body id="pg">

Blogs

Archive for November, 2008

Since I’ve been playing with 3D

Sunday, November 30th, 2008

… I thought I’d throw a quickie render up as my new header here at timgallant.org. Of course, that forced a change in colour scheme, too, but the layout remains unchanged.

I may have to rethink that mauve-ish colour featured in the middle column, which is a holdover.

Someday, I’ll probably try to do a more believable 3D self-portrait, but this looks okay from a distance, I suppose. :)

Handy utility

Saturday, November 29th, 2008

Someday, I’ll have to create a list of the handiest free utilities I’ve used. One of these definitely has to be CutePDF. While there is a Pro version (49.95), since I have Acrobat Professional, I just use the freeware. What’s great about it is that you simply use it like an alternative printer, and instead of printing on paper, it saves a .pdf file. (It’s much simpler than Acrobat’s Distiller.)

This convenience came into play again for me today. One of my clients was attempting to send me floorplans. Trouble was, the only image file type their floorplan app would save to was .bmp… and it was doing something to the .bmp file so that, while the bitmap would open nicely in the program itself, the image was just a black box everywhere else.

So I had my client download CutePDF and print from the floorplan app. Bingo. Nicely optimized to send me via email (all the files saved at between 25kb and 70kb each). I opened them up in Acrobat, saved them as PNG files, and presto! I can display them as is.

Vote “Yes”

Friday, November 28th, 2008

to put an end to subsidies for political parties.

Play smart with email and the Internet

Friday, November 28th, 2008

Here is an introductory set of tips that I am working on for safer, smarter web browsing and email use, including being a good “web citizen.” Many of these ought to be common sense, or would be if we all thought about things. As a web developer and a bit of a “power user,” I’ve had more opportunity to think about them than most. Please check it out and make sure you’re not unwittingly being foolish or even contributing to “the problem.”

God never says “No” to the prayer of faith…

Sunday, November 23rd, 2008

One of my favourite writers as far as his rhetorical approach (and a lot of his thoughts too) was G.K. Chesterton. One of his trademarks was to turn a common notion on its head. So I’m taking a page from his book(s) with the title here.

The first thing that needs to be said is that I’m not going “Word of Faith.” That was a group that claimed that whenever you claimed something in real faith, it happened. I was raised indie Pentecostal, and even I was never that extreme.

But there is nonetheless a real sense in which God never says “No” to the prayer of faith. (more…)

So…

Friday, November 21st, 2008

…is the war on drugs worth this?

Evil deeds being exposed.

Tuesday, November 18th, 2008

Despite the reality, the outcome of this is that it is the Christians who get charged with “hate.”

In case you’re wondering…

Saturday, November 15th, 2008

Yes, I know the post announcing shortordersite.com appears in two columns… it’s a side effect of the way I’ve structured WordPress here, as I’ve got three overarching categories in separate columns. If I assign a post to two major categories, it appears twice.

Just call me Tim TwoTwo. :)

shortordersite.com

Saturday, November 15th, 2008

My new adventure in business is up and running.

I’m quite excited about this concept. Now for the work of getting the word out.

and this differs from Marxism… how?

Monday, November 10th, 2008

They used to conceal these sorts of sentiments. I guess Americans have already forgotten what Marxism is.

Haha

Thursday, November 6th, 2008

Well, this was VERY stressful, but it forced a chuckle nonetheless.

I’ve been moving sites from one host to another. Was going okay, but when I set one site live, it was a disaster. Only text would show. Following image links generated level 500 server errors. I thought it was javascript-related.

Contacted support, and they told me that mod_security was blocking something. Funny, never did at the old host.

Well, when all the dust settled, it turned out to be the domain name – innocuous enough: gpconcretespecialist.com

You don’t see the problem?

Well, the host’s local mod_security rules were blocking c i a l i s.

Kinda a bad rule at that level, as there must be zillions of sites with “specialist” in the name… but kinda funny too, as I’d never even noticed that before.

Archives by Month:

Archives by Subject:

Blog Categories

  • tidbits
    personal news, informal notes, sports, music, etc
  • geekart
    web development, graphic arts, tech notes
  • scriptorium
    biblical studies, theology

My Sites

Sites are listed below in simple alphabetical order. For further information on each site, click the link, or check out site overviews on my site portal page.

site by Tim Gallant © 2008  | purchase my web dev services
timgallant.org is proudly powered by WordPress
entries (RSS) and comments (RSS).