I've been doing web design for over five years now, graphic design for a year more and even dabbled in some software and video stuff two, yet I've been discovering over the past few months that I am barely scratching the surface of certain things I need to truly know - or at least about the really 'geeky'/valuable stuff that makes the web tick. One of the benefits of keeping my finger on the pulse is that it's now easier to predict what comes next; what your clients will expect from you, what the web will require of you and, most importantly, what the web will allow you to do in the future. I'm not talking about holographic 3D projections out of your screen or being able to 'smell' web pages, instead I'm talking about things that would bore the letters out of an encyclopaedia, but ultimately make the web better from the ground up.

I'm not going to go all in-depth-technical but a few phrases like XHTML Strict, Web 2.0, CSS 3.0, are things that I've only really just encountered began to want to understand, and I'm annoyed with myself I wasn't entirely crystal on it all much earlier.

Some of the things that I'm reading and finding really interesting are linked to below. If you are a self-taught webdesigner who has never encountered a really big revelation during the learning process and have a weak heart then looking at this might be a bad idea. It's not that I never knew or had never heard of these technologies, it's just I never really looked or tried to understand them hard enough. Some have appeared in my work, and others are brilliant nuggets of newly discovered information I now forever treasure (or at least are planning on giving a test run on upcoming projects).

Malarkey's Stuff and Nonsense

Mark Boulton's Journal

Andy Budd's Blogography

These aren't the only places I'm checking out, infact it's not even a 10th, these are just the ones I have become most fond of - the whole thing is linked up to mega amounts of resources and I'm still going to be a busy boy for some while yet.

Also today I submitted some photos to a new national student magazine in the hope of some exposure. Until yesterday I had never even heard of the publication, but after a good look through decided it was my type of magazine (especially since Label has been crap so far this year) and since they were looking for contributions I couldn't help but help.

Space Cadets was once again brilliant. Tonight was the first night I felt genuinely sorry for the Cadets - I think if I was on the end of the thing I probably wouldn't take the let down that well. It's unfortunately still funny at this end though.