Archive for March, 2009

My Thoughts on Design

Design | Tuesday, March 31st, 2009

This post is part four of the series, completing my about page with more than just short paragraphs.

Design is a theme which is getting bigger all around the internet more and more. More and more people call them selfs designers and talk about design, inspiration and creativity — I’m not going to exclude me from that! But I found out that I can criticize design but creating something completely out of my own is nearly to ‘not possible’ — the effect is that I respect everyone who has that gift to create something out of his own — , at least not now.

Creating something for me, like a web-design or my business-card works great cause I have as much time as I need to get a inspiration but if I need to get something done for a other person with other thoughts on design it’s hard for me to come up with something creative — and that in a reasonable time. I don’t say that I’m not good at design — but I do not say that I’m good at design either. I think — like everything you have a passion in — you can learn it. Great thoughts on that were written by Michael Mistretta who wrote a post about ‘The Myth of Talent‘ and that’s how I think about my passion on design. Design is something in what, as far as I can tell, I don’t have talent in but if I spend time and effort I can come up with something great, it just takes time.

Design is a great thing, a great area and for sure a interesting theme, with information about it all over the internet. For me design is a passion, creating something can be hard and mostly takes a lot of time.

Some weeks ago, I decided that I will not spend much time into design in the next few month cause I need the time to learn other things but I definitely will not give up the design passion. I’ll train my skills and I’ll spend time and effort, just not now and that’s OK for me.

Next is Thoughts on Project Management. Stay tuned for part five of the series. If you want let me know your feedback or maybe tell your story.

If you want to support the developer, buy the full version. But there’s no need to tell everyone else not to. Devs know the pros and cons.

~ @definetheline

For me as a student, I look at it this way: I can’t afford each and every software I would like to use, which is the reason that I think  MacHeist Bundle(reflink) is especially great for students and private persons who do not make money or not much money though the apps. Second thought is quiet the same like this:

… To those critiquing, look at it this way. No developer was forced into participating, those who have spoken out regarding their involvement seem over the moon with the results to date, …

~ Glenn Wolsey

I am happy about the bundle I couldn’t afford many of the apps right away but wanted to use most of them for quiet some time now and one more thought against the critiquing.

On MacHeist – If a band puts up free tracks online, do you tell everyone NOT to download them cause it doesn’t support the artist?

~ @definetheline

If you are interested in the discussion, maybe you should have a look at here and here.

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My Photography Story

Photography | Tuesday, March 24th, 2009

This post is part three of the series, completing my about page with more than just short paragraphs.

Doing just web-development and a little design stuff for quiet a long time, I discovered a new passion of mine. Photography. It was some years ago and the only cameras our family owned have been a ‘Nikon Coolpix 2200′ and a ‘FinePix 2800Zoom’—we still own that cameras. The first steps were taking pictures at private parties and than discovering some other gear my dad owned.

The gear I’m talking about is a set of lenses and 2 analog SLR bodies which caught my eyes. I was hooked by the simplicity and the abilities which you have with such a camera and wanted to have one my own. I have to admit, that I just tested the cameras without film because I didn’t had films and didn’t wanted to buy some—being a tech guy, I’m not was not willing to wait for the pictures to be sent home after they had been developed—, but the testing and playing with the cameras was enough for me to gather more information about the field. And there was one second thing that raised my interest. Some people around me had just bought their first DSLR showing up everywhere with the new gear to shoot. I went out searched for the best gear I could afford and pretty fast got to know that I would have to invest more than I first thought it would cost me and the thought was forgotten numerous times.

But finally, someday early year 2008 I decided to go for it. The first decision I had to make was, which family I wanted to buy—Nikon, Canon, Sony or Olympus. In the end it came down to a fight between Nikon and Canon cause I thought—and still think, but slowly it’s changing—that these are the big players. One more part of these decision was which gear people around me had chosen and there are way more Canon users than Nikon users. So I decided to go for a Canon that I could trade gear with other people I know.

The family wasn’t the problem but now I had to decide which body of that family I wanted to choose. A friend of mine and photographer told me, that if I can afford it, I should go for the last semi-prof model, which was the EOS 30D, while the EOS 40D already was at the marked, than with the amateur-model, which would have been the EOS 450D. In the end I choose the semi-professional model like my friend advised me and in mid March I bought a ‘Canon EOS 30D’ with the kit lens ‘Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6′. Followed buy a rucksack from LowePro to get the gear everywhere I would need it.

Playing with that camera was, and still is, a lot of fun and I’m glad I bough the one I decided to buy. Over the course I expanded my gear with a prime lens—Canon EF 50mm f/1.8—, a zoom lens—Sigma 55-200mm f/4-5.6 DC—a wireless shutter remote, a external flash—Canon SpeedLight 430 EX II—, a battery grip and a carbon tripod. Which makes it all a heavy gear to cary but also a great gear to shoot with.

Of-course the gear is not the best but I think it’s pretty good for what I need and able to use. I would like to replace some of the lenses with light stronger and maybe stabilized once but there is no need special need for spending a great amount of money on that. I also would love a Fisheye but that has to wait!

Being just happy about the gear is not enough. You have to use it and, much more time consuming, you have to sort and edit the shots you’ve taken. My biggest problem is that I struggle with sorting and editing the photos, especially if I was on vacation and took like 3000 of pictures in 2 weeks and than have to sort all of them. There you have to invest time. I hope that I get this done in a better way in the future. If you’d like to have a look at my pictures, I publish them at flickr.

The next post is about my my design story, even though this story wouldn’t be as happy as the photography story. Stay tuned for part four of the series. If you want let me know your feedback or maybe tell your story.

Bring Down IE 6

The premise is simple: Internet Explorer 6 is antiquated, doesn’t support key web standards, and should be phased out.

~ Bring Down IE 6

That is a field of problems we all know in the web business! Old browsers which do not support new technology or at least the technology of the time ‘right’—which is particularily right for IE6. If you are browsing this website with IE6 you’ll see a red box at the top which tells you that your browser is out dated so please all of you using an old browser like Internet Explorer 6 move on and get a new one.

… designers need to unite, and we all need to move on.

~ Bring Down IE 6

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My Way to Web-Development

Personal, Technology, Web | Tuesday, March 17th, 2009

This post is part two of the series, completing my about page with more than just short paragraphs.

Like I already wrote, I started to learn coding with the book ‘HTML for Kids’. I than slowly started to play less games and focused more and more on coding, switching to Visual Basic for some time and later switching back to HTML, CSS, Java Script and PHP, doing some of my own projects which—I think—nearly every one, learning to code one of this languages, tries to get done.
Some of which have been a simple guestbook-script, a counter/analytics tool, a news script, an account management systems (user management) and for me in the end the plan was to code a ContentManagementSystem or at least a framework to use for website development. Most of this projects were shut down pretty quick caused by new ideas—how to do something—hitting my mind or new ideas for new projects.

In this time a friend of mine and I got our first client, who asked us if we could design and code a website—some HTML, CSS and PHP. For me it was the first time I had the experience working with a client and with a deadline! Doing the website was a little tone of work and we had to learn many things from scratch and redo the project some times before it turned out the way we and the client wanted it to be. Even though I have to admit in the end, it looked pretty good but if I look back at that website I’m not proud of it and wouldn’t add it to my portfolio but I’m proud that I did it, the way I did it, the time I did it—keeping in mind that was in 8th grade.

After that project, I started some other activities, projects like game-server hosting and trying some various things, like coding an own community site/social-network. While most of this ideas have been a mess, I learned so much through them that I think it was good for me, to learn different things and to get some experience in the field. And it fit’s my idea of learning something. I think that way of learning something is way better than school. Learning something just by hearing about it, writing down some lines and than learning till you get bored is not the way to go—at least not for me. I learn by doing failures, experimenting and getting hurt—wether it’s stress, money or just invested time. This process may take longer than the normal way but in the end it’s more of a value to me.

Doing all that also thought me something about me. Which is the reason I slowly moved away from this row coding sessions too more a project managing and ‘doing’ kinda thing. This mainly happened by discovering things like WordPress—which is a gorgeous CMS. Since than I started to use ready to use resources from the web to get my projects out there and to get client work done in less time than before when I had to code everything my self. Nowadays I use WordPress as a publishing platform—with a bunch of plugins—, PHP classes, a JavaScript framework—jQuery—and a reset css script—coded by my self.

Using all that made my workflow much faster and I’m happy about that because now I can focus on other things like actually bringing something out there rather than getting stuck in the early day development—even though I love to do some coding some times—and focus more on things like blogging, design, planing, collecting ideas, brainstorming or networking and of course photography.

Done! What’s next? Ah OK, photography! Stay tuned for part three of the series. If you want let me know your feedback or maybe tell your story.

As a blogger myself, I’ve always wondered what other people’s workstations look like. I realize many of you probably wonder the same thing, so I’ve decided to prepare this post which includes photos of work spaces from popular blogs and websites.

~ Webdesigner Depot

This quote pretty much covers, why I’m posting so many workstation posts. I love mine and love to look at others workspaces. This list of workstations of popular websites is a mix of clean and minimalist workspaces but also includes some cluttered — like I never could work at! The interesting part of the site is that it showcases some of the desks of popular websites like ProBlogger and CSS-Tricks.

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My very first years with a PC

Personal, Technology | Tuesday, March 10th, 2009

This post is part one of the series, completing my about page with more than just short paragraphs.

We all life in a time where development isn’t just ‘going on’ it’s running. I was born in a time where the PC wasn’t that popular and not even close to be in each and every house hold. Ok, the time where the first steps have been made, was already over and the personal PC was on it’s way but far away from being popular like nowadays. The first computer I used was the laptop which my dad had that time for work. The use for me was mostly focused on playing little games. The next years pretty much nothing changed about that, till we as a family got our first PC. That was the time I started to play more often—well and maybe that wasn’t as social as I thought. But something changed as I got my first book about programming. The book was called ‘HTML for Kids’ and I slowly started to learn that language—even though, I didn’t stop spending way to much time, playing games.

A few years later—I would say it was something around 2001—I got my first own PC—with Windows 2000 and Windows 98 installed. Things barely changed. Still I played a lot of games and on the side started together with a class mate to learn ‘Visual Basic’. It didn’t took long for me to discover that the programming of programs is not mine and switched the focus back to web-development by participating it more and more. To practice more and learn more, I got involved in the homepage-group at my school which maintained the web-site of the school. But that was not enough for me and I got on teaching my self at home, moving from ‘Visual Basic’ back to HTML and added CSS and PHP to the set of languages I wanted to learn.

Since than the computer is a big part of my daily life—maybe to big?—and I can’t imagine not to have one—which is somehow seems not good!

That’s it. The part about the beginnings is over. Next is my way to web-development. Stay tuned for part two of the series. If you want let me know your feedback or maybe tell your story.

In the series of big desks, I found an other desk which is worth mentioning. The desk of the software developer Stefan Didak with unbelievable 12 screens!

Massive Desk by Stefan Didak

Massive Desk by Stefan Didak

He also has written a FAQ like page about his office. If you want to find out more about his work and the use of this crazy setup, [click here].

Note: Like with the other big desk, I would love to have such a desk. BUT: I would prefer Mac Pro’s as for the back end much more!

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Filling my About Page with a Series of Post

Blogging, Design, Personal, Photography | Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009

Since some time, I’m writing on this series of posts, which is supposed to be a little background story of my life. Explaining which are my passions, what I do all day long and why I’m here blogging. The second purpose of this post is to fill my about page with some more information. The up and coming posts will be covering the following topics:

  1. My very first years with a PC (Posted: 2009-03-10)
  2. My Way to Web-Development (Posted: 2009-03-17)
  3. My Photography Story (Posted: 2009-03-24)
  4. My Thoughts on Design (Posted: 2009-03-31)
  5. Thoughts on Project Management (Posted: 2009-04-07)
  6. Why I switched or My Macintosh Workstation (Posted: 2009-04-14)
  7. My Way to Blogging (Posted: 2009-04-21)
  8. The current situation and a look into the future (Posted: 2009-04-28)

One thought popped into my mind while I was writing this series: Why should someone be interested in all this, the story about a young man hitting the internet telling his way to all that?

I thought quiet long about this, coming down to three different aspects. First, I like to read similar stories cause I’m interested in the life of others, they inspire me and I can learn from them about how to life my life, what are their passions, the professions and the backgrounds, why they do what they do like they do it. Second, I wanted to fill my about page with value, doing this with some quick paragraphs was not my thought, I want that someone who wants to know more, can read an article about that special parts. Third — the last — is that I want to write an overview about my story that I can remember and read it some day, cause now I can remember the most parts best even though I don’t want to just write it down for my self.

I hope, the posts are well written, interesting and informative. At the moment my post schedule is one post on Tuesday at 00:00 AM (CET, Germany — Berlin) and one at Friday also at 00:00 AM (CET, Germany — Berlin). I want to stick to that schedule this is why I publish this series Tuesdays for the next couple of weeks and still be posting a different post at Fridays.

Update: This series is over. All posts are published.