Some great free and not-so-free font sites.

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It’s easy to find free fonts all over the web, but many free font sites are packed with eccentric font faces only useable in ransom notes or ’80’s grunge band logos. It’s very hard to sift through them for usable fonts with the spacing, design and legibility we used to expect from traditional font foundries.

While completing a recent design project, I found several sites that deliver only high-quality font sites. Some specialize in free fonts, others are mostly for-purchase, with a few free samples that are nonetheless worth mentioning. 

The advent of @font-face means we can soon start expecting the same quality typography in web that is available in print. While cloud-based solutions (fonts.com, typekit, etc.) for commercial font licensing issues are starting to show up, there are also some opensourced web fonts out there that you can download and start using today for free on your sites.

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Add phpMyAdmin to your Web Platform Installer IIS setup

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One key item that seems to be inexplicably missing from Microsoft’s Web Platform Installer is some kind of front end like phpMyAdmin for administering mySQL databases. It installs one for SQL Server Express, but not for mySQL. Fortunately, it’s only a 5 minute job to install phpMyAdmin yourself. 

After running the Microsoft Web Platform Installer and installing whatever PHP/mySQL applications you want to run, download and decompress a copy of the latest version of phpMyAdmin from this page. Drop the folder containing the phpMyAdmin files into the inetpubwwwroot directory on your IIS server. Shorten the name of the folder to “phpmyadmin” or something appropriate when typing a URL.

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Microsoft Web Platform installer: Drupal on IIS, the easy way.

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If you work with Windows servers, then you have probably gotten used to doing without the many opensource web applications taken for granted outside the enterprise environment. Drupal, WordPress, phpBB, Moodle, etc. were all out of reach. Yes, it was possible to install PHP and mySQL, but it took a level of commitment and dogged troubleshooting persistence that few people are willing to undertake.   

Well, now you can have your enterprise cake and your opensource software too! Microsoft’s Web Platform Installer, introduced a couple of years ago, makes the process of installing all those LAMP-style web apps easy. When I say easy, I really mean easy! It just works!

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Use inexpensive Korg Controllers to control Logic Pro interfaces

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Logic Pro is a popular digital audio workstation/ Midi sequencer for the Mac. It contains many virtual models of mixers, effects, synths, drum machines and sequencers. Since the typical audio gear requires simultaneous fine-grained control of multiple parameters, the typical adjustment method is with a knob or slider control.

ultrabeat

A standard mouse is not the best way to control such a UI. Many companies sell USB-Midi control surfaces with knobs and faders that allow real-time control of the sound using Logic’s virtual mixers and effects. However these can be very expensive. For those who are on a budget it can be a high price to pay to get started.

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A visit to Frederik Meijer Gardens

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Yesterday we drove out to Grand Rapids to see the sculpture garden at Frederik Meijer Gardens. I was blown away by the quality of the art and the beauty of the gardens. What made the visit even more exciting was the collection of Chihuly glass sculpture installations all over the grounds.

IMG_4709

Beside the fantastic outdoor art and flower collection there’s an immense indoor botanical conservatory, with desert, carnivorous, tropical and Victorian garden sections. The enormous Tropical conservatory also features unusual tropical birds, along with many Chihuly pieces large and small which can be discovered among the palm leaves.

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When Firefox won’t launch Java applets

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If Firefox won’t launch java applets, but Internet Explorer will, you may need to change some settings in the Java control panel to turn on Applet support for Firefox. (Expert users: One sign that this is the issue rather than some Java security exception is that the Java console will be completely blank when you try to launch the applet in Firefox. _

Unfortunately on many PC’s, the Java control panel can be a challenge to find. First, check in the control panels area for “Java.” If it is not there, you may have to look in

C:Program FilesJava

for JRE (Java Runtime Environment) folders.

In the image below there are several of them. Usually you should pick the most recent one, as that is the one that is probably in use.

javacontrolpanel.jpg

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Create an iCal file from your data using ASP

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Google Calendar and many other calendar apps will import or subscribe to iCal format files (.ics) If your event data is locked away in a database, you may find it useful to display and distribute it using Google’s extensive calendaring features.

Following is an example of an ASP file that will write an iCal file.

Generate the iCal file in a web-accessible directory, then have Google Calendar or other iCal compatible application subscribe to it.

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Set up a Cron job in Windows to run an ASP script

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If you are used to Linux environments, and working on a web application which needs to execute a function at regular intervals, you’d use a cron job. On Windows, you’d use a scheduled task instead. There is one part of the process that isn’t obvious, so here are the steps involved:

  1. Create the web page that executes the desired tasks – sending email, creating files, etc. For example, I have some ASP scripts that create RSS and iCal feeds from a proprietary database, that need to run daily. Record the URL for later.
  2. You will also need a domain account that can run the task, or a server account that can be used in perpetuity to run these types of tasks. I usually have a “fake” account that will never expire created for this type of thing.
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