Marty June 27th, 2005
I feel a lot better about my photography when I use my wife’s Nikon D70 digital camera. I got to take some really strong shots at the end of last week and this weekend. Here are a few of them…
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Marty June 21st, 2005
I’m helping create the design for the customer service site a pharmaceutical company, and right now I’m mocking up the splash page. I have to stay within the guidelines of their overall company website (use their header and footer, keep navigation style the same), but I was playing with the login box. Everything is hunky-dorey in Firefox, but IE mucks it up.
As you can see, the form elements are moved to the right in IE, despite how it is coded in both XHTML and CSS:
<form>
<fieldset><legend>Login</legend>
username<br /><input name="username" type="text" tabindex="1" title="username" dir="ltr" value="" size="18" maxlength="24" />
login <br /><input name="pw" type="password" tabindex="2" title="password" value="" size="10" maxlength="10" />
</fieldset>
</form>
fieldset {
color:#CC0000;
font:0.7em arial,helvetica,sans-serif;
font-weight:bold;
width:60%;
}
I just can’t figure this one out - I’ve tried moving the
• Congrats to Jody on winning Screen Grab Confab IV on Cameron Moll’s website. Way to go, Jody. I’m more than just a little jealous, by the way.
Marty June 10th, 2005
Well, I have finished a spate of recent freelance jobs - it’s been great because I have been able to keep busy but stay on a flexible enough schedule to pick up and go with my wife to wherever we want/need to go (mostly birding, but also lunch, do work outside, etc.).
I worked on Mystique’s latest incarnation. It’s getting better every day, including the new newsletter functionality.
I also completed the logo design and website for Kipke & Rose, P.A.. I really like how the logo turned out, and the site isn’t bad although I was somewhat restricted by the clients style concerns.
Lastly, I am in the middle of a new set of designs for a local marketing firm. I was struggling with ‘designer’s block’ for a while, but I ended up with 3 designs that I really like. Hopefully, they will too.
But with my new job, I’m going to have less freelance time so this might be it for the next little while (well, these and the 101 ’small’ projects I’ve got half-finished).
Marty May 23rd, 2005
I just spent HOURS trying to figure out why a page that I was doing wasn’t working in IE. It had an ordered list, and worked just fine in Firefox, but when I looked at it in IE, I found that it left the numbers at the bottom of each item … and the numbers set at one for each item (see example). I tried switching to a numbered ul, tried removing the p tags, called upon the ghosts of XTHML past, asked friends. I finally stumbled upon the answer after lots of googling on Quirksmode.com:
“…if you give width (or height) to the LI, they will all be numbered with 1. “ Quirksmode.com
Lo and behold, that was the answer - IE can’t handle li that have added height or width definitions in the CSS. What the hell is THAT?
Marty January 26th, 2005
I found this link on Van’s blog … and it let me create this fun little error message.
And then I discovered Amazon’s new A9 Yellow Pages. It’s a search engine that actually allows you to SEE the places you are using the map to find. Pretty frickin’ cool. It’s limited so far, but I tried it for Kabul Restaurant in Philly. Take a look.
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Marty January 21st, 2005
I found this link on Van’s blog … and it let me create this fun little error message.
And then I discovered Amazon’s new A9 Yellow Pages. It’s a search engine that actually allows you to SEE the places you are using the map to find. Pretty frickin’ cool. It’s limited so far, but I tried it for Kabul Restaurant in Philly. Take a look.
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Marty December 8th, 2004
It’s a tale of two PC’s.My new system is pretty sweet, although I definitely need to upgrade the monitor and the video card. I’m using an old triniton CRT monitor which is doing well if taking up a lot of space. I want a 19″ LCD, but that’s just me. As for the card, I could the minimum they were offering, a Radeon 300XT, which isn’t bad although I haven’t really tried to tap it out. I want to get an nVidia GeForce 5200 or better, though - so I can try to keep up with my son.
Speaking of which, the kid came this close to getting himself squashed by his mother yesterday. After installing some new RAM for him (we put him up to 1GB), she restarted his computer - and was immediately assualted by 110 different pop-ups, programs, etc. She was miffed, to be bland about it, until she ran an Adaware and Norton Anti-virus scan. The tally - over 1,000! various programs that were classified as adware or worse.
I’m extremely anal about my system, making sure that I don’t download all sorts of ‘neat’ programs because I just know that they are laden with spyware, adware and even malware. We all have Norton Internet Security 2004 on our systems to prevent attacks, but it seems that the boy has either a) turned it off at times or b) been slack in getting updates. Considering some of the spamware has been fixed since May by Norton, I’m assuming a combination. Of course, he claims that he doesn’t know how it got onto his computer, but the 20+ programs we found on his system kind of answer that.
The worst part - I don’t think he really knows how much danger he has put the rest of us in. Since we are a home LAN, anything he gets could potentially get to our systems, although the NIS2004 should catch most of it on our machines. Still, it kind of peeves me that he was so laissez faire about it when he mom was about to blow a gasket. So, last night we spent 4 hours trying (semi-successfully) to clean his system. It will take another few hours today to get all of the crap purged - and he had the gall to blow up because we wouldn’t let him use the computer last night when he got home. C’mon, kid - you aren’t that naive - help us out, okay?
Anyone have any suggestions of a really good Spyware program that we can install? Like I said, he has NIS2004 installed (AND updated), and we just installed the latest version of adaware. But I want to make sure that we prevent him from doing this again. We’ve tried the abstinence talk, but I doubt it will take hold - I want to therefore innoculate the best that I can…
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Marty November 30th, 2004
It seems that most of my favorite blogs are done by people based on Macs. I would have LOVED to switch when I got a new computer, but I couldn’t afford the software changes even if I wanted to spend 2-3x as much for the computer itself. Someday, but I’m far away from that step. But in the meantime, I get to hear about all of these sweet programs for the Mac by the likes of Jon Hicks, but have a hard time figuring out a great one for the PC.
I use Dreamweaver MX for most of my core design, although I use StyleMaster 3.5 for a lot of the basic CSS (the wizards are good time-savers, even if I have go in and fix them). A lot of the designers I know swear by Homesite 5, although I can’t seem to find it anymore - Macromedia seems to have stopped production of it. Others swear by TopStyle, although I made the choice earlier to opt for StyleMaster 3.5. However, after beta testing StyleMaster 4.0, I’m thinking that I might need alternatives unless they manage to work out all of the bugs before release.
Supposedly Dreamweaver MX 2004 has Homesite +, which is an upgraded version of Homesite 5.5, but I think having a bare-bones editor (without the processor lag of DW) would be nice option. But are there other options out there that I don’t know of?
Marty November 1st, 2004
I finally got some time this weekend to do some stuff on the side that I had been meaning to do. The first was trying out the new beta of a CSS-editor program. I’ve used the previous version, and enjoyed it, so I was looking forward to seeing the new version and seeing if I could help iron out some of the bugs that I had found/quirks that I hadn’t liked. This is my second beta-test of a program (first real one, though) and I have to say I’m hoping that it gets better.
The program I am working on is a complete mess - while the functionality is marginally better, it seems that they have spent more time on interface design than architecture. In fact, the processing of this program is so slow that the program is nary unusable. I have put my comments in, and hopefully will see some fixes in the near future. If not, this program is doomed…
The other was a demo of a game that I have loved in the past in both board game and PC versions - Axis & Allies. I have always liked the board game version, but can’t find anyone willing to spend the hours to play. The first PC version was a mess, but the Iron Blitz version was more playable and fun. Far from perfect, as the AI was nearly incomprehensibly stupid, but at least close to the flavor of the board game. So, when I heard that Atari was putting out a new version, I was excited.
Now, I’m very disappointed.The whole point of moving the board game to the PC was so that people like me whose friends think spending time with their kids is more important than playing games can still play some of their favorite games. It’s to take a relatively finite board game and jazz it up with moving graphics, new features and single-player playability. The old versions had this (well, mostly). The Atari version … well, it’s just a mess. First of all, it IS NOT Axis and Allies. This uses the name in an ostensible manner for what becomes a Real-Time Strategy (RTS) game. Instead of creating units and using strategic oversight (as a general does), now you control individual units, supply chains, ammo dumps, and the minutiae of warfare in WWII. Using what seems like the old Age of Empires engine, you micromanage units as they go and try to achieve objectives handed to you by the generals. You decide what units you want to build and then deploy them in lengthy animations. Granted, this is a demo and my graphics card needs a serious update, but I found myself hating this.
What happened to simply making the game better? If I wanted a RTS, I’d pick up Battlefield: 1942, which is infinitely better than this game. I want Axis and Allies, albeit an improved version, and this is nothing of the sort. They’ve taken Monopoly and made you analyze construction contracts and real estate zoning regs. They’ve taken Life and now you have to add auto maintenance, stock portfolio management and local crime stats to how you play the game. It was a complete disappointment that the folks who have made such a fantastic board game have killed themselves with this PC version. Now, this might be a good game for what it is, I didn’t get that far. But it isn’t Axis and Allies, and THAT is what I was looking for.
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of Bush “Whoops’s”
Marty October 28th, 2004
Well, I tried to upgrade to WordPress 1.2, and it killed the blog, so I’m back to the old version for now. I might consider loading the newest version directly from WordPress instead of through my ISP, or I might try out MT - which seems to be a bit more versatile. Anyone out there have a preference?
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