The Artistic Outlaw

November 19th 2007 / learned, taught

Mac OS X 10.5, MAMP and VMWare Fusion

This is a note to myself more than a real post, so feel free to ignore it or use the info if need arises.

When using vmware fusion for MSIE testing on Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard through a MAMP based localhost. WordPress sites acts weird and won’t let you view sites on the localhost through MSIE.

The cause and solution of this issue is the following;

On the mac, with a MAMP based localhost, sites can be accessed via a url similar to:

http://localhost/~sites/

Whereas the same localhost setup viewed through vmware fusion using MSIE has to be accessed via a url like this:

http://mac's-ip(127.0.0.1)/~sites/

This causes a problem for WordPress based builds, because WordPress stores the full absolute URL to the install in it’s MySQL database in the table wp_options there are two rows that store the URL you need to change. They are siteurl and home. Just modify them and change the localhost bit of the URL to your mac’s localhost IP address.

Now WordPress will work fine through both vmware fusion’s MSIE install and your own mac browsers, because the mac doesn’t care if you use localhost or the IP to access your localhost sites.

Now you’re cooking with gas my friends.

August 21st 2007 / learned

Blog Rolls??

In my wanderings around the great big Internet I often come upon fresh blogs, new kids on the block so to speak. And on these blogs with no more than three posts in the archives—two of which are a “welcome to _blank” and a “Sorry I haven’t posted in a month… here’s why”—I tend to find these extremely impressive blog rolls that read like a who’s who of web design and blogging.

I’m baffled by this.

Why in the world would anybody automatically link to someone they don’t know? Is it the misconception that it supplies instant blog cred? Do these blog owners think their blog will explode if it contains a link to a well known blog? Or is this just fandom run rampant?

I would never link to anyone I didn’t know. It seems to me that most of these blog roll “regulars” would ignore any requests to return the favor in kind, and probably don’t even know your blog exists, so what is the point with wasting valuable ad/content space with a list of links of already over linked blogs belonging to people whom don’t even appreciate the link back?

When did Blog Rolls stop being a list of actual friends that blog and instead become a list of the biggest names in blogging and web development you can think of?

Enlighten me.

June 21st 2007 / learned, shared, taught

Respect

I’ve been working in the web development industry for five years now. For five years I’ve been able to sustain a specific lifestyle, working solo. Working in an industry I both love and admire. I’ve seen designers, programmers, ideas, businesses and so on, come and go, come again then leave once more. I’ve heard just about every conceivable pitch for projects from one page brochures to one-hundred page social networks. I’ve been offered partnerships, equity, free hosting and heard promises of more work to come. Basically I’ve heard it all.

There is one thing I do above all else that keeps my business running and my mind clear. Keeps me riding the karmic bicycle in the right direction if you will.

That thing. That one, simple thing is; Respect.

There’s more, go get it

May 11th 2007 / shared

Fonts found, for you.

Something I really dig about being a designer is fonts. I love finding cool, new, fresh and interesting fonts. Some I can use and some I’ll just stare at and horde.

Upon further introspection my uncontrolled, rabid collecting of fonts may have something to do with my inability to use more than a handful of them in a majority of my projects, but the safety of knowing I have them on hand if the world ever ends and a viable way to use specific fonts becomes readily available.

There’s more, go get it

April 19th 2007 / shared

I Answer Questions

Back in March I received an e-mail from Smashing Magazine asking for my participation in an upcoming article where they ask five questions to a whole bunch of web designers.

At first I was reluctant, thought it was maybe spam or even a mistake—I don’t consider myself an industry leading designer. After a few e-mail volleys with Smashing Magazine’s own Editor-In-Chief Vitaly Friedman, and assurance that it was not a mistake, I was willing to give it a go.

I answered the five questions and sent the e-mail and had not heard anything back.

Today, David pointed out to me, via IM, that the article was up.

So without further hyping of something that I was only a very small part of, please enjoy the article; 35 Designers x 5 Questions over at Smashing Magazine.

And my sincere thanks goes out to the team at Smashing Magazine for seeing something in my work that I myself have yet to realize, it’s appreciated.

April 18th 2007 / taught

Fixing prev/next navigation in WordPress themes

I’ve been working with WordPress off and on for the past year and one thing that really bothers me—there are others, but for today just this one—is the fact that the previous and next page links that appear on the index, archive and search results pages still display even if there are no other pages to be navigated.

This would not normally be a problem, unless you want to wrap the links with some css styling. Out of the box with Kubrick the links don’t show, but if you put any exterior css styling on them it will still show even when the actual previous or next links don’t.

There’s more, go get it

April 16th 2007 / shared

The Artistic Outlaw Rides Again

Hello and welcome to the new and permanent home for The Artistic Outlaw a creative pro blog. If you’ve read TAO before over at Onelotus, then there may not be anything super new yet, but rest assured I’ve got some great articles in the works and have plans to keep this blog updated regularly. If this is your first experience with the Artistic Outlaw, then everything is new!!

I broke the blog off from the Onelotus main site so that I could have more room to stretch out and really get serious about blogging about my work and industry, without being tied to a specific style or tone.

I decided to use WordPress for this version of TAO, for several reasons several of which have to do with onepanel not being completed.

Search, Tags and Trackbacks being the main missing pieces. All of which onepanel will have once released.

Plus, this will give me a damn good reason to write a WP convertor straight out of the gate.

The only downside to switching to WordPress is I’ve lost the previous comments on the existing articles, not a huge deal we’ll just pretend they’re all new discussions.

All in all, I hope to see new and old faces alike around.

Thanks for visiting, here’s to a new beginning for the Artistic Outlaw, don’t forget to spread the word.