Web design & FOSS

After reading Rupert Goodwin's post about Ubuntu 9.04, I realised that I didn't really need to install the latest and greatest Ubuntu. I had the opportunity to on my old PC tower, and I was swayed by the swish new themes available for Gnome. My absolute favourite is Dust Sand, combined with the New Wave window borders. I rather wittingly call it "Custom new wave sand".

So, armed solely with an admiration for a delicately textured and tactile theme, I proceeded to upgrade my thinkpad to 9.04. I know, it is of the utmost shallowness, vanity and stupidity to go through the pain of upgrading purely for aesthetic reasons. I take some semblance of solace from jw's comments about OpenOffice 3 being included in the upgrade. But I do think it looks lovely :*)

I'm an Ubuntu linux user, as it's widely supported, easy to install, and a breeze to update software using Synaptic. I do admire other distros (I've a soft spot for the vehemently Free multi-media dynebolic, the audio-rich pure:dyne (made by goto10), the minimalist ubuntu-based #CrunchBang) and since acquiring the snazzy Acer Aspire One netbook, I'm always on the look out for lean and mean linuxes.

Roll up Puppy Linux. Yet Another Linux Distro!?! No, it's not just another distro, this one is different and this is why. It runs off a live CD but the coolest thing is that you can now make your own custom cut-down Puppified linux from the distro of your choice using Puppy Woof!. Woof (made by the Puppy originator Barry Kauler) will automagically download and strip out the fluff, bloat and bumph from a variety of different distros (currently Debian, Ubuntu, Slackware and Arch).

A couple of provisos. I haven't actually used it yet, I'll leave that to my friend oiio who passed on the link. And it's designed for developers, not end-users. But still, I like the idea of a Fluff-Free Lean'n'Mean Linux Machine ©.

After having read Bruce Lawson's article about the end of IE6, I thought it really is about time to learn something new and also to look forward to the next generation of Cascading Style Sheets, CSS3.

New browsers are ten-a-penny, and what with Microsoft jumping on the Web Standards Bandwagon, it looks like CSS3 will be useful sooner rather than later.

Another compelling reason to learn about CSS3 is that the jQuery JavaScript library works beautifully with CSS3 selectors. Though what with me being a web designer it's a bit of a no-brainer.

Apologies to both my loyal readers for the lack of posts of late. I have been busy. Busy. Building web sites, building my own web site.

This, it has to be said, is a first. Despite having built dozens of web sites for other people, I have never actually built my own site. I have had a number of mockups, scheming ideas sribbled on the back of a crisp packet, Magnificent and Ground Braking paradigm shifts that never made it past my dreams. But never an actual web site.

So, it is with a small degree of pride and a large amount of trepidation that I bring you…

Team Firebox.

Built using the Joomla! CMS, based on the JoomlArt Avian template, with a variety of extensions.

Phew, now I can get back to writing about stuff rather than having to do any actual work ;)

When I moved to the northern Kentish environs, I switched telephone providers to TalkTalk. However, I received a disconnection bill from BT for £70, because I'd switched before my 12 month minimum contract had expired. £70, ow, for a fee I'd never heard of.

So, I wrote to the BT Correspondence Centre (no to ask for a breakdown of the bill, as £70 seemed a lot of money for somebody flicking a switch.

Nobody from BT deigned to write to me, despite my writing to them 4 times; I just received 4 threatening letters from their debt collectors and solicitors. And then finally, after counter-threatening them with legal action, a zero balance bill arrived.

The heavy-handedness of wading in with demands and threats seems to be the first course of action for many large corporations. This isn't a manifesto to bring down capitalism but just a call for BT to play fair and actually communicate with their customers. Seems like plenty of other people are having the same experience…