This is the central index for all my websites: including business sites, information sites, blogs, and sites that cover my various hobbies such as painting and drawing, and music making.
BUSINESS SITES
1.
MY MAIN BUSINESS SITE:
Founded over 16 years ago,
TheCoffeeTable.co.uk has established a reputation for top quality
craftsmanship and an attention to detail: producing solid, custom made
hardwood tables which are individually designed, hand finished with a
water based lacquer, signed and dated on the underside, and built to
last for generations. All the boards used in the construction are
individually selected for maximization of the best figure and grain.
The tables are constructed traditionally with mortise and tenon corner
joints, and the boards for the tops are butt and biscuit jointed
together: producing exceptionally robust finished articles.
In
addition to constructing coffee tables, cabinets, beds, TV, CD, and DVD
units, dining tables, bedside tables and bookcases from timbers such as
oak, ash, beech, and cherry, The Coffee Table Co website also
contains several useful educational resources, see below:
THE ORIGINS & DEVELOPMENT OF
THE COFFEE TABLE:
A unique (on the web) analysis of the most likely origin of the coffee table, and how it has progressed throughout the 20th century to attain its modern form. The current entry on Wikipedia for coffee table is a highly condensed version of these pages. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
HOW TO MAKE A HARDWOOD
COFFEE TABLE:
When I first set up The Coffee Table Co website, I received numerous email queries from GCSE students about various matters connected to making a coffee table. As a small business, I did not have the time to reply to them all individually, so my attempted remedy was, over time, to construct this section of the site to try and provide some of the answers. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MAKING A SIMPLE
PINE COFFEE TABLE:
This section of the site has a D.I.Y project on making a pine coffee table with helpful drawings, a full description of how to go about the project, and handy tips and warnings. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2. MY
SECONDARY BUSINESS SITE:
In order to have more control over the layout of my various websites, than could be provided by the use of a WYSIWYG program, I spent a year of my evenings learning how to hand code HTML, and present cleanly coded, current standards conforming, web pages: by use of external CSS style sheets. I now use that knowledge in my secondary business to design W3C compliant websites for small businesses and individuals. Unlike some website designers, who have come through a purely mathamatical/scientific route to website design, I have a background which has included studying art and architecture, and I also draw and paint as a hobby. This enables me to apply an element of creativety to the necessary coding discipline involved in producing visually attractive, but semantically correctly coded website designs.
INFORMATION SITES
1.
HOW TO BUY A HOUSE IN FRANCE:
When looking for a holiday home in France a few years back, I found that some of the websites offering information on the subject were hard work: making one wade through a large amount of information to find the facts one was looking for. After finally purchasing a holiday home in France, I decided to attempt to make the task easier for those who followed on by offering the information I had gained in a straightforward, simply laid out website. The site covers: house surveys in France, price trends in French property, information about notaires and their roll in property transactions, French estate agents (agents immoblier), notaires' and agents' fees, the legal process and contracts in France, transferring funds from Britain to France, travel routes from Britain to France, learning the French language, regional map of France, and a series of tales from France about my own experiences of buying a house there.
2.
TABBED MENU
DESIGN:
I had always liked the look of the websites I had seen that presented the links across the top of the page to look like tabbed folders. Once I became more familiar with the use of HTML and CSS, I decided, as an exercise, to have a go at designing one for myself. Having finally suceeded in achieving a working model of a tabbed menu (not without a struggle and several perplexing glitchs to overcome) I didn't want to waste the effort: so decided, by means of a website, to make the code available for anyone else who was learning CSS, and wanted this type of menu. I use the same HTML code for the menu to show variations in styles that can be achieved, merely by making changes to the stylesheet.
HOBBY SITES
1. PAINTING
& DRAWING FRANCE:
After many years of visiting France for my holidays, and hopefully many more to come, most of my limited output of acrylic paintings, pencil drawings, and charcoal drawings, are of French landscapes, townscapes, or, as is the case with my most recent drawing, French people. I have collected these images together on this website, along with some charcoal drawings of Thames-side scenes, and some acrylic still life paintings and a series of digital colleges derived from them. This website also hosts my music: details of which are immediately below.
2. MUSIC:
S*d
this for a game of soldiers I thought, aged around 14, when I got
rapped over the knuckles during piano lessons when I got my scales
wrong. I packed them in and from then on I spent all my spare time
hanging around the school music room and anytime anyone came in who
could play guitar I'd ask them to teach me a chord. I've been a muso
ever since. When I progressed to college I joined a traditional jazz
band called The Clarence St. Washboard Wizards playing banjo, and yes,
we did have a washboard player. We also, in the early years, had
someone playing a phono fiddle, a one stringed fiddle with an old
fashioned gramaphone horn sticking up from it. We made a weird and
wonderful sound and what's more we got paid for it. Our main claim to
fame was that we had been on the same billing as the Rolling Stones as
a support band. Strictly speaking this was true. What we sometimes
forgot to mention was that it was an open air concert in Hyde Park and
the Stones were playing on the main stage whilst we were about a mile
away on the periphery of the park playing on a small bandstand.
The
jazz band having finally fizzled out after some great years, I became
involved with folk music and used to take my guitar down to the local
pub to sing and play where there was an enthusiastic crowd who would
sing along and add the harmonies. We always used to sing at the end of
darts matches which went down well at most of the pubs we played in
except one where they banned our whole darts team, I'm not sure whether
that reflected the quality of our singing or was more to do with the
fact that one of our team had puked up behind the juke box.
Later I
was part of a band in which we spent about 2 years writing our own
material and practicing, we finally gigged out two or three times, but
shortly after that I left the band as I moved to Hampshire. There I got
together with Dave from Lex Elbow and another guy to write our own
material. More recently, I have been concentrating on acoustic guitar
and have produced several finished MP3s. If you click on the image it
will take you to the page of this website where you can listen to the
tracks.
BLOGS
1. COFFEE TABLE BLOG:
Although there is a substantial section on my coffee table business website detailing how to make a coffee table, on this blog I will be giving more details on a day to day basis of particular constructional challenges for each table, and how they can be overcome. As well as the explanations of the possible solutions, there are images of construction details giving a visual guide of the progress of each coffee table up to completion.
2. FRENCH LANGUAGE
BLOG:
This blog explores the challenges encountered while trying to learn the French language and, in particular, the many misunderstandings that can occur while trying to put one's lessons into practice by having conversations with French people in France. There are also some more general articles about my various encounters over the years while on holiday in France.
