2009

The humble URL has been on my mind a lot recently.

I’ve long held two ambitions. The first: to return to Australia before this decade is out. The second: to welcome in a New Year on Sydney Harbour before I turn 30.

The web development community has certainly grown up in the last four years.

I’ve been living in Littlehampton for almost a year now, yet working 25 miles away from Brighton has meant enduring the somewhat tedious chore that is commuting. This is often a more eventful affair when the journey is taken later in the evening, and tonight was no different.

With an escalating national debt, the talk at this months party conferences is of cuts to public spending and smaller, more efficient government. I believe one clear way of achieving this would be to introduce a single unified brand across government.

Last week Birmingham City Council launched its new £2.8m website. Delayed, over budget and woefully inadequate, it rightly faced a storm of criticism on Twitter and from the local press.

In less than two months time, I will once again be donning my running shoes to raise money for Cancer Research UK.

As Summer hurtles towards it’s conclusion (and let’s assume for a second that it actually started) so the anticipation for two very special geeky events can begin.

A set of standardised icons for popular social networking services and tools.

I’ve long been interested in the popular geography of Great Britain, but also annoyed by the continual government reorganisation that seeks to confuse it.

Continuing the trend of this blog documenting events that happened several weeks ago, this month saw me become the ninth member of the Brighton based web agency Clearleft.

As predicted, I was unable to blog during my travels across Europe last month, although less predictable was this being due to the death of my laptop mid-trip. I’ll be posting reports and photos from the cities I visited over the coming weeks, but here are a few general thoughts to start off with.

The first stop on my nine city tour of Europe, was Cologne in Northern Germany.

Brussels will quickly be forgotten.

After a number of years focusing my travels around big American cities, today I start a three week jaunt across Europe.

Yesterday I went to see the Le Corbusier exhibition, currently showing at the Barbican Art Gallery in London.

Slides from my presentation at Multipack Presents

After the success of the first ‘Multipack Presents’ event in February, so we return to the plush offices of One Black Bear to learn how the web can help us become eco-friendly citizens.

The appointment of Fabio Capello has brought about a more stylish and confident England. Now they have a kit to match.

Friday saw the start of this years SXSW interactive, film and music festivals in Austin Texas, and once again they highlight the scourge of swag: the ‘stuff we all get’ that soon becomes the stuff we don’t want.

This Friday is Red Nose Day, the main fundraising event in support of Comic Relief, a charity that supports projects in the UK and Africa.

It seems I have a new challenge for March.

February coming to a close means I can conclude my month long challenge to post to this blog each day. Having only written 14 entries, it’s a challenge for which I only half succeeded.

Earlier this month I wrote about my love of organisation and systems. One such example is how I name the devices I attach to my Mac.

On Friday evening I got a call from Jon on his way back to the house after a night out, asking if I had heard anything about a bomb found near Littlehampton station.

In what has become something of a rarity, I sat down in front of the television yesterday evening. Upon turning on the set-top box, I was greeted with an interesting message.

In the last few years, two public organisations in Walsall have undergone renewals, and both have choosen to reflect this change with simpler identities.

A word cloud generated from content that has appeared on my site over the last few months.

One of my favourite comedians stars in a new show starting on Comedy Central this week.

Every year the Multipack – a community of web developers based in the Midlands – seems to undergo a renewal, finding confidence to try new things. This year is no different.

Today was largely taken up by a flight back to London from San Francisco, where I spent the last ten days.

I have been using Movable Type for a number of years, yet the template code required to present an archived list of entries, grouped by month has always evaded me.

In a recent conversation with a client, he asked why I got into design. Its something I’ve been meaning to write about for sometime, so I’ll try to publish my answer here.

As I approach the end of my latest trip to America, I continue to fight the losing battle that is getting people to understand me when I say my first name.

With January over, and having completed the month without drinking coffee, so on to February and a far more ambitious challenge.

Growing up, my brother was always the one in our family more interested in American culture. Whilst he followed the NBA and listened to Public Enemy, Wu-Tang Clan and Eminem, I stood to the National Anthem and worried about Britain’s growing closeness to Europe. America was of little importance to me.

Slumdog Millionaire is the story of an impoverished Indian teen who is one question away from winning the top prize in the Indian version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire.

Before such a post becomes embarrassingly late (although I fear we may already have passed such a point) here is a quick run down of what I got up to last year.

Having nothing arranged for New Year’s Eve, meant I wasn’t sure how I would be celebrating the arrival of 2009. Well, not until I heard a conversation on the radio.