Things I’ve done with my Computer

I feel I owe it to my beloved PC to tell the world of the many great opportunities it has given me in life!

I bought my first ever PC on August 22nd 2002 in the now long defunct Compustore on the Long Mile road, Dublin (€1,400!! WTF?) and after having not touched one in 7 years since I left college, jumping from Windows 3.1’ish to XP, I done well to get it out of the box, connected together and booted.

Here’s what I proceeded to do with it..

Met A Girl

The first thing I done on boot up was to connect to the internet of course. On dialup. The first page I seen was the Eircom home page since that was my ISP and I spotted an ad for an online dating site and decided to join for the crack. I met my current partner in the site’s chat room and we’re now engaged with 2 daughters and buying a house together!

Made Music

In 2002 I was an avid songwriter and musician and the actual reason I wanted a pc in the first place was to use it to record music. I got hold of Cubase and went mad with it recording, mixing and mastering a whole pile of bizarre self penned toons at pro studio quality.

PC Love

Photoshopped

The 2 consistently coolest programs I’ve used since I got my computer were Cubase above and Photoshop. Teaching myself complex software like them gave me a great sense of accomplishment and the confidence to explore the full potential of the pc and even start an IT business.

Made Money

I’ve been making money and running a full time business largely via my computer since about 2005 and still can’t believe that I can sit practically motionless for hours on end in front of my screens and complete projects for clients all over the world.

Gained Knowledge

I personally can’t remember how I found information before I got connected to the web. Was it a trip to the local library or something!? The amount of information and answers available today in a matter of seconds via Google etc..is incredible. There’s almost nothing you can’t know instantly. That’s powerful.

Gained Respect

I constantly get people asking me about their computer issues and calling me a genius (not even nearly true!) for being able to sort things for them. Nice feeling. It’s still rocket science to most people.

Communicate

Every day I communicate with people all over the world in all kinds of different ways via the internet, gaining friends, knowledge, business and having a laugh. Not bad for someone who never said a word to anyone for most of my teenage years!

Lets hear it for computers…hip hip…

Leon

 

Photoshop Passport Template

I’ve just had to renew my own Irish passport and found the whole process way more difficult than it should have been. The trickiest bit was to do with the photos you need to include, paying attention to your position in the photo, it’s size, your demeanor, etc…mental! You can probably get one easy in a supermarket photo booth but I wasn’t sure it would conform to the specs and why pay if you can do it yourself!? You’ll get it exactly right and avoid a return/rejection if you use my template file below.

Passport

The file below conforms to the dimensions and layout as described in the photo guidelines section of the passport application document, available from your local post office. It will require a copy of Photoshop and some ability to use it of course.

Simply drag/resize a photo of yourself into my template within the guidelines and print actual size on A4 photo quality (glossy) paper.

Download Photoshop Passport Photo Template

Content Scraping or Aggregation?

First, some definitions, in my own words:

Content Scraping

A largely illegal and often insidious attempt to rob, harvest or duplicate information from another website without permission in an attempt to avoid the effort involved in creating great manual content and generate income, usually ad based.

Scraped sites would not typically acknowledge the originator or location of the scraped content.

Content Aggregation

A gathering and organising of various sources of relevant information from different websites into a central area, usually via importation of RSS feeds. Such sites are considered helpful to visitors in that they contain all the information required in one place without the need to trawl the net. Aggregation sites tend not to be ad or commercial heavy.

Aggregated sites should acknowledge the author and location of the content they import.

Google has recently said that it will downgrade ‘content farm’ type websites where most of the content is not original and is automated in some way. I worry that they may not make a distinction between the above two types.

Leon

How I’d Like to Be Paid Please!

Just a simple public wish and hint about how I and presumably most people would like to be paid by their customers/clients. I will not take the ‘recession’ as an excuse for problems paying. If you don’t have money don’t hire me:

On Time Please

You may not realise that I, the company whose services you hire consists of real people (me) with real bills (many) that need to be paid. If you agree to hire me for the price I quote then I expect to be paid when I do what you asked. I put my valuable time and private/family life aside to work for you so I expect to receive the agreed fee when I ask for it. I will deeply resent being made to chase money owed as it will take up even more of my afore mentioned valuable time.

Pay Digitally

It’s 2011 and the ability to pay someone without having to move has been around for quite a while. Cheques are an antiquated method of payment. Why would you go to the trouble and expense of writing one, putting in an envelope, buying  a stamp and traveling to your nearest post office when you could transfer a payment through online banking or Paypal instantly? You’re also asking me to leave the office and go lodge the cheque when received. For me that’s currently a 10 mile round trip taking at least 30/45 more minutes out of my working day.

Respond to Invoices

I send invoices digitally and very rarely get any response or confirmation of receipt. I consider it good manners to acknowledge an invoice and notify the sender of when they are likely to receive payment. Not acknowledging invoices makes sender nervous.

Alert on Payment

If you do pay by bank transfer, congratulations, I salute you but be aware that most people wont get notified by their bank that a new payment has come in and if I forget to check manually then I’m likely to presume you still havn’t paid. Also, make sure your payment is labelled as coming from you as it’s not always obvious who made the payment. Similarly, if you send a cheque, say you’ve sent it. Things get lost in the post.

Finally,  make sure a cheque wont bounce before you send it and if you are in doubt then make an instant/digital or cash payment to make sure. Bounced cheques cause havoc in people’s accounts and invite large bank fees to process.

Leon

Disqus Advanced Blog Commenting

I’ve recently switched over to the Disqus Commenting system from the native WordPress one for the management of comments on this blog. I seen it on a few friends blogs and thought it rocked. Here’s why:

  • Easy installation and import of existing/old comments,
  • Full comment moderation/filtering,
  • Fits in with your existing theme/CSS,
  • Nested/Indented comment replies,
  • Comment reply notification & RSS subscription,
  • Social Media sharing,
  • Facebook, Twitter, Google, OpenID login,
  • Disqus dashboard at Disqus.com with a wealth of  settings,
  • Comments are SEO friendly.

The standout feature for me and the main reason I switched is the ability Disqus gives you to SHARE your comments and replies on Twitter and Facebook. Doing this automatically creates a status update in your name on both sites with a link back to the exact comment or reply. This is a great way to gain more exposure for your article and promote discussion on it!

There’s a WordPress Disqus plugin (of course there is!) available at WordPress.org/extend/plugins/disqus-comment-system/ which when installed will magically import all your existing blog’s comments and auto-sync new blog comments with your online Disqus account. On plugin activation, you’ll have a brand new, seamlessly integrated, advanced but easy to use commenting system!

Sign up now at Disqus.com

Leon.

Social Media Marketing Plans

I don’t have one of these and probably won’t ever have one! Social media companies and gurus would tell you that before you embark on any marketing ‘campaign’ on Facebook, Twitter, etc.. that you should plan things out to maximize the benefit. Plan how often you’re going to post, what you’re going to say, who you’re going to say it to, what manner you’re going to use, etc.. The advice would probably be to ‘provide valuable content while selling yourself’ or ‘remain professional and corporate at all times, use ‘keywords’ in everything you say to capitalize on Google’s newish ability to index content from the social networking sites.

They’ll recommend that you use all kinds of tricks to get more followers or to setup automated tweets for new followers or scheduled posts for when you’re not there to make it seem like you are. All kinds of analytical tools to measure your success or ‘ROI’ (return on investment) will be suggested. Software programs that ‘do all the hard work for you’ will be pimped.

Blah, blah, blah….already I’m bored, confused or overwhelmed!

My simple advice is to be ‘Organic’ and natural. Just get on Facebook and Twitter and make friends. Not cynically but make real friends, interact with people, joke with them and have fun. Be real. Be funny, Be outspoken even. Get your personality out. Post pics of your kids, it may be totally irrelevant to the service/product you provide but everyone loves a cute kid pic and it will help endear people to you and highlight a common experience!

It’s a hell of a lot easier and more fun to be real too. And I think people prefer to buy from real people or people they like rather than a nameless, faceless corporate entity. And if not, sure you might make a few valuable friends or acquaintances anyway! Never a bad thing.

PS – They’ll probably also recommend that you should use ‘them’ to run your campaign for you. I’ve never understood how one or more people, not of your company could possibly market your company for you somewhere like Facebook or Twitter where interaction is all important. I certainly wouldn’t trust anyone to speak for me!

Leon.

 

Make a 3D Image in Photoshop

I was surprised to find out recently that making 3D Anaglyph images, ie – old style Stereoscopic, Red & Cyan as opposed to the modern Polarized type of effect used in the likes of Avatar, was really pretty straightforward and quick.

Here’s how:

  1. Get a proper camera, (not phone!) and take 2 images of any object from the same position using the viewfinder. One with each eye,
  2. Import both photos into Photoshop and copy and past the image taken with the right eye into the image taken with the left eye so that they both overlap exactly,
  3. Double click the Right eye layer to open up the Blending Options screen and turn off the Red Color channel under “Advanced Blending” as below:
  4. Blending Options
  5. Select the Left eye layer and use the Move tool to align the image to whichever Focal point you prefer to make that point the focus of attention.
  6. DONE!

Get hold of some 3D glasses and view the result! Here’s my effort:

3D Office

Website and WordPress Security

Unfortunately this post has been prompted by my own security scare! The problem, which surfaced yesterday seemed to center around the .htaccess file in the root directory of client WordPress powered sites. A hacker managed to exploit a file permissions vulnerability in this file in a pile of sites which basically allowed him/her/it to inject some code in there, redirecting any site visitor to http://r1estudio.com/cabanas with the following slightly pointless message:

Hack

I had a habit of setting the permissions on the .htaccess file to 666 which is the lowest permission I could give it and still enable WordPress to write things like Permalink, Cache & Mobile configuration to the file. Trouble is I never changed back once I had WordPress configured. The ideal permission for that file seems to be 644 which should stop anything editing it.

The .htaccess and wp-config files happen to be quite important in WordPress so make sure yours can’t be written to. As usual, you learn the hard way.

The same goes for all sites, whether WordPress powered or not. Watch your file permissions and passwords!

Leon.

Leitrim Creative IT Digital Hub and Office Spaces

Plans are well under way for an exiting new venture for Leitrim Enterprise which will see the construction of new hi-tech office space for businesses in the Creative, Digital or IT sector. The project is supported by Interreg and is a joint effort with Omagh Enterprise. Most of the funding is secured and planning has been approved for a 7/8,000 square foot extension at the front of the existing Leitrim Enterprise offices in Carrick-on-Shannon. Here is an outline, draft list of the proposed features:

Leitrim IT Hub Plans

  • Ultra Hi-Tech facility,
  • 7/8,000 sq ft space,
  • Flexible office space options for up to 50/60 businesses,
  • Flexible leases available,
  • Affordable rents,
  • High Visibility location on the N4,
  • Fiber Broadband connection,
  • Meeting Rooms,
  • Green Buildings,
  • Restaurant.

The buildings are expected to be completed and ready for occupation within 12 to 14 months from now.

For more information or to register your interest in renting office space, contact Joe at Leitrim Enterprise.