From Away

Wow, nearly a month later, and here I am once again to play the catch-up game. I know some of you may be thinking that I’m really slacking on this blogging thing, but to be honest, I’ve got so many little side projects in the chute right now that blogging has just needed to be pushed to the back burner.

Ajax

I’ve been playing around with Ajax (namely SAJAX, a simple Ajax toolkit) and I must say I’m quite impressed with the ease I was able to pick this new technology up. A simple understanding of JavaScript and the programming language of your choice (PHP in my case, and you can do some pretty cool, and powerful things.

My only bone to pick with Ajax is the fact that I’m sure it will be (and already has been) overused and abused. One of my coworkers and I were drawing some similarities to the way that animated GIF’s and Flash were overused back in the day. I can definitely see the same thing happening with Ajax. Although, it is such a cool technology, I’m extremely inclined to make use of it in any appropriate way that I can. Which leads me to my next point.

New Portfolio Design On The Way

I’m currently working on a new design for my portfolio website (finally…). I’ve got about three designs sitting in various states of completion, one almost done in Photoshop, and two sketched out on paper (hopefully to be entered in my new Mockup Maker when I get around to ordering one).

I’ve got some really great ideas for the redesign this time around, and I’m going to take my time and do it right. Now this could take until the fall, or possibly even next spring. The design I have up now is definitely serving its purpose, and I’m still getting lots of great comments on it, so I’m not feeling too rushed about getting this design out the door.

Webjillion

Our good buddy B. Adam Howell (of CSS Reboot fame) has released his latest creation upon the world. Webjillion is definitely one of those “why didn’t I think of that first?” projects. Webjillion sells “Cool Stuff for Web Professionals” and has a couple of great satirical comics on display as well.

Adam has done an excellent job with not only the design, but his first product “The Mockup Maker” is pure genious. I’ve been forever using a crude template that I mocked up in Illustrator. It never even crossed my mind to make a notebook of mockup templates to keep all of my papers organized.

So if you’re a web professional, and like to be organized (as I think most of us are), shoot on over to Webjillion and have a look around.

New Digicam

We’ve also recently acquired a new digital camera. This has definitely been a long time coming, I’ve been using a 1.3MP Fuji Finepix for the last 3 or so years, so it was definitely time for an upgrade. We picked out a Sony Cybershot DSC-W5, which is definitely not a top of the line camera, but suits our casual use just fine. It has proven to produce some great quality shots, even in my shaky hands. Now, I just have to get myself a Flickr Pro account to upload this backup of pictures I’ve not got (if anyone has any of those free pro account dealies to give away, I’d be forever grateful…)

Calgary

This weekend we’ll be heading down to Calgary for some wedding shenanigans. My cousin is getting married this Saturday afternoon, so we’ve decided to make the trek down for the weekend. I’m very much looking forward to seeing some of the family and some friends from good ole PEI. Should definitely prove to be a good time.

So I think that pretty much catches us up to date. I’d like to say that posts will become more regular around here, but with summer and all of its impending fun and activities, I’m not sure that it’ll be a promise I could keep. I’ve still got a lot of posts sitting in purgatory that I haven’t finished yet, rest assured, they will see the light of day at some point. Until next time…