"What? You Read? Books? You mean programming books, right? No?"

Personally, I find that there's a simple joy from curling up on the sofa with a good read and so am always on the lookout for recommendations on books to read. However, as someone reminded me recently, you have to give to receive and so, here's a list of the books I've read so far in 2007.

The Book Thief

It was probably the gorgeous looking cover that first grabbed my attention, and the idea of Death as the companionable narrator that helped pull me in but it was the charming and lyrical writing that really won me over. The Book Thief recounts the story of Liesel, a 9 year old girl growing up in the midst of a world war. Struggling to survive the darkness of Nazi Germany, she's comforted by being taught both words and kindness by her foster father. Indeed, it's a love of words which not only leads her to become the eponymous book thief but also indirectly leads her to the humanity that lies behind a war-torn nation. Playful at times (especially, Death's narration), tragic in others but always moving. A lovely and recommended read.

The Secret History

Where The Book Thief takes a complex setting and retells it with innocence and gentle simplicity, The Secret History is almost the opposite; taking the setting of an arts college, Donna Tartt explores how obsession and emotion intertwine and culminate in a modern Greek tragedy. Narrated in the first person and in hindsight, it tells the story of how a student finds himself accepted in a group of reclusive Classics students, an act which begins with acceptance and friendship before the inevitable tragedy of human emotion leads to an accidental murder and the eventual emotional breakdown of the group. Whilst the complex but well-written story is lovely to read, it does over-steep itself in melodrama at times; nonetheless, it's an beguiling and suspenseful read.

The Complete Calvin and Hobbes collection

This probably doesn't quite qualify as a book but I love Calvin and Hobbes too much to care:) If you haven't read Calvin and Hobbes, then you owe it to yourself to take a look. And if you do, then you probably don't need me telling you twice…

The Shadow of the Wind

When a father takes his son to a library of rare books and gives him the choice of any book, it leads a young boy into a tale of intrigue, murder and doomed love. After Daniel Sempere chooses a book by an unknown and supposedly unrenowned author, he finds him the centre of attention by a mysterious stranger and the tragic circumstances behind the author of the "Shadow of the Wind".

Whilst a fairly enjoyable read, the Shadow of the Wind reminds me of a Dan Brown novel, not only in the way it fashions murky intrigue but also in it's single-faceted characterisations. However, in the same way that The Da Vinci Code didn't overly suffer from the weak writing, the (writing) flaws aren't necessarily fatal for Carlos Ruiz Zafon novel. It's a pleasurable enough read but more one to borrow than to buy.

Anansi Boys

I loved Neil Gaiman's American Gods, and whilst Anansi Boys is less epic and more comical, it's an equally delightful read. The main protagonist is Fat Charlie, an ordinary guy with an ordinary life who has finds his life suddenly become more than ordinary when his dad, the trickster Anansi, dies. Gaiman's dark humour shines through in what is a modern fairy tale of family love and self-acceptance. Anansi Boys does take a while to get going but it soon becomes a page-turner.

Moneyball

Being british, I have to confess that Baseball is both a sport which strikes little interest in me. However, I was a fan of Lewis' Liar's Poker and the favourable writeups of Money Ball across the web were enough to convince me to give this a go. Telling the story of how the Oakland Athletics, a poor underdog in the moneyrich world of Baseball, and how their canny manager exploited the Baseball market bias and weaknesses in drafting players to beat teams with many times the bankroll. As with Liar's Poker, it's Lewis' engaging writing that help make Moneyball a good read even for non-baseball fans.

Why Don't Penguins' Feet Freeze?

I like trivia and I like collecting trivia which is why, back when I did Physics in college, the back pages were the main reason for me reading the New Scientist. If you've read any of the New Scientist "Last Word" books before, you'll know what to expect. Everyday questions are answered for the layman. You'll either find it a pointless read or, if you're like me, a fun way to wile away the time.

Empress Orchid

I decided to pick this up after I saw both my sister and a friend reading this. Empress Orchid is the story of the mother of China's Last Emperor and her struggles in the court of Imperial China. Whilst I enjoy books set around historical eras, I found myself struggling as Orchid did with her endeavours in the forbidden palace. The narrow confines of the experience, the one-dimensional characters and the difficulty in empathising with any of the protagonists meant that I can't really say that I enjoyed the read. It does pick up slightly towards the end of the novel, but it's still not a book that I would personally recommend. That said, my sister enjoyed it so YMMV.

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive

Jared's previous book (Guns, germs and steel) was a brilliant look into some possible explanations for the rise of Western Civilisation. Exploring Easter Island, Viking Greenland and the Maya, Jared takes a brave stab at the other side of the coin by attempting to look into possible reasons why certain societies fall and perish. However, whilst Guns, Germs and Steel managed to succeed with well thought out reasoning backed by case study, Collapse is less successful. In examining specific circumstances and societies, it does a decent enough job but it's in trying to extrapolate and weave these explanations where it falls short. Whether it's due to the small sample set or the narrative, the analysis feels neither substantive nor authoritative to be truly convincing. Collapse is a well written read which works best as a collection of lessons and case-studies into failed societies; however, it perhaps would have been better if it constrained it's ambitions a bit more.

Over to you

Looking back, that does seem to have been a relatively busy couple of months of reading ¹. Whilst I'm generally a fast reader, even when I was young², this was more due to having obtained a few books courtesy of Christmas, being without home internet access for most of this year and having a lazy new year:)

However, you can never have too many books to read so going back to the reason for this post; what books are you reading and what books would you recommend?

1. It's actually a bit worse than even the above list suggests as there's a few books I left out because they were part of a series or because I haven't finished them ("The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana" which I don't like so far and thus, probably won't finish and "Never Let Me Go" which I do and probably will). Now, if only bookstores ran loyalty card schemes… [back]
2. As an amusing aside, I remember a time during Infants or maybe Junior school when we had reading periods. I'd finished reading the book that I was given and got up to ask the teacher if I could have another one. The teacher, looking at her watch and the rest of the class still making their way through their books, didn't believe I could have finished and proceeded to quiz me all about the book. Despite answering all her questions correctly, I don't think she was entirely convinced on that occasion though she did give me another book to read [back]

It's for this reason that it isn't surprising that we build up a large amount of brand loyalty to our favoured tools². The knowledge capital investment that goes into using these tools means that we're significantly more productive using them than without. To be more scientific, things just "feel right" when using our preferred tools³.

That said, being serious about our jobs, we're willing to explore and take a look at what else is out there and occasionally we uncover gems that allow us to put down our own polished treasures. One such gem is MacRabbit's CSS Edit, a new version of which was released earlier this month.

Enter CSS Edit

The idea of a "CSS editor" is a strange one; surely, a general text editor ala Textmate or Editplus would be enough. But to apply such blanket dismissals would be to say that a hammer is the only tool that you'll need. Far from being a limiting or marketing feature, by focusing on a specific application, CSSEdit turns into a must-have tool in a developer's toolkit.

Live previews

1. Edit
2. Save
3. Upload
4. Refresh
5. Rinse
6. Repeat

This particular workflow is all too familiar to web developers. Automatic FTP uploads (cf. Transmit) or working on local files can help mitigate the process by getting rid of task 3, but a fair amount of a developers day does seem to be taken up by mechanical processing.

Hence, CSSEdit's live preview is a wonderful boon. If you've used the live-editing feature of Chris Pederick's excellent web developer FF extension, you'll have some idea of the usefulness of the feature.

Make a small change to the colour of hyperlinks in your css file⁴; this is instantly reflected in the preview window. The preview window uses Webkit as it's underlying rendering engine so you're seeing how the page will look in Safari.

Even better is that you can use your css file as an override for any file/url. This is easy to overlook so I'll say it again. You can override or edit the css for any page without making changes to that given page's markup.

Want to edit your WP theme's css but don't want to make a local/temp copy? All you have to do is click the "Add URL" and "Style Sheets" buttons. You can even pull down a copy of the active CSS stylesheets for that url into your workspace and start working off that. You can see how your CSS looks across all your pages (home page, comments page, blog posts, etc) without writing out markup for each of those pages.

Note that this isn't WYSIWYG but WYSIWYW. You're still in control as you're editing your css file by hand but some of the unnecessary roadblocks are removed.

X-Ray

Even if you use semantic classnames, and logical markup, there are times where you want to check how a particular element is marked up. Instead of viewing the source, you can just click on the X-Ray button and then click on the element that you want to inspect.

Once again, this isn't groundbreakingly new (for example, the FF users with the Firebug extension will be used to this feature as will Xylescope users) but it's refreshing to see it built in. It's yet another testament to the benefit of a focused app.

Rules pane

By focusing purely on editing CSS, CSSEdit is able to add organisational enhancement aimed at making life easier. One simple but important example of one is the styles pane. This provides a convenient grouped index of your CSS rules.

Rather handily, the items representing each of these rules visually represent what the rules look like (e.g. colour, background, type) making it easy to look for and access a particular definition. In addition, you can use the search-box as a filter to make looking for that elusive class that much easier.

Milestones

Every developer will know the benefit of versioning. The ability to "rollback" to a given stable version is an important life-saver to anyone working with code. CSSEdit introduces milestones, which you can use to represent saved states.

It's rather like Photoshop's snapshot system by giving you piece of mind unobtrusively and without difficulty. Now you can proceed to experiment without fear of breaking or losing that working version⁵.

Closing off

Rather than go through all the features, I've just given a tour through some of the ones which I think are particularly handy. There's also your usual editor features such as code formatting and intellisense but what I like about the app is that it does one job, namely edit css, but does it extremely well. It's not perfect and there are some things that I miss (code folding is one) or have no need for (for example, the properties pane and css validation features are all but unused) but all in all, I love it.

The greatest praise that I have for it is that whilst I'd still use Textmate as my general purpose editor, CSS Edit is now my editor of choice when it comes to CSS. Now if only it would let me choose a dark background colour for the code pane…

On an aside

With the advent of "sponsored posts" that are cropping up all over the blogosphere, I will just point out that this post has no affiliation or connection with MacRabbit, CSSEdit or any other party. These are just the words of a happy customer; the fact that it seems so positive is because I like it. No hidden agenda here.

It's annoying and disappointing that I even have to consider writing such an anti-disclaimer; the most damaging aspect of these so-called paid reviews is that they add noise and doubt so as to harm legitimate reviews.

1. This, of course, isn't unique to developing but is common to any activity or job that you do frequently. Someone commuting daily or playing sports professionally has different demands from those who only do so sporadically or as part of their hobby. Comfort, reliability, familiarity are all concerns which you may be willing to sacrifice when you're only semi-serious but not when it's crucial to your working life. [back]
2. Which also helps to explain why "versus" threads/posts (cf. vi vs emacs, Mac vs PC, FF vs Safari etc…) are always cauldrons for fiery discussions. [back]
3. Flamebait notwithstanding, this is probably one of the significant factors behind the large fanbase that vi and emacs still command. [back]
4. By working of your css file and not a 'temporary css session' as found in the web developer extension, you remove the hackiness nature/temptation. [back]
5. This isn't an excuse however to not use a real source control system to manage your code. I personally recommend Subversion but anything that isn't the abomination that is MS Visual SourceSafe will do. [back]

Yet, whilst the writing and the writer are by far the most significant factors, what is often overlooked is that the regularity of the posts themselves is of substantial import. Whilst quantity rarely makes up for quality, all the blogs that I read have a(n approximate) consistent posting pattern¹. Without trying to sound too tautological, a predictable routine results in regular reads; expectation is a useful tool in hooking readers. Imagine the impact of a missed publication of a daily newspaper or the Olympic games being delayed by a 6 months or so. Or to continue to stretch the realms of believability, what if you couldn't rely on their regularity? Suffice to say, their popularity would suffer somewhat.

So if a regular posting pattern is so important, how do I explain my utter failure at adhering to my own advice?

Procrastination defined

Despite all the evidence to the contrary, I enjoy blogging. I enjoy writing and enjoy having a platform to talk from. And yet, my last few main posts are about or have accompanied site redesigns rather than being more interesting fare.

The problem is that when it comes to blogging, the decision involves more than deciding what to write (about). As with all things in life², there's a cost as you have to weigh up what the benefits of writing that blog entry are against what you're giving up to do so. The time it takes to write that post on "Why Google bought YouTube" is time that could have been spent on development, watching a movie, spending time with family and friends or rather amusingly, reading someone else' blog post.

It's partly for this reason why I find "services" such as PayPerPost so unconvincing. Why would you want to give up your valuable time, not to mention your credibility, for a meagre 10 dollars?

Getting back on track

What makes procrastination so tempting is the way I write posts. I probably spend far longer on blog posts than many; I admire people who write off-the-cuff as it were but my style is more deliberate. The other factor is that I write as much for myself as for anyone else. That this blog is read by others is a nice side effect but, strictly speaking, not the main driver. The problem is that often, I would start writing a post on a topic, gathering up information and evidence for and against a given point, writing the introduction, bits of the middle and the end and then, having been satisfied with the process, leave it there. Definite room for improvement there.

Heading forward

One possible solution may be to tie your hands. Making a public commitment, that is removing options or at least removing some of the incentives, can make decisions easier. So here's mine; I'm going to write at least on a bimonthly basis. I'll try to aim to better that but at the least, there'll be a post every two weeks.

Let's see how this plays out…

1. Note that I used the word consistency. Different blogs succeed with widely different posting patterns. Some like 37SvN and Kottke manage to deliver on a daily basis whilst others have a less vigorous routine. What's important is a predictable pattern and not the specifics of the pattern itself, though there would be a strong correlation between post frequency and readership. [back]
2. As Netscape found out, simply being on the internet doesn't make you magically exempt. [back]

To make matters worse, on that very weekend, I'd been co-opted to helping out with some house-moving². And so it was that I barely managed to squeeze in the launch of my redesign in time for the start of October³. Welcome to the 8th iteration of If..Else codenamed 'Dianthus'.

Spreading the word

It'll be remiss of me not to talk about what precipitated this redesign. This year, over a million people will be diagnosed with Breast Cancer. Despite initiatives such as screening programmes, Breast Cancer is still the most common form of Cancer affecting women. For the last two decades, National Breast Cancer Awareness Month has helped in building wider public awareness and so, it's my pleasure to be able to subvert this site for a good cause, even if it's only in a small way. In addition, I'll be donating all my adsense revenue + 100% for this month to Cancer Research UK.

Words on this redesign

Due to the beforementioned time constraints, this site redesign is far from what I would consider finished. Even ignoring the many design features that I had to drop to get this finished in time for the October launch, I haven't been able to give this a rigorous test to make sure that the design holds up across not just the various browser configurations⁴ but also across the various pages and site options. In particular, I have little more than a vague hope that the existing content holds up without too much damage and I'm disappointed that work on the archive and search pages had to be dropped due to a sheer lack of time. Apologies for any borkages.

The big point to note about this redesign is how far I've had to stretch the definition in order to class this as a pink redesign. My initial sketches and prototypes used pink in a far stronger manner. In fact, one of the designs that I was all but ready to go with was full-on-pink. The problem was balance.

I personally don't consider myself to be a great designer and that showed in trying to develop a design that fit in with the Pink theme whilst not detracting from the content. My main problem was that, whilst each of my initial designs looked good as a one-off feature, the design always seemed to overwhelm the content which it was intended to support. With more time, I would have probably have been able to bring it under control but in a bid to get things done, I took the easy way out and applied dashings of pink to a more stable design. It's no accident that this iteration bears a lot of similarity to it's predecessor; realign is once again the word of the month.

I'm not sure how successful this design is yet. I guess it's still a bit fresh for me to make an objective decision. However, despite the rush job, I'm reasonably pleased with how it turned out. Whether I'll keep this look post-October, or whether I revert back or even redesign again is still an open question but for now I'm happy I managed to go live with it. And with that done, I'm off to bed.

1. Though fortunately, I had sketched out what I'd planned to do beforehand and worked on a couple of the major assets such as the header. [back]
2. Which was not helped by the fact that I also ended spending a good 8 hours on the road. What is it with rain and traffic? [back]
3. Actually, I missed it by about half an hour but I'm ruling it in via use of a technicality as this site is hosted in the US:) [back]
4. I did give it a quick test across IE6, FF1.5, Safari, and Opera 9 [back]

Red

Earth and fire, red is an under-utilised colour amongst web designers. So it's a pleasure to see that those who did choose red were also amongst my favourite entries.

Rob Goodlatte bats off with a wonderfully warm and worn entry; the palatte chosen work well with the style of the site. Kyle's firey entry roars with it's bold background and colour scheme. And Prabhath embraces a more earthy design; natural and personal, Prabhath was also one of the few to have gone with a fluid layout.

Other notable entries: codesign

Green

From one colour of nature to another, though green does appear to be more popular amongst developers. That said, this shouldn't be such as surprise; whilst red is bursting with emotion and boldness, green is altogether more calm and relaxed which, perhaps, makes it more appealing to designers.

Fortyeightdesigns is one such lovely entry; the balanced colour scheme work well with the classic textures and the slightly curvy layout works a treat. Snook has gone in the other direction with his use of green; more edgy than earthy, it has a matrixy, old-school programmers feel to it. And like that programmer favourite, vi, it's crammed with little secret commands that might escape you on your first encounter. Freshbranding makes the most of it's name with a design that has a fresh, clean feel. It's, perhaps, a common studio design but one that's been pulled off well.

Other notable entries: Zooiblog, BusinessLogs, FortyMedia, ThannyLe

Dark

As much as designers like to consider themselves creative and different, it's always funny to see common trends. Light text on dark backgrounds has always been one of those cyclical themes that pop in and out of existance and it appears it's now time for it to reappear. However, dark colours do look good and are relatively easy to pull off so which is why it's had a good turnout this year.

It's probably no surprise to see Bryan's entry feature well. His last design was immensely popular and having done this 21 times before, he's a bit of a veteren to this redesign game. It's also nice to see that he hasn't forgotten the food banners. Alex Graul's entry at m.ossy also caught my eye. A Lovely use of columns and contrast, it's an impressively minimalist design pulled off with class. David Longworth has stopped blogging but he hasn't stopped designing; the reboot for Orange Tape Studios was another one of those simple designs that has been executed well. Background, colour scheme, type and layout have all contributed to a strong design.

Other notable entries: Totalspore, BrokenKode, EchoFaith, Niggle

Light

And from the shadows, we step into light. White has always been an extremely popular choice; whilst grey on black does look cool, it can become a bit of a strain on the eye when you're reading for long periods and thus, it's good to see sites embracing a more content friendly design. Natalie's clearly gone for such with the readable type and generous content area; whilst she's perhaps gone a bit overboard on the homepage, the internal pages are lovely to read. In redesigning his blog, Jeff has clearly gone back to the grid. Both internally and on the main page, Jeff has masterly utilised columns so as to present information with clarity and cohesiveness and nary a hint of confusion. DesignSnack's redesign is reshuffling and tidying of the previous look and feel. It's now less of a gallery and more of a Digg for designs; however, whilst its exterior is aesthetically pleasing, it's lacking from a design and functional viewpoint. I'm not convinced it's a successful reboot but sadly, I'm also a sucker for visual sweetness something which this design is coated with.

Other notable entries: Jorge Quinteros, Yoram Blumenberg, Derek Punsalan, Matt Brett, Intellicode, Twisted Intellect, WebJillion.

Redesigned? Realigned? Rebooted.

Each of the last couple of redesigns for this site have brought major overhauls to the look and feel; not only did each of the design bring about structural changes (for example, moving from a 3/2 column switch design to what is now known as a fat bottom design) but they also brought in overhauls with the colour scheme and imagery.

And, to a certain extent, so does this iteration. Gone is the fat bottom and in comes a new flexible multi-column design. If you were a fan of columns and you own a wide monitor, then rejoice.

However, regular readers will notice little inklings of familiarity. Whilst the header has undergone change along with the colour scheme ², it's change as evolution; I hesitate to use the words brand or identity but there's enough touches to help make this feel like the If..Else that you've remember.

The new look hasn't totally annexed the old; it's more a case of the old design gently ushuring in a new successor.

Horses for courses

The more astute of you will have noticed a few developments with regards to columns. Firstly, if anyone is reading this post directly, take some time to go to the front page. Then head back to this post. For those of you using a resolution of 1280×1024, try resizing to 1024×768. Those of you with 1024×768, try dropping down to 800×600. Don't forget to scroll down to the bottom of the page.

Don't worry, I'll wait till you're ready.

Landing portal

OK, let's discuss the front page. This is the first place that many people will visit.

One of the things that I tried to do with the last couple of designs was to make the front page a real landing page. The home page shouldn't just be a chronological listing of your posts. It's also the place where visitors will arrive at for the first time. Let's try and hone the experience so that both the reader and ourselves benefit.

Let's highlight the lead/latest post so that we can draw attention to the important content. Let's segregate out our little asides, shorts and snippets so as to note dilute our main content. Give the readers a focused set of exit points to other content or parts of the site. By all means provide information but provide it in a way so as to not overwhelm the user.

Different layout for different situations

It's time to embrace wider screensizes. According to the everyone's favourite fresh smelling oracle, the lowest resolution on which this site is being viewed at is 800×600 by 4% of my readers³.

I don't want to provide an inferior experience to anyone, but by not taking advantage of improvements in screen real estate, that's what I'm doing. And so, with some help from our man in blue, this site is now sporting a resolution dependent layout. However, resolution dependent layout sounds so technical and sterile; I call it a tailored layout, a design that accomodates you. Besides, if Simon Collison gets away with it, who am I to argue?

There are 3 layout types; one for people with 1280×1024+, one for people on 1024×768 and one for those on 800×600⁴

Quick search

Searching was neglected in the previous design; in fact, I didn't even show the search bar anywhere else apart from the front page. That said, I do find myself searching back for old posts (mainly my shorts which serve as my personal del.icio.us) and seeing as you can't develop a website without a mention of everyone's favourite kitchen cleaner, I decided to spend a bit of time plonking down a fancier search bar.

Different layout for different situations part deux

I've talked about two layout scenarios so far. There's the front page and as well as the resolution dependent layout. What we can look at next is the internal page layouts i.e. for a given blog post. Quick question: if you're viewing a blog post, what are looking for? The answer is content. So if that's what the reader is after, let's make it comfortable for them to read.

The general layout and colour scheme already gives the content an advantage but by increasing both the content area and the type size, it feels just that much more nicer for lack of a better word. Besides, this gives me an opportunity to use larger images which is always good, right?

Your thoughts

If you've made it this far, you must either have superhuman willpower or a severe bout of insomnia. Well now it's your turn. Any feedback⁵? Besides, this is a good opportunity for the lurkers amongst you to come out of hiding and post a comment:)

1. Yes Bryan, I'm looking at you:) [back]
2. The last theme was dubbed Black Gold and though neither are dominant colours any more (in particular, the infamous gold colour has mellowed out and black has taken a back row seat to the other colours), they're still around albeit if only in more of a background role. [back]
3. Personally, I've standardised on 1280×1024 but in the last month, there were over 3 times as many readers that ran their machines with even larger resolutions than those that were still on 800×600. [back]
4. There's even a pseudo-big-footer of sorts. [back]
5. That said, can I ask kindly that browser-specific issues/bugs are emailed to me rather than being added as a comment? Cheers. [back]

Well enough talk, let's roll.

Day 1

The first offering is this week long project is a nice gentle affair. Simpla is a clean yet aesthetically pleasing theme that will allow you to showcase your words without distractions. Feel free to take a look at it on the demo site. If you fancy giving it a try, proceed to the theme page and download away:)

If you want to comment on this theme, head on over to this post. If you want to leave general comments about 'a theme a day' week, head over here:)

Enjoy!

Day 2

There are a number of gorgeous looking themes available but sometimes what you really want is something that looks smart. Enter todays theme which I've entitled Emire. Emire is a theme which is just as comfortable in a commercial setting as it is on a personal site. Calm and aesthetically pleasing, Emire exudes an air of professionalism. Feel free to take a look at it on the demo site.

If you want to comment on this theme or read more information on the work behind today's release, head on over to this post.

Day 3

I'll confess to having a soft spot for single column designs; I like the clarity of purpose they provide and how no-nonsense they are; when you go to a blog with a single column design, your first point of attention are the posts. One of the first WP themes that I worked on was single column and it's good to be able to develop another one. Give a warm welcome to Ambiru.

For me, Ambiru gives off an air of calm tranquility. The lovely header image¹ brings a nice piece of balance to the design.

If you want to comment on this theme or read more information on the work behind today's release, head on over to this post or take a look at the demo site.

Day 4

And it's another day in 'a theme a day' week which means, of course, another theme. Today's selection is Treba. Once again, it's all about the words and Treba's clean design let's you concentrate on the content; after all content is king.

Take a look at the demo site and see what you think or head on over to the blog post to find out more and post a comment.

Day 5

The week draws to the end and the weekend beckons allowing us to temporarily forget about the stress and tribulations of work and concentrate on R&R. With the cold weather outside, one way to relax is to curl up in bed or by a fire and immerse yourself into a good book.

Today's offering for 'a theme a day' week, entitled Jentri, is reminiscent of such; for me, it gives off an air of comforting sophistication and provides the ideal canvas for words; the perfect setting for thoughts and insights to reside.

Take a look at the demo site and if you find that it's the one for you, head over to the theme page and download it for yourself. You can read more about this theme or leave comments at the related blog entry.

Final Day

After a break in our scheduled programming, it is time to reveal the final theme in the 'a theme a day' week feature. Today's theme is Bosa, a theme that is big and bold but which also carries an air of calm tranquility.

Take a look at the demo site and if you find that it's the one for you, head over to the theme page and download it for yourself. You can read more about this theme or leave comments at the related blog entry.

What's next?

So the next thoughts on everyone's mind is what's next? Well, I'm planning to do a writeup on this week's feature where I'll be talking about the design process, lessons learnt and other (hopefully) interesting points.

In preparation for that, I was wondering if I could ask a favour of anyone who has been tuning in; could you answer a couple of questions for me (don't worry, they're easy)? Just head on over to this post. Thanks:)

Thank you

Just wanted to say thank you to everyone who's left a kind comment, words of encouragements or linked to this site. This week long feature is really hard work², and though it's one that I quite happily enjoy doing, but knowing that the work is appreciated makes things so much easier.

Additional information

Experiment?

This is an experiment because I have a day job. This means that I have a limited amount of time each day to design, develop³, test⁴ and release a brand spanking new theme. How limited? Well, realistically, I have about an hour in the morning before I go to work and about 3 hours⁵ to get something ready for release.

So, it'll be interesting to see what I can do under constraints.

Why are you doing this?

Partly because I like to give back to the WP community. Partly because I've been a bit lax with 'real' posts recently. Partly because going public gives me a big incentive to get off my backside and not procrastinate. But mainly because I like doing this and I like a challenge:)

1. Which I had a bit of help with. With the tight time constraints, I decided to ask my brother Mike if he'd could spare a bit of his time to help me develop a header image whilst I worked on the rest of the design. Much appreciated especially with the tight time constraints which he had to play with. [back]
2. The smart thing to have done was to spent some time planning and doing some preparatory work before embarking on this crazy venture. Perhaps waiting till I had a free week would have been more sensible. But what is life without a bit of spontaneity and carefree rashness? [back]
3. Limited time means no AJAX, fancy scripting or admin panel customisations. What you will get though is a robust, well crafted theme for your blog. [back]
4. Yep, I'll try to test across all the major browsers in play. [back]
5. Maybe more, maybe less. I generally get home by about 7pm. Since I'm not going to be working on this at work, that doesn't give me a lot of time to play with. [back]

A rose by any other name

"Names are easy to understand, right? Forename, Surname; what's so difficult about that? OK, so sometimes, there's a middle name in there but that's about it, right?"

The fun starts when you consider that there are a variety of cultural naming conventions. Lets start with the basic western naming construct.

Personal Name, Family Name

The dominance of English as the dominant form of communication has also indirectly meant that the above construct is familiar to most. However, looking beyond the anglicised form, it's easy to see various divergances. Firstly, in China and other eastern countries, the order would generally be family name, given name¹ i.e. Ly Phu Cuong, Wong Fei Hong.

Even the two phased construct isn't a given as the Arabic system follows a more sophisticated naming in which an individual would be addressed as a chain of names². An example of such would be Osama bin Laden; an expanded form of his name would be Usamah bin Muhammad bin Awad bin Ladin. This would allow you to trace back an individuals family history; the bin (also spelt as ibn) means 'son of'. Hence you can, for example, work out that he's the son of Muhammad Awad bin Ladin. A similar construct is also used countries in Irish speaking countries e.g. John Michael Patrick Reilly; John son of Michael son of Patrick Reilly.

Family Name

"So, maybe I was a bit hasty there but at least I can't go wrong with saying that everyone has a Family Name, right?"

Well, step back a couple of years and you'd be wrong. Until 2004, most people in Mongolia were identified strictly on a firstname basis. This lead to a lot of confusion and severely pushed back many forms of census analysis. Upon attaining power, the communist goverment had abolished the use and record of family name, fearing that tribal loyalty would provide a power challenge.

The results of the 2004 election swung the seat of power away from the communist party and one of the more progressive legislations was to reinstigate the use of Family Names.³

Moving westwards, Russian surnames generally differ depending on the individual's gender; compare Boris Yeltsin with his wife, Naina Yeltsina. The use of grammatical gender is repeated across many other Eastern Slavic countries, though often each with their own regional variations; for example, whilst Russian names generally end with the masculine ov or the feminine ova, the suffix enko is generally restricted to Ukraine.

In Iceland, the last name is usually a patrynomic. I'll talk a bit more about what patronymic are in the next section.

The etymology of family names.

Before we move on, lets have a look at the etymology of family names. With English names, the derivation of the name can be broadly sorted into five categories:

• Occupation (Baker, Smith),
• Descriptive (Brown, Young),
• Location/Geographic feature (Hill, Rivers),
• Aspiring trait/expression (Hope, Goodspeed)
• and Ancestry.

Ancestry is an interesting one; generally, this would take the form of a Patronymic. A patronymic is component based on the name of one's father; for example, thtere is Richardson (son of Richard), and Wilson (son of William). Patronym are a popular cultural construct and arise all over the world. In Netherlands, you'd have Pietersen; in Iceland, you'd have Karlsson. There are patronymic such as di Marco (son of Mark) in Italy, and the Hiberno-Norman prefix fitz manifests itself in FitzGerald and Fitzroy⁴. Mac, the common surname prefix is also a patronymic (Mac being gaellic for son of).

In East Slavic countries, the patronymic would generally be used as the 'middle name'; for example, Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev, who is the son of Sergey.

The other form of derivation through ancestry is the direct use of an ancestors name as the surname. For example, the Chinese family name of Yuan is believed to be descended from Yuan Taotu's use of his grandfather's name, Boyuan, as his surname.

Given name

"OK, you've beaten me over the head with your talk of family names. But I bet you can't do the same with first names. I mean, people just choose a name for their kid that they think sounds nice."

Popular opinion does have a big impact on the choice of first names. Names fall in and out of favour as time goes by. The big screen often plays a large role with many children being named after the current big star. For example, in recent times, names such as Keira and Leo rose up the charts; even Prime Ministers aren't immune.

The choice of name for a child is rarely an easy one. Chinese names are often chosen by consulting other family members (esp. Paternal Grandparents) and with extensive research. An interesting aside is that many Chinese also take up a western name as well e.g. Tony Leung Chiu Wai. I use my Chinese name as my forename (there's an interesting aside which I'll talk about later) whilst my kid brother uses his western name Michael as his forename.

The etymology of given names

"What, etymology again?!?"

OK, I'll try to be brief but personally, I find this interesting. However, we cannot reasonably summarise or encapsulate this in a tiny paragraph⁵, so I'll just give a quick introduction to this.

The popularity of many names stem from their roots in Religious texts; Michael (Hebrew, Old Testament), Muhammad (Arabic, Qur'an), Luke (Latin, New Testament). The origins of the words however, are often found everyday language. Many names derive from desirable titles or properties such as Sophia (Sofia, Wisdom). This can sometimes be in the form of multiple words or expressions such as Alexander ("Protector of men": Alex, protect; Andros, men) or Albert (Bright nobility). The decision to name the child in this manner was, perhaps, an attempt to shape the life of the child; that is, via a name, the child would be bound to a virtue or destiny. The other reason, which follows on from this, is that a name can provide legitimacy or purpose. There are certainly names that derive from titles/occupation such as Sarah (Sara, Princess) or George (Georgios, farmer).

Another popular source of names are Objects; for example, we have Peter (Petra, rock) or Steven (Stephanos, Crown). Another common example of such is in the popularity of flowers as female names e.g. Lily. Other origins include Locations e.g. Britney (Brittany) and Paris or Weather e.g. Fong (Cloud).

Another interesting thing to note about names is how they can evolve so as to jump across barriers. For example, the popular name Michael can be seen in other forms as Mikel, Mikael, Miguel as well as in the feminine name Michelle. There are always transliterations, of course. My western name is a romanisation of my Chinese name. This also works the other way, and often with humourous consequence; for example, Charlie would be transcribed as Tea Pot (Char Lae).

Middle Names

"That's the unimportant part of your name, isn't it?"

Not always so. We've spoken about the use of patronymic⁶ but in Chinese names, the 'middle name'⁷ is often a generation name. As far as I can tell, there's no analog to this in Western languages. The generation name, is as the term suggests, a name shared by all those in the same generation. For example, all my brothers share the same generation name⁸. The generation name is usually derived from a family's generation poem⁹.

My name

OK, enough. Let's wrap this up with your name?

Everyone knows me as Phu; using the western convention of Forename, Family name, it's Phu Ly. No surprises there; it's emblazoned all over my site.

In Chinese, I'd announce myself using the eastern system of Family name, Generation name, Given name as Ly Phu Cuong (pronounced Li Fu Keung). Phu means 'fortune' or 'prosperity' in chinese; Cuong means 'Strong' or 'Strength'. The transliteration of my name chosen by my Grandfather gives it a Vietnamese slant (which is not surprising as my Grandfather worked in Vietnam and is fluent in Vietnamese).

A rose by any other name

Since, in Chinese, my given name is Cuong, why Phu as my forename¹⁰? Well, I've already given away the answer. If you write my name in the eastern style, it'd be Ly Phu Cuong. Ly's my family name so Phu-Cuong must be my given name. And what happens when you write that on a form? Cuong is abstracted away as the middle name (as per western convention).¹¹

My family all call me Cuong (pronounced Keung) and when I speak Chinese, that's the name I give. However, in English, I'm Phu and that's the name I use in public.

Wrapping things up

So, this was a brief walk into the world of names. What's your name? How was it chosen? Do you have any information on the origin of your name or any interesting rules/information of your own? Feel free to add a comment:)

1. I'll use given name to denote what is commonly thought of as the forename/personal name so as to avoid confusion. [back]
2. Though as is the case with Eastern naming conventions, for practical purposes, a westernised naming convention is now commonly followed [back]
3. Rather ironically, the (perhaps predictable) dominance use of Borjigin, Genghis Khan's tribal name, mitigates some of the advantages of this new law. [back]
4. An interesting aside; Fitzroy would mean King's son and would be used by an acknowledged Royal bastard. [back]
5. Actually, the same applies with this whole entry in general [back]
6. This can informally manifest itself in Western culture by the choice of the Father's name as the middle name [back]
7. I hesistate when using this terms as the order often depends on the cultural convention as discussed above. [back]
8. I chose these words carefully; read on. [back]
9. I have a different generation name to my brothers because of an accident; the wrong generation name was picked in my case; an off-by-one error:) [back]
10. It's everywhere; all my official documents use Phu as my forename [back]
11. Yes, a bit of a cockup. But I've learnt to live with it:) [back]

Of redesigns and realigns

The early months of the year were ones of great change for this site and looking back, it's interesting to see what had transpired. Quite early on in the year, if..else underwent a redesign. This was not to last long. After less than a month, I realised that design really does affect content. The conventional, chronological listing of blog entries was restricting the way that I worked which was not how things should be. I needed to go back to first principles and work out what it was that I wanted, otherwise it just wasn't going to work. And so I did and thus in the month of March, a more suitable design found its way onto If..Else. This was to sit comfortably (with a "realignment" midway) until August in which I got itchy fingers again and unveiled Black Gold, the current design.

Much of the elements that you see in place on this site can now be seen across many other designs on the web. Emphasised main/latest article¹, segregated external links (i.e. the shorts)², distinctive "big footer"³ and header block; these are no longer unique features. However, in the case of my design, these elements all evolved from my personal requirements and needs. I can't claim to have influenced any others with my design choices; instead, it seems that quite a few within the blogging community had a similar epihany at the same time.

The other thing it was amusing to see in 2005 was how some many common design elements made their way across the web. The wet-floor, reflection technique is now down-right ubiquitous replacing the wicked well worn look, gradient background and scanlines as the new hot thing to have on your site. Big is now beautiful, AJAX is now more than a football team and kitchen cleaner and beta has escaped the world of academia to become this years universal "under construction" animated gif logo.

Of friendships

Like Khaled, I've made a few friends across the web this year, an idea which would seem strange merely a year ago but now feels perfectly reasonable. I'll leave out naming people as I'd only miss out one person or embarrass another but it's been an absolute pleasure knowing you all.

Of networks

Of course, how can I not mention that this was the year of networks and networking. Social networks and networking really exploded this year; Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn managed to receive their share of column space. Even more significantly perhaps, the networks of Flickr, del.icio.us and the growing behemoth that is Digg dominated a significant part of the web's consciousness. Serendepity?

The other big boomer was, of course, blog networks. Sometimes it seemed that there were more blog networks than blogs popping up daily. I, of course, chose to join one, a decision which was an easy one to make and one that I have no regrets with.

Of changing times

Adsense isn't new to 2005 but this is the year in which I've really noticed it taking off. As well as making a few people rich and inspired the dreams of many more (some of the many aforementioned blog networks are undoubtedly influenced by, and banking on text ads for their survival), they've also become accepted elements of sites on the web.

Web Design has crept into the forefront. Yes, design cliches such as those I've talked about above feature prominently and blogging templates are everywhere to be seen but it's good to see that more and more individual designs are popping up. Design galleries at one point threatened to jockey with blog networks in being the most copied idea of 2005 but their growth can be seen as a positive element.

Even if we were to step back just a year ago, the web design landscape was a lot barer than it is today. It's a sign of the times that where once talking about CSS, (x)html, semantics and web-standards were big topics, interesting posts on such topics are generally few and far between. Things aren't perfect yet⁴ but I see it as a good thing that such topics are no longer of paramount interest or importance.

Of movies, books and videogames

I've watched quite a few films this year, both on DVD and on the big screen. My favourite one which I watched at the Cinema was probably Sin City. Favourite DVD release was In the mood for love⁵.

In terms of books, Freakonomics beat out other notable entries to become my favourite non-fiction book of the year whilst a Feast for Crows grabbed the fiction title with an end of year release.

2005 also saw the launch of the XBox 360 but for me, it is news about Nintendo's Revolution controller which really infected my consciousness. So much hope, so much fear but so much to look forward to. My favourite game that I played this year though has to be Disgaea. Quirky, funny and bizarrely adddictive to play. It's old-school perhaps, and very much a niche game genre, but I like it.

Of looking back

By definition, these type of wrap ups only give a glimpse of what occured. There's a lot I left out, a lot that I decided to not write about and a lot that I've overlooked. However, in looking back, what I primarily see is optimism. I'm looking forward to 2006⁶. Bring on the new year! ⁷

1. Particularly useful in my case because it's hardly a secret that my main posts are more sporadic than other sites on the web [back]
2. By virtue of having a wide area of interest, I've become quite adept at searching for gems across the web. Were I not to seperate the shorts, the main posts would quickly become overrun [back]
3. A full 3 months before Derek Powazek had the same idea:) That said, Derek makes much more use of the footer than I do; whilst mine is primarily aesthetic, he's made his one of the central themes of his design. Besides, his design really does look gorgeous. [back]
4. Besides, perfection isn't a goal but a target [back]
5. I'm aware this came out before 2005. I don't know why I waited till this year before getting it on DVD especilly since I'm a big WKW fan [back]
6. Can't forget my new year resolutions:
   1) Write more
   2) Write better
   3) ???
   4) Profit… erm, wrong list:) [back]
7. But first, I must sleep:) [back]

Mathematics is littered with tragic stories and the story of Evariste Galois, a precocious talent, is a poignant one. Whilst still in his teens, Galois was able to develop Group theory, laying fundamental foundations for a branch of mathematics known as Galois theory, and fashion a framework for solving the riddle of Quintics. However, it is his death at the tender age of 20 for which he is probably most famous for outside of Mathematics.

Whilst (now recognised as) an undisputed genius, he found himself rejected and falling into dangerous situations, partly as a result of bad luck and partly due to his own character and choices. He eventually found himself involved in a duel with one of the finest shots in France over a woman.

The night before the fateful duel, aware of the impending doom, he spent the whole night penning his thoughts and discoveries to paper. Desperate and fearful that this knowledge may be lost forever, he frantically dashed out his mathematical research so that he could send them on.

What I find particularly memorable however, besides the wealth and treasure trove of knowledge contained within the manuscripts, are his frantic scribblings, sheer exclamations of dispair, which feature alongside his work. In particular, there is the gut-wrenching line "Je n'ai pas le temps".

"I have not enough time".

I have not enough time

It is recent events at work which have been responsible for bringing this story to mind¹. In the last week, I finally left a project which I'd been working on, in various roles, for the last 2 years. Whilst I'd had more time to work with than Galois (and obviously, the work is nothing near the level of his work), there is still a sense that you can always do a little bit more. You feel that there should be something more that you need to handover, some more code to check in, and some more notes to jot down.

The problem is, of course, you're not really sure of what is necessary until the need crops up. So the best you can do is try to plan for what you expect may crop up and what you foresee may be needed.

Cobwebs on cobwebs

The other side-effect of being busy (both at work and on other little side-diversions) is that updates to this site have been sporadic. But that's how it's always been. It's not because of a lack of things to write about. I've got a whole directory full of text files with half-finished drafts and rarely does a day goes by when I don't feel that I can (or want to) post. Even my shorts section, which show a bit more activity, could see more frequent posts but it all comes down to that same line again. "Je n'ai pas le temps".

In the short term, things will probably be hectic with the end of the year, new project work and general catching up. Hopefully though, there'll be a bit more movement on this site. I work on this site because I enjoy doing so; I don't pump out posts because of obligation, financial gain or for the (frankly ridiculous) need to post for the sheer sake of doing so. But as with many things, that's a double edged sword.

And an apology

I'm not going to apologise for the lack of updates as I've explained this sites raison d'etre. But I will apologise for the few people who have emailed me recently. Though I may not respond immediately, I always check my mails. I'll try to get back to you as soon as I can but feel free to email me again just in case:)²

1. Don't worry. I generally don't talk about the day job and I'm not really going to break that habit today:) [back]
2. Immediately after I posted this, I got a "marketing email". So in the interest of clarity, I'll just say that you're free to email me as long as it's not to send me spam:) [back]