Company Formation : Next Steps
Posted: Mon 7 April, 2008 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Domestic, Own Business, Work-related | 6 Comments »Today, we’re seeing the accountant again about the company formation, and all the accountancys and Inland Revenue requirements. It’s taken us some time to get to this, mainly through the joys of trying to co-ordinate my work and diary, Herself’s work and diary, and the accountant’s diary. So today’s the day.
In the meantime, the company has been fully formed, registered, and generally sorted. I’ve done the initial Inland Revenue registrations – I’m not going to bother with VAT registration at the moment, as I don’t really need it, although I may think about it later in the financial year as it does add a certain level of respectability to the company. We’ll see.
Once this is done, it’s just sorting out the business bank account – and that’s lined up to be done two weeks today, once the current contract has finished.
We’re getting there.
Home-Working – A Benefit
Posted: Thu 3 April, 2008 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Work-related | Leave a comment »One of the things I like about working from home is the freedom, and the peace. When working in an office, I have to listen to other conversations about mind-numbing things like soaps on TV or what super-exciting things they got up to over the weekend.
Working from home, well, I can have whatever I want going on. If I want it quiet, that’s what happens – well, except for the joy of idiot animals wanting in/out of the house. (Although at the time of writing this, Hound is asleep in her basket, twitching and dreaming away)
But it also means that if I want some noise, I can have noise of my choice. And this week, my choice has been to re-watch old episodes of West Wing. It’s been a joy.
Micro Mouse
Posted: Tue 18 March, 2008 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Geeky, General, Own Business, Travel, Work-related | 3 Comments »At the moment, I’m doing a lot of work on my laptop – the new workplace didn’t have a spare PC, so I’m using my laptop as a work machine on a daily basis. (I use it as a work machine when I’m working from home anyway, but there I still have the option of using the main desktop PC too. It depends more on where I want to sit/work, really)
Anyway because of that, and also because of some of the work I’m doing, it’s a lot easier to do it using a mouse, instead of the laptop’s touchpad. Yes, I can use the touchpad still but well, a mouse is easier.
So I’ve ended up buying a little portable optical micromouse thing , and it’s marvellous. I tend to just leave it in the office at the moment, but I’m truly impressed with how easy (and comfortable) it is to use on a regular basis. I particularly like the way that the receiver stick can be stowed inside the mouse body when it’s not being used, and also the retractable USB-to-miniUSB cable for charging the damn thing – that’s going to get used in a variety of other roles as well, believe me.
All told, very very impressed with the entire thing. And it does make desk-based laptop life a whole hell of a lot.
Camera Cleaning
Posted: Sun 16 March, 2008 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Own Business, Photography, Work-related | Leave a comment »It’s now two and a half years since I got my Canon EOS20D, and in that time the sensor had become disgusting.
So before we went to the Lake District, I invested in a tool to clean the sensor, the Visible Dust ‘Arctic Butterfly 724’ – stupid name, but decent product. It’s just a small(ish) brush that creates its own anti-static charge in order to pick up as much dust as possible, but it came highly recommended by a number of sources, so that’s what I went with.
And so far it seems to have done a good job on the sensor. A couple of swipes and it’s clean, with no more dust specks on any images. Plus, of course, now I’ve got the kit I’ll be able to clean it before it gets disgusting again.
Counting Down
Posted: Wed 12 March, 2008 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: D4D™, Domestic, Own Business, Travel, Work-related | Leave a comment »It’s not long now ’til we go off to the Lake District. In fact, we go off on Friday morning for a week – which will bring us neatly to Easter, so I’m actually not working from this Friday the 14th to Tuesday the 25th. Not a bad break, all told.
It does mean that this week is bloody manic, with normal work plus stuff for my own clients, and trying to get a dollop of work completed for them before I go off. (Which is going pretty well, and I’m sure getting through the list – but it does make for some seriously long days) I’m enjoying the work, and I’m sure it’ll make me appreciate the holiday even more.
We haven’t got much planned for while we’re away – in fact, the weather up where we’re going looks like it’s going to be bloody wet which I don’t mind – but at least it’s not looking to be as windy as it is here at the moment. It’ll mean some proper time out (although I do intend to be putting in place some more stuff for the foundations of the new business and so on) which really is much needed.
Oh, and yes, I’ve also been writing some extra posts that’ll go up here while we’re away. I’m still sad like that.
Some business planning
Posted: Wed 5 March, 2008 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Own Business, Thoughts, Work-related | 1 Comment »When we’re away in a couple of weeks’ time, I’m going to be doing some work – or rather, some work on my work. In other words, I plan to spend some of the time looking at business plans, thinking about what needs to be done, writing some letters, and jotting out some to-do lists.
It’s something that needs to be done, so that once we come back I can really make a start on doing some of this stuff. And while I’ve said to Herself already that I won’t be doing work per se, she knows that some of these foundations need to be created and figured out – and while we’re away for a week it’s as good a time as any to do it. Plus, of course, I won’t have any distractions of things like normal internet access, norking about on other sites, and the like.
So it all makes sense to get some of the bits done then. It just sort of detracts from the entire “holiday” thing. But if I come back with some of those plans, letters, lists and documents ready to go, I suspect I’ll class that as a successful holiday anyway…
Maths
Posted: Tue 26 February, 2008 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Cynicism, Geeky, Own Business, Work-related | 1 Comment »Every so often, I realise just how bad I can be at Maths. Today (and, in fairness, last night) were perfect examples of that.
I’ve been writing the PHP to do a bundle of reports, and one of them involved figuring out the return-on-investment (ROI) for a given contract. It’s a simple percentage, yet could I get it right first time? Could I knickers. OK, some of the problems were with getting the information out of the database in the first place as well, but all the same, it led to me bashing my head into the desk for a good hour just on getting the sums right and then the percentages.
And the real bummer is that I’m still not convinced I’ve got it right…
Updated : Ah, got it sussed now, and all seems to be working fine. Funny how the simple things are always the hardest to fix, isn’t it?