Archive for the ‘Internet’ Category

Work hard, play harder

Sorted under Internet on January 11th, 2010

40 Comments

It took a month longer than I anticipated but I finally finished up my redesign for iCupcake. For the past few months I've been a little more obsessed with baking & cupcakes than I usually am. So much so that majority of the blogs I had been reading were baking/cupcake centralized, which of course would lead to bakery websites and cupcakery. It only seemed fitting to bring that atmosphere to my blog--to make it not only something that fits the domain name but also what I enjoy.

Since this is my first post for the New Year, I decided that maybe I would make some goals for myself versus worrying about New Year's Resolutions. I've never really made resolutions in the past and I surely never stuck with any. Goals seem more realistic and achievable so figured I'd stick with that.

  • Increase my Xbox gamerscore. I'm sitting at 8405 right now and want to hit 10,000 before February starts. I frequently stick to specific games solely for multiplayer so this will be a nice challenge for me. I've got a few games to play right now that I took from Steve's which include Battlefield: Bad Company, Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising and a few other games that I just need to get 100% completion for achievements (Modern Warfare 2, COD4, COD:WaW to name a few.) Once I hit 10,000 then I'll just keep increasing. I've got awhile before I can catch up to Steve and his massive 104,000+ gamerscore.
  • Bake more & photograph it. I've been stockpiling up numerous recipes for different sweets and treats but have yet to really go through any of them yet. A few weeks ago I purchased a good amount of material for making some cakepops as well as cupcake bites. I have only gotten around to making the cupcake bites so far. So I don't gain weight or make my little sister fall into a food coma, I also bought supplies to package these up. I plan on letting my mom bring some to work to offer up and hopefully, strike up some business through this. It's something new and enjoying, so I'm taking advantage of it.
  • Taking longer breaks from the computer & gaming to catch up on all of the books sitting on my shelf. I have about 10+ Dean Koontz books that have not yet been read along with a few other authors. I just haven't been reading much at all the last year and really do miss laying around with a good book. So I want to read on book a week. This is a very feasible goal because I'm a fast reader. I read through the last Harry Potter book in ~6 hours so books that are 1/3 the size should be no problem.
  • Relaunch an old project of mine so I can add extra monthly income. I started it back in 2007 and made a good amount of money for the three months I had been active with it. Since then I just let it die off. In the year and a half since then, I have definitely lost out on a lot of potential clients and money by abandoning it. Hopefully by mid-February I can have it relaunched to start selling on it again.

So rather then set goals for the entire year I figured I would just do something that would be completed within the next couple of months. Once those goals are done I can either mark them off as "finished" or "upgrade" them to make them more challenging for myself. Nothing is better then earning money, playing videogames and enjoying yourself rather than stressing out.

On a last note, if you spot any 404s, spelling mistakes, or other coding issues definitely let me know. I've been staring at this for quite some time so I may have overlooked something very minute. :) Also for those of you using >IE7, I haven't yet made it "backwards-compatible," so while it will work fine for you.. I haven't gotten around to adjusting the rgba to rgb so that it will render the colors for you. I'll get to it soon.

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Posted in Internet | 40 Comments »

Breaking out of the mold

Sorted under Internet on September 22nd, 2009

19 Comments

For almost a year I have been relying on premade themes from places like WooThemes and Elegant Themes for my personal site. I just didn't have the time nor patience to devote development work to my own website. It definitely showed as I just didn't feel like updating my site.

A few days ago I randomly felt inspired to work on a new theme and I actually stuck with it. I'm known to work on something and get as far as coding out the header and then quitting on the rest of it. I just don't like working for myself as I start to hate it a few days later. I'm very pleased with myself as I've finally gotten a theme done that isn't just tweaking a premade.

I decided to go more on the CSS3 route with some features (eg: rounded corners) as I am an ass backwards developer. I am still trying to force myself to work in Photoshop to get a PSD going then to code it up. Unfortunately I prefer the code out the framework then shove in colors and images. Truthfully it's a method that's worked out okay for me so I suppose that's why I still stick with it.

Oh I almost forgot! I have finally? switched domain names. I was ridiculously bored and hated atourworst.org. I had registered a few other domains along with icupcake.org, but ultimately this was my winner. Atourworst.org should now entirely redirect to iCupcake.org; There are going to be some errors here and there but I have it set to log and email them to me so I can fix as I see them. The biggest will be images in posts, so I'll get around to that momentarily. If you spot any problems, let me know. For what it's worth, this was not designed to support >IE7. Don't bother checking in there ;)

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Posted in Internet | 19 Comments »

Trying new things out

Sorted under Internet on March 4th, 2009

5 Comments

For years I've stuck to the same software. Firefox for a browser, Thunderbird for email, iTunes for music, and Quicktime for movies. Recently I've gotten pretty tired of Thunderbird for it's lack of other in-depth features. Then I ended up stumbling upon Postbox (Mac and PC). It's built off of Thunderbird, but definitely has more bang for it. The biggest thing I liked was that when you loaded up an email in the bottom pane, it would have a sidebar of any media or links included in it that you can access right away without having to skim through the email to find. There's a lot more features, but you know, I'm just a tad too lazy to blog about it.

After that I decided I wanted to try to find other replacements for some of my software. I've replaced iTunes with Songbird (Windows XP or Vista), although the main factor being that iTunes was not too fond of Vista 64bit. My favorite part is that it's built around Firefox so I can download other add-ons to enhance my experience. It's linked to my last.fm account (which is integrated already), and I've got a few others like coverflow, showing last.fm data about the artist playing, and a few others for skinning. It has no CD ripping or burning features yet, although that's on their to-do list. That was another problem with 64bit and iTunes, the CD rip/burn was inoperable. :|

My HD capture card came with proprietary encoding software from Arcsoft which was really lacking in any major functionality. The biggest problem was that encoding took longer than it should have. Armando, ended up finding an awesome free alternative to it, Super ©. It's perfect because I needed to be able to encode to MOV with H264 video and AAC audio, and be able to chose the resolutions for it and fine tune a few other specs. Encoding is also about 75% quicker than what I experienced with Arcsoft's prepacked bologna.

Majority of my interest in trying out new software has mainly developed after I joined Wakoopa.com. It tracks the software (and webapps) that you use, and charts them for you. They do have up a recommended section for you and while it's in beta, it hasn't given me some decent choices. Majority of those were based on popularity and I was already aware of, so from just randomly browsing other users' profiles I was able to find some other software to look at.

Other than the few I've changed over I still haven't (or won't) find alternatives to my main programs like Photoshop, After Effects, Intype (well technically this replaced Notepad++), and Firefox. :P

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Posted in Internet | 5 Comments »

Jailbreaking your iPhone 3G (or iTouch.)

Sorted under Internet on January 8th, 2009

10 Comments

I've had my iPhone 3G since September, and for months I had been reading articles on jailbreaking the iPhone. It felt like so much work when reading through all of the articles found, but the process was so easy and quick. Since I'm using a Windows machine, I went ahead and decided to use QuickPWN to jailbreak my phone. If you're using a Mac, you'll want to Pwnage.

img 0028 150x150 Jailbreaking your iPhone 3G (or iTouch.) It's not really pertinent to include the steps of what I did with Quickpwn. It was a matter of plugging the iPhone into the USB port, and letting the software recognize the phone. Then you just follow the instructions listed (holding the power button a few seconds, then power+home, then home), and voila, it boots up with your jailbroken iPhone.

You'll want to backup just in case something goes awry during the process. However, I had no problems at all. Apps, contacts, and all files stayed in tact and no corruption. The main purpose for doing this was because I wanted to take advantage of a bunch of apps that are available through Cydia. Installer.app is included as well, but I prefer what is offered through Cydia at the moment.

img 0033 150x150 Jailbreaking your iPhone 3G (or iTouch.) One thing I would recommend before you download any app on your device, is that you google it online. I didn't do this, and had some issues that I can't resolve unless I restore my iPhone. There are some that are going to be buggy, and might not work entirely as it should, and there are some that are going to interfere with other apps that may be loaded as well. One website/forum I have been relying on heavily to find out any issues or recommendations has been modmyi.com which has a bunch of mods for iPhone, iPod, Mac and who knows what else. They are also very involved with apps through Cydia, so there is definitely a chance you can get help for something, or even request an app.

One app that I would stay away is called Kate (RiPDev). Prior to configuring i I went to make a call only to have the mobilephone.app crash on me after 5 seconds of loading. It kept doing this repeatedly since at first I though it was a bad jailbreak, but then I remember I installed Kate. So I went to remove the app, only to still have to problem. Perplexed, I added it back. I then went and googled mobilephone.app, and one of the first results was from modmyi.com: mobilephone.app crash. Someone mentioned that Kate was the culprit on their phone and provided suggestions on how to remove it.

I've been through a bunch of threads and have been unsuccessful at this point. Granted, I did get mobilephone.app working once I applied a trial license to Kate. However, once that trial expires you receive no warning and then you better get used to things crashing again. I've tried a few of the fixes to undo Kate's fuckup, but none of them worked, and I didn't want to resort to restoring. So I went ahead and just purchase a license for it, but don't go through the trouble I did. Just stay away from it altogether.

img 0030 150x150 Jailbreaking your iPhone 3G (or iTouch.) Granted, the largest advantage of having Kate installed was being able to modify a lot of settings on the phone (but I should mention that there are certains apps that will achieve various effects--you just need to search for their names to get 'em.) But with Kate you can have 5 icons in your dock (there's another app that can do this, but I don't know it off hand), change the icons used for a good portion of apps, add privacy settings (eg: no content shown when a text message is received), and a bunch of others I have yet to take advantage of. So if you are interested in paying for the app, there is a chance is will be of value to you. Otherwise you get a short trial (I think a week) so if you don't want to pay for it, skip out on it.

Some of the other apps I have downloaded and enjoy:

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Jordan

Hello Cupcake!

I have strong love for pugs, cupcakes, & my boyfriend. I hail from the southside of Chicago where I am a frontend webdeveloper & a small business owner. Learn more about me.

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