Category: Personal

The Joy of Stats

Posted on by chris

When I have time (which isn’t often, to be honest) I like to look through the statistics for my websites and see who’s been visiting. Some of the search terms I get arriving at my site are a little … strange. However not as strange as some people’s.

Seeing as I’m short on quality content at the moment I’ll take the wimps way out and post the search terms that have brought people to this site over the last few days:

Requests Search term
42 radiohead in rainbows review
27 marshall super bass
25 postsecret
16 php datatable
12 in rainbows review
12 in rainbows review radiohead
10 marshall superbass
7 css gantt chart
6 css gantt
4 marshall super bass 100
4 where to go in guernsey
4 review radiohead in rainbows
4 gantt chart css
3 gantt css
3 prototype unobtrusive link
3 2plan
3 review of in rainbows
3 wierd & wonderful pictures
3 whitby
3 cartoon church pictures

I think from that it’s quite obvious that I’m serving a series of niche markets with what I write. Which is fine, it fits in with the series of niches in my brain.

Round-up of the week

Posted on by chris

That sounds like I’m going to report on some successful cattle handling, doesn’t it? Sorry to disappoint you, it’s nothing so exotic.

This week has been a tough one. I’d rather not go into details (yes, all the problems were technological, and yes, they were my fault) but suffice to say I’d rather not have another week like this one any time soon. Still, there have been good points, too.

I’ve (finally) managed to install Ubuntu Studio on my main machine. It wasn’t as easy as I hoped, as the DVD I burned from their installation file didn’t work. So I ended up loading Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn) then doing the package dance to upgrade.

So far it seems to work fine, although I admit I’ve done nothing yet except load a few extra packages I need and check JACK starts. It looks great, but I do think they need a few more desktop wallpapers as the default selection is a bit limited.

Anyway, I’m currently immersing myself in a large glass of whisky to help wash away the pain of earlier in the week. More regular entries may, or may not, be forthcoming.

Flickrising the world

Posted on by chris

I’ve succumbed and created an account with Flickr, the amazingly popular image management website. While I have a gallery of images here on this very site, it’s not that easy to add pictures to. No batch tagging, no handy uploader tool to drag and drop photos in. Whereas FLickr makes uploading, tagging, renaming, commenting and organising photos a breeze. I’ll still keep the gallery here, but it will be for just a few select photos I think.

So take a look at my photos. My favourite so far is this fantastic sunset.

As time goes by

Posted on by chris

It’s been all quiet on the blogging front recently, not least because last week I celebrated my thirtieth birthday. Most people, even those that know me quite well, can’t believe I’ve only just reached 30 as obviously I look a lot older than that. And having seven children between my wife and I tends to make me seem older.

By “celebrated” I mean I went to church. No just any church, but my good friend Dawn’s new church (she’s one of these new-fangled women vicars). They don’t seem to have a website at the moment for the church itself, but they also run a project called Urban Space (although this might tell you more about them). It all looks very exciting.

The other reason why I’ve been so busy is the amount of work I have at the moment. Don’t get me wrong, it’s all good enjoyable stuff, but I do feel like I need a holiday. So it’s fantastic that the wife bought us tickets for Greenbelt, which says about itself:

Greenbelt is an independent Christian charity working to express love, creativity and justice in the arts and contemporary culture in the light of the Christian gospel.

But if you want to call it a lefty, tree-hugging Christian arts and music festival that’s alright with me. I haven’t been able to go for the last few years, so it will be a nice return. Not only will it be chance to meet up with a lot of old friends, but it will be Reubens for taste of a festival (even if we are spending the nights in a hotel).

As ever I’ll be an optimist and say I’ll be back blogging regularly about geek stuff soon, but in all likelihood it will remain as sporadic as ever.

This ain’t no disco

Posted on by chris

Andy Budd, one of the Cool Guys of the web design world, recently brought my attention to this. It’s a collection of photos of the offices of design agencies around the world. As you can image, there are some pretty cool places to work.

My home officeIt reminded me that I’d taken a picture of my own creative space to show you all (yes, all three of you). So here it is. I’d like to draw your attention to four things I think you’ll agree every home office, especially one for a world class web dude like me, needs.

  1. Bread bin (green circle). This contains the ends of loaves that no-one wants to finish (generally cheap white bread, yuk) but occasionally yummy treats such as cinnamon and raisin bagels or even lemon cake.
  2. Bananas (yellow circle). What more do I need to say?
  3. Selection of onions and peppers (red circle, middle tray). I could have bigged-up the fruit (top tray) and potatoes (bottom tray) but the onions and peppers have the right kind of spicy kick for a creatve space.
  4. Cat’s dish (blue circle). I’ve accidentally dipped my toes in this more than once, but that’s the price that I pay for my art.

So you see, the right kind of ambiance is vital for ensuring that top-quality work is produced by yours truly. And long may it continue.