ThomThom's Website

New Host

03 Aug 07 - 21:41

I've just switched to a new host. One that supports PHP5 and goes by the amount of bandwidth used, not pagehits.

I was closing in on my limit of pagehits due to my gadgets I made that checks in with a file on my server to check for software updates. This caused many pagehits without using hardly any bandwidth.

I also wanted to migrate to PHP5 as PHP4 has reached its end of life. Hopefully everything is back online.

Testing Pingback Server

20 Jul 07 - 18:06

This is a test of my Pingback server I wrote for my website.

Lorem Ipsum Foo Bar

This paragraph contains a link to another post on this site.

Lets see if the pingback will register once it's pinged.

Update: New pingback test to another blog entry.

Lorem Ipsum Foo Bar

Lorem Ipsum Foo Bar

So long, and thanks for all the pasta

17 Jul 07 - 08:24

After three years as a student in Bournemouth and one year of being freelancer in London, I'm now moving back to Norway to explore the possibilities there. Most of my stuff have been sent with ship last week. I'll arrive some time later this week. In that time in between I'm stuck in limbo as I have to halt my work and projects until I get my stuff unpacked.

I'm not entirely sure what I'll be doing when I get back. It will depend on what's out there. I'll most likely look for something in Trondheim first.

What I do know is that I got a new hobby; archery. I finally got around to try it out whilst visiting Rob at his home place. So that's going to be one of the first things I do back in Norway; getting archery equipment and find some archery clubs.

I'm sure I'll start reflecting back on the last four years when I've got my stuff unpacked and things settle down a bit. At the moment my brain is twisting in effort trying to work out whether I've forgotten to pack something.

Oh by the way my dear ex-London-housemates; There's food and the fridge, freezer and cupboard. Eat it or throw it away before it smells. I think most of it is sweets and cakes so I assume it's gone in a day...

list-style-image vs. background-image

30 Jun 07 - 15:43

I was playing around with the layout of my site here the other day. I was adding some small glyphs to some of the lists elements. It was then I realised how limited the control over the bullet images in CSS. In fact, I was very surprised that other than choosing the image, you had no control at all. The image gets located in the top left corner; which in many cases just looks odd and miss-aligned.

The standard bullet browsers renders usually relates to the line-height of the list item and therefore better positioned according to the content.

Immediately I was thinking that it'd be easy to work around that by using background-image which would allow absolute control over the image's position. But then I thought it could provide some accessibility issues. If the image doesn’t load for whatever reason, then there would be no fallback leaving the list items look like indented paragraphs.

But much big an issue is it? How serious of a usability issue is a missing bullet item in a list? Of course it'd be hard to distinguish the items if there's not whitespace separating them, and if each list item's text runs over several lines it's then look like a continuous piece of text. But with other elements such as white space, colouring, borders etc.; is it an acceptable trade-off to obtain better control of your layout?

While I was pondering on this I viewed the site without any images loaded. I found that there were several elements that failed because the foreground colour was too similar to the background colour making the text unreadable without the images. That can of course be avoided, at least in most cases by simply supplying a background image. But what do you do if the image contains transparency and adding an background colour would bleed through the image?

In general I found felt that using background-image instead of list-style-image didn't affect readability much if the image didn't load. But am I missing something? Please let me know your thoughts.

New Career, New Design

20 Jun 07 - 11:37

So I graduated with a BA in modelmaking last year. Something I really enjoyed, but I'm not sure about my place in the modelmaking industry. That's why I've the last few months have tried myself as professional webdesigner.

I've had it as a hobby for several years; doing my own little project. I've constantly been reading articles about webdesign, new web technology, user interfaces, user experiences. And I've always enjoyed creating things.

Webdesign combines two of my interests. The visual creative part where I play with colours, typography, compositions; how to present the content and lead the user through the whole experience of visiting the site. Then you got the more logic side of me where I code. XHTML, XML, CSS, JS and PHP all of them which is different languages of code. I like to code. I like it when it all comes together with each other and the visual. It's like playing with LEGO.

So far it's been good. I think I feel more comfortable with webdesign than I do with modelmaking. However, I wish webdesign didn't chain you to the desk. And I do miss more hands on creativity. Time to find a new hobby to replace webdesign which is now my profession I suppose.

I'm still working on the site. It's too large that I want to wait until everything is done before I put it online. So I put smaller sections up as I go along. Most of the blogging system is working now. Next on the list is the gallery which I urgently need to get online; need it to present my portfolio. The work have been delayed as I lately have had freelance jobs coming in taking priority.

And finally; I'm moving back to Norway next month! Yup! After four years I'm now going back. It'll be Trondheim first, but I'm not sure where I'll end up eventually. I'm feeling somewhat like a stranger already. Four years is a long-ish time, and things change. I'm curious to what awaits me.

P.S. If you need a website designed, or know someone else which need one; let me know!

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