Joan's Jabber

Admin Edit Bar Missing from Concrete5

2012-10-01T11:48:00.002-04:00

I know this issue has happened to quite a few people out there. when they log into their admin account on Concrete5 their admin header edit/control bar disappears.

This can be extremely frustrating when you are working on a website and need to edit the page or access any other back-end parts of your site. I have had this issue twice now, but both needed to be solved differently. Both fixes are fairly simple, however the most recent issue I had, I wasn't able to find any information on how to fix it, hence why I felt someone else out there may come across this odd issue and may need help fixing it as well.

The first fix I found is a very common issue. Here is a link to the forum post that helped me:

http://www.concrete5.org/community/forums/usage/edit-toolbar-disappeared/

The most important part of that forum post was that in your theme you may be missing this:

<?php Loader::element('footer_required'); ?>

This line of code should be placed in your footer.php file. This file will be in themes > [Name of your theme] > elements > footer.php

The code should be placed right above your closing </body></html> tags.

For most this fix will be exactly what you were looking for. However if you found this didn't help you, then my next fix may be the one for you.

My theme wasn't missing this necessary line of code, so you can imagine I was pretty stumped when I couldn't find any other information on missing the edit bar that helped me. It then occurred to me that I had installed CloudFlare on my website. CloudFlare was just recently added to the BlueHost cPanel as a security and optimization tool. I figured since it was newly added that I should try it out and see what it was all about. Long story short I realized I had turned this feature on:

As you can see this feature is indicated to still be in Beta mode, which means it hasn't actually been tested to be 100% compatible in all situations. I turned it off and what do you know my concrete5 admin edit bar was back!

Hopefully one of these two fixes helped you with your issue. if you find you are still missing your admin edit bar in Concrete5, can't figure it out, and haven't found any help in the forums try sending your problem my way. I would be happy to try and take a stab at it!

Happy Coding Everyone! :)

New Photography!!

2012-09-09T22:04:00.001-04:00

Heyyyyyyy! So I've been having a tough time keeping up with my blog as usual. However, I posted some new photos on my fan page this past week and figured I would share them with you all here. Plus two pictures I haven't yet posted!! Follow me on Facebook! :)

Newly Hatched Yellow Jackets

Feral Pretty Kitty on the Roof

A Painted Lady Feeding on the Butterfly Bush

A Most Fabulous Sea Gull

"Skittles" the Dog

A Beetle and a Small Fly Sitting Upon a Beautiful Daylily

Thanks for looking :)

Miike Snow T-Shirt Design Contest

2012-05-31T12:00:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I entered the Miike Snow T-Shirt Contest. The contest details are: "To celebrate the launch of the online Miike Snow Store and the forthcoming single ‘The Wave’, Miike Snow are inviting aspiring designers to submit their best graphic artwork (using the provided assets if desired) for a t-shirt inspired by the world of Miike Snow and 'The Wave'. The winning design will be featured and sold in the newly opened Miike Snow store for a limited time."

It would be an amazing opportunity if I could win this contest. Sadly I didn't win the Governor's Ball or EDC contest and this contest looks to have even more submissions than the last two so the competition is going to be really steep. I have seen many of the entries already and it seems I have some pretty good competition, but I'm hoping my design will reign through. I worked really really hard on this one and I could really appreciate the support. Please click here to vote using both Facebook and Twitter if possible for double the votes!

In my design I really tried to create a "t-shirt inspired by the world of Miike Snow and 'The Wave'", by using one of the cops from 'The Wave' music video on the front of the t-shirt and pairing it with a silhouette of the group on the back. Their signature Jackalope is depicted on both the cop's mug and along with all of the member's mugs. Please vote for me! :)

Electric Daisy Carnival T-Shirt Design Contest

2012-05-14T11:17:00.001-04:00

Yesterday I entered my design for the Electric Daisy Carnival T-Shirt Design Contest. I had a ton of ideas, but ended up scrapping most of them for a much simpler design. The voting begins today around 2PM. You can vote through FACEBOOK, TWITTER, or BOTH for twice the votes! :)

Electric Daisy Carnival is known for it's bright colored lights and carnival atmosphere. In my design I tried to illustrate that by using a spinning Ferris Wheel as the main focus. Electric Daisy Carnival's acronym is edc which is used in the majority of the official edc designs and is often depicted in the same font and style in most designs. I decided to put a twist on the popular logo, by creating my own style for the acronym edc.

Let me know what you think and vote for me here: Electric Daisy Carnival T-Shirt Contest

Excel to PDF on a Mac (More Frustrations)

2012-05-10T13:32:00.001-04:00

Have you ever needed to create a PDF on your Mac for whatever reason and can't find a simple and easy way to do it. Well other than buying an expensive program just to convert files to PDF there aren't many simple options. There are definitely online sites that you can use. Just Google Free Online (Filetype) to PDF. I don't know if it's just me, but something creeps me out about uploading a file online and then downloading it back down... Do they now have my file on their server? How long does it stay there? Are they looking at my documents? Maybe I'm just being paranoid, but whatever the issue is it just doesn't sit well with me. Not like I'm uploading anything private, but still... weirds me out.

Does this mean you can spam me now that you have my e-mail address... err no thank you!

What do you do when you don't want to upload your file to some creepy site you found online then?? Well it depends if you are running the most up to date version of the Microsoft Office or not. For the purpose of this entry I will be referring to Microsoft Excel, but most of these techniques can also be applied to Word, however if you find yourself still having trouble and can't figure it out don't hesitate to leave me a comment here and I'll help you out ASAP :)

**This information applies to Mac OS X**
*Currently running 10.7.3*

Items needed:

Macintosh
Microsoft Office 2004 or Later
Adobe Acrobat

Terms used:

Sheet - A worksheet is a single page or sheet in a spreadsheet program like Excel
Workbook - Refers to a spreadsheet file (An entire Excel File). By default Excel workbooks contain three sheets. You can delete unused ones or add more.

For Mac's running Microsoft Office 2011 (Tutorial #1):

Open up Microsoft Excel 2011 and the document that you are going to convert to PDF
Go to File>Save As...

When the save dialog appears name your document and navigate to where it says Format:. From the drop down menu choose PDF. (If your workbook has multiple sheets you need to make sure the radio button Workbook is selected. If you only want the selected Sheet to be converted choose the radio button that says Sheet.

If you only needed one page to be converted then you are finished from here (just find the document on your computer wherever you saved it.)
If you are saving multiple sheets in a workbook you will notice that each sheet will be individually converted and placed wherever you saved the document. If your workbook had 5 sheets in it, then you are going to end up with 5 PDF documents. How irritating right?
In order to have a PDF with 5 pages instead of 5 separate PDF's you are going to have to open up Adobe Acrobat (You will have to have Acrobat installed on your computer).
Open up Adobe Acrobat and navigate to File>Create PDF>From Multiple Files...

In the dialog that opens you are going to click Add Files... Where it says Choose the files you want to combine:

Choose the files that you want to combine and make sure they are in the right order that you want them to be in your PDF by selecting one of the files and clicking the move up or move down button
After you have put them in the order you are happy with click the button that says Next in the bottom right hand corner of the dialog.

It will then ask you if you want to Merge files into a single PDF or Assemble files into a PDF Package. In our case we are going to choose Merge files into a single PDF.
Click Create
When it is done creating click the button that reads Save at the bottom right hand corner.
Then just save it like you would normally save a document.

You no have finished creating your PDF

But what if I'm running a version of Excel that's older than 2011 (Tutorial #2)?

For users who are stuck in the past (As was I for a while...) you may find this next bit of information helpful.

Open up Microsoft Excel 2011 and the document that you are going to convert to PDF
Navigate to File>Print

When the print dialog opens you will be able to save your sheet (I emphasize sheet here because you will have to repeat this step for every sheet in your workbook. I know annoying). Click the drop down button that says PDF and choose Save as PDF...

A dialog will pop up to save the sheet with the name you want and where you want it to be located.
Click Save
Repeat steps 2-4 for any other sheets you want included in your final PDF.
Once you have finished saving all of your sheets in your workbook to PDF format you are going to have to go through steps 6-14 from Tutorial #1 (The tutorial right above this one).

Now do you see how this can really be a pain in the A$$, especially for us Mac Excel users. Good thing about using Word to PDF is it's as easy as just saving as a PDF, because you don't have multiple sheets within one word document. Also, it is good to know that their are alternatives to the method I have found works best for me. You can definitely use one of those online converters I spoke about earlier or find a program that costs money. If your on a Windows you probably don't even have this issue at all. You can just save in PDF and it usually works flawlessly. I guess this is the downfall of using Microsoft products on a Mac, but sadly they can't pull me away from using Excel and Word. Especially Excel...

Nuance PDF Converter for MAC 2.0 M501A-GG4-2.0

Governor's Ball Music Festival Merch Contest

2012-04-23T13:23:00.000-04:00

Hey everyone. I'm excited to tell you all about my recent submission to the Governor's Ball Music Festival Merch Contest. I really hope you like my design and please vote for me and share with your friends. You can vote through either Twitter or Facebook or BOTH! :)

Close Up of Logo: Click Here to Vote

Front of T-Shirt Idea: Click Here to Vote

Back of T-Shirt Idea: Click Here to Vote

Thank you all so much!!

The Radio is Calling Me - Before & After

2012-04-04T14:30:00.000-04:00

Thought this would interest some of you out there. Here are the before and after images of The Radio is Calling Me.

Originally drawn on an old dirty ripped envelope with a common ball point pen. Scanned into Illustrator, traced and coloured.

Application Window Resizing Frustrations

2012-03-29T16:54:00.000-04:00

I realized today that there are several things that although they may require just a simple fix, can become quite a headache when you're not sure what's wrong. I think from now on when I run into these silly, but irritating computer annoyances, that I should share my solutions, no matter how trite.

**This tidbit of information applies to Mac OS X**

*Currently running 10.7.3*

HOW COME MY DOCUMENT IS LARGER THAN MY MONITOR/SCREEN SIZE?

You may have experienced this issue when receiving a document (word, excel, image, etc.) from an email or from downloading it off of the internet. Sometimes when you receive a document either from email or the internet it may open up larger than your monitor size.

Why does this happen?

Different people use different computers, as well as different monitor and resolution sizes. If you happen to open up a document that was originally saved on a monitor with a larger screen size than your own, then chances are that when you open that document it will open up larger than your screen.

The corner normally used for resizing a window is inaccessible, because the document is larger than the monitor size

So how do we fix this?

This may seem like a simple fix, but sometimes the simplest of answers are the hardest to arrive at. In order to resize your document you will have to put it into full screen mode. You do this by clicking the little green plus sign in the upper left hand corner of your document.

After clicking the green button, the bottom of your document will now become visible.

Now that your corner is visible, you can now resize your window just like you normally would, by clicking and dragging the bottom right corner.

Wasn't that easy? Again, even though this seems like such an easy fix, if you didn't know how to do it right away or this never happened to you before, you may find yourself scratching your head in bewilderment.

If you have any specific computer (Mac or Windows) issues that you are having an issue with and you think I may be able to help you, leave me a comment. I would be glad to take a stab at it for you. Thanks for reading friends :)

New Scarves

2012-02-25T14:00:00.000-05:00

It's been a while since I have posted anything about my recent knitting endeavors. Here are two scarves that I recently finished. Both scarves were made with a loom. The first is blue and cream striped and the second is a chestnut brown, cream, and hunter green striped scarf.

Full view of blue and cream scarf

Detailed view of stripes

Full view of chestnut brown, cream, and hunter green striped scarf

Detailed view of stripes

Art Recap

2012-02-24T23:00:00.001-05:00

Bill

As I mentioned earlier this week, I entered the deviantART Cute Monsters T-Shirt Contest. The contest is open until February 28th, so there are only 4 more days to vote. If you like my design, please consider voting for me!!! :)

This week I unveiled a few of my cartoon graphics as well as a few of my photographs that I have taken over the years. Here's a recap of the images I posted this past week:

Click here to view all my images

Pig Ship

The Radio is Calling Me

Car Yard

Walnuts

The Elephant Tree

A Lonely Orange Armchair

Boxed

Thoughts

Thanks for checking out my art, I hope you enjoyed it. :)

T-Shirt Design for deviantART's Cute Monsters Contest

2012-02-21T21:10:00.000-05:00

Hello Friends!

I know, I know, I know it's been a while AGAIN. Such a surprise for me right? Anyway, I'm really going to try this time to keep updating all of you on my artistic endeavors.

So, today I finished my T-Shirt design for the deviantART Cute Monsters Design Challenge. I'm really happy with the outcome. If you like my design, please consider voting for it. Every vote counts :)

I really liked my design with the stripes on the sleeves better, but the contest rules state: Limit your design to only two print areas. The front, back, sides, and sleeve are each considered separate print areas. So since that would technically be three print areas, I had to submit the design without the stripes, but here is what it looks like with the stripes:

It's not a huge difference, but I think it's a really nice detail that makes the design pop!

Please Please Please if you like the design vote for me and share with your friends. Thank you all so much for your continuous support :)

New Website - Big City Burgers & Atomic Wings

2011-11-19T16:07:00.001-05:00

As you may know already I design websites for a variety of different businesses. The most recent website I had the pleasure of creating was the Big City Burgers & Atomic Wings website. They have delicious wings and wing eating contests. The burgers, although I have yet to try one, I have heard are very good as well. So take a look at their website and if you are in the area of Westhampton Beach stop on in and have a bite to eat! :)

Sad Little Men - Samuel Bennett

2011-11-07T11:12:00.001-05:00

I think it's important to showcase the impressive work of my peers, especially those who I have known for as long as Sam Bennett.

Last week I had the pleasure of watching Samuel Aaron Bennett's newest film on YouTube. A short film called Sad Little Men. I set my expectations high, as I have always been a fan of his work and knew going into it that I would enjoy it. Sad Little Men was utterly brilliant. The cinematography was absolutely stunning and the score was beautifully written. Now I am no film connoisseur, but I can tell when something just looks and sounds "right." Everything technical about the film to me was perfect. My only complaint was the length. The story felt rushed and I think it needed to unfold in a more gradual manner. It was in no doubt compelling, but in my opinion this film could have easily been a full length motion picture. I thought the story was so vast to be crammed into such a short timeline. Anyway, I am sure there are several reasons for this and regardless the film is definitely worth watching. Sam Bennett is an incredible writer, director, and composer. So if you haven't had the chance to see any of Sam's work yet, take a look now and make sure you check out his other work on his YouTube channel:

Sad Little Men
Directed, Written, Scored, Shot & Edited by Samuel Aaron Bennett.
Starring Jason Ralph & Will Whatley.
Sound Design by Brian Crimmins.
Produced by Dylan Steinberg.

*View the film in 1080p for the best quality*

NEGATIVE

2011-10-21T16:09:00.000-04:00

Hey everyone! I recently have been working on a new drawing. I actually finished it quite a while ago, but only recently got it onto the computer. I'm going to eventually colour it, but for now I'd like you all to check out the black and white version. Hopefully you all enjoy it!

Hurricane Irene

2011-10-19T22:08:00.000-04:00

WOW! It has been practically 6 months since I have posted and I think it is about time I start again. Since graduating Purchase College in May, I've been super busy, started a ton of new projects, but have yet to finish any of them. In the mean time here's a few photos I took after Hurricane Irene out east on Long Island.

Hope you all enjoy the pictures for now. Soon I will have my new website up and running, so check back for that :)

S.A.M.I.A. - Motor Diagram

2011-04-30T16:34:00.000-04:00

Here is a diagram of how the motors for S.A.M.I.A. (Sound Activated Motor Ink Art) were constructed.

Alien Part III

2011-04-29T14:18:00.001-04:00

Since my partner for Cross-Cultural Video dropped out I paired with Jared to make a third video to his topic Alien. Let me know if you like it!

Thanks!!

New Media Senior Show Website

2011-04-27T15:47:00.000-04:00

Hey! If you haven't checked out the New Media Senior Show website yet, you should definitely get on that. Force_Quit!

May the Force_Quit be with you!

Noise

2011-04-27T00:21:00.000-04:00

I had to make a video for my Cross-Cultural Video class again and meant to share it with all of you. It was supposed to be the beginning of a video exchange with a student from Belarus, however my partner had to drop from the class so I will never get a response to my Noise video. Anyway, I thought it was a really interesting topic and wanted to share it:

Hope you enjoyed it. Thanks for watching! :)

NEW MEDIA SENIOR SHOW

2011-04-26T15:39:00.000-04:00

Haven't posted in over a month, but I just wanted to let you guys know that the New Media Senior Show is up and running and looks great. You only have until this Friday to check it out in the Passage Gallery by the PAC. Here is an album of a ton of images taken by Peter Ohring during the Opening Reception this past Saturday.

Opening of the Senior Show Saturday April 23rd, 2011

Make sure you check out the show before it ends!

PTV69 - Studio Executives

2011-03-22T22:06:00.000-04:00

Check out one of PTV's new shows Studio Executives. They have two episodes up right now and they are definitely worth watching. Check out the show live every Thursday at Midnight!!!

Studio Execs episode 1 - watch more funny videos

Studio Execs episode 2 - watch more funny videos

Senior Project Update

2011-03-11T13:20:00.000-05:00

Three days ago I finally made some huge progress on my senior project. I recently ordered 12 worm screw dc motors off of ebay and on Tuesday they came in the mail! Being very excited I immediately made my way over to Home Depot to get myself a new power drill, a pair of pliers, and a 2 by 4. My plan was to make a bunch of equilateral triangles. That means all of the corners were going to have to be 60º. Since I was home I could use my parents table saw to cut the 2 by 4 into triangles.

Lots of Triangle Blocks

After cutting the triangles my mom, my friend Scott, and I sanded all the sides and slightly rounded the corners.

Triangle Blocks and Motor with Worm Screw

I then wanted to see how the motors would attach to the wood. I drilled a hole in the approximate center of the wood block and then screwed the worm screw motor into the hole on the block. It worked out even better than I imagined. Check out the image below.

Triangle Block Attached to Motor with Worm Screw

Here is a video of how it works:

The motor above will just be my test motor. Since I have 13 motors I have 3 that I can do pretty much whatever with since I'm going to try to stick to 10 motors in my installation. I came up with the idea of using triangle blocks, because now I can use the three sides to attach my three printer cartridges that will eventually be filled up with ink and then used to spit out ink all over the room. I am then going to paint all of the wooden triangles white and soon you will see what that looks like. I will also post sketches of how these motors will be attached in the final project.

Home for Cross-Cultural Video

2011-02-25T14:06:00.000-05:00

Our Cross-Cultural Video class had to make a video about "Home" or "Where You Are At." This is what I made:

PTV Live Shows Are Back!

2011-02-19T15:16:00.003-05:00

Yay! The new Spring semester has kicked off and that means Live Shows are back up and running. There's a few new ones this semester and some of our old favorites like Whalehammer and Purchase Late Night are back as well. Here is the schedule so far:

PTV Live Show Schedule

Monday
10:00 PM	Dick TV
11:00 PM	HoodRat Hotline
Midnight	Peter & Laura's Power Hower
Tuesday
9:30 PM	Everything I Own Smells Like Piss
10:00 PM	Movie Magic
11:00 PM	You're Naked
Wednesday
9:30 PM	Brick TV
10:00 PM	PTV MEETING: COME JOIN US!
Midnight	Purchase Late Night
Thursday
9:00 PM	News Flash with Michael Latin
10:00 PM	Show and Tell
11:00 PM	Whalehammer
Midnight	Studio Executives

Some of the shows may switch around, but for now this is what it looks like. Tune into PTV on channel 69 or watch it live on PTV69.com.

2 Million High Score Zuma Blitz

2011-02-06T18:33:00.000-05:00

First two weeks of school have already been busy, so I haven't had a chance to really update. In my spare time like always I play Zuma Blitz and I would just like to say that I just scored 2,149,290 points!!!

That is all...