Archive for January, 2008

PhotoShow: Your Name

I got tagged by Lalla Mira who has kindly took up the torch for the photoshow meme series that started a few months ago with something I posted about here.

Here’s my entry..

Photo Show Fiddyp

The rules:

  1. Create your name in a unique and interesting way. Be creative! no old birthday cakes allowed!
  2. Take a picture of your work and post it on your blog. There is no limit on the number of pictures you can post. Don’t restrain your imagination!
  3. Tag a few of your friends to join the fun and spread the word.

I am tagging:
Opal Tribble – Vegan Momma
Pelf
Antibarbie

sorry Lalla Mira, I have no sand to write my name in. Will silicon do? ;-)


I won money at darts! 中國人是好球員

uVme Darts game

OK I admit, it wasn’t a ‘real’ game but it was great fun nonetheless (love that triple word!). uVme has now gone into soft launch so anyone can join as an associate which I did today. While I was waiting for the information to go through, I decided to put a tenner in my players account and see how I could do with some real money games.

Last time I played on the beta site I was quite good at the darts game so I thought I’d wager fiddyp on a game and got a really good score! I was almost nervous while I waited to see what the other player scored and… per-ching! it popped up a few thousand less! I got my fiddyp pack and half of their wager too. yey!

The uVme coders changed the playing format slightly since the beta testing, now instead of aiming, clicking to start the power meter and then clicking again to try and hit the middle (like a golf swing type of game), it is now aim, hold click to start power meter and release the button to throw the dart. The first couple of throws I did I didn’t realize that it was like this and by pure chance the amount of time it took my finger to linger on the button to click and release was just enough to hit the middle of the power button!
As long as you’re aiming in the treble and you hit the middle of the power button, you get the treble and can skip ahead a few numbers on the ’round the clock’ game. I thought I would try a free game (you don’t have to wager) and found quickly that it’s all in the rythm, I got a cracking score and managed to clear the board in only 15 throws and hit the bullseye first time of trying.

Sweet, now to try for 2 quid…

It seems the bigger the wager, the more pressure there is! I totally lost it half way through and ended up with a sub-par score and lost my wager :-( It was bloody good fun though and for someone that doesn’t really play games, I had a great time.

I’ll have to keep an eye out for a Chinese player that’s already become (in)famous on the site, last week he was able to rack up over a thousand quid ($2000+) in wager winnings starting from just a small stake. That’s something that’ll develop more and more, just like going on Xbox Live for the first time – you realize that there some awfully good players out there! At least there’s the option to play for free so I can practice a bit more before wagering a whole two quid next time…

You can join for free and play some free games to see if it’s going to be worth the inevitable hype here


Out From Animals Upcoming Dates

Andy from Out From Animals sent me a really nice hand written letter when I ordered their CD after seeing them on the Unsigned Band Mobile Awards show and he continues to send me news of their upcoming dates. They’re not my normal type of music (I’d call it triphopunk) but I find myself opening their site in a new tab while I code, it turns out that it’s just the ticket for happy html! I love customer support and thought I would let you all know (UK residents) when and where they’ll be this year…

here’s their latest upcoming dates flyer…

Out From Animals 2008 dates


iMaingo Portable Speakers £37.50 + 0.50 P&P

£37.50 + 0.50 P&P

I thought I would bite the bullet and start offering my own stock for sale here. To start with I’m going to offer these amazing portable speakers for less than you can get elsewhere (I checked!). I have plenty in stock and will send them next day registered post for just fiddyp! (50p). Here’s the info…

iMaingo SpeakersThese portable speakers from Portable Sound Laboratories can hold an iPod or iPod Nano (and other mp3 players) and punch out a fantastic sound that you just wouldn’t expect from something so small!

In essence, the iMaingo speakers are a hard case for your iPod with built in speakers. Devices like this are not normally known for their superior quality output but the iMaingo is the exception! You’re not going to replace your home system with these but compare them to the myriad of mp3 speakers out there and you’ll see what all the fuss is about. (continue reading…)


Logo wanted… 3 hours later… logo got!

If you’re ever in need of a quick and professional 3d object design, you should definitely check out Milan Antovics’ portfolio.
This guy made me a logo to my exact specifications within hours of me asking, all the way through the process he sent me updates (usually within a couple of minutes of providing details) and was able to send me every kind of format of picture that I could want.

Here’s the final design.

Pitweb Logo

Awesome! You can see more examples of Milans 3d work at his 3D Portfolio Site and in most cases, you should be able to get a completed project done for less than 100 USD! how’s that for value?!

I got in contact with Milan initially through GetaFreelancer.

I have used GAF before and I have found it to be very easy to post a project, within minutes of being posted there were quite a few responses and bids from prospective freelancers. You have your own private message board so you can stay in touch with each freelancer.

When you have someone you want to do the work, you put the fee into escrow ready to release when the project is finished.

Easy peasy freelancing!


Spreading Coding luv

OMGG! (oh my golly gosh) I have had the most tremendously hard week. I’ve had 2 different web sites to produce, an hour long power point presentation for a shop display. Make a barcode program that can create a barcode from a product name, build 2 systems that can talk to each other but still be protected against outside intrusion and finally, design and print a variety of business cards for clients.

I couldn’t have done half of the coding and designing if it wasn’t for the wonderfulness of the internet!

Some sites that were instrumental to me learning new things were:

ErracticWisdom where I (finally) learned how to create a layout from scratch using css (no tables!). I used to make websites with photoshop, slice them up and save for web which would make some ugly table based pages that for lack of any other way of creating the site, had to do. The problem with table based layouts is that they are ugly, it all takes a long time to load and they don’t always behave nicely when you want to add extra content.

That problem is now solved, I took what I learned from Tom Fadial and experimented like crazy and now I am super stoked that I can create some pretty snazzy looking websites that load in a split second and are xhtml compliant. yey! thanks Tom!

Trevor Davis.net had an excellent tutorial on how to make an AJAX contact form which was absorbed, modified and implemented into my new .css based site and it turned out to be shockingly good. Enough to get me another project! Nice one Trevor!

There’s also jquery which I have been using for some experimentation lately, it’s a fantastic AJAX library which takes an awful lot of the pain out of coding AJAX pages. It’s so fantastic that you can create really simple effects and AJAX loadings in seconds.

I’ve even managed to sell a few iMaingo speakers direct from this site via Google Checkout!

Everything else has been put on hold while all these projects get completed so apologies to those wanting to see part 6 of the AJAX tutorial series, it’ll be here soon and it’ll be worth the wait!

uVme has now launched, it’s been a wait but hopefully all the kinks have been worked out and we’ll all be ready to make some money with it soon (although the site was performing poorly today). Come on VWD! get your act together, you’ve had over a year to get this right and I still can’t edit my profile. pah!


My New Album Artwork

my album cover

This is my new album cover! Well, actually it’s a cool thing I saw on a blog while stumble-ing today. It involves visiting sites and using what you get in Photoshop or similar paint program. The game goes like this…
(you may want to middle click these to open them in new tabs)

  1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
    The first article title on this page will be the name of your band.
  2. http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
    The last four words of the last quote on the page will be the name of your album
  3. http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/
    The third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.
  4. http://www.livejournal.com/random.bml
    Click on the users info link and look for the italic subtitle below the bold blog name. That will be your first hit single.
  5. Use a graphics program to put them all together like I did above and share it here..

For completeness, here are all the urls that came up for me..
1 2 3 4

Lets see what you get….

Here’s a couple more that I made (no refreshes allowed, you have to choose whatever comes up (even russian tag lines!) )
number 2 album
album 3


Anonymous Love Is All Around..

I got in the good books today after posting an anonymous message on a new website called 1 million love messages. My missus got all warm and fluffy when she saw my message.

It’s a great idea, that being to have one place to do one thing, spread the love and make a difference to peoples lives with 3 simple words.

I saw the reaction to my message and I can confirm that love does mean a lot even if it’s as an anonymous message that only the recipient would realize is about them.

Give it a go yourself and tell someone what everyone needs to hear now and then..

1 mil love


Better than affiliate links

gift wrap+Shopping cart=£££?

I tried out some affiliate links and reviews on this blog before and even just a couple of reviews had click thru’s that ended in purchases. My review of my Three Skype Phone has generated 30 quid in commission so far (60 USD) and my Tefal Quick Cup Review had 7 purchases. Google adsense isn’t very prevalent, I put a block on some of the popular posts and a small banner below the related links on a single post. That’s not brought in very much at all so I think I’ll chuck that out eventually.

Instead of affiliate links, I’ve decided to start selling some items on this blog, it’s getting a fair bit of UK traffic and I have a good source of stock from an auction and a ‘job-lot’ selection of electronic things. Some were a bit useless but there are some good portable speakers and headphones in there that should sell. My missus wants to try selling some items too, she does some wonderful Chinese characters for good luck sayings and traditional charms which look wicked good in a wooden frame.

I’m going to use the WordPress shopping cart plugin from Instinct because it allows you to start small. You don’t have to go to great lengths to setup an entire themed site like you would with ZenCart or oScommerce scripts. I can set up the plugin and add just one product within a couple of hours. Probably even quicker but I’m such a tweaker that I can’t help try every combination of option!

I think it’s worth a go, I’ve got a company that I could use the stock for but I think seeing as I bought this myself and not through my company, I can have an experiment to see if any of it can move through here, I’d be interested to hear about any of your experiences if you have sold items direct from your own blog or site. (a chance to plug your site in the comments if you do!)

My blog name kind of works nicely into this idea it’s a nice memorable name just on it’s own but to add a memory hook to it I am pretty sure I’ll be doing UK postage at FiddyP (50p) for any item regardless of size, this makes it much easier for a buyer to know how much they’ll pay at the checkout as well as being the theme of the site. oh how convenient! 8-)
Of course, all the regular stuff will be going on as well like the AJAX tutorials, other hand step throughs and whatever else happens in my head which I think is worth sharing..

I’m working all weekend so I’ll get on with it and see if I can’t have my first product on sale by Tuesday.. yey!


by golly I feel awful

Sneeze
Source
I caught a cold last week and it’s just moved on to the coughy coughy stage which is killing me! I’ve got to work all through this phlegm (great word!) and try and portray a happy go lucky person who just so happens to sound like a stoned Darth Vader :-)

No matter though because I notice I have gone sub 90k on my Alexa rank, Technorati authority is up near 300 and there have been quite a few click-thru’s on my uVme ads so, not too bad considering…

Because of my extended man-cold (an extreme version of flu that only the male of the species gets), I haven’t been up to making any decent posts, even my drafts that I usually keep for such occasions have dried up (plenty of titles, no content though). It’s a shame because I have some super ideas for posts and for the life of me I cannae be bovvered at all, luckily I don’t charge an entrance fee for this blog because I’d have to start issuing refunds!

I’ll get some quality stuff up soon like how to make a countdown button with php (see the 125×125 button at the top), create some AJAX Stumblebait, update CommentLuv to use AJAX and generally lark about with words and stuff….

now where’s the Lemsip?….



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