Some sniffing around web.archive.org has made me aware that it will soon be 10 years since I put up my first freelance portfolio website. August 2003. I was so wet behind the ears I'm surprised said ears didn't drown.

After finding out about the 123reg 'My 1st Website Competition', I thought this would be an excellent opportunity for some blog-based reminiscence and forward looking.

I read on that there Twitter that Opera man Patrick H Lauke has created a Super Mario World Font Set. Being a chap of a certain age that grew up playing said game on my SNES, I want to use this font badly.

So this blog post isn't to put across any thoughts, ideas, news or other. Nope. It's purely just for me to use the font on my site for the sake of it.

And so. Drum-roll ...

I recently wrote a post that contained 140 characters of Lorem Ipsum for you to use when adding dummy text for twitter posts on sites and that.

Apparently, proper dummy content shouldn't be Latin because blah blah blah, pedantic pedantic pedantic ...

I don't see the issue. It's all just letters bunched together with spaces and punctuation to form words and sentences.

But anyway. I'm an accommodating kind of chap. So - for the peculiar particular amongst you - I proudly present: Philip the Purple Otter:

Far away, in a forest next to a river beneath the mountains, there lived a small purple otter called Philip. Philip likes sausages. The End.

* Oh yeah, and read this post in full for details on how to play a part in Philip's on-going adventures - and win a prize of reasonably good proportions! ...

Here you go:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Sed nec purus in ante pretium blandit. Aliquam erat volutpat. Nulla libero lectus.

:) Oh. And for those who prefer "real" content: 140 alternative characters to Lorem Ipsum

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 that 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 ...