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Faffing….

I wish I could get more of a focus in my working life. I’ve got some web design projects I want to get on with, but can’t decide which to get on with properly. I start one, then decide I want to do something else for a while, then I find some interesting web page to read, then it’s time to eat or do some housework, then B wants me for something, then it’s time to go out shopping, then it’s time to sit down with the paper and a cup of tea……
And nothing really gets done. Of course, if I had some paid work to do, a deadline to work to, it would be different. It’s hard for me to work steadily without a motivation, without structure, without feedback. At the moment, all I’m doing is faffing……

Well, not altogether. I’m reading up a lot on web design, particularly the aesthetics and theory of it, like this article:

Designing a great website that delivers the right message means that we have to look into the colors, typography, imagery, information architecture, information design, usability, accessibility, resolution on different screens and browser compatibility. All of these factor into how a user sees our creation and forms their opinion of it.

And there’s plenty more like that for me to read and digest. Underneath all the faffing, I think I’m finding my way to being a designer.

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General, Techie Stuff

More Reasons to be Cheerful….

My birthday cake
My birthday cake

So. Yesterday was my birthday, when I hit the Big One (count the candles on my cake and multiply by 10). And I aren’t ded yet! The day before (Sunday), Daughter no.2 and her husband came up, laden with prezzies, wine and a birthday cake – made by Daughter’s fair hands! A good day was had.
Now that I’ve entered my 60s, I’ve been wondering (amongst lots of other things) about just how many other oldie web designers are out there, particularly oldie women websters. All the web design forums and sites seem to be by and for young males, and the testosterone practically drips off the screen; the same goes for industry podcasts, where the invariably male presenters never seem to acknowledge that any of their listeners could be over 40 and/or non-male (I unsubscribed from one otherwise excellent podcast because the two presenters kept behaving like schoolboys and making ageist jibes).
I’m not looking for a forum where everyone discusses knitting patterns and shows off pictures of their latest grandchild; there are already more than enough of those around, thank you very much. It would be nice just to have an acknowledgement now and then that you don’t have to possess male genitalia and be under 30 to design websites for a living.

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General

Reasons To Be Cheerful Part 372….

Whilst somewhat gloomily contemplating the fact that I’ll be collecting my bus pass next month, I read a message from Son on Facebook. Earlier he had posted a Youtube link to his current favourite bit of music. I posted back that I liked it and would be “stealing it for my iPod”.
Son has just posted: “thats awesome!! me mums got an ipod and a taste for electronic tech!!”
Made me smile!

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General

Down to business…

The last few weeks, I’ve been thinking quite hard about getting much more business-like with my web design work. The web has a lot of helpful advice for design freelancers who want to be more professional – John O’Nolan has a couple of good articles (it helps a lot that he’s British – US business practice doesn’t always translate).
One is on web-design mood cards, which are basically screen-shots of a wide variety of websites; looking through them will help a client define to you what they want their site to look like (“Something like no. 39 – but with much less black, and a lemony-coloured background, oh and a picture of my cat…”). They can be actual cards, or a web-page – O’Nolan has very helpfully designed templates for both, and you can download them for free. That’s deffo something that I’ll be doing.
The other useful article of his is on setting payment terms for clients (there are also lots of useful ideas in the comments section). After reading through it, I’ve decided that for future business clients, I’ll insist on 50% payment before I even start work, with the rest to be paid after the design is signed off but before the site goes live. In other words – no pay, no site.
Additionally, I’ll work up a questionnaire for clients – what the site is to be used for, will they want ecommerce facilities, who the site is aimed at etc – so that I’ll have a clear idea of what work is needed before I start. And I may even write out a contract for them – there are plenty of templates I can use.

Yes, this is the year I’m going to get my web design business sorted. No more “Um, will £X be OK?” or letting the client tell me what they’ll pay – yes, I’ve actually allowed that in the past, and got shamelessly ripped off. But that ain’t gonna happen again.

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Rants

Into the Heart of Darkness…

So yesterday we ventured out – far, far out.
WE had to collect a laser printer from Rochdale. It had already been waiting a week, it was desperately needed for a printing job (our current printer having turned up its toes in the middle of it); the seller refused to pack it so that our courier could pick it up and deliver it. So when the weather reports indicated a slight thaw and no snow (in the Northerly parts of Albion, at any rate), we decided to risk it and drive down to fetch it.
Taking no chances, we dressed on layer after layer, chucking more clothes in the back of the car; also in the back went our wellies and a sleeping bag – I drew the line at a shovel, since we wouldn’t be going off into the snowbound hills.
The motorway bit of the journey turned out to be ridiculously easy – even in the inevitable contraflows and roadworks, we hardly slowed down at all. The motorway was completely clear of ice and snow all the way down and the white-blanketed landscapes all around made for lovely viewing for this particular passenger. It was when we hit Rochdale that our only problems appeared – and they weren’t anything to do with the weather.
Despite spending twenty years in Lancashire, I’d never been to Rochdale before. OK, maybe a January Sunday in terrible weather wasn’t the best time to view it, but it struck me as a amazingly ugly place – it even made Wigan look good. My overall impression was that three or four perfectly OK small towns – each with a centre and a shopping street, with straight radial roads running out with terraced streets off – had been picked up by some giant toddler and squashed together in a tangled mess.
Getting around the place was a nightmare. We had an A-Z, but but signposts and street signs were so bad that we couldn’t follow it; the address we wanted was close to the railway station, but following the signs for the station kept bringing us into a Matalan car park! And the road layout made no sense – almost everything seemed to end up a a car park. (I told B about an art student I knew in 1970, who claimed his grandfather had been the last man hung for sheepstealing in Rochdale; “I can see why – they had to make their own entertainment in those days.”) Eventually, after a full half-hour of bumbling around and cursing, we had to phone for help and get guided in.

Getting out was a whole lot easier – we were on the motorway in five minutes flat. It was snowing again by then, so we decided against going over to Preston and dropping in on the kids; instead we got onto the M6 and headed for home. We stopped only at Forton services, for some food. Not having eaten since breakfast, we’d planned on having a full meal, but changed our minds when we got inside. It wasn’t just the rip-off prices that deterred us – it was the glossy emptiness of the place, the blank-faced minimum-wage workers standing around dreaming of the life they might have had in a better world, the plastic-wrapped factory-produced microwavable food. I looked around at it all and longed for a proper greasy spoon place, one that gave you plates piled with chips and runny eggs and white bread with cheap margerine. Heart-attack food for sure, but the staff would look you in the eye and smile and even joke. But there wasn’t such a place for miles. So we got ourselves some plastic sandwiches and ate in the car.

Coming down our road and seeing the lights of our neighbours, I congratulated B on his speed in finding his way out of Rochdale. “I keep telling you” he said “Wherever I am, I always know which way is home.”

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General

Decision…..

After yet another non-appearance of a cheque that was supposed to be on its way since well before Christmas, I’ve decided that all future business customers will have to pay a deposit (by Paypal, to forestall any more “the cheque’s in the post” excuses) before I start any work for them. I know times are hard, but I can’t afford to carry somebody else’s debt.
Mood: Grrrrrr.

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Rants

It’s Cold……

….dammed cold. According to the news, the temperature last night here was around -10°C. Today, it’s still below 0°C and is expected to drop to -12°C. Minus 12 Centigrade is minus 20 Fahrenheit!!! And the long-term forecast is for more of the same.
I can remember the “Big Freeze” winter of 1962/3, when even London (where I was living then) had day after day of minus temperatures (in fact, checking the ever-useful interwebs, I find that London had below-freezing nighttime temperatures all the way through February).
However, in that winter I was just a kid, with no concerns about keeping the house warm or having to get around. So all I remember from that time is the snow and slush and problems with getting to school.
Now I’m grown-up, experiencing the kind of grown-up worries that my mother went through then. Most of the roads here are icy, the drive here is just a sheet of ice, all the shops are completely out of salt – and the local news is saying that some councils in Scotland are running out of grit and salt to keep the roads open. We have enough coal for our fire until the coalman gets here this week. But if he can’t get through then we’ll have to get the car out and buy some bags. But will the roads be safe? And so on.
So I’m wishing it would thaw soon.

Especially because it’s none too warm where I’m sitting now, in the hallway. Luckily, I’ve no urgent work to get on with (though I wish I had, to get in some money), so I’ll switch off soon and sit by the fire.

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General

Quiet….

Still very quiet here, still relaxing (mostly). I’m still working on updating three websites, and also thinking hard about changing the Oakleaf Circle site over to a CMS.
At least twice in the past, I’ve attempted to do this but had to abandon the effort. However, since then I’ve had more practice using WordPress as a CMS, I’ll try again. At the very least, it should eliminate all the effort of checking for missing closing divs each time I add something to the calender or the links, which I was doing constantly yesterday; if I hadn’t checked, the site would have been an incoherent mess. So that’s what I’ll be doing until some work comes along.

Or until the money that people owe us arrives. Reading what friends and family have been getting for Crimbo has put me in a decidedly teeth-gnashing mood. At least two friends have got shiny new computers (one with a tetrabyte HD!!) and a granddaughter has a new laptop (which I suppose would have made my planned £25 gift voucher for her look a bit naff, so maybe it’s best I couldn’t afford even that…). Meanwhile I sit here at my 6-year old single-core CPU, half-gig RAM machine wondering when it’s going to crash again.

Oh well, things could be worse. The fire is roaring, B has made some delicious bread which I will toast for lunch, the car actually started this morning. It’s cold, but not snowing.

Yes, time for some lunchie-poos…..

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Techie Stuff

T’is the Night Before Christmas…

Well actually it’s still the afternoon, but what the heck.
Got the Yule feasting done, got the big food shop over with, the coal bunker is full, we have torches and candles in case of electricity failure. It’s brrrrr-type cold outside, but it’s well above freezing here in the hallway where my trusty old computer lives. Basically, we can now sit back and relax. Relax in the way that we like, of course. For B, that means getting on with fixing the cupboard doors on the upstairs landing; for me it’s time to update all the websites, do the accounts and generally tidy up my office space. And also catch up on some blogging.
Anyway, happy Whatever to you all!

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General

The Listening Post…..

….Earlier this year I won an iPod in a draw, and started listening to podcasts. I get insomnia quite a lot, so it’s something to listen to in bed that doesn’t disturb my partner. Wanting to do something useful with those hours, I listen mainly to science and web design podcasts.
After listening to maybe a hundred varied podcasts, I think I can give some advice to would-be podcasters – here it is:
1) Decide whether your podcast is going to be strictly informational, or an hour of mucking around with your two bestie mates before a visit to the pub. Please don’t mix the two styles. Just don’t, OK?
2) Never assume that nobody over 45 listens to podcasts; this could lead you into making unfunny, insulting cracks about the “oldie demographic”. Your bestie mates may think this is comic genius, but nobody else will. Especially the oldies in your audience.
3) Invite a few over-45s onto your show for interviews, or even a spot of presenting. If you don’t know any suitably qualified over-45s, you don’t get out enough.
4) Invite a few women onto your show for interviews, or even a spot of presenting. If you don’t know any suitably qualified women, you don’t get out enough.
5) When recording, speak with the 4Cs: clearly, crisply, confidently and conversationally. If you know you have nervous verbal tics such as stuttering, gulping, “umms”, “y’knows” etc, work at getting rid of them for at least the length of a broadcast. Or get somebody else to do most of the speaking.
6) Check the acoustic qualities of the place you’re recording in. Unless you want to sound like you’re recording from your bathroom, or from above Platform 6 of Birmingham New Street station.
7) If you have to talk about something visual in an audio podcast – a diagram, say, or a web page – refrain from saying things like “And as you can see here, where I’m pointing…”
8 ) Jokes are fine – really. So long as they’re both funny and relevant. However, if the percentage of jokes starts outnumbering the informational content, consider marketing your podcast as comedy. That way, listeners won’t risk waking up their partners by giggling.

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General, Techie Stuff