Pages within the news section:
- Main News Page: The main news section of the website;
- The Wayfarer: News on Stuart Vallantine himself.
- Website Development News: News on www.stuartvallantine.co.uk.
- News Archive: Past stories.
Improved Drawings Section and Compatibility
Wednesday 24th May 2006 (formerly British Empire Day)
Further artworks added and slight CSS amendments.
In a bid to raise the artistic profile of its offline cousin, the Stuart Vallantine website has seen the drawings section of the site expanded.
The number of drawings throughout the site have doubled from five to ten. There are now two colour plates within the website. Of the drawings within this site, sixty percent of them have been drawn from memory, with the rest using photographs. As of before, the drawings are navigable via the Drawings menu with the thumbnail images, and between the inner pages featuring the artworks.
Accessibility and Engineering Works
Tuesday 7th March, Friday 24th March, Tuesday 18th April 2006 and Wednesday 10th May 2006
Further tweaks to improve site accessibility.
There has been some slight changes to this website, which have made little cosmetic impact, with an emphasis on improved site accessibility.
Firstly, Breadcrumb links have been added to the drawing section of this site, to allow easy navigation into the drawings menu. Another change has concerned the email addresses. There are now three new email addresses accessible from this site, designed for more specific enquiries, with the poetry, drawings and articles allocated their own mailbox. These are in addition to the generic email address for more general enquiries.
This April has seen further developments towards improved accessibility. All links to the main pages of this site have their own keyboard short cut. For example, ALT+0 (or CTRL+0 on an Apple Macintosh) leads to the first page. This is great for mouseless users or persons who cannot be bothered to drag their mouse up to their desired link.
This has been augmented by a list of the key commands. Users may wish to place this on the side of the browser, or print them off for future reference. To facilitate this move, the shortcuts list loads in a separate browser window.
In the long term, one aim is to make the site more compliant with WAI standards, in addition to being compatible with most web browsers.
Sunfield Success Story
Tuesday 7th March 2006
The Travelling Poet inspires in soirée on himself, his poetry and visual arts.
Last Wednesday's talk at Sunfield School proved to be a success for the Travelling Poet, his peers and their audience.
This full day event celebrated the artistic endeavours of persons on the autism spectrum, with lively contributions from Philippa Rogan (with an excellent poem on Jegsy Dodd), Zoe Garrett (with an illuminating talk on living with autism, and her charitable deeds), and Keith McKenzie, whose contribution was the culmination of a two year survey on the needs of persons with Asperger's Syndrome.
The afternoon was reserved from Wendy Lawson, who spoke about living with Asperger's Syndrome, a misdiagnosis of Schizophrenia and monotracked information processing. Her two hour lecture was most interesting, open, humorous and honest.
My contribution included a description about myself, some sample poetry and artwork. On a personal note, I received some great feedback via message boards and emails after this event.
Sunfield Superman
Sunday 22nd January 2006
Live from deepest Worcestershire, the Travelling Poet.
The Midlands has assumed second home status for myself, due to following the mighty Stalybridge Celtic and other recreational activities. To confirm this even more, I shall be doing a talk at Sunfield School on the 1st March 2006 (St. David's Day), along with three other persons on the autistic spectrum, including the author Wendy Lawson.
This will be a full day event, celebrating the artistic endeavours of persons on the autism spectrum. Also, the year 2006 is the 25th anniversary of Dr. Lorna Wing's translation from the original German to English of Hans Asperger's paper on Autistic Psychopathy (his words!) into what we now know as 'Asperger Syndrome'.
Tickets are available from Sunfield School at £50 for professionals and £20 for parents and carers.
Seven Days in the Life of www.stuartvallantine.co.uk
Tuesday 31st January 2006
The Honeymoon Period Reviewed and Further Improvements.
Since its launch on the 26th January 2006, the Stuart Vallantine website has seen positive reactions from friends and family alike. Fulfilling its remit to showcase the visual and written works of Stuart Vallantine, the site will remain a "work in progress", with the site seeing new articles, artwork and poetry.
As proof of this, I have now beefed up the drawings section. Following comments concerning the small size of the images, I have addressed this, by enabling users to see an expanded version.
In my opinion, all websites are "under construction". They do not have to say "under construction" on certain pages. This is a sign of manana. A website should be a living breathing unit kept alive by a dedicated team of coders, designers, one person bedroom outfits and adequate network facilities (be it dial up or broadband so fast that the page loads up before you write "http" on your web browser address bar). An "under construction" statement is a death sentence towards improving site accessibility with search engine directories and people browsing at their home or office.
At last
Tuesday 24th January 2006
The wait is over, after a lengthy gestation period of five years.
The super soaraway Stuart Vallantine website is fit for public consumption and perusal. Its aim is to provide a showcase for Dukinfield's very own performance poet and visual artist.
Accessible and W3C compliant
Tuesday 29th November 2005
The all singing all dancing Stuart Vallantine web experience is W3C compliant.
Most pages within this website are now compliant to W3C standards, supporting the HTML 4.01 Transitional Document Type Declaration. The whole of this site has also been tested using browsers other than Microsoft Internet Explorer (such as Mozilla Firefox and other Open Source browsers) for maximum compatibility.
New Website
Monday 14th November 2005
After several years, the Stuart Vallantine website is nearing reality.
The purpose of this website is to provide a showcase for the poetry and drawings of Stuart Vallantine. Plans were first mooted in 2001, albeit without success. Thanks to improved competence with HTML, this will be ready for 2006.
