I didn’t like the way she used to force a pen in to my right hand when I’ve always been left-handed. By force I mean quite literally, I was ‘stupid’ for being left-handed. I was told that my English skills were so bad that I would never amount to anything. I wasn’t the only one in the class who was treated that way, there was a small group of us who would be talked down to because of the way we were.

Thinking back, I can’t remember why I had a hard time with those skills in particular. I can remember from a young age that I used to write and draw. When it came to a point in our school year where we were being taught about poetry, again, I was told that I was stupid because I would never be able to do what the rest of the class were doing.

I was made in a certain way and being shunned was not ‘my way‘. Having been given some homework to write poetry during the school holidays I wrote something which came from within. I didn’t want to show anyone at first just in case their response was the same as Mrs Hall’s.

I was spending a couple of days with my Dad during the holidays and typed up the piece of poetry I’d written on his computer and printed it out on his HP Deskjet 500 (remember those?!). He asked to see it and quickly told me to print off a copy for him.

The holidays finished, I went back to school and handed in my piece of work. I was proud of what I’d done, it was just a few lines of poetry but those words on that piece of A4 came from my heart. It was graded mediocre at best. I wasn’t heartbroken, I’d come to expect the same every time I handed in something to be marked.

Months later, I found out that the paper copy which my Dad had asked for had actually been sent by him in to a poetry competition which I knew nothing about. The competition was ran by the Daily Mail and the competition winners and runner ups would have their poetry published in a book.

My piece of poetry got through for my age category to the final and came second. My words, which apparently I was too stupid to write, came second in a national competition and were published in a book called ‘Voices on the Wind’.

I couldn’t wait to go into school and tell Mrs Hall that it had happened and show her the letter of proof. I’d expected a happy reaction, and all I got was her telling me that her prize student in the class should have been the one entering into competitions. But, you know, that’s ok as my words are in a book on a shelf somewhere. I’ve never stopped having the same reaction when people say I can’t do something, I always come back fighting and so should you.

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I could swear I’d important .mov files in to iMovie before without any problems, so double checked with some older video I’d imported and I was right. They had worked fine. After doing some much required googling I found that most .mov files do in fact import into iMovie just fine. There are however a small few which can’t for specific reasons and Tim Johnson answered the reasons better than I could myself;

In iMovie 11 (current version) click FILE/IMPORT/MOVIES… and navigate to your .mov file. iMovie will import it.

It is important to realize that MOV is a container, not a codec. iMovie will only import codecs that it can edit.  For example, iMovie cannot edit DIVX, so if your MOV file contains DIVX, iMovie will not import it. Codecs that iMovie can handle include AVCHD, h.264, Motion JPEG, Apple Animation, Apple Intermediate Codec, DV, HDV, etc. 

The audio codec must also be compatible with iMovie. AAC and AIFF work well.

Further, iMovie cannot edit MOV files with extra tracks such as closed caption tracks, chapter tracks, tween tracks, manual advance tracks, and the like.
If your MOV file contains these, you can delete these tracks using Apple’s QuickTime Pro.

If the MOV file contains extra tracks, or contains a video or audio codec that iMovie cannot edit, the MOV file will be grayed out and not selectable in the import dialog box.

You can determine which codecs and tracks your MOV file contains by opening the file in QuickTime Player (or QuickTime Pro) and clicking WINDOW/INSPECTOR (or Command-I). The codec information will be listed next to the word FORMAT in the inspector.

The above explains the problems I was facing. The new videos I had to import for Industry Conference were filled with codec’s not normal within iMovie. This incurred a slight bit of panic that I’d have to have the files resent to me (about 600gb worth) I found that it wasn’t so bad.

How you can import .mov files in to iMovie

It is easier than it may seem although it might cost you just a little bit of money to do so. There are a couple of apps that you can use to convert your .mov media which won’t import in to iMovie into .mp4 files which you can use.

Firstly there is the Bigasoft iMovie Converter for Mac which you can download a trial of and use to convert a small file to see how it works before purchasing a licence.

Secondly there is the iSkysoft Video Converter for Mac app which you can also download a trial of and use to convert a file, however, they create a watermark over the demo’d conversion.

I downloaded both demo’s and opened them up, Bigasoft was visually displeasing on the eye and looked older than iSkysoft. Quickly navigated through the conversion process on iSkysoft and converted one of the smaller videos which wouldn’t import in to iMovie hoping that no quality would be lost nor the audio out of sync. Everything was perfect.

So the way to import .mov files in to iMovie if they’re greyed out is simply convert them first with iSkysoft. They’ll convert in to .mp4 files which you can then import edit, export and upload to where you want them to be.

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There is so much information and knowledge being shared that I find it incredibly difficult to keep up. Here’s a breakdown of what excites me;

• The Web
• Design
• Coding
• Business
• History
• Geography
• News from all countries
• Technology
• Movies
• TV Series (Vikings, Game of Thrones etc etc)
• Business (General)
• Finance (General)

As it currently stands there are;

• 9046 unread items in Reeder
• 8000+ items in Instapaper
• 1 Book I’m currently reading yet not finished
• 20+ Books yet to be read on my bookshelf
• 37+ notifications on Quora
• 100+ items on Quora I want to read and keep up with
• 2 current items on Branch I keep an eye on
• 200+ Bookmarked links I would like to read
• 30+ new links per day shared on Twitter which I would like to read

The Information Problem

I love to consume data and knowledge. Most would call it an obsessive compulsive disorder which all control has been lost. I try my hardest until I open up that next article and start to read. My love of knowledge is in fact making things worse, for every item I think I’ve read and consumed I bookmark or add another three at least.

The Honesty

If I’m being absolutely honest with myself there are two underlying things which I need to come to terms with.

1. I *thought* I needed to know as much about my interests as humanly possible, not just a little bit of them I thought I needed to know everything in its entirety.
2. I *thought* consuming as much data/knowledge as possible would make me more knowledgeable about those subject matters.

After some time I believe both of them are completely flawed.

Trying to know so much about everything has stopped me from learning about specific areas of the things I really enjoy and can apply directly to my work/life. I seem to have floundered a bit in my practical ability. As an example, I’ve had various roles over the last few years which have restricted me from doing the things I really love. For instance, I used to find doing markup (HTML & CSS) therapeutic. I could sit for hours playing a game of chess with code to make everything work together.

I found myself in a position where a lot of my workload had to be in other areas which were more important (at the time) than doing markup. I tried to continue doing it in my spare time on my own little projects but it was taken out of my day to day role. Instead I’d bookmark and read as many articles as I could, listening carefully to talks and monitoring code snippets. Herein lies the problem. I thought I could learn theory without the practical. I can still piece together some solid markup, my confidence in actually doing so however is lower than it has ever been.

It is clear that I have a lot of interests and trying to learn about them all in their entirety has squandered the chance to practically implement what I’ve learned. Maybe thinking that we should learn everything is utterly delusional, maybe we’re just not supposed take everything in.

I’m only 50% of where I want to be

I’m months away from hitting my 30th birthday and I’m only 50% of where I want to be professionally. Granted I want to learn and share and think there is immense value in doing so but the conclusion is that I can’t learn things and talk about them without implementing them.

So, I’ve decided I’m going to go back to school, or at least I’m going to re-learn those things I miss the most through a practical means and forget about trying to take in all the information I can get my hands on. I’ll only be reading/learning about those things which will directly affect what I am doing practically.

In doing so I’m hoping my confidence issue will disappear and I’ll be back to my normal self. Through controlled data consumption I want to learn more, practice more and share more and this is the start.

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Ever since, that day has been etched in to my memory. My Dad packed up what he could carry and I watched him walk down the driveway to his car and leave from the living room window.

I turned around to find my Mum sat on a chair inconsolable with her head in her hands. I walked over to the coffee table, picked up some tissues up and handed them to her so that she could dry her tears.

There are a lot of thoughts that go through your mind as a three year old. I didn’t know at that point if I’d just lost my Dad altogether. I didn’t know if I was ever going to see him again.

That day in 1986 set me on a path fraught with unknown challenges.

I was so young, I had no path and had no one to set me on a course. For better or worse, that day made me the person I am both personally and professionally. You see, a couple of years after it happened we moved 100 miles away from my Dad to be closer to my Mums family. In 5 year old terms that is like traveling to the other side of the world.

Luckily I saw my Dad every weekend as he’d travel over to see my Sister and I. We regularly saw apocalyptic arguments break out on the doorstep for what I thought was no reason but tensions were high as you’d expect. My Sister and Mum would get upset, I’d cry but fight for things to calm down and shout at everyone to shut up to defend my Sisters emotions.

Over time

Over the years I became incredibly independent, I had to be. My relationship with my Mum and Sister were weak at best and I didn’t see my Dad as much as I needed. We still spoke on the phone nearly every day but I had no ‘life-guide’. A person who taught me rights and wrongs or what makes a good person. I had no idea of morals and values that you live your life by and how they integrate in to everything you do.

I had no idea where I would find those things until I started reading heavily and found my solace in books. I used to love library time in Middle School. Our library was old, so old you could imagine the bodies from yesteryear wandering through the aisles with their Victorian clothing brushing past. The floor boards used to creak with every change of step and the shelves were so high you couldn’t reach the top without a ladder, a proper library.

I yearned for real facts and could easily connect with geographical and historical data. A true fascination, I liked to know where in the world things happened and the reasons why.

Everything I picked up from books underpinned my thinking. As I was fairly introverted and ‘didn’t need anyone else’, I became very steadfast in my decision making. If ever I wanted to do something I would do it and put everything I had in to it. If I didn’t want to do something then it would be made perfectly clear.

I had nothing and no one else to show me anything different, I didn’t want anything different. All I needed was a straight line from A to B. There were no buts or maybes.

As I headed towards my teen years I became more and more aware of the world I would have to head in to. My Dad has always worked in a finance related industry so I asked questions about money and business. Knowing how the world works with regards to business and money was intriguing to me. I can remember at 15, I sat with my Dad and wrote my first ever business plan for an Internet cafe.

I knew even at that point that the Internet was becoming more common place in residential homes so the profit wouldn’t be in renting ‘Internet time’, so expanded the business plan in to providing food and refreshments for the people using the Internet cafe as the profit margins would be higher. On top of that, there was another potential avenue of growing revenue by running gaming events and competitions since I had the computers waiting there to be used.

Now

My head is still wired that way. To me, black is black and it is nothing other than black. Within split seconds I analyse situations and make rapid decisions. I don’t delay and once I’ve set my course I’m already too far to turn back.

I look back over the past 10 years and can clearly see how I ended up in so many different situations. At 15 I had my first interview, at 16 I had my first job, at 17 I had my second job and co-ran a large tech website (because I said I could/would do it so did) and at 19 I joined the Army. At 22 I set my course in to the industry I’m in now.

I’ve never been qualified for the things I’ve decided to do, I’ve done them because I wanted to and believed I could so did. That one day, all those years ago set me on this course and made me the person I am today. Some people say that my story is sad and unfortunate.

Maybe it was unfortunate but it is definitely not sad, I’m perfectly happy how I turned out. I doubt I would have the same drive and determination to execute on things if it hadn’t of happened. I’ve had to fight tooth and nail for every last little thing in my life, and I love that. I love battling but more so I love achieving the things people say I could/would never be able to do.

Experience made me. What made you?

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That one phrase, I’ve heard twice in as many weeks. It’s referring to events and the running of them.

Context

Let’s give an example of Bob and Sarah who run an event each. Each event is focussed around mobile apps. They’re both in the same city and their events are at different times of the month.

The same  example could be used with some minor adjustments. Bob and Sarah run an event each (large conference) focussed on the web design and development industry. They’re both in the same city but the events are at different times of the year.

A Co-existence

The statement was more of a question than a statement in all fairness, as if, the events would cause some kind of unhappy feelings between two people and have nothing to do with the events themselves, their content and the attendees. I’ve been going to and running events for long enough now that you cannot stop new events from starting.

It’s good to see them starting up, it shows that people have the passion to do something for their industry and niche likes. Why wouldn’t events ‘happily co-exist’? A risk of cannibilisation has been used if the events are meeting up regularly and have the same attendees.

I completely disagree, each event would be different with different content and organisers. That in itself would keep them different enough to make them both last. It doesn’t even matter if they had vaguely the same content – the fact that people are meeting up to share stories, questions and problems is enough to keep meetups healthy.

And everything else negative surrounding it is personal to the organisers. If they feel unhappy about the situation, they’re the ones not having a happy co-existance with the other organisers’ for whatever reason.

The huge increase of events around the UK, both large and small, show that events can run happily together…

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Apps/Services I Currently Pay For

• Dropbox – I’m not sure I could live without this now
• Spotify – The most affordable way to listen to music you want all day
• Hosting
• Domain Names
• Google Apps for Business
• Netflix
• BufferApp

Apps/Services I used to pay for but cancelled

• Treehouse – Didn’t get the whole Blue Peter vibe
• Github – Wasn’t using it, however, I’m on the verge of buying again

Apps/Service I would pay for if they let me

• Twitter – $5 a month and I’d *easily* do it
• Codecademy – They’ve taken investment, I think their product is so strong they could have started charging ages ago

How about you?

What are the things that you pay for?

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It’s not my first, I’d already designed a theme called Old Post back in 2010/11 for the guys. That was a blogging theme but it was very very niche. It was designed when tumblogging was a ‘thing’. That quickly passed as most things do in the blogging world.

Over the latter months of 2012 I spent a great deal of time looking at data at Obox and we prepared a product roadmap going forwards by looking at our existing theme library and areas where we wanted to focus on our expand into.

Blogging is still real

Yes, people still blog, if you could call it that. People write and articulate their thoughts on a daily basis. It might have evolved somewhat with things like svbtle, Medium and now Facebook/Quora adding to the blogging mix but in my opinion there’s nothing like a home of your own.

For most, writing your thoughts is still a very personal experience. Hence, where Personal’s name came from. I was also inspired by the Julie and Julia movie and taking a blogging theme back to basics.

Planning the theme

Our Principles blogging theme had previously done really well at Obox, so using it as a base for features was a good place to start. Releasing a theme which just gave the ability to blog would be far too restrictive so adding in a few extra features like Principles’ would make it more appealing.

I jumped in to my sketch book and began writing down the page templates which would make up the theme;

• Blog – Full Width / Left Sidebar / Right Sidebar
• Full Width Homepage
• Portfolio
• Portfolio 2 Column, 3 Column and 4 Column layouts
• Archive

With the minimum amount of page templates defined it was then easy to start sketching out wireframes in my notebook – nothing can beat a pencil and paper for quick wireframes. I already had an idea in my mind of the basic layout for the homepage. I wanted to utilise a large featured image or video for each post and for it to still look great when it was a simple text title.

I’d sold myself on having the themes homepage full width only, however, after chatting with the guys we realised we couldn’t limit a customers choice that much so I had to swallow my pride and stop being over protective of the design (more on that later).

I went from the quick sketches I had in my notebook to greyscale wire-framing in Photoshop, I’ve shown a few examples of this on dribbble and it enables me to visualize content blocks (text/imagery) without defining the font and images themselves. I believe starting a with a particular font and chosen group of images can move the design in a direction it doesn’t necessarily need or want to go in.

Once I’d completed the homepage and was confident in the greyscale wire-frame, I moved on to doing the same with a single post template. The single post page with no sidebar would follow the full-width look of the homepage. By decreasing the width of the content block, I was able to make the content more readable by having around 11-13 words per line. These two templates would forge the basis of the other templates so it was as good a place as any to get those ‘signed off’.

Fonts and Imagery

Easy reading was the goal of the design with a whimsical lead font for the logo. I jumped over to Lost Type Co. who have an incredible range of unique fonts and saw Lavanderia which was pretty similar to what was in my head. Edmondsans also stood out and using them together was pretty solid. However… as with most things at Obox we have to constantly think about compatibility. Lavanderia and Edmondsands would be too restrictive for our international customers so I moved the fonts over to Rochester for the logo font and PT Serif for the paragraphs, mixing in PT Sans for the titles.

The imagery I can only describe by showing you below, once I’d found the type of imagery it was only a matter of searching more and finding good examples for videos on Vimeo.

Portfolio and Portfolio Layouts

I had written down some information in my notebook of the things I’d personally want on my own portfolio including;

• Image slider
• Portolio item title
• Portfolio category
• Portfolio item description
• The ability to link to a live piece of work

I gave more space to the portfolio imagery and less space to the portfolio description and a nice little way to cycle through the images in the slider.

The size of the space given to the portfolio imagery lends itself well to both portrait and landscape imagery.

A WordPress Blogging Theme

Working on something as personal as Personal was a great experience, especially when working directly with the team that we have at Obox. Releasing it in to the wild is quite nerve-wrecking. The success criteria of a theme design is sales, so the proof would be in the pudding. So far so good and it’s great to see what people have started doing with it. You can now get personal with your blogging again.

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