Tess Barnes

I’ve just been asked to go into a local primary school to take part in a mock conference. I’ll be talking about and answering questions on what it’s like to be a web designer. As you might guess I’m very excited and a bit awed by the responsibility. I can talk about my experiences as a web developer but if that doesn’t answer all their questions I would like to be able to offer them the fruits of a richer resource - the experience of many web designers and developers from our thriving online community.

So the first stage is sorting out dates and what av equipment the school has and whether open office’s Impress is up to the task. Then I should receive a list of questions from the teacher to give me a rough guide of what’s needed. I’d really like to ask designers and developers to offer their answers to suppliment my own if you’re willing and have the time, maybe in the form of a short survey?

What do you say? Will you help me responsibly influence young minds?

Updated: survey link

A young friend is off on a long journey soon and as I wondered how best to wish him well I came up with the following. Of course me being me and being my age I couldn’t resist a fair chunk of (probably unwanted!) advice…

I just wanted to say good luck on your journey to new lands, I hope you find what you’re looking for there. Since I have a huge dollop of zen in my philosophy, the way I looked when I was searching was to look for koans, short phrases containing nuggets of truth. You find one that enflames the senses and opens the soul and you live by it for a while until it no longer needs to mean anything, then you find the next, kinda like signposts on the path to life. You find them in the moments you listen to. Hope that helps… and when all else fails, have fun

I guess it’s not a bad view of life for anyone.

One of the resolutions this year was to post more on my blog and as it’s already 18th of January before the first post of 2009 I may be behind schedule…

One of the delays has been just not feeling comfortable with the look of my blog and the ever present Damocles sword of updating the blog software. I use wordpress and seem to be updating the software more often than updating the blog. Hopefully since I have taken the hour this morning to carefully backup the old site, check my config file changes and install a stable version of 2.7 this will no longer be an issue - at least until 2.8 comes out.

I’ve also treated myself to a new theme, I’m not sure about the blue but the basic style layout is ideal. As I hope to write on a number of varied subjects that interest me, I’m not going to be happy with an overtly geeky or typewriter or photography style - especially if I’m advocating the best use of chilli in parsnip soup at the time.

So the plan is - and I’m telling all of you so I don’t back out - to write more on my journey into php, my latest love hate relationship with html5, my favourite organic veg inspired recipe of the moment, the tai chi move I can’t get my head around and maybe my latest photography walk with highlights.

It’s a tall order perhaps and I may not succeed with everything all of the time but if I learnt only one thing in 2008 it was that if you don’t aim for the stars, you sure as hell ain’t gonna get there.