On Christmas eve Sye came round so that we could exchange gifts. Sye made me one of the nicest gifts I have ever received:

This drawing of me and the cats, drawn and coloured by Sye is brilliant and shows his true talent. Click on any of the pictures above for full size. I thanked Sye and he told me to check my email Christmas Day. Sye left and I went to bed, early, after all it was Christmas eve.

On Christmas Day I checked my email and I had one off Sye. He’d designed me a new logo:

(The New Logo.)

(The Old Logo, for you to compare.)

Not only that, but he intends to help me to redesign the new blog in the Summer of next year. So a project for us to work on together!

Then it was time for the cats Dylan & Russell to receive their gifts:

(Cats getting into their Christmas bag.)

(Cats playing with a spinning penguin toy.)

(Cats chasing the lazer pen beam.)

(The cats got lots of toys for Christmas.)

The day continued with a quick visit to see Kay (my good friend) & her family. After that I went to spend the day at mums. Without any doubt the best aspect about the day was spending Christmas with family and friends. In particular my little nephew Ethan (photos of him coming soon, promise).

Hope you all had a Merry Christmas.

Write soon,

Antony

Oh and I’ve updated the Photos page and added the Book List 2011 page.

Write soon,

Antony

Version 1
My first version was created in HTML and looked like this:

It had sections to it: Personal, Carrer and Occult. It had Quick Links News on the home page.

The Navigation was simplistic as was the site as a whole. This first version of the site was online when I was 16 years old and at that time I didn’t have the domain antonysimpson.com.

Version 2

Version 2 was designed with sidebar Navigation in order to allow me to populate the site with much more content. It again was designed in HTML using tables. It contained much more photos than Version 1 including a photo’s section.

New features included a News page that had paragraphs of my news including Site Updates to let the visitors know what had been developed and updated. The Occult section of Version 1 became religion as I accepted Paganism as part of my religion. This version of the site was online around the time when I was 18 years old.

Version 3

Most significantly in Version 3 was the new blue design. I kept the sidebar navigation as I liked that it allowed me to populate the rest of the site with more content. The site used a combination of HTML and PHP, using Iframes. Removed the Site Updates but added on a Last Updated sentence on the home page so that people know when it was last updated.

The news section (above) had a page per news entry and an archive like a blog.

Version 4

Kept the same blue colours design. Kept the last updated sentence on the home page. Moved the Navigation to the top of the page. The main feature of this site was a wordpress blog which unfortunately I deleted being unable to pull off the posts and saving them. This was probably the shortest version of the site ever online, really I only focused on the blog.

Version 5

Again I kept the blue design (look above). It was the most advanced coding I had done so far. I liked the photos and had more of them to use as technology developed. I kept the Last Updated sentence and added a hit counter.

I created a windows-style little windows for the content. For the first time I had a guestbook.

Version 6

The major change in this design was the colours, using oranges and reds. The site design was the same, but I uploaded much more content.

Version 7

Easier on the eye colours were used. Advanced PHP coding used. Meta tags added so that I would appear in search results. For the first time I used an RSS feed. This was probably one of the longest sites online.

Navigation returned the sidebar with little yellow star bullet points! I discovered photoshop and used it to make my own banners. Put news on the home page. Kept expanding the site adding new sections and pages.

Also added Coming Soon – so that visitors would know what new content was to be added and Site Updates makes a return so visitors know what’s been recently updated.

Version 8

My friend Sye designed this site for me. I asked him to design it after seeing his cartoon artwork (see Funny cartoons from a friend and More funny cartoons from a friend). The idea was to create a noticeboard with a piece of paper pinned on to it. The Navigation was cartoon images that changed on mouse over at the top of the page.

The site was designed in dreamweaver using tables in a blog style. I also had a cartoon logo designed by Sye. I decided to have a wordpress blog for the home page and made some minor changes to the design to accommodate this to the version you see today:

So that’s how my sites developed over the years. Do you think I should make some changes to the current version or create a new version? Post a comment.

Antony

I am going to be mad busy until January. Work is busy as always. My University course (see Back to University) is stepping up a gear or two involving: several workshops, an exam and two three thousand word assignments all due before January. And in my personal life practically every weekend until the end of December is being booked up with occassions (seeing friends, my Psychic Party / Home Warming, Christmas parties, etc.). The celebration indicates that it will be worth it in the end, so that’s positive.

So expect less blogging than normal my friends, family, random visitors, etc. I will intend to blog at least once a week to keep you all informed of my life as best I can.

As for the second and third dream, they have both involved me being shown round new apartments. Now regular readers will know that I recently bought an apartment (see The Move) that I love. The dreams don’t mean I’m moving again, simply: New beginings. So I’m excited about the thought of new beginings. New man in my life? New opportunities at work? Who knows.

This week I’ve bought a witches broom I didn’t need it. But it smells of cinnamon and looks quite at home in my hall way. The apartment is feeling more and more homely all time time. Here’s a photo of my witches broom:

(Taken on my Blackberry Storm)

Blog when I can,

Antony

Some of you will have noticed recently this appearing on the end of my blog posts and even on the comments left:

This is a wordpress plugin created by GD, their offical website: http://www.gdstarrating.com/. I would like to thank them for making this brilliant plugin.

What does this mean for you? You can give my posts ratings, however many starts you want to give and you can give thumbs up and thumbs down too. That way you can tell me what you like and tell me what you don’t. All posts now have them on so you can rate past posts too.

So go and go rating mad,

Antony