Richard's Blog

Sonar 5 Producer

2005-11-09T11:48:00.000Z

Well I have just received possession of Sonar version 5... !!! Woo hoo... Thanks to my family for a nice Birthday present. I am looking forward to having a play, although I can see when as we are on a tight schedule here at work (imminent release in less than 2 weeks), but I'm sure I will fit in some time somewhere.
I am reliably informed on the Sonar forum and from Edirol Europe that although the minimum spec is Windows XP running on a P4 1.3Gig that my paltry 1Gig PIII with Win2K will run it just fine... So here's hoping.

New Host, and a new site.

2005-10-30T23:03:00.000Z

After a long time away from the Blog I have finally come back !!!

I have taken the plunge and gone for a reseller hosting package, this means that not only can I host Sarah's Jewellery and lampworked Glass beads site www.sarahdownton.co.uk but I can now also host many other sites, as I seem to be getting into web design, I can now offer hosting as part of the design package.
Not only is Sarah's site now all fully PHP and database driven, but also includes a blog (beadlog as Sarah likes to call it), which Sarah seems to be keeping more up to date than mine... Then again that's not very hard is it.
I will shortly be taking over the hosting of the GBUK society web site.
I have great plans for this, including integrating the members forum, which is currently running on MSN, and perhaps adding member editable pages for them to put up their own pictures and information about themselves... There is so much that CAN be done, and yet so little time. (Hmmm.. That old chestnut, anybody got any spare time they can give me? )
Well I will try not to be away for so long next time...

Professional XHTML and CSS

2005-06-05T22:29:00.000+01:00

Well... had some time to recover from the course held by Eric Meyer on Professional CSS XHTML Techniques (It was a long day, up at 6:30 for a 9:00 start, finishing proper at 18:30, then talking in the bar for an hour or so, finally getting home at 21:30... Phew !!!)
It was certainly an interesting course, and it has definitely clarified several things for me... One of the things I was pleased about was the fact that, as I am pretty much self taught as far as CSS and XHTML are concerned, I have not got it all wrong. That's got to be a good thing.
I will try to gather my thoughts for a more in-depth review... but then again if Peter is going to do that.... maybe I won't bother !! Who knows...

Eric Meyer on Professional CSS XHTML Techniques

2005-06-04T00:09:00.000+01:00

Not posted for a while but I'm looking forward to going to Eric Meyer on Professional CSS XHTML Techniques - A One Day Workshop by Carson Workshops, focusing on CSS, XHTML and Accessibility
So I'd better go to bed as I have to be up at 6:30 tommorow morning, and I'm still here typing away...!!
I hope to get some nice nuggets out of this course, I hope so, as I need to do a presentation on what I've learnt at work when I return
I am going with Peter Westwood and I hope a good day will be had by all...!!
Well off to bed... night

SarahDownton.co.uk

2005-03-17T00:54:00.000Z

Right... a bit of an overhall on Sarah's site tonight... new pictures for the "Spring Collection", plus prety much every page was updated in some form or another.

I am looking into how I can make this all automatic. Hopefully we will shortly be moving over to a new host that supports PHP and mySQL so I can automate a lot of the boilerplate work, plus let Sarah add her own news items and pictures into a gallery (possibly Simple PHP Gallery) as they come up. Also thinking about maybe using word press so she can keep a blog on the site too... maybe I can even run the whole site off it... (I will have to see about that).

The best bit will be the automated gallery, as at the moment adding all the descriptions multiple times for the alt and title tags and the image title is a pain in the bum. Plus I have to create all the thumbnails by hand, and make sure all the thumbnails are linked to the correct images.

Ahhh well, now just got to work out a way to give her an admin interface that she can use easily, but is also powerfull enough to do what she wants.

Speeding up Firefox

2005-02-28T00:08:00.000Z

Found an interesting post on ryanduff.net on Speeding up Firefox certainly seems useful...

SHE DID IT !!! 71 days 14 hours 18 minutes and 33 seconds

2005-02-08T01:23:00.000Z

Well what a fantastic result... Ellen MacArthur crossed the finishing line in 71 days 14 hours 18 minutes and 33 seconds that's 1 day 8 hours and 35 mins ahead of Francis Joyon's time...!!!

What an achievement, I just cannot comprehend the determination and stamina of that girl.... Just fantastic.

Team Ellen

2005-02-03T17:54:00.000Z

Busy keeping an eye on Ellen MacArthur @ Team Ellen.com
This is just so close... I can't help but check back every few hours to see what's happening.
Just hoping that the wind will keep her going, and that the high pressure that she is entering will not slow her down too much.

Amazingly there doesn't seem to be much news coverage on this at the moment, don't know why... We'll just have to wait it out.

Go Ellen !!!

ADSL

2005-01-29T16:53:00.000Z

Finally... I am now in the 21st Century... We have finally had ADSL installed, and what a relief it is, no longer having to worry how long I was spending online.
Maybe I will write some more for the blog...
Or maybe there still wont be enough time in the day... (to be honest that seems the most likely)

New Year already !!

2005-01-05T17:27:00.000Z

I cannot believe that it is 2005 already and I havn't posted anything since the middle of November.. Ho Hum.
I've just been so busy that there has not been any time to write anything.
On another note if you live in the Horsham area, pop along to Spellcast Glass Studio (in the alley-way between West street and the New Forum complex), where Sarah's Glass bead jewellery is on display and for sale.

Well I must think of something more interesting to write... Who knows maybe I will put something up about the advantages of Rhapsody in C++ (Dan are you reading this).. You will just have to wait and see !! ;-)

At last Sonar 4 Producer edition...

2004-11-16T15:02:00.000Z

At last I finaly received my upgrade to Cakewalk Sonar 4 Producer Edition for my birthday... So now just need to find the time to put it to use. Time... ah yes I remember, that's that stuff between cooking, eating, doing the web site, working and sleeping... So not much time left then. Oh well I'll just have to fit it in somewhere. Ho Hum.

Sarah Downtons Web site is UP !!

2004-11-05T01:56:00.000Z

Well.... after a final push I finally managed to find the time to finish off (so far) Sarah Downtons new web site.
There are still things we can (and indeed will) add, and that is all part of the fun really.
Keeping a website fresh is really hard, but please take a look (and keep coming back).
For the techies out there the design is now fully XHTML/CSS and is also XHTML 1.0 strict compliant (it validates from W3C) the CSS also validates. (Please let me know if that is not the case, Note: unfortunately, the site uses URL forwarding for the domain name, and therefore the site will NOT validate from www.sarahdownton.co.uk as is... I have no control over that wrapper frame, and guess what... it fails !)
Question now is... have I broken it for other browsers, I have tried it in Firefox 1.0PR IE6 and Opera7, but I do not have a copy of IE 4/5/5.5 to try. (They probably fail completely).
Well I hope you like the new site let me know what you think.

Some Progress with Sarah's Website

2004-10-26T18:03:00.000+01:00

I have made some progress with Sarah's new website design... I have overcome some of the CSS incompatibilities that seemed to be causing me so much grief.
So given a bit more time.. There seems to be less of it these days... I should have something new to put up soon...(sorry but "soon" is as close as I can get to a deadline with this)
What I will do now though, is to put up what we have got so far, even if this is not as complete as I would like. The new stuff (specifically the bead pictures) is far better from a display point of view, even if the page doesn't look very different.
The thing is I can now change the style and look of the page completely, without having to scrabble arround in html layout tables...!!! ;-)
After that the next step is to set up an eBay selling account (and Paypal), so that we can sell online.
Sigh... Well more stuff to do... It's never ending it seems.
As for CSS, I feel that I am understanding more and more all the time, it can be a real head banging experience if you are not careful, but certainly looking at how other people have laid out their sites has helped enormously (see my blog post "A useful CSS resource")

A useful CSS resource

2004-10-26T13:39:00.000+01:00

Found an interesting, and also very helpfull CSS Resource
www.CSS Drive.com
There are some lovely CSS example sites on this site. Plus many CSS and Javascript examples.

Internet Explorer Exposed!

2004-10-18T22:10:00.000+01:00

Found this today... "Explorer Exposed!" from Position Is Everything (P.I.E)

Very interesting, it lists all the currently known IE5 and 6 bugs... certainly makes interesting reading. Plus of course tells you how to fix the problems, which is always useful.
The rest of the site is pretty good too from what I can tell (I haven't had time to read it all yet !!)

Re-sizeable Two Columns - Left Menu CSS

2004-10-15T18:33:00.000+01:00

I have modified the BlueRobot layout reservoir 2 column - left menu layout to allow for dynamic resizing.
See my new design here -> Re-sizeable Two Columns - Left Menu
The only real difference is in the CSS, in that this now scales correctly. (Try changing the font size in the browser, Ctrl + "Mouse scroll wheel" should do the trick). All positioning and sizes are now done using em's as opposed to pixels. This can make the site much more accessible for people who like their fonts a bit bigger.
I have tested this in Firefox IE6 and Mozilla (latest versions) and if someone can test in Opera and others (ie Safari etc) that would be great!
There is every posibility that there are some issues with this, as it is a first hit, and as such may need some tweaking.

We just missed being hit by a tornado !

2004-10-14T09:41:00.000+01:00

Looks like we narrowly missed being hit by a tornado this morning !!!
BBC News: Salvage operation after 'tornado' I must admit I just slept right through... aparently the wind was quite strong where we were anyway, although the tornado was about 1 mile away - that's quite close enough for me thank you very much !!!
Phew !

Edit: The really spooky thing is that this is not the first time this has happened
See The Argus news report from April 2001. Macleod road is just next door to the one that occured today..
My favorite comment:

"She said: "If it happens again I'm moving. It just seems to be this area." "

Well... it might be about time to move.!!!

Useful packaging companies

2004-10-13T10:25:00.000+01:00

The Bag 'N Box Man, Bags, Boxes, Tubes, Envelopes, Labels and Packaging Materials for the UK.
Just for reference, a packaging company as used by Amanda Glanville
And here is another one PottersUK

New Silverlemon (Sarah Downton) website

2004-10-13T01:07:00.000+01:00

I know I know... Man... setting up a new web site can be a pain.. I am struggling with CSS incompatibilities at the moment... (between IE6 and Firefox). You think you've cracked it, and then load it into IE and it all looks like a pile of rubbish...!
I must have read the CSS2 spec through at least twice from cover to cover, but there is always something that catches you out.
Hopefully I will have the new site up as soon as we get some final pictures for it as well... (that's the olther thing holding up the process), trying to get pictures that are good enough, and can also be scaled down to show the detail even at thumbnail size is a challenge.
Currently there are two URL's for this site www.silverlemon.co.uk and www.sarahdownton.co.uk

We will be going with the www.sarahdownton.co.uk URL now, so the new site will also reflect this.

Googling for Security Vulnerabilities

2004-10-12T16:06:00.000+01:00

Some of the things that are left exposed on the internet... mind blowing !
Peter Westwood � Googling for Security Vulnerabilities: See Peters Blog for more info...

The Layout Reservoir - BlueRobot

2004-10-05T13:05:00.000+01:00

Found a rather nice site that has some examples of 1, 2 and 3 column web layouts using CSS The Layout Reservoir - BlueRobot
These seem to look a bit nicer than some other examples that I have seen.
Edit:
I feel that I have made some "Improvements" to the left menu layout design... see Re-sizeable Two Columns - Left Menu CSS

glish.com : CSS layout techniques

2004-10-03T01:27:00.000+01:00

Here is another site that has some useful CSS information on it... go have a read glish.com : CSS layout techniques

Sarah's new website design

2004-10-01T17:01:00.000+01:00

We have spent the best part of two days (well many hours at least) OK... it felt like several days, taking a whole load of new pictures for www.silverlemon.co.uk.
I have also started designing the new layout that will be fully CSS and HTML strict compliant, I have tried to - as much as possible anyway - separate the content from the design. (although this is not completely possible - see article on alistapart.com).

Although far from perfect it should allow me to change the layout and overall design without having to faff about with the raw HTML !! ;-)

Well that's the theory anyway... as for the proof, we'll just have to wait and see... with any luck the new design should be up in the next few days.

Sarah at "The Knitting and Stitching Show"

2004-10-01T00:29:00.000+01:00

Sarah Downton will be showing/selling her jewellery and hand crafted glass beads at the The Knitting and Stitching Show which is at Alexandra Palace on Thursday 7th to Sunday 10th October 2004.

This should be a really good show !

See her work on Stand TGA4

Diana East Glass Beads

2004-09-30T00:14:00.000+01:00

If you are at all interested in glass beads then you really ought to check out Diana East her beads really are something else..!
Just have a look at her concept description for the "little thinkers" beads. ;-)

[ws] Color Scheme Generator 2

2004-09-28T23:11:00.000+01:00

[ws] Color Scheme Generator 2 Just so useful, and all round cool colour scheme picker... take a look.
Brought to you by www.wellstyled.com

Silver Lemon Designs by Sarah Downton

2004-09-28T12:36:00.000+01:00

This is actually my wife's site (which I maintain)...
Glass beads are all the rage now... honest,
They are all individually hand crafted using traditional lampworking techniques. (i.e. a very hot flame, and bits of glass)
She also makes silver jewellery both on it's own and incorporating her glass beads

Silver Lemon Designs by Sarah Downton

Also see Glass bead makers UK for more information on glass bead making.

Cakewalk SONAR 4

2004-09-28T11:27:00.000+01:00

Some of the best Music software out there... always underestimated...
Cakewalk SONAR 4

Really useful stuff

2004-09-28T11:09:00.000+01:00

Some rather useful sites for web development...

www.wellstyled.com
www.quirksmode.org
www.alistapart.com