On life in general

I’m not a natural runner. I’m reasonably fit given that I spend most of the day sat in my chair, mainly due to the fact I’ll always walk rather than drive if it is possible, but I’m one of my gym’s best members - pay every month and rarely use the facilities.
When I do run […]

Deciding that I wanted to add a listing of the articles that I have written led to a rainy-weekend redesign of the templates and a reshuffle of the content on this site. I don’t consider myself a designer, and there are things I would like to add if I ever have time, but I […]

I’m probably just creating myself one more thing to feel guilty about not doing, but in the interest of improving my photography and being more creative I’m decided to join in with the Project 365 idea. I’ve had my Canon 350D since March this year and I feel I’m only just getting to a point […]

I’m writing this post from a wifi enabled train, heading up the East Coast main line to Newcastle. Getting on the train at Kings Cross reminded me of how I arrived in that station, just over 11 years ago. Hauling all my wordly possessions with me in a move to London which was, in retrospect, […]

Since my first Greenbelt in 2000 the festival has come to mark the beginning of a new year. Perhaps we are all conditioned in childhood by school terms to see September as a beginning anyway, but for me Greenbelt each year marks ends and beginnings, a time to reflect on the past year with people […]

I added a favourite quote of mine to the comments of Molly’s blog post on favourite quotes and phrases. The lines I added are from my favourite musical, Sunday in the Park with George. It is a Sondheim musical - currently back in the West End - which was my inspiration to go and study […]

A client just sent me a link to the API documentation for something we will be integrating with. The pages that contain the documentation are using JavaScript to scroll the page title! What were they thinking? Ploughing through documentation is bad enough but far worse when there is a scrolling thing constantly in view. Gah! […]

The lovely Bruce Lawson has tagged me with what might be the first ever meme-thingy I’ve completed.
Four jobs I’ve had in my life

Shop assistant (working in the high class footwear establishment that is Shoe Fayre)
Dancer
Silver service waitress
Stage crew in London’s West End working on Jolson! and The Mousetrap

I’ve gone for the pre-child, pre-web jobs here, […]

Due to the lurgy descending on our household, it not being particularly easy to find anywhere fun to go on New Years Eve with a small party person in tow, and us not really being that fussed we spent New Years Eve helping the Small Person to build an internal combustion engine from a kit […]

As title! The Small Person loves the slimy fruits, and I spent ten minutes this morning trying to chop the fruit off the stone without reducing the whole thing to mush. There must be a technique to this.

I’ve been clearing some needed bookshelf space and buying the books I need for my next Open University course at bargain prices at Green Metropolis. I don’t have room for any more bookshelves so I’ve had to promise myself that I’ll get rid of some books before buying any more, so this is an easy […]

So … I don’t post for two months, and when I do, it is for the sole purpose of showing you my pants.

Had I realised just how cool @media was going to be before it sold out, I would have got a ticket. It sounds like a fantastic time was had by all. We did however, manage to meet up with Molly for an evening, and after making her hang around in dodgy parts of London where […]

I remember the first time I saw an image rollover on a web site, and being blown away by the sheer coolness of such a thing. Of course I immediately had to learn how to do it. However, I never really liked JavaScript much after the initial ‘wooo I can make things move’ thing wore […]

Meri Williams makes some excellent points about diversity and gives some reasons as to why most of the really popular technical blogs are written by men, despite there being many women involved in technology and many women bloggers. I completely agree, and have to admit to feeling slightly annoyed by all the “where are the […]

I’m going to be THIRTY next Saturday. I remember when 30 seemed impossibly old, grown-ups were 30 … it was practically middle aged.
Today we took the Small Person to an audition for the National Youth Ballet, sat in the waiting area it seemed only a few weeks ago that it was me doing the […]

A very Happy and Blessed Christmas to those who celebrate.

On Saturday Drew and I left our respective desks and headed into London to meet up with Simon Collison, Malarky, Andy Budd, Jon Hicks, Richard Rutter, Patrick Griffiths, John Oxton and Jeremy Keith. Photos here, here and here - not a pooter in sight!

Last year, I posted to this blog about how in the North-East we carved turnips and not pumpkins for our Hallowe’en lanterns. On checking my webserver logs this evening I discovered a strange increase in traffic (especially strange since I’ve not updated for ages). The reason for my sudden popularity appears to be that […]

Our friends in Reform are at it again - giving the press something to write about by denouncing the Archbishop as a prostitute; Kings College Chapel as a “Temple to Paganism”; and having the usual go at women Priests.
The problem as I see it, is not that this noisy minority go around saying this stuff, […]

Best wishes to Jeffrey Zeldman and Carrie Bickner on the birth of their baby, Ava Marie.
“Babies are such a nice way to start people” - Don Herold

I sit on two committees as a volunteer, there are a lot of similarities between the two committees, both have buildings and people to consider, both have funding issues that need to be considered before even the smallest action is taken and both are made up of mainly volunteers along with a couple of staff […]

If you are reading this you are seeing the new incarnation of rachelandrew.co.uk which is now running on WordPress. I have to say how impressed I am with the simplicity of the WordPress install and the ease with which it imported all of the Movable Type posts and comments.
I’ve also redesigned, with a colour scheme […]

I haven’t disappeared from the face of the earth, or run my car into a tree, however September has been crazy so far. I’ve also been a bit fed up with the amount of spam being posted to this blog and every time I have intended to post I have gone to my admin pages […]

This afternoon I passed my driving test on my first attempt - yay! I went out this evening for my first drive on my own … only caught myself asking the passenger seat if I was ok to go once. I’ve had my own car for quite a while now and I’m used to driving […]

We’ve been on holiday for a week, down to Devon in the UK, land of cream teas and Dartmoor ponies. It was good fun, although I was rather glad to get back to broadband after suffering with a laptop and dialup internet connection for a week!

Despite the fact that I haven’t passed (or even attempted) my driving test yet, I am now the proud owner of a shiny red Ford KA. Learning to drive without having a car to practice in was making the process lengthy and expensive as the only driving experience I was getting was with my instructor.
Now […]

We went geocaching today to try out my GPS device and found two caches! They both contained travel bugs, which are items with dog tags that have a unique tracking number attached, and we now need to move these items on in their journeys by placing them in a new cache.

Today marks the start of my last year of being twenty-something … Drew gave me a handheld GPS device so we can go geocaching, which sounds like the perfect geek outdoor activity. I also got a Thinkgeek gift certificate from my parents, woo!

I recently bought a piano … not a real one with strings that need tuning (we’d never get an upright piano up our stairs) but a decent Kawai digital piano. When I was growing up we always had a piano in the house, but despite my best efforts I never managed to learn to play. […]

We went to the Berkshire College of Agriculture’s open day today, to show the Small Person the newborn lambs and go on tractor rides and other activities that small people (and big people) love. As well as the lambs we saw Alpacas, alpacas are so cool, I’m not generally into animals but I could quite […]

20 years ago I was accompanying my mother round various churches and community centres in the North East to listen to her talk about Fair Trade (and to help carry a variety of large and at times peculiar products). At the time no-one had really heard of the concept and getting hold of fairly traded […]

On Friday the gas men very carefully investigated under the floor boards, I had expected the whole downstairs to be trashed but they did a great job of just lifting enough boards to locate the leak. By mid afternoon we had heat once again. On my way out to collect the Small Person from school, […]

Drew manages to find our current gas situation more amusing than I do. This may be in part due to the fact that he gets to go and work in a nice warm office during the day; while I get to deal with gas men, in the freezing cold, while trying to do something that […]

I’ve gone and got another cold, this is no doubt some kind of divine retribution for always being smug about hardly getting any colds, as this year it seems like someone has just needed to sneeze within a 100 yards of my vicinity and I’ve caught their cold.
Because having a blocked nose makes me horrendously […]

Some comments made on Drew’s blog interest me. Doing a search on Google, the term ‘whitelist’ seems to be used almost always in terms of products that do some kind of filtering - such as that for spam.
The words ‘white’ and ‘black’ don’t immediately make me think of race, they make me think of … […]

The Red Cross have launched an appeal in order to send relief to victims of the earthquake in Iran. You can make a donation online in the UK or visit the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Page.

Bethlehem Media Net strives to be the “voice of the voiceless” bringing the stories of the Palestinian people and their religious communities to the web. Via Sojourners.

I had a phonecall yesterday,
“May I speak to Ms Test?”
I replied that there wasn’t any Ms. Test here, and that this was edgeofmyseat.com…. and there was silence at the end of the line. When she explained where she was calling from, all was made clear, as this particular organisation have been sending me […]

I’ve not posted for a while, mainly because I’ve been a bit poorly, poorly enough to not get much work done which isn’t like me at all, as I normally work through anything.
So now I’m really busy, I was busy before and now it’s crazy! It’s ok though .. the end is in sight and […]

I’ve started to learn to drive. Where I now live people always assume that you drive. I lived in London for 5 years and in London people don’t presume that you have a car, because lots of people don’t. However here, everyone drives their is no local public transport to speak of and everything is […]

When I was a kid, up in the North East of England, there was none of this pumpkin carving business, we were tough, we hollowed out turnips for our lanterns.
If you’ve ever tried to hollow out a turnip, you’ll know that a pumpkin is a much better option, pumpkins are soft and easy to carve, […]

Drew, after his success with his own Favicon, made me one this evening. Which was rather marvellous of him as I’d never have got round to making one for myself.
I had to make one of the decisions I hate to make this evening, I was asked if I could volunteer to do some work on […]

If Jesus once opened the eyes of a blind man, unstopped the ears of the deaf, loosened the tongue of a stammerer, so what? How can that help me? But if I find that his Spirit is still present and powerful to break down my own blinkered selfishness and make me see the truths about […]

Dive Into Mark made me laugh today with this …
“… they’ve lived in their house for twenty years and still have unopened boxes from the old house sitting in the attic. in fact, they still refer to their house as “the new house”. they have a basement too. people like this should not have basements. […]

I’ve been quiet of late. We were away at Greenbelt and then the beginning of September saw the clients who had been as quiet as mice all summer suddenly get interested in their projects again … so I’ve been busy, catching up and getting back into the usual organised chaos that prevails here.
The small person […]

I’m thinking of changing from Vodafone to Orange, due to Vodafone being stupidly expensive when making calls to phones on other networks and most of the people that I call regularly are on Orange.
However, I also want a phone that I can use to check my email with and I’d prefer to stick with […]

If you are seeing this, you are at my new site - I’m not entirely sure when everything will transfer over here.
The old site was based on a very old CMS that I wrote myself and I don’t really have time to keep updated or add to so I made the decision to move to […]

.. is doing a 24 hour blogathon in aid of Oxfam here … go leave bizarre comments to help keep her awake…

It’s very hot and sticky here, I’m from the North, I don’t recollect it ever getting close to this hot up in Newcastle (I do however remember standing waiting for buses at 6a.m. in gale force winds and sleet …) I am working surrounded by fans and an underpowered aircon unit - more to keep […]

… that Canon Jeffrey John has half of the Anglican Church up in arms about his appointment as Bishop of Reading, it has been noted that he bears more than a passing resemblance to Elton John (via Wibsite).

I know this feeling so well.
I’ve just got back from a Chamber of Commerce event, one of these things where you have to stand up and give a three minute presentation about your business. I really don’t like doing this. I sit in my seat feeling the impending doom approaching until it is my turn […]

Drew, the Small person and I have had horrible colds this last week, over the bank holiday as well. No fun.
Last week saw local elections for much of the UK, I had my first experience of local politics going to act as a ‘teller’ at the polling station for the Liberal Democrats. It was marvellous […]

I’ve just been looking over this site, it kind of needs updating …
I am not 26 anymore, neither is The Small Person four and a half
I passed my course in World Religions
I am only managing to post to this blog 2 or 3 times a month
It really isn’t very good - especially when you […]

I was about to flame someone on usenet but decided not to, it would have fallen on deaf ears anyway. Almost every newsgroup or mailing list I’m on seems to have someone who is reporting the war only from their viewpoint. On and on they post, reporting only the news items that support their point […]

Last night, as I was putting the small person to bed, I couldn’t help but think of the Iraqi parents who were preparing for the worst … what do you tell your kids when you are expecting bombing to start?
I oppose this war, as do many people both in the Uk and USA and across […]

I seem to start every month in a state of shock that a new month has arrived, time being an ever precious commodity these days.
This year’s Open University courses have started, this year I’m taking “Reading Classical Latin” and “Religion Today: Tradition, Modernity and Change“, interesting stuff … it’s been a good few years since […]

Just what everyone needs, a Rowan Williams bear!

I’m just thawing out after a week with no heating or hot water.. brrr! I must have gone soft while I’ve been down South, but it’s no fun typing when your fingers are turning blue.

When I was very small we used to watch the Space Shuttle’s televised launches and landings in awe of these near superhumans who could fly into space, I remember the Challenger disaster very clearly - but remember more the way my parents and other people around me reacted to that, than how I felt at […]

Not so long ago, if I received an email with a virus attached, I would email the sender with the relevant instructions of how to remove this virus. I don’t do this any more unless someone is sending repeated virii from the same address, because many of the virii in circulation today spoof their from […]

(only 3 days late)
This is cool - Samuel Pepys diary in blog format, it’s one of those things that is great to read but a bit overwhelming in several weighty tomes! As a blog it will be interesting to follow especially as people can add their own annotations.

Today, I was hit over the head with a cucumber by an insane Christmas shopper. Next year I’m not going anywhere near the shops without an American football-style get up. I’m amazed the Small Person survived the scrum and trolley gridlock in Sainsbury’s unscathed.

We got fish for the office .. then they had baby fish .. now we have a whole lot of fish but they are very cool and the babies are tiny. See the feesch.

The small person has been chosen to play Mary in the year one nativity play, this morning I was cornered by the teacher in charge of this theatrical event,
“last year’s Mary was rather taller, could you just take up these robes a bit and perhaps give them a clean…”
Of course I said yes (fool) but […]

The small person found an enormous wasp in her bedroom today. I don’t like wasps much, I especially don’t like wasps that are twice the size of your average, irritating with a mission to sit on your icecream, garden wasp. Drew was despatched to deal with the mega-wasp and we’re now searching on google for […]

I get some odd email, but tonight’s really takes the biscuit … sent to my business email address.
Dear Rachel. I locate the market for a new fiancèe. You are interested? I too have all my car and to inhale to more things such as this. If you are sharpened, email less within one week or […]

My open university exam is on Tuesday, I feel as if I have learned loads on my course but have no idea whether I will manage to scrawl it all onto the exam paper in three hours. One thing is sure, I’ll be relieved once it is over.
I feel so wiped out at the moment, […]

I love autumn. I’m not a summer person, even the south of England is too warm for this Northerner, and in the heat of August I long for the leaves to change and the crisp autumn mornings.
I have my open university exam this month, I’ve done well in my essays but I haven’t done an […]

I’ve been having tax form fun this week… but the forms are now safely in their brown envelopes ready to be sent off to the tax office tomorrow.
I’m still having fun with my Zaurus - I found a neat chess game for it today which will give me something to do while I wait outside […]

My new Zaurus arrived last Friday, it’s very cool… I’ve been wanting to get a PDA for some time, in order to try and tame the three diaries system I seem to have fallen into, and the Zaurus seemed like a good choice for me, I’m impressed with it so far.

I went down to town today, before the time of the silence. I needed to go to town, but I also wanted to be with other people at that point. All the shops had posters in their windows explaining they would be holding the silence at 1.46 (British Summer Time), at that time a whistle […]

.. I’m working, writing tonight, hoping to be making some sense as I ramble on about the things I do every day, in the hope that it is helpful to someone else.
The Greenbelt blog is still ongoing, it’s fun to read people’s postings after having met many of them in real life at the festival. […]

One year ago I left work and started my own web development business edgeofmyseat.com. One year on and I’m still in business, enjoying what I do and with plenty of work. I’m very glad I took the risk.

… then you are on my new server. Hopefully I haven’t broken anything while moving this site, if anything behaves more strangely than usual let me know!

Dr Rowan Williams will be the next Archbishop of Canterbury. This is a Very Good Thing.

.. and its wet and cold. I incur the wrath of the small person daily for dressing her inappropriately as the weather plays evil tricks on us. If its bright first thing you can be sure it will be really cold and wet by 10a.m. if its raining and cold when we get dressed, by […]

Do you use Homesite? If you do you might like to take a look at this site for loads of fantastic Homesite extensions, real ’save you a whole bunch of typing’ stuff.
On the subject of web development software, here’s the book I am co-authoring on Dreamweaver MX - chapters on CSS and (X)HTML by yours […]

I survived the small person’s 5th birthday party yesterday, and was only pinned in the corner by insane five year olds once during the proceedings! The next challenge is moving house, and therefore office, in the next week.
Drew and I tackled cleaning and packing in the small person’s room today, I removed about 50 books, […]

… if anyone has any spare ones, just send them this way, even slightly used hours would be greatly appreciated. Soon, I might be able to tell you about some of the things I’ve been busy with - you never know!
Drew and I have been known to sell strange things on eBay, my mother has […]

The Small Person has been asking me to come and help at her nursery one day, so I figured that going along one Monday morning to ‘help 6 children do some cooking’ would be fairly painless … how wrong I was…
I get there and a very nice teacher shows me where all the cooking […]

… and not of the muddy type!
I have a static problem so bad that I have to take off my shoes before I start work to ensure that I earth myself, and I have computers that have to have their power discharged (switch off at the back, then press the start button) before they will […]

My sister returned to the USA yesterday and my mother arrives from the USA early tomorrow morning! The Small Person is in her element with people arriving to play with her.
I’m working on various things most of which remain under wraps for the time being. The main exciting news around here is my fax machine […]

The beginning of March heralds the fact that I have been, successfully, running my own business full time for 6 months. Which is cool.
It also signifies the due date of my first essay for my Open University course which is due on Wednesday coming and is all written and ready to mail out today - […]

I have been posting random stuff here for a whole year! A whole year of random rambling available for your pleasure.
I’ve just got back from the hospital where they prodded at my neck in order to perform a Carotid Duplex. Thankfully this is really just an ultrasound scan - just the same sort of thing […]

This article based on a survey taken by the Guides Association tells us the dreadful news that girls today don’t know how to boil an egg.
I appreciate that the article is based on research done by an all-female organisation, but surely the emphasis should be that young people (regardless of gender) are not gaining important […]

So much is going on here, hence my beginning of month silence - lots of work, my Open University course has started, I’m slowly disappearing under a mountain of paperwork that must be done while I can still see my desk… but we’re fine.
I have been informed that the evil night bird is probably […]

The problem with both working and playing online means that I rarely leave the computer. Work and play seem to merge seamlessly (and scarily) into one. Thankfully my Open University course starts at the beginning of February which will force me to leave this chair and do some reading - from a book.. and not […]

I just realised I haven’t updated this since the 9th… you wouldn’t believe I spend all my time in front of a computer! This site is like the piles of personal emails I have in my inbox, that I need to reply to, and then I look at the date and realise I’ve been meaning […]

Someone who isn’t five yet is pinching all the bandwidth in this flat. The small person has discovered the web and she likes it!
I’ve shown adults how to use a web browser and it took more time than explaining it to the small person, who cannot read yet! However, she knows what the back button […]

It’s 2:18a.m. on the 1st of January 2002 here in the U.K. I’ve spent the evening here at home, with my daughter and Drew, playing with computers and chatting with friends online… I don’t know what happened to the Rachel who used to stay out for several nights at a time, I think she got […]

2001 was a year in which I turned 26, a year in which my daughter started nursery school, a year in which I followed my heart and started working for myself again, a year in which it all began to work out.
2001 bumbled past in my corner of the world, the small person got bigger, […]

… that has been greeting my blog visitors for the last day was due to the fact that I wasn’t here as we rolled over into a new month.
I have been up to the cold North of the country visiting relatives, the Small Person has been duly spoiled rotten but enjoyed seeing her great-grandmother (who […]

It isn’t that I have nothing to write about, sometimes I come here, to add to this, and can’t think of how to say what I wanted to say.
The big project is all but finished, it should be live in a few days. Which is good because I have suddenly become ill, and no-one knows […]

I know how Zeldman feels. I feel like I have had my chair welded to my bum for the last month. This big project is almost complete though, and I’m pretty pleased with it. I should be pleased with it…
I’m not someone who has ever wanted to be ‘good enough’. I’ve always wanted to be […]

…at 9 am this morning, some workmen turn up, put a generator outside my window and proceed to drill into the wall of the flat above me. This is really helping me work….
My Linux box is still resolute in its refusal to allow me to configure XFree86, the horrible thing is sat there, happy in […]

I seriously have no idea where the time goes, I want it to slow down… I want to slow down, and I never seem to achieve that. I’m increasingly envious of the people who can spend an evening lounging in a chair, watching TV or reading a book, and just being.
The constant need to […]

..the huge project is coming together nicely. In the last few days it seems to have really started to click together, it’s great when that happens.
Someone at church today said they had read my site and felt they ‘knew more about me … was that a good thing?’ It made me think for a […]