Saint_Michael

I finally cleaned out all my credits with the recent bill I got today. Man to think I had 12 years worth of hosting and didn't do much with it lol. Though I am going through and downloading what I can from my account before it gets shut down. Although the my site was pretty broken. as I haven't kept it updated all that long.

Enjoy this 200 icon pack as it will help give your mobile apps and websites a fresh look and give it some flavor as well. http://www.noupe.com/essentials/icons-fonts/exclusive-freebie-for-noupes-readers-freepiks-200-beautiful-flat-icons-77112.html

Looking for some hot and sexy fonts to spruce up your designs, websites, ads, printed and anything else? Check out these links and enjoy some font loving. http://www.creativebloq.com/graphic-design-tips/best-free-fonts-for-designers-1233380 http://www.noupe.com/essentials/icons-fonts/maximum-quality-44-free-fonts-for-creative-designers-76945.html

Flat design/UI has become one of the latest trends and because of that you will need some social networking icons to help make those websites look sexy. https://designmodo.com/flat-social-icons/

The post to host model has been dead or was dying back in 2010 and I doubt too many are still running. As for the free hosting itself, I would consider that dead thanks to social networking and websites like wordpress.com. Naturally, Xisto has suffered from the social networking craze and granted the free hosting for KS isn't what it use to be, but I suspect they are doing fairly well on the paying side.

Well the biggest problems people are coplaining about is the privacy issues coming from the new Kinect, no backward capability and the fact it destroys the secondary gaming market due to the fact that if you purchase a used game you have to pay even more to install the game on the Xbox in order to play it. Of course, Playstation 4 is kind of doing the same thing in the sense that it will be killing the secondary gaming market on top of preventing players from playing PS3 games because of their fascination with using the Cloud to distribute games, So I don't see myself running out for the PS4 ever and besides I barely play as it is as I purchase maybe 2-3 games throughout the year.

Can't remember the name of the flip phone, but I remember the carrier, Verizon, and that was back in 2001-2002 when I got it but my current phone is a Samsung Galaxy SIII and love it very much.

The net books are pretty much dead in my opinion and with that ChromeOS as Android is the dominate mobile OS and you are either a PC or a Mac person. Of course, if you gone all out and got a tablet or phablet then that really kills the net book. Naturally I am not a linux person either and so the ChromeOS hasn't really interested me at either and so if they plan to push that OS to the mobile market or the Google Glass market or the TV market it is just not a practical OS for your average user.

Even though this topic is a bit old, I been using AVG for my Samsung Galaxy SIII, its free, lightweight and AVG is well established in the Anti-Virus industry and so they are reliable as well.

Well, I happen to get Photoshop CS5 for free, won it, so I consider that my free photo editing software. Granted I do not do much photo editing to begin with.

Thought about it, tried OpenDNS for a day, wasn't too keen on it especially since I got a lot of stuff connected to my wireless network so it wasn't something I wanted to spend my day on trying to set it up. Besides, I don't need any filtering as I am a big boy lol.

I would disagree about the having the old Windows install on your hard drive pointless due to the fact that even if you didn't reformat your computer, but if you suffer a bad BSOD or a complete crash that would require you to do a reinstall of the OS, that folder will be there. The bigger benefit of course if you save your files to My Documents or on your Desktop you will be able to recover them with ease if you didn't back them up at the point of the crash or formatting. Although I am having the problem of removing that folder because of Firefox for some reason that I haven't figured out but it is quite annoying. What I found most funny about the old hard drive still being there was I never realized it when I reformatted my computer a couple of months of ago after quite a few years of use and memory and freezing problems. Granted I backed everything up before I did the reformatting but when I saw the old folder I was actually surprised it was there. As for remembering what software you installed on your computer, I recommend running Belarc Adviser, as it gives you a complete break down of everything on your machine and so using CCleaner to find out what you have installed won't help you remember as there is no way to make a list of it without typing it all out or doing a series of screen shots. Also, when it comes to saving passwords and all that fun stuff, all the current browsers do have the import/export feature that will give you a copy of your profile, though in the case of Chrome, if you attach your gmail account to Chrome it will save everything and all you have to do is just log into your gmail account through Chrome and BAM! Everything is back to normal. Can't really say that for Safari, Firefox or IE on that specific feature but does make life easier if you are a Chrome user.

The Dell XPS line has been a great line of computers, one of my first Dell laptops was a XPS system, wrote a tutorial on how to change the lighting lol. The XPS are built for pretty much everything especially if your gamer, and work heavy with audio, video and graphics. So, you do have a great machine and will provide enough power that you won't see any slowdown or memory problems after three or four years.

I kind of become inspired over the weekend to actually read some web design books all thanks to the series of books by the publisher A Book Apart. Right now I am on book three of the series 'The Elements of Content Strategy", but I thought I catch myself up on reviews. I previously reviewed the first book "HTML5 for Web Designers", which you can read here and so I will be reviewing book #2, called "CSS3 For Web Designers" written by Dan Cederholm. Before I begin my review I would to point out this book is completed outdated in the sense that this was written in 2010 and since then CSS3 has updated a lot in the three years that this book came out. However, being a perfectionist in some weird way I still read the book knowing that fact. Like the first book, "CSS3 For Web Designers" is a light read at 120 pages and the point of this book was to let people know, back then, that many of the browsers such as Firefox 3, Chrome, Safari, Opera, and Internet Explorer 9 could have some of the CSS3 built already into their perspective browser engines. Such as the ability to use transitions, animations, hover effects, border radius, text shadow, multiple backgrounds (parallax), and even RGBA. So, Cederholm packs in a lot information and examples to show you how powerful CSS3 would and has become since it was first introduced. As for the reading itself, its light and fun and doesn't really get to technical with some of the CSS3 concepts of which I know everyone will enjoy. On top of that, the author takes the time to explain everything and I will say this, I had a better understanding of the code what I could do instead of visiting a few hundred websites or using generators. Granted, I still will use them to get through the quick stuff, though I wish they had a parallax generator I could work with. Might have to do some searching later about that. But most enjoyable about this book is that he provides sample website he used to apply the CSS3 features and of course provided a couple of pages worth of useful links and resources to help get your hands dirty with CSS3 and attempt to stay current with the code. As for who this book is for, hard to say really just because most of the information is old and outdated. Though if your a perfectionist like I am when it comes to numbered books you may want to collect it in order to have all the books. Is the book critical reading? No but if your looking to take a break coding websites or whatever and need a light read, this books will help relax your brain a bit and who knows give you that aha moment.

Last Tuesday, when I was attending the monthly Adobe User's Group at the college I went to earn my Bachelors and Masters. The manager of the group who was also of my teachers announce that the school was going to end the Information Technology degree (my Masters) due to the fact that many of the web design based courses the school provides were going to be dropped. I understood the reasoning due to the fact a lot of the stuff you learn in these courses you could easily learn online or through the thousands of books that cover all the topics on web design. Of course, I felt the degree was more managerial and business than web due to the fact that I took 3-4 courses relating to web design and spent more time on the business side of things. Either way, I kind of had mixed emotions as Information Technology is a viable area of study because it opens a lot of worlds to a person like it did for me and in some ways has made me a more effective web designer more in the sense of awareness of the process as I am still waiting to apply it. So finding out that I will be one of the last to earn this degree is sad but at the same time somewhat happy that I am walking around with an extinct degree. Though I know it won't hurt my chances in finding a job, but I get that sense of oddness knowing I am walking a dead degree. Of course, to extend on that happiness I am kind of glad I got my Masters there when i did because of how I dealt with my financial situation, student loan free by the way, as I would have gone to a much further school in order to complete such a program at a much more expensive price.

Though these images are a bit old when I created them, I tried out the new Tilt-Shift Photography Filter that came with Photoshop CS6. The object of Tilt-Shift Photography is to make life-like objects appear as though they are miniatures, it is quite fascinating what people have come up with over the years doing it the old fashion way. Now, thanks to Photoshop CS6 it makes it easier, however, it only effective when the objects are far away and not really close up. I will show some images I have done that do it both the right way and the wrong way. Wrong way.

Before I begin, I am a huge Sitepoint fan, love their books as I have developed a great collection of their books. More importantly they are great read that provide the right balance of technicality and easy reason. Wish I did work for them because they are that good. Now that my fanboyism is out of the way about the publisher, let’s talk about “Photoshop CS6 Unlocked” 101 Tips, Tricks, and Techniques” by Corrie Haffley. First thing I want to point out this this is the second edition of this book as this Adobe Photoshop book deals with getting the most out of Photoshop CS6. Even better, I own one of the Adobe CS6 suites and so this book has scored more points! Of course, I will point out and for those that do not know me; I am a pretty crappy graphic designer. I can handle my own in the sense I can attempt to make things look pretty and have an eye for what looks good and what doesn’t, but other than that, I am last person to hire or use for a million dollar project. However, with this book it provides me a guide to help learn basic techniques and spruce them up a bit and like every great designer you need to master the basics to become a better artist. Naturally, 101 tips, tricks, and techniques is not enough to get the most out of Photoshop because we all know this software is hundreds of features with thousands of different possibilities. As for who can use this book, I have to everyone, not because I am huge Sitepoint fan or Photoshop person but these 101 tips, tricks, and techniques attack all three levels of skill and patience because it uses tools like the Convert Point tool, feathering, masking etc. and I know that people spend months making complex designs in Photoshop. However, if you are looking to spruce up your photos or website, Photoshop does it as well. More importantly, it is a much bigger book in terms of size as it gave the author plenty of room to show clearly how the tips work and walking you through them. Or if you’re a Sitepoint junkie like me, I would pick it up, granted the book has purpose for me since I do have the software. On top of that you learn a lot and it refreshes your skills if you have been out of the graphic design game for a bit or don’t want to hire an expensive graphic designer.

In keeping up with reviewing Wordpress books, I have another book that I would like to talk about and it is called “Web Designer’s Guide to Wordpress” by Jesse Friedman and if you read my Wordpress: Missing Manual Review I am a person who has gone beyond the basics of Wordpress and want to design Wordpress templates. That is where this book comes in as this picks up where The Missing Manual book left off and gets your hands dirty right away. One thing I like about this book is that it sections off the Wordpress template quite nicely and it should because Wordpress is a bit complex and each section of Wordpress like the Header, Sidebar, Footer, Pages, and navigation each have a specific focus with very specific needs. In short you have to understand how they function independently first and then once you do that you can begin learning how they function together. Sure, you can skip all that and plug the code in and get a fancy website up and running. However, with HTMl5 being the new king of web design, you kind of have to take a few steps back and relearn everything. Yes, I know, for some they are Gods of coding and pointing and laughing so this guy is a moron, but if you want to design a website the right way and with the least amount of problems I hope you think about my words for a second. Though, I will point out that you can still use XHTML as most of the code you will be dealing with will be in PHP. With that in mind, let’s talk about the book. Friedman does, in my opinion, a good job breaking down everything and more importantly giving the reader ample time to learn about them. It is not a tell-all book or a Bible not at 271 pages but it gives you enough information to work with and get a Wordpress template up and running in no time. Interesting note about this book is he provides a chapter on working with Responsive Design. He doesn’t go too deep about the topic but from reading this particular chapter is that you need to take a cautionary approach with designing a Responsive Wordpress template because of Wordpress interprets HTML. I would think most Wordpress designers would agree that more time is needed when putting a Responsive layout together just because it doesn’t take much to break a website that is controlled mostly by PHP. Overall, this is a good starting book to start designing Wordpress themes and obviously there are quite a few books out that cover this topic. Nonetheless, this book is small enough to prevent you from scratching your head or making things more complicated than they need be. It’s a good easy ready but if you’re looking for more technical stuff Wrox’s Wordpress books will provide that.

I have been working in the Wordpress environment for a few years now and I would say that I pretty good at using this CMS at setting quality websites. Granted, I wish I would have the patience to create and code templates but I would be wasting more time figuring out what I would want my website to have and not have. That being said, when I got my copy of Wordpress: The Missing Manual, I have been a fan of the series as the books are well detailed and really help get a beginner going on a specific topic. That is the case with this book as it covers everything you need to know about running your website or blog on the Wordpress platform. I don’t consider myself an expert in any way, but a majority of the book is kind of useless to me, web designers, and bloggers who use Wordpress. I am sure there could be tidbits of information that I may not be aware about but at the same time, I can keep myself more up-to-date on the Wordpress website or various blogs that talk about Wordpress. As for those who are experienced with Wordpress or want to get more out of it than what they have now, then sections three for five would be more practical sections of book to read, especially if you are looking to design your own Wordpress template. I will caution you though that this particular section only gets your feet wet, you would have to rely on the Wordpress repository to get the most out of building your own Wordpress template. Especially since the repository constantly gets updated with patches and security fixes or even recommendations from Wordpress experts themselves. With that being said, this book is only practical for people starting out or people looking to blog and write. If you’re a web designer and or use Wordpress as a CMS to build websites for your clients you are better off looking for other books about Wordpress.