The Blog of Victor Bustos

Hello world! this is a blog post directly from Linux… let’s see if it allows me to post html:

My Site

I came across this morning and it made me lol.

source

Right now i am testing out ScribeFire which is a Firefox add-on and I am happy with it. I still consider Windows Live Writer to be one of the best blogging client.

This is a blog post test using BloGTK blogging client.

I happened to come across a really awesome alternative to Dreamweaver on Ubuntu. It is called Quanta Plus. Which you can find here: http://quanta.kdewebdev.org/index.php  It’s really meant to work on the KDE desktop but works flawlessly on Gnome. I had tested out a few other editors but this one came out to be one of the best on my list. I loved that i was able to upload my local files to my server within the program instead of having to open up FileZilla.

Close but no cigar:

Scite

Geany

1. Dynamic skin

Skin created by: unknown

2. C2SS

Skin created by: http://enspia.deviantart.com/

3. Windows Media Player 11 Skin

Skin created by: Vadim Zhukov

WinAmp is one of my favorite media players due to it’s optional plugins and customization. I also like that the player is also a heck of a lot faster at handling a large mp3 libraries. I love that WinAmp can easily search a particular song within a 50GB of music/video library without a hassle. Try doing that with Itunes without it eating your RAM.

Below I mention a few Plugins that I find very useful for WinAmp:

For anyone that refuses to install Itunes to manage their ipods, ML iPod is a great plugin which allows you to access, manage and sync your music/video collection to your ipod thru Winamp. This basically replaces iTunes. Even thought Winamp comes with iPod compatibility by default it doesn’t compare to ML iPod’s features.

Cool Features:

• Sync Music Library to iPod
• Syncs Album Art
• Syncs Photos
• Syncs Ratings from Winamp to iPod and vice versa
• Compatible with all ipods including iPod Touch
• Scrobbles tracks that you heard on the iPod to Last.fm (optional)
• Syncs Smart Playlists
• And a bunch more handy options

Find On Disk

This handy plugin has saved me so much time when trying to find the physical location of my mp3 files. Suppose you want to send an mp3 to a friend through instant messenger but you don’t remember where exactly the mp3 file was saved. Find On Disk automatically opens the explorer window where the mp3 file lies by hitting CTRL+F in the Playlist Editor assuming that it’s registered in your music library.

Live Messenger Status

This plugin allows you to display the music you are listening to in MSN messenger’s status window. There are a few other similar plugins that I came across but I considered this one to be my favorite because has more customizable options.

WiltAim

Wilt Aim, also known as What I’m Listening to Aim plugin is the equivalent to Live Messenger Status for AIM users. It allows you to display the music you are listening in AIM.

Album Art Viewer

By default Winamp’s Classic Skins does not display any album art but with this tiny little plugin it lets you have a window that shows the album art that is embedded in the mp3 tags or a folder.jpg file found in the root folder of mp3.

Lyrics Plugin

This plugin is pretty straight forward. It allows you to view lyrics in WinAmp. Without the need to do a separate search online.

Just start listening to your favorite songs and lyrics will be displayed automatically. I’ve had a 90% success rate at finding the correct lyrics. As long as the MP3s are properly tagged then you should be good to go. The coolest thing is that if the lyrics are not on lyricsplugin.com server you can add them in yourself and save them for others with the same plugin to see.

Enhancer

Last but no least is a plugin called Enhancer. This is the best audio enhancing plugin for WinAmp I’ve tried. It makes your MP3 sound so much clearer. Once installed you will definitely notice the difference. It has several presets to match your style of music or you can use the slider controls for custom sound.

*QUICK TIP:

After you have successfully installed the plugin go to:

1. Right click on WinAmp >>Options>> Preferences>>
2. Scroll down to Plug-Ins
3. DSP/Effect >>Enhancer
4. click on Configure Active Plug-in

When you do this will bring up the Enhancer window where you will be able to change the settings as you wish. The reason I mention this is because when I first installed it I couldn’t figure out how to change setting on Enhancer.

Just recently I have been keeping an eye on my eager little brother’s Photoshop work and it’s made me a bit nervous. Not only is he intending to master his skill at 16 but he has also jumped into the world of web design while doing so. I have to say I’m very impressed at his 1^st attempt and I encourage him to keep learning. Although, by having his own site now he has officially declared war and it seems that he is now new potential competition. Here’s the link to his site, check it out: www.gerardobustos.com

Below is some weird sketch I drew last night on my friend’s pen tablet. It looks a bit demonic or something.

Below is an old animation I did in school a few years back. Thought I’d post it in my blog for others who didn’t see it.

My New Site

Off and on I’ve been working on my new site (click HERE to view)and it is taking me forever due to the fact that I am not a programmer. I do have to admit though it has been a learning experience. I’m starting to understand HTML and CSS much better. Even though I have previous web experience it has never as CSS intensive. 95% of previous websites were created using tables with dreamweaver.

For this new site my goal is to create a a quicker loading and validated website to reduce the chance of it displaying incorrectly in different browsers.

The site was sketched out and planned in the beginning but I’m still wondering how everything is going to layout since my CSS skills are limited. So far I am pleased how it is turning out. My main focus is to provide an easy access to my design work and to make it as straight forward as possible.

The whole process is also taking me a while because I freelance a lot of the time. I hardly ever have any energy or motivation left to sit on mydesk and create something. Well, I hope that by the end of this month I have everything complete.