Random Quote
Sleep is a symptom of caffeine deprivation.
---- Author Unknown
Always be wary of any helpful item that weighs less than its operating manual.
---- Terry Pratchett
"It was on my fifth birthday that Papa put his hand on my shoulder and said, 'Remember, my son, if you ever need a helping hand, you'll find one at the end of your arm.'"
---- Sam Levenson
I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask them where they're going and hook up with them later.
---- Mitch Hedberg
Don't knock the weather. If it didn't change once in a while, nine out of ten people couldn't start a conversation.
---- Kin Hubbard
As soon as I buy the moose head, I have to go pick up some KY jelly.
---- Mary Roninette Kowal
If the English language made any sense, a catastrophe would be an apostrophe with fur.
---- Doug Larson
A magician pulls rabbits out of hats. An experimental psychologist pulls habits out of rats.
---- anonymous
Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain.
---- Lily Tomlin
The important thing is not to stop questioning.
---- Albert Einstein
As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life - so I became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls.
---- M. Cartmill
Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain.
---- Lily Tomlin
We don't know a millionth of one percent about anything.
---- Thomas A. Edison
Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence.
---- Abigail Adams (1744 - 1818)
I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.
---- Isaac Asimov
The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.
---- George Orwell
To have another language is to possess a second soul.
---- Charlemagne
Those who know nothing of foreign languages, knows nothing of their own.”
---- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749 -1832)
Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.
---- Robert Frost
There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot, but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun.
---- Pablo Picasso
I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him.
---- Galileo Galilei
Study without desire spoils the memory, and it retains nothing that it takes in.
---- Leonardo DaVinci (1452-1519)
I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.
---- Thomas A. Edison
Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths theater.
---- Gail Godwin
I'll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there's evidence of any thinking going on inside it.
---- Terry Pratchett
No More Web Design
I’ve set up a new blog where I’ll be writing all of my entries related to web design, free lancing, and setting up a small business. The point here is that I won’t be cluttering up this space with unrelated material. For the record I have a paying client and am just waiting for the deposit before starting work - I’ll post a link to the finished product once I finish it.
This blog will continue to recieve my attention and regular posts as my full-time job is still teaching and I will continue to write articles for the Korea Herald. I have two scheduled articles for July. Though like every other vacation period, posting will be light.
Just a reminder that guest authoring is still available to anyone and I am actively looking for semi-regular contributors though one off posts are also very welcome. If you have any questions please send me an email or leave a comment.
Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Tuesday Jun 24, 2008 at 04:08 PM
Random_Ramblings | Web Design | Guest Author | web_site |
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Beyond Captcha
Interesting post on Captcha technology.
It’s not about the web site
Advice for designers re: client meetings - found via EE forums
Every Web designer probably has his or her own approach to conducting creative discovery meetings with clients. Surely there is more than one way to skin a cat, but I believe that among the many there are more effective ways and less effective ways.
Re-Design Complete - EFLGeek 3.0
I’ve completed the redesign of this web site and it is now live. It’s been three years since I had a new look and the last one was a template available that I just modified. This new look I created from the ground up. I hand coded everything, XHTML, CSS and Expression Engine dynamic tags. It’s really been a great learning experience for me and I’ve definitely improved my understanding of CSS.
EFLGeek 3.0 - skipping 2.0 cause geeks do that!EFLGeek 3.0 - skipping 2.0 cause geeks do that! yeah! Personally I’ve gotten a little tired of all the hype surrounding 2.0 web sites and software upgrades to 2.0.51.3.6 so I decided to have a little fun with my blog name.
Before I get into anymore details I’m going to post up a screen shot of the blog as it’s looked for the past three years so I don’t forget. The image is quite long because my monitor is 22” in vertical profile - almost no vertical scrolling for me.
And a screen shot of the current version as i’m sure it will change in the future as well. One thing I’ve done is remove the forums and wiki since no one was using them. If enough interest were expressed, I would bring them back.
I’ve added a few little effects to the site - one that I particularly like is that now any link to a file (.pdf .pub .xls .pdf .zip) will now automatically have an icon appended to the link making it clearer what is a download and what is a web page. You can see it in action on my entry about powerpoint jeopardy.
I’ve also set up comments to use avatars. If you are a member of this site, then you can upload an avatar (100x100) or you can use a gravatar (80x80 - maximum size allowed by gravatar plugin). If you don’t do either than your comment will end up with a generic silhouette avatar. I like avatars because it can really help regular readers to identify each other visually and adds a little style and class to the comment page.
Technical Stuff
I learned a lot by reading CSS Mastery which is co-authored by Simon Collision who just happened to have created my previous look. I also ready Principles of Beautiful Web Design and various web sites. The Expression Engine forums has a very helpful community that I could not live without.
Probably my greatest assistance came from Andy Harris, an active member on the Expression Engine forums - he seemed to be paying special attention to my twitters and posts on the forums and even went so far as to offer me extensive advice via email. Through Andy I came to discovered Firebug (firefox extension) and the IE Developer Toolbar which are indispensable for web development. Andy also ensured that I learned how to add a seperate style sheet to deal with the troubles that come from internet explorer.
I’ve always enjoyed playing around with photoshop, but that has mostly been with photo touch up. Making backgrounds for the web was a learning experience. I’m sure I have a lot to learn still - I think my site might be a little slow to load as I didn’t do a particularly great job with optimizing images. The problem I had was that compression resulted in a horrible look. I need to learn how to design so that my images can be compressed without getting destroyed in the process.
There are still a couple of minor changes to be done to the look. I need to add the dynamic comment preview, as well as buttons for HTML code in comments. I haven’t yet decided if I want to go with the show/hide option with extended text that I had in the previous look. For now, I’ll just have a link to the rest of the entry. I also want to add the ability to edit comments for a limited time after submission.
Please do come and take a look at the site and tell me what you think in the comments as well as vote in the poll.
Read the rest of this post
Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Wednesday Jun 4, 2008 at 03:46 PM
Random_Ramblings | Polling_Station | Web Design | web_site |
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Bamboo Invoice
http://www.bambooinvoice.org/ is potentially useful for once I get my web design biz running.
advice on getting into web design from Derek Allard.
Client Red Flags
Potential client red flags - a good post for me to keep bookmarked for future references - i.e. when I start making money in web design.
Web design is Math
if web design were math, XHTML = addition, CSS = basic algebra and Javascript = quantam mechanics with a dash of super string theory. Essentially, XHTML seems basic, CSS is a little tricky but with practice should get easy and javascript is like talking to an alien from another universe.
Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Friday May 2, 2008 at 07:18 AM
Web Design | CSS | javascript/JQUERY | XHTML |
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XHTML templates
good XHTML & CSS skeleton templates to use for new projects at particle tree.
Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Tuesday Apr 29, 2008 at 10:46 PM
Web Design | CSS | XHTML |
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CSS text wrapper
Web Design My column
I’ve added 1 new category and 3 subcategories related to web design to this blog: Web Design - CSS - javascript/JQuery - XHTML. I’ll be using these categories to write about what I’m doing in my drive to improve my web design/development skills. To keep the footprint a minimum on the blog I’ll include 95% of the entries in the extended entry and create a separate RSS feed just for those three categories as well as removing them from the regular RSS feed - but that will have to wait until I catch up on grading.
So far I have read Principles of Beautiful Web Design, CSS Mastery (twice), and ordered Beginning JavaScript with DOM Scripting and Ajax: From Novice to Professional.
I found Principles of Beautiful Web Design to be an excellent book. I particularly enjoyed the chapters on color theory and typography. CSS Mastery is really well written, reading it a second time has really helped to clear up some of the principles that I hadn’t really gotten the first time around and I’m looking forward to putting them into practice. I know nothing about Javascript and am looking forward into learning this language and what it can do - hopefully this book is as good as it sounds and an engaging read as well.
In other news I’ve just been informed that my next two columns for the Korea Herald are slated to be 1000 words each. I’ll probably write on motivation for one and on professional development for the other.
Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Thursday Apr 24, 2008 at 09:06 PM
Web Design | KH Column |
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