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 Granite Falls, Wa. Computer & General Labor services and hobbyist site for all.   Featuring PhoneFun© Acronym Generator.
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Latest Added Content

13Jul10r
New Music Added - The few songs I had in Allman Brother Band have been replace with the Eat A Peach album minus Mountain Jam. In it's place I've added Jessica and Ramblin' Man.
24Jun10r
New Music Added - A few of my favorite John Denver tunes have been added. You can find them in the Folk category.
3Apr10
File Structure Tutorial Added - A new tutorial: File Structure For Beginners, is now in the Tutorials/Articles help section under the Information menu.
8Feb10
Simon & Garfunkel Album Added - Added Simon & Garfunkel Live From New York. Cool album with all of their early hits performed live. You can find it on the Music/Audiobooks tab, and in the Folk category.
8Feb10
Best Of Bob Dylan added - I replaced the live Dylan album with this best of album. It has much better recordings and most of his classic hits. You can find it on the Music/Audiobooks tab, and in the Folk category.
25Jan10
Cherry Poppin' Daddies Album Added - Added the Zoot Suit Riot album. In Media/Audio under Music/Audiobooks tab, and in the Rock category.
25Jan10
New Music - Added some singles only available in this playlist: Blues Traveler, Pretenders, and Bare Naked Ladies. In Media/Audio under Music/Audiobooks tab, and in the Playlist category.
30Dec09
Four new freeware programs in Downloads Library - Cobian Backup is the best freeware backup program, and it's Vista compatible. MP3TAG is the best free ID3 tag editor. RocketDock is a cool customizable program/document launcher. ColorPic is an okay color picker. These have all been added to the downloads library. They are all in the Utilities category, except ColorPic, it is under Misc.
6Nov09
New free backup utility in Downloads Library - I've just added SyncBack backup utility, to the downloads library. It's a free backup utility recommended by Cnet, with an easy to master user interface and useful features.
6Nov09
Updated Downloads Library - The whole library has been updated. Broken links fixed, files updated, and new files added. External links have been added to most entries and descriptions enhanced.
1Sep09
New Pictures - I've added a new Pictures category: Montana Pictures. In it I have put the pictures I have from my trip to Butte, in Jun 09.
11Aug09
VirtuaWin portable 4.0.1 beta1 - VirtuaWin lets you have multiple desktops that you can switch between easily. It is a small (94k) program that works real good with my Vista machine. You can easily switch between desktops with the system tray icon. You can also configure hotkeys and other params. It is a free open source program. You can find it on the Downloads page under Utilities.
11Aug09
New FAQ list - Frequently Asked Questions about Granite Labor and their answers.
11Aug09
SolveigMM AVI Trimmer 1.6 - This new download is a avi file editor which can trim your avi's and save them as avi's without loss.
11Aug09
What Are File Extensions - Short tutorial on Windows file extensions and why you should know how they work. This tutorial can be found in the Information menu, select Tutorials/Articles.
31Mar09
Audacity 1.26 and Beta 1.37 - Popular freeware awesome sound editor. The latest stable release and the latest BETA version are in the downloads library. I also added the latest LAME encoder, that lets you export your sound files in MP3 format. Additionally, there is a Audacity User Manual in PDF format.
31Mar09
Irfanview 4.23 and Plugins 4.22 - Popular freeware picture/file viewer and plugins for it. This is the latest version of iview as of today. It is in the Downloads library.

New! Phone Contact Widget

Author: GL Joe
Updated (28Aug10 23:32 hrs)

On the Contacts page, I have replaced the Cell Phone tab with the Phone Now tab. Emails cannot be sent to my cell phone anymore, but this new feature allows anyone to call my voice devices (Cell, Skype, Voicemail, etc.) for free from anywhere in the US or Canada.

To use it, you simply enter your name and the phone number that you want Google to call you. When submitted, you will immeadiately get a call at that number and Google will connect you with one of my voice devices. If none of them pick up, you will be sent to my VoiceMail where you can leave a message.


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New! Granite Labor Branded Products

Author: GL Joe
Posted (24Aug10 23:32 hrs)

There is a new menu option in the "Features" menu: "GL Products". That's right a store right here on Granite Labor where you can buy high quality low-cost Granite Labor branded products!

There are some real cool shirts in there now and more products will be added presently. So check back often. Products that you purchase from the GL Store help to support development and maintenance for the site.

These are quality products that are shipped quickly and can be purchased securely. See the "Pg Help" on the GL Store page for more information.


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We're Here: On The New Servers!

Author: GL Joe
Posted (17Aug10 23:32 hrs)

The DNS has been changed and granitelabor,com now points to this new server.

Everything should work as before, but if you run into a problem somewhere, let me know please.

I hope to be able to spend some time in the next couple of weeks doing some work on the site that has been put off. I will also be working on the new sister site at pjlarson.net. That's right. In case you haven't heard, I have this new domain and the site it points to is going to be a little different than the Granite Labor site.

You can check out the new site now if you like. It is powered by Joomla! and I will be doing the setup for a few days or more. But it is available to play with for those interested. You will eventually need an account for it, but don't start one yet as it will be deleted when I install a different version of Joomla. I will post on both sites when that is complete... no more than a couple of days.


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New PhoneFun Video Tutorial

Author: GL Joe
Updated (2Jul10)

The PhoneFun page now has a link to this. It is also available from my YouTube Channel and will be linked on the Video Help page soon. Learn all about finding an acronym for your phone number.


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Now See Track List For Music Albums

Author: GL Joe
Added (26Jun10)

I've added a new feature on music list pages. When you roll your mouse over the picture of an album, an AJAX powered window will popup with a numbered list of all the tracks in that album or playlist.

The GL music player is real small and only shows you the song/track that is currently playing. The tracks have never been listed on the music list pages until now.
Now, when you roll over the album image, AJAX calls a php page on the server which in turn looks up the tracks for that album/playlist from the database and magically sends it to you in the form of a plesant looking window. Just mouseout to close it and look at the next album you are interested in. What innovation, eh?

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New Music

Author: GL Joe
Added (24Jun10)

The music library has a new entry in the Folk category: Five of my favorite Bob John Denver songs.

In Other News: I still have lots to do on the site. I've taken a break because I have other things to do and I don't make a penny maintaining the site. I will get back to it soon. If you think the changes on the site look good now, you will really be impressed with what is in store. Bookmark GraniteLabor and stop back often to keep up to date.

I have been doing some stuff in my free time. I am working on a new Tutorial for the PhoneFun program. It will be a video and maybe a ppt file as well. And I know, I've got to get the video pages together. Please report any problems with the site. I don't have time to run throught the whole thing right now.

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Rejuvenated Music Library

Author: GL Joe
Added (17Jun10)

I have fixed the layering problem with the Music Players. I also took two days to completely go through the whole Music Library and recompile all playlists... all 39 current albums! I have deleted a couple of albums, added others, and rearranged still others. It's the first real going through I have made in a couple of years. I corrected a few errors here and there, as well.

The Music albums, songs and players are controlled via a SQLite database. I created a new field with all track titles to each album and playlist. Right now it does nothing. :) But shortly I will implement a AJAX rollover in the Music Lists, so when you roll over a album, the list of songs in that album will popup magically! Coming soon. Stay tuned.

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Brand New Granite Labor Web Site!

Author: GL Joe
Updated (16Jun10)

Every page on the site has been changed in some way. Read on for important changes that you should be aware of, and interesting details about what is new and what is coming up.

Note For IE8 Users

Do not use compatible mode if you use Internet Explorer 8, it will mess up the menus.
If you are using IE8 and the menus look weird, you are in compatibility mode. To shut it off, click on the white icon by your address bar like this -      Everything will work fine on Granite Labor once you do that.

Or you can get a better browser. We have a link for Firefox in the Downloads library or find Chrome on Google. Browsers are free programs and most are more secure and standards-compliant than IE.

The two biggest changes

The most notable changes to the site are the styles and the underlying Javascript libraries. You will find more uniformity of style between pages and dialogs. This is due to better style sheets (CSS) and the integration of styles in the new JS jQuery libraries.

jQuery Replaces DHTMLX

Granite Labor is a dynamic site; your are able to interact with many pages and some are dynamically created on the fly based on user input. PHP is used on the server side and Javascript libraries are used on the client side. As before, the libraries control AJAX functions, dialogs, tabs, and other things on the site. For the last couple of years these things were powered by the DHTMLX javascript library. I have now switched to the popular jQuery library, and that changes a lot of functionality and how the site works.

Advantages Of Using jQuery Libraries

The benefits are many. Some things, such as the page menus, look similar to the old ones, but in fact they operate completely different. The DHTMLX libraries are very powerful, but they were kind of overkill for what I needed. They were also mind-numbing to use.

jQuery is easier and more fun to use than DHTMLX. They are smaller libraries which are really good at manipulating html selectors and css. They also have cool animation and styling themes. Since the libraries are small they load faster. Another thing is that it is very popular and many big sites use it, and it is served by Googles AJAX server. This means that when you come to Granite Labor, your browser might already have the libraries cached, if you previously visited a site which uses jQuery, and they won't have to be loaded again. This translates into even faster page load speeds.

What Has Change?

Every page has changed, but some may look similar. Here are a few major changes I can think of right now:

  • Dialog windows and media players are new.
  • Tabbed pages have new bigger tabs and are easier to read and select.
  • Page menus look similar but have been completely re-written and the last three buttons are a different color.
  • Dialogs and Media players are animated.
  • The Pictures page has been redesigned and is an animated accordion.
  • Services page has a new tab: The GL Presentation video.
  • Tabbed pages no longer have a height problem. The adjust perfectly to the size of the tabbed page.
  • Home page links have been converted to buttons.
  • Memulator Palm graphic looks better, as do all the basic styling of the site.
  • New features are more easily implemented because of ease of use and versatility of the jQuery library.

More To Be Done

I've been working non-stop for over a week, into the wee hours of the morning, to get the site up as soon as possible. There are still things to finish and perhaps a few bugs I don't yet know about. Visitors are encouraged to browse throughout the site and report any anomalies. I use Firefox and IE8 to test the site. Other browsers should work as well, but if you run into something odd or a broken link or whatever, please send me Feedback so I can get it fixed. I can't fix something if I don't know there is a problem.

There are some problems that I am aware of. Help Videos can be downloaded but there are no players for them because I am going to re-write that section and the videos will be hosted on YouTube. Another problem is the Mobile site. I haven't done anything with it in years and I plan to sometime soon. I was going to get rid of it, but users have convinced me to keep and eventually improve it. And there is a layering problem between the menus and dialogs with active content, such as the media players. These are easy fixes, but time consuming. I just haven't had the chance to do it yet.

I hope you like the changes so far. I would be interested in what you think of the site and any suggestions or comment that you might have. Let me know. It will give you a good excuse to use the new Contact forms.

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New Music

Author: GL Joe
Added (22May10)

I've added a new music player: Johnny Rivers. I have also added "The Boxer" in the Simon and Garfunkel player and a couple more songs in the Singles Playlist.

It has been a while since I have worked on the site. I keep meaning to. I actually am going to make some changes and when I start I won't stop until it is done. I will probably discontinue the mobile site and I will most likely simplify the main site a bit, in some ways. I plan on changing javascript libraries from DHTMLX to Jquery. That's what I have planned anyway... stay tuned to find out for sure.

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New Tutorial Available

Author: GL Joe
DATE (3Apr10)

I've made a new tutorial: File Structure For Beginners. This link will take you directly to it or it can be found in the Articles/Tutorials section under the Information menu.

In my journey helping new computer users, I have found that many don't have a clue about how their files are stored, where to save files to, where to find them, and why. This is a fundamental thing every computer owner should know. It is one of the very basics of computing. This tutorial explains these things.

The tutorial has snapshots of my desktop to help you out and I think is pretty clearly laid out, so that anyone should be able to follow it. File structure is not a complicated thing, but no one has taken the time to explain it to some folks. That is my goal. I hope it helps.



New Video And Granite Labor YouTube Channel

Author: GL Joe
UPDATED (3Feb10)

I have recompiled some of my videos to high definition and moved them to the Granite Labor Channel on YouTube. There four new videos up there now. A new one never seen before, a short 2 minute video of the Sperry/Iverson mine on the Mt Loop. The other three are in a playlist called Exploring The Mountain Loop. It is my famous movie of sites on the mountain, and is split into three parts. More will be added presently. Note: These are best viewed in full screen mode.

Some benefits of having videos served by YouTube is that they stream better, I can use High Definition, and Videos can be arranged better using playlists. Also, there is more opportunity for user feed back using ratings and comments. The only minor down-side is that video uploads are limited to 2GB and can't be longer than 10 minutes (about 10:30 actually), but that's no big deal.

I prefer you go to the Granite Labor Channel, but if you prefer you can see the video directly with this link.



PhoneFun Acronym Generator Updates

Author: GL Joe
Updated(2Jul10)


As you can see, one of the changes is the new PhoneFun Logo, but there is more. The version number has been updated to 2.4.



PhoneFun allows you to output phone-pad acronym combinations in either HTML or PDF format. I have rewritten the script that outputs the PDF format from the ground up using a new PHP PDF class. It's much easier to write and maintain than the old class I used. For the user, you will notice that you have all of the detailed information that the HTML output has, and the output renders in a nice table. The pages have page numbers.

I plan to do more with PhoneFun soon. Like add support for area codes, and I am going to remake the help video and help text. I will also be using the new video format to render the streaming help video.

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AudioBooks Merged With Music

Author: Joe
(30Dec09)

I've removed the AudioBooks tab from the Media Selector page. They can now be found under the Music/Audio tab.

It seems the audio books page was not working right since the transfer to the new provider. I will get the older books back up in due time. Currently, there are two new recordings in the AudioBooks section. One is the Alvin The Scrooge recording... the same one that is listed above, but this one is permanant. The other is another production I made in 1986 called Meditation/Sleep Aid. It is as the name implies, a relaxation recording.

You can use the built-in player to listen to these now. I will add download links soon.




Fixes & Changes
Latest bug fixes and minor changes to the site.
  • (28Aug10)
    Fixed Contact menu so selection goes to correct tab on Contact Page.
  • (27Aug10)
    Updated Pg Help for the Contact Page.
  • (27Aug10)
    Added Phone call widget to contact page and removed Cell Phone Email tab.
  • (27Aug10)
    Updated About Contact tab on Contacts page and added new phone number.
  • (25Aug10)
    Added new StoreFront page to the site and its menu item in Features menu.
  • (2Jul10)
    Added border and hover color to TOC images on home page.
  • (2Jul10)
    Fixed subhead titles on Homepage.
  • (2Jul10)
    Changed name of Donation button to Tip Jar and changed graphic button.
  • (2Jul10)
    Added a new PhoneFun logo on its page.
  • (2Jul10)
    Restyled PhoneFun page and added link to new HD video tutorial.
  • (27Jun10)
    Fixed separator lines in menus and gave items a little more space.
  • (3Apr10)
    Added File Structure For Beginners tutorial in Tutorial page.
  • N/A
    Posts older than one above and obsolete ones have been deleted.

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To Do
List of some changes and fixes to the site I have to do or have planned. Which may or may not come to fruition.
  • Rewrite PhoneFun to include area codes and numbers all at once and streamline code. Possibly add an option to find numbers from text so folks looking to request a particular phone number will know what to request.
  • Rewrite the OTR Browser and other Old Time Radio extensions to make it faster, more streamlined with more functions and easier navigation with less pages, utilizing AJAX in many areas.
  • Rewrite and impliment OTR radio file lister edit description and rating moduals.
  • Make music player flash objects transparent so pghelp will layer correctly.
  • Add pagehelp for tabbed pages with only container page help.
  • Re-write Video page.
  • Add cookies for tab persistence on tabbed pages.
  • Write tab selector code from get sent from menus on tabbed pages that don't have it yet.
  • R-write how tabbed content displays on Help pages.
  • R-write PhoneFun Help and make a new video help.
  • Make a new Site Tour video.
  • Re-design Homepage.
  • Add more content. Need to add more videos and audiobooks and tutorials for newer users.
  • Rewrite the Mobile web site. Tie into the DB instead of hard-coding media files.
  • Completely rewrite Old Time Radio Episode Browser.



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