Gavin News

New Home St. Louis

Gavin R — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 04:31:31 +0000

I recently moved to St. Louis, MO. More specifically, I moved to University City, one of the hip inner-ring suburbs that was so named for Washington University’s presence in the city.

I’m living near Lewis Park, a nice little park where families go to let their toddlers run around and adults go to enjoy the pond.

I found a cool statue of a fish on a bicycle!

I will post some more St. Louis photography here in the next few weeks/months. If you like the first image by Thomas Hawk, check out many of his cool Arch Photos.

SWAG!

Gavin R — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 14:00:14 +0000

I just got an exciting email from WordPress StackExchange.

From: rebecca@stackexchange.com
Subject: WordPress Answers swag for top users
Thank you for being one of the top http://wordpress.stackexchange.com users!
As a small token of our appreciation, we’d like to send you a totally sweet, completely free WordPress Answers swag package, as documented here.
p.s. you rock!

Snowfall

Gavin R — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 22:50:05 +0000

The second snow of the year in Chicago.

How to be a Windows Hipster

Gavin R — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 04:36:52 +0000

Here are some great classic Windows wallpapers – great if you’re trying to become a Windows Hipster.

Windows 95

See this screenshot of a Windows 95 desktop for some memories.

Windows 98

Windows Bliss on Wikipedia

Windows 2000

How to Backup iPhone SMS Messages on Windows

Gavin R — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 16:10:32 +0000

1. Locate the file 3d0d7e5fb2ce288813306e4d4636395e047a3d28 on your hard drive.

It is located at:

C:\Users\[your username]\Application Data\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup\[some id]\3d0d7e5fb2ce288813306e4d4636395e047a3d28.mddata (Windows 7)
- or -
C:\Documents and Settings\[Username]\Application Data\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup\[some ID]\3d0d7e5fb2ce288813306e4d4636395e047a3d28 (Windows XP)

Copy it to a safe location for your use.

2. Download SQLite Database Browser

This is open-source software. Download from Sourceforge.

3. Open the file in SQLite Database Browser, and export table as CSV

First open the file. Then go to File > Export > Table as CSV. Save it as a CSV file, and now you can open this is Excel as a permanent backup.

4. Read your text messages!

Note that the date column is in UNIX POSIX time. You can do one-off coversions by copying the date number into UNIX Online Conversion or you can insert a column and put in a formula to convert the UNIX time into normal dates:

=CELL/(60*60*24)+"1/1/1970"

Be sure to “format cells” as “date” or “time.”

SEO – The Right Way

Gavin R — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 02:53:54 +0000

SEO for Non Dicks. I thought it was a great piece that echos my opinions on SEO. Some of his points inlude:

Use descriptive URLs
Make sure the page title matches the first heading
Use titles that are relevant to the content
Use descriptive anchor-text for links

.. and more. All these guys offering “easy” ways to increase search engine rankings are just sleezy characters who may increase your rankings temporarily, but once the search engines find out about the schemes, your participation in them will be your ticket to Google’s black list.

Another way to employ ethical, quality methods to make sure your search engine ranking is as high as it should be is to follow Google’s SEO Starter Guide. That’s right – a guide published by Google telling you how to make sure Google will index your site properly. Make sure you read this and take the appropriate recommendations to heart.

Lastly, a there are two great tools created and offered for free by Google to help you analyze your SEO and site performance. These tools are Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools. You should have your site connected to both of these tools so you can analyze your site’s search engine ranking optimally.

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Instagram on Flickr

Gavin R — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 01:53:02 +0000

As I was cross posting an Instagram photo to Flickr the other day, I found a cool little trick.

Instagram applies to images that you upload to Flickr certain tags like “instagram,” “square format,” and “iphoneography.” It also adds tags for the type of filter you applied to the image, if any. You can use these tags to do searches for photos with only those filters.

Your Website is not a Brochure

Gavin R — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 17:25:31 +0000

So many small businesses I talk to want to treat their website like a brochure – a stylistic, non-changing piece of marketing copy. This is totally, utterly, and completely the wrong mindset.

A website is not a brochure. A website is a living, evolving experience for your target audience (“visitors” or “guests”). There should be a constant flow of new information, stories, and content that keeps your visitors coming back daily. Further, your content should engage your visitors, prompting them to comment on your posts as well as refer to your site in other channels like social media websites.

How do I know if I’m trying to treat my website like a brochure?

If, while designing the website, you want things to be more static, you’re treating your website like a brochure.

If you want images to never change (rather than pulled dynamically from the content that you are creating), or if you want have content that will probably never change, you’re probably trying to treat your website like a brochure.

If it is difficult to change and update the content on your website, or if it takes any amount of technical proficiency, you’re probably treating your website like a brochure.

How do I Avoid This?

When designing your new website, think about the business processes that will drive the content of your website. Will you have someone assigned to post news articles? How will you get new pictures? When will data points be updated? Who will update them?

Further, make sure you have a dead-simple way to update the content on your website. Often this means using a back-end CMS like WordPress or Drupal. Using a CMS like this allows anyone you decide to update the content and posts on your website – with no technical proficiency required.

Please, don’t treat your website like a brochure!

Photoshop Filter Tutorials

Gavin R — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 03:18:36 +0000

I’ll admit it – I’m a Photoshop n00b. That’s why I was so excited when I followed a tutorial on how to apply a Lomo-Fi filter using Photoshop. I’ve been doing this for awhile with my Instagram photos, but I wanted a way to make my photos look cool when I took them with my “real” camera.”

I’m going to continue to look for ways that I can add style to my photos using Photoshop and other tools. What other great photo filter tutorials are out there?

jQuery and Fancybox Based Thumbnail YouTube Scroller-Viewer

Gavin R — Sat, 16 Jul 2011 03:49:10 +0000

Yes that’s a complicated title, but I recently created this script that combines jQuery and Fancybox into a nice little component that will allow your website viewers to scroll through thumbnails of your YouTube videos and then click on it to view the video in a Fancybox viewer. The JavaScript, CSS, and HTML is all in an example on my Jsfiddle:

http://jsfiddle.net/gavinr/XhTfm/

Enjoy!