I never, ever thought I would utter those words. I am kind of a cranky old lady when it comes to "Web 2.0 social boogyboo blah blah" talk. I don't have a Facebook account (and won't get one no matter how many times I get spammed with requests) and I don't use things like del.icio.us. I'm sure they are useful, but they just don't work in my "flow." I don't "get" them in my life.  read more »

Getting my new MacBook Pro has been a much longer story than it ever should have been and I'm not going to go into all of the gory details. It started by ordering one online and then two days later Apple announced the release of the new Core 2 Duo. Eh, hey that is a better machine for the same damned price I paid for the old one! Suffice it to say that I have been the owner of a new Core 2 Duo 15" MBP for two weeks now. And I am freakin' loving it. I still love Ubuntu and will keep using it on my desktop but I really am impressed with what Apple has going here.  read more »

for the search results tell me so.

I have to say that I was pretty surprised when I discovered a hit to my site for a Google search on "drupal theme building freelance" (and was pleased that it translated into my first international client). Out of curiosity I did the search and I was truly shocked to be the fourth hit, right after Ted Serbinski, who I learned drupal theming from. I've since dropped to page two of google results for that search, but I'm still pretty damned pleased.  read more »

UPDATE: I have written a more current, relevant post comparing Ecto and MarsEdit, March 30, 2008.  read more »

I have finally gotten around to seriously testing out some different IDE (Integrated Development Environment) for my PHP coding. I currently use jEdit as an all-around editor and I love it. It has PHP parsing (but no fancy autocomplete stuff), FTP, project management, snippets and some really good XML plugins but the big hangup I have with it is that, for some reason I can not discern, it is totally jacked up on my Dell laptop when no AC power is plugged in.  read more »

RSS is very difficult to explain to someone who hasn't seen it in action. I end up describing it (very generally) like so:  read more »

I finally managed to get all of my PNG graphics working properly in IE. For those that don't know, IE (Win) does not support transparency in PNG images. The welcome box on my home page and the "frosty" bar in the header are examples of a PNG with transparency - you can see the background through the image. Microsoft has a workaround that involves a little code and a lot of finding just the right mojo to make it all happen the way you intend. There are many variations out there. A quick search of "IE PNG" on Google will bring you lots of love.  read more »

So, I found a nice little tool to help me wade through the web called toread (via Lifehacker - one of my favorite "that's a useful tool" sites.) Basically all you do is sign up at toread with your email and then add your own special bookmark to your browser. Whenever I come across a site I don't have time to read I just click my toread bookmark and it gets emailed to me so I can check it out later.  read more »

Let me start off by noting that while I spend most of my waking hours on a computer and many of them on the web, I am not necessarily "hip" in a web 2.0 way. The whole "social" trend on the web has been passing me by. I am vaguely aware of things like Flickr and de.li.cio.us with tagging and folksonomy all the rage and MySpace with its trendy social network, but frankly none of it appeals to me. Perhaps this because I am a bit of a fuddy-duddy and like my dark little anti-social hole in the web from which I occasionally peer out.  read more »

So we went to a Holiday party 2 weeks ago that had one of those "bring a gift and we'll play a game" things going on. This is that game where everyone picks a number and you sequentially pick a gift from the pile or steal someone else's gift. Neither of us is a big fan of the aforementioned game but we complied to keep it jolly. To make a long story short, Colleen stole away the bestest gift of them all - a Clapper. We took it home and dumped it in a corner. But when we set up our Christmas tree, we thought "Hey, let's hook up the Clapper." Well, we have been endlessly amused since.  read more »