Monday morning I fly.

And I ain't got wings!

The hard graft on this site and a fancy new CV has paid off. 9AM, 8th Dec, I start at Thomson Reuters. Beer all round!

I've just received confirmation that my portfolio is going to be featured in the next publication by The Creative Unity. I'm ordering 10 copies :-)

I recently visited Aquent as part of my job search. Unusually, they asked me to sit a design test lasting approximately an hour and a half. It consisted of coming up with a home page design for a make believe holiday site similar to the likes of Expedia. I also had to provide a half page accompanying document on my design reasoning.

I was rather pleased with the result, not least because I had to do it with a mouse, which for a left-handed tablet user is an alien entity.

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One of my hopes for this new portfolio was to get it featured on some of the many design and CSS galleries. The reason for this? Ego. As a designer - well for me at least - a huge part of the design process is the recognition, praise and adulation that comes from producing an accepted and applauded piece of work. Well, I've got it! In some short measure, admittedly, but it's enough to keep the ego happy for now.

So, it is with great pride that I can list my site as being recognised on CSS Zone, CSS Mania, Most Inspired, Wes Baker (thanks Wes!) and CSS Loggia.

This website hasn't been debugged for IE6. There are a few layout and visual issues, nothing major but it does add to the ever present tedium of fixing perfectly good code for an obsolete piece of software.

It is unrealistic to think we can drop support for IE6 as it is so intrinsically woven into the mindset of most web users. However, as a designer I MUST support web revolutions like IE Death March. Development of web based applications is by definition a long process with extensive testing required, and has been the mainstay of my employment for the last few years. IE6 has always played a major part in extending time lines, cost and patience.

Obviously, this is just a rant and in all likelihood, we'll just have to wait for the rest of the world to catch up and start using the likes of Firefox & Opera. But in the meantime, we can sharpen the Guillotine!

As I'm fairly new to this blogging malarkey, I thought it best to begin with something very close to my heart, job, life. I'm of course talking about Photoshop, that backbone of the design industry that just keeps on giving. After nearly 10 years of use it still feels like I have barely scratched the surface of its abilities and am constantly learning new and wonderful techniques.

This isn't a promotion for Photoshop (no commission I'm afraid), but a promotion for the fantastic lexicon of techniques, tricks and knowledge that can be found at PSDTUTS. Having only discovered this resource recently - I was living in a hole - I find myself visiting daily and promising myself that I will find the time to try out some of the techniques listed. Time, alas, is limited and I can't really justify taking 2-3 hours of the day to indulge myself. However, here's my first New Years resolution; I WILL spend 2 hours every week learning a new technique from this site.

If you are new to Photoshop or an old hat, make the time also, it's worth it.