del.icio.us is one of a new generation of community sites that handle your links, posts and articles in interesting ways. Del.icio.us prides itself on being the most popular social bookmarking website allowing users to keep their favourite links or bookmarks online, rather than on their PCs. Nothing too remarkable about that you may say but the clever bit comes when they combine this information to use it in other ways. Then you can see if other people have similar links to you, just how popular your bookmarks are and you may find some links that are more useful than your current ones.

Today I decided to add the ’send to del.icio.us’ links to the bottom of my posts to allow people to automatically add them to the network. This should have been easy as the del.icio.us Save Buttons page has some code there I could use specifically for the the WordPress files which run this website. Unfortunately it didn’t work.

I’ve never programmed JavaScript before so I was stuck on how to make this work. So after around four hours of reading JavaScript primers and some pointing in the right direction online, I managed to fix the code myself.

So for anybody wishing to put a pop-up javascript del.icio.us link on their WordPress posts then please try this code:

<a href="http://del.icio.us/post" onclick="window.open('http://del.icio.us/post?v=4&noui&jump=close&url=<?php the_permalink() ?>&title=< ?php the_title() ?>','delicious', 'toolbar=no,width=700,height=400'); return false;">Save to del.icio.us</a>


The reasons the original code wasn’t working were the encodeURIComponent functions in combination with the apostrophes. I removed them, as they’re both url encoded anyway, and it seems to have worked. So if you come across this page from a search engine or one of the other new social/community/network sites then please save it to del.icio.us as this could help some more people out.

I may be adding links to the other popular sites such as Digg and Reddit but I’ll need a long rest first.

During the redesign of this site I had to take into consideration the current hot topic of web standards, accessibilty. This is where you design your site with respect to people with disabilities, such as blindness, so that it can be viewed in as many different kind of browers and screen readers as possible. There are laws, such as the Disability Discrimination Act UK and US Section 508, demanding that public bodies make their websites fit certain criteria. This makes web accessibility a valuable skill to add to your arsenal. It was also the topic of the recent Brighton & Hove web awards keynote speech by Kevin Carey, the head of HumanITy, a digital inclusion charity. The good news is that accessibility and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) share the common traits of demanding well-writen code in line with web standards so there are also financial reasons to adopt them.

During this sites redesign one of my main goals was to fix the poor CSS layout in an attempt to help its SEO. The old fluid layout technique had demoted the middle content to the bottom of my HTML file leaving the busy left and right bars sitting in the middle of the code. Search Engine robots often give up reading a sites content after a certain amount of code and stopped before they got to the actual post. This has now been fixed and the code is semantically sound with the correct use of headers and other CSS tags (with no hacks) allowing me to post my CSS validation badge at the bottom of the sidebar. To get a better understanding of this you should view the source of this web page and you’ll be able to almost read the site yourself (in Internet Explorer go to view/source and in Firefox press CTRL-U.) If most of it makes sense to a human then it should work better on all devices.

After last Wednesday’s post on the live implementation I thought there might be nothing left to change on this site. The PHP templates were fixed, the CSS was fixed, the design had improved by a factor of 10, what else was there to do? After adjusting the rightbar adverts and the comments form I thought I had finished. It was only after I decided to check my site out with some online validation tools I realised there was a lot more to do. The goal was to get one of these:
and to do that I needed to get a pass from a range of different sources. I did well and made around 10 changes that have increased the accessibility by quite a margin. I now present a list of different validation sites, along with comments on why this site failed to pass.

Cynthia Says. My site passed the Section 508 test and only came up with a few warnings, not fails, on the WCAG tests. One problem was with the alternative text of images (the description of the image). You are meant to use an ‘alt’ tag so that people whose browsers have images disabled can still know what the image was. Blind people should also be able to read the image description, not guess what it is from the filename. I enter these descriptions when I create each post and I can often get lazy and ignore them. The recommendations are that the descriptions should be between 7 and 81 characters long and I will endeavour to include these from now on.

TAW. This validation service checks your site against WCAG 1.0 standards up to level AAA (priority three) and is the best looking of the lot. Instead of a list it actually visibly highlights problems across your web page making identification of problems much easier. KingOfMyCastle.com passes Priority 1 & 2 but falls over with only one instance of failure to comply with Priority 3. The mistake is with the search box on the right. I am advised to put some text into this box as some screen readers have difficulty when they are empty. Aesthetically, I felt this was wrong so I have left it blank.

ATRC. This checker validates your site to WCAG 2.0 Level 2 on it’s default setting. Unfortunately my site fails on only one factor, a dodgy link created by WordPress. This link has no text to actually click, which is what the validator complains about. Solving this would involve making changes to the WordPress engine itself, something I’m not about to do. Oh well, at least this isn’t my fault.

EvalAccess 2.0. Ouch! This one threw up over 250 problems and 600 warnings although Priority 1 was clean and Priority 2 had only one issue. The issue was that it didn’t ‘associate labels explicitly with their controls’ in the search area on the right. To fix this would mean putting some text next to the search button saying ‘Press this to search’ which I feel is unnecessary on a submit button. Most of the issues thrown up on Priority 3 are with Access Keys which allow the reader to move to specific links using shortcuts, rather than the mouse. A good article about access keys can be found at A List Apart and it’s well worth the read if you’d like to know more about this underused and badly supported feature.

So that’s the automated experts view on my source code but what do I think? Well, I’m upset that I can’t display the badge proudly at the bottom of this site but I’m not a government organisation which lets me off. This is just some place on the web I dump a number of links, images and articles I think people may find interesting. However, the improvments from the last design are numerous. Just try increasing the font size (CTRL scroll wheel) and you’ll see that the site doesn’t break as before. The markup is much more cleaner and I’m sure that anybody using a device other than a standard web browser will be having a much better experience than they were last week. I’ll just chalk this one up to a big experience gain on my part.

Ron Mueck’s Spooning Couple, currently showing at the National Galleries of Scotland in Edinburgh.

“And yet … all is not well. They are not as comfortable, as relaxed, as they seem at first. Both sets of eyes are open - without eye contact. They are thinking. In silence. About what? We can only guess. Her unclothed torso is turned away from his clothed torso. His naked lower half is against her knickers. The T-shirt is unironed, its white muted. The knickers are somehow indeterminate - the faded colour purple that results when whites get washed with items which aren’t colourfast. Romantic it isn’t.” The Guardian.

I’ve seen his ‘boy‘ at the Millennium Dome but his new sculptures look even better.

Dicta (noun) - Plural of dictum

Dictum (noun) - An authoritative statement; a formal pronouncement.

Didactic (adj) - Intended to instruct; Morally instructive.

Dichotomy (noun) - Division into two usually contradictory parts or opinions.

Sergio Garcia is currently 25/1 to win the open. Very good odds. If you fancy a flutter then click the Ladbrokes image on the top right of just click here. I’ve put £4 on which will give me a return of over £100 if lucky.

UPDATE: Sergio Garcia is now 8/1 - thats 15 minutes after my post. I could be on to a winner. As long as Tiger and Ernie don’t have amazing rounds that is.

And for people who don’t gamble you can take a look at this page showing the relative sizes of planets in our solar system.

Tipping and educating for over a year.

With my PC problems taking up most of the time I have neglected to write any entries for a while so here’s some fun links to look at in the meantime:

For your cute animal needs: www.thingsthatmakeyougoaahh.com

Stupid Online Comic: Filth Hole

Was the 2004 US Election Stolen?: Great article in Rolling Stone Magazine

I’m thinking of getting myself a digital camera. Digital Camera Review and Digital Photography Review are the places to check out.

Check out a whole range of optical illusions: www.michaelbach.de

An explaination of everything: www.plaxo.be

Are you with AOL? Try cancelling your account

Think you’re brainy? Do this great online IQ test. I got 140, what a smart arse!

Check this out.

Watch this video to hallucinate without taking any drugs at all!!

Right click the picture and choose Zoom -> Full Screen for the best effects. I get a good 10 seconds of trippy visuals!

Just heard on Radio Five Live:
Presenter: “Tiger Woods has received condemnation from charities after saying he ‘played like a spaz’ during last weekend’s play at Augusta. On the line now is a ten year old boy with cerebal palsy…”

I also see that Dave Morgan, the “former fiancé of Jessie Wallace”, has sold another story to The Sun. He must be hard up. The headline is “Coke used like After Eights”, which is odd as I always thought you put coke up your nose. It’s just sad to see an “ex-PC” making money off selling three year old stories to the press. I just remember seeing a clip from The Farm (Five) where Flavor Flav asks him what he does and Morgan responds by saying “I dated a soap star” - the look on Flavor Flav’s face, ha! I would like to point out that I read the free online version of this paper.

Popped into the new British Bookshops & Stationers today on Western Road. It’s the new version of Sussex Stationers but bigger, cleaner and the products were actually labelled with their price, take note Woolworths and Robert Dyas (the price slackers of Western Rd). All the staff were really friendly and helped me find a few bits and bobs I was looking for, apart from one. The security guard was casting a shadow around me the whole time I was there. Occassionally I looked at him and he didn’t even look away that quickly. It was so full on though that if he does it again I’ll complain. I’m paying your wages, Sunshine! (Well £4 of it anyway).

I’ve always wished I could be better at logo design. I just tend to open Photoshop and play around with fonts to create anything these days. Luckily logo design is merging with technology more and more and the ability to create stunning designs on your PC is becoming easier. Maybe it’s time to buy Adobe’s Illustrator. There’s a great article at Graphic Design USA highlighting the current fashion trends in logo design.

One of the most memorable and unchanging logos of all time must be the IBM logo created in 1972 by Paul Rand. For a blue chip company this is amazing longevity and they’ve saved quite a few quid on expensive rebranding exercises.



This was an update of his earlier IBM logo which had exactly the same City Medium font. The new logo contained eight lines which are meant to represent “speed and dynamism” but I also hope that it represents eight bytes, which in binary can store numbers from 0 to 255.

On the IBM website you can take a look at all its previous logos, including many when it was called International Time Recording. ITR eventually merged with the snappy sounding Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company and eventually became International Business Machines.

So I’ve been told, the computer ‘HAL’ from 2001 A Space Odyssey was named by replacing each letter of ‘IBM’ with the letter alphabetically before it.

Starting this month I’m going to try one post each day. I’ll also be changing the content from just a link blog to a link blog with some more personal comments. This will only last the month of April so please come back in May. To start the ball rolling here’s a poem.

Fat little Man,
deciphering the machine,
confusion seems new,
no change in your pocket but a passer-by gives you 20 pence.

Fat little Man,
returning to his car,
reading the instructions,
fumbling with sticky-taped paper like a five year old child.

My first poem since GCSE English.

March stats were the best yet. I had 2177 unique visitors and over 30,000 hits.

Today’s link: Man flogs wife’s box on eBay. The comments at the bottom are very funny.