Hello, I‘m a Musician and Web Designer/Coder.

Today was such a beautiful looking day that it made you want to look up at the sky and say,

“Well done sky, good job.”

The cat seemed to like it too…

I’ve been lucky to own an iPad for a months now and it’s proved very useful for various musical and web related things. When I first got it I had a look around the net for a notebook/moleskin or book style case, and eventually settled on one made by Treegloo. It worked well at protecting the iPad and is extremely well constructed but I always felt it was a bit bulky and after looking on the net came to the conclusion that this was a common feature of a lot of these cases i.e. those with a wooden frame surrounded by a book jacket cover such as those from Portenzo and DodoCase.

So, after browsing around the net a bit further, I read a post by someone suggesting fixing a silicone case inside the cover of a book… and that is what I did

The silicone case is a Belkin TPU Grip Vue for iPad – Clear suitable for the current original version of the iPad (iPad 2 hasn’t been announced at the time of writing this). The book is a copy of Biodynamic Gardening for Health and Taste by Hilary Wright, available for around a fiver from my local charity shop and the case is fixed onto the inside cover of the book using strips of velcro about 1cm wide, a strip on each side, quite close to the edge of the iPad where it curves up so so that it doesn’t add too much to the thickness. To keep it closed when moving it about I just use a largish rubber band.

The case is starting to look a bit scuffed up now after a couple of months use, but I don’t mind this too much, so long as it holds together which it should do with the strips of Gaffa tape fixed on the inside of the spine. Overall I love it as it disguises the iPad, is light and doesn’t mask the curved contours of the iPad making it much nicer to hold. You can even position it in a standing / propped up position for watching your favourite TED talks on.

The book that the cover came from is still usable too; glueing it’s dust jacket back onto it means it’s now become a paperback!

More photos available on my Flickr page.

I recently went to the launch party for my local Transition Town movement. I’d heard the term, Transition Town being used for a while as one of my housemates is an architect involved with this, but I had no idea what it was all about apart from knowing that it’s something eco friendly and generally groovy.

According to their website, Transition Towns is all about…

So I was right, it is about something eco friendly and groovy. There were all sorts of different ideas being presented at the launch party, among them, sustainable architecture, a food co-op selling locally grown produce, how to make your garden more wildlife friendly and bee keeping.

I didn’t get a chance to speak to the bee keeper but I hope these new bee keepers are being taught how to keep their bees ethically – i.e. to encourage the bees to produce a surplus of honey so the bees aren’t left just feeding on the sugared water that some bee keepers leave them after taking their winter food.

To find out more about Transition towns visit their website at… www.transitionnetwork.org/

After many long hours of designing and coding I’ve just finished redesigning this website.

There’s still a few things I want to change and tidy up, including a few oddities that are occurring in Internet Explorer but it’s the weekend, it’s a lovely day outside, and I want to go out and play in the sunshine!