Alistair Calder

I have had a blog at Alistair.com for around 12 years now.  At the beginning it was a simple ftp down > edit html > ftp up.  Now it’s WordPress and though I am nowhere near as prolific as my friend Derek, I use this site extensively for many other projects that are not public.

As a faculty member at BCIT (in Web Development, no less), you’d think I would have a nicer web site, or at least on that is current.  Alas, I have constantly struggled with my writing and end up abandoning many posts because I get frustrated with the process.

None of that should prevent me from working on template and the interactions on the site, though.  I thoroughly enjoy assisting my students achieve their potential when crafting their own creations, but somehow I slow down when working on my own.

So, I have reverted the site back to the default design that comes with WordPress until I can put the time and effort in to build something I am proud of.

Let’s see how long that takes.

While blogging from your mobile device is nothing new, it’s still nice to be able to do it. iPhone users can get the most excellent WordPress app, but the rest of us can still get close with the wPhone plugin.

The author says he will not continue with releases, but with the number of Blackberry users out there, I suspect we’ll see this trend continue.

I need to update this site a lot more than I do. Seriously.

Here are some stats:

• 12: The number of drafts that are in my WordPress queue. I am having a tough time editing them for publication
• 7: The number of days per week I have more than 4 hours of my time scheduled
• 5: The number of books that are sitting on my desk at home, waiting to be reviewed
• 28: The number of hockey games I am scheduled to play before September 1st
• 4.25: The multiplier applied to my income to match the amount my home will cost me
• 2.6: The multiplier applied to my income to match the list price of a similar place in Langley
• 3: The number of minutes in my current commute to work (one way)
• 50: The average number of commuting minutes required if I move to Langley (one way)
• $40: Approximate monthly gas cost of my car today
• $550: Approximate monthly gas cost of my car if I commute to/from Langley
• 18: The number of students I have this term
• 60: The highest number of students I have had in a term
• 6: The lowest number of students I have had in a term

That’s all I can think of for now. Off to hockey.

Currently, the WordPress theme I use is a modified version of Regulus by Ben Gillbanks. It’s a nice theme with a good set of options that let me customize a fair bit. I have been fooling around with some other things I have found here and there.

Today, I added two features to my site: Post Detail Reveal and Image Headlines.

Post Detail Reveal I coded myself using jQuery as the JavaScript library controlling the behaviour. I had a slight problem with the index page, in that I had to find a way to identify the specific Post Details to be revealed, but after I overcame that hurdle, it worked perfectly.

Image Headlines is a great little plugin created by ColdForged which allows you to convert text into an image (GIF or PNG) using any True Type font. There are quite a few options, like font-size, colour, multi-line breaks, drop shadows and more. I’m not sure how long I’ll use it, but it’s there for now.

####jQuery####

On the subject of jQuery, I have been playing with it for a few months now and I am really liking it. Through it’s built-in effects and the growing list of plugins, you can add some impressive effects to your web site, similar to Prototype or Mootools, but in a simpler, more powerful package.

Flock is a browser that is integrated with various services like del.icio.us, flickr and a number of blogging applications like Blogger, WordPress and others. 

The concept is quite simple: surf the net as you usually do, but with a browser that supports blogging, tagging, news reading and photo uploads without having to navigate to the service and log in to your account each time. 

Some of the things you can do:

Blog Editor (PC: ctrl+b / Mac: cmd+b)

This opens the Blog Post window that will automatically post to your blog based on the username/password details you supply.  You can even edit or delete previous blog entries, add tags and categories and edit the source HTML.

This editor window also has a drag-and-drop area for text and images that you can use as a temporary strage bin as you are writing your article. 

You can also save your posts as a draft, so you can complete them later, create web snipets (selections of text that you might use over and over) and you can even publish to multiple blogs if you like.

News Feeds (PC: shift+ctrl+n / Mac: shift+cmd+n)

This opens your news feeds in a sidebar (with a set of pre-populated feeds) witht he ability to categorize by folder, or by Saved Articles.  This is a neat feature, allowing you to select individual articles and save them for later viewing or sharing.

Conclusion

I have used Flock before (about a year ago), but it needed some polish and stability.  It appears to have both at this point and makes for a great companion to users who interact with, and contribute to, the web.