Wired Nomad

A Day of Different Cultures

Off to Dawyck Botanic Gardens this morning, one of four gardens that comprise the National Botanic Gardens of Scotland, on a fine spring day, for the official launch of the new visitor centre by Scottish Rural Affairs Secretary Richard Lochhead.

The garden is already among the Borders top paid-for attractions but the new centre should take visitor numbers from 21,000 to more than 30,000 by 2017.

Caught up with some clients and past colleagues, Peter Nowell and Janet Sylvester. Overall, a greatly improved tourist attraction for the Scottish Borders.

Early evening, rare social event - 3 friends from the village and I (age range 18 - 48) head off to the Royal Concert Hall in Glasgow for an evening of Joe Satriani, who graduated from the University of Life with a First in fingering technique plus a PHD in the art of plank spanking. Most people I mention it to say - who? Hard rock American guitarist, famous from 1992 for his album The Extremist, whole thing a bit long, 3 hours including similar support act Paul Gilbert (Flashy, no emotion), so can't complain about ticket value.

Visit Tweed Valley Website Rebrand launches

The other major project this month was more difficult than I had thought to complete - the rebranding project for Visit Tweed Valley, which entailed moving from a .com domain to a different .co.uk domain on the same web host - the DNS changes required took well over the alleged 72 days to happen!

Pleased with the new look, and we've just completed the Microsoft mapping application update on the new server. I've done quote a bit of behind the scenes work on the Google sitemap and keyword updates, it will be interesting to see how site traffic works out over the next 3 months given the temporary disruption, but more accessible coding overall.

New Projects This Month

There's obviously a lot going on in home grown tourism this year, the Visit Tweed Valley rebrand is about to go live, and I've been asked to update the website for Lyne Farm and redesign one for Ingraston Farm Bed and Breakfast. But there's plenty of activity elsewhere - several new projects are awaiting confirmation, including 3 in the property sector. An auction add-on for Peebles Riding Club. Developing a blog for one of Mainstream Publishing's authors, Martha Long. Gearing the Edinburgh International Book Festival website up for the press launch on June 12th.

New challenges every day.

Pushkin Prize Update

The article appeared in today's Times, you can read it online here. No sign of the crutches in the photograph in the printed version!

Off to the Pushkin Prize

Off to the Archer's Hall in Edinburgh this morning for the awarding of the Pushkin Prize, a joint Scottish-Russian arts venture. S1 and S2 pupils in every Scottish local authority school are invited to send in their creative writing folios, and 10 from Scotland and 2 from Russia are selected to attend a 5 day creative writing course, this year with author Diana Hendry, at Moniack Mhor, Scotland's National Writing Centre.

So why did we go? Number 2 daughter won from Peebles High School this year (Peebles have a good creative record here) and we were really pleased to find out that she had won the overall First Prize! Much to her embarrassment, her winning short story had to be read out, but also, there will be an article in the Times, tomorrow or Wednesday.

With photographs.

Which is why standing on a rusty nail on Saturday night necessitating a visit to Sick Kids, finishing 15 minutes before the ceremony, was not what was needed. Check out the Times over the next couple of days perhaps for a bashful teenager on crutches...

Scotia Pools Goes Live

Well the reason I never made it to the Guardian Podcast recording in Edinburgh last Friday was that 2 websites needed to go live urgently, and the first up was Scotia Pools.

Very much a first phase, launch website - as the business gets up and running in Scotland - phase 2 will include more detailed examples of live projects.

Guardian Tech Weekly in Edinburgh

The Guardian's Tech Weekly team are coming to Edinburgh on Friday 25th April, and I'll be there. It's being held at the Home House in Edinburgh.

"We'll be hosting a very meet and greet for techies and the social media-inclined, and as this is the first in a series of on-the-road recordings for guardian.co.uk's Tech Weekly podcast, we want to hear from the brightest sparks and hottest issues in Edinburgh's tech community."

Great to see they want to come to Edinburgh first, if you want to attend (40 places only and filling first, strangely with a number of people I've worked with in a past life or two...) there's a link here.

More Tourism Websites

Since launching the Scottish Tourist Guides Edinburgh branch website last month, I've completed work for 2 individual guides websites and been appointed to do a search engine optimisation project for the Cringletie Hotel.

The first guide website was also a search engine optimisation project for artEscapes who offer specialist holidays - mainly in Scotland, Spain and Greece -  and went from no presence to top 10 listing on key search phrases within 2 weeks on Google.

The second guide site was for Edinburgh guide Maggie McLeod who specialises in the American market.

Edinburgh Tourist Guide Web Launch

The Edinburgh branch of the Scottish Tourist Guides Association asked me to produce a website to reinforce their professional skills in organising tours in Edinburgh and around, coupled with a desire to show the fun side of what they offer. So the site combines images of traditional tourist attractions (the Castle, Royal Mile, Edinburgh Zoo and so on) with images of Dementors, Nessie's cousin Bessie and a group of Nordic engineers on a team building exercise in silly glasses and nose combos. And a whole lot more.

The site went live today.

Politics and Cartoons

Just waiting for a couple of projects to go live, and thought I should post another blog entry before then and loved this one I came across on Slate about the difference between Hilary and Obama, Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny.

Now I need some time to work out the comparisons in the UK... The only problem is I can't see Gordon Brown as a cartoon character at all. Possibly Spike the angry dog from Tom and Jerry?