Hi, I'm Matthew Dawkins.

Now that it’s 2012, and I have a little spare time before I go back to work, I thought this would be a suitable opportunity to reflect on the past year and summarise what I’ve been up to.

Family

Ellie’s operation

Ellie gave us a bit of a scare earlier this year.  What started off as just a niggling pain in the chest turned out to be gall stones, which was at times crippling and meant she had to avoid anything even remotely fatty for several months.  She found that change of diet difficult, what with not being able to eat cheese or chocolate.  Still, the operation went very smoothly and she was back on her feet and eating naughty things soon afterwards.  My biggest confession here is that I’m still ever so slightly jealous at how quickly she healed after her operation, compared to me and my hernia (which is mostly fine now, incidentally).

Peter leaving home

This year my littlest brother flew the nest, finding a lovely little church in Uffeculme to go and be a trainee youth worker at.  I went to his induction service, which was a great way to support him as he began his new ministry, and an opportunity to meet (albeit in passing) others like him and also the vicar he’s working with, who seems very nice.  Unfortunately, despite booking a date in with him, we didn’t get to actually visit Peter on-site this year (more on that later), so hopefully we’ll reschedule that for early 2012.  It does leave Mum and Dad’s house somewhat empty though; apparently their food bill has roughly halved now that Peter’s moved out…

Read Peter’s blog.

France holiday

Apart from a weekend in Weymouth, we as a family have never had a holiday until this year.  Ellie and I have been married for 4 years, and that was all we had managed.  This year we took advantage of Ellie’s Dad’s holiday home in France, and had a lovely week with them.  We had a fantastic day on the beach, generally enjoyed chilling and not doing too much, and although it was short it was much appreciated.  The travel was an adventure – driving on the wrong side of the road isn’t actually too hard at all, although the weather on our return journey made the ferry crossing quite uncomfortable (not that Samuel seemed at all bothered by that).

Samuel’s visit to hospital

Not to be left out, Samuel also necessitated a trip to the hospital, following a very high temperature that caused him to have a brief seizure.  That was a huge worry for us at the time, but thankfully it wasn’t anything to worry about in the end.  Apparently these things happen with young children, because their bodies aren’t able to deal with the heat as well.  No lasting damage, I’m pleased to say.

Grandma’s funeral

Ellie’s Grandma sadly passed away this year.  It wasn’t entirely unexpected, as she was very old and increasingly unwell, but it was still something unpleasant we all had to go through.  She had been growing increasingly senile, making conversation difficult, and although we’d managed to persuade her to move out of her bungalow and into a flat where she’d have people to help, she actually only lived there for a matter of weeks due to prolonged visits to various hospitals.  It was one thing after another, what with falls, blood pressure, infections, and so on.  In the end she had a fall while in hospital that led to a bleed on the brain which, in addition to everything else she was going through, was just too much.  Thankfully we happened to be visiting Ellie’s Mum at the time, so we were on hand to support her through it.  A useful bit of planning on God’s part, methinks.

(more…)

Yes, dear readers, our car is no more.  After many years of successfully avoiding things, our insurance policy is finally being put to use.  The Zafira is dead.

It was one of those stereotypical nights that would feel right at home in a Hollywood movie – the sky was black, the wind howled menacingly, the icy rain hurled itself at the ground, and small furry creatures everywhere ran and hid.  And I sat at home reading Samuel a bedtime story.  It was only when my mobile rang on page 2 that it became apparent that the weather was indeed a bad omen.

In all fairness, Ellie has only been driving on her own for a month.  And it’s not exactly a small car.  And the conditions were awful, as I’ve described above.  And it was a very narrow road.  Squeezing down a poorly lit residential street she slightly misjudged her position on the road, and clipped the back of a parked car as she passed.  She was only in second gear apparently, and it took her completely by surprise.  She was surprisingly calm on the phone though, which in turn helped me to be surprisingly calm too, as I skipped to the end of the book (andtheyalllivedhappilyeveraftertheend) and hastily put Samuel to bed without brushing his teeth.  To be honest I was more relieved than anything else – given the sort of accidents new drivers usually have, this was nothing.

Thankfully the owner of the other car was very understanding.  In fact, apparently it was the third time this had happened to her.  Which tends to suggest it’s not entirely Ellie’s fault after all… but I doubt the insurance company will see it that way.

Ellie wasn’t hurt at all, incidentally, as she wasn’t going particularly fast at the time.  In fact, on inspection in the light of the following day the damage didn’t seem too bad.  But because Ellie had mentioned about the steering not feeling quite right we decided to play it safe and leave the car where it was until it could be looked at by a garage.  So we arranged for the car to be collected, and today I heard back from them with their assessment of the damage.  There was some cosmetic work that would need doing, such as replacing a few body panels (front bumper, bonnet, front wing), repainting (the aforementioned new panels, plus some deep scratches on the doors), and a new headlight unit.  But the thing that really swung the issue was a bent and snapped steering rack.  Ouch.  Presumably when the two cars collided they bumped wheels, and even at that slow speed it was enough to cause significant damage.  The cost of repair was quoted at more than I paid for the car in the first place, so understandably it has been deemed a complete loss.

It makes me wonder though how cars last so long when they’re banger racing.  If a gentle knock can sheer a steering rack, how can scrap cars survive being repeatedly rammed and still pull themselves along??  I also wonder what banger racing will be like in 20 years time when all the ‘old’ cars are made of plastic.

So on Friday, straight after a work end-of-year conference in Yeovil, I went and picked up a hire car that we’d booked for the weekend, and spent most of Saturday looking at cars.  I had already looked at the AutoTrader website, and had decided that a Ford Focus was what we needed.  Significantly smaller and cheaper than the Zafira, but still with just about enough space inside for us to get by on a day-to-day basis.  A long term goal at the back of my mind is that now that Ellie and I both drive it might be more sensible for us to have two smaller cars rather than one big one.  So I picked out the best options, we piled into the tiny Corsa we’d hired, and set off.

The first car was in Frome, and was being sold privately rather than by a garage.  I thought it looked good from the website, so I was feeling positive.  However, the man selling the car didn’t do himself any favours at all.  He knew practically nothing about the car, because he hadn’t had it long and hadn’t bought it for himself, and had allowed the MOT to run out.  That meant that we couldn’t legally take it for a test drive, despite his offers.  It also had dubious interior additions (who uses CB radios these days???), two balding tyres (both on the same side of the car, so all four would need replacing), the engine sounded rough (even for a diesel), and it just didn’t feel right.  So we left without even moving it off the drive.

The next one on my list was back in Shepton.  It looked miles better, despite a little rust on the rear subframe, so we took it for a spin.  It was okay, but not great.  The brake discs felt warped, and juddered a lot when braking, which made the whole braking experience very unnerving.  It was also didn’t like going into third gear.  It was a nice enough car, it just didn’t feel like ours.  So we said no and went home to grab some lunch.

Armed with a broader range of options, having succumbed to the idea that I might be wrong in declaring that we needed a Focus, we set off in the afternoon to see three more cars: a Zafira and a Focus Estate in Frome, and an Astra in Trowbridge.  We went to Frome first on the basis that they were closing earlier.  The Zafira was like ours, only a slightly higher spec model, so we took that as read and had a look at the Focus Estate, just to see what the difference was.  It looked lovely, a wonderful big boot, great condition, and none of the rust issues that the other Focus had had.  Taking it for a spin we both very soon agreed that it felt like our car.

So we bought a Focus after all, albeit a bigger one than I’d expected.  God led us in exactly the right direction, once I let him, and it’s being delivered on Sunday afternoon.  Yay!  I’ll put photos up in due course, for those of you for whom a blog post of this length is just too much effort.

Some of you may have noticed that most of the images on my blog have been missing for some time.  Actually, if I’m honest, I very much doubt if anyone has noticed.  Let’s face it, who reads blog posts from last year?  Hmm?  Anyone?  No, I thought not.  Nonetheless, the images were missing, and it was only this evening that I managed to resolve the issue.

The problem started when I moved from my old hosting provider, PearTreeUK, to my new hosting provider, WebhostingUK.  I was determined to be clever, being a professional web developer, and decided to merge a load of old domains onto one master domain and host my blog there, so now you’ll find that www.minipix.co.uk, www.chapternine.co.uk and www.giftlistcentral.co.uk all redirect to www.matthewdawkins.co.uk.  Seamlessly.  Well, almost seamlessly.  The trouble was, despite all my cleverness, I forgot to download all the images on my blog before cancelling the old hosting.  Foolish fool.

So while everything worked, it looked rather bare.  For the most part it wasn’t a huge issue, but believe it or not there are actually some blog posts that Google quite likes, such as my demonstration of OpenTTD junctions, which is somewhat underwhelming without the images.

Thankfully, the folks at PearTreeUK have their heads screwed on.  I emailed them on the off-chance that they might have my old data lying around somewhere, half hoping that they didn’t (because that would be careless and unprofessional).  The reply came back positive, and thankfully it’s not unprofessional at all – they actually have a policy in place to hang onto expired accounts’ backups for several months before automatically deleting them.  Which is a very wise policy.  And it meant that they were able to provide me with a full backup of my blog, including images.  So I downloaded the images, put them in the right place, fiddled with my .htaccess file to make sure I didn’t get any straggling 404s, and hey-presto my images are back!  Feel free to take a wander through my archives if you like, to marvel at my newly-found old images.

As an extra bonus, I’m pleased to say that something else fairly significant was also recovered at the same time.  I had been writing a pregnancy diary during 2009, before Samuel’s birth, and I’d put it online (though hidden from public eyes) so that I could update it from wherever I happened to be.  It seemed like a good idea at the time.  Anyway, I kind of forgot it was there, so when I came to migrate all my websites from the old web host I completely forgot to take a backup of that diary.  Thankfully, the backup PearTree were able to send me included all that hard work.  One day I’ll finish off the last few weeks worth of entries (which are currently only in note form) and maybe make it public.  Might make an interesting read.  Maybe.

This is a short story I wrote recently.  I had the idea while on I was on holiday last month, and when I got back I let it write itself in a couple of evenings.  Hope you like it!

At the bottom of the garden

Amber was the sort of person who truly believed there was a perfectly sensible answer to anything that appeared in the least bit supernatural.  She didn’t believe in monsters, or elves, or ghosts, or any of the fairytales she had been told when she was growing up.  She instructed her parents to stop telling her bedtime stories, informing them in a very matter-of-fact tone of voice that she was “too old for silliness”.

In truth, she rejected the tales because she was afraid one day one of them might be true.

And now it was her birthday, her coming-of-age.  And she hadn’t slept a wink all night.

*****

The day before had been fraught with tension, mainly her mother’s fault, fussing around making preparations for the party.  She was trying to be organised, but to everyone else it just looked like panic.

“You’re not sweeping the floor properly, Amber,” she called from the other side of the room, “I can see streaks in the woodwork where you’ve missed bits.”

“Well then,” Amber replied, almost to herself, “maybe you should get someone to sweep the floor who actually cares if it’s clean or not.”

“Don’t take that tone with me, my girl,” her mother retorted, waving her duster menacingly in a nondescript direction, “this floor needs to be spotless for the party, and you’re old enough to know how to sweep properly.”

“I never even said I wanted a party,” Amber complained.

“That’s not the point, dear,” her mother replied, pulling a dining room chair into the sitting room to be able to reach the corners of the ceiling, “you’ve reached an important age and everyone wants to celebrate with you.  They’re expecting a party.  And that means we have to give one.  And that means you have to be here, so people can wish you well.”

“But what if I don’t want to be here?  What if I just want some time to myself?”

“Don’t start that again, child,” mother said sternly, “you’re old enough now that you should respect other people’s wishes before your own.”

“Then maybe I’m old enough to go out and have my own fun, to be where I want to be, to see what’s at the other end of the garden…”

“You are NOT permitted to go to the end of the garden,” snapped her mother from on top of the chair, “you know full well your father and I have declared that to be off-limits.

“Fine,” Amber harrumphed, “I’ll just go to my room then.”

And off she stomped.   (more…)

What’s pShadow?

pShadow, short for ‘paper shadow’, is a jQuery extension that adds realistic drop shadows to HTML elements, which works in Internet Explorer (IE8, IE7, IE6 with some clever trickery), Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera, and any other modern browser you care to mention.  It’s free to download and use, and you can see an example on the demo page.

Cut to the chase – how do I get it?

Download pShadow1.0 and unzip it somewhere.  You’ll see pshadow.js and 2 png images, and I’ve included the jQuery script too (but feel free to download it fresh from the jQuery site if you prefer).

In the <head> section of your HTML file, add the following lines:

<script type="text/javascript" src="jquery.1.x.x.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="pshadow.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
$(document).ready(function() {
    $('.someElement').pShadow();
});

Now all elements in your markup with the class .someElement will have a lovely drop shadow!

The options

There is more than one way to skin a cat.  By the same token, there is more than one way to use pShadow.  Below are some options you can set.

There are 2 built-in shadow types, using one of the 2 .png images bundled in the zip.  Choose which one you want to use by setting the type parameter to either ‘corners’ (default) or ‘middle’.  See the demo page to see the difference.

$('#element').pShadow({type: 'corners'});

You can set how deep the shadow is, i.e. the vertical height of it, by setting the depth parameter to a number (assumes pixels).

$('#element').pShadow({depth: 30});

You can vary the strength (i.e. the darkness) of the shadow by setting the strength parameter to a value from 1 to about 5.  See the technical stuff below for an explanation of what those numbers mean, but 1 is lightest and 5 is probably the highest you’ll need to go.

$('#element').pShadow({strength: 2});

And of course you can combine those options into one array, and even chain other functions on afterwards.

$('#element').pShadow({
    type: 'corners',
    depth: 10,
    strength: 2
}).css('background','blue');

How it works

Okay, here’s the more technical low-down on how this all works, and what makes it so special.

We all know that modern browsers (apart from IE anyway) support the lovely CSS3 box-shadow property.  But there are times when we need to cater for IE too, and sometimes a simple box-shadow just doesn’t cut the mustard.  The pShadow jQuery extension does what all great performers do – it masters the art of illusion.

The shadow itself is actually a .png image, carefully designed to sit on the bottom edge of an element and give impression of depth and shadow, as if the element was a piece of paper sitting on your screen.  No shadows are needed on the other edges, because the bottom shadow does all the work for you.  Your eyes do the rest and turn it into a 3-dimensional object.

pShadow uses jQuery to take (nearly) any element, or set of elements, and dynamically adds the .png image to it, positioning it carefully so that it lines up with the bottom edge of the element.  In the case of self-closing elements like <img />, pShadow adds the shadow element immediately following it in the markup, and positions it absolutely to the target element’s position on the screen.  In the case of non-self-closing elements like <div></div> the shadow is added inside it and then positioned relative to the parent.  Then it scales the width of the image to match the target object.  And, to my knowledge, that can’t all be done purely with CSS.

The darkness of the shadow (known in the code as the ‘strength’) is a quick and dirty approach but generally works well.  There is still only one .png image, but if you layer them on top of each other it gets progressively darker.  If you leave the parameter to its default setting, or set it to 1, it will place just one copy of the shadow under the element.  If you set it to 3, you’ll effectively get 3 shadows stacked on top of each other, making it darker.  By my reckoning the scale can sensibly go up to about 5, although there is technically no limit.  And if you want more control you can create your own shadow image that’s really really light and stack loads of them on top of each other, if you really want to…

Limitations

No, it’s not perfect.  Yes, you can break it.  No, I can’t guarantee to be able to fix every issue you have with it.  Here are some things I’m already aware of:

• PNG images are not totally supported in IE6, because it forgets to take transparency into account.  However, there are a number of ways to force IE6 to do transparency, so do a Google search for “IE6 transparency” and use any of the solutions there!
• If you apply a shadow to a self-closing element like an image, and then move the position of that element, the shadow won’t follow it.  Because the shadow is positioned absolutely to where the target element was relative to the page, if you then move the target element the position of the shadow would need to be updated too.  That’s beyond the scope of pShadow at the moment.
• If you have CSS targeting images, there’s a possibility that you might affect the shadow elements too.  I’ve tried to cancel out some typical CSS parameters, but it’s no silver bullet, so beware.
• pShadow doesn’t take into account rounded corners, so if you’re using a hefty rounded corner on an element then the shadow might look a little odd.  Tough luck, I’m afraid.
• Also, pShadow doesn’t currently handle nested pShadowed elements perfectly.  Hopefully that’s something I’ll find a fix for though!

Frequently Asked Questions (or at least questions that I imagine might be asked frequently)

Is pShadow free?

Yes.  It is.  And always will be.

Do I have to use jQuery?

Yes.  Technically you could achieve it all in raw Javascript, but it wouldn’t be as elegant, nor anywhere near as easy to use.  And I have no plans to convert it to use any other Javascript framework.

Can I apply pShadow to any element?

Yes.  But I can’t guarantee it’ll work in every case.  It’ll definitely work for <div>, <p>, <h1> etc, <img>, and any other element that a browser will treat as if it’s a block element like <div>.  It won’t work quite right with <input>, <textarea>, <button> yet, but that might come later.  And I’m sure you’ll all tell me if other elements don’t work either.

Can I use pShadow?

Yes.  You can use it on your personal blog.  You can use it on your company website.  You can use it on your corporate intranet.  You can use it in your web application.

However, you can’t use it on your oven.  Or your car.  Or your girlfriend.  Or your sense of pride.  Or the sunset.

What happens if I have a problem with pShadow?

Leave a comment below and I’ll see what I can do to help.  Unfortunately I have a 9 to 5 job to attend to, so I can’t provide unlimited tailored support, and you can’t employ my services either, even for money.

When is the next version of pShadow due?

It’s not.  Not as such.  This is a little personal project of mine, initially knocked up in an afternoon.  I hope to find time to tweak it as necessary, as and when people point out critical failures, but there is no roadmap for development.

Some while back, at some point after Samuel was born, Ellie started getting pains in her chest.  It wasn’t too much of a concern to begin with because it didn’t always last long and didn’t stop her doing things, but gradually it became more and more of an issue, and eventually led to an ambulance being called out because she was in so much pain.  She was whisked off to Yeovil hospital where, after a fairly lengthy stay, she was sent home and told not to eat anything with any fat in it.  She had gall stones, and needed her gall bladder removing.

So today, finally, she had her operation.  She had to be at the hospital at 7:30am, which is a silly time in the morning, even more so because that meant we had to get up at 5:30am to be ready in time to leave the house at 6:30.  The journey in was pretty straightforward, little traffic to speak of, and we didn’t talk about the operation at all.  It was only when we got there and waited in the drop-off car park that we spoke properly about the op, and prayed together that it would all go okay.

And that was it.  I dropped her off and came home.  I wasn’t able to sit with her, or wait for her, or comfort her, or be around when she came round from the anaesthetic.  I felt quite helpless.

Samuel managed to stay awake all the way home, but only just, and went straight off to sleep when we got home.  Which was brilliant, because it meant I had time to go through the shower and everything else I didn’t have time for first thing.  He woke up eventually and we went to Tesco, and when we got back I phoned the hospital to find out what the situation was.  I spoke to the lady who was in charge of bed allocation, so she didn’t know exactly where Ellie was, but she said she’d give me the phone number for the ward where she’d be put after the op.  I went to fetch a pen, started writing down the number, and then my mobile rang – it was the ward I’d just been given the number for, telling me that Ellie was out of theatre and was doing well.  Talk about good timing!

I gave her a quick ring on her mobile, because the ward nurse had told me I was allowed to.  Ellie was compus mentus, which was encouraging, but she was understandably groggy so I didn’t keep her long.  Apparently she’d be let out later in the afternoon and they’d give me a ring when she was ready.

So Samuel and I played some more, and went to the park, and came back again.  And then I put Disney’s Lion King on, because I don’t think Samuel’s seen it before.  Not that he’s got enough of an attention span to watch it all the way through, but he did spend the first 20 minutes or so laid on his tummy underneath the coffee table with his eyes glued to the TV!

Finally, as I was giving Samuel dinner, Ellie let me know that she was being discharged and that she’d like me to pick her up from the hospital.  And so I bundled a load of stuff into the car and made the journey to Yeovil again.  I managed to find Ellie eventually, in a little ward in the women’s wing (I was almost surprised to be let in, maybe I just misunderstood the name…).  Curiously, there weren’t many staff around at the time.  In fact, because Ellie had already discharged herself and was just waiting for collection, I didn’t have to check with anyone that we were leaving, we just left.  It almost felt like I was stealing her away, as if we were sneaking out without permission.  It also felt odd that I hadn’t seen or talked to any medical professional the whole day – Ellie could have been looked after by gerbils for all I know.

Thankfully Ellie was in pretty good shape, all things considered.  She’d had the operation fairly early in the morning, and it had been relatively straightforward (it had taken about an hour in theatre, plus several hours recovery), and she seemed a lot more ‘with it’ than I had expected.  I’d forgotten to bring her squash though, which she’d asked for, but I don’t think she had the energy at the time to tell me off.  We talked about her experience most of the journey back, and when we got home my Dad had arrived and was getting dinner ready.

So all’s well.  God has looked after us all, answered our prayers, and will undoubtedly continue to work his little miracles as Ellie’s body heals itself from the ordeal.  We’re also really thankful for all the various family members who are looking after Samuel for the next couple of weeks, which means Ellie doesn’t have to and I don’t have to take time off work.  It’s amazing how things pull together!

Feel free to send chocolate, she can eat that now.

I’ve been using Twitter for some time now, both for personal and professional purposes.  When I was running my own business and operating as a freelancer, Twitter became an extension of my online identity and advertising; I used it to promote my business, show off work I’d done, and generally try to show myself to be a really clever bloke.  My personal Twitter account was more for family and friends.

Now, just recently I’ve not been all that active on Twitter or Facebook.  Life has just been too hectic, and having spent all day working at a computer actually the last thing on my mind when I get home is “right, I really need to sit in front of a computer for the rest of the evening”.  I’ve also had very little to say for myself, so even when I do find myself sat at a computer in the evening, I can rarely think of anything worthwhile to say.  The same goes for this blog, which hasn’t really been regularly updated in yonks.

A few days ago I was chatting to two of my best friends on Skype, catching up on stuff.  It was wonderful to see them both, and it reminded me just how much I miss them, and how irritating it is that Colchester is just so far away.  Whoever decided that 200 miles needed to be such a long distance clearly needs their head examined.  In fact, it occurred to me that Anne-Marie and Sarah are still my closest friends (apart from Ellie of course), despite the distance and the shameful lack of regular conversation.  We really ought to keep in touch more often.

And then it hit me – I’ve been doing Twitter all wrong.

For some time now I’ve been operating under the mantra that “no one wants to hear about what you had for breakfast”.  It’s been drilled into me that Twitter is meant for sharing important and useful information, and that you have to offer something unique and intellectually valuable for people to follow you and retweet your ideas.  Well, if the goal of your existence on Twitter is to attract clients and do business and generally be seen on Twitter as a minor celebrity, then yes, by all means, that’s exactly what you should do.  But that’s not me any more.  The only people interested in following me now are my friends and family.  I’m not interested in anyone else.  And I don’t have to prove my intelligence to my friends, they already know my foolishness, they don’t want to hear about the latest trends in website performance or PHP coding.  My Twitter followers are like Anne-Marie and Sarah, who want to hear about those mundane everyday moments that often get missed even in a Skype video call.  True, they may still not care what I had for breakfast, but there are other parts of my life that they will be interested in.

I’ve found my purpose again.  And hopefully, with that newfound confidence in my own online existence, you should hear more from me in future.  And if not, feel free to shout at me in the comments to tell me off.

You should read this if you have previously received services from Matthew Dawkins Web Design or ChapterNine Web Design.

It’s officially over, and my what a journey it has been!  Way back in 2005 I was approached by the St Albans Diocese Youth Service and asked if would be able to design them a new website or three.  And so my freelance business began, primarily offering web design services for churches and Christian organisations.  The business grew, I took on more clients, and I started providing services such as web hosting too.

But, like all good things, it had to come to an end.  In October 2010 I got a ‘real’ job – a full time position as a web developer for another company, and my own business had to be gracefully turned off.  After a lot of dallying and helping clients out with migrations to other web hosts, today finally sees the final milestone completed.  My old websites are being taken offline and my reseller hosting package cancelled.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who I’ve had dealings with over the years who have made it all worthwhile.  Thanks to Rob for being so helpful, especially in those stressful downtime moments, and for resetting the firewall every time I blocked myself by trying to remote MySQL into something!  Thanks to Ralph giving me plenty of work to do, and for being cause for much entertainment.  Thanks to Anthony for getting me started in the hosting business.  Thanks to Liz for getting me my first job.  Thanks to Ellie for putting up with me, for bringing me cake batter at just the right moments, and for reminding me of the time.  Thanks to David for lending me your clients while you were away.  Thanks to Elliot for giving me work when times were quiet, and for looking after several of my clients when I started closing down.  Thanks to antoniojl for selling me the G5 Mac that’s been so useful the last few years.  Thanks to Phill for the opportunity to collaborate with you on a revolutionary idea.  And thanks to God for leading me down this path, for reminding me at regular intervals that I was still on the right track, for providing for me in so many different ways, and for showing me clearly when the time was right to move on.

Will I offer my services again in a freelance capacity?  Possibly.  I can’t rule it out.  But, that said, one of the lessons I learnt very early on (and had to either ignore or find ways round) was that I’m not a natural businessman.  I hate invoicing people, I find it hard to charge a realistic price for my talent, and I still don’t understand all the jargon of the Self Assessment Tax Return form.  For now, God has led me somewhere new and I’m really enjoying it, so I won’t be hurrying back to being my own boss.  But if you do have questions for me, feel free to ask, and if I get a free moment between family and church commitments I’ll try to answer!

So, for now, it’s adios, au revoir, auf wiedersehen, aloha, arrivederci, hagoonea’, tot ziens, and a fond farewell to all my old clients, colleagues, and various previously-important icons on my desktop.

Some may call it excessive.  Others may call it compensation for 3 months of inactivity.  Others still may call it boredom.  In any case, this is my third blog post in the last half hour.  And yes, it’s about something else that’s shiny and new.

Today was my first proper day out with Samuel.  Without Ellie.  Yes, I was let loose with our 15 month old son, equipped with little more than a changing bag and a packed lunch.  And it was lots of fun!

We first had to call in at Matalan in Yeovil to exchange a shirt that I’d bought on Saturday for one that wasn’t 2 sizes too big (my bad).  Samuel slept in the car on the way there, and pointed out imaginary cows most of the way back.  But finally we arrived at our exciting destination – the East Somerset Steam Railway!  Despite being just outside Shepton Mallet, we’ve never actually been there before, but now Samuel is old enough to appreciate it I decided it would be a good use of a bank holiday.

This weekend happened to be a Thomas the Tank Engine special, so the place was packed.  They had three small steam engines fired up, each with a different face on the front, and one of them was even painted to look like Thomas – and unlike some other attempts I’ve seen, this particular model of engine did actually roughly resemble the Thomas of the books!  This was Samuel’s first encounter with steam engines, so I deliberately took it nice and gently.  He wasn’t too keen on being in the carriage to begin with, but he soon settled in and started pointing at things out of the window.  We shared our compartment with an old couple, who seemed to love having Samuel’s attention.

The track is actually only 2.5 miles long, so the journey there and back only took about half an hour.  But that was ideal for Samuel.  We were sat in the rearmost carriage on the way out, but that meant we were at the front going back, so we could hear all the chuffs and whooshes.  And of course it smelt heavenly.  It was wonderful.  I think Samuel may have enjoyed it too, although I was perfectly happy being excited for both of us.

After the train ride we popped back to the car to pick up our lunch, then went back to the station, saw off the next train (Samuel was by now getting the hang of saying “choo-choo”, which was very cute), and found a picnic bench.  We timed it well, because the train came back into the station just as we finished our lunch, so we waved at it again.  Then we wandered round to the engine shed, where there were various engines and wagons in varying states of repair.  There was also a little tank engine on a short bit of track that members of the public could drive – advertised as a “Driver for a Fiver” experience.  Sadly, having Samuel with me meant I couldn’t take up that offer, although to be honest it was such a small stretch of track it would hardly have been worth it anyway.

And after all that, Samuel was exhausted, so we came home.  As it happens, I’m shattered too.  But it’s been a fun day out, full of new experiences for Samuel, meeting shiny old steam engines.

Yes, this is my second post today, and with the same title, but on a completely different topic.

Some time ago, as some of my faithful readers will know, I got a new job.  That meant getting rid of… I mean, encouraging my old clients to go elsewhere for their services.  Getting everyone’s web hosting moved to new providers was a bit of a challenge, and understandably there were some people who were none too pleased at having to move at all, and others who didn’t have the first idea what might be involved.  So I’ve helped as much as I can, given that I’m no longer actually working from home.

So the time is nearly upon me where all my clients will be migrated, and all that’s left is my own sites.  At that point, I’ll need to move my own sites to a new host too, as I can’t afford the reseller package I’d been using.  An upshot of that is that I can’t really afford to be running lots of personal sites for free, as I used to through my business.  What’s needed is a careful rationalisation of my online presence, to ensure continuity and sustainability.

So here’s what’s going to happen.  ChapterNine (www.chapternine.co.uk) will cease to exist, although I’ll keep the domain for now and just forward that on to another page on another website.  Minipix (www.minipix.co.uk) will also be shut down, again with the domain forwarding on elsewhere.  Now, before you all get cross and up in arms and worried that I’m shutting down my blog, I must stress that I have no intention of stopping blogging, nor of losing the last 10 years’ worth of personal history.  What’s actually going to happen is that my blog will be moved to www.matthewdawkins.co.uk, which will no longer serve as a business website but will be my personal website instead.  So everything you see here on minipix.co.uk will soon appear on matthewdawkins.co.uk instead.  Some of the stuff on ChapterNine will appear there too, as will some of the material currently on matthewdawkins.co.uk.  It’s all a bit confusing, but it’ll make sense once it’s done – basically it’ll all be in one place instead of on three separate sites.

I’m still in the process of building the new site (I’m a web designer after all, I can’t just move it and have done with it, I’ve got design myself a completely new theme to go with it!), but I’m hoping it’ll be sorted out at some point this month.  And, as I’ve said, I’ll keep the old domain names now, so all your old bookmarks and links should continue to work.  It’ll just all appear in one shiny new website over on matthewdawkins.co.uk.