Re-Booting P52

March 4th, 2010

One post a week I said. That went well didn’t it. Or not. Bugger. A combo work, work and more work conspired to destroy any plans I had.

Oh well – onward and upwards! Project 52 have, conveniently for me, re-booted the project to re-start on Paddy’s day so I’m planning to take the opportunity to try again. I might even do it this time. Who knows.

The plan has changed slightly. I still want to continue with my Objects series, but I the monthly plan should hopefully look at least a little bit like this:

1. Objects

2. Design/Art/Creative related post

3. Pics – I really need to update my flickr, this seems like a good excuse too

4. Tutorial of some description.

But to be honest I’d just like to get more than one post up a quarter so as long as I post something we’re winning right.

So. Starting on the 17th its one a week. For a year. Yup. Honest…

So, lets see if this works then.

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Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell, Penguin First Edition

January 17th, 2010

Probably my favorite book ever is Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell and it has been since I was a teenager. Perhaps I was just the right age when I first read it but Orwell’s description of a bleak dystopian landscape, epitomised by the omnipresent totalitarian ‘Big Brother’, thought crimes and the dreaded Room101 made a lasting impression on the young me.

The original book was published in 1949, but this edition (a gift from my girlfriend for my birthday) is a first edition Penguin paper back, published in 1954. The graphic design geek in me loves the design aesthetic of the Jan Tschichold/Hans Schmoller cover and the patina of age only adds to its appeal.

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Objects – Project 52

January 6th, 2010

What this? A blog post?! Yes, yes my friend, it is. I have actually written something and posted it on my blog. Sadly its a post about writing more posts, but you’ve got to start somewhere right?

So what’s all this about objects and project 52 I hear you ask? (If you didn’t I’m sure you were going too…). Well, its a happy combination of a few things I’ve been pondering recently – ‘How do I make sure I update my blog?’ and ‘You really should spend more time appreciating what you have you ungrateful little…’

Project 52
I really want to start writing and blogging consistently – this is where Project 52 comes in. Simply its a group of like minded individuals that have the same goal as me – to blog more, in this case once a week (52 times -gettit?). Hopefully being accountable, and having someone look over my shoulder to see if I’ve posted will be enough to actually make me do it!

Objects
I’ve committed to post more – but what do I write about? Recently I’ve been thinking about all the really cool stuff that myself and girlfriend have picked up over the years – we love cool items and limited edition shiny things, but after a while they sit on a shelf and gather dust. No more – the idea behind the Objects series is to take one object a week, take some nice photos and write about it. Simple huh.

Will it be interesting? For me it will, and hopefully at least a few items will be for you too. You can probably expect lots of books and music popping up as we’ve been collecting since we were kids. I’ll try and get a bit of variety in to it too though :) .

Its going to be an interesting experiment to see if I can keep this going to a whole year. I’ve much admiration for a friend that is currently doing the 100 days project. He’s not slipped yet, so if I do I’m sure he’ll point it out ;) . I’m not sure which would be harder – 100 days in a row or 1 a week for a year. I guess we’ll find out.

So – Post number 1 done. Just another 51 to go….

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Micro-blogging with Twitter

February 4th, 2009

The folks over at Think Vitamin had a jolly clever idea about using Twitter and #tags to create a micro-blog, which they have used to power the news section on the Think Vitamin site.

Ryan Carson wrote a great write up on how they had gone about doing this but it turns out I can’t run atom-html.php on my servers – so this is my variation on their concept.

How do you do it then?

I’m not one to steal other peoples thunder – so follow the guide here at Think Vitamin –  They cover why you’d want to do it, where to start, how choose your hash tag and to find your create your atom feed.  When you get to Output the Atom Feed as HTML section head back here.

Right – done all that?  Good.

Now, on the servers I host this site on allow_url_fopen() is a disabled function due security risk it poses (please don’t ask me anything else about this – that’s what I was told!) so I can’t use so the atom-html.php file that Ryan uses.

MagpieRSS was recommended to me and its pretty easy to set up.

So, down download the MagpieRSS files from here.

Once you’ve got that downloaded open the MagpeRSS folder create a new folder on your hosting space called magpierss and upload these files: rss_fetch.inc, rss_parser.inc, rss_cache.inc, and rss_utils.inc plus the directory extlib in to the folder you just created.  It is all explaned in the INSTALL doc that comes with MagpieRSS if you get lost.

Still with me?  Ace.  Now you need to create a new .php webpage (or use an existing .php page).  Somewhere in the <body> tags add the following code:

<?php

require_once(‘magpierss/rss_fetch.inc’);

$url = ‘http://www.yourtwittersearchfeedhere.com’;

$rss = fetch_rss( $url );

echo “<ul>”;

$count=1;

foreach ($rss->items as $item) {

echo “<li>”. “”. $item['title'] .”</a></li>”;

$count ++;

if($count==10){ break;}

}

echo “</ul>”;

?>

Replace http://www.yourtwittersearchfeedhere.com with the feed you copied from http://search.twitter.com/

If you don’t want to limit the number of tweets you display remove:

$count ++;

if($count==10){ break;}

Then save and upload.  A there you go – your very own twitter powered micro-blog.

You can style the feed using the <li> tag. For example on my example site I have styled it like this:

 li {

 

color:#666;

font-size:120%;

margin:20px 0 ;

padding-bottom:20px;

border-bottom: solid 1px #111;

border-right:30px solid #000;

}

 

I’m sure there is loads more that can be done – if you’ve any ideas let me know.  The next thing I’d like to do is hide the #tag or at least style it and maybe add the date and time the tweet was posted, but that will have to wait until I have more time to explore MagpieRSS.

Here’s any example of it in action: http://www.blogbyben.co.uk/fitness

Thanks to Ryan Carson of Carsonifed and Think Vitamin for the idea and inspiration.

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Posted in Tutorial | 2 Comments

That awkward first post…

February 4th, 2009

Yes, it is – its another blog by someone who thinks they might have something of use to share with the world.  Who knows – I might.  Lets find out hey? :)

I’m working on the basis of ‘I can make it look cool and edit it once its up.  Just get the damn site up!’. So the site currently uses the Thematic theme with a few little tweaks and plugins installed.  In theory you will see it evolve over time in to something more interesting.

My plans?  Well I want to learn Wordpress so expect to see things about that if I find anything interesting.  You are likely to see other things I like and think are cool too – probably music, design or internet related.  I’ve got some friends that are pretty cool too (much cooler that me at any rate) so I might write about them and bask in their glory. You know how it is.

So, if you’ve dropped by, say Hi or maybe a read a post or two.  

Cheers,
Ben

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