nickbennett_blog

Tag: hannah

  • The Birth

    The Birth

    I’ve given myself a month to get over the initial shock of the birth. Even now though the horrors of it all still haunt my dreams! I feel guilty for writing this as I was only a mere witness to the episode, while Hannah will show physical scars for some time.

    It all started as I settled down for the Champions League encounter between Man U and Chelsea…typical! I downloaded a free contraction app to log the contractions. Bringing labour into the 21st century! Hannah would shout ‘now’ and I would start the app. A few dirty phone call impersonations later Hannah would say ‘stop‘. The contraction was logged and I could return to the game. However, these contractions were becoming closer and closer. Time to pack the bags. PSP? Check! Mars Bars? Check! my phone charger? Check..oh I almost forgot your overnight bag. This process was carried out in quite a calm manner. Another contraction was logged. My app tells me ‘This free app only allows 10 saved logs’ WHAT! Hannah and I have a little dispute and I inform her we haven’t got time to discuss my thriftiness. In the car and we were off. The match is still 0-0.

    Hannah’s biggest fear was being sent home, for me there was another half of football to be watched so every cloud and all that. From here on in things snowballed. There was no chance of being sent home. Hannah was 5cm dilated, halfway there already. Her opening gambit was ‘GIVE ME EVERYTHING’ as she waddled into the maternity ward. Her pains seemed to be mainly in the back and for me, it was mainly in my ears. Then for the worst hour of my life, worse than when we lost at home to Wrexham on the last day of one of our relegation seasons. They hooked up Joshua to a monitor to check his heart rate. As they laid Hannah on her back I could see the rate on the monitor dropping dramatically. The midwife pressed a big red button on the wall. From experience, I know that big red buttons are rarely pressed to inform everyone that everything is ‘hunky dory’. A swarm of doctors and midwives rushed into the room. The doctor broke her waters with what looked like a crochet needle. They raised Hannah’s bed and I could see his heart rate start to raise again. By this point, the colour had drained out of my face. ‘Don’t worry sweetheart, I’m ok’ Hannah kindly said. I didn’t have the heart to say it was Joshua that concerned me. I think the Dr gave one of the midwives’s a Gary Lineker ‘have a word with him’ look. She informed me that his chord could have been wrapped around his neck so when Hannah had a contraction in that position it was choking him. At this point, we decided to call in her Mum. Man U 2 Chelsea 0 grrrrr!

    The mother-in-law got there in quick time. We tagged team rubbing Hannah’s back and reassuring her. Apparently, the quicker you dilate the more painful it is. The average time is 1 cm per hour. Hannah did 5 in that time! The possibility of an emergency c-section meant they could only give Hannah gas and air for the pain. The pain must have been immense and I can concur that gas and air is useless. A few tokes on it caused me no decent side effects! When the Dr confirmed she was fully dilated he asked Hannah to push. She was happy to comply to hurry the process and in her words ‘get him out of me!’ Unfortunately, after several attempts, Joshua’s head wasn’t budging and his heart rate was up and down like the suspension on a prison’s nuptial caravan. It was decided the only option was a c-section and Hannah was told to stop pushing. Apparently, this was easier said than done. I can only imagine the urge must have been like the time I had some dodgy scampi and was stuck on the motorway.

    Finally, we were prepped and readied and led to the theatre. The anaesthetist turned her onto her side and applied the spinal. Hannah literally turned from the snarling girl from The Exorcist into her normal self. ‘Aaarrrgggghhhh…Who sang this song?’ I made a mental note of the positive effects of the spinal, I wonder if you can get one on prescription? After that everything else was fairly smooth sailing. I peeked over the curtain to see our little grey screaming boy. I caught a glimpse of Hannah’s c-section opening and quickly sat down again. I was given Joshua to hold and at that point Take That’s The Greatest Day came on the radio. Perfectly set up for tears-Ville yet nothing came. I put it purely down to the stress. The only emotion running through me was relief. The Dr informed us there was a clot behind the baby that prevented Joshua from being delivered naturally. They wheeled Hannah out to Push It by Salt and Pepper…grrrr!

    Joshua enters the world
    7lb 13oz 00:30 13th April 2011

    A few days later a tour of expectant Mums and Dads came to Hannah’s bed in the post-maternity ward. The tour guide stupidly asked ‘would you do it again?’ Hannah and I both gave the same short sharp response of ‘NO!’. The smiles on the mum’s faces had suddenly turned south. The tour guide gave us a look and quickly led everyone away.

    We’re now all at home trying to get a routine going. Joshua is adorable and predictably the cutest baby ever. He was born 7lb 13oz and is now an incredible 10lb 15oz. He’s already growing too quickly! We look forward to every little development. The latest is a gurgle that sounds like the early signs of speech and smiles that aren’t purely wind-based. In the words of Bob Dylan, The times are a changing!

  • dConstruct 2010

    So on Wednesday I get asked if I would like to attend dConstruct at the Brighton Dome. My normal reaction to anything not predetermined within the last month gets an automatic ‘no’ response. However, I thought this would be good for me and would (if nothing else) mean 2 days out of the office.

    Before I break down the event itself, I want to reiterate a few things. I’m a developer NOT a designer. As much as I would love to be both, it just ain’t gonna happen. You are talking about someone whose art teacher laughed at one of his projects to his face. Someone who by stage 5 of every single Photoshop tutorial gives up as the piece of shit on his screen looks nothing like the example. I really enjoy my job as a Software Engineer for a private investment company. We deal with the company’s portal which is only ever seen by a small number of clients. I develop in my spare time and am a keen learner of any new technologies. I don’t idolise other proficient developers/designers/gurus or wish to discuss developing down the pub with my mates.

    Day 1 – Designing a Flexible Process with Simon Collison

    My expectations
    I am a man of logic and reason. I have never been involved with a project that has run perfectly. This should be ideal as it will show me an approach that I can adopt in the future and everything will be plain sailing.

    What happened
    Simon was a nice and approachable chap with bags of enthusiasm and experience. We followed the processes which he has adopted in the past with varying degrees of success. This doesn’t sound good ‘varying’. We were constantly reminded that every client is different and requires an agile approach. It doesn’t look like I’m not going to get the ‘perfect project process’ formula I was after. The team exercises were really good fun and reminded me of the initial excitement you get when starting any new project. Overall it was aimed predominantly at design agency-esq businesses. Which was probably right looking at the rest of the audience.

    Relevance To Me – 3/10

    Relevance To Designers – 8/10

    Stuff Learnt

    1. I need a new Macbook Pro (Everyone in there had a more recent model)
    2. To start any project you need to consider all platforms (iPhone, iPad, Televisions)
    3. I need to change my new site scripts to create media specific CSS
    4. I need to use the Javascript moderniser script to upgrade all browsers to be HTML5 and CSS3 compatible

    Day 2 – The Conference

    Marty Neumeier

    A good start. A really interesting talk regarding the history of businesses and how they’ve adapted. Also what role innovation plays in success and how it can go wrong.

    Stuff Learnt

    1. Your product needs to be good and different
    2. Innovation is the key to success
    3. Businesses need to be constantly designing and taking risks

    Score – 8/10

    Brendan Dawes

    A humorous talk with some visually amazing slides. It was all about gathering as much inspiration as possible, considering what you have, and then reducing it to perfection. Unfortunately not relevant to anything I’m involved in but I’m sure this will be a useful approach for the designers.

    Stuff Learnt

    1. Sometimes you shouldn’t need to explain design decisions, they should just happen
    2. Don’t go to the Piccadilly area of Manchester

    Score – 7/10

    David McCandless

    This talk was about how information is beautiful. I did feel that this would be more for me. I wasn’t disappointed. He had some excellent examples of misleading information. And how that putting information in another context can create some compelling results.

    Stuff Learnt

    1. Despite having quite a dry data set, it can be made more interesting
    2. You can establish patterns more clearly once the information has been organised in a more visual manner
    3. The media clearly have an Outlook reminder for scaremongering

    Score – 10/10

    Samantha Warren

    This discussion was about Typography. A subject I have little knowledge of. She was very enthusiastic and clearly loves what she does. It was a mainly male audience so I wasn’t sure about the shoe analogy really worked for the audience. Give a girl a microphone and it won’t be long before they start banging on about shoes (sorry I couldn’t resist). To be fair the analogy did work quite well.

    Stuff Learnt

    1. Legibility is vital in a font type
    2. The character of the font should emote the context it sits in

    Score – 7/10

    John Gruber

    He opened by showing a tweet from one of the audience which was a picture of the guy outside the Brighton Dome stating ‘Only 16 hours until the Gruber!’. He asked the guy to raise his hand, and these really excited hands came up waving frantically. I turned to my colleague ‘what a douche’. He discussed that any project is only going to be good as the controlling force behind it. The analogy he used was that of film directors, particularly Stanley Kubrick. Who took control of every single aspect of the filmmaking process.

    Stuff Learnt

    1. If you are in charge ensure you listen to the people with more talent than you (a key lesson I wish some previous project managers I’ve worked under would have listened to)

    Score – 7/10

    Live music at dConstruct
    Live music at dConstruct

    Hannah Donovan

    Hannah started with some improv live music which was awesome. That was until the dick whose phone rang mid-way through. Hannah discussed the importance of improvisation in design teams. She mentioned the developer fort where a team of techies go to a castle and have to build something from scratch with no Internet. Sounds like a great team-building and inspirational exercise.

    Stuff Learnt

    1. To improv you need to be able to be awesome at the tools you use (basically I need to step up my Photoshop learning)

    Score – 6/10

    James Bridle

    An interesting (if not depressing) look at how historically we have managed to lose so much interesting data. That we are at a frontier of information and should therefore ensure that we keep everything. A really great example was used regarding the Iraq war Wiki page. I won’t spoil it though in case he does another similar talk.

    Stuff Learnt

    1. erm…..always back up your data?

    Score – 5/10

    Tom Coates

    Probably the most visually stunning presentation. Some great videos and animations. The talk did get me excited about the prospect of household items all being plugged into the Internet. I found the boundaries on ownership particularly interesting. Basically, because our stuff would be wired into the network we would know where it was via geolocation. So no matter where it was or who had it we would still know it belonged to us.

    Stuff Learnt

    1. The future is bright
    2. Eventually, everything will be networked

    Score – 8/10

    Merlin Mann

    A good one to end on, as definitely the most amusing of the speakers. He started by calling everyone ‘nerds’ and then went into the difference between ‘nerds’ and ‘geeks’. A ‘geek’ will come around and fix your PC for you, and a ‘nerd’ will want to talk about the PC for an hour before fixing it. A ‘nerd’ is really obsessed with something.

    Stuff Learnt

    1. I’m a geek and not a nerd
    2. Don’t stay obsessed with just one thing (he gave an example of a Photoshop expert whose clients dried up)

    Score – 7/10

    Conclusion

    Overall, it was a great experience and I’m glad I went. I’m too logical in my approach to things to get enough out of the 2 days. I was getting fed up with the analogies by the end of it all. I’m sure for the designers this would have been perfect. I did actually speak to a couple of people who had attended previous events and they all suggested that it wasn’t as good as previous years.