Another site I put together has recently gone live, this time its for M and R Tax Advisers.

This one was a fun one as I learnt a great deal about the Wordpress tags and after partaking in a tutorial or two in the forums was able to put together a mean sidebar. This was also a particular good exercise for us in terms of Search Engine Optimisation as we built the site both in the front end as well as the back to allow the site to appear higher in the ratings using the latest tips and tricks.

Although the content may not be of interest to most of you, the site itself is a very effective example of how adaptable the Wordpress platform can actually be. One important point to mention is that it allows the people I made it for (who don’t have much web knowledge) to effectively manage their site by producing content in the back end as if it were in a Word document. Something nice and simple. The template then does all the hard work for them. You can visit it by clicking here.

The cards have been printed for the village podcast site and will shortly be posted up around the village itself. I’m a little nervous to see how the site will be met, its still in its early stages and will obviously evolve quickly once its acquired an audience. You can visit it here.

As I’ve been given Novemberfive readers a bit of a sneaky preview with regards to the video shorts, people have been passing comment on them ahead of the site’s launch. The majority of them have been encouraging and I thank you all, however theres been a couple that have been poking fun. I find such comments usually originate from boring uncreative people anyway and whilst I’ve no way implied I’m a video/podcasting genius, for me its all about being creative and gaining confidence when it comes to displaying content on the web. Some may argue that I shouldn’t post if I don’t want people critising which is fair enough but its the odd idiot that spoils it for the rest of us.

This was a painting I started a while back and was intended to be given as a birthday present but sadly, although I gave myself plenty of time, it never made it. Its of the Transformer Soundwave and I wanted to achieve a sort of pop arty feel to the piece through the use of bold, bright colours.

Drawing people seems relatively easy in comparison as each body is different and unique so any small mistakes when drawing the human form can be disguised and hidden, unfortunately thats not the case when it comes to Transformers. Because they are mostly made up of clean parallel lines, mistakes stand out a mile off and I found this to be rather annoying at times. The head proved the biggest challenge however, so much so that I gave up on it completely after repeatedly redrawing it over and over.

Soundwave

Theres always a camera or two floating round the tables at any wedding reception and the one we attended recently was no exception. The bride and groom decided to take advantage of this and issued everyone with a blank cd in which the guests were encouraged to burn their photos on to it and send it back to them. Unfortunately our camera wasn’t used much so to make good use of the disc, I’m improvising.

Click here to download and watch a rough video of their magical day.

I’ll be polishing it up over the next week in time for when they return from honeymoon.

I am back from an exhausting three day trip to the city. Work was very much the case of same old, same old but involved a long stint riding on the underground cattle wagons to and from the office. I love the London underground, I don’t like its passengers - they smell. The only enjoyment I get is outstaring them across the carriage and in window reflections as it would appear eye contact on the tube makes people really uncomfortable. Go read this blog about the London Underground.

The evenings however were spent dining out at a very nice Japanese restaurant where we were seated and subjected to a rather impressive cookery display by our personal chef who amongst other talents was able to create tons of fire, juggle his tools and throw egg in your face. A fantastic eating experience was had by all.

It would be pretty tough to follow that night out but we had a damn good go. Getting stranded in the glorious Wembley resulted in me gatecrashing a party to celebrate the launch of Parky’s autobiography and all the hard work leading up to it. What a great night and what a really nice bunch of well read individuals.

I’ll shortly be heading in the direction of London for the rest of the week with work, this time its to visit an online hat retailer. I also have plans to do some much needed catching up with this chap, who looked after me so well the last time I stayed in the city, I just could resist another visit.

Normal service will resume shortly.

I always pass this memorial in the village and wish I had my camera on me to photograph this curious little thing as I’m certain many people walk past without even noticing it. Well now I have.

The Spontaneous Purchase

You can view the rest of the entries over at Photofriday.com.

It seems so long ago since I last visited the stones at Avebury. I always enjoy coming here as you’re guaranteed to bump into a hippy no matter what the time of year. I was pleased to see the three ‘Wishing Trees’ still tied up with ribbons and the like, you can read about my last visit to the trees here when I blogged about it in February 2007.

The cabinet has been screwed to the wall and I’m now tinkering with my old laptop. I have been playing around with remotely accessing it and managed to set it all up without much fuss at all. I think the laptop looks great, although its bordering on looking rather like Mr Smith once everything else is plumbed in around it.

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The next stage is to hook everything up to it that I wish to control remotely and test them.