where fluff meets grit
General
Anything and everything can end up in here.. stuff outside the box
FLUID7 have moved to Electric Wharf
Dec 15th
We’re delighted to announce that over the summer the FLUID7 team moved into the Cable Yard at Electric Wharf. Our new studio provides us with the creative space to develop and grow the company as we begin to see the fruit of the partnership between WebJetty and FLUID7 (back in October 2010).
Eco-Friendly Studio, overlooking the Canal
We love the eclectic estate that we’re part of. Electric Wharf is an attractive (award winning) canal side environment close to Coventry City Center. Previously an early Victorian power station, the new development of modern offices fuses the industrial brickwork and steel of old with More >
Can open source web applications increase the ROI of your website?
Jan 4th
Open Source web applications can respond quickly to changes in web trends and technologies, allowing the software to be widely tested and regularly updated – and all for FREE!
For those not familiar with the term open source, it describes practices in production and development that provide open access to the end product’s source materials. (Video: Stephen Fry introducing open source software)
In choosing the right technologies for your website you may have already come across some of the leading open source content management systems (CMS) such as Drupal, WordPress and Joomla. The continuing growth and success of these products is greatly attributed More >
FLUID7 Relaunch!!
Dec 21st
We had a great time celebrating the relaunch of FLUID7 after bringing together Web Jetty and FLUID7 as one new stronger, better company!
We invited all our clients along to the stunning 1450 bar in Coventry, where we hired the top floor for our relaunch party. Serving canapes and drinks all evening, we wanted a chance to mingle with our clients, introduce them to the new team, thank them for their support and excite them about the opportunities ahead.
We didn’t want the evening to drag, so came up with the idea of extending a recent team photo shoot brief to our More >
Cross browser HTML5 Audio and Video is a reality!
Oct 14th
Well OK.. kind of …
I’ve been searching high and low for HTML5 implementations on video and audio. I wanted all my audio and video widgets to look the same cross browser. Although I knew HTML5 is getting great support, I also knew that HTML5 video and audio wasn’t supported by IE6, 7 and 8 and only partially supported by Opera and Firefox.. So the way to acheiving my goal looked pretty grim..
But alas! There are many clever implementations out there that are usable.. one in particular impressed me.. (more…)
Drupal – Theming to keep your modules modular
Oct 13th
Drupal is a powerful CMS and allows us as developers to create very bespoke web sites and applications.
I tend to create a module for every website to handle its Page and Block declarations. But its messy and not to mention unconventional to include HTML in your modules. I want to share how to theme your page declarations and any other piece of HTML for that matter to keep your modules tidy. (more…)
New wordpress same old theme
Jul 1st
KeePassX on CentOS
Feb 14th
Cross platform password safe
I’ve been playing with CentOS 5 lately, and really needed KeePassX on it. I ran into a few problems…
No rpms for Centos means you have to try and build from source. You also need qt-devel on the machine but it has to be version 4.3 or greater to compile.
So I had to enable atrpms-testing and use their bleeding edge qt44-devel.
This conflicts with qt-devel, so you need to ditch that first if it’s around. It also needed a few other dependencies that weren’t picked up.
# yum remove qt-devel qt4 dt4-devel
# yum install gcc-c++ libXtst-devel.x86_64 qt44 qt44-devel
For some More >
Fresh install essentials
Sep 27th
I’m still using windows for my primary development environment, although the bulk of the software I use is open source and/or free. I thought I’d share/store a rundown of some of the apps I install on a fresh windows build.
- Google Chrome (Quite a surprise winner this!)
- Comodo Firewall
- AVG antivirus
- Keepass
- 7zip
- Notepad++
- Eclipse PDT and Subclipse
- Firefox and Firebug
- Putty
- Open Office
- PDFCreator
- K-Lite Codec Pack and Media Player Classic
- iTunes and Quicktime
- Picasa
I’m very happy with this set of free apps, and can confidently recommend you try any of them.
Keeping tabs on your laptop
Sep 11th
If you’ve ever mildly pondered at the thought of your laptop being stolen or simply wandering off for a short time while left unattended, then this rather clever application may help put your mind at ease. If your laptop does disappear, you can track it’s location as soon as it connects to the internet. The best part is that only you can access this location info.. no third party is given this knowledge at all.
If you’re a Mac owner, you can even have the built in webcam send you shots of the laptop’s pilferer!
Very cool! http://adeona.cs.washington.edu/
More >Some shiny free software for you
Nov 16th
This is a small selection of the open source desktop software I use. As with most open source stuff, I believe they are all cross software to some degree and they are all really useful. Apps I’d struggle to live without now I use them regularly!
Firefox The bestest web browser ever for starters and then the plugins launch it to another level. http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/
Inkscape Vector graphic editor http://www.inkscape.org/
GIMP Image editing software http://www.gimp.org/
Pidgin Instant messenging software that is actually nice to use http://www.pidgin.im/ -windows http://www.adiumx.com/ – mac
Vector Magic An raster(bitmap) to vector converter that actually works! (online tool) http://vectormagic.stanford.edu/
Audacity Multi-track audio editing software http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
KeePass Secure password store and manager – More >
