Colin Calnan.com

Today I discovered,  completely by surprise, that if you hold down the “Ctrl” button and flick the mouse wheel you’ll get instant text-resizing. (This is on version 2.0.0.5 on PC, haven’t tested on Mac).

Having been developing in Smarty for a few years now I was really excited to hear about a Smarty extension for Dreamweaver. I thought all my worries were over, I had a vision of a Smarty item toolbar, with options to insert Sections, If/Else conditions and other niceties. This was not to be and the extension that I downloaded was for visual purposes only.

Don’t get me wrong, this is still a wonderful addition to Dreamweaver and really helps put the pages you are working on in context of the surrounding includes. It can be a little frustrating however when you click in the Design pane of Dreamweaver to change something only to find it’s in a different template to the one you’re working on.

If anyone out there has experience with other Smarty extensions, please let me know.

Last summer a DJ on a local radio station cleverly coined the phrase “Africa Hot”. Every 10 minutes or so he’d shout out to his colleagues, “How hot is it?” and they’d reply, “Africa Hot”. Honestly, that day wasn’t that hot, it was in the mid twenties and there was a nice sea breeze.

Today however was hot, damn hot. No one can seem to agree on how hot it was either, some reports have it over 37 degrees! Having never been to Africa I can’t really comment on the comparison the DJ made, but I can imagine the Africans would certainly dispute it. The wind stung when it blew and left a red rash where it had tormented the skin. Water was definitely the golden resource today, and I’ve drank so much of it that I feel I now must be at least 95% water.

As the day rolled to a close and I sat down again to renovate, gulping the liquid gold from my trusty pint glass I noticed the sky.

I remember the saying as a kid - “The sky is red, the devil is dead and there’s no school tomorrow”.

I won’t argue with the first two, but the last, well unfortunately for me there’s always school tomorrow.

For over 2 years now I’ve been sitting on the old site, waiting and waiting to do something with it. Finally I deleted it and started with a semi-blank canvas, I wanted to get something up and running and then change it as I go along.

Something unique happens when you tackle a long overdue renovation in the real or virtual world

1. It cost’s you much more than you budgeted for

2. It takes far longer than your initial feeble estimate

3. You lose sleep

4. You gain 10 pounds

A renovation can also leave you with an empty feeling. As the old is stripped away in preparation for the new, a vacuum is created, and in that space it seems that creativity and inspiration can be found. The simplest yet most complex of things can propel you.

This photo was taken as I sat pondering what to do next. The shadows from various household items presented themselves in a way that was for a moment breathtaking.