BestJobBen.com was an opportunity for Ben to write his own, unfiltered blog whilst he was away on Hamilton Island, it is now also the vehicle for the Best Expedition in the World.

The site was built on a small budget, and Ben was savvy with the Social Media side, all we had to do was launch the customised WordPress platform and let him build the content.

www.bestjobben.com

They needed branding, literature a website and vehicle livery all in matching styles.

The website is a highly customised WordPress installation, with extensive Social Media integration and plenty of space for the business to grow.

www.boardsandbikes.co.uk

The client was already active on Facebook, with some tinkering to a fully customised WordPress theme and Social Media integration the site became a great example of a client using their web platform to its full potential.

www.agentlynch.com

WATBus has a legacy, hand-coded website that never got updated.

A new WordPress installation was the solution they needed to be able to post updates and news to the site.

www.watbus.org.uk

Aidan Talbot needed a website re-vamp in a hurry. The budget was very limited, but we worked with the client and gave them a functional, SEO ready, CMS driven WordPress website that is easy to update and add content to.

http://www.aidantalbot.com

I was reading a blog post last night, about why your blog doesn’t get read, most of which i agreed with. Therefore with a spurt of energy, im going to throw myself at writing more frequently and openly. Apparently its the best way.

Whats been taking-up all my time ? well, Agent Lynch has a shiny new website, powered by WordPress, Flickr, Youtube, Facebook and Twitter. We had fun making that happen. It was the first Facebook Connect integration I’ve done and was nice to see it implemented and working. Ms Lynch is a good friend of a couple of friends – if that’s even a sentence – one of whom is Roxy Velvet. It was great to get her a sit up and running that she not only liked visually, but could attack from a content point of view and really enjoy working with.

AgentLynch.com

The Facebook Connect integration was done with relative ease, using a WordPress plugin that needed only a small amount of kicking and hacking to get working as I needed. I did in-fact use two plugins, one for the on-page login, and one for the admin/user prompt login. All the other Twitter/Flickr/Youtube bits and pieces are the standard ones ive used elsewhere.

If 6 Was 9 – its back ! – Randall has got new designs and a new movie. After filming on his trip to the Mentawai’s, he posted the video on the We are If 6 Was 9 blog. The flash site was produced by him, i just helped get the pre-loader, hosting and analytics sorted.

Slatehall Riding Centre

I did a superb little shoot last week to get some shots for a local tourism brochure and book. Slatehall Riding Centre met me on the beach along with Claire from Imapct PR and we had some fun in the shallows. Nice looking shots we all thought. The full Flickr set is here.

Bamburgh Castle

Holy Island Castle

Beach gallop

Farne Island Divers

Finally, over the bank holiday I spent the weekend with the Farne Island Divers crew diving with the seals around the Longstone. A great few days that I recorded with my little Canon compact, and the result was this small but fun video chopped together fro the video clips..

Farne Islands Divers – Diving with Seals – August 2009 from swinhoe on Vimeo.

More once Ive got something to say…

Last night I stayed up late to watch the WCT fellas finish off the contest in Tahiti. There’s nothing like a surf contest in a perfect location, streamed live over the web to get you pining for a wave. Sadly there ain’t nothing doing here for a week at least.

Taj was beaten by an on-form Bobby Martinez to take the title, with Parko, Slater and Bede all going out early.

Aritz had another good event taking out Kelly en-route to a semi’s spot.

And then after watching that last night, whilst eating breakfast I watched the second in the awesome South Pacific series on BBC2.

Awesome footage and insight into the world of the ocean and islands.

Then stupidly I link-out from a tweet and start reading about the North-east guys who are getting set for a Mentawai trip… which in turn reminds me that 5 good friends have only just returned from the damn place – where they scored (as you do in Indo…)

Some snaps from their trip are below…

Indo dream

Randall getting set-up to be slotted...

Mentawai Perfection

More Mentawai Perfection

Yet More Mentawai Perfection

Now, normally all this would be fine, I can handle a fair bit of land-locked torture – its good for the mind every once in a while. Except I have to drive to London tomorrow. And that just makes things worse.

In fairness, im going to see a good friend who has the Best Job in the World… so there are gonna be some good bits. But im also going to a funeral and that wont be so good.

Anyway, to come full-circle, envy is terrible, but Im not letting it get to me. Im using it to motivate and search for that trip of my own. I’ll ge my piece of Indo gold… im just waiting in the meatime. Making it work for me…

Having done a lot of work with elearning material over the years, it was fun to get back into it for a small job via the agency. SCORM wrappers needed to be added to nice looking html site to get it working in a Blackboard LMS.
All pretty straight forward really. Except it had been a while. So I got Google out and began a quick scout-around for new developments.

I was very happy to find Pipwerks.com, and its very useful collection of scripts and API hacks. Kudos there for making the API interactions a lot easier than 3 years ago.

Diversity in the Workplace

Today im getting a chance to do some exciting SEO stuff…. *yawn*

Im also busy trying to get http://www.beadnellbay.info up and running as fast as I can… its getting there.

So, to make it all a bit more fun, here’s a lovely song/video from Boards of Canda to brighten the day (linked via Charlie…thanks !)

In other news, I contacted the Magicseaweed guys and they kindly added Beadnell Bay, so we now have a forecast for the village !

http://magicseaweed.com/Beadnell-Bay-Surf-Report/992/

Also, this is awesome !!

http://www.underwatersculpture.com/