tatey.com

Every website on the internet use the same fonts. Infact, they’re the same fonts we’ve been using since Microsoft released it’s “Core fonts for the web” in the mid 1990’s. If you’re a designer, and you’ve ever wanted to use a particular font. Too bad, you can’t; there’s no way to ensure that users will have your desired font installed. Thankfully you can degrade gracefully. However, the original style that the designer intended is lost.

Opera is apparently implementing support for “Web fonts” in an upcoming version of its browser. As apart of CSS3, designers and developers will be able to specify downloadable fonts in their stylesheets which will reside in the browser’s cache. This opens many possibilities!

Unfortunately, I’m concerned that it may be abused. How do you prevent someone from choosing an awful, illegible font on their web page? Interestingly enough, other concerns include the distribution of fonts under their many licences and support from other browsers.

Clagnut’s blog has more information on the upcoming web fonts.

It’s official. I’ve registered “Bottlebrush Web & IT Solutions” as my business name with the Queensland Office of Fair Trading. In addition, I’ve purchased the domain name “bottlebrush.net.au” which was approved earlier this afternoon and now contains a temporary web site. Tomorrow I’m going to see if I can get business cards printed, and what options are available to me.

I’ve reached a point in my life where I’m not exactly sure where I want to take it. It’s like driving along a street, and reaching a T-Intersection. You can’t continue along, you need to make a choice and either go one direction or the other. To date, I have completed about 50% of my Commerce degree at uni. After barely completing last semester, I’ve decided to put my degree on hold for six months, and explore alternate options.

For the past five or six years, I’ve been experimenting and learning web site and graphic design. I’m familiar with XHTML/CSS and Adobe Photoshop. I’ve always thought it may be possible to derive a sustainable income from providing web solutions to small and local businesses. However, I’ve never taken the idea seriously enough to make anything of it… until recently. My family and friends are well aware of my capabilities and have often encouraged me to embark on this route.

Last Tuesday, an employee from my father’s company informed me that somebody he knew was in need a website for their new organisation. Contemplating the idea, I felt that it may be time to take this option seriously. I contacted the organisation, and managed to arrange for a face-to-face consultation. I figured this would be the most appropriate method for deriving information. After all, I’m providing them a solution that is customized for their organisation. This is very important.

After speaking with the organisation and hanging up the phone, I immediately realised I had nothing “Professional” to wear. Typically, I’m a jeans and t-shirt person, and on special occasions I’ll wear a collared shirt with a nicer pair of jeans. I’ve never had the justification to wear leather shoes, or a nice pair of trousers. Now with this potential new client, I did have the justification. I slapped on some clothes, and visited the local shopping centre.

I already owned a nice collared shirt, which I took to the professional dry-cleaners to have it steam-pressed. I can iron, but long sleeved collared shirts are very difficult to get perfect. Next, I got a long-needed hair trim before finally searching for a nice pair of trousers and shoes. After spending about an hour looking around, I finally came across a nice pair of black, pin-stripped trousers that were around $60. Furthermore, I had to get them altered, as they were a tad too long. This was an additional $16. In total, my new trousers cost $76. Lastly, I required a nice pair of leather shoes. After visiting several shoe stores, I discovered a pair that I was happy with. They were black, glossy and I picked them up for $65 from $130.

The end result.

In addition, one of my mates recently returned from overseas, and picked me up a very nice looking Amarini watch. It’s probably not genuine, but it looks great Cheers Riz.

In late December of 2006 I switched from GNOME to Openbox, a lightweight and extensible Window Manager (WM). I wasn’t satisfied with many of the existing themes for Openbox, and created my own. I’ve been using it for about one month now, and I feel it’s time to share it with the rest of the world.

You’ll need to grab two theme files, one is for Openbox and the other for GTK. In addition, you’ll also require the Murrine-GTK-Engine. If you’re using Arch Linux, a package is already available in the community repository under “gtk-engines-murrine”. Other distribution users should look here for more information.

Darkness for Openbox
MurrinaDarkness for GTK2

If you’re seeking a greyish GTK theme for the GNOME/Xfce desktop, also consider MurrinaDarkness.

You may also consider browsing my Openbox configuration files such as menu.xml and rc.xml, which you can locate here.

I was browsing my gallery, repairing some permissions and I decided to click the “Powered by Simple PHP Gallery” link at the bottom of the page. Low and behold, the domain name has obviously expired and is now available for auction. Anyhow, I noticed that site was rather pretty so I checked the source code. To my amazement it was using divs and CSS. It even included a proper doctype. Spam sites conform to w3c, why can’t everyone else?