I now speak Murloc

nitgritz — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 08:27:41 +0000

Wrath of the Lich King is everything I hoped it would be. The highlight so far was definitely when King Mrgl-Mrgl taught me the Winterfin Murloc tongue. This quest is awesome you get to go underwater, are given a special breathing potion and capture some soul juice or something in a conch shell for the king, which reminded me of the Sea Witch in the Little Mermaid. Anyhow it’s like Blizzard read my mind and knew I always wanted to be able to speak Murloc. They already do have me killing their Murloc enemies across the lake. It could be the shortage of Clam Meat regardless I think this will be great for networking.

Quest:Learning to Communicate
Here is a nice Murloc RPG in case you also have been experiencing Murloc envy.

Social networking rants and raves … but more rants

nitgritz — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 07:48:06 +0000

How To Make Money with Social Media

endorsed by Ryan Deiss

After being unapproved for commenting today on their video blog I wanted to exercise my freedom of speech and share my comment after watching this ’How To Make Money with Social Media’ video post. What is with the anti woman sentiment some of us have computer science and Multimedia careers and way to totally exclude us. Comments like a few I hear on this clip make you less credible with ½ of your audience. Ladies ‘can ‘party’ too and it seems you would not invite any.

“Men might understand this more than women do. Well that’s great (mumbles) Guys are all about what do you do for a living, that’s what everybody talks about.”

So he ‘always makes money’, need any help, from a woman, are they even invited to the party? Or should all us super smart female multimedia and marketing designers get barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen during this bad US economy?

Wow, would you like someone to speak to your female customers, clients and party members? Do you have any or maybe in ‘1000 years’ after you get some research time and take a course on the feminist movement. My advice is to try to be kind and supportive of women as well. Without us, humanity has no future generations. Social meeting sites are use very widely for dating as well. Explore this feature, Perry and get that dirt off your shoulder.

I invite any other female designers to post freely here on my blog.

Sage and Avacados

nitgritz — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 00:32:05 +0000

As it is the rainy day before Halloween it’s a good day to focus on my garden. Does anyone else to grow trees from their avocado pitts? Here is a resource for a few of the things you might be doing wrong / not doing. Look at those roots!
Check out today’s Yelp on ‘The Dry Garden’ in Oakland, CA. Written after I added two beautiful white sage plants to my collection this morning.

The new Google Phone actually Purrs!

nitgritz — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 22:25:55 +0000

Can’t have pet’s in your new apartment? No problem Google has you covered. The new T-mobile phone, the G1 offers state of the art SMS text messaging system and of course great internet access powered by PhindMe. This phone is $179.00 and requires a two year contract. Listen to this enthusiastic Public Radio Marketplace show where you can hear the purr feature and the phone features described in detail. The purr technology is described as ‘the biggest waste of memory’ that Kevin Pereira from G4TV ‘has ever seen in his life’, but it sounds so worth it for the cute companion factor. While the phone is in pet mode you can have your screen show fur, just like a real petable pet. The phone also shakes when it is petted. The use of Android technology Software development kit is freely downloadable on their website. This development project is described as an open handset alliance project and surely motivates and encourages development with its open source, all brains invited philosophy. Nice job!
The official T-mobile, G1 release site
Google gives sneak peek at Android-powered phone
Android Demo

World of Warcraft - winter release dates

nitgritz — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 04:25:55 +0000

Loving the Dragon in the snow on the latest patch and looking forward to 11/13/08 for The Wrath of the Lich King. Ok so I do not have all of my lvl 70 gear yet but I am going to need it this winter to lvl to 80 and then get all new gear … right Blizzard? We get new toys too? Off to the battlegrounds I go.
Happy Questing!

Death of the Dreamweaver Designer?

nitgritz — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 20:14:50 +0000

In my current hunt for freelance I have noticed, CMS requests have popped up everywhere, like a rampant trend and indeed requests for normal static development seem slim to none. I wanted to examine this a little bit. After establishing my own Drupal / Joomla site to tinker with, I can see why people like them. A company or business is given literally hundreds of options for dynamic and group development. However being a one person company I find myself developing my own site with big concepts and tinkering for hours only to leave the functions off as it can eventually be overwhelming for an individual who does not need a gigantic CMS for one resume and graphic artwork. Us web designers are left needlessly developing our own CMS sites just to stay competitive in the new CMS web market.
Don’t you think it is true that real developers should work on other peoples sites? Kelly Martinez an amazing programmer I went to college with told me this once and while I tweek and build on my own sites his advice from long ago rings very true to my work today. Drupal is so fun and immense however I cannot help myself.
So I will post a list of pros and cons feel free to add to them and as we get further into the days of CMS development the pros will and can eventually out weigh the cons if they are here to stay. Maybe I should do this article in a user editable Drupal book, but today I just feel like writing in my old fashion static Wordpress blog.

CMS Pros

It can do a-lot of dynamic programming for very little money.

Lots of people can be involved.

The dynamic programming is fun and easy compared to the manual old fashioned way.

You do not need a multimedia degree to do it.

There are great learning resources on the web for Drupal developers.

CMS Cons

Proceed at your own risk: If you are stretching your limbs and programming with PHP in the advanced box apparently the wrong code can break your whole site. If you are working on a client site and not your personal testing ground, this could be a big opps that could cost you the client.

Backups are a pain as you did not put the files up via ftp, when the computer crashes or hosting is not renewed on time you might not have a current backup including what others have contributed.
The image file paths a big pain and would so much rather just insert a pic with Dreamweaver, save and upload.

Dynamic pages are bad for SEO.

Your visitors can encounter too many blogs in too many places. OK so after 3 blogs and counting where should I develop? Do my site explorers really need 3 separate usernames and passwords to chat where I have posted? Yes CMS leaves no room for the lazy user.

Loose with permissions and your site could get hacked.

There are great learning resources on the web for Drupal developers that can take up ALL of your spare time, this means when you are logging hours you must log out for tutorial time to keep your prices low and less time for WOW. ;D

You do not need a multimedia degree to do it

Vote at my Drupal pole, please!

Drupal Site CMS up and running

nitgritz — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 20:21:43 +0000

This week I turned Randallkeys.com into a large Drupal CMS for my artwork/resume display and programming practice. As I do not really need a CMS this large for just myself, I invite any companies interested in having one set up to contact me and I will promptly provide a quote. I also am programming the site to share the space and allow file uploads from others, basically for educational and freelance communication purposes between designers and clients.

A second fresh out of the box Drupal site went up tonight at YLW Honolulu!

Organic Gardening

nitgritz — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 06:50:55 +0000

A great permaculture film found by Julie an author over at our sister blog Culture of Permaculture.

In gardening news this week I built a worm bin, with a large file folder box. I followed the simplest video I could find by The CompostGuy. I am so glad to finally have one to help decompose the stuff in my 2 compost bins, faster. I planted onion bulbs, and Chinese cabbage or bok choy Cauliflower. I took out my squash. Although my squash the size of large babies were impressive, it took up too much gardening real estate and no one was crazy about eating my fried squash so it basically was wasting water and going straight to the recycle bin. My harvested radishes were sort of bitter as a salad ingredient after a while so I am glad to have new things planted in place of them.

Curse Client … a Curse?

nitgritz — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 06:08:12 +0000

Curse Client, or someone controlling my Curse Client just launched about seven versions of several programs at once like windows messenger and weird dialogue boxes, completely ending a great design zone I was in. It seems someone launched this ‘unsafe operation’ when I was not even playing wow or updating add-ons, like it was a wide open portal to my pc all the time. Curse Client is not safe so please beware and use it at your own risk. Nothing else seems wrong since I uninstalled it after windows shut it down so it could be worse. If anyone trusts another add-on manager for WOW I would love to know about it.

Zeitgeist: Addendum

nitgritz — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 23:01:38 +0000

Zeitgeist: Addendum - 123 min - Oct 3, 2008
This is the full version so only try watching if you are on a high speed connection and I would recommend pre-loading.

“There are two ways to conquer and enslave a nation. One is by the sword. The other is by debt.”
_John Adams 1735-1826