Category: Personal

Roll up, roll up…

Posted on by chris

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen to the most amazing show this side of the firewall! The star of our show is none other than Chris Taylor, now Officially a member of The Guild of Accessible Web Designers!

That’s right, I was inducted (don’t ask about the ceremony, it was embarrasing to say the least, and left me badly chafed) recently and can now display this logo with pride over any part of my body:

The Guild of Accessible Web Designers logo

So I’m wearing it proudly on my … sleeve :0)

Other attractions in the show include (some of these are thanls to the great M@):

– A motley travelling band of web developers who, in village halls up and down the country, will, in front of a *live* audience, code up a rudimentary CRM application in a matter of hours without the aid of a safety net!
– A daredevil riding on a single-class Javascript application high above a pit of ravenous syntax-checkers!
– A troup of animated GIFs doing the can-can
– Chris himself taming the dangerous and wild Internet Explorer beast
– The hilarious Peekaboo Bug Brothers
– The beautiful and mysterious world of Madame CSS
– A juggler simultaneously keeping 4 browsers in the air, all rendering a single page in completely different ways?
– A lightly greased contortionist extricating himself from a web of Visual-Studio-generated HTML?
– The amazing disappearing !

And for the finale? A thousand abstract base classes released to gently float down onto the audience….. Imagine the gasps!

So what are you waiting for? Tickets are on sale now!

Confessions of a web entrepreneur…

Posted on by chris

As a way to ease me back into writing more meaty entries than the frivolous ones I’ve been doing recently, I thought I’d collect my thoughts about entrepreneurship on the web. While the title may apply to me, I can’t help but feel I’m a bit of a fraud entrepreneur, because I don’t drive round in a flashy sports car, have meetings with venture capitalists or work on a Mac from a converted warehouse*. The fact is I work for a large firm, drive a people carrier, and spend my evenings juggling baby bottles and washing up.

* Actually my house is a converted warehouse, so maybe I get some points for that.

In the midst of this average 9-to-5 life I manage to run a secondary existance. Chris the entrepreneur, building his web empire. And what does my empire look like at the moment?

Firstly there’s my web business. I treat that website as a sort of online scrapbook; full of jottings, experiments and random thoughts. And, occasionally, that is enough to attract people to me and ask me to help them get the best out of the web.

Secondly there’s my project management software. It’s free, and while that may not sound like the perfect way to make money I continue to develop it for three reasons. 1) I need a project management system, so I’m scratching my own itch. 2) Other people are starting to use it, and that makes my name known. 3) Eventually I may start charging for doing customised versions.

Thirdly there’s the Wiblog thing, a friendly blogging community. My thanks go to Dave who started the Wibsite and gives me freedom to chop and change all the technical things whenever I want. And thanks to the Wibbloggers, too, who are supportive and encouraging.

Fourthly there St Gaudéric, a website about a tiny village in the south of France where I often go on holiday. While the textual information on the site is, to be frank, non-existant (I’m finding it hard to muster up the brainpower needed to translate French documents to English), the pictures are pretty nice. Eventually this site may be used to provide email addresses, blogs, image galleries and advertising to local people.

Then I have one, two, three, four other projects which I’ll tell you about eventually. It’s not that I want to keep them secret, it’s just I have nothing decent to show you yet.

So I’m trying not to fall into the trap of believing any myths about web businesses, instead just making sites that people want to use. And while all my sites so far go for what could be described as niche markets, I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing.

I love sunsets…

Posted on by chris

Even the most irregular visitor here could not help but notice that I’ve been rather absent from this blog over the last few weeks compared to my normal rate of posting. What, 5 days between entries? Shame on me.

However I offer no excuse, as spending time with the cutest little boy and most beautiful woman in the world comes before anything else. And when we have such wonderful sights as this to look at the computer is the furthest thing from my mind.

The sunset over Yorkshire

This was taken with my trust Sony Ericsson K750i mobile phone from our bedroom window, and very (very…) roughly pasted together for your pleasure. Click for a larger version, but the original (which was painted over the entire sky) is locked in my wetware memory and there isn’t an interface for that yet :0)

Online friends…

Posted on by chris

Further to my entry yesterday where I alerted you all to the rather dubious nocturnal activities of Dave from work, I thought I should really be fair to everyone else I know that runs websites and give them links too. Plus it will be good for search engine ranking, I hope.

So we start off with Dave who needs no introduction round here. A fantastic bloke, and it’s been a pleasure working with hime for the last *ahem* years. I can’t remember how long, exactly, but it’s a long time in internet terms.

Next I suppose I must big-up my homie, my main man, and a dear friend Milan. One of the most talented and inspiring musicians you’ll ever hear. And a top bloke to boot.

Another Wibsite regular, Rhys is probably the most talented geeks I know. And I mean that in the good way, in case you were wondering.

Similarly, Wood is a great writer (although he wouldn’t say so himself) and the collection of short stories on his site is a treasure trove.

Dave (DaggerG) was mentioned yesterday, and while I haven’t spent any time ‘in the battlefield’ with him recently, he’s still a dangerous chap to mess with. He’ll go for your throat (or any other exposed body parts) should you let him.

A very well respected and amazingly full website, Dan’s Huddersfield Town site has had me chuckling for years. And if you listen to the little ‘Mi Chun Der’ song, that’s me :0)

Another old friend who has taught me more than I would like to imagine about business is Harry (and Andrew). I thoroughly enjoyed my time working at Computers Unlimited, and try to visit regularly just for the banter and strong cups of tea.

One of the misfits at Computers Unlimited also runs a rather fantastic recording studio. I had a job there once, too. Keith who owns it has been a fundamental part of the forming of my entire adult life.

Fat Al (who my wife says isn’t all that fat) is a keen mountain biker. And while he makes a … distinctive shape in lycra, he’s also a fantastic friend who I hopw I’ll be keeping in touch with for a long time to come.

John is one of those people that if we worked or lived closer together I’m sure we’d end up being good friends. We have a lot in common, the only differences are a) he’s much cleverer than me and b) he’s much better than me at doing everything. Still, he’s a sorted bloke.

If you want crystal or glassware, look no further than House of Crystal. I’ve never met Keith in real life, but our extended conversations on the phone always entertain and challenge me. Good luck, Keith.

I’m sure I’ve forgotton some people. If that’s you, leave a message!

The sport of skateboarding…

Posted on by chris

My eldest stepson has recently started his ‘A’ levels, and as part of the curriculum at his college has to regularly participate in a sport. He’s a keen skateboarder, and so asked if they would consider skateboarding a sport. They said no. Hmm. Let’s have a look at a dictionary definition for sport:

Sport: an athletic activity requiring skill or physical prowess and often of a competitive nature, as racing, baseball, tennis, golf, bowling, wrestling, boxing, hunting, fishing, etc.

Please take a look at the following video of world-renowned skateboarder Rodney Mullen in action and tell me if you think it does not contain evidence of a) athletic activity, b) skill, c) physical prowess. The music may not be to your taste (so turn the volume down) but I’ll warrant that this 2 minute clip will have you in awe.