In Retrospect

I’ve never been a fan of blogging about the new year.  Seems like the internet gets super spammed about new years stuff, about goals to lose weight etc.  I’ve always avoided posted this redundant piece of information that most people care not to read.  However, ironically, one of milestones I hope to achieve for 2012 is to be more active on my site.  So I figured, why not get started by posting about the new year, lol.  I know, I know, but if I feel the first post of 2012, should be about 2012.  So, if you haven’t tired yourself out with “Awesome Holiday Gift Idea” lists and “Best Resolutions for 2012″ lists then read on.

2011 was a big year for me. I was lucky to finalize and achieve a lot of milestones for myself. Looking back at 2011, seems like it went by real fast, memories are all blurred, incoherent, have no idea when things took place or where. It was a fast paced year full of deadlines and was a bit stressful.  If it werent for facebook photo uploads, I wouldn’t remember most of my year.

2012 will be a year of a lot of changes for me. I hope to take things with a bit more in stride. Open some new doors, and try out more new things. Self development will be a big topic in my life for 2012. I have spent the past several years, studying, completing my undergrad, working long hours. This year, I need to focus more on developing my passions, and putting my life on the rails.

Social Life

I hope to meet more new friends, and spend more time with old ones. I’ve neglected a lot of my friendships in an effort to focus on my academics. I am lucky to have kick ass friends that understand the pressure of working and studying, so they always look past my constant absence and always look forward to a good hang out. They deserve better for 2012, and I will do my best to live in the moment and share a social beer.

I hope to take my relationship into a new dimension. She too has completed a long journey through academics and is now beginning her career. With academics out of our way, I hope we spend more time together, have more random dates, talk more about our future and make some plans.

Improving Skills

I’ve been working in the IT Management field for several years now.  Management requires a lot of different skills, patience, listening, communicating, making hard decisions based on stats, budgeting, psychology, technical writing, mentoring, teaching, the list goes on and on.  I had no idea going into this market would be so challenging.  It has been an awesome experience, but honestly, I miss the IT world.  Although I do manage an IT department, I really don’t get to work with technology as much.  For 2012, I hope to change that a bit.  I’ve decide to focus on getting some certifications, maybe in Cisco, haven’t really decided.  I have also definitely, hands down, have decided to make an impact in the development industry, primarily iPhone developmen.

Hobbies

Hobbies are important when you have a life full of work and challenges.  It is important to take breaks.  Hobbies are break enforcers.  I feel the more your life gets challenging, hey the more hobbies you need!  For 2012, I want to focus more on hobbies, and possibly take up some new ones.  I want to get back to my guitar playing, take more photos, listen to more new music, make more art, and visit new cities.

Upgrades

So that about sums it up for me.  I rather not give myself exact goals, instead I rather give myself areas in my life overall that I can improve on.  How improve,  or which exact methods or goals will get me to a level of improvement is something I will decide when the opportunity presents itself.  Being flexible, giving yourself room to grow is important, so I wont constrict myself with granular goals.  Updates to follow.

Bloat Wear

I download a crap ton of apps, demo software, beta stuff etc.  After quite sometime, my machine felt a bit sluggish and buggy.  I lost a lot of storage space to junk files installed by these apps even after removing the apps.  During my time as an IT student I also had several service apps running like MAMP, Webmin, Sql Stuff, Apache, Netbeans, Wireshark, just a crap ton of IT tools that I really wasn’t using.  Deleting these icons from you application folder does remove the application, but does not delete all files associated with the application.  I guess Apple wants to keep the idea that removing software is drag and drop, and yea kind of it is, but it is not the most graceful, clean way to perform an application removal.  If you want to maintain your Mac environment, I suggest downloading an application uninstaller.  I still do not understand why Apple hasn’t built this functionality into their OS.  There are several uninstallers you can find out there on the interwebs.  The that stood out the most for me was AppCleaner.  Free, simple and does what I need it to do.

Needed A Clean Slate

I had upgraded to Snow Leopard from Tiger, which I hated from the beginning.  I hate upgrading, its so much cleaner to do a fresh install.  For a long time, I have been sporting my Mac knowing I had remnants of my older system just hang around in the back. So I decided to clean install Snow Leopard, and in the excitement of a “fresh” system, I thought there was no better time than now to try out Lion.

So far, its not so bad.  Few things I didn’t like, but  nothing I couldn’t live with out.  There was however a very annoying default setting that I needed to address IMMEDIATELY!

Pet Peeve

So yea, I don’t understand why this setting was disabled by default.  After installing Lion I was no longer able to double+click an app menu bar to minimize.  I figured by now this would be a normal, standard function of the OS.  So how did I get this functionality back? Well, At first I went to the Mouse Configuration Pane in System Preferences.  Totally was not there, makes no sense why this option would not exist in the mouse section.

After some searching around, I discovered the option tucked away in the General Pane in System Preferences at the bottom.

President Barack Obama

Michelle and I are saddened to learn of the passing of Steve Jobs. Steve was among the greatest of American innovators – brave enough to think differently, bold enough to believe he could change the world, and talented enough to do it.

By building one of the planet’s most successful companies from his garage, he exemplified the spirit of American ingenuity. By making computers personal and putting the internet in our pockets, he made the information revolution not only accessible, but intuitive and fun. And by turning his talents to storytelling, he has brought joy to millions of children and grownups alike. Steve was fond of saying that he lived every day like it was his last. Because he did, he transformed our lives, redefined entire industries, and achieved one of the rarest feats in human history: he changed the way each of us sees the world.

The world has lost a visionary. And there may be no greater tribute to Steve’s success than the fact that much of the world learned of his passing on a device he invented. Michelle and I send our thoughts and prayers to Steve’s wife Laurene, his family, and all those who loved him.

Within minutes of the announcement of Steve Job’s passing, the internet’s social networking sites exploded with reactions.  I decided to log on to several sites and witness history spread through the interwebs.  Witnessing peoples reactions around the world, moments after the announcement, was a bit eerie, powerful and somewhat comforting.

Logging onto Twitter I could see tweets pouring in, hashtag categories populating the front page all relating to Mr. Jobs.  Powerful people, business leaders, President Obama, actors, politicians, Bill Gates and the list continues.  All went on twitter, almost simultaneously to tweet condolences.

Digg was swarmed with stories being posted, dugg, commented, buried etc.

Youtube videos of users sharing thoughts and prayers populated the front page and were streamed on live television.  Unbelievable to watch major news stations such as CNN stream Youtube videos of people at home, holding their apple products and sharing their feelings.  Steve Job’s Digital Conference about the iphone, along with other Steve Jobs interviews have tripled in view count.

Huggington Post dedicated an entire page for news, stories and all things Jobs.

Attack of the Show on G4 Television extended their live show to cover some of the news and interview guests.

Websites began to post memorials such as wired.com, which blacked out their entire website and featured a photo of Steve as the background.  Very tasteful, simple and artful, I’m sure Steve would have approved.  google.com, apple.com, g4tv.com among many others.

The speed at which the information traveled, the ability to experience and witness an almost instant emotional reaction from people through social networking, almost immediately after the news was announce, is incredible.  Being able to easily and instantly contribute to the event, to have your voice heard, to share your state of emotion with other people that feel the same, connecting with strangers, offers a sense of camaraderie unlike anything I have ever seen.  Watching this event unravel through the web, really made it seem as though all of these people, most of which have never met each other, instantly were bonded and sought comfort in the idea that someone else, at the same time, may have shared the same emotional result of hearing about Steve Jobs passing.

apple.com

google.com

g4tv.com

It is the very nature of one of the many contributions and achievements of Steve Jobs.  To bring people together through the use of technology, making the phrase “It’s a small world” a reality.  I’ve never had the honor of meeting Steve Jobs (no where near it), however, his drive and passion to change the world is contagious.  Being born from wedlock, put up for adoption at birth, dropping out of college as his parents couldn’t afford it, and building a dream in his parents garage, building his dream company, changing the world, being fired from his own company, goes on to build more successful companies, gets rehired into Apple, and pretty much builds the most global impacting and powerful company in America, all from his parents garage? That’s pretty intense, I’d say that is the definition of achieving the American Dream.

“We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams” – Willy Wonka

Rest In Peace Mr. Jobs. You were my source of inspiration and ambition. thank you for paving our way into the future.

I’ve always had cable tv, up until a few months ago.  The service has just remained stagnant for so long now.  With some tv’s now having built-in WiFi or ethernet ports, and with GoogleTV on the horizon, I really do not want to get caught up in a cable tv contract.  Most of the shows I listed above can be seen for free on the cable channel website, or Hulu Plus (still cheaper than cable, and no contracts)

Also, yesterday it was announce that Xbox 360 has signed on with Comcast to provide Xfinity service through the box.  Although it seem you may need to be a Comcast TV subscriber, they may have on demand options or a cheaper alternative.  It is still recent news, however it is quite obvious cable television is going through a big change.  It may be foolish to sign a contract during these times.  For the time being, I download my shows and stream them to media consoles.

Yea that will be another post for another day.

Well, put simply, woothemes rock.  I’ve used many themes on my personal blog, along with frameworks that have allowed me to build custom themes for my own use and some clients.  However, WordPress has grown and changed in so many ways so quickly, that your theme can quickly look “outdated” or can fall apart by updating to the most recent WordPress release.  I guess I got a bit tired of constantly reworking my site for usability with the latest WordPress.  Fixing bugs, and just spending way too much time away from client work, to work on my own stuff was just not in the cards.  Basically, more time on my personal site, meant more time away from client work.  Working a full-time management job, studying mostly full-time, trying to maintain somewhat of a social life AND working on freelance design and development, you just run short on time.

Themes for clients?

I think you should be clear and upfront with your clients and give them what they pay for.  If they pay premium price, give them premium work.  I have chosen to never use themes or templates for my clients, however your client may prefer that route if it means a faster more productive turnaround.  It’s important to understand your clients needs, deadlines and purpose of the site.  Templates definitely have their place in web development, I have nothing against them, but I haven’t found a client that prefers one.  For all my client work, I develop/code/html/css/photoshop from the ground up.  After sending my client some pshop mockups of their future site, we discuss some changes and come to some agreements.  From there, I slice the mockup, export, and begin coding the site.  For the most part, this gets the job done for my clients.  Their may be a bit of jquery involved, nothing too fancy, mostly some lightbox or simple slider effects will get plugged into the site.

For my clients that need to perform dynamic updates I usually recommend several social networking sites linked with the site I design for them.  For example, if a client wants to announce a change in business or a sale etc, I recommend they open a twitter account, and link it to a spot I reserve on the site I design.  This allows their site to provide some dynamic content and also allows them the ability to tap into other networks, updating prospective clients all at once.

Which social networking sites should my client display on their site?

This is an important decision.  It really depends on the business and purpose of the site.  Twitter is pretty much a given, everyone should just use the service for quick blurbs and announcements, its free and is highly customizable.  Foursquare and yelp are both great for sites that deal with staff that moves around a lot, a delivery service, catering company, food truck site.  A critic that rates hospitality services, such as restaurants, entertainment industries etc, can use foursquare to inform site subscribers of there whereabouts.

So, WordPress hasn’t really been a platform I have recommended to some of clients until recently.  I have used WordPress on my personal site for years, but for clients, I felt it would be too much for them.  However, for clients that want to build an online community, want to post blogs, tutorials, videos, basically any client that wants a dynamic, contributing site, should be on WordPress.

So why am I using a theme and not my own design?

There are plenty of site to get free themes from.  Free themes are great to get you started on building your own site.  I enjoy starting with a free theme and slowly building it up from scratch, adding plugins, changing css, adding and changing layouts.  I came across woothemes swatch theme, and was real curious about their wooframework.  I activated the theme and was blown away.  The framework is genius.  The theme has a ridiculous amount of customization options, and all the options are contained in one section of the WordPress admin page.  The customizability options for the theme allow you to quickly change the look and feel of the site with simple WYSIWYG functionality.  This theme has so many options, that you can pretty much change the entire look and feel of this theme to a point where it looks nothing like the demo I previewed before I activated the theme.  Chock full of widgets, shortcodes, homepage customization, footer, header, it simply awesome.  So awesome, I’m gonna rock this theme on my site and proudly credit woothemes on my footer.  It’s better than anything I could have ever put together.  If you rock a wordpress site, seriously consider building it out with woothemes.  Their free themes are amazing, and their pricing scheme for their premium content is the most afforable/aggressive I have ever seen on the web.