Sam Benson

Quick Tip: How to hide the Wordpress Admin bar

Clearly the nice folks at Wordpress thought it was !important to have the admin bar showing at all times on the frontend of your site, so they left out the ability to turn it off. Fair enough, you might say; surely you can just overwrite the CSS they append to the “ of every page? Well you can, but it’s not the way you’d imagine.

Here’s what we’re faced with…

html {
    margin-top: 28px !important;
}

Normally you’d just override something like this using specificity, but because the “ element is the root element we don’t have any parents to add to the selector. Thanks, Wordpress!

So to be rid of the admin bar once and for all we need to hide it, then shift the page up. There are 2 ways to do it quickly, it’s your choice which to use.

Method 1

#wpadminbar { 
    display: none;
}

body {
    margin-top: -28px;
}

Method 2

#wpadminbar { 
    display: none;
}

html {
    position: relative;
    top: -28px;
}

Nothing too complicated, but something I find myself using time and time again.

Starting Strength - Update #1

So my home gym finally got finished, I managed to get 3 good sessions in there before we were politely told to jog on by our landlord and the garage became a storage space again.

So it’s time to start over again in our new home, we’re moving in on 11th January and the plan is to use the new garage as my gym from day one.

I’ve started reading the 3rd edition of Mark Rippletoe’s book “Starting Strength” which is where the majority of barbell-newbies like myself are told to start. So far it’s been a great read, I’m almost done with the second chapter called “The Squat”.

As my goals are to lose body fat and build lean muscle I thought it would be best to record my progress on here, starting with my current condition…

• Weight: 196lbs (89.2kg)
• Body Fat: 25.9%
• Body Fat Mass: 50.93lbs (23.1kg)
• BMI: 27.8

I haven’t decided what my goals are going to be yet, I think I’ll leave that until I’ve finished SS.

Home Gym Update #1

Phase one of my home gym is almost complete - I’ve cleared out the garage!

Whilst this might not sound like much, believe me when I say it was a monumental task of epic proportions! Since moving from Bishops Tawton to Bideford @KimmiBee & I have lived in some sort of denial about the junk we’ve managed to collect over the years; all of which ended up being thrown into the garage and almost forgotten about. But not any more! I’ve spent 3 days sorting and organising, recycling and trashing every last item and I’m so happy it’s all done.

My motivation to get fit has been kicked up a notch recently as I was diagnosed with Enteropathic Arthritis which was brought on by my Ulcerative Colitis. Fun times! There have been times of late that I’ve felt like absolute shit and I’ve had enough of it. I know that getting myself into better shape will have a massively positive effect on my health and it’s getting to the point where I need to feel it.

Anyway, enough of me moaning. Onwards to phase two: setting up my equipment!

Movember is upon us!

It’s that time of the year again when gentlemen of the world do their bit to raise money and awareness for some very important charities by growing their moustaches and showing them off to the world.

This year is my first year of taking part, if all goes according to plan then I can see it being a regular event my diary for years to come.

You can view my progress and donate here - http://mobro.co/sambenson1

All of the money raised will go towards helping Movember Foundation, The Institute of Cancer Research and Prostate Cancer UK. Which I’m sure you’ll agree are very worthy causes! You can read more about the Movember charities on the donation page, here - http://uk.movember.com/donate/.

by Sam Benson

A Real-time Challenge

I decided to challenge myself over the weekend by making a real-time HTML, CSS & JS editor using NodeJS & Socket.IO. 

I’ve managed to get it to the point where you can open your web app on multiple devices and watch it update in real-time whenever the source is saved via the editor. 

There’s still more functionality that I’d like to add, such as a working file system, hard-saves (saving is done via Redis at the minute), exporting of the finished app and shortcuts to include popular files.

by Sam Benson

Inspiration

Every now and then I find myself drooling over tattoos and artwork whilst secretly wishing that I had been the first to come up with an idea or design.

This is the latest style to go on my wishlist…

Woodcut or xylography is the art of carving an image into a block of wood and printing the negative onto canvas. The above tattoo was done by John Poverty @ Thicker Than Water in New York, NY and I absolutely adore it!

by Sam Benson