crazed monkey » meta

I redesigned my site for the future!

Ian Stevens — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 22:02:14 +0000

For years my personal site has been an embarrassment. I avoided writing new posts so I wouldn’t have to link to them, its design was that bad. Having quit my job last month, I spent some time working on a design I could be proud of. Last Friday I silently launched that design.

This new design puts content created outside my blog (tweets, links, etc.) on an equal footing with blog entries. I have been cross-posting tweets and bookmarks to my site for a couple of years in an effort to self-host all my content. Trouble was, five tweets would push recent links or posts off the front page. I wanted a front page which could include recent content from all streams.

My hope is the new design is a little more future-proof. I’ve been following the responsive enhancement trend for some months now. In September, the Boston Globe made waves with its responsive redesign. I felt it was time I had an attractive site which presented well, regardless of the size or pixel density of the screen.

Some highlights of the new design:

Nothing but ems. All sizes are relative. No pixel sizing, with the exception of borders. Pixel densities are changing, and there’s no guarantee of a minimum browser width.
No bitmapped graphics. All icons are either characters or vector graphics.
Most measurements are based on the Fibonacci sequence. I’m not a designer, and this nicely limits my choices for padding and font sizes.
HTML5 elements where appropriate.
To that end, I’m using the HTML5 reset CSS to force a baseline for styling.
For old versions of IE, I use html5shim to add support for HTML5 elements.
Some sniffing of browser capabilities. Modernizr seemed too heavy-weight, so I wrote something specific to my needs.
CSS3 Media Query support for older browsers with Scott Jehl’s Respond.js. (Respond.js does not yet support ems for media queries. Any browser without native media query support defaults to the largest layout. As most mobile browsers are Webkit-based or barely support CSS, this minimally affects those on small devices.)

This was not an easy task for me, given that web front end design is not my speciality. There were a couple of clunky starts. I finally made some progress when I decided to focus on the content without styling. Next, I tackled simple styling of individual posts on mobile devices, then index and archive pages. Once those were done, I added more advanced CSS features and adjusted the style for larger displays. This helped me focus my efforts without getting bogged down in detail.

There are still a few rough edges and usability concerns. (I still find the styling for posts on external links to be confusing, for example.) Some of my design choices, like my use of Unicode characters, don’t translate well to older browsers. Still, it’s a good first start. I’ve learnt a lot about how to design for responsive enhancement and smaller displays.

Future enhancements should include spicing up the design with some SVG or HTML5 Canvas graphics, leveraging JavaScript to hide and reveal comments and adding nav links to skip content on smaller screens.

My blog now has tweets

Ian Stevens — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 03:21:19 +0000

If you’re following this blog (and if you are, you’re one of the few) you’re probably wondering what’s happened here. I recently changed my blog so that it imports my tweets. I’m not happy with how it looks but it was a quick and painless addition to a stagnating … Read more

This blog has moved

Ian Stevens — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 06:05:17 +0000

Iâ€™ve moved my blog to another hosting service and have migrated all my posts to WordPress. Hopefully there are no problems, but if you notice any errors or missing pages please let me know.

Update: Apparently the hosting service I am using has problems with category URLs. I have … Read more

2006 Sporting Life 10k

Ian Stevens — Mon, 08 May 2006 06:06:59 +0000

Today I ran the Sporting Life 10k for the third year in a row. My time was 47:39 which beats my time last year by just under two minutes but didn’t meet my goal of 45 minutes. This year I changed age categories and was surprised by my upsurge in the rankings:

Year	Chip time	Overall standing	Menâ€™s standing	Men age category
2004	56:12	2708/5220 (52%)	1708/2378 (72%)	233/313 (74%) (25-29)
2005	49:28	1491/6339 (24%)	1164/2976 (39%)	159/349 (46%) (25-29)
2006	47:39	1189/6627 (18%)	968/2996 (32%)	176/536 (33%) (30-34)

I had thought that I might drop in my age category, given what I supposed to be increased drive among older runners. As it turns out, there were almost twice as many men aged 30-34 running as there are men aged 25-29. That must be the reason why my ranking in my age category is so much better this year. That increase in overall chip time ranking is pretty impressive, especially considering that I barely shaved two minutes off last year’s time. I’m pretty proud of myself, although during the run I was convinced I was running slower than last year.

I ran alone this year, although was greeted at the finish line by a girl I have been dating these past two weeks. She saw me off at the start line, but almost didn’t make it down in time via TTC to see me finish! The better way? Sometimes you’re better off running.

2005 Becel Ride for Heart

Ian Stevens — Mon, 06 Jun 2005 00:03:00 +0000

This morning I finished the Becel Ride for Heart for the third year in a row. After my first ride in 2003, I vowed to ride the 75km leg, but never followed through with that promise until this year, and only as a last minute decision.

Having never rode 75km before, I think I did fairly well. My time was just over two and a half hours, which isn’t bad considering that I haven’t ridden much this year, that the 75km repeats the most difficult part of the 50km leg, and that the smog levels on this hazy day affected my breathing. However, that’s still not a great time considering last year’s time of 90 minutes for 50km. Still, even after 50km I managed to pass pretty much everyone I saw, even those I passed the first time up the DVP.

Aside from the heat and smog, my biggest drawbacks were that I stopped for water before the 75km turnoff, thereby losing my momentum, and ran out of water about 20 minutes from the finish line. Next year, I think a camel pack is in order.

2005 Sporting Life 10k

Ian Stevens — Mon, 02 May 2005 04:12:00 +0000

This year I ran the Sporting Life 10k for the second time, besting last year’s time of 56:12 with a time of 49:28. My goal this year was to achieve a time of less than fifty minutes, which was accomplished only because I sprinted to the finish line after being able to read the gun time clock. Next year’s goal is an aggressive forty-five minutes.

FYI, here is a comparison of my chip time and placing between 2004 and 2005:

Year	Chip time	Overall standing	Men’s standing	Men 25-29 standing
2004	56:12	2708/5220 (52%)	1708/2378 (72%)	233/313 (74%)
2005	49:28	1491/6339 (24%)	1164/2976 (39%)	159/349 (46%)

… and we’re back

Ian Stevens — Thu, 30 Sep 2004 00:06:51 +0000

My site has been down for the past few months, first because of a failed power supply and then because of a damaged irrecoverable hard drive. The last backup I made was over a year ago, hence the ancient entries you see below. Everything since September 1st, 2003 is now gone, including all my email … Read more

2004 Becel Ride for Heart

Ian Stevens — Tue, 08 Jun 2004 23:29:00 +0000

I keep forgetting to comment on this year’s Becel Ride for Heart. You can be sure that I finished it, although I almost missed the start time. Vic’s rear tire suffered a puncture and I accompanied him back to the Cyclepath tent to have it replaced. The pit crew finished the repair some five minutes before the cutoff time.

This year’s ride was much easier than last year’s, mostly because there was no wind. My time for the 50k was just over 90 minutes, a full half-hour less than last year’s effort. That time will be difficult to beat next year without switching to a faster bike.

Thanks to everyone who sponsored my ride. Sadly, donations this year were less than half last year’s total. I blame myself for not being as vigilant.

Please sponsor me for the 2004 Becel Ride for Heart

Ian Stevens — Tue, 25 May 2004 22:53:00 +0000

On June 6th, 2004 I will be riding 50km along the DVP in the Becel Ride for Heart. Please sponsor me for the ride. Those who donate more than $10 online will immediately receive an electronic tax receipt by … Read more

2004 Sporting Life 10k

Ian Stevens — Sun, 02 May 2004 22:31:00 +0000

I must have completely lost my senses when I agreed to run this year’s Sporting Life 10k. Before last week I had never run 5km, let alone 10km. Before last week, I had never owned a reasonable pair of running shoes. Still, I managed to do fairly well despite the pouring rain, the chest cramps at the 4km mark (I ate too close to the start of the race, you see) and despite running on five hours sleep. My time of 56:12.9 was less than my goal of one hour.

For those interested, the final results can be found online. The results are somewhat misleading as they are sorted by the time at which each person crossed the finish line, and not that person’s trip time. I was late to the starting line and so did not start until 5 minutes after the official start time. After resorting the results, my standings are as follows:

2706 of 5218 overall
1709 of 2374 for men
457 of 874 for ages 25 to 29
233 of 313 for men aged 25 to 29

Now to get ready for this year’s Becel Ride For Heart.