Alistair Robinson's Blog Web design & development alistair.robinson@gmail.com Twitter vcard 07825 303 002
13
Jan 10

The Magical MODx ManagerManager Plugin

My first MODx-powered website went live today (Pinnacle Telecom Group plc), and my intention now is to share some of my experiences. From a development point of view MODx is so flexible that there are several ways of doing most things, so if like me you constantly fret about your architecture and constantly refactor your [...]

14
Dec 09

FoxyCart: Replacing A Cart Item

function add_pre_process() {
    //Find the id of the existing registration in the cart, if it does exist
    $.each(fc_json.products, function(key, product) {
        if(product.name=="Registration") {
            // Do the remove request, with parameter quantity=0
            $.ajax({
                async: [...]

10
Dec 09

Web Development Frameworks: Developing For vs. Developing With

I’ve been hunting for a web development framework for a few months. Back in the summer I was immersed in CSS and javascript, just sticking with my tried and tested server-side techniques. Using the TinyButStrong (TBS) template class I could put together a highly organized dynamic website pretty quickly. In retrospect it seems that I’d [...]

04
Dec 09

I Undressed Her by Mistake

Freud’s Psychopathology of Everyday Life reads a lot like today’s popular science books. In particular it reminds me of Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks, with its conversational style.
Much of the pleasure is the spectacle of all these Viennese doctors revelling in the exciting new theories of psychoanalysis, sharing their little anecdotes. Writing about inadvertent actions and [...]

03
Dec 09

Chemicals and Complexes

As I wrote in the last post, I’m a tangle of complexes. Why didn’t I know this before? Lately I’ve been examining how my own self-awareness has changed over the years. I suppose you could call this self-awareness-awareness.
For years I would sometimes have bad moods of a particular kind, and during those moods my thoughts [...]

02
Dec 09

Web Development and Chopping Garlic

For this post it was a toss-up between:
1. My observations on Freud’s Psychopathology of Everyday Life (boiling down to my realization that I’m a tangle of complexes, but also that I’m actually doing alright and won’t be running to an analyst any time soon)
2. A vague and geeky ramble over the broken, scarred and unstable [...]

14
Nov 09

New Work

This is a taster of what’s to come in a few weeks. I’m building this website, for the Scottish Golf Heritage Festival, with an array of incredibly useful components and features: I’m using the MODx content management system, FoxyCart for an integrated shop and registration process, and a wealth of snazzy (I’m certain I can [...]

13
Nov 09

The Black Sheep Blog and More Ted Hughes

I am the black sheep of my flock,
I stand alone at field’s edge.
Out here my waking hours I spend,
Chewing a hole in the hedge.
I am the outcast of this flock.
When you are gathered together,
I spend my days tied up by a rope,
Seeking an end to my tether.
Black sheep, baa baa baa
etc.
I’m reminded of these lines, [...]

30
Aug 09

The Black Page Part II

Just over a year ago I published a post about my experience learning a difficult piece of music, I Sleep At Waking by Ian Wilson, for solo saxophone, which has lots and lots of notes. Well, the good news is that I’ve made progress: I’ve memorized it and I can play it through, after a [...]

11
Aug 09

A Paradigmatic Project: Building a Flickr Gallery with PHP, jCarousel and Lytebox

Don’t re-invent the wheel. That’s a motto that every good programmer and web developer lives by. If we’re being creative or original it’s usually in knowing which components and scripts to combine, amongst all those that have been created by other people; and in knowing how each of those components can be tweaked and configured [...]