helensherrahdavies.com - violinist / pianist / composer

i, also, had the pleasure recently of working with helen sherrah-davies.  violinist, pianist, composer, her music is *beautiful* and we’re both really pleased at how her website turned out   i’m eagerly awaiting the release of her cd!  (coming october 28th!)

i thoroughly enjoyed working with helen, she’s a great person!

she sent me a card that i’ve become totally enamored with… i really have to find these:

beautiful!!

Blogged, Just for Fun, music, Tech, Comments (0)
Tagged as: music,webdesign October 06, 2009 @ 11:31 am

allhehastosay.com - the autism song

one of the reasons that my blog has been so stagnant lately is because i’ve been busy… and goofin’ off too, but mostly busy :D

my friends just released a song, “all he has to say”, and i helped them get the website goin’ for it.

‘All He Has to Say’ features award winning singer/songwriter aika (Aika Hirahara) on vocals, music by Music Producer/songwriter Nicolas Farmakalidis, with lyrics written by Boston songwriter Will Carr after reading a poem written by Lea Bishop about autism. Lea Bishop has been working with children with autism for two years, and has spent the past year as a teacher’s assistant at the May Center for Child Development school in Randolph, MA. She is devoting her higher education to bettering herself in order to change the lives of those on the spectrum. Creating this song has gone from an artistic expression to a full out campaign to spread awareness and raise money for autism.

check it out and help children with autism!  PLUS enjoy a great song!

Blogged, Just for Fun, music, Tech, Comments (0)
Tagged as: music,webdesign October 06, 2009 @ 11:16 am

cool links on a ~hot~ day

nearing 100F again today with humidity around 77%.  you could take a bite out of the air, but you’d need to blow on it first to cool it off enough.  me, i’m stayin’ inside where it’s ~cool~, lest i spontaneously combust.

anyways, mah collection of neat links for the week:

100+ alternative search engines you should know - (there’ll be a test later.)

50 free resources that will improve your writing skills - (i kin tipe n speel jes’ fine, kthx.)

30 calorie peanut butter - (lick off the spoon?  more like leave a spoonful and lick out the jar.)

and to close it out, a coupla ~neat videos~.  stoned cats and bill maher, what more could you want?

dude.  wait.  whut?

“we don’t have a left and a right party… we have a center-right party and a crazy party.  over the past 30 years, democrats have moved to the right and the right has moved into a mental hospital.” - bill maher

Blogged, Life, Lists, Just for Fun, humor, videos, Current Events, Politics, Tech, Writing, Comments (2)
Tagged as: humor,politics,writing,food,lists,webdesign,links July 03, 2009 @ 02:31 pm

i heart expression engine!

there are absolutely tons of modules/extensions/plugins for expression engine.  the ones i’ve found most useful are these:

modules:

solspace freeform: Freeform allows you to create simple forms on your site to collect information from your users. Postings to your forms are recorded and organized in your EE database as well as optionally mailed to the notification emails you supply. You can receive attachments from submitters and have those attachments stored in your database as well as mailed back out as attachments to admins or the submitting user

linklist: The Link List module organizes your links to other websites. With the Link List module, you can add/edit/delete links, display links on any webpage.

low nospam: Low NoSpam will check comments to see if they’re considered to be spam by the chosen service, either Akismet or TypePad AntiSpam. It can optionally also check incoming trackbacks, gallery comments, forum posts and wiki articles. Caught (gallery) comments will be set to Closed for further moderation. Caught trackbacks, forum posts and wiki articles will be discarded, since these do not have a native moderating system in EE.

solspace tag: The Tag Module allows you and your users to add Tags to weblog and/or photo gallery entries. It’s a very powerful module that allows you to create several different features in your templates using robust functions. You can show Tags that belong to an entry, view all entries that are Tagged with a specified Tag, show related entries based on shared Tags, and build a Tag “Cloud” to show and weigh all Tags in system. Additionally, your members can also subscribe to Tags, and view entries based on Tags they’ve subscribed to.

extensions:

lg twitter: LG Twitter is a Multi-Site Manager compatible extension that allows you to post Tweets to Twitter.com from your ExpressionEngine control panel. Tweets can be posted through a Twitter tab which is added to the publish / edit form or through the “Quick Tweet” bar.

plug ins:

links mentioned: Extract and display links from your entries.

randomizer plus: Allows you to show random content in your template. The “Plus” feature is that you can modify the random content in your template instead of in the plugin file, and can use any separator for the items.

md eexcerpt: Creates excerpts after stripping out tags.

trunchtml: Truncates HTML/Text after the specified number of characters.

weather icon: Shows Current Weather Conditions by querying the NOAA website.

wimpy mp3 player and wimpy player: An MP3 player jukebox for your ExpressionEngine site.

i should, also, include two tools that i make use of, but that aren’t specifically for expression engine.  they can be used on any site:

share this - Website publishers can embed the free ShareThis button to increase traffic to their site. Sharing your site’s content to contacts on Facebook, MySpace, AIM, email and text messaging ensures sharing with ease.

sphere - Sphere connects your current articles to contextually relevant content from your archives as well as from Blog Posts, Media Articles, Video, Photos, and Ads from across the Web.

Blogged, Life, Lists, Tech, Comments (0)
Tagged as: computers,lists,webdesign,ee,tools June 24, 2009 @ 10:20 am

mah favorites: web design sites

i’ve previously listed my favorite web design tools, my favorite firefox addons, so now my favorite sites about web design:

psd tuts - “Psdtuts+ is a blog/Photoshop site made to house and showcase some of the best Photoshop tutorials around. We publish tutorials that not only produce great graphics and effects, but explain the techniques behind them in a friendly, approachable manner.”  don’t miss the rest of the tuts network of sites, either: net tuts, vector tuts, audio tuts, and cg tuts.

six revisions - “Six Revisions is a weblog that provides practical, useful information for the modern, standards-compliant web designer and web developer. It seeks to present exceptional, noteworthy tips, tutorials, and resources that the modern web professional will appreciate. You’ll find a variety of content from tools that can speed up your workflow processes to showcases of beautiful designs for inspiration and tutorials on JavaScript frameworks like jQuery and MooTools.”

web designer wall - “A wall of design ideas, web trends, and tutorials.”

css globe - “...your daily source of css news.”

css play - experimenting with css

noupe - “NOUPE passionately delivers stylish and dynamic news for designers and web-developers on all subjects of design, ranging from; CSS, Ajax, Javascript, web design, graphics, typography, advertising & much more.”

smashing magazine - “Smashing Magazine delivers useful and innovative information to Web designers and developers. Our aim is to inform our readers about the latest trends and techniques in Web development. We try to convince you not with the quantity but with the quality of the information we present.”

sharebrain - “a web designer’s magazine for knowledge, resources, and inspiration”

design reviver - “Here you will find useful tutorials, free downloads, sources of inspiration, and articles covering a wide range of web design related topics.”

Blogged, Life, Lists, Tech, Comments (1)
Tagged as: computers,lists,webdesign,tools June 24, 2009 @ 09:34 am