blog.progravix.comProGravix Blog: Clarified Butter | Separating the good from the bad

ProGravix Blog: Clarified Butter Separating the good from the bad SearchBlog Home Home Web Development Graphic Design Contact Us Post navigation ← Older posts 25 years? Wowza! Posted on January 16, 2018 by progravix I’m not one for celebrating milestones. I don’t even set goals. I just do the best I can each and every day. The satisfaction in providing top-notch service with astonishingly quick speed, in my opinion, far exceeds the accomplishment of any mundane goal. Yet, the other day I realized that 2018 will mark the 25th year for ProGravix. It certainly took a lot of work, and a few sidesteps early on, but since 1993 we have been offering graphic design (and, much later, web design and video services) with passion. As a boy, I loved basic programming on the family’s Commodore 64 (with a lot of game time, of course – Frogger and Rampage come to mind). I had always loved computers, but never felt that programming was all that satisfying. That was the early years of personal computers. At the start of high school, I took several courses of COBOL and Pascal (computer languages), which I never really understood (and always failed). As a sophomore, I came across a class called Desktop Presentations , where they used Macintosh computers to create graphics. During the same year, I was learning the process of photography and developing film. For a photography class assignment, I used the photos I had taken, along with the hardware and software provided in my Desktop Presentations class to complete an assignment. It was the first assignment where I had garnered an A grade while using a computer. In 1993, I had just turned 17, and finished up my Junior year of high school. By this time, the family computer had beenBy 1996, I had become exhausted with AlphaGraphic’s retail environment, and sought a position with Maricopa County’s Library District as a Senior Graphic Designer. The drastic change from fast paced creativity, to bogged down governmental status quo was dramatic. It was a nice change, but certainly not challenging enough. Moving from high volume, full color offset printing, to black and white bookmarks for youth and adult services seemed to dull my creativity. During these years at Maricopa County, I continued to pursue projects on the side – creating banners, menus, anything where my creativity could explode. During this time, I also became well versed in HTML, and the art of web development, having taught myself by reading the code of many popular websites. Although I was a vital component of the Library District, I worked closely with other departments such as Animal Control, Department of Transportation, Parks and Recreation, and the Stadium District, which oversaw the completion of Bank One Ballpark (now Chase Field). I was the go-to photographer and graphic designer for these departments – mirroring my sophomore year of high school. In 1998, I chose to end my employment with Maricopa County, and begin an all-in effort to grow ProGravix. I had established many clients, and grew ever more knowledgeable about web development. This year also marked the beginning of ProGravix’s online presence. In 2001, we became heavily invested in expanding the video services portion of our business, serving mainly as wedding videographers. From 2001 to 2005, we had created hundreds of wedding, graduation, genealogy, and remembrance videos. When the decline of the economy drastically curbed this service, we started to focus on very high end video projects for individuals or commercial endeavors. Now, having achieved this 25 year milestone, I can assure you there is a lot more to come. ProGravix continues to grow, year after year. This is not achieved by advertising. We garner our business through our clients. By choosing to provide top-notch service day after day, we are choosing our quality and speed of service to speak for itself. Our clients share that with other potential clients, who begin to understand very quickly who we are, and what we do. This has been today’s Clarified Butter . Posted in General Business , Graphic Design , Web Development Update: Amazon’s Fire TV Posted on April 5, 2017 by progravix Three years ago I wrote a post about watching local content on Amazon’s Fire TV via Plex . At that time, we watched content via Mac minis connected to LED TVs. The main problem with this approach was the accessibility to online services such as Amazon Prime Video and Netflix. You had to wrangle a keyboard and mouse from the couch, and that was just cumbersome (and not kid-friendly). I expressed my desire in that post for Amazon to release a stick version of their Fire TV, similar to Roku’s Streaming Stick. I had tried out Roku’s stick, and didn’t like it much. Well, they did eventually release a Fire TV Stick, but I opted to purchase the full boxes instead. Since that post, we have converted to watching content via Fire TVs connected to those same LED TVs. We still have those Mac minis connected (although they mainly serve their purpose as Plex Media Servers and OTA DVRs). These Fire TV boxes are great, and fairly stable. We mainly watch Plex content on them, but they are also an easy way to consume Amazon’s video and music library, while also providing easy access to YouTube (a service I thoroughly enjoy watching vlogs [and the occasional fail compilation] on). Since purchasing those Fire TVs, we delve even deeper into the Amazon ecosystem and purchased Fire tablets for the boys. I was hesitant to adopt the Android platform (being so firmly in the iOS camp), but it works great for the boys (who also have their own iOS devices to keep them grounded in truth). Don’t get me wrong, I will always be loyal to iOS, and I would never buy an Android phone. But for cheap tablets, these things are great. This has been today’s Clarified Butter . Posted in Hardware , Opinion , Software , Video Services Wrangle pesky newer version” errors in Illustrator Posted on September 16, 2014 by progravix From time to time I receive an AI or EPS file from a client that just won’t open – either at all, or not cleanly. The reason given is usually of the newer version” nature. The error is typically… There is an easy solution – given you are running a Mac. There is a neat little application that I use a lot – Preview – which most of us pass off as Apple’s free PDF reader. But it can do so much more. The solution to this newer version” issue is to open the AI or EPS file in Preview. To do this, right-click (or control-click) on the offending file and choose Open WithPreview.” This will work for virtually all EPS files, and most AI files that were saved with PDF compatibility. The file is opened in a new untitled Preview window. Go to FileSave As…” and save it as a PDF file and close the Preview window. Now, right-click (or control-click) on your new PDF file and choose Open WithIllustrator.” Your resulting file will typically be locked...