On to other things - new site design

So I have been working on a new project recently, and this one was a two part project. The first part was making sure that their current site has a working contact form. and the second part is redesigning a new look and feel on top of a Joomla site, so that they can expand in the future with components like an online storefront, or deeply integrate a social marketing campaign into their website.

I took a peek at their current site, and found out that the issues were with the current request mail form, which mind you is written in .PHP, which I kinda hate. I was able to fix the issue though, and got it working perfectly. I know its working perfectly, because the client is now getting SPAMBOT requests :) Too Funny!! But I have them covered already, because the first thing I implemented into the new request form on their new site was a ReCaptcha security method. This should stop the spam from coming through.

I then took my time and started working on a nice responsive theme, but wanted to keep it looking like it was more for their Corporate Office vs a large crane shop. I remade their logo based on some of the feedback they gave me and then used the main colors of their logo and equipment for the highlights of the site. I also used a simple menu system that will adjust to smaller mobile screens and provide a mobile dropdown menu in those cases. Overall, the site is pretty solid so far, with no real issues other than having to rebuild Apache with multibyte strings enabled.

My next stage of this process is to dismantle the site and modules I have now, and rebuild it with a darker, more progressive theme, and after that, another lighter theme, so once they choose from one of those, I will put it all back together with the look and feel of their choice, and then it goes live. I gave the client a timeframe of two months for the project, but the pace I am working, it may only take me three to four weeks, so that's a good thing ;)

Till next time, enjoy your adventures!

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Until then, this is Untitled

I have spent the past days trying to think of a good blog post, and nothing cool came to mind at all. I went through tech projects, art projects, and even an invention or two, nothing! But then I remembered what an awesome week I have had so far, not much to complain about at all.

I started work on a new clients site, got that first down payment, then I also received a check from a back owed client, so that was nice too, not much, but together I was able to pay a little towards rent and pick up one gift each for the kids. This year we picked a gift that has the potential to offer gaming, learning, and communication... but that will end up becoming a whole other post on it's own.

The wife cooked the entire Thanksgiving meal by herself this year, and I didn't even realize till the next day that I didn't have a single complaint about it, it turned out pretty awesome! (That, and I didn't have anything to do with it this year), just awesome! There were also an assortment of baked goodies too, from Pumpkin pie, to some kind of Spice Cake and even cookies. She went all out this year and it turned out awesome.

My mother came over, and we spent plenty of time playing games and socializing. There was even a spy game in there I think, found the to-do list from my little spy... Just not sure why finding Willow is so far down the list :) Overall, it was a good week spent with the family, so there are never any complaints about that. I did plenty of art and even some music in between. I'll update my post later with a live recording of a song I'm working on.

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Forced downtime... again

I have been busy lately, so please forgive me for the lack of posts recently. For starters, I have almost no work on the table, three projects in limbo, just waiting for a green light, and a tiny trickle of gas and cigarette money coming from one web client. So I have a bit of downtime. This doesn't mean that I haven't been bust cold calling businesses or answering requests for websites and graphics work off the web though, I keep myself pretty busy, just in things that don't generate immediate income.

I started taking out some time to make some animated backgrounds for my Church's projectors during the songs. Some... less psychedelic ones perhaps ;) Here is a playlist of a good portion of the animations. I am willing to donate high resolution animations for any religious organization that may want it, otherwise, I think I will ask for a donation.



I also got a little flame under my butt on music too, trying to make a couple new songs and a couple remixes of things I hear here and there. Here is a little taste of one song I'm working on recently:


As usual, I'm always up to something, so keep posted for updates on what I'm up to next.

Thanks ;)

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APPS: The Adventures of making a showcase app for Windows 8 UI

Yesterday, I woke up knowing I would do something I have never done before, but not quite knowing what it might be. I started off the day, took the kids to school, and came home and cleaned up a little with Willow (More like, I cleaned, and she played the defensive linebacker role), so after she fell asleep, I climbed onto the computer and made up a quick and dirty mobile app for my church: Frontline Community It's still not done, but I at least got the basics in there, and can do a little of styling in Visual Studio now. 

Then I decided to take it a step further, and see what I can do to make a Windows 8 app. I put the basics into Joshfire Factory, and deployed it as a Visual Studio project. Opened it and instantly found that it didn't work. That's fine, I thought, I love a good challenge, so I was off looking to see if I can figure out why it didn't work. I found that much of the issues with the project were because it was using the old version of WinJS. I corrected every line that pointed to the old WinJS, and updated them to point to the location of the new version. I rebuilt and then clicked Run. 

Almost... There were a couple of issues still, like when viewing a section or page, and going back, you get the same content loaded behind the items on each section. Well that sux! 

So I dug a little deeper, and found out that it was not checking to see if the content was already loaded when it went back to the home screen, since I'm still a novice at this, I felt a simple CLEAR statement on load will do (I'm not too sure how to do a conditional statement just yet). That did the trick :)

Now all I have to do for it is fix the picture container when it loads the pictures from their sources, and also fix the YouTube stream from trying to use an ActiveX component... (Not even available, cant see why it defaults to it) and I'll be all set. At least I got somewhere in my ventures though, even though it is not 100% working, it is better than anything I've done with the OS thus far. (Minus a couple found registry tweaks :0)

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IDEA: Bluetooth Tape Reciever

 

 

I have been toying with this idea for only a short period of time, the idea started with a want to get my iPhone to play music to my old school stereo, without having to leave it plugged in next to the stereo. So I thought of a unique way to make that happen using elements that already exist, so the cost is lower than it normally would be.

 

The unit is made up of a Bluetooth radio, Processor/DSP, a magnetic tape head, button, batteries and a generator. When the unit is in use, the play action of the tape player will charge the batteries and run the device. When the tape player is not running, the unit will only power the Bluetooth radio to allow for connection or reset.

Overall, its a simple design, and I haven't seen anything like it on the market as of yet, but who knows, it may already be out there somewhere. On the event it has not been produced yet, I am considering this as a Kickstarter project, so if you think its a good idea, let me know in the comments.

 

 



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Proposed solution for the FTC's latest contest.

So the FTC is now offering a reward to the person offering a way to stop telemarketing or robot calls. This may prove to be a bit difficult, but it can be done and I wish I had the funds to work on this. Since I don't though, here is what I'm thinking.

What they would need is not to monitor the content of calls, but the pattern that calls are made. If calls are made in a timed pattern of more than three or four in a row, then we take that number and block all outgoing calls until they can answer a simple spoken word or a math problem over the phone to restore service. This would resemble a system close to the one we use for social networking or chat systems that use a Captcha model to deter bots.

The only way a telemarketing robot could get around this would be to use a new outgoing number after making the max amount of calls per number. Using a triangulation or location based system to detect location, would also help this from happening, because if two or more numbers are found from the same location repeating the same call patterns, it's a bot.

It's a good start at least, and its a solution based on software and not hardware, so there is no need to upgrade existing equipment in order for it to work.

Let me know your thoughts in the comments, Thanks.

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Quick and dirty UFO timeline

Here is a quick and dirty UFO sightings timeline I made for Tablets and Laptops/PC's. You can view it HERE

If you are interested in making your own, Head out to joshfire ( http://factory.joshfire.com/)

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