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So I got inspired to start a new series of posts (for more on why check out Outwardly Visible Signs on my weblog at jeffjewell.net) and even though there’s a “Monday” right in the title, I wanted to go ahead and post an introductory contribution right away.
First off, let me say that although I expect someday to be making such a post every week, I’m not ready to commit to that, yet. Right now, the idea is to have a target that helps me to organize and present the variety of content I want to have here. And to explain what I want to have here, it’s story time (no worries, this is going to be a fairly short version of the story).
My grandfather was an easily admirable man, and many of my values came straight out of his life. This was a man who began his career as low as was possible on the totem pole of the H. J. Heinz company, and never missed a day of work (or school) in his life. He never looked for another job, but through companies and divisions being acquired and merged, it was the Texize division of Morton Norwich from which he retired, as a Vice President. My grandfather taught me that the road to success was one of finding a good company to work for and then just keep working your hardest.
Things have changed. People rarely retire from the same place they took their first job, anymore… people have changed and companies have changed and the environments of work and commerce has changed.
Technology has changed… and keeps changing. I remember my grandfather talking to his golf foursome from work, back when I was young and tagging along mostly for the cart ride, about an expensive new machine the company acquired that made bottles. Tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars for this thing, I don’t really remember details, just that it was the most money I’d ever heard of someone spending on something. And just last week, I noticed that I could buy a 3D printer kit that can do everything that machine could and more… for less than $500 and some desk space to set it on.
My grandfather’s advice is still pretty damn good… it’s just that instead of finding a good company to work for, success today depends on starting a good company to work for…and then just keep working your hardest.
So that’s what jjewell.com is about. On the one hand it’s about my company: myself and my products, on the other hand, it’s about helping people do the same thing I want to do with their own company and products: making a living that comes from your life.
My wife Suzy and I have done a bit of a lot of different things over the past few years… and you can see that by looking through some old posts here: catering, event planning and production, web creation and support, computer support, music production, guitar lessons, and live music performance. These services have grown out of our lives and passions: food, music, technology, and creativity. I hope I can make this weblog into both an entertaining story of our success, and blueprint for you to use for making a success story of your own life.
I just realized that jjewell.com is fifteen years old as of June 13, 2011. I’ll have to see if I can find the original homepage on an old backup somewhere, the hand-coded HTML in Windows NotePad, no less. I remember using a dark grey marble tile background with light cyan text. I know, horrendous… but we didn’t know any better in 1996.
I’m looking forward to my next fifteen years.
I took my next step towards my future today (or technically, yesterday… it’s pretty late). I got the confirmation email this afternoon, I am now an officially registered iOS developer. True, the only thing I’ve actually developed is a “hello world” level app that sticks my logo on an iPhone, but ou’ve got to start somewhere.
Next Steps: a shopping list program for my wife, and a habit-building tracker for me.
Well, kinda.
As previously mentioned, I’m starting a new project to teach myself iPhone and iPad development. I did the registered developer thing and started in with m Xcode training. I also found a local user’s group dedicated to iPhone development, and went to their first meeting. I’d just started with Xcode, and my last software development was almost a decade ago and in the Windows world (PowerBuilder, if you must know), so I wasn’t sure what to expect or what I might get out the meeting… but I did kind of hope to get a head’s-up on a good resource for continuing my education.
Yee-haa, I was steered in the direction of iTunesU, where Stanford University has obligingly posted two semesters’ worth of lectures and slides for their iPhone Application Development class. Even better, they still allow access to their website for the Winter 2010 class, so I was able to download the actual assignments and class hand-outs.
Obviously, this isn’t as good as a Stanford education. But I keep being amazed at the resources available to you when starting to develop for Apple products.
Unlike my last post, Getting Started with WordPress, this one isn’t intended as a helpful guide for readers, it’s intended more as a cry for help from the author.
I’ve taken up a new challenge: I’m an Apple Developer, and I’ve just gotten started with Xcode. My first effort, hello.app, is unavailable anywhere at any price (the joke, for non-programmers, is that a simple program that does nothing but display the text “Hello, World” is often the first output of a programmer learning a new language or new tools… and is often the result of a step-by-step hand-holding of a tutorial included with the documentation of said language or tools. You want hello.app? Download Xcode and follow some simple instructions).
The bad news is how inscrutable some of the commands I was tutored to type were to me. It’s clear I’ve got quite a row to hoe to become competent, much less proficient, at Mac/iPhone app building. So, any reader suggestions on favorite or preferred intros to Objective-C/Cocoa/Xcode?
One of the great things about computer software and programming is how easy it is to go back and fix the things you didn’t get quite right the first time through… even “starting over” doesn’t have to be from scratch. I’ve now been working and playing with my own WordPress installations for more than a year now, and the time has come to set things straight and get things right. Here’s the list of things I’ve discovered it’s important to put in order to give yourself a solid WordPress foundation.
1. Domain name – if you’re making the effort and investing the cost of hosting your own installation of WordPress, go ahead and get a domain name for it. The internet is all about the distribution of information, and domain names are the book titles that allow the classification and discovery of your information. It’s not necessary to make your domain name reflect every bit of information about the site, indeed, calling the website jjewellWordPresssupportandhostingandMacandiOSprogramming.com wouldn’t gain me anything. It’s having the easily identifiable jjewell.com to associate with those keywords and topics that is important. And besides, if I’d used that naming convention when I first started out, I’d be stuck with jjewellrawHTMLwritingandWindowsforWorkgroupssupport.com. My jjewell.com, jeffjewell.net, and jeffjewell.org domains have hosted different content over the years, but have continued to provide an easily identifiable and searchable header for that content.
2. Input methods – your website is going to live or die depending on the content you put into it. If you find it difficult to add content, the website will have difficulty growing. At the most basic level, WordPress makes this really easy, starting with its straight-forward Add New Post web interface. If your content includes linking to other websites, WP offers the Press This bookmarklet for your browser, and it’s easy to set up the ability to post through a special email address or smartphone application (my current phone is a BlackBerry, and the WordPress for BlackBerry app is just ultra-slick). The modern web is as much about video, music, and pictures as text, and there are a variety of ways to add media to your weblog. The big decision here is whether you want to use third-party web services or not. WordPress is perfectly happy to host media in its own gallery, or you can use services such as YouTube and Flickr as your gallery, giving your media exposure in those popular forums as well as implementing embedding, widgets, and plug-ins to present your media under your own banner. Whichever method you choose, the important part is setting up the tools to input and use media as simply as possible.
3. Tracking methods – the flip side of making your content easy to enter is making it easy to find and read (and easy to track that finding and reading). Until further notice, Google is the benchmark for this with their Feedburner and Analytics products. To oversimplify somewhat, Feedburner lets you offer your content in a format that is easy for people to subscribe to and read where and when they want to. And Analytics lets you see who is reading your stuff and how they are choosing to do it.
These aren’t necessarily the first things people want to play with when they set up their new WordPress software: I know I personally went out and downloaded gallons of themes and plug-ins. In addition to this making for a slow-moving frankensite of a weblog, those aren’t the things that are most important at the building-a-foundation stage. These first steps provide you your own identifiable corner of the internet, ensure that you can input your content as quickly and easily as possible, and help your readers to view and use that content in as many ways as possible (while keeping you updated on what those readers and ways happen to be).
I first established the jjewell.com domain in 1996. I can’t really remember what it looked like, right at first, and neither does the Internet Wayback Machine. But when 1998 brought the closing of the manufacturing plant where I was working and provided me with a severance package, my fledgling web empire became the home of my first weblog (although they weren’t even called that, yet… much less “‘blogs”), the story of the jjewell North American Tour 1998.
And actually, the Internet Wayback Machine doesn’t even remember what that looked like… but I do. It was raw html coded in notepad. At first it had a dark grey marble background image with bright text in blue, green, and yellow. Yeah, I know: that didn’t even last the length of the tour, it ended up in more classical looking greys and navys by the time I returned home.
At any rate, those updates from a cross-country road trip contain some of what I consider to be my most entertaining writing, and I’ve wanted to repost the series somewhere. I finally decided that jjewell.com was where they were born, jjewell.com is where they should dwell. So I’ve retroactively posted all the NAT updates here.
Now… between these old posts and the Wayback Machine, it’ll be days before I find time to do something useful…
Somewhere, I know, there’s a post where I declared I was off the version numbering thing… and I still don’t plan to incorporate the scheme into the regular website appearance, but it’s still the perfect post title for when things are starting over again.
My original internet domain, jjewell.com, is now the homepage for my family’s businesses. This weblog will be a commentary and editorial from a guy trying to find a way in the new digital marketplace.
A quick history of what’s brought us here. Back in the day, I was a corporate computer stooge. One stint ended when the plant where I was working shut down, another ended when business tanked after 9/11 and the Towers. After the second time a corporate job evaporated out from under me, I thought I’d live the dream and try to do something with my music… and took the accompanying bar/restaurant jobs to make ends meet. After a few years of some local success, the band broke up when it became clear we had different definitions of how “success” was defined. I stuck with food service because that’s what I’d been doing, Suzy and I got an opportunity to go freelance, we did… and the economy collapsed. Customers we’d been counting on just a couple weeks before, when we’d done the math to see if going out on our own was feasible, called and cancelled with “our budget got taken away.” So I’m back in food service to keep the flow flowing, but I want to make a change.
Part of the change is using new technology tools to be your own business. Part of jjewell.com will be showcases for the individual family businesses, currently including Suzy’s Kitchen and Events, Sammiches, the jeffjewell.org band, and jjewell digital services; and part of jjewell.com will be editorial on why and how I used certain methods, on how well or poorly different tools performed. Apple, Google, and WordPress will be mentioned a lot.
The changes in jjewell.com are representative of basic changes I’m making in my life… if anything here interests you, there may be something at jeffjewell.net, jeffjewell.org, or neofrugal.com that rings some of the same bells.
The commercially viable side of jeffjewell.
call Jeff at 1-864-881-1JSJ for:
- event catering by Suzy’s Kitchen
- wedding ceremonies
- box lunch catering by Sammichs
- live music by jeffjewell.org
- digital support by jjewell
Last update from the road, but only just barely.
So why the hell would I stop in Asheville, about 50 minutes from home? Damned if I know, talk to Roberta Verona, it was her idea.
The last mechanical problem, that “missing,” or just not wanting to take the gas uphills, particularly after running for awhile, popped up again. I alternated between 60mph down hills and 20mph up hills for about 20 miles into Asheville. Luckily, if you enter North Carolina from the east on I-40, it’s pretty much straight down for an awful long way. After getting onto I-26 and wrestling with the question of whether to just tough it out the last few miles, I remembered talking with my dad the night before (and he thought I never listened to him…). The last thing he said was “Don’t push the RV too hard.” So, actually, it’s my dad’s fault I’m in a Shoney’s just outside of Asheville.
It feels good to be home already. An old girlfriend lived in Asheville for awhile when we were together, so I know the city pretty well, and the drive back to Greenville is basically a long driveway for me at this point. I feel like home.
I can’t wait to introduce Scout and Kato to Crash. I’m secretly hoping that the boys will kinda team up on Kato, who’s been pretty rude to Scout since she showed up. No respect for it being his house first. I just have a feeling Scout and Crash will get along.
The second thing I’m going to do is file the new “big books” I got in San Diego. The big dogs get special treatment including two Mylar sleeves (one upside down inside the other, to seal without any tape. We don’t like tape anywhere near a multi-hundred dollar comic book) and are filed off separately. This way I get to look at all the coolest stuff without digging around in multiple boxes for it. Hey, so I’m a geek. I like it.
After that, I’ll start the arduous unpacking process. I’m not even going to try to get everything tonight, but I’ll bet all the comics and Atari stuff gets unloaded first. After that, I may just play until I fall asleep and worry about the rest of it tomorrow.
There will be at least one more trip update, perhaps more as things like photo developing happen. I’ve also discovered that I have something to say about this whole Clinton thing (on long trips, AM stations stay with you longer than FM, for some reason, so I’ve been listening to Rush Limbaugh take enormous glee in demanding impeachment, indictment, disbarrment, excommunication, deportation,and a good flogging for Mr. Bill. As usual, the fat man makes some excellent points but fails to reach the appropriate conclusion…). It doesn’t really fit into the update category, so it looks like I may start using my webspace to shoot off my big bazoo about stuff on some regular basis. Stay tuned…
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