WordPress

What is the main problem with WordPress, well it’s that everything you do with it, looks like it was done in WordPress.  Even with wonderful designers coming up with ever more exotic and inventive themes, you can always tell it was done with WordPress.  I know this is an issue with all CMS’s, its just that WP technically is not a CMS it’s a Blog platform, people just try and try to use it as a CMS.  I’m not saying they don’t get good results, I’m just saying that what they get will always look like WP, and if they try and push it, it usually ends up looking like WP Being pushed outside its blogging comfort zone.

If  I had a decent following, which I don’t,  I probably would get a bunch of comments from angry WP lovers with links to a wide veriaty of sites made with WP.  Clicking on these links will bring up some wonderful examples of how far one can take WP. They will still all look like they were done with WP.  Its not something to get all in a huff about, I mean it definitly doesn’t bother the Flash site designers,  you can always tell a site done in flash.    Flash however has a coolness eyecandy appeal to it though, I think with WP the coolness and eyecandy really is fadding with its overpopularity.

Where am I going with this? I don’t exactly know right now, but I just know I definitly don’t like going to some software site and immediatly telling that they decided to make the site with WP. The sacrifices and limitations are almost always obvious.

Final word…..I think SquareSpace type things that are really designed as very easy flexible CMS’s for the mass’ need to become more prevalent,  so people stop overusing WP and using it for things they shouldn’t.  Then years from now when sites start looking different again, like they did before WP and other CMS, a super cool designer can come along and make retro templates for the latest site builder apps

The taco side of this. Please if you are opening a taco stand please, please don’t model yourself after Filibertos and especially don’t go naming it something ending in -ibertos.  Like WP made sites, its been done to death and quite frankly the results aren’t too good.

Final point: Blogs in WP are ok though, because that is what it was made for and it works well for that.

Microsoft Showing Old Self

I can’t believe it I am actually proud of what I’ve seen from Microsoft lately. Bing is good, and in my mind is a shot across Google’s bow. Windows 7 is remaining clean and in the right direction. I even like their commercials lately. They dropped the running app limit for starter edition of Windows 7 too. I only hope they get Silverlight adoption right. They will be back in old competitor crushing form.

I hope a couple of the old mexican restaurants hear in Phoenix make a return to their old forms. I’ve always liked Arriba and Macyos, but as they expanded their mini chains, I think their food and innovation suffered a bit. One thing I am finding in this recession is that upping quality is the only way to justify not lowering prices. I hope these once greats take that into account. I also hope Microsoft decides to look at Silverlight as a way to get back some of the hobbie programmers they lost when the jumped VB to .Net and stopped supporting VB6. A low barrior language for Silverlight would catch Adobe way off guard, and would really spread adoption.

Shorted, by Windows 7 Starter Edition

Windows 7 starter edition, an edition of the upcoming Windows 7 aimed at NetBooks, is a very bad idea. Do the decision makers over at Microsoft really believe serving a big plate of Fajitas, but only providing three tortillas, is going to work?  They have stated that the Starter edition will allow only 3 applications to run at a time.  I can fully understand the need to strip down a version for use on limited performance of a Netbook, but not a crippled version. Can you not get people to upgrade the old fashion way? by enticing them with features worthy of paying more money for?

Meaning of Life

I always have the feeling that somewhere out there on the web is the meaning of life, Its just that its Google rank is to low to find in a search – T&T Ringmaster

Looked for new, ended up with an old friend

My employer got this little video camera that takes HD videos, that he intends to use to post video blogs for his customers.   He shot his first little clip  on the road, and  when he went to edit it in Sony Vegas (7) found that sometimes the clips showed up with just a green screen in the time line, not video.  I had him send me a clip and it did the same, sometimes it would show in the time line, but most of the time it would just be a green screen.   I examined the format of the clips, they were MP4 AVC H.264 High-Profile files.   I searched for info on Vegas and this strange green screen, and found this to be a known issue with H.264 High-profile files (at least in Vegas 7).  The general consensus was that the Mainconcept H.264 decoder Vegas uses doesn’t fully support the High-Profile or has bugs.  I suspect the first, as on export the High-Profile is absent too.

I tried seeing if any tricks with mp4box or just changing metadata would work, but it didn’t help at all. it became clear that I would have convert the video.  No I hate converting video, not only because of the loss of quality, but because insane amount of video converts out there and the fact that none do a good job at all formats.  Insane amount of converters is actually and understatement here as the number of converters has gone way past the insane level to a more berserk one.  Free ones, pay ones, donation ware ones, ones not built for it but just happen to do it, old ones, abandoned ones, new ones, half built ones, commercial level, hardware, software,  a dizzying amount of converters are out there (and sadly many are based on the same unfinished open source codecs, but that is another story).   I’ve tried many of these in my time and have never found one that was good at all formats, worked consistently (many don’t work at all), and gave decent results. I’m not even going to touch on speed issues either.   Basically I’ve been disappointed time and time again with video conversion programs.    The other problem is that the ones the do actually work, usually have a dizzying amount of settings and configurations to get them to work.

Well I didn’t really want  to go down some long road of tial and error with this vast pile of converters, so I did some serious thinking about the situation.  ….Now this will probably draw some fire, I stuck to the notion that Apple is the clear leader in MP4 H.264 adoption. I mean its based on their wrapper tech even.  My first and major decision was to try out an old friend Quicktime (for Windows) which now handled H.264.  Quicktime can be a dirty word in Windows world, and it has lost the format wars on this side, but as it was one of the first into MP4 and some cameras I have shoot MOV and MP4,  I bought a Pro license a while back.

I used Quicktime as my first attempt to convert the problem files.  Quicktime did the job of converting the H.264 to regular MP4 Improved. Its quality was excellent a the process was smooth, easy, and pain free.  Quicktime really was an old friend, I already new how to work Quicktime and the results with it in the past had always been good.  I went through the process with no problems and no loss of pocket as my old Pro license worked just fine with the new version. The resulting files looked and worked great in Vegas.  Much time configuring and “trial and error” totally avoided.

The Taco side of this:

We have a toddler that really doesn’t like dark crowded restarounts, he can only last a few minutes in such a restaurant with out exploding into a fit, and once exploded there is no calming him down.   So in order to frequent such establishments we need to find someone to take care of him for the night (probably sounds easy to those that don’t have kids).

Anyway we usually have a bunch of restaurant suggestions from friends, that we have been unable to act on because of our sons dislike for such eating environments.  We had been told about a great place called Barrio Cafe for some time now, and now planned on actually going there.  So we dropped our son off at friends house and set out to the Barrio Cafe.

Unfortunately we found out that many had had the idea that night and the Barrio Cafe turned out to be one real small spot, and one with very little parking in an alley around the back.  We circled for parking several times, but it was apparent the hovering in this area long wasn’t going to get us a spot or a table in this small restaurant.  What to do know, we really didn’t have a backup plan and none of the other places we had on our list were even near here.  My wife and I definitely still wanted Mexican food as we had set out for it, and finally remembered a place we used to go to in an the area. This place is called Mi Patio, and we had always liked it.  We really weren’t sure why we hadn’t been there in some time, my wife thought it was because of a birthday we had planned there that had not gone well (not the restaurants fault).

I couldn’t even remember its exact intersection, so we just cruised 7th ave until we came to the right intersection.  There we found out old friend, Mi Patio.  Mi Patio didn’t disappoint. The warm friendly atmosphere got rid of the disappointment of not being able to try Barrio Cafe.  It’s crowded and dim lighting reminded us that this was our night, and the little one was safe with friends.   One look at the menu and I remembered another reason I liked this old friend, a few of the dishes are cross mexi-greek (middle eastern) namely dishes with Gyro meat though I actually went for more traditional fare on this return trip.  I got  a Chile Relleno, Cheese Enchilada,Beef Taco, Rice combo and stuffed myself silly and washed it all down with a couple Coronas.

The beef taco was of the hard shell authentic variety, a very thin corn tortia fried after the filling has been put in. the beef had been obviously slow cooked and was not really spiced, but rather flavored by a marinade.   The only thing tricky with these type of tacos is you need take a bite first to put hot sauce on, as there is no way to pry open these hard shells without ruining the taco.   The taco was perfectly done, not too greasy, easy to eat with hands, and didn’t come apart before the last bite.  The taco is firmly placed in the above average level on the merits of the slow cooked beef.  I personally like a little more initial heat and spice, but this was fixable with hot sauce. There salsa is very good there too, though it does appear to use canned tomatos.  This old friends satisfied, as was painless to park and get into.  It definitly won’t just be a fall back in the future.

Location change and why so long.

Just wanted to say a quick word on why I haven’t posted in some time. My employer now has me working from home, and I’ve been busy with this transition to say the least.  The move is a good thing for Taco’s I think, as my home location on the west side of phoenix will allow me to hit some of the new taco restaurants popping up in the newly expanded west , and some of the old standbys here in the west that have been here for years.

I think Guy Fieri is about to do what Corel did to Paint Shop Pro

I think Food Channels Guy Fieri is about to ruin one of my favorit taco shops.  I walked into Los Taquitos Mexican Grill in Ahwatukee today for some lunch time tacos today.  I decided on their marinated pork tacos (I had not had them before, as I usually can’t turn down the perfect Carne Asada ones).   While waiting for my number to be called I noticed, on the side of a garbage can, a paper announcement taped on.  To my amazement the notice was that Diners, Drive-ins and Dives host, Guy Fieri, would be visiting the restaurant October 17th to film for the show. I am a fan of the show, and I often watch it hoping someday to visit some of the places he spotlights. This announcement however hit me differently though. Los Taquitos is not a destination restaurant to me, it is a place I found close to my work that serves up wonderful authentic Mexican food pretty unassumingly.  Now here was a was Guy coming to to this place to put it on the map, and probably give it that marketing gleam he seems to give all the places he goes too.

What I fear the most is what I see on his show, full homey restaurants over filled with loving fans.  You see, Los Taquitos in its current state is rarely packed (I’ve never waited in a line more than one and never feel bad taking up a four-top table to read the paper while munching tacos), and certainly has zero to no marketing gleam.  I worry not just about the over publicity and crowds the show will bring, but that afterwords the owners will rethink things like the sloppy condiment tray, haphazardly placed salsa squirt bottles, the odd streaky paint job in the bathroom, and the “everything in tinfoil” presentation of the food.  These are the things that give the place interesting character and flavor and hopefully will not go away with the new found celebrity status Guy Fieri will undoubtedly bring.  I’m tempted to go through my taco review with all Guy Fieri catch-phrases so maybe he would decline to visit after I used up all of them in my taco review. They are not very original catch-phrases however, so I doubt that strategy would work.

For now I’ll say the marinated pork tacos I had today were wonderful (Not “Money” as Guy would say).  Pork can go wrong in so many different ways, especially when it is grilled.  Much of the time pork offerings leaning towards chewy and tough or mushy and tasteless. These were none of that, perfectly cooked and the dehydrated remnants of a red chili marinade coated every inch of the meat.  Throw in perfect proportions of chopped red onion and shredded cilantro leaves on top, and you’ve spelled T-A-S-T-Y.  These tacos are on the small side, but I wouldn’t consider them mini-tacos. The soft steamed corn tortillas are around CD sized and properly dual-layered for strength. Placed flat with a mound of meat and toppings in the middle, you are in command of how you pick them up and fold them. You are always free to grab any fixings or squirt red or green sauce on them, but I only chose to put the green on one of the three I ordered as the marinade looked like it was going to pack more than enough flavor.  It certainly did, and the pork was tender but had that grilled bite.   Tacos here have no cheese, lettuce or cabbage.  The meat does the speaking, and the toppings are more of a fine tuning then a condiment.

Back in 2004 Corel did a similar thing to my favorite graphics editor, Paint Shop Pro, as I fear will happen to Los Taquitos.  I had stumbled upon and fallen in love with paint shop pro years before (around version 7). I had been looking for a editor that could  do things I noticed people were doing in Photoshop at the time, but without the heavy price tag.  What I found was made at the time by a company called Jasc. Paint Shop Pro 7 was a wonderfully powerful graphic editor that while mostly Raster, had Vector capabilities.  It used a layer based approach very similar to Photoshop and had very similar tools and layout as well. One was also able to use Photoshop compatible plug-ins, so access to the powerful third party plug ins like Alien Skins line, was right there. I soon discovered that the that at least for me, PSP was probably a better fit than Photoshop anyway. PSP was more intuitive and its vector tools really shined at ground up creation of digital graphics, and wasn’t to shabby at photo editing and graphic design applications. PSP also had a interesting and diverse user community that really leaned toward the crafty and creative side, rather than then the slick and professional that Adobe products seamed to call to.  I got every new version as soon as it was available, and combed the Internet for new tutorials, plug-ins, tubes and other things the PSP community would come up with. Then right around when I was waiting to get version 9 it happened, Corel bought Jasc. Corel was a much bigger player in graphic software, but continually seemed to be loosing ground to Adobe.  Corels software blanketed over PSP though. It was like a big tool box, compared to the Swiss army knife PSP was.  I really didn’t see where PSP fit, in their lineup, and It came to be that I don’t think Corel did either.  They went about right away cutting away PSP crafty background and creative community, and have been since trying to squeak the image out of PSP as a slick bargain photo editing app.  I really wish they had maintained PSP as the sharp all around editor that continually poked at Photoshop in its utter usefulness.   So sad too, version 9, the last to be labeled by Jasc, was a masterpiece of usability, expandability and potential. It had a Python scripting engine, new photo tools, for the first time had at least some form of CMYK export.  I have tried Corels newer versions, but see that they have tucked many of PSPs great tools behind the scenes (some can only be activated in configuration) and maybe even removed some, in favor of some digital camera user market share, that in my mind don’t really want or need something like PSP anyway.   Ironically the market they seem to be after, looks to be ready to move to online apps or go to free software like picasa. As Adobe looks to be moving in this direction, I suspect they will get there first again.  The PSP tutorial, tube and frame sites and portals are full of dead links and remnants of a grand time and great program.   They went for the masses with it and really missed it’s true calling.  Corel tried to build it up but really brought it down.  Corel really ruined that taco shop.

WYSIWYG Webbuilder 5 and Taco Trio

This is how it would go on any computer forum, some beginner would post, “What is the best tool to make a web-page?” Some macho self proclaimed HTML master user would always post, “Notepad, I only will use notepad.”  I surely respect one who can code HTML well in notepad, but with so many editors and tools to assist with web-page and site creation, I say, “Why?”   The macho notepadder would of course answer, “Because it gives me total control over all my code.”  When I hear something like that, I just know their pages are probably about as creative and visual as server errors.   There are so many great web-page editors out there these days, especially WYSIWYG (What You See IS What You Get) editors, that do such fantastic jobs, I view a notepad page writer as a masochist.

Dreamweaver has always been my weapon of choice when throwing up a site, but Dreamweaver is still, to me, not for those new to web design and page making.  You still need the Code View part of Dreamweaver to get your pages the way you want them.  SiteSpinner has been my choice for no code, little effort, web-page making, in the past.  But it has not been truly updated in sometime, and something about its CSS has me convinced I can tell if the page is made in SS just by watching it load.

I had tried WYSIWYG Web Builder in the past (when it was free) and liked it a lot, but it was definitely missing a few things.  I see that version 5 has come a long way. Most of the features I felt it lacked are now right there, and there are plenty of innovative and even unexpected features that make this a great web page builder.  The shape shadow and form builder alone would make great software, but put all these things together and you can whip up very professional pages up quickly and with ease. Seriously, there is no better tool out there for quickly laying out pixel precise images and text on a web-page.  One can have a page made an loaded on a server, before a Notepad coder got the header written.

There are a few things that I find lacking with WYSIWYG Web Builder. It’s import functions are fairly poor. Unlike Dreamweaver which can pull any page in, no matter what it was made with, and retain it’s CSS and layout, WYSIWYG Web Builder massacres the style and from what I’ve seen really messes up layers and divs.  Pretty much unusable for complicated already made sites and templates.  If they could get importing working well, this would really be the WYSIWYG editor to beat.  Note: Site Spinner and most other WYSIWYG editors can’t import pages not made in it at all.  Another feature it needs, is a very easy way to move all objects below a certain point down. Especially important with long copy pages. You can select everything below manually, but this can be a little tricky with lots of objects on the page. NO worries though,  It is really actively developed piece of software, so I just know they’ll eventually have all the features I can think of, and more.

WYSIWYG Web Builder is highly recommended for those that want to put up pages and sites quickly and easily.  http://www.wysiwygwebbuilder.com/

My taco for this post is actually three tacos.  The Baja Fresh chain (I know, a chain, but trust me these are tasty) has a special called Taco Trio.  You get a steak, chicken, and shrimp taco.  These are soft corn tortia tacos (doubled up of course), and they are not just ordinary.  All three have a good size slice of avocado in them, and they live up to their themes: Diablo Steak (good steak with a nice spice). Tropical Chicken (the slice of pineapple makes it great), and Blackened Shrimp (could have been more blackened though).   I was quite impressed, these really shine above Baja Fresh’s other offerings. They should leave the white sauce out of the chicken and shrimp ones though.

Starting off the Tech & Taco blog

Welcome to Tech & Tacos. This weblog has been started to discuss my passions: new technologies, software, gadgets and Mexican food. I work in the software industry and I can tell you these are the things most discussed by the people in the industry. In the weblog I’ll try to bring to light some technologies and software that you may not have heard of or used before, as well as discuss my never ending quest for great tacos. Living in Phoenix AZ and working in the Phoenix Technology Center (Like a Silicon Valley of Arizona) gives good insight and abundant material for all these topics.

Clean and usable are the preferred words when talking about Tech, authentic and tasty for tacos and Mexican food. I’ve been finding more and more that the clean and usable software isn’t what is coming from the major software giants, but rather from small ISV (Independent Software Vendors) companies. As well, the best tacos in Phoenix seem to come from the small mom and pop restaurants tucked into this city’s abundant strip malls. What I am intending to do to get things started here at Tech & Tacos, is to start off each new post with a piece of software to explore, and end it off with the latest tacos tried. Hopefully great weblog magic will ensue from this format. Be sure to bookmark this blog or sign up for the RSS feed, as we will get things started on my very next post.

They Did a Really Bad Job

As I prepare for the opening of Tech and Tacos, I just want to get rid of the Test post and post the first meaningful tidbit on this weblog. Nothing tech and nothing taco related yet, so I’ll go off the top of my head. Before any other companies get a big bailout or other aid from the Fed, I just wanted to remind the CEOs and upper-management of such companies one thing. You were hired to do a job, and you did the absolute worst you could do at that job.