*tweak*

Sunday, March 29, 2009 ~ 2 comments so far

Just a quick note, for those in RSS land, and for those not, although less so for you as you (I hope) have already spotted what I’m about to mention. I did, finally, update the banner a little and add a splash of colour too. If you aren’t seeing any changes, please refresh your browser (press the F5 key on your keyboard or CTRL+F5 (PC), CMD+F5 (Mac)).

I’ve also updated my other websites appropriately (here, here and here).

That’s all.

Told you it was a quick note.

Tinkering

Monday, March 23, 2009 ~ 4 comments so far

In my usual style, just when I should be doing something else I find the spare minutes and hours (which aren’t actually spare) being whittled away by something completely different.

And I don’t mean in the Monty Python sense.

Speaking of which I missed a Python reference the other day, but thankfully re-gained some geek cred by asking if anyone else knew how C3-PO got his name (or R2-D2 for that matter).

So, despite the fact I’ve got a website to build for a client (I HAVE started it, honest!) I find myself, once again, with Photoshop open, working through a variety of potential options for reworking the banner of this website. I’m a bit stalled on this and, as it will affect the my other websites, it’s kinda crucial that the whole ‘brand design’ thing works.

No, I don’t think of myself as a ‘brand’ but I do like things to be neat, and lined up and uniform and have a sense of design to them. Yes, it’s a bit anal and weird, no I’m not apologising for it, and yes I will be making similar changes to all my other websites.

However, as I’m stalled on this, I thought I’d open this up to you guys and gals. I’d like your opinion on the following, please. Leave a comment with your thoughts.

(more…)

More, more, more

Wednesday, March 18, 2009 ~ 3 comments so far

For the past few days I’ve been noodling about in Photoshop, trying to come up with a revised banner graphic for this blog (and, subsequently a theme I can take across the other two ‘one man’ websites). It’s been quite educational, mixing general research with photoshop tutorials on what is probably pretty basic stuff but is all new to me.

Whilst the change won’t be radical it will add another colour to the theme, and generally make the website a bit richer. I’m all for minimal but I do think the design needs something … else … a little more … oomph …

I’ve also been playing about with Yahoo Pipes, largely inspired by http://www.gregorsmith.com/. If nothing else it’s something to do with my name domain website (that’s www.gordonmclean.co.uk, if you were wondering).

What all of this means is that, for the moment, my writing mojo is in short supply. I do have a couple of things drafted I want to publish but I don’t think I’ll be doing that here in the first instance, mainly because I’m determined to publish something to the excellent Writer’s Bloc; you have been to visit, haven’t you? Some wonderful, wonderful writing there.

In fact, it’s a little daunting, submitting something to another website in the hope that it might get published. What if they said “No, it’s rubbish, you are rubbish, never go near a keyboard again your horrid horrid word mangler you”? I don’t know if I could stand it.

Perhaps I’ll just go back to faffing about in Photoshop, it’s much nicer there.

Get off your RSS

Thursday, January 29, 2009 ~ 31 comments so far

January draws to a close (already!!) and it is time for me to own up. I’ve been experimenting on you. Sorry about that but, on the bright side, it’s not like some weird alien abduction involving probes and brain washing.

In fact, if I’m honest, it’s only really occurred to me these past couple of days that I’ve been experimenting.

I’ve been posting to this blog for a very long time and it’s fair to say, and indeed I did say it, that my blogging mojo was slowly eroding. To try and see if it was just laziness I decided that I’d try and post every single day for at least the month of January, and then see how I felt.

This is contrary to most of the advice and reassurance I was given, which largely boiled down to the fact that I need only post when I wanted to and that the lovely, smart, beautiful people who read this blog would be quite happy.

Quality not quantity they said.

Pfffftttt, I said.

Which brings us right up to date.

Putting aside the part of me that writes all this for the sheer fun of it, I turn to my stats. Surely with a more regular stream of content, my stats would be on the rise? I may it stands to reason, doesn’t it?

You’d think.

It hasn’t. Not one jot. My average (130 visits a day) remains as it was throughout all of last year. Flat, static, constant.

Mind you, I don’t actually know how many people read the posts via RSS (dear people who make clever website stats thingies, can’t I get ONE single via of all the consumers of my content?). I’m an avid RSS user myself and I know how often, on average, I actually click through to read a website

So I’d like to extend my experiment a little. For today only, could I trouble you, dearest RSS reader, to click through to the website? You don’t have to leave a comment, just load up the website if you read this post.

I’ll post before and after stats, so come on people LET’S MAKE A DIFFERENCE!!!

Small changes

Monday, January 19, 2009 ~ 4 comments so far

Sometimes it’s the little things that add up to make something better.

The realisation that I probably post to Twitter more than I should hit home recently. I use Twitter to update my Facebook status and, as a few work colleagues can see my Facebook profile, one of the jovial nitwits has created a special Facebook group just for me, titled “Gordon Mclean cannot stop updating his status”.

However, despite jokingly suggesting I might stop using Twitter soon (it has jumped the shark, hasn’t it?) I don’t see that happening, in fact I’m still finding new ways to use it.

One of the first applications I put on my iPhone was Twitterific. It was good enough for me to buy the Pro version (not hugely expensive) and it’s been my Twitter client for a while now. However it does have some limitations and when I heard mention of Tweetie I thought I’d give it a try. One intriguing part was the Instapaper hook up it has built in, with one click I can add a link that someone posts to Twitter to my Instapaper account to read at a later date.

Now, a few months ago that wouldn’t have been much use but as more and more of my fellow peers (technical writers and their ilk) start using Twitter, and as I use Instapaper for marking articles and posts that might be useful to feature in the monthly column I write for the ISTC… well it’s a match made in … Tweaven? (sorry).

In other fascinating news, I’ve been tweaking this very blog a little, mainly adding in a better view of the comments. Those of you with a gravatar should see that now, those of you that don’t get a randomly generated pattern (or you can always sign up and get a gravatar, it’s free).

OK, I’m sure you are all in need of a lie down. What an exciting whirlwind of a life I lead, eh?

Not today

Thursday, January 15, 2009 ~ 4 comments so far

So far, in this year of two thousand and nine, I have posted to this blog everyday.

But not today.

Too tired, too busy and, you know what, quite happy not to be pushing myself to blog just because it’s another day.

Just wanted to capture that thought before the day ends.

When you can’t write…

Monday, January 12, 2009 ~ 7 comments so far

… write.

12 days into 2009 and my first little hiccup. The weekend offers me nothing with which to grace this blog, unless you want the fascinating tale of the one time I ventured outside all weekend, to pick up our wheelie bins as they had blown over. This led me to have wet slippers and the discovery that the sole of said slippers is slightly tapered and the join between sole and upper is almost completely underfoot in the middle of the slipper, unlike a more conventional slipper construction which would have a solid sole all the way across the sole of your foot, the join being at the sides.

Oh god. Am I really talking about slipper construction? How quickly I sink to such depths.

But then deciding to stay within the confines of the house, rather than venture outside into the howling gales and lashing rain, means my sources of blog inspiration are limited, as evidenced above.

Largely I ‘pottered’. Which means I did a little work (a design proposal for a prospective web design client), played some games on the PlayStation (ok, one game, Pro Evolution Soccer 3), tidied a little, watched TV a little, ate a little (3lb weight loss from last week!), read a little more of Live and Let Die, and so on and so and so on.

Ohh and I played with the cat.

But I’m determined I won’t resort to using the cat as blog fodder even if he remains charmingly cute and occasionally annoying.

To be fair my weekend was quietly enjoyable and if I’m honest it did actually generate a fair few topics for this blog. It’s just that I can’t seem to write that much about any of them.

I was going to discuss the blatant sexism in the James Bond novel I’m reading but then it was written in 1954 so one can hardly expect it to live up to modern political ideals.

I could discuss Pro Evolution Soccer Master League tactics, specifically who is a good buy for a Division 2 team (hint: Gouffran, Gambino, Urreta, Mezague and Beria first) but that would REALLY narrow my audience. Not to mention the fact that most of the information I have to offer is already listed in the previous parentheses.

I could cover the fact that I spent some of the weekend re-installing Windows and, subsequently, will have to spend more time re-installing the applications I use. In a way this is a good thing, it means I can clear out those that I don’t really use anyway.

And finally, I could ponder my thoughts around the idea of switching to using my MacBook as my main computer, with the purchase of a NAS drive to host my working files, media and photos but… well that’s a way off so no point in doing that.

Instead I thought I’d just start writing and see what happened and, as usual, I find that I’m quite able to fill a blog post. Sure the quality isn’t that great but a post is a post (except when it’s a page, right?).

And hey, YOU’RE still reading..