daglitch days

I have moved

2006-04-05T23:04:00.000-04:00

I'm now hosting my blog locally. It's at http://blog.hwright.net/.

Microsoft kills again

2006-03-30T13:01:00.000-05:00

I know this is particularly annooying to me because I'm so close to this project, but they've killed another non-Microsoftie's project. Inkudoku was being developed by my husband. It got a great response from the tablet community and few months later this comes out: Microsoft Sudoku

Wow, Apple just looks more and more appealing.

Designers to developers

2006-03-25T14:05:00.000-05:00

Keith Robinson has a great post addressing the issues of context and convergence.

Not totally relevant to the post, but it just inspired me to blog about what is closest to my heart at the moment.

Website design and development has become so intertwined. You would think with all the solutions for seperation of content and presentation that Designers and Developers would be able to happily co-exist with no problem. Not True! The principle is great, but the two sides still need to communicate with one another and deal with each other's creations. The problem is there is a lack of understanding between the two as to what the other is doing and WHY.

I think it is time that designers got an education in how to work around the developer's code and the developer got an education in how to communicate with the designer.

If an Architect tells a Builder he needs a brick wall with a bay window, the builder knows what he is being asked for. Why should technology be any different?

I need a new camera.

2006-03-25T00:21:00.000-05:00

Bill Gates keynote
Originally uploaded by daglitch.

Right, see those blue curtains in the center left of the page, now follow them as they kinda curve into a hovering tan blob. that hovering tan blob is Bill Gates.

I REALLY need a new camera. Or I'll just give in and go back to my film camera that has nice big lenses :( Like I'm leaving digital. As if.

Mix06 - I now have a LOT to do

2006-03-25T00:16:00.000-05:00

Steve and I catching up in the Sandbox
Originally uploaded by daglitch.

The Mix06 conference was great. I wasn't the biggest MS fan before (blogging from a Mac right now), and I'm still not. But I was very impressed by a lot of what I saw while in Vegas and am really looking forward to Vista, IE7 and loads of other fun things..

I'm really looking forward to getting my hands on Expression as soon as MS-humanly possible. Vector and Bitmap graphics in one application, non-distructive image effects, flash style animations WITHOUT keyframes. Some cool stuff going on in there.

I met Molly Holzschlag after the conference. Had no bloody clue who she was and now feel slightly like a jackass after finding out who she is and I should have known. DUH, I suck at keeping track of names. Oh well, I had a blast downing Margaritas with the IE7 team and then with Molly and Andy. Got to whinge with those two about England and lack of understanding between Designers and Developers. It was great fun.

As if starting a company just based on demand wasn't keeping me busy enough. After visiting Mix06 I now have a ton I need (and want) to do.

The first thing I need to do after I finish my current client work is redesign my site. It is a nighmare! Currently it is a DULL slapped together portfolio. I need to:

change it to a company site with a link to a portfolio

restyle everything so it is more visually stimulating

force myself through aspx control education

write a book

create a site which is of similar subject matter to the above mentioned book

start reading blogs and keeping track of who people are

clamp down and start programming (yeah, I claim I can't do it, but whenever I want to or absolutely have to, I am always able to program)

Beyond that stuff, I also need to make a decision. Do I carry on with my site and the charity sites I host being on Linux and using PHP or do I switch over to .NET? My biggest customer who is going to likely keep giving me more and more work is a .NET guy. I am going to be involved with a project soon which runs on Ruby on Rails and my current sites are all PHP. ACK! I'm more convinced than ever that I need to once and for all clamp down and get my programming skills sorted, but I don't know which direction to go.

I don't know if you can tell from this picture, but my smile is skewed. That skew is my brain going "CRAP, YOU HAVE SO MUCH YOU NEED TO DO!!!!"

Searching the web is the worst thing if you are trying to implement better time management

2006-03-13T14:42:00.000-05:00

Mac doing some light DIY
Originally uploaded by daglitch.

With mounting anxiety attacks, it was time to start making some changes around here. Yesterday Pete introduced me to the practices of GTD (Getting Things Done).

I have a rapidly growing Web Design business and it was starting to take over my life. Okay, it had totally taken over my life. So, I started using this GTD system yesterday and it's looking really helpful.

Pete made a great suggestion that I should subscribe to some professional RSS feeds which would be relevant to general business and that of design/websites/marketing. SHEESH. Talk about walking into a minefield. I won't even get into how many hits you would get searching on various combinations of those words.

But I will make one comment. I am totally SHOCKED at how ugly and NON-user friendly all these blogs/sites from "sought after" experts. I'm not even talking about people that are self-proclaimed. I'm even talking about sites that other people say are from great people. Did I miss a trend? Is ugly and confusing the hot thing right now?

I think I'm going to have to move set up relevant RSS feeds from my Action list over to my Project list. It's just running away with me.

Going to Vegas for Mix06

2006-03-12T23:19:00.000-05:00

One week left before I fly out of here for Mix06. Kinda finding the idea of traveling out there alone a bit daunting, but really looking forward to the event and staying in a posh hotel :)

Will have to post on here regularly while I'm there to keep Pete abreast to what is going on.

Hurray, Dashblog is working again

2006-03-12T23:17:00.000-05:00

Last it's just been nearly a year since I successfully posted. I tried a few times SEVERAL monthes ago to no avail. Apparently there were issues in the Blogger API. Guess they fixed the issues, cause I haven't updated this widget and now it works. Hoorah! Anyway, now maybe I can't post up more than lame test messages once a year.

coming back to blogspot

2005-05-21T18:07:00.000-04:00

Have been using MSN Spaces for blogging for a while and it is just being a pain. You can't do inline photos and it is always asking people to login using thier passport just to read the blog. I'm sure the excuse is it is still in Beta, but it's been in Beta for ages and I'm tired of it especially now that I am blogging more regularly and am using a mac a lot more again. So this post is brought to you courtesy of DashBlog, a nice little Dashboard Widget for MacOS X Tiger. Gotta love macs for their no hassle approach to pretty much everything. I love my little iBook. :)

Don't knock hand-me-downs

2004-09-16T17:33:00.000-04:00

WOO HOO!!! I enherited the Alienware box AND the Ilyama LCD display. Eve never looked so sexy!!!

Everyone got through the Hurricanes okay and hopefully that is it (knock on wood). Hurricane Jeanne is in the area, but at the moment it looks to be staying east of Florida.

Still no progress on the moving front. One couple looked at the house, but they haven't even put theirs up for sale and it's in CALIFORNIA. Hopefully things will start moving at the end of the month. Expect to find out immigration appointment at the end of the month and once that comes round, things will move VERY fast :D

Going to the dark side...

2004-09-08T19:28:00.000-04:00

Well, that's what it will sound like to some.

A little background for anyone that doesn't know me. I am a huge Dreamweaver fan. I have used it since version 2 and have always stuck by it. Even in the teething stages of MX. Last year I worked for the local council and they had a re-occurring error in Dreamweaver related to .doc files and the DW check-in/out system. While it was enough to put some of my colleagues totally off touching DW, I chose to fall back on my testing background and try to reliably reproduce the problem. After paying attention for the error for a day or two I realized it was a problem with IIS locking Office documents up which had been viewed. The only thing DW was guilty of was giving a useless error.

Anyway, fast-forward to Tech-Ed 2004 Amsterdamn and Pete is telling me all about the new express range of products coming out from Microsoft and insisting that even I will love it. Now, I love my husband and I know he knows his shit, but I don't take him too seriously when he is evangalising MS products because I feel like he is blinded by the excitement of progress.

As always, I listened and went ahead and checked out what he was talking about. I looked through the info on the Express products and it looked like a clever pretense. About a week ago I finally installed Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Beta (phew, bit of a mouth full) and I haven't touched Dreamweaver since. I've even started looking into hosting options for ASP.NET. The Intellisense is all there and lovely. The Design view is VERY accurate (blows DW away) and from what I have seen so far is strict with the CSS rendering.

Tomorrow Pete is doing a presentation for VBUG and is going to show features of all the Express products. As I'm more one for the design side he asked me to knock up a master page for him to use. He had briefly shown me how they worked earlier in the day (which had left me very excited about the prospects) so I was more than willing to get a page together for him. I used the opportunity to play with the nice menu and path navigation objects. They are a DREAM to use, the only thing I had to look up with the formatting for the Web.sitemap file (http://beta.asp.net/quickstart/aspnet/samples/navigation/Web.sitemap.xml) which I only found out I needed because of a nice and informative error message on my page when I attempted to run my project. So even when I have problems with something new, VWD is great at getting me on the right path quickly.

If you are a web developer that just wants to get your job done with minimal hassle and maximum effect (ie, not the "I use notepad" bunch of time-wasters) GET THIS APP!!!

It's free, go get it!

Microsoft enter the mp3 market with a one up (and then some)

2004-09-05T06:44:00.000-04:00

Movies, Music, TV and photos all on the go. Pete showed me this and put up a blog post. Looks sexy and is at the top of my Dear Santa list.

Invitation only! Google's gmail and orkut services

2004-09-04T07:08:00.000-04:00

Google is really getting into this whole invitation only thing. Makes since, if you make something exclusive, people will CLAMMER to use it. VERY clever marketing. I have an account on Friendster, but it seems fairly useless. You have all the people you are connected to but of the people I am connected to, no one talks to you if you don't know you! I thought the whole point was to meet more people. I have plenty of friends in real life that were on account of being a friend of a friend to start with.

Just another matter of it's the users that make the service a success. I would like to give Orkut a look into, and see how it compares to Friendster. We'll see.

NEW! Baby Born - now with meningitis scare

2004-09-04T06:39:00.000-04:00

Well, not quite.

Pete made this comment the other day when a commercial for this doll came on the TV.

She is a 43cm function doll that drinks from her bottle, eats her own special food, needs her nappy changed, cries real tears, uses her potty, squeals with delight, moves her arms & limbs and can now go to the beach, bathtub, or swimming pool

Now people wonder why we have a problem with teen pregnancy??? Maybe if we had baby dolls that woke you for feeding every four hours, came up with nasty rashes that threatened your doll to break for good and cries that were guaranteed to scare that crap out of you. Oh and we musn't forget the 9 months before the baby comes of worrying about something going wrong and then the first 6 months AFTER the baby is born fearing Sudden Cot Death Syndrome.

If baby dolls were really realistic, kids would think twice about wanting a real one ;) These "realistic" dolls look like a cakewalk compared to a real baby!

Don't get me wrong. I love my son and am looking foward to having more, but I still dread the emotional rollercoast the pregnancy and the first year brings. Ethan is two now and has daily typical two year old moments, but I wouldn't trade it for when he was a pleasant 6 month old for the world.