Bloghttp://www.pauldukes.com/blog/en-US2010-03-11T08:05:30ZSquarespace Site Server v5.9.2 (http://www.squarespace.com/)aleggUp and New Projectshttp://www.pauldukes.com/blog/2009/11/13/aleggup-and-new-projects.htmlPaul Dukes2009-11-13T23:24:44ZElsa Ergo New Site Personal Projects aleggUp projectsJust finished a project I've been working on for the past 3 months. A website for a start up in the states. They're called aleggUp. They're specializing in helping high school and college students gain some focus on what they want to do professionally and otherwise. Check it out if you have a chance.

With all my focus on aleggUp I've neglected some other projects. I don't regret taking the contract. It was a good experience. I have two personal projects I'm hoping to start working on full steam here shortly. A satirical music/scene review site. I don't want to say much more than that. I'm still working out the specifics. I'll post more when the plans are bit more firmly laid. I'm also working on a start up of my own. I've been considering starting a company of my own for a while. Still doing some research. Trying to find out what I need to know to even accomplish this. All the basics, what forms I need to sign and such, what I need to register, what type of company I want to establish. It's going to be a design company, which there certainly aren't enough of, am i right? But, I'm trying to decide on inc, llc, that sort of thing. Got advice? Send it my way, pdukes (at) pauldukes.com.

Like every father before me, my daughter is amazing and beautiful and cute and the 2nd most important person any my life. Sorry sweetie, mommy comes first. It's been kind of hard having all of this work and so little time to spend with her. We go on lots of walks. It's a good way to get all of us out of the house. My wife is on leave for another 9 months. Not to brag, but I'm in heaven. We went shopping and bought a new Ergo. It's awesome and should be great once the snow decides to start sticking. We don't like using a stroller. It's more cumbersome, and Elsa prefers hanging off my chest like a little monkey.

]]>Quick Update Between Feedingshttp://www.pauldukes.com/blog/2009/9/11/quick-update-between-feedings.htmlPaul Dukes2009-09-11T18:02:37ZElsa Lynda.com Quick Update jQueryI've been away for a bit. And by away I mean extremely busy. I picked up a few new contracts. I will be posting more about in my current projects section whenever I have a spare minute. I don't know when that will be though, because my daughter was born on Sunday, YAY, so I'm usually spending spare time with her.

No updates on my jQuery quest, but Lynda.com just posted an essentials tutorial that I plan on doing whenever I can get one of those now elusive spare minutes. Also, I was wrangled into signing up for Plurk.com so feel free to friend of fan me if you use their service.

]]>jQuery Master?http://www.pauldukes.com/blog/2009/7/28/jquery-master.htmlPaul Dukes2009-07-29T00:57:34ZFirefox Google Chrome Nerdyblog Personal jQuerySo I've been busy doing a lot of nothing lately.

Well, I take that back. I've been reading a lot and trying to do a review that is long over due for Nerdyblog. I've been building baby furniture and trying to get the house ready for our first child. It should be here in a little less than two months. And I say it because we don't know what we're having. Right now we're just hoping it's a human.

I guess work wise I'm in a bit of a holding pattern. I've got a new version of a site I've been working on for about a year now. I was hoping to launch it a few months ago but I've been having to teach myself some technologies so that I can implement certain functionality. While doing that I've also decided this is the year I master jQuery.

So far it has been an easier journey than I expected it to be. My main problem with learning new things is usually myself. Either letting myself get distracted with other things, whether it's a game or book or life in general. A common problem I have is starting something getting distracted, forgetting about the thing I started, then remember I started my project, feeling bad that ignored it, and then ignoring it some more because I'm disappointed in myself that I forgot about my project. I'm sure you can see, it's a vicious cycle. To be honest I started my adventures in jQuery earlier this month. I had planned to finish a book or two that I bought on the subject by the end of the month. That hasn't worked out so well. I'm on page 25 of book one. I figure that maybe if I put this out there for people to see then I'll feel smoe sort of motivation to see this through. If, you're curious check back in January to see how I managed with that.

On a different and final note. What is up with the Firefox 4 screen shots. It looks a lot like Chrome to me.

]]>All Moved Inhttp://www.pauldukes.com/blog/2009/6/19/all-moved-in.htmlPaul Dukes2009-06-19T04:38:37ZMoved News Squarespace WordpressSo I finally got everything transferred over to my new home here at Squarespace. I'm loving how easy it is to edit pretty much everything.I'm not planning on giving up on Wordpress. I still manage Wordpress based sites, and I'm looking forward to all the upgrades in 2.8.

I've posted two short articles over at NerdyBlog.com concerning Google Wave and Opera Unite. Go check those out if you're not familiar with them. They both look like they're shaping up to be great advances for the web.

So that's all for now. I'm hoping to get back to my regular schedule of posting now that I've got this site up and we've gotten moved in.

]]>Squarespace Test Sitehttp://www.pauldukes.com/blog/2009/6/10/squarespace-test-site.htmlPaul Dukes2009-06-10T07:06:01ZLove New Site Squarespace WordpressSince I've been having some problems recently with my normal hosting provider, I decided to give Squarespace a try. I've been hearing great stuff about it for a while now, and I figured now was the perfect opportunity to give it a try.

I have to say I love it. I've been playing around with it all day. I've not been this excited about web design since I first began developing sites with Wordpress. On one hand I'm excited about the possibilities. On the other I'm worried about losing my job. The WYSIWYG editor available with Squarespace makes things so easy to do when people find out about it everyone is going to want to build there own site.

]]>I'm Latehttp://www.pauldukes.com/blog/2009/4/24/im-late.htmlPaul Dukes2009-04-24T17:48:18ZBack Dad Nerdyblog News Personal Scoliosis ThemeNerdyblog.com. I haven't done any work this week either. I feel bad because of this, but also because I have mild scoliosis. I just found that out today. So I am in a lot of pain physically; pinched nerves and all that. My dad passed away last night as well so you could say I'm having a pretty good week. The doctor says that the scoliosis, or curving of the spine, is due an untreated spinal injury. Lucky for me my condition is treatable. The reason I haven't treated it soon is the pain of it comes and goes. I would go many many months at a time with no pain. I just figured I had bad hips like my mom, but no my hips are great. It is my spine that sucks. I have so much work I'm not doing right now; new theme for this site, product reviews, new website design and matching newsletter. Hopefully I'll be able to sit for longer than 15 minutes at a time starting next week. Hopefully.]]>Picture Dayhttp://www.pauldukes.com/blog/2009/4/16/picture-day.htmlPaul Dukes2009-04-16T13:35:52ZCamera News Photos Theme WordpressKodak Easyshare M340. They didn't send an SD card so I have to buy one. My personal camera is a Sony, so I've got lots of Memory Sticks, but no SDs. Well I take that back. I have an old Canon dv cam with an SD card, but it's only got 8megs. So at 10 megapixels I'd be lucky to get 2 photos on it. I'm working on a new look for this site. I know the current one has only been up for 6 months or so, but I've got a few problems with it. It was my first attempt at a Wordpress theme. I've done many more since then and I'd like to incorporate the new things I've learned. It's pretty much ready to go. I just have a few tweaks to make. It's really just finding the time or making the time to make them. I'll probably make another post later with some pictures. That is if I manage to take any nice ones.]]>Updates/Google Calendarhttp://www.pauldukes.com/blog/2009/4/9/updatesgoogle-calendar.htmlPaul Dukes2009-04-09T15:40:47ZCamera Google Calendar Nerdyblog News PersonalLynda.com account that I've been neglecting. One of my agenda items was to stop doing that. I'm probably going to do a course later today. Seems like I'm turning into the "camera guy" over at Nerdyblog. I now have 5 cameras to review. Guess I should get started on that.]]>Quick Updateshttp://www.pauldukes.com/blog/2009/3/31/quick-updates.htmlPaul Dukes2009-03-31T04:01:35ZNerdyblog News Safari Touch iPhoneNerdyBlog. It's another camera. Oh how I long to review a micro pc or a high-end surround sound system. If you haven't read my last review, well, that kind of hurts. I put a lot of work into it. I'm considering an iPhone. I don't really want one, but I've noticed a site I work for is getting a lot of traffic from iPhones and I should probably pick one up for "testing" purposes. I may just go with a Touch, they're pretty much the same thing right? Just no phone.]]>NerdyBlog etc.http://www.pauldukes.com/blog/2009/1/16/nerdyblog-etc.htmlPaul Dukes2009-01-16T19:53:57ZNerdyblog NewsNerdyBlog. I was asked a few weeks ago to write some reviews for gear and revamp the site. The site s servers crashed around that time and db was lost for the articles and the forums. We're using Wordpress 2.7 though and it has only taken 2weeks to get everything back up and running. It is still in what I would call a beta phase, but feel free to check it out, join the forums, and let us know what you think. This is probably the busiest I've been in a while. Not that it's a bad thing. I'd be happy with even more work. Note to self: Finish your gallery.]]>