Journal
March 29, 2008 | General
37Signals have recently posted a couple of articles on improving the workplace experience and they’re doing things I can only dream of. The posts in questions are workplace experiments, and fire the workaholics.
Workplace experiments
Some of their ideas are great. I love the idea of a 4 day work week (and I’m not the only one). The fact they have studied it and found that the shortened work time results in the same amount of work being completed is particularly interesting.
I must admit I think they’re a bit crazy giving each of their staff an unlimited credit card, but in a tight knit company I an see how that would work. Miniclip doesn’t do things to quit such an extreme but if you need anything work related (books, software, hardware etc) then they are happy to buy it, so I guess it’s not too different.
Fire the workaholics
I find …
A year and a bit ago I wrote a tutorial on splitting the comments, trackbacks and pingbacks up on your wordpress blogs. Then a few months ago Daniel from DailyBlogtips wrote a post on the same subject (a couple people even mentioned my post in the comments 
). I decided then a plugin was needed to do this.
The basics were easy but I was having issues calling the splitter function without user intervention, I like to make things as simple as possible and it just wasn’t working for me. Then, a couple of weeks ago, this post on weblogtoolscollection talked about a similar topic and I noticed the comments_array plugin hook, a hook I hadn’t seen before.
Once I knew what to do it only took me 5 minutes to put it all together (it’s easy when you know how) and I now have a finished working …
March 23, 2008 | Links
A wonderful pop-up book for learning the alphabet. No doubt a book most people won’t need, but with something as clever as this it could be a book you’d want. I love the way each letter has it’s own treatment, and particularly enjoy the clever letters such as O,P,Q, and R.
The version in this video was hand made by the books designer, Marion Bataille. It’s going to go on sale later this year, and is currently available for preorder on Amazon.com.
March 20, 2008 | Links
Obviously I’m biased since I now sell a premium Wordpress theme, but I have posted my thoughts on premium themes over on Pro Theme Design.
The post was sparked by a comment from Matt Mullenweg where he said he disliked Premium themes because they don’t further the Wordpress community… and I disagreed.
In my opinion selling a Wordpress theme is no different to designing a website for a client, or even developing a website for yourself.
To read the full article head over to Pro Theme Design on Premium Themes, giving back to the community.
The last couple of months I have been spending my free time working on a new website and premium theme.
The website is called Pro Theme Design, and the theme is Mimbo Pro.
Pro Theme Design
Pro Theme Design is a Wordpress theme blog and premium theme store. You will be able to purchase premium themes and read tips on developing themes all in one spot. Yes, there’s paid stuff but I also intend to give away freebies, for example I have also created an icon set, which I will be distributing via Pro Theme Design.
Mimbo Pro
At the start of the year I knew I would be making the Pro Theme Design website, and I thought it would be cool to work with other developers on the themes. The first person I thought to contact was Darren Hoyt, the developer of incredibly successful Mimbo.
We have been working together …
March 9, 2008 | Links
A little disturbing, rather uncanny valley, but surprisingly realistic. We’ve all seen the websites that have cartoon people watching you (your mouse) and now it’s been taken to the next level with a virtual girl watching your mouse!
There’s no information on the page so I can’t say who made it, why they made it, or how but I can make some educated guesses. The head uses a flash 3d system with some sort of bone or morph based animation code. The eyes are separate meshes and so can move independently. The bones/ morphing gives the face the ability to blink, and the head to turn.
Found via JazJaz
Binary Moon
Rocket Boards
ExGen
Free Games 4 Bloggers
Seths Puzzle Boxes