27th December, 2009
Here is an update on some bits and pieces I have been doing since starting my new job way back in October now.
Misty winter morning steps to work.
Arrival of the massive box for my new PC.
Because there was a video on YouTube of the PC game Witcher’s strange monkey creature, or Mamune which has subsequently been removed I decided to record my own and upload it.
13th October, 2009
These and several more have been available on facebook for a while now but here is a proper blog post with shots from my graduation day.
A T-Shirt for sale with everyone’s names printed on it!
30th September, 2009
Even though I started this new design with the feeling that I should just ignore Internet Explorer 6, I did realise that there were still visitors doomed to using this browser, either because of their hardware/operating system limitation, familiarity or their company’s refusal to update. I also had all the bits and pieces for adapting a site for 5 and 6 compatibility already in place, and had been adding them as and when I recognised old scenarios that needed them.
So I took this opportunity to start up my old computer, which is running a pretty much clean install of Windows 98 updated as far as it was supported, all on a Pentium 4 with 512mb of RAM and the high-end Geforce 2 GPU: astronomical power compared to what 95 and 98 were intended to work with normally. And then there is Internet Explorer 6!
I was a little bit astonished to discover that despite my fears that the new CSS would collapse in a heap, everything was generally rendering exactly where it was meant to be. The only issues were superficial ones, such as transparent PNGs rendering as grey which were easily fixed. In the end I did make an effort to ensure that users browsing with IE6 do have a reasonable experience.
22nd September, 2009
So finally I’ve switched my website to the new design, with a hefty number of new bits and pieces being added so you’ll have to bear with me for a little while as things get sorted out. Some of the bigger changes include integrating twitter (for which I have had an unused account for years) as a sort of microblogging tool, separating my university work from my professional portfolio and integrating a ‘Related Posts’ system which I have had in mind for a long time but have only just discovered a brilliant plugin that does all the hard work for me.
Above is a shot of a couple of the images I’ve produced for new site features.
You can find that related posts plugin at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/similar-posts/. Another plugin by the same authors is one that shows a list of the most recent posts. In the old design I had this functionality hardcoded into the theme footer but now it can be done with a single line of PHP.
19th September, 2009
Tired with the poor antialiasing observed in big header fonts, I decided to introduce sIFR to the site. Here’s a preview shot allowing me to use High Tower Text as my page heading:
10th September, 2009
Following applying for a position at spongeuk I had to produce a demonstration Adobe Flash and Actionscript piece from a sample brief creating a drag and drop e-learning game.
This involved forming an interface based on the style of their website and creating actionscripted animation for button and label motion, as well as learning a bit about SLR cameras myself in the process! I await to see if this demonstrates suitable skills for the position.
Update: the company was suitably impressed by this demo however my application was too late before they had to hire another person.
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