The Ramblings of a Fosgnilbmareht

I finished reading ‘A sign of Macs to come’ by Matt Asay and must say I don’t entirely agree with some of the points. First thing that sticks out is this quote:

Yes, you can run Microsoft’s Office for Mac natively on the Mac, and it actually looks better on the Mac than on Windows. It works as well on the Mac as iTunes works on Windows.

Now, when I read that line, I laughed. iTunes doesn’t work on Windows. Yeah sure it plays music and videos and probably syncs to iPods and iPhones (wouldn’t know since I don’t own either and have no interest in either) but it slows computers down to a crawl. It takes up so much of your’s resources that it is ridiculous. I am a computer nerd and know pretty much everything going on with my computer so I can say that with some confidence. 3 different computers with different configurations have led me to that conclusion. I like the ease with which I can change tags and I like how good it sorts my music in the file system but I hate how slow it makes things. Given that my computer is pretty fast and has lots of memory so its not that bad, it still shouldn’t do that.

Another thing about that quote that I just thought of, iTunes doesn’t alway play nice on Windows. I remember last year when an iTunes update broke Outlook. The iTunes update did something and installed an Outlook plugin that prevented Outlook from sending emails and other weird stuff. Why in the world is iTunes trying to integrate itself into Outlook??!!?? It took awhile to figure that one out. We had to tell people that they could only install Outlook or iTunes, not both. It was crazy. Eventually they released another fix that problem but c’mon, it shouldn’t have happened.

I believe Macs have their place somewhere. I am firmly a PC guy (Not Window’s guy even though thats what I most use, but I use Linux often enough too) and don’t see what the big draw is to Macs. They are expensive (sometimes twice as much for the same exact hardware), not always expandable and are not as widely supported in terms of programs. It sometimes makes things try to be so simple that it becomes sometimes extremely easy to mess things up on your computer. Like you can have a million things loaded and then wonder why your computer is slow. All the icons are somewhat hidden on the launch bar thingie and applications can have all their windows closed but the app itself is still running.

I just don’t know. Most techies I believe prefer PCs and if they, the experts, prefer PCs, shouldn’t everyone?

I don’t know if it’s Joomla’s wackiness or the MVC model in general but I am still having trouble wrapping my head around the whole concept. At times it seems clear, but then I’ll read something and it blows my thinking out of the water. I think it could be a good concept, maybe I even use it at times already, but right now it seems to only add more steps to something that’s already complicated.

I like the idea of having as much separated out as possible providing the cleanest code, but I also hate it at the same time because you have to reference so many different files to see the whole picture. Overall I still am not sure about MVC programming but maybe with time and more practice I’ll come to like it better.

If you are going to redesign your website, or convert your website to a CMS (Content Management System), the first thing you should do is to sit down and figure out what you need. I know I wrote about this before but I can’t stress it enough. A website is often times the first thing people go to in order to find out information about your company. If it looks like it was made by a 2nd grader, or it’s from the early 90’s, it’s not making a good impression.

Your main focus should be on usability. you may have the flashiest website out there but if people can’t use it, then it is USELESS. Navigation should be straight forward, easy to understand and should not take you in circles. It should be well laid out before it is even created and content is even flowed. Start with site architecture and every thing else will be so much easier. If you have to click through 10 different menus to get to something that should be a main link, something is wrong. If you have a search and that doesn’t find what you are looking for then there is another problem.

A good website is gold. It is money in your pocket (or the companies, whoever). It will lend the company respect and earn customer trust. You wouldn’t want to do business with a company that has a bad website so why expect your customers to do the same. Make your site look professional, elegant and clean and you will get more business. If you don’t please let me know as I would really like to know why.

I know very little about politics. I don’t like following as it is usually boring and pointless. Yeah a lot of people will argue that I should follow it because my one little vote will make a difference, but really, it won’t. Especially in the vote for the presidency. How many of you out there know that when you vote on that first Tuesday after the first Monday in November in a year when the President is up for election, that you aren’t actually voting for the president you want? Instead, you are voting for someone to vote for the President you want. This person may or may not actually vote for that person. Crazy right?

Anyway, I am getting off the topic I wanted to write about. Recently, the government (House of representatives, senate and our great President Bush [:rolls my eyes here:]), signed an economic stimulus package type bill. They did this to try to prevent the recession that already seems to have hit us. Now that people are getting their checks, is it helping the economy at all? I don’t think it is. The people who I know who have gotten it said it went straight to paying bills and not spending it like the government thought they would. I’m not positive but this isn’t directly or immediately helping the economy.

I’m not complaining about the free money (technically it’s not free since it is probably coming out of the tax money we pay anway), since I’m all for free money. But I’ll tell you up front right now that my check is going to pay bills too.

If they really wanted to help the economy, they should do something about the crashing housing market, the insanely ridiculous gas prices or the climbing unemployment rate. Sit down and really figure out what to do, not throw money at the people and hope it covers up a bad 8 year presidency and policies.

Ever run a Google search for your name? I did and I found a former supervisor’s recommendation for me: http://markcelsor.wordpress.com/2008/02/21/eddie-monge-and-andy-christensen/ That was really cool and brightened up the already good day I have been having (with a small blemish or two though). A big thanks to Mark Celsor.

Eddie came to Clear Ink with a strong IT background and a strong desire to learn about Internet marketing technology, but he quickly blew us away with his ability to jump in and take on complex technical projects for large clients like Autodesk and Hewlett Packard. Eddie also has a strong ability to see the bigger picture and suggest tactics to make projects run smoothly and efficiently. He will be an asset to your organization.