paulfosterdesign

Print Theme updated to support Spotify Play Button

As some of you may have seen and others not, Spotify released a new ‘Play Button’. Tumblr updated the embedding method for audio posts to support this new feature.

Print Theme has been updated to allow for Spotify Play Button in audio posts. You do NOT have to do or update anything to your theme it will happen automatically in the background when Tumblr OKs the submitted changes [this could take some time, Tumblr has over 1200 themes now].

Spotify’s player was embedding ok without changes but the tweaks I made ensure that Spotify Play Button and Tumblrs own audio embedding should continue to be stable in the future. You can see an example of the Spotify Play Button in my previous post.

I thought the music publishers hated iTunes

Realised today that I have been buying music from iTunes recently and been wondering why that is? Historically I never bothered even looking on there as it was by default more expensive, I think I once found a track cheaper.

I haven’t ranted about the music industry in a while. So, pondering the recent subconscious change in behaviour, I realised the swing has coincided with the record companies fixing the price across the board at 99p per track [which I think is ridiculous] so there is no incentive to shop around any more, iTunes is more convienient for me [I’m playing my music in it, and purchase is 2 clicks away], and likely, the millions of other iOS, Mac and eventually iCloud users.

So that being the case, if the record companies believe they are pursuing a strategy to ween people off iTunes they might have to try a little harder again.

Whilst considering writing this I just bought a track and I noticed iTunes dropped that price off of the album it was from. Haven’t seen that happen before. Incentivisation, clever.

A TV show called ‘Home of the Future’ on Channel 4 which aired Feb-Mar 2012, demonstrated a sanitising UV wand which you could clean kitchen surfaces with.

Safe-2-o was #1 on Google for many of the UV wand related searches in UK and visits to my site surged, it seems many viewers were Apple fans as >90% of visits were iOS devices.

For people looking for the wand, the Home of the Future site lists it as Pure Living UVC Wand.

Stranger Door

Today I thought it would be a great idea to oil my bedroom door hinges. [Sidenote: How can they make dedicated air fresheners that smell terrible, but WD40 oli smells really nice and its purpose is to lubricate?]

The top hinge fell silent and in that instant I realised that my door for as long as I can remember sounded like that, maybe not as loud as recently, but the noise was all of it’s own. No other door on Earth sounded the same as my door and now I’ve ruined it. The action of opening the door has always had that accompanying sound. Amazing how even irritating things can become sentimental and that’s a point I can now ponder in the near silence as my door glides.

It’s not all lost, after I realised, I didn’t oil the bottom hinge and it sill makes its distinctive low volume trailing-off clicking [may favourite bit], but the ascending squeak has gone. I nearly had an anonymous bland stranger for a bedroom door.

PF - site logo concepts

A selection of the logos that either got complicatedly too simple or simply too complicated and didn’t make the cut. In the end I decided to keep the logo and in keeping with the rest of the overhaul, simplify and refine the existing design.

paulfosterdesign v2.5 is live!

Building on v2.0 of my portfolio [hence 2.5], it is a slightly leaner, cleaner version of its predecessor showing off the best bits of my design work.

This was a Valentines day feature, “The Love Hub”, I created when I worked for GAME in 2009. I still like the 8-bit/Tetris style heart graphic, very pleased with myself when I came up with that.

Kalanda

Kalanda was a concept for an electronic networked [hence LAN] calendar. One for unit for home and one for office, the units synchronise once docked onto their stand over a standard phone-line connection ensuring they are always fully up-to-date. For example, amendments made to organiser information at home, appear on the partner unit at work.

Note: The concept for Kalanda was conceived back in 2005 at a time where over-the-air connectivity was still relatively new and the term ‘cloud computing’ hadn’t been invented yet. Although the functionality looks limited by today’s standards, I like to think at the time it was forward thinking, indeed the O2 mobile operator released a similar device in 2009 called the ‘O2 Joggler’.

1000th Post

I joined Tumblr in 2008 thanks to the more visual, creative and laid-back nature of the community here. I didn’t want to have to crank out a blog post like clockwork and to just be myself and let the blog be what it will be. So lets see what I have been posting about.

A look back

1st post - A three word link… “Laser Staring Cats”. A fitting way to kick off, I think you’ll agree!

My stuff

Tipped off Techcrunch, the 3rd largest tech blog in the World, about Gift Google Chrome for Christmas campaign I discovered while checking out Chrome on Ubuntu NBR.
My 404 page made the cut on 404notfound.fr.
I posted a bunch of my older work stuff and personal posts under the #paulfosterdesign tag, with more to come.

Theme Release: In July 2010, I launched ‘Print Theme’ a CMYK Html5 based theme onto the Tumblr theme garden. The installs quickly rose to 400+ within a month and have remained level since [sort of].

Most viewed post: A justified rant about an insurance company constantly calling me has been the most popular post until they ceased. 70+ visitors/month for nearly 18 months. Hopefully my advice stopped the calls for many other people.

Most impressed: Yellowbird 360 video and more recently the Lytro Light-ray cameras. I like to know a lot about tech, and not much surprises me but these just blew me away.

Tumblr Crushes: thedailywhat, are2 [nerdy stuff], pacalin [geeky stuff] and dvp.

Cant believe I am at 1000, thanks for following so far,
Paul

I keep my shoes wedged behind the top of my radiator. Why it’s a good idea:

It was a snap practical decision to put them there but the more I thought about it and as time went on it just seems like a great idea.

It dried my shoes out after getting wet [reason I initially put them there].
It gets them up off the floor, frees floor space and stops me tripping over them or hoovering up the laces.
They tuck my window blind in at the bottom so sunlight doesn’t stream onto my eyes in the morning and wake me up.
They fit there really well.
They catch a breeze when the window is open which airs them out.
When the radiator is on for a cold day, my shoes are nice and warm when I go out in the cold.

I might stop thinking its a great idea if they melt, but I dont think that is going to happen [fingers crossed]. It was the warm shoes point that tipped me over the edge into writing this post.