Archive for the ‘Technology’ Category

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.

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.

My Desk

Apple, Blogging, Design, Technology | Tuesday, February 10th, 2009

A useless about page is one of the worst things you can have at a blog, right? I’m now — finally — about to change that. The last post was about why I write English — and also the first partly completing the about page —, this one is about my Mac Desk or Workspace — you choose how you call it.

For me its like for many creative or freelancing people — OK, I’m still at school but hey, I do my projects on side. Working at a desk is just impossible if it’s cultured with papers and other crappy stuff. Which means, that I normally have nothing lying around, especially if I want to enter the creative zone. The only things which are allowed to be there, are my MacBook, secondary screen, phone, a folder containing papers belonging to current projects I’m working on and — of course — my Keyboard, Mighty Mouse and Graphic Tablet.

The Whole Desk

The Whole Desk

My Two Chairs

My Two Chairs

Little about my desk. It’s 2.4m (94.49 inch) wide and 90 cm (35.43 inch) deep. It’s white which is one of the colors I like most. There are usually two chairs in front of my desk, one with a back which is chilly and one without which I like best for long sessions cause it doesn’t let me lay back and forces me stick to the work to get done.

Like I already sad, having a clean workspace is key for me to get creative or even just to get some work done. I can’t concentrate if there are many papers — which don’t belong to the project I’m currently working on —, dust or other stuff lying around. If you look at the pictures you’ll probably notice that there are two colors which dominate the room. White and Red. I love the white because it lightens the room and I also love the red because it’s a strong contrast to the white which is supposed to let me think out of the box and makes me fell good.

In the end it comes down to a clean, ordered and uncluttered work-area which makes me happy and helps me to get work done. The best part is I’m happy when I can sit down at my desk to get work done rather than sitting at school at desks which are not that great designed and chairs which are not comfortable.

The MacBook plus Screen, Keyboard and Mouse

The MacBook plus Screen, Keyboard and Mouse

What is your thought about the workspace? Is it worth spending some time and money to design a great work-area and to keep it clean? Or don’t you care about the place you are working in? What do you think? Feel free to leave a comment.

Time Machine and Aperture Vault saved my Live

Apple, Technology | Friday, January 9th, 2009

About 4 month ago the internal hard drive of my MacBook died. The problem is that I don’t own a second Mac or have another Mac in my family which means that I’m not able to get on working like normal and have to move over to my old windows machine for work, which is not really possible cause nearly all applications I use are Mac only. The last time it took about 3 days till my new drive arrived and I was able to restore my files via my Time Machine backup. This time was a little different. My internal hard drive died again some days ago. Here is the story what happened and how I got out of it.

Apple File Vault

Normally I’m not a big fan of Apple’s File Vault and for that reason I haven’t activate it till the 25c3. I thought that would be a security option which I shouldn’t miss. So, I activated it, went to the 25c3 and nothing happened. I came back home and plugged my Time Machine hard drive into my MacBook and still nothing unusual happened. But some days ago – it was the first of January – after that I came back to my MacBook and it wouldn’t start.

Restoring

That was the first moment I thought that, there is something wrong. Future testing and it turned out that the hard drive broke again. I was lucky that a family member of mine was able to give me a 2.5″ hard dive to plug into my MacBook and I was serious that I’m able to restore the system with my Time Machine backup. But that turned out to be wrong. I tried to install the system via the Mac OS X 1.5 Leopard DVD and restoring, everything went well. I tried to log in and an error message popped up saying that something was wrong with the users File Vault image.

Seeing something like this really scares me. All work gone? All pictures taken at the 25c3 gone? But I didn’t gave up. I tried again, this time with the last Time Machine Backup made just before I left without File Vault turned on. And the restore and the following login went smoothly. But there was still the problem with my Aperture Library which was rearranged entirely in this few days I was not at home. There I just had luck, that I backed up the Library via Aperture Vault just after coming home. I restored the Aperture Library via this Vault and had my system back where it’s now. Just some little changes, some text files and apps deleted, some new installed and written down some text and everything works again.

Conclusion

That’s the story how Apple’s Time Machine and Aperture’s Vault saved all my work don mostly in 2008. And I even learned a big something, that I have to be careful with File Vault and should use more than one way to back up my files – on a regular bases.
Have you ever had such a extreme case of backup need?