Greets folks. Haven't had much time to update my progress on my PHP5 certification or my Flex2 training, due mostly to huge amounts of freelance work I've been doing lately. I just launched a new web site for www.bonobospants.com which is an awesome high-end pants maker for men with athletic builds. The site rocks. I'm quite happy with the way it is coming together. We're still making some tweaks to it, but the x-cart based ecommerce frontend is up and running as is their wordpress-based blog which is customized to to send feeds with thumbnail images to the homepage. Lots of future customization is planned for this site, but check out the schweet zooming images on the product pages .
This was a pretty extensive customization of the "Detailed Images" mod for x-cart. I created a secondary "Detailed Images" mod and vastly improved the thumbnail code so that when you upload a thumbnail, it automagically creates small and medium sized thumbnails with the exact dimensions you specified in your admin settings, and it intelligently crops the images depending on whether they are horizontal or vertical in an attempt to keep the images looking their best without destroying your store's layout. All detailed images then have a small and medium sized thumbnail that can be displayed instead of the horribly scaled and massively inefficient full sized images which are used as thumbnails by default in x-cart. If you're an x-cart user who is sick of the horrible detailed images mod in x-cart, I think you'll REALLY like these modifications. Also, I can now offer this mod to my other customers who are using xcart 4.1.x for the flat rate of $300 USD (excluding any template modifications you may need to take advantage of the additional detailed images section). For template authors, this mod basically creates a second images array in your smarty templates called $images2 (wow imagine that!) filled with the full size, medium size and thumbnail size image URLs so you can use them instead of the standard detailed images. It does NOT modify the default display behavior to include the cool zoom effect from bonobospants.com, but that can be added for an additional $100, or it can be implemented on your existing "detailed images" mod for a flat rate of $150USD, assuming you haven't already done extensive modifications to the standard detailed images funtionality. .
Get Your War On: The Definitive Account of the War On Terror 2001-2008
My favorite comic is getting ready to be relased as a single volume. You can preorder now. If you hate the war and love to laugh, do yourself a favor and order this. You can also read all the GYWO comics online for free here.
BBS The Documentary
This is by far the most comprehensive and entertaining documentary I have ever seen regarding the early BBS system. If you're serious about knowing your internet history, or you just want some extra geek-cred, this is your new favorite documentary.
The Nada Chair "BackUp"
The best alternative I have found to overpriced ergonomic office chairs, especially for very low pain around the sacral joint. Works better than my Aeron chair ever did. Also, it comes in navy blue and black, in case you're not into the whole pregnant woman aesthetic (pictured).It's really not meant for sitting on the floor, it's really better for seats that offer poor back support, and works great at sporting events to make sitting in bleachers much more comfortable.
Antec Quiet PC Case
At just under $120 including a 500 Watt power supply, this "quiet pc" case has worked great for me for over 2 years. In fact I now own two great Antec cases/PSUs. For the money, it's hard to beat this combination.
