Bye

It had to happen, really – Piers Morgan has left the Mirror.

Successful

It’s been a pretty good day, all things considered. Compared to what a complete rancid ballsup yesterday was, this has definitely been calm after the storm. And not a blockquote in sight

• WordPress downloaded, installed, and basically set up. Check
• Photo portfolio CD and images done, on both CD and prints. Check

(by the way, 7’x5′ prints fit perfectly in a DVD case, if you’re sending them with a disc)

• Portfolio and covering letter posted Check
• Necessary birthday cards bought, written, and posted Check
• Invoice completed, signed, and posted Check
• d4d™ redesign and upgrade begun Check

Yes, it’s been a good day.

And so it continues

Hmmm, I think that with this redesign malarkey, I may actually take a semi-retrograde step. One thing that’s bugged me since I put CSS into d4d™ has been the right hand box, and the way it cuts off. It’s trivial, but it annoys me.

So, rather than doing a pure CSS template, I think I’m going to have a hack about, and use a basic table to hold everything in place, and then the main content will still be CSS styled. I’m just not going to use absolute positioning for everything, because it’s a pain in the arse. In theory it also might make the transfer of old pages a bit easier to – simply plugging the content out of its current table cells, and slapping it into a new template. That’s the current thinking, anyway.

In addition, I’m going to use some include files, so that I don’t have to nork about with loads of file changes next time I do this. (And yes, if I carry on d4d, there’ll be at least one more redesign) I’ll probably do a lot of work on this over the weekend – I’ve a shedload of travelling planned again, so it’s likely that I’ll have enough opportunity to get quite a bit done in that time.

Monday may prove interesting…

1,700

Chuff. According to my new toy, the Blogger profile, this is the 1,700th post here on d4d™ Somewhere just north of 202,000 words, and somewhere in the region of 180,000 page views. Not bad going at all. I wonder where the future will lead? Particularly regarding the contents of the 1,699th post, just below…

And so it starts

Yes, after a long time bleating on about considering it, I’ve finally installed WordPress, and started work on a new template etc. So far, so good. It’ll be interesting over the next few days (OK, week or so) while I try and find some inspiration on a re-design too.

What started it off in earnest? An idea I had yesterday, which may or may not work, but will certainly be interesting. Well, assuming my PHP “skills” are up to it, of course. They should be – the idea’s simple, but will look pretty clever.

For now, I don’t think a redesign will be anything huge. The extension for this page will have to change to .php, which will keff half the links in people’s blogrolls. Ooops. Ah well, I’ll let everyone know when it happens. Initially at least, the yellow won’t be going, nor will it be toning down. I’ve thought about it long and hard *hello Google* but it’s kind of grown on me, it’s distinctive. I may work on a colour switcher though…

As for the rest of it – I don’t know yet what I’ll end up with. The navigation bits are going to change, this much I know. How much they’ll change, I don’t know. That’s some of what I’ll probably be doing over the weekend – just having a think, and a fiddle. The side-problem is that the rest of d4d™ isn’t content managed, so anything I do will then have to propagate over the other hundred-odd pages manually. Bollocks, that was bad planning…

Twadge

In my head I’ve been putting together the code for a nice smooth slideshow type functionality for the portfolio I’m assembling. (I know, I’m putting in a lot of work for something I’m 99% sure I won’t get anywhere close to) As well as normal 7′ x 5′ prints (which came yesterday, and I’m well chuffed with them) I want to put in a CD – the originals are all digital images, so it seems to make sense.

Anyway, I’d come up with a nice bit of PHP scripting to do all this, and do it from one html/php page, rather than 15 static pages. All very nice, using variables, and a loop so that once it’d shown the last picture it looped round to the first and so on.

The observant amongst you (or the geeky) will have already noticed the flaw in this plan. It’s a problem I’ve only just realised, and I’m now battering my head into the desk for being such a complete twadgeknacker.

The Problem? : I can’t just run a PHP page of a CD. It would need me to know that PHP was installed on the recipients PC, as well as a web server. So it’s back to plan A, and static html pages that’ll load straight off the disc.

Gah.

BM5 – Genteel

Well, that was a quiet blogmeet. Not even a Topper to abuse. And with a distinct lack of North-Eastern influence (you know who you are) as well, it was quite different.

Font was OK, but a shit band were about to start, so we hoyed off to Eden on Canal Street instead. Leather Sofas, as well as Grolsch and Guinness on draught – sounds like a plan to me.

Conversation wavered between having a Mongol dog (“Down, Syndrome! Down!”), christian bands, bowel movements, bureaucrats, songs called “Fuck you, you fucking cunt”, PHP filters on content management, and a whole range of stuff that I’ve forgotten about. Definitely a fun evening – but we need to drag more people out for the next one.