Archive for the 'Fruitful Solutions' Category
It has been quite sometime since I have blogged on this site. I guess this can be a little overview of what has been going on since my last post.
I have been playing WoW a lot lately. I really enjoy this game. It is extremely fun getting your character leveled up and meeting new people. The “World” in World of Warcraft is very fitting for this game. The game is indeed like a whole different world. There are tons of people playing this game and a lot of people willing to help you battle the opposing faction as well as complete quests and instances. I am extremely glad I have started playing this game. Now, if there were only more time to play…
I have taken my Alliance Dwarf Hunter on Blood Furnace to level 38. I have some nice weapons that some higher level players have helped me acquire. My armor is good as well. Especially since my brother-in-law, Nfinight, has started leatherworking within the game. That is nice to be able to create items that you can actually use on your character as well as sell to other players within the game. I hope to drop engineering and start blacksmithing soon so I can make weapons for us to use. I just wish I would have started doing blacksmithing sooner and Nfinight would have started doing leatherworking sooner… There’s no telling what types of gear we would be wearing these days.
I’d also like to plug a guild I joined last night on the game, We Have Cookies. This seems to be a pretty laid back guild that enjoys gaming and having a good time playing the game as it was meant to be played.
Well, average admins got slammed again this month. The 10GB of transfer bandwidth was used up by the 9th or 10th of the month. Chris has started parsing the logs for the month to see if there is anything exciting going on that is attributing to this and if anything can be blocked. Surely, there isn’t that many visitors coming to the site… Something fishy is going on around here and I hope we can get to the bottom of it so AA can be available for the 13 people that actually visit the site for legitimate reasons.
Web Development
A project I have been working on is set to go live tomorrow. I have been working on this new site for many weeks now. Those of you that know me personally will know where to find the new site. I’d like to leave that project at that.
Also, I have a friend of mine (who wishes to remain anonymous on this project) has launched a really cool site for the Texarkana area called rateTexarkana.com. I highly recommend all of you “Texarkanians” to visit this site, register, and start rating our businesses around the Texarkana and surrounding areas. His design is really good. The functionality is really good. And, I should start working on this project soon. I look forward to it.
I am still loving CakePHP as a development framework for PHP applications and sites. It just works. I have one project that I am trying to complete that I will more than likely move over to this framework and another for the New Boston Chamber of Commerce in New Boston TX that I am about to start and will use this framework from the ground up on their site.
I am also about finished with the Fruitful Solutions web site. Once that is completed, I will be redeveloping an application that I host (and hope to sell more subscriptions too in the near future) called En Route. This is an extremely cool application that allows businesses and organizations with lobby traffic (vendors, customers, visiting employees, etc.) to be tracked throughout their visit. There are a lot of reporting and notification features that assist the organization using the program with helping their “guests” in a timely fashion.
Photography
My cousin Andrew, a.k.a. Dingo, came down a few weekends ago and took some photos of me getting tipsy down and doing some Spider Man poses as the “gangsta” that I am.
There’s a few more of these shots on my Flickr page.
I also had the opportunity to take some photos of an electrical storm we had here in the Texarkana area a few weeks back.
Since you can’t just point and shoot an electrical storm, I set my camera to continuous mode and held down the shutter button to catch these shots. Needless to say, I had a lot of images that were just black or of clouds with no electrical activity going on. Shooting at night is difficult. I also think that shooting an electrical storm is difficult. But, some of these photos turned out pretty good and you can see more in this photo set on my Flick page.
Musical Preferences for Today - July 15th, 2007
I started the morning off listening to DJ Screw. After I woke up (yes, I went to bed at 6AM… I’m having some issues sleeping these days… Maybe it’s the Red Bull I drink to stay awake during the day) I listened to the iTunes Live Sessions of Five for Fighting, a live album from Maroon 5, and then on to the latest studio release of Finger 11. Those of you that know me know that the last 3 bands I listed are not in my “normal” rotation, so, you’ll be glad to know that I finished off the evening with Hatebreed and Mudvayne. Nice little mix, I’d say.
Until next time…
I have been looking for a Mac OS X alternative to TechSmith’s Camtasia Studio ever since I started using my MacBook last year. Camtasia Studio allows you to capture videos of your computer’s desktop as you work in applications and then edit and arrange those captured videos to make a movie viewable in a number of different formats. You can even make interactive videos for training and educational purposes with Camtasia Software. Needless to say, the software is very impressive but it has only one drawback that keeps me from buying it… It is only available for Microsoft Windows machines and is not currently available for the Macintosh platform (and may never be available on a Mac unless we can do some CrossOver trickery).
Today, I was thinking about how I needed to redo a demo for some software I developed for my personal business, Fruitful Solutions, and I needed to see what was available for doing this on the Mac. My 30-day free trial of Camtasia Studio expired a while ago and I didn’t really want to pay the $299.00 for Camtasia Studio plus have to use my Windows machine to do the demo. I did some searching and came upon a great alternative for a really great price. Enter Snapz Pro X from Ambrosia Software.
Snapz Pro X, version 2.0.3, is a very powerful application allowing a number of screen capture features for still images and video. There are a number of different compression and output options available for both types of captures as well as the ability to record anything that is playing internally on the Mac’s audio system and from a microphone input. Basically, I get all the functionality I had with Camtasia Studio, minus some editing features that I can do within additional free software if necessary, for the very welcome and very low price of $69!
I used the software this evening to see how well it worked and after easily creating a video capture of my desktop and me messing around in some applications, I was sold. The output at 30 FPS was phenomenal and the file size was manageable. I believe this software has every feature that I am looking for to recreate my presentation and demo for my application, even at a price almost anyone with the need can afford.
If you’re in the market for some screen capture software for your Mac, I highly recommend looking into Snapz Pro X. There is a trial version available so you can try before you buy. Give it a shot. I don’t believe you’ll be disappointed.
Until next time…
First of all, let me just ask, is it 11:54PM or 10:54PM… My mind and body can’t tell. The time change last night appears to have taken place already on all of my physical clocks, computers, etc., but my mind hasn’t really caught on yet. Just to be safe I have ironed my clothes for tomorrow and have already shaved my head and face. I don’t expect that my alarm going off at 6:35AM (5:35AM “my time”) tomorrow morning will have a very nice effect on me and I just might get up a little late… We’ll see.
I should also let everyone know (you know who all 3.234 of you are) that I didn’t ever get around to creating my giant poster (or was it a huge poster?) this weekend. I ended up doing some things around the house, working on a couple of projects for FS, and went to work today with Chris.
…Why Don’t I Back That Thing Up?!
I’m just trying to tell you, I do a lot of development on my laptop and have a lot of Photoshop files, code, etc. for my client’s web sites and other applications I have developed for Fruitful Solutions. I also have a ton of music in my iTunes music library. I have e-mails from clients that I need to hang on to and other important things that matter to me and I feel like I need to back this stuff up. Before I go on, if you have data, you need to be backing that stuff up. And here we go…
I have been backing up my MacBook to a USB 2.0 IDE drive cage with a 120GB Western Digital drive in it for a few months now using an application called Personal Backup X4 from Intego. This application has everything I was looking for in a backup solution.
I currently do what the software calls Synchronizing. Basically, it is an incremental backup. The first time you run the script, it performs a full backup. Then each run after that it only backs up any files that have been added or modified since the last synchronization and will also delete any files that are no longer on the source disk from the disk you’re backing up to.
You can also create disk images, archives, and even make bootable copies of your harddrive with this software. Like I said, I have been using this software for a while now and love it. I like knowing that my data is backed up and that I can customize my backup job with little to no effort using the intuitive interface Personal Backup provides.
If you’re looking for an inexpensive ($69.95) commercial backup solution for your Mac, I highly recommend you give Personal Backup a try. There is a free trial available for those of you who like to try before you buy. If you try this application, I can almost guarantee you will be impressed with its ease of use and feature set. Of course, I say “almost guarantee” because some people just can’t be pleased and then some don’t want to pay any kind of money for software these days. Hasn’t FOSS just spoiled us all?!
Until next time…
Last night, as I stated in my previous post, I was working on-site with Chris at a client’s office installing an Internet gateway type of device. Chris has blogged about the installation and configuration of the server over at TechSays, so check there for some technical specifics on the system we installed and its purpose.
My personal business, Fruitful Solutions (a site redesign is in the works and will be completed soon), provides custom programming, web design and development, and web and e-mail hosting. As of (officially) January 1st, 2007, Fruitful Solutions has introduced a hosted application for tracking, monitoring, and routing visitor traffic and/or phone calls as well as keeping up with employee’s in or out of office status. This hosted applications is called En Route.
As my personal life has been a little hectic lately between my day job and my home life, I have been looking for other opportunities to include some other people in my side projects who have expressed a strong interest in assisting me in the past. Chris and Josh have both expressed an interest in assisting me with my moonlighting projects, and with where I am in life right now, I can use all the help I can get! So far, I have only been able to include Chris on an actual paying project, but Josh has helped me out tremendously with some voice over work for a marketing campaign I did last year for En Route.
While I don’t want to spill the beans just yet on what my future plans are for generating more business on the side, I do want to say that I thoroughly enjoyed working late last night with Chris on a project that wasn’t something I normally would take on by myself. I enjoyed the long hours (7pm - 12AM), I enjoyed the issues that arose during the installation and working together with someone you trust to get them corrected. I enjoyed working with someone I feel comfortable in giving a scope of work, no matter how minimal or unspecific it was (sorry, Chris), and trusting that they will deliver for me and be there until the project is completed. I know i can expect this from both Josh and Chris.
With that being said, I look forward to working with Chris and Josh in the future if any projects come up that I can, or need to, use them. I think by adding some other friends/contractors, equally as qualified if not more so than me, to the mix, Fruitful Solutions will continue to provide great and expanded services to its current client base and future clients.
Until next time…
Flickr Updates
