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2011 Goals Update – Quarter 3

9 months have now passed since I set my goals for 2011 and so it’s time for another update… of dear!

  • Complete work on our house – Some progress has been made, which is really good news. We now have all new internal doors, a super-duper large loft hatch, we’ve redecorated the guest room (well The Badja has) and we have a new front door which we can actually open, close and lock! Still to come is some shelving in the kitchen and new carpets. The hope is to have these done by Christmas but to be frank money is somewhat tight.
  • Give Blood – no progress… I’m ashamed… I really must get a move on with this.
  • Slight weight loss – Well **** it! I’ve only gone and put a stone on since January! I better start concentrating on this again.
  • Take up drawing – Not done much since Q1 but still doing the odd bit of practising.
  • Release a WordPress theme – Although I’ve still not released a WordPress theme into the repository my Responsive TwentyTen plugin has now been mentioned across tens of WordPress blogs and was also mentioned in one of the talks at WordCamp UK 2011.
  • Create another Android App – So I’ve been playing a fair amount with Android and have started work on an app for Forrst as well as playing with the NFC functions and more camera interaction.
  • Get listed in the next Web Designers’ Ideas book – So I have a couple of web projects on which I’m hoping for great things from. I doubt that these are enough to get me listed but this was always a stretch goal.
  • Get drafted to Dribbble – Yup, we can tick this one off. One of the kind Dribbblers recruited me following my submission of some design work as well as some begging and pleading. You can check out my Dribbble work at http://dribbble.com/toddhalfpenny

Well that’s it I think for this quarter.

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2011 Goals Update – Quarter 1

It’s been 3 months since I laid down the goals for 2011 and as such I thought I’d give a quick update on the progress (or lack of).

  • Complete work on our house – slow progress on this one… seems that trades people can be very reluctant to turn up when they say they will. I mean, WHAT?!? Do they not want our money?
  • Give Blood – no progress… I’m ashamed.
  • Slight weight loss – I didn’t expect much following overdoing it at Christmas and the New Year. Currently still hovering around the same weight as the start of December
  • Take up drawing – Finally some progress… I purchased a manga book and have been doodling from it.

  • Release a WordPress theme – I really tried hard to make headway here… I even had a theme in mind, the Responsive TwentyTen one I had made as a child theme. Sadly the WordPress.org theme repository doesn’t take child themes (at the time of writing) so I just recreated the base TwentyTen theme with an additional CSS file to add the responsiveness. Twice this was rejected by the repository moderators. Not one to give up though I found a new way to skin the cat and released the Responsive TwentyTen plugin which basically enables a child theme without actually being a theme. So, this is some progress though not strictly what I was after.
  • Create another Android App – More success! Based on the Asssist application which is an Android client for Dribbble I released the Asssist Widget. If you’re an Android users and fan of design then I suggest you go and check them out. Asssist App + Asssist Widget
  • Get listed in the next Web Designers’ Ideas book – Lord knows how this is going… poorly I would think from the small amount of web work I’ve been doing.
  • Get drafted to Dribbble – No progress on this one either. I have been updating my 3 Pointers page though with new work in the hope that this will aid the cause. On a fairly similar note though I have been invited onto Forrst, which runs along the same lines as Dribbble but also includes more for the developer-types… perhaps a better suiting for me? You can view my Forrst profile here.

So, there we are… a real mixed bag of “failure”, “mixed fortune” and “success”… couldn’t really ask for more I say.

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A Responsive Twenty Ten WordPress Theme

UPDATE: Although the following still exists and is available I have now released a WordPress plugin which gives the same output as the child theme but with the added benefit that it is hosted on the WordPress.org repository. The plugin can be downloaded here.

After reading about Jon Hicks implementation of media queries on his site to make it more responsive to user’s browsing context and the release of the (highly recommended) latest WordPress build I thought it was time to get my feet wet with Responsive site design.

After toying with the idea of implementing this on one of my client sites I thought “Hey! hold on I’m using WordPress 3.0 default theme on my blog… why not extend this?”. And so that’s exactly what I’ve done. I’ve created a child theme for TwentyTen which not only makes it fluid (up to 940px) but also makes it more responsive at smaller sizes. As well as these I’ve added some extra CSS to make it handle iphone and android browsers too thanks to some interesting articles by The CSS Ninja and riklaunim

The result of this the current 0.1 version of the Responsive Twenty Ten WordPress theme. It should be noted that this is a current work in progress which is one of the reasons that I’ve not published it to the WordPress.org themes directory just yet. There are a few known issues still too;

  • IE fluidity is not implemented – seemed to cause issue with the CSS introduced to pick up mobile resolutions (portrait and landscape).
  • Mobile (read Android and iPhone) have some issues dealing with the orientation. Still looking into this. Update – fixed 😉
  • Requires use of some JS for IE (though I’ve disabled this at the moment.]
  • Not got round to validating the CSS yet (naughty naughty, yes I know). Update – fixed 😉

The theme is essentially a fluid version of the default Twenty Ten theme with a fixed maximum width. The extra “responsive” magic comes in when the browser viewport width drops below 661px. What then happens is that the primary and secondary sidebars drop below the main content and appear just above the footer. Some tiny extra rules come into play for iphone and android browsers too to make the page layout flow better.

By all means download the theme in it’s alpha state and let me know your views. Of course you can just have a play with this site as I’m using it at present too.

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Cupcake – First Impressions on the Android Update

This morning I received the Cupcake update for my UK T-mobile G1… and so far I have to say that it’s a great improvement… in terms not just of niggles I had with the last version but also in reference to some of the new tweaks and features that have now been added.

Android Cupcake
Android Cupcake

The update took no more than 10 minutes during which my phone was unusable. There was, however, good visual feedback letting me know at least that something was going on. Straight after the G1 had rebooted I clicked on the ‘ToggleBlu’ application icon to switch the Bluetooth off (it is on by default… I’m not sure as to why but perhaps I’m in the minority here) and sadly it failed. I started to dread that the update would break all my downloaded apps… things were not looking too bright. So I started playing with the other Market downloads to see just how they’d react to the new release of the OS.

From that point on everything seemed a great change; all the other applications whether installed by default (contacts, gmail, etc) or third party software all seemed to run fine… and some with some nice new features.

Here is a list of just a few of the key things that I’ve noticed.

  • Faster scrolling – perhaps it’s because I’m excited but I do seem to notice an improvement in the scrolling.
  • Batch options in Gmail – you are now able to bulk archive, set labels, etc,
  • Auto rotate – without any additional software the orientation of the screen can be automated
  • Screen animations – some nice ice candy when moving between screens
  • Calendar – more control over events and a better “agenda” view
  • Improved Camera capture – seems much quicker and has a better interface/interaction with gallery
  • Video playback/capture support – I have only played with this briefly but seems pretty good and also supports audio.
  • Browser – 1 click zoom to 1:1 option, a “most visited” tab in the bookmarks page
  • On screen keyboard – although I really love having a “proper” qwerty keyboard I think for quick SMS creation this may come in useful.

All in all I have to say I’m pleased so far… I’m also excited about the coming of 3rd party widgets too so to sum up… my phone just keeps improving!

UPDATE (08/05/09): Kudos to  Andrew Schwimmer who had a fix for the ToogleBlu app out yesterday. Also just noticed a nifty “double tap to unlock” feature when on a call. Looks like “Shake Awake” is no longer needed.