Rockin’the Suburbs

Today has gone pretty well, weather has kind of sucked but all and all pretty good, had to get to a meeting this morning at the business office for the company I work for. Meeting went well, usually does. Got home and me and the wife had a nice afternoon together before I had to go with the Rams/Bears game, I was working the tailgating stuff so I was able to scoot out fairly early, thankfully, it was cold and raining.

I’m just a few weeks away from Christmas and starting to feel the crunch, I need to seriously take care of the rest of that this coming weekend, hopefully it will not be too bad. I could use some extra cheddar though, maybe someone nice would PayPal me some cash in the spirit of the holidays! I know I know, shameless plug for myself.

Offramp to Sanity

Holidays approach, I have yet to get much shopping done, I reserve this weekend to get on top of that. We have shopped for the nieces and nephews so far, but we still have some shopping to do, and I have to get a few things for that someone special in my life. In the midst of this I have a few concurrent projects running and a few old sites to get back online (for a former boss) and then my current “day job”.

At present I will be working on three different sites, the money should be decent but it may cut into my time a tad. I’m also trying to improve constantly on this my site, _and then_ I’ll have to get my professional site back up and running, sheesh. I have piece of mind that I’ll get through this holiday season just fine, but I will admit that I’ve been stressed lately.

Is anyone else out there going through an obstacle oriented season right now?

Linotype FontExplorer X

When I switched from Windows to Mac I brought a ton of nonsense with me, one thing was 2000+ fonts. Apple included FontBook with OS X, which is great until you have half of the fonts I have. I’d get that program freezing and crashing left and right which was very annoying when I needed to activate a special font for a project I was working on. I set out at that point to find a solution to this dilemma, and that solution ended up being FontExplorer X by Linotype. I must admit that I didn’t find this gem until countless searches led me to Jason Santa Maria’s site, (also noted on creativebits). I’ve put this program through the wringer on many instances and it’s yet to even scoff at me. I recommend this to my fellow Apple design friends, and now to you because your my friend, aren’t you?

Transmit 3

I have used this program for several years, when I switched to Mac several years ago I needed a program that functioned like the CuteFTP did for me in Windows. After trying a few free solutions, then a demo of Transmit I was hooked instantly. Transmit does everything I need it to, and then some. External Edit in anything you want. Flawless Synchronization, Dashboard Widget, Automator Actions, Secure connections. While the Favorites in previous versions wasn’t always user friendly, Panic has hit a homerun with their most recent version.

Check it out for yourself here and check out their other fun software!

CSS Edit 2

I just broke down and purchased CSSEdit 2 from MacRabbit and all I can say is wow!

Upon opening the app I already could see this becoming my permanent replacement to Dreamweaver’s built-in CSS editor. The scope and work flow are flawless, plus the folder grouping in the app are very handy. I set several folders for different types of styles like layout elements, links, section specific styles, etc. I really have to say that MacRabbit has truly outdone itself with this application.

I give this 4our out of 5ive possible stars!

Hire’um

There’s been a recent longing to get back into web development/design as a profession, as of late I’ve been doing sales and marketing for a cellular company. Working in this industry has been good to me, but I have the itch to get back into the saddle. Biggest issue with this is that I have been out of that industry for a year and a half so some things have changed. Trying to keep up I’ve done some side projects here and there so the hill shouldn’t be too steep to climb.

Has anyone out there ever been in this position no matter the industry? Tell me about your obstacles and how you overcame them.

Superdrive Crapped Out

Well, lately I’ve been getting error messages trying to burn CD’s from iTunes and even in my Disk Utility. “Failed to calibrate the laser power level for this media.” and the like. Now I admit my Powermac isn’t a spring chicken anymore but I have certainly not abused her. So this evening I took the drive assembly out and took the superdrive apart, I mean really apart. Grabbed the 91% Alcohol solvent from a local drugstore and began hand cleaning the laser. This proved to work, sort of. I was able to burn an album in iTunes but wasn’t able to get the Ubuntu Linux dist iso to burn (for a Linux project to toss on Dexter*). I suppose I will have to try to snag another drive or resort to an external solution, I wonder how much those are going for now, it’s gotta do the DVD’s too, maybe Dual Layer is the way to go this time, Tiger supports it!

*Dexter is my Blue & White Yosemite G3

I did end up slapping in a Memorex Dual-Layer DVD-RW, this thing rocks!