If there’s one thing Britain does well, it’s pomp and pageantry. Love it. The Royal Family is a massive part of our heritage, so great. Also, it’s so nice to see Windsor again, forgot how nice a place it is and actually am missing that it was just over the road and that I used to go most weekends.

Relaxed start to the weekend meeting my parents for breakfast. Now watching the Royal Wedding before a bit of portfolio work this afternoon.

A couple of weeks ago I decided I was going to try and watch less TV/Netflix in the evening. I decided I’d allow myself an hour or so when I got home from my shift at the coffee shop to unwind and then I’d turn it off and do something productive or useful. Seems to be working pretty well so far. I’ve been able to improve the new theme for my blog a bit, posted far more regularly, read more articles, read more non-fiction books, listened to more music, and made progress on my new portfolio website. Here’s to this resolution lasting.

You know you have a good friend when they ring for a catch up and when the call ends you realise you’ve been on the phone for two hours.

I don’t know why it never occurred to me before, but mind map apps are excellent ways of visually presenting a site map. I’ve found them really helpful in the last couple of weeks while reviewing site structures and navigation design.

Spent some of this afternoon going through my old design projects and picking which I’m going to include in my new portfolio site. Found a number of old projects which are going to go in there and ordered a cheap – but well reviewed – light box thing to photograph them in.

9:50pm on a Friday and finally calling it a day. The curse of double jobbing, a 14.5 hour work day. I really wish I was doing design work full time.

Any web development people know why a htaccess rule to change to php 7 is causing the file to download and not execute?

A real pet hate of mine is when someone from a different profession tries to treat me like a tool to execute their design, rather than letting me use my years of experience and the expertise/knowledge I’ve developed in that time. In no other profession would you approach an expert and tell them how to do their job. Instead you would give them all the information they need and let them do the work of providing the best possible solution to your problem. Design is not just how something looks. It’s about how something functions. How a key message is communicated visually. It’s the way that something is used to guide someone from a position of not knowing much to knowing just a little bit more. And it’s many things beyond that, but one thing it is not, is just how something looks. When you’re working with a designer, don’t try and do their job for them by giving them a layout of how you want something to look. Give them the information they need, talk to them about your aims, and let them use their skills to provide a solution to your problem.

Chopped some chillis up to put them in my bolognese which is currently in the oven. Apparently I didn’t wash my hands thoroughly and itched my nose. IT STINGS!