Leon Quinn

10 Years Computing Today!

10 years ago today I bought my first PC from the now defunct Compustore on the Long Mile/Nass road in Dublin. It was a Packard Bell iMedia (below) and it still works. Using it as my backup/music studio PC now.

I bought it mainly to record music and because a friend of mine bought one a bit before and showed me what a pc could do, even in the days before broadband! The last time I’d touched a PC was in college studying engineering about 7 years previously when Windows 3.1 and maybe ’95 were popular. My one had Windows XP which had just come out and as most people know, 7 years is a long time in computing, a lot changes and after I managed to get it out of the box, connected and turned on, it looked pretty alien to me.

The very first thing I did was to go online, via dialup and the first website I saw was Eircom’s. On it I saw an ad for an online dating site and for those that know me personally, the rest is history! Here’s some of the things I’ve done with computers since:

Started an IT business,
Met my Fiance and mother of my 2 girls,
Recorded music,
Found jobs,
Met friends,
Communicated with the world,
Found old school mates,
Gained respect,
Booked holidays,
Found cheaper stuff to buy,
Re-gained a love of writing,
Learned a LOT,
Photoshopped,
Designed,
Edited movies,
Enabled instant access to infinite information,
Diagnosed illnesses.

I know there’s an element of unreality and coldness about computers as opposed to real life interactions but used wisely, the computer can really enhance life and open doors.

What have you done with yours!?

Leon

How To Boost Your WiFi Signal

Just a quick post on some of the simple things you can do to boost the WiFi signal around your house if it’s not quite reaching some parts:

Look at your equipment

Are your router and wireless receivers up to date? I gained a massive amount of extra coverage simply by getting a new MiFi dongle router from 3 and a couple of new WiFi adapters all of which use the latest Wireless N (802.11n) specification which is stronger and faster than the 802.11b or g you might already have.

Re-position your router

Try to avoid placing your router in a corner or in some position where it’s signal might be blocked by obstacles or interfered with by competing wireless signals, ie cordless phones, tv senders, etc..Place it centrally in the house to have the best chance of covering everywhere. A high position is good too. I’ve put mine in the attic for maximum height and also because there are less walls there, none in fact! The signal then only has to go through the ceiling which is a lot thinner then walls.

Tip: if you use mobile broadband and know where your local mast is, you may have to trade off between WiFi reach and best signal/broadband speed. Placing your mobile router in a position in the house nearest the mast will increase it’s speed and signal but you might lose WiFi at the other end of the house.

Edit your router settings

You’ll have a control panel or program to manage your router or adapter settings, one thing you can do is to look for a “TX” settings page and change the values here. TX is the transmit power of your router and they are normally set quite low from the factory. A good setting seems to be about 70mW. Don;t go too high here or you’ll burn your router! It’s a bit like overclocking a cpu.

If you suspect interference from another wireless device or neighbour’s router even you can try changing your WiFi channel. 6 is normally the default so try another few and re-measure each time. Here’s a handy browser tool to help you chose the best channel –http://tools.meraki.com/stumbler#q=

Tip: If you live in the country like I do with no-one around you, you might consider turning off WiFi encryption/protection and leave it open. Open networks are faster.

Repeaters

You could buy a repeater and use it to bounce your existing signal further or re-commission an old router and convert it to a repeater by re-flashing the firmware with DD-WRT.

Other

Here’s a few funky DIY boosting projects you could try too:

http://lifehacker.com/296367/boost-your-wireless-signal-with-a-homemade-wifi-extender

http://lifehacker.com/5053796/boost-your-wi+fi-signal-with-cooking-strainer

Leon

Using the WordPress Plugin SVN Repository. Simply!

I’ve just managed to get my first WordPress plugin approved and added to the official WordPress plugin directory which is cool for me. It’s nothing major, mainly something to help my own clients but useful for anyone who uses WordPress and finds it hard to do some of the most common functions. You can view/download it below. Please rate it!:

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/help-menu/

Now simple as it is in function, it was no easy feat getting the plugin written, approved and added, with plenty of standards to adhere to and processes to be learned. For example I found out that you can’t import or host content on your own site that’s part of a plugin. You need to include all files in the plugin folder. I was hotlinking to files on my own hosting!

The trickiest part by far was figuring out how to upload the files to WordPress. They have a complex system for doing that called SVN/Subversion which is a version control system. The official WordPress help on how to manage this side of things is poor. They expect you to use command line to get it done which I’ve no clue about. After some googling and reading of WordPress support pages, I found a program called TortoiseSVN which has a graphical user interface. Much handier to use. Here’s how:

After downloading and installing TortoiseSVN, create a folder on your computer to house your plugin files. I called mine SVN.
TortoiseSVN is installed as Windows shell extension so there’s no program to run as such, it’s all right-click based. If you right-click on the SVN folder you created above and choose “Create Repository Here” you can get everything set up automatically.
Once you’ve done that if you again right-click on the SVN folder and choose “SVN Checkout” you’ll be able to download the typical wordpress plugin folder structure created for you when the plugin was approved which comprises of 3 folders – Branches, Tags and Trunk. This checkout process will ask for the url to your plugins repository which will have been emailed to you on approval. Mine looks like this – http://plugins.svn.wordpress.org/help-menu/
You can now add your plugin files (locally) to the newly created sub folder in the SVN folder which will me named according to your plugin name. Mine is “help-menu”. The plugin files (not folder) go directly in the “trunk” folder and a copy of them should go in a sub folder of “Tags” named with your plugin version, “1.0” in my case.
Once you’ve added the plugin files you can now upload them to WordPress by right-clicking the plugin folder in SVN and choosing “SVN Commit”. You’ll be asked for a username and password at this stage so put in your WordPress.org login details.
That’s pretty much it. The WordPress SVN should auto-update in a few minutes and your plugin will be live and ready to download!

Resources:

Using Subversion with the WordPress Plugins Directory
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/about/svn/

FAQ about the WordPress Plugins Directory
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/about/faq/

WordPress Plugins Directory readme.txt standard
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/about/readme.txt

readme.txt validator:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/about/validator/

Leon

Avoid Affiliate Link Penalties

Some quick and simple tips on how to at least try and avoid getting penalised by the search engines for selling links on your site. None of them allow it but some of us, including me like to try and make some income out of doing a bit of this on our otherwise useful and totally legitimate blogs, right!? Why should we be penalised?

Nofollow

Ad the rel=”nofollow” tag to all external affiliate links either manually or by using an automated WordPress plugin like Pretty Link or one that will do it sitewide, individually or on a per category basis. For example, most of my affiliate links are in my “Reviews” category. Having nofollow on affiliate links should prevent Google from following them and stop you leaking page rank.

Redirect

Use a redirection or url cloaking wordpress plugin like Pretty Link to create your own url visible as just another link to your own site that when clicked, redirects to the proper affiliate link. This also has the effect of hiding the fact that your url is affiliate to real people who might be wary of such things. If you’re using this method then it might be wise to exclude the redirection script or folder from search engines via Robots.txt.

Too Much

Don’t totally fill your site with affiliate links, just the odd one here and there and make sure you have a good pile of relevant, honest content on it too to balance things out!

Leon

50 Shades of Gay

I’m writing this on a day where the mummy porn, 50 Shades of Grey book has just become the best selling book of all time. Yes, ALL TIME. Mad. Anyway, this is probably my first attempt at designing (or re-designing!) a book cover and my guess as to the next EL James book, specifically for male homosexuals!?

Assets:

1 Google sourced hi-res image of the real 50 Shades of Grey cover for reference purposes,
1 sxc.hu sourced 3D Male Symbol image,
1 Clarendon Light Font to match the original book font.

Process:

First up was to re-create the original book cover’s background. A kind of dark blue/green felt or fabric texture with a gradient dark (top) to light (bottom). To create a similar texture, I first added the gradient sampled from the original background colours. Then I added a couple of smart filters to this layer, Smudge Stick & Smart Sharpen, in that order, messing with the filter settings on both until it looked like the original background.

Next, I added a glow effect at the bottom right as in the original simply by using a round marquee selection filled with white and with much Gaussian Blur applied. I then set this layer to Overlay and lowered Opacity to 75%. I manually drew in some white blemishes/scuffs around this area to match the original and faded them out a bit via Opacity.

Next I added the text in the same area and at the same size and colours as the original book. I then cut the male symbol out of it’s background with the Pen tool and placed it in the composition, duplicating it and positioning both symbols between the text in a similar position to the original cover’s tie. I edited the symbol colours slightly to match the background and then added shadows under both by duplicating the symbol layers and changing lightness to fully dark and applying Gaussian Blur. I manually drew in some further shadows under the top symbol to make it sit on the bottom one a bit better.

Here’s the final image:

Wine Glass Weather Goggles

A topical Photo Composition this time…as always, the shit weather in Ireland is a hot topic so here’s a montage suggesting we all drown our weather sorrows!

Assets:

1 dull, stormy Beach shot from sxc.hu
1 Wine Glass photo from sxc.hu
1 Old Post pic from sxc.hu

Process:

The beach shot was my base layer so I cut out the Glass and Post from their respective backgrounds using the Pen Tool and copied them into the beach pic, placed and sized appropriately. I duplicated the post a couple of times and spaced them out to simulate a fence type situation, editing each one with the Spot Healing, Clone and Burn/Dodge Tools to make them look different.

Next, I masked the glass and chose a 50% opaque brush and brushed out the middle of it so you could see the sea/sky background behind it. I then duplicated the beach layer and chose Filter – Liquify to warp the sea and sky behind the glass (I grabbed a wine glass from the drinks cabinet to check how a glass distorts things for this step!). I then added 2 new layers, set them to Overlay blending mode and manually painted in blue sky and sea behind the glass, using Hue/Saturation sliders to edit the colours a bit. I then manually drew in shadow under the glass to ground it on the post a bit.

I couldn’t find a decent rainy beach shot so I added my own rain next! I added 2 ‘Rain’ layers, both just black filled with slightly different settings for Noise and Blur filters then set both to Screen blending mode. I then used the layer opacity sliders to adjust them against each other slightly.

To add to the misery of the shot, I decided to make everything Black and White. Whenever I do this I always add 2 Hue/Saturation Adjustment layers on top of the colored image, bring the saturation right down on the top one and go in and edit the Lightness for each colour channel separately on the bottom one. That just gives better control over the tone than using Image – Mode – Grayscale.

Finally, I added a vignette cause I’m mad for them at the minute and some touching up here and there, specifically using the Dodge tool to brighten the tops of posts to suggest wetness and here’s the finished composition:

Upgrade From The National Broadband Scheme

The National Broadband Scheme (NBS) is an initiative to bring usable Broadband to rural areas in Ireland where there was none before. It’s been up and running for a few years now and the mobile company 3 were awarded the contract to provide services under it. I’ve been on it for a couple of years now and it’s been fine for me up until recently when I started to go over my monthly bandwidth limit. The limit is not too bad at 25GB and should be fine for most people but I’m a web designer!

While moaning to 3 support about kicking me offline without notice, I happened to ask them if there was any way to up the monthly limit and was told they had another package I could switch to called 3 Broadband Pro which was only a little dearer per month at €30.49 but had a 60GB monthly limit, way more then the NBS deal and something even I should find it hard to go over. Turns out this package is one of the best available on the Irish market at the minute in terms of Data Limit V Price as you can see from this comparison.

So the moral of the story is that many people living in rural areas including me seem unaware that there are better broadband packages than their local NBS offering and that they aren’t tied to just *NBS. Contact your broadband provider today and see if you can get on something a little better.

Leon

*PS – Strangely, 3 told me that once I switched to 3 Broadband Pro, I couldn’t go back to NBS. Not sure why, maybe they were trying to scare me off. The fact that no-one seems to know you can upgrade from NBS maybe suggests that they don’t want people leaving it?

Curiosity? Careful..

NASA might need to look a little closer at one of those first images from the Curiosity Mars rover landed today. Might not have taken as long as expected to find life..LOOK OUT BEHIND YOU.

Storm In A Teacup

Assets:

Hi-res Teacup photo from sxc.hu.
Some hi-res Cloud Brushes for Photoshop from http://www.brusheezy.com/brushes/2187-24-clouds

Process:

The teacup photo was rotated so I leveled that and started to paint in different sized random cloud shapes on different layers inside it. I then masked each brush layer to merge them a bit better. I added several white glow fx behind the clouds at points where they joined or had natural brightness simply by drawing circles with the Selection Tool, filling with white and applying a Gaussian Blur and Glow effect.

Next, I copied all cloud brush layers and merged to one, moved it below all other layers, darkened and applied a Gaussian blur to simulate cloud shadows on the inner sides of the cup. I drew in some more shadows manually with the Brush, particularly at the bottom of the clouds.

Finally I drew in some Lightening strikes with the Pen Tool around the lighter areas I’d created earlier, chose a suitable size Brush & colour and Stroked the paths with “Simulated Pressure” ticked. I added Blur and Glow and adjusted the Layer Blending mode slightly to make the lightening look a little more realistic.

I Use WordPress You Fool

Seen a few of these Batman Slap pictures online recently with various captions. Here’ my quick Photoshop effort!

Assets:

1 x Hi-res Batman Slap pic sourced from Google Images.

Process:

I adjusted the tone, contrast and colour of the downloaded slap pic then cut out the background and added my own gradient fill. Next I stuck a “Halftone” filter on the background layer with largish dots to match the existing pattern on the other elements. Finally I added 2 regular speech bubble shapes from the default custom shape selection, gave ’em a black stroke and slight shadow, tried to think of something clever and relevant to say in ’em and here ye go: