Colophon
What's a 'colophon'?
From a dictionary: "Information about authorship and printing". This is basically a page about how my sites are put together, if anyone is insanely interested. You'll notice that generally, my setup is pretty basic, bordering on cheap!
Local Software
The text, in fact anything typed, is pretty much done in BBEdit, which is an amazing piece of software, and almost a reason to buy a Mac in itself. I'm currently using version 8.7.2. It's made by Barebones, and as the name suggests, generally it's a lean, friendly, editing machine. They offer a trimmed down free editor called 'Text Wrangler' too if you want to get a taste of it.
Pictures and graphics are usually done in the incredibly useful GraphicConverter. It’s free/cheap but gets the job done as I need it. GraphicConverter has been in my tool box pretty much since I got a Mac in 1996, and well worth the license if your particular Mac doesn't come bundled with it. I used to use Photoshop Elements, but haven’t kept up with it at all and the version 2 won’t run on OS 10.5 Leopard. The Mac seems to have a lot of image manipulation tools right now, and whilst they’re pretty much all skins for built in effects, I should really choose one for the times I need it.
Any sounds on the site have probably been recorded with Audio Hijack Pro, and edited with Fission, a quick and simple audio editor, both from the über talented Rogue Amoeba team. However, an honourable mention should go to Audacity, a great open source editor.
If for some reason I'm using my Windows or Linux box, text editing is done in NotePad++ or Bluefish respectively. I'm not beyond vi/Vim though if there's nothing around and I need to tweak!
The font on the mastheads is the free 'Diavlo', by the excellent Jos Bulvenga.
Production Hardware
The site is all pretty much done from my diminutive Mac Mini Intel or my MacBook. Sometimes I get bits done from my Linux / Windows box, in a dual boot Xubuntu/Vista configuration.
Currently, for photographs, I'm using a Nikon D40, but previously I've used Canon Ixy models as a point and shoot - right now I have a Canon Ixy 20 IS. If you think the pictures in the gallery aren't up to much though, that's thanks to my (lack of) contribution. There may also be the odd one taken with my mobile phone. You'll hopefully be able to tell the difference.
I've also got a cheap and cheerful Canon LiDE 70 USB scanner for bits and pieces I'm trying to get into something digital.
For going the other way, to analogue, I have a Canon Pixus iP4500 printer.
I used to have Epson devices for scanner and printer, but I just think they’ve lost their market edge to Canon of late.
Hosting and Server Software
The site is has been hosted by Pair Networks, running FreeBSD/Apache/MySQL since September 2003 and I would 100% recommend them over 'home page space', and most other hosts any day of the week, not just for space, but the sheer freedom of installing all this backend stuff. All of the following use MySQL backends and mainly PHP.
This site, Brightblack, is actually assembled on the fly, online using the Drupal content management system, version 6.4. In August 2006, after almost 10 years of handcrafting, I moved to the Textpattern CMS, purely because I wanted more time to make the site more interesting and smarter, than coming up with scripts to re-generate code, but after two years of using that, I’ve moved onto Drupal.
My blog (www.nanikore.net) runs WordPress 2.6.2. Again, this is a very easy to use open source blogging engine. Originally the blog ran on Blogger, then in MovableType, but I went for the open source WordPress after the MT licensing issue a few years ago, and because I wanted something a little simpler.
Most linked photos on the site are now over on my Flickr! page; historically, I'd used Gallery 2 software, but finally gave up on it for a few reasons to do with comment control and it’s development roadmap.
I have forums available, mainly just for biker trips, and whereas the first installations were based on the venerable phpBB and then punBB, the current ones are built on the lighter and simpler bbPress but they're pretty much unused at the moment.
Where does the name come from?
The name 'brightblack' came to me a long time ago; around 1984 in fact. I owned a Sinclair ZXSpectrum 48K 8-bit computer in the mid 80's when I still lived in the UK. It had 8 'normal' colours, but it could produce 16 if you used the BRIGHT command in programs. Not exciting, but for some reason the idea of 'bright' black stuck with me, and when I was looking for an idiosyncratic name 12 years later, there it was. If anything it fits in with my healthy world view that most things contain contradictions. The blog site 'nanikore' is the Japanese for 'what's this?!. I thought it fitted quite well, and I was amazed the URL was available.
Standards?
I've written Brightblack since 1996, though I wrote my first HTML - very badly - in 1995. Since then it's grown and evolved through stages of Javascript overload and CSS at a time when virtually no browsers supported CSS. When I hand coded every page I kept the pages to standards, up to and including XHTML 1.1, whilst using legitimate CSS as defined by the W3C.
Standards are a good thing in my opinion so if my pages don't seem to work on your system, either let me know or try a different browser. Textpattern tries really hard to keep it's code clean too, so I'm happy I'm keeping this tradition going. in fact, that was an important part of my CMS selection which might sound picky, but I do think it's a Good Thing.
I have never used <BLINK> once. Ever. I mean, really, why would I?
Who are you?
I currently live in Tokyo, and have done since about 1999, since leaving the shores of northern England where I was aggressively beta tested. Tokyo is still a mind blowing place on a day to day basis, and if you haven't made it over, please come along.
I don't consider myself a geek, though I work in IT, and do this as a bit of a hobby. When I'm not in front of a computer, I might be cooking, doing some karate, snowboarding, on my motorbike ...or in a bar.
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