Archive for November, 2007:

It’s not long until Christmas now! I calculate about 27 days left until the big day…

This year has flown by, but no doubt 2008 will too. It has been over 2 years since we finished University, but it feels like only last month. Slickhouse has been using WordPress since November 2005 and Slickhouse.com was first registered on the 4th October, 2004.

Here’s to the last month of 2007 and the run-up to Christmas. I hope you like the Christmas-y feel going on here too!

P.S. You may need to hit ctrl + f5 to force your browser to reload the page - in case it’s caching the old (not-so-Christmas-y) background.

Thanks to Chris @ CSS-Tricks (for recommending the plugin), Slickhouse now has a ‘Subscribe to comments’ feature.

When replying to posts, simply tick the box below the Submit button that says “Notify me of followup comments via e-mail” and it’ll do exactly as it says on the tin, well screen.

For those of you using WordPress you can get the plugin (currently version 2.1) from TxFx.net. To implement it is a doddle.

This afternoon we managed to watch Episodes 21 and 22, the last of Prison Break Season One.

I thought we were at this stage a fortnight ago, as I’d only downloaded Episodes 1 - 14 of the first season - which meant when we started on Episode 2 of Season 2, there were a lot of unanswered questions. The prisoners had managed to escape, yet we hadn’t seen any of it.

A quick check on the official site proved us right - we were missing a few episodes. So for those of you thinking of downloading a TV series any time soon - check the seeder is actually seeding the whole series!

So, we’ve been catching up and have finally seen all 22 Episodes. And what a great season it is! The plot is great - even though you know they’ll make it out, it’s interesting to see WHO will actually make it and what trouble they’ll face in the process. Michael’s planning is spotless to the point that it’s obsessive. The characters each play a valuable role throughout the 22 Episodes.

If you’ve not yet seen Prison Break, then acquire it any way you can. We’re going to start on Season 2 tomorrow, but I’ve also got Heroes to start, along with Season 1 and 2 of Entourage. Let me know what American TV Series you’ve been following recently and how you rate them.

You probably wouldn’t believe me if I told you I had a huge list of things to write about, for slickhouse.

Well I do! My only problem is that there’s so much interesting content out there, that I barely get round to writing some of my own - by which time, I’m probably falling asleep.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been using Google Reader, which allows me to keep track of all my favourite sites via their RSS feeds. The following list is a taster of the feeds I follow:

• Digg - This is the busiest feed I use, mainly because there are so many contributors. Though I do find that most of the time it’s like looking for a needle in a haystack - you have to Digg (pun intended) to find the good stuff.
• AListApart - On the other hand aren’t that busy at all, providing me with a couple of articles every few days - but the content is great.
• bit-tech.net - As they’re still the best tech site in the UK. I also keep their sister site (although they’ve been acquired recently) Trusted Reviews on Google Reader too.
• CSS-Tricks - This is my latest addition, as I stumbled across an article on the site whilst browsing my feeds this evening.
• Custom PC - I like to keep track of Custom PC as they are providing some great content since the site refresh.
• Max Design - Their tutorials are very useful, which led me to add their feed to Google.
• Official Google Webmaster Blog - For two reasons really, firstly Google know their stuff; secondly I’m a Google fan.
• Penny-Arcade - Possibly the best web comic (that I’ve come across at least) on the planet, well web. Having the RSS feed to hand enables me to know almost instantly when they’ve posted a new comic.
• Photo Matt - The creator of WordPress provides us with insight into developing WordPress and also upcoming new features.
• Smashing Magazine - I’m yet to understand why many of their posts suddenly switch from English to German, but every single article is worth reading. Trust me.
• Tom’s Hardware UK - As I like to keep in touch with the technology world - and having a few feeds means that I’m more likely to catch all the big releases.
• W3C - This is a fairly boring feed compared to the above, but I’m hoping they’ll reveal more about HTML 5 in the near future.
• .Net - The magazine is one of my favourites (I’m thinking a subscription is due), so it makes sense to keep track of their postings too.

As you are probably experiencing right now (if you’ve started browsing any of the above), with all of these feeds to keep track of (and a few others), I am left with a few minutes here and there. During these spare moments, I tend to add to my ever-growing list of articles to write - but at least this time, I sat down and typed something on here.

Over the next few weeks I’ve got several personal projects to accomplish. Firstly there’s the Botswana site to complete - it’s live, but missing a bit of content. Then I am going to be setting up a new blog/community which is still under wraps. Finally, there is a revolutionary site to finish planning and start developing - more on that later.

Let me know what feeds you like to keep track of. And do you use Google Reader to do so?

[note - I could have provided you with direct-links to each feed, but opted to link to the site so that you can get a 'feel' prior to subscribing]

As I helped Simon out last night setting up Litebox on his blog, well CG Partnership’s - I decided to throw it on here too, as it’s easy once you’ve done it the first time (as with most things in life). You may have come across Litebox whilst browsing the web, as many would categorise it under ‘Web 2.0′, which instantly attracts newcomers. I like it as it allows for a simple way to create a photo album on a site, whilst still remaining accessible - for example, if you’re using a screen-reader, or have Javascript disabled the core links still work.

There are several ways to implement Litebox. You can use the traditional thumbnail approach:

To expand on the thumbnail approach you could have a group, or album of thumbnails:

You could also revert to a simple text anchor:

Example 3

Then there is the option of group/album text links:

Example 4 A
Example 4 B

And finally, something I added to the mix late last night - a single text-based link that triggers a group/album:

Example 5

The last example could be adapted so that you show a single thumbnail as your ‘trigger’ instead of the more traditional text link. If you’re interested in how all of the above were achieved, you could either view the source code of this page, or tax your brain by figuring each one out yourself. I’ll give you a hint for how to achieve the single link/multiple pictures though - display: none;

There is, however, one fairly major problem with Lightbox, or the lighter, Litebox - neither validate according to the W3C’s rules for both HTML/XHTML and CSS. This is something that I am looking into myself, with the outcome hopefully being a valid version.