I always seem to have issues organizing my projects in Eclipse. It's really convenient to have all my projects in one workspace, but then again it adds unnecessary complication with searching the workspace, closing/opening projects, etc. Recently I've sort of given in/up and reformatted my entire local workspace. What I did was I set the document root of my local Apache web server to "c:\" that way everything ...

Like most iPhone junkies, I can't stop checking the App Store for updates. I ’ve played out all the cool games and settled on my core programs, but there's still something missing. Here are 12 iPhone apps that somebody really needs to create.read more | digg story

Recently I helped launch a website that I had been developing for over a year. It is called JealousBrother.com. It is basically an interactive social network with a great combination of some of the best social networking sites out there. Here's a run down of what it's all about - the article is taken from the site's official blog: Where did the name Jealous Brother come from? I am ...

Why is it that my network connection drops out (randomly AND several times a day) to the point where: 1.) I cannot even access localhost 2.) I have to restart the computer to get the connection back I run WAMP5 and WAMP Server 2 on Windows XP machines with no problems EVER. I have stayed connected for weeks on XP. Here are some terms which I have searched for and have resulted ...

When I get busy, I don't post much but I do check the stats as a matter of habit fairly regularly which causes me to see the title for my last post a little too frequently. Hence the name of this post since I won't be posting much in the next couple months or so, I wanted to make sure I had something nice to look at. I'm ...

I am a freelance web designer, I'm also a undergraduate student graduating this year, I also just started a small business, and am working on some exciting yet time consuming client projects. To say the least - I have a lot on my plate at the moment. However as you no doubt have come to the same conclusion, in most cases, nobody else cares, and you find yourself ...

Apparently I've been hiding under a rock recently. Can someone explain to me how true this statement is that Facebook has 50 million active users? http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2007/oct07/10-24FacebookPR.mspx Talk about my job being in demand.

So there's a lot going on with Google and their Supplemental Index recently. I honestly haven't been paying close attention to any super new news, but I do know a couple ways which people have tried to figure out if their site is in Google's Supplemental index. Here are some various methods and how my site stacks up. Method (Number of pages | description of results): 1.) site:www.dennisplucinik.com ***-slktf ...

I'm going to try this out to see if I can't get to know some of you all out there a little better. I will be online tonight at 9:00pm EST until 10:00pm EST during which time, if you IM me I'll add you to the chat room with everyone else. I figured this would be a good way to get everyone together and ask / answer questions, make ...

I'm writing this just to vent. I wanted to get that out of the way. Let me just say that when you've had Photoshop training for your whole fricking life, and you suddenly find that a BUNCH of features which you had come to find very useful (in fact you use them a lot) just stop working altogether. Let me describe those things that I have found in ...

In the last 1 1/2 half months (as of right now) this site has accrued: $66.40 directly from Google Adsense ads. I don't think I'm supposed to write about the specific CTR actually now that I think of it. My observations: I haven't written much in the last week due to being tied up with work (writing quality articles actually takes a lot of effort). Most (99%) of the traffic is coming ...

Here's a quick batch of buttons for your web project - click to download the .psd and enjoy! This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. (More Photoshop Web Buttons here)

Someone recently wrote: "...graphics (or any media) should be used only when absolutely necessary - to improve readers/visitors convenience." I believe the author is arguing for simplicity. Trust me I understand the importance and difficulty of keeping things simple, but honestly - (unless you're Picasso) being too simple is more a sign of inability than of great design sense. Specifically I disagree with the the "only" part in that sentence. ...

I'm not referring to real life, I'm talking about the ways in which different Social Networking sites use the "friend" term. On MySpace for instance, a "friend" usually is someone you really know - at least that's the intention of their design. At least out of the people in your top friends you're more likely to actually know and be close friends with them than on any other social ...

Holy shit it must be my lucky month. First a positive encounter with Dell, now Verizon? Anyways, I had to write about it because that's how it should work - if a company goes above expectations and does something that you didn't even ask because they actually seem to care, you should tell someone else about it. How touching. So yesterday I almost started bleeding from my ears ...

This technique has been around for a long time apparently I just didn't know about it. But now I know and I'm going to tell you about it. That's just how it works folks. So, I've been using Gmail since way back when you could buy an invite on eBay in exchange for an interesting story and I've NEVER heard about this spam-finder technique. If you use Gmail to ...

Visual Twitter is an app which integrates Twitter's own microblogging service with your Twitter user account with a accent on the photosharing aspect. Mashable reported this story this afternoon and I haven't seen any other news about it since so I don't have any more information or other reviews on it. The most interesting thing to me is that they're using Twitter's logo. They're definitely located in Nova ...

This CSS technique is generally used to replace a piece of text with a graphical representation of that same text. The desired outcome is the effect that the text contained in the graphic image gets indexed by a search engine AS TEXT. It's sort of a not so white-hattish thing to do because it's usage is deceptive even though when used correctly it really serves a good purpose. My ...

...Or "How I Almost Just Had a Heart Attack because I Just Realized My Entire Blog Was in Google's Supplemental Index." Apparently in Wordpress, if you go to Options > General, you can set the "WordPress address (URL)" & the "Blog address (URL)" and this determines how the links are made to your posts throughout your site. Unfortunately, mine was set to this: http://dennisplucinik.com/blog This was causing my website to get ...

We're all familiar with captchas. Just in case you're not - they're basically web page modules used to verify if information is being submitted by a human and not a computer or a bot. There is an "official" captcha but there are also many variations of it (of which I think Google's is the best) but they basically aim to do the same thing. Honestly they have become ...

These are advanced techniques that require more than just technical knowledge of Photoshop, they require talent, Photoshop training, knowledge of design, layout, balance, color theory, etc. I hope you find these techniques inspiring and helpful. UPDATE: If you like these tutorials, you might love this:60+ (more) Advanced Photoshop & GIMP Tutorials Text-effects: Movie techniques: Vector effects: ...

Strange I've never seen this happen before. Digg.com went down right after I opened the story about the Starbucks nipple vandal. I'll try and remember to post a link once Digg comes back up. And I was just about to dig the full collection of every Calvin & Hobbes comic. weak. Update: Digg has a new design! (Read about it here)

Good lord, why are all my services going down? I have been trying to create a sandbox account with a fake buyer and seller account for a particular project I am working on so as to test the PayPal Payments Pro API integration. I have been trying to create this sandbox account for several days now and it's basically not working. Here's what happens: 1) From within the PayPal Sandbox ...

Being that this is something that I just had to figure out today, I thought I'd post up my notes which I found helpful on this topic. Let me know if you think anything else should be added. .htaccess files are/have/etc: created in notepad have no file name or different extension - just .htaccess (not file.htaccess) chmod to 644 (makes it usable by the server but prevents browser use) .htaccess is for Apache ...

I wrote something this morning about Wordpress having problems with "unexpected maintenance" all night on and off. It eventually seemed like it went away but I just tried to check my blog stats again and I got this: "As mentioned earlier we are currently doing some maintenance. Your dashboard is going to be unavailable for 5 hours." Good lord. I need my blog stats. Anyone have any clue what's going on ...