Peter Ellis

Yesterday was really great weather in London and rather than...

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 09:43:00 +0100

Yesterday was really great weather in London and rather than stay in developing websites or working on my blog I decided to grab my new camera and go out and take some photos. I’d never really been to Shoreditch before so thought that would be a great place to head towards. Its got a very ‘old camden’ (70’s late 80’s) style/feel about the place in Shoreditch. Anyway I took a few snaps of typical things like street signs and buildings but as I tavelled towards well between Liverpool Street and Old Street somewhere around here

I started to noticed some Bansky style wall art by an artist called Cartrain. There are some really unusual and great pieces of street art around there and you can see more of my photos on Flickr here.

Another great website for dance (and progressive) tracks is...

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 21:48:37 +0100

Another great website for dance (and progressive) tracks is ETN.fm which has been around for a couple of years now. Its undergone a few site versions but this one seems alot more stable. Anyway Ill let you check it out and decide for yourself!!

Bedtime Tunes is another great music site to check out! Most of...

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 21:38:47 +0100

Bedtime Tunes is another great music site to check out! Most of the playlists are quite chilled but the site has an intergrated music player allowing you to listen to the tracks straight off the site. Pretty impressive. The guys are all aussie based so G’day guys or g’night in the case of this site ;-)

Hybridized have released some wicked dance sets recently! You...

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 21:34:00 +0100

Hybridized have released some wicked dance sets recently! You can check them out at:

www.hybridized.org

Most notable tracks I really like so far are:

James Warren - Incandescent (2008-03-31).mp3

and

Jody Wisternoff - March 2008 Way Out There (2008-03-18).mp3

Recently created this photoshop piece… took me about 3...

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 13:22:00 +0100

Recently created this photoshop piece… took me about 3 hours where most of my time was spent in illustrator tracing a flock of birds. You can see more about this piece and other samples of my work on deviant art here.

My new theme

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 13:15:57 +0100

Ok so Ive updated my blog theme here on Tumblr…. yes I know the transparent background for the content area doesnt work in Internet Exploder 6 but I dont care I hate that damn browser!!! Anyway hope you like the new theme/skin

Flickr

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 10:39:00 +0100

Ive started becoming a more active Flickr user you can see some of my photos here:

www.flickr.com/photos/petermarkellis

I stumbled upon a site called Chyrp while reading about a...

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 10:11:00 +0100

I stumbled upon a site called Chyrp while reading about a designer Cameron Hunt. Ive had a quick play with the code and its seems pretty flexible and streamlined. If its got a big community base of followers to support it it could be a great blogging platform to use…..

Media 'London' 2008

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 12:29:14 +0100

Following my previous rant about the FOWD. Ive been told that Media 2008 is alot better than FOWD in that it covers alot more technical issues. Here is a snippet from the site:

The schedule is filled with industry leaders, delivering in-depth presentations and discussions covering topics including writing for the web, information architecture, JavaScript libraries and internationalisation.

Unfortunately I wont be able to go as Ill be in the states! But for anyone that goes to this send me an email and let me know what it was like!

Ive been getting more and more into Twitter lately. You can...

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 11:46:03 +0100

Ive been getting more and more into Twitter lately. You can check me out here:twitter.com/petermarkellis

Using .htc file in Wordpress 2.5 for transparent png's

Sat, 19 Apr 2008 10:49:00 +0100

Im adding this comment because it chewed up a large amount of my time. Ok what was I trying to do. Well get a transparent png to work in good ol’ IE6. Pain isnt it. Im so sad we need to resort to applying to seeking hacks to make things work in IE6..IE7 or the next release IE8 which so far looks like it needs a zimmer frame to help it with talk of adding a new DOCTYPE just for IE …arghhh bolt-on’s!!!!!

Anyway Im ranting back to the issue…so I installed the latest version of Word Press on my main site and started playing about with the CSS. Making a trasnparent header looked fine in Firefox… but alas IE doesnt support transparent png’s. So hunting on the web I found a fair few examples. One of which is the using of a .htc file. Here is the link where I went to for this file and the blank.gif file you also need:

http://www.twinhelix.com/css/iepngfix/

following the example in the zip I dumped the .htc and blank.gif in my Wordpress themes root folder. Was it working NO!!

Hmmm after a while of playing with limited success, it tured out that if I place in the absolute URL to the .htc file and the blank.gif where ever it was being referenced this worked.

So for example lets say in your CSS you have:

#header {
margin: 0 0 0 0px;
padding: 0;
width: 100%;
height: 292px;
background-color: #4d4f57;
behavior:url(http://www.petermarkellis.com/wp-content/themes/pmellis/iepngfix.htc); }

then I had to go into the .htc file and change the following:

// This must be a path to a blank image. That’s all the configuration you need.

if (typeof blankImg == ‘undefined’) var blankImg = ‘http://www.petermarkellis.com/wp-content/themes/pmellis/blank.gif’;

so as you can see instead of it referencing just ./blank.gif Ive used the absolute path.

Anyway trying that approach worked. Lets assume that Wordpress has some fancy re writting going on in the backend, of which Ive not yet started to investigate properly so I cant tell you why this works and relative paths dont I’m afraid!

Here is a really cool screensaver I located on the...

Mon, 07 Apr 2008 22:52:05 +0100

Here is a really cool screensaver I located on the ilovetypography.com you can download the screensaver here: http://scr.sc/products/dropclock/

"To a client who once told me, “It shouldn’t take you more than 20 mins to do this, why are you..."

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 09:51:05 +0100

“To a client who once told me, “It shouldn’t take you more than 20 mins to do this, why are you charging so much for so little work?”. My response was “It only takes 20 mins because I have 20 years of knowledge and experience to back me up.””

- www.davidairey.com

For those interested in seminars for web design and web...

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 17:23:00 +0100

For those interested in seminars for web design and web development there are still tickets available for Media 2008 which will be on at the Southbank Centre, London between 29th and 30th May. There were some great speakers there last time!

Its a shame I wont be able to make the event this year but will enjoy reading up on the news afterwards!

Ive just had a quick look at the goplan Web based Project...

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 16:52:00 +0100

Ive just had a quick look at the goplan Web based Project Management tool for which you get a free demo account.

- Looks and feels GREAT I really like it!

- Great user centric design!

but I just cant help but feel its lacking a few pieces of functionality at this point its still a maturing project and one which Id still like to keep my eye on as it grows which I hope it will do!

TwhirlIs a Twitter client built out of AIR no not thin Air but...

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 16:35:00 +0100

Twhirl

Is a Twitter client built out of AIR no not thin Air but Adobes new AIR Framework formerlly APOLLO. Of which is a really nice interface for Twitter. I really like Twitter for microblogging and have been contemplating the use of Twitter for gaining feedback for some of the sites we have relased and worked on. I recently read a really interesting article on the webreakstuff blog site, which read:

New ways of engaging with people

We’re seeing something similar now but at a hyper-level, through different, specialized channels. Companies are now engaging with their costumers through micro-blogging systems such as Twitter - in fact, just a few hours ago, Peachpit Press started following me on there. We have twitter accounts for our projects like Goplan and Totspot, and always recommend our clients and partners to do the same, because we know our audience of early adopters cares that we’re close.

Being on Twitter allows companies to engage in short (but sweet) conversations about their products. To provide instant notifications when something is wrong, or - much better -, when something exciting just happened. A feature or product launch, maybe. The possibilities are endless when companies start seeing customers as friends. A subtle term change, yes, but it has quite the impact.

Check out their blog here

friendfeed.com Allows you to easily consolidate all your...

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 16:07:00 +0100

friendfeed.com

Allows you to easily consolidate all your blogging into one useful interface! Ive signup myself and so far I like it.

I found this will reading Dion Hinchcliffe’s Web 2.0 Blog

Me on Technorati

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 15:37:04 +0100

Technorati Profile

We currently use Trac to manages tickets for Projects, track...

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 11:55:00 +0100

We currently use Trac to manages tickets for Projects, track bugs and feature requests. I still like Trac but my experience with project managers and digital teams has been one of frustration and well ….lack of experience using such tools resulting in “..why should ‘I’ use it” answers.

So we recently set out to try something better…something easier and being a Joel Spolsky blog reader I was aware of the Fogbugz project they have been developing. I rolled this out to a select group of the digital team in the hope of gaining FogBugs allies who will spread the word through the agency for me.

Im sure we all know what its like when trying to push a new concept or technology and there is always the resistance to change. But funnily enough Fogbugz has been accepted more easily then I thought by my the department.

We still is a trial stage but from what Ive seen so far its a great tool. Thanks Joel!

We are the machine...

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 11:13:16 +0100

I was sent this link a while ago and I still think its a great video for describing the web and how we see and use it. Most especially when blogging. Being a blogger myself I enjoy casting an opinion as much as the next person and voicing my thoughts about a variety of subjects, websites and other such matters. Blogging is a great medium for this…take Wordpress you can setup and install this in literally minutes (if your relatively tech savvy that is) on your site and your blogging in no time.