Latest Projects

I realised my project update list has dragged on so here's how everything is going.

TPA Project
I'm actually leaving the TPA at the end of the month! At the time I decided to quit without having another job to go to and planned to take a long break in order to focus on my front-end skills. However since then I've been lucky enough to have been offered another job! So I've already done a little for that but I'll be working on it properly in September.

In any case one of the last things I have to wrap-up at the TPA is this application. Although I didn't use all the material design patterns that I wanted to I'm pleased to say that this is all done BUILT (which took me forever) and uploaded to the app store (without being published) as of yesterday.

Although on my way home I was playing with the version I installed on my phone and realised I forgot to include an icon so will have to suffer through re-building the whole thing again *cries*. Looking at it now that's the working title of the app rather than the actual title as well... *sigh*

In any case - here's what it looks like!

I'm just quite glad it's nearly over to be honest... It was difficult to find time to work on between everything else - I can't believe I've been working on this since January and this is all I have to show for it.....

Debt Clock Project
At some point the Twitter Debt Clock stopped working. I wasn't able to figure out why it was broken and eventually decided to give up in favour of the aforementioned project. Then debt-clock.org stopped working and I can't access the server :/

Perfect time to just rip everything out and start again!

Old Site

New Site! Using the Bulma.io framework

Further down the old site with the JS working

Well - there's more than a couple of things to add and I'm not happy with the design (there's a list of things that need adding) but the new site has a tiny filesize compared to the old one and looks much better on mobile (didn't think to take that screenshot...)

So - I have 1 week left at the TPA. I wonder if I can finish this and get the Twitter-bot working again in that time.

Beck-Allan's
Last one! This is actually something I did as a challenge. I had 3 hours to fill and wanted to see how far I got. Beck-Allan's are already in the middle of a web-changeover so there's no way this project will go any further.

Old website

New website! It's a little grid-y but it has everything

Icons from Font Awesome

I'm not particularly proud of this one because the fonts, colours and otherwise don't really fit together but the most important thing is that all the information is on one page (even on mobile! And again I forgot to take that screenshot....).

When sketching from the old / current website there were a number of small pages with a number of images and a little text for each of the apartments and I thought that would be better handled with a gallery. All the relevant information about the apartment is now right by the picture and I tried to standardise it as well (ie rating, how many people, charm points).

And that's it! All my projects from the last month - and I'm really hoping I'll get to work on some more fun stuff very soon!

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INSPIRATION: WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

Yes, my mind is still in the lake district I'm afraid!

This post is going to be a little different, because rather than me being inspired; this is about William Wordsworth being inspired.

There are a few things that inspired Wordsworth.

The first, was family.

Wordsworth's 'Dove Cottage' was tiny, I wasn't allowed to take photos but there were about 3 bedrooms, all of which were pretty dark. One is on the ground floor and William and his wife's room didn't have a roof when they were first married! The Guest room was the nicest room and the Wordsworths' had lots of people staying in that room. Most  notably Samuel Taylor Coleridge , another of the Lake Poets and admirer of  William's sister Dorothy Wordsworth, the author of The Grasmere Journals and others who also lived there.

Other people who stayed include Walter Scott and Thomas de Quincey, who stayed a very long time.

The Gravestone

So the house was pretty crowded, I didn't even go into where the 3 children slept before they decided to move; it was very small and very cold. So the other thing that inspired Wordsworth was, of course, the landscape.

William Wordsworth was actually born in Cockermouth, Cumberland. When I was a child and we would drive up to see the family, my brother would always ask how close to Cockinmouth we were. He left for a long time to travel and then decided that to create the best poetry, he needed to live in seclusion so that he could focus on his writing.

William Wordsworth became so successful that Queen Victoria asked him to become poet laureate.
He refused, saying that he couldn't write on demand the way that the job description would ask him to. She kept asking and eventually he agreed; Queen Victoria loved his work so much that she made a special condition for him. He was to be poet laureate but didn't have to write any poetry for her unless he was inspired to do so.

Wordsworth agreed to this but was never inspired to write and remains the only poet laureate never to have written any royal poetry.

I like that story, because Wordsworth felt strongly that he wanted his worth to be natural, and unforced. Of course, he had inherited a rather large fortune previously so I guess it's alright for him.


So that's it really! To the right is a picture of Glencoyne Bay, where Wordsworth wrote 'I Wandered Lonely as A Cloud'.

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MY TRIP TO THE LAKE DISTRICT

So, for the past week I've been visiting the Lake District. Specifically, my family in Grasmere. They run the self catering apartment part of Beck Allan's Guest home and Self Catering, I've stayed there since I was a child but it was only this year that I discovered/took an interest in the fact that it's got a really rich history! I don't suppose it matters much to someone who hasn't been there but it's been the house of a wealthy businessman, a catholic college and a convalescent home for soldiers.

This is a popular walk

Grasmere is not the most happening place in the Lakes. I bring my old phone which has an O2 sim whenever I visit because T-mobile (and Orange) don't get any signal there. There's also not much in the way of shopping or fun things to do in Grasmere, there are places that you can go to do things but most people come here for the walking.


That nearest hill has a little rock on top that's called 'The Lion and The Lamb' because if you squint, it looks like a lion with a lamb sitting by it's feet. It's actually a place called Helm Crag and as you approach the top it changes from a lion and a lamb into various other shapes. You just have to use your imagination! There are a couple of interpretations of wikipedia but I prefer the idea that it's a lion and a lamb getting on because they're mesmerised by the view. It's pretty cold up there though!

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