mcville: James Edwards Interview

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James Edwards Interview

Nov 11, 09:56 PM by Marko

Interivew with James Edwards at brothercake.com

Marko: Hello James !
James: Hello :)

Marko: For our reader’s could you tell something about yourself? (year old and other stuff)

James: Er right, I’m 32 years old, I live in a remote, rural area near the town of Oswestry on
the English/Welsh border. I’m not married, no kids, I have a cat, and too many computers.

Marko: How are you doing these days?

James: Fine, very busy – been constantly busy for months, but I suppose that’s better than
being unemployed. Gah!

Marko: When did you first encounter a keyboard or computer?

James: I was a real late-starter. My brother had been into computers since he was a kid,
he had a Dragon 32 I used to play games on sometimes (Chuckie Egg, Buzzard Bait)
but I didn’t get into using them myself until I got into the web. Between then, my only
real computer experience was with sequencing packages like Cubase on the Atari ST.

Marko: What is your favorite art work /website!?

James: You got me there! I don’t pay a lot of attention to what other people are doing
design-wise, don’t read any blogs on a regular basis .. what I get most excited about
is where developers are showing how beautiful design can go hand in hand
with solid semantics and good accessibility, so in that respect, it’s the work
of people like Andy Clark (Stuff ‘n’ Nonsense) and Cameron Adams (The Man in Blue)
that I follow with most interest.

Marko: when you launched brothercake.com are you happy with the result of the site?

James: At the time, yeah! But if it still looked and functioned like it did in those early days,
I’d be pretty disappointed by now! It was very basic, developed in Adobe PageMill and
all tables and spacer gifs. I’m onto the 5th version of it now, and I’m much happier with
the design and the coding – hopefully any future redesigns won’t require HTML edits
now that the underlying code is solid, semantic and non-visual HTML.

Marko: What do you do in your spare time (I do realize that spare time, in this context, is pretty relative)?

James: I play games and watch telly. Just bought a PSP that’s occupying a fair amount of my leisure time,
and I’m a big sci-fi fan – Star Trek is a particular favourite, and it’s rare more than
a few days will by without my dipping into an episode of Voyager.

Marko: Do you have a favorite drink? How much of it do you drink?

James: Tea! And I drink a lot of it, pretty much all day and evening, so mayb a dozen cups in a
day at least. It doesn’t get me so wired as coffee because it doesn’t have anything like
as much caffeine, so it’s pretty much a staple drink for me, even with meals!

Marko: Would you care to give us a brief overview of what a typical day is like for James Edwards?

James: I don’t have any such thing as a typical day. Some days I answer email for 8 hours straight,
other times I do nothing but JS programming for a couple of days without a break.
It all depends on what’s happening, and what deadlines I have.
The days I like best are the ones where there are no immediate deadlines at all,
and I have time to crack back and do some development or experimental stuff –
just playing around with ideas to see which ones turn out useful.

Marko: I am always wondering how people such as yourself go about getting work? How do you do it?

James: Nothing really – I have a trickle income through my DHTML Menu API, and
people come to me and ask me to do things, having heard of me through a recommendation
or seen something I’ve done on the web. I guess I’ve been lucky really, that I’ve never
really had to go out and find clients, I’ve just laid the groundwork and let them
come to me :)

Marko: Who are some of your biggest influences?

James: In the web sphere, probably Joe Clark more than anyone else, because it’s from him
that I first learnt about accessibility, and that’s fundamentally changed the way I look
at web development. I’d also say Mark Newhouse for his seminal ALA article “Taming Lists”,
from which I really came to understand how CSS makes presentational markup redundant.
There’ve a lot of other people who’ve influenced me in different ways as well, both
creatively and technically, but those two are probably the most signficant in terms
of the total impact their own work has had on mine.

Marko: Is your background in design? What was the progression into web development and design like? How did that take place and why?

James: No, I was a musician. I studied Commercial Music at university, and ever since childhood
I’d planned to be a professional recording artist. But it didn’t work out –
I couldn’t bring myself to play the music industry game because it was just all too
personal for me; the music I wanted to make was not very mainstream, and I wasn’t
making a living.

I got into web development through that though – brothercake.com was originally for
promoting my music, but it’s a familiar story from there … I gradually got more
into computers and the internet, was spending more time making the site than
writing music, and eventually I got good enough to make a living out of it.
I worked at a company as a webmaster for a couple of years, and then I decided
to go freelance.

Marko: If you where not a designer/programmer what would you be?

James: Probably a teacher. I’ve always felt that inevitably I would end up teaching ..
because I like passing on knowledge, and I enjoy working with children and
young people. But I wont go into it until I don’t need the income from it, because
it isn’t very well paid work! I plan to wait until I have sufficient income
from other things.

Marko: How do you like our site mcville.net?

James: It’s okay … I like the fonts and the minimal design, but the coding is a bit
slack – lot of presentational markup in there like tables for layout and
tags,
and also a lot of inline JS and CSS, which is not good for degrading in older browsers.

Marko: What kind of music do you fancy?

James: I have quite varied tastes, and I tend to like a little bit of everything,
but most of the stuff I listen to regularly falls into four broad categories:
hip-hop (Public Enemy, Notorious BIG), acid/techno music (mostly early 90s stuff),
folky/indy rock (Vanessa Carlton, The The), and pure pop music (S-Club!)

Marko: What’s your favorite food?

James: You can’t beat a good sunday roast – roast lamb, potatoes, veg, gravy –
top stuff. I’m a pretty good cook, but I’m also very lazy about it, and
don’t like stopping work to prepare food, so as much as I eat well
some of the time, I also eat a lot of pasties and crisps, that kinda thing.

Marko: Where do you get out on Saturday’s?

James: I don’t really go out much at the moment, I spend my weekends mostly
working, or asleep from working! I visit friends and relatives sometimes,
go to the occasional gig, but mostly Saturday for me is spent in front
of my computer!

some relaxing question to follow

Marko: Chinese or Thai (food)?

James: Thai definitely; Chinese food makes me feel queasy, but Thai food
is always invigorating.

Marko: Coke or Pepsi?

James: Dr Pepper!

Marko: html or asp?

James: Cardigans or underwear? You’re not comparing like with like …

Marko: hahah

Marko: Do you watch television? If so, do you have a favorite show?

James: Apart from Star Trek I also love comedy – sitcoms, sketch shows;
there’s a show on Channel 4 at the moment called “Spoons” which is just hilarious.
I like comedy that’s right on the edge of being tasteful (as long is doesn’t
go over it – League of Gentlemen was just too much for me!)

Marko: What would we find in your favorites bookmarks-bar?

James: A big ol’ mess of stuff that I bookmarked and then forgot about.
I should sort that out at some point …

Marko: What inspires you? This doesn’t have to be design related.

James: I take a lot of drugs ;)

Marko: Thank again for having this interview, cheers m8!

James: No problem, thank you for asking.

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James Edwards Interview

Nov 11, 09:56 PM by Marko