Now
Inspired by various friends and colleagues, this is a semi-regularly updated overview of what I’m up to at the moment.
Summary: I’m a web developer and microagency co-owner, specialising in small and medium-sized web projects, mainly focused on WordPress. I take photographs and go hiking in my spare time; usually in the Swiss Alps.
Last update: 1st July 2024.
Personal
I’m very slowly losing weight; I’m half-way to my first goal of 80kg and things have stalled a bit. I’m hoping that the number will begin falling again because I’m becoming a little more active, beginning with a lot of walking in Turin last month, and getting in more exercise (in the form of cycling and hiking). I have a particular goal to be fit enough to do at least two or three big hikes in the Lake District later this year.
Most recently, I’ve been walking in Rosenlaui, Interlaken, between Holenstein and Brandegg and between Männlichen and Alpiglen (at Grindelwald), at Gryden (Lenk), and clocked up 7,000 steps wandering around Colmar in June. I did around 12,000-14,000 steps every day while I was at WordCamp Europe in June, and I’ve set my sights on a hike above the Lauterbrunnen Valley. I’m about to put together a list of hikes I want to achieve this season and will probably add it to the website.
Photographically, I’m currently tending toward panoramic work: mainly images which are cropped from RAW format in post-processing, but also using my iPhone. I’m also going to put together a list of wish-destinations soon, which I have plans to photograph.
Media
Listening: CDs from The Oldies Shop in Bern; The Killers; Kings of Leon; Editors; Kelly Jones; Electric Light Orchestra.
Audio book: Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix (the UK version, narrated by Stephen Fry).
Watching: 9-1-1, Taskmaster; Richard Hammond’s Workshop; Agatha Christie’s Poirot and I’m on my third loop through Star Trek: The Next Generation on Netflix.
Work
I’ve been fitting in revisions to our Say Hello agency website and the site is now available in German and English, alongside working on a more concerted plan to market our services better.
Regular weekly tasks carry on as usual: we have around 90 websites which we maintain for clients and we’ve begun offering a wider range of maintenance solutions for clients running WordPress projects. I’m also doing smaller pieces of preparatory technical and design work for a few clients concurrently.
Hotel and restaurant websites
I’m working on the third site of four in a WordPress multisite installation for a hotel group in Thun and Bern, which I’m carrying out on behalf of a design agency in Bern. The content is complete in German, so the quality control phase and translation into English is currently in progress.
Tourism API updates
One of the bigger projects from a couple of years ago was for a local tourism region. I integrated two third-party APIs into a site which a partner agency conceived and built, and I regularly work on updates and additions to the integration.
Event and workshop subscriptions
I’ve extended the website of a maintenance client to allow them to present events and webinars, and to receive online sign-ups from their clients.
Usability-focused typographic improvements
I’ve revised the website for a local care home; re-designing and reworking the typography so that it is more legible and so that the text-scaling function is more usable.
Layout modernisation and performance
Two installations for a publisher—Steuerportal and Cosmos Verlag—have been receiving ongoing layout and performance improvements for the past couple of months. I’ve just wrapped up the work and implemented it on both sites, with additional improvements coming within the next couple of months.
