Ok I finally got round to it, even though it only took a few minutes to set up, it’s just been on the backburner. So if you’ve got any ideas, or if you’ve got any bugs you’d like to report then go there and give me a shout.

www.brokenkode.com/manjipreview

So the new Computer Arts issue is out. I guess I’ve got a love/hate relationship with this magazine. Generally speaking I can’t wait to get it and when I do it takes me a total of 2 days to read through EVERY SINGLE page, and get annoyed by the corporate whoring of EVEYRTHING. I guess being a jadded about corporate culture can do that to a man, but when they put a thumbs up for Quark City or whatever the fuck they’ve called buying a small town in India, as a good idea I kind of loose patience.

See I approach design and graphics and illustration from a completely different angle to them, but then I can afford to do this, I’m not a professional graphic designer, in that I don’t do this for a LIVING. I do this because I love to illustrate and design and learn new programs. My favourite parts of the magazine are the interviews and the showcasing of people’s work. I spend ages going back to something I saw in there and grabbing some sort of inspiration.

One of my original ideas last year was to create 12 images in one year and have them put as a calender. Now I did a bit more than 12 illustrations, however not nearly as many as I wanted. So I’m going to set myself a new target this year. I had said I want to draw more this year, however I never actually got round to specifying the number. Well I think this will be the hardest thing, but at the same time it will teach me to really hone my skills to accomodate for speed and pressure. So I’m going to set a target of 1 illustration a week for the year of 2005, except when I’m on holiday.

Currently I’m 3 behind, although CoCo up there does qualify as an illustration, just need to retweak an A3 image with him in it. So I’ve got to do 2 this week and then one every week after that. It could potentially be one of the hardest things I do in terms of keeping up the work, but after 1 year I will have an emmense body of work of which I can actually have a very decent portfolio.

I’ve got a few more tweaks to BK I need to get round to completing as they were originally part of the design, it’s just I’ve been taking a breather from it all and realigning my ducks as it were and gaining a bit more forward thrust of this crazy year.

It’s been a while since I posted one of these, and this is definitely not a slant on all you beautiful people that have been slaving away on your superb Manji designs it’s just that this one as I’m sure you’ll agree truely does deserve a mention.

It belongs to Catonya and Rick, however it was designed by Lisa Fahrmeyer from Cafelisa. From her website it’s clear that Lisa has a distinct style to her work, and that’s something that’s a rare thing on the internet. To have a style that people associated you with. Lisa seems to be of an illustration background and that mentality shows. As illustrators you spend years trying to find your voice. I guess the same can be said of graphic and web design in general.

Lisa has fully embraced all my quirky little requests in absolute style. Letters Apart flavored Manji. She’s even gone and given the line that the design was based on the Manji code. Not necessary but I’m truely honoured you’d put the entire line in there.

It breaks out of the box. It’s a great little touch and brings forward the feel of an old letter brought into the modern age in style. It’s really the attention to detail that I truely love about this design. Also from what I’ve seen around the net, she’s the only one along with Paul who’s customised the edit buttons, and in both cases they do a magnificent job of these. I know how hard it is to come up with something nice for those areas, as I struggled enough to get the Manji default up and running.

Takes a bit to get used to as all the writing is italic, however having said that think about the letters of days gone past, everything was done in a caligraphic nature. Italic is the only way of achieving the desired effect. It’s obvious what the font selection is trying to convey here.

Makes it look easy doesn’t she. I mean colour selection can be one of the hardest most painful processes a web design goes through. So much is said by the colours you choose. Great colour combination.

Man when I saw this I just had the biggest smile on my face. Fantastic work Lisa.

There should be more people like me in Holllywwooood (think Bill Hicks when saying that in your head). Loads of new goodies over at the official Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Why am I a genius you ask? If I may refer you to this here post from over a year ago. See that’s why I’ve got a blog. So I can prove I had these ideas back in the day. My favourite line is this:

Still I think it would make a brilliantly funny Sci-fi movie, something like Galaxy Quest, just completely brilliant,..

That teaser trailer is brilliant and every time I see the DON’T PANIC title I crack up. Probably because it reminds of school a bit. Basketball was very big in my school, the unfortunate thing was that whenever Slieman used to get the ball, some how you could feel the PANIC in his movements and eyes. He’d tense up so as to not fuck up, ultimately Stathi the bastard copped on and kept yelling DON’T PAAANNNIIIICCC, every time he had the ball. Needless to say he’d panic even more.

Good times.

Well that was fun. No not the game. Haven’t played the game (or any video game for that matter for donkey’s). The message boards got hit by the friggin phpbb worms attack and so my hosting service decided to suspend my account. Yeah like I said fun. I’ll tell you what’s annoying, having sent an e-mail asking them to unsuspend so that you can do a 10 minute job and the whole process taking over a day to sort out.

Another thing that was annoying was the fact that they didn’t mention this to me, just up and did it so yesterday morning I wake up with YOUR ACCOUNT HAS BEEN SUSPENDED.

I didn’t care so much about a lot of things, like the messages on the board while nice, only server one specific purpose and that was to help people out, but it’s not the end of the world if they’re gone, however my blog posts see that was a different situation altogether. I initially was getting a bit upset, but calmed down after like 2 minutes of thinking about it, as a rational human being, and wrote them a nice long e-mail.

Really bad because I had loads I wanted to write about yesterday, momentum’s gone though, hopefully it’ll pick up today.

It was pretty funny though, my brother gave me a ring last night to check that I was OK based on whether or not my website was up or not. Damn I must talk about it a bit too much on the outside. What can I say, it’s currently my main method of expression and I’m very protective of the place. Which reminds me to download the MySQL database. I think I’m going to do that every month. Just to be sure. It’ll probably take 5 minutes a month, but at least anything the hosting company does won’t hit me too hard.

I’ve already told them that I’m going to be leaving at the end of the contract, so they’ve stopped the automatic billing. I’ve got several alternatives up my sleeve, and I’ll see which one I go for, although to be honest Dreamhost seems like the one to beat right now, especially with their New Years offers on.

Update: And I thought I had problems. Acta Divina has apparently been hacked into and killed. They’re shutting down because of this. That’s huge news for the Design community as it was between them, Media Temple and 2advanced.

That kind of says it all doesn’t it? I think this review will appeal a bit more to those that have actually seen the movie rather than those that haven’t. There aren’t any spoilers here, but based on the rating I give it, I suggest you go and get it if you haven’t seen it already.

Ok back down to business. As I’m making this format as I go along it might evolve over time. For now I’ll make small heading when I think I have something specific to say about a particular aspect of a movie.

One of the first things I noticed as soon as the credits started rolling was the fact that the screenplay was based on a book, written by the same guy. Now this in effect is a rarity. Most Hollywood scripts seem to be written by 15 people, and they turn out like shit anyway. Wereas this was a book, which got converted into a movie, and the writer got to actually keep complete control. I really like that. Just in case you were wondering the writer in question is called David Benioff. I really thought there was some brilliant lines in there, especially

‘You fat Russian fuck’ ‘Please, fat Ukranian fuck’

I also liked the percentile theory. What’s scary is that I usually come up with shit like that, and that one COMPLETELY passed me by. I’ve got to give that theory some more serious thought to be honest.

I’ve got to say that generally speaking anything Edward Norton is in, usually is pretty fantastic. He’s got a very natural way about him. He doesn’t force his lines, and you actually believe him when he delivers lines. He draws you in completely. I loved the scene in the toilet, the whole, ‘fuck me? No fuck you, and you and you and…’ great scene about how the city life can get to people. I sometimes feel that way living in London as well.

My only beef was with actress Rosario Dawson who play Naturelle. Nice figure, rubbish actress. Eh, the rest of the cast made up for her.

What can I say. He framed it pretty well, and let it breathe when it had to. The colours were very well done, and I did enjoy his cut cameras, where he’d repeat the scene from a different angle a split second later. I guess it’s always a good movie when I don’t notice how long it’s taken. So from an editing point of view Spike did well. Obviously he had to bring the whole basketball thng forward again, which I’m all up for. Seems a staple in all Spike Lee Joints ^_^.

Oddly enough, this was the star of the movie for me. A bad soundtrack can break a good movie, whereas a good soundtrack can make a good movie great. This is one of those rare times, where the music really hammers all the right emotions at the right time. I’m definitely picking up the soundtrack when I’m in town again.

Rating: 8/10

Just thought I’d highlight a couple of new pages added to the site. I will say this, it takes a lot of time and effort to make a site whole. Makes me really appreciate other sites a lot more that I know the guys and gals have put soo much effort into them. I will also say that the wordpress static page feature is a very welcome addition. I guess a lot of these pages will evolve as time goes by and I edit them and tweak them, but just so you know they exist:

• About Page
• Shuttle Page
• Manji FAQ

So I decided to go by Warren’s website, to see what he’s up to. For the uninitiated, Warren Ellis is a comic book writer. He’s really hot and cold with me to be honest. Sometimes he writes something that I think is absolutely stunning in quality and then he goes and writes some psycho thriller with prostitutes and rapid monkeys, or based on whatever bbc thing he was fascinated by at the time.

He used to run a blog called Die Puny Humans, but that’s been meshed into his current warrenellis.com site. The good news is he’s running it on Wordpress, hurray, the bad news it seems he’s lost his designated web monkey, or she bailed on him, or she’s decided to sleep at the wheel. Warren usually has nice looking sites (except for the aforementioned DPH which was an ugly thing and ran on Moveable Type (notice my blog system elitism in the tone people, in the tone, it’s worse than a mac user).

The current incarnation of his site is just aweful. I mean you’d find it pretty difficult to understand what it is the man actually does. It’s a complete mess, he can do oh so much better than that., and reason I know he can is because he’s done so in the past. Think of the children you bastard, think of the childern (Bastard btw is Warren’s most used word in the english language).

My mind is wondering this morning. I’ve got more projects on my plate than I care to think about, so I’m going to brain dump right now, go out for a walk and maybe grab a coffee, regroup my thoughts.

• Nick Heidfeld is going to be racing for Williams next year. No it’s not official news but I’ve got a good feeling about this. I think Nick will do exceptionally well, and while many people got excited when Jenson Buttface was going to come to Williams, I was one of the few that didn’t see this as a good thing. Even though Frank Willaims thinks that this year is going to be an interim year before they get back up to speed with other things I think Webber and Nick will do a stumpendous job and this year we might actually do better than the crappy last season.
• The new Green Day album has got 3 songs that I can actually listen to, which is an emmense improvement over previous albums which have had one decent song and the rest was less than inspiring.
• Thinking of cooking a rissoto today. This is part of my 1 new completely different dish a week new years resolution. The idea is that once a week I tackle a new receipe that I’ve never done before. By the end of the year I’ve learn 52 new dishes. So far I’ve cooked a Cheese Gratin, I’ll post my thoughts after I’m done with the Rissoto.
• The new Batman Begins website has been updated slightly. This I’m excited about.
• The new comic book list of the week can be found here. There are a couple of things I’ll eventually get round to buying from the list, although I’m not completely dying for the stuff. I’m a bit pissed off that Team Red Star, have released the Hardcover of Vol3 now, after I’d already bought the trade paperback. The thing is though, I bought this like 1 month ago and I still haven’t read through it yet. Not sure what’s been causing my slackness with my comic book reading lately.
• If you’re a windows user and think the current theme you’re using is rubbish compared to some more pretty things out there, from KDE and even Apple, here’s something you’ll love Royal Theme XP.

One of the most common questions on the boards, is how do you add another column for Manji. Now I’d originally decided not to ever release Manji with two columns, and the reason for that is simple, just about all blogging themes have got at least two columns. Some might argue for good reason. I tend to believe that in order to keep Manji unique, I would keep it single column, and that was the philosphy.

Of course even I’ve resorted to doing a two column layout within Manji, and it’s been there since the day I released version 1.0, on the official Manji download page. Is it hard to implement, no not really. So here it is for all you crazy cats that have decided to go to the wordpress boards with this question after I told you NO ^_^, yeah that’s right I’m looking at you, I’ll spill the BIG secret. Eventually I guess I might release another Manji flavour, but the Nebula Flavoured Manji will always be single column.

In the CSS, add the following lines:

.doublecolumns { } .rightcolumn{ float: right; width: 350px; } .leftcolumn{ float: left; width: 150px; }

Where you’re going to have your posts edit them in the following way (I’ve included SPACES so that the code can actually show up):

< div class=”doublecolumns”> < div class=”leftcolumn”> Where you’ll place all your links and other stuff. < / div> < div class=”rightcolumn”> Where the entries go. < / div > < div class=”clearer”> < / div > < !- - You must have this, otherwise it won’t wrap around itself - - >

Pretty simple I know. In fact if anyone had looked at the Manji download page, their problem would have been solved instantly ^_^.

I promise this is like literally the last time I talk about this. I finally got EVERYTHING clear in my head about this. After the previous post Carthik said,

GPL is a license, and only that. The author or designer of the things you mentioned do have the copyright, and they preserve it. GPL is the license they release their work under, so anyone can use their copy-righted work in the manner specified in the license. The difference is subtle, but important - since they have the copyright, they will always be identified as the rightful creators of their work.

Curious, does it matter who has the copyright. It’s a pretty worthless thing, so I started thinking and talking about it again. I couldn’t get this little thing out of my head. After all I’ve put a copyright in the Manji CSS code, but I only did that because I was following the GPL instructions to a ‘T’ when I released the theme. Turns out that line is (where I put my name and together with the GPL license) the only things you’re not allowed to remove from the code. These lines won’t bloat the actual file size and don’t effect the SOFTWARE in any way.

You see if I said you’re not allowed to take of a link within the template back to this site, the WHOLE software is no longer FREE (in the sense of complete freedom). It’s a line of code you’re not allowed to touch. That goes against the GPL license. The code is meant to be editable in every way.

How do I the creator retain the credit? With the inclusion of my copyright credit line in the comments. Found this directly from the GPL license FAQ.

Yeah ok, but what happens when I modify your code? Aha, very simple, YOU retain your copyright to the CHANGES you’ve made. You just add your copyright credit after my copyright credit and you’re away.

There’s nothing immoral, at least from my point of view, about removing the CODE that retains to my name and a link back to this website. However it is immoral and wrong if you remove my copyright line and the GPL license. And that my friends is GPL for templates. I’ve put a link in there as part of the core code. You have EVERY right to remove it and modify it in any way. If the original creator wanted to retain that one line of code in there, then a creative commons license should have been applied.

Some people might choose NOT to include that copyright line. I suspect that is the case with B2 and wordpress, because Matt hasn’t included Micheal V’s copyright in there, and neither does Matt have a copyright there either, at least I can’t find any.

For the previously mentioned Shuttle Project.

Hmm, ok after I wrote my previous post I strolled over to this link over at podz’s website. For those in the dark, Podz is an incredibly helpful chap. He’s always online answering questions on the wordpress forums and should be given a medal. He was going to help out with Manji as well which was nice, but he got a bit busy which is completely understandable.

After I read through his post and really started thinking about things, the following dawned upon me, Manji doesn’t belong to me. Wordpress doesn’t belong to Matt Mullenweg, and Persian doesn’t belong to Chris J Davis. Wordpress was a derivative of B2 which was originally on a GPL license morphed into Wordpress, does anyone know who the lead designer on B2 was? No, I know it’s easy to find out, but off the top of your head does anyone know? Unless you were using B2 probably not.

GPL basically means NOBODY has copyright of that particular bit of code. It’s there out in the open for everyone to play around with and create something better and bigger.

So when Michael asked people to credit him in the Kubrick code (download kubrick and read the readme file), he effectively had no right to do that, simply because HE made the decision to release Kubrick under a GPL license. People could do that if they were so inclined and wanted to thank him for it. But they have NO OBLIGATION. They can then take that code alter it and release it under a completely different name, without even thinking about including his name or whatever. Not even in the CSS. The only stipulation I see that you can’t do is alter the license. Nothing you do after that make it copyright of you. You don’t own the copyright of the code, and neither does the originator. In fact making people feel like they have to credit you kind of goes against Open Source code. You don’t see php.net in the bottom there, or apache.org anywhere on the site (except now of course). And yet this site wouldn’t be here for you to see without these open source codes.

This seems to be standard practice for most code we all use. Who’s the lead designer for Apache? What about MySQL? PHP? Some projects have a lead developer, since it does take a lot of time and knowledge and resources to keep something like Wordpress going. Matt’s doing a great job, but he could decide to stop tomorrow, he has after all turned 21, (Happy Birthday dude), does that mean the end of Wordpress? Well maybe, but the code might live on with someone else who would probably rename it and not include Matt’s name in there. Then again he might, but that would be a courtesy thing.

Which basically means that if you put the code in the bottom with a link back to where it was downloaded from, well that’s just a courtesy thing really. Nothing in the code stipulates that you have to link back to this site. So what I’m saying about Manji is that, by me releasing it under a GPL license, you’re effectively free to do whatever you want with it. You want to keep a link to my site in there, go right ahead, I thank you kindly and appreciate all your love. If you don’t want, take it out. What you can’t do is then say that the design is YOUR copyright, because no matter what you do with it, it will NEVER be your copyright. It’s out there in cyberspace to live or die. I will continue to work on Manji, tweaking and fixing bugs, because it means a lot to me. Wordpress is a community and in the same way that I have taken so much from it this was one way of giving something back.

So if you want disregard the below post, I could ask you to put the link, but NOTHING in the license I release with Manji says you have to. I include the link as a default, but as with everything else in that file, you’re free to do with as you please.

Free as in FREEDOM.

It’s amazing what a day does, after you’ve thought about things a little.

In my trolls around the internet I’ve seen several conflicting footers with regards to credits to Manji. I guess this is my fault since to be honest I don’t have a readme file that states any of this. I’m going to hopefully finish this off in the next couple of days along with the user manual for all you newbies who would like to understand the structure and how you can go about actually skinning Manji.

I will say that the majority of the sites I’ve been to that have used Manji have left the credits in tack and in some cases gone a bit further and given me copyright of their blog as well ^_^. Needless to say YourSite is NOT copyright of Khaled Abou Alfa. Your site is your copyright. I’ve got to say that I’m really proud of you guys for being so honest and cool about keeping the Manji credit in tact.

Which leads me to my next point. Could all those using the preview version of Manji (around 1000 downloads) make the link back to manji the following:

Many people are getting this page when they link to this site, kind of defeats the object doesn’t it? http://www.brokenkode.com/index.php?p=470

In the meantime I’ll say this about the footer credits. I guess all I ask is that you keep one line in there:

Manji designed by Khaled Abou Alfa & Root.

That’s all I ask (of course and keeping the proper creditation in the css and the GPL license). Which funnly enough brings me to my final point about this I promise. There has been some talk about people releasing their Manji flavours to the world at large. In fact Scott has already released his Flavour for Wordpress Version 1.2. Personally I’m all for this effort. It’s what GPL is all about. Community and people adding to something someone started or whatever. It’s more fun that way.

So what happens then? Well then the footer does change and personnally I’d really like it to be something along the lines of the following:

YourName Flavoured Manji: Designed by Your Name. Based wholely upon the Manji template(or code, whatever suits you more) developed by khaled abou alfa & root.

In the CSS your name gets added to the list of people before you. So my name and Root’s and then yours and then the next person after you. To be honest none of this will ever get policed. It’s just a courtesy thing really nothing more nothing less.

Found the link for this on the Designate Online forums. The following is taken from the Building Letters page for the Tsunami Relief effort:

As a core element of this issue, Max Kisman suggested to ask type designers, designers, artists and illustrators to produce one flower each, that will be published in the magazine as a respectful tribute to the people who have lost their lives, and to the power of nature.

This is what I’ve decided to give to this effort. Originally I wanted to use this as the Manji logo but I think somehow it seems like it was made for this effort.

I do urge any other designers out there with a few hours to spare to contribute to this edition

So I’m talking with my brother, asking him how he’s getting along, seeing if he’s integrating with the local culture.

Joined a sorority yet? GAMA ALPHA BETA Haha! Asshole! nobody in my dorms are in cause we’re the Ghetto people! we live in the projects……we cant afford $500 a year You serious?????? Yep… You have to pay $500? Yeah…per year That’s some seriously fucked up shit; and what do you get for it? He paused for a second and replied Friends

Needless to say I doubled over laughing. I’m sorry but that’s fucking ridiculous. I really think my bro should start a blog about all the different ideas and customs that he experiences while in America. He might not appreciate it now, but I guarantee he’ll love it 2-3 years down the line.

I’m going to start posting reviews on software you might not know about that you really should be using, or could greatly benefit from using. There’s like 10 I’ve got in mind right now, but I’m really hoping that the list will actually increase as time goes by, since I love to use and support open source projects. Every once in a while however I’ll stumble on some freeware (but doesn’t operate under a GPL license) that deserves a mention, so you can put that into this list as well. It’s crazy what you can find on the internet.

Overview So we’ll get the first one underway with Notepad2. I originally thought it wasn’t open source however after digging a little deeper, ie in the text file, you see the following magic words:

Source Code Notepad2 is based on the Scintilla source code editing component: http://www.scintilla.org The full Notepad2 source code is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License and can be found at: http://www.flos-freeware.ch

I can’t stop using this little application. I use it at work as much as I use it at home and that’s really due to it’s extreme versatility.

Features: So how does Notepad2 differ from Notepad found on all Windows machines? There are a number of great features that make it different. Here’s a brief list of what I find the most useful:

• No matter what type of file you open (well there are exceptions of course), it’s probably built in with a colour coding syntax, so it’s easier to read through
• A great feature is that if you’ve got Notepad2 open, you can just drag and drop the required file into the edit area and it will automatically load the file, without having to go through the hassle, open file > etc etc.
• Simple functions like, line wraping, auto indent and zoom functions.
• It remains lightweight, for quick access, and quick edits to any file. So it’ll load up even if you’re on a slow machine
• Very customisable, adding a great deal of flexibility to file editing.

Rating:4/5

Pros - Lightweight, customisable, open source code. Cons - No spell check and no plans for tabbed browsing (great little feature to have). While this would be a great feature I understand what the thinking behind Notepad2 is:

Feature requests are always welcome, but please keep in mind that Notepad2 has been designed as a compact Notepad replacement.

This is a long one (roughly 1600 words), so I guess grab a coffee and chill.

Broken Kode was updated 3 times in 2004, but I consider this to be version 2.0. The reason is the first version was using Moveable Type, when they decided to screw everyone over I moved elsewhere that same night. I didn’t wait a single day, I didn’t contemplate keeping my blog and then finding something more suitable, even though I’d spent soo long trying to understand their structure and code, that same night I left, and I’ve never regretted that decision. That design was scuppered, and I did the design that was online till December, when I used the default Manji template for a month. But that really wasn’t for any other reason except to get people familiar with the design. Which reminds me to make a live preview going.

So here we are BK v2.

Initial Though Process. I started designing Manji on the 1st of October. I knew that I would eventually have my own version of the template, but to be honest until I released Version 1.0 of Manji, I hadn’t actually given Broken Kode any thought…nothing. So with the release I finally could sit back and have a look and take note.

I did over 7 mock ups for the design. Each time I varied the colour scheme. I’m serious I’ve been through quiet a lot of colour schemes that I could probably do another 5 decent variations of the Manji theme. I’ve already mentioned Lava, well that’s not even on this list.

Sadly none of them clicked. Don’t ask me why. It was just a gut feeling I had that they just weren’t fun enough. Aha, so that’s the type of site I was looking for now, something more fun to look at. With that germ of an idea I let it ferment in my head.

While in Greece, I went and joined Stathi at work. He’s part-timing in a bar till he gets an engineering job. We went a bit earlier to chill out and talk. He said it wasn’t going to be busy but that he would have to sort things out for half an hour or something. I wasn’t prepared to sit on my ass an do nothing so I took a pad and a pen. From there I started sketching. I’d always wanted to have a mascot for the site, however I was too preoccupied with a bunch of other things to really do anything about it. For some reason that night something clicked, and when I looked up from the bar, there was this bottle staring at me, yeah you guessed it with the words CoCo on them, perfect.

It’s been a while since I’ve created a character like that but it was pretty awesome because the inspiration kept flowing and by the next day I’d done this sketch.

I had to wait a total of 5 days before I could scan it in and ‘redraw’ it in Flash and Freehand. It was torture I can tell you that much. I had the inspiration but I couldn’t finish it all off.

Colour Schemes

I’ve got to thank my housemate Laurent who’s been really good to chat to about the colour and overall design aspects. As it turned out CoCo dictated the actual final colour scheme. Once I’d gotten the aqua/green/blue and red everything else kind of fell into place, hell even I was surprised by the pink, but for some reason it works very well. I guess if you struggle with colour schemes, you could either use one of the following methods to help you out:

• Colour schemer
• Colour Match Remix
• ColourWhore
• Colour Blender

or alternatively you could simply be inspired by one of your favourite drawings at the time.

Ok so I’ve got my colour scheme. Thank god. With that in hand I was able to see what was what and how everything worked in Manji. Sure I know the code, but I wasn’t sure how easy and intuitive it was to actually skinning it. I’d tried to sort it out in as much of a user friendly way as possible. It was pretty simple actually. What I loved the most about the experience was the fact that I didn’t have to reinvent the wheel. The structure and 80% of the code was there, all I had to do was take it away from there. The hardest part was the first to be honest, but once I got into the groove I was away.

Plugins Galore I’ll be making a proper page for the plugins I use because to be honest these guys and gals have done an unbelievable job in implementing some fantastic functionality into a wordpress powered blog. There are currently about 14 plugins and about 3 hacks being used to get Broken Kode the way it is. That’s an immense amount of hours spent by each and every person involved in implementing this code, and I think they really should get a proper mention. What’s funny is that as I was implementing these plugins and hacks I remembered how much I’ve improved in the 7 months I’ve been using Wordpress. I remember spending roughly 2 weeks trying to sort out the preview plugin alone. Posting on several blogs and message boards trying to sort it out. It was a strange experience but in a way I kind of saw what I was doing. Actually understood that doing this would screw the pooch. Oh sure I’m still a complete spaz when it comes to php code, but I’m actually starting to understand it. In fact there was only one feature that I really wanted to implement into the design that I didn’t get a chance to do yet, and that’s the separate trackbacks/pings and comments. Hopefully that will get resolved sometime this week (not that I get many trackbacks mind, however I’d like to have that option available, you know just in case).

Debugging Now unlike some people (yeah you Chris), I can’t do a bloody redesign in 2.5 hours. It took me (just coding) about 2 days to get everything to work nicely. Once I’d sorted it out in Firefox, the problem was that it looked a complete mess in IE. You can’t not take IE into account because 50% of the people that come to BK are IE users (shame on you all, download Firefox today ^_^) . So I must have spent 4 hours debugging.

Design aspects Manji in many ways is a derivative of the original BK design. When I say derivative I’m talking about the design aspect of course, since that’s what I was in charge of. So the search bar is right at the bottom since it just makes more sense there for me, it’s single column since the content should be what it’s all about. The page that I changed the most was the comments page. I’ve been thinking about this a lot actually and I think that comments pages are really important because they bring the blogging community that much closer together. I’ve met a number of fantastic people online through forums and blogs and I think it’s these comments and allowing each other to add their voice that really adds and enhances the blogging experience.

So why so different from the original Manji? Loads of features that I love in a blog can only be achieved through the use of plugins. So when doing the design for Manji I made a conscious effort to make sure that I didn’t actually make it hard for anyone to have it up and running. Sure it’s not ideal but I remember back when I was a newbie and hacking anything but the css was just too much for me, and even then I wasn’t exactly confident in what I was doing. I streamlined everything a little bit. For my design I wanted to implement all those ideas the way I would have liked to send out the template in the first place. I’m glad at least that the comment buttons don’t need a plugin because I would have been pretty bummed.

Originally I was going to have the title bar etc in the middle but CoCo took over and I had to find some sort of balance, which is why you’ve got the title in big on the right hand side, which all the title block etc aligns to the left. Balance was something I did think a great deal about, and that top header took me several tries to get it that way.

By sheer luck I didn’t need to change the colour of the comment icons as they actually work well with the chosen colour scheme.

One of my favourite features is the navigate via category. That’s definitely something I’ll be using a lot. I’ll be using a lot? Surely you mean the user will be using a lot? Well no. See there’s been a lot of talk on the net about blogging and what a personal webpage should be about. I didn’t start of Broken Kode so that I could cater to anyone save myself. It’s a method of expression for me, it’s my therapy and I honestly couldn’t live without it right now. When I was going the redesign I was think how it would be for me to use. What would I enjoy when I scroll back through the posts. I’ll talk a lot more about the reasons for this blog in my about page once I get that sorted out.

Final note really, what’s with the actual font I’ve chosen for the header? Well it’s all because I don’t work as fast as I’d like to. That being said I’ve actually done the initial design for an original font for the site. I’ll eventually get around to updating it, however I thought as a homage to my favourite band in the world (the smashing pumpkins) I’d use one of their last ever fonts used for their final album that wasn’t released in the shops. It’s an internet only album free to download, and that was one of the fonts used in this release. Friends and Enemies of Machine. Rock on.

I’ll be posting a much more indepth post about the thought processes and ideas and what was used to make Broken Kode Version 2.0 a reality and what still needs to be done. I guess this is like my ‘beta’ version. I’ve still got validation and clean-up code, but I really want to see it go live as I’ve been thinking about this redesign for about 1 month and I really couldn’t wait to get it up and out there.

BTW CoCo is my new site maskot.

Now I think some serious sleep is in order.

I think I’m going to start blogging about comics a bit more this year. I’m not going to comment on every bit of news that comes my way, just things that I find pretty interesting, as a mark for the future, what to keep an eye out for etc. So lets have a look at what’s going on in the comic book world of late.

DC All-Stars. What a shit name. I mean if the Ultimate line with it’s butt-ugly trade dress design and name wasn’t bad enough, I can’t think how rubbish the design for this series of books is going to be. That being said, the talent attached to these projects is pretty amazing.

So Jim Lee is going to be drawing while Frank Miller will be writing. I remember when I was reading Deathblow back in the early 90s Miller lashed out at Lee for apeing his style of Sin City for that book, and now they’re working together on what is going to be the best selling comic book in the english speaking world for the year 2005. Man how things change.

Am I excited about this news? Not really sure. When I first heard about it I was really loving it, Superman for 12 issues by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely, 12 issues of Batman by Jim Lee and Frank Miller, what’s not to get excited about. Whatever these gentlemen touch generally turns to gold. They’ve all contributed to some fantastic stories in the past, of exceptional quality.

Then there’s that rumour that Adam Hughes is going to be involved with the Wonder Woman revamp, seriously stupendous news for me as Adam is one of my absolute favourite illustrators ever.

Are these characters done and dusted, old and tattered? Hardly. Two of my favorite comics 2004 were Superman books. I haven’t read Superman in 10 years. I bought the books based on the creators involved, and they absolutely blew me away. I only buy my books in collected format, I might have to bend the rules just this once so that I don’t get the story ruined by pricks on the internet that can’t keep their mouths shut.

As of Monday and every Monday I’ll be having a graphic novel review of the week. Sometimes it will of books that came out that week, other times it will be with regards to books I read a while back and are on my shelf. The first review will be of the Ultimates, as I just finished reading Volume 1 of that book.

So I’ve been doing a bit of a tidy up of this site. So I’ve got no drafts, no unused plugins, and I’ve streamlined the categories, which basically made me thing that I’m not really using the blog for some of the ideas I had, which were to talk about other things that really interest me. This has prompted me to rethink my blogging strategy slightly and start making use of all these links I’ve got and start to actually write reviews and give people some information they might not have been privy about. So once ‘CoCo’ goes live I’ve got a couple of additions I’ll be making a much bigger effort with regards to what get’s posted on the site. Vague, yeah well eventually everything will make sense.

Yesterday marked the first time this site has been hit hard by spammers. I mean this was some seriously sick stuff, and apparently Matt’s site was hit and so was Nuclear Mooses’, and I’m guessing a whole bunch of other wordpress sites. Which brings me to thank a few people for all their hard work, because seriously it was really pretty bad feeling, because as bloggers we’re completely helpless from these mindless fucks that keep attacking. See the problem is that we’re always on the defensive, and I wish we could be on the offensive, giving these absolute fuckers some payback. So thanks to Dr.Dave and Kitty for their great work, really appreciate all the great efforts for both spam plugins.