Tag Archives: Design

New Look

by thomasfitzgerald on 30. Mar, 2010 in Design, Site News

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Regular readers of this blog will undoubtedly have noticed that the site has undergone a makeover again. It’s not that long since I last changed the theme, but over the last few months I have grown dissatisfied with it the way it was. It’s not that it was particularly bad, it’s just that it didn’t support some options and some plugins wouldn’t work with it. When I was setting up The Aperture Blog, I used the highly flexible “Headlines” from WooThemes and I was impressed with it and how it worked on the back end, so I set about using a modified version of that for the new look.

The cool background image is from Graphic River. One of the nice things about this theme is that it sports a handy social media sharing function at the bottom of every post, as I know some of you have been asking for that. Anyway, feedback as always is welcome.

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Lego Dreams

Lego Dreams

by thomasfitzgerald on 08. Feb, 2010 in Design, Lego, Toys

There’s an interesting article and video up on the BBC website about some hardcore Lego Modellers. I’m a big lego fan although I am not nearly as extreme as these people. It’s worth a look if you like all thinks brick and minifig! Incidentally, if you are a lego fan and you haven’t seen it already, check out “The Brothers Brick”. It’s a great site with lots of great models built by people.

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New York Times on why there’s no flash in the iPad

by thomasfitzgerald on 01. Feb, 2010 in Apple, Internet, iPad

The New York Times has a good piece on why the iPad doesn’t have flash

Numerous developers and executives that I interviewed for my story said there was a trend toward offering users an alternative to Flash video, the predominant video standard online, in the form of HTML5, an open standard.

Senior-level managers from many of the top video sites online, including YouTube, Vimeo, Blip.tv and Flickr, all agreed that video online is starting to splinter, and as some test out HTML5 for video distribution, many will begin offering both formats as the iPad makes its way onto the market.

(Read Why the iPad Web Demo Was Full of Holes – Bits Blog – NYTimes.com.)

It seems obvious to me (and to many others) that flash’s days of prominence are over. More and more websites are using css and javascript with dhtml to produce the kind of sites that would have previously required flash. Coupled with the numerous video heavy sites that have begun to offer alternatives to Flash you can easily see that developers are starting to look in another direction. John Gruber has a very good piece on this too that’s worth checking out.

I think for all the moaning about the iPad not having flash, I think the bigger concern is what effect will the iPad have on Flash. If it’s even moderately successful (and it will be) then you’ll start to see Flash disappearing from web sites. Given how poorly flash often performs, and how good some of the alternatives now are, I don’t see that as a bad thing.

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Incredible CGI Shuttle Animation

by thomasfitzgerald on 26. Jan, 2010 in Design, Entertainment, You Tube

I just came across this incredible CG animation of the remains of the Space Shuttle after a mythical disaster, floating in orbit. What’s incredible about this is that it’s all done in 2d. There’s no 3D animation here other than what I presume is the use of 3d layers in After Effects.

(Via Gizmodo)

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This Is Why I love Woo Themes

This Is Why I love Woo Themes

by thomasfitzgerald on 18. Jan, 2010 in Design, Internet, Technology

I’ve been running my various blogs off wordpress fore years now, and over that time I’ve tried various themes. Originally I used free themes and then progressed to using some premium ones. But even then I was never really happy. Then I discovered Woo Themes. Woo is a purveyor of premium wordpress themes, but they do it really really well. What impressed me about the company was not just that they created some really nice and high quality themes, but that they gave them a really good back end, and that they continued to upgrade them. But what I really like is the way they structure their themes.

All their custom functions, the “woo framework” as they call it is regularly upgraded, and they’ve just issued an upgrade again. However, as I’ve extensively customized the themes on my blog, this would be a pain to upgrade, right? Well, on some of the themes I’ve owned in the past this would be true, but not now. Thanks to the way they’ve organized the layout of the backend, I just have to replace one folder within the theme I’m using and hey presto, framework upgraded. Simply brilliant. In the past when I’ve had to upgrade a theme it’s been a nightmare, trying to locate all the files I’ve changed then paste those changes into the new version and so on. This is so much simpler. If you’re looking for a premium wordpress theme then I can’t recommend the folks at woo themes enough.

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Cool “Human Being” T-Shirt

Cool “Human Being” T-Shirt

by thomasfitzgerald on 04. Jan, 2010 in Design

Check out this really cool t-shirt design from Origin 68. Designed like a packing slip or box label for a “100% Organic” Human Being. They have some great other designs on their site too. Add to bookmarks !

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New Year, New Look

New Year, New Look

by thomasfitzgerald on 02. Jan, 2010 in Design, Site News

Even though I recently upgraded the theme on the site I was never quite happy with it, so once again I’ve given it a major overhaul. Well, it is the new year, so why not. I was never really happy with the previous design, and the more I tweaked it the more cluttered and messy it got. I’m trying to keep this look a lot cleaner. I’ll keep the ads to a minimum and try and not weight it down with too many plug-ins etc.

The theme is based on the excellent “Therapy” from Woo Themes. I’m really glad I signed up with their developer package as it’s allowed me to try out several options on my local server before committing to anything. I really like this one as it’s quite apple like. Anyway, I hope you enjoy, and please feel free to leave feedback!

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Parallax Scrolling in CSS

by thomasfitzgerald on 16. Dec, 2009 in Design, Internet

Check this out, this is really impressive. Parallax scrolling done entirely in CSS. Look ma, no flash.

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