Some people wanted to know how I did the letters in my last piece called “oil”.
I decided to write a tutorial.
First I have to credit Zilla774 for turning me on to the use of illustrator for 3D text when you don’t have a 3D program to render it. This is my rendition and expansion of his thoughts.
There are two programs required for this:
1. Photoshop CS2 (don’t know if you can do some of this stuff with earlier versions.)
2. Illustrator CS2
Optimize your database!
I was trying to figure out why my website was running slowly, most of all my blog.
Thanks to good-tutorials.com and everyone that like tutorials (I am in the midst of writing another one :-P)
I got as many page views in a month than I got in a whole year!!
At first I thought I had exceeded my bandwidth, but I checked and no I was fine 
I checked my services, I checked the forums I just couldn’t figure it out!
While I was doing so development for an application at work my boss was looking over the database I was using and he noticed that I had overhead. Now being that I have novice-intermediate experience with development ( I started my Job last year in June) I really didn’t think twice about what that meant.
But I have a lot of it! Apparently when you delete rows and things out of your database regularly, which my spam blocker does everyday, you get an over head… and to get rid of it its like defragging your hard drive.
I had 52Kb of over head total in my DB and that is what was causing my blog to run slowly.
Now I have wp-cache installed and my DB optimized but for those of you who didn’t know
what that was here is how you can remedy that situation and save you the trouble:
If you use PHPMyAdmin:
Click on your database in the left column.
“Check tables that have the over head” and from the drop down menu on the bottom, select optimize table.
Those who want to script it:
<?phpOPTIMIZE TABLE `table_name` , `table_name2` , `table_name3`
$SQL = "";
mysql_query($SQL);
?>
You can even set up a cron job to run at 12:00AM and clear your overhead.
Hope this helps you all
I have been watching the news, movies, and listening to the news and I was inspired to do this piece.
I know I don’t usually voice my views publicly, but I was very moved to do this.
The United States is in trouble, I wish we did not rely on oil so much. If you think about it, it’s a way of life. Oil provides us with so much, and what have we really done to reduce our oil dependency? Yes we now have better mileage for our cars, but we still have not reached the mileage standards that a country such as China has. We blame China for so much, but really why don’t we look inward at our problems. And the reason our gas prices are rising is not because of China and India’s need for oil, it is because of the new way oil is being traded. Somewhat like bonds and paper cash is traded. This is what is fueling the gas price rise. Sure maybe the need for oil brought up the price to $80 a barrel but that is it the rest is because of the new way of trading.
I have been thinking about this a lot and this is what came out of it. I guess I am just frustrated, and I am hoping for change. Even though the quote is somewhat funny, the subject matter is quite serious.
stock from sxc.hu
Create the letters in illustrator.
about 3 hours in Photoshop.
This is the new re-write of the gallery viewer.
I wrote it so if your server has a particular extension installed (GD Library)
will make a thumbnail for the gallery. I also wrote it so that it’s really easy to use and install.
The new version utilizes the Lightbox and the Cycle Plugin. These extensions can be enabled in the config file.
When light box is enabled, your image description will appear under the gallery image.
If your server doesn’t the GD library extension installed or you don’t know what that is, don’t worry.
The gallery is written to operate without it.
The file: Free Gallery Viewer V2
The Demo: Free Gallery Viewer V2 Demo
The Demo Gallery: Free Gallery Viewer Gallery
Installation:
Questions or Comments feel free to comment on my blog.
Notes:
This Gallery Viewer uses JQuery so props to my friend John Resig for creating such an amazing JavaScript Library.
This also uses the Cycle plugin that Mike Alsup created to do all transitions or the Lightbox plugin by Leandro Vieira Pinho (depends on what you pick). Image class for GD Library written by me.
There is a new band in town.
For all you geeks you might want to
look out!
This is just a temporary logo, just a concept.
Don’t know where it’s going yet.
If you don’t know what Dvorak is, its an alternate layout for a keyboard (pronounced /ˈdvoɹæk/). Most computer users use the standard “QWERTY” keyboard layout. This references the first keys on the top left. Read the rest of this entry »
I was making a blog layout for the morning call and I did this for one of the header images.
It was for the TV Watchers Blog.
Ultimately they picked a different layout but
I still like this creepy picture I created.
This uses a “cross-processing” technique
in Photoshop that involves curves.
I think its this piece represents commentary about what the American culture has turned into, mindless TV watchers.
or it could be just a creepy image I wanted for a header.
Stock from stockxpert.com and sxc.hu
You decide.
The layout:
As you can see it is very similar to my Vintage Poster design.
Thats because this layout gave me the idea to make a
vintage poster tutorial.
Other News:
Now if you register for my blog you can choose to get an automated notification
of new blog posts.
Thanks to: Xavisys
