About dW
dW is a weblog programmed, designed, and written by me to catalogue my thoughts about the web, design, or whatever comes to my mind.
dW is hosted on a VPS with the fine folks at Geek Storage. All posts are published with a custom log system programmed by myself using PHP, SQLite, and Apache. All of the logging systems out there I have tried have been slow and overly complicated for what I needed one for, so I spent the time to program one myself. My weblog system is not open source and never will be. In fact it might be a perpetual work-in-progress.
I would like to thank John Gruber for his excellent Markdown concept. I do not use his code, but I do use a custom script written in PHP by myself as the ported PHP classes are less than optimized for PHP 5. Markdown is such a natural and great way to author for the web. The proper typography isn’t made using Gruber’s SmartyPants but a custom script of my own design more similar to WordPress’s texturize. The logo and the website’s headers use Delicious, a FREE font designed by Jos Buivenga.
About Dustin Wilson
I am a graphic artist/illustrator living in West Monroe, Louisiana. I graduated from Louisiana Tech University with a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts in Graphic Design in May of 2005. I only spent four years in college as I knew from a young age I wanted to major in graphic design; that’s what I did. I am a Photoshop and Illustrator expert, having spent most of my life using the programs. A certified geek, I’ve taught myself HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, AppleScript, and bits and pieces of other programming languages as I have found the need to learn them. I am of the belief that web standards are important; standards have made the web a better place these past few years.
In my free time I have illustrated the infrequently updated manga Dark Phantasy and have designed and illustrated for the My Opera Nintendo weblog, N+.
On a daily basis I use a slew of computer programs on a Mac Pro Quad 3 Ghz:
I am an Opera evangelist so to speak. It is the program out of that list I use more than any other. It is overlooked, especially on the Macintosh. I hope I can teach and show people some of the things it can do throughout this log’s lifespan.
Web Standards
The website is an experiment with CSS and markup as well, displaying incorrectly in every browser out there. It should, however, degrade gracefully in web standards aware web browsers. The website utilizes @font-face, border-radius, rgba(), and many CSS 2 and CSS 3 selectors. The markup is in HTML 5 and takes advantage of the new elements it provides, however Internet Explorer doesn’t approve of using the new elements. it has to be tricked into using the elements with a bit of JavaScript. Because the site is cutting edge it will not display properly in Internet Explorer 6 or 7. Internet Explorer 8 should display everything just fine, though.
Media Types
Initially I served my alternate stylesheets using an idea by Dave Shea, but with the wider support of media queries and workarounds not requiring server-side code I was able to abandon that and simplify things in the process. People using mobile phones and devices that have a screen width of less than 480 pixels will be fed a small screen stylesheet. People viewing on devices capable of understanding television and projection stylesheets will be fed one catered to their needs. Much simpler than having to manually select which one you want after navigating through a website that might not be ideal for the device being used.
Contact Information
You may contact me at [hidden unless JavaScript and DOM is supported] if you have any questions about this website.