Techie Talk
it's a techie time of year
Jan 6th
i never really noticed till a few years ago, but january is the hopping time for all things tech. macworld, ces, etc., etc. all take place in january. new computers, new cameras, new tvs, etc., etc. so much stuff that it sends my brain into overload. i’m slowly trying digest it all. i’ll try to write another post at the end of the january to let you know about some of my favorite new pieces of tech.
until then i thought i’d share a blog post that i came across that made me laugh pretty good. check it out. now i know what you’re thinking (that is if you know me very well), matt keith probably has a monitor like that. my monitor at work is similar but not quite that outlandish.
i hope to post again soon. until then you can check out my wonder wife’s recent blog posts. she writes much more often that i. have i mentioned recently that she is absolutely amazing? well she is!
drupal
Apr 3rd
for about the last six months i have been getting my feet wet with a cms that is new to me. everyone pronounces it a little differently, dependent upon where your from on this planet. to this north carolina native it’s, “druple.” in actuality, it’s drupal.
i was introduced to this open source cms about six months ago at my 9-5, s&a cherokee. the list of possibilities with this cms seemed endless. we could now build sites on a platform that they were truley meant to be built on. for awhile, we built non blog oriented sites on the wordpress platform. don’t get me wrong, i love wordpress, but it is truley meant for blogging and we were strectching it and using it in ways that left us restricted and sometimes frustrated.
back to drupal. the learning curve for drupal wasn’t terribly bad as i look back on it. i have never been a css whiz and don’t claim to be one now, but working in drupal has forced me to step up my skills in css coding, specifically for building themes. at times i would get frustrated with drupal, but now realize i was frustrated at myself for not knowing css as well as i should. i have to give much props to a great firefox extension, firebug. it has helped me so many times. if you’re a web designer/developer and you’re struggling with coding, download it and give it a shot.
i could go a lot more in depth into drupal, but right now i’m running short on time. i’ll try to make it a point to write about it more in the future for those who are interested. until then, check out the latest site we’ve built at s&a cherokee on an iteration of the drupal platform named webexpress publisher from our partners over at global media solutions. it is the site for nc magazine, the official publication of the north carolina chamber.
thank you google
Feb 3rd
i continue to find the benefits of investing in the benefits of google. i consider myself a fairly avid blog reader, at least of blogs that i really want to keep up with. until recently i had been subscribing to all of the rss feeds using the tools in firefox. i had heard about all of these fancy rss readers, but i never did enough blog reading to merit having a seperate program for reading blogs. on a bit of boredom the other day (i don’t know where the boredom came from) i decided to explore google reader. i was skeptical at first, but immediately fell in love with it. iGoogle is my homepage and of course there is a gadget for google reader. now i can receive all of my unread blog posts directly from my homepage! i no longer have to go to each individual blog and see if the writer has posted something new. of course i still have the option to visit the original blog post via a link from the gadget, plus take advantage of the other many features google offers me. thank you google…
the 210 records website launch!
Aug 31st
210 records has officially hit the web and in grand fashion if i say so myself. it is my latest web creation for a good friend and record producer, daniel heath. daniel just finished up from barton college back in may and he is fixing to pack up and move west to nashville, tn to start his new career. 210 records is the name of his record label. the name dates back to the number of a dorm room that he lived in during college (210). it was also the first place he started recording. daniel has a passion for making music and he is one of the funniest guys i know. he’s very talented at what he does and it was a honor to help him put his company out there on the web. check out daniel’s new site and dropped him a line if you ever need to lay something down on a track.
apple gave me a birthday present!
Sep 14th
okay, so not really. i wish apple would send me a birthday present. i’d love to have the “iTv” that they introduced yesterday or a new macbook pro tricked out with all the bells and whistles. i will definitely have one someday. anyways, apple released iTunes 7.0 yesterday and i consider it a birthday present for me. sure it was meant for millions of people, but it just happens to be two days before my birthday, so i can be selfish. it is definitely the coolest digital music program ever. you can now download movies from the iTunes store and i believe “Cars” will be my first movie purchase. i know all you pc users can get it too, but it just doesn’t look as nice as it does on a mac, sorry.
other than that things are going awesome. we held revival at my church since sunday and its been really awesome. mike penry was the speaker and he definitely brought the word. work is going well too. i’m fixing to launch my newest project. i’ve been working on a website for my mom’s boss. his name is paul stam and he is the representative for the 37th district in the north carolina house of representatives, which is the district i live in. he’s a really cool guy and he’s up for re-election in november.
i’m really proud of myself for updating my blog more than once every two months. i think this is the 3rd time within two weeks. hopefully i will be able to keep it up. until next time…
matt
