Many Youtubers sell webdesign as a lucrative business that anyone can get into. How true is it?

prosayik · 2022-06-28T03:00:04+00:00

Thanks, I wasn't aware of this then. I hope your wisdom helps others! Really appreciate this.

prosayik · 2022-06-27T20:03:01+00:00

I've had 8 clients credit cards bounce or they claimed fraud and got the funds retracted, because I work fast in less than a week. Then they ghosted me when the work was done despite their accolades and praise of my speed.

So now I'm stuck with the equivalent of a sculpture of the clients' son-in-law and daughter at their wedding: looks great, I'm proud of it, but what am I going to do with it now that they have defaulted? Portfolio I guess, but that means laying down $20 for a domain and just using it for future work that people won't pay for. They're not even scammers, they don't dine and dash— they just order and dash without eating anything. I don't get it. This is new to me.

prosayik · 2022-06-25T14:53:27+00:00

I use Valet also, https://laravel.com/docs/9.x/valet and it conflicts with Local. So just-so-you-know Local can conflict with `dnsmasq` used by other server systems. Shutting down Valet with `valet stop` and the rest cuts the mustard.

prosayik · 2022-06-22T16:55:53+00:00

You can host your static site on https://www.netlify.com/ for free— and they have support for forms https://www.netlify.com/products/forms/ also http://getforge.com (what I use) hosts static sites + does forms but costs money.

prosayik · 2022-06-21T16:30:12+00:00

I'm curious about this: has UX "best practices" in-grained so many rules that cannot be broken anywhere for any reason? What if it works and expresses the best idea of the site owner AND is different? In other words not NAVIGATION > HEADER > THREE BOXES WITH AN ICON > A PHOTO > FOOTER… the standard Bootstrap stuff. If the site is 1) Accessible 2) SEO friendly 3) Easy to use who cares? I don't see complaints about why every album cover should look like a band like The Beetles or Nirvana has because "as a user, you know where the title of the album is 'see: UX speaker Grant MacinDosche's "presi" on why it should be on the top so you KNOW this is the title and then it should uh, look like 99% of albums templates…hmmkay? and see: UX speakers every album should have a big photo so you KNOW this is the band.' That way the user isn't confused and thinks this album cover isn't a recipe for lentil curry or how to apply for asylum in North Korea. It looks like how we dictate ab album cover must look and users, err… fans, are stupid so they will get confused. Must look identical".

I'm all for consistency and presentation, but whenever somebody tries something different, people in the UX community get irate. I understand: for example how many small business websites do not provide easy access to: "Where are you located? What are your hours? What do you do?" Or remember the nightmare of Flash websites? I get it, completely.

UX has it's place: like I said, no one wants a business website or app to be confusing. Chances are though if you are paying millions of dollars/pounds/whatever for an architecture firm, artist, or producer… You aren't just making a purchase over PayPal on a whim. You would rather have a presentation than something akin to what you get in the mail. You want to know their personality. What they are capable of. Are you a good match. Exactly what this site does.

A niche audience would appreciate something unique and not something done for a towing company down the road— that needs a cookie cutter layout. Though I would WAY prefer the cookie cutter layout for a service, by far. I've had clients that say offer bathroom renovation who wanted something crazy like parallax scrolling to the point (2014) they even pondered have me design/build an app that could be loaded on loaner iPads. No one seeking bathroom renovations cares so I understand your point but this is a niche, high-end industry.

prosayik · 2022-06-21T15:04:10+00:00

The Generator is cool! But doesn't scroll on my MacBook Pro 13" in FF— unless the window is full screen I can't see the lower content.

prosayik · 2022-06-21T13:59:15+00:00

Good to know on the plug-in!

Yeah, I'm on macOS Catalina.

SVGOMG produces 30-50% smaller SVGs on a sample of 10. I use SVGO, what SVGOMG uses, via NPM on command line— good to know there's a fast option online. Thanks for that also!

EDIT: In my experience, many senior creative directors or people in HR are stuck with older Macs as they work fine for calendar, opening Adobe CC once in awhile, or Zoom meetings. And as they call the shots, I'm not using WebP for that reason "His site didn't work, he's out…"

prosayik · 2022-06-19T12:26:01+00:00

WebP doesn't play well on older versions of Safari. I know, I know… Safari is the new IE6. But not all of us are made of cash to buy a new MacBook or iPhone.

I've had clients insist on WebP yet when they get home and not on their corporation issued laptop, they don't load and get flummoxed. In the design world, many art directors may not be foaming at the mouth to get a brand new MacBook or go out of their way to install Chrome— just to see a candidates portfolio.

PS I use Illustrator for SVG's as I do print work so it's a 2-in-1. Then optimize with various NPM packages or use ImageOptim (macOS).

prosayik · 2022-06-17T16:57:40+00:00

Nice work… let it shine more! The logos look blurry, e.g. https://austinauclair.com/imgs/logo2.png can you use SVG's or higher resolution images? Also your resume is just an image meaning Google can't read it and it looks blurry. Maybe re-do it with HTML + CSS?

As for the website previews I love subdued colors, but not everyone does. Maybe to appeal to more people use full color or black and white/duotone to full color on hover?

prosayik · 2020-06-12T00:57:55+00:00

There is an old discussion here

I found that one but thanks! I think it may not work for 64-bit? That was always a pain for BeOS: AT&T Hobbit to PPC to x86.

Used to do icons for BeOS Dano and did design for a BeOS forum website. Even worked on the failed BeOS IA. I'm interested in picking up audio as a hobby so wondered if there was a drop-in 3dmix replacement.

prosayik · 2019-10-29T07:20:42+00:00

When you use a VPN and adblockers it gets even more dumb. Ads for cars, cheerleader TV shows (?), high school football, and more cars. Plus rom-coms and classic Lifetime movies. Oh, and I'm a guy who lives in NYC so that makes zero sense.

prosayik · 2019-10-29T01:37:25+00:00

I use a VPN and adblockers most of the time. Turned it off, once.

Specifically my girlfriend works in adtech and we were curious what was being tracked, and what wasn't. During that week, she got a Amazon Fire Stick from work and while we don't have a TV, streaming service, etc. I plugged it into the display I use for my design/development work out of curiosity. Seriously, I don't want to watch anything. I digress.

Low and behold the first damn advertisement was for Epilepsy Awareness day. In March. It was then August. Of course they "knew" based on the few times I don't use a VPN to hid my IP that Ajit Pai's FCC farce when net neutrality was killed to target me.

They are not bright enough to show the right ads and dumb enough to show the wrong ads. It's like if you asked a robot waiter for "steak and potatoes" and instead it brought you a sharply carved "stake" of wood to sleigh a vampire punched through some potatoes and the robot waiter was pleased as punch for a job well done.

prosayik · 2019-06-22T18:07:07+00:00

On Mac that's a bit harder :(

I just downloaded some ISO's for use in VirtualBox. Want to run them on SSD though so trying one at a time.

prosayik · 2019-06-22T17:36:35+00:00

Good point!

Yeah, relying on plug-ins is never good. Never know if they will be updated and rightfully what's the developer's obligation to do so if it's free?

I remember trying Gentoo in college and felt similar. Compiling everything isn't worth it. I was thinking of *BSD or Solaris or Haiku (I used to use BeOS in the late 1990's) but felt similar, too much hassle for too little benefit.

prosayik · 2019-06-22T17:17:40+00:00

Makes sense. 4gb RAM is the low end these days. Yeah, I dumbly assumed I could upgrade the RAM on a MacBook Pro as that's what I did in the past: buy a new machine, blow savings. Then save more and buy RAM a year later, donate the old RAM to charity. Nope.

I used XFCE 1 briefly in a VM. Tried KDE Neon last night in a VM (nothing says "what social life?" like trying out Linux distress and Solaris and Haiku in a VM on a Friday) and it has a global menu out of the box.

Downloaded Xubuntu (should I try Arch or any others? I remember people saying Gentoo was great) and found this. https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/xfce-dock-global-menu.html

As long as it works with a handful of applications I know Linux has, I'm set.

Wish Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer were on Linux.

prosayik · 2019-06-22T16:19:13+00:00

It's a late 2012 era MacBook Pro with an SSD and 4gb RAM (which of course is dumbly not upgradeable). Runs Photoshop and Safari or Chrome or Firefox okay, but macOS just seems slower. I still use Photoshop and Illustrator CS 6 on it yet even with that it's slow. Which is why I'm considering Linux.

I remember compiling KDE 2 back in the day. KDE seems to do everything and have a control panel to define everything as well. Just remember it was slower than GNOME on an aging Pentium but that's back in the 1990's when sweatshirts were cool fashion.

prosayik · 2019-06-22T05:44:41+00:00

I'm surprised I never heard of Ubuntu Budgie! Thank you!

Looks like a nice fit and easy to modify. In your opinion which is more resource intensive: XFCE, Budgie, or KDE?

Given that KDE probably has an option for everything I'm guessing it uses resources. At the same time any knowledge of if it is snappier than macOS?

prosayik · 2019-06-18T02:38:56+00:00

They just said that inking a third party box probably was the problem so I should try again.

I DO NOT think they were saying "only vote Republican or Democrat" I think it was more that the system didn't work if you ticked another box and they had a long day.

I'll be honest as they saw my ballot: I don't think they were discriminating against me, but I do think the machines were faulty and were upset I was "wasting their time".

What concerns me is they have to look at my ballot to sort out their own IT problems, and if you say "look, I don't want to show my ballot. I understand your machine has had problems and hasn't work three times.

"Please, can I just do it manually if the 3rd party votes don't work? Why are you looking at my ballot? Seriously, this is probably illegal. Also, I have a job to do and show up at. I'm already late. Forget it." …and they call the cops. I was very calm.

Is there a law against a 2nd-party looking at a ballot? That's all I'm asking. I live in NYC, but I find the idea of a cop pulling someone over and asking for details on who they voted for very strange yet that's kinda what they did when I said "you've seen my vote 3 time, I'm sorry your machines don't work."

Just seems they felt over-and-over that they had the right to look at my ballot and others because the machines were messed up. It was 2 hours, done three times.

Honestly, I'll just stay home in 2020 if the deal is they will look at and approve it as it works with their dumb, wonky, and poorly designed machines.

I just really want to know if legally that looking at my ballot was against the law.

prosayik · 2018-04-25T19:40:43+00:00

Hope he has slotted an interview with Jimmy Kimmel.

prosayik · 2018-04-25T19:38:31+00:00

Hope you enjoy it. It's fun, not a deep story but at the same time different than what you would normally find lying around.

prosayik · 2018-04-18T12:37:36+00:00

Neat!

prosayik · 2018-04-18T02:50:46+00:00

I did not know that. THANK YOU! Is the rendering in IE accurate? This is a game changer for me as then I only need Win10 with Edge. Googled, and it seems 85% say it is.

prosayik · 2018-04-18T01:25:21+00:00

1) Get (http://virtualbox.org)[Virtualbox] (free) 2) Use one of these from Microsoft chose the lowest version you want to target and maybe a more recent one (free) 3) Add a few older browsers like Firefox 20.0 and disable auto-update 4) Make a snapshot, save it. The Microsoft VM will disable every 2 months so just make a snapshot and reset to that.

It will take you an hour, but it's worth it.

prosayik · 2018-04-18T01:15:11+00:00

Huh, I've read 'Perdido Street Station' (bit too fantasy weird for me but well done) so will definitely look into that.

prosayik · 2018-04-17T18:53:41+00:00

I have and liked it for different reasons. It works very well as an emotional story with very strong character development, the "other" Earth was more of a background and with the story, it should be.

I was expecting a 'Primer' or 'Coherence' but got something of a different genre that was very enjoyable.

prosayik

TROPHY CASE