Mark McAulay

Digital Guy 
Tags


Filed under

newyear

 
January 2, 2012
 

2012

This is the fourth year running that i've written a post with a mini review of the previous year and jotted down the plans I have for the coming year. Here's the 2011/2012 edition.

2011 in review

First up, the big one. In April 2011, I joined EQ Design in Aberdeen to lead the digital offering of the company. In short, I have never been so happy working for someone else. I get to work with a brilliant team who also happen to be lovely people. I feel at home here and I love my job. Result!

Looking at my aims for backend, frontend, and creative for 2011, I seem to have done all that I wanted to do and a little bit more. Where I fell down was in fitness. I got no hillwalking done at all and I barely went running. I did walk more but I really need to try harder next year.

I should also make some mention of the little missions I went on in 2011 starting with a desire to get out of my confort zone and meet other web/digital people around Scotland. I posted about one journey to Edinburgh where i went lone wolf although I didn't post about the Highland Fling conf (also in Edinburgh) which was just as eye opening and one of the best little conferences i've been to. If the Highland Fling runs again this year, i'll be there. So on top of subject matter related to what I do for a living, I also decided to put myself through a couple of lifestyle challenges. My month of being vegetarian is detailed here. In October, a bunch of us decided to give up alcohol for a month, as it was the most boring month ever, I didn't blog about it. We did run a blog for people to contribute to and if you want to observe some of our misery, it's over here.

And so to my plans for 2012

Backend

Much like last year, I will largely stuck to Python/Django in my own time. At work, it's all about PHP and ExpressionEngine but hopefully this will be the year that I can start phasing out much of the legacy PHP work, replacing it with Django or EE where necessary. I wont be looking to learn another language this coming year as I'm more than happy with Django and EE to take care of anything that comes our way at this stage.

Frontend

It was all about responsive design last year and HTML5/CSS3 are the tools to deliver that. This year I need to get my head fully around SASS and I will be continuing with my JavaScript education. I really want to have a much better understanding of, and fluency in JavaScript as it's one of the things that will continue to be a core requirement in 2012 and further ahead.

Creative

I've taken a much larger interest in graphic design again and as well as buying typography and design theory books, i've also been able to pester the designers at EQ. I now get excited about paper samples and appreciate nice packaging again. I'll be continuing to learn about all of this. One of the new-found pleasures of working with designers who really live and breathe design, is that i can ask questions and know i'll get an informed, thought provoking and interesting reply. I've bought some tasty pens, pencils and some notebooks, yep...i'll be drawing again. I have a couple of tattoo designs to put together for friends and i want to get my daughter excited about drawing as well. Maybe i'll post some of my pics on here.

Fitness

I did a little running last year although i may as well not have bothered, this is the year i'm going to do it though, starting today in fact with day 1/week 1 of couch to 10k.

Somewhere along the line, I started smoking again. This is stupid. I have quit again and will use the money I save to buy that mac i've not been able to afford for some reason :/

So here's to another year. I hope you all have a succesfull one :)

Filed under  //   newyear  

Comments [0]

January 2, 2011
 

2011

Here is my now yearly review of the previous year and a bunch of things I aim to get done in the coming year so fuelled with new year enthusiasm, i'll keep the review brief and the ambitions high.

2010 in review

This was a big one. This year saw the end of me being the master of my own destiny that i had been for the previous 7 years. In March, I chose to return to being a cog in someone else's machine. This held (and continues to hold) challenges for me. There is no question that I made the correct decision at the time and have made myself something of a sponge by absorbing as much knowledge, process and expertise as possible from some very intelligent people in a larger scale operation. I've also made some new friends and contacts. I have grown considerably in certain aspects and that is what I had hoped would happen when i set out my aims this time last year.

Backend

Last year, I planned to stick with one language(Python/Django) and I've done just that. At work, this proved a little untrue as I had to get stuck into some classic ASP for my sins alongside the unavoidable bread and butter that is PHP. In my own time however, it's Python/Django all the way and I see little reason to change that in the coming year.

Frontend

2010 was the year that I officially switched to HTML5. Everything I build from scratch is now in the latest version of HTML. Of course CSS3 is following in close pursuit but i held back a little on that for my own reasons, this year i'll drive it on. JavaScript features highly in 2011. I can get by with it and I can use jQuery quite happily but I want to get back to the heart of the matter and learn properly so that's what'll happen.

Creative

An aim for 2010 was to get back to my design roots and behind the scenes I have done that. I've been reading up on the theory once more, consulted other designers, got more involved in the design community and started getting my hands dirty again. I still have a way to go to be honest but it's all coming back to me and i'm really enjoying it. I am finally happy with my personal brand and i'll be rolling that out to my new website that's coming early this year.

Fitness

I started running last year and although my enthusiasm for it ran out nearer the end of the year, I plan to step it up this year and get myself a bit fitter. I used to be a keen hillwalker and this year i'm taking it up again. I have Ben Hope penciled in for the end of May and Ben Nevis being spoken about also. Anyone wanting to join me is more than welcome.

Here's to a great year, I wish you well for yours.

Filed under  //   newyear  

Comments [0]

January 4, 2010
 

ok 2010, lets do this

After a particularly heavy going 2009, I've taken stock of my professional and personal life and have made some aims and ambitions for the year ahead. 2009 held some  big challenges and some fairly heavy duty decisions had to be made, the fruits of those decisions will start to come this year I hope. Like every year for the past 4, I've made a decision to learn a new programing language but unlike other years, this time around I'll be sticking with my choice beyond the year in question. I've learned a hell of a lot over the past few years and now is the time to consolidate that learning and push on. I've also made a fairly big decision about returning some focus to design which may surprise some people but I hope to expand on this a bit in this post. I set out to become a generalist and that's what I now call myself. Personally, there are a few new things I'll be doing to improve my health.

A new language

2006 was PHP, 2007 was CFML, 2008 was jQuery/CFML and last year I set about Ruby on Rails. In 2010, I'm taking everything I've learned and moving to Python/Django. There are no solid reasons for this, I wish I was experienced enough to write some kind of "here are 10 reasons why" post but truth be told, I'm not that knowledgeable yet and what I've discovered is that regardless of language, certain fundamentals and similarities exist across the board. I now feel that the time is right to settle down and focus on one language to really learn my stuff and start building some of the ideas I've come up with over the years. I love the way that I've taken to Django and although I've only done a few tutorials on it so far, I really have a feel for it and I get that buzz about using it that I've only really had with CFML up until now. Of course, learning Django without learning Python would be a bit short sighted so a Python book has already been dispatched from amazon and is on its way to me as I type.

A return to my roots

Between 1998 and 2005, I was a designer with only a little interest in code outside of html/css, I made a big decision to move away from design and concentrate on development. This decision was made largely because of the rift i'd experienced between designer and developer in my career. I still see this going on and I have some pretty strong opinions on why there's no need for it (This is a topic for another post I think as it will be lengthy!). Anyway, I am now returning to the design field and will be starting off by brushing up on my basic graphic design, typography and colour theory. It's not as if I actually moved away entirely, I handle much of the web design at work but in terms of my personal development and what I spend my own time doing, I'd not done much to keep up to speed with things. I'm sure most of it will come back to me quite easily but being the thorough person I am, this will get all the time it needs to be done properly and I'm particularly interested in doing some collaboration work with the designers I know. Truth be told, I'm really looking forward to it. Expect to see some (collaborative?)print work from me this year too (yeah...on paper and stuff!)

Personal goals

The first thing I have to do is to lose weight (i'm sure you've heard this before at this particular time of year). My weight has gone up significantly to just over 15stone (213lbs) and I need to be back down at 12.5stone (175lbs) before I slip into obesity, so I have a lot of work to do. This weight gain I attribute directly to stopping smoking nearly 8 months ago (one less resolution I need to make this year). As of the 1st Jan, I've started my diet of sticking to a max calorie intake of 1690 calories a day and will be much more careful about the types of food I'm stuffing into my face. Careful eating without doing some exercise is pretty pointless so I'm embarking on the c25k program as well as doing a bit more swimming. I hope to do some kind of proper run later in the year so this post will act as a kick up the arse in case my eagerness fades in any form. On top of these things I've made a decision to stop drinking alcohol for a little while at least. I'm not sure how long for but as of the 1st Jan, I'm "aff it" for at the very least, the month of January. This will be a huge factor in losing weight and it'll also let me save some money and get my pension on track which is another must do for this year.

The "If I have time" goals

I think I said this last year too but I really want to get into Processing. If I can find the opportunity to do so this year, I will.
Getting back into video and motion graphics remains an ambition but may have to wait a little while yet as I plow yet further on with my web design/development.

So these are my goals for 2010 which I hope will be a fantastic year all round. I would love to hear your thoughts/recommendations etc for any of my undertakings and if you fancy doing some collaborative work, leave me a comment here or find me on twitter. Happy new year to you all.

Filed under  //   newyear  

Comments [3]

May 20, 2009
 

The 2009 todo list

My first aim is to aquaint myself with rails. I hear too many good
things to just ignore it so am making an effort to investigate it a
bit. I have purchased "Agile web development with rails" and started
working my way through it, so far I like it...a lot.

 Continue the CFML education and pay special attention to railo 3.1.
CFML is my language of choice and I plan to keep getting better at it
and using it commercialy for new development work. I plan to attend
the Scotch On The Rocks conference in Edinburgh again this year as it
was my visit last year that really inspired me to get cracking with
ColdFusion "for real" in 2008.

 Learn much more jQuery...if it can be progressively enhanced, I'll be
doing that in 2009.

 Version control (yes shame on me, I don't currently use anything), I
am probably going to go with Git but lets see how the year pans out.

 HTML 5 - it's time to leave my XHTML 1.0 ways behind with no hissy
fits or ranting about how the xml based syntax is clearly nicer to
work with and embrace the future of the HTML language.

 CSS - time to learn what I dont know and start giving treats to
browsers that deserve it. Those browsers that can't handle the present
and future *cough* IE6 *cough* will continue to get the basics and as
professionals we unfortunately need to continue supporting older
browsers as long as their market share is of relatively high
proportion. How we support them is entirely a different matter though,
we can only provide what they can support right? That shouldn't mean
that the rest of the progressive world should have to suffer and be
held back so varying levels of enhancement based on capability are the
order of the day ensuring that although each site wont look identical
in every browser, the site design will remain very much recognisable
while playing to the strengths of the browser used...I heard this
referred to as progressive enrichment and I like the sound of that.

 Open Knowledge Network - more planning, advancement of
topics/speakers, linking up with other meetups nationaly and of course
a lot more work on the website (Railo powered of course!)

 Something more arty - Having largely left my graphic designer coat at
the door and buried my head in the code sand for a couple of years
now, I feel the need to do something creative again. Not sure what yet
but I suspect it'll involve geekery of some description.

 oh...and of course, I WILL post a series on getting Railo up and
running with Apache/MySQL on CentOS...honest...

 How Likely am I to do any of this?

 Back at the start of 2008, I made the resolution to step up my CFML
knowledge and start using it in place of PHP for new development where
possible. I'm happy to report that I managed to do that. Taking things
a bit further, and in keeping with the "free" factor of PHP, I went
digging into Railo which is to be open sourced shortly. In the
meantime, I set up a VPS using CentOS 5, Railo 3 community
edition(free), Apache 2.2, MySQL 5 and started playing around with it.
I can officialy report that Railo kicks ass and that I'm looking
forward to getting my grubby hands on the OS version early this year.
My other aim for 2008 was to jump on the jQuery bandwagon and start
progressively enhancing anything I could! I now have a reasonable
grasp of jQuery and enjoy using it. Lastly I decided to get the
community going in Aberdeen by organising some kind of a meetup. I
organised 2 relatively well attended meetups in the pub and towards
the end of the year, got into bed with Peacock Visual Arts and
co-organised the Open Knowledge Network. This now runs monthly.

Filed under  //   general   newyear  

Comments [0]