I was quite unsatisfied with my tumblr theme so I started to make one from scratch. This is how it went.

Early on, I found out that making a theme for quite easy. It had a moustache like syntax for adding template blocks in your html. I also discovered that tumblr had some pretty rough limitations on how you can make themes.

For instance, I cannot upload static assets on tumblr. Heck, there is no ftp facility.

But at the same time, tumblr themes are lean and powerful. Consisting of only one html page, you can make a lot of stuff if you want to.

Stumbling along

First, I mapped out the limitations of my theme. Assets would be stored on dropbox, Fonts will be delivered via google webfonts and only the html will be copied over on tumblr.

Then I started designing. I realised there was a reason why dev blogs on tumblr are so minimalistic. So I started designing on the principles of less-is-more.

shash7 site preview

Preview of an initial prototype.

Fast forward to some days later when I grew frustrated by my design. The initial site was a single column page but it just didn’t fit in my head.

I threw everything away and started again. But there were a lot of problems in designing the grid and the right typographic combination. Finally I settled on using montserrat as a heading font and the evergreen georgia as the body font.

Finally

I started making some headway. I figured out the content is the king then why shouldn’t it come in the center (Because originally the layout was one column). Unlike traditional sites, the header is on the left and the sidebar is on the right. This gives the content lots of breathing space and looks fabulous, especially on tablets.

Then I started implementing the baseline. Boy was this tough. This was the first time I had paid such attention to typography. But it payed off in the end. Everything started making sense.

As for responsive web design, the columns were simply given a width of 90% on less than 768px viewports.

Conclusion

Did it work?

Absolutely. This is the first time I have implemented baseline strictly in my design. Also, the layout is paying off as the UX is really great and navigating the site is a breeze.

Now onto making some blog posts …

Ever wondered what is common between coding, composing music and painting?
You need a highly refined skillset to work in one of these fields.

Except programming that is. Nowadays, engineering colleges are churning out engineers. Problem is; these engineers don’t have an ounce of passion for their craft.

And that is where the problem comes. To excel in one of these fields, you need to be passionate. Which only 0.2 percent of engineers from these so called reputed colleges come.

But this is not what I want to talk about. Coding is like composing music or writing poetry. Sometimes it can be elegant and sometimes it can be infuriating.

But when you make a software, you are leaving you mark on this world although in a very small way.

Think about it. If you are an engineering student, you won’t have created anything new; just some spec work made on top of other people’s work.

But when you actually create something and see other people use it, the experience can be exhilarating. Its like giving life to something.

And that’s why whenever I start coding in javascript, I always start out with var App = {};

Recently, I have been reading a lot of paul graham’s essays. His articles make opening a startup a breeze.

What bothers me is that the majority of the people don’t live in a silicon valley type of environment. Also, they can’t afford to go there either as they have other commitments like school, college, jobs, etc.

The fact is, we need more firms like Y combinator in every city. Also, political support is needed for startups to grow and take root.

Then, in a few years we can probably expect startups like airbnb, loopt, etc to grow organically and attract other startups, VCs, angel investors, etc.

Seriously.

As a level designer, I am constantly frustrated by how laggy and shitty software steam is.

The biggest problem is that even though it is 8+ years old, it is still as buggy as when hl2 was released.

Imagine this: I was making a map for l4d2. I started the compile process and the compiler showed progress in cli mode. i wondered what happened because normally it doesn’t show progress in cli mode.

Then it stopped. I patiently waited for over 15 minutes. Then I restarted steam. Turned out, stupid steam was updating the game. Even after updating, my maps weren’t getting compiled. Sick of it, I started playing bfbc2.

Even nowadays, steam still has a lot of unresolved bugs, Offline mode doesn’t work properly.

Steam sometimes crashes randomly( Although it crashes very rarely these days)

Valve games update more frequently. Its Not a good sign. When I login to steam after a long time, all my games are getting updated. Its quite sickening, frankly.

Steam is a great piece of software. Unfortunately, it’s potential can only be harnessed if you have a good internet connection and a good computer.

Hey everyone, I recently made a grid system in css.

For those interested, it is totally fluidic and responsive. And it also supports offsetting( Just like bootstrap’s grid)

Here is the link.

… sound like they are drowning. Seriously.

Have you ever seen people ask for help like this:

gb help

Somehow, stackoverflow’s strict rules seem proper now.

This is a different take on why lectures suck.

Example : My faculty was teaching wt( Web technology[ html, css, javascript and some php ] )

First day

Teacher : Alright people, I am so and so and I am going to teach you all web technology.

Me : ( I hope this class is interesting )

Teacher : … so now open a new txt file and start typing some blah blah

Now try this all in the practicals, Ok?

Me : Shit, this one is going downhill.

5 Minutes later

Teacher : Now use the bg color attr to add background color to your body tag.

Me : What about web standards??? 

Author’s note : Arguing with the teacher is equivalent to arguing with a corpse so I keep mum.

Teacher : Now use the b tag and blah blah

Me : Fascinating, I never knew all this tags existed. Its like taking history classes in html.

AND WHAT ABOUT WEB SEMANTICS????

Teacher : So expect some tags to not work in internet explorer.

Me : AARRGGGGG…

Teacher : blah blah …

Me :

Teacher : And so blah blah …

Me : Spaces off and stares at a random girl’s boobs.

As you can see, I wasn’t taught about history of the html spec, semantics, accessibility and of course, html5 for the whole semester.

College lectures suckass.

Hello everyone

I am shash7 . I am a web designer and developer. I also make maps for games like cs 1.6 in my spare time.

I established this blog primarily to rant about society, level design and other stuff.

Expect some noise soon.