www.NewVentures.ca

I’m not sure about you, but I have been fighting email scams ever since I first started getting Internet email way back in the 80’s.

While I learned quickly, and found the tools and resources to help me identify what may or may not be for real, there have been a host of people out there who just can’t seem to tell the real from the unreal.

I’m not really concerned about all those chain-emails that are out there. They are a nuisance I admit, but they are a “normal” extension of the old chain-mail letters that used to exist and some people seem to be addicted to them!

Yes, I agree that if one person sends out an email to a group of your friends that promises; luck, or bad luck, or better relationships, or, or, or…. that you will shortly be inundated by the same email coming from several friends in the group. The best way you can fight these is three fold: (Continue reading…)

So the decision being made to go with WordPress the next step is…. how? Being an old fashioned manual HTML designer, I really had some difficulty wrapping my mind around the inside parts of WordPress, namely PHP and CSS files and how they create the various themes that are out there!

I knew what I basically wanted. The main menu on the left, with extras and Google ad’s on the right along with other points of interest. I also wanted a layout or “theme” that reflected my retired lifestyle, and of course my love of a really good cup of coffee…

I decided that I would not try to build a theme from scratch, but rather work with something out there that I liked and try and modify it where necessary. The main reason I chose this route was that I wanted the blog up and running and not just sitting idle for a couple months while I figured out what I wanted to do… and how….

WordPress itself has numerous themes readily available, it actually installs a couple to play with when you follow their tutorials and has developed a really nice way of viewing them “up close” before you actually install them around your own data. So I experimented there first. You can actually access more of their themes within the WordPress Dashboard itself or go directly to their themes site at themes.wordpress.net.

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While I’m going to try and make a habit of avoiding any postings on the weekend, I thought I would pass on a few tidbits that I recently came across.

It all started last night, when we sat down and watched a show on The Biography Channel on TV about The Google Boys . While the show was a little dated (2005) it still gave a wonderful insight into both, where Google came from, how it might work and where it might be heading. So, over-all it was worth spending the time watching it.

So I was already set up, and this morning, while looking for something to read with my coffee, I dropped into my office to pick up my current book on CSS and noticed a couple of articles on my RSS feed at the bottom of my monitor. While I can’t remember what caught my eye, it was talking about Google ratings, and it led me on a wild ride through various websites and used up most of my morning. Anyone who gets lost in an encyclopedia set (showing my age?) will know what I mean. 🙂

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Wow, while trying to identify colors and shades that I wanted to change on my web page, I stumbled upon a great freeware tool for Windows. It’s called Absolute Color Picker 3.0, it appears to have been developed by Eltima Software and given out to the world for free!

The tool itself installs easily and uses up a very small amount of disk space (under one and a half megabytes.)

The only problems that I have encountered are minor and easily overcome if one pays attention:

1. On installation it didn’t put a shortcut or link into the start menu
2. It is sensitive to double clicks and closes down if you aren’t careful

You have your choice of color palettes to work with. From three interactive swaths of color controlled by what looks like a rainbow color slider, to stacks of colored pens, to a hexagon of colored bubbles, to the traditional blocks of color.

All these palettes are then adjusted by a series of what I would color equalizers. On two palettes you can also adjust the saturation rate and brightness. It is also possible to flip from one palette to the next without changing the color selection.

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So why did I choose to build my blog with WordPress? There are a lot of different and very good pieces of software out there… Here is how it happened.

After deciding it was time to design my own blog. I wasn’t quite sure where to start, I had seen many examples and types out there on various engines and levels of quality, so picking “the obvious choice”, to me, wasn’t so…”obvious”.

My first consideration was whether I should host a blog on my current site – www.newventures.com or to build it on one of the many excellent free or non-free blog sites available. For me this first decision was simple; since I’m a techie at heart, retired or not, I wanted to know more and to do more, than just write my heart out. So my first decision was made. I host it on my own site…

The next thing to consider was what type of software did I want to use, or did I want to build one from scratch. While I am a techie at heart I’m not big on building the nuts and bolts, I prefer using the tools and documentation that are already out there and modifying them accordingly. So this ruled out building a blog from the ground up.

Thinking of this just brought back an old memory I have, of a friend of mine. He loved building things from the ground up, and was very good at it.

I needed some help with a tough (for me) Perl programming challenge. He gave me a one line seven “word” script that used nothing but Perl intrinsics… It worked but it scared the life out of me AND it had no documentation nor comments in the code.

Thankfully I only had to use it for a short while, but even after researching intrinsics to death, I still didn’t understand how and why it worked.

(Continue reading…)