Category Archives: Design & Programming

Frameworks

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There are so many PHP Frameworks out there. I’ve used CakePHP and am using CodeIgniter. There are several other ones out there Symphony, Yii, Kohana and many many many more. I’m having a hard time deciding if I want to learn another php framework.

I really like CodeIgniter. I love the light weight footprint, but it’s missing a few things that I get sick of writing. Namely CRUD features for admin panels. I don’t mind writing the code just if you have a lot then it gets tiresome coding those by hand. I found GroceryCRUD which is nice, but it has it’s own templates, and I’m not sure I can integrate it into ones I’m looking into.

CodeIgniter also lacks an authentication system. There are many written, but I think I’m going to stick with writing one from scratch. While the code will typically the be same, I can at least customize it to my own needs as necessary.

Another plus to CodeIgniter and very few other PHP Frameworks is that the command line is not important. While this isn’t an issue for work related items as I have command line control, my own servers do not, so it makes it difficult to cross things in my learning process.

So I’m thinking of learning some other design framework – HTML5, CSS3 frameworks. I’ve actually been playing with HTML5 boilerplate and integrating it in to a template system.

There is another platform I’m thinking I might look into making apps with – Pokki. It’s like Adobe Air. I never quite got Adobe Air. I’m hoping Pokki will allow me to do things that I couldn’t figure out with Adobe Air. It’ll be interesting.

Neat New Toy

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I’ve been writing again, and I needed some simple descriptions. I looked on the internet for some random character description generators, and I did find a few, but most of them added things I really didn’t want. I just wanted a basic description not clothes or attitude or anything of that, just a basic description. Since I didn’t find one, I wrote one.

It requires JavaScript to be enabled, but it does what I need it to do. I can easily add additional things and I’ll probably tweak it more as necessary. It’s Ajax using jQuery. Love jQuery.

Random Basic Character Generator: Check it out if you wanna play. If you have anything you’d like to add, comment or email me and I’ll see what I can do.

Irony or not?

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Today WebAppers linked to a very interesting css file called Holmes.css. Basically it’s an inspector for your HTML to tell you what’s wrong with it visually. A great idea. And I’ll probably throw it try it out on my own webpage and see how horridly bad it’s coded since I know I was getting lots of errors and warnings on things cause of the ampersand and I’m not sure where it’s being coded wrong as I’m pretty sure it’s a plugin that’s doing it.

But as the designer appears to be in the UK I don’t know if they took the Holmes name from the HGTV show Holmes on Homes or Holmes Inspection. It’s probably not a coincidence. But you never know. This is a really good show, it’s even one of the building type shows that I enjoy watching. Shea learns a lot from him as he’s really up on the new construction technology. Shea’s found a lot of things he wants to use if he ever gets to build a house.

I wonder if the author has sent his script to Mike Holmes. I’m sure he’d get a chuckle out of it.

New Theme

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I’ve had a keen desire to make something – rather to code something, I didn’t have an inspiration but I knew I could code up a base template for WordPress. So I started from scratch. I think I have 3 iterations of various from scratch themes, but this one was truly from scratch. I started with no baseplate. I used the Twenty Ten theme to make sure I didn’t forget things and to pull things out of but I didn’t use the template as a whole, just some techniques in it.

My new theme is HTML5 compliant. It works in all modern browsers and I hope it degrades well in all the others. I haven’t checked any thing other than the modern browsers as of yet, but I will. The theme is 3.1 ready with post formats for asides, links and images. I’m using a bit of CSS3 as well in border radius and gradients and a few other odds and ends. My goal was to make the site pretty with minimal graphics. I’m using google web fonts for all fonts on the site except the site name which is my standard graphic logo.

I’ve also used pages instead of Next and Previous Links on the index, archive and search pages to keep things a bit more accessible and to see how much you have left to browse through.

Not sure there is much else anyone would be interested in. But it’s a new look one that I hope to keep around for a while. And it might change a bit as the times go on and I get bored, this will be an easy one for me to just change up the CSS to make the site look different.

Unmotivated

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I am very unmotivated this week. I don’t have the energy to do my work outs so I don’t do them. This is going to be a bad week for it and next week isn’t going to be any better either. This week is pre-preschool week and I’m attempting to set schedule with the girls, tho for Kitten 7am rolls around too early for her and she’s not hungry so I’m not sure what I can do about that. The only good thing is she’ll have a snack in preschool, but I fear she’ll be hungry most of the morning. I have a new cereal which we will try tomorrow at 7am. We’ll see how it goes.

I am a 7am alarm and an 11am alarm set now, I hope I remember to set them on Monday after I turn them off for the weekend lol. I don’t think I’ll forget but it’s one of those lovely fears I have about this.

Next week will be a big adjustment with Sammi and that isn’t going to go well, she doesn’t do well with out her sister around – she’s very clingy. So I doubt I’ll get much done until she adjust fully.

I need to redo my portfolio for my freelancing but I can’t find something that I’ve created that reflects my work and me at the same time. The creativity for personal projects isn’t there right now. But I need a look I’m happy with so I can finish my brochure as I’ve got the last of the testimonials I was waiting on so I can finish that up.

I didn’t lose any weight this week. Lack of exercise I’m sure is the key to that. This week hasn’t started any better either.

My brother and his fiancee are getting married this weekend so that also causes some unmotivated as I’d rather be there but we can’t. We knew we weren’t going but it still kinda disappointing we couldn’t go even if we had planned on it.

On an up-note, Shea’s son is home from Iraq. He to the last of my knowledge was on his way down here with his mother. Hopefully we’ll get to see him while he’s down here. I won’t have his son with him, he hasn’t even seen him yet *frowns* but at least we’ll get to see him and he’ll get to see how big the girlies have gotten. Hopefully they won’t send him out again.

Good and Bad News

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Good news first – wordpress 3.0 has been released, bring on the new goodies, tho I do have other things to worry about and do before I can really get into a lot of it.

Bad news – no vacation for us. I really don’t want to get into it right now, but shit hit the fan and now we have to cope, we are going to save this money and hope we can get by until things settle down.

We miss everyone at home and maybe we’ll see ya’ll again sometime soon.

Banned lol

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Shea just told me I was banned from redesigning my websites until I finish my project.

This said project Shea believes could make some money. What I’ve been calling Cooks Cart. I still have a lot of work to do. I guess I’ll have to push myself harder on it. Probably after I get back from vacation. 9 days till we leave, yay!

New Theme

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Yeah yeah I know I change my themes alot, but it’s my play ground and I enjoy doing so. I have another idea skittering around in my head so this may not last very long, but I liked it so I wanted to get it up and showing before I changed it yet again. This theme has been waiting to be converted from PSD to wordpress theme for a while now.