http://www.elfboy.com/ en info@elfboy.com Copyright 2008 2008-04-02T11:12:00+12:00 http://www.elfboy.com/site/twitter/ http://www.elfboy.com/site/twitter/#When:11:12:00Z I don’t use Twitter very much currently, but I thought I’d quickly mention that I have it and just made it a little prettier: http://www.twitter.com/philiprenich General 2008-04-02T11:12:00+12:00 http://www.elfboy.com/site/webstock_2008/ http://www.elfboy.com/site/webstock_2008/#When:10:28:01Z As I mentioned briefly in my previous post, last week I headed north to Wellington for WebStock ‘08, a conference for all things Web. Two days of total, unabashed geek-ery. And in the classiest manner possible I might add: you haven’t been to a conference until you’ve been to WebStock! They know how to impress around here. Let me give you a bit of a glimpse into what I experienced; later, I’ll give you a short rundown of my scrawled notes (pleasantly typed for readability). I flew in Wednesday afternoon and, after settling into my hostel, went in search of the venue so I wouldn’t be wandering around the next morning. The conference began on Monday with workshops for three days, so things had been rolling right along by the time I arrived. The extremely kind girls from Clockwork (the events management team who helped run the show) registered me right then and I happily walked away with some great swag (including a t-shirt) and an invite to come back, kick my feet up, and enjoy the free wireless. I had caught wind of a pre-party over at one of the local bars, so that evening I headed over. Small clumps of people leaned together with drinks in hand, speaking in their native Techie tongue. A couple noticed me casting around to find a geek group to join and came up to introduce themselves. Later on met a group of friends from Auckland. They were kind enough to let me join with them, and later some of us went out for late night pizza. That was a good time, thank you Darren, Dave, and Daniel (sorry, I didn’t get your card, no link!) for the food and drinks! The next morning the “Conference Proper” began. The buzz of excitement was palpable as I entered. Eventually we were all let in to the hall. I was pleasantly surprised to see that, unlike the past two conferences I’ve been to, this was not a lecture hall. No, our planners knew that was boring and didn’t breed conversation. Dozens of white covered tables were placed tightly throughout the room, each with their own power source beneath. There were cheers as we began the day. In true Kiwi style, we were fed morning tea, lunch, and afternoon tea. As well, once everything was over for the day, a cocktail party and “general merriment” (how many conferences have you been to with “merriment,” I ask you?). Cocktails and dinner. This wasn’t some measly, “Here, go mingle and have some munchies while we prepare dinner.” No, this was excellent wine and champagne to go alone with tables piled high (literally) with an assortment of bit-sized seafood, beautifully arrayed. When the doors opened for dinner I stopped momentarily to speak to Lousie who works with Clockwork. We’d joked before about my ever-present hunger and how I was excited hostel and the event both had free food. She warned me I wouldn’t even recognize the room. She was right! The tables and chairs were still there, but the room had changed. Each table, now with a fresh new table cloth along with a runner, had a floral centerpiece, in variance, set in a large glass vase. Ferns and other native bushes had been placed throughout the hall. On the stage a live band was beginning to play some soft jazzy music. The place had been transformed! The dinner was absolutely excellent and the service (as throughout the entire conference) professional and friendly. This was better than many a restaurant I have been to. Maybe that was because everyone was buzzing with post-conference excitement (and a drink or two already), but it felt amazing. I thoroughly applaud the teams that pulled this off! The speakers themselves were great! While I’d love to give a rundown of what they spoke about, I realized part way through transcribing my notes that it is going to take me a little while. I’ll write them up and post them separately. During the after-party I was able to chat with several different speakers. They were pleasantly down to earth and friendly. Dan Cederholm was a pleasure to talk with. I’ve always enjoyed his work at SimpleBits. Michael Lopp of Apple was kind enough to buy us both drinks and join our conversation. Earlier I sat with Liz and Jason from Happy Cog Stuidios and privately check out some of their latest work with them. They’re involved with a refresh of WordPress’ administration area. Jason is another prominent designer I follow on his blog. I was help them a little bit in sorting out their post-conference travel plans in the short time they had to explore this beautiful country. All in all it was an excellent conference, one that I am very happy I chose to go to. It was a close call though, and I nearly decided not to attend. Thankfully that was not the case. Now I hope to take my new-found knowledge and continued passion for this industry into the next season of time to enhance my work. Business, Education, Travel 2008-02-19T10:28:01+12:00 http://www.elfboy.com/site/version_three/ http://www.elfboy.com/site/version_three/#When:04:12:59Z Welcome to the new version of elfboy.com! Several months ago I took the site offline, deciding it was no longer suitable to represent me and my work. It has lain dormant while I focused on other projects, both on the web and off. Then, at the very end of January, I decided to go to WebStock, a web conference in Wellington. Not having a website, as a web developer, going into a geek conference somehow seemed like a bad idea! I had just two weeks to build the site. While I am under no illusions of its lack of completion, but am quite pleased to have designed the site and learned a new CMS (Expression Engine) in that short time before arriving on the North Island. In the coming weeks, as time and projects allow, I plan on touching things up, tweaking bits here and there, and generally making the place even better! I’ve never used Expression Engine before, but in my short time with it, I have been really liking what it offers! So often I create my own CMS, but using one that lots of people have spent lots of time on is quite nice! Take a look around the place. If you see something that isn’t setting how it should, go ahead and leave a note so I can look into it! Business, Design 2008-02-13T04:12:59+12:00 http://www.elfboy.com/site/i_changed_facebook/ http://www.elfboy.com/site/i_changed_facebook/#When:22:44:59Z Okay, that’s a bold-faced statement, it’s true. Maybe I affected the change more than anything. Since moving to New Zealand I’ve noticed an annoying trend come about. When I try to write a note on someone’s wall or send them a private message, it will occasionally fail. With the wall, you are given a red error message telling you that the wall is unavailable and to try again later (admittedly, the word choices aren’t the best since what’s really happening is that there has been a hiccup in the AJAX POST and it just needs to be resent). Your message is still there so you can just click the submit button again. In contrast, when I tried to send a message the only way to not lose what I had written if it failed was to use a web developer add-on I have installed into Firefox for my work. When you send a message, the form fields are all disabled to prevent you from accidentally sending it multiple times. This is nice, unless the message never sends. A little notice from one of my other add-ons let me know there had been an error, and the page would never rewrite itself to show this newest message in the thread. I would have to manually re-enable the form and resend the message, not something your average user is going to know is even possible, let alone how to do it. One day I got sick of it and emailed Facebook about this issue, thinking it may be an issue in their code. I didn’t expect an actual response, but a few days later I had a message asking for information about my browser version, plus some screen shots so they could try to figure out what the problem was. After doing this they got back to me with the unfortunate news that the problem was with my Internet connection, which was my second guess. Oh well, at least they were good enough to work with me on understanding the issue. I suppose when New Zealand decides to upgrade their telecommunications network it will all be good, I can survive. And then a few days later as I sent a message to a friend, crossing my fingers that it would go without error, I noticed something different! The sending failed, but this time, instead of hanging and leaving my form disabled for me to manually fix, it auto-re-enabled itself! There is no message to the user to let them know they need to try again, but the fact that they recognized through my report that some users may have this issue through their connection (no fault of Facebook’s) they decided to give them a bit of help through a minor user interface upgrade. Minor, but it makes things immensely more convenient for me! This sort of support and recognition and solving of minor issues in an otherwise impressive application is what makes a development team stand above the rest. Facebook is continually making minor adjustments to their UI, listening to their community, and making their social network the modus operandi benchmark for everyone else.  Business, Programming 2008-01-30T22:44:59+12:00 http://www.elfboy.com/site/moleskine/ http://www.elfboy.com/site/moleskine/#When:22:49:00Z I happily have three new Moleskines. Softbound, a  nice natural color which I haven’t seen before, and graphed to aide with grid-based design work. These are such great notebooks. I spent a  good 20 minutes at Borders  browsing their different styles and sizes. So many to choose from! I wish I did water painting, they have a very nice water paint notebook with extra thick paper. I  have a small hardbound sketchbook (which is usually not used for sketching) that I love. However, I like it so much I am too frugal with its use! It’s over a year old and has not yet been filled! It would be much easier to keep track of things if I used it quicker so it spanned a smaller amount of time. I plan on remedying this. In short, these are amazing notebooks: buy some! Design, General 2007-12-28T22:49:00+12:00 http://www.elfboy.com/site/vending_machine/ http://www.elfboy.com/site/vending_machine/#When:22:53:00Z As of today I have officially been setup as a vendor to Intel. Now that’s cool! On an amusing side note, the Part Description on the PO for the project I’m doing for them says (roughly) “Philip Renich Custom Application Programming | Qty: 1” I’m a part description, nice. Business 2007-07-19T22:53:00+12:00 http://www.elfboy.com/site/im_redesigning_my_business/ http://www.elfboy.com/site/im_redesigning_my_business/#When:02:06:01Z But I hear I’m really supposed to call it ”realigning.” All terms aside, I’ve been realizing over the past who knows how many months that this site does not do me justice (or perhaps it does and I’d rather it not). Maybe I’ve just slowly had a clearer realization of what I do and why I do it. At my core I am not a web designer, developer, architect, master, specialist, or any other fancy word. I am the guy that enables others to achieve their goals, dreams, and purposes. I absolutely love to be the guy behind the curtain making the one in front of it succeed. Is that odd? Is it opposite that I enjoy more being the unseen force rather than the face on the billboard? Maybe it’s because I’ve learned that the meaning in “Behind every great man, there is a great woman” applies to so much more; that there is this power in being the one upon whom it all hangs. All selfish and moral issues aside, I get excited when I can do something to boost another. Be it being an audio engineer, a camera operator, an anonymous donor, or a website guy, it is my passion for others to make it big. Yes, I do this (what you see around here) for money, it is my job, but it is also the medium I’ve chosen to really do what I do. I think when people ask me what I do, I shouldn’t answer “Oh, I make websites,” but instead, “I enable people to succeed.” It has a different ring to it doesn’t it? One out of ten people will be interested in the first statement, whereas probably seven out of ten will be interested in the second and ask what I mean (the other three will simply be confused or were just making conversation). I feel like I’m just doing show and tell on the surface of this subject. It is something I would like to expand with more detail in following posts. All of this is to explain why I am redesigning this site: because I am realigning my focus. Content about what I technically do and how I can technically help a business is lame. I want content that excites someone about what they can do! So I am midway through this process. I have rewritten a load of content to better express what I really do, and I’ve begun to sketch a layout which I think will be more visually in line with this as well as attractive. Expect some changes around here. When? Well, if I’m writing about it, it may just keep me more motivated and on track! Write a comment, keep me accountable to continue working on it! I’d love it to come soon. PS - In case anyone gets the wrong impression, I’m not coming down on the realign vs. redesign terminology. I love Cameron‘s writing and design; I was simply using it to get a point across. In other news, I don’t think my version of sIFR or the font I chose likes apostrophes… Business, Design, Life 2007-02-21T02:06:01+12:00 http://www.elfboy.com/site/resisting_stagnation/ http://www.elfboy.com/site/resisting_stagnation/#When:02:44:59Z Swamps smell. Sure, they are teeming with organisms, but they are usually gross and slimy. A river has power, motion, and is going somewhere. I want to be a river, not a swamp. I work part time at a local restaurant. Not only does this help pay the bills, but it also gets me out, away from the computer screen, and interacting with real people. One of the reasons I have this job is for this varition on my days. It allows me to discuss different issues with a very wide variety of people. I also network with people in my own and other fields (and you know how we web guys are big on networking). It keeps me fresh. The restaurant has shut down for a month while renovations take place: now what? I refuse to become stagnant. With this extra time on my hands I have determined to learn other programming languages: I want to be more highly skilled. I plan on redesigning this website: it does not serve well in its current form. I also have aspirations to take extra time to stay fit physically, create quality time with people, and of course, build this business of websites. It is that whole concept of life-long learning. If I don’t press forward, I am standing still - I am stagnating, and starting to smell. But the possibilities when one continues to learn are exciting. I will continue to learn, flowing forward. Education, General, Life 2007-02-07T02:44:59+12:00 http://www.elfboy.com/site/knowing_your_userbase/ http://www.elfboy.com/site/knowing_your_userbase/#When:07:14:14Z I’m currently in the process of converting several online pricing calculators from server-side executable files to sleek, client-based JavaScript forms. The first thing that struck me when I took this job is that these pretty basic forms were being sent to an .exe file in the cgi-bin. For whatever reason, when they were first developed someone decided this was the best method, even though it is pretty much just basic math that is needed. Well, when the company moved to a different server, their new host didn’t allow executables to be run so they came to me asking for a different method. After looking things over I realized it all could be done using JavaScript so I proceeded to program. I was never big in JavaScript so this was great for me to broaden my knowledge of the scripting language. One of the reasons I choose a client-side/-dependent script is because I could, through the use of the DOM, remove the submission step, speeding up the process. I’ve delivered a working JavaScript version to the client and am now talking with them about also have a standard form submit method which could use PHP in case JavaScript is turned off. Of course I’d love the extra business, but since I need to balance budget and features I feel I can’t unequivocally recommend having both methods. Why? And here we come to the point of all of this: because I don’t know who will be using this website. I can guess that it won’t be a very tech-savvy group which only uses semi-modern computers, which would lead me to believe that they wouldn’t have the default JavaScript turned off, and that they would not be on a device without JavaScript. But I don’t know that. It would be in my and my client’s best interest for me to have researched this first. And I still can check into it to make recommendations for them. That, however, leads me to another point, or question. Who doesn’t use JavaScript? I don’t know about mobile technology, but I would guess that most don’t. Other than that? This isn’t an accessibilty issue where people with screen readers wouldn’t be able to use the form. Is the issue of JavaScript being or not being used actually an issue anymore? I wonder… Client Work, Programming 2007-01-19T07:14:14+12:00 http://www.elfboy.com/site/party_beforehand/ http://www.elfboy.com/site/party_beforehand/#When:09:44:47Z An Event Apart has (un)officially started here in Seattle. Method Arts was kind enough to host a get together the night before at a local bar: covering the tab and giving away t-shirts (thanks Mark and Brian, it fits). I was a little apprehensive coming in to this. Last geek conference I was at, I had a friend with me, and I am solo this time around. So it was great to meet, sit, and chat with Dave of LUX and Kevin, a fellow freelancer and one-man business type.  So I’ve began my wee pile of cards, and even given a few of my own away. We’re all excitedly looking forward to the show tomorrow! Design, Travel 2006-09-17T09:44:47+12:00