Aaron Donohoe

Please excuse any interruptions to the blog over the next few days, as I’m messing around changing things — adding, removing, modifying, breaking, fixing etc.

Normal service will resume shortly. Hopefully.

You may noticed that I update the look of the website more then I actually update the content. You may also noticed that it is just another bastardised version of the usual theme. It’s true what they say that web developers are never happy with the look of their website and have to constantly tinker, fiddle and ‘adapt’. It’s true to say that I would fit into that category. Yet another bastardised version of the usual theme is online, but alas its living on borrowed time.

I’m working on yet another design for the blog. Simple, but is a bit more invoking then the present design which I will admit is boring. I was going to the ‘minimalist’ approach and failed miserably . I seem to spent more time arsing around with the MVPSI website then I do on my own!

Something more exciting will be coming shortly. Maybe.

Ask any web designer about Internet Explorer, most notably anything pre-IE 7 and they will tell you that their job is made a lot more difficult to get a design looking uniform along all the browser platforms. I never have any problem getting my designs looking uniform amongst browsers, such as Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera, Flock etc. However, making my blog look uniform in IE6 is a royal cunt of a job. For some reason it just doesn’t like to align properly in IE6 for whatever reason.

aarondonohoe.ie viewed in IE6

aarondonohoe.ie viewed in Firefox

It’s a stark contrast, and as a lot of people aren’t too clued up on Firefox or other friendly browsers, it bothers me to see what some readers of my blog are seeing when they visit my blog. But having refered to my stats, it appears that less than 5% of my readers use IE6, and 29% use IE7 or IE8 which is a good thing as my blog looks pretty uniform in those browser versions.

I FUCKING HATE INTERNET EXPLORER!

I’ve been sporting the new style for a week or so now. It’s essentially one of my first scratch built styles, using my own framework. In times gone by, I used other frameworks to base any WordPress design on. I rarely got any custom WordPress work, until this summer, every second project has WordPress in one way, shape or form. So, I got to experimenting with my limited PHP coding experience to make myself a custom framework, which I could easily adapt to other designs with minimal fuss. I’ve kept it as basic as possible, mainly as I don’t want it too laden, but also I haven’t the experience under my belt to be executing all manors of Javascript and other frilly bits. It doesn’t look like much, but I’m quite proud of it.

I’m still messing around with various ways to eradicate graphics completely from my design work, and this is nearly there – the only graphic is the background image. It was xHTML & CSS valid, but with the miriad of plugins installed there have been numerous conflicts between them and my framework.

It needs some tidying, but it’s all work in progress. As always, a web developer is never happy with his/her own website, and can never stop tweaking. I’m no different. In fact, I’d consider myself a compulsive tweaker.

You may have noticed that I’ve incorporated a new design into the blog, as frankly the old one was too butchered, and was quite boring. So due to the fact I had a few hours to spare last night & tonight, I got to making a new one.

I tried to get it as Web 2.0 as possible, and keep everything minimal, concise and to the point. I based the basic coding around the previous theme, as I find that it serves my purpose for the blog nicely — if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. This gave me the opportunity to tidy up the code and give me the facility to add AJAX features, should I chose to do so.

There are a few more bits which need alteration or integration. However, if you spot a bug in the meantime drop me a line — thanks

I’ve a throbbing headache and I’ve ordered a pizza so this will be short and sweet.

New iPod Shuffle.

As my long winded Mac post last week illustrated, I’m a big fan of Apple products. The shuffle was one product which I’ve owned every generation since its release. This new slimline generation will be no exception – if I had the money I’d have one, but with various outgoings for school, insurance, etc, my finances are limited so I can’t splash out on a new iPod just yet – plus I’ve a Classic, a Nano and an iPhone to keep my occupied.

I have to admit, this is a nicest looking iPod Shuffle, I loved the previous generation, but this has excelled itself. I love the the size – smaller than your average pen drive, I love the minimal look – no buttons, I love the minimal controls on the earphone cable.

One of its USPs would have to be the VoiceOver feature, which allows the iPod to talk to you and tell you various song titles, playlist titles etc. A great feature, considering the iPod shuffle doesn’t feature a screen!

Random Links:

• Bono is a tax-dodging midget
• Alan has moved to the darkside…Wordpress!

Just testing my latest acquisition, the new iPhone BlogPress app. I’ve sorted out a priceplan with o2 so I hope to mobile blogging shortly.

A great app, if you liked the WordPress app then you’ll like this as it’s almost identical except it also allows you to post to many other platforms such as Blogger or LiveJournal. It also features a easy to use photo uploader and posts to mulitple blogs so you only have to write once if you’ve multiple blogs.

It’s a bit of an investment, but worth it in my opinion.

Bit of a fuck up this week. I messed up on the publishing dates, but it’s all groovy now. I was only alerted to it when I noticed on Analytics that visits were constant to the rest of the week. Ah well.

Irish Blog Awards 2009

Alas I will not be in attendance, too much stuff going on to enjoy myself and let what little hair I have down. Those of you who can’t make it neither can follow the proceedings on Twitter, via #iba09, and the award winners will be announced on www.awards.ie at 10pm.

*This space is reserved for an embarrassing video from the awards*

Video of the Week: 10CC – Dreadlock Holiday

Absolutely no reason for it, I just found the song and loved the video.

Random Irish Blogger Links:

• A letter to our leaders who seem hell bent on destroying us
• Eolaí is running another competition
• Joe Scanlon – Five Things you should know about writing web content
• Absolutely Genius!
• Inside TheChrisD’s head – very insightful!

I’m a bit late this week, I wouldn’t go as far as to say fashionably late. As I keep whining about, I’m out the door with busyness – I’ve two websites to complete for clients, I’ve some work that needs to be done to a friends car and I’ve also a mountain of coursework to catch up on over the midterm. So time for blogging is scarce and this isn’t a three course blog post – sorry.

Video of the Week: David after the Dentist.

This video is vastly becoming a widescread internet viral, so much that it’s gotten nearly 9.5 million hits in just two weeks (just on YouTube). How cruel would you have to be to post a video of your drugged up kid freaking out on YouTube?

Random Links:

• Mark met Pete Doherty – sweet!
• The 13 year old dad!
• It’s illegal to Jailbreak an iPhone!
• New 16GB iPhone may be on the way.