I have a question to poll the audience: If you were to create a new Web design intro class, what would you teach? There were plenty of holes in my knowledge left to fill after my first class (still are plenty of them), but what would you propose adding? Here’s my take on an intro web design class. Do you have anything to add/remove? Let’s be brutal!
Loading ...Band Album Cover: Pogonomys Championi
I finally decided to try my hand at the music album cover design challenge. The rules make it so that you get a random picture, band name and song title and then design a cover for such a selection. Ivan describes the exact rules in his post.
Here is my cover art for Pogonomys Championi, playing their hit single, “homework formerly eaten by the dog”. I liked the idea of pairing the light quirky background with the dark silhouette of a laughing dog. I tried to convey indie rock band with mayan flavor. The band logo is of course their champion mouse.
References: Pogonomys Chamioni is a tree mouse. The song title is a quote from Doug Larson, “Home computers are being called upon to perform many new functions, including the consumption of homework formerly eaten by the dog”. Original Photograph by ATLITW.
Photoshop CS3+ Letterpress Tutorial
Here is a simple way to get a letterpress effect in Photoshop CS3 and above.
To summarize, you apply a bevel and emboss layer style to the area around the ‘imprinted’ art. For this tutorial, I will show how to make the effect and then use smart objects to warp it non-destructively. Continue reading »
Put yourself in my shoes…
Tracy and I moved units after seeing this wonderful view. We wake up and come home to this. No drummers beneath us is also a plus.
Triptych x4
Here’s something I’m proud of: A card with 12 images on it. What does that make this? a dodecatic? whatever. Just a fun(?) exercise. I remember making things like this in school.
DVD drive not found – a solution!
My Toshiba has problems. That said, every now and then it can’t find it’s own DVD drive. No power no detection, nothing. I’m suspecting iTunes is the culprit but who knows. In any case I found out that there’s a simple solution posted around the web but I found it in a forum here.
Steps
1) Open regedit.exe (Start menu > run, type regedit, and the exe should be listed)2) Locate the following reg file in the following path:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
SYSTEM
CurrentControlSet
Control
Class
{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}3) Delete the values for the Upper and Lower filters.
4) Restart
Real Estate Website Attempt #1
I’m building a realtor’s personal website. Since I have never worked with realty, I need to learn a few things about MLS searches. Here’s a quick summary of my learnings followed by some process.
1) There are many many MLS databases. Each area/firm/agent has their own. These databases are their secretly guarded stash of people’s homes and their connected agent. Agents have their own action list of homes. These can be managed by things like open realty, a myPhpAdmin but for homes…
2) Getting access to search MLS databases requires a realtor that is a member of the MLS owner group.
3) If permission is granted by the MLS Provider, one can create a query and ftp whichever listings you want to your own database. Permission may require $$.
4) Most often 3rd party companies just provide the code that figures out how to display the listing info. (A good webdev/designer should be able to do this decently)
5) Some companies offer to host the MLS info, but that just takes the place of the original MLS. Heavy lifting here depending on how many people input into the database. These services are really only useful for big agencies like Century 21 who supports hundreds of agents.
TRIED:
- Installing Open Realty 2.5.5 into a test site -> success, easy
- Installing Wordpress into test site -> success, easy
LEARNED:
- Open Realty 2.5.5 doesn’t actually querry an existing MLS but just allows realtors to input listings themselves. Not useful for me.
PLANNING TO:
- Need to contact Century 21 and ask how to get MLS access. May need actual realtor to make call.
Tonight’s sketch
I should be asleep now but I was having too much fun sketching in photoshop… Just a reminder to everyone to have fun every now and then.
PHP register new user
So I’m continuing on my user account management quest. Yesterday and today I added the ability to register as a new user. It’s still very rudimentary- the registration fields are not checked for validity (so more than one user can have the same user name) but I feel great that I’m making progress. Try it out: http://yukikodesign.com/test/testbed/index.php
Next up, send an email when “forgot password” and add personal account management to change passwords and delete users if you’re an admin.
PHP user login test
A huge step for me in programming- I got a simple user authentication to work through php. It took some stretching and “feeling my way through the dark” but I got something that requires a login and logout and it seems to work. The SQL database stuff was a bit of a fanagle since it veered off from my book but this time I looked around and was able to “upload” my queries instead of typing them out in a command prompt. I’ll work on it a bit more later but it’s sleepy time.
links:
My Quick and dirty test
User: jack
Pass: toronto
Book reference: PHP Hacks- Tips & tools for Creating Dynamic Web Sites
Online Tutorial: Simple Login, Logout, and Session Handling
