All righty, Wooooooosh. First few days in the new job have flew by. ive been working with a new compnay in glasgow called creative oceanic.



Brilliant opertunity with good guys. I had a compleatly rubbish first day tho, well not in the traditional sence. i got in an hour early, so i had to wait about a bit, got introduced to everyone and forgot everyones names as again is traditional, then i almost got stuck in the lift when i went for lunch, but that was just after i got locked out. So first day when ok got a bit lost with what i was supost to be doing, i blame the lack of sleep. (back on track now though). as i wa sgetting out of teh train i dropped my phone broke it in to a million bits, THEN! got home turned on my macbook and booted in to vista, to discover that it had crashed and totally wasted everything. Its taken me a full day to recover everything and ive just got round to finishing off installing 3ds mx 9 (quality but a pure nightmare to get hold off at short notice). Today. Tuesday. i spent all day modeling an award (trophy type thing) for the asian business awards, having lots of problems with it as its glass, just the usual nurbs and refelctions carry on. so tomorrow ill be going in with my mac all kitted out with max 9, preparing an intro and loop for the awards event. looking forward to it.

APPLE SHOULD BE SHOT!!! feel better now that i got that out, My mac is once again F**KED it wont work without the power plugged in, its the 2nd battery and power unit ive had sent out. not got a clue what im gonna do because i have a shed load of work to get on with 5 websites to be finished pretty soon, and a deadline for this 3d render for friday. so its all systems go.

Pure Nackered. been up the last few nights installing software. Im a bit gutted because i still dont know if ill be able to aforde Sonar in jully, in getting paid on a project to project basis through a freelance contract. The moneys not the best, but its defo not the worst. im reeealllly skint man, i just rinsed my last 60 quid on a rail pass AND MY IRON BROKE! guttted.

The stress machie has kicked in again in teh form of regal kingsize. nice

Ill let you know how things go and ill stick up a few renders as soon as i have a spare minute.

All righty folks, ive just recently changed my portfolio site as it was very ugly and outdated, for the last few weeks ive been getting right in to php and MySQL, i made a shopping basket system but it would only work in the US, bit gutted. But my new portfolio feels ausome. its online here .Its made using a CMS "Content Management System" (mambo with original joolma templates which where a pure nightmare to try and program, php is still a bit over myhead i understand it but cant author in it) Anyway the system is ausoem it lets you author directly into the site using a sort of blog system, so you dont have to create anyting in dreamweaver or that, it has little bugs in it but its quality for managing big, big! sites plus it also means that clients can update and add stuff to there site after the designer (Me!) Has ran off and spent there money on gadgets.

More New I have an interview for a web agency in town on friday, brikin it but i think i have enough to give my self a good chance (expept for the spelling aspect lol) its really good money as well so il be over the moon if i get it. anyway let me know what you think of the new site

Soo, ive been through all the figures and the paperwork, and its just not going to be salary viable, startup cost if pretty steep, its £1600 for adob photoshop and macromedia studio 8 web bundle. thats just for software. i could get a total of 2k from the princes trust and biz gateway, but there grant system takes up to 2 months and its all depends on where i live, which is a bit gutting. Advertising cost a compleate bomb as well. its all a bit much.

Dunno what im gonna do with regards to the company. looks like im gonan just have to leave it alone for the time being. cant start trading untill after aprll, makes more sence for tax reasons, so if i do go ahead with it it will be in my spare time while i work during the day, doing god knows what kind of remedial work.

Job search ............. its been over a full year since i started applying for media jobs: video editors, graphic designers, web designers, multimedia designers, cd-rom authors ... anything that i would enjoy doing, that i have skills in, but apparently skills dont pay the bills anymore.

Pure gutted lol, on a bit of a downer about the whole thing, i think i can hear cojent calling.........and that prior knowledge scares the bejesus out of me. Gonna have to start looking at boring jobs, ive applied to a few IT jobs but there all abit heavy going with MySQL, PHP, and Ajax.........Lost. Dutch Football ? lol

Ive been offered an oppertunity to try and get into IT Supoort at Dell in glasgow, but again its just another call centre. Sucking the creative indirectly

I checked out the competition as well, Graphicware house pretty much own the market in this area, there just so felxible covering everything all in the one place, Richards a cool guy with a great business head, they have this genious cms web design system wher ethere clients can basically update the sites themselves, it really good for large sites as well taking half the time to create. Ive been working on a similair idea that David from swift ask me to do, he wanted to be able to update his property search items him self. i was going to use a mysql system, but A) i dont know how to do it , although ive been reading up on it for the past few weeks, sounds easy enough and B) i dont have enough money to get MySQL added to my server. so i came up with a really simplified PHP system based on this blog except with out comments and other blog like things, its up at here but there is nothing up on it, just the mini ive been drooling over lol. So if anyones wantig work done by me ask me before the end of aprill and it will be done for free lol, i had to adjust my prices as well i was a bit too cheap and it wasnt going to be viable to keep my company afloat, but i supose thats all oot the window for the time being.

i just watched the nme awards....not impressed.

my driving instructors went off on holiday for a month, feels like im stuck in limbo with noting to do for the next wee while, its disapointing, suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

i just sent a job aplication with the words "im the best at everything, dont bother reading anyone elses cv" thats what its come down too. I need some appreciation for talent lol.

Oh yeah went to see nine inch nails the other night.. was a bit poor, they were good but there was just this really weird atmosphere of high expectation, and they didnt really kit the mark, ladytron where surprisingly good live, probibly the best best bit of the night.

After looking at php for pure agesssss......and ages.......and agess...........i found a bunch of script for a php blogging system. But i couldnt get it workin, So after more research I found another simple php blogging system, so after messing around with different codes again for hours on end, and numerous calls to my server people I finaly got php5 up and running and my permissions all set correctly and here it is. Still got some minor bugs to fix but u can add comments and stuff now which means my clients have a way to comment on my work and discuss there likes and dislikes.

thers a wee problem where comments come in under a anonymous names, think clients mite have to have a log in namem which i think ill have to provide them with, but im still working on the testing with Drew ill keep you all posted

So got together with John Mc Conville today, hes decided against a website, hes oldschool and uses the old telephone and post office lol. so ive just been hired for a full print graphics package of letter heads, bizcards, envelopes, tax return forms the full print boonah. But the good thing is hes hooked me up with another client who wants a website for their conservatory designing company. Plus he went though all the paper work and vital information im going to need. So j-digital-ink wont start trading untill Aprill ths year, it gives me more time to finish my biz plan and get funding from the biz gateway and princes trust. Since j-digital-ink is a sole trader thers no need to register the company name, but will register with the inland revinue for tax in April. So i have just over a month to get all my initial portfolio sites finished, get my bizplan finished and submited, then get my advertsing sorted and then finally finish learning to drive lol, so a busy month comming up. Plus im still looking for another job for a steady wage. but as always everything will be kept up to date on here.

First of I made my self a j-digital-ink toolbar. Quality search and email notifications! plus!!! a grear radio station slector from Alternative, Classic Rock and Metal. Give it a try. you can.



So over the last few days a whole load of things have happened, to begin with I’ve found loads of stupid spelling errors in my site, I’ve corrected some of them but ill have to fix them all soon enough. I was having this crazy problem getting my contact forms to post to my email, so I consulting Drew from Drewnotwierd and then Krist from Carbon Mojo (Php wizard) who both supplied me with different php scripts. I still couldn’t get things working. Now Im pretty much a php virgin, never really used them, I understand how they work etc but never had to work with one in mind. I found this amazing form to email tutorial on Hotscripts.com that give you basic templates for php and then guides you through the rest of the process. So after an hour or so I got my tutorial finished and working perfectly. Of course when I got to the end of the tutorial I found a download completed tutorial link, was a bit gutted. But anyway my contact form now work and it has really inspired me to start looking in to php programming, there is no way Im going to learn it but if I can at least get a better understanding for it ill feel better. I’ve also started looking at database authoring and in particular MY SQL. I downloaded a copy earlier today, seems a bit full on; but I have a few sites coming up that would greatly appreciate a database and search engine. You can check out my first attempt at a pearl search bar on the front page of my site. My sites not really big enough to appreciate the use of a search bar but it does work all the same, dont know how to customise my search results yet, they just look very bland. try searching for graphics.

So it’s been 3 days since j-digital-ink went live, so what’s the story so far. I got in a bit of a slump because I thought I was in no way going to get any work for a good while but after having an inspirational conversation with Drew(reminiscent of Jeremy Churchill Clarkston) it became clear that the way forward was to make early contacts and share the load, along with word of mouth etc. So I did, I made a contact with one Mr Krist McKenna of Carbon Mojo, a guy I used to know really well until we unavoidably drifted apart, K’s been running a small web design company called Carbon Mojo, specializing in primarily flash websites (awesome site you should check it out) so after a good we chat we decided it would be in both our interests to help each other where ever possible,I scratch your back you scratch mine etc. I’m not really a fan of designing in flash so I will probably give a good whack of my customers to K or Drew. And I don’t really understand php or databases stuff yet so I could just out source that to K and what ever html or css problems Krist has he can just ask me for help etc a perfect business friendship.

So back to business, K’s pretty busy at the moment as he still works as an I.T. professional at Dell so he has offered to hook me up with one of his clients, giving me a possible job re-designing two websites for Glenbervie Golf Club in Stirling. One for their members club and one for their pro shop. I also bumped in to an old friend David Grainge in Tesco the other night, he owns Swift Property, an estate agents with two shops one in Airdrie and one in Hamilton. I promised him ages ago that I would do his site for him, so I’m organizing a meeting for later on in the week to see exactly what we can do for him, ive already started creating layout designs and ideas to show him.

But first things first, I need to get John Mc Conville web site finished so I can go through all the paper work needed to officially register my company for tax this is really important as I needs to get it done BEFORE I start trading, and since no money has in anyway switched hands yet were still nice and legal.

Anicca are hopefully finalizing there art work at some point this week, so im going to set up a meeting with them at some point after 5 this week, although it wont be Wednesday as I have tickets for nine inch nails at the carling academy (sweet).

Other things that aren’t really to do with the company, but are sort of work related is that my C.V. got through to the 2nd round stage of submissions for a graphic design post at the BBC. Doubt ill get an interview though as I’ve applied for almost 10 positions in total at the BBC. I also have an application consideration for Samsung, as an interface designer. And again I don’t hold high hopes lol. Oh yeah ive also strted using this new free FTP software called coffecup, its really good; was using flashxp before but it randomly started having problems with my firewall settings, and i would highly recomend it, ive never used dreamweavers built in FTP clients, might give it a bash soon.

All righty so where am i at with Anicca . After a few tests i came up with a logo concept that the guys were pretty happy with, and I do too. i really like this logo concept although! it is quite an akward size to fit on things since it's very tall. have a look and see what you think.



After this i was approached by the band to put together some art work concepts, so i imediatly started thiking outside the box, comming up with useless but nice ideas one of them was to incorporate the use of diferent textures and materials, so ideveloped an idea using old brown papper and transparent acetate, looked nice but was a bit to costly,



After this experiment i liked the idea of using papper as the only element that would add colour, eyecatching amd alot! cheaper to print as it is essentially a black and white print on coloured papper. so i came up with some other ideas based on the same design



So After Martin Had a wee look he really liked the "oriental winter" one with the tree, so i did some more work on it and am just wiating for word back on what the rest of the band thought, i hit a wee bit of a problem with it though, theres a band picture in it, and since ive eliminated all white i dont know how the image will turn out but anyyway heres the final art work so far.