Archive for March, 2008

No bullet points

No Bullet Points

I'm in the middle of preparing my presentation for Highland Fling and I find myself wondering if there's a logo somewhere I can use on my first slide to tell the world that my presentation does not contain any bullet points.

I Google it. I find nothing. So I make one.

So I present to you the super-duper official No Bullet Points campaign/logo/badge.

Grab the PSD (no_bullet_points.psd.zip, 36KB), resize it, make badges, put it on your presentations, and let me know how and when you're using it by adding a comment to this post.

Hasta la vista, bullet points!

Upgraded to Wordpress 2.5

I just upgraded the blog from Wordpress 2.5 RC1 to the release version. Do let me know if you notice anything weird.

Upcoming: Singularity

I just put Singularity on Upcoming. Express your interest in the conference by watching it or marking yourself as attending.

There's also a Singularity group on Upcoming to gather together all the various local meet-ups, venues, and events. Keep an eye on that too!

(Via the Singularity Blog.)

That fragile thing we call the Internet

Sure, it can withstand a nuclear war, and we've got some records, but how much of our beloved Internet is a database error away from being lost?

Reading Robin Wauter's tweet and the heart-wrenching paragraph that is all that's left of one man's four years of blogging, it made me think again how little time most of us devote to backing things up.

How would you feel if you lost all your blog posts?

So here's what I propose: an annual Backup Your Blog Day. Maybe on April 1st ('cos only fools don't back up!) Or... (date suggestions?)

There's apparently already a monthly 13th Blog Backup Day. (And, ideally, you'd be doing automated backups every day or week but we don't live in an ideal world so I'll take pragmatic over ideal any day!)

We need twitter avatar badges and blog chicklets. Who's up for designing them? And it would rock to have a Wordpress plugin that reminds you to make a manual backup of your blog.

Thoughts?

It’s lights off for Google in the UK!

Google Goes Black

You tired, you poor, hungover masses yearning to Google... stop rubbing your eyes, Google has turned off the lights to support Earth Hour.

On Saturday, March 29, 2008, Earth Hour invites people around the world to turn off their lights for one hour – from 8:00pm to 9:00pm in their local time zone. On this day, cities around the world, including Copenhagen, Chicago, Melbourne, Dubai, and Tel Aviv, will hold events to acknowledge their commitment to energy conservation.

So now that Google's gone black, will it ever go back? Apparently.

As to why we don't do this permanently - it saves no energy; modern displays use the same amount of power regardless of what they display.

So is black the new green? Read. More.

Links:

Mullet Power FTW!

Singularity sponsored BarcampBrighton2 and the Brighton Girl Geek Dinner this month and the mullets did battle for inside these innocuous looking silver envelopes everyone got three Mullet Power cards to do battle with.

Mullet Power cards

The top three winners at BarcampBrighton2 won tickets to Singularity. And they were Nathan Murphy (35 cards), Lincoln Smith (20 cards), and Ryan Alexander (12 cards), seen below wearing prize mullets. Congrats guys! :)

We can haz Singularity: Nathan Murphy, Lincoln Smith, and Ryan Alexander win at Mullet Power at BarcampBrighton2

Oh yeah, Nathan, I need your email address... drop me an email at aral {at} aralbalkan(.)com.

We reprised the game at last night's Brighton Girl Geek Dinner and I'm waiting for the final tally to determine the winner there. The top contender at the moment is Gillian Pearce with 24 Mullet Power cards that she won fair and square (no begging, borrowing, or foraging!). Unless we have any challengers come forward by Monday, I will be proclaiming Gillian the winner!

Who be Winner Like

I leave you with this lovely photo of Lincoln and Ryan in the heat of battle. What? Of course it wasn't staged! Ye have little faith.

Lincoln and Ryan Play Mullet Power

Muchas dankes go to Madhava for the pics of Lincoln and Nathan, Molly Holzschlag for the pic of Ryan, and Serena for lending me her camera to shoot Lincoln and Ryan. More danke yous to Rosie and Devi for organizing the lovely Girl Geek Dinner and to the BarcampBrighton2 gang for an awesome Barcamp.

Adobe Updater, Die Die Die!

Adobe Updater Dumb Dialog

My daily Adobe Updater experience: Launch Photoshop. Cringe as I see the freakin' Adobe Updater icon jumping in the dock like a crazed puppy dog. Switch over to it. See the completely unhelpful dialog above (Which file? Where should I place it? Why should I care? Leave me alone!). Force quit Adobe Updater.

FeedBurner FeedSmith plugin issues with Wordpress 2.5

Moving to Wordpress 2.5 messed up my RSS feeds but I don't think it's an issue that should affect others (I had a unique setup).
Continue reading 'FeedBurner FeedSmith plugin issues with Wordpress 2.5'

OSFlash Job Board relaunch: Flash, Flex, and ActionScript job listings at half price

Do you have a Flash, Flex, or ActionScript job to post? Post it on the OSFlash Job Board.

I've just relaunched the OSFlash Job Board and all jobs listings are 50% off this week if you use the coupon code RELAUNCH. This expires on April 1st, 2008 (no joke!) :)

If you want to get notified of new jobs, you can get job alerts by email or subscribe to the RSS feed.

The OSFlash Job Board initially launched last year using the Joard system that my friend and business partner Dave Stone was developing. Dave decided to discontinue Joard at the start of this year so we were left without a job board.

It has taken a little while to get everything set up again but the job board is now back up and running using the excellent JobThread system.

OSFlash gets over 120,000 unique visitors every month. We also have a new job board widget that is featured on the OSFlash.org home page and here on my blog (I get around 70,000 unique visitors a month on this blog). By putting your job listing on the OSFlash Job Board, you'll thus be reaching a very tightly-focussed group of close to 200,000 Flash, Flex, and ActionScript developers, designers, and creatives.

Check out the OSFlash Job Board for Flash jobs, Flex jobs, and ActionScript jobs and don't forget to use the RELAUNCH coupon code to get 50% off your job listing until April 1st, 2008.

If you want to help support OSFlash, tell your friends about the OSFlash Job Board by adding the OSFlash Job Board widget to your site.

OSFlash Job Board Widget (JavaScript)

<script type="text/javascript">
<!-- 
var jobthread_jobroll_title = "Jobs";
var jobthread_jobroll_outer_style = "background-color:#dddddd;border:1px solid #999999;width:160px;";
var jobthread_jobroll_inner_style = "background-color:#ffffff;color:#666666;border:1px solid #999999;margin-left:10px;margin-right:10px;padding:10px 10px 2px 8px;font:11px Arial, Helvetica, Sans-serif;line-height:16px;";
var jobthread_jobroll_title_style = "color:#313131;font-weight:bold;";
var jobthread_jobroll_link_style = "color:#0464bb;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;text-decoration:none;border:none;";
var jobthread_jobroll_featured_style = "";
var jobthread_jobroll_featured_link_style = "";
var jobthread_jobroll_top_style = "padding-top:8px;";
var jobthread_jobroll_bottom_style = "padding-bottom:4px;";
//-->
</script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://jobs.osflash.org/feeds/jobroll/?num_jobs=5&num_featured_jobs=1&display_method=default&version=2.0"></script>

OSFlash Job Board Wordpress widget

I also made a simple Wordpress Widget that you can use to add the Job Board to your Wordpress blog's sidebar. Download the OSFlash Job Board Wordpress widget.

Once you've downloaded it, simply extract it into your wp-content/plugins folder, activate it, and add it to your sidebar from the Widgets section of the Wordpress administration tool. (Note: The CSS positioning is set for my site, you may need to modify it to make it display correctly for yours.)

Here's the source for the OSFlash Job Board Wordpress plugin. It's released under the open source MIT license, so please feel free to use and adapt it to make your own Wordpress plugins too.

<?php
/*
Plugin Name: OSFlash Job Board Badge
Plugin URI: http://aralbalkan.com
Description: Displays the OSFlash Job Board Badge on your Wordpress blog. Released under the MIT License. Copyright (c) 2008 Aral Balkan. http://aralbalkan.com.
Author: Aral Balkan
Version: 1.0
Author URI: http://aralbalkan.com
*/
 
function osflash_job_board_widget_init()
{
	if ( !function_exists('register_sidebar_widget') || !function_exists('register_widget_control') )
		return; 
 
	function osflash_job_board_widget($args)
	{
		extract($args); 
 
		echo $before_widget; 
 
		?>
<div class="osflashJobBoard">
				<script type="text/javascript">
				<!-- 
				var jobthread_jobroll_title = "Jobs";
				var jobthread_jobroll_outer_style = "background-color:#dddddd;border:1px solid #999999;width:160px;";
				var jobthread_jobroll_inner_style = "background-color:#ffffff;color:#666666;border:1px solid #999999;margin-left:10px;margin-right:10px;padding:10px 10px 2px 8px;font:11px Arial, Helvetica, Sans-serif;line-height:16px;";
				var jobthread_jobroll_title_style = "color:#313131;font-weight:bold;";
				var jobthread_jobroll_link_style = "color:#0464bb;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;text-decoration:none;border:none;";
				var jobthread_jobroll_featured_style = "";
				var jobthread_jobroll_featured_link_style = "";
				var jobthread_jobroll_top_style = "padding-top:8px;";
				var jobthread_jobroll_bottom_style = "padding-bottom:4px;";
				//-->
				</script>
				<script type="text/javascript" src="http://jobs.osflash.org/feeds/jobroll/?num_jobs=5&num_featured_jobs=1&display_method=default&version=2.0"></script>
			</div>
 
		<?php
 
		echo $after_widget;
	}
 
	// Register widget
	register_sidebar_widget('OSFlash Job Board', 'osflash_job_board_widget');
}
 
function osflash_job_board_style()
{
	?>	
<style type="text/css">
		.osflashJobBoard
		{
			position: absolute;
			left: 20px;
		}
		</style>
 
	<?
}
 
// Add widget once plugins are loaded.
add_action('plugins_loaded', 'osflash_job_board_widget_init');
 
// Add the badge's CSS to the head.
add_action('wp_head', 'osflash_job_board_style');
 
?>

Update: There was a small hiccup right after the blog announcement. If you couldn't reach OSFlash.org or jobs.osflash.org, please try again. It's back up and running! Thanks!






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