Today the great people behind WordPress have just released WordPress 3.0. This momentous moment is only seven years after the first release of WordPress in May 2003. WordPress 3.0 brings several new features to the platform: custom taxonomies, a new default theme, custom menus, and so much more. (more…)
Well, after working for about a month – part time – on the official theme for this site. I am proud to announce the official launch of the Mad9Scientist.com. (more…)
The favicon (Favorite Icon) is an 16 by 16 pixel image used to identify a site in a browser’s history, bookmarks/favorites, tabs, and address bar. This one little image, allows user’s to associate an image to there favorite site, and allow the site operators to brand the site in the user’s bookmark list and address bar.
About a week ago I added a favicon from the upcoming theme to the site, and I wanted take a moment to explain the design behind this little bitty image.
Mad9Scientist.com Extra Large FavIcon, Not To Scale
Mad9Scientist.com Real Favicon
Above is an enlarged version of the favicon, you can see that the favicon has a very limited amount of space to do much of anything. However, I feel that I did a good job of expressing the entire theme in such a small space. Now, lets dissect the image.
The most obvious part of the favicon is the capital “M”. The “M” is solid white from the Twenty Century Font Family, in particularly the regular font weight. It is simple but yet elegant – also it reminded me how I usually signed my artwork when I was younger*.
In the background you see the large blue block. The blue block has a four degree rounded corner with an one pixel white border. The blue for the block comes from the blue textured background of the theme – it is actually a random blue from that textured background. The far background of the favicon is also transparent to give it the look that the corners are rounded.
So, with space at a premium when you design an favicon, you must pick your pixels carefully. The next time you see a site with an favicon in your browser, take a moment and admirer the work that must had gone into that little image.
Need to create an Favicon? Try Dynamic Drive’s FavIcon Generator
* I developed a signature that used straight lines and hard points for my artwork
I just wanted to post a quick update about the status of the theme for this site, since the current theme is an eyesore.
I am just finishing up some of the final details – search results, 404, and making the site easy to manage from the WordPress backend. A few sections of the site will not be finished in time for the launch – Zine, Portfolio, and Concepts :cry:. So I’m shooting to launch the new theme this weekend (May 29 – 31), to comply with my self set deadline.
So keep an eye out for the new theme sometime after the Memorial Day Weekend 😀
In this age of hyper- and inter- connected networks one would say the the Internet is a utility. While others would argue that the Internet couldn’t be a utility, because you don’t need the Internet to live. But to those people I ask, when was the last time they applied for a job at major chain stores?, do you not price compare?, do you get all your news from your local newscasters or newspapers?, do you buy all your stuff from a handful of stores, do you still use a pen and paper for correspondents? and so on. Most people when faced with these questions will start reviewing how they use the Internet. I ask of you the following question:
Is the Internet “just another service”, or has it become a integral part of our society and “now is a utility”?
But before you post your response, ask yourself could you go 7-days (168 hours, 10,080 minutes, 604,800 seconds) without using anything that uses the Internet or Internet backbones. The list of items includes:
So I put the question to you, the entire Internet – could you go one week without the Internet and based upon the answer to that question is the Internet a service or a utility.
I will be the first to admit, I have a bias since I work in the computer and networking industry, so my vote is: No I couldn’t go a week without the Internet and I feel the Internet is a utility now. Aside from my previous mentioned bias, the main reason I couldn’t go a week without the Net is that I would literally be isolated from the world. That is because the part of the world I live in (Midwest United States > Illinois – 100+ Miles from any major city) is so backwards, one would think they had fallen into a time riff back to the 50’s however modern devices are still available. Also, since I run a technology company, I need to live online for technology news, communicating with clients, pricing hardware, research, etc.
So it’s your turn… Could you live without the Internet and is the Internet a Utility or a Service.
Disclosure: The reason I brought up this question is shortly before I posted the previous article my Internet service went out for about 45 minutes. I had to call and report the problem to my ISP (which I strongly dislike – it isn’t a major ISP). After it came back, I ran over to there status page and found the following:
Which, I’m 90% sure they, posted that shortly after I called, since I reported the problem at near 11:30, but the problem appeared at 11:12. What made it worst I was working on an email to a client that I was about to send before it went out. Anyway, back to the above question.
I feel that most of the responses will result in the Utility tag, due to the fact that most people that comment on blogs and websites in general are people that use the web on constant basis and since this site has little to no SEO.
Well after working for a few days in Photoshop and Dreamweaver, I have a somewhat final mockup of my new WordPress theme for this site.
Mad9Scientist.com v0.0.1-ohm Mockup
I know having an image of a mockup is all nice and dandy, but I know that a picture isn’t as good as a true mockup in code, so I went ahead and uploaded a working mockup of the theme. There is still some functionality I’m still working on, so keep an eye out for the launch version of the site. The mockup requires a “Modern Browser” for all the niceties, and if your running Internet Explorer 6 – forget about it.
Feel free to take a look around the mockup, if you have any feedback on the design just drop a line in the comments.
By the way, I should be launching the final theme sometime before the end of May 🙂
Welcome to the future home of Mad9Scientist! My name is Chris Holbrook aka Mad9Scientist, and I am a computer scientist, web developer, and so much more. Over the next few days or weeks I will be creating my personal web site here, which is powered by WordPress.
This site is “technically” in the pre-alpha stages of development, but when has that stopped anyone from seeing what is actually happening on the web :). Until I get my custom theme finished, I will be using the default WordPress theme. Which I’m glad to hear that the fine people over at WordPress have plans to replace the default theme with the next major release of WordPress – WordPress 3.
So in the mean time you will not find a lot of useful information on this site, but I will still post whatever pops into my mind. Since that is the purpose of a blog. However, the official release version of the site will include – this blog (well obviously), my portfolio, links to find me on social networking sites, my concepts or experiments I conduct, and most importantly – my other projects I’m involved in.
Chris Holbrook
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