Changes just to make changes are the worst kind. If anyone feels they need to change something just to put their stamp on it all thy are ultimately doing is hurting the overall concept of the design.

Does this mean all change ideas are bad? Not at all. But I’m talking about the type of changes that are generally meaningless to the design’s overall effectiveness and ends up just being something that someone can point to and say “that was my idea.” Those changes are the useless ones, fight against them.

With WordPress 3.0 hitting last week the big buzz with the developer community was the ease in which WP 3.0 would let you add some called Custom Post Types. Meaning you could now create a post type that would only handle podcasts or news, really anything you could dream up. It sounds like a great feature and truth be told it is going to open up tons of door for WordPress developers to do a lot of cool things.

I have been work on a few projects where we are trying/planning on using custom post types to handle a couple of problems that have always nagged us during WordPress theme development. I will let you know how they turn out…but.

Custom Post Type still really need a lot if work to really became useful and the fact that all the talk around them makes it sound like they are the simplest things to create and use. But that’s just not the case.

Creating them can be as easy as just copying and pasting a little code into your functions.php file and your ready to start posting. But then a non-technical user is faced with the first problem, where to the posts go? Well by default they won’t be outputted to the loop that calls all posts in the WordPress database. No, to get the custom post type out of the database you have to either add more code functions.php file or create a new template page that will display only the custom post type.

What about plug-ins? Good luck. I started with a simple plan of a project that’s in the works. We want to create a custom post type for a podcast that way we have better archive in the wp-admin panel for them. But there was already a plug-in in place to handle the podcast feed and getting it and extra info into iTunes. Assuming we could simply add the plug-in’s meta box to the new post type and be on our way.

Not a chance in the world. I’m told it is possible to add plug-in meta box to a custom post type page, though I remains that I have yet to see this happen. How the idea never came up that there would be a need to use plug-ins on custom post types is beyond me and making that process a simple one should have been high on the list of things custom post type really needed.

Custom post types are really still something that only developers can take advantage of. If you’re a common WordPress user don’t even try to add post types because to get any if them to work you are going to have to change code in the template files. Oh there are custom post type plug-ins that will create them for you, and that’s all they will do create you are still going to be on your own when it comes to getting the post type to display and you won’t be able to use any plug-ins.

Why the idea for custom post types is a great one, they still have a long way to go before they are usable out side of the developer community.

Like many designers I have a ton of different fonts that I’ve collected over my 10+ years as a designer. The last count was around 4500. Do I use all of those? Nope. I would guess I only use around 50 or less fonts regularly in projects, not counting any special fonts for clients branding needs.

So font management is something pretty important for controlling all the different font files. So I’ve used font Extensis Fusion Suitcase for the last few years as a font manager. And to be totally honest why I have 4500 or so font files, most of those just sit on a backup drive and only looked at if I’m trying to find a certain style. I really have no more than a few hundred different style managed with Suitcase because normally I could always find what I needed there. But during a cleaning of some of my back up drives and font dumping folder I found that I’ve downloaded the same fonts a few different times. So I figured it was time to clean up all the fonts and get them organized once and for all.

The biggest hurdle in trying to organize all of them was Fusion Suitcase, because to me it had limited organize ability. Here’s why.

When I organized my fonts I do it in categories like Serif, San Serif, Outline, Cartoon, etc. Sets can be used inside of Suitcase to get font sorted into these large general categories. But many of these fonts, as most font out there, fit into more than one of these categories. Like if I have a Serifed Cartoon font which category does it go in? With Suitcase you can’t have the same font in two different sets.

Like most designers I have two computers, a desktop and laptop and a lot of the time a new font file gets downloaded to one computer but not the other, hints why there was almost 4,500 font files with a lot of doubles and triples in there. The only way to get sharing with Extensis Suitcase at least is there font server software. And I’m in no place to spend $6000+ on server software for two computers. I figured it was time to look into a different font management program.

Enter FontCase

After some searching I found FontCase, downloaded the free trail and have it a tried and loved it right away. I could organize font by genres and put the same font into two different genres  at the same time. Plus on top of genres I could create sets or collections for anything. So I could have collections for different projects I’m working on, then delete the collection without removing the fonts from the library when I’m done. But the biggest thing was I could share font across a network with whatever computer I wasn’t on much like the iTunes home sharing works. As an added bonus FontCase will get meta date from FontFont.com for more information about the font files.

The only downside I’ve found to FontCase? You can’t share font with the genres or collections, which no fun after spending hours and hours sorting fonts into different genres. Hopefully this is something that will be address in later versions, but as a down fall, it’s a pretty big one.

Sorting, Sorting and Sorting

So how did I sort them? It’s pretty simple and just took sometime a lot of time. But the process is really simple. Since I a ready had a copy of Extensis Fusion Suitcase it comes with a program called FontDoctor. I think if you don’t have Suticase I think you can buy FontDoctor for around $50.

FontDoctor with search all folders on a computer and network drive, figure out if a file is working or would cause problems or  corrupted then copies all the files it finds into a folder that is sorted by file name. Like all fonts that start with A are put into a Folder labeled A. So that takes about 20 minutes depending on how fonts you have. From there its just a matter look at the font and deciding how you want to organize everything and that is what takes the most time. Do you just dump everything into your font management software or do you sort fonts as you add them? I choose the sort why I’m adding them route and that’s been the part that’s taken the longest.

This being the 30th anniversary of the 1980 Miracle on Ice game and Gold Medal run, plus the great, great USA vs. Canada Gold Medal game of this years Vancouver Olympics the game as gotten a lot of great coverage this year. So how does this relate back to design? Well a little after the Olympics and during the build up to the Stanley Cup Playoff the NHL release a series of great spots with the goal of getting new viewers to tune into the Playoffs. Which by the way are the best playoff in all of sports, any team that gets in has a chance to make a run to the Stanley Cup series quickly became one team fighting to stay alive and upsets are common place.

Take a couple minutes to check out these spots and tune into the Stanley Cup Playoffs because History Will Be Made.

How To Sync Multiple Calendars to the iPad With Google Sync

Yes, we’ve covered Apple’s iPad quite a bit this week. While there are other happenings in the mobile tech world, this was a big one — besides, I haven’t blogged much about it just yet. Oh, I will — I’ve been spending time with the device in bits and pieces over this holiday weekend — but I wanted to let the dust settle in terms of coverage. However, there’s one tidbit I wanted to share now, simply because it solves a problem for Google Calendar users that want to sync events with their iPad using Google Sync.

The problem is — using a Microsoft Exchange setup for Google accounts currently works for one single calendar on the iPad. I can’t have that, so I scoured the web for a workaround, found one in a MacRumors forum, and used it successfully. Here’s the method to use until Google addresses the issue for Apple’s iPad — you’ll need to use the Safari browser, although this might work with user agent string spoofing on other browsers too:

• Open Safari and then view its Preferences pane.
• In Preferences, go to the Advanced tab and check ‘Show Develop menu in menu bar.’ If you already have this checked, you can skip this step. Close the Preferences.
  
• In the Safari menu bar, you should now see a Develop menu option. Select it, choose the User Agent option and pick ‘Mobile Safari 3.1.3 — iPhone’ This tells web sites that you’re using the iPhone’s browser. You need to do this to open up the mobile site for the Google Sync service.
• In Safari, browse to http://m.google.com/sync and sign in if needed. Normally you’d do this on your mobile device, but Google isn’t yet recognizing the iPad properly. If you try to configure Google Sync from the iPad, it will say ‘Sorry, Google Sync is not supported on this device.’
• Now go to the Develop menu in Safari and choose to Disable JavaScript as shown by the check mark below.
  
• Still in Safari, choose to manage your iPad. In my list, it’s the most recent device, but if you use Google Sync across multiple devices, it could appear anywhere in the list.
  
• In the next window, you’ll see that Google says you can sync up to one calendar to your device. Ignore that message because the workaround now allows multiple calendar selections. For instance, I chose three primary calendars and three shared calendars, offering both work and family events in one single view.
  Once you’ve made your selections, click the Save button. That should do it, so don’t forget to undo the User Agent change and re-enable JavaScript in Safari. On the iPad, here’s what the result looks like less than a minute after I ran through these steps:

I’m sure Google will address the one calendar limitation with Google Sync, but until they do, you can easily work around the issue in just a few minutes. Hopefully that helps — and now I’m off for some more iPad playtime so I can share all my thoughts soon.

(Via jkOnTheRun.)

Adobe brings Ideas to iPad | Multimedia | Creative Notes | Macworld:

Adobe has released its first iPad app for Apple’s new device. Adobe Ideas is a free digital sketchbook app that’s designed to allow artists to sketch ideas wherever they are, before bringing the results into Photoshop or Illustrator back in the studio.

Here is the link to the App in iTunes if you already have an iPad.

How to use jQuery 1.4 by default on your WordPress blog:

Simply paste the following code on your functions.php file:

if( !is_admin()){
wp_deregister_script('jquery');
wp_register_script('jquery', ('http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1/jquery.min.js'), false, '');
wp_enqueue_script('jquery');
}


(Via WpRecipes.com.)

The biggest thing I would love to see is some kind of server or real time syncing functionally. Here’s why, if I’m out with my laptop and I will shot tethered into it unless I’m somewhere I just can’t have my laptop next to me. Even if I don’t shoot tethered, 95% of the time I’ll load anything I’ve taken through my laptop first even thought I do all of my post-production on my desktop. I do that I can get a quick review of everything and start getting rid of pictures I know aren’t going to make the final cut.

One nice thing that Aperture does is when I get back home I can export the library on my laptop to my mass storage I use and then import that library onto my desktop with any changes I may have made before getting home. But what would be really great is if the folder on the mass storage could see that there is new folder on the laptop and sync it to the storage then the desktop. I’m thinking there would need to be a extra piece of software that would have to be installed on a network for something like that to happen.

But if this was expanded on even more to a studio will more then just two computers. When a photographer returns from a shoot they could off load all of the new images on to the storage system as this is being done all of the work stations in the studio are being updated with the new library.  As work is then done to the photos they are always updated live across the network. This would be very helpful for just me with two computers, so I’ve got to think that a larger studio with as many as five or six work stations it would be really great.

I’d also like to see a check-in/check-out process as well, if you’ve ever worked in an environment with more then one person working on a project at the same time then you have been in the situation were you may have saved over each others work. The check-in/check-out process lets someone take ownership of the file during the time they are working on it so you don’t run into two people working on the same thing at the same time and then losing someone’s work.

Although these ideas generally deal more with a networked system, I find it hard to believe that most photographers don’t have both a desktop and a laptop these days. So even this network functionally could be added it would even help the little guy and if nothing else it would save everyone a lot of time get let photographer get into post-production quicker.

Anyway, getting started in any kind of photography you need to have a camera. Unfortunately me or anyone else can’t just tell you want camera to buy. You have to decide on your own how much is to much, what brand you want and features you have to have and what you can leave out. No matter what, go dSRL or digital single reflex lens, they are more expensive but you have a lot more upgrade options and flexibility. The biggest thing is you can change lens so you aren’t just stuck with what lens is attached to the camera, permanently.

If you are starting at zero the best place to start is with a dSLR kit and that is the first big question you have to answer, how much to you want to spend? A lot of people really get caught up around the idea of not having the gear they need, don’t. Personally I think that if you have any extra money to spend you should spend it on the camera and lens. Lens are a whole other topic, but my plan of attack as always been not to cut corners with the camera body or lens.

If you’re on a budget or have a set amount to spend, look at used dSLR kits. You can get a lot of bang for you buck by finding some really nice lightly used cameras on eBay and photo supply sites. Looking at new Nikon kits, I personally would start looking at the D90 kit then decide if you want to spend more from there. Nothing is worst then finding out 6 months after you bought a camera that you could have spent a couple hundred more dollars and got something/features you really needed.

The couple things to look for. ISO or a camera performance in low light is a huge plus and is one of the biggest reasons you really need to go to a place that sells cameras to look how the camera performs. You really should go look at cameras in person just to get a feel for how they function. Another thing is look at if there are any add on features or extra you want and make sure the camera you are eying will work with those extra items.

Unfortunately this is the one subject I can’t just say this is what you need because there are just to many choices for camera kits and this is going to be one of the biggest upfront costs of anything photography. If I were to recommend something to start with it would be the Nikon D700, but your into about $2,000 just for the body.

Why the D700? The biggest thing it’s an FX sensor camera and $2,000 less then the D3. In Nikon cameras there are DX and FX cameras, every camera but the D700 and D3 are DX sensors. DX sensor add a 1.5 times zoom or any lens that isn’t a DX lens, meaning that a non-DX 100mm lens would really be a 150mm lens on a DX camera body. An FX camera is full frame meaning there is no built in zoom so 100mm lens is 100mm end of story. As you’ll find out almost all of the really great lens are not DX lens. Also the D700 as great low light or ISO and every feature you could ever want or need.

• 40 Free Icon Set for Web Designers
• 22 Fresh Fonts
• 85 Illustrator Paint Brushes
• 105 Free Grunge Fonts
• Free Rust Textures
• 10 Free CSS Menu’s
• Social Media Icons