CrunchBang - Code, Design & GNU/Linux

Skipping Photoshop? It's easy with Linux!

There is an interesting post on 37signals about why they skip the use of Photoshop to create user interface mock-ups; instead, they favour moving straight to HTML and CSS. Myself, a Linux-only user trying to make a living as a web designer, I find this conversation both interesting and amusing.

The interest and amusement is probably fed by the fact I cannot natively install Photoshop on my Linux systems, which totally negates the decision to skip designing UIs with Photoshop. Of course, if wanted, I could always use GIMP, which by the way, is perfectly capable of creating mock-ups.

Also, surely the decision as to whether or not a UI needs a graphical mock-up is determined by the actual design brief of the UI, as opposed to being a designer's personal preference? In which case, what is all the hoorah about? Designers, heh.

Interesting Stuff Elsewhere

I have created a new page on my website. For lack of a better name, I have called the page "Interesting Stuff Elsewhere". The page features a list of links to "stuff" which I have deemed interesting enough to share via my Google Reader account.

The "stuff" is a hodgepodge collection of articles, blog posts, podcasts and videos; having said that, the "stuff" could be anything and the only real way to find out what the "stuff" is, is to click on the links. One thing is for sure, all the links lead to dead good "stuff" :)

See: http://crunchbang.org/elsewhere/

Wiki Rewrite

Over the last couple of nights I have completely rewritten my personal wiki. The wiki previously used the PHP WikkaWiki wiki engine, it now uses a bunch of custom PHP scripts. The scripts are similar to those used by my blog software, Whird. I decided to perform the rewrite for numerous reasons, some of which I have listed below:

1. I was unhappy with how WikkaWiki was formatting the underlying HTML, specifically the way in which it would never use the paragraph tag, opting instead to insert break tags. While this probably sounds like a minor issue, it was really beginning to bug me.

2. I started this site [crunchbang.org] with the intention of coding all of the software/scripts myself. Therefore, and somewhat obviously, my use of WikkaWiki was always going to provide reason for my conscience to niggle me.

3. As mentioned before, WikkaWiki is very hackable; however, it was never going to be as hackable as something I had produced myself.

4. I wanted both my blog and my wiki to use the Markdown markup language. While this was not a problem for my blog [it has always used Markdown] I could not find any suitable plugins/hacks for enabling Markdown within WikkaWiki.

The rewrite is pretty much complete and is now live. I have tried to make sure any URLs used by WikkaWiki are either reused or redirected. Please feel free to drop me a comment if you notice anything funky occurring.

Site Redesign & Fonts by Manfred Klein

I have been working on a small redesign of my website, again. Visually speaking, not much has changed; I have dropped the off-white background colour in favour of pure white, updated my Ubuntu advertisement, and changed the font used in my logo.

Regarding the new logo font, it is BastardusSans, one of Manfred Klein's many freely downloadable fonts. I really like Manfred Klein's fonts, not only because they are high quality and freely available, but because they are so diverse. Manfred Klein's portfolio features hundreds of decorative, historical, picture and text based fonts. If you are looking for a unique font for a new a project, do yourself a favour and go check out Manfred Klein's portfolio at TypOasis.

Back to the website redesign; as well as the visual changes mentioned above, I have also made changes to how the XHTML is formatted — just recently I seem to have been spending a lot of time browsing the web using Links; it was during one of these sessions when I noticed just how poorly my site was rendering in a text-based environment. I have now fixed this and my site should not only look better, but make more sense too :)

Other design alterations include:

• An updated print specific CSS file. Pages from my site should now print nicely [when printed from a modern browser.]

• A complete redesign of my personal wiki, the wiki design now matches that of my blog. I am still loving my Wikka Wakka Wiki installation, its hackability, speed and ease of use continue to impress. I did have a problem with spam comments last month, but it was easily fixed.

• A change to the font-family referenced in my site's CSS. Previously I had been specifying a range of sans-serif fonts, including but not limited to Arial and Verdana. I have changed this and the font used now is simply sans-serif. I am not sure how this change affects other systems, but IMHO, it makes for more readable copy on my Ubuntu Linux based systems.

• As mentioned at the top of this post, I have updated the one and only advert on my site. I have had one advertisement on my site since it started, it is a non-commercial advertisement for Ubuntu Linux. I have toyed with the idea of displaying Google Adsense, but I just cannot bring myself to do it, so instead I have updated my Ubuntu advert :) The image has been shamelessly ripped from the new Hardy Heron CD cover art. I have no idea who the three models are, or who photographed them, but I really like the image — there is something strangely appealing about this type of top-down photography. I am not sure of the legalities of ripping the image, but I am sure modifying it to be used as a webby advert will do no harm. See below for some resized versions:

Ubuntu Circle of Friends - 300 x 396 pixels

Ubuntu Circle of Friends - 200 x 246 pixels

Ubuntu Circle of Friends - 100 x 123 pixels

That pretty much covers my recent redesign efforts [although I have been tinkering for days and I am sure to have missed some minor details.] Finally, I have got some plans to include some new features on my site, namely a new bookmarking system and links to interesting posts and articles from my shared Google Reader feed. I will post more details about this as and when I get around to scripting the features in.

Perplexed by Web Frameworks

The latest LugRadio episode features a discussion about Django and other web frameworks. I found the feature interesting, but I have to admit that I find the subject of web frameworks somewhat perplexing. I have yet to fully embrace any such framework, although I have played with the Zend Framework. I think there are a number of reasons I have not fully adopted any frameworks:

1. I am put off by having to learn all the new classes, structures and methods employed by said frameworks. Surely my time would be better spent actually learning more about the core language?

2. I fear that using a framework would somehow stifle innovation. I am under no illusions of being the most innovative player, however, I find it hard to shake. I guess I am questioning where the innovation comes from if everyone is using the same framework?

3. It is fun to write your own code, functions, classes and routines etc. I like to experiment with code, I like to make mistakes, before fixing them — it is this that keeps me interested. I would be concerned that using a framework would takeaway much of that.

Having said all that, I'm not totally opposed to frameworks and I think they have their place; three PHP frameworks of interest to me are:

1. Zend Framework: http://framework.zend.com/
2. CakePHP: http://www.cakephp.org/
3. Symfony: http://www.symfony-project.org/

I am going to look into the above to see what they have to offer; however, I think I will probably continue to hack together my own code for a while to come.

TwitterZoid PHP Script

It's a rather silly name, I know; however, TwitterZoid is the chosen name of my PHP script for parsing Twitter RSS feeds. I've been using Twitter quite steadily for a couple of weeks now and I thought it might be nice to include my latest tweets on my blog, so I wrote TwitterZoid to do just that.

TwitterZoid differs to other PHP based Twitter RSS parsers, at least the ones I tried before I wrote it, in that it will automatically link both lexicons and URLs found within individual tweets. It also tries to mimic Twitter's timestamping, although this could be improved.

TwitterZoid usage

I wanted to make TwitterZoid as simple to use as possible. Therefore I decided to write the script to be used as a simple include file which can be used on any PHP page. Basically, to use TwitterZoid all you need to do is set a couple of variables, include twitterzoid.php and then echo the main $TwitterZoid variable where you would like your list of tweets to appear.

Example set-up:

$twitter_username = "corenominal";
$twitter_feed = "http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/99713.rss";
require_once('twitterzoid.php');

Call on the main TwitterZoid variable to produce the list of tweets:

echo $TwitterZoid;

Don't worry if this reads like gibberish, I've included an example page within the download.

TwitterZoid examples

There are currently two demonstrations of TwitterZoid in action, see:

My official "What am I doing?" Twitter page:
http://crunchbang.org/what-am-i-doing/

A more stylised version of "What am I doing?", included within the download:
http://crunchbang.org/projects/twitterzoid/demo/

Download TwitterZoid

Location: http://crunchbang.org/projects/twitterzoid/twitterzoid-0.2.tar.gz
MD5: 7c437c2ea32f45dde66fc74f690ab361

TwitterZoid license

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/

Parsing RSS feeds with PHP & SimplePie

Tonight I have mainly been playing around with SimplePie, a PHP class for parsing RSS and Atom feeds. To quote the SimplePie site:

SimplePie is a very fast and easy-to-use class, written in PHP, that puts the "simple" back into "really simple syndication". Flexible enough to suit beginners and veterans alike, SimplePie is focused on speed, ease of use, compatibility and standards compliance.

I'm totally impressed with SimplePie and I'll certainly consider using it within future web projects. I performed a quick test with it tonight by parsing a couple of feeds and displaying the results on my philipnewborough.com domain, it worked a treat. Good stuff.

Ubuntu Sans Brownness

As an operating system, Ubuntu satisfies my needs quite nicely. I've been using it as my main OS for a while now and I've really grown to appreciate its strong points, namely its excellent package management and community of users. Having said that, there is one trivial aspect of Ubuntu that hasn't grown on me, that being its default theme, artwork and general brownness.

So, last week I looked into the artwork/default themes offered by some alternative Linux distributions. Using these systems, openSUSE especially, made for a refreshing change from the depressing brownness of Ubuntu. So with this in mind I decided it was about time that I changed the default Ubuntu theme installed on my systems.

As it turned out, this wasn't as easy a task I thought it'd be. I actually found it quite difficult and it's taken me a couple of days worth of tinkering to come up with a new theme that I'm happy with. See below for screenshots of my desktop as it is now, details of the theme follow:

Theme Details

Applications: Darkilouche by sgarrity, available from GNOME Art
Window Borders: Black by twigsby, available from GNOME Art
Icons: Tango, available from Ubuntu repositories
Wallpaper: Green Meadow 2 [treated with GIMP lomo filter] by tschel, available from GNOME Art

As well as installing the above artwork, I've also combined the two default GNOME panels into one, freeing up some screen real estate and making my work environment feel less boxed-in. All-in-all I'm fairly pleased with the end result, at the very least it makes for a refreshing change from the previous Ubuntu brownness.

CommandShift3 - It's Like Hot or Not for Websites

On CommandShift3, you are presented with the screenshots of two websites side by side. If you click the screenshot of the site you think looks best, the page reloads and you start all over again. It never ends.

I'm really liking CommandShift3, which is unusual as I'm not normally a fan of such sites. I guess the subject matter, web design, has helped to endear it to me. The site is fast becoming one of my favourite places to go whenever I'm bored. The site has also made me realise that I can be as judgemental as the next person.

Anyhow, I couldn't resist submitting CrunchBang into the pool, you can see how it's performing here:
http://commandshift3.com/site/crunchbang.org

At the time of writing, CrunchBang had won 113 of 218 battles (52%), not too shabby, all things considered. Seriously though, it's just some harmless fun and I really wouldn't worry about my site's performance, not unless it started to appear here :D

My New Nokia N95 Smartphone

Yesterday afternoon, while out doing a spot of Christmas shopping, I accidentally, it wasn't planned, walked into my local Three dealership and purchased a Nokia N95 smartphone. I'd been thinking about getting a new phone for some time, my old Nokia 8310 is about as useful as a chocolate teapot, so in a way it was a happy accident.

Anyway, I'm really quite impressed with the phone and its software. The web browser is especially intuitive and easy to use; my new contract includes unlimited web access and I've been testing it out to the full. I'm a total noob when it comes to smartphones and so you'll have to excuse my excitement, but how cool is it to be able to login to Gmail or any other web based service from just about anywhere!? I'd tell you how cool, only the words escape me.

Having said that, owning an N95 isn't all good and I've already noticed a couple of drawbacks; firstly, browsing the web on my N95 has really opened my eyes, so to speak, to how poorly supported small-screen mobile web devices are. I've now got a lot of work to do to make sure my sites support such devices. Secondly, as a result of the feverish button clicking, the end of my left thumb is somewhat suffering in pain. I'm beginning to think the N95 should come with a health warning :)

Nokia N95 Features