I found a PHP GD script that would create the reflections I wanted to produce. However, the script was designed to retrieve an existing image file and I was creating the title image on the fly sending directly to the browser. I got around this by writing a temporary PNG file and then retrieving that file to manipulate for the reflections.

As design styles come and go, I expect that I will remove the extra step for the reflections when it drops out of vogue. However, this whole process has yielded what I think will be a valuable feature for the blog fm platform.

Once upon a time, I had an idea on how to overcome the limitations of fonts and what a browser could display. I had come up with one solution where individual letters were created in photoshop - using a highly stylized font - and a function would convert the letters of a blog title to the individual letter images. It worked, but it was messy both on the backend and frontend.

I just implemented a far cleaner solution. By using the GD library in PHP. I'm able to create a graphic on the fly with the blog title using about any TrueType font - in this instance, Bank Gothic, the blog fm font. I'm working on adding reflections to the image to really crank the cool factor.

As blog fm has been rolled out to dozens of sites, it has consistently improved with each installation. As the features have improved and each installation becoming more and more a transparent piece of a website, this site has remained as a reminder of our roots. Used as a testbed for early development, this site has always been representative of the minimum installation of blog fm.

However, the site has always been plain and for designers-turned-developers, it's been a sore spot. Function is great, but a little purtying up is okay too. So, we've upgraded the code and put a fresh coat of paint. We have implemented Akismet's anti-spam technology in a number of sites and will do so here as well. We're also playing with some cool graphics functions which will preview here soon as well.

In terms of content, we're going to stick with entries pertinent to the application and cool technologies we could implement - if only on a hypothetical basis. With business finally starting to spool up after a really slow start for the year, we might be a bit irregular in our posts. So some things never change.