The main change will be the format. I longed for a DaringFireball style blog. I wanted to add loads of custom code to do it. Instead I’m just going to rock with a little tweak here and there.

I guess the real question is will I keep this up? You never know.

However this man (one of the champions behind it) has a point. A very good one in fact.

http://www.zeldman.com/2011/06/22/dueling-messages-or-content-strategy-matters/

The question I’m asking is should I change to the html5 boilerplate?

I’ve looked at that mofo and there is some seriously freaky shit going on there. Is it too much?

I thought about going through and maybe stealing the best bits but I’m not even sure what the best bits are!

So I was wondering if you had any experience of making this sort of jump?answers on a postcard!

Tweetdeck had stopped working. If I tired to update my feed it kicked me back to the iPhone home screen. Un-installing and reinstalling didn’t seem to work. And the desktop client was a bit on the slow side.

So I first thought of the official client. However the bad reviews scared the hell out of me. So I gave that a miss.

Next up was twitterific. I’d heard good thing about it and that they had cut back features which is always a good thing. However on install I found you could only have one account. Which is a pity. I’m not prepared to pay for a client just yet…

So that left echofon. I know there are others but it comes recommended. And so far so good. I can’t find a way to copy Twitter user-names without trying a reply and then copying from the new message screen. But it’s a small issue. I’ll rock with it for now.

Do you have any other recommendations?

“The Maximum number of sites profiles has been reached for this version of the program (total in site and quick connect window)”

So I deleted a couple of sites. I didn’t want to but I thought I’ve got them backed up at home and I was at work. Still no joy. I was worried. A google search found NOTHING as well.

Well after a quick visit to the support forum I found this solution:

“Open up Site Manager. Right click on the list of sites on the left. Click Reindex Sites”

I found loads of Misc site profiles. I deleted them and was good to go! Hope this help someone.

But it does have a dark side…

I am a dj and used to be an active member of the dance music scene. So I have a lot of Dj friends. And promoter friends. And this is where it gets dark. The amount of crap requests I get is unreal. Events being the main culprit. (It’s at this point I remember I’ve probably wrote a post similiar to this many times and deleted it as it came across as rage/hate/jealousy or just teenage angst). No I don’t want to go to your event – OMG you’ve messaged me already and told me the same stuff in the event. Please go away.

Its not just that. There is nothing personal about it. There is even a toolbar javascript thing that just invites all your friends. I mean come on. I hate blanket marketing at the best of times. It just grinds my gears when there is no thought and effort in to it.

However I hate myself for even doing this… I … urm … can you just look away from me when I say this … published my fan page today. I know. I hate myself for doing it. I’m going to try to justify it. Even if it is just to myself.

I’m not going to do a group invite. I’m going to send personal messages. I’m going to connect with people that I feel might like to hear about my djing. That doesn’t mean everyone. I think that way I’m being true to myself. I know it’ll take long to get any impact. Hell I’m even going to phone some people. It might spark off a conversation. You never know.

There is something else. The reason I wanted a fan page is because I plan on doing a series of mixes over the next few months. I didn’t want to be annoucing it on my normal facebook profile. That would go against what I said before. So I’ll get people that give a shit about my music and my Dj’ing (both of them) as fans. Everyone else can go back to the silence. Or the occasional “I’m going here”. If you really want to know more about my day to day twitter is where it’s at.

So there. Please visit my fan page… I mean I hate myself as much as you do. Honest.

Smashing magazine has come out and said this was the opinion of one of their writers and perhaps doesn’t echo the voice of the site. Which is cool. I guess. Does the Sunday Times do that? What about the Sun or the Daily Mail? I don’t think they do.

Which raises an interesting point in it’s self. Smashing magazine and the author gave a take on the whole thing like they were a magazine. Let’s be honest to me it’s always going to be a blog. It looks like a blog. It reads like a blog. It’s a blog. And my blog isn’t a money making idea (although more on this later) its a way to communicate. A blog can be monetized I know. There are millions of millionaires that have wrote about how they made their millions from blogging. Well done them. It’s not how 95% of the population see their blog.

Anyway yet again I have digressed. So do I think they are right in saying this? Damn no. However I think they are missing the point.

Many web savvy people have become ad blind. I have. I visit smashing magazine all the time. I look at so many other sites. I don’t know who is advertising where. I think my brain can process ads and moves past them. I do know of some sites that just look f-ugly cos of the amount of ads. I know people have complained about certain sites. I just don’t see the ads. And I don’t care.

That is because I know they aren’t targeted at me. I’m not great at web design and I’m an average coder. The fact is I can take my limited psd’s in to html. I don’t need stock images. I have an email marketing plan and I use Mail chimp. You’re ads aren’t targeted at me. The relationship was never going to work. It’s not you. It’s me.

The person new to the industry should be your bread and butter. They don’t know about any of these things. Probably. It’s ok. I honestly think that smashing magazine is a great place for these people. When learning get as much info as possible. Smashing like lists are great. Yes I said it. A lot of the articles are first class for those dripping their toes in the water. And these people probably don’t know what an ad blocker is. They are interested in psd to xhtml. Don’t worry if power users have an ad blocker guys, they ain’t going to click your ads anyway.

So this is going on for a while and I promise to only go on for another couple of paragraphs. Here’s what I said I’d come on to later. I’m going to be putting some ads on this site. I know what your thinking. A blog with about 10 articles. And ads? Why? Well to be honest I have a couple of articles half wrote that will work well with adsense. I hope. they won’t be big and bold or colourful. Just some text links at the bottom of the article. Don’t click them if you don’t want. It’s more of an experiment than anything.

And finally smashing I do like you. However if you want to complain have a look at this site – http://www.thewebdesignresource.com. A site that blatantly copies your content and then doesn’t even provide a link to your original article.

The thing is I always planned to keep posting. This isn’t a sorry I’ve not been around post though. This is a magical fairy tale. Let’s start with once upon a time…

I have always been of the feeling that I am in the ideal situation to scratch my own itch, a phrased coined by the ever impressive 37 signals. I am a music professional that would like a nice place on the web for all my data from social networking sites and a couple of other important bits of data to reside. It should be easy to manage and I feel that if I got the initial system done for myself easy to customise for other people.

The problem is that really I was quite happy with my one page site and that didn’t need a content management system. I also tend to over think things and start planning for impossible to complete situations that would never come up.

I was then asked to complete a site for a good friend of mine. I was never going to charge him for the work so I asked if he minded me trying to make this system for him. Although the initial development time would be longer it would mean going forward he wouldn’t have to bother me with ever little update and maybe just maybe I could adapt it for other people.

I dare not tell you when I started the project. Again I kept throwing silly questions/scenarios in to the pot. However my friends music is about to blow up as it were and I felt if I could do this and maybe get the holding page up for the content management system site as soon as possible then maybe I could ride his wave of success.

What I also set out to achieve was to create something in a more structure and proper way. OOP PHP was the first thing that I had to start using. And adopting a DRY approach to the code was essential. I started to use mysqli to boot. I also decided that I would not be using any frameworks.

This is a decision that many have questioned. And while I agree you shouldn’t really re-invent the wheel and I have never really had a problem customising open source CMS software or hacking code together to make things work I want this system to be a learning exercise and to be a living breathing part of me.

Which is another thing I struggle with if I’m honest. I often know that I can write a piece of code to pull a variable from a database in about 6 lines. so I do. I copy and paste the same code over and over. I don’t use functions. I take short cuts that mean I get the result quicker BUT the code is never reusable. This is something I wanted to change. I had to change. And basically I have for this project. It’s not perfect. I tend to try to get one master function that does every thing when 5 functions would be a better job. However one the whole I’m happy.

I’m going to write more about the system and the struggles I’ve gone through. Also keep you up to date with the features I’ve included in the site and any changes I have planned.

Until then – http://www.djhq.co.uk and check it out working at http://www.nuraverz.co.uk. Enjoy.

Like all good fairy tales this is a happy ending.

The thing that smacks me in the face is how this is actually possible today. I feel that this country is no longer able to run itself. It breaks my heart because we should be in a position to set an example to the world. Despite our small size the UK is a major world leader. And we fail. I don’t know of a single honest politician (although I haven’t looked very hard).

Maybe it used to work because the numbers were different. Less people per representative. People knew their local MP. Maybe it worked because people used to care. We don’t now. The people, the leaders and everything in between. We just don’t care.

I had a friend who was, in my opinion, intelligent, charming, knowledgeable of the world and actually cared about people. I said to him once “You should run for government” but he dismissed the idea. He said to get in to that position he would have to go against everything he ever stood for. The sucking up. The breaking the rules. You have to be crooked just to get to in to government these days. This was years ago and the conversation often echoes in my mind.

And what can we do? Online petitions? Write to your MP? It all fails. Should we vote with our feet? Leave the country in drives of hundreds and thousands? It would never work because people just don’t care. Your vote doesn’t matter because the MP you elect doesn’t care anyway.

And what do I do? I write a post about how much we all don’t care yet am I willing to do anything? I guess you could say I just don’t care enough.

The truth and it is a horrible truth – Britain doesn’t work.