Wylie Fisher

Shiner

Shiner, a Texas beer, is pretty cheap, and not too bad. Much better than Lone Star. Lone Star is good for some kitsch factor, when you need a beer and don’t have a ton of cash, and I would imagine at peeling paint. So,Shiner beers end up in the fridge fairly often. On a recent Costco trip I picked up a 24 bottle mixed pack. I think one of the big reasons I like the Shiner beers so much is their labels. They have a nice feel to them, are all consistent, and seem well thought out. The Shiner website doesn’t have many good images of the labels, but try a Google search.

GTD

I have been looking into some GTD apps recently. I am torn on whether they will be a good thing to start using, or will just add work. I appreciate the idea of keeping track of tasks and prioritizing them and all of that, just picking the best one for the job, and actually starting to use it is going to be the trouble I foresee.

So far I have downloaded Things, might be downloading The Hit List today, and have looked into 2Do. Thankfully I can pretty much try them all before I buy, so that is where I am at the moment.

Update

After a quick look into it, I think that 2Do is out of the running. I don’t like the way it syncs between the iPhone and iCal. This week will be spent on getting to know Things. I am currently adding content to it.

Update 2

I will also be trying out iCal. It has a To Do Items bit in it, and notifications as well. Seems only fair to be using the one that comes free with, and is integrated the best with, my computer.

Dropbox

So, I’ve ben learning the PHP with some help from my friend Lateef. We were talking over IM about some files, and he had the great suggestion of switching my MAMP directory from the default one, to a new folder in my Dropbox. Then I could share it with him and he could see the file instantly and make changes and those changes would update my file. We were using it last night while I was trying to wrap my head around doing math problems with PHP. My Head is still reeling from that.

Now I am thinking of all the amazing Dropbox possibilities. The best thought I have had so far is that I could sync stuff from my work computer to my home computer without using LogMeIn. I have been trying to figure out a good way to get things back and forth, and email had been the solution up to now. The main obstacle is IT. They are cautious, as they should be, about things taking up precious bandwidth on the network and/or internet connection. If this weren’t the case I would be copying all the local files for the website back and forth via Dropbox. That way I would not need to work on files locally, yet have them update on my computer back in Asheville.

If only I ran the circus.

Google Wave

Today I got my Google Wave invite. So far I am unimpressed, but that is mainly because I have nobody in my contact list yet… I have to send out some invites and figure out how to use this thing.

PHP

With the whole job search coming up, I wanted to bone up on some old languages, as well as learn some new ones. I purchased a book on CSS, DHTML, and AJAX. I figured I could learn some new things about CSS, and get an intro to DHTML & AJAX. So far I have only made it through most of the CSS section.

After talking with my friend Lateef, he mentioned that I learn PHP. It would be good to know, kind of easy to learn, and good for future understanding of MySQL and Javascript. This conversation happened last Thursday, and right after work I headed out and picked up the Visual Quickstart Guide to PHP. Over the next several days I started reading, and watching video tutorials and making some PHP.

It’s been going pretty well. Today I made a few scripts. One was just a regular one, create a variable and display it lower on the page. The second one was generating information via a form on one page and passing it to a second page, both with POST and GET. I even figured out how to pass a page title via a hidden form field. The third script was an if/then statement.

I love this. It’s fun to have the brain working again. I feel the need for a real PHP project. Maybe in a week or so that will happen, right now I am content learning more about it.

Duke of Cheese

Just made live my new portfolio site: dukeofcheese.com. It has links to some sites I have worked on, as well as a PDF version of my résumé.

Last night I sent it out to a job for the site museweddings.com. They were looking for an XHTML/CSS coder, and right now, that’s me.