Sunrise over the Solent

Sunrise over the Solent
Originally uploaded by gcman.

Taken from near Bembridge, looking out over the Solent.

St. Catherine's Lighthouse

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Originally uploaded by gcman.

St Catherine's Lighthouse.
Processed twice in camera raw, then Photoshoped.

The making of the new sony bravia paint advert in toryglen g

And this is how it was done!

bravia advert

I think this is cool!

Fireworks Night 2006

CIMG1183
Originally uploaded by gcman.

Taken on Sandown beach.

Good website design.

The King of all Web sites Have something interesting to say and people will love you. Hide behind all the pretty graphics in the world, but if there's no content in there no-one will come back. Content really is King.

Keep it simple The surfing audience has a notoriously short attention span... Still with us? Good, then make your navigation simple and intuitive. Keep your text in bite size chunks and maybe they'll stick around.

The three Click Rule Try and adhere to this and you'll not go far wrong. Make any page available within 3 clicks from the homepage. If you don't think this is possible, think again. Some sites, with over 500 pages, complies with this rule.

Spell Check Simple enough to do this one, or is it? There's nothing more annoying than bad spelling. Every computer in the world has some kind of spell checking facility. Use it!

Page Sizes Don't cram your entire site on a single page that scrolls down into infinity and takes three weeks to load. Spend a little time planning and offer your visitors smaller pages that fit together well.

Colours & Contrasts One of our favourites, the dark blue text on a black background trick! Make sure the colours you use compliment the message. Another pitfall to avoid is the busy background that obscures the text.

Flashing lights Keep your animations to a minimum. One or two per page is more than enough for anyone and if you give your visitors a headache, chances are they aren't going to love you for it.

You've been Framed! Frames, not so long ago they were very popular but with them comes all sorts of horrors in getting the display right and keep the site together for visitors who came in through deeper pages. Avoid them.

Under construction! Simple, if it's not ready, don't post it. All sites are, or at least should be, being constantly built and updated. Keep your work behind the scenes.

Interaction Give your visitors things to do. Bulletin boards, surveys, forms, quizzes, chat rooms, games. There's all sorts of ways to get your visitors involved in your site.

_A292202

_A292202
Originally uploaded by gcman.

ThunderCat racing at WightAir 2006

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_A292439
Originally uploaded by gcman.

Taken from Yaverland looking back towards Sandown (WightAir 2006)

SEO some facts!

There are no secrets in SEO.
The web is a very open, and if a site is ranking high in the search engine listings, then you can, with enough persistence, get to see why!

Keywords.
Make sure your chosen keyword or phrase is contained within the title and URL, and then simply make sure your content is on topic.

Links.
Links, links, links and more links! Links are what make a search engine find your page, and then they combine to rank it higher in the search engines results page (SERP).

....more to follow.

Ethan1

Ethan1
Originally uploaded by gcman.

Taken with S2 pro

Looking into Google Calendar

I have been playing around with google calendar. Seem to bee quite cool! See my agenda at the bottom of the page.

AuntieP Exhibition

Exhibition
Originally uploaded by Auntie P.

Apollo theater in Newport, Isle of WIght.

Olympus e400

Finally decided ( I think ) to buy the new Olympus e400 DSLR. I've been really happy with my Olympus E1, so rather than go over to Nikon ( D200 ) I am going for the e400 while waiting for Olympus to bring out the new pro DSLR EP-1?

facts4.me.uk weblog is ready!

The fact4s.me.uk project now has weblog and forum sections.

Art Class

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Originally uploaded by gcman.

Going to miss my art class tomorrow!!

Stacks and flowers

Stacks and flowers Originally uploaded by gcman.

To remind James of Dartington.