In case you’ve been clicking around the site you may of noticed that the portfolio section has seen a few updates today. It’s still not quite finished which you’ll know if you’ve read much of the text, but hopefully I’ll get it sorted over the next few days.

Also I’m having a fun day out tomorrow with the rest of Team Chatsum (a.k.a. George) at Carson Workshops’ “The Future Of Web Apps Summit” in Kensington.

If you’re going along then do seek me out and say hi. In addition to hearing some interesting talks I’ll be whoring myself around in the hopes of being offered millions of pounds to work on earth shatteringly exciting projects. Alternatively I may just wind up talking to the plants and crying into my soulless frappuccino. You decide!

Today my flatmates and I did a little pre-emptive Christmas shopping. We still haven’t decorated our house yet and tomorrow we’re going to go and buy a tree and all the trimmings, so today was all about the research. Not quite sure where we’re going to get one from yet, the only ones we could find today were all a bit on the small side. We also popped into our local CrackDonalds for lunch. I haven’t been to the golden arches for years, and today was a reminder why. We knew we wouldn’t really enjoy it, but it was just one of those things that you have to do once in a while. We all felt suitably shamed and dirty.

I’m feeling pretty lacklustre today, but with no good reason. Or at least no reason that wasn’t there yesterday. It’s strange how one day, which is much like the last, can have such a different feeling. If I was more spiritual in my world-view then I’d probably look to the moon or my biorhythms to explain it. I have a plan though. A series of activities and actions to lift myself up and it starts with a word. That word is “mandible”, it’s my favourite word in the English language and I’m saying it to myself right now. Mandible. Mandible. Mandible. Already I can feel a tightening of the muscles around my mouth, and as if my magic a smile appears. It’s a grey day today, but mandible is helping me to see it differently. Outside my window a huge tree is throwing away it’s leaves and for a moment they look like butterflies, in the distance birds fly and it’s hard to tell where the leaves end and the birds begin. I’ve found myself dreaming of painting in recent weeks, it’s odd as I haven’t painted anything at all for years, save the odd interior wall of course, but that doesn’t really count, although it can have a Zen-like charm. My friend George says to “just do it then”, and I know he’s right. So why can’t I?

Today is the introduction for tomorrow. I’m going to be meeting up with my good friend Patrick Wray who I haven’t seen for several months. Patrick is an uplifting presence, and we’ve done a lot of work together in the past and intend to pick up again this weekend during his stay with me. Another friend will be joining us on Saturday, Gerry King, and between the two of them you can’t help but be uplifted and inspired. I’m looking forward to a weekend of adventure and creativity, some of the results of which may find themselves posted here.

I’m now free of any work and I need to put together my portfolio and CV in order to start looking for some more, but I’m never really that interested in looking back at old projects and find it difficult to summon the will to complete it. However I think it’s half-finished state is one of the things that is casting a shadow over my day and I know I have to get it done in order to move on with more exciting projects. I think I’ll distract myself with another cup of tea first. I’ve been drinking too much coffee recently and I think tea might be my saviour. I’ll watch the kettle boil, and see how I feel.

So winter is finally here, as my good friend and collaborator Patrick Wray would say “Mother nature’s icy claw” has begun it’s chilling embrace. I know I’m walking straight into a cultural stereotype by talking about the weather, but like all good Englishmen I find it almost endlessly fascinating. Is it just me or do there seem to be too many leaves still on the trees? I’m not complaining, it just strikes me as a little odd. I always seem to be surprised by the onset of winter, and I have a disease that I just can’t seem to shake off. It’s nothing biological, more a behavioural malady. Whenever it begins to get cold all the clothes I buy are only suitable for the summer. Then when the temperature starts to rise again I begin to fetishize coats and scarves. I can’t tell if I’m just very slow to react, or incredibly well prepared, like those people who buy all their Christmas presents in the January sales. Either way, I’m cold.

I finally feel settled in my not-so-new home, in fact I really like Brixton. It’s a real pleasure to walk through the market and move between the walls of sound emanating from the different stalls. It’s taken a while, but I’m a bit of a homebody you see. If I was of a more mystical persuasion I’d ascribe this tendency to my star-sign being Cancer. We Cancarians are supposed to be stay-in types, and also have a tendency to horde. It’s funny the things we believe, especially when like me you don’t subscribe to any religion. I often find myself inventing little superstitions of my own, while simultaneously flouting the rules of more established ones. One such ‘rule’ is my belief that if I say out-loud “I haven’t been ill for a while”, I will become ill within the week. Do you think it counts if I write it down? Hope not. Anyway here’s an image to prove how happy our little family is in our new home, look at those smiles! By the way, I’m the one in the v-neck whose head looks far too big for his body.

I’m beginning to look forward to Christmas at last. If I’m honest I’d been kinda dreading it. I like the festive season, but I usually make the trip home to see my family for the day itself, and although it’s lovely to spend time with them, it can be a bit boring. I come from a very small village in Oxfordshire you see, and as I don’t drive it makes getting about a bit tricky. All of my friends who will likely be in the area live in other villages or towns nearby, and of course no buses run on Christmas Day, even Christmas Eve and Boxing Day are difficult. So I end up being rather stuck and just eating too much. This mild depression was lifted however when I saw some Christmas lights through the window of a flat near where I live. They were cheap and tacky, but they reminded me how great Christmas can be, and I imagined all the fun that family will have. I hope they have kids in that flat, and I hope it snows for them.

A note on the development of this site. I’m at last getting around to adding content to all those pretty menu options on the left. Currently I’m working on filling in the portfolio section, and the gallery is working ok on non-msie browsers. I’m quite pleased with the gallery actually. It’s totally over-the-top, and a massive waste of bandwidth, but it’s fun. There’s still a fair bit to do, but I’m getting there!

Well I should sign off, it’s quite late and I should be in bed. I’ve been waiting for the trailer for “Brokeback Mountain” to download but it aint happening. Oh well, I’ll have to be content with the promo images for now.

I just wanted to share with my (three?) readers a fabulous musical recommendation courtesy of my good friend and house-mate Peter Baker. Peter has a very wide and varied musical taste, as well as being a musician/singer/songwriter himself, check out his track on the Bjork covers album ‘Army Of Me’.

The recommendation of which I write is ‘The Milk-Eyed Mender’ by Joanna Newsom. It’s an absolutely beautiful collection of songs that are hard to describe. For me it’s something like a mix of Kristen Hersh, Isobel Campbell and, well I don’t know what really. All I know is that it makes me feel happy and sad at the same time, an uplifting melancholy that I’m a real sucker for.

mmmmm… men’s chocolate!

These arrived via my kind friend George who returned from Sydney via Tokyo recently.

I’m not quite sure what qualifies them to be named “men’s chocolate”, but they are quite nice. My flatmate Peter is telling me that google say’s that these man chocs come in other flavours too, including giant.

Someone send me some!

Well fingers crossed, we think we may have found a house in London. It’s on the north side of Brixton and is a lovely 4 bed house. Hopefully we’ll know by the end of Monday night whether it’s all going to go through. I’m so excited! If we do get it then it will become ours on the 26th August. Here are some rubbish photos from the agents website.

UPDATE!: Looks like the house is ours. Hooray!

My friend George is on an epic journey to the other side of the world! I’m not being dramatic either as he’s on his way to Sydey, Australia. He’s currently in Osaka airport and has been posting some photos of his journey, you can check them out via his blog.

Hopefully George will get a chance to post more pics when he gets to Oz, that’s if he doesn’t give it all up to join a community of wild kangaroos and live as one with nature.

Well I recieved my first letter ever fro m The House of Commons yesterday. It was from my local MP Don Foster, who I’d written to about the latest insane proposal from the government for ID cards. It was very nice, and fro mwhat he’d written he had obviously read my letter so that me smile. I LOVE the headed paper and envelope, they have that yellow parchment colouring, very swish.

On a diferent note a big thanks go to my good friend George who turned me on to this Nouvelle Vague album called, Nouvelle Vague. It’s been popping up everywhere on TV ads, shows, and recently Glastonbury. So if you’ve not yet heard them, check it out, it’s the sound of the summer.

So you may be wondering what that exceptionally pretty and colourful circle is doing down on the left hand side of the page, well that there badge is representing my pindex. What’s a pindex you say? In short it’s my personal political index, and, well why not click that juicy little badge and find out more. You can even set up your own, for free! Now you can’t say fairer than that can you.

Oh, and I suppose I should mention that I did all the visual design for pindices, including the candy drop buttons. I’m particularly keen on the info balloon that pops up when you hover over a badge on the main site. It took a fair amount of work to get it working on all the platforms required, but I learned some fun new code, and got to push pixels! It was also great to work with my old friend George Grinsted who did all the back end php and mysql trickery. His code was a joy to work with and made my job 10 times easier. Thanks G!

Visit the main pindices site

And just in case you didn’t see it, here it is again in all it’s glory. Wonder what I’ll be this week?