Hello, I'm Darren - Blog

Bash process genocide

I am not a Linux newbie, but neither am I an expert. So, I sometimes tend to come across some really cool stuff and I just have to share.

Bash Shortcuts For Maximum Productivity

It may or may not surprise you to know that the bash shell has a very rich array of convenient shortcuts that can make your life, working with the command line, a whole lot easier.

Installing Django and MySQL in OSX

Everytime I get a new mac or reinstall the OS, I fear the process of getting Django and MySQL running nicely together. Fortunately, i've found it's pretty easy!

At The Controls

The wonderful cockpit images created by Smithsonian photographers Eric Long and Mark Avino gave visitors an up-close-and-personal sense of just what the cockpit looks like in each of these craft.

What a difference a decade can make

This is a pretty impressive reminder of just how far technology has moved on through the last decade. Amazing.

The worlds tallest treehouse

Welcome to the Minister?s House in Crossville, Tennessee! The largest tree house in the world, the Minister?s House measures over 97 feet tall and uses 6 Oak trees as pillars to support the structure.

Inside the Braun SK6

I have a real love for the work of Dieter Rams, and came across something today that fascinated me. The internals of a Braun SK6.

A brief introduction to SVN

I worked for years without any form of versioning system in place, and got by just fine. After working with SVN for over a year now I honestly don't know what I did without it. Here are the basics to get you started.

Start a quick web server from any directory in OSX

Sometimes I need to share files quickly with a colleague or friend. This is a really quick and easy way to set up a quick http server to serve any directory in OSX.

Fairtrade Fortnight

As you might well be aware, it is Fairtrade Fortnight. To celebrate the occasion, iPlatform were commissioned to build an awesome Facebook application for Fairtrade. Introducing Fairtrade Showoff!

Reverting the Twitter icon back to black

Personally, I am not a fan of the new Twitter blue icon (the 2D or 3D one). If you're in the same boat as me, here's how to revert back to the old icon.

Facebook Places on the map

Not too long ago, Facebook introduced their new checkin service Facebook Places. I have been using it a little bit and was pretty surprised to find that there was no feature that displayed your checkin locations on a map.

My obsession with backing up

My obsession with backing up (and why you should be obsessed too). Let me ask you a question that frequently runs through my head. If your computer was destroyed in a fire, would your data be safe?

Apple iPhone 4 bumper thoughts

This morning, my free Apple bumper case dropped on my doorstep. I just wanted to take a couple of minutes to write up my initial thoughts of the case.

Apple making Multi-Touch Magic

It's likely the first move by a major manufacturer to push finger controls for screen manipulation on a desktop computer, and while most desktop users probably aren't ready to ditch their mouse entirely, it will be interesting to see what develops, and if the idea of using a trackpad rather than a mouse takes hold. As I am sure you gathered, one will be dropping on my door step in the next couple of days.

My Apple family

My apple family is growing to be pretty large!

Apple iPhone 4 Wallpaper

With the new retina display in the iPhone 4, I seem to be struggling to find wallpapers that are at the new resolution. I figured it would be quicker to create my own, and wanted to share it with you.

CSS 2.1 and CSS 3 Help Cheat Sheets

Two useful cheat sheets that will help you quickly look up the right CSS 2.1-property or an obscure CSS 3 property. The style sheets contain most important properties, explanations and keywords for each property

CSS3 Curved Corners

CSS3 is the latest craze at the moment. This series of tutorials will show you some of the powers of CSS3 and how to use them in your next development project.

A better way to grab your tweets

While Twitter provide JavaScript 'badges' to show your latest tweets, it it sluggish and what happens if a user has JavaScript disabled?

Display your unread gmail count using PHP

Using imap_open, you can display your unread email count from your googlemail (or any pop/imap server). I used it for my status board, and it works a treat.

Featured App: Listy ToDo

Yesterday I was rolling out some updates to Listy ToDo, a small and simple web based to do list. I use it for everything these days so wanted to share it with you in the hope it will help you too!

My status board, inspired by panic

So, maybe this is a bit off topic but it is so cool, I had to share it anyway. Yesterday, I built my own status board (inspired by this: http://www.panic.com/blog/2010/03/the-panic-status-board/)

Applying Mathematics To Web Design

?Mathematics is beautiful.? This may sound absurd to people who wince at numbers and equations. But some of the most beautiful things in nature and our universe exhibit mathematical properties, from the smallest seashell to the biggest whirlpool galaxies.

Dieter Rams 10 Design Principles

As head of design at Braun, the German consumer electronics manufacturer, Rams emerged as one of the most influential industrial designers of the late 20th century by defining an elegant, legible, yet rigorous visual language for its products.

Optimise your images for the web

Image optimisation is something that is quite commonly overlooked by designers and developers alike. Image optimisation can make or break a site, if the site doesn't load quickly then your visitors will leave. There are also financial benefits as an optimised image uses less disk space and less bandwidth to download.

A primer for creating valid, strict XHTML

At its foundation, XHTML is simply HTML refactored in an XML framework. This post discusses the rules that this refactoring requires all valid XHTML documents to abide by.

Planning your Stylesheets

The idea of organising your stylesheet is actually very simple, and there are many ways of doing so, but I find the following is the best practice.

10 awesome apps for web designers

There are a lot of these posts around, but I usually find that I find a few useful apps when reading them that I never would have discovered otherwise. There are also a lot of alternatives to each of these apps, so why don't you share what's in your dock?

Create a simple login form using PHP

A quick tutorial on creating a basic PHP login form.

LAMP install on Ubuntu Server

In this guide I will show you how to install a LAMP system. LAMP stands for Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP. The guide is intended to help those who have very little knowledge of using Linux.

Add a favicon to your site

We love to interact using the internet and like to favorite things we find to visit again later using a website?s favicon ico file which is represented by their personalized favicon. Look through some web pages and you will see how many websites lack a favicon ico. When a page does not have a favicon there will be a little blank page where the favicon should be. This tutorial shows you how easy it is to add one to your site.