Welsh Icons

heah - the new What's on in Wales pages have gone to beta-test stage.

Have a look at http://www.welshicons.org.uk/cal1 and let me know what you think.

Dom

Apart from my last post (about 10 minutes ago) I've just realised that I've not posted for over a year. For those of you who are interested here is the news.

Through lack of work I've had to sign on for Job Seekers Allowance (under £60 a week)- How people think that most people on this level on benefit would choose to live this way and call them scroungers is beyond me.

I had to get rid of my beloved cats last year for various reasons (most of them fiscal) and this after 10 years of domestic bliss, this is breaking my heart.

The website (Welsh Icons http://www.welshicons.org.uk ) now has over 4,000 pages, receives around 1,000,000 hits a month. That's right 1,000,000 hits a month! and is one of the major site in Wales, but I am still struggling to secure funding. The WAG certainly do not want to know - I've been past from pillar to post for the last year doing what I beleive in and what, as the statistics show people want to see.

anyway

TTFN

Dom

Just been listening to the wireless - Peter Hain has forgotten about £100,000. What a lucky, lucky bastard.

There was an item on Radio 4 this morning about the poor in Moscow, Rusia.

Some people have to live on £1 a day - that's right £1 a day. The journalist added that cigarettes are £0.60 a packet though domestic brands are cheaper.

This got me thinking - when I (very rarely these days) buy cigarettes I pay £5.45 a packet and get around £8 a day to live on (Job Seekers Allowance) - as our American friends say "You do the Math"

Anyway, jusr a reminder to you all - have a look at the Welsh Icons site http://www.welshicons.org.uk and use the new Comment interface on most pages to let me know what you all (sorry, both of you) think.

Hello playmates. Sorry I have not blogged recently but I have been up to my eyeballs in matters fiscal. I have just been watching a programme on BBC2 about poverty in the 19th century and have realised how badly off I am.

I do not want this to turn into a self-pitying rant but I have made about £1,200 so far this year and yet have had to pay nearly £6,000 in rent. The Welsh Icons website is now costing me money and may have to close.

Tomorrow I will be contacting the Department for Work, Pensions and Whatever with a view to signing on the dole – something I have always tried to avoid.

In the meantime I have tried to sell everything I own of any value on eBay – a soul destroying task. When you get £1 for your favourite movie on DVD you begin to realise the true value of things. Still, the cats need feeding.

What follows is my plea for funding of the Welsh Icons site –

Letter from the Editor of Welsh Icons.

Dom S
Editor - Welsh Icons

I've been updating the Welsh Icons site http://welshicons.org.uk . A number of people have kindly sent in photographs of various locations in Wales to illustrate the pages found under Welsh Info/Towns and Cities. I'd like to thank San and Andrew Morgan in particular for their recent contributions.

The site has now grown to more than 600 pages with thousands of photographs and pictures and I'm thing about using a CMS system but I'm not sure how long ot would take me to convert a site of this size. I suppose I should have gone down the CMS route from the outset but I never expected the site to become so big in just a matter of 6 months. If anyone has any experience of convering a medium/largish site to CMS, I'd love to hear your views.

I've also just uploaded more photogaphs to Flickr which can be viewed at http://www.flickr.com/photos/welshicons/

Anyway, I'm off to shout at the television now - I find shouting at 'Heaven and Earth with Gloria Hunniford' a good way to relax (if that's the word) on a Sunday morning.

I've had a very busy few days. Last Thursday I got the Balmoral (a boat see http://www.waverleyexcursions.co.uk ) from Penarth Pier to Clevedon in Somerset (I think), had a few beers and then got the boat back. Of coursew I took my camera and the results can be seen at http://www.flickr.com/photos/welshicons/ .

Yesterday I took the train from Cardiff to Caerphilly. I was surprised that the journey only took about 15min which gave me time to have a pint after photographing the Caephilly Castle. To my great joy I also discovered an old fashioned sweet shop with just about everything you remember from your childhood being sold in jars. What's more, they even sold in quarters (as well as 100 grams which I've never got my head around).

Off to Penarth now for lunch - will report back soon.

B.T.W. the sweet shop is called Yum Yum and is at 52 Cardiff Road, Caerphilly. Well worth a visit if you are in the area.

Bored, bored, bored, bored.

Been at the screen all day retouching photographs and now I'm losing the will to live...

Well this is day eleven of my blogging experiment. I'm sorry bit I have been too busy to post much over the first week.

I've been designing websites and photographing content. I'm currently working on a site for a Welsh wood cardver who makes love spoons and a site for a company that sells corporate head wear - I love diversity, but I never want to see another baseball cap as long as I live. Imagine doing pack shots of 100 baseball caps, hardly the most creative thing I've done recently.

The wood carving site on the other hand has been a joy to create. Apart from the finished product I've been out and about with the camera and been to timber yards photographing native british wood as it is sawn and seasoned. I'd never seen a plank of Holly before last week.

On a completely different note, for those of you interested in the policies of the Conservative Party pay a visit to 100 Policies at http://conservativehome.blogs.com/100policies - well worth a look.

What more can I say on day 1 of this blogging experiment apart from - God Bless, Good Night.

Woke up this morning (no this is not a blues song) and as always checked the stats for all the web sites I maintain. Being the 2nd of the month I did not expect that many hits but one of the sites (http://welshicons.org.uk) was showing over 75,000 hits.

I thought something was wrong but looking at where the traffic was coming from I found the site had been mention in the Guardian News Blog (http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/news/archives/2006/08/01/the_right_clicks_more_than_the_left.html) and was generating traffic.

On further inspection I found that the article ended with -

"When the [English] Icons project was started some, like Harry Phibbs, suspected that it was an attempt to give England a modern makeover, in the Cool Britannia mode. The inclusion of the Notting Hill Carnival and the Empire Windrush in the two earlier lists underlined that impression. But those who use the site and provide the nomimations are having no more of that. Maybe it is only fogeyish little Englanders who care about these kinds of things. If you think so, try the Welsh version, it's more fun."

Funny that as I knew Harry years ao and had not given him a second thought until this morning.

With this in mind and also trying to explore various CMS offerings I decided to start this blog.

Enjoy!

P.S. For thoses interested I'll post the stats again tomorrow.