JeffreyMeagher
Host Ghost on Ploi hero image

Host Ghost on Ploi

Jeff Jeff

A few weeks ago we were checking out the local Habitat for Humanity ReStore in town since I'd never been there before. We waded through the typical old tile, vanities, sinks, and even a few microwaves. Then we found a table -- probably the coolest tables I've ever seen.  It looks like a buffet, but pulls out to be a dinner table to a length of just under 7 feet long! At first look, the price tag seemed a little pricy, but after some research, it turns out that it was well worth it.

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Veronica Mars Kickstarter Delivery Failure hero image

Veronica Mars Kickstarter Delivery Failure

Jeff Jeff

I'm a backer of the Veronica Mars kickstarter campaign. As one of my first backings, I was a bit overwhelmed by the options, but settled on the $35 level so that I'd be guaranteed a digital copy a few days after the theatrical release. You've probably heard how much of a clusterfuck the whole release has been. First, I backed this campaign to get a movie. Second, I backed this campaign to get a movie earlier than the Bluray/DVD release as movie theatres kind of creep me out with their super-sticky floors (that can't just be spilled pop) and their smell of popcorn and body odor. Perhaps back in the day, before all the over-comercialization and food, movie theaters would have had their appeal to me.

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WordPress Theme Breaking plugins like The Event Calendar

Jeff Jeff

I've been working with a wordpress theme from ThemeForest.netand ran into a most peculiar issue. I don't claim to be a WP guru or anything, but the theme stopped working correctly by not showing all the featured articles on the home page. It's got an errors.

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Setting up Ghost on a MediaTemple DV4 hero image

Setting up Ghost on a MediaTemple DV4

Jeff Jeff

After backing Ghost on Kickstarter and getting my copy of it (Yes, I know it's been released to the public already), I thought I'd share how I got it all set up and running on my MediaTemple DV4.0. Actually wasn't that difficult.

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So I Bought this Piano... hero image

So I Bought this Piano...

Jeff Jeff

As a refinishing project, I picked up this piano from a free ad on craig’s list. It’s a B. Shoninger upright grand piano. Looking at it’s finish, it’s all crackly. The patents inside on the sound board say things such as “Mar. 12. 78″, and “Feb. 5. 84″. The finish was in much to terrible of shape for this to be created after 1989 and the wood looked very dry. The B. Shoninger decal by the keys was also worn badly and from more usage than scraping I guessed.

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An Upgrade from CakePHP 2.2 to 2.3 with DebugKit hero image

An Upgrade from CakePHP 2.2 to 2.3 with DebugKit

Jeff Jeff

For my latest project, ParentApprovedSchools.com, I was lucky enough to do a fresh install of cakePHP 2.3. And with that, I found the handy-dandy plugin called DebugKit right there in the cakePHP install directions. So I gave it a try. It's pretty much amazing.  Clients that see the site in development no longer ask me, "what's all this stuff below the footer?" when I have debugging turned on and I can still see a whole var dump. Pretty amazing, I know.

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Saginaw Expand-o-matic hero image

Saginaw Expand-o-matic

Jeff Jeff

A few weeks ago we were checking out the local Habitat for Humanity ReStore in town since I'd never been there before. We waded through the typical old tile, vanities, sinks, and even a few microwaves. Then we found a table -- probably the coolest tables I've ever seen.  It looks like a buffet, but pulls out to be a dinner table to a length of just under 7 feet long! At first look, the price tag seemed a little pricy, but after some research, it turns out that it was well worth it.

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Amazon's Product Advertising API

Jeff Jeff

For a while I've been trying to come up with a safe and easy way to catalog my movies. I have quite a few of them and often forget if I have a specific season of Dexter or Psych. This catalog needed to be both easy to populate and easy to view on the go. So I started playing with the Amazon Product Advertising API as it would let me look up movie data on amazon and store it locally in my own database for fast access on-the-go. No typing the actors, movie length, and description. Sounded good to me. Only one problem: I was not familiar with creating the API signature type that Amazon required.

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I'm Engaged

Jeff Jeff

Quite a bit has happened since I've moved from South Carolina to the dying metropolis of Fond du Lac, WI. So much in fact, that I haven't even bothered to write anything. Alright, maybe not really, but still... Here's a quick update on the projects I've been working on and the things I've been up to.

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Farewell, South Carolina

Jeff Jeff

It's with a partially sad demeanor that I'll be leaving South Carolina in just 15 days. It's been a long — very long — three and a half years here. Had some experiences, did a lot of lazing around, but now I'm off back to the frozen north and couldn't be more excited.

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Myrtle Beach Volleyball

Jeff Jeff

Recently I got involved with a volleyball group in Myrtle Beach, SC. It's a bunch of B-level people of all ages getting together 2-3 times a week playing some semi-competitive ball. We play in the sand, on the beach, on the grass, and in the gym. There are even times when we have some tournaments.

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Is the Customer Still Always Right?

Jeff Jeff

I was told not too long ago by someone that the year 2007 brought about a rather large change to the working masses. That change was that the number of service-based jobs out numbered that of production jobs. Now whether this is due to robots from the Robotic Uprising of the Late 90's, or that the majority of the population is too busy or too rich to worry about learning how to do things themselves isn't quite known. But no matter how you answer that question, an even larger one comes up, "Is the customer always right?" I'm sure everyone's heard that expression before — probably from working in retail or for some older gentleman when they were young — "The customer is always right, even when he's not." But in today's society of extreme specialization, can we still opperate productively by that same principle? Can we trust that the consumer (or client) isn't out to just get a superior service for an inferior price? And once we do believe the consumer/client isn't out to just get a deal, do we push for their education through our experience and expertise or simply give them that for which they are asking?

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Jelyco, llc is Born

Jeff Jeff

It's been a long haul, but my latest and greatest project is ready to go live. I've joined up with a great friend from college @lynndro to start a full-service interactive business that focuses on young company branding. We both decided that the typical 8am-5pm lifestyle was not in our best interest and we could make a better impact on the world by being our own bosses. Sure, that's easier said than done, but we've taken that first step and have become a recognized business in Houghton County, Michigan.

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CakePHP Form Display

Jeff Jeff

I'm pretty new still when it comes to cakePHP, but there's a few things that I've noticed in my limited exposure that screams a developer created this. Throughout my job I learned that my foremost expectations of "web developers" is completely not true. I was under the impression that everyone in web development (whether they focused on design or development) could build a fully dynamic website. Sure, people focusing in development may make some odd design and layout issues, but he/she would still get the job done.

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BlogCFC to MovableType Anyone?

Jeff Jeff

Ever had the need to move blog data from one platform to another? If you've ever worked with clients or more than one blog before, you're sure to have your own favorite blogging platform. Maybe it's MovableType, Blogger, Wordpress, or maybe even BlogCFC. If you're lucky enough, maybe you'll be moving from one platform to another that's made by the same company.

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Are Websites Software

Jeff Jeff

Over on Jesus is my Sword this weekend was a post wondering if websites should be thought of as software and free updates should be expected. It felt to me like he was saying that they should be expected. I don't think that same way. I'm much more under the opinion that a website servers a specific purpose now and that anything other than potential security issues should not be "given" as a free upgrade.

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Model-Glue 3 Alpha

Jeff Jeff

This last weekend at [cf.objective()](http://www.cfobjective.com)(), Joe Reinhart gave a presentation about what's new and upcoming in Model-Glue 3 (gesture) and then announced its [alpha release](http://model-glue.com/coldfusion.cfm). That night I downloaded it and got it running with the 6 4-bit Coldfusion 8.0.1 with Apache 2.2 on OS X leopard in no time at all. However, on my test machine running Fedora Core 9 I had a few problems.

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Is a CMS the Kiss of Death for a Programmer's Marketability?

Jeff Jeff

The company I work for made a decision to make a decision to choose a content management system (CMS) to use for most of our clients. In all, it sounds like a great idea for us programmers as the workload from designer to programmer would hopefully move from 30%-70% to closer to 50%-50%. But by being able to lessen our work load, do we essentially loose our marketability for the future?

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Myrtle Beach: Thanks for Visiting

Jeff Jeff

The thing that caught my eye this time was not how old the police car was (most of the county and state have gone to 2006+ Chevy Impalas, and this was still an older-style Ford Crown Victory) but what it said on the car. It had the normal, "we're here to protect, but call us if you're in trouble" stuff. So I got to thinking about what the city slogan of Myrtle Beach because I didn't know if there was one. The only other phrase on the police cruiser was "Thanks for visiting.

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Welcome to the Tobacco Belt

Jeff Jeff

Soy milk, cottage cheese, bread, and mozzarella cheese. Sure, they have nothing to do with the tobacco belt, but they're where this story begins. Just yesterday after a joyous stop to blockbuster, I ran into the neighboring FoodLion> and ran into a not-so-joyous time. Seems the person in charge of scheduling thought it'd be a great idea to only schedule two cashiers on a Friday night at 7.00pm. As I was standing in line, it all happened.

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MovableType 4 beta 2

Jeff Jeff

Tonight I "upgaded" to MT4 beta 2 from MT 3.35. So far, the administration/backend is lovely. I can't quite yet figure out how to change my picture, but I'm pretty sure I came across something that said that's not yet implemented. But as I, like a lot of others, don't simply use the basic MT templates, I ran into a rather huge issue. Ever since I started using MT back in version 2.661, I've been a fan of the the <MTIfEntryMore> tag as I hate the never-ending blogroll pages. However, when I went to rebuild my templates with MT4b2 tongiht, I was told that <MTIfEntryMore> no longer exists!

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The Shad Show

Jeff Jeff

Recently the project manager and a fellow programmer where I work have begun a podcast, old-skool style. No video, just audio. But none the less, they're doing it. So far there's been two episodes which you can download from the is that what you think website. Over there they describe the show as a place where "you will find topics ranging from Web Development, Video Games, TV, Movies and all kinds of geeky stuff." So if you're a hankering to get your geek on and have an hour a week to spare, check it out.

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Coldfusion Scorpio and Ubuntu

Jeff Jeff

Let's get Adobe Coldfusion set up and running on Ubuntu. Possbily not the smartest idea, especially with ports of Coldfusion that actaully run on linux, but we're going to try anyway!

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Installing Ubuntu on a Sun Utlra 10

Jeff Jeff

Sometimes you just have to try the rediculous, and this is one of those times. I attempt to install ubuntu on an older Sun Ultra10 server because I have nothing better to do with it.

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