Needle and the Damage Done
Date: June 29th, 2009 Category: People, Things Tags: guitar, music, neil young [ View Comments ]
“Needle and the Damage Done” is by far my favorite Neil Young song. I’m teaching myself to play it on guitar as a matter of fact. I’ve watched the video below like 150 times (no joke) trying to get the changes and chords down properly.
Anyway, the more and more I watch/listen to it the more and more I relate it to my own life in a lot ways. Sure, I’m not a heroin addict but the angst he must of felt and the inability for him to help some things/people in his life I can relate to.
It’s a sad song but definitely one of the greatest I’ve ever had the pleasure to listen to…
Starting My Own Company
Date: June 24th, 2009 Category: People, Things Tags: adobe illustrator, orange fruit [ View Comments ]
I may have mentioned in a past post that I was planning on starting my own company. Well, it’s going to happen! It’s going to be a web development and web hosting solution provider. I’m starting small – working with small to medium size companies in the San Diego area. It’s going to be a ton of work but I’m up for the challenge and optimistic that things will work out. The bottom line is I’m sick of working for other people and just want to do something for myself.
Anyway, my roommate also happens to be a lawyer and he’s doing all the LLC paperwork for me. Everything will be official here in the state of California in about a month.
In the meantime I’ve filed to reserve the company name so I can start building out my website and create business cards etc. The state has received my reservation request apparently but until I get written notice back I’ll have to refrain from mentioning the name.
What I can mention is that the company name has something to do with the Orange fruit. So, before I could start working on a logo I needed to brush up on my orange drawing skills – LOL. So I fired up Adobe Illustrator and started going at it. Between just messing around and following a few ideas I found on the web I came up with the image below (click to enlarge).
Again, this isn’t the final logo design. I just wanted to see if I could create good looking orange skin and leaves in Illustrator. I’m actually really pleased with how it came out. Now that I got this down it’s on to creating the real logo. More info soon…
CSS Sprites
Date: June 11th, 2009 Category: Things Tags: css, development, tutorial, web [ View Comments ]
The other day while working on a web project for a client I was looking for an easy way to switch out images for the different button states (ie. regular, hover, and active) in a typical navigation menu. I’ve always taken what I thought to be the most logical approach and just used CSS to change the background-image depending on whatever state was currently invoked. But, this leads to lag in image load time due to the browser “calling” and waiting for the other image to be served by the web server and sometimes with Internet Explorer this method can cause a flicker effect. Not the end of the world of course but still not desirable.
So, I remember reading about CSS sprites a year or so ago but never used them until the other day. Basically a sprite is an image with many images inside it. Facebook for example takes this to the extreme. They utilize CSS sprites to round the corners of your profile pic and for some other uses as well. Take a look at the linked images and you’ll probably get where this is going.
Basically instead of having multiple images swapped in and out by CSS you create one master image and use CSS to reposition the background-image to suit your needs depending on what section of the sprite you want to display to the user. No load lag and no flicker. Pretty snazzy…
I found two tutorials online which were easy to follow and within minutes I fully understood how to use and manipulate sprites via CSS. The first one I read was written by Dave Shea for the website “A List Apart”. The second one was from “Well Styled”.
Check out both the tutorials above and I’m sure you’ll agree this is the best, most elegant way to do this type of image manipulation. This may be old news so to speak but I thought it was still worth looking at again. I hope you find the info as useful as I did.
New Sonic Youth Album
Date: June 8th, 2009 Category: People, Things Tags: bands, music, sonic youth, the eternal [ View Comments ]
Their 16th studio album is coming out tomorrow here in the USA. It’s titled “The Eternal“. I had the cool opportunity to check out the album a few days early and as always they delivered. If you pre-order the album on iTunes you get a bonus track and some sort of digital book which is cool.
I’ve seen SY quite a few times in the past and look forward to seeing them again this time around. But, for now it looks like there’s no Los Angeles or San Diego shows?!? The only California stop on the schedule for now is Oakland, CA. Sucks… I hope they add at least one LA show!!!
Anyway, I found this little gem of a video on YouTube and I hope you enjoy it as I did. It’s their network television debut on The Late Show with David Letterman. I’m not sure what year it was filmed (late 80s?) and the quality of the video is crappy but it’s a great performance and still worth checking out.
Free Web Development Tools
Date: June 2nd, 2009 Category: Things Tags: development, subversion, web, XP-Dev [ View Comments ]
Since starting my own web development company recently (more on that some other time) I needed a few hosted development tools to be able to do my thang on the interwebs properly. Basically, other than my Macbook and inexpensive web hosting I needed hosted Subversion access and some sort of project management tools.
I could of paid for Springloops Subversion and Basecamp for project management but those services aren’t cheap. After digging a bit I found XP-Dev. They offer subversion hosting and basic project management tools for free. XP-Dev’s product isn’t as “pretty” as the paid ones but it gets the job done and the service is reliable.
Anyway, if you’re in the market for inexpensive (i.e. free) web dev tools like Subversion and/or some form of online project management tools, check out XP-Dev.
Nine Inch Nails & Jane’s Addiction Show
Date: June 1st, 2009 Category: Things Tags: jane's addiction, live shows, music, nine inch nails [ View Comments ]
A friend of mine was in town a few weeks ago and offered to take me to the Nine Inch Nails and Jane’s Addiction show here in San Diego, CA. I’ve never seen either of the bands live before and I was excited to check them out. He had “pit passes” so we were basically right up front for the show. As I expected it was an awesome show.
Anyway, below are a few pics and a short video of the show I captured using my iPhone 3G. Check them out…
