Forget developing invisibility cloaks for the army, all they need to do is send them in on push bikes. You can guarantee that no one will see you, that includes people pulling out of side roads, setting off from being parked, opening car doors… list is endless.

What is it about being on a bike? If I was walking, I would be seen. Why when on a bike, no one can see you? The number of times I have had “altercations” with drivers.

This has yet to deter me, neither will the weather. I will continue to do my bit for the environment, as well as my wallet and persist with biking.

My route is not too bad, around 60% is cycle paths. Which is a must in Leicester as it is fair to say driving in Leicester is like an episode of Whacky Races.

I have a helmet, and I feel that I am the only one with a helmet. Have yet to see anyone else with a helmet.

Saying all that, there is a “warm” feeling when you hold up traffic momentarily. But less said about that the better. ;)

I have finally managed it, countless form filling and negotiation and I have now in my hand the keys to the new office.

It’s kind of exciting since I have never rented my own offices. I wasn’t looking forward to working all alone but fortunately that may no longer be the case with a recent addition to the team. More on that later.

In summary… new office, new member of staff, healthy project book and the site being considered as one of the best in 2007… I think 2008 is off to a great start.

ONWARDS AND UPWARDS!

Well would you adam and eve it, the bods at cssmania placed my site alongside 9 others as one of the top 10 sites of 2007.

Sweeeeeeeeet!

Yet again, I promised to keep this Blog updated… failed miserably

Due to the usual bout of way too much work and general goings-on I haven’t had the energy to write anything.

Here is an update on all things me. You may have already noticed that I am looking to expand. Glad to say that I have forged working relationships with local (and not so local) development bods, designers, copywriters and people who a ting or two about marketing/seo.

What a relief.

In addition to this, I have “almost” acquired an office. Jeez, getting offices is like bloomin difficult. It was easier getting a mortgage! So hopefully within the next few weeks I will be moving into new digs which will be cool, if not a bit weird, and a bit sad. Used to having no morning journey to make and having lunch made for me by my good wife.

As for projects, within the past 3 weeks have managed to launch 2 and a half sites. (the usual round of tweaks, amendments and can you justs).

www.nen.gov.uk (in their own words)

“The NEN is the UK collaborative network for education, providing schools with a safe, secure and reliable learning environment and direct access to a growing range of online services and content.” My role was as PHP/Database developer working on behalf of Gooii Limited providing them with a CMS and integrating supplied CSS templates.

More about the other sites later.

In my quest to get fit, I needed a device that would distract me from the pain and anger I generally feel when exercising.

For a while I have been dancing between an iPod nano, Philips and iRiver (not literally dancing, merely sat on my arse browsing impartial, independent review sites :/ ). And I can finally say that the iRiver won.

My reason? Simply because it amounts to external storage with a music folder which allows me to simple copy paste music to and from WITHOUT the need for a proprietary music manager. Not to mention the bloody good sound quality you get with their shipped headphones. Has its own graphic equalizer, play options (random all, random one, random one then all, random some then maybe a few more, random none then one and then maybe a few more then none then some) and the sound recorder.

I attend many meetings, as you can imagine, I pay full attention and make copious amounts of notes BUT in case I miss details (which is highly unlikely since I pay full attention and make copious amounts of notes) then I can record meetings for playback later. Sweeeeeet.

Other reasons were the widely respected iRiver brand and the USB socket which is a standard one meaning I can reuse my digital camera’s dangling USB cable.

Generally, well worth the money.

Full review here: http://www.pocketables.net/2007/05/review_iriver_t.html