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The Windows 8 Debacle

Posted by admin on November 11, 2012 in Computers, General | 1 comment

I had my first real-world experience with a client who unwittingly purchased a new laptop with Windows 8 pre-installed. What an unmitigated nightmare! Microsoft, seriously, what were you thinking?  Has greed clouded your judgement so severely that you couldn’t see the forest for the trees?  If this mess doesn’t drive more people to Apple, I’ll be very surprised. As a touch-screen interface, Windows 8 is passable.  But for standard laptops and desktops, with mouse and keyboard as the primary navigational methods, Windows 8...

Babylon Toolbar Woes

Posted by Adam on November 8, 2012 in General | 1 comment

Just a quick little self-help computer repair if you find the Babylon Toolbar invading your online world while surfing the web here in Cape Coral. First, it’s not a virus, although it’s almost as bad.  That’s why your antivirus didn’t scream bloody murder when it decided to hitch a ride onto your computer. Removal isn’t horrible, it just takes a couple minutes, and a knowing where to go. The version I’m seeing alot of lately uses a program called “Browser Manager” to keep your homepage directed...

908 Days Without a Virus

Posted by Adam on October 28, 2012 in Computers, General | Comments Off

I stumbled upon a pretty interesting statistic on my Matlacha home computer tonight. I’ve gone 908 days from the date of this post without getting a virus. Now, this may not seem like some great feat, but this computer gets used by a wide assortment of folks. From grandparents to grandchildren, this machine sees alot of use. That undoubtedly puts it at risk for at least a few hitchhikers or scareware infections. It just begged the question, “What am I doing right?”. I don’t use antivirus. I haven’t for years. Now,...

Ron Mayhew Photography

Posted by admin on January 21, 2012 in General | Comments Off

I’ve been helping Ron update his website over at ronmayhewphotography.com for the last few weeks. I thought about placing this post over in the portfolio section of my site, but, really, all I did was supply a little CSS know-how and some other minor tweaks to help him achieve the look he wanted. While Ron is fond of telling me “I’m a photographer, not a web developer”, five minutes on his site will prove him wrong. He’s done an amazing job of putting this site together. Beyond the site, however, the real...

4 Free Things Every Computer User Should Have.

Posted by admin on August 20, 2011 in Computers, General | Comments Off

Whether for business or professional use, these are the top four things that I always find myself recommending. The first is Dropbox.  No matter how easy software and hardware manufacturers  try to make computer networking and file sharing, the technology still remains out-of-reach for most normal computer users without help from technology professionals.  Dropbox pushes all the complexity aside, allowing people to share files with different devices, and different people, all by installing one little program.  It also acts as an off-site...

On Real Estate Website Design

Posted by Adam on July 30, 2010 in General, Webcrafting | Comments Off

I’m currently working on a new theme for use in Real Estate. Building off of the experience I had with my last project in the industry, there are a few lessons I learned that I’m trying to apply directly to the new theme. Its All About the Search! Nearly 90% of site visitors go directly to the property search. Therefore, not only should the search be prominent, it should be the first thing they see, the last thing they see, and if you wanted to go really crazy, it could be the only thing they see, as they’re not likely to...

Get-the-Image, TimThumb, and WordPress 3.0 Blog Networks

Posted by Adam on July 26, 2010 in General, Wordpress | 3 comments

I wanted a way to allow my theme users to create posts, upload an image for the post, and have that image be used all over the place without the user having to specify the image as the post thumbnail or use any other custom fields. Justin Tadlock’s Get-the-Image plugin works nicely for digging images out of posts. Timthumb.php by McDaniels, Hoyt, and Gillbanks has been the standard in image resizing for a while. Getting these two scripts to play nice wasn’t too big a challenge thanks to a helpful little post by Morten Skogly over...

Shabadoo v.01: A Thematic Child-Theme

Posted by Adam on July 10, 2010 in General, Wordpress | Comments Off

While I could call it a “work in progress”, the truth is, I’ve learned so much while building Shabadoo that I’ve taken what I’ve learned and moved on to other projects. As a Thematic child-theme development toddler, I’m hoping that Shabadoo will be of some use to a child-theme development infant. Here’s the story… To those who know Thematic, they’ll immediately recognize what Shabadoo really is. It’s Ian Stewart’s Feature Site theme, just wearing a pretty dress and some...

VieleRETS automatically updating WP-Realty

Posted by admin on May 18, 2010 in General, Webcrafting | 7 comments

What this covers:

1. How to configure VieleRETS for use with WP-Realty
2. How to configure a batch job in VieleRETS
3. How to configure a batch job to run in CRON

PC Repair Checklist 1

Posted by admin on April 19, 2010 in Computers, General | Comments Off

I started out making this little list for myself, then figured I’d share. When I go on a service call for a malfunctioning Windows computer, if the issue isn’t a “quick fix”, it usually boils down to one of three resolutions: Creating a new user profile Performing a repair to partial re-install of the Operating System A complete HDD Format and OS reinstall In any of these three scenario’s, there are a litany of things that need to be revisited in order to get the computer back to a state that the owner had it...