Please note that you may have been redirected (you might like to make a note of the URL in the address bar of your browser and update accordingly) This is a permanent archvie but is no longer actively maintained. Please visit http://joshuaink.com for the latest updates.
About me and this site
Wednesday April 13, 2005 [last update ]
John is an 33 year old web developer based in the Cotswolds, UK.
I have been designing and developing websites since 1999, previously I was a chef based mostly in London, having moved there when I was 16. I have met some very famous and beautiful people in my time, which was nice.
I myself was beautiful once but those days have long since passed and so there seems little point in placing a picture here, simply Google for Hagrid.
My most memorable celebrity moments are: Selling Michael Barrymore a lobster, having Bridget Nielsen comment on the big blue penis someone had kindly drawn on the back of my chef's jacket and nearly splitting my mouth open through excess smiling when Kylie Minogue talked to me. No, I do not know what she actually said, I was too busy trying to discreetly stare at her bum. Lesser moments have involved smiling at Lenny Henry through a window, cooking a beef burger for Michael Jackson, slagging off Paul Weller's taste in food and chatting in my living room with the lead singer of the Longpigs, Crispin Hunt. I am not one for name dropping.
In 2004 I began developing with web standards and it is, without doubt, the best decision I have made since ditching Microsoft Word in favour of Dreamweaver.
I live with my partner of many years, Esther, and our three young children, Joshua, Charlotte and Daniel. Despite many proposals, Esther refuses to marry me on the grounds that I am unmarriable. She may, however, change her mind when I show her the tax breaks we could get. Collectively we are know as 'those bloody Oxtons'.
I work from home which can make the balance between home life and work a little difficult to manage. On the whole though, I much prefer it to hauling my ass out of bed at 7am every morning to join the rat race.
I spent 2 years looking after my son whilst Esther went out to work. I refuse to change any more nappies. I did websites at night back then, I was generally very very tired. Don't ever call me a new man. It is not unknown for me to take a nap in the afternoons.
My heroes are Homer J. Simpson and Philip J. Fry and not, as many would like to believe, Jeffrey Zeldman and Jon Hicks. I am, technically speaking, a geek, though it hasn't always been that way. I love olives. My favourite colour is blue or, if you are an citizen of the United States, my favorite color is bloo. I am quite a bit overweight but, in a refreshing break from the normal excuses given by chubbies like me, I freely admit it is because I eat too much and spend most of my life sat on my fat arse. Deep down I am probably desperately unhappy but tend not to look that far. I have a bicycle, which I bought a year ago, I have ridden it twice, on both occasions to cycle the half mile to the shop to get some cigarettes. I would be a vegetarian but I love bacon sandwiches far too much. I think European people are very nice but the Dutch are a little bit too bloody relaxed for my liking. I would happily go and live in France. I don't speak any language other than English. I think most French people speak English, though they pretend not to. If you really got to know me you would discover that I am very boring. I was born in Wales, which makes me Welsh, not Scottish, though Glasgow has to be the friendliest place I ever did live. It has not been unknown for people to call me a stupid [insert insult], the nicest thing anyone has ever said about me was by fellow Brit, Pete Lambert:
...you perk up when you see a comment from Hicks or Oxton... this doesn't always count with Oxton, who 9 times out of 10 will leave a shit comment.
My own portfolio site is due for completion sometime this century, meanwhile, please email me (john [at] joshuaink [dot] com) if you would like to see samples of my work. I do not generally hold references to client work on this site due to the excessive bad language present in most of my posts, it just doesn't feel right but I am not ready to give up swearing just yet.
I have an official entry on CSS Zen Garden called Centerfold, I am the only British designer to feature on the site, as long as you don't count the other dozen or so.
I am very passionate about, and committed to, my work.
This blog is only here to make up for the fact that I don't get out much anymore, to bolster up my fragile, yet increasingly large, ego and to entertain the unwashed masses, who, quite frankly, should find something more meaningful to do with their lives.
Hiring me will be the best thing you ever do, unless the project goes horribly wrong, in which case, you'll probably regret it and so will I.
About this site/ego
This site was built in March 2005 and was designed around an illustration commissioned from Denis Radenkovic, more information about the design process can be found here, here and here. The site is featured on Stylegala, CSS Vault, Unmatched Style, CSS Design, Style Boost, Devil's Details and was given a silver star by the Web Standards Awards. An earlier autumnal version also featured on CSS beauty. As yet, no one has sent me any money or free personal hygiene products as a result of all this publicity, all in all, a bit disappointing really.
I am a completely overrated desginer and only managed to fluke this design whilst eating pork scratchings and getting drunk on local cider.
If you would like to come by my house and knock me off my pedestal, please be sure to make an appointment with my PA, so I can be sure I am standing on it that day.
Joshuaink runs off the, ever so cool, Textpattern content management system, accompanied by about a million plugins.
For the most part the site validates as XHTML 1.0 Strict and one day I may decide to do the job properly and turn it over to XHTML 1.1 with content negotiation but don't hold your breath, tag soup is quite tasty. If you do find an invalid page, please take it away and give it a good home but don't feel the need to mail me about it, obviously I'm just not lovin' it as much as I should.
How to steal this design
If you decide to steal my design and claim it as your own please be sure to remove all hyperlinks pointing to before uploading to your server, else you are very likely to accidentally click on one, thus showing up in my referral logs, which I watch like a hawk. I will then send you and your host nasty emails and will turn off my browser cache and spend the night hitting the F5 button in the hope of eating up your bandwidth (well, there is fuck all on TV since they cancelled Futurama). Also I won't ever be your friend and may be tempted to punch you in the nose should we ever meet in the street.
Or you could make life easy for yourself and take one of my free templates instead. They are much nicer than this flowery rubbish.
And finally...
Joshuaink is named after my son Joshua who was 'ink'orporated in 2001, clever huh?
If you have really read all the way to this bit, may you be blessed with many children.
