Experimenting – mwaaa haaha

Posted on 11 November, 2010 by andij

Recently I’ve taken to thinking along the lines of many other web designers and developers who are embracing the new technologies. Ranging from the funkiest mobile devices and latest browser technologies.

Using a raft of the latest tech plenty of testing and experimentation has been creeping it’s way into my daily routine. Armed with a laptop with two external screens, a couple of ‘standard (single screen)’ laptops and PCs accompanied with a small handful of smartphones and a tablet:

  • Lenovo T500 – 1680×1050 – Windows 7
    • Dell P2210H 1080×1920 (portrait)
    • Dell P2210H 1920×1080 (landscape)
  • Toshiba Tecra – 1024×768 – Ubuntu 10.04
  • Dell Optiplex GX520 – 1280×1024 – Windows XP
  • Apple iPad – 1024×768 – iOS 3.2.2
  • Apple iPhone 3G – 320×480 – iOS 3.1.3
  • HTC Desire HD – 480×800 – Andriod 2.2

These tools of the trade allow me to see my projects on many different devices, so, as a result I’m going to be using this blog as a testing area for a ground-up build of a wordpress blog incorporating a bunch of ideas. Many of which may fail, so if it’s spannered at any time you’ll know why.

So, first up is Elliot Jay Stocks‘ Starkers WordPress theme, this awesome bad-boy of a theme is right up my street as a web designer, it provides me with the bare-bones ‘naked’ theme for me to apply a bespoke design from scratch.

Couple that with the baddass HTML5 Boilerplate code, giving me access to the most top-notch tricks to get a full-on HTML5 website started off on the right foot.

Then….. An even awesomer revelation!! Aaron T. Grogg has got his shizzle out and performed an amalgamation of Starkers and Boilerplate in the form of a WordPress theme called Boilerplate: Starkers WordPress theme!.

I can hardly believe my eyes.. So much help and assistance out there on the interweb these days.. – love you guys -

THEN…. (Yup, it’s not over yet…) I scoot on over to Less Framework 3 and shave the CSS from here with all it’s @media queries. Providing me with a foundation for tailoring the theme to a number of different width layouts. I strip out the reset stuff as that exists in the Boilerplate theme by default. Rock on over to WordPress.org Child Themes and use this info to create myself a child theme of Boilerplate.

As a result, I end up with this wonderful baseline of a theme, all ready and waiting for me to apply my limited knowledge to. I’m certain that I’ll learn plenty from this process and expect to be able to apply this new found wealth to my lucky customers.

So, far, so good.. I’ll now evolve this theme steadily as I learn how to utilise all this wonderment.

An office warming

Posted on 10 September, 2010 by andij

If you’re free on Tuesday evening, pop over to my new office and celebrate with me.

There’s not that much to see to be honest, how interesting can an office be? However, if you’d like to help celebrate this occasion it’d be great to see you.

Please drop by any time between 6:30pm and 7:30pm for a glass of something and a snack or two followed by a couple of ales in the pub over the road. Continue reading →

Mobile website demo

Posted on 22 July, 2010 by andij

I’m putting together a mobile website that will be used to demo some solutions to Hybris.

To make it cool(harder) to get to, scan this QR-Code using your mobile phone QR Reader to visit the demo website:

QR Code

This demo may well be short lived, so I can’t guarantee that it’ll be there in the future, but for now, give it a go.

YMCC Junior Team Challenge Cup

Posted on 15 December, 2009 by andij

The morning of Saturday 12th December had arrived! I drove to the track half excited and half anxious about what lay ahead, as I am sure you did too.

It was a dry start and the YMCC team arrived promptly and without orchestration got to work on the preparation. Just before 10am it started to rain (only lightly I might add) but luckily we had just finished putting up the 2nd gazebo. Guests started arriving in unison with the rain but the team re-assured them we would continue with the day unless it became a down-pour. Everybody was happy with this decision. Luckily it soon stopped raining and those small showers we had later were not even noticed, as everybody (including the Mums and Dads) was having far too much fun. Continue reading →

BeInspired 09

Posted on 2 October, 2009 by andij

Yesterday, I attended the Business Link event BeInspired 09. I’d not been to an event of this type before, so I was prepared for it to be an eye-opener. I was joined by Ben Andrews a good friend of mine who’s in a similar situation to me (essentially a newbie to this business networking malarkey).

We rocked up at registration to collect our name badges and took a wander around the venue to get an understanding of where the workshops were being held, the location of the coffee and the theatre. We grabbed ourselves a seat in preparation for Richard Farleigh to take the keynote. His talk was great, far more down to earth than I was expecting. Starting out with his back-story and his childhood, realising that he could hustle people playing chess at the age of 14! Including his list of failures and Continue reading →