Blogging and all that Malarkey

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.

This week on Unfinished Business, I’m in a relaxed mood as I’m joined by Josh Cleland to talk about how we filter enquires from potential clients through our websites and emails. We also try really, really hard not to talk about movies films.

Zeldman in fine form: Never fear, web design generalists: many companies and organizations require your services and always will — from universities still seeking webmasters, to startups seeking seasoned folks with multiple areas of understanding to direct and coordinate the activities of younger specialists. But if jack-of-all web work is feeling stale, now may be the time to up your game as a graphic designer, or experience designer, or front end developer. “Diversify or die” is overstating things when the world needs generalists, too. But “follow the path you love” will always be good advice.

Talking with Dan on this week’s Unfinished Business got me thinking about photography and workshops and wanting to learn to make better photographs.

Two weeks before Christmas I took a train to Birmingham to meet a new client. After our meeting I wandered to the Bull Ring and went into the Dr. Martens shop there to buy a new pair of boots.

For the first Unfinished Business of 2014 I’m joined by my really good friend Dan Davies to talk about film marathons, what we’d hoard for the apocalypse and Dan’s totally unrelated career change from front-end developer to UX designer.

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.’

For this, the fiftieth episode of Unfinished Business, I’m joined by regular guest Laura Kalbag. We talk about ethical statements and whether we, and the companies that people work for, should set out what they will and won’t work on our websites. I would like to say an enormous thank-you to Anna Debenham for helping me get started with this podcast. To all our guests and sponsors for making the show possible and to you, our listeners for being lovely people. I’d like to wish you all a very happy Christmas holiday.

This year’s been a really good year for British web industry podcasts and I’ve loved making Unfinished Business. It’s become a great way for me to wind down from work on a Friday afternoon and has been my main outlet for the things I’ve had on my mind, largely replacing me writing on this blog.

Well it seemed like a good idea at the time. If you haven’t been keeping up with this week’s Christmas crossover podcasts, we’ve just wrapped up the week with yours truly and Sarah Parmenter guesting on Boagworld with Paul And Marcus. We talked about what we all want for Christmas, whether we can switch off from work during the break, how we deal with clients who insist their site be live by some arbitrary point and what our web design new years resolutions are? (All made up questions, obviously.)