Dear Loyal Reader,

I wanted to first start by thanking you personally for being a loyal reader of eNemesis. It's YOUR loyalty that makes this entire project worthwhile.

Now, you might be wondering why I didn't address this by name. I mean after all, if I'm going to go so far as to say that I want to thank you personally, shouldn't this letter be personal? Indeed it should, and I thank you for pointing this out, because it also happens to be the topic of my letter today, which is.... viewer/user feedback!

Let me cut to the chase here. We want to start expanding the website (yes, this website) and feedback from the user community would be the best for helping us decide in which direction to head at the beginning of our expansion phase.

I had some thoughts on developing some interactive web time wasters, or perhaps a more useful web-app that provides it's users with some type of information that is currently not so easy to get. This is where you come in.

Whether your name is Bob, Jack, Janet or something that I just don't know how to spell or say, I believe that you have the talent, experience, education and opinions that we are looking for when it comes to being as creative as possible in telling someone else (us) how to spend our time and money with the very direct and explicit goal of making you happy... or at least more complacent when it comes to deciding which website to waste your time at during the day.

That said, I'm going to go back to learning some PowerShell so that I can continue kicking ass and taking names at work.... (yes, I work for the most bad ass software company in the world, and I don't care what anyone says about them, I like picking up trash for them... I'm lucky to be a janitor!!)

Hah, yeah right... like I would mop up someone else's shit for a living... oh wait... FUCK!!!! *


-link

*(P.S.~ if you didn't get the last joke above, the "oh wait... FUCK!!!!" was a representation of my realization that each and every job anywhere on the face of the planet does and will always involve some form of cleaning up somebody else's bullshit..... in both the figurative and literal senses...)

Labels: changes, technology, thoughts, web development

So I was supposed to start my new job two Mondays ago. I got the call today telling me that I'm starting tomorrow morning at 9am. Thank fucking god. I can't really afford to be out of work for another full week.

That said, I'm still working on porting eNemesis over to the Wordpress engine. I wanted to do some skin editing, and I went looking for a tool that will allow me to "grab" colors from the screen without having to hunt for them.

I found a cool tool called "ColorPic" which you can check out by following the previous link.

I started poking around the application developer's website and found that they have an entire section of free web dev tools, so I thought they were worth mentioning.

They care called Iconico, and they say that they make "Accurate Design and Development Software." I like that, because they claim to be accurate, it gives me the feeling that I'm working with a precision tool.

Anyhow, check out the source link or the link for the "ColorPic" app above, I think you'll find some useful tools if you do any kind of web development on the side like yours truly.


-link

Labels: a day in the life of, cool shit, thoughts, web development

It's no secret to most of our veteran readers that I tend to use eNemesis.org as a way to store links that I think are really cool...

I guess what would actually "be" cool is if I were to engineer some awesome bookmark/favorites storing application that easily integrated with your browser for transferring of popular links...

...I guess I'm just not really all that cool though.

Until I suddenly become "that cool" you should check out the source link below for an idea of what "really cool" is.


-link

Labels: thoughts, web development

The UI is quite simple, pleasing to the eye actually.  It's pretty much identical to iTunes (yeah, strange, huh?).  I like the look and feel of Safari just for the fact that it's functions are simplified, unlike Internet Explorer that buries functions deep in a hierarchal menu.  Everything you need is right there.

Bookmarks - we typically know these as "Favorites" - I personally like a lot.  It takes the same amount of clicks to access you links, so no difference there.  The way to your bookmarks is to just click the book icon and it lists all your bookmarks and bookmark folders.

If you are looking in your bookmark folders, they are automatically displayed on the right side of the screen with the URLs visible.  This is great for the times you find your duplicating bookmarks at different pages within a site.  You always know exactly where you are going.

You can also drag and drop links (like IE) into your bookmarks or links list (which is directly below the URL field.  There is also an easy "+" you can click for quick adding of bookmarks.

RSS Feeds - this is probably the one part I am not too fond of in Safari.  It took me a while to figure it out.  Unlike bookmarks, RSS feeds are not automatically imported to Safari from your Internet Explorer, Firefox, or Flock.

If you go to a site that allows RSS subscriptions, you can click the "RSS" button in the URL field and it will display the feed list, but not provide an option to subscribe.  You have to add the feed page as a bookmark.  At first I couldn't get it to work, but after reading the user guide, I found this out.  A bit of a pain, and I reported that as a bug, so hopefully that will be fixed in the full release.
Tabbed browsing browsing works the same as any other browser, except for one additional functionality:  if you drag a tab away from the tab bar, it moves the tab to a new window.  I liked this feature a lot.

Changing preferences is a simplified feature as well.  Go to Edit\\Preferences and it is a flattened menu with all the options right there.  When you click an option, it immediately changes it and if you don't like the change, uncheck it and it goes right back to the way it was.  There is no clicking "ok" 2 or 3 times like IE.  You just select what you want and it happens.  If you click outside the preferences, the changes are saved and you go back to browsing.

Another noteworthy item is that Safari can display almost all web pages exactly as they would in IE.  Firefox and Flock, for example, my Hotmail would always revert back to "classic" Hotmail format rather than the Windows Live format.  Not the case with Safari.  It looks exactly the same.

The only difference I found, was of course, with eNemesis.  In IE, if you look at the menu, you will notice it's transparent and you can see the picture behind it.  In Safari, it is not transparent, meaning you only see the menu items.  You can see the picture load initially, but when the actual menu items appear, the picture is gone.  Link said it has to do with IE Hooks.  I don't know WTF that means, but it's not a big deal to me either way.  That's the only flaw I could find.

Overall, I like Safari.  Especially the fact that I work at Microsoft and I'm using Safari out of spite.  It's entertaining, really.

If you want to see a demo or try it out, click the source link below.

Update: I found another kickass feature. You can stretch any text box to whatever size you want. So, for example, in this Blogger window I'm posting in right now, I can adjust to any size I want. I can make it stretch to full screen. Can IE do that? :)

Labels: software, technology, web development

Check out the source link below, a pretty damn interesting story about money making pioneers on the 'net...


-link

Labels: bitch killa, business is business, web development

I've been working on my Internet consulting business, interviewing at Expedia.com and trying to figure out what to do with my life and I must say it's a bit stressful.

I took a look at being a helicopter pilot today... for $50,000 I can have 1-on-1 lessons at Paine Field, Everett, WA. This will get me a ton of certifications and other wonderful things to throw on a resume.

I guess I was thinking that I need a good 'ol trade that I wouldn't mind doing for the remainder of my life... you know... should all of my other plans fall through... as has been the case so far.

In other news, I've thought quite a bit more about the people that I surround myself with, and continue to surround myself with. I'm happy that I cut out some cancers in this area. So far everything seems to be moving on in a healthy fashion.

A buddy of mine named Brad decided to get ride of around five garbage bags full of clothes, many of them in almost new condition... Brad doesn't dress like a punk either, his clothes are nice. So I snatched those up (yes with permission) and just saved myself a bundle on buying new clothes for work... you know, for when I eventually get that job with Expedia.com....

Anyhow, that's it for now... I promise to post more often... and so does everyone else... right guys?


-link

Labels: adventures in everett, jobs, thoughts, web development

I found this site while searching for a utility to download entire websites. It provides some options on the windows copy/move/delete functionality that aren't normally available.

Other than that... I'm working on a client's website that I won the deal for in a meeting I had on Friday. I'm also watching Bad Santa on TV... funny movie.


-link

Labels: adventures in everett, thoughts, web development

I found a really cool blog by this person that likes to share information about web development. Check out the source link below, which links to one article about CSS techniques. You'll find other articles as well, such as the one that took me to the site about free fonts that you should definitely download.

-link

Labels: adventures in everett, bitch killa, web development