Mike Jandreau

Writer.Musician. MovieSnob. Web Guy.

There’s certain downsides to summer.   Mainly, all the bigtime tv shows are on hiatus during the summer months.   However, there’s a few of my favorite shows that start up in May-June, and that’s a good thing.   For example:

“Hell’s Kitchen” – a great reality show about a top level chef screaming at morons who can’t make entrees for his high end clients.
“Psych” – a relatively new show, only going into season two, but very funny.   Our main character’s not psychic, but he pretends to be, so he can work with the local police, of which is dad used to be one, to help solve crime.   Very funny.
“Rescue Me” – arguably one of the, if not the, best tv shows to come out in recent years.   Every previous show that Denis Leary’s done has gotten axed before its first season ended.   “Rescue Me” is now in its fourth season, and is highly regarded in the industry, and has won numerous awards across the board.   If you’ve never seen “Rescue Me”, crawl out from the rock you’re living under, and turn on FX Wednesday nights at 10PM EST.

While I miss the”Numb3rs”, “Law & Order: SVU”, “ER”, “The Office”, etc, of the regular season, the summer months have some benefits, as well.   Not only is it gorgeous in the Boston area, weatherwise, but tv isn’t completely terrible.

I added some new text to the music  page, that was written up for me.   It covers  the past, present, and future of my music.   It also contains a variety of links to lyrics that I’ve written, and had published through BMI Music.   All lyrics, at this point are for sale.   Any offers from established bands will be considered.

I have plans to add more lyrics to the page.   I just need to type them up, and figure out a better way to display them. As it is, the list of them seems rather lengthy.

So, with all my free time lately, I’ve been learning the ins and outs of Firefox plugin writing.   That, and Google gadget writing.

 So, I wrote a plugin, and a gadget.   For MovieSnobs.   The first, the plugin, is a search plugin for Firefox.   Simply visit the website, in Firefox.   Then head up to the little search box in the top right corner of your browser.   Click the little down pointing arrow, and select “Add MovieSnobs Search”.   That’s it. Now, when you type a movie, or actor into the search box, you’ll get the results directly on MovieSnobs, from our database.   Nifty, eh?

The second, the gadget for Google’s customized homepage, does the same thing.   Installing it’s a bit different though.   First, go to your customized homepage for Google, and click the “Add Stuff” link.   Then “Add by URL” link (the teeny tiny one) next to the button. And enter http://www.moviesnobs.net/snobsgadget.xml  into the box they give you.   Click the “Add” button, and then “OK” on the warning message. Don’t worry, it just says that what you’re installing wasn’t written or provided by Google.   It’s safe, I promise.   That’s it, voila, search MovieSnobs.net directly from your iGoogle page.

Fancy, eh?   Even more surprisingly, it was pretty easy to learn how to do, too.

I had some extra time yesterday, and decided to finally work on the invoicing script that I’ve been saying I was going to do, for months now.

Here’s some details  about the script, and a screenshot.   If you have any questions, or want to use it for something you’re doing, drop a note in the comments here, and let me know. I’ll get in touch with you.

I went through, this morning, and updated the content of the “Design” page.   Check it out to see my skills, and a (very) few examples of actual work I’ve done.  

For more sites I’ve done, check out my portfolio at http://www.mjjdesigns.net I’ll be adding some of the custom scripting programs (PHP based) to the site, this one or that one, in the next week or so.