At the weekend I drafted Excel templates for my business accounts - all ready for a 6th April start.
I have still been pottering about with my home and business web sites.
Trying various templates and layouts. As usual, IE for PC's tend to give me most problems.
I'm fairly happy with the template for www.westgarage.co.uk and I have been adding Google search boxes to this site.
I still have a large number of pages to convert to CSS on the original web site, I will try and update a couple of pages each day.

Today I attended the Scottish Enterprise, Business Gateway Bookkeeping Seminar in Glenrothes.
The seminar was well pitched & presented by Douglas Rutherford (Rutherford Watson Chartered Accountants from Dunfermline).
All seemed to make perfect sense - but perhaps I am still a bit befuddled from the flu!
It was good to meet with a group of like minded people, there being a mix of recent and proposed business start ups.
Several new network contacts have been added to my list.

On checking my e-mails last night, I found one from former work colleague Rod Dalitz.
He had spotted this blog via my posting on the_gyle Google group.
He had also spotted the curious source code which I fixed on the 8th.
Thanks Rod.
Got confirmation of my place on the Business Gateway's Bookkeeping for small business course,
to be held in Glenrothes on 16th Feb.

I think I caught a cold!
Certainly feels like it.
All I could do today was to read up some more on HTML & CSS.
I also adjusted a couple of minor niggles with the web sites.

Was looking at this blog on a PC today and spotted that the 2nd & 3rd entries had different formatting from the first.
Had a look at the HTML code and spotted some weird, repeated text styling.
When I manually edited the HTML all worked fine.
I don't think the problem lies with the Benchdesign CSS Template,
most likely I have inadvertently added some formatting in Rapidweaver before I published the blog.
On clearing the formatting from the two entries and re-publishing, via RapidWeaver, I see that this has cleared the problem
Whilst I had the .css style sheets and .html file open, I had a play with some of the formatting to see what changes what.
I also looked at a couple of web primers on CSS which gave me a few insights into the correct syntax and use.
My other task achieved today was to sign up to Google AdSense.

Still testing and refining the website, I even managed to read the RapidWeaver manual,
it was almost understandable (after hacking about with the CSS files last night).
With computers, I always find that it is best just to dive in and play with the applications,
then the instruction manual makes a lot more sense.
In the past I have stuggled through tutorial examples which have had little relevance to what I'm trying to accomplish.
Luckily there are some good forums for RapidWeaver and general CSS topics.
One common feature from the forums, is the fact that there have to be some work arounds to fix issues with IE6 for PCs
yep! - I spotted some of those issues last night
Next on the agenda will be pulling my business plan together - currently it exists as a few files on my Ipaq handheld.
Lots of ideas and notes- but not very cohesive or focussed as yet.

At long last my employer has issued the redundancy letters - I leave on 31st March 2006.
Now I can set a target date for getting my business up and running.
I tested the draft website on my mac last night using versions of Safari, Netscape and IE - all seemed well.
This morning I checked the site on a PC running IE and a few anomalies appeared.
Lots more tinkering this evening but I just created more problems when I started messing with the CSS styles templates.
I eventually opted for a slightly different format which appears to give similar results on all the mac and PC browsers.
The under construction site can be viewed at www.westgarage.co.uk
I have also been in touch with my local Business Gateway and have booked a place on a couple of their Business Start-up courses.

First steps -
I don't know if it is very productive for a company to go through a long consultation period when announcing redundancies?
My current employer made the initial announcement, way back in November 2005, that it was to close its Edinburgh design facilities with the loss of 260 jobs.
It has still not completed the issue of official redundancy notices to all employees.
As the days pass, my interpretation of booking "reasonable time" for job searching and the like, is increasing exponentially.
Last week I finally got round to registering the domain name for my proposed business venture and this weekend I have drafted the bones of the website.
My previous website building experiences have been with using good old HTML to produce a personal hobby site.
All very simple stuff (does not even use frames).
For the business site I am dragging myself into the 21st century and designing the site with CSS using RapidWeaver.
I am currently using standard templates (which do look rather good) but no doubt I will try and customise the templates at some point.