Craig’s Writings
Writing isn’t really my favorite thing to do, but I’ve had the occasional opportunity and inspiration to write blogs and articles, both personal and professional, throughout the years. In this section, I share the latest entries to my growing collections of writings. I hope you enjoy reading them at least as much as I enjoyed writing them.
Herman, Week 2 Front
One week later and Herman’s still hanging in nicely. My favorite sprout is still visible in the upper right, and there’s some lovely light green growth just to the right of the base rock. There’s also some mysterious white bit that’s appeared to the left of the base rock. Curious.
read moreHerman, Week 1 Back
Here’s Herman’s backside. You can see the other sprout just to the left of center. On the right side of the picture are a couple whitish bits of growth, no idea what that is. Also visible in the picture is the water I added to the terrarium. Apparently, it doesn’t need much water since it’s an enclosed container, but it’s easy to add more when needed.
read moreHerman, Week 1 Front
I was given a lovely desktop terrarium by a friend of mine; I named it Herman for no particular reason. Thrillingly, we decided to keep a journal of its progress until we decide otherwise. Each week, I will upload a photo of the front and back of Herman, accompanied by whatever I have to say about it that week. This picture shows Herman about one week after receipt. Note the cute little sprout near the upper right of the jar. That sprout, along with one other visible from the back side, appeared as the moss in Herman slowly decompressed from...
read moreDual Monitors Make Multi-Tasking Easy
If you’re a small business owner and are looking to upgrade your company’s desktop PCs, it’s time to invest in dual monitors. Having at least two monitors per workstation is one of the most efficient ways for increasing productivity in the office. These days, few people do only one task at a time. In fact, depending on your business, multi-tasking is more likely to be the rule rather than the exception. Often, it is the little things that add up to be the biggest time stealers in your day- like constantly switching back and forth...
read moreReally, a New Website in This Economy?
Yes, sorry, another article mentioning “this economy.” It’s hurting nearly everyone’s bottom line, but I still feel it’s a good time for you to stand back and take a hard look at your website. With “this economy,” now is not the time to invest in a new or upgraded website, right? Especially not if your site is less than, say, 15 years old! Maybe you invested in a brand new site in 2001, so it should be fine as is for at least, oh, I don’t know, 20 years, maybe 30? Websites are just like bricks and...
read moreHave You Lost the Slick Windows 7 Aero Interface?
Perhaps because I’m a designer, one of the things I like best about Windows 7 is the Aero interface inherited and improved from Windows Vista. If you’re not familiar with the term “Aero” in this context, it’s the name of the Windows theme that gives your windows translucent borders, that sort-of glassy interface. When you install Windows 7, so long as your computer is adequately powerful, the Aero interface presents itself. Personally, I think it looks much nicer than the Mac OS interface, but that’s just my...
read moreHootSuite: Another Great Twitter Tool
In recent Fandotech newsletter articles I’ve shared a few other Twitter tools to help you keep tabs on your Twitter presence, such as TweetDeck and Twuffer. Today, I’d like to share another tool we’ve discovered that we like even better than those. It’s called HootSuite and can be found at http://hootsuite.com. HootSuite offers a professional and consolidated collection of Twitter-related tools. It is a website that you log into from your web browser from anywhere, not a program that you have to download and install. You can set up...
read moreGood, Fast & Cheap: Pick Any Two
In this brief entry, I’m going to share with you something I’ve learned through hard lessons in the IT industry. There are certain rules to live by in life, like the Golden Rule, the 80/20 Rule, and, of course, Wexelblat’s Scheduling Algorithm (it’s a rule, but programmers love algorithms). It goes something like this: Pick any two: Good, Fast, Cheap. It turns out that you can’t eat your cake and have it too (actually, this expression is truly supposed to be written that way around). Let me put it in starker...
read moreCities XL Revisited
I should have better things to do than blog about games, again and again, right? This is a professional blog for an IT company, after all. But, I just couldn’t let my last review stand without reporting in on how the real game plays in comparison to the demo I reviewed a couple weeks back. There are a few differences that affect gameplay. Cities XL is a new city simulation game and MMO from Monte Cristo. As a longtime avid SimCity player, I just couldn’t wait for this new game to come out, especially given the incredibly...
read moreDemand Results From Your Website… More of the Iceberg
Once again, this month’s topic is about Search Engine Marketing and how to make your website be your best salesperson. Treat your website like a salesperson, holding it accountable just as you would a human salesperson. After determining your expectations for your website it’s time to implement the changes necessary to meet those goals. A typical scenario for search engine marketing: Your current site is reviewed and evaluated for a number of important factors. The site is redesigned using Search Engine Marketing best...
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