And to prove this, here is a list of random acts of kindness I have experienced, both for me personally and things I have been involved in for the community. And a list of just awesome people all over.

UPDATE: Because I have constantly been reminded of people that have been so kind to me and the community, I shall try and keep maintaining this list for the unforeseeable future, although you might not all agree with the names on the list – I really have taken something for nothing from every single person named. Keep it up!

1. Before I even knew what PHP was, Douglas Gresham taught me how to submit a form using PHP despite we’d met only once at a totally unconnected to web event.
2. Edd for turning into a cycle nerd friend as well as geeky event mate.
3. Everyone on Stack Overflow, for answering people’s questions.
4. Ross Bruniges, for generally being an excellent beer hound (add Ben and everyone from @pubstandards to this item, as a matter of fact)
5. Paul Stanton and Ryan Taylor for being extra friendly fellow northerners whenever we happen to be in the same place
6. Paul Stanton and Ryan Taylor (yes, AGAIN!) and Anna Debenham for volunteering on the BoagWorld podcast, helping me out quite a bit in the early days.
7. Kris Noble for being a random traveling buddy (or is he actually stalking me?) and general friendly face at all manner of events. And for not whinging after accidentally stealing his idea.
8. Gareth Thompson for offering business advice in running your own web stuff. And being a bloody good bloke to boot.
9. Dave Smith for feeding work and excellent advice constantly. And letting me loose on his RackSpace hosting.
10. Jake Archibald for agreeing with my views on homeopathy (and providing good web advice!). He does bloody good talks too. And is sometimes funny.
11. AlunR for organising Geek Karting (although the £1.70 profit on the last event may mean he’s not as kind hearted as I though – PS, that’s a joke…)
12. John O’Nolan for being thoroughly offensive and wrong (read as challenging my HTML structure and semantics, which is good!)
13. Rob Hawkes for Rawkets, and that book and sound advice.
14. Syd Lawrence for letting me bug him in his own house while he showed me some HTML5 Mobile App stuff.
15. Dan Knell and Kornel for always being available to drink while teaching me clever stuff.
16. Paul Adam Davis for reminding me of something I already knew, then virtually apologising for the good point he made!!
17. Antony Killeen, who organises Croydon Creatives. PS – I can’t believe he isn’t even a full time web dude yet!
18. Katskii for being everything I would expect from a Geordie lass! That *is* a good thing, honest.
19. Luke and uBelly for pointing me at interesting things that I should do and always being willing to pay for my beer!
20. Drew and Rachel for 24ways.org and providing just awesome advice and support for Perch. Rachel also posted a much more coherent post on this topic than I ever will on her own blog.
21. Chris David Mills for not only being very metal and introducing me to Steel Panther, but also giving up his time to speak at the awesome Speak the Web
22. Dan Donald and Rich Clark gave up their valuable time to organise the aforementioned Speak the Web, so they definitely need a mention.
23. Myself (!!) for volunteering at some events, manning doors and setting up chairs etc. And buying a wooden spoon prize to try and make Geek Karters smile. I know, I am too humble…
24. A thousand (literally) other people who have all become friends, colleagues or complete strangers that have helped me on my way in the web world. And long may it continue.

and finally, thanks to @arranrp, who for his sins does organise a lot of events and through him I have met many interesting and good people (some included in the above list). And he’s a mate.

So why focus on the bad. What I would like to see is a similar list for each and everyone that is currently unhappy with the industry – you never know, it might restore some faith in your friends, colleagues and complete strangers.

Feel free to ping me – I’ll always help wherever I can, and why don’t we all try it, I actually enjoy being nice. Unless you’re Julia Hartley-Brewer, of course.

Having been paid $70,000 to carry out the transport the owner and captain apparently then held out for more. With no more funds being given over and the initial funds recovered, the hostage situation came about. Leaving the harbour by force and half closing the drive on ramp with a vehicle still on it I’m sure there might be more to the story than anyone but those aboard know about.

Bit worrying for Kieran, but I know he is well versed in the politics of wherever he goes and has 12 years experience in the aid convoy business, so hoping that everything works out.

Following quite a bit of pressure through social networks from Kieran’s friends on twitter and facebook, it seems we’ve got some action by the press and government agents with the BBC hopefully picking up the story (thank you @KirbyVictoria), earlier featured on CNN. I’ll await news from the media all evening and I expect for a short while yet.

Where’s Jack Bauer when you need him. Or the Expendables, remembering the first scene from that film.

More links on the story:

BBC News

The Independant
Waltham Forest Guardian
Salem News

Molly Holzschlag on stage at FOWD 2009 - Flickr image from user: vectorfunk

The conference day was in the rather big Kensington Town Hall, which was nice, having met up with Natalie from BluHalo and the @fhoke lads the sessions got underway.

After Ryan Carson introduced the day and told us what we needed to know, there was an impromtu talk from Danny Somekh which looked at applying the agile development model to web sites. Quite interesting, if a little under prepared due to being such a late addition.

Next Jim Coudal of Coudal Partners (http://www.coudal.com/) talked about how the creative process seems to focus on taking a constant and applying variables to it, using the Booking Bands game as an example. Booking Bands says combine a band and a book to make something amusing. I’ve come up with “Oliver’s Twisted Sister” and “The Bloodhounds of the Baskervilles gang”. To do this he emphasised most would take either a band and cycle through the books you know, or vice versa. He also highlighted a short attention span isn’t necessarily a bad thing for creativity.

Next was Meagan Fisher from SimpleBits on the Mobile Web. Not really anything new, but it was interesting and good to know the leaders in web geekery are promoting and fighting for the same things as I am.

Brett Welch (of www.goodbarry.com was good) was next and was really fun. He talked about the business side of our work – the following points sticking with me:

• Talk about the clients business
• Design is a commodity
• Are you worth it?
• Try to join the dots not build from new
• Sell your expertise not a product

He had a way to remember the process, involving Busta Rhymes. Business, Understand, Strategy, Targets, Actions. The end result should be effective and repeat business.

Mark Boulton (http://www.markboulton.co.uk/) was next talking about typography for the web. He made some good points, being a very intelligent bloke:

• Typography can be frustrating on the web
• Design bridges author and reader concept ideas
• Use smart defaults and push people with the ability to influence design to make correct decisions
• Make people think they are being creative
• Use a typography cascade
• Check the Vista defaults for more fonts to use
• sIFR is a pain in the arse (my personal favourite)

The next speaker was slightly different as he had a companion to help him. Who is a guide dog. Because Robin Christopherson is completely blind.

Robin (of http://www.abilitynet.org.uk/) demonstrated the difficulties that blind and users with other disabilities find whilst using the internet. He pointe4d out that a lot of disabled users use a mobile version of a site as it is simpler, that captcha is not viable, gave some tips on making things easier for your users and was overall very impressive. This is something I will take back to the office and push for better accessibility in our sites.

Mike Kus speaking - Flickr Image by vectorfunk

Mike Kus from Carsonified was up next talking about design. His slides are up at http://www.slideshare.net/mikekus/graphic-design-the-forgotten-web-standard A good talk with a good video at the end. Not really my bag though – design and stretching design legs. One good point he made was to to harness the power of the copy you are designing for and think about the copy to inspire rather than dictate.

Sabrina Dent then spoke about the Stalinist web design model. Something that I always have trouble with. Its fine to say no all the time – but I struggle when it comes down to saying the words! Sabrina backed this up with the reasons why and so it might help me say no more often. Sabrina’s blog is at http://www.sabrinadent.com/

Finally Molly Holzschlag (www.molly.com) ran through the future of web standards, covering HTML5, XHTML, Compat mode in IE8, SVG, Canvas, RDFa, Microformats and a lot more besides. Really good and perfect for what I went to FOWD for.

I will cover the workshop content in another blog – after I have conveyed the message I took away to all the good folks at GyroHSR, hopefully changing something for the better too.

So you have the web developer toolbar, have solved all issues in Firefox, only to find IE doesn’t do the same.

What if you could click a bookmarked site, load a piece of javascript, then you simply click on any element on a page to display the element, id, class, hierarchy, positioning, border, margin and padding values in a pretty interface? Well sonny, with X-Ray (from http://westciv.com) you can!

The best bit is that it even works in IE, so you can troubleshoot any box model or double margin problems easily! It’s an excellent idea, and if I hadn’t already voted for jQuery, I would have voted for it in the innovation category of the .net magazine awards. Maybe you could vote in my stead!

So after a few days in work, not very long (but long enough!) I was off away again to Ruf Y Anun’s wedding in Palma, Mallorca. The flight was fine (easyjet aren’t that bad) and waiting for Jen in the hotel was great as I managed to squeeze in four pints.
Standard Mallorca holiday malarkey until the wedding on Saturday 1st September, 5pm local time. The Church was amazing (see above and below). Anunciada went to school there apparently, which is a bit nicer than the brick building in Hamsterley that taught me to read!

The service, in a mix of Spanish and English was lovely, with readings from both sides and the priest even doing his best in English.

Rufous is clearly impressed with the whole marriage lark.

Afterwards we got a few buses to the Hotel Delta Beach Club, on the coast with a great view, great food (the beef was EXCELLENT, as was the sorbet!). I think being seated at the Bride and Groom’s table was a bonus – it meant Hufty could entertain us! Free wine flowed freely and the dancing was inspired (I cleared the floor at least twice!). I just wish someone had told me the Spanish were going on to a club when the bus home dropped us off in El Arenal about 5am, since I definitely could have partied on into the day – at least I think so!

Anyway, a few more days of beach, burning, pool and Tapas later we all went home and back to daily life. This may be a little short, but then again, I was drunk most of the time and memories fade when intoxicated!

Ole!

So holiday time has come and gone, and I have been far too lazy to blog in the slightest.

Cornwall was excellent as normal, however the highlights include:

• Much Risk, and not coming last in one game!
• 2 barbeques
• Pubbage
• FInally meeting Del
• Wii
• Boat exploits
• Tintagel, legendary birthplace of King Arthur
• St Michael’s Mount

The best part of the whole holiday (apart from the sentimental “time with friends” rubbish) was surfing. It was excellent, and I even caught one wave, stood up and rode it all of 25m to the beach. I am definitely going to try and do it more often, either by getting down to Brighton and hiring a board and wet suit or seeing if Seaham is a possibility if I go back up North – followed by a full week next year dedicated to surfing. 2 hours is nowhere near long enough!

For the record that alcohol consumed that week include (but is not limited to):

• 1 x 18 pack Fosters
• 7 x red wine (bottle)
• 1 x Sierra Tequila bottle
• 1/4 x Tesco value vodka (aka meths)
• 1 x 18 pack John Smiths Smooth
• 1 x 24 pack John Smiths Bitter
• 10+ pints Tribute Cornish Ale

Please be aware the above list is what I consumed in full! Just me. No help (except a little on the Tequila from Claire Levison!) Good, eh!

Photos are up! Gallery, Flickr and Zooomr

Tarra for now!!

I think probably, no reason why not, especially if everyone helps.

This is the image:

Good luck Rory!!

Read more about the bet at http://heathermcneil.blogspot.com/

Today I finished a web site favour for a friend of my friend Smidge. The web site is for a choir back up North who unfortunately lost the member that handled their web site. I created a wordpress managed site, using a theme which I heavily modified, new images, slight reorganisation and a lot of photoshop work. The site lives at www.northernspiritsingers.co.uk

I never saw the previous site so I am yet to find out if it is an improvement, I hope it is.

I took on the project after Smidge mentioned it in an email spurred on by what my friend Gareth created for the Ex-National Youth Choir of Great Britain web site. Thanks for the inspiration Gareth! Now after a few updates and some training on the use of the WordPress admin section, the choir can update and use the site to its full potential.

So last Thursday I went all Hip Hop on your ass and went to see Cut Chemist of Jurassic 5 fame at the Islington Academy with Ruf, Anun, Hufty, Ruf’s brother Rob (I think…) and his partner Dave.

I was pleasantly surprised and will definitely carry on listening to and buying more Hip Hop, just got to remember to steer clear of all the terrible Gansta Rap and all that rubbish.

Also adding to the quality night was spending time with Hufty and Ruf and managing to get a hangover the next morning.

Something interesting Hufty and I talked about on the way home, apart from much rubbish, was how good a photograph of hundreds of people queuing single file to get on a London bus or Tube train would be. With all the impatient pushy people, I thought it would be a fantastic image to behold. Now just to work out the logistics of creating it… erm… ahem…

The last site I did for a friend was featured on the BBC web site – as Kate was on Five Live and the nice people at the bbc linked to and mentioned the site – listen again to Kate (and Matthew Bannister mention my site!) – http://www.bbc.co.uk/fivelive/programmes/morning.shtml

I”ve also just completed writing an RSS feed from the blog on the site, the first time I’ve done so, and I can see me doing it a lot more now! It was easy!

So there we have it, a popular web site and RSS. I am officially a web geek!