It’s Growing [Hop] Season

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Written by: Shawn Topics: Brewing Beer,

Hopzilla (Coming Soon)

It’s that time of year again. Last year I dove into brewing beer, putting together a few batches that actually weren’t as bad as I anticipated. During studying and learning what I could, a friend gave me two small hop plants (both Centennial) . Since the hops were transplanted in September (and they were a seedling) they needed a year to become more mature. Last year I was surprised since both plants produced an ounce or two (although not very full) but still were vacuum sealed (basically for showcasing my first crop :) ). In January that same friend was moving from his house and didn’t have room for some of his hops … Read More

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How To Take Over The World, Now

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Written by: Shawn Topics: Biography, Self Development,

You want to - but how? You want to – but how? (Photo: axiepics)

As of Monday, I am now officially a Board Member for the Friends of the Ridgefield Wildlife Refuge. After thinking about this for sometime, I wanted to retrace my steps on how just one year ago I moved here, not knowing a soul other than family, and now knowing just about my entire community around me.

When I first moved to Ridgefield, I had just graduated college days before and was full of ambition, but also full of a “I’m gonna relax for a little while and then conquer the world” attitude. After helping out … Read More

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I’m Gonna Have to Say No

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Written by: Shawn Topics: Buying Behaviors, Time,


Think you can do this? (Photo: Telekommunist)

So recently my phone died and I was forced to purchase a new one. So immediately I started checking out the best phones out there. After browsing for about one hour time intervals for a few days I looked at the situation from outside the box, coming to my senses and purchasing a pay-as-you-go phone. Now I’m sure some of you would disagree with this decision … Read More

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Designing Visually Appealing Artwork

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Written by: Shawn Topics: Design, Graphic Design, Web Development,

Making It or Breaking It with Design

In this post I am going to explain how to create visually appealing elements in your graphic and web design. I will do this by dissecting an the image above from a current project of mine and explain how and why I did what I did.

This project’s goal is to reflect a modern image of the company, while also make is very for users to navigate the company website. While this may sound generic, the design is certainty not. … Read More

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The Real Equation We Should Be Using When Buying

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Written by: Shawn Topics: Backing Up, Buying Behaviors,

(Photo: GorillaSushi)

This post is about myself finding a solution to backing up files online. It is not about buying Sugarsync and is certainty not an affiliate blog post with affiliate links. Simply, a story of how I went from thinking in just a monetary sense, into thinking time saving and ease of use. Enjoy.

Lately I’ve decided rather than burning DVD’s to backup my files, to go with an online backup provider, specifically SugarSync. Now I can’t believe I didn’t do this sooner. … Read More

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Custom Fields in Wordpress

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Written by: Shawn Topics: Web Development, Wordpress,

Stevenson, Washington and the Columbia River

Yesterday I came across a method to update your webpage or blog posts through the Wordpress interface, rather than going into the code. For example, you have a jQuery slider on your homepage, but in order to update it you have to go into the template (or page / post) and edit it there. After staying on that road for sometime, I knew there had to be an easier way to do this through the Wordpress interface, rather than diving into the code (and defeating the purpose of using Wordpress altogether).

So I stumbled onto Custom Fields. Custom Fields are those little boxes below the area where you update your post, that I’m assuming most people glance over once and never look back. After searching for a method to update the slider for a project, I found a method for doing this via Custom Fields. … Read More

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Three Note Coil Ascending Picking Patterns [Guitar]

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Written by: Shawn Topics: Guitar, Scales,

So lately I have been freeing up some time to practice playing the guitar. Over the last ten years, I have averaged about an hour a day playing, but keeping it more of a fun thing to do with the occasional creation of a song. Now, I’ve started putting myself to the grindstone and doing all of the exercises I used to do when I first started, by going through The Exercise Book. So yes, scales galore (as you can see above). This time it’s actually a lot more fun … Read More

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New Blog

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Written by: Shawn Topics: Biography,

The Columbia River

After putting a lot of sweat into Graticle and another side project (I’ll be announcing soon), I’ve decided to create my own  homepage. There are a few reasons for this, which I’ll explain. 

1.

It’s fun. I can use this as more of a journal of my experiences and my all around interests (ie. music, web design, hiking, fishing, … Read More

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