I have decided to hold back on some of the posts I have created, as I know for a fact now I am working I will need to write all the blog content in advance, just starting to build up a selection of posts/articles to keep this blog alive.
So this post is going to be a bit different I will be posting my selection of blog posts I have read this week and enjoyed. Some are just funny silly videos, some are normal clever articles.
Firstly, Jon Wheatley of j0n.org posted a video after picking up a tablet off the floor thinking it was proplus. Ofcourse it wasn’t and the effects can be seen in the video on the post.
Secondly, James McDonald has been busy this past week creating post after post. He posted a list of 10 Top E-Commerce Website Designs, of course these were his personal opinion but he has chosen wisely. A great post for some ideas/inspiration for any E-Commerce sites your working on or planning.
Thirdly, HTML 5 Specs have been released. Been clouded over by talks about an IE6 autoupdate as well as IE8 talk, SitePoint has posted a quick overview for people who don’t want to read the whole spec.
Finally just around the corner from the 383 office a rather random natural wonder happened. I give you The Birmingham Geyser.
Just one of the questions I was emailed these past 2 weeks. Well I have now found time to quickly answer this question.
I have got myself a job, after looking on and off for about a year. On Monday 21st I started working as a freelancer for a creative agency called 383project. The work I do for them is basically coding their wonderful designs into XHTML & CSS, as well as script integration (things like Wordpres & e107). I work for 3 days a week for them and the guys are nice enough to let me work the other 2 days in the office to do my own work without any distractions, like the ones I would get working at home.
My first week went very well, I was a bit nervous on the first day. But now it feels like i’ve been working there for months. I actually look forward to getting into the office to start working on whatever is on my to-do list. The list tends to grow day by day just as fast as I cross things off.
So thats my answer to ‘Where have you been?’. I will hopefully post quite a few posts this week focusing on blogs I started to read in 2007 and how they interest me and how they might interest you.
Firstly, CSSHive gained a new feature a few days back. This feature allows sites that are submitted to CSSHive to become the featured site of the day, which means they will be featured on the homepage with a bigger screenshot. If your site becomes featured ultimately you can be sure that your traffic for that day will shoot up. So go and submit your sites.
I am personally very proud to have been part of CSSHive and its creation, its seems to be doing very well so far which is something thats always nice to know about a project you have worked on.
Secondly, I had an interview on Monday and fingers crossed I will hear something in the next few days. I am currently waiting for an email with a test project for me to complete and send back to them. Personally I think the interview went great, and my experience with e107. went down well. I showed them e107 running on my laptop and I would say they liked what they saw instantly.
Thirdly, My e107 guide/manual project hasn’t really progressed in the last week but after I have finished up some client work and done some of my own work I will be focusing more of my time writing away to get a quite sizable guide/manual out. Other work I am doing for e107 may also slow the writing down but it will be worth it.
Lastly, I updated a few of my e107Advent themes since my last blog post. Details of the updates can be seen on the e107Advent website. More updates will be coming soon.
Its been a while since I did a ‘review/plug’ of a fellow blogger, this time its the turn of Josh Buckley.
I recently starting reading Josh’s blog after Jon Wheatley mentioned him on his video blog a few times.
So who is Josh Buckley? He is a 15 year old, internet entrepreneur from England, UK. He has been interviewed many times, just recently he was interviewed by retire@21, the interview can be found here. To find out more about him visit his blogs about page.
Just 2 days ago Josh set out to have his redesigned blog up within 24 hours and I can happily say he managed it and it looks superb. Its a vast improvement on the last design and just makes the blog so much nicer to read.
I haven’t really spoken to Josh, apart from a few quick emails back and fourth after commenting on his blog for the first time. He even managed to call me James in one of them. However if you need someone to look up too then Josh is the guy, his blog is a good read too!
Last year I went to the Internet World exhibition in London, and while I was there I found a neat little site that was launched at the show. The site allowed you to download a toolbar for Firefox or Internet Explorer then you were able to bookmark sites using the toolbar using ‘Jumptags‘.
This toolbar allows you to search your tags, so if you typed in forum you would get all the sites that you tagged with the word forum, you can then click on the site you wish to visit and it would take your browser to the site. I then stopped using the toolbar after upgrading my iMac and Macbook.
Just yesterday I received an email letting me know about a new feature of the site, it allows you to add a tag cloud of your Jumptags to your website. I have created a new Jumptags account, and have added this tag cloud to my sidebar. I will be adding more Jumptags as I find sites that I like. I think this is a pretty neat feature, it allows any visitors to my blog to see sites that I am interested in and that they may also be interested in.
For more information about Jumptags go and read their blog, more importantly read this for an understanding of why Jumptags is beyond social bookmarking.
As my CMS of choice is e107 and I am happy to announce that v0.7.11 was released yesterday. This release will most likely be the last release of the 0.7 branch. Its is a bugfix release like the past few releases. Unless a security issue, large bug or anything else crops up that requires attention this will be the last 0.7 release.
The e107 development team are now going to focus on 0.8. Instead of working on both the 0.7 and 0.8 branch’s, they can focus on the one and devote there efforts solely on 0.8. Currently there is no idea when 0.8 will be out, i’d take a guess at a few months till see see it been released.
In the mean time you can of course grab a copy of the CVS files. My CVS updates will resume soon when I am back in Birmingham.
I am excited to announce that Adam Roberts has released CSSHive, A CSS gallery that is ‘A Hive full of dangerously hot webdesign’.
I have been working for Adam the last few weeks, coding CSSHive. Its been a great way of learning more about Wordpress. As well as that its been great to work with such a talented designer on such a great project.
I coded CSSHive in return for 2 designs, one of which was released for e107Advent. Its been a pleasure to work with Adam and look forward to working with him again in the future.
I’d like to wish everyone who visits this blog a Happy New Year.
After several months searching for a job, I am hoping that 2008 brings me more luck and that by the end of the year I can be funding myself and several of my projects I want to get off the ground. My main goal for the year is to get a full time job in web development.
Once I do get a job I want to start thinking about ‘flying the nest’ so to speak. I’d love to have my own space to manage projects from. Hopefully this time next year I can be writing this post from my own place. We’ll see.