Blogging and Twittering

Why do I blog? May you ask yourself these questions: why do novelists write novels? Why do poets write poems? Why do musicians compose and perform music? Why do philosophers study knowledge and language? Is it because they are good at it? Maybe, but I personally think that it’s because they enjoy it. That’s why I blog, I enjoy it. Sure, some people ask me ‘what’s the point?’, but couldn’t you say the same about novelists, poets, musicians and philosophers?

Let me make this clear; I’m not saying that my blog is as influential or as adored as any of the above, I’m just saying that they are all forms or expression, and so is my blog. It would be ridiculous for me to even suggest that I was in any way as influential as any form of art. 

Elaborating on my explanation for why I blog. As well as enjoying it, it’s also a good way for me to think. I tend to think and question myself more in depth if I write it down; because I literally have to think about it in order to turn my thoughts, my views, my confusions and my observations into written language which myself and others can make sense of.

Straying off the subject of blogging, I’m going to talk about Twitter. Twitter is a wonderful ‘micro-blogging’ service that allows you to describe what you’re up to in 140 characters or fewer, pointless as it sounds, let me explain why it’s very, very addictive. Like MySpace and Facebook, you wonder how you ever got to communicate with other people such as friends, family, colleagues, etc, without out. If you’re going to complain and ask yourself ‘what’s the point?’, trying to shrug off your doubts onto others, just ask yourself this: why not?

Follow me on Twitter. Steven – Administrator.

It’s a Thursday

So it must be funny on BBC One then, right? No, no, no. I’m unable to explain how painful Thursday nights have become on BBC One, they are dreadful. The new ‘sitcom’ to disgust and even enrage me is called The Life Of Riley, I’m going to say this now: it follows Lab Rats in it’s miserable footsteps. Why can’t the BBC make some good comedy, a comedy which the public enjoy watching and what they are proud to air. Whatever happened to pilots and waiting for reviews before you commission a whole series, it would save them a whole load of embarrassment. Sort it out BBC, you’re appalling.

Steven – Administrator.

I’ve been busy

Well, today I felt awful. Y’know, the usual thing people feel around this time of year; headache, straining eyes, tiredness, so I decided to go home and get a good lot of sleep. Well, I tried, I had to get up two hours later to go and get my haircut, shortly after I picked up a desk from Argos, which I then spent the next four hours putting it together and getting my room back to normal – I’m still ill.

Just wanted to post something – I’ll do something else in a couple of days.

Steven – Administrator.

New V3 style variation

The style I’ve tried to imitate – thanks to PSDTUTS for helping, as usual – the stereotypical web 2.0 layout, the light blues and whites, simple fonts, light grays for the more descriptive sections of writing, simple 2px separators, glossy icons to make it feel all the more ‘cloudy’ and ‘bubbly’, which is what a good web 2.0 style needs, isn’t it? I have to say, this is probably my favorite out of all the styles I’ve made – the three being: metallic, minimal and web 2.0. Minimal is still being worked on – so I’m going to keep it as a default for a while now. View it here, of course.

Links may longer work as of 31/01/10.

Steven – Administrator. Updated 31/01/10.

Stevey.biz – a ‘brief’ history.

In this blessay, I aim to give a ‘brief’ history of Stevey.biz; what made me do it, why I wanted to do it, etc. The blessay will include screenshots and logos from previous versions, just so you can see how much this website has developed in such a small amount of time.

June 2007 – sitting down at my desk, probably sipping on a tea with too many spoonfuls of sugar, checking out new posts and recent updates to a lovely then-still-growing forum called joejoe.org. I like this forum – it’s the first forum where I found people who think more or less like I do when it comes to technology. I thought to myself, finally, a place where I can discuss and talk with people who will understand me. I still like that forum, it’s always somewhere for me to visit and have a good chat with some long running e-friends, I suggest you check it out. Anyway, the reason why I mention this forum, is because of one specific member: Jordan Green. Jordan is an active teenage graphics designer – who I think I’m right in saying, goes to college to further his career in graphic design – he had always fascinated me with his unusual, striking, very modern and sometimes clever pieces of Photoshop and Illustrator work, over time, he had developed quite an impressive portfolio. I was talking to him on MSN, he said that the had registered a domain name, of which he wanted to use as his own place for housing his ever growing portfolio. I was all very new to websites around that time, so I decided also to give it a go; that day I registered www.stevey.biz. The domain name costs around £5 for one year, however, for that little price, it of course had no ‘free’ servers for me to host public content on, so I sought around joejoe.org, finding someone who had their own server, my quest had ended when I found a member called Corey. Corey had always been a part of joejoe.org, from what I can remember he was a very respected member of the forum, boasting a shiny red badge that showed the world that he was a moderator. I queried on whether he could host me on his sever, he agreed, filled with glee I set out into the world of web designing ready to create version one of my website.

Version One

Have little to no experience at all designing and building websites, a good friend of mine – Peter – directed me to another part of the Adobe suite called Dreamweaver. Dreamweaver is a very sophisticated tool, it’s even good for beginners. Before I decided what I wanted to make for sure, I made a ‘console’ looking interface, I had no experience so it looked and worked terribly, so I ditched that idea and decided to settle for a more simple layout. For the next few days I developed and designed what I thought to be a master piece; looking back however, I realise just how bulky, untidy, unfinished and how bug-ridden the website was, it’s near embarrassing to think that I made it. Below I enclose a screenshot of version one, along side is the logo that I used for the very first version – how ugly. Sorry that the top and bottom of the screenshot are missing and that it’s poor quality, I couldn’t find anything else and deleted the original files.

Oh dear, surprisingly, I kept this version of the website for a long time, around 8 months. Version one served it’s purpose – it was the building block that world help to form version two. Over time my knowledge in website design expanded a bit and as it did, I began to loath how bulky and untidy the original version was. Out of the blue, Peter sent me a personal message on joejoe.org, the message contained a link to download version two of stevey.biz, this is where things improved.

Version Two

Armed with the shiny, new version of stevey.biz and a new server to host my website on, I unzipped the archive, I discovered that it had no content in it, just the basic layout. This enabled me to rewrite the introduction and use better language, making it more friendly and consistent – version one had references in first and third person, making it a big mess.  One of the major updates in this version is the noticeable use of PHP. The used website PHP to load code from external pages, meaning that it loaded information from external pages into a parent page – this meant that the layout referenced the same code in all pages, where only the content changed. This meant the website loaded quicker, and aided by the cleaner code I was in business. Greyham – another friend from joejoe.org – pointed out that ‘version two’, was really version one with a better look and smarter code, looking back he was right, and it should be been called version 1.1, oh well. To go along with version two, I made a new logo, in fact I made two, I’ll show you the latest logo that I had made – I like that one the best.

There’s version two then – simple, clean and clear. That’s just how I wanted it to look, but it doesn’t really take advantage of the power of the internet or web design, nor does it show of my ever-growing knowledge of Photoshop. After a good eight months of using version two, I wanted to do all of the above – I wanted take advantage of the internet, I wanted to make a website that would show of my Photoshop skills. I wanted a version that completely strayed away from the previous versions; so I did.

Version Three

I was bored of version two by now – specially for it looking similar to version one, so I decided to something about it. Version three was a ’spur of the moment’ kind of thing. I was all well and happy with version two, as I mentioned; I suddenly realised that it really was not unlocking the full potential of the internet, or more to the point; the full potential of me. I needed a website interface that would help show of my web developing skills as well as my Photoshop design skills. I think the outcome is very successful; although as much as I would like to, I cannot say that I made it alone. The original design idea and layout came from a lovely website called PSDTUTS – look at my blog for more details – and the initial coding was all down to a e-friend of mine: Jake of Initial Sketch. I can however take credit for designing everything myself and finishing the final sections and strings of code to make it perfect. Below is a screenshot of version three, and the new logo that went along with it. I personally love this version and the graphics used.

And there we have it, a website that I can be proud of, a website that finally uses the power of the internet. By using an ajax powered showcase, as well as looking and working sophisticated, it also helps me promote and show of my Photoshop skills .I also think that in version three, I have showed how I can successfully use language to create a friendly, calm environment while steering well away from becoming dreadfully informal. This will certainly be the last version I make for a long time – I will, however, be working on style variations on this theme to change around every now and again, check my blog for updates on that. Little less than two years after registering the domain, I can finally and confidentially call myself something that I’d never, ever dreamed I’d be: I am a web developer.

Steven – Administrator. Updated 31/01/10.