Has it really been that long?
Wow – to say I’ve been busy is an understatement but I didn’t think it had been that long since I posted. Well here’s hoping I can be a bit more regular – need to write more anyway ;-)
So read this awesome tutorial on Abuzeedo about a cool portrait effect and thought I’d have a crack. Reasonably happy with the results as it happens!
Do you value those around you … a haiku for Rafiki le Cygnet
His star seemed so bright
but he did not know her worth
Without her, nothing- joe73K, July ’13
That constant drive to just make it “that” much better!
Wrapping my head around this whole WordPress thing when you’ve been a web-dev for 15 years can really take some getting used to. When you are used to cutting your own code you tend to do thinks in a very straight-forward manner. Over the last little while I’ve been adapting my brain to the Ultimatum theme which is a “meta-theme” if you will. It allows you to actually create your own layouts and themes with a “drag-n-drop” interface. I’m really starting to get the hang of it (finally) but I think I’m going to have a play-around with building my own themes from scratch and see how that compares. Perhaps I’ll be able to create some hybrid-theme which will give me what I’m after … I’m sure I won’t be the first one to try.
As for this blog I wasn’t 100% happy with my initial base template – the HTML + CSS was just a little bit kludgy and I’ve learnt a massive amount in the few months since I put it online so I’ve given her a slight make-over :) Mostly just tidied up a whole lot of bad CSS and structure that was unnecessary, but I’ve given the content area a bit more breathing room, adding some nice touches (well I think they are) to the post view such as the date “tag” hanging off the side.
I haven’t done a whole lot of cross-browser testing as yet so I don’t expect it will play nice with anything but the latest browsers. I’m also looking forward to thinking my way through how I will make the layout responsive, right now she’s not all that good on a mobile device.
My final upgrade for this round was the header. I think its a def improvement – really loving the font (thanks Google Webfonts!!!) After posting the header up on the site I realised it was kinda perfect for a Facebook cover pic … bahahahahaha … so I combined it and the team.LUCiD chalkboard motif to come up with the following :-P I wonder what the reaction will be to it … hee hee hee.
Finding that new corporate style – an adventure in design-land
Been doing quite a bit of design work of late which is truly a joy. I’ve been wanting to refresh the team.LUCiD site for quite some time but hadn’t found a design that clicked … until tonight. I wanted something fresh but that I hadn’t seen before. The idea of a chalkboard popped into my head and so I went with the inspiration and I’m glad to announce that the refresh is almost complete.
Part of the process was creating a new Facebook page for the company and I wanted to use the new style across the board. With that in mind I created a header image for the Facebook page and also one for my Twitter profile. Now here’s hoping someone notices the changes :-P
Well hello TDD you sexy minx … finally we meet!
Learning TDD has been on my hitlist for quite some time – and today I finally forced myself to take out an hour and actually take the first step! Having never actually used a testing framework before (yes yes … rather shocking I know) its all seemed a little imposing.
Thanks to the Ruby Weekly I found this great video featuring Jim Weirich. In the video he does a live coding session showing the basics of how it works. Now I realise there must be thousands of videos/tutorials/articles out there that cover the same topic – but this one worked for me. Jim also introduced to me the concept of a “Code Kata” – an idea that I’m quite excited about and want to integrate into my dev habits.
So – if you have 45mins and a desire to actually get a quick but practical demo of what TDD is and how it works then this is the video for you!
