Tag Archive for 'binary bonsai'

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Noteworthy Functionality

Nov 27, '04  ·  22 Comments Tags: , , .

One of the new features I talked about in Freya Dissection, was that of ‘noteworthy’ entries, or ‘favorites’. As you may recall, I sent out a call for someone to help me take an idea from concept to plugin. Jamie stepped up and offered his services free of charge, and earlier today I installed the latest version of the plugin, which works pretty much as I had hoped.

So if I can just draw your attention to the Halo 2 entry that preceeds this entry. Notice the heart? That’s an icon denoting that said entry is tagged as noteworthy. What this allows me to do, is to create a small list of noteworthy entries within a certain category. So if you go to the Games category archive, you’ll find a small list on the sidebar…

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Freya Dissection

Nov 21, '04  ·  75 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Freya

Lying somewhere around the apartment, in the living room I think, I have a stack of sketches with design explorations that I made in the first few weeks of the redesign that has led to what you’re looking at right now. A flurry of attempts at coming up with a new form. Something to break the backbone of the blogosphere; the monotony of header, content, sidebar, footer.

Having played around for a few weeks with the elements that combined constitute Binary Bonsai, I eventually landed on the inevitable conclusion that the revolutionary layout I was looking for was a wild goose-chase, and the inevitable conclusion was to restart the redesign.

Having run this site for a couple of years, I have if nothing else, learned a lot about how I personally utilize it, and the new design needn’t necessarily invent a new form, but rather further the previous one through the experiences I’ve gained.

I hereby present, header, content, sidebar and footer…

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Meet Freya

Nov 21, '04  ·  52 Comments Tags: , , .

Everyone, please welcome Freya, previously designated 4, the new glazing on top of the bittersweet pudding that is, Binary Bonsai. There are many things to say, many things to apologize for. Feel free to leave some comments while I run her through the necessary trials to see if she is ready for the world. Though keep in mind that I will come back, hopefully later tonight, to write a full super-size entry on all the thoughts I’ve had or not had and why things are in new places and in many cases in their old habitual place.

Needless to say, the minor incident this morning set me back a trifle; while I quickly covered the major rewrites, minor changes are still lingering in the recesses beyond the frontpage.

Though for what it’s worth, I’m quite happy with how it turned out, though I regret not having had the time to flesh out some of the details that I have planned. But I could feel that I had to activate it today or slowly get bogged down in the repetitious routines of adjustments ad nausea.

Now I will leave you to it, while I head off to clean up the code a little and patch whatever holes I might find.

Update: Freya Upgrade Continued

100+ Milestone

Nov 8, '04  ·  Closed Tags: , .

Over the weekend, the Binary Bonsai flickr group rounded the 100 member mark and counting. If you haven’t already, please by all means add a screenshot of your Kubrick site to the group pool. Thanks.

PS: With this post I have created a new category, called Milestones. Also, I’ve now added my del​.icio​.us feed to the sidebar, under Clippings. It’s messy just now, but I’m just testing to see if it works properly for the launch of 4.

PPS: If you experience old entries suddenly cropping up in your aggregator these days, it’s for the same reasons.

I’m not dead. Seriously.

Oct 28, '04  ·  14 Comments Tags: , .

Holy Jesus Christ on a pogostick. I can’t wait to get 4 online and get this ugly and by now rotten and slightly soggy and sorry looking code-mess out of my face. Now if only I could stop time.

So I’m not answering your mail just now, because I have a lot of work (the kind I’m paid for) I need to do, and between sleeping, an hour with Rikke each night and the bus ride to and from work, there isn’t a lot of time left.

I’m also not writing any interesting things just now, for the same reason. That, and whatever time I do have left over, I spend on playing around with 4. Far from being a ‘revolution’, it’ll be more of an effort in making BB feel homey again, and in alleviating the fundamental problems that the current design has in structuring the site and the information on it.

In other words: Don’t expect too much ;)

Meanwhile, I’ll change the header and colors around so as to not tire too much of them. Don’t let this confuse you, 4 isn’t done until you see Freya once again gracing the header.

Version 4

Oct 24, '04  ·  Closed Tags: , .

Version 4

Focal Change

Oct 24, '04  ·  16 Comments Tags: , , .

I am growing busier and busier, and it would seem that by some degree of irony, the days are getting shorter and shorter. In fact, I have never felt as out of time as I do now. A pity too, as I have never had such a lust for indulging in different endeavors as I do now. So to retain my sanity, I’ve had to make a few prioritization’s in regards to what my day is spent on. These may or may not affect you.

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Stomped on Kubrick

Jul 26, '04  ·  16 Comments Tags: , , , .

Kubrick for WordPress

As I said a few days ago, the Kubrick Theme is alive and well. In fact, I have in a sense been working on it throughout the weekend. So I do hope that you will forgive me the longer-than-anticipated wait, but I want to make sure that this thing is right from the get-go (I hate ‘patches’, they never propagate as far as the original.)

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Almost There

Jul 25, '04  ·  15 Comments Tags: .

I’ve been churning away at this site since thursday. Every free moment has been thrown at it, and by now I’m pretty tired. But things are looking good. Really good in fact. I just need to fix one error before I hit the sack, and then there’s some very minor CSS polishing to be done tomorrow.

Or at least, that’s what I thought, until I booted up Internet Explorer.

Everything behaves exactly like it’s supposed to in Firefox and Safari. I had a minor problem with the navigation, but it only took me about 10 – 15 minutes to work around. But in Internet Explorer, it’s a whole other matter…

Currently I’m inclined to just leave the current ‘message’ that I’ve put in there for IE users and then blissfully ignore the problem. But I know that in the long run my pride will win out, and I’ll eventually wrestle it into submission. But my God, why does it have to be like this every single time?!

On an interesting note, this is pretty funny, and uplifting.

PS: Please by all means have a go at the site and report anything and everything that you can find (except validation errors, I’m getting to those later).

Trimming the Bonsai

Jul 25, '04  ·  19 Comments Tags: .

I would like to take a moment to just point out that I have improved a few things here at the big B.

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Left to trim

Jul 22, '04  ·  24 Comments Tags: , , .

I’ve added a few more items to the list of trimmings I’ve made around here. All things, so far, that I have wanted to do for a long long time. Somehow I found that over the last few days I’ve been able to work extremely focused on this site, and I’m afraid that by doing so I have neglected a few other things, such as content. But you’ve gotta build the boat before you load it with people, right? At least, that’s the way it works in Civilization 3.

So for you people waiting for the Kubrick theme, fear not, since that design and this, are basically the same, all this code clean up will be good for you too.

Here is a list of the things that I have yet to do. One of Rikke’s friends is staying with us until Sunday, and I’ll have a good deal of time until then to work on this, the list of things yet to be done.

  • Archives: Archives have been vastly improved, but still needs a little work.
  • Gallery: Just like the photo gallery, the other gallery needs to work better. I want to try and integrate it into WP and use it as a CMS, but I don’t know if that’s possible…
  • Categories: The categories are a mess. Too many, too diverse, too imprecise.

If there’s something that’s been annoying you, or something you would like to see more of, now’s the time to chime in.

One Year Anniversary

Mar 15, '04  ·  13 Comments Tags: , .

Bonsai

You know, there are times when I wish I didn’t have overhanging responsibilities. I love my job, really it’s my absolute dream-job. But, since I started my blog one year ago (exactly), I have really grown to love the outlet it has provided me with.

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Hohoho, now I have a blog!

Mar 15, '03  ·  2 Comments Tags: , , .

Okay, so now I have a blog… so what? Well I’m not sure. I guess so nothing. I don’t have anything major to bitch about at the moment, nothing out of the ordinary anyway. The ordinary being Bush and Iraq (or just Bush), the world and Iraq, Hollywood, the BBFC (I fucking detest the BBFC!), the lack of interest in Equilibrium by the critics, the lack of the original Star Wars trilogy on DVD and Indiana Jones as well…

But those have all been beaten to death already, either by me or someone much more competent over at Kuro5hin, so I’ll just mind my mouth and let you read through that stuff instead :)

To any friends and relatives keeping up with the vitals from abroad: I hope you’re doing well, I understand the weather is just as good in Denmark as it is here in Scotland. Now get out in the good weather instead of continually roasting your brain in front of your CRT monitors!… What?… Me? No, I was built for in-door use only :)

So anyway, update on the projects:

WWII Dog-Fight Animation
Work is going well. I’ve finished (more or less) the P-51D Mustang, and I’m finishing the Bf 109 G-10 texture this weekend. Next week is all about storyboarding and putting together the scene and also testing the explosion and fire effects a bit more to make sure everything is ready for the final push the week after where everthing is going to be animated.

Baucis: The Tears
The updated version of my Virtual Environments university project, which is slated for some kind of exhibition down in London (at the ICA) is in the works as well. Deadline is end of the month… I need to get a move on, render times are horrendous!

Character Animation
University character animation projects, one in Maya and one in 3ds max. The Maya one is going well, work will continue on that until late May. The max one hasn’t been started yet. I will be doing that one over Easter.

I made an update about Equilibrium (a kick-ass movie in case you were wondering), last night that you might’ve missed unless you were fast, so go read that while you’re procrastinating anyway…

That’s all for now. Welcome to my new blog.

First Post!

May 31, '02  ·  2 Comments Tags: .

I’ve finished the design of this site. Decidedly unfancy, as I just want a place where I can throw my graphics and some text every now and then.

Added Much Later: A slightly later version of the very first Binary Bonsai layout.