Thursday, December 31, 2009

Can you see this?


I'm getting glare on the screen from my illuminated keyboard. I'm wondering if this is a design flaw of the screen or the keyboard? My wife's aluminum MacBook without the illuminated keyboard never had an issue. I'm really not liking this. Previously I had a 15" MBP with a matte screen and I am starting to miss it. I wanted to downsize for portability reasons, but now I know the replacement for this computer will have a matte screen.

-Trent
Posted from my iPhone

Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Decision!

Well I've already made a decision on one project to revive/revise! The announcement won't come until next week, but I wish I could always work that quickly. I posted the other blog asking for suggestions maybe an hour ago.

P.S. This is my 125th post this year, I reached my goal!

-Trent
Posted from my iPhone

Revival

There's some projects that I have that never seem to want to go away. They always come up again and again. I've tried to make them succeed and they didn't, but each time, I try it just a little bit differently and hope to make it succeed. I'm going through this process again. Lately I've been doing most of my work for other people, and nothing against other people(they do smell better), but I want to work on some of my own projects. I'm not giving up on other people, I just need a hobby project and I think I'm going to revive/revise an old project. Considering there's about 20 of them, I can have my pick of the litter. What previous/current project that I've worked on would you like to see re-worked?

-Trent

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

New year, new you?

Do you make resolutions? Do you keep resolutions? Coming up on a new year, you often hear about resolutions and it seems people have trouble keeping them. I personally don't make resolutions, but I do make goals.
If you are trying to reinvent yourself, accountability can be crucial. Usually that accountability has to be done by someone else if you try to stick to your resolution. One way to help, blog it. Say you want to lose weight, you can keep track of your progress on your blog and make sure plenty of people have the address to help cheer you on and give you helpful tips/suggestions. Let's say your goal is to get out of debt. Again, you can blog your progress and get the support of others. Resolutions can only be followed if you keep at it and are determined.

-Trent

Monday, December 28, 2009

Using it more

As I wrote about here, I've been playing with Opera's web server built in to their web browser. Sure enough, not only am I using Opera as a web browser more, I actually find myself using the web server portion more often. It's great to temporarily host something to say test a website before launch or to show a client how a website how it's coming without giving myself more work to create a secure area on their site to see the new site. You can make it so it won't be indexed by search engines and also password protect it. It's become a decent tool in my virtual utility belt. It may not be as cool as Batman's, but can Batman host a website from his belt?

-Trent

Sunday, December 27, 2009

Fresh start Pt. 3

This is the third installment of this look at a fresh start of a website. The site is currently at around a 2.5 million Alexa rank in just under two weeks with no advertising, just SEO.

-Trent

Saturday, December 26, 2009

Quick update

Quick update to say, I went with the 13" 2.53GHz MacBook Pro. I'll post a review of it next week.

-Trent

Friday, December 25, 2009

Thursday, December 24, 2009

End of the year rush

The end of year usually also means a rush to get just a few more things done before the year closes out. Such is the case with me this year. Unfortunately I've been sick with the flu the past couple days so that has slowed progress down. It's time to make that final push to get just a few more things done. Anyone else drive themselves crazy towards the end of the year?

-Trent

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Landing page project

I just finished up a landing page project and would like to get your ideas on how it turned out. It's always helpful to have a third or fourth perspective.
OvalExhaust.Com

-Trent

Monday, December 21, 2009

Site overhaul

My website, in my opinion, isn't what it used to be. I've been at this for less than a year and this would be the second major re-design. The first design was meant to be temporary, and it stuck around too long. This one was supposed to be more permanent and it's held up well, but I think it needs something more...or less depending on how you look at it. After the Holidays I'll have more time to re-visit this idea. In the meantime, what do you think of the current site?

-Trent

2010 Goal

With the start of a new year, goals often come to mind. Last year I wanted to make this my full time gig. Many things happened to prevent that from happening. I also bit of more than I could chew at that time. As much as I would like to make this my full time job, I still have a lot to learn in order for that to happen, so I'm starting smaller. I'd like to launch 2 major projects of my own, get a steady income from this company, and upgrade my workhorse computer. It's a fairly new 24" iMac and it's great for most things, but it doesn't have discrete graphics. A few weeks ago I was working on an image that was 8ft. tall by 4ft. wide at 300dpi! Needless to say, Photoshop slowed to a crawl. Not long after that, I was working on a 5ft. tall by 2ft. wide image at 300dpi again. It's putting a load on my computer. Right now I usually am working on two computers at once, usually for different projects and while one is uploading a large website I can work on the other. Right now it's my iMac and a Mac Mini that I use mainly as a media server, but it makes a good work companion too. So if I upgrade my iMac, I can still use it as a backup. So there you have it, my 2010 goals.

-Trent

Sunday, December 20, 2009

It's time.

As stated in this post, I've been thinking of upgrading my MacBook Pro. Yesterday I came to realize none of the ports on the left hand side(save the charger) work. No USB(on that side), no audio output, no audio input, no express card slot. In addition to this, a dead pixel made itself known a couple weeks ago. It's driving me nuts! So, I think it's time to finally upgrade. I'll let you know this week what I end up with.

-Trent

3 day update.

I'm just updating from this post. After 3 days, I've more than tripled the users(not hard) and have an Alexa rank in the low 11 million range. We'll see how it goes in a few weeks.

-Trent

Saturday, December 19, 2009

Someone to rely on

Having someone to rely on is key in business. Everyone is looking out for numero uno and unless you're the one doing the looking, you're never someone's priority. It's sad to see that you can't trust so many people, but when money is involved, it gets crazy. So, having someone to rely on is important now more than ever.
What I'm getting at, is you need to be the one to rely on. Hard work does not guarantee success, but it helps...a lot! I know people personally who get upset that they haven't been successful, but they've put little effort into their work. It's no secret, success most often won't jump up and say 'Hello! Come along on this path paved with money!', however some still think that's the case. In business, failures will happen. I, for example, have started more projects than I can remember, some were met with great success, some were quite the money pits, but the key is hard work, determination, and someone to rely on...you.

-Trent

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Fresh starting point

Yesterday I launched a website for a client. With just a little bit of work over the next few months, I want to see how I can impact it's search rankings and Alexa ranking. It's a good old fashioned test. I will keep you updated on how the progress goes.


-Trent

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Giving 102.17%


Typically 100% is the maximum amount a person can give, but then they introduce 5th Gear and manage to give 102.17%. Actually that number is the increase in visitors to this blog over the last month according to Google Analytics. It's not that hard actually because there were hardly any visitors previous, but I recently found some time to devote to optimizing this blog rather than just focusing on clients. This is supposed to get me more clients, right? Anyway, thank you to all who do visit this blog.

-Trent

Monday, December 14, 2009

Movin' on up


A company that I'm doing some Social Media work for that I've talked about before just keeps moving up in Alexa rankings and traffic. This company was previously ranked at about 8 million according to Alexa. Not anymore! They are down below 700,000 and traffic is up another 7.5% in the last month. Can't argue with results. Another site I'm working on with the same company just dropped below 950,000 and it is a much newer site. It's things like this that make work satisfying.

-Trent

Sunday, December 13, 2009

Goal Update...5th Gear

So I said I'd have 125 posts by the end of the year, currently I'm at 107. The holidays are upon us which makes it more difficult, but still very possible. Right now I've pretty much got 4 speeds. Relaxed(haven't been there for years), Working, Lots of work, and Stressed(usually here). Time to introduce 5th gear...pulling hair out! Soon, you'll see a balding man with lots of work done and an accomplished goal!

-Trent

Saturday, December 12, 2009

Google Phone

The oft-rumored Google Phone is coming to lifeand has been dubbed Nexus One. It has been designed and built by HTC. The entire user experience is designed by Google and runs on Android 2.1. Here's the kicker...they plan to sell it online, unlocked, and attached to no carrier. Gutsy move for sure, but it's Google and they are kind of like royalty. You'll let them give a highly inappropriate wedding toast and loom the other way just to be in it's mere presence. If anyone can pull this off, it's Google. Now the question is, will you buy one?


-Trent
Posted from my iPhone

Photo of the Year


This is according to PhotoFocus. The photo was taken by and Rafael (RC) Concepcion. The photo is a great one no doubt, but I want to know, what do you think is the photo of the year? I won't even limit it that much. What is your favorite photo of any year? Here's the link to the original post at PhotoFocus.

-Trent

Friday, December 11, 2009

Charge for convenience?

All too often today, I see the phrase 'Convenience Charge'. I find that this is only convenient as a mean of additional revenue and worse customer service.
How often do you hear a company give a big speech about how they've re-focused on the customer and pride themselves on their service? Quite often, right? How many of those same companies charge you for them to be in the right place at the right time? The answer is usually a lot. Is that really serving the customer? As a consumer, I think of that as if I inconvenienced them and they're so upset at me that they want to go Dick Cheney on me and break out the waterboarding technique. Consider that's bot legal for a small business, they charge you extra money.
I will give you an example. Over the summer, I was looking to buy tickets to a minor league baseball game. The ticket price was a reasonable $7.00, but the convenience charge was $4.00...per ticket. For 10 tickets, that's an extra $40 to support their website that they should have already! It's not as though they are going to shut down their site if they no longer sold tickets online. This becomes a dis-service to the customer.
With the way the economy is, doing something that might anger a customer is considered a no-no. If you want to win customers back or gain new ones, focus on customer service and mean it!


-Trent
Posted from my iPhone

Don't use Google?

Mashable has an interesting article about a Mozilla executive that wants users to switch their default search engine from Google to Bing. Why would he do this? Privacy Policy. Bing has a stronger privacy policy and Google's Eric Schmidt made light of the policy in saying that if you don't want people to see what you're searching, you shouldn't be searching it. What are your feelings about this situation?

Link to original article:
http://bit.ly/5jsAVa


-Trent
Posted from my iPhone

Thursday, December 10, 2009

You are what you tweet

Twitter is becoming more available to even those who don't tweet with search deals popping up, real time search of tweets, and widgets. This makes what you say that much more available to your potential client. All too often I see people who are representing a company or a brand get caught up in how casual their tweets become. You may feel that the $&@"?! waiter is giving you bad service, but is that something you want your brand to say? Even if you are only sending out personal tweets, a Google search later shows your potential employer that they don't want to hire you after seeing how much bad-mouthed your old job.
I'm not implying you can't say something funny to your friends, but be careful of what you tweet because it's out there for all the world to see.


-Trent
Posted from my iPhone

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Goodbye cold




I'm on my way to Orlando for a conference and this is what it was like outside while I was at the airport. According to weather.com it felt like -3. Anyway, it'll be in the 80's in Florida so I'm not going to miss the weather much.
Also of note, I'm typing this while using Gogo In-Flight wifi. It's very nice having this available! I'll let you know how Orlando is over the next few days.

-Trent
Posted from my iPhone

Thursday, December 3, 2009

New desk!


In addition to getting a netbook the day after Thanksgiving, I also managed to score a great deal on a new desk and a monitor(on the left). Previously my office was cluttered with a desk my wife used in college, a desk my mom gave to me, and a card table...yes, a card table. Now with this new desk I've eliminated two of those desks and have more room to work with because I can package this desk more efficiently. It's already gone through a bit of rearranging since this picture as the printer and shelf to the right are gone off this desk now and it's been replaced by my Mac Mini media server with a monitor. It's a much better work environment down there now.

-Trent

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

100th post!


It's my 100th post of the year! And I'm here to say that I've gone netbook. I've wanted one for quite some time, but never had a real excuse for one. I'm traveling a little bit more coming soon and the Black Friday sales offered some netbooks for appealing prices. Ended up with a Compaq Mini 110 because it was cheap, but I was happy to have an anti-glare screen. After installing Firefox, the necessary add-ons, and Open Office, it was time to install GMA Booster to overclock the integrated graphics. So far so good and even though all my Adobe CS4 apps are in Mac format, I do have Microsoft Front Page 2003 that I can use on here to help with working on sites in a pinch.

-Trent

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Web Server + Web Browser?


I've been playing around with the Opera 10 Web Browser the last couple days and considering their small market share, Opera had to do something drastic to get people to use their browser. Sure enough, they did. Now inside the Opera browser you can host websites, share files, and stream music. Pretty cool stuff, but is it a gimmick. Short answer, yes. Long answer, yes, but it has the potential to be something more. I am hosting a site on the Opera Unite server right now just for fun, but it has the ability to put something up for a short while so someone can review a site you're making changes to. Plus you can password protect that site and make it so it won't be indexed by search engines. It's worth a look when you're trying to collaborate on a project and don't have/want Google Apps.

-Trent

Monday, November 30, 2009

Google Image Swirl

Stumbled upon this pretty cool new Google Labs Feature. It is a new way to discover images that could be pretty useful. I can't explain it as well as Google, so click the link for more info.

-Trent

December already?

Well it's almost December. Crazy how fast the year goes by. I've learned a lot, started a LOT of projects and even finished a few. Long term though, I'm just getting started. The holidays have led to less posting here, but it'll continue and get less sporadic after the New Year. I'm still working like crazy though and I set up a new desk and re-arranged my office which I will post about soon enough.

-Trent

Thursday, November 26, 2009

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! I'm especially thankful for my family, friends, those who support me, and of course my clients.


-Trent
Posted from my iPhone

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Stop




Have you ever felt like the picture above. Clear roads ahead, but you've got something in your way. Usually it's a mental block of some sort. I've stumbled upon this multiple times and I wish I could say there's just one answer to it, but there isn't. Sometimes I try to find motivation to force my way through. Other times I let it sit for a bit and come back with a fresh mind. The point is, keep trying! No matter the stumbling block, it'll only get worse if you don't try something new or take a different approach.

-Trent
Posted from my iPhone

Friday, November 13, 2009

More photography


I've been missing photography. I've been too busy behind the computer to go out and shoot lately. It doesn't help that it's dark by the time I get off work either. I'm committed to taking more pictures, even if it means taking pictures of paper. That's the most boring thing I could think of, but now thinking about it, you can make paper into any shape...so scratch that. Anyway, more pictures!

-Trent

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Live...from my car!


I have a Samsung Q1 Tablet that I've been neglecting for some time and yesterday I decided to mess around with it again. One problem, I only have a car charger for it. So I drove to and from work with it plugged in and on a couple errands. It was fully charged when I started updating the software on it, but the battery last maybe 2 hours. So here I am, trying to finish the last download, in my car. Fortunately my wi-fi has no problem reaching the driveway. I just figured the situation was too funny to NOT blog about.

-Trent
Posted from my iPhone

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Do you store in a cloud?


More and more people are storing things online. Is that a good thing though? Sure it frees up localized hard drive space and it's easy, but what if the server goes down? I'm no saying I don't have some things in a cloud, but everything is backed up locally as well which I think many people are forgetting to do or are just relying on the cloud. All I'm saying is, don't put all your eggs in one basket cloud. Now the question is, do you store in a cloud? If so, how much do you rely on it?

-Trent

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Photo Project Update


I'd previously talked about an upcoming Photo Project. The project is complete, and along with two other photographers, the pics are up. Check them out at SEMA Gallery.

-Trent

Monday, November 9, 2009

Weekend...gone!

I got home from my business trip at about 1am on Friday and crashed. Saturday, well I had been gone for a week, so there were tasks waiting for me. Fortunately, after a hard day's work today, I should be able to get back on track and finish up some projects as well as start new ones.

-Trent

Friday, November 6, 2009

Time

We all need more time. Since the technology of time creation has yet to be perfected(I've wasted lots of time trying to figure it out), your best bet is time management. Managing when to do what and getting the most out of those precious hours of the day. If you're not managing your time, it just might pass you by.

-Trent
Posted from my iPhone

Thursday, November 5, 2009

When do you get work done?

It seems like I always get more work done either early in the morning or late at night. It's never a normal hour. Does my brain work better at that time? Who knows. It brings up a question though. When do you work best?

-Trent
Posted from my iPhone

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

New blog?

One of the ideas Yom and I had involves me blogging elsewhere in addition to this. The question is do I have the time? Maybe. Would amount to much? Probably not. Would it be fun? Yes!

-Trent
Posted from my iPhone

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Is it November?




This is a screenshot of the weather in Las Vegas right now. Yeah, this is November weather. Last week it snowed at home! I could get used to this.


-Trent
Posted from my iPhone

Monday, November 2, 2009

New idea hatched

Whenever Yom and I get together, ideas tend to flow. Yom's Random Stats started as a joke between us for example. Today was no exception. No details yet, but when I get back home, I'm getting to work.

-Trent
Posted from my iPhone

Sunday, November 1, 2009

Routine Change

I'm in Vegas right now for the SEMA Show and the place I was supposed to be staying at flooded. Now the hotel I'm at charges $12(!) a day for Internet access so I'm trying to avoid using it if I can. Tomorrow I'll probably crack, but my phone has been serving me well.

-Trent
Posted from my iPhone

Saturday, October 31, 2009

Road trip!

I'm off on a road trip today. No Halloween party for me, unless you consider being stuck in a car for 6 hours with Yom a 'party'. I'll keep my Twitter page updated with all the happenings over the next week while I'm out of town.

-Trent

Thursday, October 29, 2009

Photoshop App

This what I needed! Well between the Photoshop.com Mobile app and Flickr's new app that lets you download pictures onto your iPhone. Makes it just one step closer to being able to do some work on my phone(besides email and twitter).


-Trent
Posted from my iPhone

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Deadline

There's nothing more daunting and more motivating than an upcoming deadline. I'm running into a few of those because I am going out of town next week for a convention for my day job. So that means I've got to hustle and get some projects done before I leave. Is it possible? Yes. Is it going to kill any chance of sleep? Most likely. If my blog posts are just a bunch of letters over and over again, I've fallen asleep on the keyboard again.

-Trent

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Busted!




It seems like things are breaking on me a lot lately. This just happens to be one of them. The USB cable that I use to charge my iPhone is shown here with newly exposed wires. It still works, but I'm not risking it. I can dig another one up somewhere I'm sure.


-Trent
Posted from my iPhone

Monday, October 26, 2009

Customer Service-When is it really service?

For 3 years I worked at a retail giant that consistently had complaints about it's service. It was always drilled into our heads that the customers needed to have a good experience so it'd show up on our scorecard. At no point was there a talk about how happy customers are repeat customers or anything to that affect. If the customer wasn't satisfied, you just didn't tell them about the survey we had.
Can you call that customer service? Of course not. Most often you're not actually getting good customer service and just lip service so they get a good score.
How do you stop this horrifying trend? Get rid of scorecards for one, but pay attention to your customer. Do they have a dog, use that. Make sure they notice that you're actually listening. It's all about building rapport with the customer. If a salesman at Company A tells me that I should buy a product because it fits my needs and a salesman at Company B tells me I should buy a product because my kid's favorite color is yellow and the
product is yellow, I'm going to pick Company B.


-Trent
Posted from my iPhone

Sunday, October 25, 2009

Next MacBook? Pt. 2


Already, I may have changed my mind. I wrote about the New MacBook recently and how it was a better option than the 13" MacBook Pro. I've been wronged. I overlooked a couple things. The 13" MBP has a Firewire port which I wouldn't use often anyway, so that's not a factor, but the screen has a 60% wider color gamut and a backlit keyboard. Both things I want. I can deal without the backlit keyboard, but having the nicer screen when I'm working on video/photos on the go, kind of important. Again, the serious stuff that really rely on color correction, I'll go to my iMac, but it's nice to know that I'm at least closer to correct color. We'll see what happens.

-Trent

Saturday, October 24, 2009

Photo Shoot Results

Last week I went on a photo shoot. It's up on my personal Flickr page at the moment, but I'll put some on the FNM Flickr page too. Here's a sneak peek until I get some more edited.


-Trent

Friday, October 23, 2009

The Search War has begun

Things become old news quickly, and unfortunately I tend to write my blogs 1-2 days in advance. When the mood hits, I gotta write. Anyway, Bing announced it will now include Facebook status updates and Twitter 'Tweets". Soon after, Google announced it will include Tweets as well. This changes a lot! I've been following Google Caffeine for awhile because it planned to integrate more Twitter updates, so I'm kind of prepared, but you better believe I'm convincing every client from now on that they are using Twitter for part of their SEO needs.

-Trent

Thursday, October 22, 2009

Next MacBook?


Yesterday Apple released a bunch of new products, including a revised white plastic MacBook. It got me thinking, my MacBook Pro is a few years old now and has it's issues. It is a 15" MBP and has served me well, but I no longer need a dedicated video card because I'll do most of the editing on my iMac. So I want something more portable. Tossed around the idea of a MacBook Air, but ultimately decided on a 13" MacBook Pro. My wife has one and I like it. However, this new MacBook came out and I'm second guessing my decision. It has the same processor and graphics card as the basic 13" MBP, larger hard drive, and is $200 cheaper. Sure it doesn't have the aluminum enclosure and no SD card slot, but I could care less. So, if I write a post about my new basic MacBook in the next couple months, you know why.

-Trent

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Something cool I found

This will only apply to you if you use Twitter, so I apologize for this post if it doesn't concern you. I just recently discovered the site TweetStats. Simply, it tells you specific details about your tweets such as what hour of the day you tweet the most in, and the percentage of Re-Tweets you do and who you Re-Tweet. Pretty cool and it's free, so no complaints here.

-Trent

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Called it!

In a previous post, I talked about the Apple Mighty Mouse and mention the no-click thing, well, here's the new multi-touch "Magic Mouse".


It has multi-touch gestures, and yes, I am intrigued by it. Will probably test one soon.

-Trent

Monday, October 19, 2009

New Goal

So I managed to do my 30 blog posts in 30 days no problem. So I'm starting a new goal. This post will be my 72nd of the year. I'd like to make that 125 by year's end. This will allow for some time off from blogging during the holidays, but who knows, I may be inspired to write a post after I stuff my face full of turkey and mashed potatoes...mmm...mashed potatoes....sorry, was daydreaming for a second. Forget it, I'm slipping back into that daydream.

-Trent


Get updates





Get updates


Sunday, October 18, 2009

Flickr Update

Quick update on my Behind the Scenes Slacking. I've managed to upload 5 pics since then. Sticking to it and I've got more to add to it soon. Hopefully more interesting pics will be taken.

-Trent

Saturday, October 17, 2009

Photo Shoot!

Today, I'm getting ready to head out to a photo shoot. My favorite kind too, cars. I've always been into cars, doesn't matter what it is, I can find a reason to like it. This happens to be a car I like without having to think of reasons to like it. It's a Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution X GSR. Say that 3 times fast. I'll post a pic on the Flickr page later.

-Trent

Friday, October 16, 2009

Jazz Game




Here I am at a Utah Jazz game with the infamous Yom from Yom's Random Stats. I managed to score some free tickets from the Utah Jazz Twitter page. Can't complain about that. This is a great perk the Jazz have set up and it makes me think more about my own customer service. In the meantime, here's Yom updating his Twitter page.





-Trent
Posted from my iPhone

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Halo

When you want to show off your skills, you create a halo. Car companies create a halo car. Me, I'm going to work on a halo site. Admittedly, I'm not the world's most amazing web designer, but I'm always trying to push myself into harder projects. My sister, who happens to be a photographer on the side would like a site to show off her portfolio. I'd like to turn it into a halo site. I want to push my skills even further and fortunately I have an understanding sister who will let me experiment on the site. I'll let you know how it goes.


-Trent
Posted from my iPhone

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

I did it! Now a question...

I set out a goal 29 days ago, to write 30 blog posts within 30 days. I completed my goal a day early(today). So now that I've done what I set out to do, what's next? How about more blogging? Do I try and keep the daily regiment going? No promises, but I'll try. I now have the habit of blogging down, so it should be as easy as EasyMac...the kind in a cup, I've screwed up the stuff in a box before. Don't ask.

-Trent

The future of cloud

It's amazing the reaction when Twitter goes down. It's a great micro-blogging service, sure. However, it goes down a lot and is vulnerable to attacks because of it's popularity. Still, people rely on it, too much. I'm not discrediting it's unique approach to communicating, but like the T-Mobile Sidekick issue over the weekend, it makes me wonder how ready we are for a world relying on the web. I'll leave you with these words of wisdom...back it up!

-Trent

Monday, October 12, 2009

Behind the Scenes Slacking



Funny Name Media has had a Flickr page for some time now, but ever since WYRD fizzled, the Behind the Scenes pics haven't been nearly as interesting so nothing got posted. Time to change that. From now on, I'll be posting more Behind the Scenes pics of Funny Name Media. It'll mainly be of things in my office(hope you like computers!), but I occasionally meet with other people. Keep an eye on it in the future.

-Trent

Sunday, October 11, 2009

Pile it on

I was just given the go ahead to start on another large project! These aren't dinky little things I'm doing. They take several weeks/months of work. And the funny thing is, I'm not really advertising either. My 'Services' page on my website isn't even up right now. Word of mouth is a powerful tool. Well, it's a short blog post because I've got to get to work!

-Trent

Saturday, October 10, 2009

12,000,000

Just yesterday I talked about Alexa, and I'm going to talk about it again. I have not put as much time and attention towards the Funny Name Media site as I should. Instead, I focus on the clients I have. Well, I've done some very minor SEO work on the site in the last month or so, and my Alexa ranking changed...a lot! It jumped by 12 million spots! That's no minor feat considering the minimal amount of work I've put into it. So, time to work on it this weekend and see where I end up.

-Trent

Friday, October 9, 2009

Alexa



The picture of the toolbar you see above is called the Alexa Toolbar. I have it installed on my computers in my Firefox web browser. Very simply, it allows you to see a site's Alexa ranking which basically shows how popular a website is. It's a very handy tool when you deal with SEO. It allows me to keep tabs on where my sites and other sites are ranked. The pic above is of Blogspot, the 7th most popular website. Where do my sites rank, well not #7, but I'm working on it.

-Trent

Thursday, October 8, 2009

Photo project


I've been pushing myself into more photography lately, which is a good thing, because I miss it. It's always fun to manipulate photos in the camera rather than Photoshop. Well my timing couldn't be better, I'll be down at the SEMA Show(big car show) in Las Vegas the first week of November and I'll be shooting some pictures for a SEMA Gallery Site. Starting the first of November, I'll be uploading some of my pictures there, so keep an eye out for it.

-Trent

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

I've done the impossible


I've done it. The uncloggable vacuum that never loses suction, has lost suction. Granted, I don't think Dyson considers what I vacuum a normal household. I have two mini schnauzers that like to tear up stuffed animals, my house is constantly covered in cotton. I pick most of it up by hand, but occasionally I'll vacuum some of it up with the Dyson. Therein lies the problem, cotton clogs. I think I'll have to have the dogs start up some manual labor to earn enough money for a new vacuum. Time to strap a shovel to their necks so they can plow the field.

-Trent

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Jailbreak?

As implied in my New iPhone post, I no longer have a need for my old iPhone. My wife is using it right now until she's due for an upgrade and then she'll get an iPhone 3Gs as well. This leaves me with an unused iPhone. What to do? I think I'm finally going to dip into the jailbreak world and see what that is like. I've never really needed it as I can do most things I need to on my current iPhone, but curiosity is getting the better of me. Will it end up as a brick? We'll see.

-Trent

Monday, October 5, 2009

My eyes!


These are my glasses. Correction: These are my broken glasses. I'm not blind without them, but it certainly helps, that's why I wear them all the time. Fortunately I've got a warranty on them, but it'll take at least a week before they're fixed.
I do have backup glasses, but the lenses are scratched(thanks puppies). So, it should be an interesting week of work.

-Trent
Posted from my iPhone

Sunday, October 4, 2009

New iPhone


So I broke down. I bought the first iPhone the day after it came out, and got the 3G iPhone two days after it came out. However, I was able to hold out for awhile longer on this one. The thing that sealed the deal was me going to the Apple Store and comparing the speed of opening applications with my phone and the 3GS demo unit. It was significantly faster and I'm always waiting for the Mail App it seems like, so I upgraded. Stuck with a 16GB because I only have about 6GB of music on this computer and I can rotate my videos around. I'm looking forward to using the video feature here soon...maybe a vlog is in my future. The return of TFAM2000?

-Trent

Saturday, October 3, 2009

Mighty Mouse


This you see here is the Apple Mighty Mouse. I hated this thing when I first used it(no right click?!?). However, I have been using Photoshop more and more and it's benefit is shining through. That trackball that allows me to side-scroll is really smooth and easy to use. It makes navigating photos that I'm zoomed in on a lot easier. There's rumors of a new Mighty Mouse after a filing hit the FCC, so we'll see if the new one will be better or worse(no click at all?!?).

-Trent
Posted from my iPhone

Friday, October 2, 2009

New project

Wrapping up one, starting another. Even though there isn't a hard deadline, I'd like to have this one done in roughly two weeks. And then it'll take probably another week or so as I build up the SEO aspect of it. At the end of October I'm going out of town for work, so ideally, it should be done by then. I'll post details when I get the main page done. I tried right here to give you a hint of what I'm doing, but it's too early to try and be funny, I'd end up offending someone.


-Trent
Posted from my iPhone

Thursday, October 1, 2009

4%

Doesn't sound like much, does it? But this is in addition to 15% originally, then 11% more, now an additional 4% on top of that. Of course I'm talking about the increased web traffic of an established site I'm working with that I've mentioned before. They literally stayed within a hundred visitors difference through 3 years using numerous marketing methods, but never social media, and that's where I came in. The amount of time spent on this has been minimal, but the impact is there. All I know is the difference between Fat Free and 2% milk is HUGE.


-Trent
Posted from my iPhone

Digg it


We're on Digg! Want to see what we're digging or become our friend? http://bit.ly/FNMDigg
I'm also experimenting with a new look on the logo(if you can call it that). It's more like a profile pic.

Let me know what you think.


-Trent
Posted from my iPhone

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Mobile Blogging Pt. 2

Here it is, hopefully the iPhone app(BlogPress) I've been looking for for mobile blogging. It allows tags, pics, and titles. This may be the new standard for me. I'll let you know how it goes after a few days and trying it on my personal blog too.

-Trent


-- Posted from my iPhone

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Most blog posts in a month ever

This month marks a record for my blogging. This has been the most blog posts I have done in a single month. The previous record was 12, now I'm at 14, with one day left in the month. Bring it on October!

-Trent

Monday, September 28, 2009

Mobile Blogging

In the previous post, I tested out the text-to-blog feature that Blogger offers. It needs work. I don't know how to add tags, create a title, add a picture(not as a separate post), etc. So, for now, I'm sticking to the web. I've yet to find an iPhone app I like for mobile blogging either, at least to blogger. I've seen plenty of good Wordpress apps though. Oh well, mobile blogging is on hiatus at the moment. I'll let you know if I find something I like.

-Trent
Testing Mobile Blogging: I am typing this on my phone through text messaging. We'll see how this goes. If it works well, I may not need to open the laptop to blog again.
-Trent

Saturday, September 26, 2009

Music to work to


Lately I have been enjoying listening to relaxing music while I work. Some types of music just get annoying after several hours of work, but I find that when I turn on Pandora and type in "Owl City" or "Making April" I get some really relaxing music that I can listen to for hours on end. And even though I might be dealing with frustrating work, I'm always relaxed when I can listen to some good music. It's actually therapeutic to work...odd, I know.

-Trent

Friday, September 25, 2009

Blogging for business


This is not what you may think it is, I'm not blogging on here to ask for your business. I'm talking about how on my latest project it includes getting the company set up on blogging. It's interesting trying to teach someone how to blog, especially when they've only heard of it before. I wrote up the first few posts, told them how to do it, why they should do it, and general idea of what to write about. I'm going to keep posting for a little while to get them in the groove of things, but we'll see how it goes. It only benefits you if you keep at it, that's why the daily blog is back here.

-Trent

Thursday, September 24, 2009

Stress makes the heart grow fonder

Right? Well in this case it does. I have a lot of very real and very daunting deadlines to work with at my day job. It's quite stressful doing the work of 4 to 5 people. The 'heart grow fonder' part comes in when I get home and go to work on Funny Name Media related items. Is there stress involved, of course, but I long for the stress of just one job. And I enjoy the work I do with FNM much more and that makes the stress much more bearable. My goal has always been to make FNM my full-time gig, and lately the projects I'm working on require full-time hours and close to full-time pay. The time may be soon, or my heart might collapse from the stress first. We'll find out...

-Trent

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Printer revisited


Sadly, this is my third time writing about a printer. I cannot seem to get one to work right for very long, at least when it's an HP. With that, I'm off to the interwebs to find a new all-in-one printer/scanner/copier thing. I'm thinking wi-fi printing would be nice, but not a necessity. I just need it to do it's job. I have a $600 Epson printer for photo prints, so no need for great quality, just scan documents, print documents, and copy documents. Is that too much to ask? At this point in time, I'd rather own a Corn Baller(watch Arrested Development if that made no sense) than another HP. Sound off in the comments if you're constantly fighting printer issues.

-Trent

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Photography

Wide Angle Kitchen Shot
One of the services we offer is photography. I've done some weddings and it's not really my scene, but lately for the Property Management project I've been working on I've had to go take pictures of the homes they have available. I'm a bit rusty, but it turned out better than the customer was hoping for(always a good thing). Despite having a 17mm lens on a Canon 1D MkII(1.3x sensor), it's just not quite wide enough for the smaller rooms. The pic above is as wide as the lens will go. After a couple more projects, I'll have to look into wider glass or a full-frame body, or both, because this project is an on-going project. We'll see how it goes after I go to take pictures either tomorrow or Thursday of another home.

-Trent

Monday, September 21, 2009

Snow Leopard?

I have a couple year old MacBook Pro that until I got my iMac, I did all of my work on. It only has a 120GB hard drive and it is constantly FULL. I am always putting things on an external hard drive and it's not as speedy as it used to be. Let's just say I used to compare it to Porsche's...now...Mazda's(still has some zoom-zoom). Well, I'm thinking I'm going to back it all up, then switch to Snow Leopard(currently has 10.4.11 Tiger), add some RAM, put all my Adobe CS4 applications on there and hope it's renewed. Right now I have the Adobe CS2 Suite and Dreamweaver 8 on there. It's awkward switching between the two. Has anyone had experience on Snow Leopard since 10.6.1 was released?


-Trent

Sunday, September 20, 2009

No longer TFAM

With Would You Rather Daily no longer active due to lack of commitment from other parties, I do not feel the need to go by that nickname anymore. It was good for that site, but not much else. So, from now on, I'm back to my given name...Trent.

-Trent

Saturday, September 19, 2009

Saturdays

Considering I have a full time job, Saturday has always been a working day for me. Today is no exception. Even though I overhauled the Funny Name Media site awhile back, it has a few nagging faults I need to fix. I'm also going to be doing a lot of SEO work on the website I just finished up. And I'm in the beginning stages of a new website. Mainly doing research on it at the moment for the customer to get a better idea of what I need to do on the site to set it apart. Doesn't sound bad for a Saturday, but then you have to realize I have to mix 'life' in there with it. So, it's off to my nephew's birthday party...

-TFAM

Friday, September 18, 2009

Google Apps


For a few different projects I've been working on lately, they've called for email service. A lot of places charge money for small amounts of storage(100MB). Well I've been using Google Apps Standard for most of these projects and it's been great. You get 7GB for free, not to mention Calendar and Docs. This made me realize I need to do it for myself and ditch my current email provider. I'll be doing that this weekend.

-TFAM

Thursday, September 17, 2009

Social Media

I've been dabbling more and more into social media recently for clients, and the results are coming in in waves. I've worked with a well established website that has tried numerous ways of advertising both through print and online, but their web presence never really would budge from their usual 'couple thousand' viewers. After spending just a couple hours on some projects for them, the viewers came in. I monitored the site traffic through their server and it had stayed steady for about a year. Within a couple weeks, web traffic was up 15%. Not an insignificant amount for the relatively small amount of work. However, with social media, you can't just set it and forget it, so I'll continue to work with it and let you know the results. As of today, it was up 11% from the 15% they originally gained.

-TFAM

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

I'm still here


I can't begin to explain the busy-ness! I have several projects that I've started and I've been going in and out of town quite a bit lately. Blogging has taken a back seat, but I'm here to show you one project that I am finishing up. It's a Utah Property Management group. They rent homes and will even rent your home for you. Check it out.
I've been doing a lot of web work lately and less 'media' related things, but it's still there. I'll give you an update of the media things I've been doing soon.

-TFAM

Thursday, August 6, 2009

New project

Somebody heard the good word apparently. I've got a new project I'm working on that for once isn't one of my own. I'll post details when I'm further along, but I've got even more work to do in addition to my multitude of projects. Hopefully my wife likes watching me stare at the computer all weekend instead of working on the lawn(not likely).

-TFAM

Monday, August 3, 2009

Workless Weekend

So over the weekend, I visited some family in Idaho. And when I say Idaho, I mean rural Idaho. This helped me realize my reliance on technology. I can't work as efficiently without internet access which should be obvious since I work on websites and my email is web based. So in the small town I was visiting, I was lucky to get service at all. When I did, there was no 3G. Even in the slightly larger town nearby. At the hotel I was staying out, no internet access. So I was stuck to working on my iPhone on the Edge network and only at the hotel. Less than ideal circumstances to say the least. But I am back in the comfort of 3G everywhere, Wi-Fi when and where I need it, and no longer tethered to my phone to try and edit HTML.

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Man down

So the USB hub I talked about here, has ceased to function. Fortunately my iMac has 5 USB ports which will do in a pinch, but I had every one of the 7 ports on this filled up. The time is now to hunt for another one. It will probably be another week or so because I am going out of town this week. You'll be the first to hear about the new one.

-TFAM

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Ready...Break

So ever since I have not needed to edit a new video everyday, it's been a bit more relaxing. I've kind of taken a needed break from pushing the new ideas. This also helps with my getting more than 4 hours of sleep a night. I still have plenty of ideas I'm working on though and I plan to attack them again with full force here soon. I'll also be announcing the new way I want to handle WYRD in the future in the next couple of days.

-TFAM

Thursday, July 9, 2009

The future

Unfortunately, it came to this. We are no longer producing the videos for Would You Rather Daily. There's only one simple explanation for this, and that's a lack of commitment from those who are supposed to be involved in the site. So rather than set up the expectation for a new video every day, I'm changing the format quite a bit. There will still be a daily would you rather question posted, but in the future it will be accompanied by a Pros and Cons list usually written by myself. This way, I'll be the only one to blame if something doesn't get done and I won't have to rely on others. I think this will work, although I do plan to go back to the daily format once I can get a committed team back on board. Expect to see some changes to the site soon to reflect our future goals. I would like to thank everyone though for the videos we did do, because they were fun to make and fun to watch and a lot of work did go into them.

-TFAM

Monday, July 6, 2009

Fifty!


We've hit a milestone...albeit a bit later than I anticipated, but it happened. You see, we we're scheduled to hit this milestone on Wednesday of last week, but filming got delayed and then when it did happen...well you can read the last blog post to see what went wrong. So, today's video marks our 50th Would You Rather Daily Episode. This does not include the realistic Would You Rather's or the bloopers video, so we've been hard at work on this. Planning to hit the filming hard this week although that's always the plan. We'll just see if it happens this time. With the first 50 out of the way, we can only hope for 50 more great Would You Rathers...and keep an eye out for some changes in a few weeks to how things are done.

-TFAM

Thursday, July 2, 2009

Epic Fail


A rare occurrence happened last night...twice. The first rarity, I got Asti, Yom, and I all together to film something. The reason I show up in so many videos is because I can usually only get one other person to film. Second very frustrating rarity: After filming several videos that night and getting lots of great b-roll material, I went to download the videos to my computer. Nothing. Notta. No videos to be found on the memory card. So, I try a different computer and get the same result. I put the memory card back in the camera and find the old videos to be on there, but none of the new ones. Obviously freaking out at this point, I try a couple different data recovery programs just in case the files were on there but they just didn't show up. I got nothing again. I try putting the same memory card back in the same camera and film a little test clip. Works fine, transfers to the computer just fine. I always check to make sure it says it's recording before we start the intro and I know the memory card was inserted right(doesn't let you put it in wrong anyway). I'm just baffled and also upset because it's hard to get a couple people together to film. I'll see if I can pull it off again.
/rant

-TFAM

Pic courtesy of icanhascheezburger

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Site redesign

In between video editing, going over project ideas, trying to create more hours in the day, etc. I usually try and refine or redesign the current web sites. Would You Rather Daily has been redesigned, followed shortly by Yom's Random Stats, and now...The Funny Name Media site! It has a unique look compared to the other sites which is good in a way. It is a huge improvement, but still has a few tweaks that need to be done to it. Also only the main page is new right now. The About Us page is still the old design. That'll probably be changed by tonight though.
I also officially started on a new project. I don't know if it falls under the Funny Name Media umbrella though because it is not largely web-based. The website will obviously be done by me, but the idea doesn't rely on the Internet to make it work. This will take several months before I have anything to show for it, so don't expect to see anything soon. In the meantime, go check out the new site and let me know what you think.

Monday, June 29, 2009

New Special Guests


We've expanded our special guest line by two. Two new entrants into the WYRD ring. They are Ron and Jay. And there's some animosity between them in the video. It leads to name-calling, but it just spices things up a bit. We're hoping these two can meet up again in a video as it will only get more interesting between them. Thank you to both of them for stepping up to the plate.
-TFAM

Saturday, June 27, 2009

The Game


So we made it to the game. There was no rain for the first inning, but then the skies opened up. We we're put on rain delay for about an hour. Before the rain, the Bees were down by 6. So not off to a great start. Everybody except Yom showed up after the rain. Unfortunately, his friends wedding was that same night so he had to leave during the rain delay. So the game got back underway around 9pm and we just sat back and enjoyed ourselves. It was a bit chilly out after the rain and I had forgotten my coat in the car. So after a trip to the team store and realizing they wanted $110 for a coat, I instead paid $25 for a long sleeve shirt. It helped keep me warm fortunately. We stayed as long as Asti would let us stay(he was too cold) which ended up being the bottom of the 7th and about 11:00pm. We then went to Denny's to get an after game snack. Apparently ordering bacon was rather hilarious. Don't ask.I think we will definitely try and do this again. Maybe I'll take everyone out to a Jazz game this year. A little bit faster pace would be helpful in keeping everyone interested.

-TFAM

Friday, June 26, 2009

Game day!


Here we are, been waiting for quite some time for the Funny Name Media night at the ball game. We're going to see the Salt Lake Bees play against the Fresno Grizzlies. I've had everything planned out for awhile, but there's something you can't plan for...weather. It's been the wettest June that I can remember and despite being nice and sunny the last couple days, there's a 40% chance of rain today at the start of the baseball game. Should be interesting since we're sitting on the 2nd row from the field so we're not exactly covered from the elements. And it's been drizzling this morning, so let's hope it stays that way and doesn't rain out the game. Expect tweets on that status of how it goes here.

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Sleep...what is that?

So as you know by now, I have a full time job. Let's just say I can't throw money at advertising a site if I don't have money in the first place. I think they teach you that in Kindergarten nowadays. Credit cards don't come until 2nd grade though. Anyway, I work from about 8:15am-5:00pm at my day job, come home, spend some time with my wife and the dogs. Maybe take a walk with the dogs. Then I try and get people together to film...yup, everyday. And I'm only about 10% successful. It's hard to motivate people when they get paid with hopes and dreams currently.
So, when I get shot down on filming, I go to work. Whether it be on a website design/re-design, writing emails, writing plans and material for the sites, editing video, etc. This goes on until roughly 1am-2am every night. I have spent a few mornings up until 5am working on things when I usually wake up at 7am...if the dogs let me sleep in that late.
Over time, this gets to be draining and every once in awhile I have to take a break and not work on new projects. But I have to stay motivated. The light is at the end of the tunnel and that light is making this my full time job. I enjoy this. The light may be a month away or 2 years away, I'm not sure yet, but it's there. Until then though, sleep...well...what are weekends for anyway?

-TFAM

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

If I threaten long enough...


...it'll eventually come to fruition. Such is the case with the Guest Scoreboard. I've mentioned to the crew before that I planned to do this, it just got put on the back burner as I worked on other projects. But lo and behold, it's up. Too bad it reminds me of how much better the guests argue than I do.

-TFAM

Thursday, June 18, 2009

It came to this...

Sometimes in life you're put in a pinch and you are forced to make a decision. Here was my dilemma. Asti is on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, Spyder was in Canada for a bit and had to dive back into work, and Yom has been unavailable recently. What am I saying? I was out of footage to use except for one video I didn't really feel comfortable with seeing the light of day. Mainly because it gives you an insight into me...an insight that outside of the FNM guys and my wife should not see. But to keep the website rolling, it got posted. TFAM vs. TFAM 2000.Yup, it's me arguing against myself and the only winner is the viewer. It's on a whole new level of...interestingness. This was filmed back in March and is one of a kind. If you dare, check it out here.
Soon, everyone should be available again so I can stockpile some footage. We're also planning to do some filming at the upcoming Salt Lake Bees game I'm taking everyone to.

-TFAM