emotionalmarkup

For a couple of years now when job hunting, in lieu of emailing around my CV as horrible Microsoft word documents, or that most frightening of modern digital afflictions being cast upon unsuspecting web users - the PDF - I’ve used a plain old HTML document. It works because unlike Word or a PDF viewer, everyone has a browser and after all, we are supposed to be web people, no?

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Can we call ourselves professionals? Given the age of the web, it can be claimed that a huge chunk of people in our line of work have really only been doing what they’ve been doing for maximum of ten years. I’m excluding folk like Tim Berners-Lee, Bill Gates and other over-achievers of course.

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Let me say upfront that I’m not an expert communicator. I am easily startled by articulate, witty people, particularly if they’re holding a martini or capsicum spray. And meeting people in large groups, such as parties, when you only know one person or a few people remotely, absolutely scares the shit of me. But like it or not we humans are social animals and sooner or later I knew a time would come when I was forced out of the cradle of my inner social circle into the jungle of crazy-eyed sociopaths.

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Note to self:

While it’s a little bare at the moment, I have created a new area to house “stuff” in the most sweepingly generic sense of the word. At the moment I’ve only had time to upload minor distractions such as webpage kickstarter template and a basic page to help webbies and writers with accents. I’m working on a few mashups intermitently so hell knows when I’ll get an alpha up.

Also I’m going to start editing and publishing some writing I’ve done over the past few years starting with Barcelona diaries: a series of random scribblings on my time in Barcelona. There’s still so much to add to this as one gets caught up in life and abandons all attempts to document it. I spent most of 2008 in Spain and am only now beginning to appreciate the impact it had on my outlook and my tortilla recipe, therefore I might rename it to Reflections on Barcelona, The Barcelona Experiment, or some other suitably poncey name.

Now I’m back in London, I will have to do the same but I suspect it will be darker prose to match the thick doona of grey that blankets us every day. Maybe I could entitle it, Fog wars or Who forgot their umbrella today?, both of which would neat names for an alternative folk trio.

What else… oh yes, I would like to record some solo acoustic guitar that I’ve written and learned (my sound engineering studio amounts to nothing more than an in-built laptop microphone and Audacity, but I suppose that were not making a “Best of” album here).

That should do for now.

I’m constantly in awe of people who can channel large amounts of energy into a single pursuit or field of achievement. Those who reach success are adept at this, for example artists, those in business or science. Coupled with social and economic pressures, one can only wonder at how they might squeeze in a few hours to dedicate to a hobby or parallel personal goal.

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If, like me, you are accustomed to receiving your site email via a form to your inbox then you’d appreciate a little fricken’ order. There are times in our lives when we salivate over the prospect of hurling ourselves at our inbox, most notably when we are bored or are missing interaction, and relish even trite comments on a carbon copy from someone you’ve never met. But for those occasions, when you’d rather pour scalding butter down your pants, than read clients’ emails, spam subjects, or queries on how to spell CSS, well-formed emails are the difference between sanity and becoming a nutty moon bat.

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Opera still hasn’t got it right with absolute positioning and it’s the reason why this site is left aligned today. Oh mercy!

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