http://www.thenicotinediaries.com/index.php en admin@thenicotinediaries.com Copyright 2008 2008-08-18T10:32:00+10:00 http://www.thenicotinediaries.com/index.php/blog/entry/what-im-working-on/ http://www.thenicotinediaries.com/index.php/blog/entry/what-im-working-on/#When:10:32:00Z Okay, so I thought seeing as its been quite a while since I actually wrote a proper post on here, I would try and write something decent. Its not gonna happen, but its the thought that counts right? So, right now I am working on a design for a lifestream kinda deal. Going to be hosted at a new domain name, that I have bought, and won’t be sharing with anyone until I get it live. The other thing I am thinking about doing is scrapping that idea and working on a tumblog kind deal for this site, and just letting that domain name lapse. They cost sweet bugger all these days, so its no great drama. What I’m really trying to do is work out what would be the best way to implement either (or both) of these ideas. For the lifestream, I found what could probably best be described as a PHP framework called SimplePie, which is basically a PHP RSS aggregator, and doesn’t need to be used in conjunction with a CMS, or any kind of deal like that. The biggest problem with that is that it doesn’t cache any further back than that which Is displayed on the page. This doesn’t really mean a whole lot from a frontend perspective, but when it comes to server loads, and page loading times it is a massive problem because to have it updating anywhere near realtime, I would need to set the cache time to 15 minutes, which would mean that every time someone visited after that 15 minutes, the cache would be completely overwritten, and it would take ages for all the feeds to be pulled in - hammering both my server, and the servers where the feeds are hosted. Not an ideal solution. So what I’m thinking about doing is playing with the code, and trying to work out a way to cache to a mySQL database, updating the feeds maybe once every 30 mins, and pulling the entries from the DB. I think that sounds like a good plan, but not too sure if that will really relieve any load on any servers at all. As for the other idea, I am having trouble working out what CMS would be best to use. I have finally gotten Chyrp to work on my local webserver, but I still can’t find any good resources for constructing themes for it, never mind the fact that they have all these exclusive terms like “feather”, “twig”, and all that kinda stuff. It’s almost like the developer(s?) are trying to be too cool for school, and the application is suffering as a result of it. And instead of the piss weak attempt at documentation they have right now (some really ugly sister to a wiki), they should bite the bullet, and install mediawiki, or tikiwiki or some decent wiki software and actually create human readable documentation, rather than documentation solely for geeks. And that is my rant over and done with for tonight. I promise that I will try to write here a little bit more often, but As I have stated many times, the CMS that runs this site is a major pain in the ass, and my server is stupidly slow. Once the free trial period runs out, I’m thinking that its time to either switch to DreamHost or Media Temple, although I haven’t been hearing too many good things about Media Temple via Twitter lately. Investigation required. Blog, Design, Personal, Projects 08/18/08 8:32pm http://www.thenicotinediaries.com/index.php/blog/entry/my-design-process/ http://www.thenicotinediaries.com/index.php/blog/entry/my-design-process/#When:08:26:01Z So, I’m very bored, and very frustrated with myself at the moment. Bored because I have nothing to do, and frustrated because I do have something to do, but no matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to get it right. As a direct result of this, I am writing a post about my design process to try and see if and where things go wrong. I’m not a real designer, just a dude who likes to have a bit of fun with the internet. I am not going to go into details about coming up with an idea for your site, or getting inspiration from somewhere completely obscure. The bottom line is that I see part of a site that I like somewhere around the internet, and say to myself “I really like that, I might try and emulate that in my own style”, and a page element is born. Either that or I deliberately try to avoid “emulating” other designs so that I can try and come up with something truly unique. At this point I start what I call my design process. This I get down to the business of building, styling, and launching a website. Basically it can probably be broken down into 4 sections. The first being Initial design. Then come architecture, then refinement, and then Uncategorized 08/16/08 6:26pm http://www.thenicotinediaries.com/index.php/blog/entry/back-on-you/ http://www.thenicotinediaries.com/index.php/blog/entry/back-on-you/#When:09:13:00Z It’s been so long since I felt this I can’t believe I ever wanted this Everything inside has died It’s all turned to ash With swollen fists and a blackened eye Those were the last tears for you I’ll ever cry You do it all again Just when I started to forget The way you treated me There’s no excuse for how you act And the one gave me WAS PITIFUL Now never again, will you get that chance You made it so damned easy to walk away I turned my back on you, took a couple of steps I felt the anger within me start to fade But I won’t turn back, lest it build again It’s so fucking funny That everything I hate in you Is what I hate in myself But I guess at least I know its there Music, Personal 08/13/08 7:13pm http://www.thenicotinediaries.com/index.php/blog/entry/an-update-on-my-life/ http://www.thenicotinediaries.com/index.php/blog/entry/an-update-on-my-life/#When:08:10:01Z If I haven’t made it clear enough yet, I am no longer living in the boring little town of Lismore. I have relocated up the coast a ways to the city of Brisbane. I’m living a fair way’s out of the city, but thats all good for the time being, seeing as I’m not much of a party-goer. I made the move on Saturday, and it all went relatively simply. I absolutely detest the process of unpacking all my crap and trying to work out where things should go, but aside from that, it was painless. Sunday was spent getting stuff better organised so that there was a place for everything, and everything was in its place. I was actually quite worn out from Sunday, which was handy, because I had to get an early night for an early morning trek into the city for a job interview. The interview went pretty darn well, and I was fairly confident of getting a referral from the recruitment company to the eventual employer. What I wasn’t expecting however was a phone call later that day informing me that I had another interview in a couple of days time. Either I’ve done something very right, or they really really need staff, but either way, I am very very happy. Reading the job description for the position, it reads like a combination between my first job at ING, and an ING mail room clerk. This makes me very happy, because that was my favourite job of all time, though it was as much to do with the people I worked with as anything else. So anyway, I have the second interview (or third if you count the brief phone interview last Friday) tomorrow afternoon in Milton, so, here’s hoping I don’t have a terrible melt-down or something, and can get the job. Wish me luck. Blog, Personal 07/22/08 6:10pm http://www.thenicotinediaries.com/index.php/blog/entry/ive-arrived/ http://www.thenicotinediaries.com/index.php/blog/entry/ive-arrived/#When:06:41:00Z So, I’ve arrived, safely and soundly in Bris Vegas (aka Brisbane, QLD), and have quickly come to the conclusion that unpacking sucks majorly. It’s not so much the whole moving process, that was fairly painless, but unpacking all of my stuff is a major headache. I am pretty much just hating on it real bad right now. I have stuff strewn from ear hole to arsehole all over my bedroom, and am currently trying to sort out what goes where. I’m taking a break right now because I just need to stop for a while. That’s really it as far as life goes at the moment. Blog 07/19/08 4:41pm http://www.thenicotinediaries.com/index.php/blog/entry/a-sad-day/ http://www.thenicotinediaries.com/index.php/blog/entry/a-sad-day/#When:15:08:03Z Today was a sad day for me. Or rather I should say, tonight was a sad night. I had to take my server offline for transportation to my new place. I was devastated. I ran an uptime command before I took it down, the thing had been bullet proof for 43 days, and 4 minutes, with a load average of 0.24. I don’t really think thats impressive, but I wanted to see how long I could leave it up for. Tech 07/19/08 1:08am http://www.thenicotinediaries.com/index.php/blog/entry/its-a-chore/ http://www.thenicotinediaries.com/index.php/blog/entry/its-a-chore/#When:03:57:00Z Blogging has become a chore for me now. The idiosyncrasies of ExpressionEngine, and the stupid admin UI has made it incredibly tough to be bothered posting. I apologise for the lack of updates, but right now, until I can get a new working CMS, and design together I will probably be posing only occasionally. Blog, Design 07/16/08 1:57pm http://www.thenicotinediaries.com/index.php/blog/entry/im-getting-out/ http://www.thenicotinediaries.com/index.php/blog/entry/im-getting-out/#When:12:42:01Z It’s about time, but I am finally moving out of this godforsaken hole of a town known as Lismore. In precisely 5 days, I am moving to Brisbane. I am super siked on it. I will be moving in with a mate of mine, who owns a place in one of the outer suburbs. Basically at this point, I am now looking for work, and liking the fact that there are a billion options open to me. I wanna start off with something pretty cruisy to get back into the swing of working full-time, but I don’t know exactly what I am looking for. Its as much about organisational culture, as it is about the kind of work I will be doing, so here’s hoping. In other news, there is no other news. Personal 07/14/08 10:42pm http://www.thenicotinediaries.com/index.php/blog/entry/lifestream-update/ http://www.thenicotinediaries.com/index.php/blog/entry/lifestream-update/#When:04:06:00Z Can I just say FUCK!? Something funky going on, either with my code, or with my host, because the code that I had, which worked perfectly on my local web-server doesn’t seem to parse on my host’s server. Annoying as all hell Design 07/12/08 2:06pm http://www.thenicotinediaries.com/index.php/blog/entry/lifestream/ http://www.thenicotinediaries.com/index.php/blog/entry/lifestream/#When:10:46:00Z I can’t really recall whether or not I have made it know that I have been trying to build a lifestream page for my website, but I have finally started to make some progress. For thos of you who are not aware what a lifestream is, it basically aggregates all of your online stuff, like music scrobbled to last.fm, twitter updates, facebook status updates, blog posts, and a million other things that I can’t think of, into a single place. There are specialist sites that can do it for you, but I would rather be able to build my own. In the end, I found a good starting point here Adactio, and the code he has put out there on the relevent blog post. I took it, and messed around with it a bit, and started to get an understanding of what I was doing. I’ve so far got it pulling in limited data from Twitter, recently listened tracks from Last.fm, my Del.icio.us links, and blog posts. The biggest issues I am having with all of the data at the moment are formatting the data to make it look pretty, and the delimiter for song titles from Last.fm showing up as some interesting characters. Stay tuned Design, Projects 07/11/08 8:46pm