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The redesign took two weeks, with the majority of the design and implementation completed at the weekend and in the evenings. This included a new design that was mocked up in Adobe Fireworks, colour correcting images to use for the slideshow, and development integration in Joomla Content Management System (CSS changes with some HTML changes). A screenshot of the new design is below.

I had been at IG Group for nearly a year and a half, and although I have been enjoying the Adobe CQ5 CMS work that I have spent most of my time at IG Group working on, there was no plan to convert any of the existing websites to this new CMS for the immediate future at the time I handed in my notice. (I feel that larger companies tend to work at a slower pace and suffer from the ability to organise projects; possibly because more people are involved in the decision-making process.) 

My last six months at the company had been crazy, particularly the months between October and February. During those months and over the Christmas and New Year's season, I sacrificed much of my time and health on a project with a tight deadline and agreed to be on support over both Christmas and New Year's weeks, which required logging in to complete some tests to ensure that the environments were available on Christmas Day and New Year's Eve. Unfortunately, I felt a little under-appreciated and that my hard work over those three crazy months went unnoticed. (Possibly due to the fact that I am not one to "blow my own trumpet", coupled with the fact that I was over-worked and felt that the success of the project would speak for itself.) I felt that everyone on this project did a brilliant job, and the team worked really well together. Despite the feeling at the end of the project, which I felt should be celebrated and applauded, I did enjoy working on it over the past few months with other great individuals. Launching a new website without design/branding/new technology in three months was a challenge, and it was a successful project. I will miss working with my colleagues, but that happens when one changes jobs.

Leaving IG Group also means leaving London, and I have changed my focus and personal goals over the past month so that I could spend the remaining time enjoying the city. The photograph below was taken at the weekend in Hyde Park of daffodils during the warmest day yet this spring. I think that signifies the beginning of spring, and it signifies new changes for me. 

Now... hopefully I am back on track after the last long month and a spring clean of my objectives (such as my website redesign)! I look forward to my new role and new opportunities. I love working in IT/Web Development/Programming, so I am quite excited to get started.

That leads me to this discussion and one reason that I have decided to go for the Leica V-Lux 3, after spending quite a few hours doing research. Leica cameras are an expensive brand, and there are comparable models out there, but after doing some research on other websites and comparing photographs of the results, I have made the decision to purchase the Leica V-Lux 3. (The comparable camera models are not quite as good when you compare them like-for-like, and I felt that spending some extra money would be worth the cost.) Even though the camera is not really a DSLR, I decided to try it anyway. Besides, carrying a lot of camera kit around on holiday and only using one lens mainly anyway, I decided that I would like a camera that is a bit lighter. The Leica Lux-3 does seem like Leica's marketing for the travel market.

My only regret is that I do not have the money to buy the Leica M8 or the Leica M9, which look like amazing cameras. However, if I could buy one, I certainly would not be taking it on holiday for fear of having it stolen or damaged. In that instance, I would not be getting all of my money out of it.

My Leica V-Lux 3 arrived earlier this week, but I was unable to test it properly until this weekend. I hopped on a train today and visited London. I used the automatic setting on the camera for most of the day. I still need to play with the settings more and discover how to change the aperture on manual settings. Some of my photographs look a little blurry, but this was probably due to incorrect shutter speed, slight over-exposure in the automatic setting, or simply focusing on the wrong area. However, I am pleased with the camera and very pleased with the colour. The image below was taken with my new camera using the automatic setting; I really could not spend ages setting manual settings in front of a busy street in front of a department store in central London, particularly as I am still learning how to use the camera. I absolutely love these rich colours.

The knowledge section of the website is colour-coded depending on the category, and articles are displayed so that the user can learn the different terms. The 'news' section is the area that I developed on my own using Java, JSP, CSS, HTML, and Javascript in the Adobe CQ5 CMS platform. Simply, content editors can add news stories written by one of the analysts, and these articles are displayed and sorted. There's also a Twitter feed from the analysts and links to related areas in the 'knowledge' section. Most of the section for 'news' is automated, so this required a lot of coding to automate this and to display it as intended. The news stories are also organised by category, and there are areas that can be filtered, such as obtaining a list of all stories by author. There's also much more to it than the screenshots that I have posted.

This is one of the most exciting projects that I have worked on in a while, and I really enjoyed the mix of development in Java and translating the designs to HTML and CSS and Javascript. During my time at the company, this was the work I did for the "news and analysis" section was the most enjoyable.

The following image shows a news article. The image and first part of the text is obtained and displayed in the preview on the home page and category pages - as well as the author and the date.

This project certainly had some challenges, all of which were not surprising considering that the project was the first public-facing website (consisting of many additional dependencies) to use the new CMS, and the deadline was tight and had to be met in time. I have noted the following list of challenges:

• The redevelopment of this website had to be achieved by 1 February. This meant that we only had approximately two months to spend for development tasks.
  
• To meet the tight mid-week deadline, we had to break from some internal processes. Typically, releases are completed at weekends, and code was being redeveloped until two weeks before the go-live date, and bugs were being fixed up until the go-live date.
  
• Many environment and infrastructure issues needed to be addressed, and new environments needed to be built. This was the first time that the new CMS was used for a public-facing website.
  
• Other web-based applications use files that exist under the domain, and it was not always clear where the files were being used. These files, HTML pages, and links needed to be migrated and approprite RewriteRules needed to be written so that the changes would not affect these other web-based systems.
• A new brand and designs for the website were being created at the same time, and the branding was received half-way through the design process. (Due to the tight deadline, designs had to be started before a new brand was created.) Additionally, the development process started at the same time as the designs were being created during the first two sprints. This, of course, meant that we needed to constantly make small changes to the CSS and HTML for design changes.
  
• The development for the project was achieved in approximately two months, including bug-fixing during the final two weeks, and some earlier development work needed to be tweaked as unfinished designs were evolved. (We certainly did work Agile.)

Despite the mentioned challenges, everyone did a fantastic effort, and I largely enjoyed it. Many disciplines (such as development, design, QA, content writers, system developers, etc) worked well together to ensure the success of the project. 

With such a project, the low points were working long hours over the Christmas and New Year weeks while colleagues and most of the company were on holiday, working through most of my lunches throughout the past three months, and ensuring that the dependent systems were seemingly unaffected by the changes. The highs were speaking to the clients and being involved at a high level, developing new components in the CMS using Java, and working together toward a common goal to launch a complete website. Now that this project is finished, I think some sort of recovery is in order.

Thanks to the good people at "Cooking Gorgeous", sellers of designer kitchen accessories, I won two free tickets to "A Taste of Christmas" food festival in London at the beginning of December. I had a wonderful time trying new foods and spending a lot of money on some of the best finds. The festival had everything, from areas dedicated to chocolate, wine/alcohol to baked goods, meats, dips/sauces, and kitchenware/accessories.

Part of my adventure was enjoying the Jamie Oliver restaurant, which was set up in the middle of the venue. This included being seated in the middle of a rectangular table with about  forty strangers and sharing good food and wine.

Some of my buys included gold-flaked alcohol, crackers from East India company, sausages, crackers for cheese, ginger wine, a cupcake, and curry sauce. The curry sauce is possibly the best gem of the day, (though, that said, I have yet to open the alcohol) and it has a lovely flavour. Although the curry range from this particular brand features mild to spicy curry, and I love spicy curry, I am proud to say that the curry lived up to my demands and love of spicy hot food, unlike most pre-made curry sauces. (Do not worry; the spice is not over-powering, but it uses an excellent blend of spices for the flavour.) The company is called "Heavenly Curry" (www.heavenlycurry.co.uk), and I suggest that you check them out if you love curry, particularly if you enjoy a blend of spice and gravitate toward the hotter varieties, which are so difficult to come by.

And lastly, one of my other buys was from the company that gave me the two winning tickets, "Cooking Gorgeous" (http://www.cookinggorgeous.com). The company sell everything from aprons to potholders to tea towels to cake stands. I fell in love with their tea towels, featuring Queen Anne's Lace and wheat designs. I bought one of these, and it came wrapped in a little tin with a bow, gift-wrapped for Christmas. The only problem is, I do not want to use it because it is too pretty. (The below images are of the tea towels, taken from their website.)