The theme was built from the scratch, using a stripped down version of WordPress 3.0′s default TwentyTen theme as a base.

We decided to opt for a small sidebar-based header to give the content pride of place on the page. The most recent tweets from Seph’s Twitter feed are also displayed in the sidebar.

Its design was loosely based on the league’s printed sheets, to help maintain a consistant feel to the layout of the information across both types of media.

Due to the large amounts of tabular data that the site contains, I opted to keep the design imageless. This was to keep loading times to a minimum – especially over slower connections – and to keep the interface as clean as possible.

It was designed to give his work maximum impact, without the need for a standard gallery-style page. To do this, we decided to use the entire background of the site to showcase a piece of his work.

The backgrounds are randomly picked from a folder of images on Ben’s web server, so he has full control over the images that are used, without the need to edit any code.

The panel transitions and navigation link animations were created using jQuery.

While writing the few lines of PHP to accomplish this, I decided it would be for the best if Ben – who will be the first to admit he’s not very code-savvy – didn’t have to touch any code if he wanted to change the images.

Here’s how I did it:

$dir = "images"; // the directory the images are in
// get all the filenames into an array
if ($dh = opendir($dir)) {
    $count = 0;
    while (false !== ($file = readdir($dh))) {
        $file = removeExtension($file);
        if ($file == "." || $file == "") {
            // do nothing
        } else {
            $imageList[$count] = $file;
            $count++;
        }
    }
    closedir($dh);
}
// remove file extensions
function removeExtension($strName) {
    $ext = strrchr($strName, '.');
    if($ext !== false) {
        $strName = substr($strName, 0, -strlen($ext));
    }
    return $strName;
}
$imgCount = sizeof($imageList) - 1;
$imgNum = rand(0,$imgCount);

Then, wherever the image is needed:

<img src="<?php echo $dir ."/". $imageList[$imgNum]; ?>.jpg" alt="" />

And that’s that. All you need to do is drop any images you want to use into that folder.

Obviously, after one look at that code you’ll notice that the images need to be JPGs, but that wasn’t an issue with Ben’s images as they are all large sized JPGs. I’ll probably revise this snippet at some point, but in the mean time, head over to Ben’s site and give it a few refreshes to see it in action (just try not to rape too much of his bandwidth).

I can’t explain why, but it seems that free t-shirts always seem to fit better as well. The Dropbox “Psychobox” shirt that found its way through my door on Friday is no exception.

Front view

In It To Win It…

…and other such phrases.

What’s that? T-shirt giveaway? Everyone loves free tees.#dropboxshirt

The truth is, when I chucked out that tweet, I didn’t really think about winning. The probability of getting selected had to be one in thousands, right? But I thought I’d have a go regardless.

I had actually forgotten about the whole thing until I saw this:

Surprise!

I’d won something! That never happens. I messaged Jon and got the details sorted out, and awaited the arrival of my ‘Psychobox’ shirt.

Snail Mail

San Francisco is a long way from London. This is the truth. You don’t have to be a genius to work out that overnight delivery is a little out of the question, but six-and-a-bit weeks? Seriously, what did they do, walk it here?

Ok, fair play, it was a free shirt. I’m not complaining, but with today’s technology you would have thought that the USPS (and Royal Mail or whoever else got their grubby mitts on it) could shift a bit quicker.

The End

If you aren’t one of the 4 million+ of us using Dropbox, head over there, and get on it, the slogan says it all.

It just (somehow) works

Big love to all the Dropbox team, thanks for the shirt!

Zion...

After park-and-riding our way into the centre of town, we grabbed some lunch and wandered around the streets trying to find a neutral-looking location that didn’t just scream “we’re in Oxford”. We ended up finding a spot by accident; a small alley/yard area just off the High Street, which had everything we needed – steps, mostly. After all, with ten subjects, you don’t want everyone on the same level.

...and some White Boys

Burritos and Batteries

After hanging around in an alley for a bit – and shooting a few shots in some phone booths – we headed for food, and then to the Skylarkin’ Soundsystem night at The Cellar. While the band set up and sound-checked, Ben and I managed to get the temperamental wireless flash working and sort out some hand-signals in preparation for the band’s performance later that evening.

We had some fun outside with the newly working flash, and took some more photos of the band inside the venue. We even got in a few shots of MC Kwasi and “Oxford’s most esteemed dubmeister” Count Skylarkin before the band hit the stage.

Showtime!

From the intro of the first track to the very end of their set, Zion and the White Boys had the place hooked. I would have quite happily paid money to get in – good vibes, good music, good crowd; awesome night.

Zion and the White Boys

If you haven’t already, I strongly encourage you to check out the Zion and the White Boys myspace page for some serious ear-worm business (“Roots Rock Reggae Riddim” was soundtrack to my weekend whether I liked it or not), and of course, all images courtesy of Ben Spear (check out more of these photos here).

Málaga Airport – the view from my knees

Que?

Five minutes past four on a grey Friday, the tyres of the British Airways Airbus A320 danced their way along the tarmac at Málaga airport. We breezed through passport control with as much messing about as a Jeremy Paxman interview, and our baggage beat us to the carousel – take that, Heathrow!

“Well, that was easy.”

Ever get the feeling you’ve spoken too soon? To be fair, I should have expected the experience to go downhill when we got in the cab to find that the driver had no evident knowledge of the handbrake’s existence, but I let it slide.

The address seemed to make perfect sense to the driver, who nodded, mumbled something in Spanish, and headed out of the airport. A few minutes in, he began signalling – in a fashion not unlike the iconic mannerisms of Manuel from Fawlty Towers – to see the paperwork once again. This second look appeared to do nothing but perplex poor old Manuel.

El Hospital?

My suspicions that Manuel didn’t have a clue where we were going were confirmed by our brief visit to the hospital. We weren’t supposed to be anywhere near the hospital, but there we sat and blocked the single lane of traffic for a few moments while Señor Sat-Nav went to get directions from a fellow taxi driver.

I’m going to give the poor guy the benefit of the doubt and say that the directions he received were worse than that week’s weather forecast. A few minutes later, we were lost. Again.

This time it was what seemed like the middle of nowhere. The far end of a quiet cul-de-sac.

Policia Local: Brit Delivery Service

A three-point turn and some more Spanish mumbling were followed by what looked like an impression if a duck attempting some sort of flamenco routine, and – although the Spaniard’s flailing in an attempt to visualise the directions was much more impressive than his sense of direction – we weren’t getting anywhere.

Cue the Policia Local, who – thankfully – were passing by on their way to do something clearly less important than help get some Brits to a resort.

Shortly thereafter, we roll up to the bottom of the steps outside reception and our Policia escort leaves us to enjoy the damp, dreary weather.

When It Rains In Spain…

… it gets a bit chilly too.

In fact, the weather was barely warmer than the UK and I could have gone to Brighton and been dryer. At least then I would have been able to use my iPhone to keep myself occupied, and not have to sell a kidney to pay for roaming data costs – but that’s another rant entirely.

So what do you do in Spain, in abnormally bad February weather, when the tennis court is under 2 inches of water, the jacuzzi is freezing, and the pool is like diving into gazpacho, just less tasty? Pick up British daytime telly on the satellite, of course! A few days – with the exception of a brief bus-ride into Marbella – were spent drinking tea, watching Jeremy Kyle blindly hurl big words at the bottom of the gene pool, and thinking about dinner.

Olé!

Flamenco dancing – it’s all stamping and clapping isn’t it?

Wrong! Theres much more to it than that. Much, much more indeed – there’s a shite-load of unnecessary fabric too! Like dancing in a curtain.

I’m not mocking the flamenco style, and I can totally understand the whole ‘big dress’ thing, in that cancan sort of way, for the visual element that adds that little something extra to the movement and music to round off the whole experience, but surely there’s a limit?

For the most part, the show was genuinely very entertaining. However, in one of the solo sections, the dancer looked like she was attempting to awkwardly reverse park a wedding dress. It was just odd. If you nearly trip yourself up that many times in a two-minute routine, there’s got to be some part of your mind telling you it’s just plain ridiculous.

She managed to finish her routine with dress, and dignity, intact – then came the inevitable.

The usual “I really don’t care whether you want to or not, you’re going to make an arse out of yourself on this stage … now!” bit. Strangely, they chose to target the over-60s, dragging every old codger onto the stage one-by-one to humiliate them with a sequence of half-arsed stamping, clapping and spinning. It was like seeing Statler and Waldorf on Strictly Come Dancing – only much less amusing.

Homeward Bound

I’m not going to lie. I don’t really have a climactic finish to my ramble through the oddities of my week. Nothing much more than the first entirely dry day in Spain being the one with the early start to get to the airport. Oh, and landing at Heathrow nearly half an hour early and sitting on the plane for just as long because they didn’t have any steps ready.

To be fair, I’m fairly sure my ranting, disjointed writing would have made most give up before the bit about Señor Sat-Nav, so well done for reaching the end with your sanity intact.