Blog

Post Titles Are Such A Nuisance

Paul Dukes — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 03:16:37 +0000

I'm learning PHP and loving it. I love programing in general. It's a nice change from coding plain markup and style sheets. HTML and CSS are fun, but the difference between those and what I have been learning is like building and painting a house or building a robot to build the house for you. It's given me a greater appreciation for what goes on behind the scenes of a CMS like Wordpress or Drupal, as well as made developing with them a lot less daunting.

Crafting arrays and loops and functions and then writing a few lines of code that utilizes those things in interesting ways is very satisfying. It's even more satisfying finding ways to reduce my file sizes, trim my code, and make it more streamlined and concise. The techniques I am learning brings back fond memories and the feeling of satisfaction that I would get from building a game in Flash back in school.

I feel like I've been a slacker for the past few years, and now I'm trying to make up for it. After I finished school, the work I was getting didn't require me to use things like Flash and Actionscript, and Lingo, and my programming aspirations went by the wayside. The classes I've been taking have rekindled that love for programming and I'm now pursuing my aspirations of becoming a web developer.

It still amuses me to think that I started university majoring in painting, something I still love, but that analytical problem solving side of my brain devours web development. When I'm at my computer I get more out of looking at lines of code than the finished product. When I see a site I like, the first thing I want to know is what was used to craft it. I've already got some ideas for web app I'd like to create in PHP. Hopefully I'll have the tools I need to get started on those very soon.

Left Hand Digital.

Paul Dukes — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 18:43:13 +0000

This update is a bit overdue, but it's snowing heavily outside, and I've got some time. I've been working on a new site for myself. It will be located over at Left Hand Digital. That site will be where I post all things work related; my new projects and portfolio stuff and all things web design/development related. I don't plan on using the blog format for LHD. So to give myself and excuse to continue messing around with Squarespace, I will be keeping this site active. I don't want it to be active for nothing. So, pauldukes.com is being redesigned for more personal stuff and non work related things. Such as a review for a game I'm playing, a book I'm reading, or a movie I just saw. Or, maybe just a random opinion on something.

My wife is going to probably be taking over Don't Forget Your Treats. We just got back from a chocolate and poutine filled adventure in Quebec City; she is planning on her inaugural post revolving around that.

Keep an eye out. More to come.

CSS3 and Something Personal

Paul Dukes — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 21:48:19 +0000

John Allsopp's CSS3 class starts today over at Sitepoint.

I've got it opened in another tab, but I've yet to get my feet wet. I'm looking forward to it. I've dabbled a bit in CSS3 over on another Squarespace site I'm working on, Don't Forget Your Treats. It's a personal foodie site that my wife and I are working on. There isn't really much there at the moment. I'm still working on getting some of the art assets together, but I think it's coming along nicely.

Funny I started that paragraph with the intention of talking about CSS3 but I derailed myself. I don't think I'll go back and edit that out. So moving along. Like all the new emerging web standards, I'm looking forward to learning more about CSS3. I know there are lots of cool things coming with CSS3, from rounded corners and animation, to drop shadows and gradients, but I think the thing I'm most excited about is columns.

HTML5Live

Paul Dukes — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 15:40:00 +0000

With my wife heading back to work soon, I figured it was time to update the site and start posting again. I didn't realize it has been nearly a year since my last post.

Last week I started Sitepoint's HTML5 Live course. Before starting the course and even though I have read the occasional article regarding the new HTML5 spec, I really didn't think it was much more than a new way to code sites.

Boy was I wrong.

aleggUp and New Projects

Paul Dukes — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 23:24:44 +0000

Just finished a project I've been working on for the past 3 months. A website for a start up in the states. They're called aleggUp. They're specializing in helping high school and college students gain some focus on what they want to do professionally and otherwise. Check it out if you have a chance.

Quick Update Between Feedings

Paul Dukes — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 18:02:37 +0000

I've been away for a bit. And by away I mean extremely busy. I picked up a few new contracts. I will be posting more about in my current projects section whenever I have a spare minute. I don't know when that will be though, because my daughter was born on Sunday, YAY, so I'm usually spending spare time with her.

jQuery Master?

Paul Dukes — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 00:57:34 +0000

So I've been busy doing a lot of nothing lately.

Well, I take that back. I've been reading a lot and trying to do a review that is long over due for Nerdyblog. I've been building baby furniture and trying to get the house ready for our first child. It should be here in a little less than two months. And I say it because we don't know what we're having. Right now we're just hoping it's a human.

All Moved In

Paul Dukes — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 04:38:37 +0000

So I finally got everything transferred over to my new home here at Squarespace. I'm loving how easy it is to edit pretty much everything.I'm not planning on giving up on Wordpress. I still manage Wordpress based sites, and I'm looking forward to all the upgrades in 2.8.

I've posted two short articles over at NerdyBlog.com concerning Google Wave and Opera Unite. Go check those out if you're not familiar with them. They both look like they're shaping up to be great advances for the web.

So that's all for now. I'm hoping to get back to my regular schedule of posting now that I've got this site up and we've gotten moved in.

Squarespace Test Site

Paul Dukes — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 07:06:01 +0000

Since I've been having some problems recently with my normal hosting provider, I decided to give Squarespace a try. I've been hearing great stuff about it for a while now, and I figured now was the perfect opportunity to give it a try.

I have to say I love it. I've been playing around with it all day. I've not been this excited about web design since I first began developing sites with Wordpress. On one hand I'm excited about the possibilities. On the other I'm worried about losing my job. The WYSIWYG editor available with Squarespace makes things so easy to do when people find out about it everyone is going to want to build there own site.

I'm Late

Paul Dukes — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 17:48:18 +0000

So I didn't get a post up yesterday. And I finished my review of the Kodak M340, great little camera by the way, and that didn't go up either. In fact that was done over a week ago and I've not been able to sit at my computer long enough to post it to Nerdyblog.com. I haven't done any work this week either. I feel bad because of this, but also because I have mild scoliosis. I just found that out today. So I am in a lot of pain physically; pinched nerves and all that. My dad passed away last night as well so you could say I'm having a pretty good week. The doctor says that the scoliosis, or curving of the spine, is due an untreated spinal injury. Lucky for me my condition is treatable. The reason I haven't treated it soon is the pain of it comes and goes. I would go many many months at a time with no pain. I just figured I had bad hips like my mom, but no my hips are great. It is my spine that sucks. I have so much work I'm not doing right now; new theme for this site, product reviews, new website design and matching newsletter. Hopefully I'll be able to sit for longer than 15 minutes at a time starting next week. Hopefully.