Journal
April 30, 2008 | Links
9rules, the wonderful blogging network I belong too, has recently relaunched. In recent years their site has gone through various stages, becoming more and more complicated. With this version they have taken a step backwards, worked out what is important (the members… yay!) and thrown away* the rest.
In my opinion it’s all turned out great, and with the new members they have added (hopefully with more to come) things can only get better.
* by “thrown away” I mean moved it all to it’s own site - over here.
Last week I released a new icon set over on Pro Theme Design. When I first started on the set I had two objectives. 1 - to spend some time learning how to make icons properly, and 2 - to make a set that I could reuse in future projects.
As time went on the set evolved and Circular was the result.
What went right
The overall outcome was quite nice. I made a complete set of over 100 icons, including a few that I use on Pro Theme Design itself.
- When I started the icons I wanted them to have a consistent look and feel, so I created a small palette of swatches that I sampled colours from.
- I learnt a lot about icon design. Ok, not an interesting point, but still worth pointing out. The way I learn is by researching, then doing. Reading about things is fine but if you …
April 25, 2008 | Links
The Royal Mint recently announced the new designs for UK coins and I’m incredibly impressed.
These coins are stunning. Obviously they look better in these photos since they’re nice and clean but the designs verge on abstract whilst still keeping the shape and colours we know. Place them correctly and they (kind of) make the Royal Arms heraldry.
They’re not in circulation yet but I think they’re great. Much more interesting than we normally get.
I got banned from Technorati a long time ago. Apparently releasing free themes is bad (and get’s lots of inbound links) only fair I guess 
Anyway, Technorati have dropped off my radar recently, their constant redesigns and confused product are pushing people away, and since they’ve been dropped by Wordpress I don’t visit at all. The thing I am most interested in is the recent announcement that they’re “suspending” blogs using old versions of Wordpress.
Personally I feel this is a well meaning, but misguided, attempt to keep the site clean. I think it’s misguided for two reasons. Firstly, they are going to be blocking a lot of blogs that haven’t been hacked, and secondly they are no doubt letting through a lot of blogs that have been compromised, and then upgraded (with the blog owner none the wiser).
A recent post on CodeScheme - Technorati and Wordpress explains how …
April 14, 2008 | General
Unfortunately I have been dragged down into the world of Twitter. Twitter is a web app that enables people to talk rubbish at no-one in particular and then receive a response from someone they don’t know. I’ve never seen the point of it before. I don’t care that you’ve just eaten a croissant, or that you’re about to go to bed, but now that I’ve been using it for a few days I am slowly coming to understand the appeal.
For me, at least, Twitter isn’t so much about the mundanities of life as the networking. Using Twitter I can keep up to date with, and help out, the online people I admire. If someone is having problems with something and I know the answer, then I can help them. Then, in the future, maybe that person will remember me and return the favour.
The Twitter website itself is ugly and …
There have been a couple of very cool physics toys released recently and since they’re fun to play with and free (and I like this sort of thing) I thought I’d give them a mention.
Phun with Physics
The first was a couple of weeks ago and is called Phun with Physics. It’s a wonderful free toy where you can build your own contraptions from the physics object and then release them into the world to interact with each other. You should watch all of the video as it starts off fairly basic and ends up showing some pretty advanced stuff. All the demos in the video are available in the free download too.
OECake from Prometech Software, Inc.
This one doesn’t have such a catchy title, but OECake is just as clever. The cool thing about OECake is the way the objects are generated. Rather than using primitive shapes you can …
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Free Games 4 Bloggers