It’s been a while
Friday, November 21, 2008
I’m ashamed to say it, but this blog hasn’t seen an update since way back in June! So I thought it was time I dropped by with a little update on what’s been going on and how everything is going. In general, everything is going extremely well. Some of you may have noticed one or two updates to the portfolio in the last couple of weeks with the addition of Pasty Standards, Stubmatic and iPhoneGameAddict. There’s more to come as well.
So first up lets briefly talk about Pasty Standards. The idea of Pasty Standards came up at work when we decided it would be good to get together with like minded web folk from around Cornwall. The industry seems pretty dead dead down here and everyone at work decided that we wanted it to change. Pasty Standards was born. All Pasty Standards is, is a monthly meet up for web designers and developers who live in Cornwall. There’s a few of us going along to each meet up at the moment but we are hoping in time it will grow and more people will come out of hiding and come along. So if your a web designer or developer and live in Cornwall, head over and get involved. It would be great to meet a few more web-type folk around here.
Next up we have Stubmatic, brought to you by Cornwall based web developer, Jon Baker. In his words ”Stubmatic is an online box office service for venues, promoters, bands, theatres and anyone with tickets to sell”. Jon asked me to look at the design of his existing site with the view to redesign it to help it become more effective in getting the product and it’s message across to his users. You can see what we came up with and it seems to have gone down pretty well with other people. Feedback has been positive and we even got a mention in the Smashing Magazine article - Strategic Design: 6 Steps For Building Successful Websites, which was awesome. The article is a good read and not just because we got featured on it, so I recommend you head over and quick it a read. Smashing Magazine has some fantastic stuff on it so we were delighted to see we got featured. I will be working with Jon on a couple other things in the coming months too so keep your eyes peeled.
And finally we have iPhoneGameAddict. A quick and simple weblog dedicated to the art of iPhone gaming. I knocked this site together in just a few hours and it’s still a work in progress, but it’s a decent start. The site is in the style of a simple Tumblog and was built with the emphasis on fast and easy publishing. So far the site has been good fun and another good outlet for me, with plans to expand it and write a few more reviews in the not too distant future. I’m even getting requests from game developers to review their games, which is great. So if you like iPhone games, head on over and see what cool stuff is out and due for release on this platform.
So that’s all the updates to the portfolio covered. Hopefully in the next couple of weeks a few more will be appearing as well. We are working on some good projects at work that are nearing completion, so there will be a few more things to talk about no doubt.
In other news, I am nearing the completion of my new design. I’m not going to say how many times I have changed my mind on it, but it’s driving me insane. I’m still not even sure on the latest one that was a 99% definite at one point. Now it’s completely up in the air again but I plan to sit down and make a final decision on whether or not to go with in next week. I don’t have a problem with all this chopping and changing though as I am not in any rush. My design has improve massively over the last year and I want my new design to reflect this as well as showcase my new work a little better. The back end will also be getting a complete overhaul. In particular the blog section of the site will be looked at and redeveloped to allow me to publish more frequently and easier. I’m considering something a little more Tumblog like, that will allow me to post quick notes, links and full articles. The current process I have in place isn’t ideal and I have become so much better with ExpressionEngine in the last year. So the new site will be an improvement both visually and technically. Form and function.
Hopefully this post will spur me on a bit now and I will come back out of the cave I have been hiding in for the past six months. I feel bad for abandoning this blog for over 6 months, but hopefully we are back now and with the pending launch of the new site, we certainly wont be letting the cobwebs gather around here again.