About Me
I'm a web designer from Bolton, near Manchester, UK.
If you want to know more about me. You can find me on Facebook, , Flickr or Last.FM.
My Life Story (in brief...)
Feel free to contact me if you have any questions.
About The Site
This is my personal blog. I enjoy blogging for my company Jigsaw Internet Solutions but as it's aimed at our clients and other website owners I'm somewhat restricted in what I can blog about. Fluffypig.com will allow me to express my personality more. It's highly unlikely that every post will interest the same people but this is the one site that is for myself and not the audience! If you stick around long enough i'm sure there will be the odd thing to interest you ;)
What's to blog about?
Anything, everything and occasionally nothing. I can't say for sure, nothing is planned. I can tell you some of the things I love though, as I'm sure most of these will be featured at some point.
Things I love (in no particular order)
- Web design - I'm so grateful to do something I love for a living [More]
- Macs - I own 3 and have my eye on number 4 [More]
- Getting Things Done - I live by David Allen's productivity system 'Getting Things Done' [More]
- Music - I have very random taste at the moment [More]
- Movies - Amateur film critic [More]
- TV - I didn't watch much TV for years, I'm making up for it now! [More]
- Food - I love to cook & eat out and spend far too much on food [More]
- Running - OK, I don't 'love it', but I do run regularly sometimes [More]
Why fluffypig?
No idea. Really, I was never one for a Hotmail email address and GMail wasn't around at the time. I've always bought random domain names for my email address, this one just happened to stick for longer than most!
I love designing websites, i'm passionate about web standards and hand code my sites using xhtml & CSS.
I use Coda for Mac as my text editor and Adobe Fireworks for graphics. I like to argue with people who think Photoshop is better for web work ;)
I don't love running really. Actually, I do enjoy the freedom it brings and it has made me feel a lot better but I really don't enjoy the hard work and pain I have to suffer at the time.
I was very unfit and out of shape until I hit the big 25 and realised I needed to do something about it. I took up running with a lot of help from the amazing Nike+ Ipod system!
I love Macs. I have a MacMini which is connected to my 42" Plasma TV as a media centre. It plays all of my illegally downloaded tv shows/movies, music and also tv recording.
I use a 17" MacBook Pro around the house and a 13" black MacBook when i'm out with clients (or working in Starbucks). I'm currently talking myself into buying a 24" iMac.
I love films. In a past life I stopped counting at 300 VHS tapes. I improved on that when I went digital and had over 600 DVDs at last count. Though I don't use them any more as i'm converting all my DVDs to DivX movies to play through my MacMini.
I love all sorts of films, my all time favorite is probably The Usual Suspects. Up there with it are Fight Club, American Psycho, Pans Labyrinth, American Beauty and many others.
My life is totally chaotic, I somehow balance a young demanding family, running a business with many different roles, writing a blog and countless hobbies.
I manage to keep the chaos in order by following David Allen's productivity system 'Getting Things Done' or GTD. If you haven't heard of it I seriously recommend that you check out the book.
If you think it could help you there are many Apps available for Mac and iPhone to integrate GTD into your workflow!. I am currently loving Things (featured in my 10 Mac OSX Apps I Can't Live Without) for this purpose but expect a blog post on the other contenders very soon!
I really didn't watch much TV at all betweeen 1998 and 2004. I watch plenty now.
I hate Big Brother, I'm A Celebrety and anything that involves dancing. I watch a lot of sport, gritty dramas (usually BBC but occasionally ITV surprises me) and I enjoy most of the big budget American shows. I'm especially loving Lost and Dexter at the moment.
I'm the chef in my house. I do pretty much all the cooking. I make classic dishes most of the time but with a little imagination. I love fish and chillies.
I also love eating out and spend far too much money doing it. My favorite restaurant is Gordon Ramsay at Royal Hospital Road in London.
I'm a massive music fan. I've been through a lot of phases throughout my life, it was gangster rap at school, indie as a teenager and then dance for a long time. I had decks, collected vinyl and went to clubs like Gatecrasher & Cream.
I don't really have any specific tastes at the moment. I listen to all sorts of stuff whilst i'm working. I am especially enjoying Radiohead, Jeff Buckley, Sigur Ros & Mark Ronson at the moment. I also like Coldplay, The Killers, Oasis etc.. I still listen to dance music but there's not that much interesting me at the moment.
