CodeMason's blog

Latest Project: The Milestone

CodeMason — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 16:37:21 +0000

It’s been a while since my last blog update, hasn’t it? Well, It’s certainly been an interesting couple of months. I spilled coffee on my laptop, and it packed in. I managed to dry it out and it was useable again, but then my desktop hard drive burned out, and I lost a LOT of photos and music. Then my motherboard died. The moral of this story is BACK UP YOUR DATA MORE OFTEN.

Anyway, to the point in hand. I’ve just finished the first phase of my latest project – A triplet of websites for The Milestone restaurant in Sheffield. This included a re-branding of slavetothevine.com (for now, just a couple of font/header/stylesheet changes), a visual overhaul of their existing website, and a new website advertising their mobile cookery service. The websites were built based on PSDs provided by Cream Creative. I haven’t added screenshots to the portfolio yet as I am still hard at work with several other things, but they are to come. A sample screenshot, complete with link, is below.

Landing page for the latest project.

One more thing; The Milestone are going to be appearing on Ramsay’s Best Restaurant on Channel 4 on Tuesday 5th October at 9pm. I’ve never built a website for something on TV before, so I’m mildly excited to see the results. Let’s hope I get some more work my way as a result!

In other unrelated news, I intend to start looking into HTML5 and CSS3 in greater detail this week. Everyone should be keeping up to date with the latest technologies, after all.

That’s all from me for now, but please check back soon!

CodeMason has a facebook page!

CodeMason — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 16:50:56 +0000

Fellow facebook users can now “Like” CodeMason (Formerly “Become a fan”) to receive occasional updates about new projects or special offers, or leave feedback on any work I’ve done.

Click Here to go to the facebook page.

For those of you who haven’t noticed the feed in the bottom right, I’m also on twitter.

Click here to follow me on twitter.

Website updates

CodeMason — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 17:58:03 +0000

It’s been a busy few weeks for me, and I haven’t really had the time to come back to look at my own website. Still, I have two more websites done and another two in development to add to my portfolio, and a little bit of time to update CodeMason.

Slave to the Vine - An online wine shop soon to be added to my portfolio

First off, you can expect the collaborations from the home page to migrate to a page of their own (aptly entitled ‘links’), and the landing page should be a little more visually captivating. It was only my intention to have the resume-style text in for a short period until I created a better landing page, but what with one thing and another it appears to have lasted much longer than anticipated. This site (with the exception of the blog) is built using Zend Framework, so with a bit of model work i should be able to add a few things to show off. I was considering adding a mailing list, but at the present moment in time I fear it would be surplus to requirements, so I’ll stick with my WordPress Blog for now.

Grainger - A website for an electrical/mechanical contractor, also to go into my portfolio.

Personal Development

CodeMason — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 19:59:16 +0000

Well, I have one more project to finish off and then I’m going to start looking into personal development until I get something else. I have the afore mentioned Android applications to look into, but also I’m going to start work on a forum using PHP and Javascript. I might even give ajax a look in and see if I can’t have a Facebook-style auto-update feature for the discussion threads. It’ll be like a hybrid chat-room/forum, which could work quite well I think. More updates on that when I start the development process though!

Android

CodeMason — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 18:14:47 +0000

I have the HTC Hero, which runs Google’s Android OS. Theres a lot of applications coming out for it recently so I’ve decided to look into programming my own applications for it. It was introduced to me by a colleague, and it looks fairly easy to grasp, so why not? Everybody wants apps, right? I haven’t looked into iPhone apps yet, but I don’t have an iPhone and don’t intend to get one, so it’s currently pretty far down my priorities.

It may look a bit like a 1974 TV remote with the buttons removed, but its a great little device.

Wordpress, Widgets and Work.

CodeMason — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 16:31:38 +0000

Okay so a clunky start to begin with, but hey, it was the first time I’d ever touched it. Things seem to be in order now though, I’ve customised my sidebar widgets, added a Twitter feed, and made a few updates to my stylesheet.

As far as work goes, I have a couple of small jobs winging their way into my inbox as I type, so that should keep me busy for a couple of days at least, although not too busy I hope, I’ve got plans tomorrow!

The portfolio page will be receiving an update within the next week with some additional screenshots of SIMON and an additional project as well.

I’ll be publicising this site on a wider scale over the next week or so as well (as soon as my “About” page looks a bit snazzier and gets a bit of a text rework!), so I want everybody to spread the word!

That’s all I have for today, but more to come soon. Maybe.

CodeMason’s new blog

CodeMason — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 16:50:36 +0000

Well this is my first Wordpress installation and I have to say, its easier than I anticipated. Having said that, I wouldn’t expect many updates in the near future as this was a technology test more than anything else, and I don’t have an awful lot to blog about.