Edward Hopper and Josephine

January 14, 2012 by MzD

I enjoyed Edward Hopper’s work quite a bit as an undergraduate in art school. Who doesn’t like the moody, dark, impenetrable scenes he pictured of America’s depression and it’s aftermath? Especially when you’re 22.

Don’t get me wrong. I still love his work – his use of colour in particular. He knew how to paint light. What I didn’t know was his wife’s name was Josephine, and that she was also a painter. Amazing what tidbits an education leaves out. How did I come to know about her?

Fonts. Yep. While trying to come about with something different (yet quick) for the front page of this much neglected site (the old adage about the shoemaker’s son and no shoes) I thought I’d just dig into the font collection I acquired a few years ago. And right there below Hopper > Edward, was Hopper > Josephine.

According to the wiki, her work Jo’s watercolor Movie Theater—Gloucester influenced Edward’s interest in theatres. A quick (is there any other type) google search did not produce any images, sadly.

SPF record – aka anti email spoofing

December 24, 2011 by MzD

I set up SPF records for 4 domains 4 days ago. An SPF (Sender Policy Framework) record “is an email validation system designed to prevent email spam by detecting email spoofing, a common vulnerability, by verifying sender IP addresses” (WikiPedia)

Since we’re using Media Temple DV server, I followed their guidelines. (which they’ve since updated with a correct link to an SPF wizard btw – the old wizard link didn’t work so they helped me on the phone which was great ).

On diamedia.net I was getting about ~5-10 spoofed emails a day (that appear to be coming from your own domain ie: accounting @ diamedia.net etc). On the other domains about 3 a day. But some days it could be higher.

How long does the SPF record transition take?

DNS records take about 24-48 hours to update. I’ve always thought this was exaggerated, however that was using the lens of how long it takes local servers to update to switching hosts, for example. I was never thinking about servers in Russia or Italy.

I set up a temporary folder in my email to move these emails (moved them manually) to keep track.

Day 1: 8 spoofed emails
Day 2: 5 spoofed emails
Day 3: 1 spoofed email
Day 4: 1 spoofed email

So, it appears to be working. I used a soft-fail (accept and tag any non-compliant mail) which is different than hard-fail (bounce any mail that doesn’t comply) so this is how the Day 3 and Day 4 are getting through. Actually Day 4 used google servers, which I have set up to allow google to be a mail server. I might switch this.
[ v=spf1 a:example.com/20 include:_spf.google.com ~all ]

I also will probably switch to a hard-fail once I am 100% sure about what this entails.

This was something I have been wanting to do for ages, but kept on putting off because it seemed to be gobbledeegook. Now I can cross that off the list and not add it to New Year’s Resolutions for 2012.

It’s Christmas Eve. Back to helping out Santa’s Elves.

WP 3.4 …

December 19, 2011 by MzD

Updated to version 3.3 of WordPress (on my to do list for all clients) and this site got automatically updated to v3.4 – it’s that cutting edge thing again. I should probably switch back to the stability of 3.3 except right now it’s a risk I’m willing to take (using the unknown).

WP 3.2 released

July 4, 2011 by MzD

4th of July release: “… can’t think of a more fitting way to mark a day that celebrates freedom than by releasing more free software to help democratize publishing around the globe” – Matt Mullenweg

The hype is a tad much for the release of WordPress 3.2, but hey Americana rules today, so why not hype it up?

Here at Dia Media, we’ve been running WP 3.2 release candidate for a week of so now, and have noticed it feels faster and lighter. This feeling of lightness is mirrored by the default font – Helvetica Neue.

Liking:

the showcase template – haven’t figured out how to wrestle it into submission yet
the Format options for posts – makes it simpler for Gallery posts
the full screen mode – although would like to be able to see the full “kitchen sink” toolbar at glance
Goodbye IE 6 – I know your death was greatly spoken of, but with this release you are now buried
the Name – Gershwin – what’s not to like?

Diskling:

Haven’t found anything super annoying or missing (yet!) and as was working with release candidate (until now) will wait and see if anything leaps out.

Let’s Have a Lime

June 29, 2011 by MzD

While we (“adventurously*”) test out and modify the new theme (2011) that ships with WP RC 3.2, we’ve created a child theme, “Have a Lime” – not (so far) radically different than its’ parent 2011, and created a header image with the phrase “Let’s Have a Lime”.

Now what’s all this about you might ask?

Well, I have roots in Trinidad, where liming is a casual social way of getting together, chatting, etc. I grew up in Montreal, so it’s not a direct local scene that I can speak to, but one I have witnessed;) and participated in when in Trini. I mention it, as it reminds me of a bit of twitter (minus the great weather and the drinks of course) – the casual atmosphere, mingled with the gossipy tone, the news that is discussed, and the general sense of community. Of course, on twitter, time is happening at lightspeed, whereas in a face-to-face lime, time is slowed down, relaxed.

One might say in re-designing this site (centuries later**) that this is the approach we want to take with new clients. Meet in a relaxed, casual manner (could be the twitosphere), start having a conversation, discover on where we’re both coming from, and then get down the details. How can we help you make your project shimmer, if we haven’t learned what its all about?

So, let’s have a lime sometime.

Turtles — These guys are really taking it easy

*WP 3.2 RC is a release candidate, updated to RC 3 moments ago – which is a development version of WordPress. Not recommended for use on lives sites, unless one is adventurous – Tally Ho!

**We’ve been doing this since the last century, and yet our own site has languished for a while, while we execute many exciting projects

“Bleeding Edge Nightlies” Taking the Leap

June 28, 2011 by MzD

Am about to upgrade to the WP RC2 release candidate, – a bleeding edge* move.

Wait, need to catch my breath from laughing too hard, as bleeding edge is a wee bit too much.

The thing is, this blog is in its nascent state – no readers per se – so there’s no need to worry about installing something that’s not fully viable.

Naturally, I have backed up files, the database, the whole server in fact. Then I will leap into the unknown. 2011 here we come.

*Bleeding edge nightlies is the phrase used in the plug-in for beta testing wordpress.

Comment Spamorama 4 Newbies

June 25, 2011 by MzD

I was reading an acquaintance’s freshly pressed blog the other day, and noticed they had lots of comments on their posts – even though there were only a few posts and the blog hadn’t been going that long.

My first thought – “Way to go! See this blogging thing really pays off”
and then I actually read the comments.

Along the lines of

“Hello ! this is a very great website here and I just wanted to comment & say that you’ve done an wonderful job here!”

“Excellent read, I just passed this onto a colleague who was doing a little research on that. And he just bought me lunch as I found it for him smile So let me rephrase that: Thanks for lunch!”

Of course, most would immediately recognize these comments as spam, especially if you take a second to notice the links of the author (pharmaceuticals and their ilk). However, I was quite surprised to see that this blogger was oblivious to their origins and was quaintly replying back things like “Thanks so much…etc”.

I’m not trying to make fun of this newbie. It opened my eyes to the fact these types of deceptions are insidious, and can be less obvious to the newbie.

The bottom line, if you are brand new to the “blogosphere” is check the links, install a good anti-spam plug-in (Aksimet etc), and, of course, as elsewhere, if it seems to good to be true…