Super Ginormous

Category: Personal

Posts of a more personal nature.

  • Organic Workspace

    The ever-evolving, ever-changing PowerServe Creative department

    One of the running jokes here at PowerServe, is that I can’t keep my desk the same way for more than a few weeks. But it’s true. For as long as I can remember I’ve made it a point to change up my workspace at least once a month. I try to think of my workspace as being an organic, evolving environment… The subtle changes that I make to my workspace are really exercises in discovering configurations that work best for me. Some configurations stick. Others don’t. Sometimes people notice the change, most of the time they don’t. What does matter is that I notice. Having a desk that is constantly changing, constantly evolving to fit my work-style and my work environment helps me to stay better focused on the tasks at hand…

    My ever-evolving workspace.In the creative department, we’ve taken this idea a step further by decorating the walls with posters each of us enjoy. I’ve got several Clerks: The Animated Series posters up, a Spider-man poster and a Superman poster. I’ve also got tons of action figures and toys at my desk. From the ceiling, I’ve got a 12in Superman hanging, along with a Naboo Fighter and an American flag… Patrick‘s got movie posters and a Misfits flag hanging on his walls. A huge British flag is hanging from the ceiling in front of his desk. Don‘s got a few Mental Soup posters, a Star Trek Nemesis poster and a U2 poster on his walls. He’s got a few toys here and there… and a Led Zepplin flag hanging on a bookshelf… Josh is probably the minimalist of us all… he’s got two posters up… one he made, and another of a Triumph motorcycle…

    Regardless of whether we have a lot around our desks, or just a little… we’re encouraged to make our workspaces environment’s we’re comfortable in.

    Give it a try sometime… Don’t settle for how your workspace currently is, unless you’re really happy with it. Try configuring your desk differently… have it point in a different direction. If you’re facing a wall, move things around so you’re facing the center of the room… Hang some artwork on the walls… Do something different! You might be surprised at the results.

  • Trackback Spam

    I love Akismet, Spam Karma 2 and Bad Behavior. In fact, I probably wouldn’t allow comments at all if I didn’t have those plugins installed. Spam’s become a thing of the past, and I’ve been able to keep the discussion fairly open as of late.

    Trackback spam is getting on my nerves, though. I’ve had several links made to my site from what looks to be some sort of WordPress feed aggregation tool… The sites copy all of the content from particular posts and/or a small excerpt from the post and then link back to my site. Seems harmless, right? It would be if the sites in question were legitimate. The problem is: they’re nothing but Splogs (Spam Blogs).

    If a site trackbacks/pings a post on my site, I check it out. I monitor incoming links through MeasureMap, Google Analytics, and by watching Technorati. If you’re not reviewing who’s linking to your site, I recommend you make it a habit.

    There are WordPress plugins that deal with trackback spam, but from what I’ve seen they mainly just check to see whether or not a link to your site is present on the offending page… If it is, the link makes it through; if not, the link gets denied.

    Spammers are attempting to use trackbacks as a means to 1) drive traffic to their sites; and 2) improve their PageRank by having links appear on established sites with decent PageRank scores. That’s why it’s imperative that you delete the inbound links as quickly as possible to make sure they don’t benefit from a link on your site.

  • Hosting Options

    I’m currently hosting my site on a company server. It’s been great so far, and I have lots of flexibility with what I can do with my site because of where it is situated, but I’m getting to the point where I may have outgrown our servers. Traffic spikes are a major concern for many site owners these days… If content gets dugg, it could easily bring a site down. I won’t say that a lot of my content is compelling, but there have been a few things I’ve posted recently that I’ve had to explicitly ask for it not to be submitted to digg.com. The reason? I don’t want the server I have my site on to be overwhelmed or any of our client sites to be effected by a sudden surge in traffic.

    So, I’m going to start shopping around for a new host. I’ve been looking into MediaTemple and DreamHost, but I wanted to see where I could get the most bang for my buck. Where are you currently hosting your site at? What features do you like about your current host? Why would you recommend them over someone else?

  • Far From Done

    Well, the new site design is here… sort of. I’m still working on a lot of behind the scenes stuff… but I felt like where I am with everything is much better than where I was with the previous iteration of the site. So, without further adieu, here’s Effercio – version 14 of cdharrison.com. There’s still a lot more to do at this point…

    • Integrate hAtom and hCard support.
    • Fix paging glitch when browsing categories.
    • Search and Archives need to be improved… The paging glitch is effecting these as well.
    • Fix notifications.
    • Create alternate, high contrast stylesheet.
    • Fix rendering bugs…
    • And much more…

    It’s getting there though. Let me know if you encounter any problems while using the site.

  • Recovery

    I got hit hard with the flu this year. I knew it would get me eventually. I didn’t think eventually would mean this year. (That’s why there’s been a lack of updates for a number of days.)

    On Thursday, I went home early. I wasn’t feeling well when I woke up in the morning, but didn’t think too much of it. I chalked it up to a simple headache… a head cold maybe. By noon, I felt a lot worse. I had achy joints, lots of sinus pressure, a headache, a bit of congestion… At this point, I was having a hard time concentrating. I got a few things done that were lingering on my queue, and then went home.

    I hardly ever go home when I’m sick. Our office is setup in such a way where each of us has some degree of space between our desks. Most people would probably stay home if they’re sick. Here, we pretty much stay head’s down unless we’re feeling bad enough to go home.

    Well, on Thursday, I felt bad enough to go home. That’s how my wife knew I was really feeling badly: I went home. I took my temp… it was at 101º. Not good… So I laid down, and took a nap. I took my temperature again around four o’clock and it had increased to 103.5º. I called my wife, and she suggested I try to get an appointment with our family doctor as quickly as possible… (They were unable to see me until Friday morning.) So, she took me to a Prompt Care clinic close to our house, and around six o’clock I was able to see a doctor.

    They checked my vitals… temperature was up to 102.8º… noted my various symptoms… The Doctor concluded that I had the flu. (Lucky me! Yay!) He gave me some Motrin (for the fever and joint pain), a prescription for Tamiflu (which works wonders), and sent me on my way!

    The barrage of meds I through at the flu seemed to do the trick. By Saturday I was up and out of bed… and I’m back at work today…

    God, it’s good to be back to “normal”. Being sick is awful. Maybe I’ll start wearing my jacket more often.

  • I survived

    I survived Career Day.I just got back from a long morning over at Evans High School, and things went better than I had expected. I spoke with three classes – primarily 9th and 10th graders. It was weird to talk to people about the kind of work that I do. Quite a few seemed uninterested in what I had to say. (I know I would have been, too.) But there were a couple of students that asked some really great questions. One asked about whether they needed to have Vista if they were going to do design work. I told them that we’re avoiding Vista like the plague… it wasn’t necessary. XP would suffice. Another asked whether college was necessary. I answered honestly, by saying it was absolutely necessary, but even I would benefit from a more formal design education.All in all, I had a great time. It was nice to know that at least a handful of kids thought my presentations were worthwhile.Can’t wait to do it again next year.

  • Sneak Peek

    Here’s a little preview of the upcoming design for cdharrison.com:

    cdharrison.com sneek peak

    I’ve been putting a lot of thought into the UI design, trying to make the site easier to use. I don’t have a timeframe for roll-out, but you’ll start to see bits and pieces of the new design starting to appear soon. My site has long been about stuff, and that’s why I’m calling this release “Effercio” (Latin for, you guessed it, “stuff”). This will be the 14th major iteration of the site, and the third since migrating over to WordPress. (In case you’re wondering, I called v13 “Nanideska”. “Nani deska” is a little Japanese phrase I picked up from watching too much anime in my younger years… it literally means “what” or “what is it?” That’s what I kept asking myself about the direction I was heading with the site and the design…)

    Redesigning, or realigning, a site is one of the more rewarding aspects of what I do. You take what works and you make it better. You take what doesn’t work and you throw it out the window.

    “The desire to redesign is aesthetic-driven, while the desire to realign is purpose-driven.” – Cameron Moll

    With every iteration of this site, and pretty much every site I work on, there is a strong desire for me to push my skills a little bit further. Design, in general, should be fun. It isn’t when you’re doing the same thing over and over again.

    So… here’s what you’ll be able to expect with v14:

    • Full Sandbox integration. Sandbox supports microformats like hAtom and hCard right out of the box. It’s a great theme upon which to build a site.
    • Better navigation. Browsing through the ‘stuff’ on my site will be a bit easier than before. Navigation will be more apparent throughout the site.
    • Better organization of content. Categories should be easier to use. Older content should be easier to browse through.
    • Better accessibility. An alternate stylesheet will be available for High Contrast. (I’m hoping to accomodate text-resizing a bit better as well.)
    • Better design. v13 evolved from a theme called Qwilm! … but it’s never been exactly what I wanted. v14 changes all of that.

    I’ll post something in the next few days detailing more of my process of taking an idea, mocking it up in Photoshop, and then turning it into a design…

  • Career Day

    Just a quick note to let you all know I will be speaking at the 2007 Career Day at Evans High School – in Evans, Georgia – on Wednesday, February 7th. I’ll be speaking to three classes about the kind of work that I do. To be honest, it’s a little intimidating. Some kids’ professional future might be impacted by what I might say. Thanks again to Mrs. April Nunnallee for inviting me. (It’s hard to believe we worked together over 6 years ago…and now she’s a teacher!)

    Regardless, it’ll be fun to get out of the office for the morning. I’ll post about the experience on Wednesday afternoon. I really need to do more stuff like this.

    If you were a student, what might you want to learn from someone coming in for Career Day?

  • Five more things you (probably) don’t know about me

    I love memes…. Even though I’ve already done this one, I figured: “What could answering this one more time hurt?” Thanks for the tag, Senia.

    1. I used to wrestle in high school. I was in the Heavyweight division (215-275lbs). During my tenth grade year, I was wrestling a kid from Menchville High School in a tournament and broke his leg to win the gold medal. Said kid beat me in my first ever match months prior to our rematch. Beating him (in this way) was bittersweet.
    2. I broke my arm when I was four. I was jumping on some boxes … specifically one containing a box spring mattress, and fell on a stone with my elbow.
    3. I’m way into Heroes. Matter of fact, I started contributing posts to The 10th Wonder because I love the show so much. You should check that site out… I love it.
    4. I lived in Germany for eight years, and all I learned while I was there was how to say the curse words.
    5. I’m not really that great with words… I’m bad at communicating. (Imagine that!) But it’s something I’m trying desperately to work on.

  • Housecleaning

    I’ve been messing with the site a bit, so if things look screwed up, forgive me.

    Seeing as this isn’t that far of a departure from what I already had on this site, I’m considering this Version 13.1.0. I’m trying to clean up my templates, add some additional functionality that I’ve been missing, and add little enhancements here and there.

    Right now, I’m adding a number of customizations that would be considered transcendent css… It’ll make the browsing experience in modern browsers a lot better than if you’re still using Internet Explorer 6, Netscape 6 or lower, etc. The decision to go this route was dictated by browsing statistics on the site. Most people that come here use Firefox and/or Safari. Yes, IE accounts for a significant part of the traffic, but honestly… if you’re still using an older version of IE it’s time to upgrade. You’ll still be able to access the content here even if you’re using an older browser, but things might look a bit messed up. Take the good with the bad, I suppose…

    This is Phase 1… Phase 2 will include the switch over to the Sandbox theme framework. Sandbox supports rich semantic markup, microformats, etc. and I can’t think of a reason not to use it… I’ve already started the process of converting the site over to Sandbox, so you can expect that switch to be made soon. The decision behind this switch is based on making the site more forward compatible. Mozilla has already announced that Firefox 3 will have built-in support for microformats. I hope the Internet Explorer team will follow suit with IE8. We’ll see.