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I've just upgraded the software that runs this site (it's moveabletype in case you're wondering!) and discovered a whole new look to my backend. Which isn't nearly so eyebrow raising as you think, those of you with dirty minds. I've always like moveabletype for its clean and simple administration area, so for a moment I was totally lost and wondering where all the menus had gone! But after a quick browse around I am really enjoying the new layout and the added extras.

Yes, it would appear that I just borked the site in Internet Explorer 6 by editing the style switcher script. So if you try and click the style changing icons on the right and get a runtime error, then you can totally blame me. That means if you don't like this new style - right now you're stuck. I am sure I could find a way around this eventually, but it's going to stay this way for now. Internet Explorer is the bane of my life when it comes to getting stylesheets working, and now it's decided it wont play...

It's that time again - school summer holidays. My lifestyle choice means that I am now on 6 weeks holiday in the glorious weather with my glorious children. Mildly paraphrased, I have to struggle for 6 weeks to hold onto my sanity while it alternately boils and storms and the weather does something similar. That's almost the truth. Add two days childminding a week to let me take care of business, and it's not a bad season. So I am not taking on any new work, and that which I am doing will be mostly dealt with on Tuesdays, Thursdays,...

I've now changed my email address, and I will be phasing out the old one gradually. The amount of spam is unreal. If you're using one with alison.harrison in it, please change that to just alison

I joined facebook the other day. Finally. Now that it's old hat, I am still uncool. I am not an early adopter on this one. Actually, it's not as bad as I thought. I was under the impression that facebook is another myspace. But when it comes down to it, most of my friends in facebook are people I know in real life. Some of them have their real face as an avatar. Some of them even post up interesting things. But there is an overload of naff applications - someone turned me into a vampire, and others keep sending me drinks. (If only they were real.) I quite like the "where i've been" map, and of course, lolcats is a quality addition, with its exlemplary exlempelary excellent grammar.

So today was a fun day. I rolled out of bed at 8am, missing a full one hour of my lie in, poured my cappucino into a handy travelling cup replete with lid, cleared out George*, programmed Kenº and met up with a haggard band of mums at Clock House station. Ready for the Fairways shopping extravaganza. You've heard of Bluewater? Well this is nothing like it. Tucked behind an industrial area, with reject trolleys from a variety of supermarkets is Fairways. It's a cash and carry for small shops that stock gifts and toys. There is a small metal door to enter between abandoned pallets and the trolley cemetary that leads into a warehouse that is several degrees colder than the rest of Britain.

I didn't actually expect olive groves to be literally everywhere, but they were. Almost every hillside was covered in huge twiste hunks of trees, the slope cut up into steps with crooked stone wall reinforcements, and black netting rolled up in lines ready and waiting for shaking time. The trees themselves are fascinating - they look as if the trunks are wound together by many smaller trunks that merge over time, leaving a lattice of holes. Like crochet in wood if you could effect such a thing. There were no olives on them, which is why I didn't first realise what they were. But after we wandered about some and dicovered a few wizened leftovers hiding in the foliage...

We're back in old blighty (have been for a while now) and I am thinking that we should have stayed in Sydney. Winter would have been more pleasant than this summer. Still, we've had a few sunny days. It's more than you can expect in England. So being a summer person, I've decided to take some time off again - this time sans children for a few days, then with the children after that. We'll be off to corfu for a few days while the in-laws take care of the girls and the house, then off camping with the girls after that. I won't be contactable unless it's an emergency, and will deal with emails when we return.

When you take 2 children on a 24 hour flight to Sydney - alone. Oh my, I must be a sucker for punishment. I am taking the girls to Sydney, leaving Paul here in London to work. We'll be over there for a month. The month over there will be fun, even though it's going to be winter. Winter in Sydney isn't exactly that taxing. At least you can still go out and about and don't have to crack the ice off the swings in the park. The flying over on the hand, is a completely different kettle of fish! The people in front and behind us are probably going to hate us - even if they don't play up. A 3 year old and a 5 year old, with very short attention spans can be noisy...

One of my many projects is a long term one with a company called ezboard. ezboard is a hosted messageboard system. With one account, you can join and participate in any number of message boards. But ezboard has come to the end of its life, and they are creating a new product to replace it, called yuku.

Having lots of work is always a good thing, but sometimes it also means that non essential jobs keep getting dropped to the bottom of the pile. Jobs like... updating my portfolio. So here's the plan. I'll add two new projects every week until I am up to date. Having already added the first two, that's a small step! It's a slightly momentous time for me this month too, my firstborn is starting school - entering reception class (any other country, and that would be called kingergarten, but this is England). Seeing her in that baggy school uniform, skinny little...

One of the best things about living in England is spring. It's one of a small handful of wonderful natural miracles. Whereas in Australia my favourite season was always autumn, over here that's a wet and and miserable season. But spring is truly wonderful. After a grey and sodden winter to see the masses of different bulbs bursting up from underground in kaleidoscpic carpets is such a blues buster. Right now we're in Feburary - the self confessed worst month of the year here. Which is awful for me, being an Aquarian. I long to get back to the other...

I presume it's ok for me to call the northern hemisphere "up over"? Having just come home from being down under? I could start a new craze with that. I didn't announce that we'd gone on holiday for a month prior to doing so (imagine the really high tech burglers, searching for empty homes to burgle via the interweb, eh?). But we spent a lovely month in the warm sunshine with my parents. The girls had a fantastic time, Santa managed to find his way there and even climb down a chimney. Or maybe it was an exhaust fan. Either...

If you know anything about Mambo, you'll know that the core developers that created it have branched off from the main body of Mambo, due mostly to political reasons, and are now working on "Joomla" instead of Mambo. For the most part, I think that of the two, Joomla will be the one to keep up with, and so I have upgraded my own test installations to run Joomla. Most components and plug ins will still run in both, and are likely to also be upgraded to work with Joomla. But this isn't the point I am wanting to make,...

I've finished mucking around with it, although once again Internet Explorer proved to be the bane of my life. If only they'd bring it up to standard! I've added a couple of things, and fixed a couple of viewing errors. I am currently working on a new site using Mambo - or as it's now called, Joomla. I have got the perfect layout - a combination of fluidity with fixed placement. I'll put it up once it's finished of course. No sneak previews!...

I know I shouldn't really do this, but I am updating the site and fiddling with the css while it's live. I find it faster and more logical. So if you see red borders, or dropping images, don't worry, it's just me with the hammer and mallet behind the scenes. I am adding in some new old work (hows that for sense?) and I am adding in more screenshots for most of the work that is currently up. I might even add in some new sections in the portfolio section, to cover more areas, such as logo design and branding,...

Well, I have finished the Emperor Hammocks (check that spelling!) website, and I am really pleased with the way the mambo shopping module has worked out. The site itself isn't one that needs the dynamic engine of mambo behind it, but the mambo phpshop module that is available made it worthwhile

I am liking Mambo more and more as I use it - it makes it much easier...

There is a growing trend on the internet for sites that share stock photography for free. This fits in with the ethos of the virtual community very well, and I have no complaints against it as it is.

The problem is, these poor quality images are free, so people start to view them as a cheap alternative for professional photography.

Want to be incited to violence despite the fact that you are a conciencious objector? Be arrested for beating a granny to death with a breadstick? Thrill as you shove innocent bystanders into the path of an oncoming 73? Laugh in the face of death as you take a white knuckle ride through the world that is consumerism? Laugh like a maniac? Bwuahahahahahah!!

There is only one answer.

Go shopping. In London. In summer.

Well, the new site design is finally live (as you can see). And boy did it take a long time to get this working in different browsers! I think Internet Explorer should be put to death with extreme predjudice!

I have a new obsession - new feeds. This is a relatively new technology for me, although I've known they exist for a long time. What I didn't realise, was how easy it is to put a lovely little OS X aggregator on the desktop and read the headlines...

I now have a huge pile of grey clothing. Grey. Very very grey. Don't think that it is a choice thing. Grey being the new black and all - bollocks. Black is the new black and always will be. Grey is what happens when you let your boyfriend do the washing.

To be more specific, grey is what you get when your boyfriend puts more clothing than would fit in the hold of the titanic in your washing machine and blows it up.

I started doing a bit of web design while I was working as an Art Director in 1999. I made some pretty hideous hobby sites at first. After I was made redundant, I decided to try freelancing again, and got on the books with a temp agency. The first company they sent me to made it clear that as soon as someone with real experience came along, they'd let me go. What actually happened was that they hired me a week later...

Every now and then it happens - someone stiffs you after you do a lot of work for them. For me, the person was Will Nickson, from the Logic Group (www.thelogicgroup.co.uk and www.thelogicgroup.net)...

I honestly don't think that I have such realms of profound insight that people will be flocking here to read it. Nor am I that good at writing anyway. And neither do I think a few lines about what I ate or how I feel are of any interest to anyone...