Eoghan O'Brien.com - Cork Web Designer/Developer, Ireland

Favicon2dots

Hey, its been a while since I’ve posted so I thought I better mend some fences and give you an update and also tell you about a cool little website I found.

Firstly I suppose I should tell you all that I’m working as a developer in Cork, part time, after a successful spell in Dublin with ActiveOnline. This week I’ve mostly been developing bespoke content management systems for individual clients, which has been an interesting research project for me as I’m still planning and blue-printing my own CMS.

Secondly, in what will be a very short post, I’ve found a very cool website called favicon2dots which takes your sites favicon and generates a pixel icon with your logo or brand, its a nice idea, pointless but cool all the same.

Posting has been sporadic in the last few months I know, but I should have more time over the next few months to pass along some thoughts and opinions to you which you care nothing about, hopefully one or two will be of some interest.

Getting Acquainted With My Mac

I’ve had my eMac for about a year now, I know they aren’t the coolest looking or the fastest on the block but, for someone new to the mac environment, it has worked well for me.

I’ve installed most of the Web Development applications I frequently use as well as trying out a few more. I’ve really like using MAMP (Mac, Apache, MySQL & PHP) mainly because of how neatly it fits with OSX, its entirely self contained and takes only a few minutes to setup.

Another Mac specific application I’ve tried out recently is TextMate, its a very slick text editor for web developers with built in syntax and spell checking aswell as automatic indentation and a myriad of other features, I’ve actually been looking forward to coding.

I’m still discovering the Mac after 12 years on Windows from 3.1 to XP and I’ve got quite a way to go until I’m even slightly as comfortable as with Windows, I think the Mac undeniable style could be the deciding factor in converting me.

If anyone out there in Interwebland knows some more good applications worth looking at throw me a comment and let me know.

October Update

The update to version 6 seems to have gone off without a hitch, I’ve been featured on CSS Mania again and I’ve recieved almost 2,000 hits in 10 days which is quite good for this site. I still have some work to do on the site but I doubt any changes will be made in the next week because of the amount of work I’ll be doing.

In other news, on Wednesday night I won 1200 euro in the lottery, which was quite a nice suprise, as I never usually even do the lottery, I dont even have any frequent numbers that I use, it was merely a two line “quickpick”.

I’ve also recently discovered Symphony CMS , a truly amazing system which makes it easier than ever to create a powerful system which can be altered exactly to your needs. One example would be a gallery I created in under 10 minutes which allows you to enter a title, decription, upload an image and also set width and height restrictions so the image can be cropped down while keeping its original quality. This kind of programming is likely to take a few hours if you were going to write it yourself, however Symphony’s powerful custom field and section creation makes tasks like this an absolutly doddle. I was so impressed with this system I was literally laughing out loud at just how easy they make it. If you’re looking for a CMS you should definitely check it out. (Did I mention it was free.)

August Report

Hewwo, I’m not making excuses now but I’ve been a little busy this month so I havent been able to update my blog in a while. So to put you all at ease I’ll give you a little report on whats been happening this month.

On August 10th, my brother Ruairi got hitched to a lovely woman named Amy in Whitechurch, Cork. It was a really nice ceremony and everything went perfectly. We all headed back to the Rochestown Park Hotel, where there were photos taken for about two hours, then we moved into the main ball/dining room for the speeches and dinner.

I was Ruairi’s best man for the day, I was unbelievably nervous but it turned out really well and I got an excellent reception from a great crowd. After the speeches we had a delicious 5 course meal and then we all got drunk and danced and danced and danced. It was a fantastic day and a great night with the band, High Voltage, doing an excellent rendition of Thin Lizzy’s ‘Whiskey In The Jar’.

I’ve also been considering going back to college to do a degree in Computer Programming, mainly because I’ve been doing so much work with different scripting languages while developing websites and finding it so rewarding and strangely enjoyable that working everyday in programming/development is something I would be happy to do.

I’ve also started working on a few new sites like a redesign for my brother’s Tae Kwon Do club site, with some new shiny Ajax goodness in it and also a new web 2.0 look for my freelance site, both of which I’ll be posting about in the near future, so until then, I’ll say good luck and thanks for reading.

End Communication.

I Bought An iPod

Not one to be unlike everyone else, I’ve joined the myriad of other yuppies and purchased the 30GB Video iPod. I havent been able to let it out of my sight since I got it. It holds 15,000 songs, full-color album art and up to 25,000 photos. Though what really impresses me about it is its video capabilities, the quality of the 320×240 pixel TFT display really suprised me, beforehand I didnt think I’d be able to watch anything on such a small screen, but I’ve watched a couple of episodes of Lost and Scrubs on it already and its just like watching it on tv.

In other news, I was way too drunk at my 21st to take any pictures but apparently some of my relations took some, so if I manage to track any of em down I’ll throw them up. It was a really good night, very little drama and a lot of vodka, jack, shots and beer.

Just An Update

Okay then people, I thought I’d give y’all a few updates on whats been goin on with me lately, considering how long its been since I last made a post of this nature.

So, last time I checked in I was working for myself under the business name Fresh Media. Since that time, I’ve taken a new position in Dublin with Active Online, I’m also now living in Dublin, North of the Liffey in a comfortable terrace house in Stoneybatter. This was quite a big move for me and a bit of a leap of faith, but so far everything has worked out really well. Working with Active Online is becoming very interesting and more and more rewarding with new challenges almost every week.

I’ve also been workin on a lightweight blogging system in PHP called FreshBlog, it wont have as many features as Wordpress or Textpattern but the advantage is, it’ll be much easier to figure out and use. Well thats the plan, I’ll be taking it into beta in about 2 months so I’ll keep anyone interested informed of its progress. All I need is some basic testing and feature requests from 10-20 people.

Finally, I turn 21 this Thursday, although I wont feel any different I will be able to get into any over 21 pubs and clubs which is the tits. I’ll upload some photos from the party on Saturday night, if I’m sober enough to remember.

• CSS Naked Day
• IE Operation Aborted
• Safari Clearfix Bug
• Mmm...Launchy
• Moving to Magnolia