French Road Trip

digitalgravy — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 19:45:54 +0000

Le Voyage Routier Français

Avec Helen et Stuart

In July 2011, my lovely lady Helen and I decided to go on a little road trip along the Southern coast of France.

This article documents that trip using the wonderful Bing Maps API.

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HTML 5 vs HTML5

digitalgravy — Sat, 23 Apr 2011 13:04:41 +0000

Coming Soon…

It's not a re-design, it's a re-thinking

digitalgravy — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 09:00:52 +0000

“it’s not a re-design; it’s a re-thinking”

Or at least that’s what JASON SANTA MARIA said.

And everyone loves Jason Santa Maria, yes including me. I suppose He’s probably one of the main reasons you’re actually reading this. O.K. He’s not the only reason. In fact it was an article on Smashing Magazine that metaphorically kicked me in the teeth.

With the old digitalgravy, I was struggling to come up with something useful and readable to write each day / week / fortnight / month etc.

The article in question made me wonder why I was furiously attempting to generate so many weak, wishy-washy posts. I mean, looking back on it, and in all honesty, the last incarnation of digitalgravy.co.uk was a complete failure – despite all the best intentions!

Anyone who knows me personally will tell you I have an appalling attention span, and that’s probably the reason why I was unable to create these posts.

The thing is, you see, that at work I’m a developer. I’m in the company’s development team. Designers in the company come asking my technical development questions.

But

There was once a different side to me. Long long ago, in this galaxy: not far away at all, I was a designer.

No, really!

Have a look at the About / Information section below and you’ll see that I actually graduated from the University of Portsmouth (in 2007) after studying Communication Design for 3 years. What is that? No, communication design is actually all about how we communicate with the world with type, graphics and other visuals.

And after so long designing I, of course, went straight into a web design position. Once in a working environment I discovered I was unable to ‘churn’ out new, original and inspiring designs for clients every day and slowly slipped into a more development based role.

My main ‘job’ now is to create beautiful user interfaces, small web apps and other interactive (usually JavaScript based) projects for a vast and wide variety of clients.

But I still have an insatiable desire to do something creative, rather than just constantly working in code. Take this last week, for instance: I’ve worked 47 hours in KDE’s Kate (KDE Advanced Text Editor). I’ve written over 1400 lines of code, in 3 different JavaScript – based projects.

Not one minute of that was based on designing.

Day	Time Started	Time Finished	Total Time
Monday	9:30am	6:30pm	9hrs
Tuesday	9:00am	6:00pm	9hrs
Wednesday	9:30am	6:30pm	9hrs
Thursday	9:30am	7:30pm	10hrs
Friday	9:00am	7:00pm	10hrs
			Total:	47hrs

MY DESIGN LIFE SO FAR

Unfortunately you’re unable to see the most glorious graph depicting how much design has been in my life over the last 7 years.

The Thing Is:

I really quite like doing design work.

In Conclusion:

I’ve taken it upon myself to transform my so – called – blog into an outlet for my (minor) creative juices. I shall use it as a method for trying out new techniques, experimental ideas and simply easy ramblings.

My posts may be long, lengthy and well thought out; or they may well just as easily be filthy, quickly hashed together and messy, with very little content or meaning.

And to be quite frank with you, my dear, I won’t give a damn.

This is my website and I will fill it as I see fit, whether it be by creating posts on technological helpful topics; fantastical random ideas; or simply guff.

I won’t force you to read it, but if you like it then please feel free to indulge yourself .

In the mean time sit back, relax and enjoy the feeling knowing that you’ve finally finished reading your first new-age digitalgravy.co.uk post.

Please feel free to let me know what you think to this ‘new way of thinking’, but don’t expect me to respond if you start bad-mouthing my mother.

She’s on Twitter, don’t you know?