Meta Dragon

design, code, and caffeine

The Child is the Father of the Man

I have been doing a lot of experimenting with the thematic wordpress framework recently. I really enjoy working with it as it does make hacking templates a lot easier – and provides a clean slate for styling.

The thematic documentation is sadly lacking, those with bigger balls will look at the code and do thousands of internet searches to find the answers to their questions – however many simply give up; (only to return later when they have no joy hacking a nasty free template).

Overriding templates and functions is the basis of creating a thematic child theme. I have searched many websites and finally found a really good source of information on the correct way of doing this. So here it is, thanks venutip

http://venutip.com/content/right-way-override-theme-functions

Posted in Uncategorised · June 15th, 2010 · Comments (0)

web 2.0 hell? new colourLovers

Does anyone remember the old COLOURlovers web site? Coz it was beautiful. Nice delicate gradients, an intuitive moving menu, enough style to make a graphic designer happy – yet enough ease of use for a newbie to computers. So why fix it if it’s not broke? Thoughts anyone?

Tags: COLOURlovers, Web Design
Posted in Uncategorised · March 11th, 2010 · Comments (0)

Traa Dy Liooar (“time enough” in Manx)

On the Isle of Man the pace of life is certainly more relaxed than say London. There is a noticeable difference between the speed in which a Londoner speaks at, compared to that of a Manxie. I for one love the relaxed pace, and certainly the more relaxed way of speaking – but how does this work out in business? The BBC published an article way back in April 2008 about this difference in pace of life.

I have noticed that on the Isle of Man, especially for a freelancer, business deals take a long time. Sometimes you hear of “I need a website, can you help” and then a gap of around 3 months before you hear anything else. Sometimes there is no follow up conversation at all. Meetings can be arranged, only to be delayed by people who don’t show up.

What are your experiences of working on the Isle of Man? Can you agree with the statements above?

Tags: Business, communication, isle of man, meetings, Web Design
Posted in Business · February 19th, 2010 · Comments (0)

Quick Break of the Silence

Hi kids I’m currently very busy working and won’t have time to blog until next week or the week after. I shall have plenty to talk about so keep checking for updates in the near future!

Posted in Uncategorised · January 15th, 2010 · Comments (0)

http://www.mannifestlive.com/

Mannifest

Mannifest :: Music and Film Garden Party
Kosheen + Easty Star All Stars get to mix with some of the local talent from this very creative and wonderfully musical island!

Show ur support guys an buy some tickets

Posted in Uncategorised · August 5th, 2009 · Comments (0)

The power of fun! Performing arts website goes live :)

From stilt walking, to fire shows, to workshops for kids Mike and Jo really know how to get a party going! With the launch of their site: http://theplaypeople.weebly.com/ you can now contact them and hire their services for your party.

Street performers have always been a great way to liven up any event from corporate events, to kids parties; and its really amazing just how many different talents these two have. They can teach you how to dance, how to pogo, how to make balloons and even throw some fire around.

Check out their many talents here.

Enjoy!

Tags: baloons, entertainment, fire, fun, glow, juggling, play, poi, stilts, street performer, web
Posted in Art, Social · June 17th, 2009 · Comments (0)

@£# on a Mac

Hi there!

I found a really great article explaining how to set up your mac for a traditional British (windows) keyboard. It seems even the British keyboard which is included with the OS is missing the all important hash key. I’m not sure how a web developer is to survive without this one!

Heres a link to the instructions on how to fix the problem: Using a British/UK Windows keyboard with an Apple Mac in OS X (3)

Once you have switched to this keyboard, shift3 becomes £, shift 2 becomes “, shift ‘ becomes @, and \ becomes #.

Hooray!

Tags: @, Apple, dictionary, fix, hash, keyboard, Mac, pound sign, web development
Posted in Apple Mac, Web Design · June 2nd, 2009 · Comments (0)

apologies!

We had a small problem recently with the server which meant a roll-back to 3rd March. My post about google, clusty and cuil has been lost.

Posted in Uncategorised · April 22nd, 2009 · Comments (0)

Sharing a ride! A new initiative on the Isle of Man

I sat in the rain, in the bus shelter on Douglas promenade waiting for a bus to work. The bus was late as usual. I couldnt help but notice the amount of cars, literally a queue two miles long, and 99.9% of the cars had only 1 person inside.

We all appreciate the idea that sharing a car can save money and “reduce your carbon footprint” but how do you meet people that are willing to share their car with you?

Well a new website aims to solve that problem by allowing users to search for potential car-shares between all the major Manx towns.

Here is the link: http://www.journeymatch.im/

Tags: car, car share, carbon footprint, commute, environment, isle of man, journey match, manx, Travel
Posted in Travel · February 19th, 2009 · Comments (0)