Adam Bird - My Personal Blog

If there has been a common theme running so far through the early stages of this year, it has been work. Not the professional kind, which I’m still playing the waiting game on as to what my future holds exactly - but the stuff I do from home, the little something for a mate, or a friend of a friend. I’ve got a couple of little projects boiling away nicely, including my first Arabic language website which will prove to be an interesting technical challenge, a website for a local car accident repair centre as well as trying to keep up with the brilliant and inspiring courses from Code Academy . Today then, I’m going to attempt something wholly new to this blog and add to my increasingly crazy workload, by starting a series of blog posts looking at the life cycle of a web development project. Starting at the beginning, in looking at an existing website, where it falls short, what it does well, all the way through to research, design and eventual redevelopment and deployment of a new s...

Towards the end of last year, my father proposed a family challenge - to lose weight. The person who loses the most weight, by April 1st out of my parents, my sister and her husband, myself and Stephanie would be treated to a weekend away at my fathers expense. We all signed up, agreed and now it is game on! We could all be playing for a weekend in Allhallows, it doesn’t really matter, we all recognised that 2011 was a year of indulgence and our forever expanding waistlines needed to be sucked back in. Stephanie of course had the benefit of an excuse on her side, she was pregnant for most of the year and feeding for two - not that you would have known, she actually weighs much less now that she did before she fell pregnant so she must be doing something right. It’s been interesting so far to see how all six of us have tackled this particular challenge, whether it is signing up to a diet scheme like Weight Watchers, skipping meals or cutting out various items of high-fat food and...

Last year I decided to try and up the ante slightly, by posting a regular blog and writing at least once a week which I did, I even managed to complete the annual challenge successfully, which surpassed my own expectations. This year, we’ve only reached week two and I’m already struggling with finding something to write - the problem I have is, I can’t quite bring myself to break the habit just yet! January is generally a tough month, financially and for some, emotionally taxing. With the dawn of a new year comes a series of resolutions to make the forthcoming twelve months worth something, to do something new, to challenge oneself and to make a difference to their lives. Reading Facebook status’s over the new year gave an interesting insight into how people perceived how they were treated; “2012, better be better than last year”, or “Bye Bye 2011, what a year that was!” For Stephanie and I, 2011 couldn’t have treated us any better. I wrote at the beginning of last year that I wa...

Last weekend Stephanie and I saw in the new year surrounded by the love and comfort of my parents, my sister, her husband and clan of children along with Phoebe and Oliver of course - but either side of that was two quite different and unexpected experiences with hospitals, needles and two females I love dearly. Firstly, I was asked by my Grandmother if I could take her to the eye hospital on Friday, the day before New Years Eve, which was fine with me. A routine check-up she told me, no problem I thought. Except, my Nan is 92 years old bless her and from right out of the Devonian old school, loud with it too, which can be cause for moments of embarrassment from time to time. Like singing “hear comes the bride” in the middle a busy waiting room at one of the nurses as she walked by. The nurse took it in quite good fashion, apparently Nan has been doing it for the past eight months despite the nurse not getting married until September! Anyhow, what ended up being a routine check-u...