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barbara and i

I’m a screen capturing fanatic. If I see a great color or palette on a website, I capture it for my collection of digital color “swatches.” Recently, I stumbled upon Scrnshots, which is a website that lets you upload screen caps of designs that inspire you. It’s actually the source of my “Wall of Inspiration” in this blog’s sidebar. It has an application that you can install and use to capture these images to automatically annotate, tag and upload.

90% of my screen capturing, though, is for tutorial illustrating and sending clients diagrams of “where to click.” I’ve found that it’s much easier to send a graphic how-to to a client than trying to explain over the phone or through email. Less “it’s the text box on the right sidebar in the box that says tags…” and more productivity.

Diagrams with screen caps are great if you can't meet a client in-person whenever they have issues.

Diagrams with screen caps are great if you can't meet a client in-person whenever they have issues.

I’ve had my Macbook for over a year now, and gone are the days where I had Windows XP and had to Ctrl+PrtScn and THEN open up MS Paint to paste the screenshot! Now that Windows 7 is out, I was curious as to how Microsoft has evolved their screen capturing features (or lack thereof). It turns out that Windows 7 has a “snipping tool” that has FIVE STEPS it seems! I don’t have Windows 7 so, please, if you are a user – let me know if there is a simpler way to do it!

On the Mac, native screen capturing (native, meaning you don’t need to install any programs – the operating system already has the feature) is easy as grilled cheese. Here is a rundown of easy-to-remember shortcuts for screen capturing:

  • Entire screen: Command-Shift-3 Takes a screen capture of the entire screen and automatically saves it as a PNG to your Desktop
  • Selected area: Command-Shift-4 Your cursor turns into a cross-hair, allowing you to select an area to capture, then saves that cap as a PNG to your Desktop.
  • Window: After you press Command-Shift-4 and get that cross-hair cursor, hitting the Spacebar turns that cross-hair into a neat-looking camera. You can then click any open window to capture – which is automatically saved as a PNG to your Desktop.

Now, those all automatically save the screen caps to your Desktop, in a “Picture #.png” filename format. By the end of the day, I tend to have a dozen or so “Picture #.png” files on my Desktop.  I don’t mind this, but you prefer to have your screen caps copied into your Clipboard memory instead of being saved as a file, you only have to add the Control key to the mix (ex. Control-Command-Shift-3 copies your entire screen onto the Clipboard, then you can paste it into whatever application you’d like to).

One last tip – If you have the cross-hair or camera cursor, and you decide to opt out of making the screen cap, just hit Esc and your cursor will go back to normal mode.  Now, I think it’s pretty awesome how simple it is for Mac users to capture screens, windows and selected areas. Microsoft doesn’t seem to have gotten it right this time. I’m sure that one day, though, you Window users will be able to clutter your Desktop with garbage as easily as we Mac users can!

Originally published at Dear Bloggery, a Jenn Schiffer Joint. You can comment here or there.

Wordcamp NYC badges

  • Nov. 14th, 2009 at 11:25 PM
barbara and i

Aren’t they awesome?

I think I might scan it for ye olde about page…

Originally published at Dear Bloggery, a Jenn Schiffer Joint. You can comment here or there.

barbara and i

I don't like when Twitter tells me what to do. I don’t have television. Well, I have a television, but I don’t get any channels – it’s basically for watching movies and playing video games. I get my news from compulsively checking Google News and from Twitter.

Lately, though, Twitter has been filled with lots of garbage trending. As you may have noticed tonight, the top trend for a while was “Earn Real Income,” which is lame because I don’t like when Twitter tells me what to do. It was the top trending topic 10 minutes ago because of spam accounts posting it. For 20 minutes after that, though, it was trending because 90% of the Twitterati were asking why “Earn Real Income” was trending topic. The other 10% were posting what kind of sexual favors you can perform to “Earn Real Income.”

I looked at some of the users of spamming Twitter accounts, and it makes me wonder – what’s with spam and blatant misspellings? In an attempt to seem like a real Twitter user, spam accounts like to use tons of dollar symbols and ‘maming‘ instead of ‘making.’ Perhaps spam was created by the spelling and grammar gods to bring to our attention the misuse of the English language. Perhaps spam is a GOOD thing, opening our eyes to the damage we are bestowing upon ourselves for posting #youknowYOURugly memes and the like.

If that’s the case, thank you spam.  You have opened my eyes to something that Google News would never have told me.

Originally published at Dear Bloggery, a Jenn Schiffer Joint. You can comment here or there.

Microsoft <3’s Open Source (not really)

  • Nov. 13th, 2009 at 9:56 PM
barbara and i

So, today I read in PC Mag that this guy discovered that Microsoft used open source code for a small feature in Windows 7. Yes, the code they used was covered by the GPLv2 license, so anyone is able to modify it BUT they must, at least, offer to provide the source code of their modifications (in this case, let us all see the source code of the Windows 7 feature using that code). SCANDALOUS!

GPL is part of the GNU project. Therefore I present, to you, a Gnu.

GPL is part of the GNU project. Therefore I present, to you, a Gnu.

Gracefully and humbly, though, Microsoft apologized (an outsider wrote the feature and they missed in review) and said that they will make the source code and binaries available next week. I’m actually excited that a story like this broke, because it brings a not-so-mainstream topic into light, and that is software licensing (specifically GPL). I taught my students about different licenses a couple of weeks ago, but did not get too deep into the subject because it was a completely new concept to them (most of them admit to pirating software and music, so licensing issues are not really keeping them up at night, I guess). Also, WordCamp NYC is tomorrow, and WordPress is under the GPLv2, so it is something I am very familiar and fond of in my work.

GPL allows for software to be free – not necessarily in cost, but in its usage. I can create a WordPress theme and sell it, for example, but I cannot make any demands, such as “no modifying the code and releasing it” or “only use this theme on one installation,” etc. If I want to sell it, that’s fine, but someone who buys it can definitely post it on their website and give it away for free. That might sound lame and all, but if it weren’t for the freedom I get from WordPress – which we do NOT pay for – I would never have been able to create that theme. GNU licenses can also be used for documentation or books. Mark Pilgrim’s book, Dive into Python is free to download and modify, and someone actually took advantage of the license and is selling it on Amazon.com as an eBook. Matt Mullenweg, founding developer of WordPress, talks about GPL and WordPress in this video:


My favorite part of that video is the quick, subtle jab at the Thesis theme, which is not GPL. Now, I’m not a license or GNU expert by any means, so please let me know if any of my points are incorrect. Mullenweg is much better at explaining how the GPL works and how it applies to premium themes and plugins.

All this talk of GPL and WordPress is getting me all excited for WordCamp NYC tomorrow!

Originally published at Dear Bloggery, a Jenn Schiffer Joint. You can comment here or there.

Styling Wordpress Image Captions

  • Nov. 10th, 2009 at 11:59 PM
barbara and i

I was adding CSS to a client’s new WordPress blog to make her image captions look nice and it reminded me of how small details like that can be an afterthought to theme designers and developers (hell, it is for me – that’s why I was adding it to her site this morning!).

Wordpress’ default style for captions is very clean and chic – using a light gray and taking advantage of border-radius to get rounded corners. I played around with the background color, image, border and rounded edges to come up with two other styles. Yes, I could come up with more, but I have to wake up in 5 hours to teach a 7am class. My inspiration for this post is the Sexual Cowboy himself, Clint Eastwood:

Picture 1

The following code is the CSS for these 3 different image caption types. You can just copy & paste them into your Wordpress site’s style sheet, and you/your clients/writers will be able to add captions with zazz. To see the code in action (since you’re probably reading this via RSS, Livejournal & Facebook), I posted a demo here.


/* Wordpress Default */

.wp-caption {
	border: 1px solid #ddd;
	text-align: center;
	background-color: #f3f3f3;
	padding-top: 4px;
	margin: 10px;
	-moz-border-radius: 3px;
	-khtml-border-radius: 3px;
	-webkit-border-radius: 3px;
	border-radius: 3px;
}

.wp-caption img {
	margin: 0;
	padding: 0;
	border: 0 none;
}

.wp-caption p.wordpressimagecaptions-default-caption-text {
	font-size: 11px;
	line-height: 14px;
	padding: 0 4px 5px;
	margin: 0;
}

/* Adding a Background */

.wp-caption {
	border: 1px solid #ddd;
	text-align: center;
	background-image: url('yourimage.jpg');
	padding-top: 4px;
	margin: 10px;
	-moz-border-radius: 3px;
	-khtml-border-radius: 3px;
	-webkit-border-radius: 3px;
	border-radius: 3px;
}

.wp-caption img {
	margin: 0;
	padding: 0;
	border: 0 none;
}

.wp-caption p.wp-caption-text {
	font-size: 11px;
	line-height: 14px;
	padding: 0 4px 5px;
	margin: 0;
}

/* Different color & larger border & larger border radius */

.wp-caption {
	border: 4px solid #ddd;
	text-align: center;
	background: #0099CC;
	padding-top: 4px;
	margin: 10px;
	-moz-border-radius: 10px;
	-khtml-border-radius: 10px;
	-webkit-border-radius: 10px;
	border-radius: 10px;
}

.wp-caption img {
	margin: 0;
	padding: 0;
	border: 0 none;
}

.wp-caption p.wp-caption-text {
	font-size: 11px;
	line-height: 14px;
	padding: 0 4px 5px;
	margin: 0;
}

It’s important that you keep the “.wp-caption” selector, so that you or the blog writer can just enter a caption when they upload an image on the “Add New Post” page without having to know CSS and HTML. If you have any questions on image caption styles, or ideas you’d like to see me implement, let me know. I kind of live for this stuff.

Originally published at Dear Bloggery, a Jenn Schiffer Joint. You can comment here or there.

barbara and i

Any illness sucks, but with the swine flu being a hot topic in the news, you can’t be sick without someone accusing you of having H1N1. It’s kind of like how everyone would say I looked like Sarah Palin with my glasses on ONLY because I am a Caucasian female wearing glasses during a presidential election that happens to involve a Caucasian female wearing glasses. I won’t have to worry about THAT anymore, ever since some d-bag stole my glasses in August. Ughhhh.

ANYWAY. I was sick all of last week and I’m pretty sure it was the flu. Of course I’ll never know because I don’t have health insurance and cannot afford to go to a doctor and pay them $50+ to tell me to drink a lot of fluids and get some rest. I’m feeling a lot better, though, which is good – this week is filled with meetings, getting lots of work done (HAHA OK, JENN) and going to WordCamp.

UPDATE: I woke up this morning with a cough that could rip the skin off an elephant’s ass.  Poor elephant, I’ll let you borrow these pants.

Originally published at Dear Bloggery, a Jenn Schiffer Joint. You can comment here or there.

Wordcamp NYC 2009!!

  • Nov. 6th, 2009 at 10:04 PM
barbara and i

WordCampNYC – Nov 14-15 November 14th and 15th is WordCamp in NYC! It’s a gathering of WordPress newbies, developers and designers. I’ll be there for both days (taking advantage of NJ Transit’s new weekend Montclair train service ::gag::), and am super excited to network with other WP’ers and learn about more advanced plugin and theme development. Late registration is only $45, so…

WHO IS COMING?

Originally published at Dear Bloggery, a Jenn Schiffer Joint. You can comment here or there.

Rachel’s Floating Head Salon

  • Nov. 5th, 2009 at 11:20 PM
barbara and i

beyondstyle

This card reminds me of simpler times, when we did not have to dial area codes before local numbers, or worry about hairspray putting holes in the ozone layer. Sigh.

Originally published at Dear Bloggery, a Jenn Schiffer Joint. You can comment here or there.

My iPhone 3GS and I woke up sick today

  • Nov. 3rd, 2009 at 5:54 PM
barbara and i

iphone in 3rd personI have a cold, and the iPhone was popping up a “This accessory is not made to work with iPhone” message all day, even though I did not have any accessories plugged in.

Although it was extremely annoying, I did find it funny that my iPhone talks about itself in the third person. Well, Jenn cleaned out iPhone’s dock with Post-it note folded up and now iPhone no annoy Jenn anymore.

Edit: I forgot to mention the most annoying part of this error – the speakers of the iPhone were not working; the only way to get sound was when I put the headphones in. Sorry for not mentioning that major bit…

Originally published at Dear Bloggery, a Jenn Schiffer Joint. You can comment here or there.

Photoshop CS3 crashing on File>Open

  • Nov. 2nd, 2009 at 8:21 PM
barbara and i

This has been annoying the HELL out of me for the past 2 months. I don’t know why it started, but every time I opened a file from the menu, this would happen:

PS: “Sorry, Jenn, but I’m going to crash now. Okay or cancel?”
Jenn: “Oh come on! What kind of bizarre ultimatum is that?! Okay.”
PS: “I crashed. Okay, Jenn?”
Jenn: “OKAY! I GET IT!”

It was annoying enough to piss me off, but not enough, apparently, for me to find a fix until tonight. After searching for other people having the same issue (most after installing security cameras, which I have not), I decided to just reset my Photoshop Settings manually. Guess what – it freakin’ worked.

Here is how you reset Photoshop CS3 to its default settings: Hold down command, option and shift (for Mac OS X – or control, alt and shift for Windows) and open Photoshop or a file that will open Photoshop. A dialog will pop up, prompting you to confirm deletion. Click ‘okay,’ or else you’re just wasting you and Photoshop’s time.

That’s one less annoyance to scratch off the list…

Edit (11/17/09): 2 weeks after I had asked Adobe Support what to do, they finally responded.  Their suggestion was the same as mine – except they managed to spread it out into 2945723 steps somehow.  Thanks anyway, Adobe.

Originally published at Dear Bloggery, a Jenn Schiffer Joint. You can comment here or there.

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barbara and i

You know when you get an idea, and you can’t focus on anything until you’ve made that idea become a reality? I get that WEEKLY – and yesterday, my idea for a new Wordpress theme took over my life. It’s something I threw together in 2 nights and integrates my upcoming freelancing-content with my need for a project slider (that you can make appear and disappear with just a click!). I still have to get a lot of new content up, so there is just the blog and bio, for now. I’ll also be making some small edits throughout the next week while I get a feel for my new look.

Besides revamping my site, I have a new Wordpress theme almost ready to launch, along with a couple of client’s sites going live in the next week or so. This has been keeping me from writing “Do Junk” posts – I don’t feel like a total blogger failure, though, because I DID get TONS of stuff done.

COMING SOON – I’ll be posting a video of Barbara teaching me how to grow cells in the lab once I’m done editing it. Needless to say, you can now add biologist to my resumé (HAHAHAH NOT REALLY).

Originally published at jjschiffer.com. You can comment here or there.

OMG

  • Oct. 13th, 2009 at 11:28 PM
barbara and i
Celtic Thunder appearance in Montclair today: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yu_moia-oVI

Have the date AND time on top of your Mac.

  • Oct. 11th, 2009 at 11:23 PM
barbara and i

Here’s what the top of my Mac looks like:

Picture 5

My icons are the following (in order): Gmail Notifier, smc Fan Control, MobileMe Syncing, Time Machine, my Dual Screen settings, Expose, my Ink preferences for my tablet, Airport wireless status, volume control, date, time, battery status and Spotlight.

What I’m going to write about today is the Date and Time. Normally, the time is up there by default. If you want the date, you can click on it and see the calendar. This annoyed me greatly, so I decided to tweak the task bar a bit so that the date is always up there. I currently have Mac OS X Leopard on my machine – I do not know if this does or doesn’t work for Snow Leopard.

Here’s how you do it: Click on the time and then on “Open Date & Time…” Your little calendar settings will open up.

Picture 2

Next, click on the “Open International…” button towards the bottom of the window. Then click on the “Formats” tab. The following is what your window should look like:

Picture 3

If you click on “Customize” in the dates section, you’ll see the settings for formatting the date. Use the dropdown menu to find out what format you’d like to use. I use ‘medium.’ Copy the date in the text box.

Picture 7

Close the window to go back to the “Formats” tab. Now, click on “Customize” in the time section and you’ll see a window similar to what you were looking at before. Go to ‘medium’ in the dropdown menu and paste your date format from the previous step before or after your time format in the text box. Customize it to look like whatever you’d like it to. I inserted “//” in between the date and the time to make it look better.

Picture 8

So, there you go! The date AND time on your desktop. It makes me happy and I hope it makes you happy too.

Originally published at Dear Bloggery, a Jenn Schiffer Joint. You can comment here or there.

Testing your site on multiple browsers.

  • Oct. 10th, 2009 at 11:31 AM
barbara and i

I’m working on a design that looks kick-ass in Safari, Firefox and Chrome, but looked like total garbage on Internet Explorer. It’s easy for one to just say “screw it!” and ignore the browser we web designers hate so much, but it’s not good for business. According to W3Schools’ browser stats, Internet Explorer was the second most-used browser last month. As a matter of fact, 15% of this blog’s traffic comes from IE users.

visitors

It’s REALLY important to make your design translate well enough for all these IE users. Imagine if your site was not viewable to IE users – if your site was an e-commerce site, you’d be alienating a HUGE potential clientele!

There are a couple of tools/techniques that I find incredibly useful when making my design friendly for IE. One is IE Net Renderer, which is a fantastic (and free) site that renders a screenshot of your site using various versions of Internet Explorer. It only takes a screenshot, though, and may not have a chance to load all your fancy Javascript in time – so it may not produce such an accurate image.

If you have a Mac and want to actually see and click on links in the Internet Explorer browsers, you can install a virtual box and run Windows on it or you can partition your hard drive and install Windows through Boot Camp. I’m not going to go into details with that now (although if you want me to go into it in the future, let me know and I’ll be glad to do so when I don’t have 294582497525 deadlines to meet). Anyway – if you have Windows and want to test your site on multiple versions (for example IE8 is VERY DIFFERENT from IE6), you can install IE8 from the Microsoft site and then install MultipleIEs, which installs all the versions of IE before 7 on your computer with ease!

Now, I can increase the size of this post 10-fold by discussing what a major PAIN IN MY ASS Internet Explorer is, or how users who refuse to upgrade from IE6 are holding back innovation of web design and development, but I don’t feel like going to bed angry tonight. If you are holding onto IE6 because you hate IE8, just switch to Firefox because you are KILLING me.

Originally published at Dear Bloggery, a Jenn Schiffer Joint. You can comment here or there.

Freely make a free coaster for free

  • Oct. 7th, 2009 at 9:59 PM
barbara and i

I was doing some work, yesterday, and was way annoyed at my can of pop sweating all over my desk. It was leaving stains and making my elbows wet (weirdest feeling ever).

coaster_sweat

I tossed my coasters from my old apartment because they were fugly, so I decided to improvise. My desk is next to our CD rack, so I figured I’d use one of the empty plastic ones, but that would have been just as fugly as using a Post-it note – so I decided to print out some cool patterns and make my CD coaster a little more presentable.

coaster_materials

This project is so easy that my thumb-less cat can do it. I just printed out two patterns from the Reprodepot book I used in the iPhone dock project.

I took the artwork out of the CD case I was using and traced the shape onto my patterns.

coaster_trace

Really, all you have to do, then, is put the pattern into the case and close it up. No glue is necessary. I told you it was easy!

coaster_patterns

I stuck with the whole farm theme with the chickens and a gingham pattern for the other side. I even cut out a “J” from the leftover pattern because everyone/cat here has a name that starts with a “J.”

coaster_final

So, this was a stupid project, but now I have a sweat-free desk. The coaster is also big enough to hold a can of pop and a tea cup (I usually am drinking both at once because I’m just a total lush like that). I plan on making a whole set of them, which would look really cute stacked on a coffee table.

Originally published at Dear Bloggery, a Jenn Schiffer Joint. You can comment here or there.

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barbara and i

I teach a course at MSU that teaches students fluency with technology. Once a week we work in the lab primarily with Microsoft Office 2007. I do not own my own copy, though, because I am a Mac user on a budget! So, how do I make documents, presentations and spreadsheets AND grade my students’ papers WITHOUT Office?

Google Docs and NeoOffice!

NeoOffice (ugly ass website alert) is an open source Office-like suite (my students learned what software suites are last week!). It’s basically the Mac-friendly version of OpenOffice. It’s a locally installed (meaning one installs it on their own computer) suite that has everything you’d need to get by in school without paying for a student edition of Office. As a matter of fact, the student edition of Office does not include Access, and NeoOffice DOES have a database program.

Picture 1

Google Docs is an awesome tool as well. Instead of having to install it locally, it is actually a web application that you use a Google (or Gmail) account to login. This means that you can access the app and your documents EVERYWHERE. I started using it last year and, ever since, have not carried any flash drives on me! I keep spreadsheets of my student’s grades, client meeting schedules, and angry letters to my previous landlord – and they go wherever I can access the Internet (my iPhone, the lab, etc.).

Picture 3

My favorite thing about Docs is that you can share documents with other users. For example, Katie and I shared a document for listing possible names of our web design biz. At one point, we were both editing the document at the same time and can see all the vulgar words each other were typing.

In conclusion (I love when student essays begin their conclusion with that), there is no need to fret if you cannot fork over the dough for some fancy schmancy memory-hogging MS Office. Even if you have Office, I suggest you give Google Docs a try. It’s just so cool to collaborate with your colleagues on the same document without getting emails from everyone on the team. AND IT’S FREE!

Originally published at Dear Bloggery, a Jenn Schiffer Joint. You can comment here or there.

Make a delicious vegan dish!

  • Oct. 5th, 2009 at 10:00 AM
barbara and i

I LOVE SWEET POTATOES.
I LOVE BLACK BEANS.
I LOVE BURRITOS.
I LOVE SWEET POTATO & BLACK BEAN BURRITOS!

…and tonight I made them for myself and they were delicious. It only takes about a half hour of your time and is made with common ingredients – but it’s not bland and “tree bark”ish like many non-vegans seem to think our food is.

The first thing you need is a kitchen.

burritokitchen

See, our kitchen is technically not a kitchen. It’s super tiny, but it serves it’s purpose. When Jimmy and I are both there, doing our thang, it kind of reminds me of when I worked in a restaurant kitchen and everyone was all up in my grill (literally). Jimmy smells and looks much better than my old coworkers though.

ANYWAY. You need the following ingredients:

2 medium sweet potatoes (enough to make 3-4 cups of mashies)
1/2 cup of chopped onion (yellow or white)
1 can of black beans (15 oz. is what I use)
tortillas
1 tbsp. oil
2 cloves garlic
1 cup of veggie stock (or water + a veggie bouillon cube)
1.5 tbsp. chili powder
.5 tbsp. mustard powder
.5 tbsp. cumin
1/2 tsp. salt
salsa (optional, but HIGHLY RECOMMENDED)

burritoonion

Peel your potatoes, cut them into cubes and boil until they are tender enough to mash. If you’re like me, and do not have a potato peeler because SOMEONE broke it (JIMMY…), you can do what I do and throw the whole unpeeled potatoes into water to boil. Once they’re tender, the peel comes right off.

While the potatoes are boiling, saute your chopped onions in the oil until they become translucent. Once they are ready, add the beans, veggie stock, spices and garlic.

burritospices

Bring the bean concoction to a boil and then lower the heat and simmer for 15 minutes. If you do not like spicy foods, I suggest you cool it on the chili powder. I tend to go overboard for others, but it’s never too spicy for me!

When the potatoes are done boiling, drain them, put them into a bowl, and mash them babies up!

burritomashies

When the beans are done, mash them as well. Get your tortillas and salsa ready, because it’s time to pile that good shit up!

burritotower

burritowraps

Roll ‘em up and you have delicious spicy (and a little sweet) burritos. They’re simple, cheap, vegan, healthy and delicious!

If you try my recipe, let me know how it turns out – and if you have any favorite recipes that you want me to do, tell me about it in the comments!

Originally published at Dear Bloggery, a Jenn Schiffer Joint. You can comment here or there.

Make an origami iPhone/iPod Touch dock

  • Oct. 4th, 2009 at 10:31 AM
barbara and i

There are a bunch of pretty cool crafts that I’ve bookmarked and forgotten about. While brainstorming what to post this week, I decided it would be a good month to get those crafts done. One of them is this cool origami iPhone/iPod Touch dock.

The first thing you need to do is print out the pattern on some pretty thick card stock (whatever is sturdy enough to hold the weight of the device). I didn’t have any on hand, so I improvised: I printed the pattern on regular printer paper, and then printed out two sheets of paper with patterns to paste onto each side of a piece of thin cardboard I had lying around. I used a cute rooster pattern and blue gingham pattern from Reprodepot’s Folk Pattern Book, which the folks at Chronicle Books sent a copy of.

Here are my materials spread out on a floor in desperate need of a washin’:

iphonedock_materials

Actually, I think something is missing here…

iphonedock_materialscat

No craft can get done in this home without Jefrey rubbing his black hairy body all over everything I’m trying to use! So, the first thing I did was paste the patterns onto each side of my cardboard.

iphonedock_patternspasted

Then I taped the cut-out pattern onto my cardboard and used an Exacto knife to cut the pattern out.

iphonedock_cuttingout

The solid lines on the pattern are to be cut, while the dashed line is for folding. When you’ve finished cutting out the pattern, your dock pre-fold will look like this:

iphonedock_cutoutfinished

Now, you can fold your paper by following the directions that come with the pattern. Dexterity is a must, because you are working with a small piece of paper. In my case, using cardboard made the task extremely difficult. I used the close-up photos from Cult of Mac’s post to get the folds just right. For a first-timer, I think my dock came out pretty nice:

iphonedock_finishedside

You can even keep your phone/iPod’s case on while using the dock, so long as it isn’t too bulky. Just plug the cord in and stick it on top of the dock. Now, I can keep my iPhone standing up on a dock as it charges and use the speakerphone when I’m working WITHOUT dropping lots of cash on a boring dock.

iphonedock_finishedfront

I had leftover cardboard with pattern, so I cut a square out and made a base showing off the awesome pattern. I love roostahs.

iphonedock_finishedbottom

I hope you like my dock. If not, suck it. If you guys make one, let me know how it comes out (post a photo, too). If you have any ideas for junk to do, let me know!

Originally published at Dear Bloggery, a Jenn Schiffer Joint. You can comment here or there.

Access your pretty bookmarks EVERYWHERE

  • Oct. 3rd, 2009 at 10:00 AM
barbara and i

I did a post about this on gameESC, but I love Start.io so much that I figured it would be great to share with y’all. It is a start page that you use to store your favorite links. Basically, you get a free bookmark-listing webpage that you can access at http://start.io/[yourname]. You can make links public or private, and you can use different styles. If you know CSS, you can make YOUR OWN styles!

Picture 1
If you look closely at my screenshot, you’ll see “SAVE TO START.IO” on my bookmarks toolbar. If you drag that link to your bookmarks toolbar, you can instantly add links to whatever group you’d like on your start page!

As I mentioned, it’s free and you can access it EVERYWHERE (where there is Internet access, of course). I’ve been using it for a long time and it makes it really easy to get to pages that I can’t remember off the top of my head. For example, I was once working at the bookstore when there was a Baristanet emergency. I didn’t remember the URL of where to log in, so I thought I was shit out of luck BUT then I remembered that I had saved it to my Start.io page! I was able to go to my start page, click on the link and get everything in Baristaville back in order in 5 minutes, instead of 7 hours when my shift was ending.

Yes, there are tons of other bookmark sites and apps out there, but Start.io is visually stunning to begin with (not to mention you can make it more so if you know how to code). If you already use it, or start using it after reading this post, let me know!

Originally published at Dear Bloggery, a Jenn Schiffer Joint. You can comment here or there.

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