Wordpress Love
November 24, 2009
The more I use Wordpress, the more I love it. I am not talking about the yourname.wordpress.com Wordpress accounts but the self-hosted fully customizable Wordpress from wordpress.org. I set my entire website up using Wordpress for content management and purchased an amazing theme from http://ithemes.com/ and it was worth every penny.
As I continue to expand the capabilities of my site I found another amazing Wordpress Plugin to add to my growing collection. My list of plugin already include Shadowbox, Inline Javascript, Feedburner, TS Custom Widgets, and Twitter Tools. Today I added WPtouch which turns my Wordpress website into a mobile friendly site that displays nicely on the iPhone and other mobile devices.
There are so many amazing plugin out there for Wordpress, it is not just for blogging anymore and it is no wonder that it just won an award for the best Open Source CMS for 2009
If you want a website or a blog, register a domain and get a hosting account then install wordpress.
Let's Go Wildcats
November 21, 2009
Arizona has their biggest game of the season tonight and the first of three huge games. They have to win all three and they go to their first Rose Bowl in school history.
I was at school there when they had their best football season ever in 98 going 12-1. I was there when they won their first and only basketball championship in 97. They were 1 quarter away from playing for a national championship in football in 98 but they have never gone to the Rose Bowl. Come on Wildcats. Three more wins and I’ll be happy. Is that too much to ask?
Scary Times
November 21, 2009
“Noise pollution is the leading cause of global conflict!” -my brother’s neighbor after getting upset with him over a barking dog.
I was busy working on updating my website today making sure all the install buttons were working properly and trying to get more Flock themes ready to list. The great thing about what I am doing now is, I get to work from home. The bad thing is my wife’s Grandma is staying with us so I had to move my computer desk out into the living room. This is the same living room that is being used as the plot of land where my kids built a really cool blanket fort. This is the same blanket fort that they are running circles around screaming while they chase each other in a game of Astro Boy. As I was trying to get work done I came to a very frightening realization, I am becoming an old person. My head was about to explode because I couldn’t hear myself think. I have reached that point in my life where I can’t stand loud noises. Maybe my brother’s neighbor was right. I was ready to start some global conflict because my kids were definitely contributing to the level of noise pollution.
Eventually I gave up and helped them make the blanket fort bigger. Nothing stifles conflict like building a blanket fort together.
The Day Everyone Has Been Waiting For…
November 20, 2009
Or at least they day every crazy female who is obsessed with Edward Cullen. That’s right, New Moon comes opened today and people (i.e. females) are going nuts. My wife went out to dinner with a friend yesterday and saw people camping out in front of the movie theater for the midnight showing. Another woman took a cardboard Edward on a stick with her to California Pizza Kitchen. My wife, and 19 of her friends all bought matching Twilight shirts to wear to the movie tonight, yes, she is a Twilight nut as well but I will give her credit for being less nutso than so many others.
This movie is going to be much better than the first for one simple reason. It is competing against the first movie. The first movie had the impossible task of competing against everyone’s perception of the book and there is no way Robert Pattinson could live up to the Edward of book. All I heard were complaints about how Edward was this in the book and how he should have looked like that, etc. Kristen Stewart had no business portraying Bella. Forks H.S. would not be like that. The list went on. Now all we are going to hear is how much better the second movie was compared to the first.
Today is your big day all you Twilight goofballs. I hope the movie is as good as you think it is going to be.
Links Back Up
November 18, 2009
I have my SSL Certificate working for my back up hosting account so my links are back up. I am a big fan of 1and1.com as a web host. Everything is running through virtusdesigns.net until I can get virtusdesigns.com transfered over. My user forum is down for now but as soon as I get virtusdesigns.com running and my database files restored. I should have my forum back up within the week.
I will be working on getting the rest of my Firefox themes updated and listed on the AMO self-listing pages.
Server Issues
November 17, 2009
As my house is about to blow down from the massive winds outside, I am madly trying to get everything transferred over to my other hosting site because I am having huge issues with my godaddy space. I have found godaddy to be very unreliable and worthless so you will run into some errors if you try to download themes. I updated my SSL certificate and hope to have my four Flock themes along with Aero Fox Silver, Revelation, and Aquatint ready to go before I go to bed tonight.
I am transferring everything to virtusdesigns.net while I get things straightened out and back in order with virtusdesigns.com.
My user forum will likely be down for a little bit during this process but I should also get that back up and running. Sorry for the inconvenience. My goal is to have Aquatint Black, Aquatint Slate, Bible Fox, Bible Fox Blue, Eclipse, Onyx, Chromium and Zune updated and ready to download by Wednesday (assuming my hosting accounts cooperate)
Oh What a Year!
November 14, 2009
Today marks day 365 since being laid off by Flock. I went to bed on Thursday, November 13, 2008 thinking everything was great. I was enjoying my new job, frustrated with some thing, but overall very happy that I was out of teaching. I was doing what I loved and then the phone call came. I was expecting to discuss work issues but instead got an awkward silence followed by, “This sucks but your job was cut”. Not what I wanted to hear on a Friday morning with Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s coming over the next month and a half.
To make it even better, my wife and I found out that she was pregnant with our third baby (later to revealed to be a third baby boy). So, in a weeks time I lost my job, the market was collapsing, we were losing our insurance and having another baby. That set off a crazy year of ups and downs follow by more ups and more downs. My family was supposed to come up for Christmas for the first time ever but they didn’t make the trip due to a freak snow storm that dropped 2 feet of snow on Portland. Come spring time, we were getting ready to celebrate our 10th Anniversary but the hopes we had of taking an amazing trip were now whittled down to a 3 day getaway on Orcas Island. Now, spending 3 days in a great little cottage in the Puget Sound with no kids was nice but not what we had hoped for. Either way, it was a nice little up time during what was just the beginning of our year.
With no hope of finding a decent job, I got a random email from the people at Ask.com and we began the discussion of bundling their search with my themes. This huge up turned into a nightmare down as lawyers got involved to make sure everything was ok as we proceeded. After taking a few months to finalize contract language we signed the contract and things were back up. Then, Firefox changed their policy regarding add-ons due to a battle between two extensions developers that led to the opt-in policy. This all happened right at the time we were getting ready to release our bundled themes and ultimately to the “secret update”. Things settled down but the excitement of the release turned into another extended wait as the Ask search extension had to be rebuilt to comply with the new policy. Between the originally planned release and the redo, our third little guy was born and brought the biggest up of the past year. He is a huge blessing and his little smiles and laughs bring joy during this roller coaster.
The combination of a new baby and major delays caused me to go into web hibernation and I was very bad at responding to comments and emails. (If you sent me an email and I didn’t respond, I am very sorry. I tried to get to them all but the time consuming needs of a newborn and a severe decrease in sleep made it difficult.) I finally got the rebuilt Ask search on October 28th and my first theme release happened on November 6th. I am supposed to get the rest of the needed extensions on the 18th so I can upload my updates.
A year without a job really does a wonder on your credit score, your savings accounts, and your debt owed since we have had to be very creative with our finances. At one point, my wife and I were looking for coins anywhere we could find to scrounge up $5 so we could have enough gas to get to where we needed to go. With so many people hurting financially right now, it has been an eye opening and much needed experience to know what it is like to not know how things were going to get paid. We have had amazing friends and a Church family that has blessed us beyond belief to help get us through. After losing my job, finding out about the baby, not having Christmas, hearing from Ask, legal delays, release #1, opt-in road bump, new son, major delay #2, release #2, some final hurdles and the Hell that is Godaddy.com, things are slowly turning around and moving forward since starting a 365 day journey of being unemployed.
It has been a very crazy year for us and tomorrow will start day 1 of the next year. I appreciate all the kind words and encouragement I have received from so many of you. I am very grateful to all of you who use my themes. I started out as a teacher doing something for fun 5 years ago and now I sit here trying to turn it into a way to provide for my family. Without you, none of this would be possible so thanks again.
Flock, Firefox and Sporks
November 3, 2009
Certain inventions should be forgotten and placed in the trash heaps of history. The spork is one of those inventions. Whoever decided that combining a fork and a spoon, two very useful eating utensils, into one mutated hybrid would have been told “I’m out” by every one of the Sharks in the Shark Tank had they appeared on the show to ask for money as they pursued their dream of cutlery perfection. The fork serves a great purpose, to pick up your food in a secure manner as you transfer that food from your plate to your mouth. It was a huge improvement on other such instruments like the chop sticks. The spoon enabled us to move from slurping liquids from a bowl to using proper eating etiquette at fancy gatherings. The spork, however, is a spoon with slots on the end that allow liquids to spill out or a fork with stubby prongs that let the food drop back to the plate before it reaches your mouth.
Forks and spoons serve two very important yet unique purposes. Web browsers are similar in their uniqueness and the audience they serve. My two favorite browsers are Firefox and Flock. They both use the same search technology since Flock is built on top of the Firefox code but they serve two entirely different groups of people. Lately, I have been using Flock exclusively.
The Flock toolbar will look familiar to Firefox users with a few exceptions. Right away you will notice the extra buttons on the URL window, the big star button, and the extra icons where you would normally expect to see bookmark favicons. Flock’s signature button is their “Flockstar” button which acts the same as the bookmarks button in the Firefox URL window. Instead of “bookmarks”, Flock uses “favorites” and the “Flockstar” button allows you to bookmark, make that, favorite sites that you visit. The rest of the URL bar adds to the functionality of Flock. Next to the Flockstar are the Media Stream and RSS buttons. When a media stream is available on the site you are visiting, the button will change colors and alert you that there is a stream you can add to your media toolbar. In the same way, the RSS button will alert you when you visit a site with an RSS feed that you can subscribe to. This feed will be added to your RSS sidebar but that will be discussed later. At the other end of the URL window is the Go button and the Mail button. There is a third button for Digg users that can be added but that has been removed as a default for Flock 2.5. The Mail button is a useful tool if you like to share sites with your friends. This button allows you to easily mail the link to the current page you are on.
Below the main toolbar is the Flock toolbar. This is where Flock truly sets itself apart from Firefox and integrates all your social networking needs. Many users are intimidated by the toolbar because, at first glance, those buttons don’t clearly explain what they are there for and how to use them. If you aren’t the type that likes to start poking around and clicking on stuff to see how it works, it’s easy to just think those buttons take up precious window space and need to be removed. Each of them serves a key role in the functionality of Flock so I will take them on at a time.
A. The “My World” button is your control center of account activity. From your My World page, you can monitor status updates for your facebook and twitter friends, do a twitter search, monitor your RSS feeds, view your media feeds, and so on. It is not like an iGoogle page where you can customize your page content and move things around but it does place all your content in one place to get a quick view of what is going on.
B. The “People Sidebar” button opens up a sidebar where you can view your activity for various accounts. This is where your twitter stream, facebook status updates, myspace content, etc. can be viewed. Flocks affiliations continue to grow and currently include most of the major services. Myspace was added with Flock 2.0. Version 2.5 had major improvements to the usability of twitter and facebook. If you are a power tweeter with thousands and thousands of followers, Flock may not be the best tool for you. Instead you would want something like Tweetdeck but Flock handles twitter nicely for casual users. From the sidebar you can view your stream, your direct tweets and your direct messages. The integration of facebook received major improvements in 2.5. The most significant addition is the ability to view your alerts and IM’s when you leave the facebook.com page and visit other sites.
C. The “Media Bar” button opens up a horizontal toolbar below the bookmark toolbar where you can view photos and videos.
D. The “RSS” button opens your list of feeds in the sidebar where you can click and see the updated stories available for your reading pleasure.
E. The “Webmail” button keeps track of your gmail, yahoo! mail, and AOL mail accounts. It will glow when you have new messages and takes you right to your account when you click on an email or want to compose a new message. If you use any of these webmail accounts, this is a great tool because you only need to go to your inbox when there are new messages.
F. The “Favorites” button opens up the sidebar to show your history and your bookmarks.
G. The “Accounts and Services” button opens up the sidebar where you can view the settings for your accounts, set up preferences for new accounts, etc. It is broken up into different categories including People, Media Sharing, Blogging, Favorites, Webmail, and IM.
H. The “Clipboard” button is a place where you can store text, links, and images from the web that you want to save. All you have to do is drag and drop what it is you want to save into the clipboard and Flock keeps track of it for you for later use.
I. The “Blog Editor” button allows you to post to your blog without having to go to the actual site. Flock integrates with Blogger, Blogsome, LifeJournal, Typepad, Wordpress, and Xanga but you can also add a self-hosted blog by entering the proper info when you set up your account. You can add multiple blogs to the Editor. When you click the button, a pop-up window comes up where you can write your post. When you are done, you simply pick which blog you want to post to and you are done.
J. The “Photo Uploader” is a great feature. You can link it to any of your social sites or your media sharing sites and upload your photos. It is a very easy and convenient too if you like to share your pictures with friends and family.
If you just want a minimal browser to view websites, Flock may not be for you. If you use webmail, have a facebook or twitter or myspace account, upload a lot of photos, like to blog, or follow a lot of RSS feeds, Flock is definitely worth checking out. Firefox is capable of doing all of these things but you must download and install dozens of third party extensions and add-ons. This will work but there is a downside. Since all of these add-ons are developed by different parties, they will not look consistent and created a jumbled look of random colors and buttons. Flock’s integration of all of these features keeps your browser looking consistent and clean as you surf the web.
One feature that has been missing for Flock users is the availability of themes to fit the look of your browser to your style and tastes. That, until now. I am working on converting my Firefox theme collection into available Flock themes so users can have a choice in how their browser looks. I have a couple of them ready now and can be downloaded here.
Flock is worth trying out if you haven’t already done so. Give it a try. Just like with search engines, people can be very particular and loyal to their browser but you never know, unless you try it out you won’t know if there is something better suited out there for you.
What was up with the spork intro you might ask? Firefox and Flock serve two different purposes. Firefox is packaged as a minimal browser with speed in mind. There are tons of extensions available but Firefox can quickly become bogged down and overloaded with add-ons slowing down the browser and defeating the original intent of the browser. It is great for people who want to change the look of their browser often and those who just want to add a couple of extensions.
Flock is designed with all of these features built in and performance is maximized to work with those features. Since they are all built by the same developers they work together without fighting each other and they keep a consistent look across the UI. So many Firefox users want Flock but are dead set on sticking with Firefox. Rather than switching and using a browser better suited to their needs, they try to turn their spoon into a spork by dumping a bunch of extension and add-ons into Firefox. Rather than getting the perfect browser they get a spork, a browser that is bogged down and cluttered with extensions that may or may not play nicely together. Download today, give it a try and see what you think.