I’m not sure what the intention was here, my thoughts were that it could be a monthly or yearly thing?  But i get the impression others maybe thinking weekly? Anyway it seems like a cool idea.

When’s it happening?

TOMORROW!! (12th August 2009)

Who’s recycling?

Mark tagged the following people in and I guess we’ll see if they partake:

• @dirkthecow (website)
• @servantofchaos (website)
• @juliancole (website)
• @jyesmith (website)
• @scott_drummond (website)

Of course, you know you can take part too, post below with a comment if you’re going to join in and let’s see where this goes to.

So heres the deal, Woopra is Live analytics for web site, just like google analytics all you do is add a javascript code. Then while i sit here with my Woopra desktop client open on my computer (this is the first win), i see you hitting the websites i have registered, i see it all while it’s happening and i see where you came from. Theres something weird about this, it creates a strange sensation for the developer of a website, the power of knowing someone is on your site RIGHT NOW!

I find i lose or disregard alot of the data that is in google analytics, purely because of the fact i go and “check it” and filter through it all. In Woopra i find myself rarely checking and just leaving it open on a screen at times to watch, due to this i find i’m noticing things about the websites i’ve not been paying attention too that REALLY need some attention.

In it’s current incarnation Woopra doesn’t seem to be doing alot more than Google Analytics, but that’s ok because they’re doing some of it better and talking about the future features. Some extras that make it that little bit better:

• Visitor Tagging – obviously in all analytics programs each user is ‘unique’ so that they can see the difference between unique hits and page views. Woopra takes it one step further allowing you to Tag certain users. Of course i’m tagging repeat customers so i can see what they’re doing..why wouldn’t i? It’d be nice if woopra allowed me to add a default link on the tag so say if i wrote the tag as “
• Live Geographical Overview – The kind of thing you push to displays and put around the office to watch
• API’s for data access – Whats that i can build my own shiney live geographical overview using my data from your servers? take that google! (and weeks after i wrote this, google released their data api)

So there you have it, my first impressions of Woopra. I’ll be posting more again on Woopra as they get the current version out of Release Candidate. If you want to check out Woopra head over to their website to check out more.

• Visual Assault – Captured Part 2
• The Landscaper – Issue 2, Page 2

The first comic that came to be was The Landscaper, this is a comic that deals with a very prevelant issue in todays society, the fact that people at a certain age are totally untouchable by the law.  Hopefully the comics’ way of handling this is a bit different from how it would be handled in reality.

The second comic is Visual Assault, which kind of came about as an accident.  The story behind Visual Assault is one of waring factions of eyes, competing to control the territory known as F.A.C.E.  Alot of the journey to and from work is usually spent by Chris and I discussing far-out stupid ideas, sometimes we bring them to life in the form of Visual Assault.

The two comics differ completely in style and thats probably why we’re both so comfortable moving between them.  The Landscaper is a graphic novel with a big storyline and a really rigid structure with humour as a small addition, where as Visual Assault is a panel-by-panel comic, with a small storyline, a very loose structure and is all about the humour.

Anyway, check out our comics and if you’re totally into them, we’ve created Facebook applications for both which you can see using the links below.  If you’re having trouble adding our applications, try using the NEW facebook, you may aswell get used to it now because over the next few months it WILL become the default.

• The Landscaper Facebook Application
• Visual Assault Facebook Application

As a short side-note for other Comicpress publishers checking out our comics, i’ve been working on a facebook application that integrates the comicpress system into facebook via a wordpress plugin.  If you’re interested in seeing this, drop me a line.

The basic idea is that santa’s sled is tired and outdated, so it’s about time it got customised into the 21st century, so go over and check it out and feel free to drop some feedback in the comments here. Also, if you’re a facebook user, you can become a fan of Pimp My Sled by joining our fan page here.

Merry Christmas everyone

http://perthworst.wordpress.com

Some things are going to be a bit broken for a few days or look odd while i fix them, but it generally works and behaves ok. I’ve designed and coded this one from start to finish on my own, based upon kubrick (tried to keep the same css where i could).

I’ve drawn a bit of influence and layout ideas from a few of my favourite 3 column designs, two of which are Grid Focus by 5thirtyone.com and the design at Mark’s Digital Farm. The reason i drew from these themes so much is that i love the way they manage to present everything they have in a nice, clean, stylish manner.

So in a current project i’m working i saw this problem becoming ever increasing as i got to 5 and 6 javascript files being imported into my code in the header tag. One of their solutions was to put some at end of the file if you can, this will only increase the PERCEIVED load time, the script still has to load, just later down the page.

They also talked about how multiple requests and other EXTERNAL requests would invoke more DNS lookups and therefore, impact on the performance. This can be seen at it’s worse with google adwords and google analytics lookups sometimes taking forever to respond. However, at my end of the problem, just the fact i had to load 6 scripts was making a small indent in the page load time, i could see the short freeze at th start of the page while it sucked down all those files.

Surely 1 big file, containing all this stuff would be better than 6 files each with their own, right? (*shrug* maybe i’m wrong). So, a short php script:

< ?php// Base directory for importing (absolute local path)
$root = "/var/www/html/";
// Scripts array contains just 1 value, a string pointing to the location
// of your file in reference to $root
$scripts[0] = "includes/js/blah.js";
$scripts[1] = "includes/js/test.js";
$scripts[2] = "includes/js/test2.js";
foreach($scripts as $script) {
 $f = file($root.$script);
 foreach($f as $line) {
 	print($line);
 }
}
?>

Basically, you add all your js files to the array $Scripts and it steps over and prints them all out line by line. Did the short wait go away? Yes! Did the page load times improve? Yes, marginally, but it did improve.

A big nod in the direction of sumo for a job well done, freckle also for taking out some more awards this year. Some awards i was a little shocked to see go in certain directions, but thats the way the cookie crumbles. Congratulations to all the winners, but beware next year, for all awards are belong to us.

Whoever that MC was, he’s great, bring him back every year. Whoever kept keeping us well under the influence, big round of applause to you and to my taxi driver home, sorry we made so much noise.

Sumo Group cleaned up finalist placings this year, totally owning the Corporate category, did no one else submit anything to this category or something? Also having one finalist in medium business and one in small business. Good for sumo, their work is one of the few companies on there i’d give an award to.

Freckle Creative also rounded up a few more entries after totally dominating last year, they’re probably set to take some awards this year also. Pat on the back to the crew at Freckle for another great job this year.

Ok.. I’m start by saying that yes i had something to do with an entry in the E-commerce category, so you can make up your own mind whether my thoughts are biased, but they’re not. The finalists in here really strike a nerve with me, MLC is not what i’d consider an “ecommerce site” so they have an order page, great but e-commerce is NOT the primary function of the site, allowing this entry into this category comes down to loose category descriptions.

Moments of Colour Design was another entry into the e-commerce category, i seriously can’t see how this can even come close to making a finalist over my own entry, at least MLC looked, felt and behaved better than my entry, i feel the same cannot be said for Moments of Colour Design.

PADC Creative Hub was the final finalist amongst the E-commerce category and to be honest, how is this in ANYWAY an e-commerce site. So they sell access to the site? how is THAT an e-commerce site, once again, loose category descriptions allowed a site that isnt really e-commerce to finalise in a category it shouldn’t have (in my opinion).

Online advertising is another weak category where alot of the finalists just seem like they were chosen purely because they were the best choice from a small group of entrants. All 3 look and feel nasty and the only one remotely a finalist in my oppinion is open offices.

I have one final nitpick, and i’m going to apologise to all the people who’s blogs im about to knock. I’m guessing once again it was a weak submission category as nearly every finalist was a wordpress blog running a very slightly modified theme. Gary’s man-with-no-blog has header changes and colour adjustments from its original theme, Myles is running the blue moonlight theme and I’m not entirely sure of the book one, Here Yesterday, if its a theme someone else created, but at least its something different. Next Year, i’d like to see the personal category be only websites/templates you have created, using wordpress is fine, but when you’re winning an award for someone else’s template, that’s just wrong.

So in short i think the web awards this year is a bit of a let down and i really hope it’s better next year, you may say im biased due to the fact i was involved with multiple entries in small business category, an entry or 2 in medium business and an entry in e-commerce. But to that i say, whatever!, I’m sitting back and looking objectively at each site and i really think the people of WA are capable of far better than we’re seeing.