I’d been pondering getting a Magic Mouse for a while. My first experience at the Apple Store didn’t convince me. It’s petite size just didn’t seem quite right. I’m used to wrapping Miss Palm and her 5 loving daughters around a Logitech MX1000, so the idea of something as sleight as the Magic Mouse was something I couldn’t really get to grips with (excuse the pun ).

I finally decided that if I wasn’t happy with it as a permanent replacement for my array of venerable MX1000′s then it wouldn’t be a total loss as it would make an acceptable companion for my MacBook Pro.

First impressions were my usual irrational “stop wrapping everything in plastic goddamnit” rant whilst having a coffee with @alanogden and not being able to resist having a fiddle (with the mouse!).

When I got it home I wasn’t terribly surprised to find that I got used to it very quickly. You hold it a lot more daintily than the MX1000 of course, which gives you the room to use your fingers for the various gestures it allows. The 2 finger swipe to the left/right for forward/back webpage movement is particularly useful.

All said and done, I’m pleased with my purchase and I’ll probably take it to and from work as it’s worlds improved over the horribly flawed Mighty Mouse.

Unfortunately it’s been downhill from there and now I’m very unfit and bordering on needing to shop at High and Mighty :s.

I’ve been on the verge of saying “enough is enough” for a few months now, and last Monday I took the plunge and joined a gym again.

Remarkably I’m actually excited to be going to the gym. I’ve had 2 nights so far where I’ve been close to not going, but apart from a meeting that kept me at work too long, and an evening where it’d have been stupid to go (sooo much pain from the day before) I’ve kept at it. 4 days a week for the past 2 weeks and I’m still going strong.

My god it hurts though! I went to a short class that teaches you some work out techniques today. Granted I’ve experienced a lot of it before, but it was very useful to get a catchup class. We did some interval training on the treadmill, incredible workout, exhausting but so satisfying!

Goal so far… fit into my linen suit again (don’t laugh, it’s a great suit for the summer!).. Goal for the future, I’m going to think big and try for a marathon.

3 Posts in the first 2 days of my new site, and then silence… this seems to indicate that I am not cut out for blogging. I shall however persist, and today’s very short post shall contain 2 things, a link to the tools from the old mousepilot website, and a list of future posts which I shall complete.

So, the link. At 3DPixel.net we combined my two very simple tools from the old site along with a couple of others and created our tools website 3dpx.net. Mainly just as a place where things we use every day can reside, but also as a tool for anyone else to use.

….and now the list:

1. Complaining post about the complete lack of consideration and awareness in society, particularly focusing on muppets in Sainsburies and plebs on the road
2. Tutorial on how to right a funky jquery/php application to upload, resize and crop images
3. Complaining post about benefits

I swear to the gods of beer and pizza, that I’ll update again soon

As usual, their article is an amalgamation of many many sources and very comprehensive. Wide support for attribute selectors is particularly good news as it means no more damn id’s on inputs! Psuedo classes look particularly useful for lots of things, but support for odd/even in table rows is pretty cool. Columns, Shadows (text and background), Border Images, Word Wrap are all very cool, but what I’m bowled over to see is multiple layered backgrounds. It’s a feature I’ve craved for so long, but honestly never expected to see, AND IT’S HERE!

At the time, I don’t think I really considered the implications this would have to future designs, but 2 projects down the line, I have to say THANK GOD. I feel like a coder reborn (cheesy I know), I’ve rediscovered the joys of transparency, inline-blocks, and padding that doesn’t make me want to tear my own face off.

I’m also actually taking the time to look into CSS3, now that there’s actually a chance I’ll use it. Rounded corners are a godsend!

So I’d encourage any other coders out there to follow in the footsteps of 3DPixel, Facebook, Apple.. and numerous other big name websites, and lets kill it off for good!

The CSS3 spec gives us access to rounded corners without the need for images and loads of xhtml.  Just add the following to the appropriate <div>.  I’ve absolutely no idea whether this works in IE7+ but I suspect it doesn’t and as it’s for my personal blog, I don’t care.  Internet Explorer users deserve to look at shitty looking pages tbh :p

-moz-border-radius: 5px;
-webkit-border-radius: 5px;