Well here it is, my first day writing a blog. Well, I say my first day. I've written one before, but not one that will end up on my corporate website for prospective clients to see. I suppose the temptation here is to use this blog to try and sell our products, but I'm not going to. If, through gaining an insight in to my character and outlook on life, you decide to give us a call thanks to this blog then so much the better - but I will be talking about the things that I find interesting, not the things we do as a company.

Luckily I love my job.

Most people treat blogs as a place to rant about the things that annoy them in the world, be it public trasport, inconsiderate new players in the latest shoot-em-up ('teh n00b l4m0rz' as I believe they are called), or - and this one crops up a lot in the blogging community - Microsoft. I'm hoping to bring a little bit of humour and happiness, maybe tell you all about the films I've seen recently, recount heady stories of my computer gaming triumphs, write amusing new lyrics for well known songs or share my intimate knowledge of ASP.net, SQL and other riveting topics.

I bet you can't wait...

So let me start by telling you a little about myself. My name is Joshua Entwistle, though I play computer games and sign onto MSN messenger as 'Oddball' after Donald Sutherland's character in Kelly's Heros. I'm a director of Burning Flag Ltd and moonlight as IT support for ESquare Ltd and Triptych Marketing Ltd (get those links in there, push up the Google rankings - always thinking SEO. Did I say I wouldn't use this space to sell our products?). My hobbies include playing computer games (Battlefield 2), wishing I was fitter and finding new hobbies. I like to eat Chinese food. I write all the server-side code used in our websites such as the News system, this blog page, our BeIntegrated system, our site statistics tracker and many, many GDI+ controls that we're not allowed to use on our hosting packages. I'll rant about this later when no one is looking.

I am also responsible for the marketing, advertising and PR of the business. I'm rubbish at it so I have to bother Triptych often (did you know they offer professional, accredited marketing, design and PR services for budgets suitable for start-up and established SMEs? I bet you didn't...). We made Triptych Marketing's web site, by the way. I like that one, it's crisp and clean. Saying that, I like all the sites we do. We have an excellent team of graphics designers and our engineers are top notch. The thing is, I tend to like crisp, clean lines - boxes - easy on the eye and easy to read. I'm an engineer; I have no style at all. Seriously - when you graduate into industry from university they knock you out and take away your style glands. Oh, they may claim that it was alcohol poisoning from the last party you attended, but I know - oh yes.

Functionality is the cornerstone of my world. If it doesn't work or is hard to use it's not good enough. Fighting with designers is becoming a pastime I'm learning to enjoy. They make a design in their graphics packages and then say "I want it to look and work like this" - to which I reply "ok". Look, I've only just taken up the sport; you can't expect me to be good at it.