Maerwilson.com ... attempting to help a friend

"I know what you're going to say, son and you're right."  (George McFly, Back to the Future)

Maer Wilson - Author, Actor, Teacher, Gamer

Alright, so random movie quote out of the way, the best thing that we can discuss now are things that we can improve on my friend Maer's blog about her new book.  I promised her I'd take a look and see what I can help her with easily.

I noticed that the site's background image only appears at the top of the display, it's not a constant through the entire site and once you scroll away from what is first shown, there are no colors other than straight black.  The colors give a nice break from an entirely black screen.

I do like that every page uses the same theme and carries the theme very well throughout the site.

You will notice that the first chapter of her upcoming book is available (on the right, titled "Chapter 1 – Thulu & La Fi: The Finders").  For this (and almost every link in a blog) I would give these permanent locations so they can easily be found and linked to.  It looks like the link address is ?page_id=119 vs something along the lines of Chapter%201 (chapter 1 html escaped).  Just a thought.

As a side note, I would probably attach a pdf formatted document to the chapter to allow someone to download and plug into their e-reader and not have the black background on it (or change the background / text colors on the better readers).

The categories make sense, give good layout for how to find certain types of data.

The last advice I have would be to change the title of the site from Maer Wilson to something like "[Title]Maer Wilson[/Title] [Subtitle]I have a tale to tell, come read along[/Subtitle]"

...

Those are my thoughts, Maer, I hope you find them useful and don't put me on the permanently ignore list or anything ;)

Citrix Solutions and Development Tools

It's about time, I'm starting my bloodless coup of the development groups here.  They've been laying in wait, wanting me to attack and trying to figure out which way I will come from ...  Today, I started my strike.

The Battle

The first shots were fired over installing BizTalk Server Development Tools and Visual Studio 2008 SP1 onto a Virtual Windows XP desktop.  In the past, as with this time, we have been asked to perform this installation at the last potential moment before the business needs it.

The push back resulted in us attempting to find the right solution.  Instead of creating a bunch of Virtual Machines on our little ESX Server for development purposes, I am moving their solution to the Citrix App Server and Xen Desktop environment that exists and has (duh duh duh duh duh duh) full time administrators.  With ESX, there are 2 people who administer that environment, 1 of which leaves next week (for good) and the other one (me) that doesn't have any interest in being a full time administrator.

Currently the shots are still being fired, software is still being brought to the front and people are hunkering down to test the solution as designed.  The command lines are being strewn back and forth and the installations are occurring ...

Wish me luck!

Orb Caster

It's quite simple, I want to be able to listen and watch media stored on my PC on my iPhone, iPod or iPad.  The first solution I found (and tried), Orb Caster and Orb Free.

Orb Caster is a simple server service that installs on your PC and performs an index of your PC for all types of media files.  It took a while to install as it does the scan of your media files during the installation process.  Since it did that, I took off and went to bed during the installation ... No Big Deal, right?

Orb has a second piece to install for your iPhone or Droid device that will play your media from either your local wireless or through their website and through the internet ...  That's right, the advertising says "FROM ANYWHERE", I'm going to try Mars, but I assume there is fine print about having an IP network available.

As far as that is concerned, the few things I've tried to pull over so far look pretty good and I'm currently examining pulling over true DVD quality movies from my library.  With Shawshank Redemption, the little bit I've watched over Wi-Fi looks really darn good.

So, here goes a $10 purchase and a little bit of hope that the company has a pretty good product.

Purchase Complete!!!


Please please please work like I want it to.

And, folks, it looks like we have a winner and it works the way I want it to.  Now I just need to get the iPad from the office again so that I can watch some movies on the large screen.  Oh well, my new toy and I are off to watch some movies and then get some sleep ...

Ciao