An idle day.

I sat around the hotel writing a lot.

H returned from her kitesurfing course mid-afternoon and we had a mosey around town. We regrouped with everyone else for dinner in a nice sea-front restaurant that was a lot like all of the other nice sea-front restaurants we had eaten at. Apple moussaka was good.

Then we drove to Sinai. About an hour from Dahab.

And we climbed the mountain.

Our local guide consitently told us to take it easy. We were all already exhaisted, so the climb was slow and steady and probably took about two hours. The night was hot and thirsty and our way was was lit only by our torches. The trail consited mostly of a gentle slope with steeper parts being roughly stepped. There are a number of huts selling cold drinks at gradually escalating prices en route.

At the top, our guide reccommended to us his favourite rock and we settled for a bit. Sitting still in a high place became chilly but we al fell asleep for an hour or so. Based on what we had learnt was possible in Israel, we decided that we were napping in the EXACT spot that Moses recieved the Ten Commandments.

The sunrise took ages, and by this time a massive group of Australian and Italian pilgrims had arrived at the top, singing and praying obnoxiously (in my opinion) and somewhat disrupting the notion of a nice peaceful sunrise.. Many also seemed to be intrigued by the fact we were camped out on a ledge below the peak, to the extent that they started taking photos.

Once the sun was firmly above the horizon our guide summoned us and we opted for the 3000 steps route to the bottom. This meant no other annoying tourists, and plenty of shade. Not to mention some awesome views of heaps of rocks.

We got back to the truck around 7am where Dave and Nev had French toast and beans waiting for us. Then, we drove. And almost exclusively slept.

We stopped for lunch at Pizza Hut (vastly superiour food and prices compared to the UK) as next to nothing was open because of Ramadan.

We camped in the desert that night. I opted to sleep outside again although it was particularly windy. Heather and Kathryn made a concoction with soya mince and vegetables and pasta. Worse things have happened.

The night was disrupted firstly when a potentially crazy Bedouin chap appeared and shook all of our hands enthusiastically and, we think, tried to invite us to sleep in his hut. We politely declined.

Much later I was woken by Lizzie dragging all of her belongings back into the truck. It emerged that the Bedouin man and his friend had decided that outside the girls' tents would be a great place for a lengthy chat. After some persuasion by Dave, they ledt eventually. In hindsight this incident was hilarious.

I woke up with sand ingrained in my skin. Mmm. But so did everyone who had been in a tent. So I had been no worse off.

We drove to the Israel border on a coach full of Russians, two Italian-Romanians,two Italians and a French-Moroccan family with two impossibly well behaved knee high children. Us Europeans teamed up and were delivered approximately one tenth of the information that the Russian-speakers recieved. Being in the language minority was definitely a unique experience.

At the border, after queuing for an age, we queued some more, then did some queuing. We made it through eventually, with only the minor incident of Alan's passport being temporarily confiscated.

We continued to drive, until we were suddenly unloaded at the Dead Sea. We sat around blearily whilst other tourists set to work covering themselves in mud they had just bought from a shop. This Dead Sea beach was long and white, with showers and seating and shops. From the people in it, the water appeaered less buoyant than we had seen in Jordan; we could see pipes pumping in fresh waste water from the showers, and there was a whole section signposted for no swimming, with the implication that they were polluting that specific bit. All in all, I think we preferred our off the beaten track, clamboring down a cliffside, Jordanian experience.

Back on the coach, our English-speaking guide arrived. He was friendly and knowledgable, if less talkative than the Russian one. He also had some weird affliction of the skin that caused random patches on his arms and then head to bleed unprovoked. He seemed fine, though.

We stopped at a high place to see all of Jerusalem before visiting the Wailing Wall (pro tip: you don't turn your back on it, evem whilst walking away). We spied on some praying Jewish people for a while, before moving on.

We followed a Jesus-related trail of locations, conveniently sequenced for the maximum touristic experience, in both Jerusalem and Bethlehem. These included the slab on which Jesus was lain after crucifixion, his tomb, and the patch of mud on which he was born. I may have become even more skeptical about certain aspects of Christianity as a result of this tour. What was far more interesting and inspiring were our walks through the streets, seeing markets and people, and such a crossover of cultures and religions side by side. At one point our guide mentioned how tolerant and accepting the people of Bethlehem are. When cultures coexist it seems understanding is crucial; disputes spring from ignorance and an inability to empathise with beliefs and people that are not your own.

Despite having not yet been provided with a promised lunch by 4pm (the Russians were becoming cranky) we entertained ourselves at a horrendously tacky souvenir shop, where our fellow tourists spent a small fortune on bizarre crap. Finally we were ushered into a restaurant and consumed a mediocre buffet that didn't sit right with anyone. Falafel off the street is probably a much better bet in future.

And thus we returned. After, of course, losing a number of Russians in the duty free at the border crossing for far longer than was polite. We got back to Dahab around midnight and a few of us checked out the pizza shop opposite the hotel. The guy had to go buy most of his ingredients fresh as he was about to pack up shop and visit his parents in Cairo for a month. But he as glad of the custom, and showed us how he makes Egyptian style pizza - superior to Italian in my opinion. Not to mention vastly cheaper. Sweet pizza was on the menu and I enjoyed a peanut one with sugar and milk. Curious.

I woke up in the early hours of the morning with a gecko on me.

Another fantastically lazy day, with everyone doing their own thing. H went to learn to kitesurf, and Al, Lizzie and I caught camels for half an hour to The Blue Hole, a prime scuba diving and snorkling spot.

My camel was distinctly tetchy and easily distracted,but overall highly entertaining.

I snorkled for a bit, but had a dodgy mask so it wasn't nearly as enjoyable as last time. I think we were all a little underwhelmed by the Blue Hole. It can't have helped that it was brimming with tourists.

H joined us later and we lazed about, eating, drinking and sleeping until we were collected at 5. For anyone still reading this because Chris pointed you here, he was diving all day. You'll have to ask him about that.

We regrouped for dinner at a classy looking Indian/Thai/Chinese place.

At ten, six of us were picked up from the hotel on a minibus for our next grand adventure...

We spent our first day in Dahab chilling out in restaurants by the beach, splashing about by the Red Sea and recovering from the ferry. Contrary to first impression, Dahab turned out to be fantastic. Locals are friendly and welcoming, food is incredibly cheap and the sea is warm and salty.

We're staying at Bishbishi hotel with clean and comfortable grounds and excessively friendly thoughtful staff. There are cats everywhere. Breakfast is good. Aircon costs extra and H initially refused to contribute. She changed her mind after waking up at 4am melted to the bed. (Only about £1.50 per day). It's been around 47 degrees here during the day, but a continuous breeze has made it entirely bearable.

In the evenings we enjoyed copious amounts of food (and shisha for those who chose to partake) with massive discounts due to the highly competitive atmosphere. We then hit the cocktail bars and drinking and dancing commenced. More than one person ended the night a little worse for the wear.

During day eight we were driven to the Three Pools for snorkling which I really enjoyed. Many many colourful fish and not-quite-healthy reef. Plus a good amount of lazing about in the sun was indulged in.

We're making the most out of not living on the road while we can.

Helen, Chris and I made scrambled eggs and beans for breakfast before we packed up camp and drove the short distance to the Wadi Rum visitor centre. It was the first day of Ramadan, but one shop and the restaurant were still open to sell food and drink to tourists.

We enjoyed the air conditioning, drinks and sandwiches for a couple of hours before a local guide arrived in a 4x4 to show us round the most famous sights in the Wadi Rum desert. We stopped at some choice climbing spots - heads up: desert rocks are hot!

We also investigated Lawrence of Arabia's old hangout, some water control he helped the locals build,and many ancient inscriptions in rock. We stopped at a Bedouin camp where we were guided through a small sheltered gorge by an enthusiastic nine year old, who presented each of us individually and at carefully chosen moments with gifts of small pebbles. On our return to his tent, his family made us a delicious herby tea and showed great hospitality.

We drove to the port town of Aqaba which looks pretty modern and appears to be constantly under construction. There was a nice beach but it was far too conservative a place for us to enjoy properly that afternoon. We chose a Syrian restaurant for a drink (about fifty percent of places were closed because of Ramadan) and ended up eating there as well. Portions in the Middle East are huge and we all ended up bloated. Good food and great juices.

We borrowed MacDonalds wifi for a little while before preparing to board the ferry. Our access to the ferry consisted of one deck of seating and two levels of outdoor decks. Most people attempted to sleep,with varying success. I didnt even try.

We reached land ahead of schedule but made up for that by waiting outside the immigration office for a few hours whilst staff did everything but their jobs. We were sitting in pretty grimy sand; a lucky few passed out and awoke when the sun came up. Nuweiba in the daylight was a sight for sore eyes. I may even go so far as to eloquently describe the place as an absolute shithole. Pro tip: the public toilets there are great - approaching them has the effect that you suddenly realise you can actually hold it for another two and a half hours after all.

So my first impressions of Egypt weren't the best as we travelled to Dahab. Again, most people used this journey for sleeping but I neglected to.

Continued on day seven...

The day started with a nice easy morning of packing and chilling out by the pool. This was followed by an exhaustingly violent match of water polo, at which Al and I were proven the indisputable champions. (We won nine-two against H and Chris).

We hit Wadi Moussa for a cheap (1JOD) and tasty falafel lunch. I have decided that fresh lemon with mint is my drink of choice for the Middle East.

A couple of hours drive took us to the Wadi Rum desert. The truck got slightly stuck en route which is always exciting. Eventually we found a good spot and pitched our tents. Al, H and I climbed to the highest rock we could physically get to. It took a while. The view was awesome but getting bak down was a minor disaster. Mostly for Heather. We made it eventually.

After dinner and sunset we relaxed in the gradually cooling surroundings. Speculation abot what was coming through the desert to get us definitely didn't freak anyone out. Shortly after settling for the night, screams erupted as Kath and Helen found a spider THIS big in their tent.

I slept under the stars that night,and was still unaffected by this apparently mythical 'cold' I have heard mentioned. I woke up with tiny little crabby spiders everywhere, but with no additional bites. Which is always a sign of a succesful camp.

A mega early start to Dave's porridge, and the day was set in motion with a drive to the ancient (once lost) city of Petra. Entrance was a steep 50JOD but the stunning sights occupied us for about five to six hours.

After entering through the gorge we walked along the cobbled pathway that lead to the treasury. Being 7am, other tourists were scarce and we got some good photos. We then began the inordinately long trek and climb in the increasing heat to the monestary, admiring the homes, tombs and other structures carved directly into the towering, naturally patterned red coloured rock faces.

From the monestary we followed a trail to 'the end of the earth' where we sat to take in a huge and humbling view whilst our friends back home were still sleeping soundly. We got sidetracked on our return journey by the promise of a spring in which we couls swim. We ventured well off the beaten track and eventually found a trickle. We followed this a little way and enjoyed the cool clear water (probably the same as we'd been drinking all day from bottles). Some clambering and relaxing later we made our way back. Midday heat was intensifying and the return to the town took its toll (on little old me at least). We crashed in a pub for an hour or so to recouperate before catching a taxi back to the hotel.

JUMPED IN THE POOL.

Dave invented killer frisbee which involved standing around the edges of the pool and exchanging frisbee tosses, with the aim of catching them no matter what. So lots of stylish (occasionally unnecessary) leaping into the water.

We chilled out and redied ourselves for a buffet dinner at the hotel. I spent the rest of the evening on the tenth floor roof of the hotel spying fireworks.

We awoke on a mountainside at around 7. So far nighttime has proved to be uncomfortably hot, at least within a tent. Breakfast was french toast by Heather and Kath. We packed up and set off,driving for ages to find a secluded spot by the Dead Sea. We avoided the usual areas as the were populated by local tourists. We changed into swimwear and scrambled down to experience the 30% salt water and apparently rejuvinating mud.

The buoying sensation of the dense water was the perfect, effortless suspension. The water was not as painful as I'd been lead to believe it might be and I managed to avoid getting any in my eyes or mouth. Salt deposits around the edge were pretty stunning and I would have happily stayed in the warm water for longer than the time we had.

Next stop was a town called Karak; apparently not the least nightmareish place out there, particularly for navigating with a truck the size of ours. We had a lengthy lunch (falafel pitta for me) and went to look for supplies for the evening meal. Food was massively overpriced (we were probably lied to). We visited an ancienr Crusader castle which turned out to be enormous and very underrated. Entry was 1JOD which did not include the services of an unavoidable local guide.

We were off again, destined for our final stop of the day the Al-Alanbat hotel. We were sweaty and tired and so delighted when the first thing we saw upon dismounting the coach was a shadey pool.

Everyone elso took a dip, whilst Helen, Al and I made no nonesense chilli with beans, vegetables and soya mince. Twas tasty.

Finally I had chance to JUMP IN THE POOL. It was dark by this time and the pool was freezing to start with but the swim was heavenly. Although normal water is somewhat disappointing after the Dead Sea experience.

We hit the sack early in our makeshift dorm in what may be a hotel outhouse. Insects and strange noises abound through the night. Always good for the night before a 6am start..

We spent a relaxing morning at the hotel before driving to Amman's City Mall where we saw the Oasis truck for the first time. It's pretty damn awesome.

City Mall is a large shopping complex and one of the most Westernised places I've seen so far, for the most part with no dress code observed by either locals or tourists. If you're in Amman and missing home, a taxi will take you there from the centre for 3JOD. After enjoying their version of Subway, we hit the massive Carrefour on the bottom level to buy supplies for the evening meal.

An hour drive from here took us to Madaba where we briefly visited a church filled with intricate mosaics, the most promient being a map of the holy land. We explored the small town and the guys hunted for beer (with success).

Further driving through winding steep mountain roads eventually took us to our campsite for the evening, on the side of Mt Nebo. We pitched our tents and admired the incredible view over the Dead Sea and Israel. We watched the sunset from this perspective too and Israel became an unearthly spectacle of glittering lights. We saw plenty of shooting stars, and cooking duties were gained and lost in wagers about the solar system (resolved by flaky 3G access and texts home).

Eventually we slept, woken periodically by the haunting call to prayer, all the more beautiful for not being artificially amplified. A great introduction forme into the world of bush camping.

We got to the Farah Hotel at around 11pm last night (after a great flight with unexpected free food) and met Al, one of our Oasis trip companions, en route.

The hotel (farahhotel.com.jo) is great; clean, cheap, and friendly.  Breakfast (because anyone who read my India blog will know describing food when I'm travelling is a priority) was flat bread, hard boiled eggs and soft cheese.  This set us up for a day of exploring the city (with Al and Chris who we met at breakfast).

We started by climbing to the Amman Citadel and wandering around the grounds and museum. A spectacular view of the city and a cooling breeze from being high up, along with helpful and enthusiastic tourist police made for a fantastic morning. We learnt about the history of the area dating back to the stone age in the citadel museum.

On our way out we were talked into letting a tour guide called Basam drive us to a restaurant for a fantastic local lunch, a visit to the black and white mosque which overlooks the city and the blue mosque. They let H and I in once we were covered in black robes, nd we spent a few minutes wandering through this beautiful, tranquil place. Young lads approached us to chat and welcome us warmly. Well, the guys were welcomed. H and I were largly ignored, so we kept quiet. One of the boys sang verses of the Qu'ran for us, and I have never seen a more pure delight in anyone's eyes. The other told us that he was visiting his family in Jordan; he studies medicine in Turkey in term time.

Despite feeling a bit opressed, this was nonetheless incredible.

During the drive, Basam impartedlots of local knoledge. Like that there are more Palestinians residing in Jordan than Jordinians, particularly in Amman. Jordan is also the health capital of the Middle East with govenment funded hospitals, world renowned doctors and people travelling from miles around for care.

Promising us better quality materials and better prices than the tourist areas, Basam took us to a bazaar frequented by visitors from other Arabian nations. The place was stunning and devoid of other shoppers so we had the assistant's full attention. We were welcomed with rich bitter sweet Jordinian coffee, and dressed up in traditional Bedouin garb, apparently more for his amusement than anything else. Don't worry, we have photos.

We made some small purchases,and Basam returned us to the hotel; we each gave him 10JOD for what had been a wonderfully informative afternoon which we certainly could not have managed alone.

That evening we met Dave and Nev, ur Oasis tour leader and driver, ad Helen, Catheine, and Lizzie our fellow travellers.

We spent a relaxing evening in a restaurant/cofee shop then saw the brightly lit cityscape from the citadel at midnight.

Today we drive and camp on Mt Nebo overlooking Israel. No wifi for a while!

To summerise, Amman is a stunning and welcoming city with a varied history and tolerant friendly people. I will definitely be back.

This is me making sure I can blog with my shiny refurbished Kindle. I can.

So keep an eye on this, and my twitter (@rhiaro) to keep up to speed with my trucking and desert camping adventures!

At the Future of Web Design conference earlier this month, I was inspired.  As a developer primarily and a designer when I have to be, the talks and people at FOWD were perhaps more valuable to me than if my main focus was on design.  I don't need inspiration to develop, but I do to design.

But an incredibly busy week and a bit later, I find I haven't had an opportunity to really make use of the ideas that were triggered at the conference; not only that, but the inspiration is beginning to fade.  And I will struggle to find time to watch the talk videos over the next few weeks.

I had intended to shove together a new portfolio site, to match my shiny new business cards, before the first day of FOWD.  Naturally I didn't manage to stick to this deadline, continued to work on the site during the conference, and to this day the redesign remains unfinished at localhost/.  It is so far responsive up to iPad dimensions, but the design that I was initially satisfied with has fallen out of my favour, so I'm struggling to finish.  I've been browsing collections of great web design, like this one, as well as staring agonisingly at localhost/, hoping for re-inspiration.

Turns out I dislike quite a few of the designs on that list.  Some just have too much blank space.  Many go way overboard with the 'Web 2.0' look; glossy buttons, excessive rounded corners, and the like.  Pretty on first glance, perhaps, but after seeing so many sites in the same style, you suddenly realise the genericness of them all; they give an impression of designers who forgot that the purposes of, or the companies behind the sites have their own personalities and branding that can't be represented simply with shiny buttons and background gradients.

I am currently a fan of textured backgrounds, and I'll confess I am currently of the opinion that a text shadow automatically makes almost any header text look better.  I'm sure this will wear off, just like glossy buttons did.  But I'm still struggling to find a style that suits me personally (and matches my business cards).

So far, just writing about it has helped a little, and I think I have enough beginnings of new ideas to push on.  Watch this space.

Their previous version of this particular site was the image from the event poster, with links mapped onto it.  It was mere moments before my progressive enhancement / responsive design OCD kicked in.  The site in question is to advertise this year's University of Lincoln Grad Ball, and is little more than an online poster.  So here goes.

1530
Marked up the page, with HTML5 tags and the content from the poster, using currently non-existent classes where needed, and also including a few non-existant images. Added my own mini CSS reset for the elements I was using.

1545
Cut the couple of images I needed out of the poster png and uploaded them.  Spent a while trying to find something to match the obscure Mac font that had been used on the poster.  Impact was close, but didn't quite cut it at small sizes.  Played with weighting and letter spacing for ages, but eventually picked a font from Google Web Fonts that did the trick and styled all the typography related stuff.

1605
Aligned, padded, margined and weighted everything as I wanted.  Remembered to use a HTML5 enabling script so versions of IE lte8 would actually bother to style things properly.

1625
Took a step back to look at content.  The organisation of it was great for a poster, where you can pretty much see everything at once, but in any scenario where scrolling is a possibility, the most important stuff needs to go at the top.  So I rearranged some things.

1630
Used CSS to hide a couple of elements that would do more harm than good on a device with a small display. Used media queries to show them for displays with a greater width than 480px.  With help for IE, of course.

Nasty, dirty cheating
One of the images I used consisted mostly of text, with a few images plonked around it.  I didn't have the energy to recreate this in a two-column list, especially not with the apparently randomly floating images.  The image is only used for 480px+ of course.  Mobile get a list.  Unfortunately, I just used display:none.  So mobile browsers are still loading the image.  I hate me, too.  But hey, I had an hour.  It's better than the whole site being an image.

READ MORE ABOUT RESPONSIVE DESIGN.

I wrote that in capitals, because it is not a suggestion.

And, if you're University of Lincoln final year student, get your tickets for the Grad Ball, and resize your browser window while you're there.  It's going to be the best one yet, as they say every year.

It doesn't really seem like much when summarised like this, but I do wish I was paid more than £6 an hour.

So I was all excited about block level links.

But then Firefox had to go and vomit the DOM all over the place.

Which, incidentally, screwed with my layout somewhat.

Everything else could handle it.  Including IE6.  Grr.  For the record, this was Firefox 3.6.10, Windows and 3.6.13 on Mac.

So I'll be keeping an eye on that one before trying it again.

YAY FOR LEARNING!

[A summary of things I feel about HTML5, from a sleep-deprived mind]

It feels like it should be much later... earlier... than that.  I’ve spent hours and hours reading debates about HTML5.  Mostly debates in the comments of blog posts and articles.  I feel fairly well versed in two sides of the argument, the nature of which boils down to “HTML5: What is the point?”.  

My personal view is that progression is good.  Development for the sake of development is good.  Even if you don’t get it right the first time, at least you’re doing something, and not just whining about it.  Someone (yeah, someone important, I don’t do citations at this time in the morning) said that HTML5 was being developed for the present, and that it will be rewritten in the future, to meet the needs in the future.  Lots of people had a problem with that concept, as we should be developing for the future.  Lots of people supported that concept, as predicting the future is quite a challenge.  I haven’t decided where I stand yet.  Maybe I don’t need to.  

I like the fact things are changing, because it makes me feel excited and challenged and all that.  It upsets me a little that I’d just got the hang of all this web development malarky, and now there’s more?!  Lots of people seem to feel the same about the latter.  Which is understandable.  Understandable in a world where the web is expected to be a fixed thing, and you make a website, and it works, and customers are happy, and clients are happy, and it stays like that forever.  But the world and the web (and customers and clients) are fluid and flowing and flexible and fickle.  Peoples’ needs change, hardware changes, software changes, businesses change.  They always have, and always will, so where this idea that the web should whoa slow down a second and wait for the slower ones to catch up has come from, I’m not quite sure.

This makes it sound like HTML5 appeared overnight.  Which for me, in a way, it did.  Appeared to my conscious, concentrating, information-absorbing mind, anyway.

But the part where the HTML5 spec has been under development for like six years or something now?  Come on guys.  I know it’s not easy, but really.  Give the lazy people something to complain about.  Or at least make a big deal out of it from the start.  So ‘they’ can start thinking about it from the get-go.  Maybe a big deal was made, and I just missed it.  But I was making websites six years ago, just.  So if I missed it, ‘they’ did too.

That last paragraph went a bit to the dogs.  What I’m trying to say is: the little man on the ground, the guy making the websites day-to-day, the guy dabbling, the guy fouling up the standard mark-up you hold so dear... Tell him what you’re doing, as you’re doing it, so he’s prepared.

I know you can’t force change.  Hell, outside of term time I still live under a regime where IE6 is deemed a perfectly adequate browser, installing Chrome ‘breaks’ IE, so isn’t allowed, and [insert new web thing since 1997] might be a great feature, but since my father doesn’t explicitly use it, any development on that front is pointless.  Hey, he even (almost daily) states angrily that film making companies are at fault because their productions are shown letterboxed on his 4:3 TV.  (I just searched so I could state that widescreen TVs have been commonplace since [year], and discovered that films have been being made in widescreen since around 1929.  HAH.  I’ll quote that juicy fact next time).  But this is whole other blog post.

I was going somewhere with this.  Oh yes.

I still don’t know whether I can put a <nav> in a <header>.

That’s all I was trying to find out when I stumbled across the various debates.

I’m officially declaring the HTML5 spec subject to interpretation.

And I’m putting the <nav> in the <header>.  It’s part of the header of the page.  In this particular context, if I had a div with id header, I’d put the navigation inside it.  To hell with you all.

PS. Thanks for the great work on developing HTML5, guys.  My life would be dull and repetitive without the likes of you; I’d be reading and writing a lot more fiction, and spending far more time with my family.  Much obliged.

He’s terrified of it.  

Great.

It’s a brightly coloured boing.  I think he thinks its a snake.

It was sad indeed.  Plus the hoard of ducklings is now down to seven.  (There were nine, last time I was in, and they started at ten).  Apparently they can die from being too wet.  Who knew.

I also encountered this morning: a pigeon who held his head upside down and walked in circles.  He had issues.  And a flightless canary, who seems healthy in all other aspects.  Maybe he’s just awkward.  But because of this, it doesn’t look like he’s fit for the outside aviary.  If I didn’t think Tigo would eat him, I’d adopt him in a second.

Speaking of Tigo, he seems to be exhibiting nesting behaviour:
[images]
I think he might be hormonal.  It would certainly explain the sudden increase in biting.

PS. Yesterday’s prophecy came true.  Quelle surprise.

I write this as a commitment to producing a number of useful things over the next two weeks.  And I will read all of Jeremy Keith’s books.  And I will make sure all of my sites validate, even the ones I did in a hurry.  And I will rebuild my portfolio with HTML5, and for mobile.

I’m going to start tomorrow.  Promise*.

I’m now reading this.

Things are being learnt.

* Not a promise.  In all likelihood, tomorrow, I will spend several hours at Weirfield Wildlife Hospital cleaning up excretions of sick animals and loving every minute of it; followed by an afternoon and evening spent playing Mum to a certain parrot and consequently failing to do anything else.

“There’s a buzzard in there.  He’s shit on everything.”

Turned out to be an arctic buzzard.  Way off course, seemingly struggling to walk or fly, and not in a good mood.  One to add to my list of animals I have seen, but shouldn’t ever have had chance too.

Edit: Look, it’s famous now! http://www.thisislincolnshire.co.uk/news/ARCTIC-BUZZARD-COMES-COLD/article-2943752-detail/article.html