Hazel McKendrick » kcnb

Bunnies Everywhere!

Hazel — Thu, 28 May 2009 15:49:18 +0000

Finally, the site has a favicon. I kept forgetting because my bookmarks still showed up with the icon from the previous theme, so I never noticed it was missing. Hopefully the new one will actually show up for you too – let me know if it doesn’t.

Look, glass. I'm practically a Mac user already.

Also, you may note the bunny logo in the title. It took over six-billion hours in MS paint, or, you know, an hour or so in Inkscape and Photoshop. This is the reason I will never be an artist.

Web Work

Hazel — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 10:58:03 +0000

I guess very few people have seen KCNB in its original form. If you’re interested in some of the previous (hideous) themes from the site, I’ve stuck them up on my portfolio in the section titled “Web Development”.

Probably the most interesting is the theme that almost came into being this time around:

KCNB Fresh Front Page

I’m still trying to find the source code for the terrible blogging/forum software I wrote before – I know it’s archived somewhere. I’ll get it up here too if I can get hold of it.

Updates, and a new theme.

Hazel — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 16:53:50 +0000

New Theme

Oh yes. That is a brand new theme you see before you. Thoughts? Opinions?

It’s a bit minimalistic (read: boring) and relies more heavily on the default Kubrick theme than I would like, but it shows up and seems to work – what more could you ask for? Hopefully being plain and simple means I won’t get sick of it as soon as I have with other themes, and it’s as simple as can be – no magazine style front pages to fiddle with and waste time on.

If you want any of the source code, drop me an email and I’ll fire it off to you. I don’t think there’s anything particularly complicated or inspiring in there, but if you’re curious let me know.

PS. Did I mention I *HATE* web coding?

Linking To Me

On this note, I’ve also pointed http://hazelmckendrick.com at my about me page (which still hasn’t been updated unhappyface), as you can hopefully see from the different banner I’m using there. If you’re linking to me in any sort of professional or academic capacity, I’d appretiate if you could use that link instead. Blogging people – feel free to stick with kcnb. Cheers

Portfolios

A few of my friends have now got their portfolios online (or will do in the near future) – please go check them out on my links page.

More Changes.

Hazel — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 19:21:17 +0000

So, any of you who’ve been hanging around longer than a couple of days (ok, so noone. You’ll just have to take my word for what follows) will have noticed that there have been a few changes around the site lately.

As you can see, for the first time I’m using a theme which I did not create myself. I have plans for how I’d like the site to look in future, but given my lack of time for web programming and my hatred of PHP, I suspect KCNB’s appearance may not change for some time. I do intend to keep updating the site, but I wouldn’t hold your breath for regular posts. I’ll write when I have something to say.

We Need Some Time Apart

Hazel — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 11:30:31 +0000

Suffice to say from my lack of updates (again), blogging isn’t really working out for me. I’m kind of sick of this updating for a couple of months, having uni, and giving up again thing. So I won’t be posting to KCNB in its current form any further.

However, I have found something which was working well for me: Tumblr. I guess most of those posts wont mean a lot to anyone but myself, but I found it a great way to keep my thoughts organised during a project and stay on top of links and sources I’ve used.

This in itself is not really enough: I’d like to have a space to maintain my portfolio of projects and games. So my intention is to cut things back here, have space for my work and use it more as a personal homepage, and incorportate a micro-blog into the site. This means I can easily share what’s going on in a way that is useful to both myself and hopefully to others facing similar problems, with a system I might actually use, and also have the space to make longer, more thought out posts if the need arrises.

Plugins and Stuff

Hazel — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 18:32:24 +0000

Since Ashok just got a new WordPress blog and was asking about plugins for it, I thought it was about time to update my own.

Behind the scenes now I’m using wp-super-cache (not that I get enough traffic to actually need it), the All in One SEO plugin that everyone recommends, and an XML sitemap plugin. I’ve also set up automatic backups.

I’d really like to have a go at writing a WordPress plugin, but I can’t think of anything that I want which doesn’t already exist. Anything in particular you would like to see?

Otherwise, are there any other great plugins which you think might help my blog?

Gravatars

Hazel — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 10:19:50 +0000

You many have noticed that the comments on KCNB have a little avatar next to them. Since most of these are showing up as the default image, my little blue space invader (who by the way is called Marcel), I thought I’d share with you how to get your own image showing up.

This site, like many other blogs and websites, has been equipped to use Gravatars. The idea is that you sign up for an account, and an image is tied to your email address. When you enter that email address on a Gravatar enabled blog or website, your avatar will automatically be displayed. This makes it easy for you to have a perpetual identity between a range of different sites – essential for bloggers hoping to promote themselves.

Hope to see some more pretty images soon – feel free to comment on this post to test your Gravatar. It does take a few minutes to appear after you’ve created an account.

New Theme Issues

Hazel — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 13:36:45 +0000

As you will hopefully have noticed, KCNB has recently undergone a change of themes.

Whilst I consider this one mostly complete (although I’m always open to suggestions and changes) there is still one particular issue I don’t know how to sort. It occurs on the index pages with lists of posts, and as far as I can tell only in Firefox. Each post extract is contained within a

element, which is in turn contained within a link to the correct page. For the most part the CSS functions correctly – when you move your mouse anywhere over the box, the background colour changes.

However, from time to time instead of this each piece of text becomes a link, as you can see in the image here.

The strangest thing is that this doesn’t even occur every time the page is loaded, reloading the page can cause the post to be displayed correctly. It also occurs more on certain posts than others, although I can’t find anything which makes them different.

I’m left wondering whether this might be more a problem with Firefox’s rendering the page, but I’d still like to fix it.

If you have any thoughts on how I could achieve this effect in a different way, I’d be happy to hear it. Also, if you’ve noticed other problems with this theme in modern browsers, please let me know here.

I’m Doing Science And I’m Still Alive

Hazel — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 19:14:08 +0000

I’m back again. I know it’s been a while.

It’s easy to say the blog is back for good now, but keeping to that is going to be tougher. First of all, I want to thank the people that emailed or messaged me prompting me to write again. I’m going to try my utmost to write regularly, and if I don’t, I encourage everyone to yell at me until I do. I have no idea how people with blogs that have lasted years manage to keep this up, suffice to say I’m impressed.

There will however be a few changes around here. I’m going to aim to write shorter posts several times a week, just to make sure I am writing something. When deadline time approaches I wont have much time to write articles but if I am used to giving shorter reflections then I should be able to keep up.

You may also notice the new theme. There are still a few kinks to work out but I think it’s far more professional and also much simpler than the previous theme. And of course, less pink. If you have any thoughts or suggestions about it, I’d love to here from you – just drop me a comment below.

Last time I blogged, I wrote about the ‘insane project’ I had planned. This was referring to my ideas for a piece of PS2 Coursework which actually turned out to be very successful. I wont say it went without a hitch, but I did get it completed by the deadline without preventing me finishing my other coursework too, so overall I’m very pleased with the result. I’m not really sure how to attempt to capture a video of it but as soon as I work it out, I’ll stick it up here.

You might also notice I’ve made some separate space for my projects on this website. I guess you’ll be glad to know that I have written more than four programs during my time at university, but I’m trying to offer a selection of my more complete work there. I’ll continue to add to it as I embark on more exciting projects in the future.

Thanks for sticking around – don’t forget to let me know what you think of the new look.

Thank You!

Hazel — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 22:27:20 +0000

KCNB has now been around for a month. Not a huge milestone, I know, but I just want to stop and take this opportunity to thank everyone who has helped me out so far.

Thanks!

Nistur, Ashok, Mike, Kiera Peney, everyone at Girls Don’t Game, Mum (of course ) have all helped me out in some way or another. I hope I haven’t missed anyone… But thanks to everyone, every link and comment is appreciated and has made a lot of difference.

Thanks also to everyone who has submitted my posts to Stumbleupon – it’s resulted in far more traffic than I had hoped for in the first month.

I’d also like to mention…

Games Kernel

For anyone who hasn’t already found it, I recently launched a second blog focusing on Linux Gaming at http://gameskernel.com. If you’re already a Linux user or are interested in trying out an alternative OS, you might want to check it out.