Jerry D. Russell dot Com

I was discussing politics earlier with fellow bloggers and I just can’t seem to get a few notions out of my head.  There are things that have bothered me for years and they are the reasons I rarely ever discuss politics with anyone.  I just leave the conversation feeling like I’m going to be ill. I have to get a few of them off my chest.

So if you will please allow me my non-partisan and entirely personally fueled rant, we can get back to what’s important…

…The blogger steps up on his apple box…

To both of our Presidential candidates.  I don’t care which one of you wins this race.  I could give a rat’s behind what your age, color or religious denomination might be. I don’t care if you like broccoli or not.  I will never lose sleep over your gender, sexual preference, sexual prowess or lack thereof. There are just a few things that I would like to see happen in my lifetime, which they tell me is going to be longer than any generation’s before mine.

So if I could take a few minutes of your time, these are the things that I think you should address over the next four years:

Read more…

Jerry Personal Personal, Politics, Vote 2008

If you’re like me and rarely read the Google AdSense TOS updates, you may have missed the new(ish) policy stating that all sites running AdSense ads must have a publicly displayed privacy policy.  As far as I know, Google hasn’t kicked anyone out of the program for not having one yet, but hey, who wants to be the first?

Not feeling particularly interested in writing a privacy policy page?  Neither was I.  Luckily, Serp Rank has the answer for us lazy types, or just those of us who can’t afford an attorney to write these things up for us.

Just pop over to the SerpRank Adsense Privacy Policy Generator and you’ll have yourself a privacy policy page in no time.  It may take a bit of tweaking if you use services that aren’t on their list, but it’s a small effort to modify a tiny bit of text, and you’ll never have to hire that lawyer.

Unless you get in some kind of trouble, that is…

Jerry Blogging AdSense, AdSense Privacy Policy, Google

If you’ve ever come off the tail end of a project that has taken an extended amount of time, it’s possible that you have found yourself staring blankly at your monitor and wondering “what do I do next?”

This is a completely understandable reaction.  Think about it, you’ve just singlemindedly poured your creative heart and soul into something for a month or more. Immediately turning your attention to something else will more than likely be difficult at best.

If this has ever happened to you, let me offer you a solution.   Clean your space and take a few days off. If you’re working for someone else, the second part of that equation may be a bit difficult to manage, but cleaning up your space should still be at the top of your priority list.

Long projects tend to build a lot of desktop clutter as well as mental clutter. Unless you are totally paperless in your working life, you’ll have scribbles of notes, scraps of research, printouts and assorted other “stuff” that ended up sitting on your desk while things were unfolding.  Take the time to go through all of these things.  File what you need and toss what you don’t.  Wipe down your desk and surrounding areas.  Make sure the trash is out.  Make a clean space for a clean start on the next project, it will help you focus on what needs to be done, rather than what you’ve been doing for the past several weeks.

The same goes for your computer. If you’ve been dropping links, photos or documents on your computer’s desktop for easy reference while you were working on that last project, now is the time to move them to a permanent spot on your hard drive or send them off to the recycle bin.  Leaving these items out where they can distract you serves no purpose once the project has been completed.

Once you’ve tidied up your workspace, walk away from it.  If you have the luxury of making your own hours as I do, take a few days off. Use the time you’ve earned to read a good book, catch up on your new favorite video game, plan to take over Chicago using just the resources you can find inside the city or perhaps get ready for that all-too-imminent zombie infestation.  Take a cue from the girl pictured at the top of this article and go have a long conversation with an old friend, even if it’s by phone, in the park or over coffee. Whatever you do, don’t go sit at your desk and stare at your monitor.

If you work for someone else, get up and take a quick stroll around the office.  Check in on a few coworkers or chat with someone in the office you may not know all that well yet. Sort through the inevitable folder of forwarded jokes and chain email to see if there really is something funny in all of that chaff.  But take a break from whatever is next on the list if it is at all possible.

These breaks will help you to be far more productive when you do get back to your normal routine just as much as a clean workspace will.  They are necessary to help achieve focus and keep you motivated to complete the task at hand.  Push too hard and you’re headed for what we in the freelance industry lovingly call a burnout, when we’re speaking in polite terms, that is.

Don’t get me wrong.  I’ve known people who can keep dogging away at project after project for a very long time before they suffer from burnout.  Unfortunately these people are not the norm.  If your mind is tired, your work will suffer and so will your productivity, especially after a very involved project that has taken a lot of time to complete.

Another way to combat this type of mental fatigue is to constantly flip between projects, never allowing yourself to become buried in one thing or another.  This helps to keep the mind fresh and moving freely from idea to idea.  This kind of mental exercise takes a bit of practice, but it can be a life saver if one project is threatening to fry what’s left of your grey matter.

I hope that these ideas prove helpful to you the next time you’re ending one project and moving on to the next.  If so, drop me a comment and let me know!

Jerry Productivity Organization, Productivity, Work Habits

This is the third in a series of articles that will cover making several modifications to the Mimbo 2.2 Theme by Darren Hoyt.  I am modifying the theme to fit the requirements for my own site.  To see the first step requirements and get an overview of what I have planned, please read The first article in the series; Modifying Mimbo 2.2: Step One – Identifying Requirements. For the methods used to modify the way the theme handles output in various places, check the second article in the series; Modifying Mimbo 2.2: Step Two – Modifying index.php. This article focuses on modifying the way Mimbo pulls images for the lead and secondary articles on the main page.

Darren Hoyt's Excellent Mimbo Theme

As I mentioned in the first part of this series, I wanted to change the way Mimbo handles it’s images to better suit my work flow.  By default, mimbo stores it’s main page images under the theme folder in a folder named (appropriately enough) images.  Using this method requires that the user has to find an alternate method of uploading his or her image files, which to me is counter-intuitive.  My solution is to store the images in the standard WordPress manner and upload them using the “Add media” dialog.

This might sound inefficient, but for me, the ability to simply paste the image url into the proper custom field makes things much more pleasant, especially when I’m trying to get several posts knocked out in one session.

The default Mimbo code for the “Featured” image is as follows:

<?php
// this is where the Lead Story module begins
   query_posts('showposts=1&cat=3'); ?>

    " alt="" id="leadpic" />


    

The important piece of code in this instance is in the image call where Mimbo’s creator hard coded the image location:

< img src="<?php bloginfo('template_url'); ?>/images/<?php
// this is where the Lead Story image gets printed

by simply removing the hard coded file location, we can now add our images in the normal way and simply paste the url into the custom fields we’ve created to handle them. In my case these fields were lead_image and secondary_image respectively.

That’s as simple as it gets, script kiddies! with just a few tweaks, you can easily take Mimbo from this:

Darren Hoyt's Excellent Mimbo Theme

To this:

Pretty nifty, huh?

If you’re thinking to yourself… “Hey, there are a LOT of modifications here!” You would be absolutely correct.  Unfortunately these are out of the scope of what I set out to do here, and I’m not going to get into them. Truth be told, I didn’t do anything that difficult, even for a WordPress theme novice.  All of the information you need to get the job done is in the WordPress Codex or on various sites areound the Internet.  There really is no reason for me to go over them again.  I’ll leave it up to you as an excercise in coding.

I do hope that some of the information provided here proves useful to someone.  If so, drop me a comment and let me know!

Happy Coding!

Jerry WordPress Themes Darren Hoyt, Mimbo 2.2, WordPress Themes