Welcome to my new blog that is powered by WordPress. It isn’t exactly new because I’ve moved my content from my previous blog that was hosted on Tumblr. Over the past 6 months, I have felt that my content was growing beyond what Tumblr could provide as I wrote more substantial posts. I was working around the convenience of Tumblr and editing the HTML of my posts to cater to my needs. Thus, the decision to move to a more substantial CMS.
My Minimalist Design
I wanted the design to be focus on the content because one of the reasons that I started this blog was to keep a record of my thoughts and any interesting concepts that I am working on. The content must be highly readable. Thus the large text and lack of visual distractions. There are still many things that I would like to add but I won’t be adding them until it is deemed necessary. I also needed my content to be easily found and search bars aren’t exceptionally useful if you don’t know what you’re looking for. I made the archives for my three categories at the top show a list of the titles of my posts, just a like the table of contents in a book. This will allow me to be able to glance through the posts very quickly and maybe even recall some interesting articles. The design also works really well with mobile devices like the iPhone so please take a look at it.
The Code
I am using this blog as a small experiment to using HTML5 and CSS3. There’s nothing really fancy here yet as the support for HTML5 and CSS3 isn’t too comforting to be used on its own. I’m using @font-face for all the text including the header at the top so that everything appears really sharp especially on Mobile Safari where people tend to zoom in beyond 100%. I have tried using the new HTML5 tags like <header> and <nav> but it didn’t seem to be working well with legacy browsers so I gave that up so that I can launch the new design first. I am still working on implementing legacy support with Modernizer so if it seems weird on your browser, you might want to try upgrading to something newer. I’m also working on the mobile version of the site, the goal is to keep the look consistent but with some optimization for the mobile device.
The Posts
I have moved over all my posts from Tumblr but due to the way Tumblr gets you to write video posts, there isn’t any titles attached to them. I have removed those articles until I can go back and edit them for the archives. There aren’t a huge bunch left so that should be done pretty soon. I’m thinking of filtering out some content to keep to the focus of the blog so don’t be surprised if some content do disappear. I promise that they won’t be awfully important ones. The move over from Tumblr was not easy especially while trying not to break any links as that would hurt my SEO.
Whats To Come
As a preparation for my final year for my degree in Music Technology, I will try and commit to writing more detailed articles about music technology and any interesting projects that I am currently working on. I am also working on some web design projects and I hope to be able to share with all of you. I’ll also be continuing work on improving readability on mobile platforms.
Dropbox for iPhone has just been updated to version 1.2.3. This version brings the highly sought after ability to send content to third party apps. This feature was first present in Dropbox for iPad. Now users are able to send content to another app without using the hack of emailing the file to themselves. This feature depends on the third party apps installed on your iPhone and most users will at least have iBooks installed. This version also fixes the problem of being overly secure with needing the key in your passcode every time you return to the app from multitasking.
The time has come when I’ve outgrown Tumblr no matter how much I love it. It is more accurate to say that my site has outgrown Tumblr. I’ll be moving over to WordPress, self-hosted of course, and I’m already well into developing my WordPress theme.
Some improvements you can expect to see on my new site will be better commenting, I dislike the need to use Discus for commenting on Tumblr as it isn’t the most friendly commenting system. I’ll also have more fully featured articles rather than small posts but do let me know what you would prefer. I will still be keeping my Tumblr so please follow me if you want to keep track of it. Although not in the initial design, it is in my plan to build up a portfolio on the site too. My portfolio is currently scattered across the web and I want to be able to share it better with everyone. Finally, for the web savvy readers, I’m not a fan of Flash so the site will be based on HTML5, CSS3 and jQuery. Who wants a site that can’t be viewed on iOS devices?
I am of course developing a custom theme from scratch on the newly released WordPress 3.0 and have definitely encountered some challenges. Since it is so new and has many changes and new functions, the documentation isn’t too detailed as of yet. It can pose serious challenges to the inexperienced but give it some time and numerous tutorials are bound to appear.
I hope to be able to get it up as soon as possible and features will be added as time goes by. Some might have realized I’ve been posting less because my time is diverted to developing my new site. I hope to be able to get back to blogging soon and I already have some nice articles in mind. Thanks for sticking around.
iTunes Singapore has been expanded with a new podcast section. Previously, Singapore account holders needed to move out of the Singapore to obtain podcasts. This is no longer needed with the new tab in the Singapore store. Looks like the Singapore store isn’t neglected by Apple especially with the country being higher up on the list of countries that Apple ships their new product to. Singapore has been on the third batch of countries for the iPad and the second for the iPhone. Hopefully, Apple will be able to provide us with an iTunes Store complete with music and video content.
Singapore users can finally have use of the iTunes app that comes with your iOS devices like the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. You can browse and download podcasts and iTunes U content.
PlainText is being developed by Hog Bay Software, the same people who created Writeroom for iPhone. PlainText is a new app for reading and writing text files on your iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad. PlainText works with Dropbox to instantly sync your files to your Mac, Windows, and Linux computers.
PlainText also allows you to sort your files into folders which is a missing feature in Simplenote. This helps to keep your files organised in your Dropbox, and is definitely a welcomed feature. I could see myself using PlainText to write articles and posts where it can be easily sorted and then opened in a word processor on my MacBook.
This solves the problem of needing to open an app like Notational Velocity to sync your notes on Simplenote. But does little to solve my problem of needing to open Simplenote on my iPod Touch for my notes to be synced. iOS 4 introduces a lot of changes and new APIs bringing a possibility that apps would be able to perform background syncing soon. Users without a persistent data connection can only hope for that day to come.
PlainText will be free and likely to be ad-supported. There are considerations to have a $0.99 in app purchase to turn off ads. You can subscribe to the blog or follow on twitter for more updates. There is a screencast to explain the features of PlainText in the announcement.
