(Back) Up and Running

Having blogged fairly regularly through June, I'd planned to try and keep it going in the longer term. But yet again failed.

However, the summer's over (more or less), I'm back in the office after a pretty hectic (but nonetheless enjoyable) summer holiday and working on a number of interesting projects.

First up is a new site for La Rosa Hotel in Whitby. It's a pretty quirky place - and managing their design requirements alongside creating a fully responsive and content managed website is quite a challenge! I can't think of another time when I've been asked to design a site which looks in some respects like it could have been built using tables or iframes in IE6 in the 90s, using graphic design elements from the 1800s.

I'm also using Perch for the first time. For years I've stuck to my guns, developing a bespoke CMS which is both developer and client friendly. I think I've finally found a commercial solution which works very similarly to the CMS I built myself, as well as providing excellent support, first parts add-ons and simple updates.

I'll write up my experiences with Perch at a later date.

Running

I've also signed up for the Hardmoors Ultras Goathland Half Marathon in November. I ran it in 2013 in 2:04:05 (according to Strava) and am aiming to come in well under 2 hours this time. I have the time 1:45:00 as a target - not sure how achievable that is, but my road half marathon PB is 1:36:17 - so I think it's a reasonable target.

Managed my first training run last night - will be posting about how I get on over the coming weeks.

Staithes Festival

I've just completed the Staithes Festival programme for the 2015 Festival, starting on Friday. It's come out pretty well - I'm pleased, as are the organising committee. Find out more about the project here. Here's a quick preview, and a short of Emma Stothard's orange lobster - one of several public art pieces on show in Staithes at the moment:

Coming Up...

I'm really excited to be working with Whitby RNLI - I'm designing and building a new site for them. Alongside that I have a small handful of small business sites to tackle and plenty of personal projects to be getting on with - more on that later!

It's good to be back in the office!