I am captured by the creative genius that spills out of garden sheds. Artistry, in particular. It seems that the blank mundane canvas of the common timber structure allows imaginative and intense focus on painterly expression. Perhaps it is the physical solitude of the shed which enables its inhabitant to travel the heights and depths of their own artistic perfection.

Damian Hirst spent almost three years in his garden studio in Devon painting a collection. The paintings, most of which had never been seen outside the shed, featured in the Wallace Collection in London, 2009. “For two years… the paintings were embarrassing and I didn’t want anyone to come in,” he said. Although he is now working with oil on canvas rather than animals in formaldehyde, the focus of his paintings remain – skulls, sharks jaws and cigarettes. Hirst holds the world record for the largest sale of a single artist at £111million but has returned to his college roots to concentrate on oil painting, from his garden room!

Dublin born self-taught artist Paul Kelly burst upon the Irish art scene in the early 1990s, winning the James Kennedy Memorial Award for portraiture at the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA) at the age of…

Be Your Own Webmaster

Once a website is created, it is the job of the webmaster to maintain the site so that it remains a valuable resource.  The task of Website maintenance is more routine than site development and creation, but it is very important and too often overlooked.

Some Website Maintenance Activities and Updates Include:

Text edits – schedules, calendars, seminars, training, events, sales, client testimonials, case studies/success stories, press releases and news stories
Continuation of search engine optimization – links back, meta data, site maps
Design and creation of sales announcements/promotions
Design and creation of client newsletters
Check website for browser compatibility and link integrity
Update, change, or create information contained on databases
Redesign pages or sections to improve the look and feel of the website
Creation of entirely new pages or sections as the website grows or changes
Reorganizing site structure for ease of future website maintenance and growth

A webmaster’s job is tricky.  Besides all the chores listed above, webmasters also monitor how many people visit the site, how visitors enter the site, how long they stay on each page they visit, and which links they use.  This monitoring helps business in many ways.  The information that is gathered can be essential to improving the website and…