flickr needs more code
Man do I EVER wish that flickr would inject a class or id in there images tags so that I could take some control over them. I would at least like to float them so the don’t appear as a block level element followed by a paragraph of description.
Ideally I would like to wrap my description around my flickr images. Oh well, you can’t have everything.
The Saturday coffee… mmm
Like Pavlov’s dog, my mouth waters when I here the sound of my morning java trickle from my carafe to my coffee cup. It’s an almost unexplainable joy to see that steam rise up, the wafting aromatic sent of dark roasted beans, the brown and beige tones swirling together as the coffee and cream combine. Coffee is truly one of those adult routines that really warrants excusing ones self from the rest of life for 10 minutes or so.
What makes a Saturday coffee any different than the rest of the week? My days are all the same more or less. I work from home so a Saturday coffee should feel no different. I guess the bussle of having the kids about, the cartoons on, the smell of cooking breakfast… a Saturday coffee allows me to tune out the commotion for that 10 minutes. Peace.
Don’t you want one now?
Brain dead or thoughtless?
Hmm. What is this telling me? I don’t know how I should take that really. As funny as that seems, my collective thoughts having no items, I am actually a bit perturbed about the real consequences of the real problem… my rss feed is not working.
I used this bit of php to make it all work (which I have used something similar in the past for rwupdates.com) but this time around I have failed to make it work. I’ll have to keep plugging away on my spare time in the next few weeks. So for now, if you’ve tried to subscribe to the rss feed on “the collective” page and are getting no results, bear with me while I work it out. FYI, the rss feed on “the singular” page is fully operational.
These eyes two separate views shall meet
My wife just got me up from a 10 minute power nap (handy having her around for that) from which I was having the strangest dream/experience. Obviously you can’t get into too deep of a sleep in 10 minutes time so I am sure I must have been half in, half out (the twilight zone if you will) when my semi conscious brain realized it was only visualizing from my right eye. The left eye was blacked out. Of course to my semi conscious brain this translated into being “blind” in the left eye, which got me worried. So, half awake, half asleep, I opened my left eye, arousing my brain into a slightly more conscious state allowing me to come to the realization that I was not blind. I just had my eyes closed… both of them.
I thought nothing more of it until my wife woke me up minutes later. It became somewhat interesting to me that one eye could be fully engaged in the dream world while the other stayed behind in the conscious one. I’ll have to look into that more someday, but for now it was just an interesting experience worthy of some square footage on the web.
Back to work then?
Time gets away from me
So I’m sitting here building a web site for the soon to be relaunched, revitalized, rebranded PUMP Communications (for which I just built the most wicked nav system for) when I realize it’s Thursday! I should have made at least one trek to Mississauga (where the Presentation Plus lair resides, home of PUMP Communications) this week and Friday is just not a good day for it. I went to Mississauga last Friday and it took me nearly 2 1/2 hours to get back to Kitchener at the end of the day.
I guess I could stop in for a few hours for a meeting, set up another OS (we’re all moving to Leopard) and duck out before the general masses consider leaving their day jobs and head out to the cottage. That would be such a disruption to the usual work flow though. I guess I will play it by ear.
The not-so-partisan box to stand on
Day 2 into the new collective thought storm and I am already imagining the possibilities. For starters I need to write an xml file so I can offer a feed for the collective page. Then I have a few ideas from there. Nothing big.
So I need a platform to bark from. One that is not so “tied”, if you will, to any given company (I own a few and work for a few more)n and this site, adammerrifield.info, is perfect for that. It allows me to pimp everything I do for everybody without appearing to be a “partisan” of one company of the other (I got in trouble for that once). So why is this important? Well I work on a great number of projects and many of them are for other companies. I don’t talk about them on my “other” sites more because it would look inappropriate. I don’t talk about from “their” sites because they don’t have a place for me to do so nor would I have such standing.
Here I can be just Adam Merrifield; guy of many talents. Speaking of which, I have to run. I have a website to build, one to update, 5 graphics to get done, a theme to market…
An intro to all that is, was and shall be
Well today marks a new day for me and the scattered contents of my brain. I am a web designer dabbling in web development, who can draw a mean icon or logo and who has more to say and write then your average politician. I have things to say, things to teach, things to get off my chest and so much of it is too eclectic to keep in one place… until now that is.
Today marks the day that I can pool my collective thoughts into this… thought storm. Interesting? Probably not. Connected? Only by a common author and common web of interest; web, design, code, internet, photography, imagery, Macs, productivity……….
So what’s the point. None really. I just thought it would be a cool little mirror into my daily internet activity. From my own standpoint it serves as a gauge as to where and when my brain is at any given moment. Will it be embarrassing? I don’t expect I will tag too many porn sites in del.icio.us, but there might be the odd view I will express, totally unrehearsed, not researched and uneducated that I will likely come to regret in the hours that ensue. Luckily you will get to capture it all here.
Without further adieu, welcome to AdamMerrifield.info.
RapidWeaver gets some love from ars technica
[
](http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2008/04/23/exclusive-preview-rapidweaver-matures-with-version-4 “Exclusive preview: RapidWeaver matures with version 4″) My homeboys, [Realmac Software](http://www.realmacsoftware.com/rapidweaver/ “We are Realmac Software | RapidWeaver | Overview”) in Brighton got some [big props](http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2008/04/23/exclusive-preview-rapidweaver-matures-with-version-4 “Exclusive preview: RapidWeaver matures with version 4″) from [ars technica](http://arstechnica.com/ “Ars Technica”) today for an upcoming 4.0 release to their popular web design application, [RapidWeaver](http://www.realmacsoftware.com/rapidweaver/ “We are Realmac Software | RapidWeaver | Overview”). If you are itching to have a sneak peek at all that’s new with RapidWeaver 4.0 then go give the article a read.
A few points that have me excited are the hinting of a more robust api that could possible allow plugin developers greater access to the OS and other apps. This is, of course, just me reading between the lines. Greater plugin freedom ovens up a whole lot of possibilities for RapidWeaver.
Something else that has me excited is the news ticker which should make it a lot easier to keep users updated with theme patches and updates.
Path Finder point release to 4.8.4
[Path Finder](http://www.cocoatech.com/ “Welcome to Cocoatech”) (my all time favorite OS file system) has had a long awaited point release, bringing the version to 4.8.4. This update brings some needed bug fixes for both Tiger and Leopard versions that are apparently rooted deep within the Mac OS itself (due to be fixed in OS X 10.5.3 I suspect). For a complete list of updates and bug fixes see the [Path Finder Changelog](http://www.cocoatech.com/changelog.php “Cocoatech: Revision History”).
The spring dusting
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh… Can you smell that? Can you smell the spring air, the wet grass, the warming days? You know what this means? Yup, it’s time for me to dust of the camera gear and start prepping for a summer of weddings in the Kitchener area. My mind has far from staled over the winter though. I have been keeping up on a number of blogs to keep my gear on the up and up and my mind on new techniques.
I have been keeping my ear to the ground at both Photography Bay and Alpha Tracks to stay on top of what is going on with Sony gear (the system I have been entrenched in for more than 15 years). I am watching to see what new Sony bodies come out before I have to shoot my first wedding of the season. I don’t know that I would upgrade but I am dying for a vertical grip so there is definitely a possibility.
I have also been steady checking out Leggnet Photography and Scott Kelbys Photo Insider for inspiration and the latest industry news and techniques.
I have also been happily listening to This Week In Photography with Scott Bourne, Alex Lindsay. Though it is a tad remedial for pro’s, it is nice to sit and listen in on their conversations. They do, at times, have me jumping up and screaming at times, especially when they constantly insist that wedding photographers will someday shoot flashless weddings as the ISO ratings continue to climb… uhh… NO! We use flash for the quality of light, not the quantity. How I would love to shoot every wedding in the precious moments before dusk but the reality, most weddings occur when the sun is high in the sky casting deep dark shadows into the eye sockets. So no worries Alex, flashes are here to stay.
Now as you can see my winter was not a restful one. In addition to keeping abreast of the photography community my work with seyDoggy trudged on. New websites, new blogs, new articles… that is something I hope to continue here soon, writing articles. I have collected a number of topics that I think could use some clarification so look for at least a few new tidbits from me in the this coming wedding season.