One of the things I have wanted for a while is a coffee machine. I have often thought that it would be nice to be able to provide decent coffee if clients come over as well as having coffee for myself to drink.

Now, at home I usually don’t drink coffee because I just have no liking for instant coffee so I tend to drink a lot of tea.

In the morning I get a coffee from the shop and drink it on the drive home. I also occasionally go back in the afternoon and get another and sometimes on the weekend I will go out for coffee.

It’s good, but getting expensive. I worked out the other day that, just counting my morning coffee alone, I am spending around a thousand dollars a year on coffee.

So, when Myer had a really nice Saeco fully automatic machine on special last month, I really couldn’t resist.

I am drinking a little more coffee now, which I guess is only to be expected, but even with the cost of beans and milk, it’s still less than what I was paying.

One of the things about being busy means I have been tardy about writing this blog. So today you get two posts for the price of one.*

*hurry, offer won’t last

It’s not just work that I have been busy with. Lia, myself and the kids have been out and about doing touristy things and generally enjoying life.

So have a look at the latest images in the gallery and enjoy too

I have been rather busy lately, so busy in fact that when I wrote up my whiteboard client list yesterday, I realised that not only were the five allocated spaces not enough, but when i divided it into two, it STILL wasn’t enough.

With eleven projects on the go, I am busier than I have ever been before and I am thrilled about it. Some are updates and others are full sites with database support.

One of my most recent sites, however, has me a little uncomfortable. Maybe I am getting prudish in my old age.

Two fashion designers who create Japanese influenced Lingerie have a new site courtesy of myself and one of my best clients, local photographer Danny Khoo.

I am quite happy with the site which is at http://www.stewartandmcgie.com/ (I’m not going to link to it but you can paste it into your browser) but the one thing that makes me squirm is this photo which I find really offensive.

I was discussing my work with a new client the other day and while going through the portfolio we came across this site.

“This must be your porn site” she said to me.

Uh.. yes :(

From our Image Gallery … Some photos from the Monastic town of New Norcia

DSCF0805_web St Gertrudes College, New Norcia Date: 21/08/06 New	DSCF0811web St Gertrudes College in Sepia Date: 21/08/06 New	DSCF0813_web New Norcia, Western Australia Date: 21/08/06 New
DSCF0834_web New Norcia, Western Australia Date: 21/08/06 New	DSCF0841_web Abbey in New Norcia Date: 21/08/06 New	DSCF0844_web Abbey in New Norcia Date: 21/08/06 New

My trackball mouse has been deteriorating lately with the left click button being really hard to press.

With that in mind I decided to get myself a new one.

Last week I went to Officeworks and Harvey Norman in Morley but had no luck at either places, HN had run out and the one at OW felt uncomfortable in my hand.

On Saturday we were heading into Osborne Park to look for a new vacuum cleaner so while we were at the Harvey Norman superstore there I went in search of the mouse.

I found one and went to pay but for some reason they decided to go “cash only”.

How can a store that size selling big ticket items be cash only!

Harris Technology down the road appreciated my business though, and so now i have a cordless version of my old mouse.

I caught up with one of my old lecturers and he was telling me that he was forbidding his current crop of students to use tables in their design, in fact he had contemplated not teaching them tables at all.

Now, there is strong debate about the use of tables as opposed to using positioning in CSS and some people are getting quite zealous in their arguments.

Myself I happen to like tables but I am open to using CSS to position as well and in the end it comes down to complexity of design and most importantly client demands.

Tables have an advantage over CSS in terms of older browser compatibility but that is becoming less of an issue as people upgrade to newer technologies. Using div tags and CSS is supposed to be more compliant across different platforms and browsers. It also makes for more streamline and easy to read code.

In practice, however, Internet Explorer causes problems with stylesheets as it does not comply fully to the W3 standards, especially in the areas of padding where it places the padding inside the box rather than outside the box as other browsers do.

These days I take the following approach with the sites that I build. Firstly I look at a way to do them using the CSS and div tag method and if that doesn't meet the clients objectives then I use a mix of tables and CSS.

Compromise is a good start and as browsers become more compatible then I will increase the use of CSS. 

I think that my old lecturer is flawed in his anti-table fight as there is still a need for them (and they ARE still W3 compliant) but he's right that designers need to be flexible about up taking new standards.

For an example of a table free webpage, my hosting site sd.net.au is devoid of tables.