The randomiser makes it way to number 7 after a little break, and it’s web designer and developer Sam Brown who joins in those all ready randomised.

Random email interview number 7 – Sam Brown

With lucky numbers 23, 5, 3, 13, 18, 16, 21, 11, 10 and 2.
Lets get started!

First things first describe yourself in a tweet – 140 characters – Go!
Sam Brown is a freelance interface designer and web standards developer from Edinburgh Scotland who is passionate about great code & design.

1. (Question 23) – Which celebrity do you most look like?

(added by Chris Spooner)

According to my friends, Eminem. Thus I turned up to our annual New Year fancy dress party sporting a grey cotton tracksuit, red baseball cap, bandanna and some bling. I’m trying my hardest to keep the photos under wraps!

2. (Question 5) – Are you a sports fan and who do you follow/support?

I’m a big Formula 1 fan and have a particular fancy for McLaren but I’m not religious about supporting the team – I just genuinely love the sport. Really looking forward to the forthcoming season. I also enjoy Champions League Football and International Rugby.

3. (Question 3) – Who’s your favourite movie star?

Probably someone like Denzel Washington, he has starred in a lot of movies that I have really enjoyed. I like a vast array of movie genres, picking a single movie star is rather difficult.

4. (Question 13) – What are the best presents you’ve ever given and received?

My Dad bought me my first MacBook Pro which was easily the best I have received, I like giving people presents that involve activities such as helicopter rides or a an abseiling adventure – one of those I’d imagine.

5. (Question 18) – What is your favourite book?

Not sure I have one to be honest, I tend to buy books and read them once. Actually, to tell the truth, I tend to buy books just to stock my bookshelves – I rarely find the time to read them.

6. (Question 16) – If there was a film of your life who should play you?

Matt Damon, but not Bourne Matt, more like Good Will Hunting Matt.

7.(Question 21) – When you were little who was your favourite super hero and why? (added by Jacob Gube)

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and I have absolutely no idea why! I was a little obsessed with them for a few years.

8. (Question 11) – What’s the longest you’ve ever been without a shower?

Only a few days, but it was rather unpleasant. We checked out of our Vegas hotel room in the morning – spent the day on the strip in the blazing heat before leaving Las Vegas in the evening but due to bad weather over New York we had to land in Philadelphia where we spent the night sleeping at the airport. We then flew the 15 minute flight from Philly to JFK the next morning and our flight back to Edinburgh didn’t leave until 2200, so we got the train into NYC and spent the day in the summer heat before flying the 6 hours back to the UK. All in all it was a solid 2 days in the same clothes and without a shower!

9. (Question 10) – If you had an elephant where would you hide it?

Probably at Tim Van Damme’s House.

10. (Question 2) – Where are you from and what’s the best thing about it?

Edinburgh, Scotland and easily the city itself particularly the old town.

And the all important final question – what question do you want to add to the question bank? Do you have a vice or bad habit, what is it and do you wish you could change it?

A big thank you to Sam for taking part you can catch up with him at his blog http://sam.brown.tc or on Twitter @sambrown

Being rather busy I completely forgot to post the link to this last week, but I wrote an article for the great tutorial site NetTuts about CSS3 transitions.

It is a introduction for those who haven’t used the transitions before and goes on to a little more advanced usage within CSS3 animations – so go check it out at http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/html-css-techniques/css-fundametals-css-3-transitions/

As you may have noticed about a week ago I gave the blog a spring clean and changed to a new theme I’ve been working on for a little while. I’ve felt for a while that the old site was rushed out a little back in October when I wasn’t 100% sure what was going to be the main focus on here and only a few months down the line I wanted a refresh for various reasons.
Using the great WordPress theme test drive plugin I worked away in the background with the site live putting together my new theme.

So what’s changed?

The Layout

I’ve shifted the main blog column over to the left for, well no real reason I just did. I’ve also tidied the pages up in areas I thought it was looking a little messy, the blog post footer for example and I’ve added an accordion on to the pingback section so these are hidden by default and people don’t have to scroll through them to get to the comment form.
The addition of a border on the comments hopefully indicates comment replies quite well and I’ve kept the grey background on admin comments.

Fonts

I’ve been really pleased with using TypeKit so far so I quickly got to work with it and changed a few fonts, the headings over most of the site are now in the great Museo Slab, a popular font which I’m sure will be popping up all over the place soon enough. I’ve also been quite cautious about the use of @fontface for body text but I had a little play around and decided to use it opting for FF meta web pro.

Links

I also changed the link styling, it’s something I often struggle with trying to decide how far to go away from standard text underline styling but I’m happen with the effect of a background and changed colour text which also uses -webkit-transitions for browser that support them.
The change to a solid background is becoming starting to get quite widespread usage and I spent a while fiddling with the hover states on here. Once I was happy with them I took a step back and realised they are quite similar to the mouse over effects on Sam Brown’s site and I hope he sees it as creative inspiration on his part more than anything else!

Portfolio

The main reason for changing the header and footer to their new top and bottom strip styles was to accommodate some changes with my portfolio. I do like the idea of having a bit of variety in posts etc on a blog but I often post small thoughts and snippets that wouldn’t get done if I had to style then up everytime. However I saw my portfolio as an opportunity to inject a bit of the projects style onto the page. I’m hoping that as time goes on I can have a bit more fun with the elements of a project when it comes to adding them to the portfolio.

Things still to do

The code has mostly been changed over to HTML5 however there are a few bits still outstanding and in need of change so they need to be looked at. There are also a few little details to take care of and the footer still looks rubbish, just a collection of lists so I need to get around to sorting that out. The tweetme button needs to be added to some pages but that will be done via the manual code and the main portfolio overview page also needs changing, but no doubt once I get around to doing all that I’ll be all ready for a brand new look all together!

Me and @aarmitage had a little discussion about screen resolution in the office the other day and it’s kind of left me thinking – are we ever going to consistently design websites for screens larger then 1024×768 pixels?

Conventional wisdom as we progressed from 800×600 to 1024×768 was that as bigger screens became affordable and PC usage more common place home users would eventually gravitate to a 1920px width screen and so on so forth. However whilst all your designer mates might have large 1920px screens most home PCs are still 1024×768 and as such web designs are generally fitted to a 960px width to sit comfortably on this size screen. Add into the mix the growth of mobile internet and the announcement of the iPad and we’ve come full circle and are right back designing for smaller screens than ever.

So whilst you may design for designers on larger monitors and we will still have to consider where our background goes beyond the 1024px width will we ever find that a commonplace width for client sites or have we reached our widest “normal” width with our 960px wide site?
Will the transition of internet access from the desktop simply mean that we design more fluid sites and mobile alternatives instead, whilst still sticking to conventional widths?

Hello there everybody, so we enter the 6th edition of wonderful random questions asked to anyone I can badger into answering. This time it is Sneh Roy the creative force behind Little Box of Ideas.

Random email interview number 6 – Sneh Roy

With lucky numbers 16, 18, 13, 25, 10, 3, 12, 17, 21 and 23.
Lets get started!

First things first describe yourself in a tweet – 140 characters – Go!

Designer, Wife, Mum, Cook, Simple, Compulsive Creator of Wacky Worlds and Characters, Fun, Funny, Coffee Chugger, Nutty, Laughs Loud, Cries Hard!

1. (Question 16) If there was a film of your life who should play you?

Drew Barrymore? Coz she is sweet, fun and quirky on screen.

2. (Question 18) – What is your favourite book?

The Harry Potter Series .. all of them. I have read each book at least 6 times.  Out of the seven if I had to absolutely pick one, it would be Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire.

3. (Question  13) – What are the best presents you’ve given and received?

Oh boy! I love to give! The best present I’ve given would probably be a 3D train cake I toiled over for 13 hours for my son’s 4th birthday. He wanted one! And it was so worth the effort hearing his squeals of joy when it was ready! One of the best presents I’ve received was on my 5th anniversary. Nick sent me on a treasure hunt with clues, letters and small presents hidden along the way till I reached the grand prize of a spa treatment. There was even a CD I had to play to figure out a clue and I had so much fun playing this game that was unexpectedly sprung on me ?

4. (Question  25) – Who was your first kiss, in what circumstances? (added by Bruce Lawson)

My first kiss was Nicky [my husband and best friend of 15 years]. It was on our first date, we were 18.

5. (Question  10) – If you had an elephant where would you hide it?

In my gym bag! You will not believe it but it has a blackhole and can seriously fit an entire elephant in it. Then when I was too tired to walk back from the gym, I’d pull him out of the bag and ride him with splendour, like a Maharajah all the way home!!

6. (Question  3) – Who’s your favourite movie star?

I am a huge Denzel Washington and Leonardo DiCaprio fan! Those guys are so versatile and they make every single movie they act in, worth watching!

7. (Question 12) – What couldn’t you live without?

My Family and Internet, in that order.

8. (Question 17) – Can you play any musical instruments? If you can’t, what would you like to play?

I experimented with the guitar when I was younger and although I can’t play a single tune right now, I think I might like to play the guitar.

9. (Question 21) – When you were little who was your favourite super hero and why? (added by Jacob Gube)

Superman!! Coz he was noble and strong and he could fly. I remember tying a soft blanket around my neck and jumping off beds, short trees and reasonably safe heights watching the blankie flutter behind me, willing myself to fly! Plus the red and blue has to be the coolest color combination ever. And don’t even get me started on the Superman crest logo *drools* and the whole mystery surrounding his transformation from Clark Kent to Man Of Steel *sighs*

10. (Question 23 ) – Which celebrity do you most look like? (added by Chris Spooner)

This is a tough one. No one has ever told me that I look like any celebrity. So I went to Myheritage.com and ran a few photos of mine through their software. It was a blast. Some celebrity look-alikes that popped up a number of times were Ashley Tisdale, Alicia Silverstone, Rachel McAdams, Vanessa Marcil, Rachel Stevens and even Billy Crystal! Lol.

And the all important final question – what question do you want to add to the question bank?

You know how sometimes you get a tune you don’t really care for, stuck in your head and you can’t get rid of it and it drives you nuts, what tune is that??

A huge thanks to Sneh, you can keep track of her on her blog Little Box of Ideas where you will find her doing the crazy task of creating a new vector character everyday of 2010!

Following on from an article on here a while ago I’ve written a post for Six Revisions focusing on getting more our of you analytics package so head on over to Six Revision for a read of Unleashing the Power of Website Analytics, you never know you might learn something.

(My RSS reader on a good day)

Recently I’ve been a bit disappointed by a number of articles. They’ve promised me the world and they’ve delivered nothing short of disappointment and badly re-hashed content. But why should I have expected anything? – Because the title of these articles promised so much.
I know blog titles are written to pull in readers, the way we digest the content through twitter and RSS feeds means that titles are written to get people onto the site and add another eyeball to the all important visitor count.

Sure I know titles like “Win that client pitch everytime” are over the top because if they worked everyone would win every pitch and we’d all get no where. However I still expect something from the article, something that says wow or makes me think “oh yeah” at least a little bit as much as the title but sadly so many articles fall short of the bar they set themselves.
An article that disappoints damages a sites credibility and it gives people a negative impression of the writer and first impressions are hard to shake.

But why does it matter? Well great content leads to return visitors, great content gets tweeted around, great content gets bookmarked, great content gets applauded, great content is… well, it’s great.

So bloggers of the web it’s up to you, you can strike a balance, write honest blog titles and your content will either pleasantly surprise people or be just as dull as the honest title you’ve written

…

Or

…

Just write great content! Content that speaks for itself in a much better way than any title you could have given to it.

I implore you all, please try and do the latter and I will try to do so myself.

So the randomiser continues to randomise and it just seems to get better – this week I hassle Opera web evangelist Bruce Lawson.
So what are you waiting for? Read on!

Random email interview number 5 – Bruce Lawson

With lucky numbers 5, 8, 9, 22, 3, 2, 6, 4, 20 and 16
Lets get started!
First things first describe yourself in a tweet – 140 characters – Go!

Passionate about communication. Poetry-reading, music-loving,
itchy-footed, kickboxing husband and father. Lover of crap jokes. Short.
Ugly.

On with the answering!

1.(Question 5) – Are you a sports fan and who do you follow/support?

Not really. I took up kickboxing when I hit 40 as good food, middle-age
and stopping smoking had caused me to expand, and because having lived in Thailand for 4 years, I’d become interested in the sport. I suppose I support my daughter, as she does it too and is much better than me (she has medals and trophies)

2.(Question 8 ) – What’s the best holiday you’ve ever been on?

Last Xmas when we went to my inlaws right up in Northern Thailand was pretty good. I had cow placenta soup for breakfast on Xmas day (not as nice as it sounds: making of video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcV0cBjSTTA) and I cooked roast dinner for 28 over and open fire and 2 gas rings.

3.(Question 9) – What’s your favourite album?

“Loveless” by My Bloody Valentine. A perfect record. It spoiled the 1990s for me by coming out in 1991 and being best album of the decade.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DEnwUAzPG4

4.(Question 22) – If you had to ‘become’ any application for the day on
your Mac or PC, which would you be and why? And what would you spend the day doing? (added by Grace Smith)

I’d be a browser. It’s all I really use my computer for (well, I listen to
mp3s as well). I’d spend the day just marvelling at the world’s photos,
bad poetry, music and and thoughts. The idea that I can access a whole planet of information and communication from my home was sci-fi only 15 years ago and it still knocks me out.

5.(Question 3) – Who’s your favourite movie star?

Anyone in Some Like It Hot. And Konnie Huq, http://konniehuq.blogspot.com/ who’s a TV presenter not a movie star, and she’s a favourite for completely non-artistic reasons.

6.(Question 2) – Where are you from and what’s the best thing about it?

I’m from Birmingham in the UK. It’s where the industrial revolution began. Because of this, it’s not beautiful but it’s industrious, with a sense of humour and a lack of pretension. (I rather hope the same description can be used about me!). Unfortunately, the local accent is mocked by the rest of the UK; it’s shorthand for dim-witted and naive. When I was a teenager, I wanted to be an actor and was advised to lose my accent. I took elocution lessons, and feel a little bit like I turned my back on my roots.

7.(Question 6) – What’s your favourite TV series?

I’m a mug for Lost. Even though Konnie Huq isn’t in it.

8.(Question 4) – What was the first computer you owned?

A no-name PC which I bought in 2001 when I returned to the UK. But I
learned in 1980 when the school got a Challenger C2 http://oldcomputers.net/osi-600.html from the USA. It has Microsoft Basic, 8K ROM and 8K RAM. I wrote some great games on it.

9.(Question 20) – What’s your drink of choice?

Day time: black coffee, Turkish tea. night: Guinness, Laphroaig whisky.
Make it a double, please.

10.(Question 16 ) – If there was a film of your life who should play you?

Patrick Lauke (www.splintered.co.uk) as people always mistake us for each other.

And the all important final question – what question do you want to add to the question bank?

Who was your first kiss, in what circumstances?

(I still remember mine: My first ever girlfriend Samantha Brown,
Birmingham, 1978 (aged 12).)

And so the question bank continues to grow and thanks to Bruce for a great interview – should I ever bump into Konnie Huq I will put in a good word for you .
You can catch up with Bruce on twitter @brucel or on his personal site at http://www.brucelawson.co.uk/ and if you get chance to watch him speak anywhere (like here http://speaktheweb.org/) I would recommend going along and buying him a Guinness.

OK so it’s not 100% new, it is an old site that I’ve finally got around to breathing a new lease of life into. Still it enabled me to have a play with some things – CSS3 transforms and transitions, typekit and some nice drop caps. I’ve kept it all nice and simple as it will be a mostly text based site.
Let me know what you think

(I’ll be adding a tutorial here about CSS3 transforms and transitions so add the RSS feed to your reader so you don’t miss out!)