on september 3rd, 2008 i started up a new blog to have an online discussion about my journey doing freelance web design, affiliate marketing, eBay and the tech i come across along the way.

so, if you wondered where all the tech articles on this blog went to now you know.

it was getting to the point where i was writing about too many diverse subjects on the life of buford. the focus shifted away from it being a family and life blog to one where i was talking about wordpress, mac, ebay and all sorts of tech stuff and it made no sense.

so please come check out the new blog, aloneontheweb.com and follow along as i begin my freelance career and chronicle all the fun experiences and tech i come along in the process.

expect to see new family photos here on the life of buford, so check back often for updates and i will continue to send out emails to the group that gets regular updates. if you want to be added to either the family or the friends email group, just drop me an email at gushin at gmail.com and i will add you.

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well, on june 20th, 2008 i was laid off from my e-commerce position with hitchfinder.com.

my family has been wonderful and supportive. i have not been depressed at all due to the upbeat attitude of my lovely wife.

i have no regrets. it was a very good learning experience and i took a lot of knowledge away from the job, plus a really cool 24" iMac computer and the adobe creative suite cs3!

what have i been doing since june 20th you might ask.

Click image for larger view.

well, i have finished my freelance web site gushindesigns.com and am almost finished with my new business card. i have designed and opened a brand new web site called appleproductsdepot.com, which combines web design, affilliate marketing and eBay.

there is also a second one of these eBay affiliate marketing web sites that i am currently building that is centered around old and new cameras, both film and digital. i am still into photography and i want this one to be a bit more interactive and it will probably concentrate more on vintage camera gear than newer stuff.

and i have been going to a number of meetup.com meetings on subjects like joomla (a content management system for web sites), wordpress, eBay and various internet entrepreneur groups.

i have also been more active selling products on eBay than i have in the past, with 30 current auctions running. i am trying to liquidate a comic book collection i bought many year ago for a good price and have already made my original investment back so the rest is gravy as far as the comic books go.

there are a few opportunities i am checking into for web design work full time as well, but more about those if anything happens with them.

a few weeks ago i bought this software bundle from macheist where you get 14 shareware apps for $47, all for mac os x. the reason i bought it was that cssEdit was part of the bundle and i was just about to plunk down $30 on it alone. so of course i got the bundle and it has many very cool apps, some i will use, some i won't. they do these bundles a few times a year and part of the money goes to charity.

click image for larger view and screenshot of cssEdit.

so cssEdit is part edit css (a firefox extension that lets you view changes as you change the css) and part inspect element (a mac os x safari plug-in that lets you highlight an element on the page and see the cascade of css from that element).

the cssEdit program does both, plus lets you upload changes to your hmtl or php pages and then refresh within cssEdit and see the changes while still retaining the ability to interact with the css.

it's quite amazing once you start to figure out all the program options and features. it has made me much more productive when working with css on sites.

the only thing i have not figured out how to do (i think) is to use the "pretend we are using internet explorer" feature. gotta figure that one out, cuz as we all know, if a site is gonna break, it's most likely gonna break under ie 6 or 7.

too bad this one is only for apple computers. i have a few friends that could use this on a pc too. if i figure out that ie option i will post it here.

just a clarification about the leopard upgrade...

this is the 2nd machine i have installed leopard on. the first was my 24" iMac and it was really scary at the beginning. all that was solved within 24hrs of install. i even figured out why my photo booth stopped working (there were 2 of them and i had linked to the corrupted one somehow?).

this time, the install went without a hitch. it was after trying the fireworks and flash that i had problems and after doing a bit of research i now understand why those older versions don't work now. i'm ok with it (sorta).

but the benefit of having leopard on the laptop has really made me so much more productive in a great way. i love the new features! after using them on the iMac and not having them on the laptop, i felt like it was way more fun to work on the imac.

one lesson for people about to upgrade...write down your friggin license codes for your programs before you upgrade.

when i bought the laptop (used) the previous owner had left some apple pro apps (like final cut pro, compressor and a few pro music apps like logic express) on the machine. the only ones i ever used were final cut pro and compressor (this one just a week ago) for some video work i did for a site i am working on for a musician (www.joiededeux.com).

after putting leopard on the laptop, now it wants license codes! don't have em. oy.

i'll live and like i say, leopard just rocks!

on tuesday night i installed mac os x leopard on my powerbook g4 laptop.

i wish i could say it went 100% without casualties, but nope, not true.

the installation went just fine from the upgrade dvd that came with mom's new mac mini.

a few minor shareware apps stopped working, but the main casualties i have are fireworks mx and flash mx. i don't do a lot of work in flash, but i work daily in fireworks.

i have other programs with feature sets similar to fireworks, but nothing that will open the already created .png graphics files i have with the original layers intact.

this is a problem since i have tons of those, for work and personal use.

i'm currently trying the 30-day trial of the fireworks cs3 program and may have to break down and buy the program! oy.