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.