Jasper Tandy » jspr

Design Tweaks

Jasper — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 13:28:15 +0000

I spent yesterday evening tweaking the design of this site and drinking rum. Rum is delicious, and an excellent design aid, apparently. Just getting the OK for an image I’ve used and it’ll all go live. Very excited, weirdly, it’s a huge improvement!

small, substantial change

Jasper — Sat, 11 Sep 2010 10:07:06 +0000

I’ve made a couple of changes. I’m grateful for everyone who reads this drivel, and if any change I’ve made pisses you off, please tell me. The changes I’ve made are fundamentally small, but have a pretty substantial result.

Firstly, I’ve removed the sidebar. It was getting huge with all the archives, tags and categories and it distracts from what I really care about and want people to read and that’s recent content. Any other relevant content is found by search engines anyway (far-and-away the most-read post on here is the one about PHP and mail() on OSX, and that’s 100% from search engines, so that’s indicative to me that people aren’t using the site to find specific things they’re looking for. In honesty, why would you be?!) so removing these was a no-brainer a bit. Search box is gone, but search still works – saying that, when I’m looking for something on the site, I always Google site:jspr.tndy.me because it gets better results that the built-in WordPress one. Links to friends are one thing that I wish could stay, but I want to start writing more about what my friends write about anyway, so irregular posts about why you should read what my friends write will hopefully improve that. No-one clicks those links anyway (according to Google Analytics).

I’ve forced the post body font to be sans-serif. Adam mentioned to me the other day that the font on allyouseeis.me (NSFW) is Times and that sucks, and it got me thinking that I tend to rely too heavily on my default browser font (Helvetica Neue) and I probably should force it. Seriously, though, if you hate Times; why is it your default font? The intention, anyway, is for serif headers and sans body. Should look way better for everyone now.

Finally, I’ve removed the little comments number circle. No need for it. Looked OK, but it was distracting and annoyed me more than it served a purpose.

If any of this stuff pisses you off, I value your opinion on the matter and will consider any request. I can’t imagine anyone’s here regularly enough to actually care about this, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t give the option, right?

Sam Hardacre reminded me that we have one of these in the office. Cool-looking camera.

Reading Feeds

Jasper — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 11:12:00 +0000

I’ve not checked this for ages. If you’re one of these people, thanks much for subscribing – it fills me with an unjustified amount of self-worth. I hope I occasionally do stuff that makes it worth keeping me in your reader.

Motivational Crap

Jasper — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 19:37:00 +0000

These stupid things normally annoy me, but they’re a pretty good vehicle for this. I’ve been thinking about this since I hit a potential stumbling block on a project I was recently working on. It’s basically what it says. Make a choice about how you’re going to do something then just do it. No messing. It served me well, hopefully this bit of obvious common sense will help.

On protecting my twitter updates

Jasper — Thu, 07 May 2009 21:39:48 +0000

The observant will note that my twitter updates are now protected. I don’t like the idea of people I didn’t authorise reading those updates – they’re unedited and unsuitable in most cases. If you’re a person and you want to read, I’d be elated, but I’d rather say yes than wish I could say no.

Thanks to the [very] few for understanding.

#jsprrecs

Jasper — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 23:01:03 +0000

I often find myself tweeting song lyrics or lines from movies or, well, lines from anything really. This normally receives one of two responses: “man I love that movie/song” or “what are you talking about?!”. #jsprrecs is here so that I can recommend stuff to people without being too cryptic (though they might involve some googling!)

Enjoy!

I love CSS

Jasper — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 23:51:54 +0000

I finally got the strength to give IE6 even less attention than I usually do, off the back of a post from Roger Johansson. Because of this, I also feel confident that it’s acceptable to use techniques available to more advanced browsers. The idea that all websites should look the same in all browsers is unrealistic and inappropriate, so this has opened up a whole new world of CSS that I can now freely use, and I’ve found it really fun. For example, in older browsers, all my category and archive links in my “sidebar” will be white, but new-browser-users will be rewarded with easier differentiation between link colours with the following gem:

#menu > li li:nth-child(2n) a { color:#656565; }

And to tidy up the last paragraph margins and get rid of the unattractive superfluous margin, I can now use this and be safe in the knowledge that people who care about this sort of thing will be able to see/appreciate it:

#menu div.content p:last-child { margin-bottom: 0; }

I don’t know how some people can dislike CSS. It’s such an awesome way of working.

Enthusiasm fuelling this post brought to you by grape juice and vodka.

goin’ through changes

Jasper — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 20:42:12 +0000

I’ve made some changes. If you see anything that looks wrong (and you don’t use IE6), let me know.