Big Trousers, Web, Design, Photography and new media.

Keynote on auto schedule shutdown-startup

Posted on 04. Mar, 2010 by Philip in Apple, Big Trousers News, Digital imaging, Hardware, Software, Video

A very recent installation job nearly went pear shaped when a new “feature” in iWork 09 Keynote stopped us from scheduling a shutdown of a kiosk style big screen sideshow on 3 screens.

The job is a display of news and coming events on 3 big screens for The West Footscray Neighborhood House. The screens run separate keynote presentations containing HD video and slideshows all with audio in 3 different locations within the center complex. Three Mac mini’s run the program files in full HD resolution and they could not be more happy with the quality of the presentations.

There were a number of hurdles to overcome however and in the interests of others trying to achieve the same result we will list solutions to some of the problems we encountered.

(more…)

Sick Australia site goes up, taste in T-Shirt design goes down.

Posted on 18. Feb, 2010 by Philip in Big Trousers News, Web design

We made live the new site built for Fang and Dome from Sick Australia T-Shirts.
Jean-Luc is the guy with the designs and is probably better known for his work on the comic Modern Gentleman, the movie Cannibal Suburbia, and his own movie productions.
A talented man with a warped mind..bring it on JL !

sickaustralia.com.au

Merry Christmas from Big Trousers

Posted on 14. Dec, 2009 by Philip in Big Trousers News

Christmas is for kids….

Louie Prez live stream from The Dog

Posted on 29. Nov, 2009 by Philip in Big Trousers News, Digital imaging, Video

The webcast from The Dog theatre went well last night and we will continue to improve our assembly of technical specifications for this type of event. The concept was for a lightweight portable and affordable two camera streaming solution.
Video to follow soon of the recorded stream.

Window Wonders record build attempt

Posted on 27. Nov, 2009 by Philip in Big Trousers News, Web design

Well after about 8 hours solid we have the rebuild for Karen at Window Wonders. Her old OsCommerce application was retired after an attack of the Trojans and a new Wordpress theme installed and modified for her purpose. We shot the whole shop content on a lightbox and uploaded the product images.

Well done Karen. Take a look and let us know if we need to sleep on it and rebuild in the morning.

Trojan in Woo Themes footer code

Posted on 27. Nov, 2009 by Philip in Big Trousers News, Software, Web design

Whilst trying to fix a Wordpress install, I found some errant code in the footer.php for site files installed by a client. After a bit of sluething I discovered that the Premium Woo Theme used had come from a filesharing site or had come in via bit torrent and had been altered to subject the user to potentially dangerous callback connections for information carried within the site. Now at Big Trousers we have seen this sort of thing injected into shopping carts but never before delivered via a Premium Wordpress theme over file sharing.

This is a word of warning to all those who attempt the ’something for nothing’ route and again a warning to those using a bit torrent client.

My advice is to pay WooThemes for their fine Wordpress Themes. The other advantage of owning a license to your Premium theme is that it comes with a lifelong upgrade so that new improved code and bug fixes are downloadable in order to improve your site functionality. Some Themes are available from Woo for free in any event but if you are reading this to find a solution this is it.

TPG dealer code VBIGTR

Posted on 13. Nov, 2009 by Philip in Big Trousers News

Big Trousers is an authorised TPG dealer and offer account registration, support, installation and configuration for Mac and PC systems. We also offer an optional alternative hardware service that includes an on site installation using Linksys Cisco or Billion ADSL2+ modems and Apple wireless routers. Network cabling and Gigabit switches are also an option as is ongoing assistance with network troubleshooting.
Book an on site custom hardware installation
ring 03 9689 6790 or get a quote online here.

New Web Design for Big Trousers

Posted on 11. Nov, 2009 by Philip in Big Trousers News

Well it has been a year or so without a refresh, so this is it.
We are aiming to show a more corporate layout for our content and make changes to content more frequently.

MYOB frustration

Posted on 10. Jul, 2009 by Philip in Apple, Big Trousers News, Software

Due to MYOB’s current software licensing practices it is no longer possible to buy a new copy of MYOB Account Edge and upgrade your datafile unless you pay MYOB an extra $29 to remove the previous serial from your datafile. That is our current understanding at least, your experience may vary.

To do this you need to email your datafile to MYOB and sign a form with payment details included.

To avoid this procedure we recommend purchasing an upgrade to your software directly from MYOB.

Big Trousers will no longer sell MYOB software for installation on the Mac Platform as we consider this licensing model to be draconian and not one we would recommend being locked in to.

As rival software is available we will look into those alternatives.

Quickbooks has been around for a while and that may be an alternative.

Connected Precision Accounting Software may not be suitable for everyone but worth a look too.

We will continue to look for other, more Mac friendly accounting software packages and report back as they are tested.

UPDATE:

Perhaps there is a version of MoneyWorks that will prove useful and competitive?

Websites and Mail down

Posted on 06. Jul, 2009 by Philip in Big Trousers News, Software, Web design

We are currently experiencing a delay in upgrading the hardware of the web server.

When all the bugs are ironed out we hope that an improvement to services will be evident but the change over has not gone as smoothly as we had hoped.

Keep an eye on this page for up to date details.

UPDATE:

It looks as though there is a DNS problem inherit in our issues here as well. The new server needs time to be seen by various ISP’s for it’s new location. Some domains are working fine and others are slower to propagate. This will resolve itself over the next few hours.

If we look at the sites hosted over different connection they are starting to appear and the good news is that the sites load a lot faster.

UPDATE 2:

It also seems that when the server was down for repair your ISP cached DNS failures. For those wishing to access mail in the interim you can see your site via anonymouse.org and use the webmail service attached to your hosting service by adding /webmail to your domain url.

UPDATE 3:

All should be getting back to normal now and the new server is a much better unit.
Twice the ram, dual SATA raided drives, faster dual multi threaded CPU – should be a noticeable difference in performance.
Still waiting on upload permissions to be sorted.

Big Trousers world record

Posted on 16. Jun, 2009 by Philip in Big Trousers News

People from the Mexican village of Almoloya del Río have made what they hope is the world’s longest pair of trousers in an effort to boost the local textiles industry, which has been badly affected by the global recession.
Forty-four people and almost two kilometres of fabric were needed to make the 60 metre long trousers.

Not quite what the world needs but impressively silly nonetheless.

Benalla Online now online

Posted on 12. Jun, 2009 by Philip in Big Trousers News, Web design

Bruce Keogh has been working hard for 3 months or more converting his entire site to the Wordpress format.

Benalla Online is a local news/directory that grew from a few pages in html to now an extensive database of local interest.
This site is perhaps the most recent we have built that suits the Wordpress structure perfectly.

Sound Acoustics website now live

Posted on 04. May, 2009 by Philip in Big Trousers News, Web design

After a few years on an old html site James at Sound Acoustics has embraced WordPress as a Content Management System for his business.

Sound Acoustics designs, tests, maufactures and sells a range of acousctic foam panels for recording studios and home theatre rooms. This site has a Twitter Feed, Flickr link, and a shopping cart using code supplied by WP-Ecommerce.

Good luck James and get the blog going… at soundacoustics.com.au

Easy Time Machine Setup with the Netgear ReadyNAS

Posted on 16. Apr, 2009 by Philip in Apple, Big Trousers News, Hardware, Software

In a recent firmware upgrade for all Netgear ReadyNAS units a simple interface for configuring for network Time Machine backup under Mac OS X 10.5 has been revealed. Untill now only a complex 15 step solution was available for this unit.
Many had opted for the Apple Time Capsule solution for network backups.

This is great news for those with plenty of room on their ReadyNAS and a small number of Macs to backup.

To use the system simply reboot your ReadyNAS and it will have the firmware upgrade done with a page available with set up instructions.

Read more here.

Louie Prez goes live

Posted on 14. Apr, 2009 by Philip in Big Trousers News, Web design

New site with photography by Phil and web by Big Trousers.

Ray Pereira, Leo Dale and Doug DeVries take the passion and poetry of Brazilian guitar, add a whole truckload of percussion from West Africa and throw in some cool grooves from French heist movies. The music is composed, yet improvised. It may sound like Jazz to you, but then again!

It’s got a hell of a groove and it sure sounds sweet.

Features downloadable music sales and video all as content managed backend.
Get online and take a squizz,  louieprez.com