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» Late Tuesday Things

It’s busy times right now preparing the shop windows and all for the summer and sales and I’m a bit of the in-house web designer and design/tech guy so I actually get to do a lot of it.

• Microsoft has released a critical update to Office for Mac 2008 bringing it up to 12.1.1. It should fix several things mainly stability and performance issues. The update is available through the Auto Updater which you can get to by going into either Office application and choose "Check for Updates".
   
• Here’s a little tip for you, something I always do. If you are trying to design something, start with a piece of paper and a pencil (having an eraser nearby would be pretty nifty as well). This way you can lay up a lot of things and write comments to yourself before working and finalising it on the computer. Also very easy to show to other people near you for quick-feedback.
   
• If you are looking for an advanced text editor also for the Mac that greatly supports coding, then you should look no further than Smultron. It’s a really good editor that supports all major code languages you want to code in mainly for the web but also for more trivial tasks like doing a to-do list. Check it out!
   
• I’m in the market for a new lens, mainly a macro lens (can’t be too expensive so the Nikon 105 VR is out unfortunately) and if any of you have any experience with one, post a comment and tell me because I’d love to hear it! Needs to be good for macro and portraits. I have a pretty good idea on what to check out but any input and hands-on experience wouldn’t hurt.

» My top 5 list of WordPress Plugins

There are quite a few plugins that this site couldn’t live without and that I’m really glad exist. I’m going to share my top list of WordPress plugins, big or small doesn’t matter here so even if they do just one little thing, it might be a thing that I really like and makes running the site much easier.

cformsII
This is really one of these big and glorious plugins that does make your life easier as well. cforms is the plugin powering the contact form on the site and it is really a truly amazing free plugin. It lets you manage the forms you need (how many you need) and with ease style them and insert more complex features.

All in One SEO Pack
This plugin is the reciept for google sucess. I’m really serious. If you have a WordPress blog and you want more control over description and keywords on your post, this one is for you.

StatPress
The master of statistics on your blog I really say this is. StatPress collects visitor information including all the detailed fun stuff you’d want to see as well as the simple visitor and referrer stats. Just choose the way you want to view it, StatPress collects it all for you in any case!

Plugin Central
This is a really different but cool plugin. It lets you quickly and easily install plugins from your dashboard without needing to download files to your computer and upload through FTP. It’s a really fast way to install new plugins. I just wish it had the ability to remove them also if needed.

Dean’s FCKEditor for WordPress
This plugin replaces the default WordPress editor with the lot more advanced FCK Editor! It works like a charm and makes posting a lot more feature rich.

 

» Wednesday Stuff

 

Third time a go this time then? I’ve been trying to post this post three times now and all times I’ve accidentally quit the window in one way or another, causing this one to close and loose all writing.So lets try one more time now then.

• Scott Kelby has turned his recent "No-Blog Wednesday" into "Guest-Blog Wednesday" and about time as well, we were definitely missing something on Wednesdays (nah, just kidding Scott, you deserve your break). Anyway, this first week it is Vincent Versace who is doing the blogging with an article about "how to take better photos".
   
• The Orphan Works Act are coming closer to a vote all the time now and I’m getting an article written on its basics and possibly getting that up this week so keep your eyes on the site.
   
• I came across a cool flash component called 3D Wall. It basically lets you create a 3D Wall with photos as a slideshow in flash. All in all it is a pretty cool thing I must say and very simple to do. It’s available for $99 from their website.

» Friday Coolies

It’s Friday today and since yesterday was a silent blog Thursday, I have a lot of things up today. Now, for those of you wondering, all is well with the person I talked about yesterday and only got a sprained leg and bruises.

• I get some questions to me sometimes on how I manage to run a business and manage to do all this etc. while still keeping up with school (getting almost straight A’s, so no slacking here) and life in general. Well, if you are running a business from home it’s the things that David Ziser mentioned in this blog, Digital Pro Talk yesterday, with "20 Pointers for running your business out of home".
   
• A trend these days in Web Design is to use resizable image backgrounds in websites to really make a website out of a photo or similar. This week CSS-Tricks posted a tutorial/article on how to make it. It takes up three different methods and rank them, good, better, best. If you want to know how to, read the article!
   
• I thought I’d tip all of you off on an article which I read back when I started out, but which still does apply very much. The article is called Becoming A Web Designer by Mat Dwyer and it is well, really awesomely made with a lot of insight and tips. It is well worth a read any day, even for someone who’s been in the industry for a little while.

» Late Wednesday Quickies

It’s getting late here when I’m typing this and I’m almost about to head to bed but I thought I should do a little update before. I just finished an extremely busy evening. Right after school I had to go to a three hour intro course to driving, which is mandatory for everyone wanting to start practise driving here in this country, feels good to have it done but it was painfully slow, especially knowing you have a french test tomorrow Wish me luck.

• Free books are always cool and the guys over at SitePoint has right now got a full book available to download, yours to keep forever, called "The Photoshop Anthology: 101 Web Design Tips, Tricks & Techniques". It’s said to be a great book for designers and I just downloaded it myself. It’ll be a little time before I can read it myself though. Got to much on my plate, but it sounds cool and you can only download it for free for the next 30 days!
   
• I’m becoming more of an InDesign addict and really starting to using the program a lot more (it’s fun). Apart from noticing that in the tutorial index I’ve found a cool site for you all other InDesign users as well. It is called InDesignSecrets and run by Anne-Marie Concepcion. It’s a really good tips blog that makes a good read any day.
   
• If you do a lot of RGB to CMYK or CMYK to RGB colour conversions, then you’ll probably appreciate this little colour conversion tool available online, for free!

 

» Tuesday News World Update

It’s Tuesday today and I was writing this post at 7a.m this morning, before school, but apparently I was way to tired to hit the publish or save button so I quite lost all post content therefore I need to repost it now. I had my concert yesterday and thanks to my family and my best friends for being there and for being the best support. It was really awesome and went really well.

Olympus Releases E-520

Olympus is today announcing its new camera body, the Olympus E-520. It has got improved AF in LiveView, 10 megapixels, a 2.7" Screen, wireless flash control, 3.5 fps shooting and a built in image stabiliser. It is available in four kit versions, body only (£479.99), with 14-42 kit lens (£529.99), with double kit 14-42 & 40-250 (£529.99) as well as with second double kit 14-42 and 70-300 (£759.99).

Cool website - CSS-Tricks

I found out about this cool website through another blog I am subscribed to. It’s called CSS-Tricks and deals with, well, obviously cool CSS tricks etc. but also points to some good thoughts about image protection and other web related things that you really need to know and be in the loop with. A really good site I must say so keep it fresh in memory.

NAPP & Stuff clarification

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while you will know that I like to mention NAPP (National Association of Photoshop Professionals) and the gang over there quite often. Now I want to note that I don’t get any kickbacks or anything (apart from the fun of doing it ) when I mention them and I do it only because I’m a member myself and I really like the work they do and their style (plus they are all a really amazing and friendly crowd)! There you have it, the "amazing story behind".

ScreenFlow - Recording Application

I read this on Terry White’s techblog yesterday and it got me a little bit excited. He got turned on to (and in a chain reaction got me turned on to) a screen recording application called ScreenFlow. It’s another screen recording application for the Mac that lets you edit the recorded material right after you’ve recorded it (sadly though you need to export it out after, one of the things I love about iShowU is that you don’t need to do that there) and add callouts and even record from your webcam while you’re recording your screen. Here’s a link to Terry’s review. (If you are a PC user reading this post and hoping for a program recommendation, my recommendation is Camtasia Studio.)

» Friday “Sunshine” News

I think I’ve just about mentioned it in all my blog posts this week! The weather here is fantastic and well, nothing short of smashing and brilliant (I could go on with extreme words like that for too long) which is causing today to be "Sunshine Friday"!

• Adobe has added a new feature to its web based photo editor Photoshop Express. From today you can now import and manage photos that is on your Flickr account in addition to the ones previously available. Pretty cool I’d say if you are using Photoshop Express and Flickr!
   
• I’m getting a lot of questions on how to work with WordPress and how to set it up for certain purposes and I thought I’d start writing a tutorial series about just that. How to work with WordPress, what settings to use, some plugins etc. I don’t have any estimated completion date but it should be within the coming two weeks I assume!
   
• Over at LightroomKillerTips, Matt Kloskowski has a good Lightroom video today about how to backup to another drive instead of your main one. (Your catalog that is) It’s something that’s indeed really hidden.
   
• If you work with the web or are a web designer like me, you probably have heard your share of SEO debates and articles but if you are a little new to the field (or even if you have been there and heard it) you’ll appreciate this article by Nick La over at the Web Designer Wall talking about SEO for Web Designers.

It’s been a long week indeed and it’s been very busy with a lot of things happening, at least for me! Now it is going to be a fun and relaxing weekend in the warm weather. Fear not, I have an article lined up for you guys tomorrow.

I’m going to be away at my cousins confirmation service tomorrow which means I’ll be in a church taking some nice pictures I hope. I might be able to share you some on Sunday!

» Blogging Wednesday

It’s indeed Wednesday today and for me at least a very fine Wednesday. The sun is shining, the music is being played and I have had the day off for a project work. Onto the happenings of today now.

• First off a tip. If you are a coder like me you might definitely like this cool source code editing program called Smultron. It’s totally free and has all of the standard features, plus some that the commercial programs don’t even have. I’ve been using it for a while and I’m in the process of writing a review up on it!
   
• Are you an InDesign user? Maybe you are but are you an InCopy user? If you are then I have a cool site for you. From Anne-Marie Concepcion who has been bringing us the InDesignSecrets we can now go to InCopySecrets as well and it’s really cool especially if you are an InCopy user (otherwise it would be pretty useless although there are a few InDesign tips there as well). 
   
• Do you travel with your laptop? Maybe you go to conferences or you host one? Are you worried that someone in your house might want to use your computer when you are not there? Or maybe you just like cool applications. In any case do check out iAlertU a very cool application that lets you lock and larm your computer so that if anyone tries to do anything with it, a siren like a car alarm will go off. It’s controlled through the Apple Remote and can even take a picture of the intruder through the built in iSight cam!

Summer is getting closer and closer for everyday and it is really starting to get warm outside so I advice you to get out and enjoy the nice weather. Take photos, walk a little, run or just sit still in the sun. Either way, get out and about!

» Tuesday Web Update

 

Things are calming down a fraction today so here without much further adieu here are the Tuesday Web News!

• A little humour first coming from the NAPP Forums. A fellow users has apparently as the first in the history reached a limit of deactivations allowed on the creative suite. Apparently and according to Adobe the limit is at 21 deactivations (a pretty odd limit). So congrats on the limit reach and being the first to test that for the rest of us
   
• Although I myself use the lazy code view in Dreamweaver a lot and I recommend it to people all the time Smashing Magazine has got today a good article with 25 WYSIWYG html creators for your sites on your computer.
   
• I intended to blog about this a while ago but forgotten and didn’t have time to run a test before but I’m going to bring it up nevertheless. It’s a pretty cool photoshop plugin which allows you to export your psd file to a css ready document. Go and visit PSD2CSS.
   
• I know I keep saying this but seeing as I have some time over tomorrow I’m going to be posting up new podcast episodes, new tutorials and work on a bunch of reviews and articles as well! I’m also starting an e-book project that I intend to release sometime in the summer.

I think that is it for today though and now some good hours of sleep are awaiting me before tomorrow comes fully, Preset Day!

 

» Thursday News Update

Congratulations to Scott Kelby

I want to congratulate Scott Kelby on the news that his Digital Photography Book Volume 1 is the best selling photography book ever right now! What’s even more is that currently his Volume 2 of the book is selling much more than volume one did for the same amount of time when it was released! Many congrats to Scott on this big achievement!

New online class from Kelby Training - Creative Integration with Taz Tally

Kelby Training has launched yet another new online training class called "Creative Intregration" hosted by Taz Tally. In this class you’ll be walked through how to set up the different creative suite applications to work better with eachother and how to use them together in a good way. I’ve watched most of the lessons in the class and I must say Taz has done an amazing job with it!

Web Design Forums

There are a lot of forums on the web and if you are a web designer, chances are that you might be looking for one to be a member on or you are at some already but want more to be on. Smashing Magazine posted a good list today with a little synopsis following each forum in their list. What they’ve done is listing a couple of forums they like with thumbnail and info.