Well, it's finally here - the Movable Type Style Contest. I've already downloaded most of the files needed to enter, so it's inspiration time while I think up either a Salty, Peppery or Vinegary design ;-)
Though one of my caveats will be to keep the images to a minimum and have the header easily editable by users - my main reasoning there is to make the blog as accessible as possible for mobile devices.
In case anyone noticed, I haven't been very vocal on here for the past week or so, mainly due to the amount of work I had being a stage manager at the theatre.
For the forth time, we performed Blithe Spirit at the Caxton Theatre (it's technically a big thing, since there has to be 15 years between repeats on plays - and we had one chap in who'd seen all four!).
Interesting experience which teaches you a lot about time management as well as stagecraft - and apart from making sure everyone was in position, drinks were ready, props were ready, and pressing the button to open the curtain, I also helped build the set and program the lights.
So - back to Movable Type and getting it to work with some of my crazy ideas!
CSS Tweak is a web based CSS optimization tool. It will take any CSS file and optimize the syntax, grouping your style declarations into shorthand where possible. It can also remove comments, and strip whitespace for maximum compression.
One of the things I've worked on with my MT instalation is to reduce the CSS file to the bare minimum. I've already chopped the extraneous code, and have reduced whitespace as much as is readable. So from the base 15k I've dropped it to 8k, and could get it smaller. I've also been thinking about gzipping it using server compression, but wondering whether to just take the bandwidth over the server CPU usage (which I could get charged for).
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I was reading an article in a SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) magazine, and it was covering some pretty old topics - one of which was making sure your About Me page was clear and yadda yadda...
This got me thinking, if you are a blogger, do you really need one?
Poster for Caxton Theatre due out in May.
Happy Pi day! "Written in the USA date format, March 14 is an unofficial celebration for Pi Day derived from the common three-digit approximation for the number π: 3.14."
As an explanation of Pi may be needed - jump here for a musical piece of education.
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Luckily, I don't get too much comment spam (*touch wood) - but some bloggers can get masses of it. An interesting article over at Jay Allen's site gives some indispensable tips on how to keep it all to a bare minimum.
For those of you using Movable Type, you may have noticed quite a uptick in the last week of spam. This spammer (and yes, the signature points to just one) is wily enough to evade most of SpamLookup's default tests. He is not, however, invincible.jayallen.org
First, assuming you're using Movable Type 3.2 and SpamLookup, you can make your life a whole lot better if you go to Weblog » Settings » Plugins » SpamLookup - Keyword Filters and put the following into your Keywords to Junk:
"Mollio is a simple set of html/css templates. The aim was to create a set of page templates that use css for layout as well as some sample basic content which has also had some css applied. It's definitely a work in progress. More sample content and layouts are planned to be added."
This is a very nice design, that I think I'll use on one of my clients sites. Nothing worse for me than when I've gotten a site looking nice and the client goes and clutters it up with content not originally in the brief!
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Experiments by the BBC Programme 'Get Smarter in a Week' show that making simple changes to your lifestyle can help with memory, decision-making, & confidence, by improving your brain's functioning.
I've always had an issue with sleeping properly, so I think I'll set the recorder for these while I'm at the theatre.
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This is the poster I did for the LWR to allow them to advertise their opening times for the year.
Caxton Theatre poster for Educating Rita.
Here's the poster that I did for the play that I featured in.
This was one of my first posters for the Caxton theatre.
An excellent article about a new device for hiding your screen contents using a foot pedal!
Have you ever fumbled with your mouse or keyboard to minimize whatever was on your screen to someone from seeing it? I see co-workers do this all the time, and they generally aren't too discreet about it, and many times they aren't even quick enough. I've even seen some dive for the monitor power button to hide the contents, all of which raises a good deal of suspicion as to just what they might have been up to.
SRC: Stealth Switch
"In no particular order 55 reasons for me to do tableless websites using valid XHTML for markup, CSS for layout and Flash sparingly, only as an ingredient." - I think it's a nice list to begin a discussion with (as if it was needed, heh!).
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After a quick test with my mobile phone, I've sucessfully created a simple xml template that posts the newest article in the blog which is readable by mobile devices.
So now I can moblog both ways - letting the world read my latest blog and blog from my phone.
Goals of updating the interface: remove UI elements that aren't useful to majority of users - increase usability of elements that are useful - increase focus on web content.
Always a good thing in my mind - one of the best moves I did was switching to Firefox, and I always persuade most of my clients to switch as well. The amount fo IE6 or even worse IE5 users out there is frightening.
They'll be expecting me to build sites using tables next!
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Yay, thought I'd do an upgrade this week and replace my two year old mobile with something a bit more swish. Since I'm on a contract, it didn't cost me a penny - just the amount of blood drained from the system for the pay monthly rate ;-)
Since it's a WAP capable mobile, I've been trying to get a Java App to run on it so I can moblog - but to no avail yet, it keeps rejecting my password to MT.
I'm also reserching on how to get MT to create a WAP page, fairly easy, so I'll stick up a tutorial later.
