I’ve finally got around to updating my home pages. Most of the little things that’ve been annoying me for a while have been fixed!

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No, I didn’t win… but I was in the top 50!

The McFarlane Prize is for Excellence in Australian Web Design. It’s judged based on accessibility, usability, the design, and the code behind it all. I submitted DouglasHeriot.com when it wasn’t even finished yet (it still isn’t, but it was even less-finished than it is now), and didn’t ever expect anything to come of it.

It was 6 months ago now when I got an email:

They said they were going to publish a book of the top 50, and I had 2 days to send in a few things! I sent them everything they asked for, and then didn’t hear anything back for another 0.4712 years (~6 months!) I assumed it wasn’t happening, as it was originally supposed to be ready in a fortnight, in time for the announcement of the winner.

Today, I got another email, saying that I can now get my free copy of the book!

You can see a preview on the publisher’s website. (I’m on page 42-43)

I can’t wait to see it!

You can also buy the book for AU$89.95.

Well yes, it’s actually 2010 now, but it was supposed to be 2009.

It finally matches my website! It still needs a bit of work, refining the style of the sidebar, (and maybe even adding some animation to it, like my old theme).

So much stuff has happened in the last year since I wrote a post. Sometime soon (maybe) I’ll write something about it…

Update: Oops… I forgot to update the copyright notice to 2010. To fix that, I replaced it with some PHP code to always display the current year, so I never have to remember again! echo date('Y');

Almost a year after it was started, my Lego Star Wars stop-motion video is complete. I had actually finished the animation quite a while ago, it just needed a sound-track, which I finished on the weekend.

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My photo of an alarm clock finally got over 1000 views on Flickr!

It’s been there for just over 1 year and gradually increasing, but I recently found a very good way of getting lots of people to see you: Try joining lots of groups that give out awards to each other. These groups’ rules say you have to view and comment other people.

Today is DHD’s 4th birthday! (as the title says)

I haven’t done anything extra special to celebrate, other than give my website a much needed update:

• The flash contact form works! (this is really cool)
• Redesigned this blog
• New Logo! This is actually pretty special
   

I have decided to create a new logo:

It will be often seen in interesting grunge/colourful/spacey designs like in my blog header, and this Flickr image I made with my old logo.

I think it looks a lot more professional than the old one:

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I have created a new design for my blog! I have also recently moved to my own hosted wordpress rather than blogger.

I created this theme totally from scratch, with valid strict XHTML and CSS. I also used jQuery Javascript Library to add nice little animations around the place (try the menus!). This idea was based on a NetTuts Tutorial.

The theme is not finished yet — the comments and post footers still look ugly. There are also a few different things I would like to do to make it a bit nicer.

If you would like this theme for your blog, sorry, I won’t be releasing it.

I now have another new website! … And a domain name!

You can visit my new website at DouglasHeriot.com!

The address to the blog has also changed — it’s now blog.DouglasHeriot.com.

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I currently have no webhost

That’s why the blog is looking bare – nobody is hosting my images.

Exphoster has been sold to some other guy. He claimed that he would continue Exphoster’s service but he hasn’t. He has stopped people from posting in the forums and hasn’t finished making the new website.

I have been looking for a new free webhost and have found a few I might use:

• ByetHost
• Freehostia
• 000webhost

There aren’t many to choose from because I need PHP and MySQL and in the future my own domain.