Thanks again to Dan Taylor, Jean Anne Carroll and the rest of the Creative Minds crew for having me out.  I look forward to many more gatherings, from the comfort of the audience.

I’ve been busy, OK?  Keeping the site up to date was put on the backburner in order to focus on finishing websites for my clients, but it’s no excuse.  Keeping your site up to date with periodic posts is my number one tip to small businesses for generating a bond with your prospective clients or customers.  People want to see that you visit your own site and that you care about what image your business is projecting.  To that end I’ll be redesigning my own site in the near future.

I like the image of me beside the books because it’s a hint at the wide range of knowledge required to do my job.  What I don’t like is how heavy I am in the picture.  Anyone who was at Creative Minds tonight will wonder who the guy is in the picture.

The other thing that I don’t like is the confusing set of names.  I was introduced tonight as Kennedy Data Solutions, the website says Quinte Web Design, and neither are memorable or particularly meaningful.

The name I’ve chosen to move forward with is Jacob Kennedy Solutions.  And I’m getting business cards.  Soon.

Thanks again everyone for laughing when they were supposed to and to anyone from Trenton, sorry, I didn’t mean it.

Jacob

The site features dynamic pulls from Twitter, Flickr and YouTube as well as some unique things like a news ticker, the Digg Digg plugin which enables easy sharing on Twitter, Facebook and Google Buzz as well as the Share This plugin.  It is, of course, a Wordpress-driven site and is best of breed for March 2010.

Coming later this week is a news aggregator.  Very cool stuff.

I say, LET THEM EAT CHEESE!

For a long time I’ve been using green, patio rocks glasses.  They’re big (which means less refills) but they’re also pretty cheesy looking.  I was cruising Canadian Tire, having just finished a paying job, and spotted some plain but heavy old fashioneds for about $8.  While it was more than Value Village wanted, they were perfect.  I scooped them and brought them home, proud as punch.

Arriving home I unpacked them, washed them, and put them to the test.  Perfect.  Or so I thought.

My wife noticed the glasses and wrinkled her nose.  Bad sign.  I had anticipated this reaction and kept the receipt but I was going to talk my way out of it, or so I thought.  She thought they looked cheap.  I countered, “simple.”  She countered “cheap.”  Ouch – not going well.  She said that if I didn’t like the green patio glasses that I could use the crystal rocks glasses.  Now we’re getting somewhere.

The pattern is called “Pinwheel.”  Not exactly simple.  I said I would give them a try.  I dropped the first three ice cubes in the glass and they made a very loud, very any-harder-and-they-would-break type of noise.  I got the look.  I said, “if you want me to use them, this is how they’re going to be used.”  Amazingly that passed for logic.

So now my drinks are sipped from crystal.  It’s fancier than I’d like.  I have to refill more often than I’d like.  I have to be more cautious than I’d like.  But I have a happy wife, which I like.  In a world of compromise I would say that this is one that I can happily live with.

Below is a picture of the three glasses.  I’m sure you can pick them out but consider that one glass is cost $0.99 for 4, one cost $8 for 4, and one cost $8 (and I had to ask if it could go in the dishwasher!).  I think I know which one Deano would use.

My how the tables have turned.  Now I try to Tweet at least once a day and only occasionally pay attention to my Facebook.  The difference seems to be that Facebook is social networking for your actual friends while Twitter is for the social network at large.  Chances are good that you haven’t met half of the people you ‘follow’ on Twitter but you likely have met and probably have even talked to most of your ‘friends’ on Facebook.

I’m not saying that I value strangers over my friends, it’s quite the contrary.  It’s mostly a difference in timing.  By and large the information that comes through Facebook is not time sensitive whereas the information flowing through Twitter is as-it-happens.

That brings me to TweekDeck.  As with most things on the Internet I stumbled across TweekDeck when I noticed someone’s status update in Facebook was posted from there.  Noticing the similarity between the names Twitter and TweetDeck I was intrigued.  It didn’t take long before I found out that TweekDeck is a social networking client unlike any other out there (and it’s free).

TweekDeck, first and foremost, manages your Twitter stream.  You can group different followed people, watch custom keywords, separate your direct messaging, and search for people and themes.  I have a very simple layout which involves “People” (real, live people), “Businesses” (businesses like Sears, FutureShop, Dell and EngadgetHD), Direct Messages (these are semi-private Tweets between you and someone else) and Mentions (any time a Tweet has your username in it).  The last column I have is my Facebook feed.  In version 0.30.3 of TweetDeck you can have several different types of Facebook columns but I just have the one, mass jumble of Facebook information.  The icing on the cake is that you can post updates to all of your social networks, at the same time!

Did you hear me?  At the same time.  That means I don’t have to have several browsers open and keep switching between them.  I can just have TweekDeck open and get near real-time updates from Twitter and Facebook and keep everyone updated, all on the same screen.  What has changed recently is that TweetDeck has added some strange kind of super logic into the Facebook posting so that they know when you’re updating your status or posting to your wall.  I’m guessing it has to do with the content but it is amazing.

So if you’re feeling overwhelmed with all the different apps you have to manage to keep in the loop, give TweetDeck a try.  It’s also on the iPhone.  Haven’t tried it there yet but hopefully soon. (hint, hint).

Here’s the good news, especially for me: the Store and the iPod page management are all they were hyped up to be.  The Store has received a facelift that makes sense, like the toolbar at the top of the page, and things like the Top Song lists got major UI improvements.  It is such an advantage to be able to preview songs right in the list and to see all 200.  I also like the ability to add to a wishlist, post to Twitter, or gift the song again, right in the list.  Page management is as simple as it should be.  No real surprise it was just missing for a long time.  I’d still like to be able to password-protect pages so that I could keep some apps away from my kids.

The bad news is that the other two features I looked forward to have some bugs to work out.  I’ll start with Home Sharing.  It sounds like an awesome idea for anyone with more than one computer in the house.  You’re tired of having to transfer tunes from one machine to another and then having to reauthorize.  Well, Home Sharing purports to allow anyone using the same iTunes account, on the same network, to simply access the others library.  And it sort of works.  My first attempt went off without a hitch.  I enabled HS on both machines and the libraries showed up.  I could play tunes and even copy them into the other’s library (this costs you an authorized machine but I’m assuming everyone here has less than 5 machines in the house).  The second time I tried it the Home Sharing section in iTunes was completely absent.  I noticed that the other machine was asleep so I woke it up but the link didn’t reappear.  I disabled and reenabled HS on both machines and the link reappeared.  But seconds later it disappeared again.  It hasn’t worked right since.  Boo.

Genius Mixes on the other hand is an extension of the Genius Playlists which I’ve been touting since their arrival.  The Genius Playlist is, well, genius.  You’re playing a song and you’re really into the vibe so you hit the Genius icon.  Instantly a list of 25 ‘like’ songs appear in a playlist with the current song at the top.  I’ve found that these playlists are 99% right on.  I’m never disappointed with the playlist.  Genius Mixes, on the other hand, are 12 ‘endless’ playlists of supposed like artists and songs.  In theory it would work the same as the Genius Playlists.  On the surface it does, but I wasn’t 4 tracks into my mixes when really disjointed tracks started appearing.  About 10 tracks in it was clear that the mix wasn’t contained at all to like tracks.  I’ve tried it several times and been disappointed every time.  (And yes, I have updated my genius database several times since upgrading.)

So there you have it, the things I was looking forward to initially have been done well.  The things I was surprised by but looking forward to need a lot of work.  That’s too bad because normally things don’t come out of Apple until they’re really working well.  And for the Mac-lovers out there who will blame my PC, I tried this on my Macbook too – same result.  I still love iTunes, regardless of the bloat and bugs.

Along with her most recent Twitter tweet, we also automatically show an excerpt from her most recent blog post.  On the home page there is also a slideshow going on in the background.  I wanted the site content to be completely controlled by Caitlin so that meant using only standard Wordpress tools for the post and page editing.  Well, in the newer versions of Wordpress images can be displayed in galleries.  A gallery normally shows up as a series of thumbnails on a page which, while a neat way of showing a collection of images at one time, is not nearly as visually impressive as an auto-advancing, full-framed slideshow.  What I did was I hid the thumbnailed gallery and used Mootools to read in all of the links to the medium-sized images, used AJAX to follow the links and grab the images, stored them in local, hidden divs, and then created a cross-fading array loop of those divs. The effect is seamless and fairly quick.  The bonus is that each of the images is clickable to the full blown image (copyright Adelita Rose, of course).  The portfolio pages use the same tricks.

The contact page is a modified plugin and the music player is a free, Flash-based mp3 player that I have randomly selecting a loop of Caitlin’s chosen music.

The look and feel went through a couple of revisions with Rene Dick at Scout Design to nail down Caitlin’s vision but the end result is awesome.  I’m so glad we were able to deliver a non-Flash product that she can administer that still has that polished look a photographer wants.

Cheers to Caitlin and Rene on a very successful project!

J

Our first dilema was whether to run in or drive-through.  Looking at the lineup in the drive-through I decided that running in would be quicker.  As I was parking I noticed that the line inside the place was to the front doors – drive-through it is.

There were about 5 cars ahead of us in line which, at my normal Tim’s in Belleville on Cannifton and College, should take about 5-6 minutes.  I knew we were in trouble when we didn’t move at all in 5 minutes.  When we finally got to the ordering wicket the conversation went as follows:

“Do you serve English Toffee?”  (I have to ask because not every location does, for some reason.)
“No, we don’t.”
“OK, a large French Vanilla will be fine then.”
“Actually, we’re out of cappuccinos.” (Now I’m annoyed because you shouldn’t be out of anything at a Tim Horton’s.  Period.  I’m now not getting anything for myself because I’m P-O’d.)
“Fine.  A large double cream, one sugar, a peach juice and a blueberry doughnut.” (I meant the one that was on the big poster by the ordering window since it’s a featured product.)
“OK, $4.12.”  (This is when my wife guesses that we’ll get the wrong type of doughnut.)
We get to the window and I check the doughnut.  Sure enough, it’s some kind of glazed blueberry thing.
“I’m sorry, I wanted the blueberry doughnut you have on the poster by the ordering window.”
“Oh, you mean a blueberry jam filled doughnut?”
“No.” (My wife then remembers they’re called ‘blooms’ and calls it out.) “A blueberry bloom.”
“We’re all out of those.”
“Ok, fine, a strawberry bloom then.”
“We don’t have any of the blooms left.” (WTF? Now I’m just plain mad.)
“Ok, fine, any blueberry filled doughnut then.” (We’ve now been at the window for a good 5-7 minutes.)
She goes to get the doughnut and is clearly not having fun, has no helpers, and will not receive anything close to something resembling a tip.  I take the doughnut and decide that it is the last time I ever visit that location.  I’ve tried, several times, to be patient at this location but I’ve had enough.  And I’m a patient guy.

I feel bad for the girl at the window.  I’m sure she hates having no help and not having any product to deliver.  At the same time, a little help when I’m ordering would have gone a long way to soothe the pain (when I asked for an E.T. she could have then told me they had no cappuccinos instead of making me go down the list).  Let this be a lesson to customer service reps everywhere, there’s always a chance to save the sale.  A smile and a kind word do wonders.  Up until the doughnut I was still a possible “be-back.”  Not anymore.

If you’re from Tim Horton’s and reading this, that Nobel location has been a disgrace for several years and while I’ve only been there maybe twice a year it has consistently underperformed.  They’ve lost sales from me, screwed up orders, been short of stock, and been quite simply too slow for the brand Canadians have come to know, love and trust.  Do something.

Before moving my pawn into F4:

After moving my pawn and before the computer’s retaliation:

Now here’s where the computer cheats.  Pawns may only take pieces moving diagonally and here he takes my pawn, sitting in F4, by moving to F3!  Even if it was checkers this jump wouldn’t count for anything.

No more Chess for me.  The game’s hard enough without the computer cheating to beat me.  Good night, Irene.

I can put the attachments in a single zip file.  I can make the articles into pdfs.  What I can’t seem to do, for the life of me, is get the Google Map into a dynamically created pdf.  I’m sure there’s a way, I just haven’t come across it yet.  Anyone?

Anyone?

I’ll post the answer here and give credit where it’s due. promise.

Anyone?