Month: August 2008

Imagine Your Worst Nightmare

…then imagine it flying around your living room.

I was in couch potato land happily watching the season finale of Flipping Out.I took a bathroom break and as I was coming out of the door I saw this dark shape flying back and forth next to the windows on the far side of the living room. A large fly,I assumed. No it didn’t fly like a fly, more vertical than horizontal flight and much much bigger than any fly I’d ever seen. A moth maybe,I hoped but I knew it wasn’t. It landed on top of the air conditioner and flexed it’s evil wings.It wasn’t a fly or a moth it was a massive cockroach.A massive, flying cockroach and probably the worst thing I could ever have to see while alone in the house.

I spent a long time in Dallas as a kid and we had the flying kind down there.They’d get in the house and take to the air,and they made noise when they flew like locusts,soaring around the light like moths.They horrified me and made turning off the light to go to sleep, knowing one was lurking, almost impossible.Decades later not much has changed.I’m still completely horrified and disgusted when I see one of these huge beasts scuttling about on the streets,leaping out at one when one is only wearing flip flops.

When I lived on 3rd street between C and D on the Lower East Side the time of the massive bugs would begin in July and stretch into late October.Thankfully they seem to be lovers of Tropical weather and would eventually go away when it got cold.Most folks do not have to share an apartment with them for whole summers. But I did.They would just appear high up on the wall out of the blue.I once knocked one down with a broom and bashed it a few times and it still got up and ran at me. While living in that place I developed a roach sensing sense.I’d get this feeling and sure enough one would appear and I’d have to spend all night stalking it until I killed it before I could even think about going to sleep.

My cat used to help. She’d stare at a spot where it was and I’d run to get it with the broom.And she’d keep helping me,too as long as it took.She was indispensable.

So tonight I hoped for a little help from Bozzio but he was oblivious.He was more disturbed by me pacing about by the bathroom(as far away from the monster as I could get) clutching a broom and whimpering. Being freaked out and having your own dog growl at you didn’t help. I could not use my cell phone,either because I didn’t pay the bill and could only receive calls. And the house phone was far too near the flying terror. I put the leash on Bozzio and ran out of there hoping to find a pay phone sooner or later.

Adam was in his studio in Dumbo, a short walk from our apartment.On the way there I did find a pay phone and told him the news. He was on his way. We met in the street and I told him where it was and he went on ahead back home to kill it. I got home hoping he had killed it only to hear he couldn’t find it!

I went into our bedroom to have a look and saw it dive under the bed.Adam went in with the broom and shut the door.I heard banging and was hopeful.But Adam came out and shook his head.”I hit him but then he ran and I lost him”. Oh crap.Over the next 3 hours Adam would go back in our bedroom and bash everything with the broom but with no luck.We watched part of a movie and he announced he was going to bed.In the Roach Room? I asked.He said I guess so.So I went in for one last look.There he was on top of our wardrobe waving his antennae and looking very much alive.

Adam went back in and shut the door.The banging went on longer, a good sign.I was standing by the door with another broom (just in case).The banging continued.Then I saw it run out from under the door. I hit it with the broom but it kept on going. I told you these are not normal bugs.It escaped under Bozzio’s training crate.My heart sank.But at least it looked a lot more…tired.While we were talking about it it strolled back into view and this time I was able to knock it senseless and I thought I’d killed it. Adam went to deal with the “remains” and it leaped at him full of horrible roach life! Adam yelped and began to pummel it to death to real and final death this time.

But the real question of the night and probably of the rest of the summer is:how did it get in?

Nextgen Gallery and WP-Ecommerce

Just the slightest bit wonky when used together in one WordPress installation

I have 1 website freshly updated to WordPress 2.6 and only using the latest version of nextGen.
I have 2 other websites, both using 2.5.1 and the latest stable versions of WP-Ecommerce and nextGen.

In the first website with just nextGen the pop up window displays the full size link under the image which you can see in example 1.
In the sites where both plugins coincide nextGen detects that WP-Ecommerce is installed and links to it’s version of jquery and no full size link is displayed. Also the pop up is different – it shows a vertical row of thumbs down the side of the window alongside the main image.This is nice but wonky because sometimes the vertical row of thumbs don’t display as thumbs but as little dots.Which you can see in example 2.To tell you the truth I’m kind of liking just seeing one large image pop up at a time. Now I think the vertical row is overkill because a page of thumbs is already being displayed on the page itself, making the pop up row redundant. Just my opinion. I saw the same kind of design when I activated wordtube, another plugin from Alex Rabe meant to be a media center for WordPress.You can use it to display images and videos in a playlist. I’d tried using it just for photographs but found once again it seemed like overkill. But if you have a lot of videos I could see it’s appeal.

One good thing is I learned how to use custom fields to control each individual gallery or slideshow.
This is essential because you might want a slideshow to display first on one page but have a row of thumbs show first on another gallery page. And if you do have a few slideshows you can use custom fields to control how they look independent of each other no matter what settings you configured in the Gallery options such as:transition effects(blocks,lines or fluids),size of the slideshow,colors of the rollover,timing,etc.
The second nice thing was finding an explanation of the Imagebrowser option for nextGen.
Place this in the page or post [ imagebrowser=6 ] “6” being the id of the gallery you want to show,and you will get this

I could try deleting the jquery that WP-E-Commerce uses and loading nextGen’s in it’s place and seeing how that works…But to tell you the truth being able to at least control the nextGen galleries is work enough for one day.

Disappearing Web Designers

Most of us chug along trying to make websites that cover the bases:
Accessible,Functional,Interactive,Good Looking,Standards Compliant.

But some of us act like shifty car salesmen and give the rest of us a bad rep. Uncool. I was just in my favorite neighborhood wine store discussing plans(and buying a nice red) to build the store’s online store. A woman in line was listening and piped in with “what is up with web designers? Why do you all disappear on me?”. The wine merchant/store owner also agreed that that had happened to him,too.

Ok, first of all most expert designers who discuss financial practices online in blogs and how-to sites tell a budding junior designer to get 50% of the total cost of the job upfront.Because,I didn’t say this in the store,the ripping off goes both ways.The client disappears,too. Or has one do all this “spec” work and then drifts off or loses interest in the project.
But if a web designer accepts any money at all they are bound to finish and deliver product.Case closed.There is no excuse for disappearing.And disappearing with money you didn’t earn is robbery.
I feel it is not the client’s job to make sure my rent is paid.I’ve learned my lesson and no longer rely on a check in the mail to live on.Too risky and too awful,in my opinion. I say please try to plan your business model so that you don’t have to get nasty and all collections agency on a client.However this like all other lessons in life is one that has to be learned.Then you never do it again.
Clients to avoid:
Clients who tell you they will trade goods for your services. Because the last time I checked humans can’t eat floor tiles,or whatever it is they want to trade. This is a cash run world.People get paid money nowadays. So give me whatever that 24 boxes of floor tiles is worth. In green money.
Clients to embrace:
Cool clients are just cool people. All of my clients are relaxed and fun.This makes working for them relaxed and fun.They’re also all extremely honorable which just ties into the whole being cool thing.
But I’m sure they’d all turn into ass kicking ninjas if I ever dared accept a dollar from them and then stopped working on their websites.
Be cool yourself.I’m not talking about wearing the right shoes or having the right hairstyle.I’m talking about having a level headed and flexible approach to the project.And always deliver.
People rely on us. Just like they rely on nannies and car mechanics. It’s the responsibility of the designer in question to be reliable and contactable.
Hopefully less and less fly by night web designers will crop up and give the rest of us who try to work and act like normal people a chance to prove that Web Design is a business mostly populated by trustworthy and hard working individuals.