Pterodaktyl…

I’ve just moved the site from the old K2 based theme to Mandigo. K2 is a very powerful theme with some neat AJAX features, but it took a whole load of customisations to get the site looking the way I wanted - customisations which then had to be migrated to every new release of the theme.

Mandigo is rather simpler, but looks good (I think so anyway!) and beyond a new header image and a couple of colour tweaks it worked right out of the box.

The only thing I still have to sort is the Twitter Tools plugin - I have it installed, but the sidebar widget refuses to show up.

Constructive (or even destructive if you’ve had a bad day!) comment on the new theme is always welcome!

I’m afraid it’s been rather quiet around here for the last month - but after a period when business was worrying slack, it’s suddenly become incredibly busy!

We’re currently working on three projects, including some flight simulation modelling, which is a whole new area for me. It’s taken some getting used to, but it’s interesting to be building planes instead of trains. They’re certainly much more complicated shapes! I really need to get my 3ds max skills up to scratch - these pictures show the standard of modelling that’s going to be set over the next few months. Unfortunately, the version of max that we use throws its toys out the cot if you try and render to texture under XP SP2. This technique is essential for getting the shadow effects that make those shots of the cab look so real, so we’re looking at a fairly expensive upgrade to the latest version. Discreet produce great software, but their tendency to cease producing patches for superseded versions tends to make me grind my teeth…
Tomorrow we’re flying up to Glasgow, then Wednesday we have a business meeting in London.¹ I’ll be checking e-mails when I get the chance. I’ll also try and do a few mobile updates, as I’ve finally got the post-by-email feature working on Wordpress.

On the subject of mobile internet access, I recently switched from Orange Pay Monthly to Pay-As-You-Go - I wasn’t using the phone enough to justfy spending £24 a month on a contract. I was worried that I’d lose the £3 for 4MB GPRS deal I got on contract, but in fact there’s an equivalent deal on PAYG. There’s also the option to buy a single day’s unlimited access for £1 - which for occasional heavy use works out pretty well.²

Well, that’s about it for tonight, I’ll try and update from Glasgow - it’ll be the first time I’ve been to Scotland, so that should be fun!

Oh yes, and I’ve installed a footnotes plugin for Wordpress³

1. 7am train from Honiton, the joy [↩]
2. I tend to go for weeks without using GPRS, then want to upload a load of cameraphone pics at once [↩]
3. Which I promise not to use this much in future [↩]

After umming and ahhhing over it for ages, I’ve finally decided to get a hosted site and set up my own blog - so here it is!

It’s powered by WordPress 2.0, and uses a modified version of the K2 theme. I’m still working on getting the layout how I like it, especially the sidebar - so you may find things broken occasionally.

Criticism of the layout and functionality in various browsers would be welcome; I’m still finding my way around WordPress and theme modification in general, so I need to know what I’m getting right and what I’m getting wrong!