Author: disclab_y1559y14
Got Mad Skillz?
Let me start out by saying that I’m not too sure how I would characterise this article, since it’s targeted at graphic arts professionals, but my observations are applicable to just about anyone with some particular skills for his or her field and who is looking at what we called “Want Ads” for suitable and hopefully gainful employment.
Think
An un-shared idea is doomed to obscurity. -Me
“Hey, wouldn’t it be cool if hamsters had wings?” Perhaps not all ideas are worthy of being inducted into the Hall Of Great Things Thunk Up By Humans, like hamsters with wings.
Incorporate Yourself On The Cheap
Many small businesses start out as a part-time gig. Some stay that way and others expand into full-time enterprises. Many small businesses start life as sole proprietorships, meaning that the owner or owners are the company. A common oversight for the start-up involves failing to take advantage of the legal protections available for the owner(s) in the case of adverse liability-oriented action, like a lawsuit, against the company.
Anatomy Of A Password
Let’s take a vote. What’s the most popular password on the planet? Is it k9H3!R+? No, no, that’s not it. How about pancetta019? Nope: not it. The world’s most popular password, according to the U.K.’s Daily Globe and Mail is: 123456.
123456. Not much of a password, is it? Does it happen to be your password? Or is ‘password’ your password? Tsk, tsk.
It is a doubtless pain in the butt to remember a secure password and writing it down makes it all the less secure. There are some services that will remember a password for you, but the old saying goes something like this: “How can two people be sure that their secret is kept? If one of them is dead . . .”
So, it’s best to have a method of creating a secure password for yourself and to use it. First, some simple rules:
Avoid using passwords that can be found in the dictionary. Hackers can use dictionary lists as the basis for a hack.
The password should be not less than six characters.
Don’t use your name, birth date or any other personally-indentifiable bit of information in the password.
Always include a mix of alphanumeric (a through z), numeric (0 through 9) and special (#,$,!,@ and so forth) characters.
What would a password that follows these rules look like? For instance (and please don’t use this one):
Brahms91#
Easy to remember, hard to guess. Favourite composer, weight when you were 13 and your favourite special character. Easy to forget? Maybe specifically, but if you make up a formula to follow, your can have a different password for each login (recommended) and not actually have to remember the exact password, exactly.
Let’s say you like to make cupcakes and you don’t usually make them from scratch:
Crocker12!
Hmm. You use Betty Crocker cupcake mix, you make a dozen at a time and cupcakes are exciting! Same formula:
Baltimore50#
Hmm, again. Baltimore is the home of the King of Cupcakes, your favourite food channel cupcake-reality show, 50 is the number of pounds you hope you don’t gain from eating cupcakes and # is the pound sign. See? Easy.
So, there’s really no reason to not use a more secure form of password. I’ll be checking on you, -91ADclaudius^.^.
Dear Car Dealer . . .
Dear Car Dealer;
After pouring my first cup of the magic elixir otherwise know as coffee this morning and sitting down to check the latest crop of spam, I was surprised to see another e-mail from you, nearly begging me to help you help me. Wasn’t that a Cheap Trick song? No? Whatever.
Clearing The Cache
If you’re getting unexpected results on a web page you’re laying out, like not seeing changes you’ve just made, it could be that your browser is simply showing you what it still has in its memory, or “cache”, which is French for “hide”,
mySQL and You
If you’re involved in creating or maintaining a website that uses a Content Management System, or CMS, as its backbone, it’s likely that the CMS uses a database. mySQL is an open-source database that is very robust and is the most widely used database on the web. It’s robust enough to be forgotten and that’s not good.
Take A Better Snapshot
With holidays, vacations and other events seemingly always around the corner, snapshots are an traditional and inevitable way to hang on to memories that would otherwise fade into bleary obscurity. Too many snapshots seem to look terrible – dark, blurry and downright unprofessional. But that’s okay, because you’re not a professional, right? That doesn’t mean you can’t use some pro techniques to clean up your next crop of fun pics.
Five Ways To Stay Creative
It’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day madhouse rush to get to work, do the job, pay the bills, take care of the kids and to at least attempt to accomplish the myriad things on the eternal to-do list we all have. For creatives, this daily merry-go-round of responsibility tends to set creativity as a priority close to, or at, to the bottom of the list. That’s not a good thing, as Martha might agree, so here are five tips to keep the gift of creativity alive.