Just Some Random Things

by cliff538 on February 6, 2010

in News, Tools

  • For a very good video on using firebug to extract information from your css watch kristarella explain it here.
  • Another great web site for videos on science, math, and computer science is Peteris Krumin’s “Free Science and Video Lectures Online!”
  • I have found new FTP software that I am just crazy about! Hands down my new favorite, tons of options and a very clean easy to use layout, and I swear it’s faster. Transmit 3 by Panic.
  • I have never used a dedicated RSS reader before and to be honest I have been missing out. It’s kind of like twitter in a way, you get this great stream of customized information that you can digest/move through very quickly. After a small learning curve I have moved all of my feeds to NetNewsWire and it absolutely rocks! Everything is now organized and keeps in sync with Google Reader. You can very quickly move down your feeds scanning/pausing for the ones you want to read and just by-passing the rest with just using your space-bar. When all of my feeds were in Safari I had to click on each individual one, wait for the page to load and then scroll through. With NNW all your feeds are in one list, broken down into folders if you want, and this allows you to scan down and read everything very quickly, pausing on the stuff you want to read word for word. There are tons of options for sorting, viewing, filing, and syncing. It even has it’s own built in browser that will open up in a new tab for when you want to have a look at the web site without leaving NNW. If you have never used a RSS reader before take the time to check this one out, it’s free and it will change the way you look at feeds.
  • The new and improved “Exposed To Want” blog is still powered by WordPress but I am now using the Thesis theme. I will write up a blog post later after I have had time to play with it more, but for now Chris Pearson has really hit on something. It is a very well done and easy to use theme up to a point. Advanced stuff is a different story and you have to really dive into the forums and search the web for people who have written tutorials on how to do things that you think should be easy. I have played with 20+ themes and thesis is the best so far. With that said, I’m still very frustrated with WordPress as a whole due to my lack of PHP skills and not having a really good solid understanding of how WordPress is all hooked together. It takes hours of study to figure out how to do basic things that I could do on a “normal” web site in 10 minutes. Don’t take that as a slam or complaint because it’s not! WordPress is an incredible and powerful backend to your blog or web site and that power brings with it complexity… you just have to take the time to learn some PHP, and how WP is structured. You can do an awful lot by just cutting and pasting other peoples code into your site, the whole WP and Thesis community is great, I have found nothing but great people who usually are more than willing to help out and share what they have learned. I can also say nothing but great things about Thesis support, there forums are teeming with help!
    Alright enough said about that for now, look forward to a full write up about Thesis.
  • If your using WordPress and you want to know more about it, I highly recommend the new book “Digging Into WordPress” by Chris Coyier and Jeff Starr. You can buy a .pdf version that will be updated or get a very nicely bound spiral lay flat hardcover. I bought both because I want these really smart guys to keep imparting there wisdom and knowledge on us!
  • Wrapping this thing up. The (I think) very cool header above spelling out ExposedToWant.com in pictures of letters from flickr is a fine project from Erik F. Kastner called Spell with Flickr. You can refresh this page and get different pictures. It’s very cool, go check it out. Yes, I’ll say it yet again: Never Stop Learning!
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Top Notch Computer Science Video Lectures

by cliff538 on February 6, 2010

in News, Tutorial

You can go a long way with reading about .htaccess, HTTP protocol, or apache servers, but there comes a point where you would really like to have it explained by a talented teacher. In comes classroom video lectures from some top schools.

Here are some of my favorites:

AcademicEarth has a great web site that is full of great material covering a wide topic area. I have been using there computer science area to find some great video lectures on the basics of how the Internet works right on up to advanced programming. Look around in here and find some area your interested in, it’s a great way to kill a few hours days and learn something new.

AcademicEarth Website Screenshot

From within AcademicEarth I found this web site from Harvard Extension School that is absolutely incredible! As of this post they have 5 classes online with video, lecture notes, slides, syllabus and source code. I am about half way through the “Building Dynamic Websites” course and it is incredible, I highly recommend it. Be sure to print out the lecture notes they are really helpful.

Screenshot of Harvard Extension School

I have been learning a great deal from these lectures and they have made me want to be able to go back to a classroom setting. You really get so much more from a talented professor. Like I said print out the lecture notes and get your self a notebook and start learning. You can also print out the projects and try your hand at them.
Never Stop Learning!

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Project PilotGraphs

January 29, 2010

The first post of 2010 has me working on a brand new project. Since I don’t have customers coming to me with requests and wants for there web site that challenge me and make me dig into the books to learn new skills, I challenged myself to come up with a whole new idea. This [...]

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WP Plug-in for Mobile Phone Viewing

December 12, 2009

Had to show you this very cool WordPress plug-in for viewing your blog or Web site on a mobile device. I can not do it justice by describing all the features, so just check it out here, WPtouch: Mobile Plugin
I have been seeing this on many blogs that I visit on my iphone and have [...]

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State of Learning Update

November 7, 2009

This update is all about slowing down and sticking to the plan. My past updates have mentioned my propensity for jumping around and trying to learn too much too fast. I have been kind of been blowing off JavaScript to a certain degree and just focusing on JQuery and I believe this to be an [...]

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Great Articles Covering JQuery

October 31, 2009

Wanted to drop off these great JQuery articles written by Michael Abernethy to you, I have been going through my Head First JavaScript book and keep dabbling over into JQuery…. hard to keep focused on just one thing you know! Well, here are a series of articles that cover JQuery very well, they are [...]

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Watch These Great JQuery Screencasts

October 22, 2009

Just found these yesterday, there is nothing like watching things being done. Go to iTunes and get all of these they are great. Click the iTunes link to go straight there.

Here is the link to the web site “JQuery For Designers” so you can roam around, be sure to look at the written [...]

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Sync your TextExpander Snippets

October 19, 2009

Here is a real quick blog entry about keeping your TextExpander snippets synced with DropBox. TextExpander is a great tool and now you can keep your snippets synced between multiple computers, just follow the instructions from the link below.
Smile on my Mac Blog Entry

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If I knew it was that easy… finally rounded corners

October 2, 2009

If I knew it was that easy my corners would of been rounded when I made the site! I was just poking around the web a week or so back and found an article on “moz border” and “webkit”, turns out you just add this to your CSS and boom you have rounded corners, at [...]

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State of Learning Update

September 25, 2009

This past week I have been trying to narrow my focus or more narrowly define my subject learning order. I feel comfortable with my basic knowledge of HTML and CSS and the basics of getting a web page built and online. My WordPress Blog is up and running smoothly. So I have had trouble defining [...]

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Rounded Corners-A Starting Place

September 17, 2009

Have not played with this yet, but researched it a little bit and wanted to drop a quick note about a good starting place. Basically it sounds like you can use JavaScript to round your corners and it works in all the major browsers. In your CSS you can use -moz-border-radius: Xpx, Xpx, Xpx, Xpx; [...]

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Quick Pixelmator Tut

September 17, 2009

This tut came out the other day on Pixelmator’s website and caught my eye. I ended up changing quite a bit because I did not care for the halftone effect, play around with this one it was fun! Never Stop Learning…..
Follow this link and play with Pixelmator!

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MAMP and WordPress Up and Running

September 16, 2009

Good to be back on the blog today! I actually had to work this week, I hate it when work gets in the way of my technology habit.

Last week I got MAMP on my MacBookPro up and running with WordPress Installed. It is the only way to go! I have to admit I have been [...]

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Stuff That Just Works: BackBlaze

September 10, 2009

Online Backup Service BackBlaze

I’ve tried and stopped four different online backup services until I came across BackBlaze. BackBlaze just works, I’ve had no negative issues. Download it, setup a few preferences and forget about it. I think everybody should have multiple backups of there stuff. I backup at home with SuperDuper but it’s wise [...]

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Pixelmator Rocks

September 10, 2009

Pixelmator Image Editing and More!

Pixelmator will blow your doors off! It was built exclusively for Mac OS X and it’s called the image editor for the rest of us. Lets face it Photoshop is expensive. I have Photoshop and I think you should too, but if you can’t afford it right now buy [...]

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