andrew dodson

I’m often asked what type of software I use to create my websites, logos and the like.  Everyone knows I’m a Mac guy, and they assume I use the Adobe Creative Suite.  Not so fast!  Assumptions can sometimes be wrong.

Yes, I’m a Mac guy.  Love ‘em.  Used a PC for years before finally using a Mac at work.  Hands down, Macs are far better machines.  Trust me.  PC users are scared to switch because they’re afraid a Mac can’t do what a PC does.  Wrong.  Not only can it do everything a PC does, it can do it better and you won’t be pulling your hair out all the time.

Anyway… on to the real topic.  What software do I use?  My general rule of thumb is easy - find something that does what I want for free.  The glory of humanity is this - there are people willing to donate their time and effort and ability to create a nice software package for free.  This is called Open Source.  When I simply can’t find a good open-source (free) program, I find one for cheap.  I try to keep my overhead as low as possible.

General Graphic Art

For my general designs, this is where I don’t skimp.  I use Adobe Illustrator a lot.  I’m currently looking into open source programs (Inkscape), or cheap programs (Vector Designer) for my vector art needs.  Until I decide if those programs are viable, I’ll use Illustrator.

Photo Editing / Raster Graphics

Photoshop?  No.  I use Gimp.  It’s a wonderful, free program.  For all of you out there using pirated versions of Photoshop because you can’t afford to buy it yourself - please try Gimp.  There IS a learning curve, but it can do everything Photoshop can do.  I’m very impressed with it.  Not to mention, it’s more streamlined that PS and runs much faster on my computers.

Web Editing - HTML

These days, I don’t do a whole heck of a lot with HTML.  When I absolutely have to code something with HTML, I use Nvu (there is also a version called Kompozer).  It gets the job done and is free.

Web Editing - PHP, XML, General Coding

I’ve fallen in love with Smultron.  A free, powerful text editor that plays nicely with PHP, XML, CSS, and HTML files.  A nice, multi-purpose program.

Web Editing - CSS

There is a free solution here that some people might enjoy.  Simple CSS.  I’ve tried it and it does get the job done.  But, it has some quirks that I don’t like.  So, I use CSSEdit.  It’s not a free program, but is in the “affordable” bracket.  It’s a pretty slick program.

Wordpress

These days, I design all of my sites around Wordpress.  I love the ability to maintain my sites from any computer with an internet connection.  There is a learning curve to designing custom themes, but once you figure it out, it’s a breeze.

Word Processing

Sometimes, clients send me Word documents with their content.  Mac does have a version of Microsoft Office, but it’s not cheap.  So, I use NeoOffice to read Word & Excel files and more.  A truly wonderful, free word processing program.  They are constantly updating it and improving its features.

So, there you have it.  If you’re looking to save some money, but still be productive, I strongly suggest looking into open source options.  Small businesses, schools, churches, governments, civic groups and non-profits could benefit greatly from saving money and using these types of programs.  You should at least look into them and give them a chance.

Hello faithful blog readers. No, I haven’t abandoned this blog. As it turns out, I’m in the midst of my busiest time of year (a little later than usual this year), but that will likely die down soon, as summer is upon us. I really do have a LOT to blog about, but strangely haven’t found the time. I’m kicking around about 10 blog posts in my head and can’t seem to get a moment to hop on here. So, I’m going to make an attempt at catching up on my blogging this week and give everyone something maybe-or-maybe-not-so-interesting to read.

More to come…

I’m happy to recommend a new blog by a somewhat new friend - John Martin (not to be confused with Josh, and no relation).  John and I go back to February of 2006 when I was considering buying an electronic drum set.  My boss recommended I speak with a guy who used to rent a house from him.  So, I called and met up with John at Memorial Baptist Church and he sold me on the Yamaha DTXpress III Special.  Since then, I’ve had occasional contact with him through CLS and church activities.  Recently, he joined us (some guys from The Point and me) on a trip to Seattle, so I’ve gotten to know him better in the last few months.  I learned about his blog earlier this week, but I’m just getting around to linking to it.

John is a great guy in this order - He loves the Lord, he loves his family, is a great husband and father, he faithfully serves his church as a pastor, and he is a great drummer & musician.  Go read his blog.

It’s that time of week… time to randomly blog:

• CLS has picked up steam over the last couple of weeks.  I’m going to try my best to keep up with blogging, but I am prepared to be working some overtime over the next several weeks.  Along with other projects, the blog might get forgotten about some days!
• NCAA Final Four this weekend - my pick in North Carolina, as much as I don’t like that.  I just think they’re too powerful.  With the way they’ve beaten people in the tourney so far, they remind me a lot of another extremely talented team that won it all by pounding teams in the tournament - the 1996 Kentucky Wildcats.
• Baseball season is now in full swing.  UK got off to an amazing start, but they’re now into SEC play, and have lost a handful of games over the last couple of weeks.  The Reds kicked off their season yesterday with a 4-2 loss to the Diamondbacks.  The staff gave up three homers, and the Reds only mustered three hits.  Fortunately, they have 161 games left to turn things around.
• Seriously - the Drop Trio is good.  Check them out.  The Leap album is a completely improvised album, which I’d normally love, but judging from some 30-second sound clips, it’s not as groove oriented as their other two releases.
• I’m enjoying Wordpress 2.5 so far.  If you haven’t upgraded yet, you should!

Thursday is for links, so today…

• The Resurgence has posted the audio from the conference. Go check it out!
• This is the kind of church Barack Obama attends.
• Rick posted 10 passages of Scripture every Christian should know.
• Now I know why I spend so much time on the internet.
• Shane posts about Spurgeon on sin.

Lots of good blogging going on this week! Enjoy…

• Josh wants us to articulate well and I agree. Definitely something I need to be more aware of.
• I caught up with a former Georgetown classmate this week on Facebook - Ryan Coatney. He has a great post dealing with the church at his blog. I’ll definitely be checking his blog regularly.
• Over at the New Attitude blog, there’s a good post on remembering the Gospel in our everyday conversations.
• Challies has a review of Mark Driscoll’s new book - Vintage Jesus. He’s not sure if he recommends it or not.

Look for a double helping of posts tomorrow evening (Friday) to kick-start the new blog schedule. I’ll be posting several links to other articles to cover today’s post (yes, a day late - sorry!), and I will be posting PCG notes. Due to the icy conditions outside, our PCG didn’t meet tonight, but I still plan on answering the questions (again) on my own. I’ll be posting these tomorrow evening from home as I do laundry and pack for my Seattle trip.

Our flight leaves very, very early Saturday morning, and we should be in Seattle early enough to enjoy the day and do some sight-seeing. The conference doesn’t start until Sunday.

I’ve been kicking around the idea of having a blog schedule, as I mentioned in the “Work Remains” post.  The more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea.  I want to say “effective immediately,” but with my Seattle trip coming up, it might be tricky (although we have internet at our hotel, so I’ll give it a shot).  Here’s the new schedule:

Sunday - no posts!  I’ll probably spend this day preparing for Monday.

Monday (Theology Day) - I will either write a post dealing with a theological topic I’m wrestling with, link to posts on other sites that deal with the issue, or a combination of both.

Tuesday (Music Day) - new music gets released every Tuesday, and I’m always adding to my collection.  This day will be for album reviews, talking about new artists, or posts about some of my favorite artists.

Wednesday (Random Blogging) - more of a “personal” day.  I’ll post what’s going on with me and things in my world.

Thursday (Link Day) - since it’s toward the end of the week, I’ll post some links to other blogs I read or come across with good articles.

Friday (PCG Notes Day) - I’ll post the study notes from my PCG as I’ve done the last couple of weeks.

Saturday (YouTube Video Day) - I thought a good, easy way to post on  Saturdays would be posting an interesting or funny YouTube video each week.

There you have it.  I’m also working on having one guest blogger per month.  I have several people in mind for this, and would probably publish their posts one Sunday per month.  More on this as it works out (if it works out).

The remainder of my week will be fairly jam-packed.  I have a lot to get done before I leave for Seattle at the break of dawn on Saturday.  Just to fill you in (since I know you’re on the edge of your seat), and to wrap my head around what I have to do, here’s a breakdown:

Life at CLS

After a slow January, work is picking up at CLS.  A couple of days last week were fairly busy, and today got a little more hectic as the day went on.  I’m hoping to have a really productive day tomorrow to stay on top of things.  Not only do I need to stay on top of things, but I also need to get ahead, since I’ll be gone all of next week.  To top it off, I need to post over thirty new t-shirts designs to our Got The Shirt site, as we try to finally get that project off the ground.

Life at The Point

I’ll be missing the Sunday service at TPCC for the first time in a very long while.  I really don’t remember the last time I missed.  Tomorrow night, I’ll go to the Habakkuk bible study, but then I get to go home.  I won’t have to stay for praise band rehearsal since I won’t be there on Sunday.  This actually helps, even though I hate to miss.  Not having to go to rehearsal will give me an extra couple of hours to get some things done.  One of those things being preparing for my PCG on Thursday night (and cleaning my apartment!).

Life at BADmedia

My goal by the end of this week is to have completely finished rough mixes for the Polston recording I did a couple of months ago.  I still need to get with a couple of groups to do overdubs, but I hope to have the project completed in the next few weeks.  With moving and everything else, it’s taken me longer than usual to get around to mixing, but I’ve finally found the time.  I hope to use my free time tomorrow evening to mix down a couple of the group’s performances.

On the website side of the business, I did a quick site update tonight.  My only real issue is The Point’s media site, which has been down for two weeks.  iPower is working on the issue, but it’s out of my hands - very frustrating!  I hope the issue is solved by the time I return from Seattle - hopefully sooner!

Other

I’m really excited about the Seattle trip.  It’s funny - a few weeks ago, we were all wishing it would hurry up and get here.  Now, it’s finally here and I wish I had another week!  A lot to do in very little time, it seems.

I finally got my internet up-and-running at my apartment tonight.  Since I have a wireless network, I went into my router settings and restricted access to only my computers.  This is my first time living in an apartment building, so I haven’t had the need to do this before.  But, I also don’t want people leeching off my connection.

In my quest to blog more often, I’m considering a schedule of some kind.  Like, Saturday would be YouTube video day, Sunday would be blog link day (linking to stories on other blogs - some people call this a blog carnival), Friday would be PCG Notes day…you get the idea.  I’m also considering have guest bloggers from time to time.  Anyone got any other ideas?

There may yet be hope for society. According to this article, only 40% of people swear on their blogs. I’ve never thought about this, but I would’ve guessed the percentage to be much higher. I mainly read news blogs, Christianity blogs, and my friends’ blogs (most are Christians), so I don’t come across much profanity on these. But, from my days at Blogger and randomly clicking through blogs, it seemed a lot were vulgar.