stuup // the ramblings of a Wolverhampton web geek

Losing my mojo

2014-05-27T20:21:11Z

Its been a while since I last posted online… I’m trying to work out why that is but I think its a combination of a few things.

When I first started this blog it was around the time of @media 2005 conference. These were exiting times for me, I had just finished reading Jeffrey Zeldman’s Designing with Web Standards and lots of my peers I had discovered in the blogosphere were networking at this and other conferences. The knowledge gained from this book coupled with the speakers papers gave me the extra drive I felt I needed to move forward in my web development career. This was at a time when most of the local Wolverhampton web development companies were still using tables for layout and probably had never heard of CSS Zen Garden and what CSS could do.

I then got myself involved with a local group of geeks who met regularly to discuss new technologies over a few beers, we even organised a few grass root conferences along the way. However my attendance gradually wained because of family commitments and most meets seemingly clashing with Wolves games.

This blog which started nearly a decade ago has seen web design change completely from an industry with no real direction to a set of guides and best practices which everyone should adhere to. But this has had a knock on effect to my enthusiasm for all things web, things just don’t excite me as they did. People getting into the industry now don’t know how easy they have it… or maybe its just my age!

Anyway, this is me saying I’m still here, 10 years older, knocking out websites and that I’ll try to post more meaningless drivel on a regular basis, albeit on a more personal and less web centred basis (:

Happy Birthday Matt!

2009-05-31T13:56:10Z

Dear Matt, you’re six today!

Unwrapping your cards and presents this morning I was reminded by the elegance of your words, the agility of your thoughts and the nature of your actions of why I am so proud of you and the young man that you are becoming.

Every time a birthday approaches I think back to how much has changed since you were born, and I look forward to how much will change in your lifetime, and hope I will be around long enough to give you the tools you need to navigate the world and grow into yourself.

Happy birthday, son. I love you.

Emerging Standards

2009-02-24T23:36:50Z

Last Saturday brought about the inaugural Multipack Presents event kindly hosted at the One Black Bear offices. The theme of this first event was “Emerging Standards” — Matt Machell, Bruce Lawson and Stuart Langridge discussed ARIA, HTML 5 and Whizzy Javacsript Stuff respectively.

The event kicked off at The Old Crown pub where most of the attendee’s met up, it was good to see some new faces along with the regular peeps — about 25 people turned up, which was better than we expected considering this was our first event. After some liquid refreshment we headed over to the One Black Bear offices where the talks began. At this point I have to state that Gaz and Ross have the nicest working environment I have ever seen, very jealous!

Matt started the presentations, his talk was a good introduction to the new ARIA specification and explained how to make rich internet applications more accessible. The presentation raised some good debate, Stuart came up with a nice idea about creating an ‘aria stylesheet’ without altering existing markup, which he quickly knocked up the next day.

Bruce’s talk followed, discussing HTML 5 and talked through the process of his HTML 5 redesign, explaining certain new tags that are being proposed. Maybe I’m mistaken, but one thing that I found odd with the specification is that there isn’t a tag that describes the actual main content for the page, there are tags for <nav>, <footer> etc but nothing to describe the actual content. There is <section> but there can be multiple instances of <section>. I think there should be a unique tag to describe this, Bruce has asked for developers to give feedback to the working group on anything they see as incorrect or has been overlooked so I may just send some feedback.

After a break for munchies in the form of pizza kindly supplied by Campaign Monitor the presentations were finished off with Stuart’s talk which discussed JavaScript and some nice features that are already built into particular browsers. All the methods discussed can be achieved using a variety of frameworks but it was interesting to know which methods were supported without a framework in particular browsers.

I’m really looking forward to our next Multipack Presents event which is currently being organised, we’re asking for feedback on what you would like to see discussed, so if you want to be heard post your comment on the Multipack blog. Until then, maybe I’ll catch up with you at the March meet.

Get your Geek on, again!

2008-06-26T22:28:34Z

After a two year hiatus Geek in the Park returns to Leamington Spa on Saturday 9th August 2008 and if the 2006 event is anything to go by you’ll be foolish to miss this years event organised by The Multipack.

It all kicks off with a friendly family orientated picnic with fun & games in Jephson Gardens followed by an evening of talks by web industry leaders Jon Hicks and Drew McLellan at KoKos. Jon Hicks will present “Pixel Pushing: An Introduction to Icon Design” and Drew McLellan will talk about “What Brian Cant Never Taught You About Metadata”. If that isn’t enough to tempt you, don’t forget the event is free.

See you there!

A lick of paint

2008-02-02T11:50:30Z

2008 has brought with it a renewed vigour for the direction The Multipack is heading, with this in mind and being a community of web developers and designers in Birmingham the natural way of getting the ball rolling was to create a new design for our website and logo.

Holding the paint brush was Paul Lloyd who created the mock-ups for the website and logo—which I’m particularly pleased with. Trevor Morris has done a brilliant job of implementing the design into html adding in Microformats and parsing all popular external feeds where possible.

We also have a new forum that Ross Riley has configured and there are a few others working behind the curtains making sure everything stays spick and span.

There will be no excuses for people not knowing where and when things are taking place either, as we now meet up every second Saturday of each month at the Old Joint Stock with the premise of moving out further afield within the West Midlands a couple of times throughout the year.

So whether you’re an existing member or not, register on the forum and get the details for the next meet from Upcoming and I’ll see you there!

Keep watching for some interesting forthcoming events…

The Web Design Survey

2007-10-17T09:10:20Z

The results from The Web Design Survey 2007 have been translated and it makes for some very interesting reading.

Here are some things that have surprised me.

Age: I always thought it was a young mans game. Young man being male/female 18-25 years old. Looks like there is a few years left in this old dog.
Gender: Maybe this is based on me being in the West Midlands, UK but 1 in 5 of my peers isn’t female.
Geographic region: There was 20% answered from the EU (except the UK) and 11.2% from the UK. There seemed to be a high percentage of people who answered from the UK compared to the EU, maybe this was a language issue.
Type of organisation: I was surprised to see about a quarter of people are either self-employed or freelance, that seems quite high for any industry
Years at current job: Looks like people move around often, I’m in the 3.6%

8 Random Things

2007-10-09T22:22:22Z

I’ve been tagged more than once so I think I should bore you with my eight random things, but before I do here are the rules:

The Rules

You have to post these rules before giving your facts.
Players state eight random facts/habits about themselves.
At the end of the blog post, you tag eight people and list their names. (Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.)
People who are tagged need to write about their eight things on their own blog and also post these rules.

With that over and done with, here goes…

When I was 8 I left my SuperTed teddy at The Natural History Museum and cried all the way home when my friends Dad said we couldn’t go back to get him, I think I left him with the Neanderthals. I’m not sure I’ve ever totally got over this.
I have a trophy for coming first in a BMX race as a member of Wordsley BMX Club, however there was only me racing in my class.
I hate spammers and think I should build a web app so people can muddy their data/contact form with incorrect contact details.
I have scored a goal from the half-way line while playing for my school against Wolverhampton Grammar School, something even Pelé didn’t manage I might add, though the level of opposition may have been a factor.
I have no patience for DIY especially flat pack furniture, it has got so bad that the family go out when I have something to build and don’t come back till it’s done, go figure.
My Granddad designed the wheels/tyres for Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
I passed my BTEC National in Art and Design at Matthew Boulton College with a Distinction and was named student of the year by the companies sponsoring the course – however I spent most of the time in the pub playing pool – for this I feel quite guilty, but not too much.
My first exposure to the Internet was through CompuServe around 1991 surprisingly I actually liked it.
I can’t count and don’t like rules.

I told you I would bore you!

Right who to tag, hmm

If I could give you one word of advice…

2007-05-15T09:44:21Z

If I could give you one word of advice, it would be to never go with esure insurance, from my experience customer service is shocking.

Update: I recently cancelled my policy with them and I’ve now received a letter off them to arrange payment of the balance, however this outstanding balance is because they had credited me this amount in the first place! Calm down, dear my arse!

Justice!

2007-05-01T22:33:10Z

The English team that doesn’t play football how it is supposed to be played may not win that much this season, they are certainly out of the Champions League. What a final it would be if Man Utd could do the business tomorrow.

Oh José you weren’t the best team, what’s with the sour grapes?

Any recommendations?

2007-03-03T15:19:05Z

I’m after a 1TB external disc, I’ve looked at the Western Digital one and it looks the ticket, I just wondered whether anyone has any personal recommendations I could take a look at before I jump in and buy something.

Code Monkey

2007-02-28T09:04:56Z

Sit back, listen and enjoy.

Vote for something important!

2007-02-27T23:13:45Z

There has been lots of talk recently about the rip-off prices for football tickets in this country, the Football Supporter’s Federation are currently campaigning to reduce these cost, their principal aims are:

Universal away ticket price of no more than £15 for all Premier League (FAPL) games with £10 for concessions.
A three-season freeze of prices at 2006/7 season levels for both season tickets and individual match tickets for seasons 2007/8-2009/10 imposed by FAPL rule. Encouragement of clubs to cut ticket prices in cash terms over and above the freeze, particularly at the low end.
The facility fee received for all FAPL televised matches to be used to subsidise tickets prices for all attending those matches.

Their main objective is – …to ensure that football again becomes the “people’s game”. Prices across the board in this country are absurd.

Show your support by signing their supporters’ online petition today, and even if you don’t give two hoots about football, go sign it anyway, may help reduce the amount of money I’ll have to pay in the future.

They never cease to amuse

2007-02-08T17:31:24Z

Overhearing my two sons at dinner yesterday the conversation went;

Youngest – When we bought our house how did they carry it, did they use a big lorry?

Eldest – No don’t be silly, this house was here when we moved in, we moved because our old house was messy.

Kids

Is it me?

2007-01-17T20:01:20Z

Now this may be a little political for me but… what the hell is going on in my country?

There has been uproar this week over alleged racist remarks aimed at Big Brother contestant Shilpa Shetty. It is the staple diet of the tabloids and TV news reports currently; and the PM has discussed it in his Question Time.

If there has been any racist remarks than they need to be brought to book, but surely condemning democracy and praising the Taliban for killing British soldiers should be the focus this week!

Happy Birthday

2006-12-19T22:54:13Z

Nearly missed this one, but I think it is worthy of celebration.

I ignored you in the beginning, abused you for a while but now I fully embrace you CSS, so have a great 10th birthday you make maintenance so much more easy than the tag soup I used to create, thank you.

Oh dear

2006-12-04T22:11:34Z

While researching what treatment is best for our youngests’ ear infection I went to the NHS Direct self-help website, I noticed they have a Langugages section. Don’t ask me why but I clicked on the Korean link to then be served a bunch of images for the text. It’s no different for all the other languages, is this how our hard earned money is being spent?

Right I’m off to care for him, shocking really isn’t it?

Scary

2006-11-29T22:17:25Z

It’s a long documentary but it’s worth it.

If you’re feeling generous

2006-11-29T21:45:54Z

Andy Higgs has built a site to try to clear his monstrous debt. If you’re feeling generous you can donate as much or as little as you want.

Now I know what you’re thinking “it’s his fault his debt is as large as it is!” or “the money he’ll earn having been to University will pay it off” but knowing Andy I doubt the £12k was spent on debauchery and every donation helps however small it is.

Of course if he does clear his debt from donations I expect him to donate the extra to another charity, like the Multipack beer fund 😉

I nailed my spam!

2006-11-27T22:51:03Z

Finally I’ve had a couple of hours to sort some code out to block the lovely spammers out there. I’ve tried implementing a few ~~clever~~ bizarre ways but each one never seemed to work.

I’ve now implemented the lovely Akismet plug-in and it works a treat, because I use Lasso there wasn’t an actual plug-in I could bolt on so I based my code on Jason Huck’s implementation, kudos to Owen Gregory for pointing me to the source code.

Now I can focus on actually blogging, won’t that be fun for you!

So far, so good. Fancy seeing if you’re a dirty spammer?

To the iPod generation

2006-11-11T08:25:02Z

Go grab the download and have some respect!

What you find looking through your stats

2006-10-07T15:44:12Z

Maybe I’m too much of a geek but I love analysing my stats.

Today I looked at who was hijacking my graphics, the most popular graphic being hijacked at the moment is the comment icon from the popular FamFamFam icon set, Christ it’s not as if they can’t go get those themselves!

There are a few minor MySpace sites out there using this graphic, but also there is what seems like one large Polish site. I’ve sent them an email asking them kindly to stop linking to my server and I’ll just have to wait and see whether they duly act.

I could create some Apache rule to stop this but I like to be able to peak at who are stupid enough to play this game.

Do you think a week is long enough before I change the graphic to Goatse?

Have you got 10 minutes?

2006-07-27T23:22:23Z

Go check out iconfactory.com, looks like they are in the process of redesigning their website, these people are funny.

Get you’re geek on!

2006-07-25T20:27:34Z

Fancy a day full of geeked out fun where you can bring the family and they can see what you get up to at all these meets you go to? Then Geek in the Park might appeal to you…

Geek in the Park is a day-long get together, picnic, and discussion for anyone to do with the Internet (developers, designers, programmers… whatever!). This is a very informal affair so family and friends are very much welcome to attend too.

The big day is taking place in Royal Leamington Spa, Warwickshire. Split in to two main events, Geek in the Park starts with The Picnic during the day, followed by The Discussion in the evening. The event starts on Sunday at noon and everything should wrap up by around 11pm.

Trevor Morris has done a sterling job of organising this event along with Andy Higgs and a few others from the Multipack they have created a website for the event which wouldn’t look out of place in anybodies portfolio, go check it out, digg the comments pool, these guys/gals are the dogs.

Anyways the day will be full of fun & frolics where like minded people can meet and discuss the latest web technologies or just play Frisbee™. The night will be spent in a nearby pub, where a discussion will be headed by Patrick H Lauke and Bruce Lawson called ‘Where the rubber meets the road: Web Accessibility and Pragmatism.’

Don’t forget that this is a totally FREE event. See you there!

There is a god!

2006-07-05T22:14:19Z

Justice! Portugal are out. Commentators are berating their style of play and sportsmanship, the crowd were booing Ronaldo from the kick off, he was crying at the end. Carvalho is out of the third place game and gave away the penalty.

Would I be called greedy to have wished France to have gone on to score a goal when Ricardo came up for a corner?

Roll on Euro 2008, hope we meet you Portugal!

Is it Groundhog Day?

2006-07-01T22:39:40Z

Bloody penalties! Will we ever learn?

I’m not going to @media 2006

2006-06-14T21:45:57Z

I’m not stepping onto a train down to London. I won’t be meeting up with the Multipack. I won’t be listening to my peers with interest. I also won’t be doing any networking.

These grapes taste horrible!

Never miss a World Cup match

2006-05-18T21:30:00Z

You’ll never miss a World Cup match now, Simon Jobling has built the perfect compliment for your football shirt and face paint World Cup KickOff. Select your team and grab the calendar file, you can even sync it with your PDA/Mobile Phone. Statto I’m coming for you!

The benefits of Multipackers

2006-05-11T22:21:15Z

Last Saturday was my third Multipack meeting and the numbers are gradually rising. I’ve enjoyed every one of them so far, it’s good to talk to like minded people who know what I’m on about – even if you do get pints thrown at you.

While mulling over certain software people use Ross mentioned that he used NewsFire for his RSS aggregator, it is built by David Watanabe the same guy that gave us Acquisition.

This said I decided to give it a go, I’ve never really been one to use a RSS aggregator – don’t ask me why – as I normally just visit the sites I read in my browser during the course of the day, and clicking on the live bookmarks in Firefox to see if my subscribed feeds have been updated.

Using NewsFire has made me much more productive as I don’t spend time going to sites I’ve read three times previously that day. NewsFire will just politely tell me when a new article has been posted.

Yeah and before you say I knew the principles of aggregators I just didn’t think one of the benefits would be less distractions.

Thanks Ross, it’s good this tinternet isn’t it?

Nobody told me!

2006-05-11T21:58:20Z

It takes me a while to make a decision, so I spent a long time finding the right bike. I must have gone to 5 bike shops and looked on every online shop selling bikes but knowbody mentioned anything about getting used to this new culinary diet.

Why so many gnats/greenfly have to end up in my mouth I don’t know. Well today was the record I must have ate at least 10 of the little bleeders, I still found room to eat my tea when I got home from work though!

Doing my bit for the environment

2006-04-21T20:07:41Z

I’ve recently bought a bike to cycle to work with the intention of getting rid of my beer gut. Since starting to cycle to work I’ve become quite conscience about how I’m not contributing to the pollution levels and feel I’m doing my bit for our planet – don’t worry I won’t be hijacking any whaling boats in the Antarctic.

Apart from dodging the White Van Men and Chelsea Tractors it’s been quite easy to get into considering I’ve not cycled for 15 years. I would recommend it to anyone who sits behind a computer all day and doesn’t get much exercise.

The price you pay

2006-04-11T20:13:13Z

The only drawback of Hip Hop is that the talented ones often go before their time. RIP Proof.

To the dark side…

2006-04-05T20:51:20Z

For those that want the best of both worlds, Apple gives us Bootcamp

Is it just coincidence?

2006-04-04T20:54:54Z

I’m a Wolves fan! There you go it’s out in the open, I feel a lot better.

Now on to the real reason for this post…

We’ve had some promising results of late and looked as if we would seise that last playoff spot. So on season ticket deadline day I decided to renew my ticket saving a few quid in the “Early Bird” scheme – a couple of people I know didn’t renew theirs the season we were promoted and got stung by an increase of £200+.

So am I cynical or is it just coincidence that the last two games after this deadline we’ve lost and put in arguably the worst performances all season.

Still, could be worse, I could support Derby County 😉

Rob dogs!

2006-03-24T19:58:20Z

Just visited SimpleBits and noticed Dan’s new website has been copied already… scum! If you are small brained enough to copy someone’s site, please at least change CSS declarations etc.

Reminds me of a certain website that copied Stop Design not so long back, the name and url elude me but… I’ve suddenly got the words “high five yakshimash” come into my head.

Dan Cederholm pixel pushes again

2006-03-21T21:32:59Z

The man behind SimpleBits has updated his site, very nice it is too.

RSS Feed

2006-03-17T21:59:52Z

Finally sorted my RSS feed out, so if your interested you can grab my feed here.

Web Developer Accreditations

2006-03-15T23:22:35Z

I’ve been thinking these last couple of years that we need some sort of government accreditation within our industry. An ISO/BSI accredited certification would give clients more confidence when choosing a suitable web development company.

Kevin Leitch mentioned it a while back and John Oxton has recently brought up the subject again while mulling over the PAS 78 Guide to Good Practice in Commissioning Accessible Websites.

Having read this guide now it gives me extra confidence when I battle against trying to make websites as accessible as possible without compromising the design. But having a particular accreditation would really help to show this to potential clients who aren’t aware of these guidelines.

Is there anything on the horizon so we can all be properly accessed to ~~exterminate the amateurs~~ accredit those who care?

I is a Multipack Member I is

2006-02-10T20:42:12Z

I’m a certified member of Multipack now, never been to one of these web ‘meetups’ for fear of bumping in to a geek maniac off the Tinternet. But looking at the member list I think I’ll be pretty safe as long as the big Welsh lad doesn’t turn up! 😛

I’ve had some glasses

2006-02-09T20:29:51Z

To my surprise I’ve recently been prescribed glasses. I say surprise because I felt I had pretty good vision and only rarely suffered eye strain.

I went to my local D&A to get my prescription and order my glasses. I’ve now been wearing my glasses all week and my eyes feel like I’ve been out for an all nighter with the love child of Oliver Reed and Pete Docherty.

Is this just normal, and me getting used to them?

iLife

2006-01-17T19:27:30Z

Got my hands on iLife over the weekend, first impressions are that it looks quite a nice upgrade. I think the Photocasting via RSS will be quite handy when distributing my photos to family and friends, unfortunately you’ll need a Mac with iLife to get the most out of it.

iWeb looks quite a nice program too, it looks so much like a program I downloaded a couple of months ago – the name temporarily eludes me – can anyone help? Unfortunately the code it spits out isn’t too clever Todd Dominey sums it up quite well.

Apple Announcements

2005-10-11T10:35:40Z

New iPods and iMacs have just been announced over at Apple. While I was expecting an update for the iPod, the iMac update came as a surprise, who would have thought that it would come before the Powerbooks.

Not sure about the iTunes up date though! I can see why people would want to watch and listen to their music video but why anyone would want to watch an episode on their favourite TV programme on such a small screen is beyond me. For Christ’s sake Apple I thought it was supposed to be “the year of High Definition Video”

Gotta get me one of these!

2005-09-08T14:10:57Z

I gotta get myself one of these!

They have got the right balance of size and features now, I always thought the iPod was a little large even the iPod Mini would have been noticeable in your pocket and the iPod shuffle was pointless, who really doesn’t want to be able to choose what songs they listen to some of the time?

But this, well this is just gonna sell.

Who was your first?

2005-08-11T09:31:15Z

I first used an RM Nimbus at school with Pagemaker 2 but I can’t really count that as I didn’t know what I was doing on it.

So discounting the above my first computer was the Macintosh II vx, a lovely little beast that was the blame for my love of Macs.

What was your first and do you look back in fondness?