Brian Teeman

During the holiday season instead of planting yourself on the sofa in front of the TV and staring mindlessly at repeats of old movies "Why Don't You Just Switch Off YourTelevision Set and Go and Do Something Less Boring Instead?"

(That was the name of a UK TV show in the 80's that ran during the school holidays.)

Having just finished reading "Little Brother" by Cory Doctorow I can't think of a better way to spend the holiday break.

Seasons Greetings to you all and your families!

At this time of year it is customary to reflect on those less fortunate than ourselves and perhaps even to do some good deed.

This year as in previous years I will be supporting the work of Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders)

Hopefuly by now you will have read Steve Krug's excellent book "Don't Make Me Think" and you will have understood how we  speed read a website looking for the relevant content.

But how does a blind person "speed read"? Do they have to "read" all the content of the website or do blind people "speed listen"?

I've always said that once you start using joomla it's like a highly addictive drug that is impossible to let go.

So when I stumbled upon this unattributed chart comparing drug dealers and geeks I just had to produce a joomla version.

A few weeks ago I was chatting on skype with Fotis from joomlaworks.gr discussing the merits of various different RSS news readers or aggregators.

Despite trying several neither of us really were satisfied with what we had found.

I started this  blog in response to a few of my friends "demanding" I put some of my thoughts and tips & tricks down in writing.

Of course I hopped that other people would stumble upon this blog and find it interesting but I never expected  the readership to grow so large so quickly to an average of 1500 visits every day.

Some readers may know that for several months this year I was building a new web site for The Movement for Reform Judaism in the UK.

It was a lot of hard work transferring an old Joomla 1.0 site with a very confused navigation structure into not only a usable site but also an accessible site.

At the recent cmsexpo in Denver I was delighted to recieve the award for "Best Joomla-Powered Non-Profit Website" for all the hard work.

A few questions that I need to know
How you could ever hurt me so
I need to know what I've done wrong
And how long it's been going on
Was it that I never paid enough attention
Or did I not give enough affection
Not only will your answers keep me sane
But I'll know never to make the same mistake again
You can tell me to my face
Or even on the phone