Eternal student

I find I am always in a "learning mode". Technology changes so very quickly, I am often behind what my clients want to implement. Honesty is the best policy -- I usually can tell them "I'll find out, ASAP." What follows can often turn into a mad scramble.

This week, I finally learned how to use Google calendar. Yeah, I know -- 'bout time! We wanted to add a calendar to frank's website and WebCalendar is incompatible with PHP 5. Embedding Google calendar works just as nicely, with the added advantage of being able to view it on their iMac mail app. Remembering to share the calendar and set attributes for any entries, it has turned out to be a better solution than WebCalendar.

We added a blog to the site, as well. It's been long enough since the last time I set up a blog, I'm having to relearn how to configure the menus and which add ons I want to be using. It's still a work in progress. On the whole, Frank is very pleased with the results, so far. We've even sold one of the original paintings, even though the store is not yet "up". Adding the store is a whole separate adventure. I've never actually created an online storefront before.

On another front, one of my clients needs to update his website information on ICANN. This is where my "teaching" skills need a little refinement. He was unclear on the difference between his registry and his host. I think we've got it straight, now. We'll be moving the registration to another service, updating the information, AND moving to a different host soon.

The most gratifying thing about all of this? I get to do what I love to do. My clients get a professional image online and, lately, the compliments are coming in. As I consider myself more of a student than a professional, I'm always excited when something works the way I intend it. Recently we were hearing "there's nothing on the site! I expected to see more of your artwork." As it turned out, the ones saying that were never actually going to the site -- they were googling the artist's name.

Once we cleared that up, the visitors were well-pleased. In the end, it doesn't hurt my morale at all when someone reports "The site looks great!" Not that selling one of the pieces wasn't great as well.

another really "smooth" video

there a lot of online media services out there. not just YouTube, but vimeo, qik, ustream, stickam... & mefeedia.

this video by patrick jean was featured on the "daily motion - featured videos" page. it's ever so much fun!

PIXELS by PATRICK JEAN.
Uploaded by onemoreprod. - Watch original web videos.

Two Years? -- egads!!

almost exactly two years since my last update. i've definitely been in a funk.

i was so completely griped about my last host, i yanked the site down and couldn't bring myself to put it back up. i paid for hosting elsewhere, immediately, and still couldn't convince myself to repost anything. the site's been paid for all this time, with nothing in place. ah, well...

i'm very fortunate to have such faithful clients and friends. all this disconnectivity and they've stuck around through the gray fog. my clients are still loyal. my friends are still supportive. and they're all cheering that i'm finally starting to get my act back in gear.

i have "presence".

High-Five SXSWi 2010 - High-Five Montage Tribute from Henry Balanon on Vimeo.

Check out the original High-Five Montage here

"bulk" mail

today has been a little interesting. one of my clients has a medium sized client base, but it can be grouped into categories of clientele. he wants to send "bulk" messages to his clients, offering special services based on those categories.

well, that's not really hard, is it? sending a copy of one e-mail to multiple recipients is possible from nearly every e-mail client available. the trick is to do it in an efficient manner and to follow a good e-mail etiquette. what complicated this little tutorial is that he uses eudora, on a mac.

i haven't used eudora for several years. which means i've never used it on a mac. fortunately, eudora can be downloaded and used for free, with only a few limitations.

i imported my settings and contact info from apple mail, and set to work looking around the eudora interface. upon opening the address book, i discovered i had to enable showing of the OS X address book. once done, i created a few alternate address books. i seem to remember there's a way to create "groups" in eudora, but this way was a little easier.

doing bulk mail this way forces the user to select the addresses in the address book. you can select multiple addresses by holding the command key as you select addresses. at the bottom of the address book panel, just click on the [Bcc:] button. Bcc:, of course, because you don't want everyone to see all the other recipients' addresses (that's the e-mail etiquette i was talking about).

NOTE: duplicate addresses will only get one copy. eudora is pretty smart about that, but it confused my client, as he was trying it out by sending copies to himself. i think we've got it working for him, now.

new client activity

one thing can lead to another.

the minutos have been clients for nearly ten years. mostly, i keep there 'puter running. they started with a packard bell (a cursed machine) that would completely quit working every couple of months. after rebuilding that machine several times, we finally built a new machine. from there we kept moving up, finally switching to a 24" iMac (alum) early this year.

Frank is a professional artist -- very prolific. he also teaches for the Palos verdes Art Center. Debs is a photographer, and she specializes in artist's portfolios - photographing the originals and printing quality giclees. every once in awhile she calls for help with a project in photoshop. her call this week was to create a CD of one of Frank'ss series to present to galleries. it was an excellent time to introduce her to lightroom.

we used lightroom to adjust the images of a few of the photos and to create a screensaver of the series. we also experimented with how it would create a webpage presentation of the series. they liked the result so much, we're finally going to put Frank's work online! as i've been pushing for this for a couple years, i'm absolutely delighted.

we're now figuring out just exactly how we're going to upload the files. one new aspect we're going to try is embedded videos of Frank's "gallery statements". we're going to give him approximately 10 minutes to record a short description of the series, as though he were presenting it in a class lesson. we'll probably use viddler, but (just in case) i'm going to try a few things with garageband. after showing the screensaver to another client, there's even a possibility of having some original music for the site as well.

i guess i'm branching out into "production". ;-)