Blogs

Okay, it’s official. Over the past couple of weeks I have been putting together a new business site that better represents the spectrum of my creative work.

I have been operating for a little over five years under the moniker of Pactum Web Services, a title borrowed from my publishing company that I formed in order to release Feed My Lambs. But that stopped making sense over the course of time; for one thing, I’m one person, and I would rather do creative work under my own name. At least as important, I do a lot more than web development now – I have designed logos; drafted print work such as letterhead, business cards, and even lawn signs; and I’ve jumped into custom imagery such as 3D characterization.

This little venture, begun as a small side income in January 2005, has grown a bit every year. As my mother has deteriorated and construction work has become unpredictable, I have more and more sought to make this primary for my income. It would be so beneficial for Mom if I can work from home full-time. Please pray that in 2010 this can happen.

So anyway: Pactum Web Services is no more. Tim Gallant Creative is at timgallantcreative.com. Take a look, join the mailing list, become a Facebook fan….

Simple rules… lead to complex behavior. Complex rules, as with the tax law in most countries, lead to stupid behavior.

For a couple weeks, I’ve had a few friends helping me beta test a new web site for Grande Prairie believers (adults 20 and up). Now it seems ready to go live:

http://grandeprairiechristian.com/

The idea here is to help local believers expand their social circles and get to know fellow Christians from the neighbourhood. Introduce yourself online with a profile, get to know one another by participating in forums and chatrooms – but don’t leave it there; once you’ve made new friends, since the whole constituency will be local, you can make arrangements to get together in real life.

So if you’re (1) a Grande Prairie area resident; (2) at least 20 years old; and (3) a Christian – please join up and join in!

Interesting application for adding pie graphs to your web page without building your own graphic.

Dear _______,

Thank you for your concern regarding HTN1, which is apparently a Technological variant of H1N1 (also dubbed “influnetza”). We assure you, the pandemic is of grave concern to all of us.

We have been in contact with our host, and have been assured that all of the component parts of each server are taken out daily and scrubbed with soap and water. This has had only a minor affect on uptime.

You asked whether we could provide a numerical IP address in case parts of the internet shut down. You should know that IP addresses are in fact most vulnerable to the pandemic, moreso than domain names. This is because there are only ten numbers, while there are twenty-six letters; thus the pandemic spreads easier. We have been lobbying the U.S. government for some time for a larger spectrum of numbers to resolve this issue.

Meanwhile, we are  extensively masking domains. Unfortunately, this still leaves the problems of domain propagation undealt with, and there is always the threat of proliferation due to the common practice of “forwarding.”

To date, we do not believe our sites have been affected, although it can be hard to discern, as computer use invariably involves headaches at the best of times.

We prepare for the worst case scenario, of course. We are aware that hacking is very hard on the system, and once that level is reached, a “hands-off” approach is no longer appropriate.

Thank you once again for your concern. Please be assured that, as long as we are healthy, we will do all we can to keep our corner of the internet running.

Yours sincerely,
_____________

Yes, a Christmas Day launch (of sorts – my official launch took place rather late in the evening).

http://www.changeinthewind.ca

For various reasons, I have recently had occasion to start thinking about matters related to sociopolitical issues.

On a couple earlier occasions in my life, first as a late teen (when I actually contemplated going to university to major in Political Science) and then later when I was in my Reconstructionist period, politics were very high on my interest list. But when, for exegetical/biblical-theological reasons, I moved away from Reconstructionism/theonomy about a decade or so ago, I largely stepped away from those concerns.  I suppose part of that was due to the fact that, upon moving away from a directly theonomic approach, I wasn’t entirely sure how to think about politics.

I certainly do not claim now to have all the answers, but this new site is aimed at becoming an educational/discussion resource to help Canadian (in particular) Christians work through what we should be aiming for on a sociopolitical level,  as well as to help stimulate ideas for how we can serve our country on a less directly political level.

The site features four main sections: (1) Articles section dealing with various matters of principle, policy, values, etc; (2) Special features section for focusing on current events; (3) Categorized links library to help Christians find valuable articles etc around the web, as well as other web sites; and (4) a blog for keeping up conversation and commenting on current events or whatever. I am hoping to draft a few more contributors, as well.

At this point, the articles section has four articles available, dealing with foundational matters as well as economics and a summary piece on marriage/family/sexuality. There are a couple of substantive posts on the blog, and the links library has a modest beginning. As of yet, there are no special features on current events.

Anyway, do check it out, and pass on the news.

Another serious security hole has been uncovered, and no patch is currently available:

Read the alert.

… and the workarounds either don’t work or can’t be performed as Microsoft themselves explain them.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

The official presentation of my first print project.

I’ll be using the pactumstudio.com site as the home for my print portfolio as I develop it.

…you can view a real live Firefox bug: http://timgallant.org/gdesign/gpconcrete/

If you check out that link with Internet Explorer (yes, even IE6), Safari, Opera, you will see four images on that page – a poster image just under the heading, two mid-size brochure images down the left, and a small business card image in the lower right.

But if you look in Firefox, chances are you won’t see the poster image at all; in fact, Firefox goes further: sometimes hiding the descriptive text I’ve used in place of captions to identify the various images, and on occasion, it won’t even reserve the proper space for the poster image, thus messing up the layout and bringing the business card image to the top of the page.

I’ve encountered the Firefox disappearing content bug before, but Internet Explorer is the one that usually has the reputation for it. Unfortunately, while it probably occurs more frequently in IE, it’s more difficult to resolve in Firefox without reconstructing the layout altogether.

Which I will do, of course – if you’ve paid attention to the actual content of the linked page, you’ll see it’s a presentation of my first graphic design print project, which I worked on for my employer (for my full time job). As I get more experience working with Illustrator and InDesign, I’ll be advertising that I’ve expanded from web work into print, as well. Should be fun.

If you’re viewing this in Internet Explorer 6 or earlier, you’ll have discovered that I have got the infamous peekaboo bug going on here (whether or not you’re aware of its name). Symptoms: the headings are coming in and out of visibility (mostly out). The usual fixes haven’t worked so far, unfortunately, but I’m still tinkering.

Web developers everywhere will breathe a sigh of relief when IE6 is put to rest.

You’ve heard of the three pixel jog? That’s horizontal. But there’s also a bug in IE that causes a 3 pixel vertical jog, and the usual hacks don’t work.

Like the more familiar bug, this is 3 px and float-related, as well.

I’ve encountered this bug more than once in the following scenario:

1. Inline unordered list of text hyperlinks.

2. Hyperlinks floated.

3. Any text link of multiple words will display 3 px lower than it is supposed to.

Actually, I almost think my description in (3) is backward, since IE7 displays single words roughly 3px higher than other browsers – thus the “jog” may actually be reverse: except where there are multiple words in the text link, IE displays 3 pixels above where it is supposed to.

Note that assigning a height does not work in this case. (Nor does zoom.) The only workaround I’ve discovered so far is to create a class for IE to render the item with 3px less top padding than its mates.

I queried the famous bug-quasher Big John Gallant (no relation) about this, and even he had not been previously familiar with the bug.

If you’ve encountered this IE behaviour and are aware of a fix, post away.

I’m noticing odd appear/disappear behaviour with my headings in my version of IE6 – but it’s a multiple-instance version, so I’m not sure how much to rely on it. How are y’all seeing it? Are you seeing headings come in and out if you scroll up and down?

How to upgrade to Windows Vista

Heehee.