Getting Back to Business

If you look at the dates of the previous entries you will notice that I have been very inactive for about the last year and I have decided that is going to change this year. It is now well passed the new year so you couldn't really call it a resolution but I have a good feeling about 2009 and getting Fired Up to really start moving as a more formal business concern.

The year has started well with 4 website projects in the pipeline and a complete house and office refurbishment that is almost finished. It looks like I will be back in the house by the end of February if all goes to plan and then will be in a position to get going properly. So thanks to all my friends and clients who have supported me over the last year and heres to a successful and happy 2009 with lots of exciting challenges that make me scratch my head, lots of laughing and plenty of amazing motorbike riding in the sun in Scotland (it's possible you know!)

Posted on January 18, 2009 7:37 PM | Permalink

Powerbook Re-born!

This is what my powerbook looks like on the inside! Spent a day with Ali last week putting in the new hard drive and fans ... then spent a day and a half loading Leopard onto the new disc and clean installing all my applications and files. Its been a mammoth job, as usual I had forgotten just how much data there was on my machine and how dependent on it I have become, it's a bit scary really!

With that in mind I am really loving Leopard and Time MAchine, it's absolutely awesome and works seamlessly to back up all this vital information, pictures and music, I am a bit paranoid about it though so I will probably keep backing up as I used to for a while just until everything calms down again!

Off to Brighton this weekend to see Groove Armada ... thats the good news, the bad news is I will be driving as the iPhone goes on sale so I can't join the hordes of sad techie geeks all waiting outside the O2 shop! Will have to go on Monday ...

Posted on November 9, 2007 11:37 AM | Permalink

Blimey It Is Busy!

It has been a while since I last posted an entry. It has been an unusually busy month or so. I have just been asked to build a website for the National Tactical Centre. This is a new facility near Stoke on Trent that allows teams of special forces personnel and police armed response officers to train in their grounds. They have a variety of different terrain including a cave system that is being used to get troops used to the environment before being shipped out for active duty in Afghanistan!

One thing that you can say about designing websites is that you do get varied projects to work on, one minute it's building a site to sell storage for children's toys, the next minute heavily armed trained killers. If you want to get in touch with your tough manly side then you can check out the site at nationaltacticalcentre.com there isn't much more than a holding page at the moment but if you visit again in the next month or so then there will be more to see.

Posted on August 31, 2007 7:35 PM | Permalink

Powerbook Won't Die, It Just Gets Better!

I have been lusting after a new apple laptop since they started coming out with intel chips but I haven't been able to make the jump just yet, to get the spec that I want it would be really expensive! So I decided that I would be keeping my old powerbook for a while longer.

Given that decision I thought I would sort out a few of it's little problems. Firstly my powerbook is 4 year old so the battery has died, a new one from e-bay cost me £30 so that was easy, next I thought I would have a crack at getting some new CPU fans, they have always been fairly noisy and Powerbooks were renowned for it. I have got hold of some from the states so hopefully they should purr nicely again rather than sounding like a tractor ploughing a field to anyone I am iChatting with!

Continue reading "Powerbook Won't Die, It Just Gets Better!" »

Posted on August 5, 2007 7:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Going a Little Bit Greener

Lightbulbs ... they have been on my mind for some time, which is a bit odd I realise. I have been looking in our local DIY shop for the right kind of energy efficient bulbs for our house for ages. We have all sorts of weird halogen jobs around and they just didn't seem to exist. Then late tonight I was reading this interesting website called "New Green Jack" published by our electricity supplier Ecotricity and I remembered ... lightbulbs, funny how the brain works. I then promptly spent £250 on energy saving bulbs from a useful website - Lightbulbs Direct ouch! I will write about them when they get here and they are up and running - the next step will be a Wattson smart meter once I have saved my pennies back up, it looks really cool and should do the job for me and Claire to remind us how much our electricity use is costing.

Posted on July 19, 2007 11:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Getting Arty With New Tablet!

I have just bought a new tablet and pen for use with Illustrator and Photoshop, for anyone who doesn't know what I am on about its essentially a mouse, shaped like a pen with an electronic board that allows you to make more natural movements with you hands, meaning that you can be more expressive that is possible with a mouse alone. It's an interesting technique to get your head around, very difficult at first but it gets easier with a little practice.

I have been experimenting with tracing photos to give these vector style images of peoples faces, I think the effect is really nice and would love to integrate it into a site at some point. Perhaps you could see an application for it on your site? Let me know if you are interested, I will keep looking for an opportunity to use it as a style at some point. I think if it was combined with some really crisp typography and a clean white style it could work really well.

Posted on July 18, 2007 10:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)