Recent Posts
» Hiding your first geocache
16/07/10 03:07 from Miles' Blog
Before hiding a geocache, I recommend that you have at least a dozen or so finds as experience. Finding what others have hidden (such as the containers in the image above) really helps demonstrate what works and doesn't work when it comes ..
» Redesigning the World, maybe not
14/07/10 14:09 from Man with no blog
Lately there has been a resurgence in the discussion over using design for the greater good. From using design principles at the boardroom table, to solving third world problems with better interaction design. Who are we really kidding! ..
» Stepping aside…
13/07/10 12:35 from Miles' Blog
The cat is out of the bag, so to speak. I'm stepping down from my role as National Chairperson of the Australian Web Industry Association , at this years AGM. Since this forum post appeared, a number of people have been emailing or calling..
» Finding that first geocache
09/07/10 05:07 from Miles' Blog
So, you've read my previous posts about Geocaching, and you're up with all the lingo and how to read the Geocache listing page, and ready to try your first cache. Let's walk you through finding that elusive first find. Start by reading eve..
» Learning the Geocaching lingo
02/07/10 03:06 from Miles' Blog
You've read my last two posts, What is Geocaching? and Getting started with Geocaching, and now you're ready to learn some of the terms used by geocaching participants. You certainly don't need to be proficient at these in order to start g..
» Tour de ColdFusion
29/06/10 00:30 from kay lives here
I’m always looking for faster, easier to use reference materials, so I was pretty stoked to hear about Tour de ColdFusion via Raymond Camden. Tour de ColdFusion is an AIR application that incorporates the CF documentation with examples and..
» Interview with Mike Brown
28/06/10 22:55 from Miles' Blog
I recently had the opportunity to interview Mike Brown, co-organizer of the well-renowned Webstock , New Zealand's largest web conference. With only a few weeks to go before Webstock 2009, Mike took a few moments out of his busy schedule t..
» Streamlining
28/06/10 11:31 from Velvet Unravelled
I'm finding that my time in front of a computer lately is given to me in chunks rather than being blessed with blocks of time in which to immerse myself. In an effort to spend the time I have wisely and get more done, I've starting investi..
» Get started in geocaching
25/06/10 06:06 from Miles' Blog
If you haven't yet, I encourage you to read my ‘What is Geocaching' blog post, which will help this post make sense. So, I've piqued your interest, and now you are keen to get started in geocaching. The first item you'll need is a GP..
» Interview with a Young Entrepreneur
22/06/10 03:20 from Miles' Blog
If you've ever read the biographies of famous contemporary entrepreneurs, you'll learn stories of how they started a roadside lemonade stand when they were 15, or sold baseball cards to schoolyard friends at the age of 14. When I was 14, I..
» Twitter WordPress Sidebar Widget version 2
21/06/10 07:53 from Velvet Unravelled
I've released version 2 of the Twitter WordPress Sidebar Widget . It's actually been ready for months, but I was hoping to add more features before I released it. I've decided to take a more iterative approach which will hopefully lead to ..
» Out of the box
20/06/10 05:46 from Velvet Unravelled
More than anything else, I'll be so glad to be rid of that “boxiness”. This is really just a post to test images, but it will be nice to have the record of the old site. Maybe.
» Happiness is…
19/06/10 14:33 from Velvet Unravelled
a new layout. There are a few minor things I'd like to fix before I roll it out, but I think they can wait until morning. Who knows, I might even add a few things!
» Scheduled downtime
19/06/10 06:19 from Velvet Unravelled
I think it's unlikely anyone will notice on the main page, but things are likely to be a little unstable around here for the next 24 hours. Thanks for your patience.
» What is Geocaching?
18/06/10 05:05 from Miles' Blog
You no doubt know what GPS is; that invisible grid of latitude and longitude brought to handheld devices using a global space-based network of satellites. It's really handy for hikers and adventurers, and used as a modern navigation device..
» Making e-technology work for you
16/06/10 03:46 from Velvet Unravelled
I'm currently at home in Geraldton, taking part in the online conference “Making e-technology work for you” . There is some software download involved, which is detailed on the site. You can sign up over at http://networksevent..
» Setting SMART Goals
15/06/10 15:10 from Miles' Blog
In December 2007, I penned an article for SitePoint, 10 New Year Resolutions to Boost Your Business . You can read the article for all the details, as well as download a handy wall planner to stick near your desk. You'll find that it's sti..
» Web Awards that have Meaning
14/06/10 01:00 from Man with no blog
Over the years I have found that web awards tend to fall into three types: The mindless handout of awards to favour colleagues. Awards for the prettiest or most unusable but funky hip design. An award that is a true test and representation..
» Be Lean and Mean to Survive the Uncertainty
10/06/10 07:55 from Miles' Blog
There's been much talk about strategies for businesses to survive the uncertain economic climate. The media every day are reporting massive layoffs and industries in turmoil. In these times, it'll be all too easy for most businesses to fee..
» User Experience is more than Wireframes and Prototypes
07/06/10 01:00 from Man with no blog
There seems to be a bit of a trend at the moment, within developmental circles to just add a few wireframes and develop a prototype or two, and then you can declare you are across the user experience design process. The thing is User Expe..
» Death by caffeine
27/05/10 00:00 from kay lives here
Caffeine is important to the productivity of geeks. Well, of anyone, I suppose. I had a wicked caffeine addiction that I managed to kick by travelling in Europe for 3 weeks in 2008. The combination of not being able to get good coffee, han..
» Complete the humorous history of programming languages
23/05/10 23:00 from kay lives here
Circulating the nerd-o-sphere at the moment: A Brief, Incomplete and Mostly Wrong History of Programming Languages . This stuff is pure gold. Some examples: 1940s – Various "computers" are "programmed" using direct wiring and switche..
» Spammers are Getting Tricky
23/05/10 10:09 from Man with no blog
If you run a Blog or any publicly facing form on the web then you now take it that spammers are a constant problem. I have noticed over the years that the quality of the comment spammers has been improving. It is to be expect really, as th..
» Kill Accessibility
20/05/10 02:22 from Man with no blog
Let's get some reality on the web accessibility debate. We all know about WCAG 1 , we have all at least had a look at the associated checklists. If you are lucky you may have glanced at WCAG 2 . We all have been developing and designing o..
» 7 different rear lights for cycling
19/05/10 14:04 from Nick Cowie
I am a big fan of the Portland Bike Works 1000W, the X-tech was not too bad either, until it got wet. Weeks later the switch is still unreliable. The Tioga Dual Eyes, survived the same storm with flying colours and is now my preferred back..
» Site archiving
19/05/10 00:00 from kay lives here
Sometimes, web sites reach the end of their lives, and continuing to host them for archival purposes is not a responsibility or expense that anyone wants to go to. Personally I hate the idea – after all, the W3C’s commandment that “cool UR..
» An epiphany on the nature of problem-solving whilst weeding…
17/05/10 00:00 from kay lives here
Photo: Black kangaroo paws in the dying sunlight I have not been, traditionally, much of a gardener. In fact, we built and moved into our house over 6 years ago and up until last month we have not had any kind of garden at all. The ..
» Is Frontend Development in the UX Toolkit?
14/05/10 01:00 from Man with no blog
It's an interesting point is the ability to code in CSS, HTML and JavaScript a skill that is relevant to the User Experience practitioner. Or should that be left to the developers and designers. Why ask? Well I'm at a crossroads. You see..
» Stop using PDF and MS-Word Forms
13/05/10 01:00 from Man with no blog
Look around the web, you'll find them all over the place. MS-Word and PDF forms that you have to download and complete. I would be forgiven for thinking that we have not progressed on the web since 1995. I know I'm not perfect I have been..
» Growing Business in a Walled Garden
30/04/10 01:00 from Man with no blog
Social networking sites like Facebook and the like were fun when they started. You could be ensured of a reasonable degree of trust with them. I don't know if you have noticed lately, but Facebook have been slowly but surely selling off ..
» Relevance of Web Industry Associations
27/04/10 00:56 from Man with no blog
Over the last few years I have really come to question the point of various web industry professional associations. Yes, it's all about member benefits, relevancy, and value for money. What I also look for is the chances to network, fac..
» Networking the Morning After
14/04/10 14:05 from Man with no blog
You have been to all the networking events, chatted to people, exchanged business cards. Even found a few contacts that would be worthwhile leads in the future. Still after all this, it just doesn't seem to be working. So you go to few mor..
» Creating a bootable USB stick to install VMware ESXi
06/04/10 04:10 from Bloggy Hell
I had to install VMware ESXi on a machine that didn't have a CDROM or DVD player. For extra difficulty, I also didn't have a Linux box with a USB drive handy - but after a bit of hair pulling, I managed to create a bootable USB stick image..
» 220s: A marketing odyssey
23/03/10 14:02 from Bloggy Hell
For those of you that have been keeping abreast of the goings on of my work life will know that I helped start up a cooperative workspace in Leederville just over a year ago. The idea behind cooperative spaces is pretty simple: You get a b..
» Rails Training is starting a week later
25/02/10 03:17 from Bloggy Hell
Due to a scheduling clash with us and the State government (There was a public holiday we forgot about), the start of Rails Training 1 has been pushed back a week. It now starts on Monday 8th and Thursday 11th respectively. There are still..
» Soooo… Which one is better? Online or offline marketing?
23/02/10 02:50 from Bloggy Hell
Both Alex and I are web nerds. Throw us a technical problem and will be champing at the bit to solve it. This, like many other coders who start their own business, is what we spend all day doing. Unfortunately for us, being totally awesome..
» Tra Vinh Special Vermicelli Soup
18/02/10 12:50 from Nick Cowie
Franki Nguyen recommended Tra Vinh to me last year and I made the long trek up William Street passed my current favourite Vietnamese Noodle House, Phong Vinh to Brisbane Streer to Tra Vinh. I had made the trek twice before, once to be scar..
» Learn Ruby on Rails
17/02/10 04:21 from Bloggy Hell
Alex Pooley (from Brown Beagle Software , and fellow 220er and Rails guy) are running some Ruby on Rails training sessions in March. It will be an intensive primer designed to get web developers who work in PHP, or .Net up-to-speed in Rail..
» Quiet time here should be over soon
11/02/10 14:30 from Nick Cowie
It has been very quiet around here, for a number of reasons. I did expect my three week enforced rest to be spent learning and experimenting with the likes of CSS3 and HTML5 and then blogging about it. Instead I spent most of the time in t..
» Bad customer support = Unhappy campers
18/01/10 03:45 from Bloggy Hell
I do a lot of front end development, and as a result, I use Adobe Photoshop a lot. I also use Acrobat Professional frequently and Flash and Illustrator enough to warrant purchasing the full Design Premium package. Said Design Premium Packa..
» Round (parts of) the world in 42 days
17/01/10 12:23 from Matt Didcoe
In what's been a rather shit week both work wise and personally (the later probably leading to the former), some good has come - the final payment has been made on my round the world ticket. At this stage, the trip looks a little something..
» How-to tunnel the VMware Intrastructure Web Access control panel
16/01/10 04:30 from Bloggy Hell
If you have some sort of *nix (Linux, OSX, cygwin), then simply run the following in a shell: ssh -L 8222:localhost:8222 -L 902:localhost:902 -L 8333:localhost:8333 your.vmserver.com replacing your.vmserver.com with your ACTUAL VMware serv..
» Redesigning Midnite
29/12/09 13:54 from Matt Didcoe
Over the years, I have had the great pleasure of working with the Midnite Youth Theatre Company on a number of their Perth based productions. Naturally, I decided they had to have a website! It started out in a Plone/Zope setup - it was a ..
» Scaling a Rails application - Part 1
09/12/09 08:32 from Matt Didcoe
I'm by no means a "scaling expert", but I've recently been doing a lot of research into scaling web applications and the best ways to go about it. What you see below is a rough guide based on what I've learnt - it's not scaling gospel or e..
» Time for a change
09/12/09 08:16 from Matt Didcoe
So you may have noticed that all the old content on this site is gone and it looks, once again, different. After some mulling, I decided it was time to move on - the content the previously resided here was out of date or pointless. I'm sta..
» My chest filled to explode
29/11/09 14:40 from Nick Cowie
Apologies to David McComb. For those who do not follow my twitter feed, I will tell you what happened over the past few days. I was riding to work on Friday morning, when I started having a pain in the chest. Mild pain which I have been ge..
» RGBa backgrounds in IE
08/11/09 04:54 from Nick Cowie
RGBa is the new black, with support in most modern Safari 3, Firefox 3 and Opera 10, you can have semi transparent elements. Only there is no support currently in IE for RGBa. However, you can easily fake it for backgrounds of block elemen..
» Why use CSS Zen Garden for CSS3 demo
06/11/09 05:18 from Nick Cowie
For those who have not seen my Edge of the Web CSS3 demonstration I used the CSS Zen Garden HTML. Why, because I wanted to use somebody else’s HTML, mainly because I wanted to show it works with any HTML and that most people would be famil..
» CSS3 presentations at EOTW09 and WebJam11
05/11/09 14:57 from Nick Cowie
I really enjoyed developing my presentation for Edge of the Web. The research and experimentation was a lot of fun. Explore the demo using CSS Zen Garden HTML and seriously try it in IE6, the WebJam presentation with some even more outrage..
» Ideas 6: The Edge of the Web Edition
13/10/09 10:26 from Bloggy Hell
Perth has had it's day in the sun, by holding the last five Ideas events, but now it is Brisvegas' go. The theme: Edge of the Web, because we have two speakers giving you exclusive previews of their Edge of the Web presentations: Ash Donal..
