Have just returned home from a sunny two weeks in Mallorca. It was a nice break and all involved had a great time, especially the kids.
We had a car for a few days to get out and explore the island a little away from the tourist resorts.
Below is a couple of pics from around Palma, Mallorca.
Check Mini album here
Add comment May 30th, 2007
Hamish, Rachel and family are off today, to begin a world tour. Very exciting stuff, looking forward to seeing the pics and hearing about their adventures.
A few words from Rachel
Our loose itinery at the moment is States..overlanding through mexico..into Hondurs central America…across the states ..from LA to cook islands then New zealand..both Islands..austrailia..brisbane melbourne and lots of overlanding…singapore..poss malaysia..then India before returning. There is apossibility of fitting Canada in..but looking unlikely at the moment. We must be slightly mad! but very excited too.
If you are interested in their progress, you can catch up with them through their blog.
2 comments May 2nd, 2007
As I write this my partner Jodi is whizzing cross country from Liverpool to London on the Virgin Pendolino tilting train.
She is speaking at a conference tomorrow, and during our text chat I asked what train she was on, so I could get a picture and shoot it back to her.
Geek
Nice pic, she then asked me if there was any stats. Geek
The technology of the day has turned me into a cyber trainspotter and I love it. I now know for example that the pendolino has a top speed of 135mph up from 125mph after track upgrades in 2005. It has seating for 439 passengers, but averages 224 per train, and emits 76% less CO2 than same journey by car or plane. This stat comes from a study by ECCM Ltd based on flights between London, Manchester, Glasgow and Liverpool. Are we to assume from this that cars produce the same emissions as planes.
Re-calculate your carbon footprint and re-book your overseas holidays..
Note: If you had wondered what OMFG is an abbreviation for, here is the long winded version to clarify.
Obscurus Mesozoic Fenestrosaurus Gizzard
1 comment April 30th, 2007
Just reading through a few e-mail news/web dev articles, when I came across this post on SitePoint Forums.
I decided to post this link just for the fun of it, some interesting comments along the way.Enjoy:
Add comment March 25th, 2007
Please read for intro: WordPress as a CMS
I have to document this in cyber land, or the chances are I will forget, or not be able to decipher my hand written notes.
So I have my basic design, and I’m using the Blix theme, because I am already familiar with it, as it provides the scaffolding for this blog.
With that in mind, and the fact that transmuting the theme to my will in the first instance was, lets say a task doing it all again for a new and totally different project presented more challenges.
There is out there a fairly heated debate as to the best platform for building dynamic sites. I like wordpress, but I also like corel photopaint opposed to photoshop, I guess it’s just the old familiarity.
I have intergrated the design with Blix and all seems good.
What I want to begin with is a static front page, but also have that page easily updatable by the client.
Small sites I have done in the past have always been down to me to update, so to have a non-designer come in with additions and customisation in mind presents some accesibility issues.
So back to wordpress, I think the interface is reasonably intuaitive, and if problems arise I can be on hand to guide the way.
Firstly: As basic as possible I copied the index.php file and saved it to a spans.php (whatever) this would allow me to use that template for created pages for the semi-static side of the site.
Secondly: Copied the index.php and saved it orig.php, so I have it in case of meltdown.
Thirdly: Deleted the posts loop from index.php so I can use all the good stuff without the clutter hitting the front page by default.
Please note, at this point I would love a highly qualified mentor!!
Been playing in code, I have the feeling again, when things begin to come together.
I am at this point going to show how to use WS_FTP LE
I think it might come in handy GO..
The project I’m working on as mentioned above required a static front page, and I have outlined how I planned to achieve this. Well anyway it didn’t work, i geuss it has something to do with the blix extended page functions, which ironically was the route of the probelm I am about to describe below.
Introducing the latest version of wordpress
I came across this whilst browsing for a solution to the static page quest. I was delighted to see that the latest version of WP came with the option to make a page static, (to take it out of the loop), and designate post pages to another location.
Excellent i thought and checked to see what dreamhosts’ version was. 2.1 to upgrade or install, and since the project is on the table in it early stages I thought i’d give it a shot.
Again it didn’t work, worse than that any created pages were not showing in the nav bar. I assumed it was to do with the tinkering on my part in customizing the design to mine.
A destryed database later and a reinstall and the same problem. What’s going on. flipped through a couple of themes and the navigation worked as expected. So it’s a blix thing. Major pain in the ass. It is to do with the extended special bx-functions.php. Not even begin to dabble with that code. So it has to be a new base theme, or a fix.
Not fully tested yet, but in early stages seems to work.
Check this development blog here for more details, and futher possibilities.
1 comment February 20th, 2007
As wordpress organizes and categorises posts, archives, all sorts of things, you think it would be a simple task to use it’s structure for a non-blog style website. With this in mind:
I have found myself high and dry above the web triangle, my compass spinning.
To use wordpress as cms for a non-blog website. I have a load of links: See below that I think will help accomplish this task.
I will build this site and document the progress, It will a be useful learning oppurtunity.
This post is just for general reference and a guide to myself as I without bearings head into the anything is possible with WP dimension.
To be fair I have been scratching my head a little, but now feel ready to undertake this task as a theoretical, hypothetical diversion into what might, or indeed could have been..
I have a site design nice-ish, needs a little work and was planning to use a content management system (CMS) to allow the owner of site the ability to update and maintain content.
With my move here to dreamhost many new and exciting options became available, and I initially looked at Joomla for the job. I don’t know perhaps I didn’t give it enough time, perhaps I am not up for the task, these thoughts have plagued my waking hours.
The urgency that was here to begin with has subsided, I feel now ready to undertake this coding challenge, and to make it beautiful..
Check these links:
WP as CMS
Page as front page
Inclued page
Add comment February 18th, 2007
