What I did notice was the blog missed a quote from one of my favorite Kevin Smith movies, Chasing Amy. Although not the most popular, mainstream movie, I think it makes the cut. The scene is where Holden McNeil (Ben Affleck) announces his love for his friend, Alyssa Jones (Joey Lauren Adams) who just happens to be, well, gay. Check out the clip.

This definitely doesn’t capture the entire moment and the ending to the scene is cut out where she runs back into the frame, jumps into Holden’s arms and kisses him. They make-out all intensely on the truck, in the rain, and then… of course sleep together. Which throws a wrench in the whole friend/gay/straight/lovers dynamic. It’s pretty interesting. Especially when Holden’s best friend, Banky (Jason Lee) walks in on them in the morning after, naked and on his couch.

If you’re a Kevin Smith fan, like myself, and haven’t seen this movie check it out. It’s one of my all time favorites. It’s got the witty banter, great characters and as always an underlying geek motif since pretty much all the characters are comic book illustrators and writers. There’s also a cameo from Jay and Silent Bob.

Snoochie Boochies

Alyssa Jones: Why are we stopping?
Holden McNeil: Because I can’t take this.
Alyssa Jones: Can’t take what?
Holden McNeil: I love you.
Alyssa Jones: You love me?
Holden McNeil: I love you. And not, not in a friendly way, although I think we’re great friends. And not in a misplaced affection, puppy-dog way, although I’m sure that’s what you’ll call it. I love you. Very, very simple, very truly. You are the epitome of everything I have ever looked for in another human being. And I know that you think of me as just a friend, and crossing that line is the furthest thing from an option you would ever consider. But I had to say it. I just, I can’t take this anymore. I can’t stand next to you without wanting to hold you. I can’t, I can’t look into your eyes without feeling that, that longing you only read about in trashy romance novels. I can’t talk to you without wanting to express my love for everything you are.

And I know this will probably queer our friendship – no pun intended – but I had to say it, because I’ve never felt this way before, and I don’t care. I like who I am because of it. And if bringing this to light means we can’t hang out anymore, then that hurts me. But God, I just, I couldn’t allow another day to go by without just getting it out there, regardless of the outcome, which by the look on your face is to be the inevitable shoot-down. And, you know, I’ll accept that. But I know…I know that some part of you is hesitating for a moment, and if there is a moment of hesitation, then that means you feel something too.

All I ask, please, is that you just, you just not dismiss that – and try to dwell in it for just ten seconds. Alyssa, there isn’t another soul on this fucking planet who has ever made me half the person I am when I’m with you, and I would risk this friendship for the chance to take it to the next plateau. Because it is there between you and me. You can’t deny that. Even if, you know, even if we never talk again after tonight, please know that I’m forever changed because of who you are and what you’ve meant to me, which – while I do appreciate it – I’d never need a painting of birds bought at a diner to remind me of.

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Now, his message is not to pay your professionals less money so they’ll be more productive but to allow them to concentrate on their passion of what they do without the thought of money or any type of reward. People in my line of profession want to be passionate about what they’re doing and allowed to accomplish their job without someone standing on their feet about it. We want to concentrate on our work and enjoy it. That is our reward. That’s why we do what we do.

“Pay people enough to take the issue of money off the table.”

Autonomy, Mastery and Performance!!! What an awesome concept. I love being able to manage myself. I’m not the type of person that wants to be told when to get to work and when to leave work. Some days I feel like putting in 12 to 15 hours of work and can be pretty productive during that time. My creativity is flowing and my mind is on point. Then there are days where my mind is blank and I am not productive at all. I’m just there wasting time. I’d be better off doing something else where my head is not on my job.

The ideal situation for me would be to let me work at those times that I’m feeling most productive. Let me manage myself. Thing is, I am a lot more productive in the evenings. I’m just not a morning person. And at the age of 30 I pretty much know that I will never be a morning person. If I could, I would work from mid morning, maybe even noon, to early evenings or even late into the evenings.

I’ll use a day out of my week from last week. I was at my day job from 8:00 am in the morning till around 5:30 pm. During that time I was tired and not as productive as I could have been. My head and my thoughts were clouded and I really couldn’t concentrate. After that I went home, caught an hour nap and got up to work on a contract website. During that time until around 2:30 AM in the morning I was a lot more productive. Some of my best work came during that time. I felt refreshed and energized. I could think clearly and productively.

I love Dans concepts and the information he’s including. I think what he speaks about would be a great business model. I think allowing your employees to control and express themselves is ideal. Let them be autonomous, especially in a creative environment.

My favorite part of the entire lecture is when Dan touches on the open-source industry. I’m a HUGE advocate of the open-source business model and I can understand his thoughts on why it’s been so successful and how it relates to his subject matter. Creative and IT professionals don’t do what we do for monetary benefit – not entirely anyway. We do need money. Its all about “Autonomy, Mastery and Performance.”

Anyway, I loved this video. The icing on the cake was the illustrations. Great stuff and I hope you enjoyed it as well.

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Anyhow, the coolest part of the night was just hangin’ out with my uncle. He’s been a rock in my life and it’s good to chill out with him and “shoot the shit.” He’s definitely someone I’ve looked up to throughout my life.

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The Script, Break Even – Lyrics

I’m still alive but I’m barely breathing
Just prayed to a god that I don’t believe in
Coz I got time while she got freedom
Coz when a heart breaks no it don’t break even

Her best days will be some of my worst
She finally met a man that’s gonna put her first
While I’m wide awake she’s no trouble sleeping
Coz when a heart breaks no it don’t break even, even no

What am I supposed to do when the best part of me was always you?
What am I supposed to say when I’m all choked up and you’re OK?
I’m falling to pieces, yeah
I’m falling to pieces

They say bad things happen for a reason
But no wise words gonna stop me bleeding
Coz she’s moved on while I’m still grieving
And when a heart breaks, no it don’t break even, even, no

What am I gonna do when the best part of me was always you?
What am I supposed to say when I’m all choked up and you’re OK?
I’m falling to pieces, yeah
I’m falling to pieces, yeah
I’m falling to pieces
I’m falling to pieces

You got his heart and my heart and none of the pain
You took your suitcase, I took the blame
Now I’m trying to make sense of what little remains
Coz you left me with no love, with no love to my name

I’m still alive but I’m barely breathing
Just prayed to a god that I don’t believe in
Coz I got time while she got freedom
Coz when a heart breaks, no it don’t break–
No it don’t break, no it don’t break even, no

What am I gonna do when the best part of me was always you?
What am I supposed to say when I’m all choked up and you’re OK?
I’m falling to pieces, yeah
I’m falling to pieces, yeah
I’m falling to pieces
I’m falling to pieces

Oh, it don’t break even, no
Oh, it don’t break even, no
Oh, it don’t break even, no

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This picture was taken today on my way back to work from the gym.  Some adjustments in Photoshop and this is what I came up with.

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I just read this in a quote by Steven King and it made me think a little bit. It made me think back to all the things or situations where I avoided saying something important and meaningful to someone. The things that meant the most to me but I was afraid of someone else’s perception of me. You know those moments where you felt like the situation was immense and way too big for you. You were afraid of the reaction.

Whether it’s simply voicing your opinion or getting your true feelings off your chest, revealing oneself can be a difficult thing to contend with. The thought of rejection and humiliation can be too much for a person to deal with especially in a moment of weakness.

The entire quote:

“The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of because words diminish your feelings – words shrink things that seem timeless when they are in your head to no more than living size when they are brought out.”

If you’ve ever been in a moment where you felt like no matter what you say to someone your true feelings could never be truly understood then you can understand what King meant by, “words shrink things that seem timeless when they are in your head to no more than living size when they are brought out.”

Think about that for a moment. How many times have you wanted someone to know how you felt about them but didn’t have the words to define your true sentiment. Or you just got so nervous that you weren’t even sure if you really made any sense at all. Now compile that moment with that person having a less-than-desirable response. It can hurt A LOT. We’ve all been there and know it’s not fun.

If there’s one thing age is good for, it definitely makes you wiser, but it also makes you more tolerant of how people perceive you. After a while, you really don’t give a shit. As I’ve gotten older I’ve gained a confidence that definitely wasn’t there when I was a teenager or even in my early 20′s.

I’ve always had confidence in my abilities and my talents but I was extremely conscience of how others perceived me. If I could send a message to my youthful self it would be to, “Just let it all hang out, bro! Rock out with your cock out, hold nothing back, and enjoy the ride.”

I look back to moments when I put myself out there, was rejected, and in this space and time it has no affect on me. If anything, those rejections made me a stronger and more presumptuous. The truth is, within time, you’re going to forget it all anyway.

My message: Don’t be afraid of rejection so much so that you would let it interfere with letting someone know how you feel about them. This includes family members, friends, love interests, etc. I’d be more afraid of of not knowing what would happen if I didn’t tell someone how I felt.

Hell, I recently put myself out there and I feel a lot better for it. That person knows how I feel about them and what I think about them. I went out on a limb. I feel better about that than if I had kept those thoughts and feelings to myself. Something may or may not come of it but at least the proposition is out there and declared to them.

Say what you need to say and let the rest iron itself out later. Life is way too short to hold back and every once and a while you might just be surprised at the outcome.

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Now let me say that I am by no means anti-Mac. I love their products and if I had the chunk of change I would own one of their top of the line Mac Book Pros. However, I do understand Mac’s attractiveness and why it’s so popular. With that understanding I can also see thier faults as well.

To me the iPad missed on a great market with some of it’s short comings. Flash support being the biggest. Sure the refined OS of the iPad is amazing and from what I have read about it, it’s flawless and an experience in itself. This is all typical of an Apple product. Having said that, I still wouldn’t throw my money at one of these things. I understand it’s not necessarily a laptop, netbook or phone but there is still some things it could have capitalized on being such a great concept.

For a techie like me I’m not really attracted to cute apps and tricks. I need functionality and compatibility. Yes there is a lot of productivity software type of apps for the iPad but no multitasking you say? I can’t imagine what the developers at Apple were thinking when they didn’t integrate some sort of multitasking capability.

I want something that’ll allow me to to do more than the simple day-to-day stuff. Sometimes I may need to jump onto one of my websites and edit code while I’m on-the-go. In doing so, I have to be able to jump back and forth between my ftp client, a text editor, and a browser and maybe sometimes a graphic editor. With my Lenovo S10 Netbook, this is easy and I carry it around with me for that reason. It’s extremely convenient; so much so that I’ve whipped it out in a bar a few times to make a couple edits to a clients website. Plus it has a fully functional Ubuntu OS so it’s not just small and cute.

The answer to the iPad’s woes: The ICD Gemini.

This thing is chock full of awesomeness. Way too much to be covered here but for starters it has an 11.2″ HD display and will play full resolution High Definition videos. The device runs Google’s Android OS and along with that a web browser that supports Flash.

Further more, you can use this thing as a cellular phone. It supports Cellular Voice, Data, SMS and MMS along with wifi connectivity. Not to fall short of anything it also sports an FM tuner.

I can’t wait to see this thing out in the world and hopefully get my hands on one. I would like to see if this thing can handle a full on Ubuntu install.

For more info check out the Engadget.com review of the ICD Gemini. This has a full listing of specs and a comparison chart to the iPad and another device called the JooJoo.

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Change Is Good…

In light of spring and the changing of the seasons I’ve put together some minor updates to the theme of my website. Although I wasn’t exactly going for any “look” in particular, I like the metallic feel and the burnt-in oriental flower background in the header. I think it came out really cool. I usually like dark colors as I think it’s a little easier to read off of, but maybe that’s just me.

With that in mind I stuck with a darker gray and light font as apposed to the black that overwhelmed the design before. I changed the colors of headings to stand out more and added an underline to them to separate content throughout my blogs.

These changes took only a few hours and to me that is the beauty of a website that is theme or template based. Making major look and feel changes can be applied site wide extremely easily. I hope this inspires some of you all to refresh your websites and keep things fresh.

Back In School

So after a five week break from school due to “technical difficulties” with my account, I’m back. Today was my first day being back in and it felt good. Everyone likes to feel like they’re being responsible with their future. I’m taking a Sociology class and I’m looking forward to it. Not because of the work but because it makes me feel constructive; I feel like I’m accomplishing something. It’s a self-serving feeling but hey, in the end, I’m better for it and I just may finish that degree.

Latest Photos Uploaded Gallery

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2. Controlling Image Sizes In WordPress

No one wants to open their web page only to see that a huge, or mis-managed, image has pushed content off to the side and completely damaged any credibility of the website to its current or potential readers. Typically this isn’t due to a lack of caring by the author. It’s usually an issue of content providers not understanding the complexities of image sizes and resolutions in relation to web design an content authoring.

This problem came to me during a recent project where my client was posting images and content on a daily basis. I needed a way to constrain the pixel size of images that were being uploading to the server and into articles. I found myself spending a great deal of time re-editing and re-inserting images that were being published way too large. It became a tedious problem after a while and I needed a solution that would benefit me and still give my client the comfort of knowing he wasn’t damaging his own website.

The Easy Way Out

Okay, so there is a simple CSS trick ( img { max-width: 500px; } ) that you can use to fix this problem. Using CSS width limits on “img” html tags will constrain the maximum width an image is displayed in the browser. However, this approach is a little funky and the image isn’t actually optimized at the specified width. It’s only scaled down, or “squeezed” by the browser, so it’s still not an ideal solution because you’re rendering an image that’s at a resolution way too large for web optimization. I needed a solution that would re-optimize the image to fit into the content space and be at a resolution that’s suitable for web publishing.

After a couple days of research I found a WordPress extention and an easy code hack that could help me get what I needed.

My Requirements

First of all, I want the maximum size of the image uploaded onto the web server to be no larger than 980 pixels in width. This is an optimal image size that will display a perfectly proportioned image when its thumbnail is clicked. A full sized picture is displayed by Lightbox that’s not larger than the width of the web page (1,010 pixels wide).

In order to achieve this I installed Resize at Upload Plus through the WordPress plugin library. This plugin was written by Daniel Mores and A. Huizingais. It lets you set the maximum size an image can be uploaded onto the web server. If the image is larger than that maximum size, the plugin resizes it to whatever size and width you specify. It’s a really sweet and simple plugin and something I would hope to see built into WordPress in future updates.

Resize at Upload Plus solves a lot for me. Now my client can upload images directly from his digital camera or computer and not have to worry about the physical pixel size of the image.

Before I had him resizing his images in Photoshop before uploading and publishing them. Now my server doesn’t take such a huge hit with the giant images that were once being uploaded onto it and I’m not having to spend valuable time to go back and correct these image size issues.

The next part of the problem could be solved natively in WordPress without needing an extension or plugin. WordPress lets content contributors insert images at four different specified sizes: “Thumbnail Size,” “Medium Size,” “Large Size,” and “Full Size.” Although the intermediate sizes of the image can be constrained, the “Full Size” image option is still going to be a problem since it allows the author to insert an image at a width up to 980 pixels.

In the “Media” section I set the “Thumbnail Size”, “Medium Size” and “Large Size” accordingly to fit the content column so that the image would not be larger than it. That was pretty easy.

Having solved that problem there was one more item left to address…

Solving the “Full Size” Problem

The next problem I was dealing with is that the “Add Image” dialog was still allowing the content author the ability to insert an image at its full size of up to 980 pixels.

I don’t want “Full Size” to be an option available to the author. It gives them the opportunity to make the mistake of selecting “Full Size” and inserting a 980 pixel wide image into an article. Which in effect would break the theme and defeat the purpose of limitations and constraints.

The easiest way to solve this is to disable the code that displays the “Full Size” option. Although considered a “hack” to the core WordPress files it solves my problem. The particular portion of code we need to disable is located in the /wp-admin/includes/media.php file on line 822.

$size_names =
	array(
 
		'thumbnail' => __('Thumbnail'),
		'medium' => __('Medium'),
		'large' => __('Large'),
		'full' => __('Full size')
 
	);

Change to:

$size_names =
	array(
 
		'thumbnail' => __('Thumbnail'),
		'medium' => __('Medium'),
		'large' => __('Large')/*,
		'full' => __('Full size')*/
 
	);

Next, save and upload the media.php file to the server, and the option to insert “Full Size” images has been removed and is no longer available to the author.

That’s it. The fix is as simple as installing an extension and a change to the core admin media.php file.

The only remaining problem with this “hack” is that if you ever update WordPress you may need to go back and comment out the “Full Size” code again. Other than that, there should be no problems for you or your client. You no longer have to sit with the thought of images breaking your theme and your client is happy with their ability to edit and contribute to their website. Win – Win situation.

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3. Design, Inspiration & Education

In my friend Victor’s vision, The Santa Fe VIP was set out to be an end-all be-all resource for everything related to Santa Fe and in particular, it’s nightlife. After a little deliberating and getting an understanding for his project I had him focus the scope of his website on nightlife and highlight various businesses in town on a more concentrated scale.

Instead of being “all inclusive” I suggested he make exclusivity his selling point. My idea to him was, “What would make a persons night in Santa Fe a VIP experience?” People want to know about the deals in town. They want to feel like they’re getting the hook up or they’re part of “the crew”. If anyone has ever been to a night club that had a cover charge and known the bouncer well enough to get a deal at the door, that’s a “VIP Experience” and was going to be our model.

So far, it’s working, and because of Victor’s range of friends and connections in the restaurant and night club industry he’s been able to lock in some great deals and pass them on to readers of the website. He’s locked in a following and people appreciate the service.

My Role…

My role was simply to build and maintain the website and to help Victor get an understanding of publishing web content through a Content Management System; WordPress in this instance. The website went through a slew of design changes while Victor and I deliberated over how he could manage and maintain content as well as sell the site to potential customers with ad space and exclusively offered customized web pages.

Requirements

Victor initially didn’t express many requirements or things that were a MUST HAVE which gave me complete control over the creative process. He expressed to me his idea and I simply translated that into a functional web design. Some things that he did like were rotating and dynamic content; “flashy” stuff. I had a few ideas and a couple things that I hadn’t really tried or used before. For one, this is a website that is about entertainment so it should have some entertaining value to it. This means content that changes and isn’t stale. A lot of my clients want their information out but aren’t necessarily looking for any entertaining value in their content. Victor, on the other hand was.

In order to achieve what Victor wanted I used a jquery rotating banner on the home page. This would serve as two functions: ad space for exclusive customers or content and it has an wow factor. It’s dynamic content; It’s “Flashy”.

The Logo

When creating the logo we had a lot of different opinions. I had my own vision of what I thought it should look like and so did Victor. So to remedy that issue I had him send me examples of what he liked; font’s etc. He directed me to the website of Cody Sanderson. Cody is an amazing local Native American Jeweler and Victor liked the font on his website banner. After about two days of trying to find the font that Cody used I realized it was most likely a custom font and I’d save time just making it myself. Using Trajan Normal as a template I was able to add the exaggerated columns, ornate swirls and pronounced swooshes. What transpired from that was a pretty cool font and a great logo.

Results?

So far the website has been very successful and we’ve garnished a lot of attention from different resources namely Facebook and Twitter. I’ve always been a very big advocate for Social Networking. Not as a cool toy or a way to meet with old friends and reach out to social interests, but as a way to reach out to a large audience to gain interest in your content. More specifically in this case: Santa Fe locals and tourists were the target audience and both Facebook and Twitter offered a great way to reach out to that audience.

The site is growing everyday. Throughout the last month (even before announcing a launch) the website has had approximately 7,000 hits. Victor himself has managed to sell some of his newly found web-based real estate and produce some valuable content. Although we’ve experienced a few bumps with media content, Victor has grown comfortable in publishing regular blogs and events with pictures and links.

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