Quick Listen: Aerosmith Pink
Posted somewhere around 45 minutes ago
There is a fat chick dancing in her underwear in this video. You are warned!
iPod Touch/iPhone Shelf Wallpapers
Posted somewhere around 7 days ago
Shelf wallpapers are still a bit scarce since not everyone and their mom is making them. Yet. These are just a few of my favourites I keep on my iPod Touch to change things up every so often.
Posted In: iPod Touch & Resources
Salvation Army Mismanagement?
Posted somewhere around 8 days ago
Last week I went to the local Salvation Army with my parents and we were shocked to see an employee, hereafter referred to as Anne, selling things out of the back of a truck as they were being unloaded for donation to the store.
As Anne was picking through things she started calling her friends to come look at a couple of side tables and a coffee table. Those friends called a few more friends and before you could blink an eye there were people buying things off the back of the and out of the front of the store! Historically Anne is pretty tight-fisted when it comes to everything. No one can buy anything that wasn’t looked at and priced by her. People have tried, including us, but it’s a no go unless Anne really likes you.
Monster Dash
Posted somewhere around 8 days ago
I honestly didn’t expect to enjoy the game as much as I have so far. The thing the really sold me was that it’s so reminiscent of Serious Sam, Duke Nukem and Half Life!
The controls are so simple it’s almost funny. There are two buttons on either side of the screen. One makes the hero jump, the other fires his gun, he does all the running so all you have to worry about is jumping over spikes, gaps and the odd mummy.
Posted In: iPod Touch & Resources
Listening To: Accept
Posted somewhere around 11 days ago
Balls To The Wall
This is one of their first hits and the only one on this page without the original lead singer, Udo Dirkschneider.
My Favourite Textpattern Plugins and Themes
Posted somewhere around 11 days ago
This is a current1 list of plugins that I love having installed on my site. My favourite plugin probably would have to be smd_admin_themes and my favourite theme is called Stung – by Zander Martineau.
You might recognize a few familiar favourites that I’ve always used, but I have quite a few new finds to share with you so please check it out!
Posted In: Textpattern & Resources
Why I've Been Gone
Posted somewhere around 11 days ago
Everything you should know about the redesign has already been posted in The Big Redesign, so please read that before submitting any questions about the new look. This post is about why I’ve been gone and gets a little bit personal.
The Big Redesign
Posted somewhere around 11 days ago
It’s been almost a month in the making, but I’m finally rolling out the new look for Babblative! A few things have changed, actually a lot has changed, but not so much that it’s totally unrecognizable… I hope.
What’s New?
Most of the website was built from scratch, the most obvious holdovers being the X/HTML and styles (more on that in a bit) and the Textpattern tutorials. Other than that I ditched my old archives, abandoned most of the content and started fresh so that I could make my site make more sense for the both of us.
- I’m using a fair amount of new, totally great, plugins for Textpattern.
- The links page has been pared down to display only my favourites.
- All the navigation should be done either through the two links in the navigation above the content, categories on the right hand side or the links in the footer. Other than the About page there isn’t any subpage navigation.
- There’s a new category called music where I post my current favourites. I’m mostly into rock, but I like blues, metal and just about everything from the late 90s and early 00s.
- The link structure has changed slightly, I decided to stop using the style “section/article-name” style that I’ve been using for so long. It feels so much cleaner.
You might notice that I did away with tags, I think that I used to use tru_tags from Rainskit. I decided that the categories were more than enough navigation for this little site.
My main goal with this layout/site structure is to make it easier on me to update the website and easier for you guys to browse it. It doesn’t make a lot of sense for a site this small to use such a complicated subpage structure, especially one that only adds to visitor confusion and server load.
What’s Old?
I have to admit that I didn’t really keep a lot from the old site. I grabbed the tutorials that I thought were useful and a fair amount of old code, but that’s about it. I still have all of the old posts kicking around, but most of it is so far away from being useful that I can’t stand the idea of cluttering things up with it. If there’s something you really need that I didn’t bring over, try contacting me and we’ll try to work something out.
- Textpattern 4.2.0.
- The Textpattern tutorials are all back, including Your First Textpattern Theme which should still be compliant with 4.2.0, but I make no guarantees as of yet. Just know that I haven’t had any problems with importing my old templates into the new site.
- Most of the X/HTML and styles are recycled from my original website.
- No IE 6 support. IE 7 works, but the navigation is a bit off and IE 8 is just fine. You IE users also lose out on the pretty CSS3 effects.
I know HTML 5 is out and it’s apparently the shiznit. I’m going to wait until it’s just a little more widely adopted before I start rolling out an HTML 5 compliant layout. Also it would have meant building the site from the ground up and I’m more than a bit lazy, hah. Hence why I grabbed as much code from the old database as I could and took off running.
That’s not to say that I didn’t clean a lot of things up. If you take a peek at the stylesheet you’ll notice that I did away with quite a few of the dead styles that were cluttering it up so everything should load a teensy bit quicker now.
How?
Everything was built using Textpattern, of course, and Notepad++. Visitors are tracked with the free open source analytic software Piwik. The design was started in Photoshop and was tweaked and [mostly] finished in Pencil before being put to code.
If you have any questions, comments or concerns about the sites layout you can either comment or, better yet, send me an email and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.
Posted In: The Site & Web Design
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