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webdesign

Tuesday Morning Tech Links

July 28, 2009 by krisis

I flag a lot of techie links, as if I’m going to go and use 39 how-tos or 87 productivity tools right there on the spot. That’s not how it works. You tuck that information away for when you need to look back on it. And a scattering of bookmarks across my five different computers is not a good tucking method.

Hell, even cloud bookmarking doesn’t really do it – for me a bookmark is for a page (in a book or on the web) I know I will come back to at a specific time. This sort of thing is more open-ended.

Luckily, I have the ultimate in permanent memory technology – a nearly decade-old blog.

Elise has been doing a lot of CSS work lately, which is an area of web design where I’ve fallen behind. Thus, I love this Getting Started with CSS guide, which is packed with 20 starter tools. (via @mayhemstudios)

Handy list of the 22 most useful free apps for your PC. At the beginning I was like – um, duh – but as it continues it will surely slip you a surprise or two. (via @robangeles)

In a similar vein, 30 open source apps for web designers is a litany of code- and image- editors and FTP apps that I’ve never even heard of before. (via @bkmacdaddy)

I sometimes have a blank moment where I’m futzing with my server can’t remember exactly what I’m supposed to be doing with my .htaccess file, and the next time I have that moment I’m going to re-read 16 Useful htaccess tricks.

If you are several dozen levels of “Internets Wizard” higher than that, perhaps you’d be intrigued by the Ultimate Round-Up of Fireworks Tutorials. I have Fireworks now, but what I haven’t had is time to level up my skills in it.

If you or someone you know is still Twitter-averse or a Twitter-virgin, they should refer to the mammoth Ultimate Guide for Everything Twitter, which covers just about any question you could conceive of. (via @Sharonhayes)

Alternately, for the power-user, how about a guide to how to use twitter when you follow several-thousand people? Around 300 I felt hopelessly lost, and started searching for an external app to sort people into groups. This article takes a more organic approach. (via @danavan)

Finally, not really a tech link, but it appeals to this same crowd: What to include in your design contracts.

Filed Under: Twitter, webdesign, weblinks

How To Edit Your MySpace Music Profile

April 26, 2008 by krisis

Editor’s Note: This brief article has helped thousands of musicians begin to gain control over their MySpace pages. If it also helps you please consider friending me on MySpace! In your “ADD ME” note make sure to mention that you found me through my blog. Or, comment below, including your url, to share further tips or tricks you may have uncovered.



I just spent a boggling amount of time (inclusive of intensive brain-process time while asleep) trying to learn how to update the layout of my MySpace music profile.

I won’t bore you with all the gory details. The upshot is, MySpace operates on its own peculiar set of rules, and 99% of websites proffering updated MySpace layouts (AKA “MySpace Codes”) do not care one iota if you understand them. They just want you to pick your layout and be happy.

(Even if you’re a savvy web-user it might not be immediately obvious where you paste the layout, as there is no obvious “backstage” area of MySpace. Improbably, any code alterations get pasted into your About Me box – or, if you’re a Band, your Bio box.)

My problems were twofold:
(a) We all know I can’t be happy until I understand how something works.
(b) Normal profile codes and editors don’t necessarily work they way you want them to on a Band profile.

Now, allow me to provide other musicians with the benefit of my 16 hours of experience in this field. It’s not a tutorial, so much as a guidebook. For this to be of any use you should have a basic understanding of HTML and CSS, and a high capacity for trial and error testing.



First: Understand what you’re getting into. Read an awesome article by Mike Davidson that gives a detailed overview of how MySpace layouts work, and what you have to do to alter them. They’re effectively a series of nested tables altered by simplistic CSS code – not so bad, right?

Next: See Mike’s explanation at play. Visit Views Under Construction and then visit their sample profile and band profile. Now you understand the degree of manipulation you can put your profile through!

Then: Look before you leap. Dip your toe in the alteration waters by checking out some isolated edits you can make at Pimp Web Page, pasting them into your profile to see their effects. Note that you can do more than just change colors – you can resize, move, and hide most elements of a profile.

Finally: Head to the best editor I found, Real Editor. It’s meant for normal profiles, but you can still load up your band file. Here you can tweak just about any element of your page!

My suggestion? After you’re through playing around copy out the complete code for reference. If there’s any of it that doesn’t make sense, go back and work out one element at a time. Each time you finish an element, get the HTML. It will have some other junk in it, but it should be easy to pull out the one element of the code you actually altered. After a few iterations you’ll begin to understand what’s what. Try starting with your Contact Table, which is called contactTable in CSS.

When In Doubt: It’s not always obvious what certain page elements are named, or how they’re manipulated. If you’re stumped on how to get your intended result, trying viewing the source code of your profile, or another profile that you like. Zero in on the thing you’re trying to change.

If it’s an element like your top friends, search for text inside that table – you’ll discover the table class is friendSpace. If you’re viewing a cool profile that has altered that particular element, search again – this time for the name of that class. Now you should see the CSS that’s driving their manipulation.

If what you like is a minor element, like a certain border or text treatment, try searching for that color’s hex value (grab it beforehand by taking a screenshot and using an eyedropper tool in Photoshop, or similar).

And: Every time you arrive at a non-objectionable result copy out your code into a text file and save it before you keep working. If you’re having trouble with one tricky element, just work on that element in an otherwise blank About Me box, and add it to the rest of your saved code once you get it right.

Hope this helps!



Filed Under: Making Music Work, webdesign

Revising your auto_increment in MYSQL

April 20, 2008 by krisis

This is a post about manually altering your auto_increment value in a MYSQL table. The solution was just obscure enough drive me crazy for a few minutes, so I figured it’s worth blogging for other DIY MYSQL intermediates (including myself) to stumble onto in the future.

The MYSQL query is:
ALTER TABLE Name of Table AUTO_INCREMENT = Next Value

If you don’t understand the query, or why you might use it, keep reading.

[Read more…] about Revising your auto_increment in MYSQL

Filed Under: day in the life, webdesign

In and out on this same path that I followed for years

October 19, 2006 by krisis

Lately I have been spending a lot of my free time perched in my chair, pouring over old poetry notebooks, tracking down lost songs.

Ever the archivist, when I built my first “artist” website back on Geocities I made it a point to unflinchingly catalog all of my songs – from the very first – noting the birth date of each one. That list eventually became a virtual discography that numbered each song sequentially running through the writing of “Under My Skin” during freshman year at Drexel.

Half a decade of intervening years has erased my memory of all but the “greatest hits” of those early songs. In some cases I can still recall a melody, or a few chords, but in others I’m surprised that I even wrote a song by that name. My longtime undercounting of my catalog at 140 songs was a result of this – fully sixty songs has been discarded or forgotten.

As I build my new MYSQL song database I have been slowly reconstructing and archiving those songs – their lyrics and chords, but also the stories behind them. In some cases its easy. A few days ago I unearthed one forgotten oldie from its original notebook, complete with lyrics, chord diagrams, and even some guitar tab. It held up remarkably well when i played it. Other songs are much more obscure – existing only as scraps of notebook paper – scribbled lyrics littered with strikeouts and arrows. Or, worse, just a single 8-bit recording, my tenative voice floating in from somewhere in the 90s to remind me I wasn’t always this loud.

Of course, even the most well preserved of these songs are still seven or eight years old, and my compositional abilities at seventeen are a strange match for my performance abilities at twenty-five. While some sound miraculously intact, others are fragments of some wholer emotion I couldn’t refine enough at the time.

On Tori Amos’s recent boxed set she reached back to the masters from Little Earthquakes to pluck a song – “Take Me With You” – that was only partially finished out of obscurity. Building from the original piano composition, she reconstructed the lyrics:

The truth is, there was a vocal on the 1990 take, and the lyrics to the chorus are the same. I’ve retained the chorus and parts of the bridge and used it as a skeleton. Then I worked around what was just humming in the verses. But the bridge was close to being there and the choruses were intact, so I haven’t changed a word. – Record Collector, Nov 2006

Tori’s idea is a seductive one – that of mining old material for new material, subtly updating a fragmented song to make it complete. Should I play the part of Tori to these unrefined tunes, shoring up the tentative framework of existing lyrics or layering in additional passing chords where once they were only implied? What if the identity of those songs is intrinsically linked to their naivite? Says Tori, “First of all you have to be able to think that you can almost channel yourself as you were then, and yet still be you now.” Is it worth it to interfere?

Just as alluring, there are two songs that seem to be entirely unfindable, even after pouring through every notebook, every folder of scraps. Interestingly, in both cases I remember exactly what the song was about. In one case I even remember the general shape and sound of the tune, and even the color of ink I wrote it with, but none of the specific lyrics or chords. If I were to reconstruct either of these song would they be something new, even though it uses the original idea as a touchtone? Are they better left lost?

I’m never sure why it’s so important to me to manage my catalog of songs so carefully, never letting one slip into obscurity. It reminds me of my childhood, how i would pour over the liner notes to every new cassette, memorizing credits, sourly disappointed if lyrics weren’t included. Even as I painstakingly transcribed lyrics from faded paper and chords from lo-fi recordings I find myself pausing to examine snippets of songs that were never finished enough to be included on the discography, wondering if they could be refurbished into something new and complete.

I suppose the correct answer is, “Yes, if it makes a good song.” But, I’m not really searching for good songs. I just want my catalog to be entirely performable, and listenable. If that requires some minor reconditioning, so be it. But, if I write in entire new verses by my 2006 self, can I rightfully call the song the same thing I did in 1998?

Filed Under: my music, webdesign Tagged With: Tori Amos

November 9, 2004 by krisis

It’s not supposed to look good, it’s just supposed to look different than that powder (oh my god if i have to see it one more time i’m going to gouge my eyes out) blue from the last layout. I still have about 800 things to fix, but at least everything works again.

Actually, this is pretty similar to CK’s original layout. Full circle, or plain lazy?

Please, spare your comments for another day.

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2004/11/109997694712348234/

Filed Under: webdesign

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