September | 2007 | Mitchelaneous

Archive | September, 2007

Digital Drawing with Wacom Graphire4

Sep/28 in Personal

I just got my Wacom Graphire4 4×5 USB Tablet via the UPS guy (that is probably damn tired of delivering packages to my house already) yesterday. Really haven’t had enough time yet to give you a good review – but I’ll hit on some high points being a “first time tablet” excited fanboy.

Cool Software Bundle

The first nice perk is it comes with several software packages – the best being Adobe Photoshop Elements 3. Not sure if I am ready to use it to retire my old Paint Shop Pro 7 – but it might happen.

Sturdy Product, Class Act Packaging

Unpacking things at times felt like I was going through a maze with all the folds, protection and levels of plastic I had to go through to get it out of the box. The pen, mouse and tablet pad are all good solid products too. They have some weight to them – and do not feel cheap in any way.

It might take a while to get used to holding the pen correctly, other than that I am good to go.

Installing the Wacom Graphire4

Installation could not have been easier. I just plugged it in, installed the drivers (on my Windows XP box) and I was done. Might need to configure the touch settings and sensitivity of the pen but I plan on playing with it a little more this weekend. Also says it is Windows Vista ready all over the packaging for the box – so the future should be bright with this device.

All in all I am highly impressed thus far. Always wanted one of these so I figured, why not spoil myself a little ‘bit.

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Worried about WordPress 2.3?

Sep/26 in Web Development Tutorials

Only thing about using WordPress is if you use it on multiple web sites – it is a ‘bit of a pain to update them all at the same time. Thus far I haven’t had too many issues getting things done. It is just a slow and tedious process to go through. Here are some of the issues I’ve run into. Continue Reading →

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New Gnome Look for Windows XP

Sep/25 in Desktop

I always love finding new Windows XP visual styles that are not only good – but great. Some of them are ugly, others are Mac-clones. Very rarely do you get one as cool as MurrinaFancyClearlooks.

Need help figuring out how to change your XP visual style? Don’t worry this past post should have you covered. Finding this one was kinda like hitting the Windows XP visual style lottery. Just look at all the pretty colors.

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Give Your Folders Backgrounds – Windowpaper XP

Sep/24 in Desktop, Desktop Apps

Sure, it might not be a feature you have always dreamed of having – but adding wallpaper to folders on your desktop machine sounds like a pretty neat way to customize your PC using experience to me.

Windowpaper XP is a freeware program that will allow you to get that one Windows 98 customization feature that just seems to have gone to the wayside. The ability to change the wallpaper of a folder as well as the text color of the icons in that folder. Continue Reading →

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SEO: The Art and Science of the Search Engines

Sep/22 in Odds & Ends

While there are many approaches to Search Engine Optimization one can take, I have found that a few simple tips can help you keep your site ranking well with minimal effort. I will only focus on SEO related to your page structure and content in this article, for brevity.

Topic specific content: Place content on pages that is uniform. For instance, if you are a web host, create a full page just talking about dedicated hosting. This gives the specific page an edge over other companies who discuss all of their plans on one page (because of your higher percentage of topic-specific keywords). Continue Reading →

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Virtual Desktop Apps Don’t Work

Sep/21 in Desktop Apps, Personal

Virtual Desktops The last few days I have been trying to try a few more productivity and desktop applications to help me get a little more work done. One thing that I have seen for ages but never really gave a fair shot to was running multiple desktops on one machine. So I tried out a handful of programs – and I have to say it just did not do the job for me.

Now I like to keep the minimum needed open when working on anything. I really don’t like clutter – but after downloading a few of these multiple desktop programs I found it more of a chore than anything to switch back and forth for different projects or jobs I was doing.

Just in case you want to give it a shot yourself, here are a few you can try:

Multiple Desktop Power Toy for Windows XP

Dexpot

Virtual desktops are a good idea but for some reason nobody seems to have made it work just right – just yet.

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9 WordPress Alternatives

No doubt that WordPress is the king of the hill when it comes to content management these days. It seems like in a lot of people’s eyes they can do no wrong. There have to a few other choices out there though right?

Now don’t get me wrong, I am totally happy with WordPress – but, there are several cool alternatives that might be worth checking out for your next web project.

Continue Reading →

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Plantation Bliss

Sep/18 in Desktop

Always love finding the awesome wallpaper out there – and you can toss this one into my selection of the best wallpaper out there today. Hunted down via DeviantArt – how could you look at this and not say it is cool?