Posted: Fri 13 June, 2014 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: 1BEM, Cynicism, Domestic, Stupidity, Web Development, Work-related |
For some reason, my quality control this year on the jobs I’ve taken on has been very flawed.
Admittedly, with the current one I had my reservations from before I started – but what I’d been told about the product itself was sufficiently of interest to make me still want to work there for a while. Mind you, I hadn’t actually seen the product at that point – and it turns out that it’s not a fun product, and isn’t actually doing what I thought it was (or what was described to me pre-start)
Before that was the Cambridge contract, which was dire – but at least I stuck it out for the three month duration. Very much Not My Thing.
The previous bad one (also in Cambridge) was actually last year now, so I suppose it could’ve been worse, and at least I’ve been doing some fun stuff in between.
Usually it’s the case that the really bad ones lead to me looking around and being available for something really cool, so I’m vaguely optimistic about whatever’s coming next.
I just hope that’s the case this time. I’ve had enough of soul-destroying roles for the moment…
Posted: Fri 13 June, 2014 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: 1BEM, Advertising, Agency Idiocy, Creativity, Customer Services, Cynicism, Web Development, Work-related |
The current place has just launched a new product for their customers. They’re proud of it, and they’re flogging it now.
It’s been called “Alternative Reporting System for Executive Decisions”.
No-one – not one of ’em, not marketing, not the board, no-one – has realised what the acronym for this product is. And they’re launching it.
I could tell them. I can’t be arsed.
[I so wish I was making this up. But I’m not]
Posted: Thu 12 June, 2014 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: 1BEM, Business, Creativity, Customer Services, Cynicism, Design, Geeky, Thoughts, Web Development, Work-related |
One of the buzzwords in the current (but please God, not much longer) workplace is “Minimum Viable Product“. It basically means “The customer gets what they’ve asked for, and nothing more”. In other words, “Yeah, fuck it, that’ll do”.
It’s a good concept when a business is starting, when you’re writing the first versions, where it’s a product idea and you don’t know if it’ll work, and/or what’s going to be the popular or desired features. So you write the minimum to launch it, make things work without bells and whistles, and find out what people want. It stops you from diving down the wrong path (and yes, mixed metaphors, live with it) and wasting time that’s valuable, that could be better spent on creating the things people do want.
It’s great for a startup, for a new product.
It’s NOT great in any other eventuality, and particularly not for an established product with customers paying shedloads. It leads to inconsistencies, weird functionality, and general oddities. Buttons disappear, sections are different, and it’s all a bit amateur. And that’s exactly what we’ve got.
But can you persuade them? Nope. It’s the buzzword, it’s How Things Must Be.
Which just isn’t healthy.
Posted: Fri 30 May, 2014 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Domestic, Getting Organised, Interviews, People, Web Development, Work-related |
Today is the last day of my current contract. It’s been a hectic (but pretty productive) month, and has given me some further pointers for where I want things to go in the longer-term for my own development projects and ideas.
In the meantime though, a change.
I’ve been offered a full-time permanent role with a tech company in Milton Keynes. It sits on a par with a lot of my longer-term ideas too, and should give me a decent grounding in some bits that have been missing from my recent CV. So it’s got its bonuses.
I have my reservations this time – about the company itself, rather than the work. The work doesn’t really concern me at all. The company does.
Since being put forward for the role, they’ve been – pushy, I think is the best way to describe it.
I did the phone interview on short notice – it’s fine, I’m used to that.
Then the interview request came through, for tomorrow. OK, I can move things around, arrange things for that to happen. Then on the day they tell me “Oh, it’s likely to be two to three hours“. Nice to be pre-warned, and lucky I hadn’t just said I’d do the interview in my lunch-hour…
That all went ok, and the offer was pretty much there. But they wanted to talk to me the next day, to have a final phone conversation. Again, it had to be Today. It had to be ASAP. Pushy.
They know I’m working my ass off this week, closing the current contract. And still they’ve been pushing every damn day, “Have you done the paperwork” “Will you be starting“.
The paperwork didn’t even arrive ’til yesterday. I’ve said I want to read through the contract, make sure I know the deal and what’s on offer before I sign to start. And I’m working. So I got the paperwork at 12, in the end. By 3pm they were calling again, “We want to confirm you’ll be starting on Monday“.
I’ll start with them. But if they keep up this kind of bullshit pushy “We’re important” attitude, they’ll be told to fuck off before very long at all.
So yeah, I’ve got some reservations. The pros (currently) outweigh the cons, but it’s not by much. We’ll see.
Posted: Tue 31 December, 2013 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: 2012/13, Bankruptcy, Domestic, Finances, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Getting Organised, Own Business, Resolutions, Thoughts, Web Development, Work-related, Writing |
Here we are, at the end of 2013. It’s been an eventful old year, what with one thing and another.
In no particular order – and probably leaving out a load of lesser stuff – my 2013 has consisted of…
- Having Mondeo kill itself in the outside lane of the M1 – always an interesting experience
- Renting a Renault Megane for two weeks – the shittest car it’s ever been my displeasure to drive
- Buying the Saab as a replacement for Mondeo, and it’s done well so far. Handing back the Megane was also an absolute joy
- Countless meetings all over the country
- Completing my bankruptcy period – it stays on the record for four more years, but it’s discharged now
- Being made redundant from the job I started the year with
- Going back to contracting and
- getting the first job I applied for – indeed, they offered it to me at the interview, and wanted me to start immediately
- And the second – although it turned out to be shit
- And indeed the third – on that one they offered after phone interview, without even meeting me
- Forming my new company, which will start trading from mid-January
- Sorting out an ISA savings account – which actually has some money in it!
- Continued writing, and getting some ideas out onto keyboard/paper – time will tell how successful that stays
- Been able to purchase some stuff I didn’t have in the new house – like a proper bed-frame, etc.
- Caught up with friends, some of whom I hadn’t seen in far too long
- Attended two weddings – and another one’s already booked for 2014
All told, it’s been pretty busy, somewhat hectic, highly changeable, and not a bad year at all. Sure, things could have been better/smoother, but when all things are considered, I’d say it’s been a positive year.
Posted: Mon 2 September, 2013 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: 2012/13, Creativity, Domestic, Finances, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Getting Organised, Health, Own Business, Web Development, Weigh Less, Weight Loss, Work-related, Write More, Writing |
So here we are, the start of September. Which means we’re two-thirds of the way through the year. Doesn’t time fly when you’re having fun?
For me, the first two thirds of the year have been more about staying stable, getting stuff done, getting things in place and ready for whatever comes next. It’s been pretty successful: I’ve got through the bankruptcy period,, I’m pretty settled on location and house for the moment, and I’ve changed jobs, with all the fun that entails. (Oh, and got some pretty good contacts and future opportunities from people within ex-employer) It’s looking pretty positive.
But now it’s time to step things up a bit. There are things I want to do, or at least want to start, and see how they work out. The plans and ideas are there, but now it’s implementation time. (Yeah, I know, heard it all before) I’m not saying they’ll all work, I’m not even saying they’ll all get out of the starting gate – but I want to at least try.
For this next period there’s really three main projects going on, alongside the general gradual development/sorting of finances, which is now just an ongoing process. The other three are :
- Health / Fitness
- Project Development
- Writing
Pretty self-explanatory, I think. But a bit more detail…
Health / Fitness
One of the goals for 2013 has been to improve fitness, improve health, and lose weight. So far it’s kind-of happened, but not properly. I’ve been going to the gym, but it’s not really working for me – and even less so when it’s now in the exactly opposite direction to where I’m going for work… So it’s time to rethink (again) and get back into doing something. I’m not yet sure what it’ll be, we’ll see. There’s a couple of ideas, anyway.
Project Development
As always, I’ve got some ideas for some web-based businesses. I think I’ve now got the overall plan, so it’s time to see how things work out. The primary ideas are all based round a particular theme this time, so who knows, it might actually work out. I’m aiming to get the main sections for the first significant project written by the end of the year. Maybe more, with a bit of luck, but I’d like to be ready to get it launched in early 2014 and see where things go from there.
Writing
Similar to the above, I’ve got two ideas that I want to get into some kind of shape over the next four months. I think that’s a reasonable timescale. We’ll see.
So yeah, the next four months ’til the end of the year should be quite interesting. That’s what I’m hoping, anyway…
Posted: Wed 7 August, 2013 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Change, D4D™, Domestic, Web Development, Work-related |
OK, it’s only a (very) short-term thing – ten days all told – but it’ll pay the bills for another couple of months, so I’m happy.
Basically, the interview was arranged yesterday for 12 noon today. I got there, we talked, and they decided on the spot to take me on. Even better, for most of it I can work from home, which makes things even more acceptable.
And I’m also lined up for second interview next week on one I phone-interviewed for this week.
Yes indeed, things are looking peachy right now.
Posted: Tue 8 January, 2013 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Bankruptcy, Business, Domestic, Own Business, Travel, Web Development, Work-related |
Usually around this time, I’d be looking at hitting the Spring Fair at the NEC in Birmingham, which kicks off at the start of February.
I’ve gone a few times over the years, usually building up some contacts for building websites etc. Sometimes I made use of them afterwards, most of the time I didn’t. (to be honest) It’s always an interesting trip, what with one thing and another.
This year, I’m not planning to go. Partly it’s on a week that is already madly busy, but also I’ve got enough on my plate for the moment without adding to it.
2014 may be a different matter, but 2013 is one where I definitely won’t be going.
Posted: Thu 10 June, 2010 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: @Media 2010, Geeky, Web Development, Work-related |
Today and tomorrow I’m in That There London, attending the @Media conference again. I missed it last year through being a completely forgetful twat, so I made sure I was going to be at this one, stuffed spine and all.
I’ll write more about it as time goes on, but for now, well, that’s it, I’m away.
Enjoy.
Posted: Thu 4 February, 2010 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: D4D™, Domestic, Security, Web Development, Work-related, Writing |
In the run-up to the Festering Season, I had one hell of a lot of work coming in with some documentation that needed doing in order to get us what’s known as PCI-DSS accreditation. PCI-DSS stands for “Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard”, and it’s a total fucking nightmare.
Anyway, one of the big steps in attaining this PCI-DSS standard is to have somewhere around a metric shit-ton of paperwork. No kidding. There’s some 230-odd points in the PCI-DSS standard, and each one of the bloody things needs documenting. It’s a serious bit of work just getting all the paperwork done.
With the other stuff I also had to do in order to get everything in place, the documentation took a back-seat, and we ended up getting it done by me speaking into a dictaphone, and then getting an audio-typist to type it all up. It was supposed to save me a stuff-load of time. And it worked – I’d got all the dictation done in two and a half days, and the typist did everything in time for mid-January.
Or so we thought.
It turned out that the audio-typist was a tossbag, and didn’t actually do all that much in the day they were in – at the end of which they said they’d done it all.
Cunty fucking bugger.
It’s taken me the intervening three fucking weeks to get things back to where I thought I was in mid-January. Three weeks of doing this sodding documentation, three weeks of making sure it’s right, and that it all makes sense. Oh, and still doing all my normal insane workload as well.
This goes some way to explaining why I haven’t been writing much on D4D in that time – I’m utterly damn sick of typing, and didn’t have the time or headspace to do much here.
I’ve just now finished the documentation for PCI-DSS. We’ll review it tomorrow and next week, so I’m sure there’ll be some edits. But that’s just fiddly crap – the most important thing is that I’ve broken the back of it. I’m done.
I’m also utterly fucked. But that’s beside the point. I’m done with the documentation. Happy, happy day.
Posted: Tue 10 November, 2009 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Thoughts, Web Development, Work-related |
Yesterday was a very strange experience at work.
Having been a contractor for the best part of ten years, it’s the first time that I’ve been in the position of calling a couple of the agencies I’ve worked for, looking for a contractor, rather than for a new contract. It’s certainly been a learning experience, being on the other side of the coin.
The fact is, there’s more work at the new place than I can do on my own. We’ve already got one other person on board who works part-time, but we’ve got a couple of big projects that need completing ASAP. Given some time I could do them – but not both of them simultaneously. (Well, I could – but it’d involve some serious working hours to get both in place at the same time) I suspect I’ll still end up doing a lot of the work on both, but well, the company has agreed to looking for a contractor, so it’s worth a go. (And we’ll gloss over my current nagging suspicion that it’ll still be me ending up doing the work because they won’t want to pay the contract rates. We’ll see though.
But anyway, it’s still been interesting. We’ll see how it all develops, but it’s let me see the agencies in a bit of a different light too, which is never a bad thing.
Posted: Fri 23 October, 2009 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Five Year Plan (now Ten), Getting Organised, Photography, Web Development, Writing |
As part of the run-up to my birthday – and yet another of the “Five Year Plan” rundowns, as at that point I’ll be 3/5ths of the way through – I’ve been starting to think about some site organisations and rationalising a few bits of what I’m doing.
Of course, that doesn’t mean I’m anywhere even close to having sensible levels of life/work, but I’m trying to do something about some of it, at least. In some ways, weirdly, it means I’m going to have more to manage, but that’s OK too.
One of the projects I’d had on the cards this year was to merge my ‘creative’ sites together, so that the Photography and Writing stuff would all sit under one roof. I did it back in April/May time, and what it’s actually meant is that I’ve not added much to either site – which of course wasn’t the expected action at all. So I’m spending a bit of time separating the sites again, and going back to (almost) how they were a year ago. Retrograde steps or what?
In hindsight, while it was logical to think about putting the two ‘creative’ sides into one place, the two bits don’t actually go together all that well. Putting the two in one place led to more separation and confusion than the seperate sites did/will, and while in some aspects it’s now a wasted effort, at least I know for sure that the idea didn’t work, and (to some degree) why it didn’t. Sure, it’s annoying. But like the man said, “It’s better to regret something you have done than something you haven’t”.
There’s other bits of rationalisation and thought in the offing, but that’s the starting point. I’m sure I’ll write more of the other stuff over the next two weeks. For in two weeks time, I shall be 38. And that’s pretty scary in itself.
Posted: Tue 11 August, 2009 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Creativity, Own Business, Travel, Web Development, Work-related |
Checking out some information about the location I’m going to be based in over the next month or so (from a week on Monday) I had a look at the dreaded Tesco website to see what stores are close to the places I’ll be working/staying. (And in this case, the answer is pretty much “fuck all”) I’ve also looked at the locations for other supermarket-type places, and will obviously wander around the area a bit too, see what’s around that isn’t easily web-findable.
Anyway, while looking at the map on the Tesco site, I noticed this…
I think they haven't checked the work on placenames
Yep, there’s notation for “Waterloo Strain Station”…
NOTE : You can find the same thing by typing “SE1” into the store locator.
Posted: Tue 4 August, 2009 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Domestic, Geeky, Web Development, Work-related |
A silly reason that I like databases, and SQL…
Herself asked me “How many days between 1st January and August 10th?” – for reasons beyond comprehension.
Normally, something like this would involve figuring out how many weeks, or counting weeks/days in a diary or whatever.
In SQL, it’s a simple “SELECT DATEDIFF(‘2009-01-01′,’2009-08-10’)” and lo, you have the answer. (221 days, if anyone cared)
Posted: Tue 7 July, 2009 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Driving, Own Business, Travel, Web Development, Work-related |
Today, I’m working in the office of a new client down in London. Thankfully, once this day’s done, I’ll be able to primarily work from home, which means I won’t have to do the drive down to London on a daily basis or anything.
It should be a good day, though – there’s a lot to be done for this project all told, but I’m glad it won’t involve shedloads of commuting.
Mind you, next Tuesday I’ve also got to drive down to Brighton for a meeting with another potential new client. Madness – although it should be fun, even if I’ll be coming back looking like a stunned primate.
Posted: Wed 8 April, 2009 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Geeky, Own Business, Web Development, Work-related |
Currently, I’m working on a small e-learning project which is absolutely killing me mentally.
The work itself is OK, and the ideas behind it are quite cool. However, the people in charge of the project have put together the entire set of e-learning tests in PowerPoint (AKA The Software of the Devil), with one screenshot per PowerPoint Slide. All told there’s nearly 200 of these – and they’re not necessarily in order.
Now the order doesn’t matter too much – all this stuff is going into a database, and that’ll handle the question order just fine whether or not it’s out of order. However, having them correctly grouped does make it easier during the transfer to process them out of SatanWare into anything remotely usable.
As it is – and this could be because I’m not au fait with Powerpoint, so there may be some esoteric export function or somesuch that would’ve made life easier – I’ve had to go through the following process…
Phase One
- Select PowerPoint slide.
- Copy Image to clipboard
- Go to Image Software of Choice (in this case Fireworks, but Photoshop would’ve worked too)
- Create new blank image
- Paste clipboard-copy of image into new image
- Save new image as filename.jpg.
- Close new image.
- Repeat 200 times.
Phase Two
- Open each new image one by one in Photoshop/Fireworks (I could do it in batches, but again, one-by-one allows for consistency/sanity)
- Add four new layers for answer options (A,B,C,D) and add a pretty arrow pointing to a possible answer for each one.
- Make sure that the letter for the correct answer goes to the correct answer
- Save new image
- Close new image
- Repeat 200 times.
In short, it’s utterly soul-destroying. I’ll just be glad to get it over and done with.
Posted: Mon 16 March, 2009 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: D4D™, Web Development, Work-related |
It’s been one of those quiet days today – well, on D4D™, anyway.
Within work, I’ve had my head down, fixing a bundle of bugs on the latest thing I’ve been writing. Nothing world-ending, but still stuff that needed fixing.
Most of the problems came about because on occasion I’m a total flange, and screwed up some of the logic between Phase 1 and Phase 2 of the project. In short, the logic in certain pages has become so convoluted that I don’t really think it qualifies as logic any more.
In others it was more just that requirements changed, and I forgot to update things in accordance with those requirements. Or kind of updated them, but not entirely.
Still, finding these things is exactly what testing is for…
Posted: Mon 9 March, 2009 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Geeky, Getting Organised, Own Business, Web Development, Work-related |
This will come as absolutely no surprise to many of you, but this morning I had a blinding flash of “Jesus I’m a twat”.
I’ve recently been working on a site where the server is based in the US, and I’ve been trying to sort out a regular task (a cron job, for those who know what the hell I’m whittling on about) that would run at midnight every day.
You can see where this is going already, can’t you? Believe me, I couldn’t until this morning.
I’ve been checking in the morning to see whether the cron job (timed to run at midnight, remember) had run overnight, and each day it hadn’t run. I’ve checked the logs – nothing. I’ve checked the command syntax umpteen times, and checked how it’s running via crontab. All fine. But the bloody thing’s not running.
However, I got a message at 7.05 this morning telling me it had tried to run.
And right then it occurred why this problem has been happening, why the script hasn’t been running at midnight.
It’s because:
- I’m a fuckwit
- The server’s in the US. Midnight in the US is (in this case) seven hours behind midnight here.
So come 7am GMT, the server runs the script at Midnight (US Server time). And all’s well.
I’ve changed it now, so that it runs at 5pm (US Server time) which is (of course) Midnight GMT. It means things will still fuck up come BST, but I’ll change things a bit to rectify that when I get round to it.
In the meantime, well, let’s just leave it that I’m a fuckwit.
Posted: Fri 30 January, 2009 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: @Media2009, Getting Organised, Own Business, Web Development, Work-related |
I’ve written many times about the @Media conference, which is one I always look forward to and attend when I can. I missed last years because we were travelling to Ireland on the Friday of the conference, so it wasn’t worth it.
This year it’s a bit later, on the 25/26th June at the South Bank Centre, which should be fun. I’ve never been there for conferences etc. before, so it’s another new place on the list.
Early-bird tickets (Two days for £299 plus VAT) went on sale last night, and I’m already booked in for it.
Happy, happy day.
Posted: Mon 19 January, 2009 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: D4D™, Redesign, Thoughts, Web Development |
Over the weekend, following on from a comment on here from Chris, I finally got round to making a change to the index page of D4D™ that I really should have made months (if not years) ago. And in honesty, I really thought I had done it years ago. I certainly planned to.
Anyway, the index page now redirects back to here. Which is how it should be, and what it should’ve been doing ages ago.
There are still plans for a redesign of D4D™, which would also involve moving servers to a new home. (That’s also related to another plan for some rationalisation of the number of hosting services I currently use) At that point, this section of D4D™ may change to being the index page of the entire site – so you’d only need www.dummies-for-destruction.co.uk , instead of remembering that extra /random – but setting things up in this way now will theoretically make things easier on that score anyway.
Come that time, I’ll be redirecting back the other way, so that anything at /random goes back to the index page. And all will be well.
We’ll see though. It’s a way off yet because like the builder who never completes his own extension, I’ve got enough work on right now that redeveloping/redesigning D4D™ keeps on getting put back.
Maybe I should set a target date, and then just work on thrashing it through. Or maybe I’ll simply let D4D™ keep on shambling along in its current guise for a while yet.
Time will tell.
Posted: Fri 24 October, 2008 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Geeky, Getting Organised, Web Development, Work-related, Writing |
Over the last few days, I’ve spent a fair amount of time setting up the PC at the new workplace, so I thought I’d do a bit of a dump of what’s gone in – and, as a corollary, a dump of the development tools and software that I find essential.
Browsers
The first thing to get installed was, of course, Firefox. This is just essential – particularly when the company’s default browser is still the incredibly shonky IE 6. Following on from there, the following Firefox extensions got installed…
- WebDeveloper – just an essential tool for web developing, couldn’t do without it
- AdBlock Plus – not for web-development, but just for blocking adverts on sites. It was weird to see sites with Ads, I’m so used to Adblock Plus now
- FoxMarks – as a user of multiple computers (home, laptop, work) I love being able to synchronise my bookmarks between all three machines without needing to repeatedly export them from one machine to another. I used to use Google’s BrowserSync, but that doesn’t support FF3, so FoxMarks is a suitable replacement.
- FlashBlock – similar reasons to AdBlock Plus, but as download of the Flash plugin is also blocked, I might as well just block Flash entirely. Works for me, anyhow.
Then we get onto the development tools.
PHP – I’ve put on two text editors
- Crimson Editor
and
- phpDesigner 2008, which I’m getting to like.
CSS
- BradSoft’s TopStyle – my CSS Editor of choice. Yes, I can (and do) use text editors to do the CSS, but when I get lost to what’s doing what, TopStyle’s the place to go
MySQL
- MySQL’s GUI Tool suite is always useful
Others – there are probably some more things I’ll add in over time, but for now the only extra bits I’ve added on are:
- Open Office 3.0 – always a joy to use after experiencing MS Office again
- CeltX – For the writing side of things, just in case I need some diversion tactics to take my brain off PHP for a while
And that’s it – for now at least.
Posted: Mon 22 September, 2008 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Geeky, Own Business, Web Development, Work-related |
A quick self-reminder post : Interface Design guidelines.
More people should read this – it makes sense, despite being a bit geeky.
Posted: Wed 20 June, 2007 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: @Media2007, Geeky, Own Business, Reviews(ish), Thoughts, Web Development, Work-related |
I never did get round to finishing this, did I? Doh!
For the thoughts (such as they are) clicky on the ‘more’ link…
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: Wed 11 April, 2007 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Customer Services, Getting Organised, Web Development |
One thing that constantly annoys/irritates/amazes me when it comes to websites and the like is the sheer number of businesses who only get the one domain name.
Currently, we’re looking at a particular manufacturer of wood-burning stoves, and trying to find a local dealer for them. First of all, the company has been (so far) utter crap in getting back to us, which is a bit of a worry.
Secondly – and bear in mind, they’re a UK company – they own the www.site.com domain, but not the www.site.co.uk one. Now OK, the .co.uk one is being hosted by a certain bunch of scumbag domain squatters, but I’d still consider either a) spending the money to get the domain, or b) going through the domain dispute system to say ‘Sedo are a bunch of scumbag domain squatters who’ve registered this domain in order to sell it’.
But because it’s a UK company, I naturally go to www.site.co.uk , rather than .com . This isn’t the only company with which this happens either – recently I’ve found a whole bundle of them. It’s incredibly annoying, and just goes to show how little some companies still understand about t’internet.
Posted: Wed 7 February, 2007 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Geeky, Web Development, Work-related |
Note : This post is sickeningly immodest. Live with it
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: Sat 3 February, 2007 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Cynicism, Thinking About..., Web Development, Work-related |
Over the last three weeks, I’ve been doing a lot of work on a new site. The basic premise is that it needs to be very user-friendly, easy to use, quick, smooth, and useable. I’ve got my own ideas about a lot of this, and on the initial development work, I’ve been applying quite a few of them to what I’m doing.
One particular thing that drives me crackers when I’m using a website is – to use the example of on-line banking – when I have to go through a seperate page to ‘select an account’ when I’ve only got one account. To me, if that’s the case, I’d far rather that the system had some logic, and effectively figured out for itself (OK, was programmed to ‘realise’) that if I’ve only got one account, I don’t need to select that account, it’s fine to go straight through to the account details page.
Anyway, I’ve been working to a similar kind of idea on the site, and while in theory it’s simple, it actually turned out to be (in some ways) a real pain. Yes, the logic is also simple, it’s just that it does take a couple of extra steps in order to get it to work.
But when it does work, it’s really nice, and makes life a lot easier.
Why is it, though, that making things simple to use can be incredibly complex in the back-end, whereas making things really complex and obstructive is actually dead easy?
Posted: Tue 2 January, 2007 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Domestic, Own Business, Web Development, Work-related |
Over the last few days, I’ve been writing a website for a small business that Herself is starting. It’s fairly cool, to be fair, and I’m pleased with the results so far.
One thing that’s been a complete pain in the arse, though, is that the business will initially be dealing with payments via PayPal – which is a good system, and works well in general – but man, is it a pain in the arse to get set up. Once I’m done, it’ll all work fine, I’m sure, and it’s been fun to write a shopping cart section for the site as well. Ah yes, the joys of eCommerce as well.
Anyway, it’s been interesting, and once it’s completed, I’m sure I’ll add some publicity somewhere, as well as sorting out the Google SEO stuff for it.
Posted: Tue 15 August, 2006 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Geeky, Technology, Thinking About..., Thoughts, Travel, Web Development, Work-related |
Since getting the job offer a month ago, I’ve made a lot of changes in the way I work. Primarily for my own security (i.e. so the passwords and data for the other sites I work on aren’t readily available) I removed all my private work and data from the work PC, and instead stuck it on a USB stick. I also now have Portable Firefox and Portable OpenOffice.
What I don’t (currently) have on a portable stick is all the text editing stuff, photoshop, and that kind of thing. That doesn’t really matter, doesn’t really need to be portable. But the information itself is all now held on portable devices.
It’s been interesting working this way too – plus it means that effectively I can do my stuff on any old PC, wherever I am, and it won’t even affect the PCs settings.
I’m currently debating upgrading the USB sticks (At the moment I use two 512M Sticks, mainly because of a fuckup I made earlier in the year) to one or two 1Gb sticks, and at that point I can also put on portable XAMPP as a complete development environment (database, PHP, Apache web server, the lot) and portable NVU as a text editor, and then I’ve got everything I need for my work on one or two USB sticks. Of course, with a bit of rationalisation (and a bit of “dump the old crap on the portable 30Gb drive”) I could do it with the two current 512Mb sticks. One for the tools, one for the data. Hmmmm.
Anyway, I find this kind of thing interesting, because it does change the way I work. It makes me wonder about logical extrapolations, where you have a complete operating system on a USB stick/disk, and PCs go towards being dumb terminals that don’t have their own drives/storage at all. Instead, you carry your ‘computer’ around with you, and just slot it in (or connect up the USB cable) and bang, your own operating system wherever you are.
Posted: Sun 25 June, 2006 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Own Business, Thinking About..., Thoughts, Web Development, Work-related |
I worry about myself sometimes. Today, for example, as if it wasn’t enough to be wading through a whole bundle of stuff and ideas to do with various sites, I also have to end up going and getting another one because of an idea from Friday that seems to have frown grown legs and already started running.
Aarrgh!
I need to stop having ideas – just for a while, so I can catch up with the ones I’ve already got…
Posted: Thu 18 May, 2006 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: D4D™, General, Own Business, Thinking About..., Web Development, Work-related |
Over the last couple of weeks I’ve continued working as and when I can on Where’s Good. It’s beginning to come together nicely – of course, it’s still woefully light on reviews and recommendations, but I’m looking at making the site a success on a long-term basis, rather than just an overnight flash in the pan. If I’m right, it’ll all come together.
Anyway, one of the more fun bits of work I’ve done on the site has been to put a blog on it. Yeah, very sad, and very much in keeping with the Web2.0 checklist, but I figure it’s something that might be useful in keeping track of what’s going on, what’s being worked on, etc. etc.
It also gave me a chance to work with WordPress 2.0 , which so far I’ve resisted using on D4D™, for a number of reasons. Mainly, I haven’t had time. But also I know that my WP install is hardly “normal” so it’ll take time to merge it into WP 2.0’s formats. And frankly, I can’t be arsed.
Anyway, it’s all slowly working out, and making steady progress. And I think that’s pretty groovy, all things considered.
Posted: Tue 25 April, 2006 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Getting Organised, Own Business, Thinking About..., Web Development, Work-related |
OK, even though the site has now gone live, Where’s Good? is still having bits done to it.
Yes, as one person suggested, perhaps I should’ve waited another couple of days to fix everything. However, in some cases the bugs were ones I didn’t know existed – and never would until it got released into the wild. And on a couple of bits, well, I just forgot something still needed doing. Mea culpa on that one.
Also, I’d said I’d release it yesterday, and I don’t like going back on what I’ve said/promised I’ll do. It’s a flaw.
So over the next few days I’ll probably still be adding stuff, fixing bits, and generally keeping on working on it. Yes, in hindsight perhaps I should’ve waited, and launched the thing properly on May 1st. But I wanted a soft(ish) launch where people would log on, try things out, hopefully tell me if something wasn’t working, and carry on like that this week.
At the end of the day, everything’s got to launch sometime. Yesterday was the day for Where’s Good. And May 1st is likely to be the “full” launch – not that that’ll mean much, there’s not going to be champagne, fireworks, and celebrations or owt, but it’ll be up, running, and hopefully not too buggy…
Posted: Mon 24 April, 2006 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Own Business, Thinking About..., Web Development, Work-related |
OK, well, it’s time to do the deed. I’ve been working on this idea properly for a month now, although the URL has been in my grubby little mitts for a while longer than that.
So. The site is called Wheres Good, and (logically enough) it’s at http://www.wheres-good.com . Nice URL, eh? The basic idea is to build up networks of people reviewing pubs, restaurants, shops, hotels, blah blah, and to then be able to rate other reviews (and users), building up a decent reference model of what’s good, where’s good to go, etc. etc. Along the way, you can set up a “hotlist” of places you want to remember/bookmark, and also set up events and stuff, so in theory blogmeets and so on could be arranged, including where to go, all on one site.
It’s still in beta (hey, like there’s a shock) but should all be working, which is a good start so far as I’m concerned. Anyway, let me know what you think of it…
Posted: Thu 20 April, 2006 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Geeky, Getting Organised, Own Business, Thinking About..., Web Development, Work-related |
Well, I’ve decided.
As of Monday, [the site which has currently not been revealed] will no longer be unrevealed.
In other words, this weekend I’m going to be putting some finishing touches to it, fixing a couple of things, and hopefully sorting out a couple of other bits that really should be done, but I was thinking might not be immediately. However, leaving the launch ’til Monday should give me the necessary time to do so.
Obviously it’s still really going to only be Version 1.0 , and there’ll be improvements, additions, fixes and so on along the way from there, but it’ll be good to have it at least out there, and usable. Although I’m kind of edgy too about getting feedback and so on. But I’m sure I’ll figure it all out, one way or another. Should be fun, anyway…
Posted: Fri 24 March, 2006 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Own Business, Thinking About..., Web Development, Work-related |
Gah, sometimes I swear I’m my own worst client.
On The Other Site (and I promise I’ll be letting it out into the wild soon – promise.) I’ve been working out how to get the necessary information into the bloody thing, and it was becoming more and more complex. Countries, Regions, Towns, and at least two other bits of information before we got to the crux of the matter, and so the page was hellish.
Mainly this was because I was trying to do it all in a way that makes sense for the long-term, and minimises the amount of data that’s repeated in the database. For instance, if you’ve got an address table, you don’t really want a buttload of records with the same town, county, and country – you’d want to have a “location” table that will hold those, so you can say in the address table “location=10”, and then in the location table, record ten has “town, county, country” in it. Makes sense.
Anyway, the way I’d done this was becoming incredibly complex, and so this morning I’ve been looking at it again, and figuring out better ways to do it. Well, by “better” I mean, of course, “simpler”- both from a coding point of view, and a usability one. All the same, it’s enough to make my head ache quite a lot.
The annoying bit is that I’d got it all to a point where it was actually pretty much working. It just took too long to get anything done, so the re-plan was necessary. And maybe when I develop things a bit more, I’ll come back to this way, and do it all with AJAX or something to make it nice to use. But I’m not convinced…
Posted: Tue 14 March, 2006 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: D4D™, Geeky, Thinking About..., Web Development |
Over the weekend, Pete pointed out a piece about “mystery” navigation on websites that doesn’t tell people where they’re heading. He suggested it might be rather relevant to me, seeing as d4d™ does exactly that. (And I recently discovered that the rollovers for showing where you’re going when the mouse hovers over the button doesn’t actually work in IE – I’d always kind of assumed it did, and thus hadn’t tested it. Mea culpa)
Anyway, it’s something that I started off as a project on here, something where I was interested to see how people used it. Initially it actually had the look of buttons – using nasty Javascript rollovers and images – where you only knew where you were going once the mouse was already over the button. But it was ugly, so when I went over to CSS for the main bit of the site, I just kept it with text but still on the same theory, not knowing where you were going ’til the mouse was over the button.
You see, my theory is that most people actually navigate based on position, rather than necessarily reading the button that tells them where they’re going. (And yes, I realise there’s a fallacy to this for first time visitors – just bear with me, OK?) I’ve worked on sites where the navigation was truly dynamic, and altered itself so that the “most used” buttons for user ended up at the top of the navigation tree (Man, you should’ve seen the database behind that bugger) and so the nav was different for every regular user, and also changed as you used it.
However, it turned out people hated this – about 75% of the regular users would already have their mouse pointing at the place on the screen that held the button for where they wanted to go, and when that changed, it annoyed them. It’s the same kind of theory that annoys people when supermarkets change the shelf layout, or store position for certain items. People like patterns. People stick to patterns (for the most part) and thus reinforce those patterns.
So d4d™ went the other way – if you knew where you were going, it didn’t matter what the button said – and in fact it could say nothing at all. In many ways it’s an experiment that’s worked – but it’s also one I wouldn’t put onto a commercial site I was doing. When it’s commercial, you really pretty much have to make sure you’re open to everyone, with a particular focus on the first-time visitor. If they don’t like what they see, or find it hard to get round, then they won’t become a repeat visitor.
(I’ve currently also been trying to persuade work about this one, that dynamic nav might sound cool and look cool, but long-term it pisses people off and is epically counter-productive)
Posted: Sat 25 February, 2006 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Own Business, Thinking About..., Web Development, Work-related |
In what I suspect may just turn out to be a theme on this stuff, page-widths are quite a bone of contention among web designers.
Basically there are two schools of thought – fixed-width and fluid . Fixed width is pretty self-explanatory – the page is designed to fit a certain size, say 800 pixels, or 1,000 , or another arbitrary figure. In general this is fine – the BBC does it this way, as does the Guardian, and many many others. It’s probably slightly more “standard” for commercial websites than fluid, but not by all that much.
Fluid, on the other hand, still tends to be used primarily on smaller-size (readership-wise) sites, blogs, that kind of thing. Not that it matters, but it’s also my general preference. Fluid widths fill the window, regardless of the size of that window. It doesn’t matter if it’s 600 pixels or 2,400 – the site expands to fit. D4D™ does it – if you’re lucky enough to have a dual-monitor set-up or similar, expand d4d to the full extent of the screen. Look, no blank space. It’ll shrink right down to about 450-490pixels before things break. That’s why I like fluid – because it doesn’t care whether you’re using a monitor that’s only able to use 800 pixels, or whether you’re all the way up at 2,400 (or more) or anywhere in between.
I suspect that a lot of it, as with colour, comes down to personal taste. The BBC site annoys me because it only uses half the window width I’ve got open. The Guardian annoys me for the same reason. However, people who like fixed-width (and again, I wonder if this is related to book or newspaper page widths being fixed, and thus “normal”) argue that if the text isn’t handle correctly in a fluid layout, it can end up being almost unreadable. And in fact I agree with this on occasion – if you’ve got lots of short paragraphs, they can look bloody awful in a fluid layout.
I suspect that the sites I’m currently working on will end up being fluid layouts – I’d rather see the space used for site content, instead of just being blank, wasted space. There’ll be space within the layout, though – I think that it’s the lack of space that can make a fluid layout feel cramped, and so I’ll be using as much space as I can for it.
We’ll see, when it comes to time to test it all out.
Posted: Wed 22 February, 2006 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: D4D™, Own Business, Thinking About..., Web Development, Work-related |
OK, so I was about right in what I figured, regarding website colours and so on.
As with most things – some people like it, some people hate it, and the majority don’t seem to care one way or t’other. Figures.
However, the experiment between “Worksafe” and “Inverted” wasn’t just about people’s reactions to colour, it was also about which produced less eye-strain after a while using it. My personal preference is still for light text on dark backgrounds, whereas most people seem to prefer dark-on-light. I’d guess that’s down to being used to newsprint, and print in general, with black ink on white/whiteish paper.
I do find that after a solid day of looking at a white background to work on, my eyes can be quite tired. It’s the constant “glare” of a predominantly white screen day in, day out, that seems to have an effect. And on that score, light text on a dark background seems to produce less eye-strain, and less headaches.
But from the look of it, on the commercial things I’m doing, I’m going to have to go with dark-on-light as a preference on the colour schemes. I might put in a colour-switcher similar to d4d™ though, just to give people the option (and, of course, so I can have my preferred light-on-dark scheme for working on the bugger x hours a day!)
As always, any thoughts or responses will be greatfully received…
Posted: Tue 21 February, 2006 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Own Business, Thinking About..., Web Development |
As with yesterday’s “Thinking About…” post, don’t even bother if you’re not interested in web design and so on…
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Posted: Mon 20 February, 2006 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Own Business, Thinking About..., Web Development |
DISCLAIMER : If you’re not interested in web design/ development and some of my thoughts and plans regarding it over the next few months, don’t even bother clicking on the “more” link underneath – you’d just be bored!
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