Category Archives: Computers

An alternative to pdf reader: foxit!

Computers, Reviews

I read about this nifty little application called Foxit Reader on one of my listservs. It was recommened as an alternative to Adobe Reader (sorry, it’s for Windows machines only!).

I absolutely hate the Adobe Reader. I am not sure why I continuly have problems. I am religious about keeping up to date with software. I’m so fast about it, that when Macromedia (back when it was Macromedia) offered a backpack for the first few hundred or so to upgrade to MX, I got one! (Well, Kerri got it ultimately, but that’s another blog.)

The latest issue I had was that every time I tried to open a pdf file in FF, the whole thing would stop running. Oh, task manager said it was running, but it wasn’t running. I had to kill it through task manager, and, since I couldn’t restore the session when I reopened task manager, I would lose whatever browser windows I had open (yes, I know, I know, just use the history side, but that’s not the point). Fortunately, FF has an option to r-click and select “View page in External Application”.

However, now that I have Foxit downloaded and installed, opening pdf files is quick and painless. No, I’m not an affiliate or reseller. Just a pleased end-user.

Fixed the blogroll and found the missing categories

Computers

I’m posting this because I spent a TON of time figuring it out. I put up my blog, and added the first of several links to my “blogroll.” I went to assign a category to the link, and, since it appeared I could, I added a second category to that link. Now, the link in question is Gary’s Shire Enterprises Blog link. Since Gary is a web developer, I wanted to add his link to my Computers category, which I did. Now, I needed to write a post to the Computers category to see his link. (My first attempt at publishing a blog did not publish any of my links, but that’s coming up soon.)

So, I go to the Write:Write Post page in my admin section, and enter my post about how I became a web designer. I forgot to add the category, so I went into Manage:Posts to add it. That was when I noticed that the category Computers was not visible in the little box on the right. Weird. I could add another category here, Tech, but when I tried to then edit my Blogroll link to add that new category to Gary’s link, it (the category Tech) wasn’t in that little box!

Okay, this was getting very frustrating. I googled, read forum postings, and even read the code to see if I could figure this out. I also went and had a look in the database, but even hacking the ID there did not solve the problem (it only broke the public part of the blog).

I decided to put that issue aside, and focus on why my blogroll links weren’t visible. I was using the Delicate Dreams theme by Tina Silva (which I tweaked so it looked like my old website). I knew it had to be something missing in the sidebar.php, so I switched to a pre-installed theme “WordPress Classic 1.5.” Lo and behold! The blogroll was there! A swipe of some php code, some formatting, and now I have a blogroll, on every page. Great!

But I still had the missing category issue. I figured, since the blogroll was on every page now, and now showing a list of links for each category, I might as well remove the second category and leave Gary’s link in the Blogroll category only. Wouldn’t you know, as soon as I removed the “computers” category from Gary’s link, it (the “computers” category) was suddenly available for me to assign my post about how I became a web designer.

Not the most intuitive solution, but it worked. Maybe this post will help someone else!

Addendum! After adding a few more posts, I noticed that the blogroll was now showing up on the home page twice! I removed the code I had inserted, but then it didn’t show up on any of the other pages. I located the function the checks for a page title, and used that to determine whether or not the blogroll should post in my sidebar. That is, if there was no page title, then this was the home page, and I did not want the blogroll; but if there was a page title, then I did want the blogroll.

Sounds confusing, I know, but makes perfect sense to me!

How I Became a Web Designer

Computers, Family

How did an art-deficient musician get into web design, you ask? I?ve asked myself that a hundred times!

I was slow to get onto the Internet. My old boss and good friend Brad was (I swear) one of the first internet users. I had no use for chatting with people I didn?t know, so although I was an avid computer user, I limited myself to software applications.

Eventually the Internet morphed into the World Wide Web and I got a job that required going online for various purposes. By that time, I was also in school for computer science. Although we didn?t study any HTML, and the idea of dynamic sites was well out of my experience, I loved the idea of web pages. Graphics combined with code. What could be better? I was bound and determined to learn HTML.

One evening, while I was at work (I worked second shift and went to school during the day), then 12-year-old Kerri called me and asked me if I could teach her how to make a web page. I said, sure, maybe over the weekend we?d learn it together. Darned if that smarty-pants didn?t call me back an hour or so later and said never mind! She?d figured it out and now just needed to know how to upload.

Although I never learned it all that fast (Kerri would continually eclipse me with technical issues until I became proficient with databases, but I think she?s ready to pass me again), and my older sites are painfully dated, I fell in love with web design and all its potential. I studied a bit of graphic art, learned the Macromedia products, and got a job at a dot com, and absorbed everything I could. Sadly, the dot com closed, but I continued on my own, learned php, honed my design skills, and opened my own freelance business, White Wave Designs.

These days, I?m fortunate enough to be able to work on web pages all day! I am a programmer in the web development department of an area college, and continue to freelance. Life is good.