Nik’s Blog
Nik is the mastermind behind emuzines (although the title was a team effort). He may not blog as much as Katie, but he does enjoys tinkering around with the website and playing host to Katie-as-client. Nik loves pizza, Coke, raw cookies dough, and all things computer. He dislikes crowds, Pepsi, and scary food. Nik can make anybody laugh, and is a blast to be around. He is very generous and has a great heart!
All Play and No Work
Its been far too long since I quit my previous employment. Eight months if anyone has been counting. Initially it was the greatest thing Ive done in a long time. I was underpaid and overworked without the possibility of raise anywhere in sight. So when I asked for one and was told no, I put in my two weeks and took a breath of fresh air. Ive been filling my time with other ideas and projects. One of which is coming very near execution if my unemployment continues. www.technikly.com will be going forward in two possible ways depending on how my job hunting commences. My plan for it is to be a self help information tool for the less technical minded users who are looking for a better understanding of their computer. If things dont change It may also roll into providing my own computer support services privately. Ive been holding off hoping ill get a regular job. I have recently interviewed at UC Davis. If you didnt think I was balding before I certainly lost more hair over the stress and nervousness. A Round two call should be coming next week. I hope they can look past my indirect experience with MAC OS. Ideally I want a career in the IT industry with a stong interest in network administration, configuration, and deployment. With a job and regular income again I hope to pursue more advanced certifications and gain more experience. Keep watching www.technikly.com if you are interested and you can always send me questions and topics you would like to see explained further.
Gravatars Enabled!
I recently learned of Gravatars. I guess I always knew it existed for wordpress just never created my own. Today I did just that. www.gravatar.com to sign up and create your own profile and upload your image. Everywhere Gravatars are enabled on the web it will use your e-mail address to link to and display your chosen image. This includes most blogs and forums and now Emuzines! This laso has had the added benefit of fixing the unique default icons where users dont have a Gravatar set up. All your comment pictures are now unique to you again…YAY?!
Redesign
Well, it’s finally public for all to see. I spent quite awhile on it and completely scratched the whole process twice, nearly three times. Katie liked it enough for me to continue on. There will still be changes made over time, but for the most part it is complete. Usually I go with a template that is close to what I want and then modify it to be how I want, but I built this theme from the ground up. It is not valid xhtml markup or css the last time I checked, but I don’t really care that much–for future templates I might. Please report any suggestions or bugs. It should look the same in the three big browsers: IE, Chrome, and Firefox. I did not test with Safari or on any mobile devices. Let me know if fails in any of those for you.
Creative Juices Flowing
Without a job, I find myself delving back into some projects that have sat in the back of my mind for quite some time. I’m still currently addressing the Brolly Hut website and ran into some creative roadblocks. We really have no use for the website other than providing an online menu to customers. With such little content, it’s impossible for me to settle on how things will look or flow. I talked it over with Katie and I’ve settled on doing what it takes to at least get a menu for customers to view online and print. More importantly in my frustrations with where to go on that project, I began looking at Emuzines design and layout. This site has quite a bit more content and I have a pretty good idea now how Katie and I both utilize it. So after a few nights of some Photoshop design mock-ups, I stumbled onto something Katie approves of. I’ve been working on implementing it since. It’s a complete redesign and hopefully I can get it live soon.
P90X: Prior to Day 1
My current state of physical activity has been one sit up every morning and whatever walking is required throughout the day. Lunch is my favorite meal and often the largest of every day. I always skip breakfast and then drink as much Coca-Cola as I can get my hands on. Dinner is usually whatever Katie decides on and I will usually eat more than I should, attempting to prevent left-overs. This has been the situation for the last 6 years or so. My weight has fluctuated drastically within the last 3 years. Recently I could no longer button most of my pants and found myself purchasing 36 inch waists. Bending over at the waist to tie my shoes causes discomfort in my mid-section, and walking any flight of stairs takes the wind out of me. Along with upcoming weddings, including my own in just over a year, I figured it was time for this:
to change.
Everyone back home was talking about P90X. Some friends were using it for their own excercise so I said why the hell not. Above you can see my 6 before photos. Laugh it up now, since you will eventually see my transformation at 30 days, 60 days, and finally 90 days. The hardest part will be lasting the full 90 days. We have a few trips planned and I currently plan to bring it with me to work out with as well. I’m not really following their diet plan other than my portions have become lighter. I’m eating breakfast, having half a protein bar between meals, sticking with a light lunch, and trying to stop at dinner when I’m no longer hungry. Coke is gone from the house. I may treat myself to one here and there, but I will try to resist the refills. Lots of water is consumed. I have always had headaches after serious physical activity. Well I found out they are caused from dehydration and that I needed to be drinking more water. Expect a post at each week’s end and every 30 days you get new pictures. Today I finished day 3. 87 to go!
How To Tie Shoelaces, Properly!
Are you a parent? Maybe a teacher working with younger children? How often do you re-tie shoes? Wonder why your own shoes come undone all the time or look funny? It’s a skill we all learn early on and then never revisit assuming the mastery is complete. Here is a site dedicated to tying your shoes with purpose and intent. And for those pesky untying laces save yourself some time and trouble and relearn tying your shoes as an adult. If not for yourself do it for the children!
Enjoy the wealth of Knowledge at Ian’s Shoelace Site.
Back in Black
It’s been about a month since my last post and three days since I quit my job. I have some applications in but I’m not terribly serious about jumping right back into things. I’ve enjoyed these last few days immensly and the free time is allowing me some personal time to work on my side projects. When working, I’d rarely use my free time to work on these things and often found myself winding down from working all day or relaxing and doing nothing on the weekends. I’ve also saved up on many posts that get neglected and back logged for future moments. Those will be showing up after I finish my number 1 priority: Brolly Hut. It’s pretty shabby as it is now and it had really only been a placeholder so that no one else was able to purchase the domain. Since Monday, I have been working on a full site redesign with primary focus on getting the menu online for our customers. With Katie’s guidance and opinions, I’ve grown very happy with how it has been coming along. I look forward to revealing it soon. WordPress has become my favorite Content Management System (CMS) to date. I tried using Joomla but found its complexity too difficult to manage. WordPress keeps things simple. I’m an amatuer web designer at best and often wonder if it’s something I should pursue more professionally. With what I have learned about WordPress in the last few days, I would love to redesign Emuzines again…some other time maybe.
Recurring Dream
The school semester is going awesome. It’s my last year of college and I totally have my act together studying hard and really focusing in on my major. I wake up in a panicked sweat because I realize I might have missed a major midterm exam in one of the few remaining general education courses I have left (always a history course). I tended to skip a lot of class days for courses I felt really didn’t need my presence to obtain the information required. I would really get worried if there was something I missed because I didn’t go so often. I then realize I graduated seven years ago! Why in the hell do I still have this dream? I have my diploma, so nothing to freak out about. I’m not even in school pursuing any further education. Yet this dream is still fairly regular. This is the why I wont return to school for more education. I always had poor study habits. I feel very lucky to have been able to complete my degree with minimal studying. No way in hell could that fly in graduate school. At least my dreams are about things years past. Tell me I’m not the only one with this terrible dream?
Katie’s Birthdaymonth
I always struggle with holidays and gift-giving events. If you know Katie then you also know that gifting is critically important. Did I get off the hook for Christmas this year after proposing? No…that was a Happy Thanksgiving gift, leaving Christmas gifts fair game. Her Birthday is also not to be misunderstood as just one day. A better clarification would be to call it a Birthdaymonth. The entire month is devoted to the celebrating of her birthday. She is greatly amused by “Happy Birthdaymonth” wishes. So if you see her at all during the month of April please do so. There isn’t a lot of time left, but I am looking into what I could get her this year. Below is a poll of some items she would like. I know which one wins already, but I maintain full veto powers. I would also appreciate any other possible ideas others may wish to leave in the comments below.
VOTE AWAY!
[poll id="2"]
Why So Much Hate for Internet Explorer?
I do a lot of searches for solutions to problems I encounter while fixing customer’s computer problems. Almost everywhere you can read about how your computer skills are directly related to whether or not you use Internet Explorer, Firefox, or Google Chrome as your primary browser. Every tech savvy intelligent person I know scoffs at anyone who still uses IE. Well im here to say that IE will and continues to be my primary browser choice for daily browsing.
Are we done snickering? When you can get over your elitist attitude about browsers you should read on.
I still have Firefox and Chrome installed on my system and I use all three for various reasons. Mostly so that I’m comfortable with how each one works so I can fix them when they break. And they break plenty. Maybe not as much as IE but Firefox and Chrome have provided some decent headaches when troubleshooting problems. Lets look at the small amount of traffic this blog has seen broken down by browser:
|
Internet Explorer
|
160 | 54.42% |
|
Firefox
|
54 | 18.37% |
|
Safari
|
31 | 10.54% |
|
Mozilla Compatible Agent
|
30 | 10.20% |
|
Chrome
|
18 | 6.12% |
Not surprising to me but most cant understand why there are so many people who haven’t woken up in the browser wars and moved away from IE. This is the issue web developers have with IE. Im no fool and I fully understand that IE probably has the worst support of browser standards. Mozilla has even come out in a blog attacking IE stating that it is not a modern browser. What does that mean? Well basically there tons of specifications layed out by CSS3 and HTML5 which no browser 100% support. Let me say that again. No browser that currently exists supports 100% of the standards set forth by CSS3 and HTML5. Microsofts retort to Mozilla’s claim. But the best read is over at Ars Technica by Ryan Paul who paints a more truthful picture about both browsers shortcomings.
What does this all mean to the average user? Absolutely nothing. Any web developer would be a fool to not be compatible with IE. If they weren’t they would be telling their clients that the majority of web users out there can access your site. The only people all this browser mumbo jumbo really affects are the web developers. Their headaches exist trying to keep their sites consistent across all browsers. These issues would go away if only all browsers supported exactly the same subset of the specification.
But, Nik, this hasn’t answered why you still use IE.
Oh yeah, back to that. I don’t care what browser supports what. I would prefer one that meets the full standard but that is a future that wont exist. My biggest complaint with Firefox and Chrome is their failure to meet the standards set forth by the platform they install on. Why the hell does Firefox and Chrome not read my windows favorites folder for all my saved browser favorites. No they each store their own secret list is some hidden file and folder inside the application data depending on which version of windows. This is the most annoying thing ever as a computer service technician. I hate having to remember where and how these superior browsers save their favorites so that I can transfer them to a new system. IE is easy, copy the users profile folder and we get everything: Favorites, Documents, Music, Pictures, Videos, Desktop, etc. Which also brings up the point that those are the places you should be storing that information as well. Not in some convoluted scheme devised by yourself that only you can figure out. So to Firefox and Chrome: USE THE DAMN FAVORITES FOLDER!
When IE is not working, crashing, or having problems, do not take the advice of your friends and install Firefox or Chrome and forget about it. So many times I’m told by customers they use “Birdfire” or “Google” because IE keeps crashing or doesnt work. Here is an insider secret. If IE crashes something is seriously wrong with your computer and probably should looked at by someone who can figure out why. Sometimes it just a browser pluggin going awry. This is not IE’s fault but is the fault of the pluggin. A third party software vendor who failed at programming but still does it anyway. Mostly though we are talking about a virus, spyware, or adware infection screwing with it. This is why ignoring the issues is so bad. Viruses these days don’t exist to crash servers and gain notoriety among their creators. They are there to make money. Some do it more underhanded then others. Worst are the keyloggers which still log keys after you have moved on to Firefox and Chrome. These are aimed at getting login info and identity data. The rest are mostly just annoying causing pop-ups and re-directions. Some of these I call features, because they send you to awesome websites you normally would never have found. Lets face it, the only people who really use Firefox and Chrome in windows are people browsing the indecent websites and are afraid they will get an infection.
So yes I’m a happy IE user and IE9′s release will probably make me more happy. Does it make me a novice? Maybe to Anti-Microsoft Fan Boys who jump on a band-wagon for fear of judgment by their peers. Ive comfortably used windows since windows 3.1 and while it has had its problems and issues in each release I would argue that the majority of the hatred for Windows and Internet Explorer stems from User Error.