Sorry for the shortcomings of the blog over the last few months (says he to himself).

Here’s a recap of the last few months (well most of it). This is quite long and uninteresting, but should waste a few minutes.

• We’ve been working on a “hush hush” project for the National Lottery. We’ll be able to reveal a bit more in a few months time.
• The first release of GigReflex, (the web application produced by Circa82 and web dev guru Greg Gigon) has gone live. It’s in a very basic form at the moment, but we’re working hard towards the next release.
• Circa82 has started representing some larger design agencies. We handle the majority of the agencies web work and go along for meetings and the like. The usual “your soul is mine” agreements are in place, so we’ll leave it at that.
• A meeting was held with long term client SBK Healthcare about how to improve their web architecture and general setup. It was a vvvvveeeeerrrrrrrryyyyyy constructive meeting as both sides got their points across which wasn’t always possible on the phone. The meeting was held in a country pub, with Mike (Circa82), Sarah (SBK), Amelia (SBK) and the SBK guard dog. Watch out for some major updates soon.
• The BPM Logic site was designed and developed. This will be added to the portfolio section shortly.
• Circa82 has taken a keen interest in the CMS Silverstripe. A few concepts are in place to utilise the technology (a very good one at that) and will be put into production during September.
• Accounting. We hate it but it’s got to be done (plus we haven’t found an accountant that we want to use). It’s good thing we’ve done the basics though, as we will review any future accountants work thoroughly.
• Two friends of ours have setup their own companies/services.
  • Firstly there is James Godbold the .NET guru, who works under the name Dr Nuke. They specialise in DNN site production and general ASP.NET. You can find their products and services available for sale at SnowCovered.
  • Next up Simon Bowles who has setup Blue Jay Designs Ltd that specialise in niche printing services and art selling. It’s very much in it’s infancy and the site is being optimised as we speak.
• Circa82 visited the excellent @media conference, a review will be posted up shortly.
• Lot’s of general updates for clients and a whole load of new books on AS3, CSS and vector illustration.

Here’s a (very) quick review of the @media 2008 conference.

Overall: 4/5

I enjoyed the @media conference immensely. There were a good range of speakers and a lot of knowledgeable people to mingle with. The venue (SouthBank Centre - Queen Elizabeth Hall) was in an excellent area and was just about the right size. There were two stages; the main stage was where we spent most of our time with the second stage for the more intimate discussions/presentations. The subject matter of some presentations was very simple, but still contained nuggets of goodness. The conference is very accessible for the inexperienced and experienced developers/designers. Just go there with an open mind, and you will take away some vital knowledge.

Speakers: 4/5

Overall the quality of speakers was very good, a couple of individuals didn’t get their point across too well though (probably partially due to my mindset).

The questionables: Indi Young’s presentation on Mental Models I didn’t think hit the right spot, I was really interested in the subject matter but too much of the time seemed to be spent on case studies without covering the actual processes of handling and creating. Browyn Jones presentation The Book Was Better was a good subject matter for the conference (copywriting), but she seemed to struggle at first as the presentation used a lot of videos, she didn’t have enough content, she lost some of her notes and it was her first presentation (only a few things then ;)). It was enjoyable and covered some good areas of website content writing and it’ll be interesting to see how her presentation skills improve.

The mentionables: Nate Koechley (Yahoo) presentation on Professional Front-End Engineering was the best of the conference. He has a great presentational manner and covered a lot of content in a small amount of time. The last presentation of the conference seen was James Adam & Simon Willison’s Exploring the Server Side: Rails & Django. This deserves a special mention for being the most memorable for sheer entertainment value. James and Simon were “battling it out” with the two technologies Rails and Django. Both were excellent in knowledge and presentation. They didn’t go to deep into the languages but showed the simplicity and scalability of both. Django I have little knowledge of but this helped wet my appetite.

I will be taking in the sites and sounds of the @media 2008 conference on the 29th and 30th of May.

I’ve also made a few minor fixes to the Circa82 site in IE5.