Website launch, Sky, Devo, offpsring.
Well, not blogged much for a bit, been very busy at work the last couple of weeks getting a couple of websites finished off.
The first of which was for the School of Media Arts & Imaging at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design. We’re pretty happy at work with way it’s turned out really, it’s really two sites in one with the addition of an all-new Research portal focusing on all the interesting work going on in the School.
Interestingly it’s now 10 years since I graduated from this very school (known then and until just recently as the School of Television and Imaging though) with my degree in Time Based Art, time flies!
Sky / Virgin Media update
I haven’t mentioned Sky / Virgin Media for a while, I’ve now switched from Virgin over to Sky. So I now have access to Sky One and therefore ‘Lost’ again! What’s more it’s cheaper than I was paying for my Virgin Media package. The Sky broadband is pretty good although I do have criticisms of the setup a little bit, however it does seem to run pretty fast. Virgin for sure will have faster speeds in future but for now 8Mb is pretty awesome.
My main criticism of the broadband is that it comes as a supposedly non-user editable setup. The free router is basically a Netgear router with a slightly amended firmware which comes packaged specifically for Sky. What you can’t do is login to the web-based Admin system and configure it, it comes with the SSID and password preset as well as the connection details. However, I wanted to get into it so a quick google search came up with the goods. You can use a username of ‘admin’ and password ‘sky’. Hardly tight security! Anyway, I’ve now logged in and changed the security from wpa to wep and changed the password too.
It did make for an easy setup but I still think they should provide this information to allow some customers to get into the box and make changes as it is a pretty basic security setup by default. Also some may want to make use of the content filtering / scheduling to control access to the internet etc.
Devo
I’ve been a big fan of the band Devo for years and they are playing a gig at Glasgow Academy on Sunday June 24th.
I’m hoping to go and check them out, it’s probably one of the few opportunities I’ll get to see them play.
Oh yeah, offspring!
Nope, not the band! I mean my wife Annie is pregnant! Yep, I’m going to be a Dad again! The first scan is due very soon so I’ll post a picture of course for any family members or other interested parties!
That’s all for now!
~Rick
A Kodak moment…
Remember that phrase?
Looks like it’s back… with a vengeance! ;)
Four Mysteries of the Universe…
Update: I originally posted this as ‘Three mysteries of the universe’, then I thought of another one so I’ve updated to four!
Here are three four mysteries of the Universe:
- Adobe’s European pricing for the CS3 suites
- Availability of AVCHD capable video editing software
- When are Apple finally going to ditch the really old Mac OSX 10.2-ish looking aqua pin-stripe header / main navigation graphics from their website.
- Will there ever be a new version of Director released by Adobe?
~Rick
Take the “A List Apart Web Design Survey”
A List Apart are running a Web Design survey to gather statistics about the people involved in the web design industry around the world. They’re after as many as people as possible to take the survey to help gather these statistics, so I’d encourage you to take it if you work in the web design industry or even if web design is just a small part of your job. Your input will be of great use, I’m personally looking forward to the final results of the survey!
Here’s a bit of info from their website:
Designers, developers, project managers. Writers and editors. Information architects and usability specialists. People who make websites have been at it for more than a dozen years, yet almost nothing is known, statistically, about our profession. Who are we? Where do we live? What are our titles, our skills, our educational backgrounds? Where and with whom do we work? What do we earn? What do we value?
It?s time we learned the answers to these and other questions about web design. And nobody is better qualified than the readers of A List Apart to provide the answers. Participate in our first annual survey to increase knowledge of web design and boost respect for the profession. Selected participants, chosen by random drawing, will win one free ticket to An Event Apart event held in the continental U.S.; an Apple 30GB video iPod, an Event Apart jump drive, or a funky A List Apart T-shirt.
~Rick
Yummy Adobe CS3 Goodness
I’ve now got the Adobe CS3 Web Premium Suite installed on my Mac, very nice it is too!
I’m planning on writing some more about some of the new features once I spend a bit more time with the suite as a whole.
Other news
Other news is Alyn’s website seemed to get hacked yesterday somehow, but it’s all fixed now. Oh wait, that reminds me, AJ has gone into labour! ;)
~Rick
Naked CSS Day ’07
If you are visiting this site on the 5th of April then don’t worry, the site isn’t broken! If you’re visiting after the 5th of April then you won’t see what I’m talking about. The reason this site looks (or looked) ‘funny’ is because all of the stylesheets for the site are disabled to promote Web Design according to Web Standards.
“CSS Naked Day ’07” is a concerted effort by a whole heap of people online to promote the design and development of web sites according to Web Standards. The initiative was started last year by Dustin Diaz who explains it by saying:
The idea behind this event is to promote Web Standards. Plain and simple. This includes proper use of (x)html, semantic markup, a good hierarchy structure, and of course, a good ‘ol play on words. It’s time to show off your <body>.
Hopefully my site looks ok in all of it’s naked CSS glory :)
If you don’t know anything about CSS or Web Standards then go take a look at these resources for a quick starting point:
- Web Standards
- CSS Zen Garden
- A List Apart
- Designing with Web Standards (book)
- 456 Berea Street
- Bulletproof Web Design (book)
- Web Standards Solutions (book)
Anyway, that’s just a few links for starters, there’s lot’s of good stuff there. The “Designing with Web Standards” book is a great introduction to the whole concept, and the last two books are great for taking your skills further forwards. All three are really well written and are essential books to read in my opinion.
~Rick
BlogoMaid – Truly Original Blog Templates
The recent SimpleBits LogoMaid logo debacle made me imagine what kind of blog template ripoffs might be out there so I started to make a few just for fun!
If I was on the ball then this would have made a good opportunity for an April fools gag but unfortunately I didn’t think about it until later on!
BlogoMaid company logo
Sample Blog template #1
Sample Blog template #2
I hope Dan Benjamin and John Gruber don’t mind me using their sites for this little bit of fun!
~Rick
Part Two – Why does UK hosting suck compared to the US?
It’s been a couple of weeks since I posted the first part of this series of articles comparing the UK and US web hosting scenes. There was a quick flurry of activity in the comments of the last post. A few commenters seemed to get the wrong idea that I was primarily focused on the price of US hosting compared to the UK, that I thought hosting was cheaper in the US, Whilst I do think hosting is cheaper in the US there are still plenty of cheap options over here if you want to get hosted on a budget 1 and 1 Internet, Fasthosts, Webfusion etc etc all offer very cheap webhosting packages. However, the focus of my comparison is more to do with overall quality of hosting, the unique and specialised hosting options available in the US at a more competitive price than would be found in the UK.
In my last post I complained about the fact that I have 3 different hosting setups to provide what I need, a Fasthost Reseller account, a couple of WebFusion VPS accounts and a Fasthosts Dedicated server (read the previous article for more on why I have this setup currently). Well, to add to that mix I have since signed up for a hosting account with Mosso.com. I am basically planning on moving everything that currently runs on the VPS accounts over to Mosso. Why did I choose Mosso? Well, here’s the basic feature set / price point:
- 80 GB of disk space
- 2000 GB of bandwidth
- Online control panel
- Full System Administration
- Managed Backup & Security
- Includes 24 x 7 Support
- Based on Rackspace’s 100% Uptime network SLA
- $100 per month
Basically for less than the cost of the two VPS accounts I get all that capacity, now, you need to go and read all the tech spec on the Mosso site to fully understand the setup but it’s basically a load-balanced cluster setup, they describe it on their own site like this:
Put succinctly, The Hosting System is advanced, enterprise-level hosting technology and easy-to-use software that beats the pants off of running your own server?and costs less, too.
That pretty much sums it up. It’s not cheap hosting, but it is great value for money. The fact that they’re based on the Rackspace network is encouraging. Rackspace have a very good name in hosting, they’re one of the companies that has made the jump ‘across the pond’ and does provide high level managed hosting services in the UK. However, it comes at a price, you probably won’t get a server for anything less than £300 a month from them, but the quality service they provide also serves Mosso so this makes $100 a month seem like a bargain.
(Features + Quality) ÷ Money = Value
As I’ve said, I’m not looking at the lowest price, but more along the lines of the pseudo-equation above. It’s the features offered by a webhost and the quality of them along with the amount they cost that represents the best option. I just think the services offered by US webhosts such as Mosso (The Hosting System), MediaTemple (GridServer) and TextDrive (Accelerator) (and EngineYard if you’re looking for Rails hosting) offer a better answer to the equation than you will find in the UK.
I’ve not really written about what I had planned for Part 2 of this series, mainly because of the point I wanted to clarify since the comments on the last post. However, hopefully in part 3 I’ll get down to doing a bit more of a closer look at the three hosting options provided by Mosso, MediaTemple and TextDrive.
~Rick
LogoMaid: This kind of flattery will get you nowhere…
There’s been a bit of a storm going on recently on the net due to the disregard for intellectual property shown by various companies. First there was the ripping off of both the Joyent website and Corkd (see Dan Benjamin’s Flickr picture for the resulting hybrid ripoff!), now there is a big stir about LogoMaid and their use of several well known logos amongst some of their logos for sale.
The main stir at the moment relates to Dan Cederholm’s SimpleBits logo and this one by LogoMaid:
In an ongoing Flickr discussion thread LogoMaid insist that they’ve done nothing wrong (they even hinted that they’d consider suing Dan Cederholm for his use of his logo!), overall it’s pretty crazy.
Here’s a few other dubious examples from LogoMaid’s catalogue:
- Apple Inc logo
- Panic software’s icon
- Godbit logo – Read the post ‘LogoMaid – Imitation or Theft?‘ and compare logos
I agree with the sentiment of the article I just mentioned, so I’ve written this post to help raise some attention to this kind of abuse of ideas and images. If you’re planning on purchasing logos from somewhere like LogoMaid then it’s worth being wary. LogoMaid claim “Over 3600 unique and non-unique logos to choose from”, the problem is some of those logos truly are “non-unique” and were created by someone else. You may find that you get an unexpected surprise when the rightful creator of your new logo takes action to protect their creation from being abused.
Caveat emptor
~Rick