One Man's Blog

Discount Coupon for Trey Ratcliff’s HDR Video Tutorial

November 26, 2010 By John P. 305 Comments

Trey Ratcliff's Horse HDR

Do you guys remember when I did the little video of uncrating that magnificent HDR Wall Art that my friend Trey Ratcliff created for me? Or maybe you saw when I posted his awesome video Japan: Heatbeats of Time? Or maybe you’ve just seen some of his awesome photography in general? He’s had over 44 million views on Flickr and 22 million on SmugMug!

Well, I’ve got some good news… Trey now has a NEW downloadable version of his HDR Workshop! And, thanks to the magic of friendship, you can get 10% off any version of the HDR Tutorial using the coupon code: “JOHNPISAGREATGUY“. So feel free to Order the HDR Video Tutorial Now! (Oh, and don’t bother looking for a bigger discount code anywhere. It doesn’t exist, so no need to waste time.)

What’s This All About?

This isn’t any old HDR Tutorial… this video was shot on location in Austin during Trey’s sold-out HDR Workshop which people paid $1,000 to attend. (And I should know… I shot it!)

And lets not forget that Trey Ratcliff is the greatest HDR photographer on the planet, and the first person to ever have an HDR hang in the Smithsonian Museum.
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Filed Under: Art, Photography, Tutorials Tagged With: HDR, Photography, Trey-Ratcliff, Tutorials

5 Amazing Examples of Watermelon Carving

August 16, 2010 By John P. 17 Comments

Here in Texas it is HOT outside! I mean it’s still nearly 100 degrees at midnight during the summer. So, it’s no surprise that Watermelon is a favorite around these parts. If you keep it in an ice chest for a while before you carve it up it makes for a cool refreshing treat!

But there are chefs out there who are using watermelons (and other fruits) for much more artistic purposes! And I was amazed to see some of the things these people can do in a very short time.

Here is Vid Nikolic going to work on a watermelon.

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Filed Under: Art, Food, Tutorials, Videos Tagged With: Art, Food, Tutorials, Videos, Watermellon

Tutorial: Manually Take WordPress Out of Maintenance Mode

August 4, 2010 By John P. 23 Comments

Today while performing a WordPress upgrade on another blog the update failed! Grrr. If that wasn’t enough of a problem, when I checked the site it was stuck in “Maintenance” mode – meaning that no matter what you tried to do the only thing that showed up was a page telling you the site was in “Maintenance Mode”.

I Googled like a madman, and searched the WordPress site too, but there is no documentation as to what to do to get it out of this mode! So, I fired up my FTP browser and manually performed a complete upgrade of WordPress. Still no luck!
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Filed Under: Tutorials, Wordpress Tagged With: Annoyances, Hacks, Tutorials, Wordpress

Video Tutorial: Getting Started with WordPress

August 3, 2010 By John P. 3 Comments

Seems like I’ve been talking to more and more people lately who are just getting started with WordPress, so in order to put a few materials together for you so you don’t have to search all over the bloody internet I’ve compiled the following WordPress Video Tutorials. I consider all of these good enough that I wouldn’t even bother remaking them because they really can’t be improved upon.

So let’s get started learning how to use WordPress, shall we?

Tutorial: How to Use the WordPress Dashboard

The first thing that happens when you log into any WordPress installation is that you are taken to the Dashboard. So we might as well start out by learning what’s here and how to customize the Dashboard.
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Filed Under: Tutorials, Wordpress Tagged With: Blogging, Tutorials, Wordpress

Tutorial: Fix iPhone and Google Calendar Time Zone Sync

June 15, 2010 By John P. 7 Comments

Folks, I travel a lot. And I use my iPhone, and I use Google Calendar. On my recent trip to the Indy 500 my phone apparently did all sorts of automatic stuff based on my time zones and kept me in good shape. However, when I returned to Dallas I had something strange happen!

Although my Google Calendar was reflecting the proper time zone on my computer, and ALL of my time zone settings were correct, my Google Calendar as viewed through Safari on the iPhone was off by exactly one hour – which happens to be the same as the difference on the trip I took.

I searched EVERYWHERE for settings on how to fix this, and finally figured out the incredibly complex way to do it!

Turn your iPhone off and then on again.

Yeah. That’s it. Power cycling the phone corrected the time zone immediately. So if it happens to you, now you know.

Filed Under: Tips and Tricks, Tutorials Tagged With: Annoy, Hacks, iPhone, Tips and Tricks, Tutorials

Tutorial: Speed Up Your Web Surfing with Google DNS or OpenDNS

April 10, 2010 By John P. 13 Comments

Folks, listen up. If you are still using your ISPs slow DNS servers you are probably suffering needlessly and not taking advantage of the full speed of whichever connection you may have – even high speed ones like cable, DSL or Fiber Optics. And if you don’t know what I’m talking about – this means you!

I’m going to show you how to speed up everything you do online by switching to a better, faster Domain Name Server (DNS) system run by either Google or OpenDNS. Best of all, it will only take you like 5 minutes to make a change that will benefit you every day from now on! But before we get started, let me explain what DNS does for you in non-technical terms.
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Filed Under: Computing, Google Tools, Tutorials Tagged With: Computing, DNS, Google DNS, Google Tools, Hacks, OpenDNS, Tutorials

OpenCamp: The Conference for ALL Webmasters!

April 6, 2010 By John P. 1 Comment

Well folks, I’m extremely excited to finally unveil the new OpenCamp Conference that I, and a team of volunteers, have been secretly working on for months. (BTW, follow OpenCamp on Twitter and Facebook!) For those of you who were waiting on the announcement for WordCamp, well consider this it! We’re taking it to a whole different level this year by inviting WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, and everyone else to the event!

Now, some of you may have been to WordCamp Dallas in the past, and some of you may have seen me lecture on blogging and other related topics, but I assure you – nothing you’ve seen in the past will compare to what we’ve got planned for OpenCamp!

We’re going to bring together about 1,000 bloggers, webmasters and podcasters all in one spot for an entire weekend of lectures, entertainment and networking. I promise you, it’s going to be absolutely amazing. And best of all, while other people are charging $1,000 for conferences half this good, we’re keeping OpenCamp CHEAP!

Here is a little intro video we put together to explain the concept:

Now, hurry up and get registered! Attendees are going to be listed by order of registration, so trust me YOU WANT TO BE FIRST ON THE LIST! Of course, there is a little issue at the moment with the automatic feed, but get registered anyway because the clock is already ticking and there are people ahead of you now!

Filed Under: The Man's Videos, Tutorials, Wordpress, Work Tagged With: Blogger, Blogging, OpenCamp, WordCamp, Wordpress

Video RANT: Taking the (Sharp) Edge off the MacBook Pro

March 11, 2010 By John P. 71 Comments

God only knows how many times I’ve whined on Twitter about the sharp edge on my MacBook Pro right where your wrists rest while working on it. I swear to Buddha that after 15 minutes of working on this thing I have lines deep enough imprinted in my forearms to make people think I’m trying to slash my wrists! Furthermore, this laptop nearly makes me want to!!!

But tonight I’d had enough. After a marathon session of pain, I finally got off my lazy butt and did something about it. So, here is a video of me taking a file to my MacBook Pro and doing what Apple should have done long, long ago!
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Filed Under: Computing, The Man's Videos, Tutorials Tagged With: Apple, Computing, laptop, MacBook, Rant, Rants, The Man's Videos, Tutorials