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.

To put things into context I suppose I'd better tell you something of myself.

My name is Dom and I'm a 41 year old web designer living in Cardiff. I returned to Cardiff after 20 years living in London in Feb 2005 with my three beloved cats and set up a small design company called 3Cat Design (http://www.welshicons.org.uk/3cat).

I also run the Welsh Icons website (http://www.welshicons.org.uk).

I smoke (Rothmans cigarettes) and drink (Stella Artois) and read the Daily Telegraph. I would describe my politics as Libertarian Conservative but don't let that stop reading further. By the way I try to keep the Welsh Icons site politically agnostic.

I'm also a news junkie and cannot get off to sleep without the BBC 24 hour news channel on in the background. I like cooking but am not too bothered with eating, though I enjoy a few mouthfulls when eating out.

My hobbies include photography and you can view some of my work at http://www.flickr.com/photos/welshicons/

I'm off to have a shave now so I can get a photograph to use on this new fangled blog thing.

Well here it is. My first ever blog. I've been meaning to get around to blogging for a while now - the new licensing laws haven't helped.

What do I have to say?

Not sure yet but I'm pretty certain I'll come up with something once this first post is done.

TTFN