I am Ad Taylor

2009 June

• Links

  • http://www.draplin.com/
  • http://www.vimeo.com/1465284

  Draplin’s modern day fable

  Posted on : Tuesday, 30 June, 2009

  I know I’m a month or two behind on this one but I only just got the chance to watch it. It’s a great story not only for design but for any job/task we undertake.

  Draplin tells how we all must ensure everything we create is the best we can possibly can — be it a sign, tax report or a building — as we are shaping our worlds future landscape.

• Wet behind the ears

  Posted on : Wednesday, 24 June, 2009

  Wet behind the ears.

  So the journey begins here and is signified by the start of this blog. The journey? Well I am in the process of (as in waiting for results) graduating from my degree in Multimedia Computing, therefore I am starting the arduous task of finding an agency to hire me. I really want to join an agency as I think it will further me as a creative, much more than going at it freelance like I am now.

  With this said I am really enjoying my time — post uni — working on freelance work, and with every job I complete I find I become a considerably better designer/front-end developer. [note — I have no idea what it is I am. Tried to work it out but can't find an answer]

  Though none of this is what I intended to post about. What I mean to ramble on about is the intended purpose of this blog and more importantly answer the question I kept on asking myself … What’s the point?

  I have been wanting to start a blog for some time now but have been putting it off as I figured it would be, as the saying goes, teaching your grandmother how to suck eggs. I am still yet to graduate and have only been taking commercial projects for a year or two — to use yet another saying — I am a bit wet behind the ears.

  Recently I reached a conclusion on the matter; No matter how wet my ears are there will be someone out there with slightly damper ones. So this is my attempt to give back to the community the knowledge and resources’ it gave (and still gives) me when I was starting out.

  In a way this is my pre-emptive apology to those who may read something on this blog and think ‘this is horse sh**e’. The posts might be technically crude, they maybe even lean on the side of incorrect but hopefully they will be enough for some other WBTE designer to get on the right tracks.

  I plan to post hints, tips and code snippets in the ’shorts’ section of this blog. My aim is to make them the kind of thing that can be helpful off the back of a quick google search (and a boost in traffic wouldn’t hurt too). It is in this section, ‘features’, that I shall be posting tutorials, how-to’s and reviews that need the extra space and design this section can offer.

  The first post is going to be the wet-behind-the-ears designers guide to git and github. I have spent a while searching for the perfect version control system for the non-techy and I think git and github are just that. Anyway, that’s for later on next week.

• Links

  • http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/06/guy-3.html

  Seth Godin’s “guy #3″ – inspiring

  Posted on : Thursday, 18 June, 2009

  Over at Seth Godin’s site he has written an insightful post called “Guy #3″ . It’s a celebration, of sorts, of those who see potential and make things happen — those that are often over-shadowed by guy #1 and #2

  It’s not my intention to link to other peoples posts on this blog however I really wanted to share this one.

• Links

  • http://twitter.com/iamadtaylor/status/2022722571
  • http://squaregirl.com/blog/2009/6/1/iphone-css.html

  iPhone targeted CSS – An answer to the :hover issue?

  Posted on : Thursday, 18 June, 2009

  I have been worried for some time about how iPhones and other handheld devices can’t use the :hover functions I seem to rely on heavily for idicating links and giving extra information.

  The answer could be over at http://squaregirl.com with just a few lines of CSS:

  @media only screen and (max-device-width: 480px) { 
    body {color:#000;}
  }

  As soon as I have a bit of time I am going to rectify this sites crappy handheld usability.

  Great work!!!

• Removing p tags from the_excerpt

  Posted on : Thursday, 18 June, 2009

  Making this blog I found many silly little stumbling blocks that slowed me down. Don’t get me wrong I think Wordpress is great but some of the formatting is simply awful.

  A great example of this is the_excerpt call; There is a pretty good chance your going to want to link the text to post and if you care about semantics mark it up with hfeed and rel=”bookmark”. Well good luck if you want a strict valid page as it comes free wrapped in p tags.

  RANT OVER. The fix: (Warning – this is a fix that goes straight for Wordpress core files)

  1. Open up wp-includes>formatting.php
  2. go to line 1498 (the function is called function wp_trim_excerpt($text))
  3. and add the line :

     // Removes the p from excerpts 
     remove_filter('the_excerpt', 'wpautop');

  My function now looks like this:

  function wp_trim_excerpt($text) {
  	if ( '' == $text ) {
  		$text = get_the_content('');
  
  		$text = strip_shortcodes( $text );
  
  		$text = apply_filters('the_content', $text);
  		$text = str_replace(']]>', ']]>', $text);
  		$text = strip_tags($text);
  		$excerpt_length = apply_filters('excerpt_length', 55);
  		$words = explode(' ', $text, $excerpt_length + 1);
  		if (count($words) > $excerpt_length) {
  			array_pop($words);
  			array_push($words, '[...]');
  			$text = implode(' ', $words);
  		}
  		
  		// Removes the p from excerpts 
  		remove_filter('the_excerpt', 'wpautop');
  		
  	}
  	return $text;
  }

  I’m not saying this is the correct way — I am by now means a developer — but it works.

  EDIT : Since installing 2.8 I realised this was a bad idea as the modifications made were written over. I made a plugin to perform the action instead but I shall cover this in a post very soon.

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