Portfolio
Posted: Mon 5 February, 2007 Filed under: Five Year Plan (now Ten), Getting Organised, Photography 2 Comments »About four or five months ago now, I bought up the domain I wanted for use as a portfolio for my photography. I did some basic development of it, then got distracted by other things.
And so it remained.
However, over the weekend just gone, I’ve finally got working on it again – and even better, it’s now got some photos on it! There’s still a way to go, and I need to re-do some of the styling and programming (well, that’s what the train journey to and from work is for, after all) but it’s one hell of a way further on the way to being a decent portfolio site than it was, say, three days ago.
Of course, once I’ve got everything sorted, I’ll add in a link here (and in the meantime there’s always a small selection on my ImageKind page) and hopefully be able to do some promotion and so on in that way too.
Upgrading
Posted: Fri 2 February, 2007 Filed under: D4D™, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Geeky, Getting Organised 4 Comments »So, the time has finally come.
Over this weekend, I’m going to be upgrading to WordPress 2.1 on D4D™. Yes, I’m nervous about it. Although I’m not going to go the whole hog and re-rationalise everything at the same time, as mooted a while back when I considered removing the older sections of the site ( to a deafening silence and dearth of comments!) but that may well happen over the next couple of months too.
If I’ve been really organised, I’ll have used a trial site in order to check things out and see what it all looks like, getting the templates in order, making sure I don’t end up with a fucked-up abortion of a site for two days.
If I haven’t been organised, then it’s going to look like a dog’s dinner here for a while as I go through and fix the problems as/when they occur.
Should be interesting, if nothing else.
Self-Promotion
Posted: Thu 25 January, 2007 Filed under: Five Year Plan (now Ten), Getting Organised, Own Business Leave a comment »Over the last week or so, I’ve started working harder at doing a bit of self-promotion. This hasn’t been the easiest of things – for one thing I’m not a great self-publicist – but I’m getting there.
Not least among The Things Wot I Done was registering my business name/site with both the UKWDA (UK Web Designers Association) and GAWDS (Guild of Accessible Web Designers), which has been interesting, and brought about some interesting conversations (well, interesting in a geeky way, anyway) about markup and how websites ‘should’ be written.
In addition I’ve been getting myself more organised with regard to billing, and I sent out a couple more invoices this week – it’s one of those things that I know I should do, but I still sometimes forget. I really do need to get better on that one.
And at the same time I’ve also been working on gaining permission to get access to a couple of locations where I really want to take photos. I’m still waiting for the responses on those requests though. Still, see how it all goes.
But yes, it’s all coming together, and so far it’s all looking pretty promising…
Developing
Posted: Sun 21 January, 2007 Filed under: Five Year Plan (now Ten), Geeky, Getting Organised Leave a comment »Today, my head is completely elsewhere.
In fact, it’s in Geekworld completely. I’m currently developing three websites at the same time, which can get pretty confusing, it has to be said. But it’s going well, so I’m hoping to have made a fair load of progress by the end of the day, and to be pretty much completed on at least two of them by the end of the week. Should be interesting.
And just to make life that little bit more complex, the site list I’m working on doesn’t include the one for my own company, nor the CV. However, as well as the sites I am working on, I’m also working on a framework idea, so that I’ve got all the basic stuff in place for any of the other new sites that’re still on the planning schedule.
Anyway, that’s where my head’s at today. There may be other updates today, but I really wouldn’t count on it!
Unexpected
Posted: Tue 16 January, 2007 Filed under: Domestic, Five Year Plan (now Ten), House Purchase, Thoughts 5 Comments »I used a phrase today that, quite honestly, I’ve never expected to say.
Yes, we intend to borrow £200,000.
It hit me just afterwards, that’s one fuck of a lot of money.
Decisions Made?
Posted: Sun 14 January, 2007 Filed under: Domestic, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Green, House Purchase Leave a comment »So, we ended up seeing two ore properties today, even though we’d already made a decision about the place we’re going to make an offer on. Why did we still see other places? Because by the time we’d seen the one we wanted, it was too late to cancel today’s viewings, the relevant estate agents had closed, and so we decided to be decent human beings, and still go see them.
Thankfully, neither of the properties today changed our minds about the ones yesterday.
However.
Now, I could gloss over this, and make out it never happened. But I won’t.
So, yesterday we saw two properties (Well, we saw way more than two, but we saw two particular ones) that we really liked. We’d made a decision on one, a fantastic place we both loved. We also had a second choice, which would be a bit more of a project, needs more work, but also ticked all the boxes. The difference between the two?
Property One is the more expensive one, by about £15,000 at the max price – but that puts it over the £250,000 stamp-duty threshold – which means we’d pay £7,800 in stamp duty instead of £2,500 on Property Two. Property One would need a small amount of work, but it would’ve been done quickly, whereas Two needs a lot more work – it’s fine to live in, but there’s a lot we’d want to do. Property One is an old place, whereas Porperty Two is 60s/70s, and has all the ‘character’ of a dead sponge. Oh, and Property One’s garden is OK, but small – and Property Two’s one is feckin’ huge, and sits on a plot of about 1/3rd of an acre…
We revisited both properties today, and did a lot of thinking.
And while last night it was Property One that was going to get the offer made on it, it’s now going to be Property Two. With it we get a huge garden, and a massive potential to expand on the place, increase its value, and make some serious changes. It also gives us the opportunity to add in some green energy stuff, as well as doing a lot more of our own vegetables etc., which Property One just wouldn’t have had.
So yes, we’ve made a decision, and Herself will be making the offer in the morning.
Mortgage Pay-off
Posted: Fri 12 January, 2007 Filed under: Domestic, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Getting Organised Leave a comment »With our current situation of starting off on the mortgage trail, one other thing that’s coming back to the forefront (for me, anyway) is the entire aim/aspiration to pay off that mortgage as quickly as possible. So it was interesting last night to see the return of the BBC’s “Pay off your mortgage in two years” programme.
The project is now at an end, and the first one last night – now titled “Did they pay off their mortgage in two years?” – was a good start. As it turned out, the couple had just about achieved their target (although to complete it, René Carayol (the presenter/mentor of the programme) had to buy one of their HotPod stoves) which was impressive. It’ll be interesting to see over the next few weeks how many of the other families involved in the project were successful.
Personally, I found it quite inspiring, and could (to a degree) identify with the couple in the programme, who had a lifestyle that was pretty relaxed and laid-back in general, and seeing how they came through in the end. I always find I can identify far more with that lifestyle than with the entire rat-race oriented people you so often see in this type of programme,(Relocation, Relocation drives me potty with the entire ‘Tarquin and Suzanne have worked in London, but now want to sell their townhouse and get a country getaway as well as a city crashpad’ crap, which appeals to me about as much as being repeatedly booted in the balls) I also love the fact that their main source of the income that paid off the mortgage was those HotPod stoves that they’d designed and made themselves.
The programme is definitely designed more for the ‘self-starter’ type of person, rather than the ‘quick-fix’, and I just find the entire thing fascinating. It’s certainly part of my own goals over the next few years – I acknowledge that I can’t just get a mortgage and then start paying it off immediately at well over the odds, but I can still aim to get it done as soon as possible, even if that in the end takes five or ten years, instead of the god-awful thirty that is likely to be the term of the loan.
I don’t know, maybe I’m unrealistic – but seeing programmes like the one last night make me realise that at least I’m not the only unrealistic or unreasonable person out there, and also that just because most people do choose to pay off their mortgages etc. over the allotted time, it doesn’t mean everyone does.
For now, that’s enough to keep me going at looking towards what I’m doing and what I want to do, while keeping that final goal/ aim/ aspiration in mind.