Role: Design, xhtml, CSS, Wordpress Theme and integration with social networks

Completion: Project ongoing

Role: Design, xhtml, CSS – Project in conjunction with Jon Colegate

Completion: Project complete

Role: Design, xhtml, CSS, Wordpress Theme – Project with Sunflower

Completion: Project Complete

I’m being flippant its not the bugs that bug me, its the stunning lack of support for even simple CSS that really kills me. :last-child? Not possible that’s pushing technology just that little to far for the worlds richest (maybe) tech company after all even Mozilla has only supported the tag for the better part of its entire existence. The excellent Quirksmode.org maintains a list of CSS selectors supported by different browsers the vast majority of which may as well be red for the entirety of IE’s entire range. We’ve added as little compatibility as we thought would make it look like we were working in the last 6 years, be thankful web designers. Its a practical joke surely? On the 20th anniversary of the browser we’ll be treated to the punch line.

I’m left still finding work around’s, pointless hacks and adding extra class statements to objects purely because IE, despite two major revisions, is still only approaching compatibility with CSS2; a standard that’s been around longer than most of the standards movement. I’m left longing for the days when, as with IE6, there wasn’t even the pretence of compatibility, it was a bitch and an albatross but one we knew and hated but at least we could deal with it.

Come back IE6 I miss you.

So I know its not cool or in at the moment but the sheer joy and innocence of the woman’s singing delights me. Why? How the hell should I know. Recently folk has been making a come back with talented and incredibly young stars like Laura Marling and Alessi’s Ark. I’m among the first to extol the virtues of both of these young artists along side other new exponents of the genre Iron and Wine, Fleet Foxes and Bon Iver. Yet I keep coming back to the 60’s in particular Melanie. I know in my head that there is little lifter her above the crowd she doesn’t have the jaded intellectualism of Leonard Cohen the direct brilliance of Bob Dylan or the disarming honesty and wit of Joni Mitchell its just joy, pure energetic, innocent, joy.

I guess, the first time I discovered the folk scene I was looking for great lyricists, this time I’ve been driven back there by the second coming of the synth culture. I didn’t enjoy the 80’s much when they were happening, I wasn’t that old then but I didn’t much like the tinny synth sound at the time I hated the clothes in retrospect and I’m retreating in fear now that its all coming back again. Are we going to further disgrace the Romantics by bringing in the new, new romantics, whose ideas can be entirely theatre and completely lacking in even the smear of substance that the new romantics had. Hopefully we’ll hit a 90’s revival in a stupidly quick fashion.

Still I have my emerging UK folk scene and I’ll always have Melanie to take away the rage at the 80’s with pure joy.

Notable in the years line up of festivals is the ever wonderful All Tomorrows Parties. Having already had a massive sell out festival this year curated by the legendary Pavement, a weekend that seemed to sell out within 4 hours. They follow it up at the end of the year with two festivals curated by Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Belle and Sebastian respectively and although its still early both festivals have line-ups that draw me in beyond just the headline. Neurosis and Isobel Campbell with Mark Lanegan? Yes please.

Ah then comes Latitude, A festival that its worth attending just for the Littery and Comedy stages alone, Sebastian Faulks, Jeremy Hardy, Emo Phillips, Rich Hall and Mark Watson have me sold. The music though Belle Show up here again but the main draw is the wonderful Laura Marling, Spoon and the Dirty Projectors there’s plenty elsewhere on the line up that has me #00ff00 with envy, the Theatre arena alone may have got me queuing for tickets but alas I cannot go.

Finally in my trilogy of festival woe is bestival, Hot Chip, LCD Sound System, Four Tet, Echo and the Bunnymen, The Wailers, Dan Le Sac v’s Scroobious Pip Tricky and Gil Scott-Heron, kill me now. How did they get that line up together? I swear some festival organisers this year spent some time at cross roads line-up wish lists in hand and came back minus a soul but with a check list of nothing but joy.

My advice this year, buy your tickets, pack your tents, go and have some fun just don’t tell me about it at all.

Building the site took a huge amount of getting used to both php and wordpress, for of idiosyncratic quirks both. Wordpress in particular seems to be built to be entirely counter intuitive to my own particular working process. Once that hurdle was over it was back to getting used to the social networks that I’d been studiously ignoring for so long, sorry twitter. I made it to the party, late admittedly, but I made it all the same. Integrating all of these things has been fun, for a masochistic value of fun.

Honestly its great to have a home base on the web again. Somewhere I can ramble at will and nobody will be able to cut me off mid flow. Other than me, like its not wise to self edit. As I don’t yet know how long my average post may be but it seems like I’m signing off pretty early in this post but all the same, I’m sure I’ll have something to post soon.