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My Alter Ego – Southern Trout

October 4, 2013 by Leslie 9 Comments

For almost two years now I have been working on a non-Miva Merchant project that has truly been out of my comfort zone. I must also humbly apologize to all of graphic artists that I know, admire and aspire to be like.

Back in December 2011, I partnered with my in-laws to form Southern Unlimited, LLC and launch Southern Trout with the goal to produce a digital online magazine that covers everything related to trout fishing in the southeast. The project was the brainchild of my father-in-law, Don Kirk, a renowned outdoor writer whose works include the The Ultimate Fly-Fishing Guide to the Smoky Mountains,Fly-Fishing Guide to the Great Smoky Mountains,Smoky Mountains Trout Fishing Guide,and his latest release Flyfisher’s Guide to Tennessee.This would be the perfect venue for his knowledge.

Building the website for the project was the “easy” part. Creating the “brand” for Southern Trout was the first must-do task to tackle. While I understand the concept of branding, being able to creating the design for it was one of the first of many challenges that I would have to rise to. The logo and color schemes would be what people would come to recognize us by, so it would need to be memorable. Besides making graphics for the web, they would also need to be print quality. I am fortunate to have worked with a number of graphics artists throughout the years and learned the differences between RGB and CMYK, DPI and resolutions.

southerntrout-logo

The real challenge would come when it was time to layout the first edition of Southern Trout. I had never used another “design” tool other than Photoshop, so learning InDesign was a challenge. Thank goodness for all the generous people that have graciously shared their tips and tricks online. With each edition of the magazine, I have tried to learn a new trick or do something just a bit different. I also continue to study print magazines trying to learn the styles of others. All I have to do is figure out how to layout all the articles, images and advertisements into something visually appealing. I trusted the content that the writers would provide would speak for itself.

SouthernTrout-May-June-2012-coverThe first edition of Southern Trout went online around the first of May 2012 and was 68 pages. As a fledgling start up business, we agreed to publish the magazine every other month. The magazine would be supplemented with the website, a newsletter, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Flickr, FourSquare and any new way to get the word out. Some of most fun I have had has been getting out to events to promote the magazine. DSC_0433We stayed in a beautiful bed & breakfast in Virginia aptly named The Speckled Trout while attending the Virginia Fly Fishing and Wine Festival.

Each layout is almost like putting together a puzzle but without the box cover to see what it should look like when finished. Placing the images within each article, trying to figure out how to make the images pop and not have a cookie cutter look to it. Couple that with inserting ads in a variety of sizes, it gives me a continuing appreciation for all the graphic artists I have worked with over the years.

A digital magazine has it’s pluses when it comes to deadlines, they can be stretched a bit. Also you have the ability to go back and fix little things, but it’s not like the quick fixes of a website. The digital magazine is published to the website using an application that converts all the PDF pages from InDesign into versions that are compatible for a wide range of viewing devices. It does all the heavy lifting creating Flash and HTML.

SouthernTrout-Oct-Nov-2013-coverOn October 1, 2013 we published our 9th Edition of Southern Trout  – with more article and many more pages – I laid out 202 pages from cover to cover!

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: Other Tagged With: digital magazine, InDesign, Southern Trout

The Importance of Log Files

July 10, 2010 by Leslie 1 Comment

I’ve just spent the past few days pulling my hair out trying to update Adobe AIR on my Mac. I thought maybe uninstalling everything and starting over would help. It didn’t, all that left me with was no Adobe AIR at all. And no Adobe AIR, meant no Seesmic Desktop.  I read through the Adobe support stuff which was pretty useless. The error message I keep getting when trying to update Adobe AIR applied to Windows installations according to Adobe.

During an upgrade of Adobe AIR, the following error message appears: “An error occurred while installing Adobe AIR. Installation may not be allowed by your administrator. Please contact your administrator.”

I had the Adobe AIR Uninstaller. I ran it a couple of times. I tried all the suggested command line prompts. I tried everything logged in as the root. Nothing was letting me reinstall Adobe AIR.

So I posted to Twitter and  did Google searches. The Google searches took me back to the Adobe Forums. Other people where having the same problem I was having and it looked like this had been going on for a while. One of the posts, “Adobe AIR not installing properly.”,  had a great tip, look at the log files!

My log file had something odd in it:

Jul  9 20:27:24  /Volumes/Adobe AIR 1/Adobe AIR Installer.app/Contents/MacOS/Adobe AIR Installer[1088]: error during install: [ErrorEvent type=”error” bubbles=false cancelable=false eventPhase=2 text=”Unhandled exception Error: Could not create directory /Applications/Adobe/Flash Player/AddIns/airappinstaller” errorID=3010]

Why on earth could it not create the directory? So I took a peek in the Application folder and there was an old text file called Adobe. I renamed the text file and ran the Adobe AIR installer. I was pleasantly surprised when it announced it had completed the install. As soon as I was successful, I went back to the forums to post my solution. I figured it was the right thing to do since I posted my issue as a reply to a few other threads.

Now I’m a happy camper with Seesmic Desktop running again!

ps…I tried the Seesmic Desktop 2 Preview. It’s nice, but does have all the bells & whistles yet. On the plus side is didn’t need Adobe AIR.

Filed Under: Other Tagged With: Adobe AIR, Seesmic Desktop

Quick Thoughts On The New Apple iPad

January 30, 2010 by Leslie Leave a Comment

The new iPad is starting to draw me in. Sure there’s no Flash support but I don’t play any of the Facebook games). it still doesn’t support Verizon Wireless usage, but no contracts are required to use the AT&T service. Perhaps that’s a marketing ploy to attract more customers to AT&T. I am seeing it’s very practical business uses.

It would have come in handy when I was at the Atlanta Gift Market trying to find a wifi signal to demo the social media tools with my iPod Touch. The larger screen would have also made it much easier to view what I was trying to show to the various vendors I was talking with.

Branding Expert Rob Frankel had the following comments about the iPad:

1. It’s likely aimed at the business market, where cloud computing
and SaaS technology is accessed by companies with large staffs.
Those staffs, like nurses, would carry an iPad rather than a
clipboard, updating a patient’s records on a central server.
Warehouses, shipping and just about any other highly-populated
business would benefit, as would teachers with lots of students.

2. No USB and no camera pretty much supports the business
deployment, since most businesses have security issues: they don’t
want photos or data leaked outside their domains.

3. In order to gain usage and acceptance, it would make sense for
Apple to launch the tool to the masses, including the capabilities of
download and e-book reading. This would integrate into the
employees’ lives outside of business.

4. Apple is probably looking to gain a foothold niche in business
the way it has dominated education for years. This would be perfect.

5. With the demise of printed publications, iPad may be the bridge
that brings Rupert Murdoch’s dreams into reality, by essentially
forcing everyone to buy some kind of device in order to read the
morning paper or magazine.

Bottom line: A nurse grabs her iPad and jumps on the train to work,
reading her paper or listening to downloaded podcasts/tunes. She
gets off the train, walks into the hospital, logs on to the central
system and begins her rounds, checking on patients whose records are
constantly updated in real time.

That’s pretty much the way I see it from here. That’s also why I
don’t think the mass consumers are going to want an iPad for a while.
Version 1.0 isn’t really for them.

I might have issues with the touch screen keyboard and the while the docking kit looks nice, it might be cludgy to carry around while traveling. I’m sure that will generate a lot of carrying case business.

Only time will tell. I don’t plan on being an early adopter of the iPad, unless of course Apple wants to give me one to test and review online for them 😉

Filed Under: Other

Social Graces of Social Media

January 18, 2010 by Leslie Leave a Comment

I was bringing a friend of mine up to date on my recent unemployed status and started talking about how I’m looking to help online businesses incorporate more Social Media into their marketing strategies. His response almost stopped me in my tracks: “I’m trying to get people to stop using Social Media.”

I intently listened to the problems he was up against with Facebook, Twitter and other “Social” online applications. He talked about how it cut into productivity with all the games and such. Not only was he having to deal with the deluge of email related spam, now he was having to handle company resources being eaten up by all the bandwidth to the Social Media sites.

Then he said something that reminded me of the AOL Chatroom days – “people say things on Facebook and Twitter that they won’t say to your face.” It’s beyond the old, now updated, joke “What happens in Vegas winds up on YouTube.” Comments made in cyberspace can be far worse than accidentally hitting Send All on something you probably shouldn’t have been forwarding in the first place.

In Tamar Weinberg post The Ultimate Social Media Etiquette Handbook she has some great common decency tips:

“Publicizing a private conversation on a wall post. In case it isn’t obvious, Facebook wall posts are completely public to all your friends (unless you tweak your privacy settings). Private matters should be handled privately: via email or even in Facebook private messages.”

Read more: http://www.techipedia.com/2008/social-media-etiquette-handbook/

Forbes.com asks the question Are You Practicing Proper Social Networking Etiquette? It touches upon the conversation I was have with my friend:

“where managers have limited or banned Facebook for being a distraction and monitor employees’ personal pages for images or comments that might reflect poorly on the business.”

Chris Brogan addresses the Facebook games that I so dislike in his 2007 blog post Considering Social Network Etiquette

Don’t play along, if you don’t want. It sends the message of how you want to use the app. Don’t feel that this is a ‘when in Rome’ situation. Use the networking tool the way you want to use it.

As users of Social Media, we have to remember that we are putting ourselves “out there”. It is something that even I have to remind myself, to “practice what I preach.”

Filed Under: Other, Twitter

Seesmic Desktop Get Sybil Stamp of Approval

April 23, 2009 by Leslie Leave a Comment

Some others have referred to me as the Sybil of Twitter, because I have (and actively use) a number of Twitter accounts for various reasons, like keeping business, politics and persoanl stuff seperate.

Although the Seesmic Desktop had been suggested to me just a little while back, I was hesitant to download yet another application for Twitter. I needed an app that can handle my multiple Twitter accounts. Twhirl seemed to be the answer for me, but I really liked how TweetDeck is laid out. Unfortunately, TweetDeck can’t handle my multiple personalities.

So today, I decided to give Seesmic Desktop a run. I’m not trying to push any limits with it yet, I want to get comfortable with it first. So far I have 5 accounts set up. I like how I can drag each account into the desktop window. But what really caught my eye was how it “knew” which personality I was sharing from. I have on occasion, sent out a political tweet into my business user name. Makes me wonder if deleting a tweet really works. My next favorite feature is the “Home” panel. All of my account tweets go into this panel, sort of a running total.

Decided to watch the Preview after using the app for most of the day. It pretty much says everything I’ve just covered.


Seesmic Desktop

Filed Under: Other

Good Morning San Diego

February 26, 2009 by Leslie Leave a Comment

Let’s start the morning off with an “I told you so”. Hubby was right, I would be awake at 5AM, unfortunately, and it’s 3AM here in San Diego. I did try going back to sleep but all I could think of was “how great it would be if I could telepathically blog.”

We got in yesterday, greeted by beautiful mild San Diego weather. The day started at 3AM our time. We left the house by around 3:30AM and headed to our “pick up point” to have a friend take us to the airport. I have a lot of negative things I could say about the baggage check in process, but I’ll let it go. Security was fun, I’m always prepared to pull the laptop out, put it one bin, take my shoes off and put them in another bin but I got extra special treatment this time. I decided I would dress for the plane. I’m always cold when I fly, so I wore a nice big warm sweatshirt pullover. Since I didn’t “have a t-shirt underneath”, I got patted down. It was very professional and I took a very light hearted approach to it.
The flights them self were uneventful. We have come to the conclusion that my flight related migraines are due to the altitude and pressure changes. It probably didn’t help that our breakfast consisted of nutra-grain bars that we brought along. Those were consumed by 7AM our time. No real food was served on either flight. I nibbled on the bowl of cheerios, but Jeff passed on them. Couple that with the dehydration that comes with air travel that probably contributed to the perfect storm for my migraine.

Better car this year!First thing I did when we landed was to call our kitty sitter to let her know we made it safely. We made it to pick up our rental car, seems they overbooked themselves and didn’t have the type car we reserved. As we stand next to a Chrysler Sebring convertible, the agent says “How about this?” Well, duh.

We made our way to the hotel, got checked in and turned right around to go find food. We had been pretty much running on empty for hours. After finding food we both needed to crash. After Jeff caught a few hours of sleep we ventured out for dinner. Old Town parking was a mess due it being Ash Wednesday, so we plugged In-and-Out Burgers into Nuvi and found our way there. The one we found was packed, the drive up was backed up around the block and it was standing room only inside. We stuck it out and had some pretty good burgers. The fries were fresh cut – we actually heard the guy working the fry cutting machine.

Now to plan out today’s adventures – I hear there is a Miva Merchant Conference mixer that starts at 6PM tonight. Time to get the camera out and ready.

Filed Under: Miva Related, Other

GoDaddy Hosting

January 25, 2009 by Leslie Leave a Comment

I must have been asleep at the wheel when GoDaddy started the “Free Hosting with domain – Economy Hosting” plan. I’ve got lots of little “playground” type sites that have don’t need the full power of a Miva Merchant savvy host. The “free” hosting does come with:

FREE Hosting with domain name is Ad-supported Hosting. Ad-supported Web sites contain relevant online advertising on a small portion of the site, but DO NOT include obtrusive pop-up ads.

I’m thinking of moving this site over to the GoDaddy Economy Hosting to give it a performance test drive. My biggest concern will be speed – how long does it take to pull the page up? Since this blog really doesn’t get a lot of traffic (yet), it may be tough to evaluate how it performs under those conditions.

I have a photo gallery that I’ll move and update the links to it, perhaps that will help with the performance testing. I am really sensitive to the “site is too busy” type messages and I’m worried all these “free” sites will have some sort of throttle on them. I’ll have to research that one too.

I do have one of GoDaddy’s Deluxe Plans for designingkirk.com (something I had setup for both my husband and myself), which I’ve been playing around with. Again not enough traffic to do any real testing.

Nothing personal to GoDaddy, but I’m glad they are not doing any Miva Merchant hosting. While I would love to see much cheaper Miva Merchant hosting, I know that it takes more time and attention to keep that type of server humming.

Filed Under: Other

Playing With Themes

October 30, 2008 by Leslie Leave a Comment

I tried on the new theme for a day. It was “okay”, but I’ve reverted back to the one I started this blog with. I need to decide what I’m really going to do with this domain name and this blog. It started off as a testing ground but I really haven’t had a lot of time to play around with things. I still have my personal blog at leslienord.com and I have Leslie’s Little Soapbox. The Soapbox uses Blogger, which is Google application. Google has added features to it, I think to try and keep up with WordPress.

I think I may just have too many blogs…

Filed Under: Other

Cruising The Themes

October 18, 2008 by Leslie Leave a Comment

It’s been a while since I cruised through the WordPress.org Theme Directory, I like this one:

Desk Mess
Desk Mess

Desk Mess says it all. I’m thinking about changing my theme to this one.

My mission today is to find out why the WPG2 is no longer letting me insert images from a Gallery into a post. I’ve tried using multiple browser and I’ve posted to the support forum, now it’s time to follow up and find out what up.

I also need to find out how to make the “optionally below the link.” in the Add Link > Description work. I need it for a WP I’m tinkering with. I think I have too many blogs…

Filed Under: Other

Twitter Fan

September 13, 2008 by Leslie Leave a Comment

I am enjoying Twitter even more now that I have discovered twhirl lets you have multiple accounts open. You do need to be careful to watch which window you comment in – something about a football game may not make sense geek tweeter buds.

Twhirl uses Adobe Air and can run on both on both Windows (2000/XP/Vista) and Mac OSX.

Filed Under: Other

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