gonkulair

At least wipe the snow from all your lights, mirrors and windows on your car. The license plate is also a good idea. I can’t believe the number of cars I see with a foot of snow on the car everywhere except for 2 peep holes out the windshield. Laziness will hurt you on this one.

Thank You and don’t forget to tip your server.

I know this is aimed a little more at the technical folks out there, but here goes anyhow.

In my experience I’ve found a couple windows platform applications that aid me greatly in developing/designing web pages. I’ll also try and list the Mac OS X similar product, as I do actually work on both platforms.

HTML/PHP/Script editor:

Basically, this is a really fancy Text Editor. It has text coloring to help you find mistakes and to give a better feel for structure to your document. My money (or rather no money) goes to HTML-KIT for Windows. It allows you to work directly on your server via FTP integration which supports multiple modes. It basically gives you a wonderful server/folder/file list on the right side. When you double-click a file, it downloads and opens. When you click save after having opened this way, it will upload and overwrite the version on the server. The comparable product on the Mac OS X platform is TextWrangler. It’s very similar to HTML-Kit and the price is the same.

Image Manipulation:

In the commercial world, we would say Adobe Photoshop. But in the open-source/free world we say GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) Basically, it’s free photoshop, and it’s nearly as powerful. I have yet to find something I can’t do in GIMP that I can in Photoshop. It’s interface is a bit stark, in that most of the options are accessed via a right-click contextual menu. But it works the same, and after a very short time, most people become quite comfortable using it. It does require the GTK framework for Windows, but that’s available on the website along with GIMP.
Vector Graphics Studio:

Vector graphics are an important part of the design world and ultimately the web world. Vector graphics differ from standard or “Raster Based” graphics in that rather than being and actual Bit by Bit map of the image, they are a series of math and markup that “describes” the object in the image. This allows for infinite scaling in either direction, it also allows for easier skewing, dynamic resizing and so on. Basically images are created by using a combination of basic shapes, lines, colors and techniques such as masking, clipping, grouping, etc. Most logos are vector graphics that have been “exported” to raster types. For Vector image work, I recommend InkScape.

Both Inkscape and GIMP are available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux Operating Systems.

There are of course other tools I use, but most of them wouldn’t be of interest to the average “I wanna make a webpage” person. They are aimed more at the “I develop Web Applications” crowd. Those will come in another post later. But these three basic, yet powerful tools get the most use in Web Page and Web App Development on my machine(s).

Well, geek time is done, hope this helps someone.

This is a two parter with 2 sub parts for on of the parts, and it deals with the buses.

1) Sleep with your feet towards the front of the bus. This way, when the driver hits the brakes or slams into something, your don’t get a broken neck. It also keeps things consistent and easier for the rescue workers in the event of a tragedy. Imagine thinking someone had 4 feet or 2 heads.

2) Don’t poop on the bus. This one’s pretty easy, and I’ve probably mentioned it before. It’s just a no-no.

2.5) Don’t fart loud on the bus, then everyone knows who did it and these things are like iron lungs. Besides, it’s funnier to lie quietly and snicker into your pillow when people start reacting.

That’s it for this installment. Stay in Drugs and Don’t do School. Wait, other way around.

This one I came up with on my own. If you’re going to lend your computer to someone, follow the A.B.C. method.

A) Ask if it will be covered if tragedy strikes.
B) Backup your personal data and programs. If you can afford the space to make a disk image, do that, if not get anything you don’t want to lose.
C) Check again to make sure it will be covered if something goes wrong.

This is all because of “The Incident”. Here’s the details. We were setting up a prompting system and my computer was the only one that had the proper adapter to allow an external display to be hooked up. We downloaded and installed the prompting software, all of the content was created and installed, then the prompter was installed and hooked up via a long VGA cable. We tested it during sound check and the man with glasses said it was good, make some color changes and maybe dim the display, but for the most part it was good. Set list is put in, talky talk parts are in order. Went to dinner with Jen, came back and Florey the friendly carpenter/camerawoman who’s running the prompter comes up to me and tells me my mac is dead. I go and take a look and the ac adapter light and sleep light are flashing really weird patterns. I try to restart, nothing. I pick it up to pull the battery and out comes about a 1/2 cup of water. I then hastily pop the power and battery out. Tip it to the side, another 1/2 cup of water. Bet you can’t imagine what four letter words I said then…. Darn, Damn, Agua. Followed by some other ones. It sucks, but let me tell you, I was relatively calm, as I had done a backup that morning in the form of a home directory copy to one external HD and an image of the drive to another. That computer was going to be taken with Jen when she left, as I’ve ordered a new one and I’m just waiting for it to be delivered. But now, courtesy of that cup of water and the touring company, Jen and I will have matching 1.5GHz 12″ Superdrive Powerbooks. Awwww, isn’t that sweet. Rule 4 is the best for me so far,

Listening to: Paul Oakenfold - Creamfields

If your device comes with a retaining cord, clip or protective cover, by all means use it. I have to think the reason these things come free is because the manufacturer has spotted a possible liability or weak point and has addressed it in this manner. Case in point, shirt man’s blackberry. We went to dinner and he was using it and spouting prose on how great it was and how much easier and faster his job was because of it. I asked him where the protective cover was, and he stated, as with everything else, he lost it the first day he had it. Well, about 45 minutes later after having put it in his front pocket, he pulled it out to find a cracked display. I couldn’t help but laugh, and exclaim “you’re fooked now!” in a murdered scottish accent. I had a few beers so it was quite funny. He then told the story about how just that day he had wandered into a Cingular store to buy a new cover, but they were out of them. That just made it even funnier, I had to apologize, I now felt bad. I told him I’m going to start velcroing new things to him so he doesn’t lose them, which of course sparked a reply about how I just wanted an excuse to get my hands on him…sheesh. Well, enough for rule 3, but remember. Always use protection, especially when it’s free and keeps you from breaking something, or catching something.

Listening to: U 2 - Live at the Staples Center in LA - Pride (In the name of love) accompanied by 15K+ singing fans and an awesome light show. (ooh, it’s the oh ohhhoh oh! part) Good Night all.

So the Chief Inspector of the Geek Squad, Robert Stephens, my fearless leader, has always said ” Rock Stars are/were the world’s first telecommuters”. I gotta say, he was right, and they keep going further. Now I know iSight camera’s for Mac OS are not new, but you’d thing they come free with every mac, because everyone with a Mac here has one, for each mac they have. It’s a point of concern for me of course, because of the bandwidth usage and the fact that I’m the person everyone calls when the internet is slow. Yes, I do have one, well actually two. The second will be included with my PB 12″ when it gets handed over to Jen. I’m hoping this will allow me to see her cute little face when I’m talking to her, so she can properly express herself. (She sticks out her tongue sometimes to mock me, it’s super cute). The next thing everybody seems to have is the Blackberry communicator device, or “Crackberry” as some people refer to it. They are great, I’ve only used one a little bit, but I’m definitely pushing for one, and may purchase my own eventually if I don’t get one. It’s kind of funny though, I’ve seen some near misses and even minor accidents caused by these things, it kind of worries me that there may be some people out there that are trying to use these things in their cars. Yikes!

Our next entry from “Josh’s Rulez of the Road”. This one is quite obvious, but often overlooked. Don’t ever think you’re computer is thirsty. It may be hot, and it may have a fan on, it may even sound like it’s panting while slowing down for normal activities. Even in this situation, it is not thirsty. I also do not recommend using your computer near somebody who’s hobby happens to be balancing open Snapple bottles on their knees while riding in a tour bus down gravel roads in the mountains. While it is fun to watch them, and you may want to get work done, this is not a good idea. The rule, in it’s simplest form is this: Don’t spill stuff on your computer, in fact, don’t even allow it near without taking the proper precautions. The first recommendation, if you must enjoy a beverage near your computer is this. Tape it down and use a straw, this can be improved further by taping the straw into the bottle also. The second tip is this, use your computer in a 3 mil or better garbage bag, however, this may make typing and reading the screen a bit harder, but should the wandering tsunami come for a visit, your computer should be safe. You can take this one step further by affixing a life jacket, however this is only recommended where the life vest is a fashionable color and not one of those gross orange things. Computers do so love to be safe, but not at the cost of being stylish. OK, so most of the stuff in here is BS, and it’s still technically April Fools, so I’m alright. Here’s the bottom line, be careful with your drinks. If you do spill, immediately shutdown the machine and pull the battery and all power. If it’s just a keyboard, unplug it immediately. Keyboards are cheap, data and computers are not.

Score so far:

Toshiba Tecra M200 : 0
Snapple Lemonade: 1

Luckily, Toshiba is great and they sent out a tech with a new machine to swap the drive and keep us up. So the score is once again even.

Toshiba Support (Tecra M200) : 1
Snapple Lemonade: 1

Time for a BBQ, it’s one of our big rig drivers Birthday and we’re grilling with a Big Green Egg in the dock. Mmmmmmmm…burgers…Mmmmmmmm…beer…Mmmmmmm…sleep. 1pm Call time tomorrow.

Peace, and wish The Pope well on his next journey.

Do Not change anything on your computer the day of the show, especially if your computer is part of the show. I see too much of this. I think computers follow Murphy’s Law on some deep level. It seems as though when it’s the worst possible time to have problems they do. Keeping this in mind, I’ve thought long and hard to develop my “Rules of The Road” - Rule 1. Today it was a minor excel issue, but for a very important part of the gig, the monitors for the band. The issue was resolved with a quick print out and a reinstall of office, but it’s working fine now.

This is one of the 10 or so warnings found on all packs in Canada. Quite funny really.

For those of you who don’t know about this great and vast resource, Wiki-Pedia is an online collaborative encyclopedia. You can edit it. If you know something is wrong or have some information to add, you can do it. The community watches over it, and when defaced, most articles are reverted within 20 minutes. Currently it is one of the largest encyclopedias on the planet. I recommend the Random Page Link as a homepage, then you always get something new, and interesting, or maybe not.

The address is wikipedia.org(english) and I’ve just completed adding information about my wonderful hometown of Edgerton, WI. I added the lines about Tobacco City and Sterling North. You get that stuff drilled into your head living there.

On the Audio Psychosis Inducer: Hooverphonic.BlueWonderPowerMilk - Eden (Great on a good system, or headphones)