December 06, 2007: Website design and web development
Brainfire is a freelance web design and web development company based in Berkhamsted, Herfordshire, near Hemel Hempstead. Run by Mat Harden, a passionate and experienced web designer, Brainfire specialise in standards compliant accessible websites. Services include web development, website help and updates, web standard and semantic coding of existing designs, HTML email marketing, bespoke website application development, PHP development, ASP development and web consultation.
For all enquiries, call Mat Harden on 07769 655 641 or email mat@brainfire.co.uk.
December 05, 2007: Garden glove specialists
My friends, the Garden Glove Specialists have recently added an on-line payment facility to their website to allow card payments for their Second Skin & Ultra gardening gloves.
They sell three types of gloves:
Ultra Glove - these latex rubber gardening gloves provide thorn resistance and are great for pruning roses and pulling brambles.
Second Skin - their most popular glove, nitrile rubber thorn resistant gardening gloves, which are flexible great for potting, tying up plants and any jobs where you want to feel what you're doing. And they're thorn resistant!
Easy Fit - the latest gardening gloves are very light weight and great for every day use. will be available to buy soon available to buy now!
Each gardening glove has a cotton back and elasticated cuff keep all dirt and bugs out! Everyone who uses them thinks they're fantastic!
May 31, 2007: I am not Brainfire Group
Occasionally I get requests from misguided companies (and lawyers) asking me to sell or hand-over domain names they believe have been registered by Brainfire. I'm am not a cyber-squatter. I do not register domain names in the hope that large corporations will pay huge sums to recover. Unfortunately for me a company called Brainfire Group does. Brainfire Limited and Brainfire Group are two entirely separate entities.
All I know about Brainfire Group is the following:
- They register domain names to the their address in Calgary, Canada
- They are involved in a number of domain name disputes with Nominet
- They have been involved in one of the few legal cases that have used Wikipedia as a court source
If you want to discover who has registered a domain name, use a WHOIS lookup such as the Geektools Whois tool.
November 23, 2006: Backyard Theme Park
Last Wednesday there was a novelty story in the Metro about a metalworker in Indianapolis who built The Blue Flash rollercoaster in his own in his backyard. It might not have made it into the RCDB, but I thought it was great. There should be more of this sort of thing. Like that guy who put a fake shark through his roof.
Anyway, it reminded me of the backyard monorail I found on the web about a year ago. Maybe these guys should get together and make a backyard amusement park?
October 25, 2006: Where the hell is Matt?
No not me, I'm here. I mean, where the hell is this Matt? A video of a guy called Matt dancing some ridiculous dance in many amazing locations around the globe. A chewing gum brand caught wind of it and sponsored him to do it all over again - nice work if you can get it. I think it's quite well known now, thanks to YouTube. Thanks to Matt, who pointed this out to me (about 3 months ago).
June 30, 2006: Shoreditch Light Sabre
Have a butchers at this simple website: the Shoreditch Light Sabre. There's not much to it, but the force is strong. Hgggmmmm, like you will…
June 02, 2006: Not a dog but a blog
I've been meaning to blog it since he launched it. And I've been meaning to blog it since Andrew mentioned it. I've added a link to it. Now, I've just read iFridge? and I think it's about time I finally got around it.
Colley.me.uk launched on 11 May 2006. Apart from being my gigging buddy he's also one of my favourite have-a-little-chuckle-to-yourself-over-a-lunch-time-sandwich wordsmiths. Check him out!
Shame you can't write comments though. I got done by one of those smart-pants mini bars when I emptied the whole damn thing to put my water in there. Next thing I know, there's a bill at my door.
April 15, 2006: Worst website menu ever?
I've been browsing round the world of the web tonight and I came across the site of record label 4AD. I thought, "ok, great, I'd like to read about the Cocteau Twins please". So I found myself clicking this stupid wheel type thing until I found a bit on it that says 'help'. This isn't general website or accessibility help, but how to use the diabolical navigation method they had lumbered their poor unsuspecting users.
Click on tiny arrow near the letters, select a letter, drag the artist name into the light area, click the... no hold on, I don't give a damn anymore I've lost interest. Why make it so hard for potential customers to find your products? Correct me if I'm incorrect, but if you need to provide help on how to use a website menu, then it's probably not the best menu, now is it?
It's a very well put together piece of Flash. Once you've 'learnt' how to use it, it's not so bad and I guess it could be nice to browse an artist by year, but really, come on, it's too complicated.
Anyone else seen a bad menu lately?
January 29, 2006: He's done it again
Check out Vince's latest adventure from he Vince Goes Ape series. Thank you Vince!
January 27, 2006: Little bit of a problem
If anyone’s been here lately, you may have noticed some funny things going on and pages not working. Well, I've moved server and it caused an untold amount of problems. I’ve got a new re-seller account at WebFusion and wanted to hose brainfire.co.uk on that. But as I already had an existing brainfire account, WebFusion could not create a new one. Which means I was facing un-avoidable downtime. I’ve had to back-up the whole site - wait - and then upload to the new server. What a load of rubbish! It would have gone smoother if I moved to a new host.
This will also explain the lack of posts recently.
January 10, 2006: Doing the doodle
After two years of nagging, Rob has finally added a doodle section to his blog. I’ve always been a fan of his graphic work and characters, and now you’ll see why.
December 09, 2005: Upgrade to Movable Type 3.2
Not that anyone will be interested, but I've upgraded my publishing software for this site to version 3.2. I had a few teething problems as I publish my pages in PHP and as the default file permissions in 3.2 are set to non-executable, these did not run… as I learnt the hard way.
All working now though, and I must say - I really like Movable Type 3.2. It's a great piece of software with some clever little functions and now has a colourful interface.
September 18, 2005: Rogue taxidermy
No, not a Google whack, but something very strange indeed. Last nights dinner conversation touched slightly on the wonders of the Internet. Over the first course, I thought it was time we talked about animals with two heads and badger-fish. As if taxidermy wasn't enough already. Check it out for yourself, but beware, these custom creatures may offend.
September 02, 2005: Happy shopper
I was trying to buy a couple of CDs this morning. CD-Wow gave me the best rate so I attempted to purchase the items by clicking the 'Add To Cart' button. I logged in to the site with no problems, but then realised I could not see the shopping cart. After 3 frustrating minutes of searching through the site, I gave up and bought the items from Play.
Continue reading "Happy shopper"
August 10, 2005: Browse all the houses
Imagine you could browse a map of the UK and see what the houses look like anywhere. Cor - that would be brilliant!
Just as well we can then. Thanks to some brain-box called Andrew we now have OnOneMap.com using Google Maps. I could spend hours on here, it's fascinating stuff.
June 16, 2005: Venues finding service
Last month saw the release of our new project: Venues.org.uk. A free venues finding service. I was responsible for designing a clear and simple user interface with emphasis on the search facility.
I'm happy with the results - all pages validate as transitional XHTML, use logical semantics and contain accessiblilty features. I also believe it's easy to use. Plus as our reports show, many people are finding it a useful tool too! [I'll add some stats soon]
March 30, 2005: Transparent screens
I like this idea a lot. It's similar to the Infinite Cat Project. Take a picture of what's behind your monitor & then make that the background image on your "desktop" to give the impression that your monitor is transparent. I'm going to try this out myself.
February 15, 2005: NotMyFace update
I've added some pictures to NotMyFace of Clare's Hat & Wig Party & a couple from my Barge Trip in Bath with Tre & Stu during a wet weekend September last year (I've yet to scan my photos of this, so more to come soon).
December 07, 2004: Infinite Cat Project
On the insanely good ideas for using the internet list, this is currently ranked at #237. The Infinite Cat Project is cats looking at other cat who are themselves looking at cats, who, in turn are looking at cats which are also looking at cats & those cats which are being looked at by the cats are looking at cats... ugetme?
December 01, 2004: Re-inventing the wheel
It's never been a clever idea to try & re-invent the wheel. But now some square has not only tried, but succeeded. Check out this nutter who's built a fully working bicycle with square wheels which still gives a perfectly smooth ride!
Must be the only person who'd be happy to see more speed humps...
November 17, 2004: Firefox errors
Don't get excited! It's not problems with Firefox, but rather the many many websites. Like errors on Yahoo! Launch. No way am I "down-grading" to Netscape 7.1, how rubbish is that! BT is another offender with errors flying out left, right & centre.
Start bloody building your sites for proper browsers!
However, a colleague did find this one error. But I think it might be ok.
November 09, 2004: Come on Firefox!
The day everyone uses Firefox will be the day all web designers rejoice. For now though, with M$ holding over 90% of the webs users with the inferior Internet Explorer, we'll have to make do with front page BBC news.
Now come on everybody, make your own life easier, download Mozilla Firefox.
August 27, 2004: Breakdancing Transformers
I used to love the Transformers. And I love break dancing (I can't do it, but I think it's cool). So if someone mixed the 2 together - then that's got to be awesome!? Well, nearly take a look for yourselves.
Goes on a bit, but if you can wait until Ravage (the little tape that comes out of Soundwave's chest) appear, it gets better then.
Talk about robotics...
August 25, 2004: Designers up north
Sometimes it makes me sick how good designers can get. Today I felt particularly nauseous when a friend sent me a link which led me to finding the work of Lynn, Limmy & Donnie.
Most of their work I found to be greatly inspiring. It's was also good to see the boys sense of humor.
August 23, 2004: World Of Vince
The wonderful World Of Vince has now been published online. Now we can all enter the bizarre & banal thoughts of the one & only Mr V. Topics covered are "Letters from Vince" & "Out-of-Office Messages".
Marvellous!
July 13, 2004: Addictive lunchtime gaming
For lunchtime games Mousebreaker's Blast Billiards ranks pretty high. Now, after giving the table a good iron & a lick of paint they've released the even more challenging version 5.
July 06, 2004: Euro 2004 Virtual Replay
OK, the European Cup 2004 is over. But thanks to the BBC we can still watch all the goals in their Virtual Reply centre. You can watch each & every goal from any angle in super slow-motion - fantastic!
You will need Shockwave Player to use this.
May 25, 2004: Go go gadget string vest!
What the hell! Have you seen this? SCOTTeVEST - Technology Enabled Clothing is going to revolutionise the way we think about our daily attire. No longer will clothing serve as a single purpose skin covering, now we can look stylish & carry on with our international secret agent day jobs.
Don't worry about your t-shirt weighing over 20kg, with the poses you can pull off in these garments you'll be walking on sunshine!
I should have seen this coming when my mother threaded my mittens through my parker.
