Category: Website

Website
This is either information on 42bitpi.net or ctopher.me. It has to do with design, technology, or some creative aspect. This is about my websites or content.

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Progress Start Website Work

New Website:

MyDigitalChaos.net

My new website is up and running. It’s been a month in development, and taken countless hours of time and energy. Sign up for the newsletter to find out when prints go on sale.

Check out mydigitalchaos.net and sign up for a newsletter when prints go on sale. We should be going live in the next month. Maybe sooner.

While you are there, buy a book. They are online in print and digital formats from Lulu and Apple Books. Check out all that we have to offer. More coming soon.

Head your browser to mydigitalchaos.net and check out the gallery and the books listed for sale. Sign up for the newsletter and receive notification when prints go on sale.

That’s mydigitalchaos.net and we offer photographs and books for free thinkers. Which is a good thing, because we are in short supply these days.

Best,

Christopher

Categories
blogging tip Progress working

Geek Tips

5 Points Geeks Should Consider

a non technical article with valuable points

Web Design has come a long ways since the days of 1997. A lot has changed, some for the better. It seems we have rockets compared to the tools of old. Back in the days when we were coding html by hand and didn’t have the use of stylesheets. What we have today doesn’t require rocket science, just a passion to learn.

All that has changed now. We live in world where the tools to make magic happen are available to everyone and almost anyone. Anyone that can teach themselves and has the patience to stick with it can learn the basic in a few weeks.

For some of us that are more hard headed it may take longer. That doesn’t mean it’s not possible to really get the hang of things. It is however still very possible. Not only possible, but very practice. Learning how to do this kind of work can build skills in the rest of your life.

While you may feel like it’s not much fun in the beginning, once you start to develop skills then it’s like a fix that you have a difficult time getting enough.

While it’s taken me two years to adapt to the changes of today’s modern web design standards. There are some things that will make life easier for everyone. Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change. Hope it’s possible to unlearn the old ways.

With that said here are a few things that can help or hinder your progress in web design.

Negative Space

Beware of your use of negative spaces. In some design aspects they can be very useful. However you have to really look at the design as a whole and understand it completely.

Are you making full use of the whole page? Does it scale for mobile and still use the whole page? My findings are that people really like phones, but they aren’t too hip when it comes to using a computer.

Take this into consideration when designing your sites. Don’t use too much negative space in your designs.

And it has to scale for use on mobile ready devices. My thoughts in the matter is that there will be two groups of people. Mass consumers who use smart phones, and the Geeks that rule using high res displays attached to Terabytes of storage.

Typography

Please designers, do not neglect your typography. This is really important. There are plenty of design solutions available today to meet or exceed your design requirements.

This means using fonts and actually designing your site to use the fonts in the ways that maximize your design. Gone are the days of html 1. Even web 2.0 is now obsolete. You have to adapt to new ways of making things look great.

Pick your fonts out and design your whole site to look and feel throughout the entire site. Design matters, and typography is key these days. Make good use of fonts and design for using them.

Photography

To be successful in todays internet market, you have to be able to take great photographs. You have to be able to have some WoW factor to your work. It’s advanced a lot. In addition you not only have to have good photography skills. Not only that but you also have to understand aspect ratios to make graphics that look good on your blog. Then it has to look great when shared on social media.

This requires knowing how to make the right size graphics that will port from your blog or website to the social media giants standards that will keep the content looking professional.

Don’t make the mistake of posting work to your blog only to have it shared to social media and look like junk.

A very useful webpage for design aspects and ratios is found here (Image Sizes For Social Media) and you will find it useful to make your graphics based upon these sizes depending upon where you want to be putting them.

You need to be a photoshop pro with today’s current tools and be able to maximize the look and feel for your images. The best results will be from work that makes the view feel something.

No feeling, very little response rate. Make them feel something, and you will get better results. The best thing to do is make them feel good, not bad. However if you focus on the good you will get better results.

Color Pallets

When designing your site. You have to think about the entire theme of your site, this includes what color pallet your viewers are going to be seeing. You want to pick a suggestive color pallet that leaves a calm and relaxed viewer.

While there is room for attention grabbing headlines, it’s best to stick to black for those. Using today’s available tools, pick a color pallet of at least twenty colors. Then decide what purpose each will have before you design. Staying consistent with your colors is key. While from page to page has to stay consistent you also have to wow the viewer with enough color that they feel alive.

Things to avoid are using fonts for text that have poor contrast from the background. Readers will tune out so fast that you will lose them all right quick. You have to have good color balance and make it easy on the eyes to read. I would avoid text in shades of red for more than just a headline and never body of text in red.

Dynamic Designs

Be creative. Don’t design static pages that look the same every time they are viewed. However keep the refresh rate low and design to be stable. Using content from your social media sources or using content from a randomized array that has been designed to group together is best. Update to dynamic content can be both content that stays the same for days or weeks, mixed with fresh work mixed into it on a per page view basis.

However don’t move the important content all over the site. Pages should keep content that is important in the same format and place for the entire duration of the websites life time.

Archive your websites. Save. Keep. Recycle. Update new stuff and move old stuff to the back of the board.

Really the goal should be to keep it simple, dynamic, fun, and stable. People have to be able to come back to the same point for the content they need most. Don’t move things around too much. Once you set it, pretend it’s set in stone.

Conclusion

Keep these Geek Tips in mind. There are a lot of people that write technical content, but this should suffice as a high level overview of some of the things to consider when doing technical design work.

Categories
Courage Progress Website

My Website: 42bitpi.net

You Are Here–>

I do however run another website that is called 42bitpi.net. It’s been around since 2011 and I have spent countless hours working on it. It’s been in  designing it, re-designing it. Then just deleting it more than once. There have been a lot of failures in my designs.

It was having to learn to code for both mobile phones and desktops that finally drove me to having to learn new skills. Design for mobile isn’t my favorite. Trying to design for mobile and desktops takes a lot of the creative things that can be a lot more fun to design out. It’s just not possible to do that on a phone.

I learned this the hard way and drove away a lot of my traffic and my friends support.  When they loaded the website on their phone and it looked like junk. The design I have is just okay, I would have liked to do some more creative things, and have thought about having a different site for mobile altogether.

To be honest I enjoyed doing the work. I don’t have my friends or families support for moving forward. They could care less and say, “Yeah, your one of millions and millions of websites and no one cares.” So what? Like “Yeah what makes you any good?”

I’m Just Like “Huh?”

It is however something that I enjoy and thought I was adding to the beauty of the whole world wide web thing that everyone talks about. But to be honest, I have had to swallow a hard bitter and jagged pill.

At this point I feel the whole internet is dying and nothing will save it. Anyways I have written about my website before you can see the video I made here about the fun I had trying to make version 1.0. I’m on like version 5.0 now.

It’s no better. There is the cool little coin flip thingy, but no one knows what a coin flipper is. They don’t have a clue. They are like, “A what?” You know a web page that flips a coin three times.  And if you get best two out of three that’s the results. Unless of course you get two tails, then it’s still fifty fifty because two quarters are equal to a fifty cent piece . I guess no one really cares what value it has.

It’s my wish that people would take the time to actually (*Gasp*) “Care” about something I have done. If you knew what conditions I Have worked under then you would be impressed. I’m sure of it.

So check out my website: https://www.42bitpi.net

Categories
Blog Highlights Website

Creative Ice

Hot as Fire or Cold as Ice?

Creative fires burn hot, to keep the pace you need fuel. Sometimes our creative fires get put on ice to calm the storms. Sometimes the creative ice fuels the storms.

I’m really looking for some good feedback about the feel of my work as a whole. I want to know how this work makes you feel as a person? I want to know how this work, my Instagram account, my twitter feed, my blog, and my website make you feel as a being. Does it warm your heart or leave you with blocks of ice?

How could I improve and make things better? What feel would be needed to make you feel better? In my work I have been attempting to inspire and help others grow. Sometimes that means having to endure a slight amount of discomfort to be able to learn from my lessons.

But my question is, are they too uncomfortable to bear? Does it need to be softer and more gentile or can you handle what I’m saying? Does it need to be tougher so that you will understand, is it too soft and gentile? Take some time and read my work, think through it; and let me know how you feel about it.

Here are A few highlights from my blog

An Important Truth

The Mind

The Difference

While these may not be the most joyful to read, they may be the most important. There is however some joy to be found here if you look for it. I don’t know if my writing makes you cringe or if people just aren’t interested in reading. Sometimes I wonder if people know how to use a computer. I have my doubts. In the seventy-six blog posts I have made, I have had more attempts to hack my account than readers. It’s kinda sad.

Take a look around, have a look at my twitter feed, my instagram, and my website. I would appreciate any feedback you can provide. Preferably via email, which is the best way to reach me. Thanks!

Categories
Note to Self Website Work Writing

Future Work Direction To Think About…

Getting Direction Is Tough

I’m changing my direction by a slight amount in the near future. I feel it’s best to do something with my books, my photography, and my computer talents. I’m still looking for full time work, however it needs to be a job that I can work from remotely.

With today’s technology there is every reason that I can do everything that needs done from the comfort of my own personal work space. I want to focus on making my website here to be the best experience I can, in addition I plan to add a lot of cool features and products available to those who may be interested in what I’m doing now and in the future.

Writing Direction

I also have plans to write another book. It’s been a few years since I last undertook the actual process of writing an entire book. I think with my experience in the last year; that I have grown to the point that I can do a fine job with expressing something for entertainment purposes.

That really is what people want is to be entertained. I think that because of the books I have read, that I write to make people think, without the factor of trying to entertain them. Well maybe my ideas will be the laughing point in the future, but I still hope that people will think about the main points. Maybe I can make a fusion of the two and make something that both entertains and makes people think. I hope so. This direction is one way to go, there are many options.

Categories
Job Search Note to Self progress Progress working Writing

Building Blocks…

Life can be challenging, if we accept the challenges and build our lives around them; then we can always be growing and learning. I’m rather excited about the way my projects are going right now. After several weeks of intensive labor and effort I think progress has been made.

My book is completed and available for sale on Lulu, I have my website finished, I have a book cover to design and to convert the book into ePub format to finish it. I’m working on a design this week.

I want creative challenges and need something that makes me learn and grow in new ways. So far everything I have done has been very rewarding but somehow I want to do a lot more. I need to work on the graphics for my pages and come up with a finished idea that looks just right. I have two designs to consider, my hope is that I can pick one.

There has to be a point that we consider ourselves successful and to let that record stand in our mind and heart. By doing the best we can do everyday, and always challenging ourselves to do more; we can grow to be self reliant and successful no matter what our situation.

Categories
Finding Work Note to Self Programming Website

Talent Perl:

Perl Programming

I started writing perl scripts back in 2000. This was when I wanted to do something with the log files from the Pix firewall and Cisco routers and switches. It was slow going and I found it difficult to wrap my mind around the language that required Regex and processing large files.

The learning process took me many years. There were many failures and a few success’s. As I progressed with patience I learned skills and found that it all started to make sense. There is nothing like sticking with something until you have mastered it.

Fast forward about fifteen years. I have written perl scripts that do basic things with dates and times, to much more complex things. This is like generating a complete ePub document from just a text file. I write clean code and it works every time. Well every time after it’s been debugged and tested.

Kinda Scaler

I’m really proud of my abilities in perl and feel that it is a major accomplishment to have progressed like I have. I went from trying to do basic things to actually having things that work with what I wanted to do.

Learning how to use perl with mySQL and using DBI and DBD. Doing so allows me to insert and show records in perl has been a real blessing. I have found that I can automate processes for importing data to live databases from FileMaker Pro. Doing so with successful imports into databases in mySQL.

If you want to see my perl scripts and see what I have written. I will offer to let you see my source code. Just ask.

We won’t talk about the years I spent trying to generate random numbers. To quote the best thing I ever heard, “Anyone that thinks they can generate random numbers by deterministic means is, of course living in a state of sin.” – John von Neumann

Categories
Note to Self Progress Website

Progress…

I’m working on my site, it’s a work in progress. I hope to have everything completed within a few weeks. There is a lot of backend work that needs to be done and testing will take a while. It’s really just making sure that everything is ready to rock and roll.

If you want to see my personal site, you can check it out here while your waiting for this business site to go live. I hope that you will take the time to see my work and visit my site.

I hope to offer creative services and Macintosh expertise with great customer service that will inspire people to grow and expand their lives while giving them the skills to be successful.

Anything is possible, not all things are probable. Just a Universal Paradox.