Monthly Archives: March 2009

Paginator 3000

Paginator 3000

You may of noticed the new style of pagination I have at the bottom of the page, well it’s a WordPress plugin called – Paginator. It’s probably my favourite plugin, so simple, but when you got quite a big archive of posts, very handy indeed. It’s based on Paginator 3000 by Karaboz (all in Russian) and was made into a wordpress plugin by dzhus.

I fist saw it used on The Strange Atrractor and thought I’ve got to find out how they did that! A bit googling later I found it and was surprised it was so easy to impliment (for wordpress blogs anyhow).

The next thing on my list is to find out the best was to impliment those tabbed sidebar widgets I’m starting to see all over the place.

Background paper textures

Free background paper textures

While I was doing my Cargo Collective folio I decided to make a new repeating background gif. Originally I really wanted to have a really bright colourful background, break from the mold of ether black (ish) & white (ish). After much experimenting and playing around, I just couldn’t find a colour that didn’t clash with my work – problem with a colourful image heavy site, so I ended up plumbing for white (ish)…

The good news though – I thought I’d post all the rejects here, maybe they’ll be of use to some of my readers :) There’s 2 sets of files for you to download, the gifs are ready to roll, just upload them and insert the link into your html. But I’ve also included a set of Photoshop files, the texture’s just a mask so you can quickly & easily change the colour just by paint bucketing the layer. Note – there’s a second darker layer underneath, you’ll want to change this accordingly with your top layer. They’re all 150 x 150, so not too big file size, have a play around and I hope you find them useful.

This’ll get your eyebrows moving

Cadbury Dairy Milk is going Fairtrade

Cadbury Dairy Milk is going Fairtrade! I’m sure you’re all aware what Fairtrade is about and that’s it’s a good thing. So far I’ve seen it as a bit of a niche, with the odd logo on expensive bags of coffee. So it’s good to hear that Cadbury are annoucing that it’s mega mass market flagship choccy treat is going to be using 100% Fairtrade ingredients (in about 6 months). Find out more on their blog »

“Fair trade means products are purchased directly and at a fair price from small family growers and co-operatives that do not rely on hired or illegal forced labour. Growers receive a minimum guaranteed price that covers real production costs, regardless of how low world market prices fall.”

Cadbury is a big dirty corporate company, but it does seem to have a history of doing nice things,  such as – Back in 1879 Mr. Cadbury didn’t want his chocolate factory workers to live in city slums, so he built it out in the countryside (Bournville) along with a model village which would ‘alleviate the evils of modern more cramped living conditions’ for them to live in. No pubs though, Mr. Cadbury was a Quaker, well you can’t have it all ;)

Cadbury fairtrade blog

How come I know so much about This Cadbury Fairtrade thing? Well I was pulled in at the eleventh hour last week by Hyper to re-design the blog after the client rejected previous work. There wasn’t much time (the announcement date was set in stone) Started on Thursday morning then 27 hours later without rest or sleep the blog was finished. I think Guy Bowden who built it must have been burning the midnight oil over the weekend too.

Anyhow, check out my late-night chocolate & caffeine (I don’t they were Fairtrade) fueled efforts our on the Cadbury Fairtrade blog »

Cargo – portfolio site

cargo collective portfolio site

Pay close attention to this post dear blog readers – this portfolio site is 100% free and 200% awesome! I’ve tried out many portfolio systems over the past year, this is head and shoulders above the rest and won’t cost you a penny to have a play, can’t say fairer than that eh? It evolved out of the system that runs the SpaceCollective community, so has a fair fine heritage.

Cargo is largely much like all the others, but what makes it so briliant is down to a few key features like:

  • A strong focus of design and visuals – it’s all about the images
  • Navigation is a full page of projects thumbnails, the defacto best way of naviagting visual work
  • Simple enough for the novice, but enough advanced features to keep the seasoned developer happy
  • Unlimited – uploads, projects, customisation, fun.

What you get:

  • A choice of excellent themes to style your site
  • CSS editor to fine tune or completey customise your site
  • Well maintained forum with lots of top tips
  • Free Hosting
  • Ability to set up a custom URL (www.example.com)

My Cargo porfolio site

I’ve been playing around with it for a week or so, you can see the quick & dirty portfolio I’ve knock up here »

Here’s some other great portfolios I’ve found made with Cargo: Folkert Gorter, Josh Pangell, Stephen Cheetham, Kitchen, or just check out the Cargo Gallery.

It’s is in public beta at this stage, you can request an invite here. There’s talk on the forum of bringing in a flickr-esque annual subscription for a ‘pro account’, with a similar price tag – $25. Sound fair to me, would be happy to pay that.