Happy new year to everyone!  I’m testing out a new feature to the blog that lets me say when posts should become visible (I hadn’t bothered building that into this until now).  I hope you’re looking forward to an exciting 2007!

Yeah this pushes the definition of noteworthy, but this is just a quick note. I’ve made several small but important changes to the site. Most of them will appear cosmetic (for example, the footer is shortened). I’ve also added cookies to remember the name, email and website you entered if you left a comment, so you don’t need to re-enter that every time you want to comment (thanks Jason for the suggestion). I’ve also streamlined the approval process and added some additional spam comment protection. You should generally find now that comments are approved very quickly (often instantly).

Thanks to everyone who’s been contributing. I really appreciate it.

Over the last little while, I've documented how this site is changing. I thought I had arrived at a pretty stable look, but if you are a keen observer, you may notice that the the hanging robot on the side of my site has changed. How do you start a blog post about a robotic chimp that's hanging out on your site? It's hard, but I wanted to chronicle the evolution of the hanging robot, and see if I couldn't find him a name.

This story starts with an innocent email from a good friend and colleague (and skilled artist), Cliff. He wrote ...love the new look, but hate that hanging robot on the side.

Well, this humble blog started as a standard Wordpress install. I quickly moved to the Hemmingway theme, but then thought that my site lacked any of my personality. So I set about to rebuild it. My first attempt was chronicled on this blog. My intentions were to make it available as a Wordpress theme for anyone to download.

Well, the time has come to properly do this site. Until now I've been using a Wordpress theme that I hacked together in an afternoon and named "Kill All Humans", but it never quite felt right. There were so many little things here and there, CSS inconsistencies, etc. So what I've decided to do is rebuild my site in Code Igniter, and chronicle the whole process in short (maybe 10 minute) videos.

The first step is re-building the XHTML to be like I want it to be. Below you'll find the XHTML/CSS building blocks of the new derekallard.com.

So we've folded over 3500 points, and the number of active folders is growing every day! Keep it up all!

You can visit the Code Igniter Folding Team page to learn more about folding, or for instructions on joining us.

The video tutorial I created for Code Igniter has been graciously linked to off the Code Igniter Videos page, and credit was given. Excellent, thanks Rick!

Staying up to date in the field of web-design is a really tough job. One of the best ways to stay on top of the game is to read… a lot. Here are some of the sites I make frequent visits to:

Update: I've stopped all development of the Wordpress theme. This blog is now powered by a custom built Code Igniter application, so the theme just wouldn't work anyhow. ;)

The theme used on DerekAllard.com is a custom build Wordpress theme that I’ve called “Kill All Humans”. It features beatiful original artwork from Simon Oxley (used with permission) and on the fly flash replacement.

More about this theme will be posted here as it evolves, including the source files for the flash if you wanted to implement it yourself.

Update: OK, I give. Commenting will now be available on most posts. (November 13, 2006)

What the?!? Where can I leave comments on DerekAllard.com? It is a blog right? You bet, but I’ve decided to disable comments by default, and here’s why…Actually, Jeremy Keith pretty much summed it up perfectly on his blog. For me, the added effort of moderating, filtering and responding to comments just doesn’t make sense here. Let me stress that. It doesn’t make sense for this blog. I’m not saying that they never make sense, but the goals of this blog are:

• keeping friends and colleagues updated on what I’m doing
• tracking the development of BambooInvoice
• a place for me to write about internet technologies

None of those goals are really served by enabling comments. So if you want to reach me, please by all means do, I love getting feedback - but you won’t be able to do it via comments.