Been a little quiet around here lately hasn’t it? Plus the design could do with a bit of an overhaul, as there’s a danger the site could fall apart if I don’t get round to looking at it soon.

The reason for the lack of updates? Most of my online time now gets spent either on my personal finance blog, Money Watch, or tweeting for said blog when Twitter isn’t down. (That reminds me, I must cream off the personal tweets to my original account, and leave the money entries to my MoneyWatch account – also, check out new microblogging service, Plurk.).

Anyhow, with 2 kids running around the house, it’s often difficult to find the time or motivation for blogging or developing the sites in the way in which I’d like to. But over the past few months, I’ve been using a method of motivation apparently used by comedian Jerry Seinfeld to motivate him to write. All you need is a calendar and a pen – each day you achieve a certain goal, which in my case is either writing a new blog post for Money Watch, or going for a jog, then you colour in that day on the calendar. The idea is that you don’t want to break the chain – as consecutive days get coloured in and you build up the chain, it should become more and more difficult to miss a day.

It’s a funny little psychological battle over something that is essentially meaningless, but for the last few months it has managed to keep me motivated to write, and I’ve now started applying it to my physical exercise.

Of course, there are plenty of other things it can motivate you to do, such as losing weight or getting out of debt.

And for those of us who’d rather keep track of these things online there’s a useful tool called Don’t Break The Chain which will help you manage multiple chains, plus if you have a website, you can display your chains on there, adding an extra level of motivation if you know others can see how you’re getting on. Here is an example of how it can look.

If you’re logged in, you simply have to click on a day to mark it as complete.

Whilst it might not work for everyone, if you’re looking for a simple motivational technique, it’s worth a shot. Read more about the origins of this technique at Lifehacker.

My favourite RSS feed reader, FeedDemon, is now available for free!

Developer Nick Bradbury has just announced that FeedDemon, plus the rest of the Newsgator suite of RSS tools for individuals, can now be downloaded without charge – kind of a loss-leader for their Enterprise software.

After having tried a mixture of web and desktop-based feed readers in the past (such as Bloglines, Google Reader, and FeedReader), I settled on FeedDemon a couple of years ago. It was subsequently coupled with Newsgator’s online reader, which, together with the desktop synching, allows you to read your feeds from pretty much anywhere, in a variety of ways, without having to read the same item more than once. Pretty priceless when you’re trying to keep on top of hundreds of feeds.

I’d seriously recommend you try it out – just export your feeds from your current RSS reader, sign up for your account and / or download the software and see what you think.

I have to admit, I haven’t used the likes of Bloglines or Google Reader for a while, so it’s difficult for me to know how they compare to FeedDemon, so uf you do try it out, let me know what you think in the comments below.

Other tools available for free include a plugin for Outlook, and a mobile RSS reader – plenty of options for your feed reading needs.

I’ve been a Flickr Pro user for a while now, finding it a really simple way of archiving and sharing photos (in the dark, distant days of the internet I spent ages designing and coding a gallery script for my photos, with the aim of doing something similar myself – this was one of my first PHP projects, courtesy of Webmonkey).

I also happen to be a bit of a stats junkie, so I was interested to learn that Flickr has now got detailed stats available to its Pro users.

The stats will show you how many times your photos have been viewed (which is actually already available), but more interestingly they’ll let you know how people found your photos, what pages they came from.

Search Engine Land has a detailed overview of the stats available – if you’re a Pro user, you’ll need to activate your stats to get started.

In more Flickr news, there has also been an update to their photo “uploadr” – which allows you to easily post photos to your Flickr account from your desktop.

Google has a new tool (at least I haven’t come across it before) which allows you to generate PNG images of charts simply by providing a URL with certain parameters.

The Google Chart API allows you to generate a range of different graph styles; line charts, bar charts, pie charts, Venn diagrams and scatter graphs.

You can also format them with a range of different colours and styles.

In the past I’ve used a variety of methods for producing charts for web pages; individual .gifs stretched to create bar charts, Flash charts to give more interactivity, and of course the least dynamic and most time consuming method of producing them in Illustrator.

The Google API gives an easy solution for creating simple charts, which will be more than sufficient for a number of projects. There’s no need for an API key, so setup is a breeze. There’s also a comprehensive developer’s guide which gives you examples of all of the types of charts you can make.

If you’re looking for a solution to produce charts for your site, then I’d say this is a good starting point.

HTML email is a thorny subject.

Some people love it, others hate it. Whatever your point of view, the fact remains that whilst it is an available option, and an option that can generate income for businesses, then web developers will have to design them.

If you’ve ever had the pleasure of having to put together a HTML eshot, you’ll know how difficult it can be to ensure a consistent design across the multitude of email clients that are out there. And for web standards-savvy developers, the return to tables for layout and inline styles might seem like a backward step, but it’s a necessary evil.

This is where the Email Standards Project comes in.

The Email Standards Project works with email client developers and the design community to improve web standards support and accessibility in email. Our goal is to help designers understand why web standards are so important for email, while working with email client developers to ensure that emails render consistently. This is a community effort to improve the email experience for both designers and readers alike.

For my own sanity’s sake at least, I’m hoping that the project can start to make some progress with email client developers. Getting all of the different providers to agree on a set of standards will not be easy, so whilst I don’t expect standards to come to all overnight, if we can at least work towards a basic set of standards it will designers lives easier, and hopefully improve the medium for those who wish to receive HTML email.

What surprised me most was the nature of his first post; an absolutely mammouth round up of his addiction to digital gadgets, and in particular SmartPhones.

I have, over the past twenty years been passionately addicted to all manner of digital devices, Mac-friendly or not; I have gorged myself on electronic gismos, computer accessories, toys, gadgets and what-have-yous of all descriptions, but most especially what are now known as SmartPhones. PDAs, Wireless PIMs, call them what you will.

I did know that Fry was a technology lover, but his knowledge of this subject, and the technical detail he gives, is astounding. Couple that with his writing ability and you’ve got something special.

It will be interesting to see how his blog develops – hopefully he will be a regular poster, and with his vast knowledge in a wide range of subjects, plus his writing abilities, it should be a little better than the average blog. Definitely worth subscribing to his RSS feed.

I’ve just found a file on my PC with a write-up of the James Brown gig I went to almost 2 years ago. For some reason, I never posted it on the site, and as I never commented about his death at Christmas, I thought I’d post it to serve as my send off to the Godfather of Soul…

James Brown was nicknamed “the hardest working man in showbusiness” for a reason.

At 73, The Godfather of Soul is still touring, and last Thursday night (17th June 2005, I think) I was lucky enough to find myself watching his show from just 10 feet away. Despite his apparent popularity, I had learnt that ticket sales had been slow (indeed, the show came close to being pulled) – thinking they would sell out fast, I had got tickets on the night of release – luckily for us that meant a front row seat, within sweating distance of the man himself (indeed, within sweat-towel catching distance, as it turned out).

In all honesty, I was more there for James Brown the name than for the prospect of a good show. I couldn’t count the number of times that I’d drunkenly danced to his records (or records inspired by him) in that same venue – and the thought of being able to say that I’d seen him perform there meant more to me than seeing a good show. Christ, the man is in his 70s, he’s been in jail twice, most recently a three-year stretch on a series of assault and drugs charges at the tail end of the 1980s, and has certainly seen his fair share of “the good life” – how good would he be playing to a half-full concert hall in glamorous Wolverhampton?

I shouldn’t have worried though. So the number of spins has reduced, and the splits are understandably now absent from his show (how he managed them in the past with the trousers he used to wear is anyone’s guess), but he’s still relatively agile and likes to give his dancers a run for their money (one suspects that’s not all he’d like to give them).

He’s also still a master band-leader. James Brown has been known to work his band as hard as he works himself – he supposedly used to issue fines for bum notes or not being turned out properly, and judging by the concentration on the faces of almost all of his 17-piece band the other night, he is still The Boss where this is concerned.

As for the music, well, most of his favourites were there (although some of the really funky stuff, such as Funky Drummer, is generally left out these days) – during the slower songs some of the audience would sneak off to the bar / toilet (I was guilty of this) – but I was particularly impressed that despite his age his voice seems to be in pretty good shape. A lot of his funkier songs do not require much of a singing voice (some may say that James Brown invented rap with this style of singing), but the slower numbers, such as Please, Please, Please and Try Me show off his gospel roots.

A couple of slight disappointments on the night: a lack of “Living In America” – not the funkiest of songs but one of his most famous. Also a lack of any encores – I do generally get tired of bands dragging out gigs by leaving the stage only to, lo-and-behold, return to do their biggest song; but in this case I was ready for more.

Before the gig I would have said that it would probably only be worth diehard James Brown fans forking out for a ticket, and they should see him quick before he quits (in hindsight, that should have been dies) – but after the show he and his band put on, I can see him going on for a few years yet, and continuing to impress audiences.

Pictures courtesy of Joe’s cameraphone.

Based around the number “2012″ (thankfully this was confirmed by the official website, as it’s not that obvious), the logo has a sharp-edged, “broken glass” look to it, and in my opinion does not look that welcoming or friendly. There’s also just the slightest hint of a swastika in there too.

I know a brand is more than just a logo, and I’m all for their vision of the games being for everyone, which is reflected in the fact that the same shape is being used for the Olympics and Paralympics, but I think the emblem could have been designed far better. The original London Olympic bid logo, with a ribbon in the shape of the Thames (it is, right?), flowing in and out of the letters making up London, was far nice, in my opinion.

I’m not going to pretend that I’m a good logo designer, it’s just that of the 5 or so people who I know who have seen it, we all think it looks awful. The logo has been given four different colour shades, which will apparently change by year as we approach the games, which is quite a nice touch.
I guess now we’re just missing the inevitable annoying mascot which tend to grace these sorts of sporting event.

According to their press release:

The design brief was for an emblem that represented the four key ‘brand pillars’ of access, participation, stimulation and inspiration, culminating in the brand vision of ‘Everyone’s Games’.

So what do you think? Does it meet the brief? Have I missed the point?

Update: It looks like the reaction to the logo has been largely negative, according to the BBC, and there has been a massive reaction to it. There’s even an online petition to get the old logo back. It’s also worth checking out some of the hilarious suggestions for alternative logos.

This is just a quick letter to say that I am finally starting to “get” what you’re all about.

It’s taken me a while to really understand what all the fuss was about, but I am finally starting to realise how great you are. Where else could I dig up old videos of my favourite football hero scoring goals that’ll probably never be seen on TV again, find interviews with a local 70s rock star that I have an unhealthy comedic obsession with, or discover rare footage of Prince, Michael Jackson and James Brown sharing the same stage?

Just to nit pick slightly though – I do appreciate it must give you a headache worrying about all the legal issues, not to mention the huge bandwidth bill, but do not overlook the small details – please please please could you fix the tabbing order on your search form? I can’t count the number of times I’ve entered a search term, tabbed and hit enter, only to find I’m triggering the home link on the logo.
It only requires a very small change to your HTML, but that would no doubt save many people from my same annoyance.

Faithfully yours,

R x

The main issue here is to ensure that all links into your pages (most notably from search engines, but possibly from within your site too) redirect to the new addresses corectly, and don’t show any nasty 404 errors.

The best way to do this is with “301 redirects”, which tell the search engines that the page has moved permanently, and after a while they should show the new page in their results pages (for Google this can be a reasonably quick process if your site gets crawled regularly, for other search engines it seems to take a longer time for them to catch on to the redirects).

The way I achieve this is through editing the .htaccess file, but rather than typing in all of the new addresses by hand, I run a script to produce all of the necessary 301s, and them copy and paste them in to the file.

Wordpress has several permalink structure options, in my particular case I wanted to go from just using the post name in the URL to adding the post ID into the URL too.

The script in the following link produces the list to change the permalinks from:

/%post_name%/

to:

/%postid%/%post_name%/

The script: /code/wordpress-permalink-redirects.txt

Once you’ve run the script, copy and paste the output into your .htaccess file – this can be done through the Wordpress admin panel, but be careful not to overwrite anything that is already in there.

By playing with the results from the script you should be able to achieve your desired structure (if you need help with a particular structure, why not let me know in the comments below).

One thing to look out for is that any pages that do not need redirecting may appear in the list – if so, delete them from the list or your .htaccess file. Also, hundreds and hundreds of entries in your .htaccess file may slow down the performance of your server, so it’s something to keep an eye on.

Given time, this would be a simple procedure to turn into a Wordpress plugin (if it doesn’t already exist, if so, please let me know.) in which you could specify the structure you wish to change to, and the plugin would automatically write the list to your .htaccess.