Dan Price’s blog
Weblog of a cyber-geek

Well this is going in a category called “Bi-weekly websites” although it seems that I never post often enough to this category to justify the term “bi-weekly”.

Anyway, we’ve been using a new website at college called How The Market Works - it’s definitely worthy of it’s name. Not only does it explain the basics of the stock market in easy-to-understand language, but it has a really really fun stock market game where you invest in real stocks and make or lose virtual money (Believe me it’s addictive).

I site I managed to find recently through Google was the Web 2.0 validator.

For those unacquainted with the term, “web 2.0″ is a term used to describe the new internet, following the recovery after the .com crash of the late 90s and early 2000s. The only problem is that no-one actually knows exactly what “web 2.0″ really means - some people think it’s about design, others about new technology (i.e. AJAX), community-based websites or a mix of them all. It’s simply become a buzzword and there are a number of running jokes in the tech industry about it.

Back on track, the web 2.0 validator tells you whether you’re site is 2.0 or not! In their own words: “we’re the dot in web 2.0″!

This sites results are as follows:

The score for http://www.danlprice.co.uk is 10 out of 66

• Uses Cascading Style Sheets? Yes!
• Attempts to be XHTML Strict ? Yes!
• Actually mentions Web 2.0 ? Yes!
• Uses Semantic Markup? Yes!
• Refers to web2.0validator ? Yes! (Woohoo!)
• Uses the “blink” tag? Yes!
• Appears to have Adsense ? Yes!

Wow, I’m so 2.0….

OK, so for starters, I haven’t kept to the category name, “bi-weekly web sites” at all… I think the last time I posted to this was about 2 months ago.

This is besides the point anyway. I found a really cool blog, by a Webmaster-Talk member, called Lightning Shock. The guy (James) makes a lot of sense, particularly with posts like 100 reasons Digital Point sucks” and “Social Networks are Communities, not self promotion manipulation tools“.

The blog is well worth a read and highly recommended - now I’ve found it, I hope to be popping back there regularly

This is a hilarious episode, where Homer decides to become a boxer, starting off fighting hobos/tramps, but ends up fighting the world champion, Drederick Tatum. The episode is taken from the 7th season
Best Quotes:

Barney: You’d never get me in a ring - boxing causes brain damage. [He then proceeds to drink a can of varnish] (more…)

24ways.org makes for an interesting read for web designers and developers. The site has, as the site name suggests, 24 ways to impress your friends (or visitors in this case) with different techniques, and has articles including CSS, Javascript and image editing. It’s definitely worth a look.

Incidentally, I am working on a redesign of my web hosting site, Whym Web Hosting, because I feel the use of a WYSIWYG editor makes the site less unique, not to mention the unnecessary markup that it chucks out.

If you are interested, you can see the ongoing redesign here. Please bear in mind that my CSS skills aren’t far from non-existent and that I’m still learning XHTML!

Dan

A recent thread on the Webmaster-Talk forums caused some hilarity (as all of my posts do naturally….), because of the following post:

Gullible Inks Inc. is looking for quality inks for reciprocal ink exchange.

If you have any inks, then email gullible@gullible.org.uk

Of course this is a way to catch a couple of spammers, who don’t seem to know their language/their business language (depending on their nationality) very well. I didn’t actually even mention “links”, but instead “ink exchange”, and if you thought there was something wrong with my l key, intelligent humans would notice the word “Gullible” has this in twice. (more…)

Mount Everest
Few people get to climb Mount Everest, and a lot of people wouldn’t want to anyway, but now we know what we’re missing! Panoramas.dk allows you to take a 360 degree panoramic view from the summit of Mount Everest. The site also has plenty of other spectacular navigable 360 degree photos

Going under water
Undersea photography by Andrej Belic gives us an insight into what we would see if we all lived in submarines!

Cityscapes and landscapes
Forrest Croce, a photography based in Seattle has taken hundreds of photos of landscapes and cityscapes, and has written several articles about improving your photographic skills.

Top left Pixel
An amazing photo blog, with some particularly interesting flash-enabled entries

The Earth at night
An interesting photo showing the Earth during the night. I’m suspecting that this was taken over a 24 hour period and patched together since when it’s night in some parts of the world, it’s daytime in others!