Valhalla Island

The “best” meat pies in town!

We’re the “real” furniture wholesalers!

Those are two real examples I’ve seen in my area. Why are the quotes there? If anything they make it seem like what’s in the quotes is some kind of lie. Maybe, I’ll. Start… using unnecessary - punctuation (in my) sentences $

Today, Jimmy Wales, founder of the world’s largest, free information resource Wikipedia, came into #wordpress, an IRC channel I’m often in after some help and I gave it to him! Here’s the conversation (with some irrelevant stuff taken out):

jwales: My question is pretty simple really… jwales: http://blog.jimmywales.com/ jwales: I have a wordpress blog jwales: and I am writing a rather longish post jwales: and I want it to be sort of like a longish post at slashdot jwales: i.e. a short stub intro jwales: and then you click “more” to read the rest jali: jwales: http://codex.wordpress.org/Customizing_the_Read_More jali: jwales: Something like that? jwales: read more, yes! jwales: ok then so jwales: I just enter the intro words into the “Optional Excerpt” field in the write > write post place? jimwhimpey: jwales: you can just press the little divider button in the editor, and you’re done jwales: oh, little divider button jimwhimpey: jwales: you want the excerpt to be different from just the start of your post? jwales: no, that is what I needed jwales: little divider button jwales: the other part would be if I wanted the excerpt to be different I guess jwales: but I don’t need that jwales: just the little divider button looks grand

I help people in #wordpress every day but helping someone that made something I so strongly believe in, something that is, in my opinion, the best single thing on the internet was really cool.

The latest addition to my Desktop Wallpaper. Unicorn Saddles and Time Machine Parts, Wild West style!

One of the best things about OS X is it’s icons. They’re so good because Apple has Human Interface Guidelines to govern everything anyone puts on the operating system. It keeps the standard high.

The icons have always been so good out of the box that I haven’t had the need to change them. But then I switched some of my most used applications and with it the dock changed, it was suddenly looking very yellow and purple, not my favourite colours alone or together.

I never liked the TextMate icon so that was the first to go, just a matter of replacing a file in the App’s content folder. I found so many good icons that I thought about changing a few more icons I wasn’t a big fan of, iTunes wishy washy icon especially.

You’re not allowed to change OS X application icons though, that’s where Candy Bar comes in, a little app from the makers of Transmit. It works really well, even backing up your originals. And because it’s a little app it’s only $13. It has a great icon itself.

Reinventing HTML

Web Design is 95% Typography

Rawkstyle is latest hot modification I’ve seen for Day Dream. I really dig the concrete look and the colours he’s used. The photo styling in the posts looks brilliant, a lot like those at the human museum.

I’m constantly finding amazing photos on Flickr. This HDR shot of the First Church of Christ Scientists makes me wish I was there, it’s a shame there’s no high resolution version. This city shot is pretty too.

When trying to work out how to set this up in the same way Dreamweaver handles it became obvious that this way (my way) of working wasn’t typical. Developers were using SVN but after investigating SVN further I realised it doesn’t suit my way of working or the projects I’m usually working on, upload on save does.

Setting up upload on save relies on Transmit’s DockSend feature. DockSend is primarily to enable users to drag and drop a file onto Transmit in the dock and have it upload to the correct place. This is only for users who have their sites mirrored locally and remotely (like me!). You must set it up on a favourite connection in Transmit and enable it in the options.

It works by knowing the root directory on both sides. So that when you drag a file onto the icon it just looks at it’s path back to the root and then follows that same path from the root on the server. It’s also smart enough to create new directories if it has to.

TextMate includes a bundle for the Trasmit DockSend feature. It basically performs a virtual dropping of the file onto the Transmit dock icon. To make it work on save takes a little tweaking.

It’s not exactly upload on save, it’s upload on command + S, the default shortcut for saving in nearly every app. To make it save and perform the DockSend command we need to make a macro that does both and then map command + S to that macro. So this is how it’s done.

1. Open a file in a directory that you have DockSend enabled for, in TextMate.
2. Select Bundles - Macros - Start Recording.
3. Press command + S followed by ctrl + shift + F (the default DropSend file command)
4. Select Bundles - Macros - Stop Recording.
5. Select Bundles - Macros - Save Last Recording.
6. Give it a name and give it the activation key equivalent of command + S.
7. You’re done.

So that’s it, any file you open that’s in a folder with DockSend enabled will be automatically uploaded to the correct place. There’s is some drawback to this method as it only happens on command + S, not when you actually save by file - save.

This method is extremely fast, you don’t ever have to look at the Transmit window. Even if Transmit isn’t open, opening, connecting and uploading only takes a few seconds and you don’t have to do anything special, still just command S in TextMate.

Dreamweaver’s main function is graphical webpage editing. I assume this because design view is it’s default and there’s menus all over the place for inserting tables, images, changing width and height values, etc.

Dreamweaver is what I started with when I first started making websites a few years ago, back then I used design view. I don’t really remember when I started looking at a lot more code, maybe around the time I came accross WordPress. Eventually it was code view full time, I got rid of all the properties and insert menus, everything but the editor and files panel was removed. And that’s how I’ve been working for a couple of years.

It didn’t make sense to be using an application with 95% of the features disabled all the time. So I’m using quite a large program that specialises in something else while there’s small applications out there that focus on exactly what I do, writing code.

TextMate had been raved about as having great autocompletion features and generally making you code a lot faster. This screencast helped me a lot, every feature shown will come in very handy and the narrator’s voice is very cool.

The highlight colouring was also a big factor for me, as well as anti-aliased fonts. You’re able to choose from a number of really nice themes and you can edit each colour to your liking. My favourite two are sunburst and twilight, both with dark backgrounds, it’s very easy on the eyes.

There’s a few things I still have to work out like having anything within php tags display with php highlighting rather than the current file’s highlighting. Also in DW writing something like mail( would open a tooltip with each parameter of the function which was very handy.

Part three tomorrow, setting up upload on save.

Swapping one program for two may seem like a step backwards but in the way I finally have it set up, I never look at Transmit. So why’d I switch?

When a client comes into work and we’re be chatting away, about half of them will ask “so what do you use to make websites?”. Me, being an honest person, answers “Dreamweaver”, that’s when this indescribable look comes over their face while they say “oh, wow, I have a copy of Dreamweaver I’ve played around with”, the professional nature of my job falls down in a crumbling heap and they start to wonder why they’re giving all this money to someone who uses a tool they own themselves.

But owning a hammer doesn’t make you a carpenter.

So then I’m stuck trying to get my professional status back by saying “Yeah, it’s really handy to have a text editor, FTP program and project manager in one, I haven’t touched design view in years”, but the damage has already been done.

It’s like a doctor saying “I just type into Word how red your nose is, how swollen your glands are and it tells me what to prescribe”. You have Word on your computer at home, what’s stopping you doing it yourself and saving $50 by not going to the doctor. The doctor is no longer a professional.

Even if that was true and patients knew that’s how it was done I’m sure they’d still see the doctor for that comfort of a professional telling them what they need. The thought that they could just do it themselves seems to be unique to the web business where everyone’s 10 year old son has their own website.

This post is getting far too long for my narrow layout, part two tomorrow.

A new wallpaper!

Veer is something I’ve seen advertised through the deck for a long time but like everything else, I ignored it. Then a couple of days ago my insatiable need for new desktop wallpaper brought me to Veer.

Their desktop wallpaper impressed me so much that I explored into the paid stuff. Where I was much further impressed, especially by their huge range of beautiful type.

It’s extremely expensive, $99/font, but if you found yourself doing work for a client with a bit of money you’d just drop that $99 onto the budget. Entire font sets are also available at the low, low price of $4500 and how I wish I had the money for that.

If you don’t know what to buy someone for their birthday buy them a font from Veer, they’d love it.

I envy the people that work for and supply to Veer. Spending their days creating pretty visual elements to sell to people. It’s the opposite way of doing things, instead of being contracted to create something, you’re creating whatever you want and then having it bought.

Eight web browsers on my computer, which has the best icon? Ignore how bad or wonderful they may be.

The guys from SpaceLook, a MySpace messaging app, emailed me with thanks for Day Dream as their site is apparently using it.

You couldn’t tell by looking. The app looks pretty good, anything that gets you out of the MySpace UI has to be good, .NET only though.

This is one of my favourite t-shirts. The colour, the breaking into birds, the way it’s broken further down the left side of the ‘u’, it’s all perfect. It’s the details that separate a good shirt from a great shirt.

Another amazing photo from Ten Years of My Life. The updates have really slowed down lately but the author still has a baby so I will cut him some slack.

“Beauty is the promise of happiness”

A quote by Stendhal in the book I just finished, The Architecture of Happiness. It makes a lot of sense to me, we see a beautiful house or a beautiful girl and think, if I could just have that (or her), I’d be happy.

This amazing photo was found in the Flickr HDR pool with a lot of other great photos. HDR stands for High Dynamic Range, it gives images a large difference between light and dark areas.

The subtle adjustments are best, this one on Wikipedia is brilliant.

Web 2.0 Thinking Game

The default <input type=”text” /> is so pretty in nearly every browser, with the nice little inner drop shadow, an effect that would take much styling to achieve.

Why don’t browsers style the old <textarea> in the same way? Browsers are bad with <textarea>, everything but Safari defaults textarea type to something monospace, why? I hope Safari’s lead starts to be followed, it’s <input type=”search” /> is impressive.

That’s the difference between the search box in Safari and Camino on Bartelme Design. It adds rounded ends, a previous search drop down and a clear button.

Another wallpaper for the collection. I’m using this one myself and really like it. Available in a range of sizes as always. If there’s demand for widescreen versions, let me know.

Broken Kode’s come out with a little re-align, which isn’t a redesign and it’s not technically a re-align either, that’s just the name for tweaks to a site without changing anything major and it looks great.

I’m a big fan of Khaled’s work and while I criticised Shuttle it was because I think it unnecessary not because the design isn’t great.

We bought a camera this weekend, our first real digital camera. It’s a Canon Powershot A700 and it seems to be really good so far.

With it I purchased a Flickr pro account and uploaded some of our first photos. That was after giving up on my free Zooomr pro account.

The program I’m currently enrolled in is a dual degree of IT and Multimedia, for four years. Here’s a quick run down - IT involves programming, information systems and mathematics, my major would be in software engineering - Multimedia invloves programming, animation, digital image creation, video and sound production, all of those things.

There is a detailed list of the course content availible on the Griffith Website. This semester I had one couse that the Queensland College of Art, computer visualisation and I liked it a lot. This year I’ve had a chance to experience the degree I chose coming out of highschool. I’ve filled out the form for an internal transfer to the Bachelor of Design but now I’m having second thoughts. Continue reading →