I'm currently looking through a number of my old sketchbooks and portfolio pieces from my time at art college, and also from my time studying for my Graphic Arts degree at university.

I plan on scanning / photographing a number of my best / most interesting pieces of work, to add as bonus material on a semi-hidden area of my online portfolio on this website.

This material will only be accessible via my RSS feed, and also via links associated with blog articles I may decide to write about the work.

To get back on point: the process of going through this stuff really sent my mind wandering back in time to some of the experiences and wisdom that I gained during my time studying. There are a number of useful things that I learnt back then that I still apply to my professi0nal practice today. One area that stands out is in regard to criticism.

Read onwards. Well. Downwards ...

I am often asked the process by which I take a traditional line drawing, and then add colour, texture and compositional treatment to it.

This post goes through basic scanning and line preparation for a 'print-ready' illustration. It's quite basic stuff but hopefully a few of you may find it useful.

Well, well, well. Seems it's all been kicking off today with all this 'twitter @replies' stuff.

Basically, the twitter people have taken away the option for users to see all @replies - having them hidden by default. See: Twitter puts a muzzle on your friends.

Folk went mental! And it didn't take long for a #fixreplies hashtag to get thrown in the mix for users to show their anger.

But now it seems the people at twitter are (kind of) back-tracking by making all @replies display by default (well, sort of I think?). See: We learned a lot.

Now. I had replies turned off by default when the replies were directed at people I don't follow, so this is going to be a pain in the bottom for me now. Meh!

But, my little beaky friends, I have an answer ...

With the life of IE6 coming rather slowly to an end (as discussed in my previous post), the talk of designers and developers dropping support for the browser is rife in blog posts and tweets all over the web.

Some pretty large sites have already got the ball rolling - possibly one of the biggest being FaceBook.

There is also a trend of developers, not dropping support entirely, but only providing it if their client specifically requests and pays for the work necessary to accommodate the browser.

So, where do I stand on IE6 support?

Well, I'm not telling you. Nah, only joking. Read on my little chickens ...

Yep. You have read that correctly. I will miss IE6.

Yes, it is an awful browser - full and stupid bugs, limitations, poor standards support, yadda yadda. We all know this. We've all beaten our fists on our keyboards in frustration when trying to get things 'working' in it. We've hacked it, and metaphorically smacked it, since the day it first launched back in 1507 (or around that time).

I have hated it. I have wanted it to die. It has often cost me money in extra development time on projects, and held me back on certain interesting ideas I've wanted to implement on commercial work.

"Yes. That's right. So why in the name of Jiminy Christmas will you miss it?!"

Well, give it some 'click' and I'll tell yer ...