UX Design

After years of building web sites as well as being about two years into the Web Design & Development degree at Full Sail University, I believe I've finally found where I fit into the grand scheme of things. I'll still be keeping my eyes & ears open, but UX Design seems to fit the bill for me given that I love research, figuring out what works (and why), writing code AND have a fetish for minimalistic design. There was a time when I thought that I was strictly a developer but I've learned that my creative side absolutely starves to death & for me to ignore that would be insane. To go a step farther, I love stats...just can't help myself & once I took the HCI class at Full Sail & learned of the psychology behind making things worked, I knew I was on to something.

Giant Step for Web Type

Every now and then somebody makes a little dent in the universe that really catches my eye, and Typecast has done that for me this morning. I know, I know...nobody really gives a damn...but it's true! I just don't get impressed, much less excited, about too much. With that said, I have a confession to make - I love typography. I can't help it! I'm one of those people that look at the ads in magazines usually more than I read the actual articles.

Okay, so...the guys (and gals?) at Typecast have come up with a way to just damn near eliminate the writing of CSS from what I can tell. Don't let me steer you wrong though, go check it out & let me know if I'm wrong. From my perspective, it's for those of us that are still stuck in the middle between letting go of the old HTML ways & fully grasping the shiny new HTML/CSS ways. Yes, I know. I should've done all this by now, but I didn't ...and while I'm coping with growing pains... wallah! Typecast  ;)

Unlearning

I'm not even sure that "unlearning" is a word but I have definitely come to realize that learning new ideas in place of the old ones is quite a chore. In the past few years I've done quite a bit of unlearning & can't say that I recommend it but it sure as hell beats the alternative if something isn't working for you anymore. It takes time and I've gained something I really never thought I have - patience. The trick for me has been to keep doing the new until it becomes second nature. Now the old ways just seem to be a whole other lifetime away most of the time.

At any rate, my latest unlearning experience is in the HTML area & has proven itself to be no exception to this rule. Years ago I fell in love with HTML & could build tables with my eyes closed. Sound great, right? Not so much at this point. HTML5 is quite crafty & really does some kick ass tricks but damn...pretty much none of what I know about HTML is applicable now. With that said, I'd love to hear back from some of you nerds out there that have gone through (or are currently going through) the same struggle. What's your trick to unlearning the old HTML & dreaming in HTML5?

I've completed a couple of small sites via my educational adventure at Full Sail University but I'd like to gain some real world experience before graduation. I'm currently practicing Actionscript chops as well so if you can offer anything there as well, great!

Design Inspiration

If you're like me, I have to take some time to look around & see what others are doing in order to stay inspired and wanting to learn new things. One of the sites I like to explore is The Best Designs because they highlight a broad range of web sites that vary in style as well as complexity. Another great resource I like visiting to get my fix on CSS, WordPress & design in general is Noupe - The Curious Side of Smashing Magazine. These guys really grab my attention because I love writing code, but I also appreciate great design work that I've never taken the time to develop without pencil & paper.

Have some great sources of inspiration of your own? Leave me a comment, I'd love to hear from you!

Wireframes Are Your Friend

It has been my experience that when starting on a project with a client, it is easy for them to get distracted by aestetics & not concentrate on the technical side of things. Several weeks ago I ran across this tool & wanted to share with those of you interested - it's called Balsamiq Mockups. In the past I've used everything from pencil & paper to Adobe Illustrator so I was thrilled to be able to jump right into creating wireframes within minutes of downloading this software. It features drag-n-drop components so you'll be up & running in no time.

Adobe MAX 2011 (Oct. 1-5)

Maybe next year?

Check it out!!!

CF Developer Week

A whole week of ColdFusion nerdville: http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/event/index.cfm?event=detail&id=1489920&loc=en_us

Restaurant using the iPad

Check out this New York restaurant using the iPad running a custom app...

http://www.inc.com/articles/201108/the-birth-of-the-ipad-only-restaurant.html

Sites n apps n such

It's been quite a while since I've wrote an actual post & I've gotten the opportunity to work on some really cool stuff recently so I think it's time. Life is pretty crazy in general & I am constantly amazed at how much I can actually get done in a day when I set my mind to it. I definitely owe a lot of the stamina to Full Sail University. LOL After starting their Bachelor of Science - Web Design & Development program back in September 2010 I have learned to push myself to new limits, and although I won't lie & say I haven't complained along the way, it has sincerely helped me to realize some of my potential.

With two teenagers at home, a full-time job, meetings, a new course every 4 weeks, side projects & the daily grind of dishes, laundry & dinner - life is NEVER dull.

So...the course I'm taking this month is Physics & I won't lie...so far, I don't get why physics is relevant to the degree I'm pursuing. On the flip side, everything I have learned thus far in the program has proved to be useful at some point so I'm going to trust in the process & keep making progress. ;)

If you're considering FSU I will say this - NOTHING could have prepared me for the rollercoaster ride but I would not trade it. For anything. I've always dreamed of attending a school like this & although it is not easy, I'm attending school with some of the best talent in the world & we are being taught by some of the best professors in the world. It is truly an awesome experience.

As far as projects, I got the opportunity to utilize Wordpress last month & so far the results are awesome. It was a perfect match for what the client wanted & needed, and they have been very pleased with the ease of updates & maintenance. Low up-front cost + quick implementation turn-around time + easy maintenance = everybody happy. Swing by & show them some love at: TxkEggFest.com.

Another project I've been working on for a couple of months now has me flexing brain cells in areas I haven't used in YEARS. We are in the process of building a huge site that includes an auction, services, reverse auction & shopping mall - all under one roof. The front-end runs on HTML & CSS with a CGI-based back-end and the first section of the site went live on June 1st of this year with plans to launch each additional part every 30-45 days. The owners are very driven & have kept me on my toes and fired up my passion to learn as much as I can on a daily basis & get it implemented as quickly as possible. I just finished the first version of and iPhone app for the site & although it is very rough and I have a LOT to learn, it's been a big accomplishment for me personally. Take a few minutes to check it out & feel free to shoot me ideas/feedback - MakeAnOfferNow.net.

Other projects that are "in the works" are: finishing my personal site for services I offer as well as a portfolio, a banner graphic for a local artist & my "pet" project. I'll reveal more about the "pet" soon - but for right now it is in the VERY early stages & I'm just not ready to pull back the curtain just yet.

Things I've learned:

• I don't care for Physics LOL
• the Objective C language is a BEAST
• PhoneGap ROCKS!!!

Catching up

Things have been busy at work & home here lately so I haven't taken the time to write much. Work has been interesting the past few weeks - to say the LEAST. Two people have left the company in the two months - one of them that had been here for quite some time, so that has left me with more responsibilities. The other one had been here about a year, but took care of quite a few things that I now get the privilege of doing. ;-P Long story short, I have a lot on my plate.

Some of the things I'm working on...print stuff: full page magazine ads using Adobe Photoshop & trying to learn some InDesign chops along the way; web stuff: can you say social networking? yep, blogging, facebook, and tweeting for the man LOL; seo stuff: neverending battle...; side gigs: been creating some HTML-based emails for folks & about to start a site for a friend - should be interesting. ;-P

On the flip side of life, I've been working in the yard & contemplating going back to school online this fall to finally get started finishing up a degree I started about 400 years ago.

Life is good...

Google's Matt Cutts LIVE

Google Liquid Galaxy (Live Demo)

Google Busts Out (Once Again...)

Just a quick post to show a little Google love! ;-)

They never cease to amaze me with their timing & technology.

Check out Google Buzz
From what I can tell so far, it's a twitter/facebook/blog offspring. I'm very curious to see how this goes over & see how it gets utilized. I must admit, a central location to check email & see what my peeps are up to is rather groovy. Especially when I'm still using an old school cell.

On another note...

Google Fiber for Communities
That's right folks! Google is going to play around with kick-ass speed internet access in homes around the country. Sign me up! ;-P

What's Really Going On...

There's a lot going on in all areas of my life so I wanted to share...

At home - we are moving furniture around & getting settled into the new house. I talked my son into letting me have the master bedroom that he'd already claimed, so that I can setup an office space to do projects from home. It's going to take a little time but we'll get there.

At work - the web site has been live for a hot minute & I'm working about 20-25 hours a week & doing some side work from home. Right now I'm focused mainly on building fresh content around the products and blogging each week.

I recently ran across a post by Matt Woodward about Posterous.com & I've played around with it a little but nothing major. Still working on building my own site to showcase skills, projects, etc.

Smashing Downloads

I love to find nice looking templates since I'm not much in the way of a graphic designer - so I wanted to share it with you... Smashing Downloads has posted 20 Useful Resources to Download Free Website Templates

PHP, Facebook & Other various animals

The new site is up & running and I'm doing my best to redirect old CF based site traffic to the new PHP. It's only been 10 years since I've touched a redirect file - and 2 years since I've done any web dev. And my brain has been fried for the most part since 2004. So I suppose you could say I'm not having a good time at this point...

I've become addicted to Facebook! It's the first & last thing I do online each day at this point...anyone know where I can find a meeting? ;-) LMAO

Okay, all BS aside...I need some help rewriting the .htaccess file and any SEO tips for keeping our rankings before the bottom falls out. The new site generates HTML files for every category, sub-cat and product so I think our rank will jump at some point. But for now I want to keep us afloat with as little damage possible.

Naming Conventions and Other Various Animals

I've had to do various small tasks here lately to get the new web site up & running - and since we changed platforms completely there was a lot transferring I ran across some cool utilities & thought I'd share...

Exporting from SQL to CSV
The old database was SQL 2000 and the new has the option of importing CSV files, so instead of writing the SQL to transfer from old to new I found a handy program on Download.com called MS SQL Data Wizard. It was very easy to use with only a small amount of code to write so that I could generate a separate CSV for each product category. Kudos to the folks at SQL Maestro for a program that's easy to work with & very powerful.

Renaming Images to All Lowercase
Right now I'm trying to find a program to convert about 5-10,000 images to all lowercase file names. I know that Photoshop will do this but I'm pretty rusty - guess I might have to go dig thru help files at Adobe...

Yahoo & Google Launch Sitemaps.org

Snip from WebProNews...

In an exclusive video interview with WebProNews Yahoo and Google announced a collaborative site called sitemaps.org. Tim Mayer states in the video, “This is something we are announcing tonight at around 9 PM tonight (Las Vegas) Google and Yahoo have gotten together to provide webmasters and publishers a unified way to send their content … let our search engines know about new and existing content.”

http://videos.webpronews.com/2006/11/16/yahoo-and-google-collaborate-on-search/

Firefox 2, Diggnation

I am just now getting around to upgrading to Firefox 2 and wanted to post a little reminder for those of you that are STILL using the 'blue e'. The blue e sucks, Firefox rocks. LMAO That was cheesey... And I've been sitting here laughing my ass off listening to the latest Diggnation podcast thru iTunes & these guys are nuts. I've got a 2pm nerd conference about Apollo that Adobe will be launching early next year so I better run for now...

Nerd Uproar

You want to witness a bunch of computer nerds (myself included) in an uproar? Go on over to the 37 Signals blog - Signal vs. Noise - and read this post:

Web developers: Microsoft has no idea what's going on

It's hilarious but at the same time it's all the more reason why I got Ubuntu installed this past weekend and will be working on learning how to do everything I need/want to on a Linux based system at this point.

I'm wondering how long it would take MS to release software if they cut out coding pop-up error messages and just made their damn software work???