latest update – hooky kid

October 25th, 2009 by Holly

It’s been almost a year since I last posted a new image of where I am on my latest work. just posted it on my artwork page: http://ahsodes.com/auto_thumb_generator.php or vist it directly here -> http://www.ahsodes.com/images/art/hooky_kid_2009-10.html

just finished usmagazine.com (well, 2.5 weeks ago

September 23rd, 2009 by Holly

usmagazine.com

Category: News

Topic: celebrity news

Year created: 2009

Overall rating: 4 out of 5
Content rating: 3 out of 5
Design rating: 4 out of 5
Navigation rating: 4 out of 5

We just finished the first phase of this site – usmagazine.com. most of the design and development was performed by funnygarbage, where we, at wenner, provided direction and support.

It is very cool, though. First site I’ve built with symfony. It is too early, really to make any snap judgements on the framework, though. We have another couple of months, at least before users get used to it and traffic resumes to a pre-redesign level – at least that is how it went for the last redesign, which wasn’t half as drastic.

What I am looking forward to most, though, is bringing more social features into the site – ratings, click streams, recommendations, whatever.

Brooklyn sunsets

September 13th, 2009 by Holly

some sunsets from the past spring/summer

vacation – VA/SC/GA

September 13th, 2009 by Holly

Just got back from a pretty nice vacation – in this order: Williamsburg, VA – Hilton Head, SC (base camp) – Savannah, GA – Charelston, SC – Hilton Head, SC (chilled for a day) – Williamsburg, VA – back to Bkln, NY (9 days)

Usmagazine.com relaunch

September 9th, 2009 by Holly

Last week we launched the newly redesigned usmagazine.com… Has a cool new look and it’s backend is much more structured which should make it easier to create new sections/features down the road as well as keep everything much “cleaner” code-wise. It is now built on a much better framework (IMHO) that uses MVC principals much better than the old site’s framework.

I am pushing to add user registration on the site next… as soon as all the wrinkles have been ironed out of this first iteration of the new site, hopefully.

I feel like there are still some performance issues but no one but me seems to be noticing anything. I’m definitely going to look into it more when I get back from a long deserved (IMHO) vacation…

Vision Festival 2009 – Notable sessions

July 6th, 2009 by Holly

This year, I finally got to the Vision Fest… It was really great… I went Wednesday and Friday nights – the best session by far was the Ayler Project on Friday night. The Ayler Project was made up of Roy Campbell (t), William Parker , Joe McPhee and Warren Smith a at Abrons Arts Center in the lower east side. Apparently, they are coming out with an album next year which I am dying to get. (Hope I’m not disappointed).

But there was other really good stuff too (Charles Gayle, Sun Ra Arkestra) and I got a buttload of great cd’s (which I haven’t done in a while) so overall, I was really glad that I didn’t miss the shows this year! (It made me feel like I was in college in Baltimore again)

Here’s a review of Friday night

Symfony session variable clear

June 9th, 2009 by Holly

We’re starting a new Symfony project soon at work (new job since my last post, oh so long ago).  Anyway, I’m pretty excited to start using the framework.

And, as a random little sidenote, here’s a link to a blog post I stumbled upon about clearing session variables in Symfony:

$this->getUser()->getParameterHolder()->clear();
$this->getUser()->getAttributeHolder()->clear();

http://eatmymonkeydust.com/2008/08/symfony-security-sessions-not-cleared-when-logging-out/

Dead external drive… doh!

June 9th, 2009 by Holly

My external drive died last Tuesday…  Dagnabbit!  and of course I hadn’t backed anything up…  looks like I’m going to have to cough up some dough for data recovery…  I would try something like GetDataBack (http://www.runtime.org/howto_datarecovery.pdf) but the drive doesn’t show up in windows explorer or even spin…

If anyone has any ideas, I’d love to hear them.

last fm channel and collection visualization

January 25th, 2009 by Holly

Added a couple of nifty new things to the site.  The Most useful one is the lastfm audio player widget that I aded to the mus.so des homepage.

Also, a spiffy information visualization of the artists in the collection has been added.  It was created using the Google AJAX visualization API.

arrrr…. how be goin’the art, matey?

December 23rd, 2008 by Holly

Well, If you really must know, it’s been going very slowly.  I’ve been working on hooky-kid for a long time and I just finished a small piece I made as an xmas gift.  They’re all on this page in the last row – http://ahsodes.com/auto_thumb_generator.php

about


A Holly Sphar is (I am) an artist and information technologist who lives in Brooklyn, NY. By day, he is (I am) Web Development Manager for Wenner Media (Us Weekly, Mens Journal, Rolling Stone). For kicks, he (I) work(s) on various art projects, web projects, looks into new web technologies, hangs w/ his (my) wife and dog, explores NYC (actually, he likes Brooklyn a bit more), etc,

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