You may have been popping in here this week and thinking, “why isn’t he blogging every day, after he said he’d aim to do a post a day for the whole year?”. I’ll explain why I’ve been quiet on here for the past few days.

Over the past few weeks, i’ve been working with Michael Krapf and Mark Forrester over at WooThemes on our new theme (released today), “Unsigned“. This theme, geared primarily at bands and solo musicians, is a theme that’s near and dear to me, as music is a great passion of mine, as is the independent music industry in South Africa. More on “Unsigned” in another blog post though. Back to Project 365 and the “post a day” concept.

While blogging, I tend to ask and re-ask myself the same questions every so often; “who am I blogging for, really?“, “is it worth posting every day for the sake of posting every day?“. I believe, after much thought, I’ve found answers to both of these (which I’ll most likely find again, should I end up re-asking these questions yet again).

Who am I blogging for?

Ultimately, I’m blogging for myself and for anyone who wants to read it. It’s not a case of “I’m blogging for me and that’s that” or “I’m blogging just to get readers”. Both of those viewpoints are really inaccurate… first off, if you’re blogging for yourself, why do you need it to be online? Just blog in a journal app of sorts on your desktop, or in a text document. Why go to all the effort of setting up a blog?

If you’re blogging for others and not for yourself, you’ve lost the point of blogging. Blogging is, as I see it, sharing. Therefore, by saying “hey, I found that interesting, let me share it”, I’m blogging both for myself (because I found it interesting) and for others (because I’m sharing it) at the same time. Question asked: question answered.

Is it worth posting every day, for the sake of it?

No, it isn’t. Quality over quantity any day. Not much more to say on that front. All clear, right?

What about Project 365 then?

If blogging is about being original and making something “your own”, to a certain degree, then lets do that. Instead of saying a “post a day”, lets say, a “post for each day of the year”. That means, as long as there are a minimum of 365 posts at the end of the year, we’re golden. That means I can stick to Project 365, while retaining a certain level of quality and interest in posts (instead of posting randomly with pictures of cats climbing out of shoe boxes and whacky Lolcats pictures… what’s the point of that?).

In other news, I made a few visual tweaks to this blog’s theme recently, highlighting the comment count on each post, adding post thumbnail support to each post (I’ve been meaning to do that for a while) and a few minor visual tweaks. I’d like to keep evolving this blog where I can, refining the layout, rather than switching it up completely when I get tired of the design. I feel that’s more in line with both my ideas for this blog, as well as my schedule.

Have a great weekend everyone.

It’s often said that one should blog first and foremost for oneself. If you like a topic or post, you should write about it of you want to. While this is true, the next question I ask myself is, why share thoughts and ideas if I’m blogging for myself and, by association, not for readers?

I’d say a mix between the two works best for me. Blogging about what I like, as well as touching base with you all and finding out which posts you like best and ideas for topics to blog about in future posts.

So… what do you guys think?

Occasionally on Twitter, I read tweets along the lines of “20 years ago today, I was climbing trees” or “#whenIwasYourAge I rode my bike to school every morning”. Is technology part of what has caused this generation shift?

Many people refer to “Generation-Y”… the youth. The “young people” who are to “make a difference in the world”. I’d say that we’re entering a new age of “Generation-O”- the “plugged in” youth of today who seek to optimise every facet of their lives through technology.

Every day, I examine things I do daily and ask myself, “how can I optimise this?” “How can I make this process ‘easier’?” As I hit “Publish” on this post, it’ll be tweeted, Facebooked and Buffered, essentially optimising the sharing of the post. This stems from the question of “how can I optimise this?”.

Are these questions always necessary? Probably not.

Over the holiday season and entering into the new year, I’ve been finding methods of stepping aside from technology from time to time to take pleasure out of the natural joys we have all around us… walking on the beach, going for a drive by the ocean. These times led me to start thinking about the concept of “Generation-O”. Growing up in the 90′s, I was one of those kids who rode their bike every day and had fun in the forest. I feel as though I am of the final generation who enjoyed these activities, which technology seems to have replaced.

If you find yourself in this technological loop, try to step aside and just spend an hour or so taking a walk on the beach, in the silence, gathering your thoughts. While technology is great, it’s important to remember that even the smartest computer requires a human being to flick the “on” switch.

Over the past few years (I’d say, since about 2008), I’ve decided to approach tasks day to day from a different angle. How can we say that a task is “impossible” if we haven’t even yet attempted it?

This is quite a common occurrence in web development… developers looking at a task, attempting to analyze it, getting “stuck” at one point and then moving on, deeming it “impossible”. Why does it have to, all of a sudden, be “impossible”, if you haven’t even attempted it yet? Why settle for the “shortcut” when you could just sit down and develop it how you envision it in the first place?

It’s not about it being “impossible”… you just haven’t found the correct pieces yet, or how they fit together.

As a small example to illustrate how this approach sucks and how it could be improved with a simple re-thinking process, lets take a look at a real-world scenario I experienced last year.

During the development of our “Editorial” theme at WooThemes, we wanted to add functionality to provide the administrator with more control over how many columns their content should be laid out in. This, at first glance, seems quite straight forward. A simple PHP script to cut and re-arrange the words at certain points would do this.

What if the author wants to control where the content is cut off? What if they want virtually infinite possible columns? Well, a shortcode would do this, right?

What if they switch themes? Their content would look ugly and be riddled with a bunch of shortcodes that aren’t in use anymore. In a context like this, where the content is everything, we couldn’t have that.

This is where we got down to the drawing board and found the solution that stands to date. A simple button that adds an HTML comment into the author’s content. We then use a WordPress filter (and regular expression) to convert the HTML comments into semantic HTML tags on the frontend, keeping count of how many columns are being generated and adjusting the layout accordingly. If the administrator decides to switch themes, the HTML comments won’t affect the display of the content, nor the functionality of the WordPress admin. The button itself, as well as how the HTML comments are displayed in the WordPress admin, echoes how WordPress itself handles similar functionality, integrating seamlessly into the authoring experience.

To illustrate how this relates to the “impossible”, many would settle for the shortcode option, as it is the most direct and “obvious” choice, without taking into account the ramifications thereof.

We’ve taken this same approach on many other pieces of functionality within themes and functionality developed at WooThemes. I’ve made this concept a part of my day to day approach to things as well.

To sum it up in a sentence, I’d say, “don’t assume something is ‘impossible’ until you’ve tried it. You never know… you may just get a better result”.

At many such conferences, I’ve heard successful businessmen and entrepreneurs impart valuable tips such as “the value of your fax machine is determined by how many others have fax machines” and “surround yourself with others who know more than you in certain areas of your business”. Both of these are valuable tid-bits of knowledge that I have taken to heart.

When listening to a speaker at a conference, I feel it is important to take in every word and process it (rather than just sitting and listening while tweeting a quote from their talk). I feel it is also important to ask questions and spark discussion from these talking points.

To the above two quotes, I find myself asking, “what of those who are just as skilled as you in your area of expertise?” and “but what if I don’t actually use the fax machine?”. This leads me to the topic of this post; growth through discussion.

A fax machine (metaphorically or literally) is useless if not used, regardless of how many others have fax machines. If I am the only person in my surroundings with the particular skill I specialise in, who am I to discuss things with?

Working with the developers that I do is an experience second to none, if I may put it that way. Just by sitting next to the gentlemen that I do, I’ve learned so much… and we hardly show each other any code.

Through discussion of concepts, ideas and approaches to problem-solving in code, we help each other to create a better end result, and trust in one-another that the result produced will be to each of our liking.

Therefore, what I’ve learned through listening, taking in, processing and re-interpreting the above two quotes is, do that they suggest, and also make sure that you have people around you who are like-minded individuals and discuss ideas with them, rather than just putting headphones on and zoning in on your tasks at  hand. That way, you are able to discuss your ideas and, through discussion, come to a better (or different) approach that could take your product or idea to the next level.

Stop. Listen. Discuss. Grow.

On Fridays, WooThemes works remotely. With Magnus down in Cape Town for a few days, we took the opportunity to go out and enjoy the beautiful Cape Town summer. And what beautiful weather it was.

We met up at Surfer’s Corner in Cape Town (a popular surfing spot in the Southern Suburbs) and rented some gear from one of the local surf shops. The beach was packed, there was plenty of activity in the water (and the shark spotter flag was black, which means there’s poor visibility, but we won’t focus on that ).

For me, having body-boarded since I can remember, this was my first time on a surfboard. The shop gave us longboards (which are, apparently, the best kind of board to start on). This, as you can imagine, was quite a change from a light, short bodyboard. Nevertheless, the eye-opener was yet to come.

As this was my first time in a wetsuit as well, I had literally no idea what to expect from anything… the water temperature, the feeling of being in a wetsuit or the feeling of using a surfboard to catch a wave.

On the whole, every experience was one to remember… not freezing when walking into the water (thanks to the wetsuit… definitely wearing one of those again), carrying a longboard (I couldn’t fit my arm around it, which made for some really funny moments) and catching a few waves with a longboard (wow, surfing takes a lot of work!).

Thanks to the Woo crew for an awesome morning… and to Maggie and Mark for their excellent Kelly Slater impressions on the waves.

So far, the journey (pfff… it’s been only 5 days) has been interesting. The main challenge, really, is to figure out what to post about. I’m definitely of the belief that a blog post should provide some form of value for the reader (not just a video of a cat jumping into a shoe box, for example). That makes it all the more difficult. Luckily, I find I learn a lot and find & pick up web development tips on a regular basis (such as more rigorous use of the Transients API- thanks Warren), which fills up one section of posts I’d like to write. I also tend to think of concepts and theories, which I could flesh out a bit more and post up here in my “thoughts” category. These may become a bit too general though and would need to be filtered into the proper categories.

On the whole, blogging is something I really enjoy (especially using the “distraction free writing” feature in WordPress, which this blog post is currently being written in). I’m really glad I chose to blog for Project 365, as I’m thoroughly enjoying it so far.

Got any ideas for blog posts you’d like me to write up? Pop them in a comment below.

2011 was a year of much excitement and many developments for me. Travels, WordPress plugin releases and exciting developments at WooThemes, coupled with the inclusion of our new family member, Maddie (now almost 5 months old), made for a truly amazing year.

With 2011 now firmly in the past, I’d imagine the usual chain of thought is happening with you all as well… “what new years resolutions should I make?”, “should I make any new years resolutions at all?”, “can I actually keep any of them?”. These are three questions that have been on my mind on and off for the last day or so (clearly, new years resolutions don’t weigh down on me ). I figured, lets cement a few down in a blog post as a starting point, and see if it’s possible to get them done sooner rather than later in the new year.

1. Blog more.

Yes, yes… this old favourite. Don’t we all just want to “blog more”? Luckily, this very post is a starting point for making this resolution happen. With the post-a-day and post-a-week projects run on WordPress.com, surely it’s possible to achieve at least a post a week? What always keeps me from this resolution is the question “is this blog post relevant, or am I posting it for the sake of the post-a-day/post-a-week?”. Therefore, I’ll do my best to keep the posts as relevant as possible. If I truly can’t think of anything to blog about at any given time, I’ll either not post or try one of the topic ideas from post-a-day/post-a-week.

Note: This isn’t me committing to a set posting schedule… I’ll post when and as often as I can.

2. Learn another instrument.

I’ve been wanting to learn drums for many years now, as well as one or two other things. Drumming is starting to call on me more. While this one may not happen for sure, I’d really like to look back in 365 days and say “hey, I did that”… so why not add it to the list, right?

3. Do more.

Okay, this may seem like a stupid one. Let me explain.

When I accomplish goals, I get this sense of overwhelming calm and satisfaction. Therefore, accomplishing more goals produces more of this great feeling. That being said, having too many tasks on the go at any given time, while exciting, can become a bit pressuring. Therefore, a more accurate description of this would be to “do more, and not over-extend my bounds”. This should surely make for an exciting year, as there are many many ideas rattling around in my brain, just itching to be executed.

Right, I’ll keep this short and sign off for now. Here’s to an incredible 2012 and a happy New Year’s Day to all. If you’ve written a similar post or have any similar new years resolutions, pop them in the comments below and share them.

Okay, so the Soccer World Cup bug has definitely bitten me. I don’t generally follow much soccer, but wow, what a vibe!

If one steps back and takes a look at what the world experienced not even an hour ago, it’s quite miraculous, actually. An entire nation, across all continents of the world, united in support of Bafana Bafana as they went up against Mexico in the opening match of the 2010 Soccer World Cup. And that first goal… wow!

The game itself was a mix of various emotions. While we didn’t have the majority of possession of the ball, we managed to take what possession we did have and make some real magic out of it… which made the game all the more entertaining. The end result of a 1-1 draw was the result of both sides fighting for that last goal, which was a truly incredible sight to see.

On the whole, I’m just super proud of Bafana Bafana and really proud to be a South African. Feel it, it is here!

Fusion Cafe is a sports bar/restaurant hybrid. The sections are separated by a perpendicular walkway which allows visitors to eat in the restaurant and not be disturbed by rowdy sports fans, if they’re looking for a quiet meal. The division between the two is subtle yet just right to be convenient for virtually any visitor.

The food at Fusion Cafe is a small yet varied menu, consisting of fish dishes, hamburgers, nachos, salads, starters and desserts. Essentially, there’s something for everyone. The unique factors come in with the presentation… wow. The non-soup dishes with side items (for example, a hamburger and chips) are presented in a stacked method, with the side order as the base on the plate. This is, I’d say, quite unique and an interesting concept for presentation.

Ultimately, the experience was top class. The environment is pleasant and welcoming, the food is well presented and extremely tasty and I’ll be going back there again for sure.

Photos will be up as soon as possible. The food presentation is best seen, rather than read about.