I have been working on a fun project lately, creating a website and online personas for my adopted greyhounds. Since I started the bit of an advice column for how to create a website, and what tools to use, I figured that I would try one of the simple builder sites. The two I played with are Weebly, recommended by my friend David Kendall Grant, and Virb, a spin off of the hosting I use, Media...
After my first “So you want a website” post, one of my faithful readers, David Kendall Grant mentioned that Weebly is an awesome, free, and very flexible website creation option. I recall hearing about them in the past, but thought nothing about it, so I thought I would give it a try. First, a basic setup is free. Like WordPress or Blogger, you can easily get a site up that is...
Yesterday I talked about the different avenues to putting up a website, and mentioned some of the pros and cons. Today, I will talk about some of the mechanics. It will be boring, because you aren’t doing anything, but planning at this point. What sort of site do I want? Ask yourself what you intend to do with it. Are you a photographer and want to share your portfolio? Do you want to write...
I get a lot of people asking me how to create a website. They see this page, or the site I run for the Southern Arizona Greyhound Adoption group, or my professional site, and wonder what they need to do to play. It can be confusing to a neophyte, but hopefully I can clear the confusion. First, you need to honestly assess your technical ability. Do you view yourself as a bit of a nerd? Are you...
As part of my migration to a MacBook Air (from my macbook pro with beaucoup disk space) I figured I would just live with the “as delivered” iPhoto. Alas, that was not to be. I did one (small) import of photos, and I about barfed. For a program that takes about 1.5 G of disk space, it pretty much sucks when you are used to using Aperture. iPhoto lacks a lot of what I have come to expect in my...
I have a few websites, and I have all of them (except this one) in my Google Analytics account. I don’t obsessively watch it, but I keep track of trends. My main site, Tralfaz, I run on Joomla! which does a pretty good job of internally monitoring the page visits. I find that on days where I make a new post, I typically get 100 – 130 page views of that (mostly from the Product...
I have been trying really hard to use my Nexus 7 as my tablet and media consumption device. In general, it is a worthy competitor to the iOS based iPad’s, but there are some notable differences. 1) The built in Safari “Reader” function is something I use heavily. If you are unfamiliar with it, it takes a web page, strips out all the marginal things, formats it in larger, more...
When I first started making money (delivering the San Jose Mercury News), I put together a hifi system (old components, amplifier, and turntable) and started buying music. I was addicted to the extension of my collection, which ran to hundreds of LPs, including some rarities, and bootlegs. I remember the thrill when I first got a car and was able to drive to Santa Cruz, not to visit the beach...
A week or so ago, my wife and I were shopping (at a local office supply store), and they had the two Microsoft Surfaces. The RT which is ARM powered, and the other one (pro?) with a Core i5 and full windows compatibility. I was expecting to be underwhelmed, but the Metro interface, and the responsiveness of the product was surprising. Metro (the Windows 8) UI is well suited for touch...
I was cleaning up some programs that I am not likely to use on my new MacBook Air (iPhoto, iMovie), and I figured I would also blow away Garage Band. Before I deleted it, I thought I would open it up and see what it was all about. Then I found the Lessons part. Damn, that is cool. Really cool. Now I need to buy widget to get my guitar plugged into my Mac. I bought the Artist Lesson of Alex...