Jeffery Rainey » Jeff

Rainey Contracting Website

Jeff — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 14:45:40 +0000

I recently launched this website for my brother who started a construction contracting company. He and my dad will be working together to provide construction services in the Tri-Cities area. Together they have a strong background in construction with over 45 years of experience at every level of the business. Checkout his website to learn more about his services at raineycontracting.com.

Theme Spectrum Launch

Jeff — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 21:13:31 +0000

I am so glad to finally be launching Theme Spectrum. Here you will find clean premium WordPress themes for artists and designers. These themes have many features and options to give administrators lots of control of their web content.

Read more about it here: http://jefferyrainey.com/theme-spectrum/

Or, checkout the site and buy a theme or two: http://themespectrum.com.

New Website Launch, Today in Web

Jeff — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 14:35:17 +0000

This is just a quick plug for a new website that I launched, todayinwebdesign.com. This new site will serve as reference for me and hopefully a resource for others, featuring techniques and tools that I find useful. I will be posting at least once weekly so please follow @todayinweb on twitter or become a fan of todayinweb on facebook.

Typography is Not Just for Print Anymore

Jeff — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 17:39:17 +0000

Now the web kids get to have fun with typography. Typically the internet has limited how fancy the designer can get with fonts. In the past, the only real way around this was to layout the text in photoshop and use the image. The problem, this text is not accessible by search engines and text readers. Letteringjs is a new jQuery plugin that will allow designers to get fancy with accessible text. Check it out!

The Web, My Way

Jeff — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 20:22:22 +0000

So I downloaded the stylebot extension for Google Chrome. This little app allows the user to override the style information for a website and save it for later use. Now I can remove annoying element, kill terrible colors and customize layouts to my liking.

For example, facebook has some of the most annoying ads and I refuse to like any to make them any better. With stylebot I was able to remove the ads and widen the center content column and these changes will persist as I return in the future.

Before stylebot:

After stylebot:

Much better!

Here it is in action:

Upgrading my MBP Hard Drive

Jeff — Fri, 21 May 2010 19:28:40 +0000

I am upgrading my 256 GB 5400 RPM drive to a 500 GB 7200RPM drive because I am out of space. How do I have this much data? I don’t even store “everything” on this drive. I used the MY OWC Upgrade Center tool to help me find a drive that would work for my machine. For a little extra cash, I got the USB enclosure. This is great for cloning the drive and I will be able to turn my old drive into a small external USB.

So far the cloning my drive is going well. Carbon Copy is cloning my disk while I am working on it…. mind = blown. That rocks!! It looks like I am getting close with 170+GB written so I am preparing to turn the machine off and do this.

Update – I am finished

I was patient and things went very smoothly. I simply carefully followed the instructions at ifixit.com for my MacBook and now I have about 300 extra GB!

I included a few pics, but to see the real instructions look at the ifixit link.

I won’t lie, I was a little nervous when I got here.

Here I have plugged in the new drive, but unplugged it again to add the bumpers that I almost forgot. So far everything is running smooth. My programs are opening much more quickly, I have plenty of extra storage and the machine is quite a bit more snappy.

Google TV Coming in Fall

Jeff — Thu, 20 May 2010 18:18:17 +0000

I am so ready for this! Right now my rig for watching video via Hulu works, but is clunky. Read about it on TechCrunch

Homemade Flamethrower

Jeff — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 19:19:09 +0000

Moskitofänger (Mosquito catcher) – Pretty cool even though the title isn’t correct.

Interesting new search engine, WolfRam|Alpha

Jeff — Tue, 19 May 2009 18:03:57 +0000

Well, its not really a search engine, it is a “computational knowledge engine,” but I will just say search engine since you are searching the knowledge base for things. WolfRam|Alpha officially launched yesterday and it is really quite amazing. Type in a word or query and WolfRam|Alpha spits out what it knows about it. My first name for instance came back with information on rank, fraction of people with that name, years it was popular, the age of others with that name, etc.

But, the real power comes when you begin combining queries to do things like math equations, stock comparisons, or sports comparisons. I think the real value of something like this would be if they offer an API for programmers to call for real time information. Oh, wait, I just looked and they are doing that too!

Free DNS Report Replacement = intoDNS

Jeff — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 16:10:23 +0000

I used to love DNSreport.com when it was free and then they changed to a pay model. I understand they probably need to make money but,

I don’t use these tools enough to feel like I need to buy them
I also know the price is nominal, but if I were to purchase every tool that I rarely use I would be broke

So, I was very happy to find intoDNS. intoDNS offers that same functionality that I used to get out of DNSreport.com when it was free. I have tried several other free DNS tools, but I do not feel any of the others are really worth mentioning.