Musings of Old Man Joe

Irish guy living in Los Angeles

Internet

I want to write about website design.

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gandalf using the computer
I feel like this quite often!

For the last few years I have been working toward having my own website design company. I have designed about half a dozen websites for friends and family. This I would say is most web-designers start in the business.

Younger ones may even have the chance to go to a code camp and get hands on coding experience, which is great of course. I actually want to go to a camp next year if I can afford it. Of course you have different opportunities if you’re in your twenties and even thirties than when you’re in your late fifties!! My expectations have to be more what I can do for myself as any company would prefer to hire a coder that would be a bit younger. I get this and I’m not complaining. I think I would much prefer to be a freelancer than part of a design business. But that is where getting into the business becomes a bit more of a challenge.

Where to begin?

As I mentioned before most people start this business helping out friends and family. It’s a great way to get the feet wet and you get an opportunity to iron out the bugs (should there be any of course!!)

It’s also really common for newbies (hate that term), to charge much less as they don’t have the confidence to ask for the $60-$90 per hour a full stack web developer can earn. For your info there are front end developers who create websites, there are coders who can also use software to talk to the server/database in case you had a store or needed some specific actions to take place like a membership etc: Facebook. The dynamic aspects require server side languages and having that knowledge makes you a full stack developer. Personally I am studying it but not sure if I want to go into applications as such, the answer is still out on that one!

What I have learned (short version)!

There are so many ways to build a website it’s crazy, but the things that you should consider are really not too hard to grasp.

How much are you willing to spend on a website?
The answer to this is how important is a website for what you are trying to achieve.
If you have a online business and this is the way you intend to make money it’s crazy important you don’t skimp. If your site goes down for a few days and you lose hundreds of dollars it would be a hard lesson to learn.

Is your website not an online business but just to promote a static business?
I would still make sure it’s hosted with a good website hosting company. You don’t want any downtime and you don’t want to hacked! Yes I secure my websites and many attempts have been made. The cheaper hosting companies will look after their computers but not your website, you are responsible for that. Always back up you’re site!

Mobile/Tablet friendly
Nearly 50% of website traffic is now either mobile phone or tablet, if your website is responsive you’re good. if not you will go down in google rankings!

WordPress or not WordPress?
It was only recently when a friend asked me to look at her website as it needs updating, it’s not mobile friendly it is not WordPress or another CMS (content management system). So in order for her to update the content she would have to use an FTP (File transfer protocol) to update her website using html and she doesn’t know code.
I looked at the code for her website and it was fine, but just being the html there was no easy interface for a regular person to add or change content.
I have coded many websites and some are interactive using different CSS libraries like Bootstrap. But to have the non coder use their website it truly needs a CMS either WordPress or Drupal.

Free Websites
Last I want to talk about the free websites, you can create a website using wordpress.com or wix.com and with wordpress for a not too large sum of money you can even have your own url (yourname.com).
There will be advertising and you are limited to what you can add but it’s doable for a web presence. Wix to be honest I don’t know much, it’s probably quite reasonable for the free page but any more content and functions will probably require some kind of payment.

In the end the choice is always yours, but don’t bet tempted to spend money on this unless it’s required. Remember you have choices!

Peace!

Blade Runner 2019

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I remember watching blade in the early 1980’s, and to be honest although I loved the movie I was young and appreciate it much more today than I did then. Just like 2001 a space odyssey which was also way ahead of it’s time, I wondered back then what the world would truly be like in the years to come, and if I would even see it!

Flying through Los Angeles in 2019

It’s funny how science fiction in many ways is being brought to science fact, but not exactly how we envisioned and not in the time line we thought.
After the Moon landings in the late 1960’s until 1972 we all (well myself anyway) thought that after such an event there would be no turning back.

Well as we know now those missions were not really for science but just a pissing contest between the USSR & the USA. It was a shame but just after that the world stepped back to the time before the moon shot and carried on arguing about money and religion and rights (all very worthy subjects but not for this post).

So in the 1980’s and 90’s the world of computers, hardware and software start the play on the technology of our time. Hardware & software have always been almost racing to see who can get ahead, it was never an even race. It was probably when the iPhone came out in 2007 it was the catalyst for the tech companies to get their shit together and produce the solid state hardware in bulk and at a decent price to let the technology move forward.
it would seem there always has to be a profit or war for things to move forward.

blade runner movie poster with Harrison plus cast

Blade Runner Final Cut Set in Los Angeles in 2019

So here we are in 2019 the time of replicants and Blade Runners out to find them. How have we done with the real world?

Well due to Star Trek we have our mobile communicators, automatic doors are all over the place. We can ask computers and most of the time they can give us an answer (excluding Siri of course). Uber states it will have flying cars in or around 2020.

So considering we the people did stop after the moonshot due to budget cuts and domestic stuff, the timeline hasn’t been too bad considering!
It’s not as dark in Los Angeles as it is in the movie, but of course it was trying to get across a future when people didn’t try to stop climate change or worry about genetic manipulation or disease. In George Orwells 1984 big brother was the government and people for years have been worried about the government watching you. Well in many countries the government does watch you. But even worse is corporations using apps and the internet to watch not only what you do and see, but save the information to sell that information to whoever, and the people went willingly!

I will be optimistic for the future and say even though some people voted against their best interests that the times will change, mistakes have been made in the past and they can be rectified.

Peace!

Social Media take Two

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Is Social Media Really Social

So a couple of days ago I cancelled Facebook, Instagram, Whats-App because I really had run out of reasons to keep them on. What really surprised me is what happened after I closed the accounts.

Have you checked your social media today yet?

For a while I had figured that social media wasn’t really as social as it was intended to be, just allot of sharing but not so much interaction, at least in my case. It was nice to see family pictures but that was about it. I felt with the way Facebook handles personal information, we are the commodity and they use it as they want! It was time to say goodbye as far as I was concerned!

“Lack of direction, not lack of time, is the problem. We all have twenty-four hour days.” – Zig Ziglar

The thing that surprised me the most after leaving social, or becoming less social, was how much more free I felt. The feeling of having to check a notification or get onto some app to see what has happened since I was on last is gone. It was like walking onto an open field of grass and being able to just have time to myself, I never expected that! I still kept Twitter and of course WordPress. Which is why I am writing a post the day after I wrote the last one. I have the feeling of not being disturbed, I am free. I can of course still do things with my iPhone that I used apps for. I called my sister abroad using FaceTime audio instead of Whats-App and it worked fine. So I might be posting on WordPress a bit more now I have the time.

You have been Warned!

Social Media & Privacy

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So I finally let Facebook, Instagram, Whats App go as I am sick of wondering where they will either sell my stuff or just plain lose it due to carelessness. If you wonder what Facebook takes from you read their privacy policy it will scare the shit out of you  click here.

I have been agonizing about this for a long time (Go Figure!). Later this year I will formally be starting my own business in website design, and I felt it was correct to have an online presence as my business was online, but I changed my mind, more about that in a later post!

I have found that these social apps don’t really make me more sociable (personally). I just get to see what all the people I know are reading but not how they are feeling or what is going on in their lives. Not that I particularly need updates that much. The only reason it took me so long is there are many people I have worked with and hung out with. I may never see them again in real life but I could keep contact in some way. But at what cost if my info is hacked and I have to change my passwords and all the other crap that’s involve when your data is stolen. So I wanted to come on here and say that if you look there are alternatives to Facebook that are in fact the next generation of social media, and it’s quite exciting!

One Facebook alternative that I may try is MeWe as it’s based around privacy, and when you post a picture of your kids you still own the pictures not the company you posted it to.
The difference is that you pay for services, which is the model in Asia, and means you are not the commodity, the services are the commodity. This is a fundamental difference and it’s important. There are many other social apps, but they are very specific in the types of social interaction they present. I felt this was the closest as a replacement of Facebook.

This is from their website:
MeWe is free for members because privacy is not something anyone should ever have to pay for. All the great features that people love in social media and none of the BS are free and standard on MeWe including: private 1:1 and group chat; private and open groups; disappearing content; custom camera with Gif creation; live voice and live video; next-gen voice messaging; personal social cloud; custom group profiles; and much more.

In addition there are optional special features including extra storage (8GB is free, and 50GB is $4.99 per month), Secret Chat (like WhatsApp only without their egregious tracking) for $.99 cents per month, Custom Emojis at $.99 cents a packet, plus MeWe Pages (coming soon) at $2.99 per month, and special games exclusive to MeWe members.

At the moment I am burned out of social media, but I just wanted to share.
(pun intended)!

 

 

perplexed

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Those that have been so kind to read the few words I post on here, as I am studying quite a bit & the old life thing going on I don’t have too much time to post.
I have found it difficult to put into words what I see politically and globally with what is going on.

Last night I was watching the series by James Burke entitled “The day the universe changed!”

We are back in 1984-1985 and the cold war is still up and running, the threat of nuclear war still looms & the world wonders what the future will hold.
We all know the mission to the moon was a pissing contest between Russia and the United States. With a side mission called scientific discovery. I was about 9 years old when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon & got to dress up as a spaceman in my class.

When I was in my teens I would read boys books about time and space and the future science will bring. It was exciting and full of hope for the future. Western countries stood for freedom of expression and movement, the idea you can make it if you try! The United States was by far the biggest economy so it was felt the best opportunities were there, not that it was any more free than any other western country.

Russia & China being the opposite of freedom, no freedom of movement and being told what you can and cannot do was not the way for the future of society, if we were to go to space and beyond!

Of course times change and the cold war ended & we left the moon and didn’t go back because we won the contest. The funding for science dropped because funding was never really about the science. Time moves along and technology moves into the mainstream. So there is money to be made, and today we have the web (light & dark). We have access to more info than any humans since the beginning. This was going to be the new dawn of humankind.

But of course the dark side was always possible, and with the availability of knowledge was the availability of crap, social media, fake sites, scams, identity theft, click bait, Fox News!

The Russians discover they can fight a media war because people aren’t equipped to filter, and they don’t know where to get news they can trust.
Trump calls any story he doesn’t like fake news because it doesn’t stroke his ego. News media continue to give time to stupid people to give the impression of being fair. People begin to believe the stupid people because they are getting exposure.

And then there was this!
THE CHRISTIAN RIGHT AND THE RISE OF AMERICAN FASCISM 

Before the 1970’s the christian right was part of the rest of the united states, probably just as happy with the moon landing and what science might bring for the future. A baby wasn’t a baby until it was a baby, not today when some consider a few cells to be a baby. But things changed and it may change what was once the bright future of the United States.

For some the multi-diverse idea of society breaks what they consider the mold from their youth. It was a fiction but real enough to them, and they feel it is gone & want to rekindle the past. They have been deceived into thinking it can come back. Society and business moves forward because business in the end wants to make a profit. The old industries are no longer really viable but they have been told the reason is immigrants, unions, the other side selling jobs overseas.

Business did move overseas, but it was purely for profit, and cheap labor. But another  reason not mentioned too much was due to technological advances. Now we have people being voted into government who don’t believe in science, who want to make the United States a purely christian country, which goes against freedom of religion. I believe in freedom of religion, you should be able to practice what ever religion you choose. But do not try and impose your religious beliefs on me. If you take away my right to choose, I may as well be living in 1985 Russia or China!