Scan’s can be one of the most exciting times in a pregnancy, finding out all about your baby, seeing your baby for the first time. It is also one of the most nerve wracking times in your life, as the sonographer checks to see everything is ok with your little one. You dread the worst, especially when they tell your wife to empty her bladder as they need to check the legs in more detail. Even worse when they switch the machine off, turn round to you and say “I’m so sorry”.

At this point, every tiny bit of excitement is replaced by fear and worry. The sonographer tries to explain what they have seen, but you just think the worst. We were then put in a room and told that a midwife will come to see us and explain everything. That was one of the longest times of our lives. Thankfully after such an awful time in the scan room, the midwife explained to us in full what the situation was, what would need to be done and possible treatments after birth.

Will was diagnosed with bilateral talipes. Also known as clubfoot, in both feet. At this stage they could not tell how severe and whether it was linked to any other issues. For this we had to come back for some more scans later in the pregnancy. We were told about support websites, including the great Steps Charity site. This included a forum to talk to parents of babies and children who suffer with the same. In the pregnancy this was a valuable resource and gave us more confidence about what lay ahead. In fact the more we read and talked to other parents, the more we thought that the way the sonographer told us was way over the top and could have done this in a much better way.

As the pregnancy went on we had other scans, and although they could not rule out 100%, they didn’t believe it was linked to anything else.

August 31st, 1am and my wife’s contractions start. 7.37am and Will was born. His talipes were massively evident to the point they were classed as severe. Up in the ward and the nurse came and told us that we would be referred to Nottingham Queens Medical Centre (QMC) Hospital in the Childrens Clinic.

Two weeks after he was born, we took Will to the QMC where he was to be looked after by Mr Hunter. He straight away said that his talipes were severe and that he would need to start his treatment straight away. This was to be approximately 6-8 weeks of being in plaster from his toes all the way up to his hips, to be replaced weekly. A tenotomy followed by another 3 weeks in plaster. He would then need to be in a special boots and bar 23 and a half hours a day for about three months, which hopefully would be reduced down to nap and sleep times until he is about 3 or 4 years of age.

Will was put into plasters at his first appointment and it was heartbreaking to see him lose the movement of his legs and feet. But we knew it had to be done. The first night was awful. He cried virtually all of the night. To the point where we rang the emergency doctor to see if we could give him anything, but he was too young. Unfortunately as the emergency doctor said, we had to just ‘grin and bear it’. It eased over the next few nights.

What we didn’t think about was what other people would think when we took Will out. You could see people looking at Will’s legs and they’d look at us. We couldn’t help but think that they thought we’d hurt him or we’d dropped him. It was awful, it was something we had to get used to very quickly and become thick skinned.

Every Tuesday we’d have to return to the QMC to have Will”s feet adjusted and replastered. What I had to learn very quickly was how to remove the plasters. This had to be done at home about an hour or so before his appointment. It was done by soaking them in warm water, loosening the plaster cast and then peeling off the bandages. It wasn’t easy. The first week it took me nearly an hour. Having to keep the water warm enough for Will, and trying not to scare him whilst I was yanking at his feet. In later weeks, scissors were brought in, being extremely careful, but they were very useful. Over the space of seven weeks, I managed to get it down to 25 minutes.

The nights were hard, the plasters were obviously weighing Will’s legs down and making it very uncomfortable. The first few nights after a plaster change were the worst, with him being in more pain. We tried lifting his feet with cushions which helped, in the end we went against all advise about baby’s sleeping and he slept on his front. Remarkably he found this more comfortable and he managed to sleep much better, it was still bad, but we were managing to get better spells of sleep in between his feeds.

Will had seven plasters altogether and after which he had to have a tenotomy. This was a procedure done under a local anaesthetic. He would have his tendons sliced in both ankles. He’d then be put in plaster for another three weeks. We’d been dreading this operation ever since we knew that Will would have to have it. I couldn’t watch, and got quite emotional during it. But it was very quick and he didn’t feel a thing. He also was allowed a double dose of Calpol, it was when the anaesthetic ran out and the Calpol wore off was the worst stages.

Three weeks flew by and it was now the final time to take off the plasters, by now Will’s feet had completely turned to the correct position. In around three to four months Mr Hunter had fixed Will’s feet. It was now a case of keeping them fixed.

It was then time for another visit to the hospital, a visit to the Orthotics department to have his boots and bar fitted and then another checkup with Mr Hunter. He was given white Markell boots, which involved using shoelaces to keep tight. Mr Hunter was extremely happy with Will’s progress and advised us that he’d need to wear them 23 hours a day. He also advised that the first few nights would be quite hard. How right he was.

All I can remember for the first few weeks was Will constantly waking up crying, always checking whether his feet had slipped out of the boots, undoing and tightening them again. It was extremely hard. He didn’t take to then very well. In fact we found the Markell boots very hard to deal with, that much that we rang Orthotics up to see if there were others he could have. They advised us that they were trying out a new set of boots and asked us if we wanted to use them. These were blue and had two Velcro straps and a buckle. These were brilliant. They were so easy to put on and keep on. I don’t know the names of them but would really recommend them.

It didn’t help Will’s sleep but did ease managing his boots better. It was around this time that we decided to try and claim for Disability Living Allowance for Will. We thought we had a good case with the amount of times we were having to get up to help him at night, and his basic needs outweighed the needs of a child that didn’t have Talipes.

It took me over a week to fill in the 50+ page form, I did a diary of how many times we got up at night and for how long for, and sent lots of literature I’d received from the Steps charity. I was quite sceptical whether we would be awarded the DLA due to many people being turned down on the Steps website forum, but were overjoyed when two weeks later we received a letter saying we’d been awarded the highest care component. I would recommend any parent of a child with talipes to claim.

Will was to wear his boots and bar 23 hours a day for three months. An extremely long three months, and it was awful seeing him so restricted. He was getting to the age where he was sitting up and trying to move around. But after two months we were back at the hospital for another checkup.

Mr Hunter again was extremely happy with Will’s progress, that much that after another month of 23 hours a day we could reduce this down to night time and nap times. This was great to give Will a bit of freedom, since two weeks of age and for around seven months he’d been restricted either with plaster casts or boots and bar and now during the day he was free from all of this.

Nightimes were still the same and probably were slightly worse due to him becoming used to not having to wear his boots and bar for the majority of the day. During the day Will was starting to become more mobile and starting to crawl.

By the middle of April we had another checkup at hospital. Mr Hunter again was very happy with his progress, he thought one of his feet was still a bit tight, but this would sort out by using the boots and bar. He was that happy with his progress, that we didn’t need another appointment for six months, in October.

Over the past few months Will has become more and more used to his boots and bar. His night wakening have reduced immensely and we have gone through spells of sleep throughs. It still is a bit of a shock to your system when he now wakes, but we are thankful for improved sleep.

Will has also been standing up now for a couple of months, and it looks like it isn’t bothering him and is causing no pain. He is gradually becoming more confident in his standing and is shuffling along with the help of the sofa and other objects.

It was then this week when Will managed to walk with the help of his walker which was an amazing milestone for us. For over a year we had wondered whether he’d be able to walk ok, and now he was, with the help of his walker. We don’t think it will be too long before he won’t be using this and have the strength to be walking on his own. View Video of Will walking

It’s been a hard but amazing year, seeing our baby’s feet change from having severe talipes to the point where he is walking, times we never thought it would happen. An emotional rolllercoaster I would say, but an amazing journey. It’s by no means finished and there is always the worry of a relapse. We have our next appointment in October, so we are extremely interested to see what Mr Hunter thinks about his progress.

Will is one next week, I cant believe how quickly it has gone. At times I felt it wasn’t so quick, but looking back and what he has gone through, it seems like yesterday when we were in the labour suite looking at this tiny baby, taking him weekly to hospital, to the point where he is now. I probably wouldn’t have said this at many of the 3am wakenings, but I’ve loved every minute of it. Especially seeing him walking with a big smile on his face.

Granted I’ve probably only been an Apple fan in the last 3 years. Personally I don’t know why it took me so long, but it doesn’t take you long to become the obsessor. Soon as the iMac was delivered I was hooked. Then the Apple TV, the MacBook Pro, iPhone etc etc.

So what with this Apple vs Adobe fighting.

On Thursday 29th April, Apple did a quite unusual thing and made available a letter that Steve Jobs had written about his thoughts on Flash. This has obviously been building up ever since the decision not to make Flash available on the iPhone, if you read into the letter, probably even earlier as Jobs has always maintained that crashes on Mac’s tend to be from Flash plugin within Safari.

Jobs maintains that Flash is a closed system, and openly admits that Apple also have proprietary products too. But expresses that Apple have gone down the route of using Web Standards such as HTML 5, CSS and JavaScript. He goes on saying that even now Adobe haven’t released Flash publicly on a smartphone and that the release keeps getting pushed back. And that Flash has one of the worst security records in 2009, and therefore moving on to his statement that Flash is the main reason for Mac OS crashing.

He continues by saying that Flash is a battery hog, and that most Flash Apps/Sites will need to be redeveloped to take advantage of ‘Touch’ input devices and that if you’re redeveloping then you may as well do this in HTML 5 etc.

And finally the main reason is the concern of being able to produce sub standard applications that hinder the enhancement and progress of the platform. How quick would Adobe be in updating Flash for the iPhone after every OS update. It’s taken this far to get close to having an Android plugin (second part of this year at time of writing).

I’m going to try and talk about this as impartially as I can. If not I’m going to end up questioning whether I am more of a fanboy than I am a developer.

Let’s start here:

Right, the issue of not having Flash on the iPhone. Really can anyone tell me what they’re really missing out on by not having Flash? Just some nice animated banners?  Whenever I use my iPhone for browsing the only thing that bothers me about not having Flash is a blue lego brick telling me where it should have been. I personally don’t feel like I’m missing anything. The way the web has developed especially the last couple of years is that Flash functionality can now be replicated quite simply by using JavaScript frameworks and AJAX. On a web site, what is Flash really used for these days? I’d like to see any stats on it, but I personally think that Flash is primarily used for displaying video. And yes, it does this very very well. But for YouTube? There’s an app for that.

I won’t go into this in anymore detail as I think Smashing Magazine has done this very well here.

As a web developer I haven’t touched Flash in over a couple of years. I lie, I did actually update the video player on the company website, which we built in Flash. But again this supports my previous argument. The site is built purely in Coldfusion and jQuery. There’s a Flash video player on the home page. And a media player built in jQuery that uses Flash to play FLV’s.

A few years back I really liked the look of Flex. When version 2 came out and Adobe AIR was first released. I was extremely excited. I thought ‘here is the death of the browser’, Adobe are really ahead of the game here. They were great products. Personally I purchased Flex 2, and version 3. Beta tested 4 alongside Flash Catalyst. Yet if I was to choose how to build a ‘rich internet application’ nowadays, it’d be using AJAX, jQuery and Coldfusion/PHP or .Net. This isn’t because they are ‘easier’ to code in. It’s because I’m not having to rely on a plugin and the hope that my customers have the plugin. Because I know it will work on mobile devices. Because I’m using open web standards.

Apple seem to be going on about HTML 5 and is this really a HTML 5 vs Flash war? Well not really as HTML 5 is still years away. That’s the reason theres no decent HTML 5 apps out at the moment. If it was Flash is the winner, hands down. But even though it’s years away we’re getting early adopters. YouTube already uses it for displaying video. And you have to say if others start to use that ahead of Flash, then the there really would be problems for the future of Flash.

I know many techy people who won’t touch a Flash Plugin because of the security issues.

But then there’s Apple. Another of the main arguments is about closed systems. Apple argues that Flash is a closed proprietary system, but then decide to remove the ability to develop apps using third party tools for the ‘closed system’ that is the iPhone OS. Now I agree to some extent of the reasoning behind this, I personally think it benefits the iPhone. But the argument that it will allow the development of sub standard apps on the App store is surely wrong. Maybe this will increase the development of ‘cr’apps, but don’t Apple have the final say anyway on what goes into the App Store. Or is the fact that the number of rejections going up will not look good?

I think Apple produce some great software, iLife is great and I love Aperture, but when it comes to sub standard apps, iTunes. Such a huge product and that millions of people use, surely Apple can do better than that.

So whether I agree with Steve Jobs or not, I think this whole argument isn’t Adobe vs Apple. this is Flash vs the future of the web. It’s just that Steve is on the side of ‘the future’. He really doesn’t like Flash does he

Yes HTML 5 is coming, and you could argue that Adobe has a great head start in having Flash at the extent it is, but the number of Flash websites are decreasing, as it’s functionality can be replicated now in JavaScript. There’s problems with Adobe being able to create a mobile plugin version of Flash, and there’s already adoption of HTML 5 for Flash’s primary use, video. That is where I think the issue lies.

Is it an Open vs Closed argument? No, the iPhone is virtually closed system, but Apple is now the biggest Smartphone provider in the US and there’s millions of iPhone owners across the world. Are they bothered that it’s closed. Not really.

Do I want to see Flash disappear. Of course not, competition is good, and I love being part of both the Adobe community and the Apple community, but I honestly do fear for Flash’s future, not because Steve said so, but because of the way the web is moving away from the need for Flash.  It’s just the way the world and the web is evolving.

Am I more of a Fanboy than a Developer. Not really, I just don’t tend to use Flash anymore, mainly because personally I build sites that don’t require Flash, and/or there isn’t a need for it anymore.

Yet over the last few years, I have started to worry, and it comes down to this simple statement.

“Coldfusion is no longer a technology being used in UK industry”.

What do I mean by that? It’s simple. There just does not seem to be any companies out there who seem to be using Coldfusion anymore.

Where do I get this information from?

Since I left Capital One, I moved to a ‘cloud computing’ company. I thoroughly enjoy working there and work with some great people, but have been keen to look out for new roles just to reduce my commute. I have two lovely children and at times it has taken me over an hour and a half to two hours to get home. I miss them, I miss my wife, I miss some of the new things they do when they’re growing up. I don’t get chance to help and support my wife because I leave really early in the morning and don’t get back sometimes till they’re in bed or getting ready for bed. So for this reason and this reason alone I kept my CV updated on the job boards. In two years the only calls I’ve really had from agencies are for roles in London. And these phone calls have been pretty sparse.

Speaking to agencies they tell me that Coldfusion roles are pretty hard to come by because:

1. Where Coldfusion is used it tends to be used for legacy applications which most companies are currently migrating over to languages such as .Net and PHP. Coldfusion developers are usually brought in to support legacy applications and/or to help with migrating to other languages.
2. There is a serious lack of Coldfusion developers out there.

Both these are intertwined. Are companies moving to other products because they can’t get the developers. Are developers leaving Coldfusion because they can’t get the roles?

Being part of the Coldfusion community in the UK I find statement number two to be quite unbelievable. But I remember two roles that did come up outside London a year or so ago. One was a contract role in Glasgow, and another was a role in Milton Keynes. Now forgive me I don’t know exactly what the roles entailed or what the company’s names where. I just know that these roles were for Coldfusion Developers. These roles took months to fill. Month’s, not one, not two, but over six month’s to fill. Yet there seems to be quite a healthy Coldfusion community here.

I honestly believe that there are two reasons why businesses are moving away from Coldfusion. Firstly, yes, there does seem to be a lack of developers, because developers will go where the roles are. It’s a catch 22 situation, and it’s getting worse. Secondly, I also believe that businesses don’t want to pay the license costs for the product especially when they’re better supported ‘free’ products available. This has nothing to do with the current economic situation.

Most companies can afford the odd £5k here and there. A company the size of Capital one you’d think would have no worries in upgrading to a new version of Coldfusion. But they were having to upgrade from version 5 to 8 during my time there. There was the costs of bringing in a Project Manager to manage the upgrade, the cost of IT resource and new servers that they had to bring in as current infrastructure was not supported. The cost of multiple licenses of Coldfusion. It soon added up to a hefty amount. And they did this with the risk that there were only two employees (now one) in their UK Operations who could develop in Coldfusion. So there’s the worry of having systems that aren’t supported in the event of a Coldfusion Developer leaving and the struggle and cost of having to re-recruit a new Coldfusion Developer.

“Companies will choose a technology that gives them a great pool of resource available to them, and theres a definite Coldfusion drought in the UK.”

Personally I have to think of the bigger picture. I have to think of the future and how I’m going to afford to live and support my family. I was close, about a year back, a business literally two miles down the road from where I live had a Coldfusion Developer role managing, wait for it….’a legacy application, which was being migrated to .Net’. Their struggle was to find a Coldfusion Developer who had some .Net experience (myself) or bring in a .Net developer who could learn and understand Coldfusion enough to migrate their application. They went with the latter.

So I’ve taken the plunge into another pond. A tough decision leaving my current company as it’s an exciting place to be at the moment, but it is an opportunity too good to turn down, closer to home, and so I will be soon managing a team of .Net developers with the aim of bringing my knowledge up to speed to move into .Net development. So the Coldfusion community is to lose another member.

What can be done?

I honestly don’t know. Has the cycle gone too far? Are the other technologies available too far ahead with the amount of developers developing in their languages? I don’t believe for one minute this is the same in the US. I’m sure there is a healthy use of Coldfusion out there. So why not here? We can continue to have the ‘Scotch on the Rocks’ and the ‘CFDevCon’ (if it is to go ahead again) conferences, but until we get the uptake of Coldfusion back in UK business I can see the attendances of these starting to dwindle if they haven’t already done so.

The future

I thought with the introduction of technologies such as Flex (with Flash Catalyst and Flash Builder) and the ease of integration with Coldfusion that this would give the boost we needed. But as with Coldfusion, I haven’t seen a massive influx of requests for Flex developers specifically in the UK. Which brings in the added worry about the future of Flash. Flash has always been a ‘marmite’ product. you either like it or you don’t. I did enjoy using Flash, but have hardly touched it in the past two to three years. I like the concept of Flex, but to be honest with the introduction of of JavaScript frameworks such as jQuery, Prototype and Sproutcore you have to start worrying about the advantages of it and therefore what does the future of Flash hold? There’s also the added competition of HTML 5 and the fallout between Apple and Adobe because of no Flash on iPhones or iPad’s.

What future does Flash have? It started basically as an animation package, and overtime has turned into a great way off building rich internet applications, but there are other ‘better supported’ technologies out there that do not require plugins etc. Will it go back to just being used for animations again? I hope not and don’t think so.

Yet it may not be the demise of Adobe, It’s going to be an interesting few years for Adobe especially with their Web products. Is there a future for Coldfusion (especially in the UK)? Is there a future for Flash? I honestly don’t know. Personally I hope so, but I have my worries.

Please note these are my personal belief’s from the experiences I’ve had in looking for Coldfusion roles, and in my eyes, the way I’ve seen web technologies go.

As always, mine will not be the only opinion, and I hope people have a more positive outlook. Whatever your thoughts, I’d love to hear them.

Finishing the Derby 10k run

I am still here…. As you may know I have decided this year to complete a number of runs to raise money for the Steps Charity. Steps is the charity that has supported us with William after he was born with Bilateral Talipes. So to give something back to Steps, I have decided to complete a number of runs this year with the aim to compete in a full marathon in 2011.

On April 11th 2010 I completed my first run, running in the Derby 10k run. What made this achievement even more satisfying for myself was that the week leading up to the run I was quite unwell with a cough and a cold and the night before I was very close to pulling out. I am so glad I didn’t.

Even more satisfying is that I hadn’t really trained as much as I should have. I had completed the Sport Relief mile a few weeks before quite happily and had upped my training but the most I had run was 3.3 miles. So to go from averaging 2 miles every training session to completing 6.2 miles for the event itself and not feeling any major issues during the run was really good for me.

I’m now in training for the Robin Hood half marathon which will take place in September. I also aim to get another 10k run in before then.

You can sponsor me for all my runs in 2010 at www.justgiving.com/ppounder

Over the past 3 weeks or so we’ve had no end of snow, an amount I’ve not seen since I was a young lad. New Years Day we drove over the Peak District to my sister-in-law and brother-in-laws in Manchester and it was absolutely gorgeous. The beautiful side of snowfall. Now though its that horrible slushy rubbish which you wish would just disappear.

So thanks to Stefan Richter at Flashcomguru.com, who has used my original post and completed the jigsaw. I’m not going to take any of the credit for this one, thanks to Stefan’s work, it is now possible to get CF9 installed onto MAMP with Snow Leopard.

View his post here.

You may have noticed that I have added a Fundraising/Marathon section to the site. This is because I’ve just registered myself to run the Edinburgh Marathon. Unfortunately it looks like I was a bit late to apply for the ballot for next year’s London Marathon, however I am on the shortlist for a charity spot. So I could end up doing two marathons within a month.

I will be running for the Steps Charity who are a small national charity supporting children and adults affected by a lower limb condition such as clubfoot or a hip condition. Will was born with bilateral fixed talipes which means both of his feet are pointed inwards. He is currently undergoing treatment to correct these, which involves plaster casts, an operation and then wearing special boots for a time to ensure that his feet when corrected do not relapse.

Seeing Will undergo this treatment has made both myself and my wife feel that we would like to contribute and raise funds for the charity. I have decided along the path of running a marathon, which I’m happy to say my brother will be joining me. And both Clair and myself will be coming up with more fundraising ideas over the next few months. Keep your eyes peeled.

In the meantime, please take a look at my fundraising and training pages. And if you feel generous, you can visit my JustGiving page.

Kind regards

Paul

Paul

Rhod Gilbert

A month back I meant to blog about Rhod Gilbert’s Edinburgh Preview show we watched in a small venue in Eastwood. The venue was that small, it could possibly only hold 60 people, and we were within touching distance of the great man.

For those of you who don’t know, Rhod is an up and coming Welsh comedian, who last year was one of the highlights of the Edinburgh Festival with his show, Rhod Gilbert and the Prize Winning Mince Pie. A show Clair and myself went to see in Nottingham in March. Rhod stood up for over three hours telling about his experience of a Mince Pie in a shop in Knutsford Service Station, and his quest to find out why it was an award winning Mince Pie. He also was a great success at the Royal Variety Performance.

Well this years show is a follow up to last years, entitled Rhod Gilbert and the cat that looked like Nicholas Lyndhurst. Why its called that, I won’t say, you’ll have to see the show.

Well in a small venue in Eastwood, Rhod tested out his new materlal for his show, and cooly as you liked afterwards chatted with the audience asking for feedback about his performance. Absolutely brilliant.

We were going to watch the DVD recording of last years show in June, however it would have been too hard to get to London on time. The DVD is out in November, I definitely recommend it.

20 week scan

Well most of you who know me, know that I am due to become a father again. We have had our 20 week scan a few weeks back and this time we decided to find out what we were having. So in true BBC News before Match of the Day stylee, if you don’t want to know the results, look away now.

So, our son is due late August/early September, and we’re very excited. This means, with Livvy we will have both a daughter and son. We have now started to tell Livvy and she seems to be very excited and is always saying ‘Hello Baby’ to her mums tummy. All very cute.

I’ve added a picture of the scan, for you to see. Looks like September is going to be very busy, but really looking forward to it.

Paul