I designed and built the html parts of this site – a collaboration with Digital Elevation programmer David Shaw.

Simple, clean design with a bespoke job search facility….

http://www.socialcaresolutions.org.uk/

“Professional Social Care Solutions are dedicated to care services and the exceptional people working within this profession. We are one of the UK’s leading Health and Social care consultancies providing high quality services to both our candidates and clients to fulfil their recruitment needs. “

I designed this site a few years ago now but I still like the design!

www.jmardall.co.uk

“Hello! Welcome to my website. I provide a carefully tailored outplacement service for senior executives who are looking for a new role.

What’s special about my service?

• I only work with a very small number of clients at any one time
• It’s therefore a very personal service
• I work with my clients in a very proactive way

I help my clients assess their current situation, consider what they want to do next in a focused way, prepare their CV, sharpen up their interview technique and look for the next role – be it full-time, part-time, interim or portfolio – using advertised vacancies, the headhunters, networking and special approach letters to help us.

My aim is to provide the best outplacement service available – discreet, confidential, effective.”

“Jonathan’s personal approach has provided support and encouragement way beyond my expectations. ..he has gone the extra mile in helping me to prepare for interviews that proved invaluable in securing an exciting new role.”

I’ve been working with Eat Sleep Live for the last 7 years and this is the 3rd generation of its website – built to adhere to Google’s latest rules and also to be an easier user experience…www.eatsleeplive.co.uk

“Eat Sleep Live’s reclaimed wood furniture is high quality in terms of design and longevity. Being entirely handmade, attention is paid to every detail of every piece and this shines out when you look at the beautiful solid wood furniture which is on offer.
One of the great benefits of shopping at Eat Sleep Live is that you can do your bit for the environment through purchasing reclaimed furniture. Furthermore, many of these furniture pieces have the desirable naturally-worn look that is so hard to replicate artificially. If you’re looking for robust furniture with a rustic look, you will find what you want in the wood furniture on offer here at Eat Sleep Live. Using reclaimed wood and built by hand, it is impressive and resilient and fit to grace any home.

No matter what your décor, there is a wood that will suit your home. Many people look for dark wood furniture and there is plenty on offer here. Dark wood provides a distinctive look and if you already have dark wood furniture, you will want to maintain consistency with new additions. Genuinely impressive rustic furniture can be hard to find with many techniques which are used to artificially age wood being ugly or unconvincing. However, here at Eat Sleep Live you will find recovered wood which already boasts that genuine rustic look, so why not take a look at what’s on offer.

Reclaimed wood furniture has a distinctive look and also has the benefit of being better for the environment. The use of reclaimed wood is still relatively uncommon, so if you are looking for something unique with bags of character and history in every beam or are interested in eco-friendly furniture then eat sleep live have a fantastic range for you to choose from. It is impossible to replicate the quality inherent in handmade furniture through other construction methods. Wood is a natural material and every piece is different. It needs an expert eye and extensive experience to fashion it into something distinctive and well-built and that is what you will find here at Eat Sleep Live.

Real wood furniture is striking and resilient and it is these dual qualities which ensure its lasting popularity. Genuine handmade furniture has a quality that cannot be imitated and the use of natural materials makes for furniture with timeless appeal. Furniture made for life…”

My good friend Jason James has just uploaded his new website - http://www.scarycaravan.com/

If you need any illustration/design work doing – he’s the man!

Take a look at his site to get  a taste of what Scary Caravan Media can offer!

We then worked together for an animation studio. Whilst we never worked together again after that, our paths would always cross and now Jay shares space in our studio.

The Ghostboy project (http://www.ghostboy.co.uk/) is Jasons pride and joy – a quirky story told and illustrated in a quirky style – totally Jay!

Jason is currently trying to gather funding via Sponsume (http://www.sponsume.com/projects/search?keywords=ghostboy) and to be honest anyone interested in sponsoring Jason and Ghostboy will be funding something quite unique – what are you waiting for?!

As a resident of Nottingham, and a lover of Hockley, I’m writing this post with a feeling of sadness.

I used to to come to Nottingham as a teenager (ok – quite a few years ago!) and always loved the familiar ‘lads’ route:

A trip to Selectadisc to see what was new

Followed by a walk down to Way Ahead – at the time the best rock music shop in town

Then Another World, Page 45 for a bit of comic geekness

Finally, into Hockley for Ice Nine, Void and maybe Jugglers.

Only then would I maybe head to Virgin Megastore and HMV or Game to finish the shopping trip…

It’s really sad to type all that and realise that only Page 45, Ice Nine and Void remain (I say this as it appears HMV aren’t going to be around much longer either).

Now – over the last 10-15 years Hockley lost it’s way a bit – it became the main location for the trendy bars and pubs, taking it away from the alternative markets that it had had traditionally.

Well Hockley recently has started to pick up a bit – even in these testing economic times – which is a credit to all the independents that are there now – I will put a list together another time of them!

Well sadly a few weeks ago Pink and Lily, who have been in Hockley for 6 years, have had to close down. Caroline, the owner is gutted – as are we as fellow Hockley retailers.

There unfortunately are numerous factors why businesses are struggling in Hockley – and i’m not going into the social and economic climate here – i’d rather talk about the ineffectiveness of the city and county council.
Some Reasons why Hockley is suffering:

1. Parking

Well this has long been debated and for some reason the city council have decided to put parking meters all over Hockley, restricting parking to one hour (not long enough for a coffee let alone shopping) and changing the times to 8am – 8pm.
This has caused numerous businesses here to really struggle – the Broadway has noticed a drop in customers due to senior citizens no longer coming in during the day as they don’t want to have to park at the nearest NCP and walk to Broadway.

2. Alcohol and Drugs

We witness on practically a daily basis alcoholics and druggies causing trouble around Hockley. Whilst I have to admit our local police officers do a cracking job, there’s not enough of them and the city of Nottingham council needs to do something about putting these people somewhere other than the city centre.

3. Lack of identity

Hockley and the Lace Market has so much history it’s just amazing – and yet our city council seems determined to push it away rather than embrace it.

Nottingham should be as proud of its heritage as say York or Bath. They are fine examples as each of these towns has a policy where shop frontage has to adhere to a certain style – it’s clearly a good model to follow.

Now that’s just 3 things! I could go on but even after all this Hockley has one massive asset – it’s INDEPENDENT BUSINESSES.
With numerous well established businesses as well as quality startups Hockley could and should be much more of a destination. People need to know what and who is in Hockley.

I  feel with the drive of these independents, and the backing of some quality policies and common sense from the city council Hockley could become that destination – unfortunately at the moment only the former applies.

I think really we need to try to put Hockley back on the map – but sadly with the banks not lending and the council unable to fund any projects this could be a very long time coming…

But here’s the Spirit of the Independents – keep fighting the good fight – we must all work together to make Hockley the destination it should rightly be….

I’ve owned this budget tablet for about 8 months – it’s well know throughout the modding community because to be honest it’s a bit rubbish out of the box. But after a few months of tinkering, it now runs Google’s Honeycomb (Vegacomb) and it’s even better than more expensive tablets running honeycomb.

With it’s Tegra 2 chipset, it fairly motors along – never a sign of lagging or struggling with any apps or games.

My one gripe is that I now realise that 10.1 inch tablets are a little too big for me – you can’t comfortably read an ebook in bed for example – The viewing angle doesn’t help but to be honest I think 7 inch tablets are the way forward.

Below is Pocket-lint’s review of the Vega from over a year ago….

The Advent Vega is a 10.1-inch Android tablet that seems to be causing quite a stir. On paper this is justified: you get a 10.1-inch Android 2.2 tablet, with a capacitive display, it is slim and looks good, and features a powerful Nvidia Tegra 2 processor. All this is yours for just £249.

But it isn’t quite that simple and much of the demand for the Advent Vega comes from the potential the Vega offers, rather than the out-of-the-box experience. In fact on opening the box you might be a little disappointed, unless your plans for the Vega involve getting involved in modding.

So what do you get? Open the box and you are presented with a 10.1-inch device. The edge-to-edge capacitive display looks fantastic with a 1024 x 600 pixel resolution, although the viewing angles are strictly limited. There are no buttons on the front of the Vega except a webcam set in the bezel. Measuring 275 x 177 x 14mm, it is a smart looking device from the front.

But the immediate concern is control. The controls are set into the edges of the Vega along with all the connections. The top right-hand corner offers up a mic, power/standby, a screen rotation lock, and a back button. The right-hand edge sees a volume rocker, 3.5mm headphone jack and a flap covering the slot for the microSD card, USB and HDMI ports, along with a DC connection. The bottom features a docking connector. Internally it features Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.

The Vega makes use of on-screen home, menu and back buttons added to the toolbar. In some applications this causes no problems, but as soon as you enter something that is full screen, you lose those controls. The back button on the top does a rudimentary job, but we’d rather have these buttons all catered for externally, so you can still navigate with ease, and navigate consistently across applications. The on-screen stock Android keyboard is responsive, although you could potentially get more from the space on offer.

Flip the 750g device over and you’ll find the rear offers two speakers set behind the bottom edge. It’s great to have a tablet device with respectable speaker performance – ok, it is instantly bettered by adding headphones, but for watching a bit of TV online they will serve you well enough. We did find ourselves occasionally smothering the speakers when it was resting on a duvet and sadly the video player won’t flip, so you can’t just turn the device upside down.

Power the Vega on and you are presented with a stripped out version of Android 2.2. Without Google onboard, you’ll find that it covers the bare bones only – this isn’t the full Google experience you’d get from a smartphone or from the much more expensive SamsungGalaxy Tab. In fact the only features really offered out of the box are the browser and media player functions.

For your average consumer, looking for a large device to surf the Internet and watch some movies, the price of £249 might just work. But the Android hook perhaps leads you to think you are going to get a lot more for your money. So there is no Android Market and none of the normal Google apps you might be expecting. Advent haven’t even provided an alternative app store for you to expand the Vega’s offering.

But that’s not such a problem. You can take the same steps as Archos and easily download AppsLib, or the SlideMe market like the Disco tablet. Both are available to download for free and run without issue. You’ll then be able to get access to some content (AppsLib is the better of the two) but the vast majority of applications still lie behind closed doors. Yes, you can search and find apk files that will directly download and install, or you can collect them from websites like GetJar (for your Angry Birds fix download the GetJar app which will take you through to their Android mobile site for quick downloads), but things do start to get labour intensive.

We’d have expected, at the very least, the inclusion of apps to take care of common things like social networks. Instead you are offers browser shortcuts to Facebook, Twitter and YouTube via a shortcut bar on the homescreen. The homescreen will swipe from side-to-side, offering space to drop widgets and application shortcuts, but until you actually get some content, much of this customisable space won’t get used.

Pitching the Advent Vega as an iPad rival isn’t really fair. The iPad is super consumer friendly and getting content is a breeze. In the case of the Advent Vega, you have a tablet that has an operating system not natively designed for such a large device (as the quality of the icon rendering testifies) and you’ll find that the drop down menu from the top doesn’t even fill the screen width. As a result, if you are looking for a cheap alternative to the iPad, you might find yourself disappointed.

On of the biggest problems we encountered was stability overall. The Vega crashed, the screen locking and becoming unresponsive for no discernable reason. This happened both when loaded with content (which may have caused some instability) but also happened when restored to its native state. Often we’d have to restart the Vega to get it going again.

Of course the real answer is to take things a little further and this is the point that some might decide the Vega is not for them – despite the attractive screen and affordable price. Those who are a little more familiar with Android, or fancy their hand at modding, will find that there are already plenty tinkering with the Vega and restoring some of that Google goodness to the tablet, and perhaps you could glance over at MoDaCo forums to get you started, if that’s the way you want to roll.

It feels like Advent have released an Android tablet just so advanced users can go crazy. There is plenty on offer too, accepting that it is going to make you work for it. The Advent Vega is hugely powerful, with the dual-core Tegra 2 processor offering up the likes of Full HD video support. The speed with which is handles browsing is impressive too – pages load in a flash.

Out of the box, much of the potential remains untapped. The default video player leaves a lot to be desired. It had a go at some of our HD content, but the frame rate wasn’t nearly high enough to be watchable. The format support is basic too. We did have it playing some SD AVI, MPEG4 and DivX files without any problems, but as a device that only really offers video playback out of the box, we’d have expected something a little more comprehensive from the off, to mop up the variety of HD codecs in these containers.

The browser though does throw in the nicety of offering Flash video support, so you’ll be able to roam around the Internet and consume media as you go. The provision of Flash does make the Vega a little more useful – you can head on to BBC iPlayer and watch without a problem – just as you can with most other video sites. We also found it to be pretty stable when it came to playing Flash videos through the browser. This is certainly one of the plus points that the Vega has in its favour.

The addition of the HDMI means you can easily output your content and the microSD card slot makes it easy to expand the memory. There is only 512MB of internal memory but there is a 4GB card bundled in the box. It is rated at 6.5 hours of video playback or 16 hours of music. We found the general browsing gave us most of the day without needing charging.

Verdict

The Advent Vega is an interested piece of kit. It will probably appeal to those who either know a lot about Android, or nothing at all. The former group will take it and change it, the latter group will accept it as a simple browser and media player. The middle group, however, will probably never be happy with the limited range of functions available on the Vega as it is.

We’re impressed with the screen – it is vibrant and responsive to the touch – even if the viewing angles are a little tight. We found it to be great for watching (compatible) movies, with just enough sound gusto to cope with watching TV without having to use headphones. We also enjoyed the freedom of browsing the internet with Flash video support, meaning video sites could be enjoyed from the stock browser.

But overall the Advent Vega is an odd device. It lacks the full-on Google sweetness of the Samsung Galaxy Tab and it doesn’t seem to have a skill it is really pushing, other than Flash video. We’re left with a device that offers great potential as a powerful toy for those who want to mod it, but should otherwise be approached with some degree of caution.

A new exclusive bridal boutique in nottingham’s lace market.

The Lace Market Bridal Boutique presents the stunning collection of wedding dresses and vintage inspired wedding accessories by
bridal designer Kula Tsurdiu. Situated in Nottingham’s Lace Market, it perfectly reflects the Kula Tsurdiu brand which ultimately
endeavours to compose inspiring stunning gowns that capture the air of romance, passion and a bygone era.

http://www.thelacemarketbridalboutique.co.uk

Take a look at my latest website – www.kulatsurdiu.co.uk

A highly visual site for a fantastic bridal wear designer – beautiful.