Adactio: Journal

Home for the holidays

I’m off to greener pastures. In fact, the pastures don’t get much greener than where I’m headed. I’m going to spend Christmas and New Year’s in Ireland.

Just my type

I made a trip up to London today. I just happened to be in the vicinity of Regent Street so I popped into the new Apple store. It’s quite a stunning shop and I was, needless to say, in my element.

Man brands band with slap-dash Flash

Everybody and their dog has been linking to a blog post entitled “five mistakes that band and label sites make”.

Pete has made some nifty little additions to his site. He’s added some toggle-able layers for his music and his photos (the Listening and Flickr links, respectively). They’re kind of like Dunstan’s panorama information panel. Very nice.

Word to the wise

For a long time I’ve resisted using Microsoft’s ubiquitous word-processing software. Recently however, circumstances dictated that I simply had to get a copy of Word.

Odious Odeon

Remember the kerfuffle about the Accessible Odeon service that Matthew Somerville created so that anyone could check their local cinema listings?

Back from Baltimore

I’m back in Brighton after a fairly short and painless jet-stream aided journey from Baltimore.

Go go go

I’ve been busier than a fly on feculence for the last few days.

Mac madness

I was thinking of heading up to the Mac Expo in London tomorrow. It’s pretty much an annual event for me (anyone remember this post from three years ago?).

Client communication

There’s a great interview with John Allsopp over at the Web Standards Group. John is the author of one of my all-time favourite articles over at A List Apart: Dao of Web Design.

Britpacking

London was the setting on Saturday for another gathering of geeks. Patrick managed to get everyone from the last get-together to come to the big smoke (excluding Dunstan, seeing as he’s in San Francisco and all).

Party on, dudes

I’m a torn geek tonight. I was tempted to stay in and watch the new show on BBC that should be called Walking With Planets. In the end, I decided to come out to a WiFi pub for a Firefox release party.

Alive, alive-o!

Maybe it’s just because I was visiting the city recently, but I’m getting a real kick out of this Dublin-based blog, Twenty Major.

Generating thumbnails with PHP

Looking through the family photo diaries over at the Guardian website made me realise how much I like having thumbnails in picture galleries.

Photo journalism

When I wrote an article about my JavaScript Image Gallery and released the code into the wild, I allowed anyone to use the code freely without any attribution. I did ask, however, that anyone using the script drop me a line and point me to where I could s

Schrodinger's election

Last night, I decided not to watch the all-night long election specials on television with their swingometers, pundits and talking heads. Instead, I went to bed to dream of the possibility of waking up to a different world.

Viva La iPodDownload

I wrote a little while back about a nice little plug-in for iTunes called iPodDownload. It plugged a glaring usability hole in iTunes whereby you aren’t able to simply drag your music from your iPod to your computer.

Let sleeping iPods die

After a Friday afternoon meeting over at Semantico, I decided to swing by the local Cancom shop and browse through whatever Apple goodies they might have in stock.

Anger is an energy

Last year BBC Radio One came to Brighton and organised a week of live music. This year, there’s no sign of auntie Beeb but local promoters have organised a week of music anyway.

D'ye ken John Peel?

“Then here’s to John Peel with my? heart and soul”

JavaScript tweaks

I’ve been getting some feedback on the toggle-able sidebar sections I implemented last week.

The Stephensonsian System

Following on from a posting on the Brighton New Media mailing list today, I just found out that the third book in Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle is now available. It’s called The System Of The World.

Ch-ch-ch-changes

I’ve been doing some spring cleaning around here (if you’re reading this in an RSS reader, you might want to visit the site to investigate some of the changes).

Real horrorshow

Is it just me or do the new Apple mini stores look like the Korova Milk Bar from A Clockwork Orange?

Good night, good luck, win awards

While I was off galavanting around Dublin, the 2004 Virtual Festival was hosting its Web Awards ceremony here in Brighton.

Apple documentation

There’s a very old joke about a man who goes to the doctor and says:

Farewell to Erin

I’m back from my trip to Ireland. It was a short visit but I managed to pack in quite a bit of activity.

Across the Irish Sea

I’m off to Dublin for the weekend.

Web video roundup

Clean out your fat pipes, here comes some bandwidth-sucking fun.

Earth shattering

My brother-in-law lives and works in Seattle. That’s his workplace they’re talking about in this article in this Newsweek article about Starbucks.

Tally-ho!

The Labour Party Conference is being held in Brighton this week. The area near the conference centre has been surrounded by a "ring of steel" manned by bored police officers pulling twelve hour shifts.

So far, far away, so close

I’ve spent the last week re-living my childhood.

Mobile technology and cocktails

I ventured out of the house yesterday evening to attend an event sponsored by Sussex Enterprise. I was interested in the subject matter of "ebusiness: How can Mobile Technology help your business?" but mostly I was lured by the promise of a free

(Type)face off

After reading this you might want to play this.

Favicon gallery

Michael Pierce is putting together an exhaustive annotated gallery of favicons. It’s quite inspiring.

Dark side of the brain

I was having an iChat with a friend, who I had previously considered to be a reasonably well-adjusted chap, when he asked me out of the blue if I had heard that Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon was an alternate soundtrack for The Wizard Of Oz.

Talk like a pirate day

Arrr, it do be that time of year again me hearties.

iPodDownload

Yesterday, I put some new music (ripped from CD) onto my iBook. I then transferred the music onto my iPod. Rather than transfer the same songs from my iBook to my iMac, I thought it would be simpler to plug the iPod into the iMac and transfer the songs fr

No rest for the wicked

Since getting back from my (extended) holiday in Florida, it’s been go go go. My workload was piling up while I was away and now I’m making up for lost time with Message and Semantico.

Farewell to Florida

It’s time for me to head back to Blighty. My stay in Saint Augustine wound up being longer than originally intended but there are worse places to be stranded for a few extra days.

It's a funny old sci-fi world

The plan to have stunt pilots in helicopters catch a returning satellite didn’t work.

Storm chasing

If, like me, you have recently acquired hurricane fever, there’s a handy little freeware OS X application you might like. MegaTrack shows the current and projected paths of tropical storms using data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Adminst

I've got the power

Praise Jeebus! Electricity has finally been restored to the beach house. It’s good to be back online.

Frances has passed us

The storm has passed.

Blow winds, blow

It was a fairly rough night last night. But it was all sound and fury signifying very little compared to today.

Crisis? What crisis?

Hurricane Frances is taking its own sweet time. For a while today it stopped completely off the coast of Florida.

The waiting game

Hurricane Frances seems to have weakened and slowed down a bit. This is a mixed blessing.

The approaching storm

Frances is getting closer to Florida. The good news is that, at the moment, it has decreased from a category four to a category three hurricane.

Waiter, there's music in my DRM

Microsoft has soft-launched its music downloading service. Naturally, lots of people are comparing it to the iTunes music store and evaluating their relative merits.

The calm before the storm

Hurricane Frances is getting closer. People here in Saint Augustine have been stocking up on water and other supplies. Things are still quite calm here though.

Putting the Anal back into Analysis

In an article entitled Apple’s missed opportunity, a certain Paul Jackson from Forrester Research has this to say about the new G5 iMac:

Storm's a-coming

Since arriving in Saint Augustine, my days have settled into quite a pleasant routine.

The new iMac

The new iMac has been released into the wild. From an engineering point of view, it’s quite a marvel. From a price/performance point of view, it’s also pretty marvelous: unbelievably good value. Doom 3 is going to scream on this thing.

Capturing alligators

I took a trip to the St. Augustine Alligator Farm today. If you’re ever in the area, be sure to check it out. It’s like Jurassic Park with a better safety record.

iPoddie

Now that I’m in the States, I’ve taken possession of my previously ordered iPod. Needless to say, I’m loving it.

Wish you were here

I’m in the land of coral and sunshine: Key West, home to Hemingway, shipwrecks, six-toed cats, wild chickens and lots and lots of seafood,

Sunshine state of mind

I’m taking a flight from Gatwick to Orlando first thing tomorrow. Jessica and I will be spending the next two weeks in Florida.

Not waving but drowning

Looking at the unusually large waves being churned up on the shore of Brighton’s beach yesterday put me in mind of a particularly descriptive line from Joyce:

Don't worry, browse happy

The Web Standards Project has launched a new promotional website to encourage people to switch from Internet Explorer. It’s called Browse Happy.

Something well wicked this way comes

Here’s a wonderfully Goreyesque Flash game called A Murder Of Scarecrows.

Fixed vs. Liquid... yet again

Quote of the day comes from Nick Finck:

iChat Snap

iSnap!

A gaggle of geeks

This weekend, Brighton was the setting for Geekend 2: Electric Boogaloo.

Multimappa Mundi

Richard has added a handy little feature to Multimap. By creating a category for blogs (along with hotels, restaurants, etc.) you can now link a blog to an address in the Multimap database.

PDFs with PHP

Not all of the functionality I’ve been adding to this site recently involves JavaScript and the DOM. I’ve also added a new PHP script.

Lust

This collection of 1920s erotic photos features one flapper with a mandolin and another with a bouzouki.

Anger

If you’d like to make a difference in the ever-worsening situation in Darfur, please, please, please make a donation (via the secure WorldPay service) to the World Food Program. I’ve made a modest contribution which, by itself, won’t amo

Envy

File this under "Now, why didn’t I think of that?".

Greed

I finally caved in and succumbed to the temptation of owning the style gadget de-siècle. I’ve ordered an iPod.

Gluttony

Richard points out that Jamie Oliver’s website is now written in XHTML and CSS.

Sloth

When I really should be working, the last thing I need to read is this excellent article by Tom Hodgkinson in The Guardian entitled The Virtue Of Idleness, taken from his forthcoming book How To Be Idle:

Pride

It’s that time of year again. Brighton is party-central this weekend. Brighton Pride is an annual event celebrating the town—, sorry, city’s gay and lesbian community. It’s Fun with a capital F and it’s make me proud to live

Definite article

I finally put together some of my slides from the SkillSwap talk I gave with Richard and turned them into an article.

:hover Considered Harmful

I was on iChat with Andy Clarke recently, shooting the breeze about CSS and accomplishing this or that cross-browser effect.

Migratory patterns

I’ve mentioned before just how stressful and nerve-wracking it can be to move web hosts. That’s why I’ve been putting off the long-overdue migration of The Session from the hell that is WebServePro.

What's that you're listening to?

I’ve been doing a little tinkering behind the scenes here.

Brain Lego

Others redesign. I just pile new designs on top of the old.

Day of the t-shirts

Yesterday the postman delivered not one, not three, but TWO t-shirts.

Dear Auntie Beeb

In the article “Real ‘frees’ Apple’s iPod player”, the following paragraph appears:

The do-DOM-DOM-DOM, the do-DOM-DOM

Yesterday was JavaScript day.

Mother London

I was in London yesterday for a meeting with one of Semantico’s clients.

Registering my displeasure

The hot topic of the day would appear to be newspaper sites that require visitors to register before allowing them to read any articles. Wired is running a story which ties in nicely with last week’s article about The New York Times and its lousy pa

The grand alliance

Given the martial tone of some of my recent posts, I’m starting to feel more and more like a warblogger.

Regurgitating the chestnut

Andy Clarke has resurrected the always topical issue of fixed width vs. liquid layouts. This is something that also arose on the Brighton New Media mailing list last week.

Pop-up blocker stopper

I probably shouldn’t even mention this for fear of giving anybody any ideas but it looks like there’s a way of circumventing pop-up blockers.

Picture perfect

Tim Bray points to a great collection of photographs by Richard Friedman.

The gathering storm

At the risk of turning this site into “Browser Watch”, I simply have to point to Ben Hammersley’s article in today’s Guardian called “The second browser war”.

Embrace and extend

Dave Hyatt has been blogging about the way that Dashboard will require some new HTML elements.

Home again, home again

I’m back from the west of Ireland. I was sorry to leave. I had a wonderful, music-filled time.

Have t-shirt, will travel

I just finished coding an e-commerce site with Message. The Rapha website, selling cycling apparel, has launched just in time for the Tour de France.

Dashboard confessional

One of the most contentious of the new Tiger technologies announced at Apple’s Developer Conference is Dashboard.

The mac rumour mill

Daniel Bogan pointed out this very interesting tidbit from the iMac page of the Apple website:

Good evening, Portland!

I’m back from the wilds of Dorset. As I suspected, the weather wasn’t entirely conducive to camping outdoors so my nights were spent tucked away in a warm bed between four walls under a roof.

Have a good weekend

I’m off to spend the weekend on a windswept promontory in the West Country.

Web applications are the new black

I almost gave myself a sore neck from nodding my head in agreement as I read John Gruber’s latest article entitled “The Location Field Is the New Command Line”. He talks about the differences (or lack thereof) between desktop and web-bas

Back of the net!

The iSight madness continues…

It's a small world after all

I’ve had my iSight for almost a year now but lately it’s been getting a real workout.

Pewx

Jamie pointed out something funny to me the other day.

Salva--, I mean, SpaceShipOne

There were a lot of unremarkable television shows made during the seventies and eighties. But because those were my formative years, those shows have an unwarranted prominence in my memories. Tales Of The Gold Monkey… Scarecrow And Mrs. King…

Blooming wit

Yesterday was Bloomsday. I wasn’t in Dublin: I was on stage in Brighton with Salter Cane. Still, I couldn’t let the occasion pass unmarked.

noTunes

The iTunes Music Store has launched in the UK. Hallelujah!

Feastival

The Brighton Food and Drink Festival has started.

On Her Majesty's Secret Sea Power Service

It seems that a number of the bigger Brighton-based bands haven taken to giving quirky, secretive concerts lately.

Best. Simpsons reference. Ever.

From Idle Words:

Everything in its right place

I’ve made no secret of the fact that I’m a big fan of Apple but even by my kool-aid drinking standards they’ve really outdone themselves this time.

The move

In an article called Stress and Emotional Health over at BBC Health, there’s a list of "top stress makers". The "very high" category lists "moving house".

A host of problems... again

Notice a few things missing around here?

Web Services

I had so much fun playing with Amazon’s Web Services over at The Session, I decided to give Google’s APIs a whirl.

Came not so far for beauty

Ever have one of those dreams that are filled with a bizarre mish-mash of famous people in a familiar setting but doing things they wouldn’t normally do?

That's all I can stand, I can't stands no more

Please excuse me while I have a little grammar rant. In the space of one day I have seen the words "resource" and "author" used as verbs.

When geeks gather

My last post might have given the impression that I’ve been doing nothing but programming lately. While it’s true that I have had some late nights, writing XSL files ‘till four in the morning, I also found the time for some R’nR

Tempus fugit when you're Amazoning fun

Forgive me reader, for I have sinned. It has been almost a week since I last wrote anything here.

Got Blog?

The RSS grapevine is fairly humming today with the news of the Blogger redesign.

Brighton rock

The Brighton Festival is in full swing. Everywhere you look, there’s theatre, music, dance and art.

A musical interlude

Here’s a song guaranteed to bring a smile to the face of anyone who owned an 8-bit machine in the eighties… Hey, Hey, 16K:

Cinco de Mayo

Won’t somebody please think o’ the my-oh!

Prints charming

I have a new gadget.

Now with even fewer wires

Brighton has some new wireless hotspots thanks to the good folks at Loose Connection.

A new look for Spring

It’s the first of May, a day when workers the world over take a day off… except for web designers, like the very talented Nathan Borror, who use this day to launch their redesigned websites.

Songs from the web

iTunes 4.5 was released earlier this week.

Irish spring break

I’m back in Brighton after my short break in Ireland. For those of you uninterested in travelogues and holiday snaps, look away now.

Into the west

I’ve been pretty busy lately and not just with web-related stuff.

Revenge of the DOM

There’s a new article up at A List Apart called Let Them Eat Cake. It’s all about using JavaScript, or more accurately the Document Object Model, to hide and show content on demand.

Laughing stock

Here’s a cautionary tale about the dangers of over-reliance on stock photography:

Turning Japanese

If you happen to be in Brighton and you like Japanese food, be sure to check out the Murasaki cafe/bar on Dyke Road (near Seven Dials).

Unreal Tech Support

When I was in Arizona at Christmas time, I picked up some games for my Mac. Since then I’ve been happily playing Halo, not so happily playing Aliens vs. Predator 2 (it’s not a patch on the original) and not playing Unreal Tournament 2003 at al

What is Web Design?

"Who are we? Why are we here?"

Beatallica on the brat

Beatallica perform Beatles songs in the style of Metallica.

The end of the end of the day

I concur:

Content management

It has been quiet around here lately, hasn’t it?

Hirnlego

I recently completed my first submission for the CSS Zen Garden. It’s called Hirnlego.

Airline madness

I’ve been comparing air fares recently in anticipation of a possible trip to Ireland.

Probot

How cool is this?…

Design nourishment

If you’re looking for some stimuli to get the creative juices flowing, look no further than the fantastic Lightboxing organised every month by Veer.

Tour Guide

My friend Diarmaid has been over visiting from Ireland for the past few days.

Movie shorts

Here are a couple of amusing little films to close the end of the working week:

Project Miroir

I have a new picture up on The Mirror Project that was taken in Paris last weekend.

Springcleaning Stylesheets

I’ve been updating the stylesheets ‘round here. If things look a little screwy, please do adjust your set: refresh until things settle down.

We'll always have Paris

I’m back from my weekend in Paris.

Paris in the Springtime

When I was in Arizona at Christmas time, the focal point of the seasonal celebration was the exchanging of gifts around the Christmas tree.

Going to the movies

Being Oscar season, this is normally the time for looking back at the films of the past year, singling out the best for praise and the worst for derision.

There and back again

I’m back in Brighton after a jolly jaunt in the countryside experiencing Dunstan Orchard’s non-digital social networking experiment. His hospitality was second to none.

Geekend

I’m off to Dorset. Whatever the collective noun for blogger is, there’s going to be one of them this weekend.

Futurlab shindig

I’m down at the Sussex Arts Club enjoying the hospitality of new web kids on the block, Futurlab ("we got rid of the ‘e’ and passed the savings on to you").

The big smoke

Yesterday was my birthday (discretion prevents me from revealing my current age).

Teleport

I took a trip on Friday to see the good folks over at Motionpath.

Born free

I’ve added my Javascript Image Gallery to the articles section here at adactio.

They'll bomb us into last week!

Either the BBC are getting lazy or the Russians are making some pretty outrageous claims:

iLove the iLife I iLive

On Monday, I placed an order at the Apple Store online. The delivery time was estimated at three to seven working days. My order showed up within 48 hours.

The three ages of geekdom

The past:

The C in CSS

I’ve been tidying up the stylesheets around here. Everything should look exactly the same, just executed more economically.

Adopt, adapt and improve

My JavaScript Image Gallery script has been embraced and extended to produce this very neat image gallery which uses some nifty DHTML to provide three "pages" of thumbnails without any page refreshes.

My iBook is iBack

All is well with the world once again. UPS delivered my iBook this morning after trying and failing yesterday morning (nobody home).

PHP sendmail frustration

I spent hours last night tearing my hair out trying to fix a mystifying PHP problem.

Bluetooth on the brain

Best. Haircut. Ever.

RSS feeds for The Session

If, like me, you’re both a geek and a lover of Irish traditional music, you might be interested in hearing that there are now RSS feeds available from The Session.

Apart at last

In this week’s A List Apart: JavaScript Image Gallery by yours truly.

They're my friends

You know how they sometimes do parody ads on South Park or Ren and Stimpy?

Captain Safari

As users of Apple’s web browser will be aware, Safari offers the option to display a bug reporting icon in its browser chrome. I’ve used this feature a few times and, based on the modifications in the subsequent version of Safari, here’s

As the web turns

I’m back from Ireland where I had an enjoyable, if somewhat rushed, weekend of seafood, stout and song.

Just plain wrong

Seeing windows apps running on OS X kind of freaks me out but not nearly as much as seeing what this guy did to a G5:

Airport

An iChat transcript with my friend Diarmaid who I am supposed to be meeting in Dublin right about now:

iBook blues

It’s the twentieth anniversary of the Mac and my iBook has decided to celebrate by popping its clogs.

The blog entry that wasn't

Things have been very quite here in my online journal lately.

GarageBandLand

I’m going to have to get my hands on iLife pronto.

Oh, the humanity!

Coca Cola today launched an online music download service that aims to compete with the iTunes Music Store.

Rock'n'roll dreams

It is with a certain glee that I have been forcing friends and colleagues attempt the "spot the head replacement" game with the band pictures I put online.

Shooting the band

I spent the wee hours of last night honing my Photoshop chops.

Geek gossip

Andy has beaten me to the punch on this little exclusive: I found out at work today that my co-worker/employer’s brother, Martin Freeman (of The Office fame) has been cast as Arthur Dent in the upcoming film of The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Ga

And they said it wouldn't last...

Jessica and I yesterday celebrated four years of marriage.

iPodette

The big announcement at yesterday’s Macworld keynote address was, of course, the much anticipated introduction of mini iPods.

iLike

I’m back in Brighton. I’m over the worst of the jet lag and back into the routine of work, band practice and wet weather.

See you on the beach

My holiday time here in Arizona is coming to an end.

The Return Of The Return Of The King

I’ve just come back from seeing The Return Of The King for the second time.