Personal

My diet has been devoid of chilli over the past few months. Normally we eat lots of hot food – hotter the better – so I was becoming desperate for my fix. In a quiet moment, I made myself an delicious second breakfast to ease the craving.

Two weeks ago I became the father of a beautiful baby girl. Thought I’d better jot down some thoughts for posterity.

Last Sunday I completed the inaugural Brighton marathon. It was a great day, for a good cause.

Poppy is 1½ today. She’s my first dog and, it’s been a wonderful, if occasionally trying experience for both Her Indoors and me.

Brief thoughts on the vile attacks on Kathy Sierra.

I’ve just being perusing the 2006 Review edition of Grafik magazine and came across some mini-interviews with graphic design luminaries. I thought they wrapped up the year nicely, so I’ve copied their questions here and provided my own answers.

After months of preparation I’m immensely pleased to announce that Andy Budd, Jeremy Keith and I have joined forces to form Clearleft, which officially launched on Monday.

At midday today, people across Europe held a two minutes silence in memory of those killed and injured a week ago in London. It was one of the most unexpectedly moving experiences I have ever had.

So thanks then, terrorists. You’ve just succeeded in bringing the families of millions of Londoners that bit closer together, giving them an increased love of their city and an enhanced appreciation of their way of life.

As you’ve probably heard by now, a number of explosions have gone off in the London Underground system and on a number of buses. Tony Blair has just confirmed it was a terrorist attack. Thanks to those of you IMing to see if I’m OK.

For those of you following the saga, my iBook is finally fixed and it feels like a weight has been lifted from my shoulders.

Heartfelt congratulations to Marcus and Mie on the birth of their baby boy, Oliver Beard. According to our new Dad, Mother and baby are ‘perfect’. Welcome to the world Oliver [pithy comment about current state of the world removed].

Congratulations to Darren and Alison on their firstborn, a beautiful baby girl (as yet un-named) born yesterday at 1pm and weighing in at 7lb 12oz. Christmas will never be the same :-)

Even now I don’t know who I was talking to and he didn’t know me, but he did know my name, phone number and presumably my address. He also knew that I had a Belkin router and NTL broadband. How?

I won a case of beer today. A sodding great case of London Pride. It rather took me by surprise.

Why I haven’t been blogging much recently and what I’ve missed over the past few weeks. Highlights include Todd Dominey’s PGA Open Championship and Phantom Power, the new album from Super Furry Animals. Also a brief critique of the new Pixelsurgeon site.

Some weeks ago my Dad told me he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer. This week he had a radical prostatectomy; I visited him today and had some thoughts I wanted to share.

In response to last week’s rant about upgrade messages for non-CSS browsers, Doug has written an fascinating post on the process Wired went through with their upgrade message. Doug talks about the evolution of the message wording and how it’s placement differs…

Don’t come too close, I’ve got a shocking cold. The sort of cold some people would call ’flu. These people have clearly never had ’flu. ’Flu is a proper illness, not to be sniffed at . You’re out of action for a week. I mean totally out of…

I saw a commuter with a broken leg this morning. I don’t mean it was in plaster, I mean he’d broken it just that minute. The poor guy was lying on the pavement outside City Thameslink in obvious ‘distress’, surrounded by a discarded brief case and flight…

I thought it appropriate to point to a post I added to the {fray} this time last year: The day the earth stood still.

Walking from the station to the office this morning, a peculiarly large number of people appeared to be smiling; almost chuckling to themselves. While this is entirely laudable behaviour, in London it is enough to make one feel somewhat paranoid. On a different note,…

I am thirty years old today. I think I’m fine about it.

Regular visitors will notice that I am no longer for hire. Those nice people at multimap.com have taken me on as a producer. This is good news indeed, however it leaves me with one week to do all those chores I should have been doing since the demise of Citria. For your pity,…