Posted: Tue 11 September, 2007 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: D4D™, Own Business, Work-related |
It’s coming up to that time again where I want to start doing some extra work. Over the last couple of months it’s just not really been feasible, with the additional pressures of relaunching the main work site as well as two smaller sites, so extra work would’ve been just insane.
Thankfully that’s now all over and done with, so I’m back to looking for more new things to be doing. I’ve had some interesting feelers from a couple of sources, and over the next two weeks I also plan to be doing some self promotion as well, sending out letters, going to do some visits, that kind of thing.
It should be interesting – but I know I need to keep myself motivated on this one. This year hasn’t been all that great motivation-wise – although that’s a whole seperate post- and one thing that has hit me hard was the evidence of my own piss-poor judgement of other people as I’ve one client who still hasn’t paid me, three months down the line. I’ve tried reminders, and generally stayed in touch, but there’s been nothing forthcoming out of him. Thankfully (well, semi-thankfully) the invoice for that one went through Parasol, so in theory it’s Parasol that should be chasing him for payment, rather than me. That doesn’t seem to actually be the case – although I wouldn’t know for sure, as Parasol are utterly shit at communication too – so it may end up going through Small Claims Court before long.
Anyway, yes, the main challenge is going to be about keeping myself motivated to get new work. Right now I just want to catch up on some sleep, but I know I need to set some time aside, sort out potential sites, and probably also redesign my company site as well as updating my profile with the various sites I’m registered on.
Should be interesting, if nothing else. And a provider of some D4D™ content along the way too, I should think. You lucky people…
Posted: Sat 8 September, 2007 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Own Business, Travel, Work-related |
One thing I’m personally really bad at- and that’s partly down to being a contractor, and the sheer cost of it- is organising time away from work. I’d never deny this, although I do work on it when I can.
This week, we’ve booked a holiday for next March – going back to the Lake District, to the same place we did in March 2006. Already, I’m really looking forward to it.
Posted: Wed 22 August, 2007 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Own Business, Work-related |
In seven days, the site I’ve been working on solidly for the last six months finally goes live.
I can’t wait.
Yes, I’ve been in the contract for (coming up) a year, but for the first half of that I was primarily doing a lot of maintenance and updating on the current site, and keeping that all running nicely. Since about March I’ve been working on the design and underlying structure of the redesigned site – while also still maintaining the current site in parallel with the new one.
It’s been one chuff of a struggle, “helped” by a deeply indecisive business and a web team who can’t write HTML without Dreamweaver, but we’re so nearly there. It’ll be good when we’re finally done, though.
I’ll probably write more about this when I have two brain-cells to rub together. Maybe next Thursday.
Posted: Sun 22 July, 2007 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: D4D™, Own Business, Thoughts |
It’s that time of year (again) when a techies thoughts turn to redesign. Well OK, it’s that time of year where I think about redesigns, anyway.
Primarily I’m thinking about redesigning (and in fact pretty much completely re-doing) the site I have for my private business. It’s been the same way for a year or two now, and as I need to update the information on it anyway, I’m seriously debating redoing the design and back-end as well. (When I say ‘redoing’ the back-end, I mean ‘creating’ the back-end, as currently it doesn’t have anything funky in the background, just normal flattish PHP pages)
At the same time, though, I’m already contemplating some tuning-up and/or tweaking on the photography site, as the two are closely related. There’s also been the small matter of some new business cards that bear absolutely no resemblance whatsoever to the site.
The only thing that’s stopping me, really, is that once I start, it’ll be a fairly big job. Alongside that, I’m still fairly uninspired about how a redesigned site would look. I just want to do it, I don’t yet know the details. Perhaps that’s the biggest hint that I should wait.
Currently, I’ve pretty much got the time to do a redesign project on the sites. There’s a lot of other stuff sitting on the back burner, waiting for things to happen, (designs, concepts, background information, that kind of thing) and I just know that if I got into a redesign project, then all the other more important stuff would suddenly all come back on me at once. Life’s like that.
So it’s all a bit up in the air at the moment. I haven’t yet decided what I’ll do. Time will tell.
Oh, and no, I’m still not planning a full upgrade for d4d™ I know I should do. But well, I’m not.
Posted: Wed 18 July, 2007 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Customer Services, Geeky, Own Business, Work-related |
(via Gordon)
While I’m not in the position of being overloaded by email (I tend to process it as it arrives, and thus not end up with a wodging great backlog most of the time) I think that this method of dealing with emails in a fixed number of sentences is brilliant, and may well be adopted anyway…
Posted: Tue 17 July, 2007 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Five Year Plan (now Ten), Getting Organised, Own Business, Photography |
Over the weekend we went to see a local framing store – yes, we’re going to put more of my photos on the walls of the new place – and while we were there, we started talking about whether he might be interested in stocking some of the photos I’ve done, in order to sell them to shop customers.
I’ve no idea whether we’ll make any progress – I guess that the odds of making a sale on one’s first attempt are fairly low, if I’m being realistic – or whether he’ll decide to give it a go or not. That’s something where only time will tell, really.
But for me the important thing is that I’ve now made that leap, and from here it really only gets easier. It’s something I’ve been talking about trying for a while (for which read “flummin’ ages”) but now I’ve actually started looking at whether I can sell some of my stuff.
There’s a long way to go yet, I know – but at least the first steps are now being taken. I’ve no idea whether I’ll be successful or not – I’d like to think it will, but reality tends to kick in at that point with a good healthy “Yeah, Right”. I’m going to try, though.
And like the man said, “Life’s too short to be filled with ‘I wish I’d….'”.
Posted: Fri 13 July, 2007 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Geeky, Getting Organised, Own Business, Work-related |
So, the big question – now that Adobe have released the complete Creative Web suite, with Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Flash, Fireworks etc. all in one dollop, do I upgrade from my (slightly dodgy) copy of MX Studio ? Can I afford to?
More to the point, can I afford not to?
I’m sure there’ll be more on this one later in the month/year…