Archive for the 'Technology' Category

Wordpress Theme Development

Published
by
Antonio
on April 8, 2008
in Technology, Uncategorized, Web Design and wordpress
. 0 Comments

I’ve finally updated to Wordpress 2.5. Great looking interface!

On a similar note I’ve finally decided that I’m going to develop my own Wordpress theme. Although I have a bit of knowledge when it comes to CSS and PHP I’m not really clued up on the structure of Wordpress, so have always avoided it. Here are my efforts as of today:

Progress screenshot

The overall idea is to create a Wordpress theme that is better suited to a portfolio website than a blog. In the long term I want to be able to have different layouts that are more typical of portfolio websites and also allow integration with Gallery2, which itself will have a modified display to suit portfolio websites.

That is, unless anyone can recommend an existing theme?

Information Overload? Enter BlogRovR

Published
by
Antonio
on March 21, 2008
in Advice and Technology
. 3 Comments

Ever since my computer crashed I’ve been trying to piece back together my online activities when suddenly Irealised that I spent far to much time reading information thrown at me from RSS Feeds, Facebook feeds, Twitter feeds, Thunderbird feeds, and Google Reader Feeds, not to mention following links from blog posts. It’s just all too much!

I spent a few days away from the Internet to try and get back in touch with reality only to be greeted by hundreds of unread feeds and many more e-mails. In my search for a solution I stumbled upon BlogRovR. It’s a nifty little Firefox plugin that displays relevant blog posts from your subscribed feeds based on the site that you’re currently surfing. Sound confusing? Let this ‘ere YouTube vid do the talkin’:

I’ve been using it for a few days and it’s quite alright, though I haven’t completely ditched Thunderbird and here’s why:It works best if you’re subscribed to lots of feeds
The plugin displays the relevant information from feeds that you’re subscribed to. So, if you only read a few very topic specific blogs expect to only get a little bit of information displayed. I think because of when you first sign up to BlogRovR it gives you the option to sign up to up to 80 popular blogs so that you have more chance of finding more information. I’m currently subscribed to 156 blogs and once I get through all of my bookmarks I expect it to grow to 400.

You still have to surf the web in order for it to work effectively
This plugin wont replace traditional feed readers. Whereas Thunderbird and the like deliver content direct to you, BlogRovR requires you to be surfing the web before it does anything.

BlogRovR doesn’t automatically display the latest posts
If you want to be displayed information relevant to the page you’re viewing then BlogRovR is great, but if you want the latest headlines stick to your traditional feed reader. But then again, if you use both you can see other posts relevant to the ‘new’ one you’re looking at…

It’s oh so new
I’ve subscribed to lots of comics and Flickr photostreams but so far I’ve not had one of these displayed by BlogRovR. I think this could be to do with a combination of how people tag images and how BlogRovR interprets this. Maybe people need to add better tags and descriptions? We’ll see. Two suggestions for improvement would be:

  • Have an inbuilt search function
  • On the homepage include the ability to put subscribed blogs into categories and then the option to share the list of blogs under category, thereby adding a more social aspect to it.

Summary. Don’t ditch Thunderbird yet. Instead install BlogRovR and unsubscribe from about 300 of the 400 blogs you’re subscribed to.

The Art That Never Will Be

Published
by
Antonio
on March 16, 2008
in Art, My Art, Technology and Work In Progress
. 0 Comments

I’ve been having a lot of problems with my computer recently. To add to the fact that it kept crashing my DVD writer wasn’t working, so I couldn’t back up anything! Oh noes! After a very lengthy process involving using my iPod to transfer 100GB to a computer with a working writer I thought I was in the clear to reinstall Windows. Or so I thought. I restarted my computer one day and, after checking for errors, it deleted my ‘Unfinished Projects’ folder, which included some collaboration work. Unfortunately for me this is the one folder I forgot to backup! D’oh!

So now I present to you unfinished versions of my collaborative work with Nahshon McPherson that will unfortunately never be finished.

Collaboration With Nahshon McPherson

Collaboration With Nahshon McPherson

Collaboration between Antonio Roberts and Nahshon McPherson

VJing

Published
by
Antonio
on January 9, 2008
in Technology and VJ
. 0 Comments

I need to get more done on my vjing work. So far I’ve done very little of it, and even less djing. I’ve been messing around with Pure Data, Xaos and Processing in an attempt to get some live processed images, and I’m now taking a peek at Ben Neal’s Phlumx software, but what I wonder is if I need to go look at more professional software…

Here’s a sample of what I’ve done. It was for a project at university to create a video about ‘Speed’ (created in Adobe Premier).

Open Source software in design

Published
by
Antonio
on January 1, 2008
in Art, Education and Technology
. 0 Comments

Seems like I’ve started a rather interesting discussion over at the Computer Arts Forum about the use of Open Source software in design.

I think that the general consensus is that Open Source software apps such as Inkscape, GIMP and Blender will never replace their industry standard counterparts because there’s nothing wrong with these products in the first place. FOSS packages such as Open Office and Firefox (and to a lesser extent Ubuntu) have only really gained popularity because their counterparts are kinda rubbish. Neither Microsoft Office or Internet Exploder are as standards compliant as their FOSS counterparts and, in relation to Microsoft Office, you can save a lot of money by using Open Office that, whilst it has its flaws, offers very similar functionality to Microsoft’s product at zero percent of the cost! Brilliant!

When I start planning workshops soon, I’m still going to plan them assuming that they don’t have the necessary software (not all schools have Photoshop-like software) so will offer the use of FOSS packages. I think education is where Open Source will find its place in terms of design. What do you all think?