Writing · Page 4 of 5
Opinions and ramblings since 2005, some of which aged well. Mostly technology, community, politics, and the messy bits in between.
As I'm heading overseas to travel I've decided to switch to a US based webhost. I've been hosted at iServe in New Zealand since I decided to start my own website. Friends tried to convince me to move my hosting offshore to take advantage of the lower pricing, but I've always been a loyal kiwi. iServe have been a great host and I recommend them to all New Zealanders.
One of my favourite designers (possibly my all time favourite) Dan Cederholm has yet again realigned his website with a nice new design called Araknoid.
I've rewritten my contact page so that it's now a bit more attractive and works better when translated to vCard format. I've done some testing with Windows Address Book and the OS X Address Book and all seems fine. Please feel free to point out any problems you may find with the hCard otherwise any suggestions that you have.
I just completed my 2006 Census form and for the first time ever, I did it online. Being the web-savvy geek that I am I had decided to scrap pen-and-paper in favour of the web interface as soon as I heard that it was an option.
I came across a new app on the new iMacs today, introducing Comic Life. Hayden and I even made a quick comic of our own to show it off. It's a little silly but making it was good fun.
The South by Southwest Peoples Choice Web Awards are back and New Zealand's own 95bFM website is in the running for the CSS category. The 95bFM site was made by the very talented team at Cactuslab. I've always been a big fan of the site and I'm glad that it's made the final five. Make sure to vote for it to win.
Personality tests, while there's often one or two things that you don't agree with, they seem to be pretty correct on the whole. I came across an entry on Joshuaink about this site Personal DNA which determines your personality type. It turns out that I'm a Benevolent Inventor, seems to have me all worked out.
Yes I know that I've only just rebooted back in November but exactly six months later, I'll be doing it again. The reboot is being driven by a large change in the focus of this site. I'll still be focusing on design and web standards, but I also want to make my website a place for friends and family to keep in touch while I'm at camp. The idea is to take a MacBook Pro with me to help me keep everyone updated with video podcasts and Flickr feeds.
Camp America is a summer camp work placement programme that is run the world over. This year I will be part of it. I'm currently awaiting selection by a summer camp which will be located somewhere in the United States. I hope to get a bit of travelling in after camp although I have to be back in New Zealand by late September for a string of birthdays (including my own 21st).
Since it was posted on ieBlog that some existing CSS filters will no longer work on future versions of Internet Explorer (including the upcoming IE7) there has been a bit of a buzz about the disappearance of the commonly used Star-Hack. Filters have become a necessary evil in order to resolve bugs and inconsistencies with the browsers. In an ideal world where all browsers behaved the same way and were bug-free we wouldn't need filters, however that world does not exist. At the same time filters are all about exploiting other bugs in browsers in order to get them to ignore sections of code or to parse sections that other browsers wont.
Just a quick note that my portfolio is back up and running, as usual all comments are welcome. I'll add some more recent work soon.
Tomorrow morning I'm off to beautiful Matarangi on the Coromandel Peninsula. It's the third annual trip that I've organised for myself and a group of friends that I used to go to High School with. I can look forward to five days of lying in the sun and swimming in the cool sea. It may not be as exotic as Molly's Eastern Caribbean Cruise but I'll try and bring back some photo's of the beautiful beach.
I'm sitting in an internet cafe on the main street of Auckland's city centre at 2:45 in the morning and seeing as I've got time to kill I thought I'd hit the ol' Wordpress.
Molly Holzschlag writes an open letter to Disney Store UK about their recent redesign.
The clock hath struck midnight (GMT +12, +1 for daylight savings) which means that it is time for the unveiling of my Fall 2005 CSS Reboot.
What does inspired really mean?
Today marks the first day of Blind Week here in New Zealand. With the CSS Reboot exactly one week away it's a good last chance for all rebooters to make sure that their new websites will accessible for the blind and for those with other vision impairments. The added accessibility is worth both your time and your effort.
I'm still in the middle of my big CSS Reboot redesign/rebuild and last night I hit a surprising problem. After listening to the WE05 Podcasts I decided to opt for a liquid layout but found that certain browser widths were giving me a 1px variance in Firefox. Apparently it's a rounding error in Gecko (not IE for once) and it annoys me something chronic.
I recently emailed my local ISP Orcon telling them why they should switch to a web standards based design. As always it was a compelling argument. A week or two later I found that they'd started converting their website as I had suggested. I haven't heard anything from Orcon so I'm not sure whether or not it was my email that convinced them but never the less, I should have been happy that they'd made the jump right? Well, yes and no.
In one month the face of the world wide web will change forever. Ok, that was a little over-the-top and melodramatic but the point is, exactly one month from today over 650 websites will be changing in unison. It's all part of the November 1 CSS Reboot 2005. They call it the Fall 2005 CSS Reboot, but I won't. For me it's Spring. Some people don't like the Reboot idea, I do. Sure there's a temporary sensory overload as you try to see all the new websites but they're all so beautiful.