January 7th, 2009
With the ubiquitous cry “Hmm, blow-offs” Cath Hyslop plies her wears around Worthing. Which gave me an idea for a new blog design element, namely a kangaroo doing, well, blow-offs.
See what I did there? Kangaroo, and blow-offs from it’s bottom? Put ‘em together and what do you get? That’s right! An idea for a rather tenuous illustrative pun. And here she is, in all here vectory glory…
March 5th, 2008
Some of the keener eyed among you may have noticed a few little housekeeping changes around the site. These are a forerunner to a larger update planned later this year. I don’t want to give away too much yet (as ideas are still in the process of forming) but hopefully the upgrades will promote a greater sense of community around the place. I’m busy getting to grips with JQuery and Wordpress plugin writing in any spare moment I can grab.
But whats new now I hear you cry. Well, here’s a full list of (small) changes to satisfy the nosy ones.
Anyway, Enjoy…
December 3rd, 2007
I know, I know, I know! The updates have been getting less again - but I do have an excuse - Work has been mega busy, look out for some exciting stuff coming from them sometime soon….
But the lack of updates aren’t the only problem with this site, one is the un-robustness of the design in our old friend Internet Explorer.
I’m really inclined to say ’screw IE’, but then again it’s still a main-stay of web surfers the world over, it shouldn’t be - but that’s an argument for another time. Recently, my good friend Mr.Cotton told me that one of his classes had to review a website for an assignment, so being the good egg that he is they we’re pointed in the direction of roobottom. Now, I like to think this was because Paul knows good design when he sees it, but its more likely that he just wanted to take the p**s out of my name.
Knowing what our country’s fine educational institutions are like at providing the latest equipment for their fine young minds, I doubt if they’ve got much choice than to use IE, but you never know some cleaver boffin may have sneaked in a copy of Firefox in his Transformers lunch box. So now I’m torn between really wanting to serve the readers who have little choice in their web software, and sticking it (in some small way) to the man. The man being, erm.. Well, I’m sure you know what I mean.
Incidentally, Paul getting his class to review me did raise another issue that I will be sorting out - Comments. He said he didn’t think most of the guys in his class even knew you could comment. Whoops! Is this true? Do it need to make it easier to and more obvious that you can comment?
Anyway, all this blogging has made me hungry, and lunchtime is nearly over. TTFN.
October 1st, 2007
One of the biggest parts of the recent upgrades was a revolutionary new way to explore the Roobottom archives.
Instead of the standard Wordpress list of archive months, the Archives display a full list of posts in a kind of pseudo calendar view. In this way, it’s easy to browse back through the years and take in the wonder and beauty of roobottom through the ages.
But now, even more goodness. I’ve integrated my Flickr photos in with the archives, so that each time you visit you’ll see a random picture for each month (if there are pictures for that month). You can even link directly to the full Flickr archive.
Oh, and I’ve updated the comment system to give you a little more feedback. It hopefully will put an end to the confusion over comments being held in moderation.
So what next? I’ve made upgrades galore, but it’s stuff that I wanted and I thought was cool. But what do you want? Do you even care? Here’s a few ideas I had to kick off.
September 25th, 2007
Paul Lloyd and I went to school together. We laughed and cried together. We shared chips from the same paper bag. But alas, he is not keen on the new design. I don’t know if we can weather this rift in our friendship. As an attempt to repair broken prides and clear the air I would like to publicly discuss the issues my friend Mr. Lloyd has with my design.
But first, a brief history.
As already mentioned, myself and Paul went to the same fine secondary education establishment. After a teary goodbye, we both left for our respective Universities - Paul choosing a course in Graphic Design and myself a stint in Multimedia Design. After completing our eduction (both with an Atilla) we moved into jobs, greasing our way up the ranks to reach the lofty heights of Lead Design at Ning and Interaction Designer at Glaxstar.
It should be mentioned at this point that whereas I have always had slightly more technical skill than Paul, he far outstrips me on the design front. That said, lets now move onto what he thought of the new design.
F*****G Stars!
Were the first words out of Paul’s mouth. Too many stars apparently. I gathered from this that Paul was less than impressed with the new design.
He then sent me an email, a design critique if you will, kindly enclosing a re-hashed version of the design that ‘he did on the train’. This gave me a basic overview of each area of my sins:
Ok, time to get serious. I must admit to having my pride a little battered by Paul’s redesign, but he’s an awesome designer and a great friend. I just thought this would be funny - And a chance to put both designs out there. I’ve uploaded Paul’s Homepage and About Page to Flickr. Please feel free to take a look and rip either or both versions. Again, it’s over to you!
September 24th, 2007
Not since January 4th 2006 has there been any update, new look or (if you will) face lift to my own little corner of the web. So it was about bloody time I put mouse to slightly grubby desktop and upgraded things a little.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been spending quiet moments with Fireworks and then Dreamweaver slaving away to bring you a pimped-up roobottom. I’ve chopped out the things that were rubbish or no-body used (most notably the subscribe via email thing) and added in some cool new ways to navigate around.
The Archives have received a complete re-code and now offer (I think) a great alternative to the standard Wordpress list by date feature. In-fact all of the code is sleeker, faster and more importantly ALL stored in it’s theme directory - where as before it was scattered all over the place.
I will endeavor to post some more technical details of what’s going on behind the scenes in the near future - and I may even release some of the Archive code as a plug in (if I get enough spare time).
Oh, and the flickr photo streams now work! Thanks to the brilliant work of Eightface.
August 7th, 2007
I was always skeptical about earning money through affliate links and online advertising, but for the past year I’ve been using a service called Text Link Ads and been very Impressed with the results.
Last month I earned a total of $112 from selling adverts from this site and others - I never imagined that I could make that much! TLA is cool, and if you’re looking to advertise, they even do a $100 free start up promotion. Get In!
Has anyone else had any experience with this?
August 9th, 2006
Yes, this is a complete geek post, so I apologize in advance. You may have noticed a few subtle changes around the place if you’ve been visiting lately. It was about time I had a clear out and a much needed tidy up. So many things were left unfinished or shoddily done that I needed one big blitz.
The two biggest changes are the logo (and the associated subtle colour change) and the finalised footer (Kris: what competition, I don’t remember any competition… Think I owe you a pint mate). Oh and changing from “roobottom dot com” to “roobottom”, yeah, cos that “dot com” was so 2003. Ahem, anyway here is the full list of things I’ve changed, added or updated.
*Google ads: Only on the homepage, please support me if you feel the need. I usually get really made when people say stuff like this, so I’ve tried to keep them to a minimum. I’ve got a feeling I’m going to be needing all the money I can get soon. Maybe a post on this in the near future.
Oh, and I’m aware of the problem with the links in the e-mail newsletter, I’m working on it!
July 10th, 2006
according to the Wayback Machine roobottom dot com is 5 years old, erm, yesterday! Given my lack of posting lately, it’s surprising I remembered at all, but being just a single day late is pretty good going I think.
While we’re on the subject of posting, give Steve’s Webcam a look, you may at first glance think “this is just a webcam of a random back garden” and you’d probably be right, but if you’re into piles of wood or indeed when he does get the archives working on the offical site you can probably spot me getting out of the car at around 3.30pm yesterday (9th July)… Then you’ll, you know, love it.
OK, sorry, but that’s it again for now. Why? Simply because I don’t feel like writing much at the moment. I know I must be disappointing litterely tens of fans, but you guys will have to cope without me for a while. sorry.
May 17th, 2006
9rules are having their 4th round of submissions today! And of course, being one of those web geeks, I’ve submitted. Yeah, ok, I’ve even had the date written in my diary for the last month. And yes, both my laptop and my work computer popped up with reminders just so I wouldn’t forget. Huh, like I was going to.
So there’s really no point in this post other than to show off that I remembered, and possibly to give all my adoring fans the opportunity to comment and show the fine people (yeah? Nothing wrong with a little ass-kissing…) just how amazingly popular this site is… What?! A man geek can dream can’t he?
The last 10 posts. See The Archive for more
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