Posts about Personal

I’ve always thought of myself as coming from Irish roots. I never questioned it. My family are Doyles. Doyles were Irish. So, my roots were in Ireland. Except they’re not.

I don’t know whether it’s been a reaction to post-Musk Twitter from the people I read and talk with on Mastodon, but there seems to be a renewed interest in personal websites and hosting one’s own content.

The spectacle of yet another Tory leadership campaign—this time to replace Boris Johnson—is in full swing. So, I thought it would be fun to rank the hopefuls’ campaign catchphrases. The results may shock you.

I’ve been a paying member of YesCymru for the past year, because I believe that Wales would have a better future as an independent nation. At the very least, people who live in Wales deserve a vote on independence. I have thoughts about the YesCymru message and how they can make a better case for independence.

“I’ve got an idea,” I said as Sue and I sat on beach outside Perth in Western Australia. “Why don’t we move to Australia for a couple of years? We love it here and it would be an adventure.”

Let me start this list of my top five country music albums of 2015 with a confession. Although country’s been by far my most listened to genre again this year, I haven’t listened to it as much as I have the past few years. In the latter part of the year, I’ve taken several musical diversions. The last one’s been Electric Light Orchestra, a band that I’ve loved since my teens. But, with the possible exception of their Wild West Hero, they couldn’t be further from county.

I know that my taste in country music’s mainstream. Mainstream enough that some country aficionados might criticise my ‘this Englishman’s’ lists for not straying far enough from the top of the country charts. The truth is, I like catchy country pop, and while next year I will try harder to discover music that’s further from the stereotypical southern dirt road, this year I’m happy to listen to songs about beer, cut-off jeans and cowboy boots, fishing in lakes and trucks and tractors.

I’ve been over the moon with messages of support and offers of help for Geek Mental Help Week. I’m going to write personally to everyone who offered to design and build the website

Like, I guess, everyone else, I now know more about ALS than I did before the Ice Bucket Challenge. The campaign has been hugely successful, has raised awareness and ten times more money than was raised last year to help combat the disease. Of course charity didn’t start and doesn’t end with the Ice Bucket Challenge and so my friend Paul Boag challenged me, Rachel Andrew and Carl Smith to:

When Sue and I were a young couple with a four year old boy, we didn’t get the chance to go out very much. An evening meal while a babysitter watched our son Alex was a rare treat.

It’s once again that time of year when almost every web designer, developer, podcaster and bottle washer that you follow on Twitter is asking you to vote for them in the annual Net Awards. Well, if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.

Last November I switched from a 13" MacBook Air to the equivalent MacBook Pro with a retina display. How does that feel?

I won’t blame you if you didn’t read it, but a couple of Septembers ago I wrote something personal about my name, how it made me feel, why I changed it and then regretted it ever since. You can read it now if you like, but the general gist is that being called Andrew when I was young reminded me of something I was missing and that made me terribly sad. So I asked everyone to call me Andy instead, and they did that for the next thirty-five years.

Related to my This Englishman’s top five country music albums of 2013, Alex sent me a link to this, on YouTube, Grady Smith’s ‘Why Country Music Was Awful in 2013.’

This time last year I didn’t feel much like sharing, so went without a run down of top country music albums of 2012. Looking back now, that was probably a wise choice as the musical year seemed epitomised by Lionel Ritchie, yes ‘that’ Lionel Ritchie’s truly, truly terrible Tuskegee. No link because, ‘Sail On!’

And here’s what happened:

A 64Gb first generation iPad sits by my desk. I bought it on the first day they were available in the US and, like many people I suppose, using it has changed what and how I design.

Here’s something personal I wrote for the Pastry Box Project today:

Remember “MICKY,” the world’s cleverest CHIMPANZEE?

Of course you do. Well now, thanks to renowned Liverpool historian Ken Pye, I’ve finally seen a photograph of Micky:

More about Micky the world’s cleverest chimpanzee. I’ve <mark>ed several parts:

Before she died at the fantastic age of 98, my Nana gave me her boxes of family photographs. She knew I value family histories and would keep her things safe. I’m in the process of organising them and in one box I found a tourism brochure from Liverpool from around 1938/39. In it, an advertisement, for Liverpool Zoological Park caught my interest. In particular, “MICKY,” the world’s cleverest CHIMPANZEE.

I’ve turned into a country music nut. What a started as downloading Dolly albums for a road trip has turned into real enthusiasm. Although I look terrible in a cowboy hat and don’t know the difference between a ’coon dog and a corn dog, lately I’ve listened to little else. We could disagree about what classes as real country — Cough. Taylor Swift — but all I really care about is music I like.

In the comments of many web design group interviews, many readers ask for more beards on the panels in particular because, There is no way of discerning how the experience of a bearded designer might differ, simply because there is a complete lack of representation. So, we decided to prepare an article featuring specifically professional bearded designers giving their expert advice.

I’m almost at the end of preparing materials for “Hardboiled Web Design” and soon I’ be writing. To demonstrate various CSS3 properties, I’ve put together an archives page in the demonstration site, “It’s Hardboiled”. That’s where you come in (again).