For a long time I was travelling with all this stuff in a laptop bag ala messenger bag style-ee. This was crippling. I forget the amount of times I pulled my back out of shape the day after a heavy load. With the new job I thought it was about time for a new bag to carry all my shit. I opted for a Karrimor Kodiak 35 litre capacity.

The Kodiak is a proper weekend pack with plenty of room. The reason I chose this pack was that the description told me that the top opening was wide allowing access to the main compartment which would easily store an A4 folder, making it ideal for commuters and students. Yes, I bought it online. It certainly accommodates my laptop plus a lot more. I can easily carry magazines, folders and A4 pads without an issue. The other compartments allow me to store the laptop battery, cables, a flask and food. There is also a hydration compartment which accepts my 2 litre Camelbak reservoir and feeds the drinking tube out through a small port on the side and then slips under a couple of retaining straps on one of the arm straps. Lovely. If it decides to piss it down, which it normally does in the UK from time-to-time, stowed away in the base of the pack is a waterproof cover.

There is no doubting it is a large pack but it doesn’t feel like a chore to carry around like the laptop bag did. Anything that keeps my back from tying itself in knots and allows me the luxury of carrying a lot of kit too and from work is a godsend. You never know, I may bring my running kit to work too and see just how bad these hills are around Sheffield. I saw Aubrey coming back from a lunch time run this week and learned we have a shower available in the building – so what the heck, why not?

Just pulled into Derby station, guess what? It’s raining…

Commuting by train will be good – I am so pleased I am not driving, that’d be another story. I am looking forward to using the train journey as my time to read, tie up loose ends with work, blog, listen to music and catch up on podcasts. You never know, I may use it for the odd kip on the way home too! I have gotten some sound advice from colleagues who have commuted for years and I have to get myself into the mindset of the journey being my time to myself. One of the worries I had was putting my time of arrival in the hands of whichever train company I will be travelling with. I have been told that I shouldn’t stress about this. It is ultimately out of my hands and what will be will be. I think this is a very pragmatic view to take, I can’t control delays and malfunctions so there is no point twisting your mind over it or allowing it to change your mood. I am however going to be catching the early of 2 trains that get me into Sheffield on time. How much of a safety parachute the second train will be if the first is missed or goes wrong is to be witnessed.

I would welcome comments on your own commuting experiences and how you pass the time or make it your own. What problems have you faced and how did you overcome them? Post in the comments below or send me a tweet @kevin_rapley. I will share any insights on this blog of how the commute is for me and what I do with my time.

Here is the podcast episode for you to listen to

Download ‘Content Page Design Best Practices’ episode

I have implemented one of the recommendations by Luke immediately. I was actually pretty shocked at what I am about to tell you. I was listening to the episode and Luke described how so many websites give so little screen real estate to the bread and butter of the page. The content. He mentioned how some websites expect the readers landing on content pages to engage with the content and have trust in it, yet they only give the content 25% of the screen real estate – or less!

When I heard this I was thinking to myself, ‘Yeah that’s not me, I put a lot of emphasis on my content. It’s a large block with a small sidebar of sign posts to my RSS feed and my social media goodness around the web. I’m alright Jack.’ So, I take a screen grab of DigiKev working on the basis that the majority of my visitors are using 1024×768 pixel screen ratio and bring it in to Photoshop to do some measurements on how much percentage I actually give my content in relation to the rest of the page.

The figures were in, there in black and white I saw the following:

1024×768 = 593609 pixels
of which 162870 pixels are given to the main content block.

162870 / 593609 * 100 = 27%

Uh-oh, I thought. 27% is not very good. The problem was that on my content pages I was providing a breadcrumb which was eating too far into the vertical screen real estate. I had plenty of margin around this though so there was lots of room for maneuvre. I have a rather large masthead which contains my branding, art work and menu structure. I like the impact of this and I feel it gives a good impression about who I am and the skillset I own.

After editing the page to shift the content and breadcrumb up I recalculated the percentage of page given to content:

195200 pixels dedicated to the main content block

195200 / 593609 * 100 = 32%

So I reclaimed an extra 5% of content relevant to the page, still not great. It could go further and it shall. I plan to either replace or reposition the side sign posting to be replaced with more relevant content to the subject of the page. This will reclaim a large proportion of the page to content:

297290 pixels dedicated to the main content block

297290 / 593609 * 100 = 50%

This will be a vast improvement by reclaiming 32% of the screen real estate to content. Content is key, we really need to make certain that we make content the hero of the page. It is of course what people visit our sites to consume. Try the sums yourself, give your content a healthcheck. What percentage are you dedicating to content?

Blogging on the old platform was a chore too, there was a lot of faffing to get a Blog post to behave in the way I would like which increased the time. Time I don’t have so Blogging ground to a halt. This new Web site is using trusty WordPress with all the requirements I need and an infinite bag of bolt on plugins at the ready if necessary.

I am very kindly being hosted with Mark Steadman of Bluemilkshake, long term readers of this so far disjointed Blog will know he is a good friend of mine and gets mentioned here fairly regularly.

This is a completely new structure and design which I have built on a CSS Framework I have adapted from Blueprint CSS and the best parts of other great CSS Frameworks available. It is called frameworkThree and is ready for you to download and play with at your leisure. There may be some short term teething problems with the new Web site as I progressively test and iron out all the creases. If you spot anything please send me an email through the contact form or send me a tweet over on Twitter if you’re into that. My handle over there is @digikev

Overall, I am really happy with the new structure and design. It gives me a great platform to now develop from and with WordPress doing all the hard work in the background you will now be hearing a lot more from me again. You lucky, lucky people.