I had a request for a Joomla site so I loaded it onto my server to check it out. The install was a breeze. Now I am just reading the documentation.
I have played around with Drupal a little. I even started building a social networking site with it, but then I got busy and haven’t touched it since. I am going to try to launch it within the next couple of weeks.
I checked out a bunch of scripts for building social networking sites but they all were screwed up. I tried elgg and dutch from barn raiser but neither worked. Maby it was just me.
Got turned on to the Nettus podcasts from my instructor Gord Grisenthwaite. Great tips on learning web development, AJAX, PHP, and WordPress. Over 100 episodes. I am especially enjoying the Wordpress for designers series - learn how to create your own wordpress themes.
The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life.
Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company… a church… a home.
The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past… we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude… I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it.
And so it is with you… we are in charge of our attitudes.
I have finally graduated from Vancouver Career College. Now I have to complete a practicum and after that keep on learning. There is always something new to learn in this business and that is why I love it! I could work in this field forever and never learn everything there is to know. I have a good foundation to build on, and now I will see where it takes me. You can check out my resume here —-> Robert Kennedy Resume
School was awesome. To be honest I am really going to miss it. Gord Grisenthwaite was extremely knowledgeable and I learned lots from him.
I was very pleased with the CGD course although there were a two sections that the could get rid of; The first one was sustainable futures. That was all about environmental issues and being green. It was interesting, informative and fun but really had nothing to do with design and I would have rather spend the time working on dreamweaver. Same goes for the job search module. We created our resume when we learned Microsoft Word and having another week of that was a waste of time. Time that would of been better spent on the most intense module of all - “HTML, CSS and Dreamweaver”. I spent alot of extra time in class working on this portion of the class. There was alot to learn in a very short amount of time.
We created a portfolio website. The first part of it was our portfolio. Then we created a Kasugai Gardens website and last a Urban Merchant website. This project will be online for a couple of months. You can check it out here —> Robert Kennedy Portfolio Website
Flash wasn’t part of the course but it is something I do want to master so I bought the Dummies guide to Flash CS4. Looking forward to getting a handle on that.
I also wanted to learn PHP and bought a couple of books on the subject. It is alot to take in and now I am not sure if PHP is something that I will pursue. You can’t learn everything and usually a person is either a designer or a programmer but not both. I want to be a designer so I think I will leave PHP to the programmers.
Most people don’t know that everything they do on the internet can be traced back directly to their computers. This is made possible by each computer’s IP or Internet Protocol which is a unique code that is assigned to a particular computer by the ISP or the Internet Service Provider. Each computer only makes use of one IP while on the internet - it acts like the fingerprint of one’s computer.
The Proxy Server
For one reason or another, a lot of people continue to look for ways to protect their online identity. One of the best ways to do this is by making use of a proxy servers.
A proxy servers, or at least one that has been properly configured, allows users to perform their online activities without being traced back to their actual IP. Proxy servers appear like a single user on the internet, when in reality a good hundred people could actually working behind it. Although it may be possible to be traced back to the proxy server used, there is no way for people to go further than this which means that it is nearly impossible for one’s IP address to be tracked.
The Dangers
Proxy servers can definitely be beneficial for a lot of folks. However, issues begin to arise when these proxy servers are run by malicious entities that only intend to harvest information from unsuspecting users. This has become an all too common occurrence on the internet which has caused a lot of problems for a lot of people.
One of the biggest problems with proxies servers is that most of them do not make use of any sort of encryption. For the users, this means that all the data they pass through the proxy will be sent ‘as is.’ That is, all the information a user types in can be easily seen by someone who knows how to get around these servers. This is why it is never a good idea to visit sites that ask for personal details when using a proxies server. Users are generally advised to stay away from shopping sites as they require bank and credit card details. These types of information are surely those that one wouldn’t want to be going around.
Not Just for Cybercrime
Aside from being used to steal personal information, proxies servers are also used by some companies to mine data from. One will be surprised at the sheer number of large companies and corporations that make use of such a dubious method for their market research. Some retailers open free proxy servers to specifically serve this purpose. Once they have it in place, they can very easily get information on their users such as their buying history in order to come up with tailored marketing campaigns for each user. Although this may sound extreme, this is nothing more than a variation of the ever so popular loyalty card scheme - albeit, a bit more covert and without the user’s knowledge.
Before you even think about using a proxy server the next time, you should remember the consequences of this set up.
ITC Sales is a leading supplier of clearance Dell Laptops and other IT equipment such as servers, printers and monitors
You might have heard about autoblogging which is having your blog update itself automatically. Now Autoblogging sounds like a fantastic idea, but does it work? Autoblogging is accomplished through having RSS feeds on your blog. You can find Wordpress plugins that will do this.
I confess that I havent tried the plugin yet, and that is because a RSS feed isnt really autoblogging, but yes it is the closest you can come to it.
Nothing beats fresh original content, and a RSS feed is just updates from other sites.
That doesnt mean it doesnt work though. I believe that having rss feeds on your blog, or website can be effective, because the duplicate content that it produces is still indexed by the search engines and does show up in search engine results.
I wouldnt get all excited and say good bye to blogging though because the search engines, and readers still prefer truly original work with the human touch.
Try using RSS feeds in conjunction with blogging; One way to do this is to put RSS feeds from your blog on your static websites that way you can blog once and have your message broadcasted from many websites. Or put a rss feed from your twitter account on your blog so everytime you tweet it shows up on your blog or your other sites.
I would say the biggest mistake you could make with RSS feeds would be to use RSS feeds from news sites that everybody else is using because then you are not standing out in the crowd.
In conclusion autoblogging by using RSS feeds can help you out if your creative about it, but dont depend on it as your only source of content.
You get your cell phone bill and suprise there is a bunch of mysterious charges for “short codes”. You
have no idea what they are and after you contact your cell phone carrier they tell you that you subscribed
to a third party billing services that you never heard of.
What happened? Short codes are are 5-6 digit
phone numbers where you txt them a code to receive a services such as a joke of the day. You will often
see short codes being used on tv shows like American Idol where you vote by sending a txt message and are billed fifty cents to participate.
The problem is that short code services are spamming cellular phone users with useless services and hitting them up with huge fees without the customer authorizing the charge. Sometimes the service is promoted as being free, such as with twitter, facebook or with ringtones. Then the bill comes and you find out you have been charged for the so called “free’ service.
Teenagers are often the target market for short codes ad they are the biggest users of text messaging. When the bill comes in the parents pay the bill without even knowing what the short code bills are for.
Recently a class action lawsuit was launched and the publisher Simon & Schuster could end up paying out up to $90 million dollars for spamming cellular users with short codes.
I am not a fan of winter, and I am missing summer greatly. The month of December is one that I could pass on. As soon as october is over the Christmas commercialization begins. I don’t like to shop and do it only when I have to. The shopping experience gets only worst when there is Christmas music being played. When I enter a store with carols playing i cringe and leave as quickly as possible. This time of year I try to keep in my own world and wait it out till the end of the year when everything goes back to normal. I do enjoy New Years though - I think of it as a time to look back on the previous year, the goals I made, and how far I have come in accomplishing them.
Off the top of my head I think my goals for last year where:
To buy a home
To get my “C” ticket in welding
To Get my motorcycle license
And make money online.
Well I had a good year. I accomplished most of my goals except for purchasing a home.
I got my C ticket, my MC license, a motorbike, and made money online.
I also got fairly fit, but have been slipping the last two months, but I am back at it as of a week ago.
My Goals for 2010
Increase my online income and earn a significant portion of my money from google adsense or other CPA program.
I am going to spend my time building websites and would like to create cool flash websites.
I am planning on the winter of 2010 being my very last winter in Canada. In 2011 I expect to move to the United States.
I want to trade my Honda CBR 900 in for a Ducati Street Fighter or maby a BMW.
I want to keep training and work specifically on improving my core and my cardio.
With the cold weather that is outside I have lots of computer time and opportunity to go to the gym. I will keep working on my sites and learning as I go. Then summer will finally be here and I will be enjoying my favorite season.
