I haven’t updated this in quite a long while as I’ve been busy moving and what-not. That said, I am finally all settled in with internet and all the essentials, the ship is back afloat.

I’ve been working on recording some jams. A couple of things on my list of ‘Things to do Before I Die’ include recording a record and playing a show of my own tunes. Slowly but surely this is coming together. I’m going to be helped out by a couple of Bremerton friends with additional tracks, it shall be quite the project. I hope to play a show next time I’m in the NW with the same people as well, I’m sure it’ll be a one-time thing, but that’s all it takes to cross that item off.

Back to coding I go.

Seeing as how I’ve been super busy lately, I have not yet gotten around to writing the promised post about the full Wordpress / Joomla! Integration, but there are definitely things on the horizon.

I am moving into a new place this weekend, which I am very excited about. Should be a long a busy weekend adding Halloween into the mix.

This past week was filled with all sorts of musical adventures starting with Portugal. The Man last Saturday and Sunday. As always, my fellow northwesterners never dissappoint. Monday evening I found myself headed to Boondocks with Melissa & Denae to watch Houston’s The TonTons put on a free performance, which was also quite excellent. We also ran into Monica, Fayza and Maggie. Thursday I went with Melissa & Mei Lani to see Ray Lamontagne & Leona Naess, which was very pleasing to the ears, however the venue and audience were quite subpar. This finally brings us to Friday which saw Melissa & myself attending Ben Folds, which was definitely spectacular. I’d definitely reccommend any of the mentioned bands to anyone and everyone.

I have moved onto the new site at work, it is a legal job site, similar to Monster and HotJobs but geared specifically towards attorneys and legal staff. We are aiming to improve on areas that are not quite ideal on similar websites. With this new project comes a plethora of challenges. I’m basing the jobs system off of the open source job board engine, OSJobber. While OSJobber is a great bit open source code, it is far from having all of the functionality that the new site is going to require. My first mission is to modualize the platform for use outside of the actual interface.

Anyway, that’s about all I’ve got for now. Halloween this weekend, moving this weekend, and killer steak dinner next weekend.

Cheers.

Here’s a great resource for all of you freelance folks out there: Full Frontal Freelance.

Full Frontal Freelance is a “Tumblelog for the free and fearless” created by Aja West. It is filled to the brim with all sorts of useful resources not only for freelancers, but for anyone in any sort of creative industry. Also be sure to lookout for random links and writings by yours truly among other great, creative folks.

So as you may or may not know, I am definitely an Mac enthusiast. That said, at work I am unfortunately using a Windows machine, much to my dismay. It has been quite the challenge  hunting down any sort of freeware that compares with the options for Mac machines, but I’ve finally managed to found one that I find pretty awesome.

I had been going through various different freeware programs for different uses, ftp clients and code editors were the main ones that I was having a great deal of trouble finding solutions that I’d be happy with. Last week I stumbled on Scriptly by Webocton and was beyond pleased with what I found.

Scriptly is a code editor that is filled with all sorts of useful features. From the seven different preset syntax highlighting methods, as well as any custom configuration you may want to the incredibly useful sidebar containing search functions, code snippets, a color picker / hex value converter, and various other useful tidbits. Scriptly is definitely a program worth the download. I’m actually finding myself wishing for the first time that a Windows program was available as a Mac one as well. This is by far the best piece of freeware I’ve ever come across on this Windows machine.

The Wilco Book is an excellent book based around incredible photos by photographer Michael Schmelling and short essays and commentary by the members of the band, and authors Henry Miller and Rick Moody, among much more. The book focuses on the band as a whole and their surroundings, from bits about their practice space and gear, to their love for music and where they draw their inspiration from. Included with the book is a CD featuring twelve previously unreleased tunes which is quite the bit of experimental songs and demo tracks from previous albums. I managed to come across this at Half Price Books in the Rice Village, but it is also widely available at book stores worldwide as well as the official Wilco website and of course, Amazon. It was definitely worth every penny.