Wind and Webs

Well if you've been around in the UK during the last few weeks you'll have noticed the wind.  "Wind eternal and ever lasting Wind."  I never thought it would stop.  Some nights it's kept me awake - I'm a natural born worrier.  Amongst other things I was most worried about the trees we are surrounded by falling on us, or on the house, or on the electricity cables.

Post biggest storm we went out to survey the damage.  Preseli Mags mentioned on her blog how their trampoline blew away.  It prompted me to check ours - which is out of sight of the house.  Thankfully one benefit of having the trampoline sited on a near 45 degree slope is that the legs are buried in the ground one side and staked down at the other.  It's going nowhere.  We did have a casualty though.  The greenhouse lost two panes of glass.

I have also been working hard promoting a new side-line for our business.  Diversity is the key in these hard economic times.   I have occasionally created websites... but now I'd like to focus on this area a little more so we have branched out into hosting them too.  A sister site to run alongside our main business website was in order, specifically promoting design and hosting.  Creating this new site has been another learning curve for me - as this is the first time I've used Joomla.  Joomla is a CMS (Case Management System), where the web designer designs the look and feel of the site, but the client can create, edit and manage the content.  I've always liked a challenge.  I'm most definitely not clever... but I positively enjoy the learning process and the satisfaction of problem solving is really rewarding.  Our new site is still yet in development - but hopefully it's shaping up nicely. 

Apologies for this shameful plug little bit of self promotion. I don't know what's come over me!

  

Joining in...

I had in my mind's eye when we moved that we would join in.  It was mentioned to us a few times that we really should; often dire warnings of ignoring this good advice were made explicit. 

"Oh you will be OK as long as you enter into the spirit of things and don't ever turn down invitations." 

...or worse...

"You know what the Welsh are like and they really don't like the English."  Nudge, nudge, wink, wink.  "Hope you've packed a fire extinguisher." 

These comments from parochial well wishers simply confirmed that our decision to move was the right one.  We had always intended to join in as really it would be a bit shortsighted of us to move somewhere new and then promptly insulate ourselves from the world.  You have to make an effort to make new friends.  This was going to be home after all.

Never a more welcoming crowd could we have we met.  Cymru Am Byth!  A Barabrith was awaiting us on our arrival, left on the doorstep.  People have warmly invited us into their homes and plied us with food and wine. 

In our turn we help with looking after the common land (actually Him Next Door does most of the mowing), this Friday we have a community bonfire to burn all the chopping back we did earlier in the year.  We also go to fundraising events in the local community and support the school, village hall and local shop whenever we can.

We actually proactively fund raise for both the common land (Cadwraeth Llysyfran‏) and St Meilyr's Church, nestled at the bottom of the garden.  I am not particularly religious but believe I suppose essentially in Christian principles.  And the Church is truly beautiful and awe inspiring in its age and presence.  You wonder what those walls have witnessed in their time.

From my involvement in the immediate community was born the website http://www.llysyfranchurch.co.uk/.  My little bit of giving. 

140 Christmas Cards sold so far...

Burning the midnight oil...

I've dabbled in website development, strictly as a sideline - never really admitting I do it.  One of my clients recently asked for their website to be totally revamped.  Nice and simple site. Not too many pages.  They were very pleased with it.  Then the Principal asked if I could do one for her son, who runs a Real Estate firm in the USA.  Requests for a blog and database etc... whoa.  I tried very hard to wriggle out of it, but when the cheque arrived before I had even started, I felt I didn't have much choice.

Quick - Amazon.  Bought a couple of books (knowledge in cold storage).  Both good but one in particular has been revolutionary.  I ordered new software on the back of it (which I'm still waiting for) but I feel empowered.  I am beginning to understand what I'm doing now, the fog is lifting.  I can deconstruct what is really going on behind the scenes.  Sounds strange but I've always used WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) software up to this point.  But for many reasons it has been really restricting me and it bloats the code.  WYSIWYG works well until things do not go as planned - trying to edit the code was like wading through treacle as I hadn't learned the basics from scratch.  Now that's all changing.  I'm really starting to understand what the code can actually produce and how I can manipulate that code, this time to my tune.  I might be back in control.

It really is like another language with strict unforgiving grammatical rules, but hey ho I've never been a first past the post kind of person.   Always a plodder that (hopefully) gets there in the end.

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