Website Templates, Themes and Inspiration
Are you looking for website templates you can buy or borrow? Here’s a handy list: Buy: Template Monster BuyTemplates.net Pixelwave Web Design Theme Forest Borrow: Open Source Web Design FreeCssTemplates.org Also, here’s some good links for inspiration: BlogSpoonGraphics.co.uk TheDesignInspiration.com CSSLuxury.com Line25.com WPFloat.com (WordPress designs) DesignBombs.com MixCSS.com

Furnished Dining Room
We got some furniture for our Dining room. We now have a drinks cabinet 🙂 (and a table, sideboard and book shelves): Before: After: Although, it’s more of an office than a dining room now.
Frog Woes
The sight of a frog makes me feel sick so Kix found it funny that we had to edit a blog post that contained a real frog photo for a client of ours. Good phobia therapy? 🙂
The Bitvolution Webserver
The hardware behind Bitvolution is called “Butterfree“, he’s based in Germany (www.hetzner.de): Specs: CPU: Intel® Coreâ„¢ i7-920 Quadcore incl. Hyper-Threading Technology. RAM: 8 GB DDR3. Disk: 2 x 750 GB SATA II (Software-RAID 1). Features: LAMP – Full root access. 24h reset service via Web interface 92 GBit bandwidth with unlimited traffic usage (but the […]

Introducing Butterfree
I have a new machine. He’s called “Butterfree”, he’s German and I rent him for £45 per month from http://www.hetzner.de/en: Specs: CPU: Intel i7-920 Quadcore incl. Hyper-Threading Technology. RAM: 8 GB DDR3. Disk: 2 x 750 GB SATA II (Software-RAID 1). Features: LAMP – Full root access. 24h Reset service via Webinterface – I already […]
PeoplePerHour.com search page redesign
My latest project was to implement a redesign of the PeoplePerHour “Find Freelancers” page. Previous Design New Design Why is the new search better? It’s twice as fast Many less DB queries per page (old: >100, new: 10) Less page reloads needed (results refinement via AJAX) Uses faster DB queries, less table JOINs and better […]
Clearing floats with pure CSS
Do you ever use <br style=’clear:both’ /> or <div style=’clear:both’></div> in your webdesign? If you do, stop now, there is a better way to prevent subsequent page elements being affected by the previous floating sections: Bad: Why is it bad? <br style=’clear:both’ /> is bad because it introduces a blank line when you actually only […]
HeidiJoyceGardens.com
We have just finished and published http://www.heidijoycegardens.com. It should hopefully look clean and simple? Technical details of site: The site is written in PHP using WordPress as a development framework. Uses the Yahoo grids CSS framework (and their CSS Reset). Uses Jquery and Jquery UI (hosted by Google)

Finished First “for-pay” website
Our first site as freelancers is more-or-less finished. It should hopefully look clean and simple?

My new company – Bitvolution Limited
Bitvolution is a company I set up to provide freelance web development and consultancy. I have got the website up and running: Let’s see how it goes…
Finished Hallway
We finished the hallway (i.e. finally got round to doing the skirting board). Before: After:
Installing fonts in Ubuntu
If you have a font file with a “ttf” extension you can easily install it in Ubuntu (v9.04) and use it in applications such as the Gimp. Essentially, all you have to do is drop it in the correct folder: cd /usr/local/share/fonts If the truetype/custom directory doesn’t exist already: sudo mkdir truetype sudo mkdir truetype/custom […]

Stop websites turning off the “remember password” browser feature
I’m currently in the process of incorporating a company and www.businesslink.gov.uk is my friend (now gone away but there is https://www.gov.uk/browse/business), especially the “Business start-up organiser” which is the ultimate “to do” list of things that need to be done. However, I found the site was annoying in that it kept logging me out if […]

The Three Peaks Challenge
The three peaks challenge involves walking 25 miles while climbing 2940m and driving 466 miles in 24 hours. The 3 peaks are the tallest in Scotland (Ben Nevis), England (Scarfell Pike) and Wales (Snowdon). We did it as a group of 10 including a very kind driver who didn’t walk. My legs have never been […]

Building a MythTV Box
We have quite a good Freeview box which does scheduled recordings including series-record but it could be better because it is missing a HD output, DVD playback and Video streaming. We decided to build our own HTPC in order to take control of our viewing options once and for all. Hardware List: Case: Lian Li […]