I’m getting hitched!

That’s right ladies… I’m going to be off the market!

*pauses for loud sighs of disappointment*

Hey! Where was the noise?!
Meh, whatever, I know I’m hot!

In all seriousness, I don’t think I could have found a more loving, caring, generous and beautiful person to spend the rest of my future with!
Sam has been a rock for me in the last few years, helping me through some extremely difficult events in my life.

I have no idea why or how she found the will power to put up with some of the stuff I’ve had thrown my way.
However, she remained supportive and gave me the help I needed to get through the other side smelling of roses (along with family members).

I won’t go on any more about it however, you don’t read my blog/twitter feed for mush, also it’s using up the content for my speech!

I would just like to say a VERY public thank you to her for being there for me.

I’m changing jobs straight after the wedding!

I’ve been busy in the evenings doing the odd job to help with finances.
I was recently asked by a Peterborough based company to build a theme for their outstanding WordPress e-commerce plugin, Jigoshop.

They liked what I’d done for them, and had noticed the coverage my responsive design testing tool and menu got, and offered me a full time position.

I’ve gladly accepted, and am thrilled to be joining a vibrant, enthusiastic team to work on whatever they throw at me.

Exciting times!

As you may be aware by now, Adobe has announced a new product of theirs entitled “Muse”.

If you don’t already know what it is, it’s a modern day version of  a badly conceptualised, poorly executed set of applications that allow pretty much anyone to “build websites”.

Why the hostility?

Put basically, Adobe, it feels like you’re trying to screw over the very people who use your products on a daily basis.

The web community has been working hard over the last 10 years to encourage writing websites in a semantic and meaningful way. Muse basically ignores all of this and does it’s own thing!

Not only does the HTML consist of over 1,500 lines of HTML to build an incredibly simple page, it even promotes it’s self as the program for creating “websites as easily as you create layouts for print”.

As pointed out by @aral,  the web doesn’t need more print designers, it needs people who specialise in the field, and can move it forward in the right direction for the benefit of the entire world!
The web is a far more fluid medium than the physical page, and as a result print designers often find it hard to adapt well to the web.

When are companies going to get it through their head that they shouldn’t be building applications that write code for you? It’s bad for the web industry, and it’s bad for the consumers of web content (read: everyone).

Put simply, it’s a false economy to let people who don’t work on the web think they can build effective websites! You end up polluting the web with more ill-planned, badly designed, poorly coded websites made by a CEO’s nephew who “knows how to build sites”.

Adobe, I implore you, drop the product.
The feedback is quite clearly negative from the web community, please take note.

Do you work on the web? What are your thoughts?

Nothing was making me spend time on my own website, and my evenings have vanished in a haze of trash telly and client work.

It got me thinking about how I could motivate myself to both finish designing and building my site on a more regular basis, and then keep it updated with refreshing new content.

BOOM, it hit me

I could just deploy a crap version, and then everyone would see how unfinished it was…

Bear with me, it will make sense.

The fact that I now have a horribly unfinished, unpolished website representing what I do means that I HAVE to pull my finger out and get it finished.

After all, who wants something half-done being the first thing people see?

Brave? Stupid? Who knows, but it’s working!

If you find yourself stuck in an endless loop of re-designing, and not building, WHACK A CRAP VERSION ONLINE… it works wonders.

Let me know if this could work for you, or if I’m being a moron!

They wanted me to design and build some HTML templates for their developer to build into their CMS.

After spending some time gathering requirements and providing them with wireframes, the design was signed off almost straight away.

Photoshop, HTML, CSS

It was a rough ride looking for a job before I was finally lucky enough to be given a position in a company on a “trial run”.
I worked hard, initially scanning holiday properties from hundreds of holiday brochures and importing them into a content management system.

With some knowledge of photoshop, and little to no knowledge of HTML, CSS or Javascript, I had to work hard in my own time to learn the skills I would need to be able to design and build websites.

This is common in our industry, and is the only real way of learning.

Yes, there are courses on design, development, computers etc. However, the industry is so fast moving that courses often find it hard to stay relevant.
Students often have to employ their own skills of research and personal development to stay up-to-date.

Enter Mark Boulton Design.

They have offered up a fantastic apprenticeship opportunity to the people at the bottom of the ladder today.
Not only will they provide two years paid work, it’s with some of the most talented people in the industry, and are offering a fast track into the job I love so much.

This offer is something I would have torn the limbs from every other potential candidate to obtain when I was starting out.

Should more web companies be doing this?
Should universities be doing something like this rather than traditional courses?

I’d love this to become a topic of discussion that could change our industry for the better, but the chances are that nobody else will follow suit.

Either way, I wish the guys at MBD, and my brother (who will be applying) all the luck for the future, and would love to hear progress as the apprenticeship matures.

While I fully understand where John is coming from, and the reasons he has decided against using Dribbble, I won’t be doing the same.

I agree that this design “community” site has become a little “elitist” and sometimes it can be like a school playground.
However, I fully believe that this can be the case on any community platform, and will continue to be as long as it’s human beings contributing content.

It’s human nature to form social groups, or cliques. There is absolutely no avoiding it.
One way to deal with these is simply not to interact with them (which is what John has chosen to do), and thats his prerogative.
While some don’t agree with the way he did it, I admire his honesty, and putting his opinion out there.

There will always be the “cool kids”, and no matter where you go, this is always the case.
Twitter for example is full of them in every industry possible, but does this mean leaving twitter is a good idea, or do you just ignore the irritating minority?

Personally, I think Dribbble has more to offer than the irritating minority.
I’ve had nothing but constructive feedback on anything I have posted, and as a result has improved my end result.

There is a constant stream of new and beautiful work – some of which, yes, is a bit copy-catish, but that’s life.
Everything in life goes through trending and fashions - dribbble is no different.

Thoughts?

I enjoyed myself so much, I thought I’d write a quick post about it. Feel free to ignore it.

The Venue

This Month’s #dpip was moved from the previous venue (The Brewery Tap) to the new venue (The Beehive) to cater for larger numbers of people attending.

With The Beehive previously being a rough looking pub, I was a little unsure of the choice of venue, but it had since been renovated and turned into a pleasant pub with an area for a sit-down meal.
The drinks were a little on the pricey side, but I guess this goes with a fancy looking interior, and having blue lights turn on when the hand-dryer in the men’s room was used. I can only assume they are covering the electric bill for this essential feature?

The bar staff were friendly, and didn’t seem to mind the torrent of designers, developers, copy writers and other geeks descending on them.
Not one joke was heard from the bar staff about taped up glasses, or snorting laughs – I was surprised.

The pub isn’t large, but that didn’t impact on the event in any way.
We had a side area/room with closable doors, so the geekery could be contained without disturbing the rest of the bar’s patrons.

The People

After entering the pub, it was relatively easy to spot “the geek room”.
@andyreedy and I grabbed a drink each, and a perch outside the room, just to make sure we weren’t walking into a company night out.

As soon as we were sure that the room was the “dpip room”, we walked over and entered.
Everyone greeted us in a friendly manner, re-arranged the tables and sat down for a light-hearted session of banter and chat.

With around 15-20 people attending, the small side-room that we had filled soon became noisy with conversation.
Everyone made an effort to talk to at least a few other people they didn’t know – this is pretty much unheard of with geeks isn’t it?

Jokes were made about tech and internet related issues, which would normally have gone down like a lead ballon, but filled our small room with laughter.
I’m still undecided on whether or not this was a good thing or not?

As the night progressed it became increasing clear who were the developers, the designers and those working in various other fields.
Small groups formed, talking about their own fields, and interjecting conversations from other fields of work.

The atmosphere was great, and the conversation was something most of us didn’t get the chance to raise in our “normal lives”.
I even had an offer to merge my skills with a couple of others to form a work-group.
I was most humbled, considering everyone had only known me personally for what felt like five minutes.

There was also mention of a paintballing session with a few of the lads.
With @digitalgravy working at Microsoft, he offered to bring a few of his work colleagues along for us “Mac boys” to shoot.
We declined his polite invitation with sincerity………… ok, that’s a lie.  We fully encouraged the chance of shooting some Microsoft people. Who wouldn’t?

The evening came to a close at around 11:30, with most of us not even realising how late it was until I mentioned the meter running out in the car park.
A few of us stood outside chatting for a bit longer before we all made our way home.

Will I go again?  You bet.

http://mydpip.com

I need to get my site designed and built!

I have been saying that exact phrase for what feels like years now.
I start a design I like, then I give up and abandon all hope of finishing it.

Time’s are about to change!
2011 is the year where I stick to my word… the site WILL be built.

Why the sudden turn around?

• I’m sick of having subdomains that I link to, and nothing on my main URL.
• I’m sick of promising myself I will do something, and not doing it.
• I have a couple of projects I’d like to do, and no “Personal” site to write about it.
• Someone might actually have a use for the gumph I intend to write about.

For the above reasons, the next few weeks are going to be spent deciding exactly what this site will become, how I will use it, design and build it hopefully before the end of March September.

Why March September? I have a lot of stuff going on, and spare time is short. It’s that simple.

Anyway, onwards and upwards!