Photo Credit: “iLove” by julian-

As a programmer/web-designer I dip into a diverse range of programming languages and frameworks. I often find that I get locked into a specific coding grammar/syntax and that it is then difficult to switch to a new one. This is when I find the following cheat sheets invaluable (and indeed comforting).

• Subversion (SVN) - 293 KB PDF
• Regular Expressions (RegEx) - 648 KB PDF
• mod_rewrite - 563 KB PDF
• PHP - 556 KB PDF
• CSS - 316 KB PDF
• HTML - 563 KB PDF
• Ruby On Rails - 753 KB PDF
• HTML Character Entities - 959 KB PDF
• JavaScript - 453 KB PDF
• MySQL - 348 KB PDF
• RGB Hexadecimal Colour Chart - 199 KB PDF
• OS X / Linux / Unix
• Photoshop CS3

Photo Credit: “Hey DJ” by Thomas Hawk

Due to work and other commitments it’s been a while since I last posted here. In the meantime my RSS client periodically trawled the great ocean of the Internet and landed a rather decent catch of prime linkage. So, without further ado, I present a link anthology - the very best that’s passed before my radar over the last week or so. Continue Reading…

Photo Credit: “Last Days of Autumn” by don2g

It’s that time of year when the trees turn golden, the sun stays close to the horizon and the early morning mist rolls down off the hills. That’s right folks, autumn is here again (fall for our American friends). The days are getting shorter and the nights longer and you’re likely to spend more time indoors than out.

In short, it’s the perfect time to “reboot” your weblog with a new design or feature set. Why not take inspiration from nature’s glorious autumnal colours and refresh your website. To help you along the way, I’ve put together this little list of website design “thingies” that you might want to integrate into an autumn reboot.
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JavaScript can add a lot of special effects that can really improve the user’s experience. Here are 10 simple and clever JavaScript techniques that add an extra dose of usability to any website.

Make your WordPress-powered website even better with these great sidebar widgets.

Prompted by Jason Kottke’s recent post about his “Most-rewatched Movies” I list the ten movies that I have watched over and over again (in no particular order).

The Usual Suspects: A boat has been destroyed, criminals are dead, and the key to this mystery lies with the only survivor and his twisted, convoluted story beginning with five career crooks in a seemingly random police lineup.
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PHP masters show us the best principles to follow for high-grade PHP programming.

A collection of links to pages/websites that I’ve found interesting enough that I might want to revisit them at some point. I’m publishing these here because my Safari bookmark library has become a huge, disorganised, unmanageable mess and even ninja warriors would fear to tread there.
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Apple is one of the coolest brand names in technology, so no wonder their site should adhere to modern web design standards. Divs, classes, no tables, media types, ajax libraries, separated stylesheets, extensive code organization, interesting varying layouts, it’s all there for you to learn from.

I want to remodel my rather drab and cold computer workspace¹ but I’m not quite sure what I want to do with the small amount of space my Macintosh lives in. And so I’ve spent a few hours browsing through workspace photos on Flickr for inspiration and, adopting ideas from a variety of home and office photographs, I think I’ll be able to create the perfect workspace for myself.

What follows is a gallery of those workspaces I found most appealing, with a concise commentary on what qualities appealed to me.

1. I love the simplicity and warmth of this workspace. The lighting here looks absolutely perfect for long hours in front of the computer. I think the desk lamps are gorgeous² and the lack of visible cabling is very appealing.

Continue Reading…