a generous designer’s blog

We can now watch videos even in 1080p HD, but to link to a specific time in the Youtube video is not so evident.

There are a few, nearly similar ways to do it. The differences between them are only there for our ease. No matter which do you use, put it at the end of the youtube link (without quotes). Here are they:

• to begin the video playback at 14 seconds: “#t=14s”
• to begin the video playback at 1 minute and 10 seconds: “#t=1m10s”

Examples:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3iLFhYDCy0#at=2m20s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TN3VtWwks4&feature=player_embedded#t=45s

Hope it’s useful! If you know other Youtube deeplink feature, don’t hold it back!

Update: one of them doesn’t work any more. corrected.

Just received a new update via the Software Update. You should really apply this one, even if you’re not a frequent updater.

Since I have a Mac, it has a typical noise when turns on or starts up from sleep: the optical drive’s mounting noise. Even if we doesn’t use, it will make this noise. When I changed to a unibody MacBook, they applied a significant improvement on this, a noise level that I could easily live with without any complaint. (Here I must mention that MacBook Pros had always a “better” and lower noise.)

But from now on, we do not have to “suffer” from this. A new EFI firmware update (with a scary pc-speaker voice during installation), some restarts and a SuperDrive Update arrived that completeley eliminates these startup noise of the optical disk drive.

Tested, it really works! Can’t beleive why the hell took this soooo long to deliver. Here’s how to apply the updates, in case you don’t read the small footer notes

1. Select the EFI firmware update in the Software Update app, and install it
2. After a few seconds, it’s done… almost. Quit every application you’re running, and connect the power cord! Now quit Software Update too, and the EFI firmware update will just start.
3. You will hear some creepy speaker noise when it restarts, see black screen for a while, and see a progress bar sliding up. No need to worry, at the end you are at your login screen.
4. Log in and go to Software Update again. Now install the SuperDrive firmware update.
5. That’s it. No need to restart again. To test your new super-quiet MacBook, go to sleep, and than awaken. Ta-da, no noise !

But anyway, thanks Apple , I really needed this after getting a new mainboard and few month ago, and now a new battery. (Although I still wonder what will be next. Garantuee expires at the end of Deceember. :S )

Notes: Always follow the onscreen instructions and always connect your MacBook to a working power source when installing a firmware update!

Last weekend was a big step for me, but not so big in the development: I’ve launched the splash site for the “I Shot Your Design” web design showcase site.

It’s my personal collection of (partly, or totally) beautiful websites. It has over 1000 screenshots in 1280 pixel wide png. It started as an offline, speedy, inspirational collection for myself.

Then why did I decided to go online beside all the other same CSS galleries? First of all to send “look-a-like” and educational samples to my clients. Not for all of them of course, not all of them can understand the purpose of these screenshots.

I have also some fine features in my mind that can help searching for patterns in the gallery, like colour variations, layouts, styles, ratings, etc.

If you’re interested, you can sign up here for a notification about the launch: I Shot Your Design

A few weeks ago I got back my MacBook from the service (mainboard exchange) and now here’s another problem. To be precise, two other problems, but all of them can be solved at home. No hassle with the distributor.

My MacBook is almost always on power adapter, I use it like a desktop computer, so noticing a battery problem isn’t always easy, and maybe never is on time.

But this was hard to overlook when I unplugged: the battery went dead from fully charged in about an hour. In addition, it completely shut down at 16%. And when I say completely, I mean no reserve battery power warning message, and no saving the computer state and go to sleep: just switch off like I’ve teared out the battery. (Yes, I lost my unsaved work.)

There’s some handy guide at Apple how to treat you lithium-ion batteries like “Lithium-ion Batteries” and “Apple Batteries – notebooks” but none of them are helpful solving our problem.

System Profiles says: Check Battery

Actually you need this guide, hidden in Apple support articles. But before that check your battery status in the System Profiler (Hardware/Power). When it says “Check battery”, you definitely need to do this before thinking about the service (btw you need to do this monthly according to Apple’s advice).

Follow these steps to recalibrate your batteries (and put some endurance in it – once a month ):

1. Plug in your adapter and fully charge your MacBook and rest in the fully charged state for at least 2 hours.
   (The power cord’s plug turns green when it’s fully charged. Don’t care about the percentage shown in menu bar.)
2. Disconnect the power adapter and let it use the battery. When the battery discharges, your MacBook will hopefully save your state and go in sleep mode.
   (Or not. Mine just switched off, so I switched on it again, and used it for a few minutes again.)
3. Allow it to sleep for at least 5 hours…
   (…to discharge all remaining reserve battery power.)
4. Plug in again and leave it until fully charged.

That’s it. While you charging and discharging (step 1 and 2) you can use your computer. I’m not sure you can do this at step 4: Apple explicitly tells this in step 1 and 2, but not in 4. (Maybe you can tell me?)

Note: This calibrating only applies to all MacBook, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, PowerBook G4 with lithium-ion batteries.

Update: I recalibrated twice, but had no luck. I went to the service where they can diagnose the problem in five minutes. If they get the appropriate error code (or something), they’ll renew the battery for you, like they did it for me.

My new, version 2* portfolio site is coming soon. I have no scheduled deadline, but the time is running out, and I really need one.

The design is 60% complete, which means it’s style and minor layout concepts won’t change. But the hardest part, the logo is 90% ready. According to my time, I think I won’t be integrate as part of the whole agenerousdesigner.com Wordpress thing. Although it wouldn’t add much extra time, but I’m not sure yet to about how to communicate my site and my freelance web design services. Currently I’m seeking a part-time job for a steady financial base in these crisis, and meanwhile I can continue freelancing as I always did before.

And now for a proof of the new portfolio, here’s a sketch paper of my logo. I’ve just drawn a few iterations on paper ’cause it’s so geometrical that with Photoshop it’s a lot faster.

Thes are the few sketches, the final is a kinda combination of these

* version 1 is offline for a while now, and was on another domain anyway

PS: My MacBook is in the service, so I’m condemned to work on a MacBook Pro. Now considering not to give it back

Holiday time. One week snowboarding in Val-Gardena, Italy. While you reading this, we are on the way through Austria.

View Larger Map

And no internet in our apartment. How can people live like this? Strange thing.

Oh yes! I made it! After following twitter status on RSS every single day, and sending a couple of emails to the support (no response), and after a HALF YEAR of waiting they can restore my account! THANK YOU!

Even this message could not take my happiness away:

30 days? What the f*ck are you doing there? Never mind, just restore it.

Welcome back feed readers!

After a week ago, before Feedburner announced the moving to Google Accounts, my feed readers count has dropped to the half.

I was a bit upset, but who uses FeedBurner for a while, knows that this could happen sometimes. It only appears in the statistic, and it’s back in a few days, like nothing happened.

But this time these few a days was a bit longer, plus there was this “moving” thing which actually did not resolve the problem, so everybody worried about the lost (or burned ) readers and had another question in mind: was my RSS statistics really authentic? (or should we count the requests manually in a server log? )

For now, the readers are magically back again but with a gap in the statistics. Some folks reported that Google Reader stopped reporting the subscribers to FeedBurner while moving. (Can’t remember the link).

Here’s a shot of my small statistics. As you can see on 17. January I started to “lost” my readers, but on 23. January I’ve got it back. Happy me.

FeedBurner statistics while burning my readers

Just a quick note. Google Apps’ Gmail got a new theme. To be more specific, it’s the new default skin from the Gmail “Themes” feature, which is available  from a couple of months (don’t know exactly).

I’m looking forward to see more customisation options in the domain settings, not just the login box’s border and background color. I don’t think the Gmail themes will be available (concerning the “corporate image” vs “the people who send funny and up-to-date (not!) powerpoint attachments” situation in most of every office, it would be a mess), but I would like to create a colored theme for my business, and maybe with a custom background.

Updated my Wordpress to the latest 2.7 version. It was a few minutes, as always. The bigger issue was to change my permalink structure.

The old one looked like this:

agenerousdesigner.com/blog/blog-posts-title-20081231

It looks now a bit useless, but I had a whole concept when it was created. First of all, i didn’t like the over-segmented /year/month/day/post-title form. I thought that the title is the most important, and the date must be also represented but at the end. Of course in this case the date format was a wrong decision.

The new structure is a default Wordpress option and it fits now my requirements:

agenerousdesigner.com/blog/2008/12/31/blog-post-title

But there’s a big problem with the search engine and user friendly links: you cannot change the structure the way you want or when you want. That wasn’t a problem in the good old days when we used ?p=3621763. It was always the same, meaningless link.

Luckily there’s a useful wordpress plugin for this, so you don’t have to maintain the old redirects in the .htaccess file “manually” (redirecting the redirects… :-s ).

You can download the Permalink Redirect Wordpress plugin at Scott Yang’s Playground, the developer’s website. (I didn’t find it on Wordpress.org)

You have to type in the previous permalink structure for the plugin to work. Also you can list special urls that will be excluded from the redirection, or specify urls where the old or the new did not follow the structure and you want to pair them manually.

Now all your links are handled, and visitors can find you, even if they bookmarked or followed an outdated link.

My note: if you change your post’s title several times while writing, don’t forget to check your permalink! It seems that Wordpress does not follow the changes! Or at least when you edit it at least once.