Inspired by a few friends doing a roundup of the year and plans for the future, here is mine.

Past

• Got made redundant from Jigsaw
• Got a new job at a spangly design agency
• Came out of a long term relationship
• Saw a life coach
• Went in search of my biological father in Belfast
• Realised I am not cut out to work for other people
• Went to some awesome raves
• Quit the spangly job to develop my own web design business

Present

• Up to my eyes in building websites
• On a mission to lose some weight
• Enjoying spending time with my daughter
• Networking with other web/tech folk in Nottingham

Future

• Spend more time with friends that I have neglected while building my business (Sorry guys!)
• Be more decisive and do the things I want to do
• Care less about what ‘people’ think
• Develop the website business and open an online shop
• Learn to use my dSLR!
• Live on my own again (Not cut out for house-mates…)
• Plan and finance a windmill meditation retreat centre
• Maybe build another custom retro car

Launched today is a new site for Distant Horizons, promoting their Lake District self catering accommodation. Lots of lovely PNG transparency going on with this site, and an overlapped, textured design to break up the straight lines…

See more at FCS Websites, Nottingham web designers.

This cartoon seems more appropriate than ever at this point.

I saw Trading Eye quite a while ago but did not have time to have a good play with it. Now I have, so downloaded the trial localhost version and got busy.

Now don’t get me wrong, I am a geek/nerd/whatever but installation was not easy. It needed a PHP loader module adding to my local MAMP setup before it would even let me do anything. Then it wouldn’t accept the license file, and I think it was because I used the wrong program to extract the files from the downloaded installer zip. Not very smooth.

However, with the help of the Trading Eye forums and a large dose of stubbornness I got it installed and working. The admin system is gorgeous yet simple and has all the functionality I or my clients will need for running a small shop.

I am hoping that an upcoming project has the budget to use Trading Eye as I would like to offer this as standard due to its accessibility and standards compliance straight out of the box.

More to follow when I have had a good look…

Nick

I’m really good at cookeries, I adore to prepare for Russian kitchen. I not badly play tennis and I float…