An hour about iLife and iWork, 10 Minutes about the 17-inch MBP, and couple of minutes about DRM-free iTunes. Bit weak if you ask me. Apple could have at least tried to show something interesting or exciting given that it was their last ever MacWorld keynote. No Snow Leopard, no Mac Mini, no 30-inch LED cinema display, no iMac update, no Mac Pro update, surely they could have slipped one of those in.
Dean J Robinson - deanjrobinson.com
Articles & Notes View All »
Wednesday 07 January 2009
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Sunday 04 January 2009
Fire and Light
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The Big Picture truly is a must look, in the past I’ve never checked it enough, but I’ve just rectified that by subscribing to their feed. The image above is just one of the amazing images in their 3-part best of 2008 series, which I highly recommend you check out if you haven’t already. Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
Original caption from “The Big Picture”:
Lightning bolts appear above and around the Chaiten volcano as seen from Chana, some 30 kms (19 miles) north of the volcano, as it began its first eruption in thousands of years, in southern Chile May 2, 2008. Cases of electrical storms breaking out directly above erupting volcanoes are well documented, although scientists differ on what causes them. Picture taken May 2, 2008. (Carlos Gutierrez)
Source: http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/12/the_year_2008_in_photographs_p.html
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Saturday 03 January 2009
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shouldiusetablesforlayout.com No. If you can’t make a div based layout work these days, then, well, you’re probably using Internet Explorer. Solution. Stop using Internet Explorer. Seriously you have no excuses anymore now that both Safari and Firefox are available for both Windows and Mac.
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Friday 02 January 2009
Easy CSS Drop Caps
{4}Adding drop caps to the beginning of a paragraph, as I did with my latest redesign, is actually a pretty simple and straight-forward process. The effect can be achieved with just a couple of lines of CSS making use of two special ‘pseudo-elements’.
This effect should work in most browsers (yes, even Internet Explorer, according to MSDN both ‘elements’ should work in IE5.5+), the only real variation may be which font is displayed for the drop cap, and the way the specific browser interprets ‘em’ font-sizes. Alternatively pixel sizes could be used for the drop cap font, which should allow you to get greater consistency between browsers.
As mentioned we’re going to use two pseudo-elements as outlined in the CSS2 specification, the two ‘elements’ in question are :first-line and :first-letter. If you’re curious and want to know more about these ‘elements’ or the concept of ‘pseudo-elements’ feel free to follow the links and have a read of the specification, its not necessary for the purposes of this brief how-to, but some people are into that sort of thing.
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Thursday 01 January 2009
Epic BrikWars!
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Saw this on Digg a few days ago, thought it was the perfect candidate for testing out my new “image quick post” thingo. Check our the source link below for the desktop wallpaper version and a selection of other equally epic BrikWars wallpapers. Wish there were some widescreen ones though, guess this one will do for the moment.
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Wednesday 31 December 2008
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How to fix crappy IE image scaling All these years making do with the below par appearance of scaled images in Internet Exploder and all we had to add was one measly little line of css. Hit the link for a before/after comparison.img { -ms-interpolation-mode:bicubic; }
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Monday 29 December 2008
The One Week Redesign
{4}Like most of the “redesigns” that I’ve done this year, this one is again just an evolution of the previous design. And like the last evolution this too was just about a complete ground-up rebuild. I’ve tried a few different things this time, with the use of post summaries, more variation in typography, revised single post view and many other bits and pieces. Lets say its same same but different…
Why another redesign?
Two reasons really, firstly I can’t help myself, I just always have this need to change something. Secondly, I needed to upgrade to WordPress 2.7 and I wanted to make sure I could make use of all the new features it brings, this meant I either had to update large portions of my existing theme, or build a new one. Oh, and did I mention that I only started work on this design on December 23rd, so really its the “less than one week” redesign.
What’s different?
The basics of the site haven’t changed very much at all, I’ve just rearranged things a bit, and gone crazy with some fancy CSS in areas like the post excerpts (CSS dropcaps FTW). The layouts of the reviews, archives and downloads pages remain largely untouched (because I was actually happy with how they looked). The single post view has received a bit of a revamp, with the excerpt added, a revised sidebar and updated comments display that makes use of the threaded comments functionality built in to WP2.7.
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Friday 12 December 2008
Fluency Admin 2 Released
{17}There is no doubt that the brand spanking new admin interface in WordPress 2.7 is a huge leap forward, and so long as you don’t switch to the ‘blue’ version (seriously, worst, blue, ever) its actually pretty nice to look at and use. The navigation is now down the left-hand side, just as I preferred (which is why that’s where it was in Fluency 1.x), and because of this, styling and customising the menu in-particular has been a lot simpler that it was in previous versions of WP.
There is no doubt that the brand spanking new admin interface in WordPress 2.7 is a huge leap forward, and so long as you don’t switch to the ‘blue’ version (seriously, worst, blue, ever) its actually pretty nice to look at and use. The navigation is now down the left-hand side, just as I preferred (which is why that’s where it was in Fluency 1.x), and because of this, styling and customising the menu in-particular has been a lot simpler that it was in previous versions of WP.
So whats new.
Well, technically, everything is. Fluency 2 was a ground up rewrite due to the fact that just about every part of both the design and underlying structure of the default admin has changed. This was definitely a good thing, as it allowed me to make sure I’m only including what really needs to be included. However I did make this a little hard for myself when I started work using the early trunk builds, which meant that every time I updated my build I had to update Fluency…again. I actually ended up building the Fluency 2 CSS from scratch twice, and what it looks like now isn’t at all what it looked like when I first began playing around.
Keep reading for further details, screenshots, and most importantly the download link.
Nominate Hahlo for a Shorty Award
{0}Do you use Hahlo? like Hahlo? love Hahlo? why not nom-nom-nom-inate it for the Shorty Awards. Just click here.
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Sunday 09 November 2008
Nominations open for Open Web Awards
{2}Nominations for the 2nd Annual Open Web Awards presented by Mashable have opened. Here’s where I insert the shameless self promotion, by nominating myself/my work in couple of categories. If you use either Fluency or Hahlo please consider nominating (links below open a new window) and voting (when the time comes) all thats required is […]
Nominations for the 2nd Annual Open Web Awards presented by Mashable have opened. Here’s where I insert the shameless self promotion, by nominating myself/my work in couple of categories. If you use either Fluency or Hahlo please consider nominating (links below open a new window) and voting (when the time comes) all thats required is an email address and 30 seconds of your time. Thank you.
Nominate deanjrobinson.com in the “Blog Plugins” category for Fluency Admin (and/or any of my other plugins that you may be using).
Nominate Hahlo.com in the “Social Networking Applications” category. or…
Nominate Hahlo.com in the “Mobile Applications” category. or both.
Also if you feel that Fluency, Hahlo or any of my other ‘things’ should be nominated in a different category please feel free to do so. 
Twitter @deanjrobinson »
2 days ago
“ thinking about deleting a bunch of no longer used sub-domains, don't need them, and if I do in the future I can always recreate them. ”
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Reviews View All »
- January 2009
- December 2008
- 29Dec
good if you're expecting mindless crap, better than "Meet the Spartans".
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ProjectsView All »
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Fluency Admin 2.0
The all-new version of Fluency, now compatible with WordPress 2.7
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pipeDream
Based on the theme that I used on this site for the latter part of 2007. It comes with 21 different color schemes built-in, as well as simple integration of twitter, flickr and delicious.
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