Fear of Fish

This blog has come to the end of its lifetime, and for now will sit quietly doing nothing. The new blog is at:

blog.fearoffish.com

Have you ever noticed that most things you want to do on a Mac are simple? The term 'It Just Works' they use really is true. I can send pictures and sounds to my blog really easily with Bluetooth File Exchange, I can easily connect to wireless networks without wondering wtf is going on. These are examples of actions that are sometimes mind boggling-ly hard to get working on a Windows machine.

Now, I'm Microsoft Certified, so the chances of a regular user being able to do that are very remote. That's what keeps the PC repair industry going, which I used to be in. My friend runs a PC repair business and he praised the day when Vista came out, because he was presented with a whole new flow of revenue as everybody upgraded.

However, I digress. I'm only writing this post to let you know that Apple have failed me. My friends know me as the Apple fanboi who let them get away with murder, purely because they are leagues ahead of the competition.

Setting up your Apple MacBook to dial the internet, through a 3G phone (or GPRS or Edge). Here are the steps:

• Download Modem Scripts for your phone from Ross Barkman's Site
• Place them into your /Library/ModemScripts folder (as described on his site)
• Open Network in System Preferences
• Create a new Location called "Mobile" or whatever you like, and select that Location
• Open Bluetooth in System Preferences
• Add a new device (or configure an existing one) and in the wizard give it the details that you can find on Ross Barkman's GPRS info page
• Dial the internet through Internet Connect (with Bluetooth selected in the toolbar)

Now, to get to the point where you know that it's not that hard to get going, you have to spend hours frustratingly wondering why you can't figure it out to start off with. I'm not comparing this to a windows machine, because most phones come with software that will configure this all for you.

I am, however, putting out a plea to Apple to ease this process. The USA may have free wireless internet throughout the country, but in Europe and other continents they still charge us ridiculously high prices for that privilege.

Please Apple, can you fix it for me so it's click click easy?

I decided that I'd spend a couple of hours styling my site with a sprinkling of new html and css, aiming for the same minimalistic approach as Simpla, but with my own colours and adding some code highlighting goodness. Hope you like it, it's a fluid design and I tested it in Safari, Firefox and IE7 (I don't have an IE6 to hand at the moment). If you have any problems let me know, and if your names Cristi and you have any problems, then let me know how to fix it too.

Thanks to Mark Boulton for his excellent articles on the golden rule of Phi (and all the others I've read in the past), as well as his basic template for using the grid system for fluid layouts.

As you can probably see, the site is undergoing some major design changes to bring it to the more corporate level. Once I'm done there will only be major articles on Ruby on Rails here as well as portfolio and other business info, the rest of the chit chat will be shifted over to http://abloke.com which at the moment redirects here. I've decided it's best to split work and pleasure, it makes sense and should give the site a more professional feel.

Bear with me everyone. Comments on the design are welcome.

So I figured the site looked pretty minging, so I had a little word with a developer friend of mine called Luke Redpath who let me use his mephisto template to create this new colourful design.

All the html of the layout is his, and the colour scheme is mine. The template is not open source, and is not available for 'borrowing', so many thanks to Luke for letting me use it. I hope it's up to his standards.

Let me know what you think.

No my friends, I'm not writing about any comedian, nor am I blabbering about a super hero...I'm talking about the blog Mephisto which is now powering this site, I played with it a few times before, and as we know by now I'm a serial blog starter!

Anyway, Mephisto is gaining steam and suits my needs perfectly, we're up to version 0.5 and I have to say that Justin Palmer and Rick Olsen are doing a great job. Onwards and upwards!

I've implemented a half way design for the blog, by taking Damien Tanner's iamrice2 theme, and making it a blue variant. If you'd like to use it too, then download it from this location.

When I get some free time I'll implement the new design, and resurrect Freddy the Fish!

Is anyone missing Freddy the Fish and his quotes? or did none of you actually notice? I'm considering transitioning this new blog over to the old design, which was less clean but more colourful. I enjoyed making the Fear of Fish design, and had quite a few laughs creating quotes for him. I'm all for it, but if you 'the audience' think I should forget it then please pipe up, except for you Amy, I know you never liked it. :-)

Sorry everyone, but the blog conversion hit a patch of hallucinogen drug or something, and missed a post or two, and so you'll see a couple appear at the top which should be at the bottom...just as I repost them, and then adjust the database manually to shift them back down.

Veh veh solly.

Yep, I've migrated back over to Typo since they released version 4.0, with Akismet spam reducing goodness. Let's see how it goes...I'll migrate the comments for posts back over later.

A lot of work has gone into this release, and it shows as you look around. The admin interface is hugely improved, and we even get Jeff Hardy's Scribbish goodness. For those who don't know, he's currently in the middle of writing a most excellent book called Practical Rails..."but, but...aren't you?" Why yes, we're co-authors along with Rodney Ramdas! Okay, that's the last shameful plug I pull for a while, I promise.

I've finally found a small window of opportunity to get the Fear of Fish theme complete for the site, and as such (If you haven't already noticed) there will be a temporary interlude in my posts.

Keep your eyes open for the 'coming', and when it happens, make sure you give as much or as little feedback as you like, I like to know what others think to help me improve.

Sorry everyone, my feed has been broken for a week or two and thanks to Evan Weaver pointing it out I've now fixed it. So you should be kept up to date as usual.

Although you can't tell because the look is identical, the backend of the site has now been transitioned over to my own simple blogging engine. Those of you who will be able to tell, are those with rss feeds, which I haven't implemented yet, but no doubt I will by the end of the day if I find time.

Typo just wasn't doing what I wanted, and it was easier for me to build my own engine rather than hack away at Typo. The site now has the infrastructure to implement my portfolio system, and other pages. Links on the sidebar will be faulty, but bear with me and everything will come back online and have more functionality.

Also, you might notice a few graphical glitches. Don't worry, I'll iron them out. My priority was to get commenting working again, and it does. Shame I had to remove all the comments on the transition across. So if you've previously left comments and they're gone, my apologies.

EDIT: The search system is now working at the top left, and rss feeds have been implemented. So please re-subscribe to the new feed. Sorry for any inconvenience.

EDIT2: Permalinks have been added, so link away!

I personally didn't like the last design, it made me feel amateurish because of the cartoony feel with the colours. So here is Fear of Fish version 2. I hope you like it.

I was aiming for a more professional feel, clean lines and a restrcited colours set. I have yet to test it in Internet Explorer because I have no internal way of doing that yet. Add the fact that I'm stuck on a 56k modem till Friday (hopefully), and the full testing in major browsers (I've tested in Firefox and Safari) will be complete next week.

If you're looking at the site in Internet Explorer, you may have noticed a few little abnormalities with the new design. For those lucky souls who are using FireFox or Safari you should see the site as was intended. I'm working on the IE side, it could take a few days depending on the time I have spare.

In the meantime, please stop using Internet Explorer and go fetch Firefox to see this how it was intended.

I need to sort out a lot more, but I thought it was a wiser decision to have something with design appeal rather than the default typo theme. What do you think so far?

Update: I have the general layout working in IE 6, Safari, and FireFox. I'll be updating other sections here and there over time. It feels good to have my own identity at last.