As I’m currently ranked number one on Google for a search of “Fullerton Web Design”, I didn’t want to break what didn’t need fixing. I’ve therefore kept the one page minimalist design with the same content (a few tweaks to my prose here and there). Fingers crossed that Google doesn’t turn its nose up at me and knock me down, but that shouldn’t happen.

The main change is to the ‘our work’ section that has a new interface that looks rather snazzy. I played and played with jQuery to get it just right. Took me ages, but really pleased how it turned out.

My biggest flash of inspiration came today when I revised the logo. I wanted a simple ‘spot’ to identify with the name, but wasn’t too happy with the way my circles were aliasing when exported from either Fireworks or Illustrator. This could be due to user error, of course. Ahem.

So, while out shopping I suddenly had a flash of inspiration – what about CSS for the circle? Can that be done? Duh. Of course, using CSS3 and the ‘border-radius’ property. Add in a radial gradient to boot and I have my logo with purely CSS3 and HTML5. Sweet. Of course we still have an image as backup for the browsers that don’t do the new CSS3 wizardry (yes Internet Explorer < 9, I mean you.)

Anway, enjoy the new Shiny Spot Web Services and give us a call. We’ll do you a pretty awesome website. Promise.

So, after getting some books from Amazon I started. After much reading I got as far as working through some simple apps using Apple’s Xcode and iPhone simulator. Then we went on vacation to New England… and it all went to pot.

Upon our return I didn’t pick up my book or crank up Xcode. I just left it and slowly started forgetting all I had learned.

All is not lost though – with the renewed interest in the iPhone due to its fourth generation launch, I am once again bitten by the iPhone development bug. It hasn’t taken me too long to get back to where I was, and I’m impressed with the stuff I still remember. In fact, by learning it all a second time, some of it that wasn’t quite clear to me the first time now makes more sense.

Don’t get me wrong, developing for iPhone is a steep learning curve and it will be some time before I’m an iTunes App Store millionaire. However, I am excited at the prospect of getting something published on the app store.

Of course, I was behind the times when I first started learning this stuff last year. Now with iOS4, the new iPhone and the iPad I’m slipping even further.

That’s why I shall never be a millionaire!

Resources I’ve found useful

• Learn C on the Mac by Dave Mark
• Learn Objective-C on the Mac by Mark Dalrymple and Scott Knaster
• Beginning iPhone 3 Development: Exploring the iPhone SDK by Jeff LaMarche and David Mark
• Apple’s own documentation is AWESOME, as is Xcode development software. It’s all free if you regsiter

It is a great piece of kit, and although not exactly necessary, it certainly is great fun to use. I shall write more on it later, and probably using my MacBook. In the meantime, I’ll say to those who say it’s “just a big iPod touch” that yes it is. And you say it like that’s a bad thing?

It seems to work a treat and it’ll be easy for me to add new images as and when. All I have to do is crop them, add a caption and them upload them to a folder on the site. The PHP script does the rest. Marvellous.

Now that I have being playing with WordPress for some time, I am getting more familiar with the hands-on customization of templates, the loop and all the other great funky functions that allow developers to get it ‘just so’.

You see, this blog was the first WordPress install I ever did. I admit I was a little apprehensive at this wondrous beast. The theme was adapted from one by my web host (Dreamhost – sign up now!) and all those PHP functions and ‘if’ statements were a little confusing.

Since that first attempt, I have also been building Drupal hosted sites, and although they are different, the core principles of CMSs helped me progress with WordPress when I came back to it.

I thought it was now time to revisit the O.C. blog and clean up the templates and css files to get a more consistent look across posts, comments, category archives and search results. I still have some further tweaking to do, but overall I’m happier with my blog-baby.

I do wish, however, that I could create a more funky header that sums up the Englishman.

Sullivan Management Group Inc.

I am pleased because it’s another local site for my portfolio. We’re getting there, that’s for sure.

www.sullivanmanagementgroup.com

I suppose it was a bonus that we get on so well, with him also being an immigrant like me. He hails from that fine Antipodean country of Australia so although we’re from opposite sides of the planet we have a lot in common (Y’know, from our dark imperialist past!).

So, if you’re looking to buy or sell real estate in Orange County, give Glenn Ritchie a shout and tell them that I sent you. He’ll sort you out for sure.

Am I happy with it? Nope. Why not?

1. It keeps crashing my MacBook. This happens, it first seemed, randomly. However, I think I have managed to work out that it happens when the machine has been asleep, or if the dongle was plugged in AFTER start up. Fingers crossed that if I plug in the dongle and then turn on the machine, then ensure it does NOT go to sleep I can use it safely-ish. That’s a bit of a nuisance to say the least.

2. Three or “3″ mobile network sucks. When I am busy surfing away it stops working and disconnects me at random. Also, often while I am connected web pages won’t load. Then it may disconnect me again for a laugh.

My main mistake is that I went with 3 who are a solely 3G network (clue’s in the name, see). This means that if there is not a 3 signal, they don’t have a 2G network to fall back on to at least provide some connectivity, even if it is somewhat slow.

Looks like on my next trip out I will be investing in a short-term contract Orange USB dongle.

For those that don’t know, I do websites and am fortunate to get paid for it!

I had a site go down – falconhealthcare.co.uk. When visited, it was just a blank page and I couldn’t FTP in. I checked the hosting company for any issues and they reported a performance issue on the servers. I gave it some time, but still nothing happened.

To see if it would help, I re-uploaded the index.php file of the site, which was running on Drupal CMS. Huzzah! The site was working again. I was about to go back to playing on Facebook, when I thought I’d just check some of the site’s links were working ok. Suddenly I was being redirected to allvideo.org.uk – a very nasty site that has lots of malware and other evils. Needless to say I gave a huge WTF?! and was very, very confused.

As if you didn’t already know: Google is your friend. It was mine too as a search produced this post by Tony Geer that explained everything. Reading it I discovered that sure enough, my .htaccess file had been altered and I’m guessing so had my index.php. Fortunately the addition to the index.php file had knackered the site good and proper, preventing any innocent users from being hijacked.

I sorted out the site, upgraded the Drupal core and changed the password for ftp. Was this all linked to the ‘server issues’ Heart Internet were having? Who knows. I have reported it to them, so we’ll see what, if anything, they have to say on the matter.

And thanks Tony, you da man.

Update: Heart Internet have suggested that it’s a PC virus that intercepts usernames and passwords and uploads the dodgy content. They helpfully pointed out it was the Gumblar virus. Hmmm, I smell a cover up. Why? Because I use a Mac and I’m the only one with FTP access! Perhaps this issue is a bit closer to home than Heart Internet realise or want to admit.