Sucat David

Mac & HP – Can’t We All Be Friends?

admin — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 21:50:31 +0000

I remember when I bought my iMac years ago, an HP PSC 1510was purchased along with it and I wrestled with the config to make the two hardware pieces see each other and play nice. Since then, the hard drive crashed and now it’s the whole thing all over again.

Like most things these days, the troubleshooting began with a Google search and there was a wealth of information from others with the same problem. Turns out that HP and my iMac simply don’t play real well together.

There was lots of funky advice about unplug, power off, uninstall, reinstall, blah, blah, blah… What finally worked was to download much older drivers than the ones on the HP website and install those. Turns out that the manufacturers improvements to the drivers broke them.

Try as I may, I cannot get my HP PSC-1510 to scan...

Complete Site Redesign in a Morning

admin — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 04:01:02 +0000

Sometimes, I just have to escape into codeland. It’s my happy place. In this case, it was a redesign (again!) of my own site using a stock install of WordPress. It seems an odd thing for a developer to do, knowing this is my chance to impress you with killer graphics and bleeding-edge coding. Tell the truth, I’m just too tired to make the effort. The whole internet business that changed so much since I began 1993 that I might as well do as my clients have and go the free route.

Grabbing a free download is cake. Installing it onto a server is a bit of a trick, however, as the screen capture above can attest! What I did was up the .zip via FTP and expand it right into the root of the server. After renaming the folder to the proper subdirectory and building the database, all that needed to be done was to edit the wp-config and install.

OK. I’m greatly oversimplifying, but the core matter is the same. Open Source software is better than that built by developers and can be used for free forever. It is robust and feature-filled right out of the box. There are countless templates, add-ons and code snippets for the webhacks out there. Most of all, it puts the creative process into the hands of the owner rather than the developer.

That was the rallying cry of Web 2.0 that cut web maintenance budgets web-wide. We wanted to give content control to its creator, then were upset to realize that subscription payment and update fees were lost in the shuffle. I have been using the format for years on my cancer blog, but it wasn’t fully embraced until the San Diego Eruv site, which was built in an afternoon at the request of its corporate committee. Soon thereafter, it was used for a client siteand another. Now, I have more WordPress installations out there than I can count.

I left this install as stock because I just like it. The menus are easy to create and change. The sidebar widgits are like old friends. Like I said, I’m in my happy place.

Talk about being in the zone... This is just crazy!

D.I.Y. Publishing Made Easy

admin — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 00:52:29 +0000

When I was looking for my son’s Bar Mitzvah invitations online, all I saw was overpriced junk. Nothing was even close, so I dusted off the design tools and got busy. Type on a curve was fun old-school trick. Getting hebrew fonts was a bit of a grind, but there were some good ones out there. FontExplorer X from Linotype is a must-have tool for any mac user with a font library. A couple hours of work and a simple upload to FedEx Office and I had my custom invitations in an hour for $36.

I love designing on the Mac

I hate to like Windows 7, but…

admin — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 23:03:49 +0000

I have always had to maintain a PC on my mac network to run various business softwares and this has asways been a painful experience. Before getting this (sweet) new laptop, it sure was. Especially near the end there where the blue screen closed every session at some point. A perfect example is the pain from needed activesync to connect WM6 to my gCalendars. Still have to do that, but W7 made it easy (huh?) So then I pumped it up with an online install of the best insurance illustration package I have ever used (pretty strong case for a guy whos first system ran on floppy discs ALONE) and ran through a 47 member census in one standing by calculating target face amounts with blinding speed. OK. Good. But can it do graphics? Installing Adobe Photoshop CS5 (extended) was way too easy. Laughably so. Then, discovery of the fun little snipping tool (that was my idea!) made a previously complex task simple. Nothing was left but to write a rave review, and I thought that day would never come.

This is my first post under W7, about posting with Windows 7

Using Technology to Pass Online Tests

admin — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 20:45:29 +0000

The other day I had a chance to make a big chunk of change, but I discovered that my insurance license had expired TWO DAYS previously. Bummer. I went into hyper-renewal mode and powered out all my Continuing Education units in a morning. How was this amazing feat accomplished? My downloading the textbooks and using Acrobat Pro to convert them all into searchable documents. For pretty much every question, I was able to copy keywords from the test browser window into my resource files and find an identically phrased answer. Nice. I thought I got a perfect score on this test, but ended up with a passing 86% because I actually answered a few questions from memory. Shoulda known better…

They said it was an open book test

This Photo Gallery is Taking Over My Site

admin — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 07:05:37 +0000

I’ve been pretty psyched with the default template bundled with the latest release of WordPress, not so much for its flexibility but because it’s easy to do what I want, then come back and apply some new trick. I’ve been using other systems too, but I always come back to the plugin universe. Granted, I don’t really have to answer to anyone about how my sites look, so what ev’. My indoor climbing wall site was from the days when I used javascript and .html to build sites. I like the functionality of the new site way more. Plus, it was fun to open up the old files and repurpose them into FotoBook galleries.

The big blue blob is "The Grapes of Wrath" by Etch and is my favorite hold

UberDrupal is Uber-Cool Open Source Software

admin — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 05:30:46 +0000

Yesterday, I was ripping some CDs for a client‘s iPod and used the time wisely to do my first Drupal install. The idea is to use this robust open source platform for the content management of my bigger sites. I used another client‘s site as a model for an Ubercart implementation and realized right off that the scale of the project didn’t warrant the complexity of the tools. So, even though UberDrupal is uber-cool, I bailed for a simple WordPress install.

Extreme Multitasking = ADD :)

Handbrake Gives The Power to the People!

admin — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 22:56:51 +0000

It was like seeing an old friend for the first time in a long time when I saw this interface again. There was a period that I was active in converting DVDs to .avi files. I had my reasons (ratio) and gathered up a good set of tools that would let me play these files on my divX/XVID box. Then, I got this new Mac Mini and had to start all over. Handbrake, a killer converter for .vob files, was the first tool I reached for. I needed an old version because my ppc maxes out at OS X 10.4.11. I was working with my daughters band concert disc, so it wasn’t protected. The next lesson (don’t hold your breath) is about cracking those discs you bought with Mac The Ripper.

I love this app and everything it stands for.

Sometimes, I have to just stand up and walk out

admin — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 22:49:38 +0000

It seems like I never get a break in this business. Most of the codegaking and marketing I do has no hard deadline, so it doesn’t matter if it’s the middle of the day or the middle of the night. Another factor is that my $$$ is directly connected to the amount of hustle. Thus, I’m pretty much always on. If not actually pitching my various wares and asking for money, there’s a multitude of preparation and implementation tasks. Then there is opening new markets and updating the old ones. Then there are clients and joint projects. Don’t forget single dad and homeowner and minyan maker. My life, thank G-d, is overflowing with davidness.

Don't let the empty desktop fool you into thinking there is nothing to do...

Daddy Got Himself Some New Mac Software

admin — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 00:11:27 +0000

I was adding in a new “print document” format to the order form at canceranswers.com and got pretty stoked by the functionality of Coda, another killer app from Panic Software. I picked up at the tip to use it during a Drupal open source content management system training conference last week. Coda edits text files locally and publishes to the web, or opens from the server and saves locally. I also saw bbEdit (my main editor) being used in the same way at a different session, but new software is fun to mess with and the new app fit the project of editing online without ftp. The active window below shows optimizing the screenshot with Photoshop CS4, another dreamy piece software. If trapped on a desert island with only one piece of software, it would be CS4. Unless the island had broadband, in which case I would choose a browser. Duh.

I wasn't really saving it as a .gif, but the interface looked better in the screenshot