Mark Forrester - Independent digital designer and online entrepreneur

Personal letters like this one I received through my Gran really drill home the reality of what is happening in Zimbabwe at the moment. When will somebody step in and do something about this tragedy.

Dear Family and Friends,

Well never thought I would have to do this email do not know if it may be my
last from our farm “Chidza”.

At 3.30pm today a lorry load of so called Mugabe brain washed “war-vets”
arrived at our gate to take over our land, equipment and pedigree cattle.
This crazy action is occurring in a country where there is v little food
being produced !

It is now 6 pm and they have been singing their war songs at our gate for
three hours, the atmosphere is violent and more and more of them have
arrived. (more…)

No not a website proposal for a change.

I’ve been scare here this week, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have important news to tell you all.

On Saturday, the 1st day of Spring, the day before Easter, I proposed to my lovely girlfriend, Xenia, walking along the beautiful Thames river on a not so beautiful very cold, and wet, winterly morning.

“Isn’t this romantic?” I asked Xen a few minutes into our rather chilly river walk, huddled under an umbrella, to which she bluntly replied, “NO”. It didn’t stop my quest though and I’m very happy to say she answered “YES” to my marriage proposal after finding a sparkly ring in one of her gloves.

Happy times.

The much anticipated Wordpress 2.5 is almost complete and ready for download. The feature list looks quite impressive, with a lot of focus being placed on the re-design of the backend interface.

Other new features include:

• Widget-based dashboard
• You should be able to have any number of any widget
• Undo for comment editing
• Search for both posts and pages

The list of new features looks very positive, but unfortunately it excludes the one feature that I want to see, and this is to do with custom fields. When adding a custom field it has to be done through a form placed right at the bottom of the backend forms. (more…)

It’s midnight and my girlfriend and I have decided there is no point in going to bed as in 3 hours a taxi will be picking us up and taking us to Gatwick Airport. From Gatwick we head to Milan, Italy followed by a 5 hour bus trip up high into the Italian Alpes. Livigno is our final destination and home for 1 week of fun in the snow.

It is our first time skiing so I expect to come back with a lot of bruises, hopefully no broken bones, and lots of good memories. I probably haven’t packed enough warm clothes, but i’m hoping my thermal undies protect me from the -10 degree celcius temperatures… (more…)