The Dog's Blog

News is spreading of the sudden and tragic passing of Jack Pickard.

When I first heard the news myself I felt an immediate sense of great loss and sadness. Which is strange – because I, like many hundreds of people, never actually met Jack.

He first came into my life a few years ago. I had just started out on the road to standards and accessibility on the web. Quite by chance I discovered Accessify Forum where Jack was part of the Admin team.

I quickly realised that there were a ‘core’ of professionals whose advice and words were always worth taking careful note of. Jack was a prominent member of this core and his advice and opinion were always given both willingly and freely.

Through his blog, he showed us what an extremely powerful and emotive wordsmith he was. He had informed, fair-minded and well-balanced opinions on just about every topic under the sun.

He also had an amazingly dry sense of humour, the sharp end of which I am happy to have been the target of on several occasions!

The many, many comments, posts and tweets that are spreading through cyberspace are a reminder of the countless numbers of people Jack touched.

Jack’s Mam has made on comment on Jack’s last blog post. People are leaving their own messages. It will be both a fitting memory to a wonderful man, and a physical sign of just how popular he was.

My thoughts and condolences are extended to his wife Tracey, his two small boys, his physical family and friends and his extended cyber-family.

Rest easy Jack.

Well, the New Year is rapidly approaching, my new hip is (so far) responding as it should’ve done 16 weeks ago and… I’m bored.

It’s about time I started implementing some of the changes I outlined earlier this year. Of course, all of these plans were in my head before the saga of the hip so, essentially, I’ll be starting from almost scratch.

Basically, ‘The Dog’s Blog’ will remain – although with some changes to design, layout and content. It will remain the outlet for our (you didn’t think I’d drop Coy, did you?) humour, whimsical nonsense, personal thoughts, etc.

The new business venture – AWTS (Accessible Web & Training Services) – needs a web site to go with the address it already has. Plus, there will be a new blog to deal primarily with topics such as Web Standards, Accessibility, Disability, etc.

Now that things seem to be ‘on the up’, it’s time to get things rolling; so expect some changes over the next month or two!

My first task is to locate an accessible WordPress theme or a theme that is reasonably easy to make accessible. There are many that claim to be accessible however, in my searches today, they fall way short of acceptable standards – all suggestions welcome! I’ve become very familiar with the structure of WordPress themes, and I’m not squeamish about rolling up the sleeves and diving into the code where necessary!

Keep watching this space for developments!

Imagine that you’re hooked up to an IV (Intravenous) drip for an hour. You’ve read all the books you have and need more. You’re sick of music and on-line Christmas shopping. So the question is: ‘What the hell do you do for an hour?’.

Well, on this occasion I found myself thinking about the various TV programmes I’d seen over the last couple weeks and ended up thinking about last Friday’s repeat showing of a classic. The programme in question was ‘The IT Crowd’. It’s an absolute brilliant episode where Roy & Maurice give Jen a hand with an upcoming speech by introducing a small diversion to help overcome her nerves.

The diversion? A small tin box that Jen believes holds The Internet. Jen has totally no knowledge of IT, so is completely taken in. Anyway, the plot is not the important thing here – what is important, is that my thought processes ended with JackP. I know, I know…not a pleasant subject to be thinking about at any time; but, in this instance, very relevant.

I remembered that Jack had published a post about Reynholm Industries and getting your very own company ID card. Unfortunately, he didn’t exactly tell you how to obtain such a card but did leave a tantalising clue.

I remember leaving a comment boasting that I too would obtain my very own card. Due to unforeseen medical difficulties however, I had completely forgotten about it…until now, that is.

So, deciding to fill in my time in a (semi) productive manner, I hopped over to the Reynholm site.

It was a shock to my system…I did find out how to get my own card but, unfortunately, so had my bloody dog…errr….I’m sorry; I meant, of course, to say: so had my beloved canine companion Coy!

Don’t believe me? Check it out ye disbelievers:

What’s worse, is that the canine clown genius has given himself a superior position to me and his photo is better than mine…cheeky sod!