In the early 90’s I lived in a crazy little desert town called Tucson Arizona. A wonderful place filled with exotic plants and people who were, well let’s say equipped to live in a dry island where summer lasts 9 moths of the year and can reach temps of 118ยบ . In this place there was a thriving music scene filled with creative weirdos and fueled by the DIY punk ethos. I was involved in numerous music projects, and Barely Bipedal was one of my favorites.
Recently my friend Kevin loaned me his 4-track and I started digitalizing all the old 4-track recordings that we made. I have created a website using Wordpress for the band (more of a historical document but who knows maybe it will fuel some new material) and you can listen some of the songs free. Click on the banner below to learn more about this wonderful band of misfits from the land of tall cactus and javalinas.
Hard to believe 10 years ago we were all (well some of those people) worried about the great digital disaster Y2K! We are fortunate to still be around and to be celebrating 5 years of our little design agency Bitclone here in Portland Oregon. What’s been the key to our success? Well in addition to a meticulous obsession with new technologies and how they affect design, I believe it is our desire to provide a personal commitment to serving our clients. My grandfather was an amazing and inspiring human being who ran a Ford dealership in Old Saybrook CT. He had clients all across the country and he was often driving to places like Florida to personally deliver their cars to them! The man was always on the move, he would take these 15-20 minute power naps to recharge, but then pow he’s back up mowing the lawn, tending his huge garden, or helping someone out with a small task. He lived to a feisty old 93 years of age, take what you will from that and let’s rock 2010!
Here we are at our favorite little Perierra Crepe Cart (corner of Hawthorne and se 12th).
While Wordpress obviously wasn’t initially designed to be a full featured CMS, and it still has a ways to go in competing with Drupal or Concrete, this is a great trick you can use to expand your ability to add content which is editable from the admin area. Wordpress Custom Fields will allow you to add data below the post area when you are creating a post (or a page which uses “post” info basically). You can create a Custom Field “Name” and “Value”, the name is basically a key that you can use to call the content in your template…which is the great part of this as it allows you to place editable content outside of the main post area on a page. Here is a screen shot where you can see I have added two Custom Fields, one for a picture (I didn’t add the picture value yet, but you can add a pict via the main content area then just copy the HTML info and paste it in) and one for a quote the client wants to change on each page (click the thumb for full size).
You need to actually edit your templates a bit, but it is fairly easy. Once you have created your Custom Field Name and added some content (value) you can use the get_post_meta() (click here for more detailed info) function as demonstrated below, just swap out Custom Field name where indicated and you can place this in your template-
<?php $key=”YOUR CUSTOM FIELD NAME”; echo get_post_meta($post->ID, $key, true); ?>
You can play around with adding html in the custom field or your template to get styling correct. This is how it looks in my template where I want the quote to show up.
I also recently discovered a nifty plug-in which will add tinyMCE toolbar functionality to the Custom Fields! Very cool.
Here is a small app that addresses the growing problem of web distraction due in some part to all the social media apps. Are you constantly checking email, adding Tweets…or logging in to Facebook to see if you are losing that Scrabble match? Stop the madness! This app will allow you to block certain websites and email for a specified amount of time…beware it is a commitment as it will not allow you to override it until the time is up! Call it a self imposed intervention of sorts. It is only for Mac users…we must need it most…but wait, I love my distractions, they keep me sane, ah well enough of this time sucking Wordpress BLOGGING, back to work.
Hey all you restaurant workers out there seeking employment, you should check out this new app called Table20 aimed squarely at the restaurant business. We were contracted to help fix up and create some HTML/CSS markup on this project, and we also provided them with their new Wordpress theme. The app just launched, and is already filling up, helping connect restaurants and bars with those looking for employment. We think this is a really great idea, and the final product is quite slick. Have a peek at Table20.
My job occasionally requires a large amount of clipboard action. Cutting and pasting text from one document to another, mostly when formatting content to html for web development and various client website updates. I discovered this small lifesaver of an app which will keep track of recent text clippings you make, and provide access to them. This allows you to have access to more than one piece of clipped text, which can be extremely helpful. The app currently only works for text, not images, but it is free, and hopefully they will eventually offer image/graphics support as well. Once installed Jumpcut adds a scissor icon and drop down in your top toolbar from which you can access recent clippings or configure it’s preferences.
I shot some video a while ago of one on my favorite Portland Oregon bands rocking out at a cute little produce market called Cherry Sprout Produce co-owned by my good pal Lana Rebel. A few months later I finally had a bit of time to edit one of the better songs and post it. The audio was really loud and chewed up my on camera mic, but I think it actually adds a nice low fi feeling, which is in line with the Rock n’ Roll sound of Thee Headliners.
there are a number of really good reasons I recommend my clients, friends and family to use Firefox instead of Internet Explorer, and security is at the top of the list. No browser is 100% secure, but let’s face it, IE is a target, and it’s flaws are exploited more often. Today a pretty serious exploit was discovered, and while Microsoft scrambles to fix it all you can do is hope they are faster than the Black Hats.
Wow! they really keep upping the bar with every new release of Wordpress. This new one will feature a complete overhaul of the Admin area, which is definitely welcome. It really looks slick, and they have put a lot of thought into the layout and access of everything. The navigation has moved to the sidebar, and there is a host of expandable/collapsible windows providing space for access to more tools.
As a design professional and an artist I’ve always been fascinated with medical illustration, and these great paintings are really remarkable documents that transcend above the ordinary. They are really beautiful and grotesque, created in 1819 by Kyoto-area physician/artist Yasukazu Minagaki (1784-1825). The paintings were studies created from actual corpses which were actually the remains of recently beheaded criminals, and it is the grotesque expressions which really makes them stand out in this time period. There are two scrolls of 83 paintings currently hosted at the Keio University Library. Check out the rest of the images here (there is a link to page navigation in the bottom left corner of the page).
