happy new year!

well its almost that time of year again and like any self respecting human being i won’t be online when the time comes to actually say it so here it is a little early!

i’m hoping 2009 will be a good year for myself in regards to web dev, and it should also see markdoesdesign moving from being a simple blog hosted on the wordpress servers to its own fully fledged site.

my targets for this year in relation to markdoesdesign are as follows:

design it! (always important )
develop a custom built cms to manage the content of the site
keep blogging and attempt to infiltrate the dev community a bit more

nothing spectacular but thats what i’ll be up to in the first few months of the year when i’m not hard at work at bluebit.

happy new year!

new development set up

well its taken me a little bit of time but i think i’ve finally found myself a nice little free rival to the old way i used to work on the pc.

i used to use dreamweaver to do all of my editing with the auto save to server feature enabled which i loved as it just made developing a site a simple and fluid process, especially as i like to check what every little change i make looks like. now i’ve moved over to the mac however i decided to see if there was a free alternative to this.

what i’ve settled on is the following:

Smultron for editing

Smultron is a free text editor for Mac OS X Leopard 10.5 which is both easy to use and powerful. It is designed to neither confuse newcomers nor disappoint advanced users. It should work perfectly for a whole variety of needs – like web programming, script editing, making a to do list and so on.

Cyberduck to upload on save

Cyberduck is an open source FTP, SFTP, WebDAV and Amazon S3 browser for the Mac. It features an easy to use interface that allows to toggle between bookmarks and the browser outline view. For editing files, it provides a seamless integration with several external editors. Many OS X core system technologies such as Spotlight, Bonjour, QuickLook and the Keychain are supported.

I tried out a few of the other options, for example bbedit and coda however for simplicities sake and to stop my wallet from getting angry I think this solution will be more than adequate. admittedly this set up is lacking in regards to features such as SVN however as i generally work on projects alone currently i feel i can look past this.

i’m sure there’s plenty of other people out there using the same set up, i’d be interested in hearing of any issues that you’ve had working in this manner or some helpful hints to expand the power and features of this work flow.

parents trying to shift the blame?

coming from a generation of people who are pretty adept at using this wonderful technology called the internet it saddened me to see Culture Secretary Andy Burnham discussing the concept of age ratings being applied to websites to ensure that people do not see content that they find disturbing. the focus of this article on the bbc website is the safety of children essentially, but what i would like to ask is what happened to parental supervision? if a parent is worried about what they’re child might see on the internet then they should surely be supervising them?

A poll carried out by the children’s charity in October suggested three out of four children had been disturbed by images they had seen on the internet.

whilst this is all well and good how would an age classification change this? if a child is viewing this material then they’re more than likely ignoring any warnings visible on the sites already and a large red circle with the number eighteen within it probably won’t make a difference. if anything its more likely to spark someone to click the link considering we all know its generally what we’re not meant to do that is the most desirable course of action.

thankfully i’m not alone with my judgement regarding parental supervision. Diana Sutton, head of policy and public affairs at the NSPCC responded to the idea with the following:

“It’s one thing to have a political commitment, but it’s much harder to actually enforce it,” she said. “We want these ideas to have teeth.
“And these mechanisms on their own aren’t enough. They’ve got to be combined with greater parental awareness. Most parents have no clue what their children are up to online.”

so my message is reasonably clear, parents open your eyes, use the technology yourself and be aware that its not necessarily the fault of the website that your child is viewing content that is unsuitable for them.

i’m a mac

whilst not completely true, the phrase i’m a mac is something that i hope to be able to say with a bit more sincerity in the future. a couple of days ago i broke the habit of a life time and took a plunge into the aesthetically pleasing world of the macbook.

for years i avoided buying an ipod only to kick myself when i did, so i’m sure this will be the same. whilst there was nothing wrong with how i worked with xp, mac laptops have always lured me in with their sultry designs and promise of improved work flow. i can’t say i’ve used this long enough to decide if work flow will definitely be improved but perhaps even the idea of that occurring will no doubt make me seek out the ways in which do this.

this morning i stumbled across Quicksilver, whilst i’m admittedly slightly confused with this application launcher, i haven’t heard a bad word about it so i feel like its my duty to ensure i take a bit of time to get my head around it. hopefully its this kind of mac only application that will make the pc to mac switch extremely beneficial.

who am i? where am i? who’s the president?

this is my “hello world” into the world of blogging and i feel that the most appropriate thing for me to do here would be to begin with who i am and what this is all about.

my name is mark jones, I’m 22 years old and I’m a web developer/designer working for a company called Bluebit Web Design. I primarily do front end coding, which can also be explained as hand coded valid html and css. i’m also exploring the world of php/mysql and jquery as i delve deeper into the world of development.

so mark does code then?

whilst i’m primarily a coder in my job, design is what makes me tick and i’ve been lucky enough to strike a balance in both realms of the web dev world. design is what brought me to this career and its something i continue to relish the opportunity to be involved in. i’m influenced by a wide range of digital and traditional art and i like to think the world surrounding me has a part to play in the work that i produce.

so whats this all about?

basically this blog is going to be a round up of my thoughts and opinions on a wide variety of topics in relation to the internet, technology and life. if you read something you don’t like, let me know, if you read something you do like, let me know, if its too long and you didn’t bother, save it for 4chan.

peace.