Design Challenges

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Blogger ... WTF?

I been using blogger to publish this blog for over five years now. A few month I received an email that FTP yadda yadda yadda was a big toll on the blogger platform and that they could no longer allow it as of May 1st 2010.

I really want to know why then don't they simply allow me to dump the database out so I can simply migrate to wordpress install on my server?

Instead they offer that I transition to their own domain or do some migration nonsense.

I will opt for number two, but will rampage thru this internet thingy to look for a way to quickly switch to the more powerful wordpress open source platform.

The bottom line is that I wish I would have really analyze all my options five years ago instead of thrusting that Google was going to solve all my troubles for life. In other news, HTC has now release the incredible on the verizon network and I may drop my hopes for the Google Nexus One and jump on HTC. Any thoughts world?

Labels: advertising, Blogger, Google, techniques

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Facebook Thumbnail

It seems that now-a-days social networking is all the rage. I been on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Digg and all other social media for a long, long time now, but haven't seen the big potential in any since the days where Digg was driving all the traffic to my sites.

Since I started using Facebook, about two years ago, I have seen an influx of communication with family and friends that I would typically not reach out to on as much of a regular basis as I do with the social platform. As for twitter, honestly, I just don't see the point or get it. I can do much more with Facebook, and see Twitter as a spam platform for celebs to sell themselves and companies to sell products. I just can't be bother.

My sites all have Facebook Connect and automated interaction with social media, and see the value in the traffic that is driven everyday from the sites to mine.

I learned today that as Web developers, we still have some control of our sites within the social platforms. For example, when someone grabs one of your links to post on Facebook, the link shows up on the page with a brief description and a thumbnail. The description comes from the meta description data, lack of the tag forces facebook to grab the first few lines of text it encounters. The thumbnail comes from the first tag it finds, or you can specify via the tag with photo to grab. To do so, specify it as follows,

<link rel="image_src" type="image/jpeg" href="http://www.domain.com/path/icon-facebook.gif" />

The bottom line is than in this day of super automation, it is nice to know that you still have some control over what happens beyond your control. Good luck and keep on socializing, someday computers will run the world on their own, we will continue to get paid, and socializing will be all we do.

Labels: advertising, brand, content management, Design, Digg, Search Engine, SEO, Social Bookmarking

Friday, October 16, 2009

Disney, the biggest scam on Earth!!!!

I'm so sick of Disney. Today we checked in at our over priced hotel to discover that they completely screwed our reservation. I mean this property, Disney's Caribbean Beach Resort, is the equivalent of a Motel 8, yet they charge you five star hotel prices. Not only do they have the marketing mind of Bill Gates, but they have the same quality level of Windows Blue Screen of Death. Their idea of customer service is to continually apologize for their mistake, and keep repeating that there is nothing that they can do to correct the booking error.

Here is the scoop, we booked via Hotels.com as they provided the best rate for the room. We were offered an upgraded to water view and King size room for x dollars extra a night. The x was minimal so we went ahead and jumped on it. We arrive at check-in to hear from the oriental girl that expedia, who is the one that shows up in our record instead of Hotel.com, has no way to guarantee neither a King size bed or water view. Disney is aware of this, but they choose not to do anything about it with them. There were three other couples checking in at the same time all suffering from the same experience.

The girl couldn't do anything for us, hence here comes the manager. The manager says water views don't have king size beds, but double rooms only. I asked to be downgraded to a king size bed and lets move on. She then goes to say that the hotel has limited king size beds and they are all sold out for months. She offers us a $20 dollar credit per night and one of the few water views available. We, with no other option, accept. We get to the room to find out that if we stand just in the right spot in front of the window and look to the right and threw the bushes, we get a glance of water. At this point I'm just fuming, but tire and in no mood to argue. We march our way to the front desk and ask her to simply lower me to the next level down and refund the difference. The manager states that at this point she can move me to a lower category room, but that no deductions can take place and asks me to call Hotel.com and deal it out with them as they are the booking agent.

The bottom line is that these people tag line is "The happiest place on Earth, where dream come true!" They were unable to make me happy or make my dream come true. The truth to the matter is that we are going to spend very little time in the room, so who really cares. I just wanted to get what I was promised or my money back; and after one hour and two rooms later, I got neither. Disney hotels suck!!!! Next time I will stay back at the Gaylord, where dreams do come true at a much lower price.

Labels: Disney, hotel, Orlando

Saturday, September 05, 2009

Black Clouds

We have been experiencing a low pressure system for a week now and I'm getting sick of the lack of sun. Today we were driving around and noticed the differences in colors of the clouds and the speed at which they move.

My wife asked why some clouds are so dark and others are not. I quickly pulled an answer out of my rectum, that it must be because of the concentration of clouds in one spot versus another and the ability for light to go through it. It sounded like a good explanation; she bought it, but after a few minutes had passed, she decided to question it.

I decided to do a little Googling once we arrived home, and I was surprised to find that the answer wasn't much different than my "hot air" explanation, here is what I found:

"There are two things going on to make some rain clouds to appear very dark. The first is that some clouds, especially thunderstorm clouds such as nimbocumulus clouds can tower to great heights with tops 15 to 20 km (50-60 thousand feet) above the earth. Plus these clouds, which tend to produce very heavy rains and hail are very dense, being full of water vapor and raindrops at lower altitudes and ice crystals at high altitude.

As a result, it is more difficult for sunlight to pass through these clouds than it is for light to pass through neighboring clouds which aren't as high and dense. More of the light is reflected back into space or sideways because there's more obstacles. Plus, there's more absorption of the light on its way through the cloud, because the light will bounce around very much and take a very long total path before finally coming out the bottom of the cloud."

Source: http://in.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070410085440AA32jGJ

The bottom line is that you have to be quick in your feet and it doesn't hurt to blurb out the first rational thing that comes to mind. Some make think you're an idiot for offering an explanation without knowledge of the topic, but 9 times out of 10, you will contribute to the conversation and even if you're wrong, most will appreciate the effort. Just be prepare to take whatever is thrown at you.

Labels: Design, Freedom of Speech, Google, Jacksonville

Saturday, August 15, 2009

Happy Birthday to Me!!!!!

For my birthday this year we decided to go to the "Happiest Place on Earth", Disney world, why not, we have season passes and my friend let us borrow his apartment down the street from it, so it became a low budget fun time.

We spend day one in Animal Kingdom and watch the fireworks late night at Magic Kingdom. We got rained on and saw a large rat run across our feet, not, not Mickey, a real live one. The poor creature caused quite havoc among Magic Kingdom visitors, I found it slightly amusing.

We returned the next morning to spend the day at Magic Kingdom and later enjoyed some chimichurris and empanadas down at the OBT, "Orange Blossom Trail."

All and all, one of the best birthdays ever!

The bottom line is that to have a great time you don't have to spend a fortune, all you need is the right person to spend the time with.

Labels: concert, Disney, Jacksonville, Orlando

Friday, July 17, 2009

Hurricane Killer technology

I was watching the Today Show this morning and saw this story on how Bill Gates is spearheading a project to kill off hurricanes. This is not a joke, Bill Gates has turned his attention to controlling the weather.

Intellectual Ventures Lab, an organization built by former Microsoft executives to brainstorm new technologies to benefit mankind, wrote that Big Hurricane Suck would be used when "humans decide that we have exhausted all of our behavior changing and alternative energy options and need to rely on mitigation technologies."

The idea is for barges to pump cold water from the depths of the ocean to change the hot water and climate that serves as the accelerant that power hurricanes. In term this slows down or simply disintegrate it.

This is a novel concept, but what are the repercussions of messing with Mother Nature?

The bottom line is that w emay have technology, know how, but do we have common sense to forsee all reactions to our actions.

Labels: maps, Politics, techniques

Saturday, June 20, 2009

2 Miles: End Game

Two months ago we started a two mile challenge a work. This challenge was very simple, perform two miles a day for sixteen weeks. You could walk it, run it, do the elliptical, use your Wii, among other things, as long as a minimum of two miles were perform you were in the clear. If you didn't performed, you were to pay $1 dollar per day missed, or you could opt to drop out of the challenge at any time with a $5 dollar buy out.

The end came as a three way tie, myself and two of my colleagues were successful in not missing any days of the challenge. I feel very proud that I was able to take on this challenge by the horns and wrestle it to the ground each and every day. Another goal I had in mind was to create a daily journal entry for each day of the two mile challenge and unfortunately I felt short in that regards. This should have been a very simple task, but I just didn't run into many interesting things to write about each and every day.

At this point this entry concludes the end of two miles. I'm also happy to report that construction is coming to an end at our home as we saw sheetrock go up this week. I was amazed to come home yesterday to find a floor that appear as if we had a snow storm. Everything is cover in white powder from the sanding. This made for an interesting weekend in house cleaning.

The bottom line is that challenges are always welcome here. I'm a very competitive individual and I urge each and every one of you out there to embrace what life throws at you and climb out a champion.

Labels: 2-mile, Jacksonville, TPC