Blogs

… 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.

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.

to put an end to subsidies for political parties.

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.”

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…)

…is the war on drugs worth this?

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

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.

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.

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

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.