But that’s in the past. I’d like to share a few updated screenshots. :)

Welcome to Fontastica

So first of all – welcome to Fontastica! Enjoy your stay. I decided to keep the overall look of the site pretty simple. The overall design is pretty much done, but the code is changing almost daily. I’ve decided I’ll be submitting my Beta version for my final project, then I’ll be recoding the entire thing before its public release, hopefully sometime in April or May.

The basic premise of the site is that you can browse fonts, tag them and rate them against other combinations.

What do you think?

This interface is going to change drastically (in fact, I’m gearing up to do that this afternoon, so don’t get too many ideas), but that’s the overall feel. For the most part, you get given two random fonts, and you can judge whether they go well together or not. Simples. I’d like to write an algorithm that makes the “random” part a little more calculated, but that’s a way off yet.

And then there’s the faceoff, which was pushed for by my tutor:

Which do you prefer?

The idea of the site overall is to keep it as simple, clean and easy-to-understand as possible. Recent user testing has proven that I’ve got a way to go with that. It’s all well and good that I know my way around the site, but if nobody elsedoes then I’m doing it wrong. So like I say, it’ll probably change before the actual launch.

As more people add their opinions – what style of font it is, whether it works well with other fonts, etc. – there will be more stats available for each font, including a list of fonts that others think it goes well with, and – once I’ve got that pesky algorithm working – automated suggesions based on the tags people give fonts. And the best part is that, at the moment, there are no user accounts. You don’t have to sign up. What more can you want?!

So that’s what I’ve been working on, alongside writing an API/client interface and designing a mobile app for reading and taking notes on literature. I have been writing blog entries, but those have been for my Interaction Design module (where the mobile app design is taking place) – you can take a peek if you like, but it’s nothing exciting, I swear. Just an amateur rambling on about user experience research that she knows nothing about.

Anyway – I’d better get to work. I’ve got a lot of interface redesigning ahead of me this afternoon.

So instead I took some advice and began to think about things I like and see if I could come up with anything from there. The list of “things I like” is pretty extensive, but I managed to boil it down to kittens (well, who doesn’t like them?), design (a bit broad) and development (see before). Development is a little linear and easy enough to go about learning, but design is subjective. You can learn it, but you can’t necessarily “get good” at it. That’s what I focused on as I lay in bed fretting. About an hour after we’d turned the light out, I suddenly had a thought. Fonts are a tricky thing. There are some static resources out there for “fonts that go together”, but they’re just that: static. What if I thought about a dynamic version?

That’s what started the ball rolling: the idea of a dynamic font resource. What if you could view two fonts side-by-side and see if they go together? Then you could vote on it – and others can see the result. “Sophie thought Times New Roman and Arial made a good combination! Twenty other people agreed.” At the start of a project, when you’re fishing around for two fonts that go together and going through your library of hundreds of typefaces to see what fits, this is the sort of thing a designer needs. “These fonts go well together and they suit my project!” Bazinga: two hours of mindless font-searching … regained for design.

From there, new parts have just kept falling into place. It can be a resource and a playground. Let users see what the fonts are like side-by-side as a header and body text, let them rearrange and enter their own text, let them export the CSS so they can just drop it in, let them tag and categorise fonts and organise them that way…

I have a lot of ideas for this project and I’m just beginning. Fontastica is starting to take a little bit of shape, starting with a landing page. Now comes the steep learning curve of web scraping and CodeIgniter. This should be fun.

Stay tuned for updates. In the meantime, you can follow me on Twitter or help me with my research by filling in the two surveys I’ve set up: one’s about what fonts you like and one’s about categorising fonts. Let’s see where it goes.

To begin with, I did a CPU-only (with SIMD assembly) run through with the encoder, on my i7 2600k-based host machine and my ARM board.

[OK] Videos > x264 --demuxer y4m --crf 20 --threads auto --output output.264 blue_sky_1080p25.y4m
y4m [info]: 1920x1080p 1:1 @ 25/1 fps (cfr)
x264 [info]: using SAR=1/1
x264 [info]: using cpu capabilities: MMX2 SSE2Fast SSSE3 FastShuffle SSE4.2 AVX
x264 [info]: profile High, level 4.0
x264 [info]: frame I:1 Avg QP:20.68 size:179370
x264 [info]: frame P:126 Avg QP:20.67 size:101531
x264 [info]: frame B:90 Avg QP:24.47 size: 13774
x264 [info]: consecutive B-frames: 17.5% 81.1% 1.4% 0.0%
x264 [info]: mb I I16..4: 30.9% 44.2% 24.9%
x264 [info]: mb P I16..4: 1.4% 2.9% 0.4% P16..4: 41.8% 24.7% 17.8% 0.0% 0.0% skip:11.0%
x264 [info]: mb B I16..4: 0.2% 0.3% 0.0% B16..8: 48.3% 3.0% 0.5% direct: 2.3% skip:45.5% L0:31.5% L1:45.0% BI:23.5%
x264 [info]: 8x8 transform intra:59.2% inter:63.7%
x264 [info]: coded y,uvDC,uvAC intra: 53.0% 55.9% 37.2% inter: 30.7% 46.3% 28.0%
x264 [info]: i16 v,h,dc,p: 48% 26% 14% 11%
x264 [info]: i8 v,h,dc,ddl,ddr,vr,hd,vl,hu: 18% 11% 42% 4% 5% 4% 6% 4% 6%
x264 [info]: i4 v,h,dc,ddl,ddr,vr,hd,vl,hu: 24% 12% 16% 5% 13% 6% 14% 4% 6%
x264 [info]: i8c dc,h,v,p: 60% 21% 17% 2%
x264 [info]: Weighted P-Frames: Y:2.4% UV:0.8%
x264 [info]: ref P L0: 69.7% 15.0% 10.6% 4.7% 0.0%
x264 [info]: ref B L0: 92.9% 7.1% 0.0%
x264 [info]: ref B L1: 99.9% 0.1%
x264 [info]: kb/s:13098.54
encoded 217 frames, 15.78 fps, 13098.54 kb/s

And then on my embedded board:

root@freescale /x264/cpu/bin$ ./x264 --demuxer y4m --crf 20 --threads auto --out
put ../../output.264 ../../resources/blue_sky_1080p25.y4m
y4m [info]: 1920x1080p 1:1 @ 25/1 fps (cfr)
x264 [info]: using SAR=1/1
x264 [info]: using cpu capabilities: ARMv6 NEON
x264 [info]: profile High, level 4.0
x264 [info]: frame I:1 Avg QP:20.72 size:178268
x264 [info]: frame P:126 Avg QP:20.69 size:100902
x264 [info]: frame B:90 Avg QP:24.48 size: 13718
x264 [info]: consecutive B-frames: 17.1% 82.9% 0.0% 0.0%
x264 [info]: mb I I16..4: 31.2% 44.8% 24.0%
x264 [info]: mb P I16..4: 1.4% 2.8% 0.4% P16..4: 42.0% 24.7% 17.8% 0.0% 0.0% skip:11.0%
x264 [info]: mb B I16..4: 0.2% 0.3% 0.0% B16..8: 48.3% 2.9% 0.5% direct: 2.2% skip:45.6% L0:31.7% L1:44.3% BI:24.0%
x264 [info]: 8x8 transform intra:58.4% inter:63.6%
x264 [info]: coded y,uvDC,uvAC intra: 52.7% 55.3% 36.6% inter: 30.6% 46.3% 28.0%
x264 [info]: i16 v,h,dc,p: 47% 27% 15% 12%
x264 [info]: i8 v,h,dc,ddl,ddr,vr,hd,vl,hu: 17% 10% 46% 3% 6% 4% 6% 3% 5%
x264 [info]: i4 v,h,dc,ddl,ddr,vr,hd,vl,hu: 24% 12% 17% 5% 13% 6% 14% 4% 6%
x264 [info]: i8c dc,h,v,p: 60% 21% 17% 2%
x264 [info]: Weighted P-Frames: Y:1.6% UV:0.0%
x264 [info]: ref P L0: 70.2% 14.7% 10.4% 4.7% 0.0%
x264 [info]: ref B L0: 92.9% 7.1%
x264 [info]: kb/s:13019.85
encoded 217 frames, 1.01 fps, 13019.85 kb/s

The embedded platform has a quad core processor which ramps up to 1Ghz under load, while the desktop machine has 4 cores hyperthreaded at 3.4Ghz. Considering that it’s pulling in a raw video file over 600MB in size on a class 4 SD card, the board does surprisingly well. That’s not necessarily a fair comparison because the desktop machine is running a copy of x264 from the debian repositories while the arm chip gets one built from the latest source.

Anyway, after trying that I thought I should get down to trying out the OpenCL libraries that came with the pre-built filesystem image.

I grabbed a copy of Apple’s OpenCL hello world program, and with some minor tweaks I got it to run through (The global work item size was exceeding the maximum supported by the hardware). The example program basically multiplies two vectors full of floats, which interestingly enough fails on the embedded platform:

root@freescale /x264$ ./float_hello ; ./hello
Computed '95/192' correct values!
Computed '192/192' correct values!

It seems that the floating point precision provided by the OpenCL interface isn’t up to scratch, or at least hasn’t been set up correctly. Needs further investigation.

That was last July. I started work on the 2nd August 2011 and have been working five days a week ever since, except for the odd holiday here and there. So what’s it been like?

Well, I went into the job … sort of prepared for it. I’d only worked very briefly with Drupal for a two-hour lab in my second year, when we’d had to create some vocabularies and associated taxonomies. Even though I only had that limited experience under my belt, I was taken on board and within a couple of weeks I’d learned the basics of the system. A year later, and I’m pretty competent with it and I’ve even considered migrating this site from WordPress to Drupal, simply because I find it a lot easier to work with, even if it is a lot heavier.

But how did the rest of my courses at uni help to prepare me for all of this?

With my design knowledge tucked under my belt I was able to help with theming a number of sites, and I was provided with the perfect opportunity to actually try out some of the things that I’d spent my second year learning. But more than that, I was able to build on my skills as a novice developer. I went into the placement with a very basic knowledge of PHP, JavaScript and Ajax, and have come out the other end feeling much more confident in my skills. This year I’ve come to understand what it means to use object oriented programming techniques (something that always escaped me before), and I even understand arrays (there are certain people on my course who will understand my frustrations with them last year).

Alongside all of this I’ve become more active on Twitter this year. Being in the midst of the action has meant I’ve been able to discover new technologies and techniques for doing things I’ve been doing for years. I’ve been able to refine my workflow and have taken part in a number of … interesting discussions about all sorts of things. It’s helped to encourage me to expand my horizons even more than I would have done if I’d just been sitting at uni doing the work there.

That’s not to say I haven’t got anything out of my course. If I hadn’t done the first two years, I wouldn’t have had such a solid starting point for this year. I’ve been thrown into the deep end here, but at least I had armbands: I knew the basics, and I knew what I wanted to come out at the end, but being here, working at Circle, has allowed me to refine and clarify what I’ve already learned.

On the other hand, I’ve definitely learned this year that I am an implementer. Give me a design and I will bring it to life. I don’t think I have the creative capacity to come up with the designs for the implementation, but it’s a hell of a lot of fun being the one who gets to implement them. And yes: I’m talking about both design and development.

So. Friday is my last day here. I’m travelling home for a few weeks before starting my final year of university on the 24th September. I’m excited to see what it will bring, and I’m full of ideas and techniques that I want to try out. It’s good for me to know that being here in a working environment hasn’t killed my enthusiasm for the industry (actual work is something that too-regularly drags me down when it comes to something I enjoy doing as a hobby), so I’m eager to press on with my final year and come out at the end of it with my degree.

Here’s to the last year, which has gone by surprisingly quickly. :)

But overall, I still like Firefox … and for some reason, it’s become the butt of a great many jokes on Twitter.

It’s now come to the point where I think twice or thrice about posting something to do with Firefox because there are some people who will immediately jump on me for it. “It’s just a joke,” they excuse themselves, “I only do it to wind you up!” But does that really make it excusable? The number of times I did something just to wind my brother up and would get told off by my mother suggests that’s not an appropriate excuse. So why does it count here?

Now I will concede that on occasion I poke fun at Chrome users. I’m not perfect. But I don’t leap on anyone as soon as they mention using Chrome, because ultimately it’s their choice of browser, and if it works for them then that’s fine. Even with IE – a few years ago I wouldn’t have thought twice about responding to an IE user’s plea for help with “get a proper browser”. Now, I’ll try to fix their problem and then suggest they consider a different browser. Ultimately, they have a different workflow. It may be harming my productivity in one way or another, but if they don’t want to change, then why should I force them?

I have legitimate reasons for disliking Chrome. Actually, I like Chrome’s interface and speed, but I don’t like its inspector, nor do I like the way it renders some things and that some of my add-ons aren’t available. Perhaps there are alternatives in the Chrome store or whatever it’s called but I’m not interested in finding a replacement. Similarly, I could list the reasons why I don’t like using Opera, Safari or IE. I’m sure each and every one of you has a reason for not using a certain browser. It’s not just because I’m stupid, believe it or not.

(Insert a tie-in to religion: you hate it when people try to force your religion on you, but you’ll quite happily try to force your browser on others …)

In the last few weeks I can cite several different occasions when people have made mention of the fact that I use Firefox in a derogatory way. “It’s just a joke, get over yourself,” you say, but when it gets to the stage when people “pity” me for “having to use it”, is it a joke? Is it just a joke at my expense? That seems a little more far-reaching, to me.

Since I started university, coursemates and peers alike have suggested that I’m somehow “inferior” to them because I don’t use an Apple computer, and that people who use Chrome are somehow better than me. It was a massive hit to my self-confidence in the first year, even though it was “just a joke”. I was able to produce websites that were just as good as those who used a Mac and Chrome could, and achieved grades that were just as high, but even so the words stung and I spent most of my second year trying to shake it all off.

Even on unrelated things, people still quip about my use of Firefox. Even when confronted about it, they remain chipper. Just a joke.

I suppose, then, since everyone thinks this is “just a joke”, I shall just stop worrying about it and stop letting it get to me. But it would be nice if I could start mentioning the browser I use without fear of people commenting on it. Perhaps that’s too much to ask, though. After all, people have been trying to get the web ‘verse to be nice to each other for a while.

I’m not entirely sure if that’s the right term for it, but that’s what Richard calls me, and it seems to ring true. I love to touch things. I wasn’t generally the sort of child who was told “look with your eyes, not with your hands”, but I was dreadful for just running my hands along fabrics, surfaces and textures. Richard says he knows where I have been in a clothes shop because there’s a pathway of softly swaying fabric that I’ve touched as I pass. I just love to feel things on my hands. That sounds really creepy when I put it down in this editor, but it’s true. I touch things to feel them.

I think nearly everyone has read Bret Victor’s brief rant on the future of interaction design. For the most part, I’m going to agree with him. I do feel like there’s a push towards “pictures under glass”, and I’m not keen on that at all. It’s nice to know that I’m not the only person out there who feels that way about modern technology. But more than his argument, I resent this trend because I am a kinesthete.

One of the things I miss most sorely about my old Nokia phone is its keypad. Not its shortcuts, or the functionality, or anything like that: I miss the keypad, and the fact I could write a message without even looking at the phone, just by running my thumb over the keys and knowing where I was on the keypad. Now I use an HTC Desire S, and it’s just not the same. The keyboard … well, it works, but I have to look at what I’m typing, there’s no feedback except for a buzz. I don’t know where I am and I can’t feel that I’ve pressed one of the keys. That doesn’t sit right with me. I miss the physical aspect of my old phones.

I could, of course, buy a Blackberry, or an HTC Desire Z like Richard has. Both of those have tactile keyboards, but have you seen the size of those buttons? They’re miniscule, and they’re full QWERTY keyboards. I’ve tried using them but they require two hands and full attention. I liked being able to type a message with one hand while steering a trolley in a supermarket and scanning the shelves for the tomatoes I needed. Multitasking! These new touchscreen phones, though, they require you to have your attention on them at all times. Once upon a time I was able to write a small essay on a phone. No longer. I can barely be bothered to type a short missive, beause the experience doesn’t appeal to me.

That extends to my thoughts and feelings about tablets. Putting aside the fact that I can’t understand why someone would want a tablet (it’s not as powerful as a computer but it’s not as portable as a phone, why does anyone need one?!), there’s nothing to them. They are hunks of metal with a shiny glass screen. There’s nothing for me to touch and nothing to give me feedback. I only like Richard’s Asus Transormer Prime because it came with a keyboard included, rather than an optional extra that you’d have to pay through the nose for (here’s lookin’ at you, Apple iPad). I still don’t like it, and I can’t work out what to do with it apart from playing Solitaire and watching videos of cats on YouTube. But at least there’s some kind of feedback from the keys on the included keyboard.

That’s one of the reasons I think Microsoft’s Surface might work: it has an included keyboard. It’s a bit thin for my tastes, but it’s a step in the right direction for me.

I love my little Stone. It’s served me well. I’ve had it for almost five years.

But then I move on to the fact I don’t like touchpads because there’s no feedback on those, either. I don’t like that they’re just a smooth surface that you run your finger over, and I like having a mouse to actually move around and do clicky stuff with. It feels… well, I’d say more natural, but I suppose that’s not exactly natural. But it feels better to me, because there’s a response, and I know that moving my hand will move the cursor, and I’ll hear the sound of the click when I press a button. It’s not much, but those little moments when I’m interacting with the hardware rather than skimming my finger across a smooth glass surface and hoping for the best. Because seriously, what am I going to get out of that?!

These are the same reasons why I’ve resisted change on so many levels. I don’t like Kindles because I love the weight and feel of a book in my hand. When I’m reading, I often idly flick through the pages of the book with my fingers. I can’t do that with a Kindle. I have a little Creative Zen Stone mp3 player which I use more than anything else, because I like the buttons. I can put it in my pocket and, on the go, click through the fabric of my jeans to change the track. I’ve got a keyboard with half-inch deep keys because I like the sound and feel of the buttons being pressed. I know when I’ve pressed one. I know what’s going to come up on the screen. None of this millimetre-thick stuff that Apple has.

And now there’s a move towards hands-free things altogether. Siri, for example. Dare I suggest how stupid I’d feel standing in the street shouting at a phone to “CALL! HILARY!!” only to discover that my accent is just that little bit wonky and it’s dialling my driving instructor instead? Or how about these televisions that are starting to come out that you tell to “play movie”? What’s the point in that? I can’t even say I like the Kinect that much, because I like the feel of a remote in my hand, the buttons being pressed. That’s why I like the Wii – it combines the remote (err, Wiimote) with movement, rather than taking one out of the equation.

It’s not that I’m resistant to change, I’m just resistant to the changes that are happening. I really like touching things, but with every tech conference the touch is being taken out of the equation. I don’t understand this movement towards hands-free technology, nor the idea that a hunk of metal with a shiny glass screen is a better alternative to physical items. I do understand that a Kindle is easier to transport than a book, and you can get more on it, and that an iPad is a viable alternative to a laptop if you’re only going to take notes on it (…perhaps), but not for me.

In my ideal future, we have hardware that has buttons and proper interactive elemtns rather than glass screens and cold metal backs. I’m not saying “let’s go back to the IBM machines of the ’80s”, but rather “I like what I have now and will continue to use it for as long as possible, or until there is a viable alternative”.

Unfortunately, in a day and age where the general trend is towards things that are lighter, easier to transport and smaller in your hand, I don’t see my ideal future coming about. So, I will do what many people will suggest I do, and continue refusing to buy them. I’ll keep using my desktop machine with the keyboard and mouse and in ten years time I will mess up your analytics data by being the only one on a desktop to visit your site. I look forward to visiting it.

There are a few big things that this redesign brings. Most things are pretty obvious, but I’m still excited about them so I’d like to take a moment to tell you about them. :) However, there are also a lot of bugs crawling around, so I’ll list those afterwards. I’ve spent too long on this design, and I think Stu Robson summed it up quite nicely in a tweet the other day – better to put the site live and have people tell me about the bugs so I’m forced to fix them now rather than putting them off forever! So, first things first, the lovely things.

Lovely things

1. Responsive design
   That’s right! Hoorah! HJ has a responsive layout. Resize your browser! I dare you. It’s been a long time in the making, and I’m pleased to finally have had the chance to put my play-tests to the real test. I’ve had ideas for making the layout responsive ever since I went to a CSS conference in London last year, but I was always too worried about doing anything with them. This time I took the plunge! I don’t think it’s been done particularly well (don’t go snooping at my code please don’t), but for a first try, I’m quite pleased with it.
2. A portfolio
   *gasp!* A portfolio! At last! Where there’s been a link to a portfolio for years, there is now actually a portfolio for you to peruse. It’s mostly full of old illustrations at the moment, and some university work, but I intend to add some of the things that I’ve done on my placement this year and hopefully that’ll make it look a little better. Oh … and it’s going to have links to full sites, too, so you’ll be able to nosey around – I just need to find the files for some of them before I upload them.
3. Nicer typefaces
   Okay this isn’t really a big thing but I’m far happier with the typefaces on here now. Again, still not perfect (still learning…), but I think Adelle and Chaparral Pro are a good choice for the overall look and feel of the site. I hope you think so too. :)
4. HTML5
   And something else I’ve finally taken the plunge with … some basic HTML5 bits and pieces. Just really basic stuff for now, but I’ve used them and I’ve started and that’s the important thing, so I’m happy. The first step is always the hardest, and all that. Hopefully now I’ll be less afraid of using it in the future!

Known bugs

I think it’s important to note that I don’t know about all of the bugs on the site: if you spot something that isn’t listed here, please feel free to add a comment or drop me a line to let me know.

1. Show/hide menu
   At smaller sizes on desktop (i.e. when you resize your browser window), the show/hide menu button disappears entirely after you hide it again. Silly thing.
2. No margin on resize
   Something I thought I’d fixed but apparently haven’t – there’s no body margin when you resize the window/view the site on a mobile device.
3. Colours don’t *quite* match up
   A few things in the footer – such as the links “elsewhere” – aren’t using the same shade of green as the header. I know, that needs sorting out. It’s because of a last-minute change of mind as far as colour scheme goes.
4. Post image headers overlay strangely at smaller sizes
   Yeah need to add a catch for that.
5. Category archives don’t work
   I’m still learning the WordPress stuff. If this were Drupal, I’d be fine, but I’m struggling (strangely) with the WordPress codex. I’ll get to that in the end, though, and any tips that anyone has would be great.
6. Portfolio isn’t quite right
   It stops paging after 6 pages, could do with an extra row of content on larger screens, the images aren’t totally right, and I can’t arrange by category … but again: only just learning WordPress properly, not to mention I’ve never used the Types plugin before this month. It’s all very, very new to me!
7. Meta information doesn’t quite line up
   Yeah I know about this, I thought I had it fixed but apparently I didn’t. That’ll be sorted soon, hopefully.

Anyway … I think that’s it … like I say, any and all feedback is appreciated, whether it’s congratulations or you’re reporting another bug that you’ve found. (And yes, that is some HJ code in the post picture. And yes, that is a note to self that I left in the code.)

I hope you enjoy the new layout as much as I do!

It’s coming up to ten years since I met my best friend, it’s been eleven since I moved to Lincolnshire. Since I turned sixteen, I’ve survived my GCSEs, ploughed through sixth form and done three years of university. Hey, you get the highest ever grade for your GCSE in art & design. How’s that? You pass it with flying colours. All that flapping and panicking you do, it’s worth it, because it stirs you into getting that A* that nobody else in the history of the course at school has achieved. That’s something. For all your worrying about never doing things before anyone else, you manage it. And you manage it beautifully. So don’t worry.

Don’t worry that you wrong Richard. It is cruel and heartless, and he might never let you live it down. But it will happen and it will strengthen your relationship and eventually he will make you happier than anyone else could. Embrace your cruelty, just this once, and see where it gets you. But try not to embrace it too often. People still don’t like it five years down the line.

You’ll make mistakes in sixth form. A lot of them. You’ll distance yourself from friends and sometimes family, and you’ll lose yourself in work and coursework. Your colleagues are your friends: don’t push them away with false barriers. You’ll regret that later. Throw yourself into your coursework, that’s what should be coming first. If only I’d had this letter when I was sixteen, maybe I would have done better.

The two years you spend in sixth form will be the hardest you’ll face for a while. Don’t worry, you come out alive. Really and truly you should  do a bit more work – you are perfectly capable of getting three As and a double distinction. Sorry, kiddo, that means you’re gonna keep on both English and Chemistry. You’re going to be swamped in year 13, but you’ll relish the challenge, I promise. Even if you’ll end up regretting it later, because you didn’t get the grades you hoped for. But you’ll learn, and you’ll improve. Eventually. I’m still working on that learning and improving thing now, but I’ve got the rest of my life ahead of me.

Hey, and here’s a tip: you are not alone. I know it seems like it, but your friends are there for you – they love you just as much as you love them. Don’t use them, but talk to them. Some of them have been there for you since you were twelve. They’ve been through school just the same as you. They are your peers and your confidantes. If you switched off that cruel streak for just a few moments perhaps they’d be more welcoming of you, but I know how hard that can be. Just… try to tone it down a little, ok?

University is a blast. It will be so difficult that first year because people are not like you. But it’s fun, and it’s challenging, and despite what your coursemates will say, it will be useful to you. Every little bit of it is useful. Listen well, and learn from what the lecturers and your peers have to say, because even though they’re the same age as you they are intelligent and their opinions are valid and valuable. But seriously, stop looking down your nose at people.

You know how you’ve spent the last few years thinking that all other sixteen-year-olds are know-it-alls? Yeah, well, you’re going to get like that when you turn nineteen. What’s worse, though, is that you’ll notice it. Just a little heads up for you there. It’s going to be irritating as hell, and you’ll hate it. I guess my advice is to think before you speak, but that’s never been your strong point. Just ask Richard.

I’m 21 now, writing to you from the future or something. It’s amazing to think it’s been five years since I was your age, since my biggest worry was getting up on a Saturday morning for an 8am shift at Iceland. It all pays off, though.

I am a girl, not yet a woman. At 21, you won’t have done anything big. You’ll move to Bristol for university, but that’s about it. You don’t get roaring drunk. You don’t even learn to drive yet. Well, you take some lessons, but you’re more intent on spending your meagre wages from Iceland on lunch, to ease up on the household spending. You don’t ever manage to pull an all-nighter: you just don’t have it in you. Seriously, by the time you hit 21 you will not have done anything of note. You don’t even manage to finish your portfolio website. There is no reason for you to feel high and mighty, because you are not.

You’ll struggle. There are times when you won’t be able to keep your head above the water. These moments are thankfully brief and often (but not always) coincide with deadlines so at least you will be able to plan for them. Don’t try taking sleeping pills, either. Here’s a secret: you’re really stupid and taking a sleeping pill will make you panic about not waking up on time so you’ll stay awake all night anyway. Deal with it. You can function on very little sleep … just.

And here’s a handy heads up for you: for two years after you finish working at Iceland you will wake up in the middle of the night from dreams about being late for work. It’s a real pain in the arse but again: deal with it.

By the time you finish your first week of sixth form you’ll know who your true friends are – they will be your friends for at least the next few years, so hold on to them. They become wonderful people, and their wonderfulness will rub off at least a little bit on you.

So I suppose, past-me, the biggest piece of advice I have to offer to you is this: deal with it. Life will keep going and you have to keep up. Things will come right, one day or another. Hopefully the thirty-year-old in us will one day tell us it’s all good, but I’m not there yet. You’re not at 21 yet, so you don’t know these things for certain, but I am, and I know that things will get at least a little better.

Chin up, 16-year-old me. Chin up, because life doesn’t suck entirely, even if you think it does.

Unfortunately that’s not the case entirely, but it’s getting somewhere. Today I sat down with it again and redid a few bits and pieces and I think I’m getting somewhere with it. If you follow me on Dribbble, then you may have seen some of my progress shots already, but I’d like to go through a few key points that I’ve encountered so far. I’m going to try and keep the blog updated as I finish up the layout, which I am keen to do over the coming weeks – I even have ideas for how my portfolio will finally look …

Anyway, on with the show!

An initial redesign

For the most part I chose to keep things the same – or at least similar – to the current iteration. The body remained set in Chaparral Pro (the same typeface as the site logo), the brown blocky header remained, the content was split from the background … I think the most major change was that I moved the navigation so it was above the content (more accessible, plus it looked much nicer than those silly ribbons), and I chose a different typeface for the headers (Bebas Neue).

For some reason I had it in my head that gradients, text-shadows, box-shadows and so on were the way to go. Coupled with things like rounded borders and soft textures I’m sure that would have looked wonderful, but even then I was leaning towards the new “clean” style of doing things. Gradients are so last year, man. The new up-and-coming thing is clean edges, no gradients except the super-subtle ones. It’s all about keeping edges straight and, well, edgy.

So yes: this was a step in the right direction, and with it came responsive design.

If you click on the image, it’ll take you to the Dribbble shot where there’s a link to the full-sized version.

And that was about where the layout stayed for the next few months … well, kind of. There have been a few small changes here and there – both to this sandbox version and to the site you’re on at the moment. Small things that are designed to make my life easier but are probably not noticeable to any of you.

A second refresh

This morning while at work I was struck with a sudden desire to do some more work to the layout. For the first time I actually applied a grid to it, using a tool called Responsify.it. It took a matter of moments to download the grid and I’ve spent the morning applying it to the layout and playing with the layout a little. This afternoon, while still not finished with the layout, I dribbbled this shot:

Hopefully it’s easy to see what’s changed!

I’m much more pleased with this version. I’ve switched Bebas Neue out for Adelle again, solidified the background and changedt he colour of the navigation bar so that it looks a little less stark. I’m not sure about the background colour – it might need changing a little since it’s so light with such dark shades of brown and green on it, but I’m much happier with this. It’s lighter, airier … it’s fresher, and I think that’s what I need for the summer!

I’m still working on it and things are likely to change, but I’m much happier with this layout. Touch wood I’ll have it up in the next couple of weeks, if all goes according to the non-existant plan I have.

In the meantime, any and all feedback is appreciated. this is all you’re getting for now, but there will be further shots in the future, I’m sure! So keep an eye on my Dribbble account to see what’s going on.

To get that off to a good start, the same disclaimer as before applies, this is intended as a rough guide only, and I make no assurance for how accurate the information is. Modifications such as this to your hardware could damage or destroy it. Apply common sense where necessary and I take no responsibility for any failures resulting from following or not following my instructions. (Worked for me though, so I’m assuming it will for you too.) Secondary disclaimer – soldering irons are hot. Don’t try to eat them.

So before we begin, you’ll likely want the following:

• Same as before: A Pi, an SD card with a bootable OS image, a micro USB to USB cable, a mini USB to USB cable, Putty!
• An FTDI breakout board that lends itself to soldering. (link)
• A soldering iron, and some solder (hurray!)
• A connector which will fit on top of the Pi’s GPIO pins.
• Wire Strippers.
• Something to cut through the connector cables (pliars or wire cutters).

Now that you have yourself once more kitted out, the first thing you’ll have to do if you took the bigger breakout board rather than the Basic 3.3v version from the last post, is ensure you set it up to work with 3.3v, not 5v. In the image below, highlighted on the FTDI breakout is the location you need to add the solder bridge, by melting some solder and connecting the 3.3v jumper (lower in the image) to the middle jumper you can correctly set up the breakout board to operate at that voltage level.

In that image, they haven’t yet been bridged, there needs to be a bridge of conducting material between the two jumpers for it to work. Don’t blow up your board!

The next thing you’ll need is the cable to affix to the GPIO pins on the Pi. If you have an old motherboard or spare computer lying around that you can scavenge parts from, those from the front-panel USB will be perfect for our needs, it should be a cable that looks something like this:

Note that one of the holes on this connector is blocked off, we don’t care about this, so feel free to break it open so that you can fit it cleanly onto your board if you want to. Usuaully these cables have a female connector on both ends, if you cut through it with your wire cutters in the middle, you can re-use the other half for another project.

At this point, you have the end with the connector, and another end with insulated wiring. You can strip off the insulation from the ends of the wires (only as much as you need) to prepare them for being soldered onto the FTDI breakout board. At this point you can also cut away any wires you dont need which would have hung uselessly from your connector. So you should have something like this:

In my picture, by following the information on this page you can see that the wires are connected as follows on the Pi:

• Green – Ground
• White – TX (Transmit)
• Red – RX (Receive)

As before, the TX from the Pi connects to the RX on the FTDI board and the RX on the Pi connects to the TX on the FTDI board, by process of elimination Ground still connects to Ground. Now you can remove your connector from the Pi for easier manipulation during soldering, and begin feeding the stripped ends of the wires into their correct locations on the end of the FTDI breakout board. The result of that effort should be something like this, but with better soldering:

Yeesh, that’s messy – I know. I’m not very dextrous.

Right, now assuming you’ve not crossed any solder trails, and that you’ve correctly bridge the solder to make to board play nice with 3.3v, and assuming you wired up the correct GPIO pins, and that you sacrificed the goat correctly – you should be able to plug the Mini USB cable into your computer, and have it automagically install the driver for the FTDI.

Once that’s done, you can open up Putty, set it to serial mode running at 115200 baud on whatever COM/ttyXXX that the FTDI decided to put itself on, turn off hardware flow control open up the connection and then finally plug in your micro USB. At which point the board shouldn’t explode, but should start spewing out boot information for you to read.

Isn’t that nicer than the previous solution? Yes, of course it is.

Enjoy! :)