Tranquility

“sàmhchair : quietness, silence”

— http://learngaelic.net

Another week and another launched website! The first phase of the rebuild of Sàmhchair has been finished and am happy to see it go live this afternoon. It is a much improved site over the old one (who built that?) and it looks great.

The site is about the quiet village of Strathy in the north of Scotland. It was commissioned by a client who lives there and wanted to show the world what a wonderful place this is to live. If it becomes too popular though it might not be be as tranquil as it currently is though :-)

The first phase involved a total rebuild and getting the copy into the site. The next phase involves getting their webcam and weather station online!

Check it out the site at Sàmhchair.

Like the site? Does you site need updating? Get in touch.

Brownies!

Just back from a mornings consulting on the Florence and George website. They have just launched an online shop selling brownies. Freshly baked and in many flavours to suit all tastes! Have a look over at Florence and George!

It was also good getting some more experience implementing an online shop into a website! Takes a lot of time testing and perfecting on phone and desktop, and then the fun of testing if the payment system works correctly! 

Needless to say I can't think of a better way to spend a Tuesday morning than working on making a website even better than it already is and taste testing brownies.

Update: I almost forgot! Happy Pi day! :-)

Apple Store Photo Walk - Exploring the Grassmarket

I had a fun time this morning taking a guided tour around the Grassmarket in Edinburgh with members of the Apple Team and other iPhone / iPad photographers. The apple team members were very helpful in explaining how to use the Camera Application and brought along some hardware from the store to try out!

Although what the Apple Team members were explaining was prior knowledge to me, it was good to meet new people and to help them with some of the functions of their applications and photography techniques.

Interestingly the majority of the people were older (OAP's), this took me a little by surprise, but it was great to see an older generation really get to grips with this technology. It was surprising as I have never seen a lot of people (of an older generation) use this technology so adeptly.

The afternoon was taken over by a client meeting signing off a website, which will be part of the portfolio when this site relaunches in March. The site is Tenth Floor Photography, go visit it and leave some nice comments on his first blog post! :-)

For now I'll leave you with some of the shots from earlier today in the Grassmarket and surrounding area.!

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Olloclip field trip

Ōlloclip have released their Lenses for the iPhone 7 (finally). I was able to get their core lens set from the Apple Store on Monday and in a nice coincidence it was also a sunny day. I headed down to Holyrood Park from the centre of Edinburgh to see what I could capture. The Olloclip core lens set comes with three lenses: Fish Eye; Super Wide and Macro (15x). 

 

Holyrood Park (also called the Queen's Park or King's Park depending on the reigning monarch's gender) is a royal park in central Edinburgh, Scotland. It has an array of hills, lochs, glens, ridges, basalt cliffs, and patches of gorse, providing a remarkably wild piece of highland landscape within its 650-acre area. The park is associated with the royal palace of Holyroodhouse and was formerly a 12th-century royal hunting estate. It also has the small hill of Arthur's Seat to climb.

The park is a short walk from the centre of Edinburgh and provides plenty of great photographic opportunities. The shots below were taken mostly with the super wide lens attached to my iPhone with a couple of fish-eye shots thrown in for fun :-)

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Project work

'Starting' to finish a couple of projects that I have been working on. Getting started was slow process but I can finally see the progress coming together.  

Over the next two weeks I should have one new website up and running and another 'over-hauled' allowing my own consulting page to go live on this website, which will also be re-branded. 

It has been over a year now since my good friends at Florence and George launched. Watching their business come together has provided inspiration and ideas of what individuals, small businesses and clubs require from a web designer/coder. My plan is to provide a more personal feel with clients in a 'Jerry Maguire' kind of way.

It has been my experience that many people are intimidated by the internet and talking to designers when they have not had much exposure to this technology. It is my hope to provide a 'safe place' where they can talk over their ideas and to feel that they can ask any question no matter how simple or complicated. 

Sabbatical over? Or is doing what you love not really a job?