A few years ago I wrote to the Labour History Archive and Study Centre (People's History Museum) to see if they had any records relating to my grandmother, Sonia Anderson (née Schreiner). As well as being a Labour town councillor for most of her adult life (until her death in 1998) she had come to the UK in 1935 as a refugee from Nazi Germany. Born in Stuttgart in 1920 her family had fled Berlin to Paris in 1933. Her father had been a prominent Communist and would certainly have been arrested and interred in one of the growing number of concentration camps in Germany. However after two years in Paris she was sent to England aged 15. The family story was that this was via the Red Cross but it seems more likely that this was through a connection in the Labour Party: Dorothy Woodman.

The Reichstag Fire

Dorothy Woodman was a socialist, activist and journalist. In 1933 she had been working in Berlin and covered the Reichstag fire; a significant event in the consolidation of Nazi power in Germany. At the time Hitler was Chancellor but the Nazi party had failed to form an overall majority government at the Federal elections the previous year. The fire at the Reichstag - the German parliamentary buildings in Berlin - was used by Hitler to apportion blame on the Communists in Germany and to legitimise a consolidation of power by the Nazi Party. The immediate outcome - brought into law the day after the fire - was the suspension of civil liberties as well as freedoms of expression and the press, the right to free assembly and the right to secrecy of post and telephone.

As a journalist in Berlin Woodman had managed to arrange an interview with the Russian communist Georgi Dimitrov, one of the Communist conspirators accused of organising the fire. On her return she was able to write about the impacts in Germany of fascism and the rising arrest and oppression of political opponents. It was in this context that she became co-secretary of the Relief Committee for Victims of Fascism whilst also running as a Labour Party candidate for Wood Green.

The Relief Committee for Victims of Fascism

Through the spring and summer of 1935 Woodman received several letters from the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party frustrated at her contributions to the Relief Committee and it is copies of these letters which the People's History Museum kindly copied and sent me when enquiring after my grandmother.

The role of the Relief Committee was three-fold: to raise funds to help those persecuted by fascism, to raise awareness of the growing threat of fascism in Germany and Spain within Britain, and to organise demonstrations amongst workers movements to show solidarity with the victims of fascism. In the summer of 1935 Woodman counter-signed a letter along with former Labour Party member and Trade Unionist Isabel Brown. The letter outlined with exacting detail the 296,257 political arrests there had been in Germany of workers, Jews and progressives along with the 132,544 injured and crippled in concentration camps and prisons whilst some 3,944 had been killed, either “shot whilst escaping”, suicided or “simply shot without explanation”.

In the piles of papers I received there is a back and forth between Woodman and Mr J Middleton - General Secretary of the Labour Party - emphasising the incompatibility of being a Labour Party member and supporting a cause considered to be subject to outside political influences. Woodman argues in her response that her work for the Relief Committee was widely supported by colleagues and was not incompatible with cooperation from Labour Party members with other parties in opposition to the Unemployment Act of 1934 or the British Colonies (Sedition) Act of 1935 (JSM/CP/104). However this argument fell on deaf ears and Woodman was instructed to cease further affiliation with the Relief Committee.

The Relief Committee was not without controversy and was to be proscribed as a “Communist front” by Clement Atlee later in 1935. But it’s sources - and fears - were felt to be valid and of genuine concern to the working class movement within Britain. And it had vocal support from a wide range of high profile figures within the country including Aldous Huxley, JB Priestley, the Dean of Canterbury Hewlett Johnson, the Bishop of Bradford Alfred Blunt and Dudley Aman, Lord Marley.

There was undoubteldy influence within the Committee from the Communist Party in Moscow, likely via funding through the German communist Willi Münzenberg in Paris. Münzenberg had founded the World Committee Against War and Fascism in Berlin in 1933 before fleeing to Paris where he took over the Editions du Carrefour press. It was in Paris that Münzenberg spearheaded the publication of numerous books warning against the dangers of fascism and Hitler’s ulterior motives for Germany, including several by my grandmother’s father, Albert Schreiner.

Münzenberg was a skilled writer and propagandist. He had been in regular contact with Moscow since the German Revolution of 1918 and worked closely with prominent left-wing writers in Germany such as Bertolt Brecht. In 1924 he launched the illustrated weekly AIZ, a popular socialist newspaper with a circulation of almost half a million before the Nazi's seizure of power.

Woodman, the Comintern and anti-fascist connections

In 1933 Münzenberg oversaw the publication of the Brown Book which proposed that it was in fact the Nazis that had been responsible for the Reichstag fire and not Communist agitators. Whilst it is now recognised that the book was largely a propaganda exercise it played a valuable role in raising awareness globally of the full extent of persecution carried out by the Nazi party as well as the threat to the Jewish population in Germany and the increasing use of concentration camps to imprison and punish political opponents.

To return to Woodman it is hard to say what her involvement was - if any - in the arrival of my grandmother in England. Certainly there was a groundswell of individuals wanting to provide refugee opportunities within Britain for both Jewish and non-Jewish refugees as noted by Hansard in this notice from Lord Marley in the House of Lords from Febuary 1935, notably some three years before the infamous Kindertransport operation of 1938-39.

But it is important to note Woodman’s connections with the World Committee Against War and Fascism headed by Münzenberg. And it is in this context we have to look at one further connection in which my family is explicitly linked: the publication by Münzenberg in 1934 of “Hitler triebt zum Krieg” - “Hitler’s Drive to War” - published in German, French, Russian and English and in 1935 of “Hitlers Luftflotte startbereit” - “Hitler’s Air Force ready for take off” published in German, French and Russian. What is of interest with these two books is that they were both written by my great-grandfather Albert Schreiner but both had been released under the name of Dorothy Woodman.

Both books warned about Hitler’s plans to mobilise for war in Europe and - like the Brown Book - had sought to warn western countries of the genuine threats posed by National Socialism to European peace. Of course these were in part politically motivated by the aspirations of the Comintern (Communist International) in Moscow. But they were also largely organised by anti-fascists from Germany that had seen what Hitler was capable of and wanted to send a warning to others about what might follow. In his comprehensive book on the German anti-fascists in exile - Weimar in Exile - Palmier comments on these books:

“it is such a mine of information that it is hard to understand how the émigrés managed to obitain it all” (p327) and that the Nazi’s war preparations were - from the benefit of hindsight - written with “astonishing precision.” (p)

Although both books were written under the name of Dorothy Woodman it is now largely recognised that her name was primarily used to reach a broader audience and help legitimise the messages in the book to a non-German audience. Indeed it was quite common for German exiles to use publish under a pen name (in a subsequent book Albert published under the psuedonym “Albert Muller” and he was to go on to fight in the Spanish Civil War under the nom de guerre “Albert ‘Juan Pena’ Schindler”). Certainly Woodman’s journalist credentials as well as her connections to the Labour Party and also the Relief Committee would have helped spread the message to concerned ears in Britain and got it to the right people that could do something about it. She certainly had the ear of influencial figures such as the aforementioned deputy speaker of the House of Lords, Lord Marley.

Family Ties

But perhaps the greatest clue lies in the words of Albert himself who in his lebenslauf, written shortly before his death in 1979:

“Meine Tochter Sonia, geb 5. Marz 1920, ist in England verheiratet. Wir haben sie 1935 durch Varmittlung von Parteifreunden in England untergebracht, damit sie ihre Ausbildung fortsetzen konnte.”

“My daughter Sonja, born on March 5, 1920, is married in England. We placed her in England in 1935 through the mediation of party friends so that she could continue her education.”

So it is perhaps not a huge leap of faith to suggest that the close connections between Dorothy Woodman and Münzenberg had provided a means to get my grandmother out of Paris, especially since it is known that the former had visited Paris in April of 1935 to attend an International Conference reporting on the persecution of workers and socialists in Spain following the failed Revolutionary General Strike of 1934.

After defeat in the 1935 election Woodman gave up on her political aspirations but continued to write and champion socialist causes as secretary of the Union of Democratic Control. She was in an open relationship with the editor of the New Statesman - Kingsley Martin - and became their Asia correspondent, going on to write a book about anti-colonial struggles in Burma and the imperial wrestle for control of the Himalayas.

In 1949 the author and fellow New Statesman journalist George Orwell had given the British secret services a blacklist of “cryptocommunists and fellow-travellers … who should not be trusted as propagandists”. However, despite her clear connections with the activities of the Comintern - notably in those years preceding the outbreak of World War II - she can at best perhaps be regarded as a “near-Communist”. Regardless, she was a key figure in raising awareness in Britain of the dangers posed by the Nazi party, a prominent anti-fascist and anti-imperialist, a reassuring thorn in the side of the contemporary Labour Party and a proud left-wing agitator.

I’ll likely never know for certain if it is through Woodman that my grandmother came to England in 1935. But it’s a good story nonetheless. And if anyone can find a picture of Dorothy I’d love to see it - struggling to find one on the internet.

Music at the stones, lunistice 2025

A long day

It is now a week since I ventured up to the old stones of Calanais, extremely fortunate to have been invited as part of the celebrations of the once-every-18.6-year lunistice event where the moon is at it’s major standstill and the “strawberry moon” looms lowest and largest in the night sky.

I’d not been up to the Outer Hebrides in over twenty years and it was 24 year since I had visited the islands for my PhD studies. I was quite nervous about visiting - mostly because I was worried about remembering (or at the very least having to read) the thousands of words I poured out on the Neolithic of these islands two decades ago. I’d been tasked with delivering a workshop, a guided tour of two of the smaller monuments and an evening talk on the Neolithic archaeology of the region. The week leading up to my visit I wrote three different talks, agonising over text and slides. I wanted it to be perfect.

I landed into Stornoway early on the Wednesday - a 7am flight from Edinburgh - and immediately set about visiting various lumps and bumps in the landscape with my host and companion, Alison. I’d got on really well with Alison when I did my studies. I’d like to think we had a similar sense of humour, an innate skill for employing puns in our article/paper titles and a similar energy and enthusiasm for the past but one that was led by data first and theory second. Plus a shared fondness for my supervisor Niall Sharples who Alison had edited a volume with back in 1992.

Alison at the central stones of Calanais

That first evening was the evening of the lunistice. We visited the stones to find fifty-odd folk here for the occasion. At the last lunistice in 2006 hundreds had been at the stones. It was much quieter than expected - except for the thousands of midges that had gathered for the occassion - and whilst the weather was fair the moon barely put in appearance, skirting the horizon behind a veil of clouds; the faint orange hue of it’s glow fleetingly visible at around 1:58 am.

The faint hue of the "strawberry moon" on the lunistice from Cnoc An Tursa

Some folk were disappointed. We were at the edge of the world - or so it felt - for a once-in-a-generation audience with the moon and she had decided not to show. Most folk had travelled hundred of miles to be there. Some others thousands. But that is life and it’s kind of heartening to think that our distant ancestors would have experienced similar frustrations having erected such a substantial monument to monitor, mark and revere this celestial occasion only to be left empty-handed.

But lets be clear: the lunar event did happen. We were just not invited to witness it. Perhaps this was the Neolithic equivalent of Punxsutawney Phil; the distant megalithic cousin of a groundhog seeing it’s shadow and heralding 18.6 years more winter. Regardless I found the experience to be hugely grounding; gracious and blessed to have been there even if we had not seen the event that we had all come up to be a part of.

Sketch of the stones at lunstice

Tangent

On the rare occasion I drive into cities when I hit the inevitable bottleneck of traffic and angry drivers I use this opportunity to centre myself. I work hard at not being cross or frustrated and instead seek out the meditative potential of the moment. I take this moment of fury and speed and tension to seek calm and slow down. That obviously sounds like total wankery but I couldn’t help but think of this shift in focus visiting the stones and the absent spectacle of 2026.

Sometimes its the being there is the important thing. The spectacle isn't necessarily the moon but the coming together of total strangers and the union of shared experience. And how can that be a disappointment?

I began with a quote from Joni Mitchell’s song “Woodstock”. I prefer the Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young version but the lyrics remain seemingly relevant (and if you want my absolute favourite rendition of these lyrics check out Unkle’s “Iter 4”):

We are stardust, we are golden
We are billion-year-old carbon
And we've got to get ourselves
Back to the garden
Joni Mitchell “Woodstock”

What is that old saying about Woodstock? "If you remember it you weren’t there”?

It is with a huge amount of sadness that I've had to step back from my role as technical director at Mud. Since my diagnosis with Sarcoidosis in 2019 I have tried to continue working through what has ultimately been quite a debilitating, idiosyncratic and poorly understood disease. The lung involvement and associated fatigue followed by a series of eye bleeds has meant that I am just not able to continue in a role that demands continual screen use. Nor am I able to reliably support Matt Powell and our wonderful team making the fantastic, rich, engaging and genuinely transformative websites that have become our trademark.

When I first started working with Matt in 2013 I couldn't have imagined the great work we would go on to do together or the wonderful team that we have cultivated.

We've done some amazing and impactful work for clients that really do make a positive change in the world, whether that is advocating against climate change or engaging with rehabilitation in prisons or facilitating disabled users - our truly best work was always when we were helping people to make the world a better, kinder and fairer place for all.

My time at Mud - working alongside Matt - has been an absolute privilege and I can only look back on the past 12 years with immense pride. I thank you Matt for the chance you took on me back then and on being so supportive since my diagnosis. And I am truly sad that I am not able to continue.

So what next?

Well my first priority has to be to try and get on top of my health. Since last year I have been on the immune suppressant Methotrexate to stop my condition worsening. However I am still susceptible to "flare-ups" and attacks to my eyes and chest. And my immune system is still liable to overreact when I get an infection or bug. The hope then with the methotrexate is just that the collateral damage from such bouts will be reduced.

One thing I've learned is that the damp really doesn't help and over the past couple of years it has been inescapable that the wet British winter really wipes me out. But I'm not really in a position to relocate to warmer climes just yet. However if you happen to be reading this and have a summer bolthole that needs a winter caretaker just holler!

In truth I am shitting myself about the future. We have a mortgage to cover and two teenage boys to support. But I am trying to remain upbeat. I am looking to tap into my creative juices more and hope to be doing more drawing, illustrating, writing and painting. Who knows, I might even finish the graphic memoir (Finding Albert) that has been on my "to complete" list for far too long.

And I am always on the look out for "side hustles" so if you can think of any ideas or anyone that needs some art then please do think of me. Even part-time and casual work in the Frome area would be of help.

Plus at almost 50 I like to think I have a fair bit of experience of life, creativity and running a business so am more than happy to offer my expertise and perspective in a consultant or mentor capacity if that is something you need or think you might benefit from.

Otherwise am looking to continue with my voluntary work with the Arts Emergency charity mentoring young creative students from disadvantaged backgrounds. I've also just started voluntary work with Marie Curie UK as a companion for those at end-of-life and with terminal illnesses.

In the meantime if you got this far so many thanks for taking the time to read and thanks in advance for all your wonderful support - whether that is hugs, work, words or just a wry nod.

It really means the world to me, Peta and the boys xxx

• Find out more about the consultation and the important questions to answer on the Against the Box Substack
• Write to your MP via the Creative Rights in AI Coalition
  
• Read about the PPA #makeitfair campaign
• Read The Society of Authors stance on AI
• Read The Association of Illustrators stance on AI
• Read DACS stance on the consultation

Below have copied my letter to our MP:

Dear Anna Sabine,

I'm writing to you in relation to the Consultation on Copyright and Artificial Intelligence which closes today.

I'm furious and terrified. As an artist and illustrator based in your constituency I cannot be anything but scared at the proposals currently being discussed by our government regarding AI usage of creative works and the copyright changes they require.

First things first, I am not a luddite. I have spent the last eighteen years working at the forefront of web technologies. I started making websites - initially for government and public services - because I saw the internet as a fantastic tool for democratising access to information and for the sharing of opinions, knowledge and creativity.

To some extent this has proven to be the case. However over the past 18 years I have also seen the control of these spaces increasingly fall into the hands of a select few. And it has become clear that there is no ulterior goal of human betterment leading their agendas. This is ultimately about profit and control and - if I was feeling conspiratorial - then I'd perhaps also suggest more worrying underlying agendas. But let’s stick to the money one for now and perhaps also the ethical implications.

The development in recent years of new technologies such as deep learning processors and graphics processing units has opened up fantastic opportunities for things like machine learning to assist with interpreting large and complex datasets in a way that simply was not possible before. This is why we see arguments such as "AI is great for solving cancer" bandied about in reference to the Consultation on Copyright and Artificial Intelligence.

However this is not what artists, illustrators, musicians and other creators are objecting to, as you would have seen on the front pages of any newspaper today.

The consultation clearly recognises the significance of the creative sectors and that "the UK is a world-leader in the creative industries, a high-growth sector powered by human creativity – from music, film, and design, to visual arts, theatre, and media. These industries enhance our lives and create economic and social value." (B.1 30)

I couldn’t disagree with any of that statement. Furthermore I would argue that the key part of this statement is the word "human". Creativity is a fundamental form of human expression. It originates in and reacts to our role as individual actors within a world that is more than borrowed terabytes of data. It is about our lives, our experiences and our relationships. The moments that went towards making us who we are when we create.

So to see this endeavour - this culmination of lived experience - reduced to fodder for text and data mining "for any purpose, including commercial purposes" (C.1 75a) is frankly insulating.

Reducing our work to units of data for generating art and other forms of creative expression does little more than reduce us to expensive and expendable cogs in a wheel of commercial endeavour that the AI sector is seeking to replicate or worse, replace.

I'm sorry if this sounds overly dramatic but as a creative that has worked at the coalface of internet technologies for almost two decades this is the reality I see in front of us. And that is why I implore you to reject the current consultation and its proposals.

Copyright has to be implied at the point of origin. We cannot assume an opt-out method.

We are more than ones and zeros.

Cole

Every day - give or take - I sit down and spend twenty minutes or so sketching three random strangers. I could do this at a bus stop or in a crowded cafe but instead I reach for my phone and head on over to the @earthsworld Instagram account, pen and sketching pad in hand. Once there I’ll do a quick sketch of three or four portraits from the feed. It doesn’t matter if I’m sat there forcing my eyes open with my first cup of Joe of the day, or unwinding in front of the telly before bed. It has become a really great (and enjoyable) habit to get into.

Here’s some reasons why I’ve come to love this daily exercise.

It’s about quantity not quality

It’s not that I am trying to draw badly, I’m just trying to sweat less about it being good. And this is the reason for sketches. It is about the act of getting stuff down - the process - rather than necessarily the end result - the product. The whole point of this is low fidelity, low friction and speed. To ensure this I make sure I can work anywhere (I have a small, dedicated notebook for these sketches) and use only a pen.

I’m an over thinker. Pencil is great for laying stuff out and roughing a sketch but I find with pencil I can go over and over the same outline to get it right. Eraser be damned! Working straight in pen helps me get away from this overthinking and just commit already to getting marks down on paper.

This is probably why I also focus on a composite of portraits rather than individual portraits. By working on three of four heads I am less focused on getting any one drawing accurate and instead am more focused on getting the sketches out. And it really works - when you are doing three heads you get less worried about whether the hair of one is quite right or the nose on the other is perfect. And the imperfections just get lost in the whole. Which leads me on to my next reason.

The importance of strangers

It is tempting when sketching to reach for pictures of people you know - whether that is friends, families or celebrities (“know” as in familiar with rather than mates). The problem with this is you will never quite get it right. That subtle crease by their eye; the wry smile; the way they hold their head. With familiarity you will always focus on what is not right with the sketch rather than what is.

With totally new faces you are trying instead to capture an essence of the person. Sure there has to be some familiarity but you focus on the main bits - hair style, beards, glasses and eyes, nose, cheeks and jowls - and hope that the rest follows. And if it doesn’t then no bother. I have two or three other faces that will hopefully be closer. I am not sweating the small stuff and that is easier when you are looking at something/someone completely new and fresh eyes.

That is why I love the @earthsworld account. Candid portraits from country fairs in the US. People I would never normally see or encounter in my daily life. I will often image something about the person from that brief period of trying to capture them. What are their stories? What are their likes and dislikes? Why are they smiling/frowning? Do they know they are being photographed?

But in the end it doesn’t really matter - these are sketches. And furthermore the variety of subjects helps me stretch my drawing vocabulary. Black, queer, disabled, cowboys, old people, young people, bikers. I could go on but ultimately trying to capture the diversity and complexity of others is a simple way of keeping your drawings fresh, relevant and different and not falling back on your comfort zone.

As the great cartoonist and illustrator Alex Toth said (I paraphrase)

Faces, faces, faces. Faces that tell stories are stories unto themselves. Help tell ‘em.

Mark-making

Another reason why I enjoy this exercise is it really helps me understand the pens I work with. I prefer drawing with a brush pen (a hard point Tomboy Fudenosuke brush pen if you're asking) but sketching quickly with it really helps me understand what I can and can’t do with this pen, from shading to detailed work to fluid movements to creating shape and texture just by applying different amounts of pressure on the paper.

I’m not saying rush out and get yourself one of these pens but regular practice with your pen of choice really helps you get to master it in a way that you simply won’t by focusing only on finished pieces.

Don’t force it

Finally, whilst I try and do this exercise every day it is a bit of fun. I don’t want to force it and feel guilty that I’ve missed a day (I’m looking at you, Inktober). If I can squeeze out 20 minutes great. My experience and sketchbook are better off from it. But if I can’t it doesn’t matter.

Remember. If you’re not getting paid for it then it’s supposed to be fun!

If you want to work together or find out more drop me an email at post@cole007.net.

It’s exciting to carry out these small efforts to make a house a home. Can’t believe it has taken us eight years to get round to modifying our kitchen; a place that should (in my head and heart) be the centre of the home.

One of the things that struck me when we “bought" our kitchen last week was that it came with a 25 year guarantee. This seems such an unfathomable period of time but also as someone rapidly approaching 50 (over half a lifetime!) is it really that far away? Also it made me think about my own life expectancy. Obviously it comes with no guarantees but will I be around to see our kitchen guarantee expire?

For some reason this figure has stuck in my head. And given me a great deal of perspective. I am fortunate. I have had friends my age die. Close family members die. Some had a good innings (whatever that is). Others less so - their opportunities in life dramatically and so unfairly curtailed. “Before their time” is a phrase we hear a lot - as if we all have a particular Best Before Date marked somewhere on our body, perhaps with a QR code that links to a Instagram Story to show us how to live our best life…

And then I think about how unlucky I am - to be 48 and have a life-limiting chronic illness that means I cannot face life with the gusto I used to. That pacing myself is a term I have had to add to my vocabulary but yet cruelly that when I don’t, I fail to have the vocabulary to articulate how debilitated I feel.

It also has made me think about what I want to get out of life. To be honest more of the same whilst I still can. And for some people that will mean making substantial life changes. Take up yoga. Drink less. Eat more healthily. Exercise more. Meditation. Listen to podcasts on meditation. Declutter. “Focus on the important things.”

For me it’s feels a bit more fuck it. Maybe the important things are right in front of you. The getting drunk with friends. Or alone. The frivolous bet on a football match. The idle doodling in a notepad margin during a business meeting. The thrill of not putting your recycling out one week.

Selfish I know. But I want to enjoy life whilst I still can. Not just for me. For my friends and family that no longer can. I want to be an ambassador for abandon. Is it so wrong I like a drink? Is it wrong that I don’t feel obliged to join the other 40-somethings that have taken up the gym and running in a mad dash to run away from their own mortality. Is it wrong to squeeze a few more years out of a life whilst you still can?

Sorry - this isn’t really a post about kitchens. Or guarantees. But thinking about kitchens (and guarantees) has made me think about what I enjoy in life and the importance of being able to enjoy it whilst I still can. And I have to say I’ve found this perspective quite liberating.

Nor the 1990s British Comic for mature readers. Today we’re talking about drugs or rather medication. The stuff that you’re given to make you better.

After a year where my Sarcoidosis has progressed into my lung tissue and also had a pretty good go at my eyes I have been “bumped up” to the interstitial lung disease team at my local hospital. The ILD team are basically in charge of various diseases that cause scarring (fibrosis) or - in my case - granulomas which cause stiffness in the lungs and make breathing difficult.

As part of a review with the ILD team it has been decided to try immune sparing agents to help arrest the progression of the sarcoidosis. Essentially drugs to stop my body fighting itself. So on top of the low dose of steroids I have been on to manage the condition in my lungs and eyes I’ve just started on Methotrexate, a drug usually used for the chronic inflammatory condition arthritis, cancer patients and organ transplants.

Methotrexate is extremely potent, even in smaller doses. The box comes with a massive red sticker on it “Cyto-toxin!” which literally means “cell poison”. It is so potent it is only taken weekly and needs to be taken with folic acid to help reduce the side effects. Twice weekly blood tests beckon to ensure that there isn’t any collateral damage from taking the drug such as liver function (as a fond fan of beer, wine and whiskey it is at the very least refreshing to get a weekly reminder that my liver is functioning as normal).

The main down side of this medication is that it is designed to wipe out your body’s natural immune system which leaves you open to the bugs and sniffles you would normally fight off without even noticing.

So fingers crossed this controls the sarcoidosis and can help me manage this obscure condition going forward. It is frustrating is that the medication will not help with any of the symptoms of the sarcoidosis: brain fog, fatigue, etc. It is there. In the words of my ILD doctor these drugs are not to make the condition better but rather to stop the Sarcoidosis getting worse. But it is great to have it under closer observation after the last five years or so and hopefully will mean my body being a bit less of a twat to itself.

Still, my life long ambition of having someone to fetch me some beers from the Co-op without me having to leave the house has at long last been realised!

*NEW PARENTHOOD LEVEL UNLOCKED*

At this milestone it seems impossible to ignore words that my mum always told me:

With sixty seconds' worth of distance run, Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it, And—which is more—you'll be a Man, my son!

Gethin. So proud of you. Keep being curious. Keep challenging the status quo. And continue to be happiest in your own skin - especially because other people's skin smells funny and tends to bunch up in all the wrong places.

Above pic is of Gethin at one day old - always the intense thinker. Barely ever cried. What a star ⭐️

PS if you are remotely curious about those early days of parenthood then there is a(nother) blog where we attempted to pen our thoughts in those early, pre-social media days with family so far away. Pop over to the bairn blog.

Haters gonna hate

Yesterday I heard the news of Ed Piskor’s suicide. If you are not interested in comics you may never have heard of Ed. Perhaps you had come across one of this books, most notably the Hip Hop Family Tree series. Or perhaps his association with Jim Rugg as part of the ongoing Youtube video series “Cartoonist Kayfabe”. I’ve never met Ed. I don’t really have a perspective on him except through his work.

I’m not going into details of the accusations and rumours levelled at Ed in the period leading up to his taking his own life. I didn’t delve into the details when they surfaced and am not remotely qualified to comment. But this story highlights a campaign of vitriol targeted at an individual online to the extent that he felt he could not continue.

Then yesterday a suicide note was posted - seemingly from Ed - up on Facebook. Just as we had all watched the demonisation of an individual unfold on social media in real time - with accusations spreading like wildfire (and I am not for one second excusing Ed or debasing these accusations) - we started to see the very real unfolding in real time of attempts to clarify this note and attempts to contact and ultimately help Ed. These were futile. The note was genuine and his family confirmed that he had taken his own life some hours after the note was posted online.

Incidentally, yesterday - April Fools Day - also saw the “Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Bill” come into force. To quote the Scottish Government, the act provides “new measures to tackle the harm caused by hatred and prejudice.” The act - on face value - provides a concrete measure to tackle what feels like a growing mob rule on the internet. The kind of mob rule that in this instance has resulted in an individual taking his own life.

But the act is not without controversy and has been seen by some not as a means in law to provide protection but rather as a means to silence those who have views which others dislike, most notably around gender identity and the rights of transgender women. The Scottish Government have tried to qualify this saying “protections for freedom of expression are built into the legislation.” But for some - such as the author J.K. Rowling - this has widespread consequences for CIS women because in our deeply misogynistic society some women feel threatened by the potential dangers presented by biologically born men who self-identify as women.

What does this have to do with the death of Ed Piskor? For me they are related because both are intimately tied into the very public trial by social media that characterises mob rule in the digital age. And in the latter case that is on both sides of the debate.

I am not a women. Nor am I transgender. Furthermore I have transgender friends and consider myself a feminist. As a white, CIS male I have empathy for both sides of the argument. I fundamentally wish we lived in an inclusive society that fully embraced both perspectives. But sadly we do not. This is a battleground (or at least it often feels like it) I feel ill-equipped to participate in or take sides on. And it would not be an understatement to say it causes me a great deal of angst and consternation to regularly see these arguments unfold in a public fora where advocates on both sides decry you are either with us or against us. This seems very far from the aspirations of the Scottish Act to protect freedom of expressions and which seek to punish actions whilst permitting opinions.

Anti-social media and the shared disconnect

The polarity in this argument is not restricted to social media. We can see across human recorded history examples where society is asked to take sides along clear dividing lines, whether that is social media, civil and religious wars or even our very own (in Britain) parliamentary fabric. The House of Commons is a house divided along a single axis, a linear chamber to this day clearly demarcated by two red lines 2.5 metres apart “which, by apocryphal tradition, is intended to be just over two sword-lengths. It is said that the original purpose of this was to prevent disputes in the House from degenerating into duels.” This political house has at its core an architecture that divides and serves to encourage opposing views. You only have to watch the schoolyard cheers, jeers and heckles at Prime Ministers Questions each Wednesday to see that this is an environment that rewards boisterous and vociferous expression of rivalry rather than collaboration, cooperation and conversation.

So social media is by no means unique nor is it isolated but it has certainly helped to magnify, amplify and exacerbate fissures within society.

In the (relatively) early days of the internet - and certainly one of the things that attracted me to it - was the idea of the democratisation of knowledge. Having information available to all and providing a platform and set of tools through which any voice could be heard. That is how I first learned HTML. A language that could be used to mark up words to put on a computer that could be viewed by anyone in the world. The more I delved into the web the more I saw it as a valuable tool for breaking down the literal and social barriers to knowledge. In my experiences of archaeology even the most liberal of academics still perpetuated themselves as gatekeepers to how we understood and explained what happened in the human material past. I saw the internet as a means for breaking down these ivory towers, or at the very least building ramps to let others glance into their hallowed halls or perhaps even participate.

Social media arrived within this world and I was fascinated by the openness and connectedness it provided. It was fundamentally about sharing and bringing people together, often over large geographical areas (the WORLD wide web). As we reached the limitations of HTML, new technologies were developed to help people and technologies communicate. APIs were built to provide the loose architecture for people to build their own tools and experiences online. In the meantime efforts were made to standardise our tools as well as make human experiences online more accessible. As Tim Berners Lee had said back in 1999: “The Internet is for Everyone”.

At times for me the internet - and especially social media - made the world smaller. It connected me with people that I would never otherwise have met, on a global scale. At times where I have needed it I have found solace in and with kindred spirits. I have found allies that helped me fix problems, I found work, I got a book deal and even a place to live.

Bridges and walls

You could argue in this sense that the internet and social media is a success story. Everyone has in the palm of their hand the ability to say what they want to a global audience. But rather than serve to level the playing field and democratise voices it is hard to deny that it has also served to foster echo chambers; closed networks which reinforce existing views and prejudices. And rather than connect people it instead defines people by which side of a divide they are situated on, amplifying conversations that reinforce their stance and demonises those that oppose them.

I have certainly been guilty of this. #FBPE is a hashtag that cropped up in the wake of the Brexit referendum (yet more dividing lines). Meaning “Follow Back Pro-Europe” it served to help people proudly identify as supporting British membership of the European Union. In adopting this hashtag I was on the one hand trying to find others that shared my exasperation and frustration at losing a core part of my identity - my citizenship of Europe. But I was also making a vocal and visible stance that I was fundamentally opposed to those people who supported the referendum. Similarly in a bit to raise support for proportional representation at the 2017 general election I was vociferous in my support for any party that opposed the Conservative Party candidate in our constituency. This was the political equivalent of “my enemy’s enemy is my friend” and whilst I stand by the energy and devotion I put into this campaign (mostly because it was a reaction to our broken electoral system) I cannot help but wonder if in emphasising and regurgitating the divisive lines of our current political landscape I was in fact part of the problem.

With these divisions and polarity the opposite has emerged from my early experiences of the internet. Rather than a smaller, more connected world that rewarded the serendipity of strangers, we seem to inhabit a world which encourages division. And in that sense the world now seems larger and more alien. And - personally speaking - in the wake of these divisions I acutely feel the voids that develop between sides.

To return to the suicide of Ed Piskor and the controversy surrounding the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act, there feels like a growing chasm between sides that is now bringing about very real casualties. My instinct is to want to fill this void. To pour empathy and compassion into the gap to bridge this divide. But as the dividing lines become clearer and the gap grows this becomes harder.

Pulling the drawbridge up

There is a scene in the Zack Snyder Superman film Man of Steel that springs to mind here (sorry, I know a lot of people hate on this film but I’m a big fan). Struggling to come to terms with his developing super powers Clark Kent hides in a closet at school, overcome with the voices he can hear with his extraordinary hearing.

“The world's too big, Mom”

To which his mum replies.

“Then make it small.”

I've loved social media. As I have said it has provided a great comfort and help to me in difficult times of my life. It has brought me friendships and opportunities that I would never have found possible without it.

But I find myself now yearning for simpler times and quieter times. Without having to take sides and without being immersed in conflict. Without having to fill the chasm left behind as the gap between opinions grows greater. Like Clark Kent maybe I just have to make the world smaller.

Maybe it's age. Or perspective. Or exhaustion. But I feel like I have to walk away from social media. I’ve done this before but more as a detox. Now I feel I need a clean break. So I am logging out of my social media accounts. I am not deleting them. I think it important that they serve as a reminder (to me if not anyone else) of happier times. And perhaps I will find more time to blog. Like the good old days.

But just in case I’ll keep my comments closed. You know, to keep things civil. I'm only ever an email or text message away.

As the great William “Bill” S. Preston, Esq. and “Ted” Theodore Logan once said:

“Be excellent to each other.”

* Footnote

I called this post Social AIDs. This was a deliberate play on words and is intend more as a warning cry than a deliberate provocation. AIDs is a human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that came to prominence in the 1980s with widespread societal consequences. The HIV/AIDs virus fundamentally affects your body’s ability to regulate and defend itself. To me this analogy seemed especially apt. Because without stops and check our social media has become increasingly toxic and prone to incubating and amplifying the worst of us. The slogan associated with the public health campaign in the UK seems especially relevant here: “Don't die of ignorance.” Without wanting to take sides, I think in light of the death of Ed Piskor we can perhaps think on this before wading into another internet pile-on.

Apparently it's TimeToTalkDay today - raising awareness of mental health illnesses.

I've always been quite open (hopefully) about my own struggles with depression and anxiety. It has in some small way helped me to share my experiences and release some pressure from the internalising system from time to time.

Since 2013 I have been taking medication to help manage the symptoms of these feelings (100mg sertraline daily). Winter is always hard. But the bad days always pass and no matter how deep the dip you are in it is just that, a dip. There will be lighter days.

If you suffer from mental health problems know that the way you feel and think is not reality - it is a lens, a filter through which the world is seen and experienced. It is - in its own cruel way - an attempt by your brain to compartmentalise and make sense of a world that is moving at 100 miles per hour and filled with trauma.

The trauma sadly is too often real. The world is a fucked up place and it is filled with fucked up people. But the lens can deceive. It can amplify, distort and filter. You do not have to correct the lens - it is after all a part of you. But knowing it is there can in some small way help.

And also know that if you hurt inside it is usually because you care. And that is not a stick to beat you with but a baton to grasp tightly.

My messages are always open if you need to talk or just offload. I may not understand but I will always listen.

So the bad news first. My sarcoidosis has got worse this year. In April I started having trouble with my vision resulting in the first of almost twenty trips to hospital over the course of the year. A series of bleeds in the eye due to inflammation left me with limited sight in my left eye. A prolonged period of heavy steroids and two bouts of laser surgery later the issue remains and I await the outcome of conversations about potentially moving onto immune suppressants in the new year. Similarly the impact of sarcoidosis on my lungs has worsened and whilst my lung function tests have been pretty stable the inflammation has continued making me short of breath and fatigued on a daily basis.

The main impact of this has been reduced capacity to work. Spending any kind of time on screens has been incredibly hard as is any prolonged wearing of glasses. I’m extremely grateful of the support from my business partner Matt and our employees as I continue to work less hours.

It’s hard not to be emotionally affected by all this. In my late 40s it feels like my mind and my body have had a divorce and I am stuck with a malfunctioning body that does not want to pull in the right direction. I cannot do what I have trained myself to do over the past twenty years and even the things I find a lot of joy in - such as dog walks - can be difficult. I’m also finding driving hard so huge apologies to Peta who is now doing the majority of chauffeuring for the Henley brood!

But it has not all been doom and gloom. 2023 has also been a year filled with love, laughter and music with friends and family. In April new horizons were opened up for me and the boys with the award of German citizenship through my grandmother, a German refugee who came to England in 1935 fleeing persecution from Nazi Germany. I feel extremely fortunate that for us at least there an outlet from the horrific stupidity of the Brexit referendum and it has been wonderful to once more feel European.

February saw the first of a number of gigs throughout the year. Me and Peta saw the fantastic Welsh balladeer Gareth Bonello at an intimate gig in Frome and I took my son to see the ridiculously effervescent Henry Rollins on his postponed Good To See You tour in Bath. In September Peta and I went with friends to the Forwards Festival on Clifton Downs in Bristol, some highlights (aside from the wonderful company) including Leftfield, Goldie and Gabriels. And finally in November I at long last got to see a bucket list band of mine, Queens of the Stone Age at the O2 arena in London. Thanks Peta for the tickets and Pete for the company!

It was a good year for travel. We had a lush week in Brighton in the summer (coinciding with Gay Pride) housesitting for friends. I think Gethin has found his spiritual home! And in September I went to Hamburg with friends for a weekend enjoying the sunshine, beverages and hospitality of this beautiful German city. Then in October I was lucky to be able to travel to Barcelona with work for a three day conference to catch the last rays of summer.

It was a good year for drawing. Due to eye problems and steroids and the resulting time spent avoiding screens was able to throw quite a lot of energy into drawing but sadly not my ongoing comic project telling the story of my great-grandfather. I think I just needed a mental break from working on something bigger. However, I was humbled to be invited to talk about the project for the LDC group in London earlier in the year and it was great to return to Thought Bubble in Harrogate with a table in November. Sales were terrible but the crowd was lovely and well worth a visit, even if the journey took several hours! I also got a chance to promote my graphic novel collaboration with Michael Rosen in my home town Frome when he visited earlier in the summer. It was great to do some signings and sketching with Michael and finally I got my first fan-mail this year for the Michael Rosen book. Thanks Archer!

I was chuffed to have been invited to contribute to an exhibition in Frome of local illustrators calling for contributions on the theme of “Folk”. It was a lovely opportunity to put my new found/rediscovered love of doodling to something useful and the exhibition is on until the 4th January.

Finally was humbled to be asked my thoughts on creativity by friend Rich McCoy which you can read here.

November was a happy sad time as the family got together to say good bye to my grandfather Don. Don had died (at the impressive age of 102) back in 2000 just before Covid. He had wanted his body to be donated to medical research and education so we finally got his remains back and met in Harlow; the town he helped to establish with my grandmother, Sonia in the 1940s and 50s. I was incredibly close to Don and was with him when died so it was really nice to at last say goodbye, capped off by some wonderful songs from local folk singer Moose Rosser.

Finally I cannot finish without mentioning a true highlight of the year which was the tenth anniversary of Mud. Although it has been a tough year for me personally with work I am so incredibly proud of Matt and our team for making it this far and producing such fantastic work. I am in awe of the standard of websites we continue to delivery and am proud to consider everyone at Mud great friends.

So here is hoping for a somewhat less eventful (at least health wise) 2024 but more of the good stuff please. Oh and a lot less Tories please should our next General Election take place. That would be ace!

So, this week after over 4 months of steroid drops and tablets, literally dozens of scans and a fair bit of poking and prodding I had some laser eye surgery on my left eye.

Technically I think the term is "laser photocoagulation" - a process chiefly aimed at destroying abnormal blood vessels within the eye. In my case because of continual bleeding in the eye there is a danger that the blood vessels try and be clever and grow new vessels over the area responsible for sight. This would basically be a one-way ticket to blindness in that eye. So in order to prevent this a lovely ophthalmologist spent half an hour or so firing laser beams into the back of my eye. It was like a prolonged version of the scene in the unofficial James Bond film Never Say Never Again when the villain and Bond fight over a 3-D video game to win the affections of Kim Basinger. I digress.

It wasn't very painful but was pretty uncomfortable. Mostly because someone is moving your eyeball around manually and firing lasers in to it. And the gentle "popping" of blood vessels being fried is not a particularly pleasing sound.

The words "permanent destruction of retinal tissue" were mentioned and I've now lost peripheral vision in my left eye but the surgery will hopefully prevent degeneration of vision in my left eye and stop further bleeds. A review in a couple of weeks will let me know if it was a success.

Rich is a wonderfully creative human being and it is strange how we have circled different worlds for the last 20 years or so. We first "met" in a freelance mailing list (shout out to WAUK). When I moved to professional web development I was in awe of Rich's visual design work and regularly pointed to these as examples of how websites don't have to be boring at senior management meetings of the QuANGO I was working at.

At the time Rich was living in New Zealand but jump forward a few years and was amazed to discover Rich and I had both moved to the same small town in Somerset with our families. Rich has since moved back to New Zealand but we keep in touch and I continue to be amazed and inspired by the work he does as both a designer and artist. And of course he is a very lovely chap too with an incredibly deep and caring soul.

Anyway - on to Rich's questions. I have to say I felt a bit of a fraud when asked as creativity is something I have always skirted around rather than pursued outright. But I suppose as I do have a published book featuring my illustrations I might briefly overcome my British sense of self-deprecation to indulge in responding. Am not offering any answers or valuable insights - just my own experiences to those starting out on their creative journey.

Can you share a brief overview of your creative journey, from when you first started pursuing your creative career to where you are now?

I always had a pen or pencil in my hand and am a chronic (idle) doodler. My dad was an artist turned graphic designer (he's now relapsed back to painting since retirement).

My first ever career aspiration was to be a comic artist. In awe of my grandfather felt a more academic calling so parked the art but continued drawing throughout my life. In my 40s felt calling to return to drawing and worked on a couple of comics.

Since a health scare in 2019 and its (negative) impact on my eyesight have thrown myself back into more creative work and different media. Sadly/fortunately depending on how you look at it I've had to cut my hours working which has enabled more time for creativity (buoyed on by 4am steroid-induced mornings).

What inspired you to become an artist, and how did you decide to pursue it as a career?

100% my father but also felt intimated living up to him. He was a batik artist in the 1970s who did portraiture. He loved drawing and got to travel with it but put his creative career on hold when me and my sister were born to provide for us. He initially retained a highly creative side to graphic design with hand lettering and drawing but as things gradually moved to computers he drew and painted less and less.

My fondest memories of our times together in my childhood were of us drawing together on holiday. Then when I first started reading comics I was blown away by the different artistic styles and creative opportunities of the medium. Especially as around this time we were seeing colour used more widely and also more adult-themed stories.

I decided to "jump" onto an A-Level in art having not done the GCSE but my teachers were quite critical and always found my work "too tight" so I parked things for "more noble pursuits" like getting a degree (in archaeology) earning money and starting a family. But I always kept doodling and was able to do some professional archaeological illustration for a while in my brief aspirations to become an old fossil - or at least dig some up.

How do you balance your creative pursuits with the practical aspects of being an artist, such as marketing, networking, and financial management?

I struggle. There is an element of self-marketing needed which I struggle with as someone who is quite shy and socially introverted without a few drinks in them. I also hate selling myself which is what marketing and networking really is.

Social media has definitely helped. Since doing comics professionally I've been able to piggy back on twitter and Instagram to find people, work and the communities around the creative work I do.

Also the creative work is really a side hustle. I'm fortunate that I have a well paid career that more than covers the mortgage and supports my family. Honestly speaking there is a part of me that would love to make a living by being a professional doodler of some description but it really isn't going to happen! However time spent as a freelancer making websites has also taught me some valuable lessons on the financial side of being creative and it amazes me when I talk to other creatives how widely this isn't talked about (if that isn't a contradiction).

What is the most rewarding aspect of being a creative person?

For me it is getting lost in working. As someone who has spent the last twenty years working online with computers everything moves so fast. There are so many demands on attention and drawing/creating/painting takes me away from that. I recently started playing with oil paints (portraiture) and as someone who is naturally impatient I've loved the slowing down it enforces.

I'd also have to say seeing the appreciation from others of your work. I can't deny there is a sense of narcissism in there and the ego tickle/validation is lovely but having done a comic book aimed at kids there are few things that can beat seeing a child chuckle at something you've created or saying they loved your drawings.

What keeps you motivated and passionate about your craft?

It's a fine balance between never stopping to explore and not worrying about things being perfect. I think also as life throws more pressure at me - especially around my health - creativity has given me an outlet and a distraction.

What advice would you give to young artists who are just starting out and considering a creative career?

1. don't obsess about tools
2. your work will never be perfect
3. the journey is more important than the destination
4. your best work will be from the mistakes you made not the decisions you took

How important is it for artists to find their unique style or voice?

Tough question - as a comic artist I spent years trying to find my style but after a while realised that what I was looking for was a visual vocabulary and that was totally the wrong approach.

At the risk of sounding like a wanker, once I started instead focusing on trying to capture a story or a feeling rather than a likeness or a style things came a lot easier.

Also going to contradict myself here (lesson 1 - don't obsess about tools) but I found a pen I totally love drawing with - the Tombow Fudenosuke brush pen - and that if anything I would say gives my work it's style. I guess it is like a musician and an instrument.

How did you discover and develop your own artistic identity?

Practice and long, sweaty hours of beating myself up and learning the hard way to let go. There really are no short cuts. You just have to put the hours in and wait to find something that clicks.

Can you talk about the role of failure and perseverance in the life of an artist?

See above. But really for me I've been so lucky to have had some recognition as someone who is just a glorified hobbyist. My first published work was a collaboration with an internationally recognised children's author so the failing there was in the pressure of living up to the expectation I suppose (and still not sure I did).

I am ridiculously self-critical and that really is the flip side of a world that is increasingly online. I procrastinated massively on my first main project because I was stressing out about it being perfect.

I lost myself in tools and techniques because I was wanting to impress my peers and that was totally the wrong audience. It was a kids book. I had to develop a mantra that I kept reciting which was that they really wouldn't care about the fonts used or whether the speech bubbles were inside or outside the box. They just wanted fart jokes and a talking dolphin.

I suppose it comes down to how you define failure. Did you pay your bills? Did you make something you were happy with? Did you fuck up a painting/drawing? Will anyone notice? Did you please your peers or your heroes?

Again a big part of it comes down to letting go and not sweating the small stuff. It took me a cancer scare and some tricky years with my health to learn that one (and I still struggle sometimes).

What are some misconceptions or myths about being an artist that you would like to debunk?

Well lets get this out of the way: artists are all pretentious prima donna's desperate for validation and attention but they are also the kindest most beautiful people.

I've never signed up to the idea of the tortured creative but I do recognise that for many people (and sometimes myself to) that creativity can be a powerful conduit for challenging emotions, feelings and human experiences.

Also if someone tells you how to be a better creative (myself included) totally ignore them. There will be no substitute or short-cuts for your own experiences.

How do you navigate the art industry and find opportunities to showcase your work or collaborate with others?

Largely social media but that is just one part of "community" - every town and craft has its communities. Find them. Go out and talk to people. It's hard but when people with a shared loved and shared struggles come together it makes everything 100% easier.

You will make friendships and learn that people care more about helping each other than they do about bringing other people down. Talk to people about art. Don't be afraid to show your work and invite conversations about it in public. Well, unless you specialise in photorealistic paintings of demonic vulvas. Then maybe be a bit more selective about your audience.

What are some common challenges artists face in terms of recognition and financial stability, and how can they be addressed?

Well the first thing I would say - and this might sound really trite and from a position of immense privilege - is that if you want to make a career being creative you are not doing it to make money. So worrying about money is just going to make things so much harder from a creative point-of-view.

We all know bills need paying - that isn't the privilege of the creative. We all need to do it. And when you have dependents that becomes infinitely harder and will shape a lot of your decision making. Probably one for the myths question but I hate the idea of creativity coming from suffering. I 100% agree that great art can elevate and shine a light on the worst of human nature (Guernica) and there is a fascination with the tortured creative (see above) that I think tells us more about our relationship with suffering than it does our relationship with art.

Gone a bit off-piste here but the problems are really systemic and political more than they are about creative pursuits. I live in the UK and when the Prime Minister is talking about "more valuable degrees" his is talking about humans being economic units of production.

Fuck that bullshit. Celebrate being something more than that.

How do you stay connected with other artists and the larger creative community?

Sadly mostly social media and online but have recently started going to comics conventions and meet-ups and have recently made touch with local illustrators.

Can you share any tips for artists to market and promote their work effectively in today's digital age?

Sadly it is a very competitive space so 1. you have to have a presence online, 2. just be yourself and 3. keep posting.

Are there any specific resources, workshops, or organisations you would recommend for young artists who want to further develop their skills and knowledge?

Not especially. The Society of Authors is useful for those working in comics and there is also the Society of Illustrators for those who see themselves as more pure creatives but cannot really advise outside of this. Find a local meet-up group. You cannot substitute meeting people face-to-face.

How do you approach self-criticism and growth as an artist?

I find my self-criticism comes from a broader mental health problem so when I work out that I will let you know. Growth for me comes from letting go of the small stuff. Again practice, practice, practice. If you love what you do is it hard work?

What strategies do you use to continually improve your craft?

I think just practice and practice. As an illustrator it is doodling and observation. Always have a pen and paper handy. I seriously don't leave home without having at least 5 pens on me. If I'm at a bus stop or in a pub I doodle. People. things, places. Just being playful keeps you fresh.

Have you ever experienced creative blocks or periods of low inspiration? If so, how did you overcome them?

Always. Usually when I have external pressures or demands on what I am producing such as a commission or deadline. If I ever work this out will let you know but suppose you only ever get to the end by putting one foot in front of the other

Do you believe it's necessary to have a degree in art to succeed?

Well I don't have a degree in art but do have a degree so I would say "no" but caveat that there is a value in a degree that is not just down to the teaching and outcome (a nice piece of paper).

Learning "how to learn" outside of a school setting is undervalued as well as pursuing something alongside peers is something that will really help build resilience and friendships.

In my experience the best creativity comes from collaboration and bouncing off other people and what excites/interests them. A degree is the perfect environment to build those foundations, whatever the subject.

Can you share any memorable experiences or achievements in your artistic career that have had a significant impact on your journey?

Well a published book for my first "professional" work was probably a classic case of peaking too soon. However the best memories of that were the moments seeing children enjoy it. That makes it always worth while and reminds me once more not to sweat the small stuff.

Is there anything else you would like to share with young artists aspiring to pursue a creative career?

Play. Practice. People. Work on these three things and the rest will fall into place. Unless you're a psychopath. In which case perhaps consider a career in politics.

Is there anyone else you would like to see answer these questions? If so let me know.

In my sphere (comics): Lucy Sullivan and Gustaffo Vargas. Two people I really look up to for totally different reasons.

So as previously reported I have been on steroids (oral and drops) to tackle bleeds and inflammation in both eyes for four months now. The sarcoidosis is hitting both eyes differently. I have inflammation in both eyes but for my left eye it is in the rear (posterior uveitis) and in the right eye it is in the front (anterior uveitis). The symptoms for each are different - my left eye struggles to focus and has black floaters whilst my right eye is in some pain and struggles with light (photosensitivity) so wants to close the whole time.

There is a burst blood vessel in the back of my left eye and whilst it is not directly impacting on my sight except for floaters the fear is that new blood vessels will form over the area of the eye responsible for vision resulting in vision loss.

In the meantime navigating the highs and lows of medication (steroids and anti-depressants), primarily waking up ridiculously early (4am not unheard of) and crashing during the day. I continue to find certain situations really difficult, especially when it gets dark due to the large visual contrast. I've never had great night vision but now find it really tiring trying to concentrate in low light levels. Perversely though also finding bright lights really tricky as light bounces off the blood cells floating in my exquisite ocular jelly.

I'm feeling weirdly cathartic about this all - maybe it is the medication but it is what it is and it is making me think and reflect on what is and isn't important and trying to enjoy what I can out of life at the moment.

I worry more about the impact this has on those around me - especially Peta at home and Matt at work - as I just cannot do the things I would like. The double whammy of a lung condition that makes walks and general physical pursuits harder and now eye problems that make seeing and doing things difficult.

Saying that it is quite upsetting at times and have been prone to the occasional emotional outburst and bouts of melancholy. Struggling to do what you've spent the last 17 years working hard towards is incredibly frustrating. I just cannot spend all day on a screen like I used to and finding I need days off to rest my eyes and longer breaks during the day just to get through stuff.

Finding drawing therapeutic but not sure if that is just the act taking me into a different headspace or at some subconscious level I'm trying to do it whilst I still can (again, want to emphasise here no immediate risk of going blind but cannot say it is not on my mind).

Anyway, if you are remotely interested am dumping my output over on my Instagram chiefly - and if you want any of my prolific 4am doodlings then just drop me a message. And if you want to pay for it even better!

Love Me Again by John Newman was riding high in the UK singles charts (yeah, no idea who that is either), Despicable Me 2 was cleaning up at the box office, Flappy Bird was released on iOS, Andy Murray had just won his first Wimbledon title and the internet was dominated by Grumpy Cat who lent her trademark scowl to a line of “Grumppuccino” coffee beverages (but was to later win $710,000 in damages after Grenade Beverage LLC created a roasted coffee line without the cat’s permission, RIP Tardar Sauce 2012-2019).

It was also the summer that Matt Powell and myself joined forces to form Our Name is Mud Ltd. Combining Matt’s business nouse, brains and incredible good looks with my uncanny ability to kill a server just by looking at it. A digital business empire was born.

10 years, 459 client projects, 3478 invoices (according to Freeagent) and 39 employees later, I am so incredibly proud of the company we have created and the work we have produced.

It is hard to summon up highlights from a decade. We have done some great work for some fantastic clients and we are showcasing some of our favourite over on the Our Name is Mud Instagram account. But for me our finest achievement has been the people. It is the hardest thing to get right in a business but to bring together people who share your purpose and values and want to put their time and love into what you create has been so incredibly rewarding.

If you were to ask me to give you some advice on lasting ten years running a business (and again to emphasise, Matt does all the hard work) I would offer the following tips:

1. Get a non-executive director. Some early guidance, good practices and outside eyes and ears will be invaluable
2. Know what you are selling (mostly it is time even when it isn’t)
3. Innovation is expensive (not prohibitively, just know this)
4. Your best work will be collaborations - find people, businesses and organisations that share your mojo
5. People are everything. Hire slow, fire fast and build a good culture. People might come for the salary but they stay for the vibes
6. Whatever you do don’t invent a CSS referencing system based on a 1960s British comedy sketch, especially in advance of working with a Belgian intern
7. Have fun

Anyway - what a ten years. Feeling incredibly grateful. We've done some great work and I've made fantastic friends along the way.

And this has been in no small part thanks to Matt. I owe him an immense debt of gratitude for first inviting me to come along for the ride all those years ago. May there be very many more.

Late in 2019 I had a bit of a health scare. Originally thought to be lung cancer further tests and a biopsy revealed it to be a rare systemic inflammatory disease called Sarcoidosis attacking the lymph nodes in my lungs. In 2020 the sarcoidosis decided to have fun attacking my eyes which responded well to steroid drops.

Reflecting on this attack I wrote:

And I know full well that if it hits me a third time it won’t be nearly as forgiving.

It turns out I was right.

A few months ago I started having trouble again with my eyes. My left eye was struggling to focus and my right eye was wanting to shut, especially in bright light. I soldiered on and tried to get on with it. I had an eye patch for when it was really bad but eventually rang up the hospital to see if I could have it looked at.

This was 8 weeks ago. Scans showed blood cells in the front of the eye. The blood vessels in both eyes were haemorrhaging into the eye. These needed clearing up before the doctors could get a better understanding of what was going on. An intensive period of further drops helped but for the first time since my initial diagnosis have had to go on oral steroids as well to try and “hit it hard”.

In an appointment yesterday for the first time the words “vision loss” was mentioned. Admittedly a worst case scenario and something that some laser surgery is hopefully going to avoid (freaking laser beams) but it has stopped me in my tracks. Not only faced with a chronic illness I now have to recognise this is - at least partially - a degenerative condition and this is probably going to keep happening for the rest of my life without ongoing medical intervention.

I’ve been told to avoid stress and screens which as a professional web developer is a bit tricky. But my business partner Matt and colleagues have been brilliant and incredibly supportive, giving me the time and space to work when and how I can.

In the meantime for the first time in my life am trying to get used to doing nothing. Which of course has been impossible but I'm needing to do as much as possible without glasses and away from screens.

So, I’ve been drawing. A lot. And painting. And have rediscovered home brewing.

I’m actually feeling quite philosophical about things. It’s really frustrating walking into things or juggling three pairs of glasses/sunglasses depending on the prevalent light conditions. I can’t really drive at the moment so feeling a little less independent. But it’s all okay. I am blessed that I have loving and supportive people around me and I’m not going blind at least. I’m just a bit slower and things are a bit harder.

I’m mostly just annoyed about the added strain this puts on those around me. Especially Peta. She probably won’t read this so it is safe to say she’s a saint and I’m very fortunate to have her. Just don’t tell her I said so :D

If I was to sum up some themes from the year it would be about friendships. New ones were made, some were lost and existing ones were strengthened.

The start of 2022 was to be frank a bit shit. I fell over after one beer too many at the leaving drinks for one of our employees at Mud. A late night trip to hospital in Bath (thanks Lieve for the chaperone and Peta for the late night rescue) revealed I’d pretty badly broken two fingers. The result was six weeks of being one-handed and some extremely painful traction on the fingers to set them back in place.

Whilst recovering I did get the chance to see the wonderful Sam Amidon playing in our home town of Frome and it was so lovely to have live music in our lives once again after the last few years. March though also saw the sad loss of my friend Alex after he lost his struggle against the horrific and debilitating Motor Neurone Disease (ALS). It was a relief that Alex was finally at peace but I miss our occasional talks.

One unexpected outcome of my hand injury was throwing myself into oil painting. I haven’t painted since my A-Levels almost thirty years ago and had never painted with oil paints before. I think I needed a creative outlet with only one hand working and the result was a flurry of portraits. It has been really nice to explore a new medium and to think about creativity at a completely different pace to normal. In the run up to the Qatar World Cup I managed to sell one of my paintings to raise over £120 for Amnesty International so quite chuffed with that.

In April we caught up with my cousin Annya and her children who were visiting from Poland. It was great to meet up after so long and hang out in Bath for the afternoon.

May saw the publication of my collaboration with children’s author Michael Rosen, a graphic novel “You’re Thinking about Tomatoes”. After two years of creative block and imposter syndrome (around the small matter of a pandemic and health issues) it was extremely rewarding to see the hard work and encouragement from friends and family finally come to fruition in a full colour, hard-backed book.

Me and Michael spent a day signing the books at a depot in Basildon and were invited to talk about the collaboration at a children’s comics festival in Brighton. It was a great few days to reflect on what we had created, there was some great feedback on the book and it was lovely to make some new friendships in Brighton, especially Myf Tristan and Joe Nixon who kindly put me up and all the members of Cartoon County who made me feel so at home.

With the weather turning it was lush to be able to spend plenty of time on sunny walks with Hazel. With my health problems over the past few years it has been a real struggle to manage longer walks and it is a source of real sadness that I can’t manage the 5-6 mile long treks I used to. But I feel really chuffed to have managed what I can and we are so lucky to have this silly dog in our lives.

June saw an overly ambitious attempt to bring the floors in our dining room back to their former glory. A stupid and temporary burst of energy resulted in my ripping up the carpet and a tool hire later we had stripped the floorboards and started varnishing. The result was lush but sadly a fair bit of worm damage meant we had to replace almost a third of the boards. Something to complete in 2023 …

July heralded the start of a rather lush, long and warm summer season spent with family and friends. We started with a rather excessive weekend trip to a friend’s festival in Dorset and concluded with a wonderful family holiday to Catalonia. With the collective experiences of the last few years I was so grateful of the chance to spend two weeks with family and close friends making the most of the Spanish sunshine.

Our return from Spain saw our oldest son - now 16! - leave home of a sorts, off to Exeter to study for his A-Levels at specialist school for Maths nerds. It has been really strange to adapt to not being a family of four during the week but thankfully he is home at weekends. We’re so proud he has found a passion and it is great to have more time with our youngest whilst he is away from home.

In September I was lucky to go to Helsinki to spend a weekend with friends visiting Pete who had been working there for the last few years. Beers, saunas, cycling and sunshine provided a perfect break to cap off the summer.

It has been a great year at Mud. We worked on some great projects and whilst some members moved on to greener pastures, we had some great new folk join the team. After a strong start for the company to the year we took everyone away for the weekend to a farm house in Bridport for some tasty food, plentiful drinks (bit of a theme to the year) and fine company. As an employer it is great to be able to spread the love and repay the team when they have spent all year pulling out the stops to produce some excellent work.

October saw a late birthday celebration seeing the lovely !!! (Check Check Check) perform in our small home town venue for a fantastic evening of dance-disco-funk.

After turning 47 I decided to get another tattoo and booked in with our fab Frome studio, Skull and Dagger tattoo, to get a homage to the Republican forces of the Spanish Civil War with a Miliciana expertly created by the excellent Jesse Rodriguez.

The autumn also saw some exciting events. I went to see Wales play New Zealand in Cardiff (thanks for the tickets Los) and in November I tabled at my first comic convention at Thought Bubble in Harrogate. It was a great weekend and whilst not hugely profitable I had a really fun time and met some great new friends. Special thanks to Lizzie and Conor for kindly showing me the ropes and introducing me to so many lovely people!

With the weather turning we saw a proper winter hit Frome with snow in December providing an exciting, cold run up to Christmas. With two teenage boys there is no arguing that some of the magic leading up to Christmas has gone.

But I suppose rather the magic has changed - it is more about celebrating and enjoying and reflecting what you have. December definitely proved quite a stressful end to a very busy year. But there were moments of joy - me and Peta had a lovely candlelit carol service at Wells Cathedral - and ultimately we got to celebrate a lovely time together with family and friends over the Christmas break.

So we march on into 2023. I’m not one for resolutions but I can only hope for more of the same next year, spent with those I love and continuing to enjoy being creative. Just a little less turbulent on the political front please, world. Thanks!

Wishing you all the best for a fantastic New Years Eve and new year.

I walk into the kitchen. I know I’ve come in there for a reason. But cannot fathom what that was. I yawn. My right hand shakes. I’m used to it. And the breathlessness. A slight cough. Nothing sinister. I used to breeze through these small coughs, especially as a smoker. But it feels like every cough is dwindling my valuable oxygen. Like an astronaut counting down their precious supply, the Hans Zimmer score rising to a crescendo of tension.

Why was I in the kitchen again?

My eyes are tired. Focusing can be hard. And sometimes my pupils make funny shapes. Adjusting between light and dark can be difficult. A sudden flash of light whilst in a dark room can be blinding and trigger a migraine. When I walk into a dark space it can take minutes for my eyes to adjust. Sometimes they don’t.

On days like today my brain feels like a saturated sponge. It tries to absorb new information - respond to various stimuli - but it can’t. The information just rushes off in droplets, their only legacy is the added sense of frustration that there was something I was supposed to do; an email I had meant to send, a job I had promised someone, a bill to pay, some wet clothes to hang up.

Work can be tough at times. Especially when I’m running on empty. I’m grateful that I only work 4 days a week. There are so many distractions (I work on The Internet, after all) but also lots of notifications. Emails; conversations and private messages on Slack; alerts that a server has fallen over. A client emails with a problem - I get asked to quote how long it would take to fix it. I hedge a bet. I’m pretty good at guessing. Fortunately.

Some days I can’t even work seated. I lie in bed or on the sofa as that seems the only way to get the energy to the surface, like squeezing the last minty hit from an exhausted tube of toothpaste. And I feel like I’m letting everyone down.

And then I forgot what I was working on. I got distracted by a message. Hang up the Washing? No, that was at home. Shit, I didn’t hang up the washing!

To return to space (more Hans Zimmer) this feels like all those bits of detritus that orbit the earth. Clusters of space shit. Most of us are facing in the right direction with shields up for this barrage of debris. We just see the shimmering bits of light as gravity and friction causes them to beautifully combust into infinitesimally smaller pieces. A kaleidoscope of yellows, reds and oranges against the stark, dark blackness of space.

On days like today my shields are down. The bombardment of information, noises, sounds, requests, demands and messages is too much. I can’t drown it out. So my mind shuts down. And then my body.

Sometimes it's the other way round. It might be an infection or a bug. Or I overdo it. A pint too many out with friends. A mile too long on the dog walk. An errand more than I should have. It doesn’t matter whether it starts with the mind or the body. The outcome is the same.

Shutdown. A frustrated passenger in a body that will not function like you want it to. It moves slowly. It overreacts to stimuli. And once again there I am standing in the kitchen. Forgetting what I walked in for.

Ah yes, the washing machine. The cycle is complete. It makes a vague robotic attempt at music to signal it has finished. It’s no Hans Zimmer but it proves a very helpful reminder. Thanks Bosch washing machine. I thought I was losing my mind for a moment there.

I was in two minds about posting this up but as it is the day of Alex's memorial/celebration thought I would share some memories and a poem I wrote for Alex after hearing he had died.

Alex and Laura were the first family we met when we moved to Frome - a valuable gateway to the mine of information on our new town and its surroundings. In a roundabout way it is thanks to them we moved here - their relocating from Bristol to Frome was mentioned by a mutual friend when we were looking to move south from Scotland. We'd also met before - Alex and I working in web development we were bound to orbit the same events and people.

One night shortly after we had moved to Frome I went out for some drinks with Alex in what used to be the Olive Tree. I nervously drank too quickly as I often do and knocked a pint flying over Alex. The whole pint - all of it - glided over that large varnished pub table all over him. Sorry about that Alex.

As you likely know I have struggled with my diagnosis of sarcoidosis the last three years. I started to be ill in the summer of 2019 - the same summer as Alex's diagnosis with Motor Neurone Disease (ALS).

During those early months of our both coming to terms with our illnesses I met Alex for some drinks in Frome. We talked for a few hours about life. Our bodies. How God/the World/karma throws curve balls at us. Our trauma. Not listening to ourselves. It was a brief but deeply personal conversation that will stay with me forever.

I had hoped to resume our chats. Then the world went a bit topsy-turvy. Life got in the way. It always does.

The next time I was able to see Alex his condition had deteriorated but he was taking great joy in the open air swimming at Vobster. Last September I decided to join in. It was a lovely experience. The tail end of summer. The sun was shining but the water was cold. It turned out to be his last there. The cold water triggered a huge flare up of my sarcoidosis but that didn't matter. It was a beautiful moment to have shared with him.

I tried to visit Alex - again things get in the way. I visited him some Wednesdays. We talked. Mostly about our children. But by then talking for Alex was hard - he needed an eye tracker. One afternoon we spent an age talking. It must have been so tiring for him and I could see that battle in him - the mind wanting to continue but the body saying "enough". I said I'd come back and we could watch a film together.

The following week he died.

When I heard of Alex's death I decided to climb Cley Hill. It was a beautiful day and I hadn't been up Cley Hill since my illness. The main symptom of my sarcoidosis is fatigue. In my case it had primarily attacked the lungs. It made exercise difficult (ironic for somebody who barely ever did any) and I tired easily. The hill seemed too much and I had often lamented the thought I may never go up it again.

When we first met Alex and Laura I remember Laura telling me about going up Cley Hill pregnant. If Laura could scale it pregnant then surely I could make it up a sodding hill with some crappy lungs! And I did. It wasn't easy but I did it.

On my way up I started thinking of a poem. I never wrote poetry but some words just came to me striding up that hill. Some words for Alex:

These are the shoes
All battered and worn
The laces are frayed
And the fabric all torn

These are the shoes
Now shorn of their tread
Just think if they spoke
Of what might be said

These are the shoes
The trails they began
The trials they endured
The miles that they ran

These are the shoes
Beyond all repair
We’re sad now they are gone
But so glad they were there

On the way home I stopped off at the pub and bought two halves of Guinness. One for me and one for Alex. And I didn't spill a drop.

It was only when I got home I realised that I'd "borrowed" the rhythm of the poem from Michael Rosen's "These are the Hands". I'm sure he won't mind.

Anyway, Alex. I miss you. I wish we'd talked more (my fault). And sorry we didn't get to watch that film.

The next round is on me. And I promise not to throw it over you!

I needed to reassess things - take things easier. In my head I was still the 24 year PhD student toiling most hours and drinking and smoking my way through the rest. I needed to slow down: work shorter days, take more breaks, switch off.

An old friend mentioned spoon theory;- needing to think about now having a finite budget of reserves that need to be allocated accordingly and breaking tasks into smaller chunks.

I was reminded of that scene in the film Gattaca:

"You want to know how I did it? This is how I did it, Anton: I never saved anything for the swim back."

For a long period of time I had been running on empty and not leaving anything left in the tank. And it showed. I had been working long days and jumping into late nights with a short break for dinner (“family time”). My mind was filled with things I had to do. I couldn’t focus and would usually procrastinate, almost as an act of self-destruction knowing full well it would add to the strain. I was tired and had lost 10kg in weight. My body had had enough.

I returned to work after the Christmas break, resolved to slow down. Work shorter hours. Take better care of my health (physical and mental). As partner in a business this should be easy but it felt really hard - that somehow I was cheating our staff by working less hours than them or my business partner for adding extra load onto him. We hired some extra help to support my role in the business and I was starting to finish work at 3pm (often for a nap). I was helping out more at home. And slowly I was getting my energy back.

And then the pandemic hit.

I had been working from home anyway: the commute into Bath took too much out of me and seemed a poor use of the limited energy levels I had available. I found driving tiring and the train not much better. But work and home quickly became a blur where I was somehow 100% in both but neither was getting the focus or attention it needed. Peta was furloughed. The schools were closed. Like most people we started off with noble plans.

We were lucky. At Mud the work kept coming and we were fortunate to be in one of the few professions that seemed to have both resilience and demand baked in when it came to a lockdown and remote working. But the economic future was uncertain. We sadly had to furlough two recent hires including the role supporting me. We were going to get through this but the long hours crept back in and before long was working 40 hour plus weeks again. The 3pm shut off went out the window and I was once more at a computer most waking hours.

I was falling back into bad habits. Smoking to give me breaks in the day and drinking in the evening to signal a cut off from work. It was great having Peta and the kids home - especially with the lovely summer weather - and it was nice to see them enjoying the garden and sunshine. But I stayed inside most days.

After a few months my right eye started hurting. Lockdown had passed and I mentioned this to my consultant knowing that after the lungs, the eyes are the most regularly affected organs by sarcoidosis. An initial inspection with the ophthalmologist seemed fine but he advised seeing an optician to get my eyes tested. The glasses I had been wearing were a quick one hour turnaround I’d got a year earlier in Bath to fix a broken pair so I could drive home. Perhaps they were a bad prescription.

Something was up. The usually cheery optician was strangely quiet and seemed concerned. There was a lot of humming and thumbing through books. A scan of the back of my eye was showing black marks which apparently indicated some kind of inflammation. He had seen sarcoidosis in customers before but not like this. He wanted me to see a specialist.

Eye Clinic

I was back at the hospital in Bath and further tests confirmed what the optician had seen. The blood vessels in the back of my eye were inflamed and bleeding. I was starting to get photo-sensitivity and having trouble with blurred vision and spots.

I was prescribed some steroid drops and was to return in a week or so to review. Then the left-eye started playing up. Some days I was having difficulty seeing out of my left eye. Others my right. But the main outcome was tiredness again. Some days I couldn’t focus on anything (literally and mentally).

It was the sarcoidosis. The immune response that had a year earlier started attacking my lungs was now going for my eyes.

Several trips and tests followed (deja vu!). They injected dye into my arm on my birthday to view the flow of blood through the vessels in the back of the eye. Then last week someone finally explained to me what was going on.

At the back of both eyes I had vasculitis - spots similar to the granulomas identified on my lungs which had started forming around the blood vessels at the back of the eye. This was causing an inflammation of the blood vessels and leaking blood into the eye. Additionally I had anterior uveitis which meant that the iris was also leaking white blood cells into the eye. This was what was causing the vision problems and photosensitivity I was experiencing with light bouncing off the cells floating around in the vitreous eye fluid. Nice.

The vasculitis seems to be responding well to the steroid drops. I am phasing them down from 4 to 3 to 2 to 1 drops a day. Hopefully things will calm down.

Once again my body is shouting at me. After the initial elation of coming out of the lung scare last year I felt like I was relatively on top of things. But now I am starting to realise that my sarcoidosis is a condition that I will have with me for the rest of my life.

It is a condition that cannot be treated or cured but has to be managed. I can take steroid drops and anti-inflammatories but that will only ever manage the symptoms. It will not address the underlying cause.

And I know full well that if it hits me a third time it won’t be nearly as forgiving.

The following weeks and months after that call were a blur. I don’t really remember much what happened. But I remember telling Peta. And the kids. And my parents. Telling them was the hardest. I spoke to my business partner. I was not going to be in work for a while.

Everyone wanted to help. Friends turned up with frozen meals. People offered to walk the dog. I was in an out of the hospital in Bath for tests. Breathing tests. Blood tests. X-rays. CT scans.

Wednesday November 30, 2019.

I went into the respiratory clinic in Bath pretty fast to see a consultant. They were kind but pragmatic. I was facing three diagnostic scenarios based on the initial findings: lung cancer, lymphoma or sarcoidosis. I was told that the worst case scenario was lung cancer and that would be life shortening. Lymphoma would mean referral to another unit that specialised in blood diseases whilst Sarcoidosis was the best case scenario but was pretty rare. Found myself thinking “I hope I have a good cancer” like an idiot.

They wouldn’t know what the problem was until they had done a biopsy of the lymph nodes in my chest. That required an EBUS which was hastily arranged where a tube is inserted into the lungs to view the lymph nodes and take diagnostic samples of the growths on these glands.

Monday December 2, 2019

I got a phone call saying there had been a cancellation and they can bring forward the EBUS. Great news but I was pretty nervous. I’m sure atop my (quite substantial at this point) NHS records it says in massive words “hypochondriac and a bit of a wimp.” I have a quite low pain threshold and I’m terrified of needles (despite having had to give several gallons of blood samples by this point).

Needing a cannula I gowned up and they couldn’t find the bloody vein (pun-intended). Two nurses and a doctor tried on both arms but just couldn’t get it in. A rather no-nonsense doctor then came in and promptly found something that would work. “You’re going to end up with a bit of a bruise”.

I was wheeled in and administered some drugs. The EBUS itself wasn’t painful but I had to be awake for the procedure which was pretty uncomfortable. 45 mins or so to take 4 or 5 samples from the lungs all whilst instinctively trying to suppress a gagging reflex.

They got the samples they needed. It would be about a week before I would get the results.

Tuesday December 10, 2019

Less than four weeks from that call.

Me and Peta went into the RUH to see the consultant. Good news. Great news. “We found granulomas indicative of Sarcoidosis”. I never thought I would have been so delighted to hear the words “you have an autoimmune disease.” The sense of release was amazing. I was not looking at a death sentence or a period of chemotherapy.

It perhaps came as no surprise. My mother has the autoimmune disease Lupus and my uncle had chronic Rheumatoid Arthritis. I come from a family where obscure illnesses are like a game of Top Trumps. But this was a new one. Sarcoidosis … the only people that seem to have heard of the condition were fans of the TV Series House where it is the running joke for obscure illnesses they can’t quite diagnose.

What was Sarcoidosis? In simplest terms it is a disease where your immune response attacks your organs, usually when it perceives it is under threat. It basically massively overreacts like a petulant man-baby. It’s like bringing a hand grenade to a knife fight. It is probably going to win but there is going to be massive collateral damage.

In my case the sarcoidosis was affecting my lungs. 80-90% of cases of sarcoidosis are on the lymph nodes and lungs. But it can affect any of the body’s organs. It is a rare condition, affecting 1 in every 10,000 people, but is poorly understood.

Over the coming weeks we discussed what next. After the euphoria of the initial diagnosis there was now a period of uncertainty. How will this condition evolve. How can I manage it. Can we treat it? Sadly few answers were forthcoming and the general consensus seemed to be we would only know by observing it over time.

Life was going to change. Things were going to be difficult. I still had to get my head round this new condition but hopefully things were going to be manageable.

I had always been skinny (except for the post-40 beer belly). But even then I knew two stone was a lot of weight to lose. And it wasn’t like I’d lost my appetite. I was eating fine. I had a blocked nose all the time. Like a constant allergy or cold. I put this down to smoking. I’m terrible at remembering things when I go to the doctor. TLC - the mnemonic of symptoms I taught myself to remember: Tired, weight Loss, Cold. Don’t go chasing waterfalls.

I saw three different doctors. The first thought it was related to depression. The second doctor thought it might be a virus. It will play itself out but we’ll do some blood tests just to be sure. They came back fine. By now I was pretty much convinced that 1. I am a massive hypochondriac and 2. at the top of my medical records it says “Cole is a massive hypochondriac”.

The third doctor listened. She understood I was worried and wanted to know what she could do to alleviate my concerns. She reassured me that if I felt unwell that needed looking at. She would organise some more blood tests (LOTS of blood) and - as I was a smoker - she would book me in for an x-ray.

15th November 2019. 1.15pm. The phone rings and I miss it. I usually have my phone on silent. I go outside for a cigarette to check the voicemail message.

“Dr Henley. We’ve had the results from your x-ray. I think you need to come in to discuss them. I’ve made an appointment for you this afternoon. Bring your wife.“

I put the half-smoked cigarette in the ash tray. I don’t know what to expect but I know that it is probably serious. They never call me “Dr Henley.” I don’t call Peta. I don’t want her to stress out and - besides - she should be back from Wales by then, won’t she. The kids come back from school, oblivious. I don’t want to tell them until I know more and have spoken to Peta.

Peta is not back. She’s running late. I send her a message to ask when she’s home. I never usually send a message to ask when she’s home. I tell the kids I’m popping over the road to the doctors. “Tell mum where I am if she gets back”. They grunt or similar, acknowledging that something was said but barely shifting focus from whatever it is they are doing. Video games probably. I’m cross. They should care more but they don’t know. Nobody knows.

The doctors is a five minute walk. I try to make it slower.

I see a doctor I’ve not seen before. It is rare these days to see the same doctor twice. She is very friendly but serious. During my x-ray that morning the radiographer had seen something on my lungs. They immediately told somebody in Bath who rang my doctors surgery. I’m now sitting here being told by the friendly but serious doctor that I had “life changing news”.

They don’t know what it is - they expect to do more tests. I would be referred to the hospital in Bath and see a consultant in the next week or so. But I am told to expect cancer. That word you hear so often affecting so many people but not you. That is what happens to other people. I hear the word cancer again but my mind keeps focussing instead on the phrase “life changing.” What does that mean? Is life changing a euphemism for death? I suppose death is the ultimate life changer.

Over the next few months I will hear similar phrases a lot: “life changing”, “life shortening”, “life limiting”. It is weird the platitudes and lengths we will go to to avoid saying what we mean. Perhaps we just don’t have the vocabulary for saying “you might have a debilitating disease that will slowly kill you, put your affairs in order” in a concise and friendly manner. I bet the Vulcan’s have a word for it.

I can’t recall much of the rest of the conversation. I ask questions that she couldn’t possibly know the answer to. I think I try to remain calm and - as usual in difficult circumstances - try to alleviate the tension with humour. The only defence mechanism I have left. The one thing that does stick in my mind is how serious she is. She has a pained expression on her face. She knows she is giving somebody bad news. Terrible news. She has done this before.

• a slower web: rather than constant reloading of media, the page should refresh at the users request and only irregularly,
• original content: stripping out noise to only show original material from those people I am following,
• positivity: use filtering to provide a more positive experience through showing only tweets matching certain critera

Using the twitter API I had a pretty good basis for fetching and showing data based on my user timeline and adjusting the response based on these three criteria.

By stripping out asynchronous requests we can slow down our experience and put a stop to the bottomless and compulsive experience of chasing the infinite scroll. We can then also exclude any replies and filter out any retweets to focus on original content.

In terms of focusing on more positive content I've played with interpreting twitter data before in using the AFINN method for analysing sentiment in tweets about Christmas. Basically a text string is broken down into words which are then compared to a predefined dataset that scores words based on the emotional response they reflect. For example, 'bastard' has a score of -5 whilst 'outstanding' has a score of 5.

With this criteria/method we can gauge whether a tweet is overall positive or negative and assign it a score and exclude those that fall below a certain benchmark (eg 0 which is - essentially - neutral emotionally).

So I had a play over a couple of evenings and this is what I came up with: the AFINN twitter experiment.

The sentiment filter is pretty manageable but sadly doesn't work with sarcasm so there are plenty of false positives (and false negatives too). Also am fully aware that this experiment removes one of the core features of twitter: community. I've provided jumping off points for engaging with individual tweets but as a proof-of-concept I think it goes someway to achieving what I set out to do.

Trigger warning - this plaything shows tweets from my own timeline (with tweets from protected/private accounts removed) so primarily shows content about tech/comics/politics.

View at your peril …

I, like many others, have found myself spending a lot of time lately reflecting on the state of the web and wanted to try and collect some thoughts on my concerns for our discipline today, the direction in which it is heading, and a reflection on the soul of what we do.

Web design: a short-history

So I have recently come to realise that I have been making websites for twenty years. The most surprising thing about this (for me) is that I still feel relatively new to the discipline (if we can call it that), following a brief first career as an archaeologist. In these twenty years, the shape of the web has changed beyond belief. I have seen our websites and pages evolve from the humble, linear hyperlink driven pages to table-based layouts; from floats to elastic-based design; through responsive web design and the rich, landscape of tools, techniques and technologies we see today.

So many of my early years in this industry were spent trying to negotiate limitations of the languages we had at our disposal (and the browser landscape available): the spacer.gif, float layout hacks (i still curse the double margin bastard in IE6); MooTools, Prototype then jQuery. It seems almost hard to recall how much energy was required in fighting for web standards and the separation of semantic markup, CSS and JavaScript; separating our content from our design and our behaviour.

In the face of this struggle – or perhaps in spite of it – the actual way, we worked remained largely unchanged. For a long period, we still worked mainly by putting files on a server and seeing what happened. With version control we discovered a greater maturity and ability to take greater responsibility for the work we were producing – and roll back if we fucked things up – and with the shift from SVN to Git we were able to work more collaboratively.

Our tools, for a long time, were limited. Photoshop for design, a text editor for the static files, an FTP client for putting these onto a server. But as we ironed out the limitations of the languages we were working with (notably with the onset of CSS3 and ES6) we started to shift our focus from overcoming the problems with our media to addressing the tools we used to create this.

Tools like Codekit, Hammer and Live Reload gave us simple tools to visualise our work in real time and handle complex pre-processing and optimisation but such tools were short-lived. In a short period of time tools like Less – and then Sass – helped us to work better and faster direct from the command line. Automating our workflow improved the code we produced and also the ways we began to think about code. Sass helped us to start (or at least made our job easier) abstracting our CSS through methodologies like BEM, SMACSS and OOCSS; methodologies which borrowed heavily from established principles of software development that were cascading (no pun intended) into our front-end workflows.

We started to break things down into smaller, reusable chunks, aided and abetted by the fragmentations possible and the onset of more reusable deliverables such as pattern libraries. With abstraction, we started front-loading more and more responsibility onto our HTML markup through data attributes and classes and use tools such as Grunt and Gulp to increasingly automate the testing and execution of the code we deliver.

Herein ends the history lesson … (I already told you I used to be an archaeologist).

Where are we now?

I am overwhelmed by the developments in our field over the last twenty years. The maturity within our discipline and the sophistication of the work we now produce is incomprehensible from the static, HTML files I was bashing out twenty years ago. But I think we need to be careful about the pace and our motivations for change and also consider what this comes at the expense of.

Discipline Insecurities and the confidence of others

As an archaeology student I remember being told by someone that ours was a “magpie discipline” – relatively junior in the field of humanities it lacked confidence in finding and driving its own way forward so borrowed heavily from others: initially its close relative geology but also the physical sciences, the social sciences and latterly the more abstract works of the humanities and philosophy.

We can see something similar in the web; from the humble float layout to the (still) widespread use of Photoshop; from the concept of Responsive Web Design to the adoption of complex software methodologies to produce our code. We have appropriated tools, techniques and ideas because 1) ours was a blank slate to make our own (aka making it up as we go along), 2) we lacked the historical foundations to guide our way forward, and 3) the medium we are working with was – and still is – incredibly fluid: we constantly need metaphors to help us verbalise and articulate the problems that we encounter as the digital landscape changes because this is a blank canvas; virgin territory yet to be defined.

In the early years of web design and development many of the ideas and approaches we borrowed were from the visual sciences; from desktop publishing, architecture and the arts. However, with time this has increasingly been the computing sciences. As CSS methodologies proliferated in the early 2010s, we started adopting naming and working conventions borrowed heavily from the construction of large-scale software products. We lapped up these approaches because we had no discipline security; no confidence in the way we were working so we looked elsewhere for guidance. But for me, this causes many problems because the requirements of coding up the CSS (and/or HTML and/or JS) for a 6-page client website was very far removed from coding up the complex user interface for an engineering product. It comes back to the perceived difference between websites and web applications: I personally feel there is a fundamental difference between these two (sorry Jeremy) and homogenising the goals, tools and methodologies of both have (I think) made things far more complicated than they need to be.

Fragmentation of roles and the triumph of engineering

Along with the increasing complexity, and maturity of our field has come the fragmentation of roles. Twenty years ago the designer very often was “the coder”; a web designer – as well as designing – had to put files onto a server, set up email and work with a CMS. Over time we saw this distinction break down, and we are seeing it fragment even further with the (necessary and perfectly valid) discussions around whether a front-end developer needs to know JavaScript let alone more complex tools and frameworks such as Vue, React and Angular.

It is virtually impossible to imagine a website now without JavasScript, not just in the way we deliver our front-end code and behaviour but also in the methodologies and tools we use to produce it. Indeed, the format we use in many of our libraries (both back-end and front-end) will now often leverage JavaScript notation to communicate between services and to store data in a structured format.

But what price this reliance? And what are the stages and dependencies of getting a file onto a website now? What tools are required? And who is driving the decision making behind these?

At Mud we have a fantastic front-end library that we use and this article is no way offered to criticise this. I am incredibly proud of the websites we produce using this library, the skills and enthusiasm of our team of developers, and the dedication they have shown into pushing our work forward. But this suite of tools that have been designed to modernise and streamline our work is not without its complexities and limitations.

Since it’s current inception in September 2017 our front-end library at Mud has had 347 commits. It currently has 22 third-party dependencies (one of which – our custom gulp build tasks – has a further 126 third-party dependencies). The capabilities and functionality of this library of tools have improved immeasurably since I cobbled together a simple example working with Sass five years ago. But has our striving for constant improvement come at a cost? And what is driving the evolution of our tools?

I’m not picking on this tool in particular and again, I am immensely in awe of the work our team at Mud produces. But I think this serves to highlight a systemic problem within our industry as I perceive it today and that is the obsession with tools and a lack of focus in their adoption.

The tool should never be the goal

At the risk of sounding like a Luddite, I do worry that the adoption of tools for producing websites often lacks focus and a clear reason for “why.” As a largely self-taught profession, we have often lent on our peers for guidance and direction. But how often is the context of this guidance comparable to our own? As I said earlier, can the efforts to produce code for enterprise website applications across large, distributed teams share some equivalence with the work many of us produce in creating small, brochure sites for small to medium-sized businesses and not-for-profits? Does one shoe fit all? And are we in danger of focusing too much on the “Pencils rather than the drawing”? The Process over the Product?

“The biggest difficulty in writing about creative activity, from writing itself to automobile-devouring, is that in most cases the articles or interviews that result seem to be unable to use above plain technical information and lists of preferred tools. I don’t want to fall into the same rut here by telling you which typewriter I use or what sort of carbon paper I think is best, since this information will not make the slightest different to how well you write.”
Alan Moore, Writing for Comics

When we adopt new tools at Mud I try to have a conversation about their interaction with our workflow and processes. In particular, I try to ask:

• will this tool make our work better
• will this tool make our work easier
• will this tool make our work faster

If a tool doesn’t address one of these three criteria we need to consider why is it deemed necessary?

Making money isn’t a dirty word

The main reason why I ask this question is that innovation is almost always a barrier to productivity (at least in the short-term). Tools should only ever be a solution to a problem. Yes, there will always be tools to give us marginal gains on the work we produce; for example, to shave a couple of milliseconds off the TTFB or knock a valuable few kb from our front-end assets. But this must always be placed within a value judgement of the time that is required to implement, adopt and perfect these tools.

Whether you are a freelancer or work in an agency or on a product, the primary commodity you sell is not lines of code but time. This is what our clients, partners and employers pay for. In theory, as our skills evolve and we gain experience our ability to produce code is improved (as well as our ability to frame our decision-making through gained knowledge and perspective). This is generally why senior developers cost more than junior developers: because they have invested time in knowing how to produce things quicker and better:

“But, what?” the woman sputtered. “How could you want so much money for this picture? It only took you a second to draw it!”
To which Picasso responded, “Madame, it took me my entire life.”
Pablo Picasso

So are our tools making our code better, or our work quicker? And are these the criteria driving their evolution and adoption? Or is the increasing complexity of our tools driven by a search for perfection, or an insecurity about our own methods and processes? And do we need to frame our decision-making process so that new tools are seen as a pragmatic enhancement rather than out of a sense of purity and pride for the products we create?

I blame CSS. Well, not really but when we were fighting for the adoption of web standards and the separation of markup, style and behaviour one of the strongest weapons in our arsenal was Dave Shea’s amazing CSS Zen Garden. This articulated the power of CSS and the various, experimental ways we can leverage it to control our layouts. From this conversation, we saw the evolution of new ways of creating websites and conversations about the legitimacy of specific naming conventions, classes vs ids, etc.

But one of the ways CSS Zen Garden was used to persuade people about the merits of a web standards approach was to suggest that we can retain the markup and replace the CSS. However in reality how many projects has this ever happened on? What is the realistic lifespan of a thing we produce? And do we tend to underestimate how disposable our code truly is?

With current web practices the markup, CSS and JavaScript are inherently linked. We may abstract CSS into classes and then our JavaScript into data behaviours but the three not only benefit from working together, they now fundamentally require it. As our code has become more fragmented – from pages to themes and from patterns to components – the integral way our CSS and Javascript operate has become wholly and mutually dependent. The role of pre- and post-processing tools means that to create a web page we must invest in – and indeed have become reliant on – the tools that are used to produce our finished templates. And this has led to a considerable increase in the complexities of putting our ideas out into the world (or onto a server). But missing in this conversation is the recognition of how long do we expect the things we create to live? What is the lifespan of a website? A page template? A component? An object? And how will our ability to maintain these elements be affected with time?

I don’t really do front-end development any more – I have managed to employ an amazing team of people far cleverer than me to negotiate many of these questions. But as a technical director I need to be aware of the complexities involved in moving between projects and the speed of picking up things where they were last left off one, three or five years later.

The Dangers of Knowledge Capitalism

Now excellence is a noble pursuit. The evolution of our discipline has benefitted immensely from the millions of hours our community has put into writing blog posts, sharing code and producing tools to make the work we produce the best it can possibly be. But the pursuit of excellence worries me, primarily because it champions dogmatism (SPACES NOT TABS) and idealism over creativity and pragmatism. Don’t get me wrong – working practices and standards are important. We work in ways that were not conceivable twenty years ago and our efforts proliferate into and improve the work of so many others.

However, I worry what this means to those entering our profession (as well as to a lesser extent old farts like me who struggle to keep up). I teach part-time on an MA in web design at the University of Greenwich. The course deliberately covers the principles that underpin good web design and development: from design theory, accessibility and User Experience through HTML markup, CSS and JavaScript to PHP and CMS development. It is necessarily a broad brush as for many of the students this will be their first experience of coding and producing websites. This broad brush also enables us (indeed requires us) to teach the foundations of our discipline. Because whilst the architecture and tools of our practice change regularly, the foundations some twenty years on still remain pretty solid.

Yet I have seen with increasing regularity questions from students not about the principles of our work, or even these underlying foundations but instead about our tools. And that concerns me. When I started making websites I had a copy of HTML Kit, an FTP client and a copy of Gimp image editor. Now I get questions about Node, Gulp, React, Sass, Tailwind, etc. These are perfectly valid questions – these students are looking at the marketplace and confused about the skills they need to progress. And what scares me is I don’t know the answer.

For years our discipline and community have thrived on the energy and enthusiasm of its participants freely giving their knowledge for public betterment. This was one of my attractions to working on the web. In my previous career knowledge was something that was owned and a commodity that was traded. People shared information but you were rarely allowed to publish it without the approval of its owner. I wrote a number of articles that were never published because they contained references to material that ‘belonged’ to somebody else who was unhappy with me sharing my thoughts. This – for me – was the complete antithesis of what the academic world should be. Indeed my first experiences making websites was in the hope that this would help democratise my PhD research and make the ideas and theories that I was creating more accessible to a broader audience (and hopefully in a more accessible language/format).

Our community is far more open and transparent than this and it has always benefited from the time, passion and devotion invested in it. That many of us are self-taught shows how accessible our discipline can be compared to the more formal career progressions of other, more traditional ‘industries’. Yet I worry about my inability to keep up. And if I can’t keep up how do we expect those just starting out? I worry that the pace of development and the fluidity of our tools ultimately alienate a large number of people from joining and contributing to the conversation.

Thoughts?

This isn’t so much a thesis as a collection of thoughts that hopefully share some coherence. In short, I worry about our over-reliance and obsession with tools because for many these are a barrier to our discipline. I worry that they may never really make our work better, faster or easier and that our attention is increasingly focussed not on the drawing but on the pencils. But I mostly worry that our current preoccupation with the way we work (rather than necessarily what we work on) is sapping my enthusiasm for an industry I love and care about immensely.

Many thanks to Heydon Pickering and Paul Robert Lloyd for commenting on an earlier draft of this post

5th March 2013. At home against Real Madrid, Manchester United led 1-0 on the night and 2-1 on aggregate, looking set for a Quarter Final place. On 56 minutes Nani is sent off for a dubious red card and Madrid went on to win 2-1 on the night (3-2 on aggregate) knocking Manchester United out of the Champions League. That evening sticks in my mind for two reasons.

First, this was possibly the last time I recall Jose Mourinho – the Real Madrid manager at the time – showing humility. After the game, Mourinho claimed “Independent of the decision, the best team lost. We didn’t deserve to win but football is like this.” I remember at the time this post-match interview almost felt like a job interview for taking over when Fergie finally decided to hang up the hairdryer.

Secondly, that evening – for me at least – represented the start of things going wrong for United. Two months after that defeat Alex Ferguson was to announce his retirement at the end of the season and although they were to go on to win the Premier League that year, things were not all well at Old Trafford.

Good Grief?

Fergie’s departure was always going to leave a void that would be incredibly hard to fill. You cannot manage a football club for over 25 years without creating a degree of dependence. But he had for some time surrounded himself with staff and senior players who adhered to his philosophy and to whom he could delegate responsibility.

Ferguson’s retirement had been suspected for a while and life without him seemed unimaginable but inevitable. And then David Moyes appointment was announced.

I’d always held a degree of respect for David Moyes. He had seemed to command loyalty amongst the Everton players and supporters, made the most with very little and regularly managed to grind out results when needed (including a frustrating away 4-4 draw with United in the Premier League finale of 2011-12). But his first move on arriving at Old Trafford was to clear out the staff that had proved so successful and loyal to Ferguson’s footballing philosophy.

Let’s be clear – things weren’t all rosy at United when Fergie left. There are many that would claim he left because he could see what was happening and that having built the club around three core footballing dynasties: the early Premier League years; the Treble-winning squad and latterly the post-Glazer years – a fourth seemed beyond his grasp, especially with the growing strength and financial resources of Manchester City.

However, a successor to Ferguson had to build on his successes and – perhaps more importantly – acknowledge his philosophies. The backroom clearout by Moyes – bringing in much of his staff from Everton – proved to undermine his tenure at Old Trafford before it had even begun.

Roll on to 2018 and we have seen Moyes come and go, van Gaal given a slightly longer (but equally unsuccessful) bite at the cherry and now Mourinho into his third season at the helm after his arrival in 2016.

Three games into the season we have had two defeats – to Brighton and Tottenham Hotspur – and an unconvincing but briefly reassuring victory over Leicester City. So how can we judge the Mourinho project and is it too soon to consider showing him the door?

Journey or Destination?: a tale of two philosophies

Ferguson had been an authoritarian when it came to how he wanted his teams to play football. And – as we well know – when a player didn’t fit into how he wanted to play or saw themselves above the team and the club they were shown the door. But Ferguson was also happy to delegate and appoint others to carry his philosophy forward. And this is the key word which I have mentioned a number of times already: philosophy, an underlying belief in how to play. At its simplest for Ferguson this meant scoring more goals than the opposition, but this was usually (but not always) built around a solid defence that can release the ball quickly, a midfield spine that can protect and distribute the ball effectively and foremost a strong attack that used space, freedom and creativity to unlock the opposition. It also meant absolute trust in an individual to carry this philosophy forward on the pitch.

We can contrast this with Mourinho who is, above all, an autocrat. He demands total respect from his players for his style of play which is more about bettering the opposition that it is about beating them. Here then his style lacks philosophy because it is tailored for the opponents he faces. And historically this has been one of his greatest strengths. But without an underpinning ideology, it becomes hard to find followers, whether that is in the dressing room or on the terraces. And furthermore, it deprives those on the pitch from offering leadership because it is fundamentally a perspective and approach that lacks trust in others.

For Ferguson the destination was important. You can’t be one of the most successful managers of all time without a hunger to win trophies. However, I think for Ferguson the journey was equally important because it was through attacking and attractive football that you can carry the support of your fans and make ten men feel like a hundred (to paraphrase Rogue One).

For Mourinho, his style of football has always been about the destination. A boring 90 minutes is justified if it results in victory. This is why he loves Fellaini – because he provides the perfect means to break up football, to stop opponents playing, to slow down the game. That’s not to say Mourinho (or Fellaini) is incapable of playing attractive, flowing football. Just that this is usually only when the circumstances allow.

Trust and Man management: warm arm or cold shoulder?

Trust is an important part of being a manager. To again quote Rogue One (you can tell I like this film), trust goes both ways. One of the main issues I think at Old Trafford at the moment is that the manager does not trust his players and the players don’t trust the manager. Take the captain for example. Historically and certainly under Ferguson, the captain was the manager’s deputy on the field. It is somebody that shares and understands the manager’s vision for how a game should be won. In the last two seasons, it is hard to see a player that has filled this role for United, and this is in no small part to the fact that it is hard to see the manager’s vision for how to play. Two seasons, five transfer windows and £389m in transfer fees later and Mourinho still doesn’t seem to know his best way of playing or his best starting XI. Furthermore, his signings are not about building foundations. No wonder the players sometimes seem lost on the pitch and their creativity stifled.

It takes time to build a philosophy. But Mourinho has always been about immediacy and throwing money at holes in his squads. This fits in well with the business objectives of Manchester United PLC because big name, expensive footballers help to market the brand and are as much about competing for sponsorship deals as they are about competing for titles and trophies. But part of the DNA of Manchester United has also been about bringing in young talent to flourish. This was something Ferguson excelled at. But again this comes back to trust. For young players to flourish they need to be trusted and given both opportunities and responsibilities. What’s more, they need encouragement and this is not the Mourinho way.

Negativity breeds negativity: ego and the blame game

Mourinho is ruled by the ego. On the one hand, everything about the way he manages revolves around him. He demands complete respect from his players, fans, boardroom and the media. His victories and trophies are entirely down to his tactics. But on the other hand, when things go wrong he cannot accept responsibility. This is why he always falls out with players and club boards. And this is why the post-match interview from 5th March 2013 sticks in my mind.

Whereas Ferguson was completely happy to delegate responsibility to his backroom staff and players, Mourinho only seems able to delegate blame. If we are not winning games it is because he has not been able to buy the right players, or the players are not performing for him. And this negativity can only go so far. Contrast the last twelve months at Manchester United to Klopp’s Liverpool, Guardiola’s Manchester City, Pochettino’s Tottenham or Southgate’s England squad. What these are all share is a group of players that want to play for the manager because when the chips are down the manager protects them, and when things are going well they are shown praise. Furthermore, they are given trust on the field to play with freedom and above all, enjoy themselves.

And this is what saddens me most of all at United. Because in our squad there is a wealth of talent that I believe can genuinely compete against the best teams in the World. But at the moment they can’t because they have a manager that has set them up to fail before they have started. Moaning that “this will be a difficult year” or that he “wouldn’t pay to watch that!” if he were a fan before a ball has even been kicked in earnest. What must that do to a players confidence? What must that do to a sense of team spirit or “playing for the badge”.

The motto of Manchester United is ‘Youth, Courage, Greatness’ and for me, Mourinho is only attempting to tick one of these boxes and that is for himself. So please. Enough is enough. For a while, I could sacrifice the journey for the destination but now it is barely justified, even if we win trophies. It is no surprise to hear United fans are looking enviously over to Liverpool and City because they play with a philosophy, they play with passion and they play for their manager.

And that seems a long way off at Old Trafford.

Aside from a good laugh at seeing Morgan - a serial pretender to the art of journalism - being challenged on his own programme, it made me think about what Communism means in the twenty-first century, especially in light of researching my great-grandfather, a German communist that fled Nazi Germany in 1933, and whether this is a term we can - or even should - reclaim in the identity politics of 2018 Britain.

Communism and Socialism

Politically I am left. I believe in equality and fairness and that the interests of people must outweigh the interests of business. I believe that you cannot have wealth without poverty. I believe as a society we have more to offer if we focus on what unites us rather than what divides us. I also believe that this must extend beyond national boundaries. I believe that the state has a duty to care for the poorest and weakest members of our society, that education and healthcare (both the NHS and community health - mental and physical) are fundamental priorities and that these are best served under some kind of centralised authority (‘the state’).

This puts me squarely in the camp of socialism. But I have a problem with this being labelled as Communism, really for two reasons: the first, historical and secondly, the roots, aspirations and requirements of Communism itself.

I am a proud socialist - this is a badge that I will openly wear and a label I will regularly use to describe myself with. What is surprising is how many people challenge this and especially how many people misunderstand this.
Socialism is regularly conflated with Communism. I once had someone challenge me on my political beliefs quoting Orwell had been against socialism (citing Animal Farm). The truth is that there has been a long history in Britain and the US of demonising the Left and an outcome of this is the two being tarred with the same brush.

This has undoubtedly fuelled by fears of Russia during the Cold War (and before; Churchill had resisted British involvement in the Spanish Civil War fearing the growth of Communism more than the galvanising of fascism). Socialism has become a word associated with authoritarianism and the unbridled control of unions over the progress of commerce. It runs counter to the aspirations of our political and economic models of the past fifty years, from Keynes to Neo-liberalism.

The New Labour of 1997 was as much about a shift towards the centre from an economic perspective (for Labour) as it was a shift towards a different, personality-driven politics. The systematic weakening of traditional industries and economies within Britain since the 1970s with a shift towards “free markets” has undermined the communities and organisations that had upheld traditional socialism within the UK. If you throw in the ‘property as asset’ model then it is no surprise that we have a society that finds socialism challenging because it forces us to have a very uncomfortable conversation about property and private ownership.

The Communist Manifesto

This, along with workers rights, was what drove Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels to draft the Communist Manifesto in 1848 (heavily influenced by workers revolts across Europe at that time). For Marx and Engels Communism was ultimately about the control of power relations. With the Industrial Revolutions power relations had become largely controlled by the Bourgeoise; those who owned the means of production. Workers (industrial and agricultural) were a resource to be exploited in the pursuit of profit and wealth. To address this problem the Manifesto really sought two core means to challenge the status quo: armed uprising - “the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions” - and the abolition of private ownership.

Marx and Engels rightly felt that the status quo could not be overturned by political means (rather than violent means) because the political system was inherently biased towards the upper and middle classes. How could the proletariat have a say when they didn’t have a voice?

“The executive of the Modern State is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie”
The Communist Manifesto, 1848

With this in mind power had to be taken. Furthermore it is worth mentioning that Marx and Engels did not - per se - have a problem with industrialisation (and the resulting urbanisation as populations aggregated into industrialised areas). These had been core to driving forward much social reform, especially around healthcare and sanitation. However, the problem for them centred around the control of production and this is where armed uprising and discussions over private property become linked.

“You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine tenths. You reproach us, therefore, with intending to do away with a form of property, the necessary condition for whose existence is the non-existence of any property for the immense majority of society.”
The Communist Manifesto, 1848

For the Neo-Liberalism of the last forty years (in the UK at least but also the US) we have had an economics and a politics underpinned by the myth of self-improvement and this has gone hand-in-hand with the explosion of private ownership. On the one hand this could be read as addressing Marx and Engel’s above concern. Access to private property is possible for large parts of the population in a way that was simply not possible before.

However this has also caused immeasurable societal damage. Private property is now a commodity and again, largely benefitting those who control the means of production (those building, selling and renting property) as well as the financial systems that keep the wheels in motion. With the crash in 2007 the banks were too big to fail. We were so invested in our property that it was inconceivable that house prices would crash. I’ve written before about the unsustainable rise of house prices in proportion to household income and it is a point worth labouring here (no pun intended).

Communism and Neo-liberalism

What this means is that socialism has become an uncomfortable conversation in our current economic and political climate. A focus on private ownership along with low taxation (another defining feature of Neo-Liberalism) has placed the emphasis on economic success or failure on the individual and not society. The austerity campaign of the Conservative party - first in coalition and subsequently - was to address the increasing debts of the centralised societal system of the New Labour government. But austerity was only necessary because it was seen as essential to maintain the existing economic model, namely to maintain free markets whilst keeping taxes low.

Taxation is where things get a bit problematic for Communism. Karl hated the idea of taxation:

From today, therefore, taxes are abolished! It is high treason to pay taxes. Refusal to pay taxes is the primary duty of the citizen!
Karl Marx, 1848

Taxation - for Marx - was seen as a way of perpetuating the existing social hegemony. And this is possibly where Communism and socialism chiefly differ. Communism abolishes taxation because it envisages society and politics as an inter-connected organism. There is no need for the state to tax its citizens because the state is already controlling the means of production through which salaries are delivered. It also seeks to remove social hierarchy because without social hierarchy we avoid the inherent problems of wealth, poverty and status as well as the issues discussed regarding private ownership. However, the view of society as organism still requires people to govern it and herein lies the unachievable paradox of Communism: an inevitable imbalance in power relations that has led to authoritarianism, totalitarianism and - in some instances - dictatorship.

Communism, Dogmatism and choice

For Communism to function it must be ideologically driven and for that to happen it requires a system that is driven by dogma. And dogmatism demands the abolition of free will. And that is what equality - and socialism - is all about: the ability to choose. More so, socialism demands that we are all afforded the best opportunities possible to make our choices - and yes, for some that will include the freedom not to.

Socialism for me is about recognising that social hierarchy exists. It recognises that there will be a degree of economic disparity in society. But that this needs to be tempered; that the gap between the wealthiest and the poorest in society is too great. That the economic models we currently occupy force poverty on the global markets we participate in (at home and abroad). That the value judgements we employ must be more than economically determined. Socialism is not about the abolition of capital but it is fundamentally about its constraint.

I don’t want to live in a world which celebrates being a self-made billionaire. I want to abolish the myth of ‘self-improvement’ (largely because it perpetuates and reinforces the hegemonic structures in place). I want a politics that encourages people to see taxation as a social benefit, not as a penalty.

I am a socialist you idiot!

So this is where my problems with Communism lies. The rally call of Marx and Engels was a historically situated manifesto that sought to challenge a set of preexisting social and economic problems. That these challenges have been tainted massively by subsequent misinterpretation and abuse (chiefly in Russia but also China and Vietnam and to a lesser extent the DDR) forces us to reconsider not only the aspirations of Communism but also the very use of the word itself. I wholly support much of what Marx and Engels wrote. Many of the core problems that Communism sought to address - inequality, human rights, colonialism, the balance of power relations - remain.

But for me their words and calls to action where situated within a world that was far different to our own. Their aspirations remain as valid today as they did 170 years ago. But the battlefield has changed and for this we need a new language and a wholly new set of calls to action. For me that requires reclaiming socialism for ourselves, breaking free from Communism and the loaded assumptions that are used to tar both with the same brush. For me this requires a fundamental reimagining of politics. But that is a post for another day …

Last night I saw the latest instalment of the Star Wars ‘nonalogy’. I really enjoyed the Force Awakens and loved Rogue One so had high hopes for this film. However, like one of its main themes, I came away conflicted. A billion words will already have been written about the film but I wanted to get some of my thoughts down about how I read the film and my reaction.

tl;dr;

A conflicted film with some fantastic themes and performances at its core but diluted by some unnecessary story arcs and characters and an over-dependence on comedy and CGI. 7/10

So …

A core theme of the Last Jedi is the tension between the light and dark sides of the force. However, this dichotomy resulted in two very different films competing for my attention.

For me the evolution of Ben Solo and Rey was the best part of the film, with brilliant performances from Adam Driver and Daisy Ridley, expertly mediated by Mark Hamill. Rey’s development was heavily reminiscent of Luke’s journey in the Empire Strikes Back and at times echoed the darkest parts of the original trilogy. The battle between Rey, Ben/Ren and Snoke was a highlight of the film and ultimately one of the darkest and most suspenseful moments in all of the Star Wars films.

However … with the dark there must also be light and this is where the film failed for me. Alongside Ren/Rey’s story arc is the ongoing battle between the New Order and the Resistance, the latter trying to flee in a protracted pursuit that spans the entire film.

Unfortunately for me these parts of the film felt over-reliant on comedy and CGI to underpin and stretch out a much weaker storyline that was there to prop up rather than complement Rey’s story. The survival of Leia – especially given the death last year of actress Carrie Fisher – seemed an odd choice whilst there were scores of unnecessary scenes and characters; from Finn and Rose’s journey to the casino city, Canto Bight to the culminating battle on Crait.

Although it was great to see two strong new female characters in Vice Admiral Holdo and Rose, these felt underused in these weaker parts of the film whilst Benicio del Toro’s scoundrel was criminally two-dimensional. John Boyega is a fantastic young actor but his character Finn was reduced to a slapstick, comic role until virtually the last scene of the film. And let’s not even discuss Captain Phasma or the Porgs.

Speaking as a socialist there was a nice sub-theme about the dangers of capitalism and the commercialism of war (somewhat ironic in a merchandise-fuelled Disney event) but this was lost in a heavy-handed delivery that made me wonder at times whether the film actually had two directors, especially given how wonderfully and subtly directed the scenes featuring Adam Driver and Daisy Ridley were.

I sat through the Last Jedi wanting to love it but at times I really struggled.

On the one hand this felt like a film that was passing the baton on to a new generation of Star Wars heroes: a New(er) Hope. This is both a bold and necessary step for the series to take and it definitely draws a line under Star Wars as a narrative about the Skywalker dynasty.

But this also felt like a passing of the baton on to a new generation of audience. My kids loved the film and I definitely came away thinking this was more a film for them than it was for me.

Maybe it’s nostalgia, maybe it’s just getting older but I – like so many others – grew up with Star Wars. My good friend Ryan pointed me in the direction of an article entitled, the Last Jedi doesn’t care what you think about Star Wars. However, I wish it had thought I cared.

So here are some of my favourites from the year:

1. Public Service Broadcasting > Every Valley

Standout track: Every Valley

I wasn’t a huge fan of PSB’s previous offerings but this is a stunning album, plumbing deeper musical depths than the Race for Space or War Room without abandoning the core of recycled samples that first brought them to collective attention. This is a beautiful homage to Wales and its mining past. Nostalgic without being sentimental, passionate without being political but above all a fantastic listen redolent with the voices, emotions and soul of the lost industrial communities of Britain.

Every Valley features some great collaborations, James Dean Bradfield on Turn No More in particular but the standout track for me is the opener featuring recorded interviews with Richard Burton. Simply wonderful, goosebump-inducing sounds exuding Hiraeth.

2. Ghostpoet > Dark Days + Canapés

Standout track: Woe is Meee

A gritty, up-tempo album with some lovely rhythms complemented by Ghostpoet’s laid-back, laconic lyrics. Harking back to the golden days of trip-hop without being nostalgic, this album breathes attitude and a vulnerable confidence. Woe is Meee – a collaboration with Massive Attack’s Daddy G – is my stand out track but special mention goes to the single, Freakshow, both mixing guitars, beats and Ghostpoet’s downbeat delivery into a pulsating, catchy sound that carries you along with it. A refreshing trip down the darker side and sounds of hip-hop.

Also, definitely check out the Slowdive remix of Woe is Meee.

3. IDLES > Brutalism

Standout track: Mother

A raw slab of concrete that smacks you in the face but underpinned with catchy tunes laced with abrupt vocals and sardonic humour. An energetic offering from the Bristol band, it would be an insult to offer a summary that didn’t pay a nod to the sharp, short energy of this fantastic album.

4. Queens of the Stone Age > Villains

Standout track: The Way You Used to Do

I would probably just throw this in any way because, you know, Joshua Homme. However, this album is a pretty special follow up to 2013’s outstanding …Like Clockwork. The album starts as it means to continue with the foot-stomping, riff-throbbing Feet Don’t Fail Me Now and only really abates for the finale, Villains of Circumstance. Whilst not as visceral as some of QOTSA’s previous offerings this is raw, Rock ‘n’ Roll dredged from the sawdust-filled, tequila-soaked spittoons of the Californian Desert.

And I loved every minute of it.

5. Depeche Mode > Spirit

Standout track: Where’s the Revolution?

In a year that saw the disaster of a General Election, growing social inequality and the Brexit locomotive shudder towards the cliff edge (don’t get me started on Trump), Spirit showed that a band in their fourth decade can still touch a nerve with synth-fused, guitar-driven songs, tapping into topical issues and the darker sides of life. Dave Gahan remains the consummate anti-hero, belting out Where’s the Revolution? as if he’s standing at the gates of the Bastille. The opener, Going Backwards sets the tone for a topical, reflective album that seems the perfect soundtrack to 2017:

We can track it all with satellites
See it all in plain sight
Watch men die in real time
But we have nothing inside
We feel nothing inside

Honourable mentions

Some of the other albums I’ve enjoyed this year:

• !!! > Shake the Shudder
• Unkle > The Road, Pt 1
• Ryan Adams > Prisoner B-Sides
• Thundercat > Drunk
• All Them Witches > Sleeping Through The War
• Nadine Shah > Holiday Destination
• The Brian Jonestown Massacre > Don’t Get Lost
• King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard > Murder of the Universe
• This is the Kit > Moonshine Freeze
• Baxter Dury > Prince of Tears
• Mark Lanegan Band > Gargoyles

Over the years Twitter has been invaluable to me. I signed up in the summer of 2007 shortly after moving from archaeology to a job in web design/development. In those early days, feeling my way in a new career and working largely on my own, Twitter helped me to connect outside of my office walls; a digital water cooler. More importantly, it helped me to learn and grow and meet others who did what I did. With time it helped me through low points – depression, redundancy, random PHP bugs – but above all it helped me to connect. Through Twitter, I have made lifelong friends, discovered Frome (where we moved to from Scotland in 2011) and found work. This is a tool that has in some ways changed my life.

Over this time, the world has changed and with it so has Twitter. What started off as a fun project amongst friends, growing rapidly through the geek community – fuelled by the emergence of the iPhone – has become a staple part of our modern, digital lives. It has shaped the way we consume and spread information and ideas. On the one hand, this has been an invaluable tool; mobilising action and ideas quickly, and democratising communication and media (see, for example, the dramatic Arab Spring of 2010). On the other hand, it has also been used as a tool for misinformation and misdirection. In the wrong hands, it has been the greatest propaganda tool the world has ever seen.

The brevity of Twitter was always its greatest asset, restricting messages to the character limit of an SMS message. As the old saying goes, less is more and particularly in its early use, there was a certain art to compiling a message to fit within the allotted 140 characters. But less also means more ambiguity and brevity has led Twitter to become less a platform for ‘micro-blogging’ rather increasingly a platform for inciting action and reaction. We self-validate by surrounding ourselves with others that share our beliefs, politics, affiliations and aspirations. And with this our opinions and identities become more entrenched, our views more polarised.

This has invariably changed the shape of the media – user-generated content has given real-time access to events around the world in an instant. But with this instantaneity, we lose the curation and rationalising of what we see and read. We see the undigested regurgitation of information, spreading around the world in an instant quick to reinforce our prejudices, good or bad. When was the last time you checked the source of something you retweeted?

But the brevity of a tweet makes it perfect for leveraging and sharing stuff on an emotive level. Never let the truth get in the way of a good story …
And this emotional level is what drives Twitter as a business.

Aside from the use of Twitter changing the entity itself has evolved over the past ten years. With time we’ve come to see the humble tweet evolve to include @ replies, hashtags and RTs (all user-suggested features), favouriting others tweets, delivering images and video, culminating most recently in a whopping 280 character limit (RIP SMS). With this evolution – in conjunction with an ever-expanding fanbase – Twitter has moved from communication tool to media platform to global corporation. And with this, the business has to make a profit and please its shareholders. But Twitter isn’t your normal kind of service.

Don Norman has spoken about the evolution of online services and how with many digital services now the User is the Product that they are selling. Twitter isn’t “selling” you the use of their service – it is “selling” others information about your use of their service. In the main this is used to help businesses target customers; “You write about camping? We can promote your tweets about camping gear to these users.”

But with the growth of Twitter that data has become increasingly valuable. With the US Presidential Elections in 2016 – and likely Brexit too – this data has provided the foundation for a new kind of political campaigning. Furthermore, this campaigning has targeted the echo chambers we inhabit and leveraged the reactive nature of how we use Twitter. This has been used as part of legitimate political campaigning and was extremely successful for Momentum and the Labour Party in the 2017 General Election, especially valuable with younger voters. However, we are increasingly seeing the manipulation of this service for disinformation in a new form of propaganda – on both Left and Right sides of the political spectrum.

And this is good business for Twitter. We have seen outrage after outrage (again, from all across the political and ideological spectrum) and this outrage creates data for Twitter and data is the commodity it sells. The Daily Mail thrives on this. It deliberately publishes articles that will inflame (some) users with provocative titles. And these users share these with abhorrence. And with that, the footprint of the Daily Mail’s presence is spread and visits to the site improve, generating more revenue from its advertisers. Disgust has become the oxygen of commerce.

And this concerns me.

I’ve always thought of Twitter as a meandering river. You can sit on the bank, occasionally dipping your toe in. Or you can kick off your shoes, roll your trousers up and go for a wade. Or you can immerse yourself in the fast currents. At times, in the early years, I was practically submerged in the depths of this continual flow. But I have found my use of Twitter has been increasingly spent in the shallow depths, or watching from the safety of dry land.

In the last week, we saw the President of the United States retweet three tweets from Britain First, a fascist organisation in the UK. As scary as these were in promoting and propagating xenophobic and Islamaphobic rhetoric, was the lack of consideration for their content and more importantly their context (the premise of the original tweets were proven to be false). This was a knee-jerk digital regurgitation from the man that has a finger on the button to start a Nuclear War. This is not Trump’s first offence but for me, it feels like – to use my earlier river analogy – the banks of Twitter have broken. Twitter has a perfectly decent Rules of Use prohibiting conduct that undermines others on the basis of religion, ethnicity or gender but Trump repeatedly flaunts these. And Twitter repeatedly fails to engage with this problem, largely because for Twitter Trump is good business.

Once again, disgust has become the oxygen of commerce.

Note this from Twitter’s Rules of Use:

“We believe in freedom of expression and open dialogue, but that means little as an underlying philosophy if voices are silenced because people are afraid to speak up. In order to ensure that people feel safe expressing diverse opinions and beliefs, we prohibit behavior that crosses the line into abuse, including behavior that harasses, intimidates, or uses fear to silence another user’s voice.”

This philosophy has become meaningless and Twitter is turning a blind eye to some of its core principles because it is making them money. And that makes me feel very uncomfortable.

So I’m taking a break from Twitter. It has been an invaluable friend and ally over the last ten years but it feels like the only action I can take that will make any difference is inaction. To return to Don Norman, with Twitter the user is the Product. But to go back to Marx, what we must also remember is that we are also the Means of Production. And without us Twitter has nothing.

This is certainly an ideal I cling to; that our society should be fairer and its wealth and success more evenly distributed. That ‘success’ is determined by how we treat the weakest and most vulnerable in society and not by the profits of large companies that are showering bonuses on their executives and stock-piling assets off shore to avoid paying tax.

But the clamour for Jeremy Corbyn has me worried and is perhaps worryingly a symptom of the very problems that we find ourselves challenging today. Our elections have become a popularity contest between individuals; a contest that is driven by spin, slogans and machinations. This is perhaps why Corbyn has been so successful. Because at his core he seems honest and unwilling to engage in this kind of political display. And it also perhaps explains Theresa May’s utter capitulation since calling the snap election, refusing to engage with the public and regurgitating slogans ad nauseam.

However this is the means by which politicians are judged now. We elect parties based on their leaders rather than their policies. In America this is understandable with a two-fold electoral system; one for the President and one for the House. This is not the case in the UK but we have become so used to the cult of the individual that it is almost impossible to see past this.

A key part of this problem is that it undermines the premise of what we are voting for at national elections. Foremost we are voting for our representatives in parliament; the person we want most to be the voice for our constituency in Westminster. Yes, we align these individuals according to a national party and its values but generally a successful MP is regarded as one that serves his constituency and not necessarily one that serves his party. This is perhaps the problem of party politics, where tribalism, allegiance and blind loyalty become the driving force of conversation; centralised dogma determining localised decision making and messaging rather than debate, dialogue and legitimate representation.

I have said it before but our system is broken.

First, our voting system is unrepresentative. Just look at some of the statistics from the Make Votes Matter and Electoral Reform Society websites to see how poorly a significant proportion of the country are represented at parliament. The First Past the Post system favours the larger parties and ignores those that come in second or third place. Nationally we can see how the percentage of votes cast seldom compares to the percentage of seats won: UK 2015 General Election. This ultimately leads to a parliamentary system that neglects those whose voice sits outside the main dialogue.

This inequality is reflected in the very fabric of Westminster itself, a building that pits one side against another in a them and us battle over the lives and governance of British people, rights and values. The building is an anachronism of a two-party state (originally the Whigs and the Tories before the arrival of the Labour movement in the early twentieth century). It is a division that is manifest in the very architecture of the building – MPs jeering and booing each other across a symbolic mace. It is a parliament that emphasises competition and division over collaboration and partnership.

In the run up to our recent election we heard the oft-repeated mantra ‘coalition of chaos’. Well for me government must be a coalition – a collaborative endeavour to reflect the views across society (“for the many, not the few” again). If you look at most modern parliaments the emphasis is on diversity, on accommodating a range of voices in debate. The buildings that accommodate parliament are often circular to support this unanimity of democracy. Yes allegiances form, majorities and minorities emerge. But that is a part of democracy. All voices should be heard (even if we don’t like what they have to say).

So back to Jeremy Corbyn. I am excited by a rise in the support for Labour and socialism. Particularly the rise amongst young voters; those whose future has been threatened by almost 40 years of Neoliberal capitalism. However I am concerned that the momentum for this is hanging on the shoulders of one person. With one person an idea can rise and fall. With a movement an idea can become a wave that overcomes obstacles.

So agree with Corbyn, challenge the status quo, but do more than chant “oh, Jeremy Corbyn” and stock up on novelty t-shirts. Be part of a movement, protest, shout. Make your voices heard and demand better from our current system. I would love Corbyn to be at the head of this wave but please don’t force him to be the fulcrum for it.

Well the public have spoken and after a manic couple of months since Theresa May called a snap election to massage her ego and solidify her mandate going into Brexit we have a reduced Conservative majority and a resurgent Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn.

I have been involved in a local tactical voting campaign in Somerton & Frome that was sadly unsuccessful and whilst I revel in the reduced strength of our current government I can’t help but be disappointed that our constituency remains occupied by a Tory MP.

So what have we learned? Well, first and foremost I wouldn’t have changed a thing. We launched ourselves into challenging the status quo and in the process brought together a number of people from all political allegiances and backgrounds who wanted to fight for an opportunity at positive change. I am extremely proud of the work and compassion shown by everyone that helped us and in the process found friends and comrades that believed in a cause and threw all their energy into it.

Our electoral system

At a time where all our politics seems to be divided: right and left; remain and leave; soft and hard; Trump and sensibility; we need to appraise how it works and – more importantly – whether it works at all. The fear of a snap election called to the fore people who tried to work around the constraints of our First Past the Post system. Initiatives like Compass, Swap my Vote and Tactical 2017 tried desperately to pool the resources of the progressive left in a bid to overthrow the system we have in the face of a Tory landslide. And to a significant extent it worked. But what it highlighted was the need for compromise and unity across disparate voices and allegiances to achieve this. For many places this worked. In our constituency it didn’t.

As I have mentioned before, our current system of government is an anachronism. It is a bi-partisan democracy based on the idea of a two-party state rooted in the dominance of two political parties from the eighteenth century: Whigs (Progressives) and Tories (Conservatives). Our politics and democracy has thankfully moved on but our political system has not. This system emphasises the need for an absolute majority whilst pitting the House of Commons into a “them-and-us” dialogue that ultimately leads to extreme, reactive legislation built on short-term political cycles.

This system is completely unreflective of our population and means that only rarely are the views for the majority considered in the actions of governance. After the polls last week we have a ruling government that was supported by 42% of those who voted and only 29% of the electorate, propped up by the DUP, a party that won 0.9% of the popular vote. According to the Electoral Reform Society, as much as 74% of votes cast didn’t make a difference in their constituency. The SNP have 35 seats in parliament with 3% of the national vote, whilst the Liberal Democrats have 12 with more than twice those votes (7.4%). UKIP needed 593,852 votes to elect an MP whilst the Conservative party only needed 42,979 votes and the Labour party 49,141 votes.

Our system is broken. A more representative form of voting is fundamentally required. Indeed, we need a form of government – and electing it – that emphasises dialogue and collaboration rather than dogmatism and division. There are a number of options available and I am in no position to say which is best but I can say with complete belief that ours is not working and pits those with comparable beliefs against each other when we should all be working together.

Somerton and Frome

Which brings me nicely onto our efforts locally. Whilst the coming together of a wide range of people for this election has been rejuvenating and opened up a political conversation for many that would not have happened before, it has also tragically opened up rifts which our current electoral system has amplified. I was disappointed at the Frome hustings this year to see four parties all broadly preaching the same message but touted under different tribal allegiances. Imagine what could have been achieved if all these people had worked together. Sadly with our current system the Greens, Labour and Liberal Democrats wouldn’t concede a chance at any collaborative endeavour. In fact it was utterly disheartening seeing ‘progressive’ candidates and their supporters focus their energies on attacking what we were trying to do rather than on their own campaigns.

Again, these are all amplified under our current electoral system which only emphasises division and competition rather than constructive collaboration, a clamorous jostle for the most votes; a popularity contest rather than a meaningful form of engagement where participation felt valued. Since the results of the election came in I have read some quite angry posts from Labour supporters that have said our efforts have damaged the Labour party locally or worse that ours was some kind of Liberal Democrat conspiracy. Particularly stating that because the Conservative candidate had an outright majority the progressive candidates could not contest this seat.

I completely disagree with this argument. There is no denying that ours is a largely Conservative constituency and with that in mind I think it would be largely impossible for Labour to realistically challenge our current MP within our current system. Whilst I support Labour nationally and was delighted at their rise in popularity at the polls last week, I do believe we were right to throw our support behind our Liberal Democrat candidate because historically this was our best chance at contesting the seat. But imagine what we could have done if we had thrown all our energy into one candidate; if the resources, energy and passion that went into the campaigns for our Liberal, Labour, Green and independent candidates was instead placed behind a single candidate? What might have been achieved? Instead David Warburton was able to sit back, largely uncontested, watching the rest of us divided by a common enemy.

Sadly, with our current voting system collaboration seems unlikely. Labour would not concede (sadly they refused to stand down for any progressive candidate nationally) and the deep-rooted political tribalism and – in some cases – pride means that it would be extremely hard if not impossible for us all to come together behind any one candidate from an existing political party because too often the points of difference are policies rather than ideologies.

But what if we could stand for something else? What if we could all get behind a candidate that represents the wide range of views across progressive parties? Imagine what our combined energy could accomplish? Frome (albeit a small part of the constituency) perhaps represents one of the most fertile constituencies for such a reimagining of politics. Our town council is completely independent representing a range of views but ultimately unrestrained by political silos and dogmatism.

I do not think it is long before we will have another election. The confidence in Theresa May is rock bottom, her mandate for Brexit is weak, and the Conservative majority is largely dependent on a group of terrifying religious fundamentalists. And with this in mind we cannot rest to lick our wounds now this battle has been lost.

Because the war is just beginning and for that we have to work together.

There have been a number of conversations about the relative merits of tactical voting in the ensuing weeks with a lot of criticism targeted at our efforts around the following three arguments:

1. tactical voting undermines our democracy
2. the Liberal Democrats are tainted by their coalition with the Conservatives
3. vote with your heart and for what you believe in

My thoughts on these three criticisms:

Tactical voting undermines our democracy

Our current electoral system undermines our democracy. First-past-the-post is an anachronism no longer fit for purpose. According to the Electoral Reform Society 74.4% of votes make no impact and this will never change whilst a Tory government is in power. We desperately need Proportional Representation to reflect the broad range of opinions within each constituency: Red, Green, Blue, Pink, Purple and Orange.

Since our last election we have seen a divided Labour party, a divided Conservative party and a break-down of the binary divisions which our Houses of Parliament was built around and perpetuates. This election – I believe – is an opportunity to address these divisions but it can only happen if we reduce the Conservative majority.

The Liberal Democrats are tainted by their coalition with the Conservatives

As I have been at pains to say a number of times, supporting tactical voting within Somerton & Frome does not mean we are members of the Liberal Democrat party. Many of us voted Green at the last election and to be honest, on the basis of the party manifestos I would vote Labour if I thought my vote had any impact at all within my constituency. But it doesn’t.

A vote for Labour – or Green, or Independent – is sadly a vote for a continued Conservative majority within our constituency within the next parliament. Five years ago – after a life time of supporting the Liberal Democrats – I wrote to every Lib Dem MP to say I would never vote for them again because of their coalition with the Conservative Party. It is a matter of deep pride for me but it is a pride am prepared to swallow if I feel that there is a chance of unseating our Conservative MP.

“Memories are short” has been the cry from a number of people. Well my memories are long when it comes to the destructive politics for the few of a Conservative government. I am not a Liberal Democrat member (although I have been impressed with the stance of our candidate, Mark Blackburn) but I am a realist who in this instance is prepared to vote tactically if that can mean one less Conservative MP.

Vote with your heart and for what you believe in

As I said above there is a lot within the Labour Party Manifesto and from what Jeremy Corbyn is saying that I wholly endorse. I spent most of my adult life challenging people that said my vote for the Liberal Democrats was a wasted vote. For me I was participating in democracy. But our democracy is broken and we need a reset. If this weren’t a snap election there would have been time to have proper discussions around fielding a progressive or unity candidate in Somerton and Frome. Hell, I might even have stood myself. But there hasn’t been time so we have to organise and galvanise as best we can.

Is voting against a party you believe in a wasted vote? Is it compromising on what your heart says?

Well it depends what your heart wants.

Imagine waking up on the 9th June and your vote had the effect of removing one Conservative MP. Then imagine that one MP was the one that removed a Conservative majority. Now imagine that one vote could start a conversation nationally about how we elect our government, how we can affect change, how all members of society can have a fair vote through a fairer voting system. My heart may say vote Labour but ultimately my heart cares more about a future for my children without a Conservative government.

So this Election I will be voting Liberal Democrat. They are the only party in our constituency that has a chance of challenging our Conservative MP at the ballot. And I’ve even swapped votes with somebody in Edinburgh South so that my support for Labour nationally can have an impact, whilst endorsing the Liberal Democrats in a constituency that can make a difference.

So what does your heart want? Another five years of Conserative Government or starting a conversation where all our voices will be a little bit louder?

Warning: this brain dump contains spoilers for Rogue One

Earlier this week I took my son to see Rogue One when he was off school sick. I was hoping for a good film - I’m a big fan of Gareth Edwards’ previous offerings Monsters and Godzilla, and of course a massive fan of the original Star Wars films - but I didn’t have any particular expectations; especially as this was the first Star Wars film to sit outside the main canon (perhaps excluding Caravan of Courage).

What I wasn’t expecting was to love it. It was a different take on a universe I had grown up loving, replete in the visual and auditory iconography of the original trilogy. But it had license to do things differently, from the score to the opening crawl. There were nods throughout to the original films that this preceded, and of course the plot very much leads into the original Episode IV: a New Hope story. But there was enough scope to explore different narratives within the same universe. The characters from the original series have strong cameos but they exist as backdrops to the film’s own story, one that can stand alone without needing to be directly read in relation to the films set before and after it.

What I loved about this film, however, was how it made me think. In light of Brexit, Trump and post-truth it felt like a Star Wars film for the twenty-first century; and a rallying call for collectivism over individualism.

Politics, Individuals and Chronology: the Idolatry of Lucas

“According to Simiand, there were three idols [in the study of history] which must be toppled. There was the ‘political idol’ – ‘the perpetual preoccupation with the political history, political facts, wars etc….There was the ‘individual idol’ – in other words, the overemphasis on so-called great men…Finally, there was the ‘chronological idol’, that is, ‘the habit of losing oneself in studies of origins’.” Burke 1990, 11

In the early twentieth century a movement of French historians set up a movement - led by Lucien Febvre and Marc Bloch - to counter traditional approaches to the study of history. They created the journal Annales d’histoire économique et sociale founding what has come to be known as the Annales movement [2]. I studied the Annales movement whilst studying for my archaeology PhD as I thought their focus on social and collective history was a relevant one for the study of our material past.

"But what the blazes has this got to do with Star Wars?" I hear you cry.

For me George Lucas was obsessed with the stuff of traditional history that the Annales movement fought against: politics, the individual and origins. This is nowhere more prevalent than in his laborious prequels which play out like a complex Shakespearean tragedy without any of the charm or excitement of the original trilogy. As Simiand, Febvre and Block attempted to remove the ego from the histories they wrote - making history a study of people over the study of kings and queens - they also attempted to remove the ego of the historian from the narratives they wrote. It was the Annales movement that first looked at what was called a ‘problem-oriented’ history focusing on data to tell their stories of the past over solely written accounts [3].

The Star Wars prequels (I-III) were killed as much by Lucas’ obsession with politics, events and personalities as they were his obsession with himself. His constant tinkering (including revisiting the original trilogy with CGI) to leave his own mark on the films - culminating even in him placing himself in the final instalment of the prequels - left the film series feel somewhat tainted, especially efforts to fit the original trilogy into the origin myths he was trying to construct.

Of course the stories told were Lucas’ own but we tend to forget Lucas had only directed one of the original trilogy. The most critically regarded - Empire Strikes Back - was directed by Irvin Kershner whilst the Return of the Jedi was directed by Richard Marquand. So Lucas’ tinkering to further his own narrative seems somewhat perverse, especially for Return of the Jedi given these updates occurred after the death of its original director, Marquand.

So back to Rogue One. The story and Edwards’ direction reminded me of the Annales movement through this shift away from origin myths, politics and individuals towards a more Annales history; a history of movements rather than of individuals. Of course this narrative was driven by the individuals that provide the focus of the story but they are joined together and consumed by a cause; the Rebellion.

Rogue One was a license to step away from the Skywalker dynasty (which the Star Wars series is ultimately a tale of) towards the expanded universe; the tales around the things that take place in the Star Wars universe. Yes there are nods to the characters and places of the original series - obviously Darth Vader, Moff Tarkin and Princess Leia as well as more fleeting supporting characters such as Doctor Cornelius Evazan and Ponda Baba from Episode IV, members of the Rebellion such as Mon Mother, and Bale Organa from the Lucas prequels. But these are there to frame the narrative rather than drive it.

Rogue One took me back to seeing Star Wars for the first time because it wasn’t a story about the Skywalker dynasty but rather a story about the Rebellion. In the film the various characters all have their own agendas but in the end they (literally) sacrifice themselves for the cause they are fighting for. In many ways this tale reminds me of Orwell’s writings about the Spanish Civil War.

Fascism, anti-fascism and the Spanish Civil War

Without going into too much detail (I heartily recommend you read Orwell’s accounts as well as Haycock’s fantastic I am Spain, the Spanish Civil War was defined by the call to action of people from across Europe against the growing dangers of Fascism within Spain. This was within a context of most western leaders turning a blind eye to the growing threat of Fascism from Germany, Spain and Italy with many (including Winston Churchill) preferring their chances against Fascism than against the growing threat of Communist Russia.

The analogies between Star Wars’ Galactic Empire and Fascism are nothing new). However there are obvious comparisons between the Rebel Alliance and the Republican forces of Spain; defined by guerrilla fighting against the seemingly unrelenting war machine of Spanish Nationalism (headed by Franco and assisted by Hitler) and in-fighting between different socialist and Communist movements.

In-fighting within the socialism and resistance forces has been a recurring reality amongst leftist organisations (The People’s Front of Judea, anyone?) and is a trope that has lived out throughout the twentieth century (and before) through to contemporary politics (see the current battles between the Labour Party and Movement in the UK). In the Spanish Civil War Orwell was lucky to escape Spain alive after the in-fighting within the foreign socialist forces supporting the Republican cause, the Communist Party crushing organisations like POUM.

In Rogue One when Jyn goes to Yavin to rally the Rebellion cause against the impending threat of the Empire she is confronted by in-fighting between the various factions of the Rebellion unable to decide on action, a Rebellion that had already seen a split between the direct action of Saw Garrera and the more diplomatic aspirations of the Rebel Alliance.

I’m not suggesting that Rogue One is directly analogous to the circumstances of Spain in the mid-1930s or socialism more generally. However, what both provide is a redolent metaphor for the struggle between worker movements, society and authoritarianism. A struggle that is strikingly relevant to 2017.

Rogue One a tale for 21st Century socialism?

In an era of Post-Truth and Selfies [4] we have all become the centre of our own political landscapes. With Brexit in the UK and Donald Trump in the US we have seen a surge in populist, media-fuelled, ego-centric, me first politics, exacerbated by the social media echo chambers we have come to immerse ourselves in. Seeing Rogue One I was reminded of the challenges presented by Febvre and Bloch and the battle against the idols which we have built up around ourselves; idols celebrating and worshipping politics, individuals and origins.

Sitting in the cinema with my son earlier this week I was genuinely moved by Rogue One, partly because I felt was a film that eschewed these idols; a film that celebrated collective action over the cult of dynasties, where the character development was about personal sacrifice in the face of threat from global (Galactic?) forces that people felt powerless against (for Fascism now read Capitalism?).

So what does this all mean for socialism in 2017? Well that is a conversation for another day. However, call me an old-fashioned socialist but Rogue One - for me - gave a new lease of life to a much loved franchise that had grown tired under Lucas, despite the recent rejuvenation by JJ Abrams. And reminded me that the struggles we face today are ones that have been faced - and overcome - many times in the past. Even a long, long time ago.

Viva la Rebellion and thank you, Gareth Edwards!

¹ Why Rogue One is my favourite Star Wars film

² I’ve written about the Annales Movement before

³ Of course, all history is subjective

⁴ The OED Words of the Year for 2016 and 2013 respectively

Originally posted on Github

It was great to be back. It reminded me of a time of peace and calm, a tiny little bubble of being in the moment. But then I realised every tool I wanted was now on my phone. If I wanted to set an alarm to wake up I needed my phone, if I wanted to take a photo I needed my phone.

Remember that picture that went around not so long ago about how great it was that we used to have to carry around lots of things for different tasks and now most of these could be performed by something that fits in our pocket. I was beginning to feel that this was no longer a good thing. I was starting to develop a love/hate relationship with my iPhone.

I had already decided never to take my iPhone to bed with me, to keep sleep sacrosanct and remove the compulsion to check the latests news or tweets or emails immediately before or after sleep. But by the start of this year I was recognising that this was not enough. Around Christmas I decided to make my Twitter and Instagram accounts private to see if that would help shape how I experienced and used these networks. I found myself less conscious of sharing with everybody and more focused on posting for myself. A small victory.

By the start of March, the idea of lent made me consider a break from my iPhone. I’m not a religious person but I liked the idea of sacrificing something important to me and something I was increasingly feeling I could do without. More so something that I was starting to feel that I was suffering because. So in the same way that some people might give up chocolate or alcohol for a month I felt a strange compulsion to give up my smartphone.

I didn’t want the hassle of changing my number so – being on the Three network – managed to find a 3G feature phone that could … drum roll … make phone calls, send texts and, in desperate moments, play snake or do sums.

So some thirty days later what have I learned?

Well foremost I’ve learned that I don’t really miss my smartphone. I was expecting to be frustrated but in fact I’ve felt quite liberated. It’s been more of a diet than a detox. With the exception of days when I’m travelling I’ve left my phone at home which has meant rediscovering how to be idle in those moments that pass between doing things: breaks, car and train journeys. The spaces and pauses which we seem so determined to cram full but leave us wired and yet unsatiated.

I’ve started reading more which is no bad thing. But I’ve also found myself wondering what did we do on the loo before smartphones?

So what do I miss?

Spotify although there is something nostalgic and charming about carrying a defined and delimited range of music with you. It reminds me of the days on the top of a double decker bus riding to school using a biro to rewind cassettes as my Boots Walkman could only fast forward.

I do miss Instagram. Of all the social networks I probably find Instagram the least toxic. There is something delightful in seeing the world through other people’s eyes and I do miss the serendipity of capturing moments you see in everyday life, as well as the convenience of being able to record those micro-moments of family life. But then I’m reminded of the time I was fortunate enough to go the Champions League Final in Hamden. I vividly recall the Zidane goal before half-time not just because it was simply sublime (it was) but because I was struck how many people there with cameras were so busy trying to record the occasion that they missed the moment.

So after a month I think I’m going to stick to this crazy experiment. It has certainly made me think about how I interact with technology and the internet. And the potentially toxic relationship we can have with things. It has also made me realise how dependent we have become on these small black boxes, from communication to orientation; from passing time to capturing moments. As the great philosopher Ferris Bueller once remarked, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around for a while, you could miss it”.

Since giving up my iPhone life has slowed down and I’ve found myself looking around so much more. And I like what I see.

“Traditional history – history, one might say, one the scale not of man, but of individual men, what Paul Lacombe and François Simiand called l’histoire evenementielle, that is, the history of events: surface disturbances, crests of from that the tides of history carry on their strong backs. A history of brief, rapid, nervous fluctuations, by definition ultra-sensitive; the least tremor sets all it’s antennae quivering.” F Braudel¹

Before a recent holiday I came across Hossein Derakhshan’s post on Medium, The Web We Have to Save². Hossein’s article is a reflection on his perception of the state of the web after six years in an Iranian jail. It discusses the evolution of the web during this time and the loss of what was important to Hossein about the web before his imprisonment. Hossein’s post struck a chord with me. It made me think about how the web had changed since I started working with this rapidly-changing medium and how this change relates to some of the anxieties I have had about the state of the web today³, particularly how these affect me on a personal and physiological level⁴.

Surprisingly, Hossein’s article also made me think about subjects that I had studied during my PhD in archaeology and not thought about for ten years, subjects that on face value have seemingly no connection with our digital present.

A history of the Mediterranean the Web

In his history of the Mediterranean, originally published in 1949, Fernand Braudel examined this region according to three different rhythms of history: the slow, almost imperceptible pace of geographical time; the history of social structures and institutions; and the history of individuals and events. Part of a movement of French historians known as the Annales School⁵, Braudel sought to challenge traditional history’s focus on the minutiae of dates, kings and queens, choosing instead to look at the slower patterns and undercurrents which move society and social change.

The Annales School can be seen as an attempt towards the democratisation of history. Away from the traditional histories written about and for the elite. A social history looking at the way history was shaped by and also affected the common man. I studied Braudel as part of my doctoral research on the prehistoric archaeology of Scotland. Like Braudel I had become increasingly disillusioned with archaeology’s focus on the minutiae of individuals and events. Studying a fifteen hundred year period, I felt drawn to the slower narratives offered by Braudel and his contemporaries, focussing on broader material histories rather than being drawn obsessively into the details of our archaeological past.

Despite the seeming irrelevance of a mid-twentieth century scholar’s study on late medieval Europe I have lately started to see a lot of parallels with Braudel’s views on the study of history; the evolution of the web and this evolution as part of a broader history of publication. For Braudel we can relate these three histories to the different paces of publication that the web is situated within.

The evolution of the web must be understood as part of a longer-term history of publication. The foundations for the web were provided by the centuries of printed medium that came before it. However, despite increasingly cheaper means for printing and broader availability of reproduction, the printed medium represents a slow, deep pace of change. Writing is marked by editions, sometimes years between. There is a permanence and inflexibility to this printed form and the route to publication remains limited and costly. The printed form reminds me of Braudel’s geographical histories: what he called the longue durée which concern longer-term trends and slower trajectories of change.

Blogging

In the early 2000s the internet emerged as a solution – or at least an alternative – to the permanence of print. Blogging started as a way of responding to the fixed nature of the printed medium and the barriers and pace of printed publication. Blogging can also be seen as a rise in the democratisation of publication. Access to an audience was no longer tied in to print cycles and editorial. Information and opinion was no longer ‘owned’ and anybody who wanted could have a dialogue through the digital page:

“Blogs were gold and bloggers were rock stars back in 2008 when I was arrested. At that point, and despite the fact the state was blocking access to my blog from inside Iran, I had an audience of around 20,000 people every day. Everybody I linked to would face a sudden and serious jump in traffic: I could empower or embarrass anyone I wanted.” H Derakhshan⁶

At the core of this democratisation – Hossein writes – was the humble hyperlink. For Hossein the blog wasn’t only about a new, open medium for publication. It was a means for interlinking people, articles, thoughts and opinions. It was part of a broader, open network built on the basic foundations of the internet: a web of interlinked content.

The fast web

In his article, Hossein argues that the web we have to save is under threat by new means of publication and communication, particularly social media as the emerging, dominant means for online dialogue. The emergence of social media like twitter in the late 2000s represents the arrival of ‘micro-blogging’: concise, transient means of communication. On the one-hand these new media represented the logical extension of dialogue and engagement that the blog afforded.

However, at another level it represents something wholly different. Social media represents the emergence of closed networks for publication, walled gardens that control the means for dialogue and the ability to reach beyond these walls.

It also represents a more fleeting form of communication – one that is of the moment, that fades away as quickly as it emerges. This can be seen in stark contrast to the permanence of the printed form. In this sense, social media reminds me of Braudel’s understanding of events, what Braudel described as “the ephemera of history; they pass across its stage like fireflies”.⁷

This ephemeral nature is what we are starting to see with this latest state of publication. Within walled gardens links become dead-ends, whether that is through the takeover of URLs through services like bit.ly or twitter’s own t.co, or the death of hosted platforms like Geocities and the data they contain. Furthermore, the increasing AJAX-ification of web platforms means we are losing one of the most enduring features of web publication: the hyperlink. Hashbangs and Javascript-dependence break the very fabric of the medium we are working with, arresting movement between places and articles, providing blind alleys where crossroads once flourished and obscuring paths as soon as they are trodden.

The Like and the responsibility of response

Social media represent perhaps the ultimate in the democratisation of publication but there is a flip-side to these ‘open’ platforms for writing and sharing. The first problem is the power of the like. Writing for many has become a popularity contest where the power of sharing has become as valuable as the power of what is being written.

This can be interpreted as part of the oft-lamented demise of the attention span, writing (and reading) being part of the myriad of things competing for our attention in the constant information-deluge of today. Micro-blogging emphasises short-form over long-form, rapid fire over deliberated. Which brings about the ultimate problem of this ephemeral rhythm of publication: accountability. With everything moving so fast there becomes less and less time to digest and respond. Communication has become of the moment, robbing us of time to collect our thoughts and weigh up our responses. The outcome of this – of which I am as guilty as anyone – is cementing our prejudices and surrounding ourselves with those who validate our assumptions.

Like the historians which the Annales School challenged, this ephemera becomes a densely populated realm we find hard to look outside of. But outside of these moments; these 400×300 images and 140 characters; what endures? How absorbed do we get by these ephemera? And how much does this distract us from stepping back and looking at the bigger picture, the slower rhythms?

I see this in the world of front-end techniques and technology. We become obsessed with tools and methods, very rarely looking at how these relate to the fundamental basics of web standards, accessibility and progressive enhancement. We obsess about a right way to do things as if there was one right way rather than looking at the goal; how things fit into the broader philosophy of what we do on the web and how what we write contributes to us being better at what we do.

Looking back, moving on

Like Braudel I find myself drawn to trying to understand a slower rhythm; a slower web. Let’s continue to engage through social media but step back from the power and attention we grant this ephemera, these “pieces of flotsam I have combed from the historical ocean and chosen to call events“⁸.

I find myself sucked into these events, and lamenting the slower pace of change and the opportunities that presents to observe, digest and reflect.

This is not to say there is no place for the fast web. Twitter and it’s ilk is a fantastic antidote to the increased isolation of working in a digital space. It is a great space to meet people, to solve problems, to share in a collective pursuit; whether that is making websites, following football, political tub-thumping or revelling in the high drama of televised baking contests. Certainly twitter has been my saviour on more than occasion; as a water-cooler, problem-solver and above all, friend.

But, let us write more enduring things. Let us appreciate the history of our situation; and rather than dismissing fading technologies seeing these in terms of how they have contributed to our present. There is no right way. Let us start to write our own histories and appreciate the deep foundations of where these have come from and that other’s have their own histories.

These histories do not belong in a vacuum. Everything we do is shaped by what has come before. We have had these same arguments before and it is not about taking sides. Rather, let us own the spaces we write in and start to own the dialogues we engage in. Comment deliberately and thoughtfully.

Let us make a new rhythm for the web.

¹ F Braudel, 1949. The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, p21

² H Derakhshan, 2015 The Web we have to Save

³ C Henley, 2013 The Pastry Box, Tuesday, 13 August 2013

⁴ C Henley, 2014 Have you tried turning it off and on again?

⁵ The Annales School

⁶ H Derakhshan, 2015 The Web we have to Save

⁷ F Braudel, 1949. The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II. p901

⁸ F Braudel, 1949. The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II. p1243

Grunge was one of the first musical genres I discovered for myself and as a disgruntled teenager provided a great antidote to the manufactured music and clothing of the early nineties. In the early 90s we had hip hop and dance/rave music but there was nothing for teenagers that really tapped into Rock ‘n’ Roll. At the same time we had the Gulf War, the Rodney King beatings and Poll Tax riots music was being dominated by the likes of Kylie Minogue and Right Said Fred. Music and clothing was mass produced and marketed around mass consumption. For me grunge was an alternative for people that weren’t happy the direction society was heading in.

It should be a cracking evening – live music in an independent cinema until the small hours, bar, visual effects from Anthony Head – he of Illuminate Bath fame. Additionally Matt has been busy arranging a great selection of grunge-related raffle prizes including signed music, books and prints.

Tickets are available in advance for £8 (plus booking fee) through Tito at https://ti.to/westway/grungeraiser/ or at the venue on the evening.

I’ve put together a choice selection of tunes featuring the kind of music you can expect to hear on the evening. Hope to see you in Frome on Saturday!

There is enough wealth in this country for all its people. We have been seduced into putting the acquisition of property ahead of a quality of life. Corporate interests trump the rights and interests of the people. We are told that to counter this would make us uncompetitive, that it would arrest foreign investment in the same breath that we are told immigrants are causing net losses to the public purse.

Communities have been fragmented by the dissolution of industry. Because free trade means it is better ‘value’ to buy salad leaves from Peru than support your local farmer. Where we prefer Amazon because it is cheaper and more convenient to have stuff delivered than walk to the shop whilst the billions we spend is syphoned with minimal tax into some foreign enclave solely to make the rich richer. To reuse an old phrase we have come to appreciate the cost of everything and the value of nothing.

And whilst the purse strings of government – local and national – are being continually cut funds are still found for war and to bail out the banks. We are repeatedly told the problem is elsewhere – whether it is the idolatry of the poor or the benefit tourists of the EU – without any reference to the data that proves contrary. Whilst a succession of governments refuse to take responsibility for their actions, heckling over a gilded mace in a building that has resisted change for centuries, its very architecture reinforcing the two-party rule that our country has experienced since political independence from the Crown. Our politicians are encouraged to support their ‘meagre’ salaries with outside interests that fundamentally compromise their ability to make unbiased decisions for the nation and their constituents. And the latest insult, a government and political parties that through fear of alienating the populist media have taken to blame outsiders, failing to acknowledge that our great cultural diversity is due to millennia of permeable borders and not through seeing the English Channel as a barrier to movement.

Our current government – appointed by just 24% of the electorate – has executed brutal cuts without any public mandate, in the name of balancing books caused by a generation of poor economic policy. Healthcare and education is being quantified on the basis of return of investment. What price can we put on these? In what logical world should profit or postcode govern our rights to an education and affordable healthcare for all.

This isn’t Labour or Conservative’s fault. This is due to a centralist doctrine shaped by Big Business and the Media over and above the mandate of society. We’re all in this together. Our governments should work for us and they are not. It is time for our political system to be overhauled.

So how do we solve this problem? Too many people have too much to lose through a revolution. We are shackled by the handcuffs of Student Loans and Interest-only mortgages. But next year gives us an opportunity to make a statement that we want – need – a different kind of politics in Britain. We have a system of democracy and a General Election gives us an opportunity to have a voice. Not voting is not a solution. Dissatisfaction with the options on offer should not dissuade us from participating and having a voice. The first-past-the-post system is horrifically outdated. But we have an option to make a statement without siding with one or other side of the same coin.

Come May next year we can spoil our ballots. This will not be a protest for or against any political party. It will not stop the favourite candidate maintaining their seat of power. But it will show that we are no longer happy to accept the way things are.

First and foremost register to vote. It is abysmal that only 65% of eligible voters turned out at the last election. If there was a new party of No Voters that would have been enough to have a clear majority over the other Parties. This number should not be underestimated.

So next May how are you going to vote? Are you going to vote for what you believe in? Are you going to vote tactically – voting against what you don’t believe in? Or are you going to vote for your unhappiness with the Status Quo?

Spoil your ballot. Vive la Evolution!

The slides and audio from my talk are posted below along with some brief notes.

Our Industry

First I want to talk about our industry. Why I think people that are prone to mental health problems are attracted to our industry and also the conditions within our industry that can cause mental health problems.

Phil Stringfellow quote

Mental health affects EVERYBODY and adding an often derogatory term in front of it is another form of segregation – @psdesignuk

I completely understand Phil’s quote. We are not unique. But I do believe that there is a problem in our industry and a need to talk about it. We are an industry that is used to sharing and we need to embrace that to have an open conversation about the problems we experience: professional and personal.

Some data

Responses from this year’s Freelance Rates survey show 8% of respondents would describe their mental health/wellbeing as bad or very bad. That is one in every 12 of us. This is not a good thing.

Curiosity

We are a young industry and many of us are pioneers. Many of the people who work on the web – whether creative or technical – are naturally curious and critical. We are interested in picking things apart and solving problems but this can turn on itself and mean we become self-critical.

Exposure

I think one problem in our industry is our high exposure to information. We are at the coal face and many of us work and play online. For some we became attracted to working on the web through a hobby and personal interest and that makes it very hard to take or make time away from what we do.

About Depression

I want now to talk about some of my experiences of depression, how I understand mental health problems and how it has affected me.

Lupus

This is a photo of me and my mother in the dim and distant past. My mother has a blood disorder called lupus. Lupus can be defined a number of ways but the way it was always explained to me was that the white blood cells which are supposed to fight infection cannot differentiate between bad things and good things. They attack the host and something aimed at good – fighting illness – becomes bad. Friendly Fire.

Critical

This is how I see depression. One of my greatest assets – my brain – has been an incredibly force for good in my life. It got me through a degree, MA and PhD in archaeology, it helped me move careers to the web and helped me overcome many challenges in our industry. However my brain – like lupus – has turned on itself.

It is this sense of being analytical and critical which has underpinned my depression. By putting my own life under very intense scrutiny. Always.

The self

Depression is a selfish disease. It puts the self under intense scrutiny – comparing ourselves to others, focussing on our weaknesses, insecurities and failures. But this very often goes hand-in-hand with a sense of not indulging ourselves. We don’t want to treat ourselves (or alternatively fall into ‘binges’ of _treat_ment, whether that is spending, eating, tweeting, whatever) and don’t want to burden others with our problems. This is a conversation we would often rather keep to ourselves.

Filters

The thing to remember about depression is that it is a lens or filter rather than reality. It is how we perceive ourselves and others. Like the seventies lens filters of Instagram, depression is a state or sense of altered reality with distorted edges, slightly blurry bits and the occasional bokeh.

Strategies

I want to spend the rest of my talk discussing some of the strategies available for coping with mental health problems. Some have helped me, others haven’t. All are worth considering.

Speak to a professional

First and foremost speak to a medical professional. Go to a doctor and see what they can do for you. You wouldn’t put off going to a GP if your leg was in pain or you had a nasty rash. It should be the same for mental health problems. For many people depression is a chemical problem that can be managed chemically. I’ve been on anti-depressants for almost a year and tried several versions. At first I was too proud to go on medication for my depression – I was worried about the potential side effects and felt I would be a failure if I couldn’t fix this problem by myself. I was referred to an NHS counsellor for 6 short sessions where we discussed strategies to help manage the way I felt myself. It didn’t work.

I read Philip Robert’s brilliant post on his experiences of depression and medication and it really gave me the confidence to consider anti-depressants. I now take Sertraline and have a regular consultation with a medication specialist.

Talk to Somebody

You cannot underestimate the value in talking to somebody about our problems. That can be a friend, a family member or a complete stranger. After feeling like I barely scratched the surface of my illness with an NHS counsellor about six months ago I got in touch with a private counsellor who I now have weekly sessions with.

It is immensely powerful to be able to offload to somebody who is not invested in what you are saying, somebody to be non-critical and also guide conversation to help us better understand ourselves. You can find a BACP-accredited therapist online and if you cannot find somebody please contact The Samaritans.

Get away from a Screen

It is really important with so much of our work and recreation taken up online to spend time away from a screen. Go for a walk or take up aerobic exercise such as cycling or swimming. It also exposes us to sunlight which is a valuable way of naturally boosting serotonin.

Also find a hobby – Adam talked about the importance of flow earlier. Of getting into a zone. I started helping out on a local spoon carving workshop and it has been immensely valuable in taking my mind off things. Painting, knitting, crafting are all things that can help us achieve mental flow and switch off the mind.

Watch what you eat

Caffeine is a natural stimulant and chemically alters our brain. Like all drugs we can quite easily build up a chemical dependence on the responses that it triggers. I gave up caffeine in a bid to manage some of the negative aspects of my depression, particularly fatigue and mood swings and it has really helped. And giving up caffeine doesn’t mean you have to give up good coffee! I heartily recommend Lavazza decaffeinated coffee

Another thing that I have been experimenting with the past few months is trying to cut sugar out of my diet. Potatoes not Prozac is a really interesting book that discusses sugar dependency and the symptoms that can manifest with high-sugar diets. The book advocates cutting out sugars and simple carbohydrates replacing these with protein rich foods and complex carbohydrates. A recommended read.

Notifications

Turn off notifications. Keep your phone on silent. Don’t take your phone to bed with you. Try and minimise distractions in your life and try to step away from the “micro refresh hits” http://vimeo.com/56479210 that give you a short dopamine boost but then lead to big crashes.

Turn it off and on again

Finally try turning off from time to time. When there are too many tasks running on a computer and we see the spinning beach ball we restart it. We are used to turning technology off and on again to fix it. But how many times do we do this for ourselves. As a birthday present recently my wife booked me on a surprise weekend in a monastic retreat. For me this was a restart – a charge to unplug and unwind from work, the internet and my family and devote some time in just resetting things. We need to make time for such experiences.

Thanks

I cannot begin to imagine the reasons behind somebody taking their own life. However as somebody who has been battling with depression for the last eighteen months I can completely understand the anguish that negative thoughts can cause and the desperation to do anything to make that suffering stop.

Mental health is still something we all find incredibly hard to talk about. Depression often arises from feelings of self-doubt and self-criticism so the idea of talking openly about our ‘weaknesses’ and ‘failings’ can be terrifying. It is far easier to keep the pain and hurt inside than burdening others with it.

I want each of you reading this to do something for me. If you suffer depression or anxiety talk to somebody. That can be a health professional (doctor or counsellor), friend, family member or complete stranger but you do not need to keep your feelings to yourself and do not deserve to be feeling the way you do.

Secondly if you know somebody suffering depression or mental health problems reach out to them. Pick up the phone, send them a message and make sure they are okay. Let them know that the pain will not always be there. They may have some issues to overcome or chemical imbalance to address but things won’t always be this way.

Chloe we only met a few times but I consider you to be a friend and I miss you. Sleep well xx

The loss of Sir Alex after 27 years was always going to be a blow but a blow that was inevitable failing the physicists at CERN unlocking the secrets behind Fergie Time. How do you plan to replace the irreplaceable, potentially the greatest manager to grace club football? The answer, most would say, is with time, patience and resources.

In the appointment of Moyes, United identified a long-term prospect, an uncut diamond that had not had the opportunity to shine at Everton. United also had to acknowledge that the first task facing the incoming United manager is renewing a tired and aged squad that in reality – despite winning the Premier League last year – was on the wane. A number of key players were due to retire or leave and with the (second) retirement of Scholes United’s inability to sign a decent, creative midfielder since 2009 was showing. This was the dying embers of Fergie’s final title-winning squad and a substantial rebuilding exercise was required.

The appointment of Moyes last summer showed a shared vision and a long-term plan. A six year contract to show the clubs intentions to rebuild and recognition that this was not going to be an overnight transition. I wasn’t a massive fan of Moyes but had a great deal of respect for his abilities to get the most out of a limited squad and with limited resources.

His selection wasn’t exciting but it showed vision and audacity rather than a knee-jerk appointment expecting instant results. However early signs were not promising. The foundation of recent successes – Sir Alex’s coaching staff – were shown the exit and Moyes oversaw some weak performances in an overseas tour, the few highlights being some of the performances from younger players like Lingard and Januzaj. Worse still was Moyes’ efforts in the transfer market.

This was a chance for Moyes to make his mark on the squad and step out of Sir Alex’s shadow. Sadly the only outcome was a last-moment panic buy at a ridiculously inflated price for one of Moye’s own players from Everton, Marouane Fellani. Fellani was undoubtedly one of the outstanding players for Everton under Moyes but was he quite what United needed?

Early results were promising – a dispatching of Wigan in the the Community Shield with a brace from Van Persie followed by a 4–1 away thumping of Swansea. However the team failed to keep this early momentum and – with perhaps the exception of some good performances in Europe – the season has seen a steady decline in results. We’ve had a record number of home defeats in the league, FA and League Cup exits to Swansea and Sunderland, and in the last few weeks an embarrassing away defeat to Olympiakos in the Champions League and a humiliating home defeat thrashing to local rivals Liverpool.

All this season despite the resultsm I have given Moyes my support. I felt despite results there was a long-term plan and that despite clearly failing to qualify for European competition next season we should take this opportunity to rebuild a tired squad. Foremost David Moyes is the manager of my football team and I owe him my support.

However, in the Liverpool display he has clearly lost the team. The players looks tired, frustrated and out of shape. I have never seen as many players’ heads down as I did against Liverpool this weekend. There is no pride amongst the players and no fire in their belly. The only leader on the field is Rooney and that is a man who spent most of last season trying to fight for a move away to Chelsea.

Moyes’ has shown a frustrating lack of tactical depth and variety. He has one formation which has clearly not worked – his obsession with 4-4-2/4-4-1-1 has played quality players out of position, got the worst out of our forwards, forced us into an over-reliance on sub-par wingers, and exposed our back line. On the receiving end of a record 81 crosses, Fulham manager Rene Meulensteen said that United were dull and predictable and on the evidence of this season it is hard to disagree.

Moyes seems reluctant to mix things up when it is required – exemplified by waiting 70 minutes against a comprehensively superior Liverpool at the weekend before making a substitution. Worse still, when things haven’t been working Moyes has overlooked the quality he has on the bench. Players like Hernandez, Wellbeck and Kagawa have been beyond the fringe whilst Zaha – impressive in pre-season – has failed to get any time on the pitch. Furthermore, Moyes reluctance to take off players who are under-performing seems to show a man bereft of confidence and authority within the dressing room.

United has always been a team built on a simple philosophy: attack is the best form of defence. Yes, our best teams have had a solid backline (think Schmeichel, van der Saar, Stam, Bruce, Vidic, Ferdinand) but our foremost aim has always been to attack. Sadly this current United squad seems terrified of running at defenders. We have some of the most creative forwards in the League and they are reduced to chasing crosses. With a lack of tactical variety, weakness at the back and a shortage of goals … where to now?

Finally, Moyes has shown a complete lack of strength when facing the media. Repeated phrases like “I have heard” and “we were unlucky” have shown a man reluctant to face up to results, take responsibility for performances or offer any constructive solution.

Since the summer I have backed Moyes against a backdrop of increasingly despondent results and performances. It is becoming harder and harder to see responsibility for the downturn anywhere but squarely at the feet of the manager. Tonight remains our last chance of getting any pride from this season and I find myself in two minds. Of course I want victory for my team but I don’t want a good result for United to paper over the cracks of a dismal season. And in the case of a defeat I can’t find any reason to continue supporting Moyes.

This year I’m asking a few questions about health and life style as I’m particularly interested in the lifestyle of working freelance.

So if you are a freelancer and can spare five minutes of your time please pop along to http://bit.ly/freelance2013.

Responses are completely anonymous (Prism permitting) and will be compiled into a tool and blog post later this summer.
To view last year’s results check out the blog post at http://cole007.net/blog/130/freelance-rates-survey-2012

At Mud I’ll be overseeing the delivery of projects and working alongside Pete on front-end development and CMS work.

It has been great to spend time with Matt over the last couple of months and discuss how we can collaborate to produce striking digital work. Having worked with Matt as a freelancer I really identify with his approach to work and am relishing the opportunity to grow a business together.

I’ve really enjoyed the last 2 and a half-years working as a freelancer, particularly in the last eighteen months working alongside the inmates creative folk at studio 5. I’ve had some amazing clients and being freelance has taught me a lot about myself, my strengths (and my weaknesses).

So here’s to a new direction – and if you’re looking for somebody to work with on your new digital project then give Mud a shout!

Office Rent £180/month

Before moving to Frome late in 2011 I’d been freelance for six months or so working from home. As I’ve written before I had really struggled working from home and was fortunate that Frome had a vibrant and affordable co-working space. I rent a studio along with a bunch of other freelancers which costs me £180/month including bills. This is a lot of money but has paid for itself and having a dedicated work space has really helped productivity, sanity and socially.

Hosting £35/month

For a long time I’ve been with 1&1 for hosting and whilst I’ve been really happy with their service it’s not been a solution that scales very well. With numerous domains and several sites to manage I’ve long been meaning to look for something more dedicated so at John Baxter’s recommendation I recently moved over to a VPS with Memset. I’ve now got much more control over my sites and can manage multiple accounts separately!

Freeagent £15/month

I’ve been using Freeagent since it was in early Beta and I honestly couldn’t imagine working for myself without it. Even when I was only working a few hours freelance a week the £15/month outlay more than paid for itself in saving my time managing accounts, invoices and expenses. A truly invaluable service and you can get 10% off your monthly Freeagent subscription using the referral code 1c8frs9e

Github £5/month

Github is such an invaluable and brilliantly executed service. Whilst they have a free option for public repositories I happily pay to host private repositories for client work. Bitbucket is another service where you can host unlimited private repositories although you are limited to who you can share these with.

BrowserStack £12.50/month

As someone who spends a lot of their time in HTML and CSS having a ready means to test in various browsers is essential. I’ve never got on well with running a Virtual Machine on my laptop so BrowserStack is a brilliant solution with the added bonus of being able to test local server or files. Indispensable for front-end folk.

Dropbox £10/month

I cannot remember life before Dropbox. It is such an essential tool in my day-to-day work; whether it is for versioning or sharing files, synching work across devices or hosting HTML templates. You get 2GB with their free account but Dropbox has become such an integral part of my workflow I am more than happy to pay for the Pro account.

Sanebox £4/month

I am such an idiot when it comes to email. I really struggle to keep on top of messages and hate having unread email in my inbox. Sanebox has been a massive help in managing my emails. It synchs up with Gmail (and other email services) and takes stuff out of the inbox that doesn’t think is important. It’s pretty clever and stuff rarely slips through the net.

It pings me at the end of each day to show me what it has archived and has some pretty powerful features like defer (you can archive messages and set them to reappear in your inbox at a later date), reminders (ping you if someone hasn’t replied to an email you sent) and black hole (for burying all those pesky newsletters you’d forgotten you’d subscribed to). All in all a pretty magic service!

Spotify £5/month

Okay so technically not work-related but for concerted head down productivity you can’t beat sticking on the headphones, loading up Spotify and sticking on some beats – a few years ago it would be hard to fathom having so much music at your fingertips for just £5/month.

Total spend: £266.50/month

So the outgoings do all add up but there isn’t anything there that doesn’t help me work better and ultimately save me time. Be interested to hear what services others subscribe to. Chris Coyier and Stu Robson have also blogged about their monthly outlay.

1. Open terminal (⌘+space then type ‘terminal’)
2. In terminal type sudo nano /private/etc/hosts
3. Enter your password when prompted
4. After where it says fe80::1%lo0 localhost create a new line and type/paste the following: 127.0.0.1 www.dailymail.co.uk
5. type ^+x (^ is the CTRL key) to exit, y to confirm and return to save

If this doesn’t work straight away you may need to flush your DNS cache – to do this simply type/paste the following into terminal dscacheutil -flushcache

Et voila – no more Daily Mail website on your computer. Please pass on to friends and family to make the world a better place.

I was originally invited to help on the course after a chat with Prisca following my talk at Milton Keynes Geek Night last September. Having accepted the invite it has been a brilliant experience with long days, crazy train experiences but above all rewarding days spent listening to students and (hopefully) helping guide them along the process of creating a website as part of their practical thesis project.

I cannot overemphasise how satisfying it has been to offer my time to help others. It has been personally rewarding and reassuring to realise that I know more than I think and that the years I have spent in this industry can be of some use to others just starting out on their path in web design.

Many thanks to David and Prisca for the opportunity to be involved in their brilliant course. I can’t wait to see the fruits of the student’s efforts come September and am already looking forward to helping with next year’s course!

It was a terrible experience but it forced me into a position that I had been too scared to pursue when working: full-time freelancing. I’d been doing bits of freelance work in my spare time for a few years but was never confident of my abilities to support my family and cover a mortgage under my own steam.
And we had no savings. How do I cover the bills, the mortgage, feed a family of four with no income?

Thanks to twitter I managed to have six weeks of work lined up within a few hours and have somehow managed to survive on my own ever since. So I am now coming up to two years as a full-time freelancer. 731 days of supporting myself, my family and my stationery habit through coding.

It has been a crazy couple of years – we sold our house, relocated from Scotland to Somerset and I have had the pleasure of worked on a great range of projects with some lovely people.
I have learned a hell of a lot about myself and about how to work with others. I’ve loved having the freedom to work on projects I care about and having the flexibility to work the hours I want. However, I wish I’d learned more about cash flow and budgeting and that I took/made more time off for myself.

The business side of working on the web is deservedly getting some great attention at the moment. There is a feature on freelancing in the latest issue of .net magazine whilst we are now seven episodes into the great podcast, Unfinished Business which touches on a range of topics covering working within the web industry.

So looking back over the past two years what advice would I offer to others just starting out freelancing? Here are a few bits of advice taken from my own (sometimes steep) learning curve. I’m by no means an expert but hopefully there is a nugget or two here to help others who find themselves in a similar situation to where I was two years ago.

1: Keep on top of your books

Book-keeping is boring. We all put it off, we shove our receipts into boxes and then there is a mad panic as we get ready for the frenzy of self-assessment. So my first tip is make time for your book-keeping. Just an hour a week spent now will keep you on top of things and save hours of tears, confusion and pain down the line (trust me!).

How you keep your books is up to you but I’ve been an avid user of Freeagent since it came out of Beta in 2007. Since 2011 Freeagent has become an invaluable tool in managing the financial side of my business; from sending out estimates and invoices (and payment reminders) to clients, to recording bank transactions, to keeping track of expenses, to calculating self-assessment.

If you are interested in trying Freeagent the following link will give you 10% off a monthly subscription with the referral code 1c8frs9e

2: Value your time, know your rates

Freeagent was the first tool I used that really made me think about the value of my time. When I started using it I was only working a few evenings a week freelance but even then it paid for itself. My rationale was if £15/month saved me more than the equivalent amount in my billable time then it was worth it.

Whenever I see a piece of software or a solution (such as a CMS) I always ask – “how much time will this save me?”. And when you have an appreciation of the value of your time you rapidly appreciate that free software rarely is.

On the subject of valuing your time you of course need a benchmark for this and to do that you need to work out a realistic day-rate. By realistic I don’t mean “what would I have to charge to cover the equivalent of a salaried position?”.
When freelance you must pay for your learning (books, conference attendance, etc), you must pay for your time not working (holiday, sickness, etc), you must pay for the resources you need to do your work (computer, software, rent, etc) and you must pay for your life after you stop working (pension, savings, etc).

Knowing your rates – and sticking to them – is critical to being successful at this freelancing malarkey and the subject of a great podcast from Anna and Andy. I’ve also blogged on this following a survey on freelance rates I carried out last year and there is a handy tool to calculate rate by location, skills and experience based on the results from last years survey.

3: Get used to budgeting

I’m terrible at budgeting. The thing with freelancing is that it is often periods of feast and periods of famine. That can be a nightmare for planning, especially with mortgage/rent, bills, etc coming out.

So it is absolutely critical to get a deposit from clients.
I usually ask for 25% off the estimated project fee up front to secure my time on a project. This helps keep money in the bank for when things go quiet on a project or a lean period. This has proven especially valuable when working on projects that require outgoings up front, e.g. travel or software licenses.

The other tip I would offer is get used to setting money aside for tax. I bank with HSBC which offers me a business savings account alongside my business bank account. Whenever I receive payment on an invoice I always take out 50% straight into my personal account as drawings, put 33% into my savings account to cover tax and rainy day and leave the rest in my main business bank account to cover outgoings like business rent. It’s a really good habit to get into.

4: Find space

In my first 6 months of freelancing I worked from home. We lived in a quite remote location and had a spare room I could use as an office. However this didn’t work out for me – I felt very cut off from other people and found it really hard to concentrate on work with a young family around. I was never giving either my work or my family my full attention and ended up working crazy hours to compensate.

Aware of this, when we moved to Somerset in 2011 I was keen to find an office space I could work from. I was really fortunate to find space in a great co-working hub in Frome and the benefits have been considerable: I find am much more able to keep work and home life separate, I try to do a 9-6 most days and now very rarely work from home. I’ve also made some great friends and am much more sociable.

Looking back at my second tip, the amount I spend on rent is more than made up by the increase in productivity (and personal benefits) I get from working in such a space.

5: Network

My final tip is networking – for me this has been through twitter and going to conferences. I rarely attend local networking events – they no doubt work for some people but I have never got any work out of attending them.

On the other hand, in my first year of freelancing I attended a lot of conferences. This ate massively into my profits but it reaped its dividends from the amount of experience I got – socially, educationally and professionally – and the number of people I met. In the last year probably 70-80% of my freelance work has been through contacts and referrals made at conferences. And this all came from going to places and talking to people.

So what tips/advice would you give to those starting out freelancing? What mistakes have you made?

1993 was a coming of age year for me. It was a year of parties and experimentation; it was a year I put my studies on the back burner to focus on friendships and self-discovery. Like all seventeen year olds I can look back at being a bit of an asshole during this year – especially to my parents – but with hindsight this year probably came to define me more than any that came before and after. I learnt a lot about being myself and sticking to what you believe in.

1993 was also a great year for music. Truly great.
Grunge and alternative Hip Hop were in full swing, Acid Jazz was taking off and the early ripples of Britpop being felt through acts like Suede, Radiohead and PJ Harvey.

1993 saw me attend my first music festival, the Phoenix festival with a bunch of young misfits from Leamington. And what a line up – Faith no More, Sonic Youth, the Black Crowes, The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy, Living Colour. The list goes on …

In honour of this great year I have spent the last week or so casually compiling some of my favourite tracks from 1993 into a Spotify playlist. There are some notable omissions – notable tracks from Madder Rose Bring it Down and the Juliana Hatfield Three’s Become what you are – but if you are too young to remember then hopefully this will give you a flavour for what you missed. And if you’re not then maybe bring back some pleasant memories!

In the last five years Textpattern has been a loyal companion, hosting my sporadic blog posts and performing admirably on the few occasions where I’ve had traffic spikes. However lately we’ve grown apart. I used to use Textpattern a lot but increasingly found it needed considerable hacking to do anything more than serve simple content.

Increasingly I’ve felt the need to try something new for the blog.
I now mostly work with ExpressionEngine for content management but this would be overkill for my personal site. I’ve been interested in the potential offered by file-based CMSs – especially for version control – and have seen Bastiaan’s excellent Kirby blossom since it was released into the wild in 2009. However work took over and I put migrating to a new system on the back-burner.

Then last year my interest was piqued when I saw that Jack McDade had started his own, file-based CMS called Statamic. I’ve been a big fan of Jack’s work on the ExpressionEngine Structure add-on so thought I would give Statamic a go. The main issue I had was getting all the content over from the current Textpattern CMS into a format that Statamic would like.

So, inspired by a tweet by Andrew Travers I dusted off my PHP-fu and set about building a wee tool to do the work for me. What I need is folk to test it – so up on Github is the codebase to export a set of files from Textpattern suitable for use in Statamic. Download it, fork it, refine it but please let me know how you get on.

Repository is at https://github.com/cole007/textpattern-statamic

I teach on an MA in web design at the University of Greenwich.
It is my job to enthuse postgraduate students about working on the web, to convey the good and exciting work that is done in this young and dynamic industry. When I moved to the web in 2006 I moved from an academic career where information was closely guarded to one where people openly shared their work and methods. It was a refreshing and exciting change of scenery and I was humbled by the time many peers and ‘old hands’ gave me when I was starting out.

Today I read some truly sad and brave blog posts that made me sad for what this industry seems to have lost with time. Sarah and Relly have both spoken up about their experiences of the horrific sexism and flagrant disrespect that can pervade our craft. There is a massive side to this debate that I don’t feel qualified to comment on, which is sexism and attitudes to women within our industry. All I can do is call out when I see it and speak up to say that I believe sexism is unacceptable in any form.

However there is another side to this debate which is a lack of respect for others. It seems with the instantaneous, fleeting – and sometimes seemingly anonymous – nature of our channels of communication people have lost some of the fundamental basics of human interaction.

So, to recap here are some basic rules/reminders:

1. If you speak in a derogatory way about another person in a public channel then you are a dick. It doesn’t matter if you name them or not – if it is in the public domain and it isn’t constructive then it is malicious.
2. If somebody says something that offends you then take them to task about it, if somebody says something you disagree with then challenge them directly but never make it personal.
3. Respect your elders – in the web meritocracy it is easy to become successful very fast but always show respect to those that paved the way for you to do what you do.
4. Twitter is never the right medium for informed, intelligent debate. The subtleties lost in brevity are too great to be constructive.

Regardless of sex, gender or ability, it disgusts me that any one individual (or individuals) feels they have the right to speak publicly – and personally – about another person. The old rules apply: if you wouldn’t say something to somebody’s face don’t say it publicly.

It is not a panacea and it is not going to be suitable for everyone, especially rich media sites, data-heavy sites and complex web applications. However it can be a very compelling and cost-effective way of reaching a range of users on a range of devices.

But #RWD is more than just a technique – it is a design methodology that requires a dramatic rethink of the way we design for the web. It is a bottom up approach which makes it extremely hard to apply to existing, desktop-based designs. However it is not impossible.

I was recently charged with retro-fitting responsiveness to a desktop-based, fixed width design. The design was 960px wide and the client wanted the full width site design to be available at 768px – the portrait width of the iPad and other tablet based devices – but a responsive layout at lower viewports.

The issue we had was defining how the design should behave based on the meta viewport element – at 768 pixels and above we wanted the full page design to kick in (filling the viewport) whilst at lower resolutions we wanted the width=device-width to kick in with a responsive layout.

Loading the meta viewport at all resolutions was causing the desktop design to be truncated at smaller resolutions whilst removing it altogether caused issues with the ‘mobile’ design kicking in.

The solution? A small javascript hack. We detect the device width on page load and insert the meta viewport element if this is lower than 768 pixels. Yes, I know this isn’t responsive web design but for those in a similar situation this may provide a way to help pave the way for a better ‘mobile’ experience at smaller viewports without having to squeeze your desktop designs into considerably smaller viewports:

if(window.outerWidth < 768) {
	var ele = document.createElement("meta");
	ele.name = "viewport";
	ele.content = "width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0";
	document.head.appendChild(ele);
}

Responsive it ain’t but hopefully a good compromise if you are stuck with a fixed width design but need/want to introduce responsiveness for smaller devices. Your thoughts and suggestions much appreciated.

To satisfy it’s remit and to become more sustainable the Works is looking to extend the premises to create a dedicated workshop space, an archive storage and access space for public research as well as offer training in the necessary skills of this dying art.

To quote:

“This building will give us the space to train, enthuse and inspire the next generation of letterpress printers ensuring that Robert Smail’s Printing Works remains working for future generations.”

Robert Smail’s is a great day out and a wonderful, unique resource.
The proposals are at planning stage and Robert Smail’s are seeking comments of support with the Scottish Borders Council by the 31st of January. To do so visit this link http://eplanning.scotborders.gov.uk/online-applications/ and enter the planning reference number 13/00006/FUL. You can then offer your thoughts by creating an account and adding to the comments of support there.

There were some great and inspiring contributions last year and looking at the list of other contributors for 2013 is truly humbling.

My first contribution was published yesterday – I’d love to thank Alex for this opportunity to put my thoughts out there and look forward to offering more over the coming year.

“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it” Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

2012 was a pretty busy year and flew past at alarming speed. It was our first full year in Frome, having moved down from Scotland in October 2011, and marked the forging of new friendships, new opportunities and new experiences.

Our two children are growing up fast and whilst not without their troubles are becoming two kind, caring and inquisitive young individuals. We moved house late in 2012 and am looking forward to the chance to make this house our home over the coming year.

Work

2012 marked my first full year of freelancing. It has been an extremely busy year and whilst I have had the good fortune to be busy with work throughout the year, I have found it hard to be more defined in the work I do. In the past year I have done UX work, front-end development, web app and website design, CMS builds and discovered my limits at JavaScript. It has been great to have a range of skills to fall back on but I do increasingly feel that as a jack of all trades I cannot excel at any one thing.

Saying that I have been able to massively refine my work processes and methodology over the last year. I have started to use Sass to speed up my work with CSS, and Git to version my work and ease working in collaboration with others. I’ve also worked much more with Responsive Web Design, something that had only really aspired to in late 2011.

Giving back

2012 saw my first experiences of speaking at web events beyond local events in Edinburgh. I volunteered to give a talk on progressive enhancement at the fantastic Port 80 conference in May, and then I was delighted to be invited to give a twenty minute brain dump at #MKGN in September. The latter brought about a chance encounter with the lovely Prisca, striking up a conversation that led to an invitation to become a visiting lecturer on the MA in Web Design at the University of Greenwich.
Something these experiences together have taught me is that everyone has something to give in our industry, and that there are always folk who can learn from our experiences and expertise.

In 2011 I probably attended too many conferences. The networking benefits was great but this took a toll through costs and time spent away from family. So I vowed early in 2012 to cut back to just a few events, focussing on the New Adventures and Build conferences – without doubt the best events I had attended in 2011. However I was also extremely lucky to be selected to attend the Brooklyn Beta conference in October. I took this as an opportunity to have a long overdue and deserved holiday with my wife, Peta, and spent a week staying with family and enjoying the dizzying delights of Manhattan and Brooklyn.

2012 also saw me revisit the Survey on Freelance rates I carried out in 2011. The number of responses was improved and I was able to capture a more varied picture on how we as a discipline work and charge. Hopefully the resource and resulting tools will continue to be of use to freelancers across the UK.

Sadly late 2012 saw a decline in my health and confidence and the surfacing of some personal demons. I need to spend more time and energy early in 2013 on tackling these and devoting more time to my friendships, family, health and activities away from the glare of pixels.

Looking forward

So what lies ahead for 2013? If I could sum up my single take away from 2012 it was trying to give something back to our industry and I am hoping to do this even more in 2013. I am looking forward to more teaching and was extremely humbled to have been invited to contribute to the Pastry Box project over the next twelve months.

I want to try and focus my work a bit more – I have worked on a dizzying range of projects over the last twelve months but this has not been without its problems. I feel that I am often reinventing my processes and practices, and jumping between different skillsets can be exhausting and time consuming.

If anything I would really like to try and cement working in collaboration/partnership with other folk over the coming year. I’ve loved the freedom, flexibility and control of working freelance but I’m a sociable animal and have not enjoyed working in isolation on projects for much of the year.

Oh, and I need to take a holiday. It is almost seven years since we had our first child, Gethin and we have never had a family holiday (beyond the occasional weekend away). I have so many happy memories of my childhood from family holidays and travels abroad so I hope that I can forge some time to go away together.

So, it is already shaping up to be a busy and rewarding year. See you in twelve months to see how it all pans out!

The premise of the tool is simple, input your monthly working from home expenditure and then outline the monthly use of your home – the result should be the amount you can claim back as a working from home allowance.

The tool is up at a new URL: http://relief.fraq.info and I welcome any feedback

Please note the disclaimer: this tool is not offered as a substitute for professional advice. If you have any queries you should speak with a professional accountant and I cannot accept liability for any damages incurred through the use of this tool.

As some of you might know, before I moved to the web in 2006 I was an archaeologist. During my time in archaeology (from 1995-2006) I was a regular conference goer – usually attending two or three a year but the highlight of my calendar was always an annual conference called TAG: the Theoretical Archaeology Group.

TAG always took place just before Christmas and was hosted at a different university each year with two simple premises: to think about the archaeological record in new and different ways; and to be open to contributions from all.

TAG had a number of features that differentiated it from other archaeology conferences and whilst it did not have a manifesto per se this could perhaps be summarised as follows:

1. Low cost, accessible to all (especially students)
2. No fixed location: hosted at a different university each year
3. Multi-day, usually 2½ days
4. Multi-track, usually 4-6 sessions at any time
5. Anyone can propose a session
6. Anyone can propose a talk

The format and concept is somewhat similar to ‘unconferences’ like as Barcamp but is ultimately more structured in that the sessions and talks for TAG are confirmed in advance.

I went to my first TAG in 1996 and was immediately excited to see such a diverse, interesting and challenging range of talks. Two years later – in 1998 – I gave my first talk and organised my first session, and for most of the subsequent years I attended I ended up contributing one or sometimes two talks. It was a great opportunity as a young student to get experience of public speaking and throwing your ideas into a crowded throng of like-minded individuals.

The thing that always impressed me about TAG was that it felt like it was a conference organised from the ground up, primarily by students and for students but featuring a potent and healthy mix of established academics, professional archaeologists and those – like me – just starting out.

The web community

I’m not criticising anything that has gone before and having helped out (in some capacity, at least) in the delivery of two conferences in Edinburgh I have massive respect for those that that have the courage and passion to organise events for our community.

However, I feel amidst the conversations that we have been having recently about web design conferences that we are crying out for something similar to TAG; straddled between the small, local meet-ups that occur across the UK (such as the phenomenally successfully Milton Keynes and Oxford Geek Nights) and the larger, more commercial conferences (such as Build and dConstruct).

There were 442 responses in total, up on responses from last year although 6 responses were rejected as it either was not possible to differentiate between hourly or day rate, or the rate was left blank.

Methodology

After last year’s survey I added some new questions to help discover more information on how freelance web folk work, as well as gender to see if there were any biases present. I also tried to tighten the responses as much as possible to use drop-down options rather than free text which would help with comparisons between different groups of data.

Despite asking for folk to submit their day-rate there were lots of folk who added their hourly rate so as a rule I multiplied anything that was explicitly hour-rate by 7.5. Where a range was specified the average was used (eg a rate of £200-400 was treated as £300).

As previously, I used Median to calculate averages as this would limit the impact of extreme outliers (looking at you Andy Clarke!).

I have summarised below the results for day-rates broken down by Age, Skill-set, Years Experience, Location and Gender – outlining total number of responses, minimum, maximum and average (median) as well as showing comparison (where available) with last years response.

Results

Day-rate by Age

Day-rate by Skillset

Day-rate by Years Experience

Day-rate by Location

Day-rate by Gender

Demographics and Work practices

How old are you?

What is your gender?

Do you normally require a deposit before starting work on a project?

Do you normally use a contract?

What is the average value of projects you work on?

Do you primarily work …

Findings

Perhaps unsurprisingly given the economic downturn is that generally day rates have fallen since last year’s survey, with some areas experiencing a rise (for example, the North West, Yorkshire, East of England and Scotland). As you would expect London commands the highest rates, whilst the North East, South West and Wales command the lowers rates.

There isn’t a significant difference between skill-set although back-end development tends to command the highest rates, and as one might expect rates generally increase with both age and years of experience. For gender, males tend to command a higher salary than women.

In terms of demographics there was a significant bias towards men (93% of respondents) but a pretty even spread across ages, the majority falling between 25-34.

For work practices it was quite surprising how few participants work without a deposit and without a contract for work. Also the majority of respondents worked on projects less than £3000, with 48% on projects less than £2000.

Tool

Using the data I have rebuilt the FRAQ tool I cobbled together last year to reflect these updated rates and criteria. This can be seen at http://fraq.info. The source data for the survey has been posted up on Github at https://gist.github.com/4214846 under a Creative Commons Attribution license. You are free to use this data for whatever purposes you see fit as long as you provide attribution to this article.

However there is a part of my brain that paints a different picture. The part of me that hates everything I do, that can’t see how good things are, that gets stuck in self-destructive patterns of behaviour to avoid work; divergence to avoid the ultimate and inevitable dissatisfaction with the things that I am creating.

I have always been a polymath – a person who can readily apply their hand to many different things – a jack-of-all-trades.
But I am slowly realising that this is not an ability; rather it is the bi-product of a disability. It is the outcome of a sub-conscious that never wants to excel at something because to excel brings the risk of being exposed; both to criticism from others and from myself.

This is perhaps why I spread my skills so widely in what I do: design, UX, front-end development, CMS-development. To have a broad range of skills and experiences is a good thing, surely. But it also means that I play it safe – I shy away from pushing myself in any single direction, dabbling in shallow waters.

I hate the part of me that hates what I do – the self-critic. And the part of me that avoids work; to avoid having to hate what I do – the self-pity.

Things are good. But I can’t see it.

The net result (apart from the excessive borrowing of fictional money from banks) has been a continual rise in house prices – a boon to our parents’ generation – and increasingly poor conditions for those (like me) who choose to rent.

Rant aside I thought it would be interesting to see how (or if) house prices have changed compared to average household income over my lifetime, along with two other main costs of living: the average cost of petrol and the average household energy costs.

After some brief googling I managed to find economic data for the UK from 1977 to 2010 (sources below) and have summarised the results in a spreadsheet hosted on Google Drive

I’ve tried to summarise the results in two sets of graphs below: a comparison of household income, average house price and average fuel prices, and a comparison of house price and average fuel prices as a proportion of annual household income. For each have offered a linear view to show absolute comparisons, and a logarithmic view to show relative comparisons.

Whilst rising steadily, I was surprised that energy prices (house and road fuel) have been relatively constant in relation to household income – if anything they have actually fallen.

However house prices themselves have rocketed and exponentially so. The average house price has risen a massive 1843% over the last 35 years. Now over this period we have also seen a significant rise in household income – average household income in 2010 is almost 9x what it was in 1977 – but no where near enough to cover rising house costs.
In 1977 the average house price was 381% of average household income – however by 2010 this had risen to 783% – the affordability of housing has more than halved!

I’m not offering any conclusions or interpretation here (nor judgement) rather a set of images that starkly show how dependent we have become on the banks – through borrowing – to fuel our need to own property and how this entrenched this might be in our current economic plight.

Average household income, house price and fuel prices over time (logarithmic scale)

Average household income, house price and fuel prices over time (linear scale)

Average house price and fuel prices as a proportion of household income over time (logarithmic scale)

Average house price and fuel prices as a proportion of household income over time (linear scale)

Sources:

Average house prices: Table 502: House prices from 1930, annual house price inflation, United Kingdom, from 1970 (xls, 36Kb)
Road and domestic fuel prices: Quarterly energy prices table 2.6.2: Average expenditure each week on fuel per consuming household in the UK (xls, 68Kb)
Average household income: TABLE 14: Average incomes, taxes and benefits by decile groups of ALL households (xls, 1.4Mb)

Since leaving school in 1994 I have always wanted to teach in some capacity – my first degree was originally in Archaeology and Education with an aim to becoming a primary school teacher (before falling in love with prehistory and focusing instead on a single honours in Archaeology).

Whilst I was studying for my doctorate I really appreciated the opportunity to teach and take seminars with undergraduate students and when I moved to Scotland I was delighted to be offered a teaching position at Newcastle University (which I unfortunately had to turn down).

In 2006 when I made the full-time switch from archaeology to web design I felt the opportunity to teach would be behind me but was really pleased when the chance came to move to a web design agency that did teaching and workshops, although sadly this was short-lived.

I was excited then when, on the back of a talk I gave at Milton Keynes Geek Night last month, Prisca got in touch to see if I would be interested in helping out on their Masters course as a visiting tutor on the practical, Web Thesis Project.

It’s a long day (7 hour round commute with 6 hours teaching) but I thoroughly enjoyed the first day last week and I am really looking forward to helping out on the course over the coming year!

This time last week I was in Brooklyn enjoying the fantastic Brooklyn Beta conference. To say it was a conference though would frankly be insulting; this was a gathering, a coming together of minds and of like-minded folk who all care passionately about the work they create on the world wide web.

I have been to a number of web events in the past and I have to say Brooklyn Beta was quite unlike any of them. So I thought it would be useful to look at why this event was so different to any others and what I got from being one of the privileged few who were able to attend.

The whole is greater than the parts (but the parts still matter)

“The future of the internet is to create small valuable networks.” – @jayparkinson #brooklynbeta

— Tina Roth Eisenberg (@swissmiss) October 11, 2012

I would find it hard to put my finger on a stand-out moment at Brooklyn Beta or pinpoint various experiences because the totality of the event was what made it: the talks; the live musical interludes the food (included in the event fee) and an inexhaustible coffee supply; the water bottles, buttons and tattlys the bunting and hand-made signs. This was a labour of love from the organisers that was compiled along a singular theme: make something you love.

Good things take time

“What piece of software was ever better because of a deadline?” Favor goals over deadlines #brooklynbeta #github

— Erick Schonfeld (@erickschonfeld) October 10, 2012

Most web events I have attended in the past, with a couple of exceptions, are one or two days. The result can be a disjointed affair and very rarely are conferences aligned along a single, coherent theme. The Build and New Adventures conferences in recent years have challenged this with expertly curated talks and a fringe of supporting events that reinforce the central themes of each. However spreading talks across three days – and without a schedule – really changed the dynamic of the event; it led to a conversational rhythm over the course of the three days involving both speakers and attendees.

Be honest

“Being a maker involves doing something that may not work. Otherwise you’re just an assembler” – Seth Godin #brooklynbeta (via @ugmonk)

— Tina Roth Eisenberg (@swissmiss) October 10, 2012

What suprised me at Brooklyn Beta was how open and reflective the talks throughout the three days were. In the UK talks tend to be quite theoretical or abstract, sometimes verging on the polemic. I think in the UK we find it quite hard being honest about our failures (and also our successes) and standing up in front of others to speak personally about our experiences.

However the one strand that unitied almost all of the talks at Brooklyn Beta was how introspective they each were. I think the informal and intimate setting really helped here but there is no taking away from how honest, entertaining and transparent each of the speakers were.

Practice what you preach

“Everyone should write a blog because it makes it harder to be a hypocrite. You have to decide what you believe.” Seth Godin #BrooklynBeta

— Maria Popova (@brainpicker) October 10, 2012

The theme of Brooklyn Beta was ‘make something you love’ – a call to arms that pleaded for us all to go out there and make things we are passionate about, something that mattered, something we could be proud of. There was perhaps no greater testimony to this call to action than the event itself – it was a labour of love for all those involved in its delivery

Coda

So what did I get from Brooklyn Beta, apart from meeting some great people in an amazing city?

There are four, simple things I want to take from my experiences in Brooklyn and carry forth into my work. Four things that I have probably taken for granted in recent years:

• Be honest
• Embrace failure
• Do what you love
• Be an agent for change

I’m not sure when this started but it has got worse with time.
I find myself increasingly self-conscious of what I say: what will people think of what I say? what if I interrupt or talk over people? what if I say something inappropriate?

Bizarrely public speaking doesn’t frighten me at all. I’m in control, the conversation is one way. I can prepare. But interpersonal correspondence terrifies me. I think I am going to freeze, thoughts and words won’t come. So I avoid it. And hope for the best.

Am not sure how to solve this. Hopefully writing about it will help me start to think about it and address it. And just maybe some of you experience the same and want to share your experiences too.

Sorry, the letterpress has now been sold

Sadly am reluctantly selling my old Adana letterpress as it is just not getting the time, love and use it deserves.

I’ve had this for a couple of years and really enjoyed using it but have just not had the time to make the most of it and with a house move imminent we could really do with the space.

If anybody is interested am looking for £250 (buyer to collect from Frome in Somerset) – the set includes the following:

• Adana HS 1 hand-operated letterpress, chase (approximately 5×3” chase)
• two new rollers (barely used)
• range of type (10-12 sets) of various weights and sizes
• miscellaneous type, blocks and spacers
• assorted accessories, including four quoins and a compositing stick
• two large letter trays (one Caslon)

Anyone interested please drop me an email at cole@tinyv.com or call 07941248326

I was – as always – not very confident about getting what was in my head out into a digestible format. Here were ideas that had been mulling about in the back of my mind since I made the jump from archaeology to web design back in 2006. However I had an enjoyable time and from those folk who I spoke with afterwards the feedback was generally positive.

In my talk I tried to bring together some of the work in my archaeology research on the function of art, design and craftsmanship, how this applies to my work as a designer and front-end developer, and how this can shape the processes we use in the rapidly changing landscape of web design today.

It was a great night in all with a refreshing format: two headline talks, three shorter, five-minute slots and some shorter 1 minute plugs. I really enjoyed all the talks, especially a first from Rachel Shillcock on knowing your strengths, and a reassuring call to arms from Ben Bodien on stepping outside of your comfort zone.

Many thanks to Richard and David for the invite and for organising the event. Hopefully some folk got something from my talk and for those that are interested the slides from the talk are below. The icons used for the slides are taken from the fantastic Symbolicons Line set and the font used was Bariol

Lots of folk kept asking me whether these would be available as prints but I never seemed to have the time and resources to carry this out. Last November, after selling our house, we had some spare money so I thought I would have a go at investing making some prints of these designs to sell. After getting costs from two suppliers I stumped up the money to have prints made into two designs.

I was pleased that initially some folks bought the prints but after an initial run of sales purchases dropped off quite quickly and despite sporadic sales interest has never really taken off.

So what went wrong? Here are my thoughts which hope might be of interest and value if you are thinking of selling prints, particularly as a side project.

Timing

The first problem is that it took far too long for me to get round to selling prints. For 2 years folks were asking me to create prints of my designs and by the time I got round to it the market was flooded with Keep Calm parodies, some copying my own designs. This cheapened the value of the designs as well as weakened their exposure. Response from some after launching the prints was ‘not more Keep Calm prints’ which showed that the market was pretty saturated.

Also, once I decided to sell prints it took too long to get these to market – screen-printing is a slow process and due to delays in production and lost deliveries (one Fedex delivery ended up in Germany) I missed the bulk of the Christmas audience I had originally aimed to have the prints ready for.

Cost

Screenprinting is expensive. The labour cost in production as well as costs for preparing screens and creating custom colours all adds up. I had considered digital prints but felt that with lots of Keep Calm prints already on the market – most cheaply produced – a quality, hand-produced screenprint would be a USP. However this meant that the initial cost of manufacture and therefore sale was going to be considerably greater that competing, digital prints.

Also worth considering with screenprints is that the cost of production is considerably increased with multiple colours.
The cost of production for the 3-colour A2 Keep Calm and Put the Kettle On print was around £15. That is a massive cost to draw any profit from. Similarly with t-shirts, the material cost of the tee is a big part of your costs. Unless you are mass producing you will not profit .

Finally , I didn’t consider reseller markup. Shortly after producing my prints a local shop was interested in selling the prints but I couldn’t compete directly with them by selling at a cheaper price online. I therefore had to introduce a markup that meant both the shop and myself could profit. This drove the price up too high. These were quality prints and whilst I was selling them at a cost marginally greater than some digital prints this was still too high for many people, particularly in the current economic climate.

Ambition

I am not ashamed to say I got greedy. I looked at how much it would cost to produce prints of two designs across two sizes and worked out what my likely profit would be. I figured that spreading my sales across a range of items rather than focus on one or two would be profitable but I was almost certainly wrong.
Which leads me to …

Marketing

I did very little research going into this project. I didn’t spend enough time looking at what comparable products were available and at what costs – I just asked some people and looked at some Etsy shops and other print sales to get a broad idea of what I should sell and at what price. I should have researched more extensively what designs people wanted and what they would be prepared to pay.

Related to this point was a lack of time spent promoting the products I was selling – I relied heavily on my personal social media contacts to promote prints and asked friends to do likewise (sorry) but never really spent/made/found much time for promoting the products. I set up an Etsy shop to accompany the Big Cartel site I was using to sell prints but spending no time promoting this resulted in zero sales.

What I would do differently

If I were to look at selling prints I would definitely look at selling digital prints in the first instance, at least to gauge interest in a design. The cost of production for screenprinted products was simply too great to be profitable without investing heavily (time or money) in promoting them.

If I was to screen print products again I would err towards producing larger quantities of a single design, and likely single colour to keep the unit cost down.

Finally I would make more time to promote what I was doing.
You cannot rely on personal marketing and the goodwill of friends to drive sales.

Regrets?

I don’t regret making the prints at all. I can put it down to a failed experiment (admittedly a pretty expensive one) but I know if I hadn’t have done it I would always have regretted it. I know that I made mistakes and hopefully armed with some of my experiences above, if you are thinking of branching into selling prints online you can avoid making some of these yourself!

Please note Mrs Henley wants her spare room back so in a bid to get rid of the remaining prints (and try to cover my costs) am offering all my prints at 25% off for the foreseeable future.

What a bloody saga – one week later a monitor I ordered from Amazon on next-day delivery has finally turned up but just wanted to flag up a terrible service from CityLink who were in charge of delivering the items.

Sequence of events as follows:

Thursday, 19th July

9.46 – Order shiny new Dell monitor from Amazon using Amazon Prime for next-day delivery. Shipped from Wednesbury using CityLink.

Friday, 20th July

Order doesn’t arrive. Disappointed. Tracking history not updated. Oh well.

Monday, 23rd July

Order doesn’t arrive. Tracking history updated and apparently driver failed to find delivery address. Twice. Ring CityLink customer services. No answer.

Tuesday, 24th July

Ring customer services – item not out for delivery. Offered assurances that would be delivered on Wednesday. Ho hum.

Wednesday, 25th July

Order doesn’t arrive. Tracking history not updated. Was told would be called back to clarify situation. Wasn’t. Amazon offer £4 gift certificate as recompense for inconvenience. Yay!

Thursday, 26th July

Call customer services. Item not out for delivery. Cannot deliver until Friday as no vans available. Assured would be sent first thing and arrive by 12pm Friday. Le sigh …

Friday, 27th July

10.30 – Delivery van driver calls. Give him directions as he can’t find the place. Van arrives! Go out to see driver throwing parcels from back of van to find order. Pile of battered-looking parcels on the floor. I return to office – driver drives off and calls to say he doesn’t have item.

11.47 – Item arrives! Delivered to wrong office, the box battered and open.

All in all a terrible service from City Link and just glad that the Dell Monitor I ordered was so well packaged. Hoping to highlight a dramatic shortfall in customer care that falls woefully short and reflects badly on the Amazon Prime service.

So what are your CityLink woes? Add your experiences in the comments below.

So if you fancy learning a bit about the origins of Progressive Enhancement and their relevance today as our websites become richer and the contexts of consumption more varied then do have a listen and let me know what you think (interested in feedback on both content and execution)!

Audio

Slides

Further Reading

So began 22 years of disappointment and underachievement – immense players like Hierro, Mendieta, Raúl, Luis Enrique, Morientes, Pep Guardiola, Etxeberria and Sergi always threatened greatness but seemed to fluff it at the major tournaments (some dodgy refereeing decisions aside) with some particular lowlights losing to the hosts Portugal in Euro 2004 to miss the knock-out stage, Stuart Pearce’s penalty in Euro 1996 after two disallowed goals and a frustrating 0-0 draw with Paraguay in 1998 (meaning missing the last 16 despite spanking Bulgaria 6-1 in the last group game).

Then 2008 happened. The greatness that La Roja had always threatened materialised with sublime, skilled football and the mastery and maturity of players throughout the squad like Casillas, Ramos, Puyol, Xabi, Iniesta and Villa. Last week saw Spain win its third major tournament in a row. Spain have now not conceded a single goal in knockout football since 2006 and the 4-0 thrashing of Italy in the final last Sunday showed that this record is not just built on a miserly defence but on exquisite attacking talent.

So thank you Spain. Thanks for the last three years. It has been well worth the wait and I feel so very proud to call myself a fan!

A wee tweet later and got some great responses so thought should summarise the responses for all (in order of popularity):

Beanstalk

Recommendations: 13
At a glance: SVN, Git support. Automated FTP and SSH deployment
Starting cost: 3GB Storage, 10 Repositories, 5 users, 3 deployment servers $15/month, 6GB Storage, 25 Repositories, 20 users, 5 deployment servers $25/month

Bitbucket

Recommendations: 7
At a glance: Unlimited public & private repositories, Unlimited disk space, Unlimited public collaborators
Starting cost: 5 (private) users FREE, 10 (private) users $10/month

Codebase

Recommendations: 6
At a glance: Git and SVN support with built-in project management and time-tracking
Starting cost: 3 Projects, 500MB storage, unlimited repositories £5/month, 15 Projects, 2GB storage, unlimited repositories £13/month

Github

Recommendations: 4
At a glance: The Granddaddy of Git with unlimited users and unlimited storage
Starting cost: 5 private repositories $7/month, 10 private repositories $12/month

Also mentioned Springloops, Deploy and Codesion

As a bearded, bespectacled chap this makes a perfect avatar I shall be stealing appropriating for use on twitter and the like

So what better way to prepare for the tournament than a knock-out competition of the best (and worst kits) of the tournament, as rounded up the clever chaps at Who Ate All the Pies.

Group A

Winner: Czech Republic
Runner Up: Greece
Poland
Russia

Group B

Winner: Germany
Runner Up: Holland
Portugal
Denmark

Group C

Winner: Croatia
Runner Up: Spain
Italy
Ireland

Group D (Group of Death)

Winner: France
Runner Up: Sweden
England
Ukraine

Quarter Finals

Czech Republic vs Holland
Croatia vs Sweden (Sweden edge it on Away kit)
Germany vs Greece
France vs Spain

Semi Finals

Czech Republic vs Sweden
Germany vs France

Final

France vs Sweden

Winner: France

So France edge it with their nice, modern twist on a classic. These tops exude French style and whilst neither are quite as lovely as last year’s away shirt they are both befitting winners.

Runner-up: Sweden

I love the retro styling of both Swedish home and away shirts, the latter particularly with a shameless nod back to the seventies.

Notable mention: Germany

Germany deserve third-place simply for the styling of their Away shirt, echoing the kit of the West German side single-handedly deprived of the 1986 World Cup by Diego Maradonna. Classic.

Notable mention: England

Am a big fan of the retro, two-tone styling of the England shirt. They were always going to struggle in a tough group featuring finalists France and Sweden but a special mention for trying something different.

Wooden Spoon: Ireland

No comment

There are two ways to enter this competition:

via Twitter

Tweet a link to our Keep Calm print using the following web address somewhere in your tweet (using this URL is important as this helps us see who has entered):

http://goo.gl/frI0U

via Facebook

To enter on Facebook, Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/ArtsFacerePrints

Some small print …

• Deadline for entries is 0:01 on Wednesday 6th June (British Summer Time)
• There will be two winners, one each from Twitter and Facebook (you can enter both)
• Winners will be chosen by random using the randomizer tool at random.org
• Apologies but due to postage costs this competition is only available to UK entrants

Good luck!

Hopefully it went well but I just want to extend a massive warm thanks to Joel Hughes for organising the event in such a short period of time (4 months from conception to execution!) and for his hospitality in sunny Wales.

When I get round to flicking the switch slides from my talk will be below or available to view on Speakerdeck

I have also tried to compile a reading list of material referenced in the talk on readlists.

The font used in the slides is the lovely, versatile Edmondsans from the Lost Type Co-op and the icons used throughout are the bargainous, lush Geomicons Wired

However ideally we should be testing on a range of devices and it is great to see that clearleft now have a test lab which they are letting other developers access.

With this in mind, based in the Old Church School co-working space in Frome and working alongside other web designers on a daily basis I thought it would be a good idea to set up a mobile testing suite that other designers and developers can use to test their website designs on.

So, if you are based in/around Frome and have any old mobile phones that you no longer use then drop me an email or send me a reply on twitter

Specifically looking for smart phones (Android, older iPhone models or Blackberry) that are wifi-enabled and still have their charger.
You can get an idea of the range of phones that would be useful posted up on the Clearleft test lab

Whilst there is no substitute for testing on actual devices and we should exercise caution at designing for predetermined breakpoints, I’ve found having a quick way of checking a design at different viewports on my Mac has massively helped me working on responsive website designs.

I’m a big fan of Divvy (also available on Windows) which provides a quick tool for resizing windows to predefined sizes on a 6×9 grid. The nice thing with Divvy is that you can set keyboard shortcuts for pre-defined blocks.

When working on media queries in my CSS Divvy has become an invaluable part of my testing process. I’ve got a keyboard shortcut for Divvy mapped to ⌘⇧D and I’ve set a range of common jump points which on my 1440 × 900 13” Macbook Air works out as:

• i (iPhone-ish) = 1/6th (240px)
• 1 = 1/3rd (480px)
• L (Left half) = 1/2 (720px)
• 2 = 2/3rd (960px)
• F (Fullscreen) = Full (1440px)

This is pretty great for testing against a broad range of device widths – mobile, 480px and above, 768px and above and 1024px and above – and whilst nothing beats testing on actual devices I’ve personally found Divvy to be an invaluable way to rapidly test responsive designs at a range of viewport widths.

I’m a big fan of moo.com and have been buying their fantastic printed products for a number of years. I was delighted to see them release their heavier weight Luxe business cards recently so ordered some for my recently rebranded freelance identity (more on that soon).

As a hobbyist Letterpresser I thought it would be nice to get some custom plates made to emboss my Luxe cards so contacted the nice chaps at Centurion Graphics to have a couple of custom polymer plates made. These are hardy enough to both print and emboss paper and card – leaving a nice impression – but are also relatively bargainous at £17 for two plates.
(For a heavier impression Magnesium plates are also available at a slightly greater cost).

The outcome of the experiment was mixed – the problem with digital printing (as employed by Moo) is that there is a pretty generous bleed due to the variation in print alignment between cards in a run. I’d had this problem before when printing up some cards based on a design I submitted for Andy Clarke’s Hardboiled Web Design where border’s did not line up with the edge of the final card.

The thing with letterpress is that whilst there is some play for aligning the substrate you are printing onto (or embossing in this case) there is no way to do this consistently across a range of prints without realigning the plate each time.

So, the result isn’t perfect but I think this is a great way of enhancing the lovely Luxe business cards – and considerably cheaper than commissioning your own set of letterpress business cards (although there is no substitute for quality letterpress printing).

I fondly recall getting our 48k spectrum – the first computer in our home. The rubber keys, the smell of the power adapter over-heating from abuse, the sound of loading. Hours spent playing The Hobbit) and Knightlore, thumbing through Your Sinclair and hammering a Kempston Competition Pro

So, many happy returns to the ZX Spectrum and thank you – you made me want to make stuff with code

For the last eighteen years I have been a vocal and proud supporter of the Liberal Democrat party. In the two years since the General Election I have seen this pride slowly eroded by a series of policies that undermine the values of the party.

There is no doubt that the Liberal Democrats presence in our Coalition government have tempered, and made more digestible at least some of the draconian policies of the Conservative party but at what cost? Well, my vote for one.

Yesterday I wrote to each of the 57 Liberal Democrat MPs to explain why they no longer have my support. If you wish to do the same then you can download a CSV of the contact details for each Liberal Democrat MP and member of the House of Lords from Pastebin

A copy of the letter I sent is pasted below:

Dear Sir

The 9th June 1994. A memorable day. My first ever trip to a polling booth, my first cast vote and my first vote for the Liberal Democrats party. I was excited that I was now a participant rather than just an observer in a democracy. And at 18 years old I was excited that I now – at long last – had a voice.

In every election and poll since then I have cast my vote and always it has been for the Liberal Democrats. At each election I read the literature and defended my vote fiercely every time I was challenged that mine was a wasted vote. At the last election I spoke passionately and often to friends, colleagues and anyone who would listen that this was the time for a new and different voice in British politics.

Eighteen years on from my first vote and I feel that every one of those votes was wasted. I see a party that I have for my whole adult life believed in and I don’t recognise it. In the coalition government I see decisions being made and supported that go against the principles which had underpinned the party which I followed and vocally supported for my entire adult life.

Tuition fees, the NHS Bill, Welfare reform, Public Spending cuts (especially the Arts and Heritage) and lately the suggested ‘web surveillance plans‘ have shown a government that is interested more in protecting the interests of it’s members and the long-term economic prospects of a few than the long-term welfare of the people it is governing.

I am copying this letter to all of the 57 elected Liberal Democrat MPs to let you each know that I will never again be casting my vote for the Liberal Democrat party.
It is no longer a party that I can be proud of supporting.

Can you genuinely say the same? Is this the same Liberal Democrat party which you joined? Can you stand by the decisions that are being made in its name as part of our current Coalition government, decisions that may irreversibly change the face of Britain?

My great-grandfather – a socialist who fled Nazi Germany to avoid persecution for his beliefs – once said that people have their foibles but of foremost importance are the principles they stand by – this comes before parties, before personalities, before power and before policies.

Those in a position of power will always have to make unpopular decisions. They will always have to make compromises. However, I hope that one day – when you look back at your political career – you will be able to say with confidence and without regret that when you were in a position of power and trust that above all you stood by your principles.

With considerable regret and disappointment,

Dr Cole Henley

Happy Birthday son!

Since I could hold a pencil I was doodling, being creative, making things. My childhood was one filled with dead trees and the smell of pencil shavings, the margins of every school books replete with sketches of my imagined worlds.

As computers became a more prevalent part of my life a lot of my creativity moved to digital, using whatever tools I could lay my hands on; from Deluxe Paint 3 on the Amiga to doodlings in Inkscape and Gimp.

In 2009 I moved from my job as a self-taught web developer to become senior designer at a web agency in Edinburgh – a grand job title for what was essentially the lead designer in a small team of three – stepping into the (gigantic) footsteps of Roan Lavery as he went on to devote his time fully to the increasingly successful start-up, Freeagent.

Before then my job had been mostly building things (both back-end and front-end) and consultancy – making recommendations for the web strategy in the government agency I was working at. I actually did very little design as this was largely handled by the in-house print design team. I went into a designer role because I wanted to tap into the creativity I had always enjoyed but had hitherto just devoted to personal side-projects or pockets of freelance work.

It was a baptism of fire – truth be told one thing I had never done before was design to deadline and furthermore the expectation was to produce designs in a tool I had never used before: Photoshop. There was no time to learn a new tool on the job so I muddled along in the tools I could use – primarily Gimp and Inkscape – but also increasingly designing in the browser to speed up the process of getting design proposals into a CMS which had been a real bottleneck on delivering projects.

It worked to a certain extent but it was never a particularly quick process and under the spotlight of a boss that was panic booking work in to cover financial problems in the business it was not producing results fast enough. Furthermore I found myself constantly challenging and being disappointed with the work I was producing.

This perspective has continued into my freelance work and it dawned on me recently that I was slowly but surely falling out of love with being creative. Of the work I’ve done in the last year, the work that I’ve enjoyed least and that has made me the least money has been my design work. I have little or no confidence in the work I produce and constantly compare it to the (superior) work of my peers on twitter, dribbble and across our industry.

The thing is, I love web design. I love the excitement around new technologies to design and enrich user experiences. I love the medium, the conversations that surround what we do and the conferences where new ideas are discussed with old friends.

But I hate designing.

It has taken me three years to realise this and the impact this is making on my abilities to be happy in what I do and to make money.

With this in mind I have decided to stop designing for money. Instead I’m going to focus my freelance work solely on front-end development and ExpressionEngine work. I’m hoping this will give me the chance to work much more in partnership and collaboration with others and to focus my efforts on doing work that I enjoy and that is profitable.

But much more I’m also hoping that this will mean I can rediscover my passion for being creative. Because I love design.

But I hate designing.

However, automated reminders can seem a little impersonal and there are still some clients that are late paying.

For offending clients I’ve decided that a little extra squeeze is required so thought I might humanise these automatic reminders with the following images:

Will keep you posted on whether these are at all successful ;)

2012 marks the Women of the World festival and organisers are asking for who your inspiring woman is.

Mine is my grandmother, Sonia Anderson: she was born to a communist father in pre-war Germany who spoke up against the Nazis, Sonia was stranded in Paris whilst the remainder of her family fled with other German refugees to New York.

With no English she came to the UK with the Red Cross and went on to get an Oxford education before meeting my grandfather Don, raising 4 kids and spending 41 years as a loyal Labour counsellor in Harlow championing social causes, the arts and education.

She was a trustee of the Harlow Art’s Trust which was set up to promote the integration of sculpture and the arts within urban design (more information in this PDF). When she sadly died in 1998 a sculpture was dedicated to her memory

She never talked to me about her childhood or German roots but she was proudly political, a firm believer in social causes and devoutly opposed to any form or prejudice.

She taught me the importance of a broad education, reading and the arts, and to see past people’s foibles and stand by what you believe in.

I miss her daily.

So who is your inspiring woman?

This phrase has been in my mind since hearing Simon Collison’s closing talk at Build conference last year.

I’ve been meaning to create some kind of motivational wallpaper for my desktop based on this phrase ever since.

The picture is of one of the greatest memories I’ll never have – a photo of me on my grandfather Don’s lap on a boat trip in Norfolk. I must have been just nine months old when it was taken.

Don was probably the most influential person in shaping who I have become. He taught me the joy of reading, the need to question things, the fun of taking things apart and the importance of being yourself.

What a year – good times, bad times, long periods of brooding in isolation. So how would I summarise the last twelve months?

The highs

It has been hard to stay motivated and focused, and there have been long periods where I haven’t, but being able to take time off to spend time with my family at the drop of a hat has been invaluable.
Being my own boss – being in control and responsible for my working life – has been an absolute tonic.

Being self-employed gave us the freedom to sell our house and move to new climes when we upped to Somerset last October. Moving to Frome has been one of the best things we have done as a family and being freelance has given me the flexibility to work from anywhere.

The community has been a massive help in making those first tentative steps into working for myself. Twitter and the web design community at large have really helped me survive this part year – in getting me work during dry spells, in keeping me sane and in helping me solve the problems I have faced.

To anyone that has replied to a tweet, offered me work or just been there. Thank you.

The lows

The worst thing about being freelance for me has been the isolation. For the majority of the last year I worked from home which proved massively unproductive. It was also extremely destructive – the boundaries between work and home life became blurred to the point where I was finding it difficult to focus on either. When I was with my kids I was thinking about projects I was working on and vice versa.
An unhealthy pattern that has been easily solved moving into the great coworking space at the Old Church School

I’ve also had problems with cash flow more times than I’d like – it is all parts of the learning curve but have suffered some difficult spells when clients have been late paying or not had a proper payment plan in place to smoothen the quiet periods.

Lessons learnt

So what lessons have I learnt and what tips would I give to myself if starting out again?

1. Learn to say no. I’ve never yet regretted saying no to something
2. Get money up front. Cash flow is king
3. Get an office. Working in isolation is not healthy
4. Make your own work. Don’t wait for work to come to you
5. Don’t take too much on (and avoid smaller jobs)
6. Make time for your business. Whether it’s accounting, marketing, attending great conferences or local meet-ups it is important to devote time to managing your business

The year ahead

It’s been a great year – I’ve not made a great amount of money but I have learnt a lot about myself and where my strengths and weaknesses lie in web design.

Hopefully the coming twelve months will see me focus much more on work that I find enjoyable and profitable.

I love working for myself and I look forward to the chance to work more in conjunction with others and the opportunity to build some beautiful things.

What do I do?

In 2006, my first web job was building bespoke Content Management Systems in a government agency and executing Photoshop comps into HTML and CSS. My job title was Web Development Manager so you could say I was a web developer. But as a self-taught geek with my back-end knowledge limited to dirty PHP this never felt particulary comfortable (I got a D in GCSE Computing and object-oriented programming gives me a headache). I have always been happier in the client-side of the web so web developer just doesn’t fit.

My next job was as Web Design Manager for a small digital agency which involved designing websites and increasingly preparing these into front-end code. Due to workflow problems in the agency and the increasing demands of a boss who couldn’t say no to clients, I rapidly went straight into designing in HTML and CSS to speed up our process. You could say I was a web designer but to be honest (guilty secret time) I struggled executing designs in tools like Photoshop and Fireworks, I don’t have the best eye for colour and was utlimately always happiest in code.

In the last year I have been a true jack-of-all trades freelancer carrying out a range of jobs from visual design to interface design to usability consultancy to front-end development to CMS builds. So how now do I describe what do I do? I neither feel like a web designer or a web developer, and find these terms are limiting primarily because of what I can’t do, as much as by what I can. So I am stuck in this liminal space between two definitions, struggling to explain to people what I do within the terminology available.

Designer or Craftsman?

I’m trying to get into words some musings on the relationships between archaeology – a subject I studied for my doctorate – and web design – what I now do for a living. The two fields seem disparate but there are a number of connections that keep arising between my experiences of these two and it is something I have talked about before. One of these connections is the role of the craftsman.

I studied the anthropology of pottery manufacture and decoration. What I found interesting was that very rarely was pottery decoration executed to a preconcieved design. There was a visual grammar to their work – a ‘style’ – but the designs ultimately produced were invariably a response to the medium they were using. Potters were the first responsive designers.

I’ve been excited by recent discussion in web design about the role of craftsmanship. Recently, Simon Collison’s excellent talk at Build and Ben Bodien’s brilliant 24 ways article have encapsulated some of the frustrations I’ve been experiencing lately in describing what I do.

A craftsman for me rarely has a preconceived route – they have an object they want to arrive at, a set of tools, a set of raw materials and a vocabulary to execute their work but that execution is a process of discovery: a journey. They work with their hands rather than their eyes, they test, they push and respond. This is not to say that designers do not have similar voyages of discovery – but with design the product is the deliverable, with craftsmen it is the process.

I’m not a designer. I’m not a developer. I am a craftsman of code. I roll my sleeves up, I get a feel for the medium, I push against the constraints of new technologies, new devices and new processes. I respond.

Anyway, it seems our two-year old son had navigated to the On Demand menu and chose this film – obviously without appreciating that it would cost £6.49 – and then turned it off after ten minutes.

What surprsied me though when double checking our settings on the Virgin Media box was that by default, PG and U-rated On Demand content can be purchased without needing to enter a PIN code.

So in essence Virgin Media acknowledge that – by default – children should be protected from watching rated (ergo inappropriate) content but that – by default – they should not be protected from purchasing age-suitable content without the consent of an adult (who knows the PIN code for the set-top box).

So, if you are a Virgin Media customer (with children) please update your settings so that all On Demand content requires a PIN to purchase.

The one kind of job that I’d say I’ve found the hardest to deliver in the last year is offering a ‘package’ of work – that is a design and build for someone who wants a content-managed website. This was our bread and butter at the agency I previously worked for and something had previously enjoyed. However I’ve really found it hard to deliver this as a one-man team, at least in a way that is profitable.

So as a freelancer can package work be profitable? I’d be interested to hear how other freelancers make packages work for them?

Personally, in 2012 I really want to concentrate on doing more focussed work and working in colaboration with others more.
I’ve got some great projects lined up already that am really excited about. However, if you’re looking for someone to make great things with this year and in need of an interface designer, front-end developer or someone to whip ExpressionEngine into shape then do get in touch. I’d love to hear from you.

Update – to clarify, by ‘package’ I mean being the exclusive deliverer on a project requiring a range of different skills towards delivery. I do not mean offering set-priced products.

Are you a sole-trader in the UK?
Do you work from home?

Did you know there are a number of costs that you can claim against which can be used to offset your tax contributions?
Neither did I until I read this article on the Freeagent website regarding some of the costs you can claim back for working from home.

With this in mind I set to a handy wee calculator tool for helping folk work out their entitlement based on their home use, available at http://relief.fraq.info

It’s an early release so keen on feedback but hopefully will be of some use to others as they set to completing their self assesment tax returns.

Disclaimer this tool should not substitute professional advice from an accountant!

Here are some hastily-assembled thoughts on what I want to achieve in 2012:

Learn new things

2011 has seen me continually review my work process. I’ve now switched exclusively to building sites in HTML 5, created my first few sites using responsive web design and refined my approach to using CSS.

There are two things I really want to get my teeth into to improve my workflow in 2012: SASS to focus on writing leaner, more efficient CSS and embracing GIT as a more systematic way of versioning my work (than shoving templates into Dropbox). I will try to tackle GIT later in the year but plan to start 2012 flying with the handy guide, Pragmatic Guide to Sass.

More focussed work

Since going freelance earlier this year I’ve taken on a wide and varied range of work. Needs must and in the pursuit of daily bread I’ve done ExpressionEngine and Perch builds, front-end development, interface design and good old-fashioned website design.

It has been great to have had a steady stream of work but I have overloaded myself and doing a wide range of different work has regularly required jumping in and out of different skill sets.
I’ve also found that doing a lot of smaller jobs has invariably proven unprofitable, particularly when offering clients ‘a package’ of work.

In 2012 I want to focus on doing fewer larger jobs and carrying out more targetted design work, specifically interface design and front-end development. With back-end development and CMS-wrangling it has been great understanding how CMS’s work and being able to build complex sites has brought me some great jobs and experience in 2011. However it has not been work I’ve massively enjoyed and there has often been a steep learning curve with every new job. Foremost my passion and skills are in HTML, CSS and jQuery and that is where I want to focus my attentions in 2012.

Hopefully in 2012 I can look to focus on my strengths (and avoiding my weaknesses), particularly if I can team up with other freelancers to collaborate with on larger, more profitable projects.

Embrace GTD

To be honest I really struggle with email. I spend too much time sending, receiving and digesting emails and this takes up a disproportionate amount of my time. I have also spent 2011 wrestling with pretty much every To-Do list available, to little avail.

Managing my own time and projects has been something that I have honestly struggled with through 2011 and having started to read David Allen’s Getting Things Done I definitely want to focus more time in 2012 on a ruthless methodology for managing email and project work.

Conquer some Demons

Going solo in 2011 has been really rewarding but working long periods in isolation and taking on too much work has left me feeling out of control at times and some old demons have resurfaced that I need to tackle. Being online is great and with most project comunication via email and tools like Basecamp it has been far too easy to have very little face or voice time with a client.

The result has been little confidence in speaking with clients directly and I really need to work on this before I retreat into an electronic bubble altogether.

I also need to try and focus more on my own work rather than contantly comparing my work to others. As Colly said earlier this year ‘are you in your work?’

Take a holiday

Finally the one thing I want in 2012 above all else is to have a holiday with my family. We’ve not had a family holiday together since before Felix was born, and what else is it all for if not to enjoy time with those we love.

Freelancing

At the start of this year I was working for a small web agency in Edinburgh. I’d moved there from a government job in 2009 and it had been a really mixed experience. I’d learnt a lot but was growing unhappy with the lack of control I had in the work I was producing. Cash flow had obviously been tight in the company for a while but getting 4 days notice of redundancy in late February was completely out-of–the-blue.

Amazingly, through the support of people on twitter I was able to get up and running with freelance work almost straight away doing a mix of front-end development, CMS builds and design work.

I’d been doing bits of freelance work for a few years on the side of a day job so had a good grasp of accounts, etc (thanks to Freeagent) and I carried out a survey to help me figure out what I should charge.

Overall, the transition has been surprisingly smooth but I’ve definitely made mistakes.

1. The first mistake I made was taking on too much work. Not having a steady income anymore I found it hard to turn stuff down and the workload built up and up
2. The second mistake I made was not insisting on contracts – it’s not something I’ve been bitten badly with but I’ve had a few late paying clients and really suffered from not having something with a signature on to wave at them
3. The final mistake I’ve made was not insisting on money up front for work, something that has definitely affected cash flow

One unexpected thing that turned up in 2011 was getting the opportunity to do a design for the .net magazine build off series. This was great fun and gave me a chance to get back into some illustration work – it was also amazingly the first ever web design I’ve created in Photoshop.

Conferences

As part of the shift to freelancing I’ve spent a lot of time doing good old-fashioned networking. I’ve always been a bit of a self-confessed conference junky so launched into a swathe of various web events throughout the year.

It’s a fair outlay but meeting some of the folk I’ve met along the way has been invaluable – I’ve got work out of it but also made some great friends. Special thanks to those kind folk who put me up on my travels: Neil, Maykel, Cennydd, Ben, Niklas and Ben

The two stand-out conferences for me this year were New Adventures and Build. The passion and focus with which these two events were curated by their respective organisers – Simon and Andy – was both palpable and infectious.

At each I rediscovered a love for my craft and a renewed vigour to take pride and enjoyment from the work that I produce. So to Simon and Andy I extend my warmest thanks.

A move

2011 also saw a pretty life-changing relocation for the Henley family, selling our small, semi-rural cottage outside Edinburgh and moving 9 hours away to the small Somerset town of Frome.
We had been talking about a move south for a year or so – we’d not had a decent summer in Scotland since 2006 and we were missing family. We’d had some great times and experiences in Scotland, made some amazing friends, got married and had two children. But above all we didn’t truly feel at home.

Losing my agency job actually made thinking about a move much easier so we put the house on the market in late July and amazingly it sold in two days. By mid-October Peta had given up her job in Edinburgh libraries, we were packed up in 1.5 vans and moved 400 miles south.

I can safely say we are thoroughly enjoying our new life in Perfidious Albion – although it has not been without some adjustment, particularly for our eldest who has had to settle in to a new school and meet new friends. Frome has some lovely pubs and shops, and a great population of like-minded folk who appreciate local craft and produce.

Have also managed to find a great co-working space at the Old Church School which has enabled me to get out the house and try and drive a clearer separation between work and home life. Something I desparately struggled with since going freelance.

Keeping it real

The last few weeks have also seen a personal aspiration come to fruition when I commissioning a series of prints of some Keep Calm parodies I designed back in 2009. They were printed by the amazing folk at Get a Grip and are available to buy at artsfacere.bigcartel.com

So, it has been a pretty mental year.
A new career, a new location and some great experiences along the way. Stay tuned for 2012 …

Over the last two years I have been repeatedly asked if I was going to sell these designs as prints and have seen a number of uncrupulous folk selling copies and rip-offs of some of these designs.

Well, today am pleased to announce that after sweat, tears, a couple of missed deliveries and a few shed pixels I have had the two most popular of these designs – Keep Calm and Put the Kettle On and Keep Calm and Cary Grant – screen printed by the lovely folk at Get a Grip which are now available to buy as prints and tees via our wee online shop.

So what are you waiting for? Pop along to artsfacere.bigcartel.com and if you’re in the UK and order by 5pm on Monday will aim to ship First Class Recorded delivery on Tuesday so should be with your for Christmas!

I’ve had a letterpress for about eighteen months now and have been asked by a number of people how to get into letterpress? What to buy and where? I drafted a recent reply to someone and thought it might be easier/helpful just to post this up here.

Which letterpress?

In the UK the main letterpress to aim for is the Adana – which are basically tabletop hand-powered letterpress.
They come in a range of sizes (usually sized in inches) and date from the early twentieth century until around the 1960s.

There are two main designs – a single pull lever one (the older ones – I have one of these) that look like this ->

… and the double arm one which are a wee bit easier to use that look like this ->

The size refers to the size of the chase you lock your type or design into so essentially determines the size you can print – although you can print without a chase (especially if not using type).

Some Links

• britishletterpress.co.uk – fantastic UK resource on letterpress
• letterspressed.tumblr.com – a letterpress tumblr I started but just couldn’t maintain but some interesting links
• www.briarpress.org – the exhaustive resource on letterpress but one of the most in navigable sites on the internet!
• www.nts.org.uk/Property/Robert-Smails-Printing-Works – a letterpress workshop in Innerleithen in the Scottish Borders. Great day out and they do workshops irregularly. Know they are occasionally bequeathed old presses that people get rid of so worth getting in touch. Also in Innerleithen is an antique shop called the Glory Hole (snigger) which sells type.
• [UPDATE] Armina has kindly pointed out a range of videos introducing letterpress at typeandpress.formapparatus.com

Where to get one?

The best bet is eBay – I got mine by signing up for a notification for when Adana press came up for sale and found one in Norfolk (presses are HEAVY so the cost of shipping was almost as much as the cost of the press).

I signed up for ones turning up on eBay in a 50 mile radius from Edinburgh and stuff came up quite regularly. Might also be worth signing up for Gumtree searches/notification on the off chance.

Finally a long shot but might be worth firing out a Wanted request on your local Freecycle – someone might have one lying about that they don’t use any more.

Things to look out for in a press are decent rollers (the old rubber ones deteriorate with time) and avoid rust. The presses can be reconditioned (mine was and not very well at that) but there are lots of moving parts so it needs to be clean and move freely.
If you find a nice press with poor rollers – or without any at all – these can be replaced relatively inexpensively.

There are folk that recondition and sell presses but they’re not cheap.
Might be worth trying www.adanaprintingmachines.co.uk to see if they have anything available.

You are also going to need some type – lots of type.
Folk getting rid of presses often sell with some type to get you started but worth keeping an eye out for sets, particularly the usual suspects – Times Roman (serif) and Gill Sans (sans serif) seem to be the most popular but there is plenty out there.

What you’ll need

You will need space – using a letterpress needs a good sized desk or tabletop that should be clear and clean.
You will also need some glass to ‘ink up’ on, some ink (this has to be printing ink), a roller to roll out the ink, some quoins and keys for tightening the type in the chase, leading (for arranging the type vertically), spacers (for spacing out type) – preferably both wood and lead – a galley to set the type out on, a composing stick to arrange type into lines and LOTS of rags. For parents of young children old muslin squares are perfect for this!

Over the last two years a number of folk have got in touch to see if any of these designs are available to buy as prints or tees. I have dabbled with the idea and put a couple of tee designs up on Spreadshirt last year. However I recently decided to try and take this a bit more seriously so have commissioned some screen prints of two of the more popular designs which are due back from the printer any day now.

With such popular images has come a lot of people reproducing and selling copies of these works, mostly via services like eBay, Amazon and various print on demand services. Some are adapatations of the design, others are blatant rip-offs – the processes for reporting these as infringments is often overly complicated and time-consuming to do anything about and usually if an item is pulled it soon reappears from the same seller or another trading name.

I’m used to seeing small-scale copying of my designs but was surprised to see a tweet from buddy Steven Easton saying that Lakeland are selling a cup featuring my design. The offending item is clearly not my original design but the combination of phrase (however poorly executed) and the textured union jack background is surely more than just ‘inspiration’.

So what are your thoughts? Imitation or inspiration? Does this constitute infringment by Lakeland of my intellectural property?

Appreciate if anyone can advice on what – if any – grounds for complaint I have, particularly those of a legal persuasion.

I’ve done my bit and have now bypassed the Adam Woodyatt phase of folicular embaressment to sport a mighty fine piece of moustachery

Donated yet? If not then you still have 24 hours to help support these incredibly good causes by visiting http://mobro.co/cole007.

Please note that I’ve only been working freelance for 9 months or so, so the folllowing is by no means authoritative or exhaustive and may not apply to everyone.

Have you any advice for a freelancer starting out?

Three quick tips all kinda related:

• Know your strengths,
• put a value on your time (this is different to working out what to charge), and
• make time for personal and business development.

The first two are closely related – it’s easy when starting out to try and do everything yourself. This can certainly be a good thing to find out what you are good and what you are bad at and where you should specialise. However time spent on things you aren’t good at (whether that is client work or admin) or don’t especially enjoy is a bad use of your time.

If you can put a value on your time, in terms of what your time is worth to you (not necessarily what your time is worth for paying the bills, etc) then this makes it easier to realise when you should sub-contract work out to someone else, and when you should pay for a service that might otherwise be free.

Knowing the value of your time also makes it much easier to say no to clients when they request particular functionality which might be outside your skillset or comfort zone.

Knowing this also means that it is easier to justify where and when you should pay for software and services. For example, I heartily recommend using Freeagent to manage the financial aspects of your business when freelancing (wee referral code for 10% off: http://fre.ag/1c8frs9e). When you’re starting out £15/month (+VAT) sounds a lot of money but if that saves you an hour a month then it is worth it – and it will!

With this in mind I also found it much easier to justify moving to a paid-for CMS with client work (Perch and ExpressionEngine) rather than open source. Getting dedicated support on a product rather than being community-dependent makes a massive difference!

Finally make time for personal and business development. It is tempting (especially if you’re young) to work all hours God sends but it is really important to try and work a 9-5 and to carve out one day a week to further yourself and your business, be that for paperwork, personal projects, blog writing, finding new clients or learning new skills.

So what tips do you have for those starting out or considering a move to freelancing?

When I was made redundant in February and looked towards working freelance full-time I wasn’t sure what to charge. I’d done freelance work in evenings for a few years and had a rough idea what I needed and what I wanted to charge. Some folks agreed the rate I had thought I would charge whilst others said I was under-charging but I found there was very little to support this. We just don’t talk openly about what we charge as a profession.

With this in mind I hosted a survey for a fortnight inviting freelance people in the UK that work in the web to provide some broad demographic data (age, location, skillset) and an indication of what they charge per day.

There was a pretty good response to the survey and I published the summary results as a table but felt there were some obvious biases in the data so reopened the survey for another week in September where we got a rather portentious total of 404 responses.

I’d been sitting on all this data and struggling to find some time to do anything with it until Practical day at the Build conference in Belfast last week.
So armed with a spreadsheet and no internet connection I sat down to do some number-crunching. The results were quite interesting.

Methodology

My first regret was having free text fields in the survey.
There was a lot of data that needed cleaning and some folk had clearly put hourly rate instead of day-rate. As a rule I multiplied anything that was explicitly hour-rate by 7.5 whilst anything under £100 I removed as I felt this could not easily be distinguished between daily and hourly rate.

With my earlier survey results I had made a big mistake by using Mean to provide a broad average of day-rates across the UK.
With these results I have instead opted for Median which should limit the impact of extreme outliers, for example two responses with a large day-rate amongst the small number of responses from Wales.

Below is a series of tables summarising day-rates according to various demographic criteria, showing the number of responses, minimum, maximum and average (median) day-rate for each demographic group.

Results

By Age

By Skillset

By Years Experience

By Location

The findings

Generally speaking the average rate varies around £300/day with West Midlands and London above average but noticeably lower rates in the North West, Yorkshire and Humber, East of England and the South West.

As you’d expect the day-rate tends to increase with age and experience, although the upper ends of these ranges feature a relatively low number of responses so this data is probably less useful. There is also a general trend towards designers charging more than developers, although these categories are quite ambiguous (for example I didn’t make a distiction between front-end and back-end developers).

How about something useful?

I’d been chatting with Paddy Donnelly about doing something useful with the data for a while and at Build he suggested some kind of interactive tool so that people could calculate their day-rate against a number of criteria.

The result was a day or so of number-crunching and pixel-pushing to craft a simple, one-page tool to calculate your day-rate at fraq.info (yes the name is rubbish but we were on a tight deadline to get to the pub). The resource comes with a large pinch of salt but hopefully will provide a useful tool for those who have very little idea about what they should be charging as a freelancer.

I’ve already had a number of people saying that they feel they were undercharging with the tool giving them something to measure against and if we can open up an honest and transparent dialogue about what we as charge then we can only grow as a discipline.

Summary

Hopefully the survey and results are of some fleeting interest.
Happy to chat further about this, here or on twitter – thinking I might open this up annually to see if we can start looking at data across time.

And if you want to do something yourself with the data then please feel free to download a copy of the results here: http://db.tt/7kwb4t0M (attribution of source with a link back to this article would be greatly appreciated).

Also, A List Apart are carrying out an annual survey for people who make websites. If the above has interested you and you care about your profession please take time to complete the survey at http://surveyapart.polldaddy.com/s/ala2011

This was the first day in a lifetime supporting Manchester United, beguiled by the red, black and white of the Red Devils . This was no glory support. United struggled to a 1-1 draw that day having lost 6 of the previous 8 games in the, then League Division One. They hadn’t won the league in almost twenty years. Within a month Manager Ron Atkinson was sacked and on the 6th November 1986 Alex Ferguson was appointed manager following a successful spell at Aberdeen.

In the 25 years since his appointment this club has achieved arguably more than any other of the modern era. 12 Premier League titles, 5 FA Cups, 4 League Cups, a UEFA Cup Winners’ Cup and two memorable evenings in Barcelona and Moscow.
But it was one Manchester United memory in particular from the last 25 years that I wanted to share which was a bitingly cold 6th December 2003.

I’d not seen United play since that first game in 1986.
And then, late in 2003 I heard news that my grandfather was diagnosed with cancer.
He was a lifelong Manchester United supporter and despite only living a few miles from Old Trafford had never been to see them play.
I really wanted to do something positive for him so wrote to the club to see if I could buy some tickets without being a member.
I received a letter from the office of Alex Ferguson, featuring two free pitch-side tickets to their home game against Aston Villa and well wishes for my grandfather.

It was a great afternoon – United won 4-0 (two from van Nistelrooy and two from Forlan) – and a great experience that I got to share with my grandfather.

What a 25 years. Thank you Sir Alex for making my club the envy of football fans across the world and for that priceless afternoon in 2003.

This is the 4th year running I’ve made the ultimate sacrifice in support of Movember – that’s right, I shaved my beard off suffering a cold face and risking my children not recognising me.
So it would be great if you could rummage around the back of your sofas and donate any spare pennies you might have in support of this noble cause!

You can find our more about Movember at http://uk.movember.com/about/ and make your generous donation at http://mobro.co/cole007

Cheers!

Cole xxx

Anyway, after a wee tweet got some interesting links and chatter from folk, so dumped here for the general benefit of others:

From Andy Marshall links to the Business Link advice on Managing Late Payment and also the Government legislation on Late Payment of Commercial Debts

From Mike Robinson a link to the Pay on Time website which provides useful information and a guide to the Late Payment of Commercial Debts act.

From Richard Quick a link to The Law Donut guide to claiming statutory interest on debt

Also some interesting responses about how individual folk manage late payment, including a number of folk suggesting an early-payment discount as an incentive for clients (e.g. 5-10% discount if paid in first 14 days).

General consensus for overdue payments seems to be to hit the client with a late payment fee of 5-10% of the outstanding amount for each month

UPDATE

Andy Clarke also pointed out his post on writing an effective letter for collecting debts

Also, how amiss of me to forget Mike Monteiro’s legendary musings on late payment (HT Gareth Rees)

Being a web designer by trade I know how to find a bargain online and all too often will be found scouring Google for cheapest suppliers so when it came to selling our house I felt applying this model would be fine.

So we commissioned Home Sale Online, a Glasgow-based company which offered a fixed price service on estate agency and also included a Home Report (still a requirement in Scotland when selling property). We had a surveyor from their sister company, Survey Scotland come out to visit the property late in June.

Our concerns were raised when we received a draft advert with a number of omission and errors but thought nothing of it until we received the draft Home Report from the surveyor which missed a small storage room from his survey and – we felt – considerably undervalued the property.

Despite protesting, the surveyor refused to budge on his valuation so we spoke to a local Estate Agency who agreed that the property had been undervalued and didn’t take into account our house’s location, in the quiet area of Muirhouses surrounded by fields with views over the Forth. We commissioned a second survey and another surveyor confirmed our suspicions deciding that even in current markets that the property was worth at least £7,500 more than had originally been valued. To add insult to injury the original surveyor then offered to raise his original valuation upon hearing this.

We have since decided to go with a local estate agent and accept the hit on seller commission which is more than covered by the difference in valuation (assuming we sell at the value price). Though having complained I don’t expect to see any of the £570 we originally paid to Home Sale Online and am happy to take that hit. An expensive lesson learnt.

So kids:

• don’t confuse cost with value: the cheapest option very rarely is
• don’t (always) be beguiled by cheap online prices, and finally
• if dealing with property it is always best to go with someone local

I’m not saying Home Sale Online are an awful provider. They seem to have lots of happy customers. Just that in our case they weren’t the best provider – and that decision could have cost us £7,500.

Normally my CMS of choice is ExpressionEngine but in most cases this would just be overkill – the CMS is too complex and the license cost too great for smaller projects that only need a quick blog or image gallery on an otherwise static site.
Enter the fantastic Perch Content Management System – an extremely user-friendly and coder-friendly way of adding simple CMS functionality to otherwise static sites.

It differs from other CMS’ I’ve used in that is ‘template first’ – in other words the templates define the content management and not the other way round.
This is no bad thing but the one area where it falls short is with images.

Perch is rather cunning and you can set in advance a pre-defined thumbnail size for use in templates so that when an image is uploaded to the CMS it automagically crops images to the appropriate sizes for use in the front-end. However this becomes a problem if you or a client then decided to resize image thumbnail sizes in your templates.

This happened to me recently on a site that featured around fifty images entered via the Perch control panel.
The client wanted larger thumbnails and the only way to achieve this in Perch would be to redefine the thumbnail size in the CMS templates and upload all the images. Again.

This was less than ideal, so having done some image maniulation in PHP before I decided to write a wee add-on so that if you change the image crop sizes then new image thumbnails will be generated on-the-fly when they are requested.

The premise is simple. Perch appends a simple parameter to image filenames when it generates new image thumbnails.
A .htaccess in the resources folder directs all requests that aren’t for existing files to a PHP script.
The PHP script checks to see if a source image exists, calculates the resize dimensions in the requested filename and then redraws a new thumbnail with these dimensions.

This has been tested on one Perch build but obviously the more the merrier so would be really grateful if anyone using Perch could give it a try.
Installation and usage instructions are simple and contained in the acommpanying README file.
The files can be downloaded from the project Github repository

I welcome any feedback, suggestions or contributions to the code and please note that the PHP is pretty dirty.
I have no doubt that it could be tidied up substantially!

A child of the seventies, I was a massive fan of the Mr Men books when I grew up so was the envy of school friends when my father did some work with him in the early eighties.

As well as lots of signed book (including the lesser known Timbuctoo series) I was the proud recipient of a hand-drawn Mr Tall which is one of my most prized possessions.

Happy Birthday Roger, and thanks for all the memories!

Simple Minds – Don’t You (Forget About Me)

It’s the eighties child in me that can’t help but love the brat-pack movies and their fantastically cheesy soundtracks. This one’s probably the greatest, the theme from the Breakfast Club.

Limp Bizkit – My Way

I’m not proud but sometimes a bit of cheesy skate rock is all that is needed to clear the cobwebs.
Mrs Henley thinks listening to Limp Bizkit is tantamount to a mid-life crisis. I’m inclined to agree.

Kylie Minogue – Come Into My World

Never been a big fan of Kylie but this song really stuck with me, probably because of the brilliant video by Michel Gondry:

Bryan Ferry – The Right Stuff

Again, cheesy eighties time. Always been a fan of Bryan Ferry and Roxy Music and it was a fine line between this and Avalon. This won.

The Monkees – Do I Have To Do This All Over Again?

I loved the Monkees growing up. However, after seeing their surreal, psychadelic film Head I saw the band in a completely different light. The music on the album for this film is fantastic and this is one of the tunes I keep going back to.

Dire Straits – Romeo & Juliet

So much cheese in one track. A Geordie singing a ballad about a young, Italian couple in love. What could possibly go wrong?

Duran Duran – Rio

Back in the day when I was a landscape archaeologist I used to get panic attacks digitally transcribing 1:10,000 scale Ordnance Survey maps.
Then I’d stick on Duran Duran’s Greatest Hits. Really loudly. And all would be okay again.

Duffy – Stepping Stone

I have to say despite being a fan of all things Welsh am really not a big fan of Duffy. However I do like this particular track providing fond memories of morning drives into Edinburgh with Mrs Henley on our way into work.

Sugababes – Overload

Colly beat me to the Sugababes’ Freak Like Me so going back to their first single, Overload. It’s not all bad though – singer Siobhan Donaghy who left the band after one album went on to make the beautifully trippy Ghosts

Ryan Adams – Wonderwall

Bit of a cheat here. Wanted to opt for the Oasis version of the song as Oasis are a band that I otherwise cannot stand but utterly love this song. However, Oasis aren’t on Spotify so will make do with this hauntingly beautiful version by Ryan Adams

Some near misses

KC & the Sunshine Band’s Get Down Tonight, Beyonce’s Crazy in Love, Amerie’s 1 Thing (gobble gobble gobble) and George Michael’s Freeek! were all close calls but just too groovy to be guilty ;)

So there’s my Guilty Secrets – if willing or able have plonked into a Spotiy playlist for your delectation/embarrassment * delete as applicable

• WeeNudge invaluable set of web design resources to help communicating and working with clients
• Adapt.js snazzy wee JS file to determine the CSS applied to a page based on viewport size. think media queries for those devices that don’t support ‘em – as well as those which already do (via zachinglis)
• .htaccess tester handy htaccess tester (via mikos)
• Pack and Smooch range of lovely felt sleeves and cases for Apple products (via sazzy)
• Selling design great article from Andy Budd on choosing clients and how designers sell their services (via edds)
• What’s more beautiful than this? so want to bake me some of these cupcakes (via bluebirdcage)
• cute roulette words cannot convey how cute this is (via PouipouiDesign)
• Apollo looks like a promising addition to the hosted project management tool scene (via mcaulay)
• The Square Grid is a useful, simple CSS framework designer (via vanshea)
• use the Awesome Highlighter to highlight and share text from pages (via mikecoulter)
• CSS3 patterns gallery provides lots of lovely pure CSS3 background tiles (via necolas)
• Please, feed the Cursor Monster uses CSS3 transforms to create a truly engaging piece of web design (via malarkey)
• time/bank looks like a brilliant platform for skills and service exchange (via akopen)
• Office Wednesdays chronicles one chaps weekly work from different around Gateshead (via welcomebrand)
• UBoard is a beautiful, practical Mac-inspired monitor riser, sadly US only at present (via foamcow)
• Google Map Maker provides a handy and long overdue tool for crafting your own Google Maps (via cubancouncil)
• On the hunt for an affordable, family-friendly music festival in the UK and the Truck Festival looks like a great choice. Plus features the marvellous Gruff (via foamcow)
• some are calling it an invasion of privacy but the iPhoneTracker provides a captivating visualisation of how your iPhone has logged its location in time and space. Fascinating stuff (via the standardistas)
• FFFFALLBACK offers a wee bookmarklet to look at what web fonts and font stacks are being used on a particular page. Useful (via nicewebtype)
• showoff.io stand to be a great tool for sharing your localhost work remotely for a time delimited period (via codepo8)
• EEUK will be a UK ExpressionEngine meetup taking place sometime in Summer 2011. Stay tuned … (via gradualist)
• Clever boy Jamie Pittock didn’t find a language switcher extension for EE that he liked so he built his own (via jamiepittock)
• Trent Walton does a benchmark test of CSS2 vs CSS3 – guess who wins? (via elliotjaystocks)
• Guilty Pleasures sees Colly throw his cheesy hat into the designers.mx ring (via colly)

The vote for the referendum on AV(Alternative Vote) is in a few weeks time.
There have been a lot of ‘facts’ flying about regarding AV and was shocked this morning to get a vile piece of propaganda this morning through the door from the NO to AV campaign – a campaign fronted by William Norton and Charlotte Vere (two hitherto unsuccessful Conservative Party parliamentary candidates).

So here’s my take on the myths that are being espoused in this spurious piece of literature:

AV is unpopular

It is true that AV is not widely adopted by democratic societies but just because it is unpopular it doesn’t make it a bad decision.
The current political system with First Past the Post benefits the majority parties – that is why they are unhappy to relinquish it.

In the UK we have the first coalition government sinc 1945 and with it the first opportunity to upset the status quo of our dichotomous political system.
The coalition government is constantly telling us it is having to make unpopular decisions. Why not support one that makes sense? A fairer system of voting that represents all political parties rather than unfavourably weighting the usual suspects.

At the last election in 2010 there was no majority party. The result of which has been a coalition government comprising 53.5% of seats and 59.1% of votes). There was no clear leader and a compromise had to be bartered between first and third-place parties for political favours. The results were unclear and both parties are having to make compromises that were not supported in eachs manifesto – the promises on which votes were cast.

One person, one vote

Fuck sake. How thick do you have to be? With AV you still only get one vote. But that vote is weighted on a scale of preference.
I really want Labour to get in, I wouldn’t be too upset if Green Party got in, I’d be fucking devastated if the Conservative party got in.
That’s the beauty of AV. With a weighting of your vote you get to state who you don’t want to be elected and not just who you do.
I still only get one vote but if the party I favour does poorly I still get a say in who should govern my country.

The Winner should be the one that came first

Cue grossly inaccurate racing analogy (and shockling abuse of stock photography).

Under AV the votes of the least popular candidate can decide who wins the election

Bollocks. This is just misinformation – votes for the last popular candidate are rejected in the counting.
If there is no clear leader (50% of the vote) at first count the alternative votes for rejected candidates are recounted (without need for a reelection). If there is still no clear leader then the process is repeated until a leader is chosen from the majority of votes cast.
The only way this would mean that the winner would not come first is if on the total count they are the least popular candidate. In which case they aren’t the winner.

AV is expensive

How much would a re-election cost? A change in electoral system is expensive but the majority of this cost is one-off associated with the referendum itself and the machinery then to count votes. Is this a fair cost to pay for a fairer voting system?

AV leads to broken promises

Well, we’ve not exactly been free of these with the current system.

So, AV has got my vote. Still confused? For a simple explanation of the AV voting system watch this excellent video:

• The Beastie Boys prereleased their new album with a brilliant video to accompany it (via motherfuton)
• Ten best practices for ecommerce from the new Lakeland website (via
  crouke)
• Fantastic visual feast from Marius Roosendaal (via thismanslife)
• Conference legend Chris Heilmann’s tips for becoming a Kick Ass Public Speaker (via copepo8)
• Some lovely laptop bags from STM (via colly)
• Nice visual outling the creative process at Simple Square (via bondomatic)
• Hankering after old handheld computer games? Check out the marvellous Pica Pic site (via wez)
• Great blog charting the history of User Interfaces in film (via codepo8)
• The perfect placeholder image generator? (via meenhorst)
• Freelance? Run an agency? Watch this invaluable video from Mike Monteiro (via trovster)
• Use Adobe Creative Suite? Adobe announced a subscription model for their products, although they’re not the cheapest" (via MrQwest)
• Use CSS3 liberally? Litter your pages with text shadow? Give a thought for highlighting (via cssgareth)
• Why Google Chrome is two steps ahead of other browsers when it comes to the address bar (via nicepaul) * A beautiful, simple wedding invite featuring a simple, paper record player. Stunning (via CarolineNo)
• Fascinating article in the New Statesman by Hugh Grant (yes, that Hugh Grant) exposing underhand tactics of journalists for the News of the World and the Daily Mail (via tanepiper)
• Ingenious reverse image search tool by TinEye to see how your images are being used across the internet (via NewSugar)
• See how your site measures up on mobile devices using the W3C MobileOK checker (via oliverker)
• Lovely set of colour schemes for a range of text editors, including Coda (via peterjlambert)

Oh, and I got a Mac, but more on that later …

I rarely do but thanks to the marvellous laterstars I’ve got a handy way of managing twitter favourites and reviewing the links i’ve been stockpiling for consumption at some later date.

Am guessing that some of these links might be of some use to some others so herein starts a weekly summary of the last weeks tweets that caught my eye. Let’s see if I can get it to last more than a week …

• griddle.it Handy tool to create a background tile image, great when composing layouts (via @robeam)

• Madmanimation Missed this when it first came out but a great example of CSS3 animations in action courtesy of messrs malarkey, hellogeri and acalzadilla (via "hellogeri”:http://twitter.com/hellogeri/status/54890088508821500)

• Above the Fold New book by Brian Miller on the principles of visual design applied to the web (via @Si)

• Tron Legacy Write up of the work that went into designing the computer interfaces in Tron: Legacy (via @wilfreeborn)

• The fall and rise of user experience Transcript of Cennydd Bowles’ thought-provoking plenary at IA Summit 2011 (via @Cennydd)

• Noun Pack Useful complement to explore the resources from the Noun Project (via @xz)

• A cloud-centric Mac set-up Elliot discusses his current Mac set-up and how this hsa changed with services like Dropbox (via @elliotjaystocks)

• Type-a-file Handy typographic CSS reset for a range of typefaces (via @luxuryluke)

• Edinburgh Coffee Extravaganza Google Map summarising the best independent cafes in Edinburgh (via @craigwebster)

• DutyCalculator Useful tool to calculate import duty & taxes (via @brindy)

• http://receivd.com/early-access?m=feb221901 Simple tool (in beta) to share files via lists (via @boldfish)

• Whatfont Bookmarklet Really useful bookmarklet for discovering the fonts in use for any particular element (via @JamFactory)

• Green Man Festival Time and funds permitting this looks like the music festival to attend in the UK if you have a young family (via @caitlinmoran)

• Why Apple Should Be Worried About Amazon’s Cloud Player Interesting opinion piece on the potential imapct of Amazon’s new Cloud Drive service (via @elliotjaystocks)

• Pro Git professional version control Need to learn Git? Plenty of resources in this handy guide (via @foamcow)

• EECI Conference’s videos All the videos from the 2009 and 2010 EECI conferences (via @RobertEerhart)

Some looking back

Well the end of February was pretty exciting. The day before Felix’s second Birthday and with about a weeks notice I found out that my employer Net Resources was going into administration leaving me in panic mode. The choice was to find alternative employment or to try something I had been thinking about for a long time: brave freelancing.

I had considered freelance but was too worried about the hiatus in earning between salary and then invoiced freelance work. I just couldn’t see being able to fill that gap without financial assistance. However the hand was now forced so I decided to give freelancing a shot and after some frenzied tweets managed to secure some work carried out under freelancing identity, TINY v. I’ve now got a couple of projects under my belt and learnt a lot in the relatively short period of time since making the shift from full-time, salaried work to independent trading.

It’s been a pretty rapid and steep learning curve. I’ve never had a head for accounts but fortunately Freeagent Central has made invoicing, estimates, account and expense management a breeze. I cannot recommend this software enough and it has paid for itself 100 times over already!

Also lots of effort and time going into communication, meeting new clients, securing future work, writing proposals but that is the nature of the beast. So five weeks on how have I found it?

The positives

Working from home has been great. I do not remotely miss the stress of the morning commute – from the frenzied getting two adults and two children dressed and fed and out the door to catch an over-crowded, over-priced train into Edinburgh.
I’ve also found that not commuting and splashing out on lunches, snacks, coffees, etc. has saved me an absolute fortune.

I’ve loved being in control of the work I produce and the clients I work with. That was something I felt I never had at Net Resources and being solely in charge of and accountable for my own destiny has – I’ve found – made me much more productive.

Since working from home my ongoing back troubles of the past eighteen months have been conspicious by their absence. I can’t figure out if this is working practice, desk set-up, etc or the fact that despite the stresses of losing my job a great load has been lifted from my mind. Time will tell …

I thought I would really struggle with loneliness if working from home but since moving from full-time work I’ve made much more time to socialise than have done in a number of years and am trying to get into Edinburgh at least once a fortnight. Am also finding a range of lovely folk on twitter and skype keeping me sane.

A big positive for me in going freelance has been learning to say no. This is something I’ve always struggled with and when starting out freelance it has been really tempting to say yes to any offers of work. For the first week or so I did and was quickly overwhelmed. I started reading Too Nice for Your Own Good which I bought on a whim at Christmas with some Amazon vouchers and have to say it has helped put how I communicate with people in perspetive (but that’s another blog post entirely …).

The negatives

Working from home has its downsides. At days when the boys are home it is hard for them to appreciate that daddy is now working from home. There is a lot to be said about the physical separation between home and work environment and whilst I’ve managed to carve out some space at home to serve as an office it can be quite distracting when all your son wants to do is play football or swingball.

Keeping the separation between home and work has been really difficult, particularly in time keeping. I’ve thrown myself into work and some evenings will work into the small hours atop trying to do a 9-5. This is something I’m hoping is just a short-term thing as I try to push work out and get cash flow up but am wary that this shouldn’t become regular working practice – for my family’s sanity as well as my own.

Looking forward

So overall the move has been great and long overdue. I’ve been really enjoying working for myself and whilst I’m not sure if this will be a permanent switch am relishing the freedom and control that was certainly missing at Net Resources.
Looking forward there are some things I definitely need or hope to do:

I really hope to carve the time out to blog more often. Blogging kind of fell by the wayside for me around almost a year ago and now my time is my own I really hope I can make time to structure my thoughts and put them out there to foster debate or just to get things off my chest.

I really need to *Redesign the TINY v website* – the site was put up as a holding page when I started doing drips and drabs of freelance work 4 years ago. Whilst it has been great to have been too busy to do personal projects I really need to focus on my shop window! I’ve been pointing folk to a holding CV on Dropbox which has worked so far but will need remedying!

I have to slow down – I’ve been putting in long days and late nights and this has not been compatible with a small family. On paper enough money is coming in to cover out outgoings and I really need to weigh up the positives or more money against the negatives fo the time that takes me away from my wife and children.

Finally, apologies – if you’ve got this far – to anyone who is waiting on the result of the freelance rates survey I set up in February. I was amazed by the volume of responses (almost 250) and hope in the next week or so to get the results down in some form for public consumption.

So look forward to hearing more from me. Hopefully …

have been watching with interest the evolution of Endorse on dribbble these past few weeks. in the words of the man himself, Endorse

will allow you to easily find people in your immediate and extended networks who have availability, and likewise, if you are indeed looking for work allow you to connect with others, promote your skills and hopefully increase your work load

expressing an early interest in the app (by following @endorseapp on twitter) i was able to register an account last night and it looks like a marvellous application. some initial thoughts:

loves

having twitter integration at the sites core is fantastic.
it is amazing to see how this blether tool is now the primary means of communication within the web design community.

The simplicity of the user interface and its functionality is spot on. any action is no more than one click away and login is simply via your twitter account (although an email address is required for registration).

Sam’s eye for design is outstanding.
The black and yellow palette works extraordinarily well and the simple layout provides a firm basis for Sam’s rich attention to detail.
Shading and rounded corners have been used subtly whilst the use of tone and opacity to depict availability works extremely well.
It is also nice to see the site liberally sprinkled with CSS3 and jQuery enhancements. This is a site unapologetically designed for the rich browsers of the web community.

I must also mention the comedic touch of the site’s 404 page

suggestions

With the site design employing the latest innovations in CSS3 it would have been nice to see it also built in HTML 5.
Extending the CSS3 support to Opera (and the W3C specs) would also have been nice additions.
Whilst aimed at a web savvy audience some basic fallback styling to IE 6 (for example via Andy Clarke‘s universal IE6 stylesheet) would also have been nice.

The search facility at present only applies to your extended community. Whilst this supports the ethos behind Endorse (“We search through your social connections to determine the most personal recommendations”), this makes it extremely difficult to search for endorsements when your own networks are quite small (hint hint) :(
This is the one area where the site might be prone to accusations of social media circle jerk symposium, however unjustified.

Another observation is that on a users page it isn’t wholly clear who is endorsing who. On Sam’s page for example is he endorsing all these fine people or they him?

However, this all shouldn’t distract from a fantastic application.
Sam and Mike have laboured away to provide one of those rare sites that is instantly both invaluable and effortless at the same time.

Now, anbybody care to endorse me?

Since collecting Panini stickers in the playground battlefields for Mexico 86 i’ve fostered a sense of Stockholm Syndrome when it comes to these adhesive bits of paper depriving me of my hard-earned pocket money.
Now I’ve got a “young prodigy”: http://twitgoo.com/v7rsn to nurture in such arts I thought i’d marry this year’s futile efforts for sticker collection with a wee twitter app.

It’s been a great experiment. I’ve always wanted to build a twitter application and never quite got round to it.
I’ve had some great input along the way and got to get my hands dirty with back-end code for the first time in a long time.
I’ve also been itching to push out a personal HTML5 site so this seemed a great opportunity.

So, just waiting on some beta feedback then we’re good to go!
So dust off your stickers and get ready for the good ol’ “got, got, need, swap”

When I went to the polls on Thursday I voted as I have voted in the past four elections since I have been eligible: for Liberal Democrats.

I voted, as I have always done, with my conscience for a Party that best epitomised honest and fair politics for the whole spectrum of British society, a Party that embraced Britain’s proud place within a broader European climate, a Party that has shown to see the thrust of technology in modern British life and the inclusivity that it affords. And the role of the environment in our lives and its precedence over a military budget that emphasises a long-extinguished war with a long-forgotten enemy. And proportional representation. A fairer electoral system where a party that wins 20% of the votes will get 20% representation in our House of Parliament.

Two mornings later and I feel shocked and suprised at the thought of a Liberal Democrat coalition with the Conservative Party. In an age of political scandal I respect your integrity and principles in adhering to what you had said earlier in the campaign.

However I cannot see an alignment with the Conservative Party that would not significantly compromise your Manifesto which I believe strongly in and voted for at the ballot last Thursday.

I therefore ask you to reconsider any proposals from the Conservative Party for a shared governance of this country. Yes, Britain voted for change two days ago and as I have always felt change is not either side of a two-dimensional political spectrum. The British people have expressed their disatisfaction with their current government. They have expressed their disatisfaction with the political process.

A hung parliament is not to be feared – despite Cameron and Murdoch’s protestations over the past few weeks and this gives you an unprecedented level of power in the forthcoming governance of Britain. I urge you then to give serious thought to a solution that does not compromise the manifesto I and you both believe in for the pursuit of power.

Otherwise I fear I just could not bring myself to vote Liberal Democrat again.

Kind regards,

Dr Cole Henley

extremely talented designers are now doing things that could only be achieved in Flash six months ago and the results are both beautiful and engaging
as Andy Clarke has repeatedly advocated, this hardboiled or top-down approach places emphasis on the potential experiences that we can provide with CSS3, and goes beyond the embellishment for those that can ideology of progressive enhancement.

however the one concern i have from many of these is the emphasis that is being placed on hover states and interactions.
i’m not talking here about good ol’ graceful degradation – giving a simpler yet functional site for those with older or less capable browsers/devices.
i’m talking about users who are using the latest browsers but are tied to or prefer to use alternative input devices.

one of my pet hates in web design is when you see fantastically designed sites that fail to consider focus states on links or inputs.
i’m not disabled but i very often use my keyboard for navigating websites. it’s what i’m used to. if i tab round your page and i can’t see where i am it pisses me off.
its simple. where you have :hover just add a :focus

however the opportunities that css3 offers – especially with webkit transforms – now presents new problems for accessibility and usability.
so, don’t stop experimenting. keep making your websites fun and engaging. keep pushing the envelope.
but make sure that whilst pursuing aggressive degradation in these beautiful new websites of yours that you consider those that may have the latest shit-hot browsers but might not be using them in the way you expect them to.

What has surprised me is not the measures proposed by the Bill – although these are clearly of some concern – but the speed with which the Bill has been considered and passed by the House of Lords since its first reading on the 19th November last year. Can the full range of issues relating to this Bill have been considered in a fair and accurate manner within 4 months when the Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day Bill has taken three months to get to only its second reading?

Now of course some would argue that the Digital Economy Bill has been considered much quicker than other Bills because its consequences are much further reaching (no offence intended to any Armenians that are reading). This is precisely the reason why this Bill cannot be rushed through the Parliamentary process.

So, like many others, I urge you to write to your MP expressing your concerns about this Bill and the momentum with which it is being drafted into Law.

You can write to your MP (if you know your postcode) using the write to them website. Remember that the Digital Economy Bill concerns UK Parliament so make sure that it is your MP that you write to and not your MSP (in Scotland), AM (in Wales), MLA (in Northern Ireland) or MEP.
A simple letter expressing your concern about the Bill has been made available on the 38 degrees website which will automagically contact your MP directly via email.

Echo your concerns on twitter and facebook. If you have a blog post about the Bill. Raise awareness of it and the genuine concerns that it highlights concerning the democratic process in Britain today.

The letter I have drafted is copied below. So what are you waiting for? If you care about the future of the Digital landscape in the UK then draft yours now

Dear Michael Connarty

I am writing to you regarding the Digital Economy Bill of which you are no doubt aware.

I am not writing to challenge the Bill or it’s measures (as I am not in possession of the full facts regarding them) but am concerned from what I have read at the speed with which this Bill has been moved through the House of Lords and now potentially also the House of Commons.

I am writing therefore to ask you three questions:

1) do you believe that the Digital Economy Bill has been drafted in a correct and neutral manner in light of the full facts available?
2) do you believe that the measures proposed by the Digital Economy Bill are clearly defined?
3) do you believe that the Digital Economy Bill is in the interest of justice and has been drafted in a transparent manner devoid of political or economic influence?

If you cannot answer yes to any of these three questions then I would urge you to support consideration of the Bill in a full, qualified and considered Parliamentary debate.

Kind regards,

Dr Cole Henley

If I hear back from Michael I’ll be sure to let you know

To summarise/paraphrase Brendan:

I’ve got to say this. The UK web design scene is often just self serving, indulgent bullshit perptuated by friends of friends. Count me out.
… Let’s have a bit more honesty and less sycophantic bullshit.

Whilst Brendan to some extent has a point – the ‘scene’ is largely dominated by the usual suspects and liberal doses of idol worship – however, Brendan’s observation is largely a product of the media through which the web design scene largely communicates: twitter.

The scope for comment afforded by 140 characters usually results in a “yay – i like this” with limited opportunity for elaboration. Meanwhile the echo chambers that twitter encourages means that we tend to forward on the work that we like because it is likely that someone who follows us may also like it. As Jon rightly says, the outcome is positive noise – something accentuated by a legitimate reluctance to offer public criticism when the nature of the medium so often leaves it open to misinterpretation.

So what if the scene is dominated by a sychophantic few? I moved to the web from a completely different field (academic archaeology) early in 2006. I had taught myself web design and development whilst studying for my PhD and was guided along by the work of a number of key designers and developers.

In academia I had always struggled with the prevalent ivory towers. The strict hierarchy, the closed and protective exchange of information, the slow pace of debate, the reluctance for communication and collaboration. The limiting opportunities there were for dialogue regarding the merits or imperfection of one’s work, approach, methodology or ideas.

When I moved to web design those barriers were quickly removed. People who’s books and articles I had digested, whose work I had looked up to, responded to emails and blog comments I made and were happy to communicate both openly and freely.

Web design is a competitive, commercial environment yet most of those within the “UK scene” are happy to divulge their secrets and chat about their work.

Furthermore, this environment of positive noise is not – I feel – entirely disingenuous. I trust the judgement of those who speak positively about my work and would hope they would be honest and up front in offering their criticism.

That is the lovely thing about the dribbble website. Insights into the process of people’s work and the trusted feedback of like-minded individuals – both negative and positive but always constructive.

Such an environment just makes us improve and refine the work we produce. I have bills to pay and work to get out the door but deep down I want the respect and approval of my peers and am not afraid to reciprocate where it is due.

The ambitions of this new venture are bold and its mission statement noble:

We seek to revive Scottish journalism by using the internet rather than railing against it. The Caledonian Mercury stands for intelligent reporting, informed analysis and raising the standard of debate in Scottish life. It also seeks to return journalism to journalists and is a platform to display the work of selected specialist writers – freed from the demands of filling space, toeing the line and “feeding the beast”.

Engaging with disinfranchised readers of the traditional press. Encouraging and supporting intelligent journalism. Fostering debate. All good stuff. But why oh why does the Caledonian Mercury (CalMerc) website look so bad?
For a site that is supposed to innovate and breathe fresh life into the Scottish media, the whole thing hangs off a standard and unimaginative WordPress template.

At a time when most newspapers are trying to realign themselves for the online market and make a significant departure from their printed equivalents, CalMerc strives to head in the opposite direction with a design that shouts “I want to look like a grown-up newspaper”, despite its claims to the opposite.

So where has it gone wrong? Well, some initial thoughts follow.

Logo and branding

The logo and heading of a newspaper is usually its calling card – from the heraldic motifs and bold logotypes of the Times and the Scotsman to the red tops and sans-serifs of the Mirror and the Sun. With newspapers it is often the primary means and opportunity for branding and here it is sadly found lacking.

The unicorn has a particular resonance for Scotland, notably in its heraldic form where according to legend a free unicorn was considered a very dangerous beast; therefore the heraldic unicorn is chained – however here it is bland, crudely executed and largely anonymous.

Typography and layout

Look at the homepages for the New Times, the BBC News and the Guardian websites and you will see multiple avenues into the range of content on these sites.
The layout of the CalMerc site instead focuses on a single stream, choosing a two-column layout that works well with blogs but just cannot cope with a constant ticking over of content, particulary if CalMerc is to be at all succesful in its aims to decentralise Scottish journalism.

Guide your users. Use layout to help them scan and digest your content. Pick a grid and stick to it but don’t be afraid to break it.

The home page should introduce multiple streams and minimise scrolling, not through fear of the fold but to provide a ready and accessible overview of the breadth, depth and relevance of its content. Direct users to explore as much of the site as possible and facilitate that where possible. Make the tag cloud more engaging and the search bar more obvious.

Engaging users

As a solely online venture, advertising revenue will be integral to the success of the CalMerc site, although as it stands cannot help but feel that the advertising in place is too obtrusive. The Google Ads just feel like another bolt-on and distract from the logo, search bar and date (although can this really be seen as relevant for a newspaper freed from the constraint of daily printing cycles?).

Ironically as “Scotland’s first truly online newspaper”, social networking on the site feel does like a series of bolt-ons and as used gives the impression of an afterthought. Whilst the site clearly is endeavouring to engage with its users why not unleash the potential of the social web and let the populace contribute its own content. It is nice to see that twitter is being used to engage with a user base rather than just regurgitate hyperlinks and it would be great for that engagement to become two way.

User images could be added – perhaps illustrating individual articles via Flickr – or commenting on articles via twitter and other media using hashtags or machine tags? Be native to a web of data – bring other content into your site and let your content seep out into other sites. Oh, and if your aspiration is to engage your users then don’t put your twitter followers at the bottom of the last column of the page, put them foremost.

Show the most read and shared articles – possibly the most focused and decisive navigation element on the whole BBC News website.

Final thoughts

Clearly the Calmerc website is in its infancy but I can’t help feel that an opportunity was missed to launch something truly innovative and support the aims of the publication through a considered and engaging new design.

With the promising start that Caledonian Mercury has made, lets hope it’s not too far off and a new design can be seen and treated as an integral part of its aspirations and innovation (and not just as a secondary, decorative afterthought).

In your opinion, what makes for a good website?

It was quite an interesting exercise and was deliberating whether to respond with what I felt the client wanted to hear or an impassioned plea for what I expected from a good website. I erred towards the latter:

1. A good website is a website that knows its users and their needs, guides them through their use of the site and engages them through a combination of an evocative visual landscape, well-crafted copy, rich opportunities for interaction and a clearly thought out and articulated site structure.
2. A good website should talk to its users in a language they understand.
3. A good website should reflect its subject matter but be open to its users crafting their own interpretations and reflections.
4. A good website should feature intuitive navigation and orientate the user, but also not be afraid for them to get lost and never be afraid for them to leave.
5. A good website should not feel pressured to provide access to its resources within three clicks or to place all its content “above the fold”. A good website should never look the same in every browser.
6. A good website should not stop at the website. It should tap into the networks and websites that your visitors already use and encourage the sharing of experiences and resources through these.

In short, a good website should be relevant, interesting and engaging.

So what do you think makes a good website? Be interested to hear your thoughts.

As a student of archaeology I find the notion of an indigenous British population frankly amusing, so I thought I might offer my thoughts and response on the matter regurgitated here

…since it’s first occupation several millennia ago Britain has been a rich mixture of people featuring a diverse range of origins, races, ethnic backgrounds and beliefs.

So, it all depends on how you define indigenous.

• Do you mean the African hominids that first appeared on the British landmass, long before it was a separated from Europe?
• Perhaps the Germanic hunter-gatherers who settled here after crossing the channel during the last Ice Age?
• The Romans who immersed and bred themselves into Iron Age society after 42AD?
• Maybe the northern-Germanic tribes – the Angles and Saxons from which the term Anglo-Saxon (and ‘England’) derives – that settled Britain in the post-Roman period?
• Possibly the Norse that dominated large parts of northern and eastern Britain in the 9th and 10th centuries?
• Per chance the French Norman invaders who arrived in 1066?
• The Saxe-Coburg and Gotha – sorry – Windsors that currently rule Brittania?
• Or are you referring to the members of the Commonwealth countries that arrived – invited – to help rebuild post-war Britain?
• Maybe our European cousins who have arrived in Britain keen to make a life for themselves by putting in a hard day’s work?

But then again I’m perhaps not entitled to comment. I was born in England the grandson of a German refugee who came here in the Second World War to escape the threats of a nation that feared and had turned against anyone that was different from an artificial ideal manufactured by a mad man.

Britain was a nation that welcomed her, protected her and accepted her. If these qualities ever desist to apply then I’ll be on the first boat out of here.

At the time I was working for a government heritage agency responsible for the online presence for an organisation that managed over 14.5 million archive items relating to 280,000 archaeological and architectural sites and monuments throughout Scotland.

Despite its public remit, RCAHMS had a perception of being closed and restrictive and I was keen to promote the idea within the organisation of communicating its resources outwith the confines of its website(s), as well as enabling other users to contribute their own information to RCAHMS from other contexts and social networks.

I’ll offer my ramblings on the relative success of RCAHMS’ efforts in another blog post but I wanted first to reflect on the notion of a web of data itself and whether it had any currency two years on.

The idea of a web of data is one that has come under fire in the last week or so. A regular user of twitter I was quite surprised to discover today that only a user’s last 3,200 tweets were visible through twitter. in the meantime, tr.im can no longer support its url shortening service, social bookmarking site ma.gnolia withered unexpectantly earlier in the year and we seemingly can’t even rely on flickr to conserve our much loved snaps.

Is then the idea of web of data – information, data and user-generated content moving freely between sites – still achievable? Is this a utopian, liberal ideal endorsed by those that have grown up with the open source and web standards communities? Or is it synonymous with the excesses of a pre-credit crunch world, haemorrhaging money and minutiae across the infinite possibilities of affordable digital storage?

Web applications are easily built, cheaply deployed and quickly disseminated. But rarely are the full technical and financial implications of such ventures considered in detail.

So what does this mean for the web of data? Is the movement of information now merely transient (who would be interested in what i had to say more than 3,200 tweets ago)? Should we be curating and archiving these relics of communication? Or is this web of data about me just a further signifier of excess that can no longer be sustained within the current economic climate?

Are the strands of the web robust enough to survive such losses or are we just going to end up with loads of broken links in the chain? Quite literally¹.

¹ Apologies for the mixed metaphor

I left the employ of RCAHMS at the turn of the year so it was great to catch up with some old faces and frantically bid some fictional cash against each other to acquire the crème of the crap.

So, after three or so hours battling out with our imaginary cheque books I concluded with the following squad of fifteen, coupled with an ominous sense of inebriation:

What thinks you for the coming season?

5 minutes on the computer without a mouse made me realise how completely and utterly dependent on them I was so an urgent, out-of-hours trip to Asda was in order.

Imagine my delight to discover a wireless mouse with the following features:

• Delicate figure, fluent and smooth linearity, gracefully curved top cover designed, comply with somatological philosophy
• Left side has striped and anti-slip plate, wonderful touch feeling
• Adopted 27MHZ Radio frequency to transmit, enjoy yourself freely in the wireless space
• 256 sets of ID code, there is no interference even many mice being used at the same time
• 800DPI, accurate position, free yourself on the internet
• It will be auto-sleeping without operation within a long time

Anyone know what somatological philosophy is?

In usual, dependable fashion answers were forthcoming from accessibility stalwarts (if that is the right term) Patrick H. Lauke and Bruce Lawson who offered the following responses respectively:

@cole007 fieldset, legend “date of birth”, hidden labels “day”, “month”, “year”

@cole007 3 separate inputs, each with a unique title, no label, in a fieldset with legend “Date”

These two solutions are perfect for my example of day/month/year, but what about less obvious examples and what about inputs that might have no obvious label or title.

At Net Resources, we are currently working on a search form for a client to query against a database on tartans.

One of the criteria you can search against is ‘slog’ which is to do with the thread count of a particular tartan. In official tartan parlance, a slog comprises of two three letter groups divided by a colon, eg. BGK:WRK. The logical break in the data means that the query input should ideally be broken into two divided with a colon, eg:

Slog :

<label>Slog <input type="text" size="3" /> : <input type="text" size="3" /></label>

However, these slog fields do not have obvious names that can be applied through a title or hidden label, so my question is this. How best would you mark a form with these two inputs divided by a colon?
What – in your opinion – would be the most accessible, semantic, dogs bollocks approach to marking up this particular part of the form?

since then being a smoker has been a large part of my identity, rarely venturing far without a packet of rolling tobacco to hand. i would readily admit that i am addicted to a bunch of chemicals which are primarily poisonous but i would also say – despite this knowledge – that i enjoy smoking. the act of rolling a cigarette, the act of sharing a cigarette, the sense of camaradre shared by those who huddle round the ashtray on cold, wet autumn evenings outside the pub.

however, today marks a whole week – that’s a whopping 168 hours – without smoking which is pretty much the longest i have been without nicotine since my early teenage days (except for the aforementioned hiatus). i’m not sure when or even if i will ever have another cigarette but one thing i can be sure of is that i haven’t given up. i’m just taking a break.

so why the break? well three factors really. one the birth of a son, the other a death of father-in-law, the last a killer hangover. for the past few months i have certainly been acutely aware that i have been smoking too much. psychologically, smoking has been a valiant ally in times of stress in my adult life and since january i have embarked on a series of new (and unfamiliar) experiences: a new job, taken on more freelance work than i perhaps should’ve and seen the arrival of our youngest, Felix (as well as contend with the competing affections and emotions from our eldest, Gethin).

in the past 6 months smoking has become more than a habit and i was not particularly happy with how something that i had enjoyed was having such an impact on my life (and to some, lesser extent also my wallet).

this sense was exacerbated with the sad and relatively sudden passing of my wife’s father two weeks ago. the idea that i could make a decision now which might affect the amount of time i have to spend with my children (and their children) was something really powerful and made me think for the first time in a long time about not smoking.

i have tried to give up before but always failed: bad timing, bad planning, bad willpower. the two things i knew were:

1. that there is never a perfect time to give up smoking, and
2. that I would know when the time was right.

last Wednesday the time was right. the night before – at my father-in-laws wake – i had indulged in a few gins too many and as a result the following day was spent in a state of utter self-pity, without caffeine or nicotine: the two biggest vices in my life (the third being twitter, which I also somehow managed to abstain from).

am now back on the caffeine and twitter but have somehow managed to stay off the fags. each day since last Wednesday i have said to myself “no, i won’t smoke today”. if i thought to myself i had given up i think there would be too much pressure but as long as it is just taking a break then i can take one day at a time and hope that tomorrow, is just another day when i feel like having a break…

For anyone running their own data-driven site this would traditionally be achieved through running a cron job – a task scheduled to be performed on a regular basis on a server irrespective of whether that site is being visited or not. However, running cron jobs feature two complexities:

1. the cost in learning how to configure and manage them (though having never done them it could be a piece of piss), and
2. the cost associated with hosting a site that has cron capabilities (this functionality is chargeable as extra on my hosting account)

So what about a compromise – scheduling visits to your site to take place periodically rather than scheduling the server to perform task at regular intervals?

This was something I set about figuring out when I realised that a technology already existed which periodically checks a website: RSS. If we can set up an RSS feed to process a script as it is requested could we harness the power of RSS to semi-automate updates on your website? Hell yeah!

Setting up a test script on a server, I created an empty RSS feed and then subscribed to the feed using Google Reader. Everytime the feed was requested the time was logged in a separate text file. Like clockwork it transpires Google Reader (other feed readers are available boys and girls) was requesting the feed every three hours on the dot. So it might freak out if more complex scripts are attempted but in principal this might prove one way of scheduling relatively simple scripts to run on your server with relative frequency if you don’t have access to running cron jobs on your server.

So, as a habitual web-tinkerer have set up a wee website to promote the car at http://panda.cole007.net/

If you are in central Scotland and looking for a wee runner (and I’m not talking about Shane Williams) then this one comes heartily recommended and a mere snip at £1800 sterling (which is about the same as a packet of crisps at the current exchange rate). Bargainous!

Am sorely tempted to get myself yet more moo cards

It was especially sporting of someone who’s namesake is a regular feature of Bond films to have decided to make an appearance at 0.07 hours.

Young Felix is in fine company, sharing a birthday with Samuel Pepys, Handel, Peter Fonda, plutonium, ISO and the Gutenburg bible, the first Western book printed from movable type.

True to form, it is nice to see that Felix’s Gramps has already adopted the pseudonym Teddy for him. 10 hours old and already has an alias.

Images and more to follow on the soon to be resurrected bairn blog shortly

PS bonus points if you can name the film quoted in this blog title ;)

What bothers me about Gordon Brown’s comment is the idol of the individual and the cult of celebrity that it seems to endorse.

The ‘cult of the individual’ is something that I looked at when I was looking at the different scales with which we study the past – the history of history. This was perhaps best evoked by the French Historian Fernand Braudel when he stated that the study of the past involved the history of undercurrents, in other words the history of the longue durée, beneath the superficial flotsam of individuals and events and the stiller waters of social structures, beneath “the surface disturbances, crests of foam that the tides of history carry on their strong backs”¹.

Fernand Braudel was a member of the Annales school, a movement of French Historians who had saught to redress the imbalance of historical study and its emphasis on wars, kings and politics. A key influence on the Annales School was the French economist François Simiand who felt that:

“there were three idols which must be toppled. There was the political idol – the perpetual preoccupation with the political history, political facts, wars etc.…There was the individual idol – in other words, the overemphasis on so-called great men…Finally, there was the chronological idol, that is, the habit of losing oneself in studies of origins.”²

What Simiand was protesting against, in 1903, was society’s focus on the individual, the dangers of being sucked into the minutaie of interpersonal politics and the risk this posed to understanding society, how societies operate and how they change. This passage more than any other shaped my reading of the Neolithic monuments of the Outer Hebrides. “Oi! What’s a bleeding French economist got to do with a bunch of 5000 year old stones and Jade Goody?”, I hear you cry! Hold on, I’m getting there…

Simiand’s idols have never been more apparent as they are today and nowhere in modern society can this be seen more readily than in the cult of celebrity. Warhol’s 15 minutes of fame has been cranked up to eleven as everyone strives for their instant recognition through a transcient appearance on television or one of the many mediums which now afford similar opportunities (says he posting on a blog, the ultimate triumph of the id over the ego). And nowhere is this cult more evident than in the life of Jade Goody.

It is sad the unfortunate direction that Jade Goody’s life has taken. As someone who has experienced the cruel and indiscriminate nature of cancer she has my complete sympathy. But nobody epitomises more the pursuit of the self and the celebration of the individual in contemporary society – qualities of society that Simiand and the Annales School challenged a century ago.

So why bring Gordon Brown into this? Simiand was an economist. He was interested in the way that a society’s economy is shaped by the opinions and perspective of its people and its leaders. We are embarking into what has the potential to be the worst economic crisis in centuries and a large part of this has to be attributed to the pursuit of self.

Indiscriminate lending from banks have manufactured a generation that has never had to count their pennies and live within their means. Thatcher’s dissolution of industry, the subsequent privatisation of Britain’s infrastructure (from a succession of governments) and the championing of social mobility (the American dream) have all fragemented the sense of belonging and kin in our society. The lottery and reality TV have gone on to create a sense of instant win for riches and renown without having to earn it. But whilst we can – and apparently should – pursue instant reward, meteoric decline is always someone elses fault (compensation culture). A complex fabric neatly stitched together by the media and advertising.

So back to Jade Goody and Gordon Brown. It saddens me that politics and celebrity are so inextricably interwoven. It saddens me that the leader of our country, hitherto Chancellor of the Exchequer, applauds someone selling the rights for their wedding to the media – the very mentality that likely brought about our current economic down turn. It’s perhaps saddeset though that when the copies of OK! magazine featuring Jade Goody’s marriage hit the news stand that they will be bought in their thousands.

François Simiand must be laughing in his grave.

¹ Fernand Braudel On History 1980, 12

² Peter Burke The French Historical Revolution 1980, 11

The only beef I have with Phil’s site is that it isn’t really unobtrusive. If the aim of unobtrusive javascript is to make your content accessible to all, then the behaviour layer javascript provides should be accessible to all those with javascript enabled. This includes those that prefer using keyboards to navigate (like myself) and those using assistive devices to navigate and interact with web sites. The javascript on Phil’s Unobtrusify site sadly is mouse dependent so the underlying content which the site is using to demonstrate unobtrusive javascript is, alas, inaccessible. The javascript is obtrusive.

Looking at Phil’s code – utlising the fabtacular jQuery it would be a piece of piss really easy to achieve the same effect for other (non-mouse) devices. My approach would be something like this (the following is untested – just throwing possibilities out into the ether):

$('#wrapper h1').addClass('clickable').wrapInner('<a></a>');
$('#wrapper h1.clickable a').click(function(){
	var el = $(this).next();
	if(el.is(':visible')){
		el.animate( {opacity:0}, 300 );
		el.slideUp(300);
	} else {
		el.slideDown(150);
		el.animate( {opacity:1}, 300 );				
	}
	return false;
});

Simple. All we’re doing is wrapping a hyperlink around the content of the h1 element and applying the effects to that and with that the code should work with a keyboard. The CSS will need restyling as the styling should ideally now be applied to the hyperlink element and not its h1 parent but that is another matter entirely (saying that I would argue that the background effect used at unobtrusify.com could equally be applied using plain ol’ simple CSS).

Anyway, not at all dissing Phil’s lovely site and the spirit behind it. Kudos amigo for your work in highlighting an important and oft neglected part of standards-based web design!

In the 6 or so years since we moved out of the city the cost of rail travel has risen whilst the quality and reliability of the service has deteriorated. According to the beeb, on average rail fares were 50% higher in Britain than in Europe and “88% more expensive than the next most expensive country – France”.

A return ticket for a thirteen minute train ride to and back from Edinburgh during peak hours (ie standing room only) is now £8.10. Eight pounds ten pence!!! How are these fares calculated? My original suspicions were monkeys with abacuses with cockrail Scotrail scrimping on the Bananas but then I discovered the fabled rail fare calculator.

Alas, I cannot reveal my sources but I can divulge the mystical equation, thus:

£ = (α ρ) x (α δ^-1) x (α κ^-1)

where £ denotes the cost of ticket, ρ the density/popularity of the service, δ the distance travelled and κ the reliability/quality of the service in question. For those less algebric than the cockrail Scotrail monkeys this equates to cost being the sum of denisty of service multiplied by the inverse proportion of distance travelled multiplied by the inverse proportion of reliability of service¹. This golden ratio (not that one) basically means that no matter where you are travelling cockrail Scotrail will shaft you!

¹ of course, don;t blame me for the shocking paucity of this formula, blame the cockrail Scotrail monkeys

The rules?

• Go to IMDb and find a quote from each movie
• Post them in a note for everyone to guess

• NO GOOGLING/using IMDB search functions for your answers

Post your answers in the comments

Film one

A: This is a bar for British officers!
B: That’s all right. We’re not particular.

Film two

A: You got a message.
B: Yeah
A: You’re not gonna open it? It might be important.
B: Yeah, like the last two I got were important. The first one was from my wife, telling me she was leaving. The second was from my lawyer, telling me he was leaving… with my wife.
A: Ah, that’s bad luck. Grandfather say it not rain everyday. This is good news, guaranteed. I bet your lunch.
B: Okay, you’re on.
A: Come on…
A: You are fired. Oh.
B: Well, at least I won lunch.
A: Good philosophy, see good in bad, I like.

Film three

I tried to kill myself with a Lady Bic. A pink plastic razor with daisies on it and a moisturizing strip.

Film four

A: You mean I’m going out there, under the water?
B: Well earlier today you wanted a gun. Now you’re getting a gun and a wet suit.

Film five

This may smell bad, kid, but it’ll keep you warm until I get the shelter up… Ugh. And I thought they smelled bad on the outside.

Film six

A: Those people are trying to kill us!
B: [shouts] I know, Dad!
A: This is a new experience for me.
B: It happens to me all the time.

Film seven

I like these calm little moments before the storm. It reminds me of Beethoven. Can you hear it? It’s like when you put your head to the grass and you can hear the growin’ and you can hear the insects. Do you like Beethoven?

Film eight

Hi. How are you? My name’s Elliot, and I’m with the Cub Scouts of America. We’re… we’re selling uncut cocaine to get to the jamboree.

Film nine

Wait, that doesn’t look like Earth. Where’s the blue sky? Where’s the-the grass?

Film ten

A: Is it being prepared to do the right thing, whatever the cost? Isn’t that what makes a man?
B: Hmmm… Sure, that and a pair of testicles.

Film eleven

Remember those posters that said, “Today is the first day of the rest of your life”? Well, that’s true of every day but one – the day you die.

Film twelve

When they touch down, we’ll blow the roof, they’ll spend a month sifting through rubble, and by the time they figure out what went wrong, we’ll be sitting on a beach, earning twenty percent.

Film thirteen

Want to know the common element for the entire group?… I’ll tell you the answer: I’ll tell you, ‘cause I had that one. I had that question… Carbon. Carbon. In pencil lead, it’s in the form of graphite and in coal, it’s mixed up with other impurities and in the diamond it’s in hard form.

Film fourteen

A: Why, out of all the God-forsaken shitholes in Mexico, do we have to meet here?
B: One place’s just as good as another.

Film fifteen

Well, what if there is no tomorrow? There wasn’t one today.

Film sixteen

You’re U.S. Government property. You’re a malfunctioning $30 million weapon. You’re a total goddamn catastrophe, and by God, if it kills me, you’re going to tell me how this happened.

Film seventeen

I don’t like children. They smell like TV.

Film eighteen

What is this great evil? How did it steal into the world? From what seed, what root did it spring? Who’s doing this? Who’s killing us? Robbing us of light and life. Mocking us with the sight of what we might have known.

Film nineteen

A: This… this, the hollow at the base of a woman’s throat, does it have an official name?
B: Good God, man, pull yourself together.

Film twenty

They all have husbands and wives and children and houses and dogs, and, you know, they’ve all made themselves a part of something and they can talk about what they do. What am I gonna say? “I killed the president of Paraguay with a fork. How’ve you been?”

Good luck tout le monde and no cheating!

In terms of technical gubbins it was built in one evening using PHP to scrape the wikipedia API to find people then the wikiparser class to establish whether they were with us or not. However, experienced a number of issues with extracting meaningful and accurate data from wikipedia’s proprietry markup, notably

1. whether someone was, in fact, a person, and

1. whether they had expired

That was, until the astonishingly clever Brian Suda pointed me in the direction of freebase a data junky and web enthusiasts nirvana with well structured data easily interoggable through their exhaustive api. a few ammendments later and dCeased now seems pretty robust at answering the question it set out to do.

A few wee enhancments include a random phrase to express a person’s death drawn from wikisaurus and using the proposed date of death microformat. The design is a bit rough around the edges but will do for now.

Deliberating on whether to buy a domain for this baby or just to keep it sitting as a sub-domain of my web work at TINY v but in the meantime, as Brian pointed out hoping it will at least settle a few disputes in the pub. And to answer Roan’s original question, no she isn’t.

2009 has so far been a fruitful exercise in avoiding my tax return. Amongst the things I have achieved in the subtle art of self assessment procrastination careful thought and deliberation, I have:

• nearly finished our kitchen
• found a renewed interest in blogging

• discovered that capital asset is an anagram of ass tit palace, a finer name for a brothel i think you will unlikely find

Thank heavens then for Freeagent Central, an Edinburgh-based web application aimed at making business accounting simple for numerical numpties like me. I first came across Freeagent Central shortly after starting freelance work 2 years ago and it has proven to be an invaluable resource for managing my business finances.

Features that really sold Freeagent Central for me have been:

• Project and client-based invoicing, including recurrent invoicing (eg for hosting or maintenance)
• Customisable invoices (using CSS templates) exporting to PDF
• Time tracking
• Integration with bank accounts (including import of digital bank, credit card and paypal statements)
• Expense and mileage tracking, including recurring expenses
• Ability to upload scans of bills and receipts
• Great, prompt customer support and advice on Get Satisfaction
• Automatic tax and income assessment calculations, including integration with salaried employment
• At a glance accounting summaries
• Built-in API, though not really explored this yet
• Export data as an excel spreadsheet
• Slick design by my Net Resources predecessor, Roan Lavery

• Lots of other things that mean nothing to me

Freeagent Central is a monthly subscription-based service (sole traders come in at £15 + VAT a month) but there is a Free 30 day trial to see if it floats your boat (and not your business). If you sign up using the following referral link then we’ll both get 10% of our subscription costs (everyone’s a winner, baby):

http://www.freeagentcentral.com/?referrer=1c8frs9e

It may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but Freeagent Central has improved the workflow for my freelance work immeasurably and taken the sting out of accounting and self assessment.

Disclaimer, other accounting web apps are available and none should replace the merits of hiring a reputable accountant to do your taxes, although there is an expanding list of accountants who are freeagent friendly.

And remember kids i(nvoice) comes before e(xpense), except after c(apital asset)!

feeling the need for speed

Since discovering firefox I was impressed with its wide array of extensions, its tabbed browsing and good support for CSS. It quickly became my first (and pretty much only) port of call when it came to perusing the web and building things for it (except for the obligatory browser testing).

But the one thing that really pisses me off about Firefox is that it is a memory hungry beast. If you leave more than a few tabs open your web browser will soon savagely be devouring any spare processing power on your computer. If you even think about opening up a graphics package at the same time as you have an open browsing session you’ll soon be wishing that some limey hadn’t even bothered inventing the internet in the first place.

So, the first thing I noticed about Chrome was how blazingly fast it is, even with our poxy rural broadband connection. With so many AJAXy rich internet applications on the web in this day and age I hadn’t really realised how slow Firefox was becoming as a casual web browsing tool and this, for me, is where Chrome really stands out.

tab clear

Chrome makes some nice enhancements to tabbed browsing, such as the ability to drag tabs out of their container to create a new browsing window. Clicking on a new tab will bring you to one of the nicest features of Chrome which is its default home page – showing your most visited sites (with screengrabs), recently bookmarked sites and – during your browser session – your most recently closed tabs. There are also options to search or browse your browsing history, with visits outlined chronologically using favicons for swift perusal.

I think the real clincher for Chrome – and this is not as a web designer but as a web user – is this holistic approach to web browsing that it takes. In stark contrast to many recent browsers which have scrambled to add features and functionality as the web expands in its remit and potential, Chrome takes one function – web browsing – and strips the fluff and distractions away to do that and do it well. It resonates with the same simplicity that characterises the Google search page and the interface for Chrome is intuitive and effective, focusing on the web page itself rather than countless toolbars. One potential criticism is the loss of a separate search bar but as the majority of people would be using this to search Google anyway this isn’t really a problem.

inspecteur gadget

For the web developers amongst you, it has to be said that Chrome has a pretty nice HTML and CSS inspector built in, with nested viewing of the DOM and CSS attributes and a handy option to examine the speed and size of any resources used on a page. All available in Firefox I hear you cry but it’s pretty impressive that this bit of geekery is part of the core build for this browser. Chrome also has some other useful resources for web developers and designers with a javascript console and debugger and tab manager.

apply yourself

Clearly a preempt to Google’s ultimate aim to take over your desktop as well as your web experience is the ability to create application icons for any website and save these to your desktop or start bar to initiate a minimal version of Chrome for that website. A nice feature that will only increase in potential as people move more to web applications from traditional software and whilst this ability already exists in other browsers/operating systems Google have taken it and made it simple and intuitive.

account ability

The main down sides to Chrome for me has to be the inability to tie the browser into a Google account.
It would be great to integrate the burgeoning array of Google tools (mail, documents, calendar, analytics, reader) into the browser for ease of use and to also be able to transfer and synchronise your settings (bookmarks, history, etc) across multiple devices. I find it impossible to imagine that this won’t be taking place in the future but for me it is an opportunity missed by Google to make a useful browser invaluable (for Google account users at least).

aRSSe off

Having said that a strong asset of Chrome is its near sole focus on web browsing it would still be nice to have a bit more RSS integration into the browser, particularly with Google having their own RSS reader and having taken over Feedburner. But after even IE adopted RSS feeds in its address bar, Chrome won’t event let you know if there is a feed associated with the page you are browsing. Poor show Google!

So, that’s about it. Hope it’s not too gushing but as you can probably tell I am profoundly in love with the new browser on the block. Its definitely not time for Firefox to hang up its horseshoes just yet. FireFox will remain the browser of choice for web designers and developers in the foreseeable future due to its versatility, effectiveness and superior power. However, there is a new filly in town. It may be too young to fight with the big contenders and has a logo resembling a cross between simple simon and a pokeball but so far it has impressed this particular web jockey.

So, here goes:

Blog More

The road is paved with good intentions. Unfortunately, Edinburgh council has recently dug a massive hole in the road as part of their ongoing effort to make Auld Reekie innavigable to all but hoverboards.

I’ve got a lot to say – some of which might be of some interest to the passing observer (much not) – and at the moment I’ve got a quite frankly shocking 12 draft articles that i started writing but never got round to finishing. Procrastination and perfectionism are not happy bed fellows!
Most of these will be deleted but I will endeavour in 2009 to find more time to post things up on this here blog for your delectation.

Redesign aforementioned blog

When I designed this site last year I was quite happy with it but for me it has past its efficacy. The blocks of colour and type treatment have proved quite rigid and inflexible and – to me at least – boring. I want to use this blog as an opporunity to piss about experiment with new techniques and skills so I think it is about time that it got a visual refresh.

Be a most excellent and attentive dad

In 2 or so weeks time I will be twice the dad I have hitherto been with a new bairn due to arrive into our lives. We completely struck gold with wee Gethin so am dreading the potential nightmare of bairn 2.0. Either way, with two kids on the go am going to have to do my best to be there for Gethin, Peta and the new arrival. When Gethin first arrived I kinda freaked out in a typically blokish manner – throwing myself into the cave and denying my new role and responsibility as a parent. So I am vowing to do my best to avoid a similar reaction this time round and be there in body, mind and spirit!

Smoke less

I love smoking me – as Jo Brand recently exclaimed on the excellent QI

The only advert I’d agree to do is one for fags:
“They’re bloody lovely and you might not get cancer”

Yes I know it’s bad for me and no, it doesn’t make me look cool and yes, it costs money but I do sincerely enjoy chuffing on a roll up or two. But I definitely smoke too much and realise that I should cut down a wee bit. So during 2009 I will try to bring my consumption down and see smoking as a light relief rather than the coping mechanism/involuntary response that it has recently become.

Start writing PhD up into book

For ten years or so I invested most of my waking moments (and probably far too many of my sleeping ones) in the study of the Neolithic of Scotland. The culmination of this was my doctoral thesis – a mighty tome of some 120,000 words that currently sits – probably unread – on a library shelf somewhere in Aberystwyth. I am proud of some of the stuff in there and would like to make it available and more accessible, particularly to those outwith the archaeology fraternity.
So, now I have officially moved on from archaeology perhaps now is the time to take what I have learnt in the past few years as a web designer to create a visually and intellectually engaging account of the Neolithic of the Western Isles of Scotland.

Screenprint more

In the run up to the end of 2008 I got quite into screen printing, making Christmas presents and cards for friends and family. I have always loved art and being creative and in recent years this has manifest in digital media but it was great to get hands dirty and produce tangible art (if you can call it that) so will defo try to continue the momentum of last year to experiment more with this medium and be more creative.

Unfinished projects 1

Most of my spare time thus far in 2009 has been spent renovating our kitchen. This past weekend saw the wall cabinets going up so we are pretty much there already with the exception of some tiling but don’t want this particular project to lie unfinished for the remainder of 2009. One of my goals therefore will be to finish what I started and preferably before the new bairn arrives

Socialise more

I just don’t get out as much as I used to. Parenthood, rural location, finances and commuting are all excuses reasons for failing to go out with friends and colleagues more often than I perhaps otherwise should so will try in 2009 to go out and socialise more in Edinburgh and its environs, especially with the burgeoning web scene Scotland is now enjoying.

Value work more

The old adage goes that if you charge peanuts you get monkeys. In addition to full-time web work, for the past 2 years I have been doing freelance web design work under the moniker of TINY v. My rates for freelance work have always been particularly low, reflecting the fact that this is a secondary income and I can’t work as quickly as I might if I could devote all my time to freelance projects. It is probably a gross generalisation but from the past couple of years experience the more you value your work (in terms of the rates you charge) the more worth your client will percieve in your services and the greater value you will see in doing that work.

Working freelance in addition to the 9-5 means late nights and sometimes low motivation – nothing is going to kill that motivation more than knowing you are not getting paid what you think you deserve for doing it. I may lose out on some clients but will definitely try to charge more for the freelance web work that I do in 2009.

Unfinished projects 2

The curse of the web designer – teaching yourself new skills by having a half-arsed brainwave, envisage building it into a web app, buying up a domain and then doing piss all with it. In 2008 I had two such brainwaves which went on to stagnate – dumago and tinyadr. The upcoming Barcamp in Edinburgh is the perfect opportunity to throw myself back into at least one of these so will do my utmost to get something relatively polish in time for 14th March (amidst the minor distraction of our new arrival).

So, what are your resolutions? What do you hope to achieve in 2009?

From the start of January I will be working at Edinburgh-based web design agency Net Resources. I am faced with the tough task of replacing the irreplaceable Roan as web design manager there with him going on to do more lovely shiny things with gradients, whitespace and Calibri at Freeagent Central.

I’ve been the web designer (latterly web development manager) at RCAHMS for over 2½ years, starting in April 2006 (the day our son Gethin was born). Although I had been doing web things as a hobby for about 8 years, taking this forward to a job was a daunting prospect and a big gamble at the time. It was the first time there had been a web position at RCAHMS and in those early days was a role I was lucky to be able to have some input in shaping.

In the past 2½ years I have seen a changing attitude towards the web at RCAHMS and it is great now to see the significance attached to the web in promoting the work of the organisation and also the importance being attached to creating accessible online experiences shaped by the principles of web standards.

Sadly, in the past few months (perhaps spurred on by the uncertainty associated with an impending bairn 2.0) I have felt like I needed a change from the Commission and when the opportunity came up at Net Resources it was one I had little difficulty in accepting.

I have known of Net Resources for 3 or 4 years and always had a great respect for their work. It was doing a PHP/MySQL training course there in 2006 that I realised I could probably treat web design as more than a hobby, giving me the confidence to move jobs at RCAHMS. So it is great for things to come full circle.

Alas, it is ultimately a time that I must say farewell to archaeology. Although I have not done archaeology in the 2½ years since I moved to the web, working in a heritage organisation has kept me in contact with the subject that has dominated so much of my life: from amateur enthusiasm in my teens through university and ultimately the PhD. I started at RCAHMS almost five years ago as a HLA officer and along the way I’ve met some great people and worked on some great projects. Working there it is impossible not to be swept along with the passion for the historic environment shared by all its staff.

It is truly a unique organisation, one I will be sad to leave and I can only hope that it survives the recent proposals from the Scottish Goverment and continue to play an important and independent part in recording and understanding Scotland’s rich cultural heritage.

I had a moustache in the army to make me look older because I wasn’t permitted a beard. On demob I grew a beard for the same reason. Last Sunday I shaved it off because I no longer needed to look older.

In another email I was asking his opinion on the role of the web for the older generation. His response?

The problem with the net for most people my age is Who do you chat with when all your old friends are dead; and What can you find to chat about with anyone younger ? For the first you need belief in some hereafter and a good medium and for the second a lot more knowledge about what is now called music, promiscuous sex and binge drinking – none of which oldies know about because we only lived so long by avoiding such.

I love my Granddad me

For the next 30 days I will be joining thousands of men (and no doubt some women) across the globe in trying to acquire a quality ‘Mo’. Those of you who know me will know that I am a beardy sort. If so, you will probably be wondering what kind of a challenge growing a Mo will present to someone who has sported some form of facial fluff since being of folicular growing age. Well, the prerequisite of Movember is starting the month clean shaven. That’s right, Dr Henley has shaved off his entire beard just in time for what will certainly be the coldest November on record.

So if, like me, you believe in raising the awareness of Men’s health issues and can spare a penny or two then why not make a small donation to Movember

All money raised by Movember is donated to The Prostate Cancer Charity who are using the funds to create awareness, fund research, increase support resources and networks for those men who suffer from prostate cancer.

If anyone is interested in monitoring my Mo-progress I will try to remember to stick pics up on flickr

mad day. could really do with a fermented cereal beverage but fridge says no. sulk

imagine my surprise later that evening when outside my front door were 4 bottles of beer with the following message:

ask and it shall be given unto you…
Tweet and ye shall find!

What a delight. Alas this was not the twitter beer fairy but the lovely @neilmatheson spreading a little cheer in the small of the night.
Thanks Neil – I owe you a beer or 4

Now twitter fairy – I could really do with finding large wads of unmarked bills down the back of the sofa…

it was a great evening although had to sadly dash before too long to catch a train home (upon which I promptly fell asleep on and missed my stop, but that’s another story). among the illustrious illuminaries in attendance were andy, jonathan,
sam, roan, sandy, brian, dave and paul plus some others who were just an irrecognisable haze through my beer soaked vision

hoping the momentum continues – the consensus was that such meet ups should be regular and john has already got the ball rolling on another installment of Refresh Edinburgh. It is great to see Edinburgh and its environs has such a thriving web scene of like-minded and passionate individuals who care greatly about the web and it’s nice to know we don’t all have to head to the south of England once a year to catch up. just next time someone please make sure i have some food with my beers

0-19: the formative years

well, this is when the majority of it all happened. i was born in harlow, essex, and after a short period of homelessness we moved to royal leamington spa. this time was spent entirely at school although it wasn’t until i was 18 that i began to take education seriously after failing my a-levels preferring instead to devote these prime years to finding self, usually in the pub or late at a friends house.

after not making the grade, a year of retakes forced a dramatic rethink of priorities and was pleased to make it into university the following year and escape for pastures new in sunny wales

19-30: the eternal student years

i initially set off for cardiff to become a primary school teacher, taking education with archaeology. in the first year i fell in love with archaeology, especially British prehistory and the neolithic period, so instead focussed my degree solely on archaeology, hoping to continue my desire to teach by aspiring for an academic career.

thus unfolded the next 11 years or so. after doing well at the degree i got a grant to take a masters at cardiff and then a scholarship from the british academy to undertake my PhD on the Neolithic of the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. The PhD became all consuming but during this time i met my lovely wife Peta during a dig on South Uist.

at 26 peta and i moved to edinburgh whilst i was still completing my doctorate. i submitted the doctorate and got a job at Historic Scotland as an assistant inspector of ancient monuments. i had to resubmit the thesis and in the meantime got a job at the RCAHMS as a landscape archaeologist, surveying the survival of past land-use throughout scotland. at 30 everything was about to change

30-33: sea change

at 30 everything changed. the phd was done, our first child, gethin, was on the way and after struggling to find a secure job in archaeology i decided on a career change, moving to a new role in web design at RCAHMS. in the last 2 and a half years i have rediscovered the passion i once had for archaeology in web design and an outlet for my creativity. i have found a lovely home with my wife and our baby has become a cheeky wee boy. i also have quite a few more grey hairs

33-?: what’s next?

well, time will tell. bairn 2.0 is on the way and who knows what lies around the corner. it has been a fab 33 years so far and here is hoping for a fair few more…

Whilst the aspiration for such a document is welcomed, as a public sector employee who embraces web standards I must support the concerns echoed by Bruce Lawson, Chris Heilmann and Jon Hicks with this document.

The public sector must have an inclusive approach to web delivery that emphasises accessibility for all. Browser support statements, for me at least, go against this ethic.

Anyway, my response to the COI is posted below. Offer your responses to the document via the COI website or by sending an email to webguidelines@coi.gsi.gov.uk

Dear Sirs

I work in the public sector as a web developer/designer and looking over the consultation document – and the various responses that have subsequently emerged discussing it – I feel that this document has missed the point somewhat.

Working in the public sector resources are very limited so the numbers game (<2% usage) would theoretically be welcomed in terms of cutting off support for certain browsers (i.e. those we don’t have the resources to test on). However, in reality the best approach has to be adopting a web standards methodology (separating content from presentation, progressive enhancement, etc). This would ensure that all but a handful of browsers would be supported (although, ironically, those least likely to be supported will be those in greatest use, i.e. Internet Explorer).

It is important to state what browsers a site has been tested on but this is not to be confused with a list of supported browsers. As the public sector strives for inclusivity in the products and information we deliver online, we cannot turn to those users who favour a particular technology which falls beneath a certain demographic and say that their platform/interface is unsupported.

This is passive discrimination. In all likelihood less than 2% of our users are likely to be blind but there would be outrage if we were to turn around and say that we cannot support their use of the site because of their proportion in our overall demographic. We should treat the diversity of resources that the public use in accessing our resources as seriously as we do the diversity of the users themselves.

The only common-sense approach then has to be to develop and design with a standards-based methodology. To have solid foundations upon which we create and deliver our web resources. Browsers change but standards remain and the more we as a web development and design community work to these standards, the more the browser manufacturers will have to adhere to the standards which we utilise (and the less a browser support statement will ultimately be required).

By all means propose a statement that states which interfaces a site has been tested on and this could logically be part of a broader accessibility statement (I for one have always considered accessibility to be an aspiration for the inclusion of all users irrespective of means, ability or technology) but, and I must reiterate, do not confuse this with those interfaces a website supports.

Perhaps the issue is semantic but I, for one, would not want to be taking this approach on the web sites I manage and deliver to the public.

There is so much more I wanted to do in the time available but jsut couldn’t – some positive feedback so far from those that have had a look and keen for some more so if anyone is interested in giving it a test run drop us an email at info@tinyadr.com and we’ll send you the details.

Anyone at dConstruct, hope to see you there…

keeping quiet on things at present but the domain name has been ordered, the obligatory moo cards are being printed (and will hopefully arrive in time) and beavering away at design and functionality.

stay tuned….

Pop along to the Paperie website to pick up 3 Field Notes books for £6.95 including free UK delivery. Now I’m getting back into sketching after a long absence, I think I might also invest in a nice Moleskine Large Watercolour Notebook whilst I’m at it.

Working on a site in the excellent open source CMS MODx I needed to create a site map. The site featured a mix of static and dynamic pages, the latter featuring things that would drop in and out of the site with time so I needed a snippet to filter the documents in the site accordingly when creating the site map.

Handily, MODx has just one such snippet built into its core called Wayfinder which is designed for the express purpose of creating lists of documents within the document tree. However, one shortcoming of Wayfinder is that it is a pain to ignore children documents when generating a list from the document tree without also ignoring their parent. In Plain English, if I have a news folder which contains individual news items and I want in my site map to include the news folder/parent but not its childrens (the individual news items) it is difficult to achieve this without

1. specifying all the children you want to ignore in the wayfinder call that generates the list (not desirable for the technically unitiated ie content populators/managers), or

1. deselecting an option for each child file that is added during content population (a bit of a hassle)

So, one simple tricky solution was to hack into the Wayfinder snippet, adding the ignoreKids parameter to achieve just this.
Now, when calling wayfinder from within MODx just add &ignoreKids=`X` as a parameter with X being a comma-separated list of document ids for those document parents/containers that you want to appear in the wayfinder list but not their children, eg:

[!Wayfinder? &startId=`0` &level=`3` &ignoreKids=`75,77,78`!]

This will perform the Wayfinder snippet, including documents 75, 77 and 78 but ignoring any of their child documents.

Instructions

Download wayfinder.ignoreKids.hack.zip

This zip file contains two php files: wayfinder.inc.php and wayfinder.snippet.php. Replace the snippet call in MODx with wayfinder.snippet.php and replace the wayfinder.inc.php file that is in your /assets/snippets/wayfinder folder.

It will be great to be back on home soil after what seems ages and I will be making it a long weekend to do some long overdue catching up with friends and family.
After spending most of my childhood and early adults years in Leamington I couldn’t wait to escape for the bigger, brighter lights of Cardiff in the summer of 1995. However, it is only recently visiting it with my wife – who, being a forces child, never really had a childhood home – that I have come to realise what a lovely, peaceful town Leamington is.

Really looking forward to a fun day and some great talks in the evening with messrs Jon Hicks (also an old Leamingtonian) and Drew McLellan. Only regret is not being able to bring bairn down to partake of the family-related ativities in the day

PS: looking to be a billy no mates at the event so anyone reading this popping along do say hello – going to be wierd being a stranger in my home town!

filling out the online forms to get a quote i was intrigued by some of the options available under the required occupation field, notably blackburn rovers player. unsurprisingly, web designer wasn’t available

although it is taking place in ROYAL leamington spa, some 344 miles away from my humble abode in scotland, the event is actually taking place less than 200 yards away from where my folks live and where i grew up, on the banks for the river leam (or thereabouts).

so am royally gutted that can’t afford to attend – the prohibitive expense of virgin train fares means that on the 9th august i will be sitting at home sulking whilst the geeks descend en masse to my old haunt. unless, of course, there are some philanthropic blog readers out there with plenty of poppy poised to line richard branson’s pockets on my behalf…

sadly, however, the cards weren’t as expected. the text on the cards, being primarily black, had been printed on a black background.

the problem was, it seems, that the image I uploaded – a png – had a transparent background. although the image preview when making the cards showed a white background the digital processes involved must default to black. black on black in printing can be pretty cool, especially where spot laminate is involved. sadly this wasn’t the case :(

so, if you are uploading any png’s to moo.com for printing please make sure that the background isn’t transparent. however, don’t let this dissuade you from partaking of another fab moo.com product. Just make sure you format and upload your images properly

update

i got in touch with the lovely people at moo.com about the problem and they are sending a replaced batch of cards free of charge. three cheers for moo!

the article discussed JIIGCAL, a computer-based system for choosing career paths that was introduced into British schools in the 80s.

i remember filling my sheet out – a questionnaire with a series of multiple choice questions – which were then sent off to be calculated by a computer up in Edinburgh. the result? a dot-matrix print with your top ten careers as chosen by the super computer of the future.

i don’t have my print out anymore (though some people still have theirs) but I distinctly recall my top 3 career paths, as chosen by this computer:

1. Fashion Designer
2. Archaeologist

1. Medical Illustrator

being both squeemish and scruffy, neither option 1 or 3 appealed to me so – having not really considered the possibility before – I decided that i was going to become an archaeologist. after school i went on to do a degree and then masters and then doctorate in the subject.

always having been interested in archaeology i never realised that it was something that could be done as a career. remember, this was long before the days of time team and Lara Croft, so perceptions of archaeology were restricted to Indiana Jones and….well, that’s about it. Come on now, which young boy wouldn’t want to be Indiana Jones?

Ironically given my current career, there was nothing on the list to do with computers. Saying that, back in the day i was never particularly good with computers – i only got a D in my Computing GCSE though that was largely due to the joys of programming on a BBC Micro.

i’m not doing archaeology now (although am working for a government heritage organisation) but bizarrely Jiig-Caal definitely shaped what I wanted to do after school and what i went on to do for the next 10 years of my life. it determined the path that ultimately led to me meeting my lovely wife (on an archaeology dig in the outer hebrides), and also to me moving to Scotland, which I now call home. I still love archaeology and perhaps, some day, I might return to it but in the meantime cheers Jiig-Caal. You may have been making decisions that would irrevocably change impressionable young people’s lives forever on a machine that had less computing power than my mobile phone, but in my case you got things pretty spot on!

Before making the big jump onto the property ladder (just before the markets went belly up) we were seriously considering sending our boy to the Steiner school in Edinburgh, which emphasises a holistic approach to education and places an emphasis on personal development before (but not at the expence of) academic achievement.

I was fortunate enough as a child to go to a state school that embraced similar ideologies and had always wanted a similar education for my child(ren). Sadly, the education I received which I value so highly has since been killed off by the ever restrictive pegagogies and curricula of the government, emphasising quotas and continual assesment within the education profession – a system that ultimately fails our children and demoralises the teaching profession.

It is sad that as a parent, choosing a particular kind of education for our children has become a privilege rather than a right and where a certain quality of education is only available to those who can afford it. This undermines the fundamental principles of the 1944 Butler Act which saught to remove a system of education that privileged those who can afford it by making education compulsory and free for everyone between the ages of 5-15.

It is even sadder that were the choice to exist, that I – and no doubt countless other parents – would choose an independent school over those offered by the state for our children. Not as an indictment of the teaching profession but of the increasingly restrictive constraints placed on teachers and pupils.

ryan mcgoverne photography

This has been a revamp of a site I worked on some years ago for good friend and talented photographer ryan mcgoverne. The existing site was okay but lacked any back-end beyond a simple MySQL database, so updates came to yours truly in exchange for a beer or two on the rare occasions we got to meet up.

Ryan decided he needed something he could update himself so I adapted a bespoke CMS I had created for the website of photographer Simon Way a year or so ago. With increased confidence in jquery I was able to make some enhancements to the CMS – such as customisable thumbnails and cropping of images – as well as the front end too. On the negative side (ol’ cynical me), I wish I’d had more time to spend on the overall layout and typography of the site. But at the end of the day, in terms of making the images the primary focus of the site (a good aspiration for a photographer’s website) I think the result is quite successful.

caerleon research committee

as an alumni of Cardiff University School of History and Archaeology i was approached by a lecturer there to redesign the website for the caerleon research committee: a bunch of (primarily) academic types interested in the research and investigation of the Roman legionary fortress of Isca.

It has been a fun project and one which nicely brought together my interests in archaeology and web design. I had the freedom on this project to experiment with, and ultimately dictate, the design and overall I’m quite pleased with the result, especially the page footer. Personally, not overly chuffed with the suckerfish menu (mouse dependent) but that was what was asked for so duly obliged.

Now, those of you know me know that I am more likely to be found partaking of a crafty fag round the back of the bike sheds than walking anywhere unless it can be helped so what better opportunity to boost my lungs AND do it for a worthy cause than to seek your charitable support in my endeavours.

So please pop along to http://www.justgiving.com/colehenley to pledge your support for the Cole Henley Badger Walk, a 1 mile walk though Edinburgh’s lovely Meadows come rain or shine (given the Scottish summer so far almost certainyl the former) in aid of the Badger Trust.

Just think, your generous contribution could help promote the conservation and welfare of badgers and protect their setts and habitats.

And remember, donating through Justgiving is quick, easy and totally secure. It’s also the most efficient way to sponsor me: the Badger Trust gets your money faster and, if you’re a UK taxpayer, Justgiving makes sure 25% in Gift Aid, plus a 3% supplement, are added to your donation.

So pop along to http://www.justgiving.com/colehenley and make your donation today.

It transpires that the mobile number UK twitter users use to send messages to – 07624801423 – is not included in my plan because t-mobile regards this number to be an international number. Why? Because the company that operates the number is based on that bastion of insularity, the Isle of Man.

My last mobile phone operator – Virgin – considered this number to be UK-based so included it in my free texts plan. Bizarrely though, Virgin operates their service on the back of the t-mobile network.

Anyway, I thought I would post this up in case anyone else out there is sending messages to twitter from their t-mobile mobile phones.

Postscript

One rather long call to customer services later (and some rather bad hold music – something at least Virgin had covered) I eventually got to speak to a manager and t-mobile have agreed to refund the amount charged but stated that any future uses of the number will be charged as previously

It also seems that twitter have posted a help page on this topic for UK customers

But my reasons for backing Spain are a more sentimental than analytical. In the summer of 1986 when I was a wee, skinny boy a guest visiting from Spain brought with her a replica Spanish football kit. I had only recently discovered football, being taken to see Big Ron’s Man Utd scrap a draw at Nottingham Forest and spent what seemed like the whole summer collecting Panini Mexico 86 stickers . Whenever Spain played I cheered them and was royally gutted when they lost to Belgium on penalties in the Quarter Final. Thus started a lifetime of supporting the perennial underachievers (a term that was seemingly coined for the Spanish national team), most painful of which probably being the Quarter Final loss to England on penalties.

Anyways, this year I have a feeling that they might just do it. They are possibly a bit shaky at the back but have some really useful attacking players and for the first time, a range of players that have experience in playing outside Spain. The Spanish are a fiercely loyal and patriotic side and it has historically been rare for Spanish players to ply their trade away from home, with players like Zubizarreta Butragueño Luis Enrique and Raul all playing in Spanish teams. Those that had ventured abroad have either enjoyed limited success (Morientes ) or done so in the twilight of their career (Hierro ) so it is great to see a stock of young players – in Reina , Fabregas and Torres – who have enjoyed success abroad.

So time to dispell the bad memories and 44 years of hurt.

In conjunction with Dan Champion (the brains behind betMooch) we bring you betMooch Euro 2008 Fantasy Football – pop along to register your free team of eleven.
Once registered you can setup your own custom leagues to challenge the managerial nouse of friends, family, colleagues and the like. There is even a lucky dip feature to assist with the mangerial challenged amongst you.

Pop along to betMooch Euro 2008 Fantasy Football and register your team before the deadline of 19:45 _BST on Thursday 19th June, 2008

RSS stands for Real Simple Syndication and it is a means for sending and recieving websites outwith the webpage.
“Why do this” I hear you cry?
Why? Because today the web is more than just web pages. With the proliferation of blogs and user generated content on sites like flickr and youtube the web is being updated by the day hour minute second and it is becoming increasingly difficult to keep track of this information. Let me illustrate.

Back in the day when I was a young web-a-snapper, I would spend a lot of my online time trawling through my bookmarks, viewing my favourite news sites, blogs, image sites, etc. to see if there had been any updates since my last visit. My bookmarks were becoming unmanageable and my time lost as I repeatedly hit a site only to see that it was the same as it had been when I last looked.

Then I came across RSS. RSS is a dissemination technology. That is, it provides an alternative means for disseminating a website – or rather a website’s content beyond the traditional means of the web page. Lost you yet? Think about Braille. Braille is a means of disseminating the same information but in a different way, allbeit in this case to a different kind of user. RSS sends content from a website to you, the user, but in a different way. This is called a feed. A feed is a stream of information about a website or page that automatically updates when that page/site has been updated.

Whereas the traditional means of consuming web content – the web browser – reads web pages we need a dfifferent medium for reading RSS feeds. This is called a feed aggregator. A feed aggregator sits between you and the web content you want to consume. You tell the aggregator what websites/pages you want to subscribe to and it does the rest – when a feed you are subscribed to is updated the aggregator downloads the latest article from that feed for your consumption.

This aggregator can come in a number of formats. I personally use Google Reader, a web service provided by Google, but you can take your pick. There are software aggregators that you can download, widgets you can stick on your desktop or you can subscribe to RSS feeds in your email client and view them as you would messages for your email account. You can now consume RSS feeds with mobile phones (alas, I am sad enough to), some handset providing this facility as standard.

Whatever way you choose to consume RSS feeds, the idea behind them is that they bring the web to you. They are a tool in streamlining and therefore enhancing your online experience by freeing up your time to do the tasks you want to do on the internet.

How do I know a site I like has an RSS feed?

Sadly, not all websites have RSS feeds. But a great many do. If you are using a modern web browser like Firefox, Opera, Safari or the latest version of Internet Explorer (7 or above) and you visit a site with an RSS feed your browser will tell you this by showing the RSS icon (usually orange but sometimes blue) in your address bar, alerting you to the fact that you can subscribe to that sites content.

Clicking on this icon in your address bar will offer you the chance to subscribe to the feed using your aggregator of choice. Some sites may have multiple feeds. To return to our bairn blog we have two RSS feeds on the site. One to alert people when we have written a new article and another to let them know if any new photos have been posted.

The lost art of exploration?

It may be argued that RSS feeds take the fun out of the internet. Does having information come to us so freely and so readily deprive us of the joy of exploring. With RSS are we losing the ability to browse the web?

Browsing the web is like any kind of exploration. Take the jungle. We can make our way through a jungle unaided (easier said than done perhaps). It takes time however and to enjoy the sites and smells of the jungle we need tools to speed up the process. Wading through the dense vegetation of the web it is difficult to get our bearings sometimes and we might often stumble upon paths and sights (and smells) we have encountered upon before. What we need is a tool. What we need is a machete. An RSS machete!
This will speed our progress through the areas we have walked and seen (and smelt) and enable us to spend our time exploring new places (or to more easily revisit old ones).

Piss poor metaphor aside, RSS feeds provide your means to navigate the web quicker. They provide a means for you to be in control of the information that comes to you when both it and you are ready.

Tell me more…

Well, if this has wet your appetite then there is plenty of more information out there on RSS feeds. Some useful starters:

• feed 101 an interesting intro to RSS feeds on the feedburner website. Skip to the end of the page for a list of common RSS readers
• Web feeds summary article on wikipedia about web feeds
• List of aggregators exhaustive list on wikipedia of feed aggregators
• RSS format detailed history of the RSS format

• What is RSS introduction to RSS by legendary web designer, Dave Shea

And while you’re at it, why not subscribe to my RSS feed by clicking on the RSS icon in your address bar above.

the conference, and the subsequent workshops i had the good fortune of attending, were in a word inspirational. there have been a range of excellent write-ups from sam and roan and Jeremy Keith did an admirable job of summarising the conference talks so i won’t delve into too much detail but taking the lead from andy budd’s excellent presentation i thought i would summarise my brief trip to london through my own experience curve:

Highlights

Pre-conference party. After going to the wrong party I eventually arrived at Covent Garden where promptly met a wide range of thoroughly interesting people and a few idols to boot. Sadly, drank far too much free booze and mixed my drinks leading to some chronic vomitting in the small hours. Oh dear.

Andy Budd’s talk. Sheer inspiration. Andy’s talk considering the user experience curve was captivating from start to finish. Attention to detail, personality and customisation are ideas that will stick with me in future web projects.

Jon Hicks’ talk. A great summary of the web design process from idea to deployment. Necessarily basic at times it was great to step back from the minutia of web design to see the bigger picture and a holistic overview of the process we are all involved in. Plus one of the best web straplines ever:

Oh what a friend we have in cheeses.

Daniel Burka’s talk. If Jon Hick’s talk was about getting website up and out there, Daniel’s super talk considered responding to user feedback and the necessarily iterative process of developing websites in an age of user generated content. It was great to finish the day on such a high and with a speaker with such enthusiasm.

The whole shebang. Paul Boag put together a fantastic array of speakers that worked really well in outlining the web design process, from conception to development to deployment to evolution. I have a notebook (the paper variety) full of ideas, inspiration and techniques. Cheers Paul.

Pub standards. The exodi from the after-conference soiree (see below) led to a conversion of like-minded individuals at Pub Standards in the Brick Layers before hitting the Spanish Bar and hanging out with Sam Brown, Tim van Damme, Malarkey, Jason Cale, Larissa Meek and the thoroughly enjoyable Erskine gang

Miguel Ripoll and Elastic Design. Having been booked onto Elliot Jay Stocks' workshop on Photoshop and not being a Photoshop user I was delighted to get onto Miguel’s workshop on Elastic design. Fascinating discussion which focused on elastic thinking behind the design process. Got so much from this workshop and to boot the guy is a fellow Mac hater – a dying breed in this industry it would seem.

Lowlights

Not many but for me the lowlights were Benedict Ireland’s completely unnecessary talk about the Aston Martin website and the after-conference soiree. Free bar expired in half an hour with subsequent bottled beers @ £5 each and the music too loud to hear self think, let alone chat to other delegates, hence exodus to Pub Standards.

If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire… The A-Team

As a web designer I rely on a range of software for completing my daily tasks. Here I outline my Soldiers of Fortune to show how I get from ideas to paper to pixel.

Pen and paper

I love it when a plan comes together and what plans are complete without pen and paper? When working on or for the web – whether it is a design or some head-frying PHP or javascript – I will always have a pad of paper poised for doodles, calculations, inspiration and distractions.

Col. John “Hannibal” Smith: notepad++

The brains of my A Team is provided by that George Peppard of
text editors, notepad++. At the end of the day whether it is back-end, front-end or those fuzzy bits in the middle I spend most of my time in this text editor.

I have never been overly keen on those tools that do too much of the work for you. I have always found comfort in basic text editors
as they help you to understand how the codes you are working with function. How many web design jobs have I seen advertised that say Dreamweaver is required? Dreamweaver is not a technology, it is a tool, and a job should always be about the skills and not the tools. It also signals my desire – as seen throughout my arsenal – to work as much as possible with open source software.

Lt. Templeton “Faceman” Peck: inkscape

I need a man I can rely on, a man who I can depend on to get what I want, when I want and look good doing it. For that I am increasingly using inkscape. There’s so much satifaction and control in working with vector graphics and this software has become an invaluable tool in all my design work, whether it is working up logos, icons or whole web sites. I’m preparing an article on using inkscape for working up web designs but in the meantime suffice to say that my dream job would probably entail playing with inkscape all day long.

Capt. H.M. “Howling Mad” Murdock: the gimp

For moments of lunacy when I can’t get the job I need doing in Inkscape I stray into photo editing and to achieve this I bring out the GIMP. It sure takes some getting used to at first but once you get used to it Inkscape is a very rewarding and powerful piece of software. The interface has improved with each new version and the close parallels between Inkscape and the Gimp make these two perfect companions for all your graphical needs.

Bosco B.A.(Bad Attitude) Baracus: Windows

The muscle of my outfit is provided by Windows. I have never felt geeky enough for *Nix and just not stylish or rich enough for Macs. I have never really got Macs and though I appreciate the sheer quality of their design I have often felt they were a case of style over substance. It may not be getting on no airplane anytime soon but it admirably does everything I want/need it to do. Pity the fool, sucker!

Notable accomplices

So, that’s the stars of the show but what A Team would be complete without an ensemble cast of tenuous accomplices hand-picked from wikipedia.

Colonel Morrison: freeagent central

Behind every operation is a man who pulls the strings. Some poor person that has to wade through the paper and the figures to ensure a smooth operation. I simply do not have a head for figures. I never have and never will. Since starting freelance work to top up the coffers I have struggled with the essential but essentially dull task of accounting and was king of procrastination when it came to my tax returns.

Three cheers then for freeagent central which came to me in my hour of need. It takes care of almost all my accounting needs and is well worth the subscription cost for the piece of mind that it provides.

Frankie “Dishpan Man” Santana: jquery

The A Teams special effects expert. Until reading dom scripting – the excellent book by jeremy keith – I had a complete phobia of javascript. Whilst Jeremy’s book helped get my head round many of the problems I was having with client-sided scripting I still felt there was something missing. I tried a number of javascript frameworks and libraries but it wasn’t until stumbling upon jquery that I found something that made javascript completely click for me.

The A-Team van: 1&1

The backbone of successful web development has to be a reliable web host, a vehicle for all our hard efforts that has to be rugged and reliable (red stripe optional). I have had really bad issues in the past with cheaper service providers where flexibility and reliability have been sacrificed to save a few pounds a month. It may not be as cheap as some others on the market but I have had nothing but good experiences since i moved over to 1&1 for all my hosting needs.

No, I haven’t lost my site design down the back of the sofa. This is rather my joining in with CSS Naked Day organised by Dustin Diaz to promote web standards and the importance in web design of separating presentation from content.

The use of CSS is an excellent example of how we can control the visual design of a website externally without it affecting the way the site is written. This enables global changes to the appearance of a website with relative ease, but then you don’t need me to tell you that. Pop along to the CSS Zen Garden to see how we can use CSS to display the same piece of website content in a variety of different ways.

I have also taken the opportunity to make today Javascript streaker day. There ain’t much javascript on the site but today what is there isn’t there – if you catch my drift – to highlight how progressive enhancement should provide for behaviour what CSS does for presentation.

So, hope you’re not dissappointed by the glare of white on the balding head of this website and not offended by all the dangly bits that are raw and exposed whilst in this state of undress. Fret not – all shall be restored tomorrow but in the meantime check out some of the other sites partaking of CSS nudity.

I’m really looking forward to the range of talks and workshops – particularly given the bent towards design over development – and also to putting flesh to the pixels and meeting some people that I’ve hitherto only encountered online. It promises to be a fantastic event so if you are reading this and will be heading along and should encounter a tall, skinny fella looking a bit bedraggled and nervously puffing on a roll-up or two, do introduce yourself as am quite shy at these sort of things!

On the one hand it is great that they have broken out of the tiny container that had been a feature of the site for so long, clinging to the left of the window like it was trying to beat a hasty retreat from anyone viewing the site with a monitor resolution greater than 800 pixels. It also a noticeable improvement that the page has more breathing space than its predecessor with a good use of grids, whitespace, tones and lines to organise and order the content on the page. Definitely an improvement and in keeping with the recent changes to their front page.

But all the styling in the world can’t detract from the fact that the underlying markup is the same as it ever was with tables, tables and more tables used to organise the content. We see this time and again where the desire to refresh an identity is greater than the perceived need to address the underlying problems of a website.

As the old saying goes, you can’t make a silk purse from a sow’s ear and that is the greatest strength and weakness of style sheets. By enabling us to keep presentation and content separate we are afforded the ability to make global changes to websites with relative ease. But when the website itself is badly written this is not so much an implementation of web standards or progressive enhancement but rather a cowboy effort to paper over the cracks.

The good use of typography on a site is there to enhance the experience of web browsing. It is a fundamental tool in helping people engage with text, images and their context, something embraced in the (relatively) recent redesigns of the Times and the Guardian websites. But in both these examples the greatest strength in redesign was not the visual overhaul but rather an underhaul in how these sites are constructed.

If you are going to invest time and money in updating a website please go the whole hog (to further the sow’s ear metaphor). Admittedly, the editor of the site has come out and said that the update is just a refresh and one that will preceed further changes on the site but what is the need to rush out an unfinished project?

Does Aunty Beeb value the aesthetic qualities of its website over its function, accessibility and extensibility?

If anyone out there is trying to get clean urls working on textpattern with 1&1 (and lets face it, who wants a messy url!) the solution is to update the out of the box txp htaccess file so that RewriteBase is defined as follows:

DirectoryIndex index.php index.html
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteBase /
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
 RewriteEngine On
 RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f [OR]
 RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d
 RewriteRule ^(.+) - [PT,L]
 RewriteRule ^(.*) index.php
</IfModule>
#php_value register_globals 0@

Hope that helps someone as had me fuddled for a wee while….

Two years later and I still hadn't got round to setting up a blog where I can post my thoughts and ruminations on all things to do with web design, archaeology and any other gubbins that springs to mind. So, at long bloody last here it is. A place where I can vent my spleen, cogitate and pour any thoughts greater than 140 characters out onto the poor, unsuspecting interweb.

So stick around. Hopefully there will be something here to interest you and there is even one of those new fangled RSS things so you can keep track without even having to visit the site.

Uh-oh… Frank isn’t doing well at school, and he has just been told off by his head teacher again…

He has one last chance to prove himself: all he has to do is follow the rules on his class trip to Chiltern House, complete his worksheet and stay out of trouble.

But when a girl steps out of a painting and steals Frank’s worksheet, staying out of trouble is easier said than done. Together, they embark on a perilous adventure to discover the girl’s lost identity, uniting with new friends along the way who show Frank all is not as it seems in this stately home.

How did the owners of Chiltern House come to own its priceless treasures? Can the secrets of the past ever really stay hidden? Will Frank’s head teacher stop him and his new friends before they find out the truth?

For this book I adapted the script for the comic medium then illustrated, coloured and lettered ready for publication. I was also commissioned by Mecob book cover designers to illustrate the cover.

In 2024 I was commissioned by the Cheese and Grain to create a promotional poster for the visit of Michael Rosen.

Click on an image to view an enlarged version.