New frontiers

What a busy, trying time! With many projects on the go, logo's, banners, themes (and more themes), showcase sites, tutorials, photography gigs to wrap up before Christmas... It's no wonder the holidays never feel restful to me. So why then would I go and do something as crazy as learning Obective-C programming at such a time? I guess I am just a little crazy that way. That and because Chris has taken up making plugins and wants me to join him in our continual quest to take over the world together. I have to admit I have wanted to make RapidWeaver plugins for quite some time and this was the fire that needed lighting under my proverbial behind. Will I actually make any plugins and how soon? I can't/won't make any promises. It's a little far beyond any limit I have stretched my self to in the past and I do have a theme store (or two) to support. So here it to the new year and all that it may (or may not) bring!

The cats out

Well the project I had alluded to in the last post is starting to see the light with it's first public peek-a-boo. The site, RapidWeaved.com, is a showcase project for RapidWeaver users by RapidWeaver users. It's kind of a backyard sandbox, if you will, instead of the elitist, high-brow playgrounds that other showcase sites seem to be. The premise is that no-one gets rejected so long as the contest is G-rated and the site is built with RapidWeaver. It's not a new site or project by any means, I actually took over the domain and concept from Gary Byrd who found it was getting unwieldy. And indeed it was. I had a few ideas how to better manage this kind of data and put a plan into action. Only time will tell if I really know what I am doing or just talking through my butt. My intent is to make it an attractive site with attractive content but also make it as pain free as possible to update. We'll see about that I guess. There are a few other finer details that will come to light later as well. But first things first. Oh, and by the way, if you are a RapidWeaver user and have a site built using RapidWeaver, feel free to submit it to RapidWeaved.com.

Showcase site project is back in the mix

A while back I had taken over a particular showcase site (I'll keep that quite at the moment) and was charged to take it to the next level. Well real paying jobs kept getting in the way, support kept getting in the way, life kept getting in the way... So I've recently had pause to look into this project again and was surprised at just how close I was to completing this site the first time around. So with that said, I am amping up to get this thing done early in the new year. I'll keep you posted.

Unobtrusive is great but what about unencumbered?

So in the last few years javascript libraries and snippets have popped up like spring flowers gasping for light. One will round corners for you, one will make an image pop out at you, one will make a box spring open, one will make a drawer slide, and so on... All of these libraries, it seems, have their struggles and inadequacies much the same way a CSS/XHTML developer does; browser behaving badly. Where it gets infinitely more complicated with the javascript is that some libraries and snippets will inadvertently interact with one another from time to time, and that's where a whole bag of ugly gets thrown upon the table. What makes this worse? The fact that we can now just throw these bits of javascript sweetness in our html projects without the foggiest notion of how it works and how to fix it should the need arise. And since these are all open source projects, don't expect great support, or any at all, for that matter. And so this is the muddy water I currently stand in, waiting to sort out a scripting issue on a product while I tell my client base that we are doing everything we can.

The long road is getting shorter

You ever get to the end of a project and just let out a sigh of relief? I just finished one of those. It was the kind where there were variables that would go one way, but then needed to come back to another. I shopping cart was required, but it had to be easy to use, but then it had to be expandable for the future. One choice broke one aspect, another choice would break something else. Tax calculations, shipping calculations, inventory calculations... You see, I am a digital download guy and exempt from all those bothers. But on this project I had build a store for tangible goods in a state that doesn't take tax lightly.

Anyhow, this job is complete with the exception of a few tweaks here and there. I'll let you know when you can see it.

I shall not follow the heard

I can't begin to describe my frustration! Once single javascript library is throwing a monkey wrench into my entire process! The venerable MooTools, who I have no use for, but many services I use do, is not a team player it seems when it comes to rounding corners in javascript. They don't believe rounding corners is the job of unobtrusive javascript and instead think that bags full of poor markup, redundant, empty tags, place holders and css should be our only method of rounding a corner in a layout....

So WCAG says we ought not use tables for layouts if we can avoid it..."Tables should be used to mark up truly tabular information ("data tables")." So by that guideline one can only assume that using <b> tags (which is for bolding or adding strength to type) for layout would be equally offensive. I have now tried every javascript library and snippet I can get my hands on to round corners and not a single one will work with MooTools and a Lightbox window. Arghhhh!

Sorry, I just had to vent.

I must be famous

So what does it say about ones perceived popularity when there is a squatter on your domain name. That's right, at long last I decided it was time that I register adammerrifield.com (thought about for years) and when I tried I was turned down with the message, "ADAMMERRIFIELD.COM is already taken."

Oh poop! I am sure it's simply a coincidence, but I can't help but think that someone has taken to squatting on any domain I might be interested acquiring. I won't go into which ones, but they are all closely associated to me or my company. What for? Oh well. I will just go and register a WAY cooler name (lets see if the squatters can read my mind).

Elbow deep in php search engines

I have been playing around with a php search engine (since so many people request a good site search) and did quite a bit of mucking around to find a simple way to do things that might make for a good RapidWeaver snippet entry or a RapidWeaver tutorial... Well... a tutorial I might eventually have. A snippet? Not so likely.

If there is anything I learned from the last snippet I released it's that not everybody is code savvy and not everybody enjoys digging in to html and php. While I really don't mind supporting 50-60 responses in a thread for a free bit of code, I must honestly say I can't afford the time right now.

Fear not though, when I have a moment I will sit down and write the definitive tutorial to have a completely integrated and seamless (not to mention built in) backend searching solution for RapidWeaver based sites. It will be advanced but if you are not afraid to get your hands elbow deep in code than I think you will find it well worth your while. To get an idea of what I have been working on, go over to seyDesign and try the little search box in the sidebar.

Stay tuned...

micro-blog micro-fatigue

Staying tuned in is becoming increasingly tiresome as of late. Anyone who tries to keep up socially in the tubes knows what I am talking about; there's Pownce and Twitter and Jaiku and Facebook and flickr and MySpace and 9rules and VIRB° and Tumblr and Bebo... did I miss any? Guys like me try to get our foot in each of these just so we can have some background knowledge on what's going on with these and other upcoming sites and services. We are generally accompanied by the same cast and crew in each location as we tend find these sites and tell our friends and colleagues about them and then we engage in the same conversations... "What are we doing here?"

I have sort of been pulling back a bit from these sites lately and really focusing more on the ones I believe in more than the ones all my "friends" are on. I have left Twitter (more or less), and become more proactive on Jaiku (much faster and more flexible). I share more of personal life on Facebook rather than trying to promote my business through that channel. But most importantly, I am back to putting content on places where it will benefit ME most... Back on MY sites, that I make, that I host, that belong to me. I don't need a service to allow me to micro-blog... I am a web designer... I know how to do it myself.

So what transpired to make me come to this realization? Time management and the fact that I am trying to find time in my schedule to start a podcast (for what I can't say at this moment) and in the shuffling around of my schedule I realized that I commit WAY too much time that really aren't serving the company as well as I had hoped.

Don't get me wrong, I'll still sign up for all of these new services, etc... I have to... it's part of my job. I just won't set my hooks in so deep... I'll just hire an intern for that! :)

New theme, more articles and a wedding

Busy, busy, busy...

I have had my hand dipped in a great number of projects over the last few months, and indeed the last few weeks have been intense. There are a two sites to be release in the coming weeks which I am quite excited about. Neither of which I really had much say in the actual design of, but was the keystone when it came to turning the concepts into functional websites. I'll keep you posted about those.

New theme...

Something else which has been all consuming is is the release of THEME 007 from THEME WEAVER, a very nice new RapidWeaver theme. As I am sure some of you know, I am heavily involved in everything that THEME WEAVER puts out and THEME 007 is no exception to that rule. I was more or less left to my own devices when it came to that one and I couldn't be happier with the results. I even went so far as to offer a discount for it on my own RapidWeaver theme site.

Get faster, get better...

I recently wrote and extensive article on nutMac.com about looking and learning your way to better productivity and sped up workflow on the mac. It's a good read if you make your living on a mac.

Recent wedding...

A recent wedding has left me with a ton of new material to write for Merrifield Photography so keep your eye out there for more photography related reading material. The results of this wedding have actually got me rethinking my position on never doing weddings again (which I say every time). I might just get back into again. I certainly get asked enough.

Realmac Software and MacUpdate special

Realmac Software has a special going with MacUpdate to get RapidWeaver 3.6 for just $24.95. Don't miss out on the special offer.

I can't leave well enough alone

Some people are willing to settle with the technology that is handed to them... but not me. I have to break it apart and understand why it works. This has been true with this whole RW Updates project. It started with a RapidWeaver Snippet, then a multi-feed website, then Authors were posted, with links to their site... Keep in mind that I am using php to automate this whole process.

So what was next? RSS Feed for the artificially generated Daily Digest "blog"? I had never really spent a lot of time in an XML file but knew it was a simple enough syntax structure but could I hack some php into that and build an effective (not to mention functioning) RSS Feed?

I was able to find one other guy who had attempted the same but the platform from which he was starting and where I intended to be was so grossly different that I feared I would have waisted too much time trying to "port" my code into his xml layout. So I cracked open an xml file that RapidWeaver generated and just started to apply php in the way I think I would have liked to see it work.

With a bit fussing and farting around I managed to get something near to what I actually want. In the end I ended up using two commands from that other guy. I liked the way he limited the number of items but I think I am going to go back to the aging technique I was using.

Is this still a work in progress? You bet it is. And I am loving every minute of it.

Blogger Widget

Thanks to Gary of RapidWeaver Themes turned me on to this nice little mac widget for posting to blogger. I am all about making things closer at hand therefore making things more productive for me so this little widget (though sadly lacking in some of my favorite editing functions) is right up my alley. Thanks for the tip Gary.

RW Update: A new RapidWeaver resource

It was best said on seyDesign in this article, but I just wanted to tell you a bit about the site on the technical side. It is based heavily on the "Show Recent Posts" snippet that we had recently released and in fact, that snippet is a direct result of our work on RW Updates. Granted the code on RW Updates takes that a little further so that we could pull in multiple feeds, sort them by date, truncate them, reveal the posting source, etc... but the real meat of it all is still in there.

Productivity comes down to searching

In my experience, how fast you work is directly linked to how fast you can find things. Finding things fast is key feature on macs with built in services like spotlight and is amplified by apps like Quicksilver but too many people neglect the simplest aspects of these tools. A new article on nutMac reminds us that spotlight commenting is an invaluable feature of OS X 10.4.

The secret is nearly out

We have a secret project nearing completion and final release. Well actually we have a lot of those, but this one is for us and a few friends (not often we get to stuff for our own enjoyment). Stay tuned, well let you know as soon as this little project launches.

Noise Industries uses RapidWeaver

It never ceases to amaze me when I stumble across a site using RapidWeaver in the wild; especially ones with some serious clout. Today on MacZot they announced a deal on FxFactory Editing Pack from Noise Industries. Intrigued, I checked it out and found that it was a RapidWeaver made site. I can't say for sure who is responsible for the theme, but I must say it is a nice site and theme.

Wiggly Wumble Poem: First day of school

Remember your first day of school? Wiggly Wumble writes all about it in their most recent poem titled First day of school. Go and have a read...

Path Finder image conversion trick

If, as a Mac user, you don't already know about Path Finder, I suggest you give it a spin. It is so many system apps built into one that it will make your head spin. To help you through some of it's features mind you, nutMac.com published the occasional article on it's use. Always in search of faster ways of getting things done, nutMac.com has found a quick and convenient way to convert icns file formats into any other workable image type at the click of a button.

Realmac Software Release RapidWeaver 3.6.3

Brighton, England - September 19th, 2007 - Realmac Software today announced an update to RapidWeaver, its award-winning website creation application for Mac OS X.

RapidWeaver 3.6.3 sees numerous improvements to the application, including:

• Greatly improved memory usage when exporting websites
• Fixed an issue with using the bold and colour attributes on a string
• Fixed some issues with the main view displaying incorrectly
• Option-Double Clicking on photos now opens the files in a Photo Album

along with various other fixes and enhancements.

For an in-depth list of new features please visit: http://www.realmacsoftware.com/ or the new http://iloverapidweaver.com/ website, designed by Realmac Software to evangelize RapidWeaver on the web. Pricing & Availability
RapidWeaver 3.6.3 is a free upgrade for registered 3.6 users, and is priced at $49 for new users and just $25 for users of earlier versions. RapidWeaver 3.6.3 is available to download and buy from today.

System requirements
RapidWeaver is a Universal Binary, requiring Mac OS X v10.4.3 or later. A free trial copy of RapidWeaver can be downloaded from: http://www.realmacsoftware.com/

Albert Kinng, seyDesign site of the week

Albert Kinng, Orlando DJ at Mega 98.1 FM, gets his personal site listed at seyDesign as this weeks site of the week.

Group photography done right

Photographing large groups poses a challenge to many photographers. All too often we try to squash them together or line them up like they're in the military. Merrifield Photography has the answer you might be looking for to help combat this battle of the boring in this how-to article for shooting group pictures.

Show Recent Posts, revisited

You might remember last week when I announced a RapidWeaver snippet, Show Recent Posts, I had been working on was released to the greater public. After some extensive feedback I thought I would dig my heels in and add a function that I certainly know I would want in the snippet, the ability to truncate posts to a predetermined length. I wasn't easy though but with some help from some friends I was finally able to pull it off. Just yesterday I let loose the second version of this RapidWeaver snippet, Show Recent Posts 2, which incorporates the new post shortening function. Enjoy!

New poem at Wiggly Wumble

A new poem showed up on Wiggly Wumble a few weeks back called Alphabet for Bedtime. It is a silly little peek into the bedtime routines of many children worldwide, as the poem makes it's way from A to Z. See if any of it rings true for you and your little ones.

Marten Claridge, seyDesign site of the week

Marten Claridge, crime writer and author of such titles as Nobodys Fool and Slow Burn, uses RapidWeaver and a well known seyDesign theme, Tuo for RapidWeaver. Marten's site was listed today as the seyDesign site of the week.

Merrifield is feeling Alpha

And finally, some really good news for all you Minolta hold-outs... well that's me and about 5 other people I'm sure. But anyhow, Merrifield Photography brings us some excellent news.

"Touching" opinions

So... I said there were a few things to get off my chest... we'll my curmudgeonly side shone through on our Mac productivity blog, nutMac.com in a post venting about the new iPods. Have a read here.

Getting the word out, one post at a time

You know it's nice to be busy, but from time to time you have to get a few things off your chest. I had been sitting on a few such things over the last few days. For starters, every one with an online store struggles to get the news out to their clients that something is new or updated. Blogs have been a real godsend in that department. The trouble is though, if your blog isn't the first thing that your clients see when they come to your site, they don't always get the information you want to convey. I used to have my blog as my home page on seyDesign a while back, which worked well but looked like crap. A blog does not make for a sexy landing page. So what I did was make a nice new landing page and buried the blog deeper in the site. This was sexy, but far fewer people were getting the news the needed about my products. My solution was to make a cute little implementation of SimplePie and put it in the sidebar of seyDesign's home page so that recent posts would always show up on the home page, off to the side where they won't dirty things up. Since I went to all the effort of coding this up to work in RapidWeaver, I decided to make it into a RapidWeaver snippet and share it with the rest of the RapidWeaver users out there. If you're interested in knowing more about it, check out this article.

Loghound releases FAQ Maker

My favorite client, John McLaughlin of Loghound.com released his latest RapidWeaver plugin, FAQ Maker. I am a huge fan of all of Loghound's plugins (this blog is made with RapidBlog), but what makes each and everyone of his releases special to me is that they use my icons. I am particularly proud of the icon I made for FAQ Maker, second only to the icon I made for RapidBlog.

If you are wondering exactly what FAQ Maker does, it's a RapidWeaver plugin page type that allows users to easily generate FAQ pages, kind of blog style. I have made a lot FAQ pages in the past, and building headers and anchors and so on is a tedious job. FAQ Maker does away with all of that and frees you up to just enter the question, then the answer and FAQ Maker takes care of all the rest. It can even mark new entries so visitors always know what's new on the FAQ.

seyDesign releases bloop! for RapidWeaver

And all of the sudden, bloop! seyDesign released a new RapidWeaver theme! In the midst of a trying schedule of site design, icon design and custom theme design (I'm sorry for the delays, you know who you are), we we're able to squeeze a new RapidWeaver theme into the store at seyDesign. You might ask, "Why now?" Truth be told, we have been sitting on the theme for a while (it's actually part of another project altogether) so it wasn't a stretch to put this RapidWeaver theme out. But more importantly, it is vital to our survival to maintain a degree of freshness. If we go stale, we get forgotten and that hurts our bottom line. To those of you who are being patient... thank you. I am working VERY hard on all of you jobs and you will see the fruits of that shortly.

Artistic impressions

Catch our very own Merrifield Photography mentioned on seyDesign's Site of the week. We have an inside on this one since we know someone who knows someone... you know what I mean?

It's a polar subject

This week on Merrifield Photography is an interesting article about the use of polarizing filters in photography. From contrast enhancement to increased saturation, learn what polarizing filters can do for you. Read more here.

You Blog Like A Girl!

No seriously, you do. Julie and her site, youbloglikeagirl.com are taking the inter-tubes by storm with a fury of blog posts of glamour and gadget geekery. What's this got to do with seyDoggy? We made the theme. Julie is using a custom made RapidWeaver theme built to order to her exacting specifications.

You Blog Like A Girl has been listed on seyDesign's site of the week, and has also made an appearance on DesignSnack. We suspect that this won't be the only places she gets recognized.

nutMac speaks iMac

That's almost a tongue twister isn't it? On the nutMac site, I give my views on the new-ish iMacs and their keyboards. It's an interesting look that goes beyond the hype of the new Apple Inc. machines.

Putting Spark in your ads

Spark, and innovative company specializing in advertising on vehicles in a big way, has been listed as Site of the week #7 at seyDesign.com

The bigger picture

Are you into photography? Are you into close-ups? Well if you are and you've wondered how it's done, take a trip over to Merrifield Photography to read their latest article: Larger than life; Macro for beginners.

nutMac goes Skitchy

Part of the fun of using a Mac is all the killer software that is in development. Part of the fun of writing for an all-mac blog like nutMac.com is not having to worry about the PC world getting it.

This week, nutMac reviews Skitch, the super cool mac app for taking, annotating and sharing screen shots in the easiest way ever.

How embarrassing!

So I announce yesterday how Dan Alban's site is the latest to be shown off at seyDesign's site of the week and ON THE DAY OF PUBLISHING his site gets changed to iWeb! What's a guy got to do to look important around here?

Dan Alban gets listed

Dan Alban, author of such books as Digital Photography for 3D Imaging and Animation and Inside LightWave V9, has had his website listed on seyDesign.com as this weeks "Site of the week".

Merrifield Photography demystifies HDR imagery

I love it when subjects just fall into your lap, like HDR imagery. It's even better when they are a perfect fit for a project like merrifield-photography.com. HDR is yet another acronym that gets thrown around the web these days like some new flavor at Starbucks. It's been around awhile but until the crazy influx of digital SLR users, it wasn't nearly as common a practice.

Don't know what I am talking about? Go and read the article then.

Oh snap! What now?

As if I didn't have enough blogs to write for so I go and start another one? Well it's all for good reason I hope. Since I do contribute to so many blogs and sites and I want to get the word out about each of them, it makes sense to have the parent company of these projects be the one to do the word spreadin'.

So in a nut shell, that's what you'll find here; daily updates on what I have... er... updated most recently.

Blogs to watch out for:

• seyDesign • Merrifield Photography • tumblDoggy •
• WigglyWumble • nutMac • Jaiku • twitter •