I’m using VNC to remote into the PC from the iMac so I can Remote Desktop into a server to change some css in a .Net project. I then have to email a copy of the css file to the project owner so he can check it into his source control repository from which he publishes the project…to the server.

OK Ryan, here’s your flowchart:

As you can see, things get a little hairy once we get past the windows server. I’m a little confused myself. Would anyone care to explain this to me?

Dustin Diaz’s latest post got me thinking about gallery websites and why they are so popular. I love to see the latest and greatest css designs at all the screenshot galleries, but many of those sites feature the same designs, and they’re marketed to the same people. I’m sure that the philosophy behind the maintenance of these projects is (at least partially) altruistic. They want to provide a resource to other designers and inspire creativity with a database of good design. The idea however, is not a new one.

Back in college, one of my first graphic design teachers was a guy named Jagdish Chavda. He was a snappy, and sometimes rude little Indian man…but he had a wealth of knowledge about graphic design. He was the kind of professor you either love or hate, and it looks like things haven’t really changed. One of the most useful “tings” he taught us was to create a morgue file whenever we worked on a large project. The concept is pretty simple. If you’re doing an illustration or marketing project that involves trains, you clip out and print up anything you can find that might give you inspiration and keep it all in a folder. Should you ever need to do another project involving trains, you’ve got lots of inspiration to pull from.

The morgue file idea kinda slipped my mind until a few years ago when I was working on a website layout. I found myself looking for a similar layouts to the one I wanted to create to see how other people handled the background textures. That was when I decided to start my digital morgue file. I started collecting images from the design interact site of the week, cssvault, and a few template sites. Easy enough, just save images to a folder on your computer. If you’re trying to save a lot of images though, it gets a little tedious. There are a bunch of tools out there to help you programmatically pull images from a website, but for OSX users, there’s already a powerful tool for that in your applications folder.

The program is called Automator and it has an intuitive and easy-to-use interface to automate just about anything. To get you started with your morgue file, and to help you figure out Automator.app, I’ll post some .workflow files below as I get a chance to create them.

• GrabCSSVault - Grabs all the CSSVault gallery images.

PS - If you want to contribute an Automator script, or have any other good uses for Automator, please zip up and post a link to your .workflow files below.

While some people create killer web apps in their spare time, Ames and I prefer to make holes in the ground. There are a couple factors here that make hole digging in South Carolina difficult:

1. Trees, or more accurately stumps. We have been trying to get a maintainable handle on the forrest that is our yard. As a result, we’ve got quite a few stumps around. They range in diameter from about 2 to over 18 inches. Today’s stump was a small one, but then there’s factor 2.
2. Hard Soil. Back in Florida, the ground was nice and moist. You could actually use a shovel to dig into the ground. Not so here. In addition to shovels, you need a tool called a Mattock that has a pick or axe on one side, and a grub hoe on the other.

Getting this one tiny tree stump out of the ground probably took us a couple hours. We started out thinking we could just dig it up, then moved to hacking at roots with the mattock, then more digging, then I got out the chainsaw…which started smoking, so we went back to digging and hacking again. Here, Ames is clearing out some of the dirt around the roots by hand so I might split them in twain.

Success!!! - Little did we know, we were far from “done” with this project.

Once we got the stump out we had to bring in some soil from another part of the yard to even out the slope from the house. The goal of all this digging and dirt moving: plant Hydrangeas. We finished leveling out the soil, made our holes, put down some potting soil and got the new plants watered in. They’re looking a little scraggly now, but with some TLC they’ll make it through the winter and create an amazing display in the Spring.

Yesterday I did something I don’t normally do. I went back to a REALLY OLD post, edited it, and opened the comments. Ever since I started keeping an eye on my stats with Refer and Shortstat (I have been dragging my feet about signing up for mint…but I will eventually.), I’ve seen traffic dribbling daily into that entry from search engine queries on “Publix Sushi”. I was curious about why such a steady flow of people would be interested, so I made a note and opened up the comments. Well, there haven’t been any comments yet, but going back to the post made me hungry for sushi…so I went out to our local Publix grocery store to pick up some lunch.

Today’s sushi choice: Dragon Roll. The roll consisted of freshwater and sea eel, cucumber, avocado, rice, seaweed, and was beautifully wrapped in thin slices of avocado. I used to always get the Spicy Roll when I lived in Gainesville, but the Dragon Roll was excellent and I would definitely get it again.

When Ames and I got married we had two of a lot of things you should really only have one of. Two beds, two can-openers, two toothbrush holders…you get the idea. Within the first 6 months of marriage we had eliminated a lot of that extra clutter, but even after 2 years we still had our two old deskjet printers from our undergrad days. We always had (at least) two computers around, so having two printers was no big deal, except when they ran out of ink. Fortunately, we never had to buy both new ink cartridges for both printers at the same time. For the last few months, one has been low on color, and one has been low on black ink, but now they’re both low on everything. Actually, I take that back. One printer still has some magenta, and the other still has some cyan. Still, that doesn’t work when Ames needs to print out homework; and if we have to print out a Google Map, magenta roads are hard on the eyes.

We were all prepared to go to Sams Club and plop down a whole lot of money for new ink when I got the idea that I could probably buy a shiny new printer with ink for what I was going to pay for 4 cartridges. After talking to Amy about it, we began our search. We scoured the Internet and the Sunday advertisements to find the best bang for our buck and we discovered that we could do a lot better than just a network printer. We decided on the Brother MFC-5440CN from Staples.

For $99 after rebate, it’s obviously not the top of the line model, but it is a huge upgrade from our previous printing, scanning, and faxing solutions. Rather than having to get a USB hub, it connects directly to the router, which means if I set up some port forwarding, I could even print things from outside the home network. It would be amazing to me if Amy could print something out at home from her iBook at school. On the iMac, I followed some advice I read online and didn’t use the CD at all since there have been some changes since Tiger came out. I just downloaded the drivers directly from Brother which allow the iMac to communicate with the unit via Bonjour. They even have a handy dashboard widget that displays the ink levels. On the PC, I’m having some trouble communicating with scanner. Everything else is working great though, and I just got a fax this morning from the eye doctor with Amy’s contact prescription…so I know that works too.

Little did we know when we decided not to buy ink cartridges that we would be getting rid of such a huge pile of electronics. It all works…but it’s all old. The scanner takes up a lot of desk space and doesn’t play well with Windows XP, the fax machine works great, but was kicked out of it’s perch by the all-in-one, and the printers of course are out of ink. I was initially going to sell it all on ebay, but a friend suggested that I donate it to the Salvation Army, which I think is a great idea.

I forgot to mention that I bought a new desk toy while I was at Staples. I tried pressing it a couple times yesterday while I was working on some complicated database code, but nothing happened. Oh well…at least my printer works again.

This actually happened last weekend but I promised Josh I’d post a picture, so here it is.

Last Saturday while Amy’s dad and I were out in the yard chopping up one of our dead trees, I slipped on a nice round log and landed on the side of my face on another log. In my head it went something like Ryan’s stunt from Singing in the Rain, but it was far less graceful, I didn’t really do a flip, and I don’t think Ryan could land on the side of his face if he tried.

Having wrestled for 3 years in high school, my ears were already a little deformed, and I fully expected when it happened that I had broken cartilage. Fortunately though, a week later, my ear seems to have mostly healed up. Ames and I spent most of this weekend doing more of the same type of work. Between this week and last, I think we’ve cut down about 14 trees. Some were large, some were small, some were dead…and some were tall. Sorry, couldn’t help it. It’s not like we have a shortage either. Amy tried to figure out how many we had total and lost count at 40. I think our goal is to get that number down to about half. We really don’t hate trees, we just like the idea of being able to grow grass in our yard…and of course, I like using a chainsaw. Perhaps I should stop this post now before I start getting hate mail from the folks at treesaregood.com. While I’m at it…maybe I should sign up for health insurance too.