Learning new things for 2012

Posted in Personal Web development on 1 December 2011 | Comments

The last few months have been pretty busy round here with client work so it has been tough to set aside any time for learning new things. For example, I’d like to spend some hours learning more about responsive web design grids like Skeleton, writing an app that uses the Perch API, or even increasing the range of CSS selectors and properties I use.

Learning about new things was what dragged me into web design and development in the first place. Well, that and the lure of Internet fame and fortune ;-).

So, with an objective to have more personal development time in 2012, I’ve signed up for 12412 which I hope will provide peer pressure and/or motivation for me to look into some web design and development subjects that I would otherwise not find time for. Why not sign up yourself?!

And, of course, it will provide a few subjects for me to write about here as well….

Comments on this blog

Posted in Freelancing Personal on 28 June 2011 | Comments [2]

I try and operate a sensible comments moderation policy on this blog but I see a lot of blogs that do not do this and that have a free-for-all comments policy (it seems). I think that approach devalues comments especially on high traffic/high visibility sites. If I was in charge of those sites, I would have tougher moderation on comments. Here’s what I do here.

• Comments that don’t add value don’t get published. This means that comments that simply say “Nice blog, I appreciate your posts” will not get published. Whilst it may be nice to hear these sentiments about your blog, I’m never sure how genuine they are since many such comments are seemingly made just for the sake of getting a commenter’s website linked (even though the links have rel = "nofollow").
• Comments that do not provide the commenter’s real name don’t get published. Any comments from “web design los angeles” or similar won’t see the light of day. This is some misguided attempt to get search engine credit via link keywords (it’s misguided because of rel = "nofollow") but if you cannot put your real name on a comment, well….
• Comments should say something about the blog post, not just your personal site that you want to promote.

This is a perfectly sensible policy I think. Please add your own thoughts in the comments!

Social Hiking - a great web app!

Posted in Website review Personal on 28 March 2011 | Comments

I use quite a few web applications and increasingly I am tying them into my non-web activities away from the office. In that vein, over the last year or so, I’ve been using Social Hiking which is a web application developed by Phil Sorrell (@daylightgambler). I’ve not blogged about this before (except indirectly in ViewRanger GPS for Cycling) but I think it’s a great app. Here’s my description and experiences with it so far.

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Finding time for 'fun' stuff?

Posted in Personal on 21 March 2011 | Comments [2]

These days, I seem to be on a constant work cycle that doesn’t seem to allow me much time to do the ‘fun’ web stuff or the personal projects that I used to. Yes, I maintain a few personal websites (that could probably do with a lot more attention from me) and I read a heap of RSS feeds that (I hope) keep me up-to-date with web design and development happenings but otherwise it’s client work all the way.

By ‘fun’ stuff, I mean starting personal websites, creating and exploring different website layouts, testing out code examples, reading books about new web design (CSS3) methods, etc. I’m pretty sure I used to be able to set aside time for this but I seem to have fallen out of the habit.

In a similar vein, I have loads of reading that I keep meaning to do – books and back issues of .net magazine that litter my coffee table – but I cannot seem to get motivated to read as much as I used to. Perhaps my concentration span is less than it was. Or I am too immersed in client work during the day to get excited about more web stuff in the evenings. Or I need a holiday. I don’t know.

Whatever is happening, I think I need to do something about it. Take a break. Set aside time in the week. Something.

All other suggestions gratefully received!

Ideas of March

Posted in Personal Web design on 15 March 2011 | Comments [1]

Today, I read a couple of tweets on Twitter which lead me to Chris Shiflett’s post, Ideas of March, where he encourages a blog revival by asking folks to write a similar post (saying why they like blogs) and to blog more for the rest of the month. So, here’s my post with that same theme

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