Redswish

Carefully crafted banter

Top Gear fuelled by WordPress


10 Responses

I hope the title isn’t misleading. Clarkson’s Lamborghini Gallardo is NOT turning to WordPress as alternative fuel source in the current petrol crisis. However the Top Gear blog is actually powered by my favourite platform – WordPress! It’s not really that big a deal, WP is amazing and is used by a massive percentage of bloggers, but it still makes me happy. So let’s all get into /wp-admin and try lots of passwords! Only joking… please don’t sue me. And for those of you living under a rock, the brand new season of TG started on Sunday night. It wasn’t the finest series debut but was still enough to make me chuckle on the couch. To be honest, the previous 2 seasons will be hard to beat so I’m looking forward to seeing what they’ve got planned. They’ve already gone to the North Pole and crossed the Botswana Salt Plains… maybe this time they’ll drive to the top of Everest…

Read the full article »

Death to IE6!


4 Responses

A site I’m building at the moment has required me to consider the poor people who still unfortunately use Internet Explorer 6. I’d love to think it was a thing of the past, extinct along with any pre-XP versions of Windows and late 90′s pop music but unfortunately not. As we all know, Firefox is steaming ahead at the moment. The latest release of FF3 has been a huge success and considering the fact that it doesn’t come installed by default on Windows or Mac, the latest official browser usage statistics claim it to be nearly twice as popular as Internet Explorer 7.

Read the full article »

Firebug for Firefox


0 Responses

Regarding Firefox add-ons for developers, of which there is a fantastic selection – please, everyone check out Firebug, unless you have already. It is the NUMBER 1 ESSENTIAL ADD-ON FOR ANY WEB DESIGNER/DEVELOPER. If anybody has recommended this to me before and I’ve not acknowledged it, I’m very sorry and very foolish not to have done. Firebug tucks away subtly, but when unleashed it allows you to inspect every aspect of a web page and investigate the html, css, javascript then allows you to make live changes to see how they would effect it. 3 Major Uses of Firebug: 1 – When building a page, editing the page in real time to see what CSS properties and values needed to be added, changed or deleted. What will happen if you get rid of this <p> or if you delete that unnecessary <br />? 2 – Analysing other webpages to see how they achieve certain effects, or what styles they’re using.…

Read the full article »

Kindle Hacks


2 Responses

A couple of months ago I wrote an article, which I now realise to have been rather out-of-date, about the Amazon Kindle. I received a polite email from a visitor regarding further possibilities that the Kindle offers, and would like to share these with you.  ”Hack Your Kindle: 100+ Tips, Resources, and Tutorials to Get More Out of the Amazon Kindle”: http://www.collegedegrees.com/blog/2008/06/17/hack-your-kindle-100-tips-resources-and-tutorials-to-get-more-out-of-the-amazon-kindle/ If you check out the link it’s actually quite interesting just how much you can do. I’m so tempted to get hold of one, but only after a new iPhone, and HD TV, and Macbook Pro, and Playstation 3… I wish I’d hurry up and win the lottery!

Read the full article »

A Quiet Month…


0 Responses

Hey all Sorry this month’s been so quiet on my front. Even with so much stuff happening at the moment – the Yahoo/Google/Microsoft parades, news of the new iPhone release on the 11th July, MySpace is set to be redesigned and Jakob Nielson is still moaning about usability issues on the web. I have however been busy starting my new job at Flame Digital in Manchester. It’s very similar to my old job – but now I have to get up 3 hours earlier, work 4 hours more each day, have to actually get dressed and can’t take a day off whenever I feel like it. That’s right – I have become employed! But it’s all good. Flame’s a great place to work and promises to offer lots of opportunities to learn and better myself, while meeting new people and getting the chance to put my name to some big projects. I will still be freelancing on the side and…

Read the full article »

Web Awards is a Farce


0 Responses

Yeah you all know, everyone knows – the Web Marketing Association’s 2008 Web Awards entry deadlines has been delayed till the 13th June… which for some reason doesn’t surprise me. I would love to have entered some of my work in the awards, not that I expect to win but let’s not forget it’s the taking part that counts! But to enter a site it’s £$195! Or to me that’s about £100. Which honestly is a joke. Yeah I know judges and admins need to get paid and some bigwig has to make a nice killing off it but $195 is a joke. And even if you win, the benefits really aren’t all that fantastic – as you can see on the ‘benefits of participation‘ page! And to be honest the previous winners aren’t really much to go by. If you take a look at some of the previous winners, the sites are by no means awful but seriously don’t…

Read the full article »