iCarly, eat your heart out!

I just added a new section to the site, for my Video Job Interview series. Thought it might help show off some of my abilities with editing video/audio, converting files, and integrating web with youtube.

The videos are a bit…cheesy, and at the moment, generic, but in time I’ll be adding to this section, and it’ll hopefully give potential employers a bit more to consider when reviewing my portfolio.

I also added a video message onto the main page of the site…will be updating this as well as time goes on.

After a long day of video editing, Twitter integration (for Riddler’s Bar in Limerick), and web design mock-ups (for an as-of-yet untitled project for a good friend of mine), I’m off to bed.

and “thanks for visiting KenFonzi.com” )

-Ken

Quick little update from the commuter rail train to Providence, where I’m heading to help my sister prepare for her accounting final.

Just got a new testimonial from my former-fearless-leader/current good friend Jim Wolken. Really great guy, afforded me many opportunities. He’s now working at Rhode Island School of Design, so I’m hoping to grab a coffee with him.

His testimonial, and others, can be viewed under the Contact section. Thanks Jim!

If you would like to send in a testimonial, and improve my appeal to prospective employers and clients, send it to me at info@kenfonzi.com.

Just a quick note, very excited to have just added the ‘Woopra’ for Wordpress plugin.

Woopra gives me the ability to see the number of visitors I’ve had to the page, which sections are being viewed, the country of origin, and browser information.  It doesn’t record IP addresses (so don’t get freaked out ), but it’s great to see who visits the site.

In particular, it’s great for my continuing plan to market my site to potential employers…when I send out a resume, does the average number of daily hits show any sort of a spike?  Are people actually reading the sections on my Volunteer Work/Work Experience?

It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

All the best,

Ken

I spent the major part of the day doing some web bits for the GayInIreland sites.

We recently added a google calendar to GayInLimerick.com (link here), which we plan to synch up with Cork’s calendar and Galway’s calendar (that’s next…). The main calendar will go on our GayInIreland.com site, and because of the way the calendar’s synch (if everyone in the individual communities keeps up to date), we’ll have a robust calendar full of the nation’s LGBT activities! This resource is hugely important, as most of the communication channels in Ireland are run through Dublin, and unfortunately don’t have the means to keep up-to-date on venues, services, and events in the more regional communities.

So, after all that was done, I decided to start ‘decorating’ for the holidays on these sites. I’m not a graphic designer (can you tell?) but I swapped out the normal logos for something a bit more…festive.

	became…
	became…

Well, after decorating “other people’s houses” so to speak, I decided KenFonzi.com needed some holiday TLC. I did a quick search on WordPress for a ‘Snow’ Plug-in, and found the excellent flakes that (should be) shimmering down your computer screen at this very moment. Then, using my trusty Microsoft paint application, I messed around with the header a bit until I found something that represented the season.

The images (to the very best of my knowledge) are all creative common licensing. If you like the snow plugin, the link to download it is in the footer of the website. They have similiar functions for leaves, and balloons…can’t wait to try them out!

All the best,
K

I’ve been trying out GoogleWave the past couple weeks.

It seems like it’ll be a really useful collaboration tool, but I don’t know how far it will go with regards to ‘replacing’ conventional e-mail and web messenger systems.

Really, GoogleWave isn’t anything ‘new’ (in its current release)–it’s the same sort of tech we’ve seen with forums/blogs (conversation threads), Twitter (direct replies, ‘@’ replies), and Facebook.   There are some pretty neat widgets you can use in conversation, but again, it’s nothing particularly new.

It’s promising, however, as the tech develops.

On a side note (as I’ve sold it so well), I’ve got 8 GoogleWave invites to give out.  Any takers?

K

Just wanted to give a quick shOUT!-out to my friend’s Darren and Paul, back in Galway.  Their event “Big Gay Night Out in Aid of shOUT!” is on tonight (23 Nov, 2009) from 7pm, upstairs at  Skeff in Eyre Square.

shOUT! is an LGBT Youth Group in Galway, and a very successful one at that!  They run a samba drumming band, which (while sort of random) is a great creative outlet for the kids.  They’re also very much in demand at Pride festivals, Marriage Equality marches, etc.

Here’s to you, guys! I hope it’s a success!

K

Been at this for an hour or so.

Trying to set up an RSS feed which is a compilation of a bunch of feeds/tweets that I follow. Started using YahooPipes for this service. There’s great flexibility, and it does almost everything I want it to, except that I’m having no luck in merging the feeds together (eg the feeds are still grouped separately, whereas I’d like them to be merged by date/time they were published). The ‘Sort’ utility seems pretty useless, but I still have some tinkering to do.

The RSS feeds I’m merging are related to the GayIn… sites that I maintain (GayinLimerick.com, GayinGalway.com, GayCork.com), as well as The Advocate and the ACLU for LGBT news updates. I’m also throwing in some television and entertainment feeds (TVguide.com, Entertainment Weekly’s Michael Ausiello, and the UK’s X-Factor).

Just a bit of testing to see if I can get Facebook to update as well…

Do not be alarmed.  This is just a test.

K

‘Allo?  Facebook? Twitter?

If this new Socialite plug-in I just installed, you should be seeing that I updated my blog on KenFonzi.com.  Much more seemless than trying to remember to update what I’m doing in multiple locations, especially as its usually something mundane like ‘eating breakfast’.

Feel free to comment away though

K

I’ve gotten a fair few questions about the symbols up the top of the page, in the header.

I wanted to put something visually…interesting, if not pleasing, so I started messing around with OpenOffice Draw.  There’s a pretty cool feature which allows you to essentially do a 3-D rendering of an object (or in this case, a letter).

Take the symbol on the left of my name.  Picture it divided down the centre.  Looks just like that ‘k’ next to it, hmm?  Likewise, the other symbol is the lowercase ‘f’ from ‘Fonzi’.  To be honest, it looks like some sort of alien structure in a low-budget SciFi (oh, sorry, SyFy) original series, but until I get around to creating a logo for myself*, it’ll have to do!

*Any graphic designers out there want to have a go? Hit me up!

K