UK Cannabis InformationMy first site, which I developed with Neal Deason in October '95, teaching ourselves HTML, contains well-referenced information on legal, medical, historical, political, social, industrial and botanical aspects of the world's most controversial plant, with particular reference to the UK. Running UKCIA has taught me a lot about website organisation, management and promotion, as over the years I've improved the design, implementing all the new webskills I've learnt. An early success was the publishing of Graeme Steel's prison diary, which got us some unwanted press attention from the Mail on Sunday - a "drugs propaganda of Liberal leader's son" tabloid shock horror piece. |
Legalise Cannabis Campaign ScotlandIn May '96 I was lucky to met Tom and Jules Craig of ThePulse, early professional website designers who were now more interested underground sites. I learnt a lot of web-site design and marketing tips from them collaborating on this site (e.g. it was the first time I used margins for pages). We had a press launch at Electric Frog internet cafe with Graeme Steel, which got some press, but generally hit rates were very low, so I became rather disillusioned and was happy to return to UKCIA. The best part of the site is the News Archive. I wrote about 40 Scottish and World cannabis news stories, from press releases and newspaper reports, developing my editing and writing skills. |
Gateway to the UndergroundI researched and reviewed a wide range of underground and counter-establishment websites for ThePulse, and slotted them into an elegant and simple tables-based layout. ThePulse now trade as Paradox Cafe, and I almost started working for them, but they couldn't guarantee funding so I accepted the university post. |
UK Cannabis InformationWhen Neal Deason left to go to college, I took over UKCIA again and gave it a much needed revamp, organising it into directories and incorporating the website design and promotion skills ThePulse had taught me. Page requests increased to around 7000 a week and Paul Flynn MP called it "a treasure trove of information". |
Children of Albion Rovers Club NiteThe massive Edinburgh literary underground event held on the 30th December '96 was a great success. My flatmate Kristina Glitters took some great photos of Irvine Welsh, Paul Reekie and DJ Wiseblood, and within a couple of days we had them online thanks to the scanning and image-editing skills of Angela Taylor, who also helped me with the MEG website. I learnt a lot about Photoshop from her. |
Marine and Environmental GeosciencesThe first site I was paid for! Developed for my old friends and collegues at Edinburgh University's Geology Department, unfortunately they were slow at supplying the content. There are still large sections of it that just say text text text text text text text, forlornly waiting for a bit of editorial input. Angie Taylor helped with the logo, but I did the scanning myself, and had to airbrush out a lazy student from one shot!! |
Science and Engineering Library, Learning and Information CentreWhen my design for the MEG website was seen, I was quickly snapped up by this project's team. For the next year I researched and developed online learning techniques, produced pilot web-based educational materials for a variety of science subjects, ran the project's internet/intranet website, prepared training materials in how to design online learning webpages, and organised workshops about online learning. |
 Glitters Web ZoneKristina is a talented Australian photographer, who I was lucky to live with in Edinburgh in '96. I did this web page for her featuring some of her photos. She is currently lving in Sydney where another friend of her's that works as web designer has done another web page for her! I don't have the address for that yet. |
 KLF web pagesI've been a fan of the KLF since 1987, and have been researching and writing about them on the 'Net since 1994. I wrote the first version of the KLF FAQ then, but it took me until 1997 to start assembling my KLF web pages, which follow on from the FAQ. There's various articles and compilations of information up there and whenever I get time I try to add more. |
Industrial Fleet ManagementI knocked up this forklift hire company website for a friend of my Mum's while on holiday in Australia, it only took a few hours. We decided on a very simple 'placeholder' site optimised for search engines. |
SELLIC (cont.)As soon as I returned from Australia and New Zealand, I re-developed the SELLIC website, incorporating navigation links into the header, which also indicate section and sub-section location. The site used SSI extensively which I learnt from boss John Butler. Throughout 1998 I continued to research and develop online learning techniques, produce interactive web-based educational materials, and significantly increased the amount of "WebSkills" training materials on the site. Unfortunately after my departure the SELLIC website was re-designed and they didn't keep any of my content. |
Reduce, Reuse, RecycleA wee attempt at environmental education using JavaScript. Have a look. |
Flash AnimationsOne project at SELLIC that I loved, was creating teaching materials using Macromedia Flash. These animations were produced in collaboration with lecturers and used on undergraduate science courses. They ranged from cell biochemistry to electrical and mechanical engineering. Unfortunately I can only find 3 of them now. |
The Leaf Trading CompanyI finally helped my mate Andrew to get his hemp mail order business online. It featured photos of me and his family modelling the clothes! It was a typical catalogue site, but not a shopping basket one. Unfortunately Andrew's Hemp business folded, he sold off his stock and the website is gone now. |
Ediburgh Uni LibraryThrough my SELLIC connections I got the job of re-designing the Edinburgh University Library website. This was a real "design by committee" site and they made so many changes it became a nightmare, and I was not happy with the finished site. The navigation menu is cut into different images so that the current section could be indicated and the menu expanded. They are still using the design on the sub pages, though it badly needs an update, while the homepage has been changed. |
CAL Resource BankOne major project that I co-created in my last three months at SELLIC was an database of online learning resources. It was designed to be shared by all the learning technology groups around the university and referenced via a number of different routes, allowing all sorts of cross-referencing and filtering out of information not relevant to that group. The results were displayed as part of the web pages of each group. I created the logo for it by distorting the Edinburgh University crest. |
Things To Do When You're Not Watching TVHelped a friend develop her home page, which is mainly a showpiece for her writing, but also a call to arms - turn off those TV sets, and go and do something less boring instead! The front page is a really complex sliced up graphic reassembled with a table layout so that the TV set in the centre can be an animated gif. |
NZ NORMLAs soon as I arrived in New Zealand I went down to see the groovy cats at the Hemp Store and offer my services. I don't have time to do much to their site, but I've made it more search engine friendly, done some scanning and added some photos as well as a latest news box to their front page. I also added the NetMind update-notification service to many pages. |
NZ Green PartyI'm very excited to be running the NZ Greens website. They have a couple of MPs. I'm sure I'll get some great campaigning experience in the run up to the '99 election. The first thing I did on taking over the site was to re-organise it into sub-sections, to make it easier to navigate. Gradually I got the HTML to be consistent so that changes can be made to the whole site easily now. I'm looking forward to introducing lots of innovative environmental education webpages. |
Unitec IWDIn January 1999 I joined the staff at the Department of Computing at UNITEC, teaching various Internet related courses, but mainly the IWD (Internet & Webpage Design) course which I completely redeveloped. This was one of the first UNITEC courses to be available online, there are many more now, though few can really be studied completely remotely from Auckland like ours can. It hasn't always looked like this, its been a gradual evolution since I started teaching on it. Currently it is hosted using the WebCT system, mainly so that it is password protected. |
HyperDISCHyperDISC is our teaching webserver at UNITEC, and among other things it hosts a gallery of all the project websites created by my students. Because it is a teaching server it is often down (e.g. while we create student accounts). At this time there were no Computing Dept. staff or course information on the UNITEC website, so when I updated the HyperDISC design, I added staff and course profiles, using the Templates and Library features of Dreamweaver. |
The Waiheke projectA Waiheke Island Millenium grassroots eco-project needed a website, and they needed it done by the end of the century. I only had a few hours and little visual input from the client, so it was very simple and mainly text. |
Unitec MastersIn January 2000 the Department of Computing at UNITEC launched its' Masters of Computing programme. In the first semester I taught a course called Internet Applications which was a fantastic challenge, due to the very wide range of skills, abilities and egos in the class. Of course the course had a website, hosted using the Blackboard Course Info system like all the Masters courses, which is very restricting. This is my lecturer information page. |
Unitec MastersIn July 2000, the second semester of the Unitec Masters of Computing degree I taught a course called Website Management for the first time. This uses a very similar Blackboard Course Info hosted website. It was a real challenge to develop another completely new course. |
Unitec IWD2In July 2001 I began teaching a new undergraduate course I developed called Internet & Web Development 2. This focuses on real-world website design and management tasks and attempts to build up the students HTML, CSS, JavaScript and image editing skills. Of course the course had a website, again hosted using the Blackboard Course Info system. This makes four new courses I have completely developed. |
Green PartyOn the 7th December 2001, to mark Green Day, the anniversary of getting seven Green MPs, we launched a completely new design for the Greens site. It taught me why you should never have a fixed date for a launch because I had to stay up all night to get it finished and even then there were some pages not switched over. The design was done by Michelle and incorporated the leaf motif from the logo throughout the design. Like the previous design this uses a relative width expanding table that works at all monitor resolutions. The navigation menu has a Javascript image rollover and a drop down DHTML menu. |
Orlando FlowersThe biggest freelance paid commercial site I've done, was for Orlando Flowers, an Auckland based exclusive florist who specialises in weddings and corporate events. The design was done by Michelle in Fireworks and then recreated using standard HTML and CSS by me. The navigation menu expands and is highlighted to indicate section and subsection and has a mix of Javascript image rollovers and CSS rollovers. The site features over 100 photos which Michelle scanned, cropped and colour corrected manually, but then we produced the web images using a Photoshop batch actions. The site has been very successful attracting lots of new business via a "request a quote" form. |