Thanks Yahoo!

It’s like you read my mind… all I want it IMAP now…

And it now officially supports Safari 3 - even better - no more nag screens for Yahoo! Mail.

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It’s very odd for me to be championing something that appears on the ITV schedules as in recent years I’ve found very little worth watching on the network. However, there appears to have been a coup de grace in the form of a new comedy improv show which is apparently an Australian import.

I spotted about 10 seconds of the show last weekend while getting ready for to go out, and mainly attracted by the presence of Paul Merton doing something different, I took the time to setup ITVs ridiculously complicated Catch Up system on Windows (Mac not supported) and watched all the back catalogue of episodes still on offer from this first series (I think I’ve only missed the first one).

The programme is called Thank God You’re Here and seems to me like a slightly more accessible and up-to-date successor to Who’s Line Is It Anyway?

Like I mentioned before, Merton was the big draw for me, and it’s really good to see him back in an impro role, even if it isn’t his performance that makes this show good. In fact, if you like to watch for new comedy talent, it supplies a really good selection (Michael Macintyre, Marcus Brigstocke, Rufus Hound, Lee Mack etc etc), although there have been one or two guests whose inclusion seemed a little strange (Corrie actors), but then again that’s probably just because I can’t help comparing it to the WLIIA? format.

So that’s my current recommendation if you want some good quality improvised TV comedy.

This was another Multipack Saturday and there was a good collection of familiar faces at the meet on the balcony of the Old Joint Stock. Good news from One Black Bear who have just won a very important contract and Paul’s stories from MacWorld gave some insight into the new Macbook Air.

Aside from the local geekery, I spent three days with Rattle this week working on a couple of projects and took some time to visit Chris whilst I was up there. I know some of my friends think it’s odd to insist on visiting people everytime you go anywhere out of your usual territory, but I can’t help it - surely it’s better to stay in touch anyway?

Rugby-wise, I’ve only seen the England games due to some poor scheduling, but can’t say I’m feeling particularly pleased with our current form. I mean, we’ve done the same thing two weeks running (luckily this time it didn’t have such strong repercussions) but how do we let our game play fall apart so easily in the space of 25 minutes? At least it looks like we’re consistent.

Finally, and probably most surprisingly from the past week, I noticed quite plainly that in the new series of Lost, Bromsgrove (yes, like the local Bromsgrove) gets a mention. There’s clearly nothing more mysterious than Bromsgrove.

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I’m really pleased to write about some exciting changes for the Midlands based web group, The Multipack.

The ‘Pack have been going strong for over two years now, and being a collection of web developers it seemed only right that after all that time we might be able to muster up an update to the logo, website, forum and set out a new direction for 2008.

Kudos to Paul Lloyd & Gareth Brown for the artwork and Trevor Morris & Ross Riley for the hardstuff. The new site is really refreshing and looks fantastic.

There have been some other changes too. Our key venue is now the Victorian splendour of The Old Joint Stock on the edge of Birmingham’s St. Philip’s Square, right between (and no more than one minute walk from) Snow Hill and (3 minute walk from) New Street stations.

There will be some more opportunities to meet with us further out in the West Midlands, as we are hoping to start venturing outwards once more.

Meetings are (as they have always been) open and free to anyone who wants to informally discuss, learn or network with other local developers, designers, experts and non-experts. We meet on the second Saturday of every month at 2.00pm over a few beers and a even occasionally a late lunch.

For more details about Multipack events (including our next meeting on Saturday 9th February), check out our new website and forum, or feel free to ask questions of any of the regulars such as myself - we’re always looking forward to meet and join up with others who want to learn, share and engage with other web professionals.

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There has been plenty going on with me in the past few days. What with the completion and delivery of a piece important print work this week (with a Sunday to-press deadline) it wasn’t much of a weekend.

I’ve finally encountered the swathe of completions and launches for projects that have been ongoing (there are one or two anomalies that are yet to be mopped up, but on the whole things are wrapping up nicely).

Monday was no let up, heading to London for a meeting in South Kensington and an introduction to yet another exciting project. After all the formalities of work, I managed to track down probably my longest-term associate and friend (it’s hard to know someone longer than a person who you first encountered on the day you were both born - a day neither of us can truthfully say we remember) and we went for a couple of drinks to catch up on two years of life. Andy (we share the same name too) is an accomplished jazz musician, while I am a web type, but we’ve both ended up following the self-employed path. The number of coincidences between us including others probably are matched by an equal number of unrelated events, but I find it amusing how around 15 years ago (after a period of time when our two families had lost touch with each other), I was helping Dad cut down a hedge in the back garden of our new house, and we were all a little more than surprised to find that we’d moved in next door to each other. Despite all the odd gaps, the geographical differences and the rest, we always seem to manage to start conversations where we left off. It’s the only time I ever wonder whether your date of birth actually does have any possible influence on the way things pan out, and I’m certainly not one for believing those types of things.

Also today, quite surprisingly I came to learn that Dan had managed to inadvertently stumble across the co-founder of Tangerine design agency while organising some rental transport for him. Dan recognised the name of the complex where his customer worked, and mentioned he had previously collaborated with a design agency in the same estate. It turns out Dan’s customer was now working for the very same company, but had previously been attached to a rather more well known ID outfit.

Dan didn’t recognise the name of the agency ‘Tangerine’ (I could have told him who they were straight away), but the customer soon enlightened him that he had co-founded it few years ago with a bloke called Jonathan Ive. Had I been in the car I think I’d have a few more question. This opportunity was probably as close as you could get to achieving any kind of insight into the notoriously elusive designer’s method. Either way, I still find it highly amusing that Dan managed to get into a conversation with his ex-business and design partner, especially whilst doing something completely unrelated to design.

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About this time two years ago I encountered my best practices epiphany, when in a whirl of blog posts, articles and university modules I managed to haul myself onto the table-free markup bandwagon.

At the time there was a frenzy of community based activity, and even if a lot of other people had made the conversion to high-quality code before me, I’m sure there were also a lot more who followed after.

I loved the engagement, the semantic pedantry, the arguments, the twists and turns through the intricacies of the markup, which by all accounts had turned out to be a much larger tapestry than I might have previously believed. This empowered movement has been one of the web industry’s greatest achievements to date, and it’s effect seems to have manifested itself into the lifeblood of most web professionals today.

However (and there is always a however), I came to realise soon enough that this was a phase and not an era. This level of frenzied output would eventually be stifled by a number of factors. Ever-increasing, ever-more critical audiences meant that the pace of discovery and analysis quickly reached a boiling point and saturation occurred. We ended up running out of useful things to say on the topics of HTML and CSS. Whereas a small group of people had championed and educated the masses previously, the masses were now looking for their own slice of web pie, and the advent of Web 2.0 was the real world consequence of our new found knowledge and confidence with our technologies. It was like Ug had been making sparks for years, but had only just discovered how to arrange kindling.

The effect was a revolution that was probably the most bloodless in history. Ever.

I don’t know anyone who has been put out of work by Web 2.0 (I’m talking creatives, not entrepreneurs), and it seems that some focused retraining is really all it takes to make the leap. It’s not like the industrial revolution when your Spinning Jenny suddenly needed to be replaced; we even had the luxury of knowing our equipment was still adequate and the training was completely free (especially if you knew how to use a search engine, and most web professionals don’t feel they even need to include that skill on their CV these days).

This was all part of something big. It wasn’t just about clean code and semantics. Nor was it wholly about getting your styling to work in every goddamn, picky version of Microsoft’s browser. It was about a general step forward which brought us nose up against the glass bottom that is Genuine Progression.

Staring at the arse of Genuine Progression is also where we left Ug. Ug is a simple chap who has very recently learnt how to light a fire. Even before he mastered how to create it for himself, he knew what could be achieved with it. He saw it warming things, destroying things and cooking things. Ug is harbouring big ideas for his new skill, but frustratingly he doesn’t seem to be able to execute them.

For a start, Ug wants to make a bonfire with a Guy on top. The problem is that King James won’t be born for another 8,000 years, and no one has a clue how to make sculpture because ancient Greece doesn’t even exist yet. Ug knows what he wants, but he just can’t do it. He also pines for wonderfully sqidgy, sweet, melt-on-a-stick marshmallows, but despite having more sticks that he could ever desire, he sadly lacks the powdery pink and white confections needed to make the experience truly ‘complete’. Roasted sticks just don’t taste as nice.

And this is like us, the web professional in early 2008. Save for a few minor distractions and spending time taking a Polyfilla-like approach to smoothing out the gaps in our knowledge, we can’t actually go much further without improvements to the technologies we work with.

There are two monumental events that still and always will get web pros excited (aside from LOLcat). The first is the release of a new web browser. This really gets us going, especially if anything vaguely interesting has been done with the rendering engine. Wowsers at browsers.

The second things is far more important, and far more rare. In fact, it is so rare that at the going rate, a web professional might only ever encounter four of these events in their entire working life. What I’m talking about is a Specification Upgrade. Oh how we lust for a Specification Upgrade; waiting for some acronym-prefixed-decimal to increment just once is like hanging around for the phoenix to figure out how to begin the ignition sequence.

So is this going anywhere? Good question. I’ve always been interested in what we can do to improve the web, and more than happy to get into discussions where we debate future progress. After all, those choices we make now will affect our direction in the future. But in recent weeks and months, I’ve become bored of the debating floor. Far too many superfluous opinions make making judgements cloudy and decisions hard to make. Bitterness between parties is prevalent, enlightened argument is either lacking or overflowing - either way, no one seems to be able to agree on anything - and I’m not talking major divisive issues - I mean anything.

Our next scheduled monumentals are Firefox 3, IE 8, widespread adoption of CSS 3 and then finally HTML 5. The first two are on the radar (albeit with a wedge of time between them) but the last two are not. The bickering, the in-fighting, the lack of direction, the flawed design by committee route means that a decade will pass between the recommendation of 4.01 and the ordination of new version (and then we can look forward to the adoption process afterwards - like an after-party, but one that goes on for just a little longer than eternity itself).

Essentially like Ug, I am disillusioned with staring up the backside of progress. We’re waiting for a monolithic system to finally display some kind of life and allow us the space we need to fly some new kites, and which ultimately is the reason why the entire web community for the foreseeable future will continue to waste dedicate all it’s creative resources and energy to having a massive free-for-all arguments on topics like the use of a meta tag.

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Once again that day of the year comes around when I gather up all the bits and pieces from one of my previous travels, order it, catalogue it, mount it then file it in a binder. This is the closest I come to obsessive compulsive, but for the past five years it has been a bit of a ritual, and I notice from year to year the date I tackle this job gets further and further away from when I took the trip. This, of course, is not ideal. You start to forget things. But it also makes the process more enjoyable as you stumble back across all those little things that had completely slipped your mind.

The main bulk of each of these folders I compile is made up of thick wadge of photographs. Usually it can take one to three days to mount them all up, depending on the size of the haul, which gets larger every year. Thankfully, after my US trip in 2005, I managed to cut down the number of photos I actually got printed afterwards (no one apart from myself wants to shuffle their way through over a K of someone else’s holiday snaps) so I just got the salient ones done. Unfortunately I wasn’t so pragmatic about Tibet, Nepal and India, and there is a stack approximately two inches tall on my desk, yet to be tackled.

I would place the photos in slip-in albums, but the cost is prohibitive for what you get and you still have to put them in order. A maximum of 60-80 photos per album usually at between £15 to £25 a pop means that I’d be looking in the region of £250 to mount them up (let alone the cost of the photos), and that would span 10 thickly bound volumes. No, instead I mount them in plastic sleeves with self-adhesive photo corners, which of course also gives me room to insert things like tickets, leaflets, notes etc etc and can usually get it down to one heaving volume. It is a miracle of patience I’ve ever completed one, let alone five - and by the end of the day you are guaranteed a headache from the concentration. That’s why I only go proper-travelling once a year.

I’ve just completed Japan & Australia (2006), but have yet to tackle the latest batch and it’s quite daunting. Maybe I’ll leave that one another year…

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Last weekend proved to be more work orientated than I’d normally like; not to say I didn’t enjoy it, just it wasn’t much of a break from the web.

On Saturday was the first Multipack of the new year and a good turn out. There were discussions of magnitude going on, and I think we made some important decisions. Either way, there has been a flurry of activity this week. Expect some announcements soon.

Sunday started badly at 4am when I finally drifted off to sleep. At 10am I was running a training event with some clients, which of course, was well planned except for the venue. In the end we found some big armchairs and sockets in The Talbot hotel and had four hours playing in HTML/CSS wonderland. It’s not the most riveting way to spend a Sunday, but at least it was painless. Unfortunately the odd schedule meant I didn’t manage to get over to the pool, which was probably the day’s biggest disappointment.

Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday were full of the extraordinary. I’ve been pushing the limits of my knowledge of servers recently, and also trying to break the back of a body of work that has been mostly enjoyable yet time-consuming. Anyway, most of that is under control now and I’ve had a string of new projects float over the horizon, so I’m feeling good at the moment.

Midweek I ventured down to London for a meeting and afterwards met up with Swanny who I managed to prise out of his office at 7pm. After a couple of drinks in a place where it was too expensive to buy bar snacks, I left for home.

Finally the post-new year social activity is taking off again and I’ve come out of the haze that surrounded the beginning of 2008 to establish some firm plans about what I want to achieve in the next few months. I’m looking forward to the challenges. I can’t believe it, but I’ve just realised that what I’m talking about are really just New Year Resolutions. I thought I didn’t do New Year Resolutions. Looks like I’ve been deluding myself.

Oh, and the Macbook Air looks interesting…

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