So, we all know of Ben’s profound love of all things design-y, and all things colourful, and occasionally of his love of random bullshit he’s coded too. Recently this lead to the expulsion of a program written in PHP which would take a given colour, and process the page in that colour. That’s nothing special, I admit - but this one does it slightly differently. In the first version (I’m amongst coding version 2 with a bunch of new/interesting/useful features) it generates random colour strings and applies them to the page on each refresh, and spits out a bunch of data relating to said colour. Here, give it a go yourself. Remember your colour, because it’s going to serve as useful further down the track. And yes, it should be fairly unique - the way I’ve coded it allows for 13,481,034 possible colours (for ease’s sake of not needing to accommodate for random hex values with only a single figure and thus killing the output) every possible colour in the 24-bit RGB gamut is accounted for - all 16,777,216 of them. I changed the way the output code works so now every possible colour is taken care of, not just those with values above 17 on each of the channels).

After hitting refresh a few hundred times and seeing so many wonderful colours, I got to some thinking. What we don’t see a lot of is design with rich palettes and wildly striking colours out of the ordinary, instead, we see the same tired tones over and over. It’s basically almost as if the design handbook for the modern designer stipulates no creativity or creative license in terms of colour. And frankly… it’s depressing. Then it occurred to me: throw it out there, a challenge for the keen designer, to sharpen their teeth and test their metal against a formidable foe - completely random colours. Relying on the random output from this program is perhaps not entirely practical in terms of outputting harmonies (that’s in the works), however, it does force you to think outside the box. And thinking outside of the box in this world is something that has become entirely necessary.

So, here’s the low-down.

• THE IDEA: Design something using this body copy stolen from our good friends at Wikipedia OR COPY OF YOUR CHOICE related to the topics of either colour or design, be it for print or web (if for print, strip out the latent HTML in the provided copy), with the primary colour selection being left down to computational fate.
• THE HOW: Go to the random colour picker 3 times, recording each colour it chooses for you. These colours will serve as the basis for your design, and will serve as prominent figures in terms of your colour selection. Periodically, polls will be ran to let the people decide who has achieved the best results in this exercise, which will see their work featured here, but also on the forthcoming Show Your Colours website.
• THE RULES:
  1. Basis colours for your design must be picked using the random colour picker’s output. Variations (lighter/darker versions of the same colour) of these colours are encouraged, as is the use of black (#000000) and white (#FFFFFF) to assist in harmonising the selections.
  2. Colours outside of your selections are allowed, however the three primaries must be exactly that - your primary colours. Any deviation from this is not allowed, and quite simply, undermines the entire point of this exercise.
  3. The body copy is encouraged to be used as the primary copy for your design. If you wish you may omit as much of this copy as needed, however, it needs to be included in some form or other. Also, changing the order of the copy is permitted so long as it conforms to the rest of the stipulations in this rule. Failing this, including your own copy - so long as it is relevant to the task - is acceptable. Please ensure it includes textual hierarchy if possible.
  4. If you choose to do web design, table-less layouts utilising valid CSS and XHTML are highly encouraged. This helps in keeping things standardised, as well as really just makes the web a better place to be. That, and you’ll know in your heart that you’re one of the good guys helping to forge towards a more standard web environment.
  5. You may use a maximum of 3 typefaces. I cannot stress this point enough. The overuse of different typefaces is an absolutely horrible habit and anybody caught in the midst of it should head back to Design 101.
  6. You may base your layout as heavily on images as required, as long as they conform to the colour standards pointed out in rules #1 and #2.
  7. You may include your own images, so long as they serve some practical or beneficial purpose to the theme of this - colour. If they don’t, don’t include them.
  8. You may submit as many different designs as you wish based on as many different colour trios as you wish, in fact, this practice is highly encouraged.
  9. For each design you produce, post a comment here stating the three colours you got, as well as a link to your design.
  10. Following the rules of design you learned in school is vital. It kind of defeats the purpose of the entire thing if we can’t follow at least some of the things our teachers tried to hammer into our heads.
  11. Non-designers are encouraged to participate. If you fall into this category, add “I am a non-designer” into your submission. At the end of it all I’m going to tabulate all the data for designers-vs.-non-designers and present it in a unique way. Watch for it.

And that’s about the long and short of it. Get cracking guys, I’m eager to see what you can produce!

The beautiful thing about CSS is that it has such an ability to radically change the appearance of the markup that drives it with only a few minor changes. Sometimes these changes can be radical, other times they can be subtle - improvements if you will. That’s been the aim for me over the last few days since this redesign, to bring this right up to par for a public site. While I’m not quite over that tempest yet, I’ve come a long way in the last couple of days since I made it public. I’ve not had the chance to fully test in a full myriad of browsers yet (Firefox 2.0.13/Windows, Opera 9.27/Windows, Safari 3.1/Windows, Internet Explorer 7/Windows), BUT over the next couple of days I’m hoping to get hold of a Mac system and having Linux reinstalled on my main workstation to fully test it. As of now there’s a few bugs I’m aware of and pondering a fix for:

• IE7/Windows: Menu dropdown pads improperly and obscures some other main menu items. This can be averted by moving the cursor off of the menu item and into the whitespace. Currently investigating methods to serve different browsers different content without relying on oldschool (ie: BAD, BAD, BAD) “browser sniffing”.
• IE7/Windows: Currently displays unordered lists waaaaaaaaay out of proper alignment thanks to IE’s lack of <ul> indentation. Again, will most likely be remedied using dynamic stylesheets.
• IE7/Windows: Some comment styles aren’t working properly and causing padding/etc to display obscurely, and sometimes making div elements extend beyond their need to do so.
• Safari 3.1/Windows: Currently displaying header navigation dropdowns improperly, causing some second-tier links to become inaccessible.
• Safari 3.1/Windows: “Font smoothing” built into Safari on Windows causes some copy text to become obscured, investigating a workaround to make text darker for Safari.
• Opera 9.27/Windows: Currently displays some unordered lists outside of where they are meant to align. Considering going over the CSS files to find the culprit rule.
• All: Some gravatar images are displaying wonky and not showing up properly positioned.
• All: Comment boxes are crushing and losing alignment at resolutions below 1024×768.
• All: CSS file is disorganised and bloated, needs to be optimised and served on a dynamic basis.

Today brought on a bunch of minor touches that I can almost guarantee you’d've not noticed, hell, I only did them hours ago and I have forgotten a bunch of them already. On the list of things I fixed today, here’s a few that are in effect as we speak:

• Fixed some header funk that was going crazy and making the site unnavigable.
• Fixed some other general navigation issues, such as there not being previous page links on the main page.
• Readded the Archives page and fixed some minor issues with it.
• Readded the Links page back to the subnavigation.
• Fixed the display for function pages (404, Search, etc) to work with this stylesheet (a lot of this codebase is taken directly from my typophile project, as can be seen by the similarity on comment forms…)
• Fixed some general float clearing problems.
• Cleaned up my CSS file to make it a faster load and less cluttered (that one is mostly for me).
• Fixed some of the comment form issues allowing it to read better (especially blockquotes).
• Readded some of the driving javascript to enable functionality like comment quoting.
• Fixed the Contact Form so it doesn’t look like a bunch of barf that fell out of a dog’s mouth.
• Made it validate to both XHTML 1.0 Transitional and CSS 2.1 standards, soon to include valid XML feeds with XLST styling.

And let’s not forget what’s on the list of things to do:

• Styleswitcher! PHP-based dynamic styles has been a part of my site since I first started working with PHP back in 2004, so it’s only sensible I keep that functionality. I’m planning on implementing degradable AJAX-fronted PHP (yes, I know it’s a buzzword, but it’s pretty useful for the dynamic web) with a wide range of colour/font/size/contrast options.
• Fix the bloody header navigation so it works across the board.
• Make searching the site easier accessible, once more using degradable AJAX.
• Add some general dynamic/clientside trickery to make the stay better, while still providing a first-class user experience for those incapable of running it.
• Integrate it further with the myriad of other sites I own so this functions as a hub, not just an autonomous unit.
• Some other general trickery to make it go from “cow” to “wow”, and bring it up to speed with the wonderful Wordpress 2.5 platform it’s running on…

Expect more changes to come. I want this to serve me as a study in beauty, which may take some time…

Yeah, so I let it get a little redundant. And yeah, I let it go to waste for months on end and essentially belied my previous sentiments suggesting I was going to avoid my blogs falling into disrepair. And yeah, I really didn’t feel like saying much for the longest time. That stuck in my side a lot, because it was a burden - the things I loved about programming and coding and designing and writing had fallen by the wayside and basically ended up in the scrapheap never to be used or thought about. It’s a shame, because all of it has such a special place in my heart, it reminds me of a different time in my life when I was perhaps more naive, but still satisfied because I was making things. I was making computers do stuff that I told it to, and to me that was pretty mindblowing shit. You sit down and labour over something for 10, 20, 50, 100, more hours on something to get it just how you want it - and that’s literally labouring, none of this pussy-arse half-hearted commitment to a job bullshit - and it’s beautiful. I think I got it back a little bit while I was in Chicago, seeing so much beauty and being genuinely happy and elated and overjoyed with life and its limitless possibilities basically guaranteed I’d come back home refreshed - a task which it did exceedingly well. While I was there I rediscovered a love of cooking, and indeed, that I can actually cook. I also discovered that with a little push I can draw realism. And that I can take photos. Basically - I came back with a wealth of things I learned I could do, or that I refound my ability to do or metamorphisised how I did it. This design here, entitled Chicago in honour of what it signifies, is a natural progression of one of those rediscoveries - a combination of all of those loves - that in turn became http://anycolouryoulike.info/illinoise/, and eventually, evolved into this right here. I love designing with purpose.

This time around, I’ve opted to go for a lighter style. Sure, the fixed layout worked for me for a while, but eventually it just got to the point of tedium. This time I felt it necessary to use a single column because it naturally places emphasis on the writing - the last time ’round everything was far too heavily link-based and put more preference on people leaving than actually staying. I felt compelled to complete remove all the pages and have it as a single page - that could possibly have worked, and may still in the future - but for now, I’ve kept it all able to be accessed. And yes, it was a fucking nightmare trying to code that dropdown menu, because as much as I love CSS, it’s so wonderfully inhibited in so very many ways. I’m pondering making it a fixed menu that activates when you’re actually on a subpage which was my original intention.. even if it wasn’t Wordpress’ intention. And that, my friends, is the biggest problem with using someone else’s code to drive yours, no matter how much you try it will always work how they want it to, and not always how you want. Just as soon as I get it worked out, then I’ll do it. I’ve also tried to keep it all as capable of degrading as possible, sticking to my roots as a standards nazi from those years ago prior to me purchasing my domain (that’s 4 years ago, folks). That’ll get better over the next little while as I refine and recapture the vibe, I’ve not properly undertaken a reasonably in-depth project with Wordpress and CSS since I designed typophile which is just shy of 12 months ago. Basically, since then I’ve not touched CSS, or any kind of code for that matter, mostly due to having no time and/or no will for it. I have a feeling this will change shortly.

But, welcome, or welcome back - enjoy the festivities. Peace out, internet.

[Listen to blogcast of "We Now Return You To Your Regularly Scheduled Program"]

So… back into the realm of blogging. S’been a while, but thems the breaks I guess. Part of the reason for such a long departure from doing it every day as I once was is because quite simply… I didn’t feel like writing anything. I kind of got burned out on it after forcing myself to, every day over the course of the year after I broke up with Erin… kind of a personal therapy if you will. It just got to the point of tedium and I didn’t like that aspect - everything I was putting here, everything I had in my mind to output was becoming stale and quite simply unenticing to continue. The other big part of it was because I simply didn’t have the time to justify writing stuff that was overall boring and not all that important on the hierarchy of life priorities. Between work and everything going on at home, there just wasn’t enough hours in the day. But - I’ve decided I’m gonna start using this thing frequently again - in conjunction with a few other projects I’ve got on the boil. Basically, in terms of web I’ve got the following:

• newklear.org - this website. The format will be slightly changed, and I’ll be (hopefully) refreshing the interface sometime in the near future as time permits. Think something that just smacks of me and you’ll be somewhere on the trail of what I’m aiming for
• goodbyebluesky.info/cogito - semi-regular home of music reviews and all things of that nature. Because, obviously, I review music a fair bit, even if I don’t actually write it down. Hooray for nerdom!
• anycolouryoulike.info/typo - as many of you already know, this is my design blog. Hasn’t been updated in a while because frankly I haven’t been around much design lately… but we’ll see how it goes. I’ll be chronicling my development of the interface for the parent domain (anycolouryoulike.info) over the next little while as I make progress. Because progress is awesome and everyone likes to know the inside workings of things that’re out of the ordinary.
• anycolouryoulike.info - My personal portfolio that I’ll be unveiling… sometime…? I dunno. It’s a little while off yet - the backend system that drives the interface is gonna take a fair bit of coding and perfecting before I go live with it. Think minimalism - with a twist.
• photo.benjaminalldridge.info - Place where photos go! I’m gonna make a photoblog branch of it shortly, allowing me to post the highlights of what I shoot with my Canon EOS 20D. It’s what I’ve always wanted to do - just never had the money for a film scanner or even film. So now, digital has the technology!

And that’s about the highlghts of my web presence for now. As for other junk - like real world junk - the impending jump across the creek is coming at a mindbogglingly fast pace, like scarily. But at any rate, it’ll be a good time. At least I hope so. Everyone says I’m gonna get shot or some shit… I guess it’s probably highly likely given some of the outlandish shit I come out with that’d be easily able to offend most people in the general vicinity. Especially angry Mexicans and Negroids. Everyone loves those! Except George W. Bush, as Kanye West correctly identified.

Speaking of Kanye - his new album is unspeakably shit - don’t waste your time buying it. Or even downloading it if that’s your style. It’ll make you weep. … actually in hindsight, that’s pretty similar to Late Registration too I guess. Can’t win ‘em all, eh?

OH! Other stuff and nonesense includes me looking to acquire a rather large Marine aquarium - stocked with various Clownfish (Amphiprion ocellaris, Premnas biaculeatus, Amphiprion percul, and Amphiprion frenatus), a few Butterflyfish (I’m yet to decide what kinds), and a few corals. It’ll be interesting to see what my first foray into Marine aquaculture goes like. Untohere I’ve been pretty successful with my freshwater ventures - but it can sadly only give so much enjoyment without spending the same sorts of figures you’re looking at to go salty anyway. I’ll be sure to take some photos of it. In time.

Anywhom, I’m out. Welcome back to the party, people. Things are just starting to get interesting.

By the way - here - have a photo:

Look! It’s a beer!

Big dawg, out.

Wow, it’s been a bit of a while, hasn’t it? Why? Because, to be completely honest, I’ve been too exhausted lately to really write much. I’ve been working basically full-time hours, combined with not sleeping too well and taking care of a bunch of other stuff. So, combined together, it’s meant complete silence from me. Makes sense eh?

In the meantime, I went apeshit and bought a bunch of stuff. In fact, part of that is why it’s been so long. See, one morning before work I accidentally bumped one of the power leads on my computer while putting my work boots on. What did it lead to? It lead to the computer being a goner. Gone. Finito. Suffice to say, I was kind of shitting myself at the prospect of $1500+ to get something reasonable, but through a few contacts and some looking around I managed to get a decent system together for under a grand. By “decent”, I mean the following:

• Athlon64 X2 4600+ (2.4GHz) OC’d to 2512MHz stable
• ASUStek M2N4-SLI
• Palit GeForce 8600GT 256MB PCI-e OC’d to 650MHz (core) & 800MHz (memory)
• 3GB Corsair DDR2-4200
• ASUStek SATA 18x LightScribe DVD-RAM
• Western Digital SATA-II 320GB 16MB cache

When I only had a gig of RAM in it and it was running stock speeds without the dual core patch, I was at around 6,000 on PCMark06. So when I test it now, I should be looking at rather bigger numbers. Sometime soon. Mostly I’ve just been dedicating my CPU cycles to Folding@home, what I consider to be a really good cause. You should sign up for it too if you’ve not already, the progress they’ve already made is incredible.

To boot, although I’ve not really been doing much art lately, I’ve embarked on a few projects. One of them is repainting my guitar, completely by hand. Thus far I’ve stripped and refinished the body and scratchplate, fixed some wiring and mated it to a Behringer X V-Amp unit (I’ve already got an Akai D1 Shred-O-Matic and a BOSS CE-3), sounds pretty damn good. I’ll wait ’til the entire setup is finished before I am completely decided on it.

On a totally different tangent, I’m now the proud owner of the following:

Yep. Decided to get myself another camera to shoot with, so I got a [relatively] cheap Canon EOS 30 body with an undisclosed USM lens, and a Canon EF F/1.8 50mm MkII lens. I figure I’ve got 3 lenses now so I’ve got a bit to choose from, especially the 50mm which I’ve heard nothing but praise for. Admittedly my EF f/4.5-5.6 35mm-105mm won’t be a whole lot of use for most applications now because I prefer to shoot faster stuff, but it’s still there if I need it. So, expect to see photos. Maybe I’ll even set up a photoblog on one of my newly acquired domains? (The list is now newklear.org, somethingnothing.net, anycolouryoulike.info, drenigmatic.info, goodbyebluesky.info, eponymousfunk.info, heyyouyeahyou.info [the most likely one I'll use], and of course the eponymous benjaminalldridge.info) I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

Oh well internet. Until next time, peace out and shiz.