Web Development by Alistair Robinson

Goodbye and Good Riddance to Word Processors: A Better Way To Write Proposals

January 24th, 2012 2 Comments
A few days ago I tweeted: “Writing a proposal. Oh boy do I hate word processors. There must be a better way.” It turns out there is, though I ended up forging my own path to suit my skills and working methods. A little background… I need to produce decent looking proposals for web development projects. Normally I bite the bullet and suffer the awkwardness of Word or OpenOffice or LibreOffice or something, and then export to PDF. It’s all very clever: it took some great minds to produce this software. But it really goes against the grain. It feels so wrong. I like plain old text, and as a web developer I’m used to defining the style of documents by hand, in CSS, … read on »

The WordPress White Screen of Death

August 24th, 2011

This is the kind of thing that happens out of nowhere when you’re in the middle of finishing off something simple, and sends you into a rage shouting “What the fucking hell…this is just bizarre!” and so on, until you finally fix it by fiddling about intuitively, and then just move on. For once, professional discipline compels me to record the problem and its solution, partly for my own benefit but also to help others avoid the drastic solutions offered in several places on the web.
After working primarily in Django for the last while I had to do some WordPress work yesterday, implementing SEO improvements to one of our e-commerce client’s web site. I added a function to functions.php and … read on »

You Might Like to Try…

January 20th, 2011

critique-of-pure-reason.com
I haven’t been blogging here much because I’ve been doing it over at my philosophy blog, critique-of-pure-reason.com. Go take a look and leave a comment, if you’re into that sort of thing. If you’re here for web development…I really should write something soon. I’ve just launched chop-chop.co.uk, and it’s worth a write-up, as it’s my first large project using Django – But I may wait until I’ve done the reservations system. Here’s a screenshot:

Granular Convection Can Improve Your Life

October 26th, 2010 2 Comments

Every morning, when I have my fruit-filled nut-rich luxury muesli (with dollops of greek yoghurt and plenty of honey), I shake the box rhythmically from side-to-side before pouring it into the bowl. As a result, I get the biggest, tastiest, juiciest bits, and avoid the dust. I’ve been using this technique ever since, as a child, I saw a television programme – maybe it was the great Johnny Ball – explaining granular convection, otherwise known as the Brazil nut effect. When you vibrate a granular material, the big bits rise to the top.
Ever since I learned about it I’ve made use of it in everyday life, increasingly without thinking about it; but it’s not something I would necessarily have picked … read on »

Enlightenment Bullshit

October 17th, 2010

I’m in the middle of a large Django project, my first one using the framework. It’s bloody wonderful, it really is. I don’t understand why Django developers aren’t going on about it more – about how lovely it is to work with. Developing web sites in Django is a beauty-full experience. I didn’t know it could be like this. I don’t know what it’s like to find Enlightenment in the way the Buddha talks about it, and I don’t even really know what it’s like to meditate, but this approaches what I imagine they mean.
Pony-Powered Enlightenment Bullshit
This sounds like bullshit, of course, and I confess I’m spinning this out more than is warranted, but there is an immense calm, neatness … read on »

Irritation in Waterstone’s

July 13th, 2010 1 Comment

I have to say to begin with that despite initial appearances this is not a grumpy old man piece. At least, it’s not exactly my intention to voice petty gripes just for the sake of voicing them.
I was in the basement of Waterstone’s at the west end of Princes Street. Three young members of staff, one female and two male, were talking loudly. The males were teasing the woman in a deliberately petty, repetitive fashion. I was quite distracted by this incessant stupid chatter, and although I was in a public place and we can’t expect the silence of a library in a high street shop, I was irritated. I think I was justified:
1. Different standards and conventions – loose … read on »

An Epic Search For an Epic Search For Truth

July 5th, 2010

Logicomix, An Epic Search For Truth
By Apostolos Doxiadis, Christos Papadimitriou, Alecos Papadatos and Annie Di Donna
I have enjoyed comics since I was a child, when, fascinated and entranced by Hergé’s Adventures of Tintin, I argued heatedly with my friends, who all preferred Asterix.
I still read Tintin occasionally, and I enjoy more consciously grown-up graphic novels, but I never thought I’d be treated to a comic-book account of Bertrand Russell’s quest to establish the foundations of mathematics. The idea of such a book is incredible, yet here it is, a story told passionately and illustrated beautifully, which does justice to the men and their ideas. And they’re all in here: Frege, Hilbert, Cantor, Gödel and Wittgenstein….
Read the rest on my philsophy … read on »

Certainly Not My Kind of Book

June 11th, 2010

Oddly for someone whose political affiliations have always lain in the left tradition, I’m more and more fascinated by, and attracted to, the philosophy of Roger Scruton, who is a conservative. I find his manner of setting forth arguments – both in writing and on television – to be irresistible. It’s somehow both gentle and passionate. But it’s more than that: I really do agree with many of his ideas.
Anyway, I was looking at Mark Dooley’s biography of Scruton on Amazon and noticed this 5-star review:
This certainly is not my kind of book. It is a Christmas present for which I was asked so clearly it IS the kind of book enjoyed by the person who asked for it.

CSS Abstracted: Update

June 8th, 2010 4 Comments

In a recent post I described my first foray into…well now, what am I supposed to call them? CSS frameworks? No, that doesn’t work, because Blueprint and YUI and 960 and others are often described as such. CSS meta-frameworks? That appeals to me, but it’s rather obscure. CSS compilers? Yes, perhaps.
But wait. There are CSS compilers, and then there are the libraries and frameworks and plugins that are built around them. Well, I guess that’s where the term “meta-framework” comes in.
One such meta-framework is Compass, which is built around the core language and compiler Sass. I mentioned Compass briefly in my other post. At the time, I had dismissed it as being more than I required, or more than I … read on »

E-commerce for Small Business in The UK: A Starting Point For Web Developers

May 22nd, 2010 8 Comments

NOTE: see the comments for updates about how this went in the end.
I think I’ve unearthed a conspiracy. In the wonderful world of the world-wide web (that’s WWWWW for short), with so much information available, and so many companies selling online, surely there must be a collection of standard procedures for implementing an online shop, and reliable sources of information covering them? Apparently not. How else to explain this except an evil conspiracy? In particular, an evil conspiracy against web designers and developers.
This post is drawn from an e-mail that I sent to a tech savvy client, a small business owner. The email summarized their options for e-commerce, in the specific context of the UK, and it was the result … read on »


©2010 Alistair Robinson