Archive of August 2008

A Life Update

This week has been interesting, but fast.

My main aim this week was to get everything up and ready before I go back to the usual "grind". It's seemingly failed. I've spent far too much money and, regardless of that, it's still not really as good as it could be.

So What Did I Plan on Doing?

Easiest way to demonstrate that is to make a list.

1. Setup a Mail Server.
2. Learn the basics of PHP (enough to do something useful).
3. Learn some Ruby on Rails.
4. Setup Backup DNS.
5. Setup Zenoss to remotely monitor my Servers.
6. Setup backup Mail.
7. Try Samba over SSH to use with a redundant 320GB drive. (only because it can't be plugged in and used anywhere)
8. Setup Asterisk, including using my VoIP card.

It's quite a bit, isn't it? I didn't complete any of it.

I did do somethings though.

I won a Nokia E51 on eBay, I organised a podcast, I've blogged and I've done half of each task. By this I mean, I started, but am yet to finish.

This isn't because I've done a little bit and given up, it's because I've come across many other problems along the way. The Mail server refuses connections. I forgot about the PHP, I'm not willing to learn more than two programming languages at once (C and PHP), backup DNS doesn't seem to work and also errors at me. Adding clients to Zenoss for a first timer needs reading over. There's no point setting up backup mail when you can't get your main mail working. I can't remember how to do Samba off the top of my head, so that also needs me to read the manual of. Asterisk? pfft. I'm not superman.

Oh, but I did launch something to take place as the Four Cores site. It's not perfect, but it's now got it's own RSS feed and this can also be done through email, thanks to Feedburner. I'll be posting about this later on.

So, I have a few more days. Can I do it? Hopefully, I'm going to give running mail on a separate server another go (using my PowerMac) and I am also going to try Apache's Reverse Proxy function and Open Directory. Assuming it will work within my LAN.

The use of this is also to take some load of one machine and to give me some flexibility. There isn't a problem with running everything on one machine, but there is a problem when stuff doesn't work. And it doesn't work. Of course if it did, I wouldn't be doing this. But still, a few more Watts, a little bit more noise, slightly more admin work don't outweigh everything actually working.

Notes in the Cloud

Ahh, the Cloud. That glorious Web 2.0 way of giving your data to someone else and making sure you can access it everywhere. Good in concept, but what I needed was a way to make notes on my iPod Touch and on various other workstations and come home to see them on my desktop. Lazy? No, just embracing.

That's the thing about Web 2.0; most of it is complete shit but there are somethings which we realise that we cannot do without. Notes is a great example of this, paper? Old.

We have of course had paper since the Egyptians (or the Chinese, if you talk about the process of making paper), great invention that. Oh, and of course the slate before that.

But of course, we're better than that now, surely? Surely there is a decent way that we can keep everything synced together and not have to move stuff around?

And of course, you don't want to pay for it do you?

For this Evernote seems to fit the bill, working online, on my iPod and on my Mac (and Windows too, of course). It is one of those easy to get hooked to when you're using it things that once you stop using it, you forget about it and never open it for a month or two.

I suppose though that in this case then I am glad I have an elephant on my Mac's top bar thing. (Screenshot below). Hopefully, when I need it I'll use it a lot, and forgetting it won't be easy with it just by the Twitterific icon.

But with the general unwillingness to make this post a big advert for Evernote, it's not without it's problems. I can't delete notes on my iPod as the app crashes, the icon isn't that great, and the general interface seems rather cluttered.

The web app is about as good as any web app will ever be, it's slow at points and thus could be better.

I should stop complaining though, it is free and seems to fit the gap of whether or not it should be added to OmniFocus (task list), or into Evernote. It does save me forgetting stuff I need to do though, I can keep it updated wherever I am because it's sync'ed, and I don't have to have slips of paper or leave post-it's around.

For the latter bit though, I seemed to have stopped that with starting to use OmniFocus to list everything I want to do which isn't like the normal task list apps where you have to give your life story every time you add a single item to it. In a way, I suppose that it is my own fault, I like making lists and I like to note stuff down. Otherwise I forget it, forgetting things you need or want to do isn't fun.

Mobile Internet: An Update

A couple of days ago, I started talking about mobile internet. Today I received my O2 SIM card and came to a surprising conclusion.

If I were to move to O2, after 6 months, I wouldn't have to pay for just under 4 months. This is quite possible because of an introductory deal giving me £30 worth of credit and and accumulation of credit that won't be used when I top up each month.

Surprisingly, for topping up £10 every month (and a little bit of change) I will have everything I've wanted in a phone for a long while. That's bundled SMS and bundled internet access. In a way, I feel that I have scored big time.

For the reasonable price of £10 each month I can do this. This by far beats having a contract that ties you down and charges you more. This is one of the main problems in me getting an iPhone.

So, going by my solution of using an S60 phone linked to my iPod over WiFi I have, in effect produced an inexpensive iPhone (the fundamentals of anyway) that will give me what I want.

Price wise, it is only really affordable if you have all of the hardware in question, in the first place. I didn't, as I have been using my UIQ3 based Sony Ericsson P990i for quite a long while. Given that I couldn't use my iPod to connect to that I never got around to really doing anything about it either - if I had the programming skills however, I would. At least then I wouldn't be going out to buy a new phone.

I am going to revisit phone choices in a future post (because I am in the process of changing mine at the minute), but now I am going to kind of leave it there for a bit really. I need to see what this is like for myself before posting a lot about it.

Mobile Internet

It seems like one of the biggest cons of the decade. The internet, on your phone. Unlimited*

*As long as you pay for every byte you transfer, oh, and we only charge per megabyte.

It's expensive, it sucks and it's being thrown down our throats so much that we don't realise it. It's there to be loved though. The idea of using the internet wherever we are hasn't picked up as much as it has in Japan where most of the internet access is done from mobiles. There, even mobile only sites exist.

As usual, I want some. I want my unlimited mobile internet and as usual, I don't want to pay through the roof for it.

Options wise, this leaves me in a sticky situation. The options for a decent price plan for a decent amount of usage is quite minimal and quite dependent on your usage. Preferably I'd like to stay out of a contract, but if I were to include a contract then I would be opening myself to many more options.

My current network - Vodafone, does a £1 for 1MB for one Day. This seems good, but general mobile usage isn't usually like this - generally, you only browse a few sites and a time and move, you don't download a large file, or view a lot of pages. The same is true for T-Mobile, not really a great deal when it is looked at from a distant stand point.

Unfortunately the MVNO's (the virtual networks like Tesco Mobile) are about as bad - these are only reselling a service and they assume that you will not be going anything more distant than talking or SMSing. This takes us out of the loop of them.

Orange on the other hand have interestingly named price plans but no real offering, unless of course you want the bundle deal. In terms of mobile internet, the information is either really hard to find, or non-existent.

The unfortunate thing is that every network seems to want to sell you a USB dongle and big contract. Although the big contract isn't anything abnormal, then whole dongle thing is quite annoying, none of the providers are willing to provide this on a SIM only basis, so going and putting one of these in your current phone isn't really doing to happen.

So this leaves us with the final network, and the only one that seems to have what consumers really want in mind. Refreshing compared to the rest.

But not cheap.

O2, which are also the iPhone carrier in the UK do have a rather nice add-on, and that is (although advertised as Unlimited), 250MB, of usage over one month for £7.50.

Still expensive, but with Vodafone I would be paying on average £31/m. £29 on a non-leap year February. Unfortunately a pound a month really stacks up.

But the unfortunate thing about £7.50 a month is that it means paying £10 a month for it, for most of the year. Over time the remainder will obviously stack up.

When it is thought about in pure money terms, it's seemingly cheaper to pick up an iPhone, especially in the UK when you do get the same amount of access that you would for that £7.50 and WiFi access. £35 per month is a lot more than £10 per month though.

But then of course I have another problem. I want to use my Touch to do the actual browsing and this means that I need to either have a new phone, or write some software to do it for me. I'm not really capable of doing the latter.

So that's another £170 up front for an S60 phone which I could use this with. It's quite a neat product, it allows you to share your phone's connection over WiFi, which the Touch could use.

Oh, and the other option - a 2G iPhone, but that's not really the point, as 3G is more important than a pretty face.

Unfortunately, this software needs an S60 phone, I have a UIQ Symbian phone (a Sony Ericsson P990i) which it won't work with.

Obviously this gives me the options of buying a new phone, but this is quite an expensive approach. For a nice phone, I'm looking at at least £170 and going down the cheap route really isn't the point. I could consider a Linux based phone, but there are limited ones of them around and probably for the same amount of money.

The fundamentals of course are down to in effect producing a router. Practically, this shouldn't be too hard. But putting it into practice isn't that easy either. Especially with an SDK which is quite honestly terrible.

Oh well, back to dreaming I guess...

Building a Good Portfolio Site

If you haven't noticed, a couple of days ago I setup a portfolio page here to try and advertise that I'm open for Freelance Design Work and to give it a bit of a go anyway.

Of course, the aim here is to show off your best works (for me, two) and use it as advertising to make some money. Which in effect it is, it's an advert, just showing what you are good at.

What I have noticed though is that people often do them so badly that I am surprised that they do actually make any money. I suppose they pressure clients so much that they do eventually get some work...

But for me, I aimed at a single page with a few screenshots and links to the work live. Though of course, only live if it was all done by me, because otherwise I'd be crediting myself with other peoples work. That's not very nice.

I have specifically built this to be a minor side to the site, I haven't aimed at it being the main focal point, not just because the only two projects are done directly by me, for me, but because prospective clients should know more about you.

For one, the main function is as a blog and the other function is a display of my Tweets from Twitter. The aim of this is to try and give a more all round view of me. The short sharp posts are down on Twitter and others are much longer and therefore obviously have much more thought put into them.

Back to the portfolio page, I didn't want to just display simple screenshots as these are invariably boring and I also didn't want to have something based around flash that wouldn't be as assessable to everyone. Naturally you don't want to block off important bits to people who might pay you.

So what I did with this was to push a simple screenshot to an angle, fill in the blank space with a colour, in this case black and put a banner at the bottom with the URL, or name for the piece of work. These are then linked to the appropriate sites, or to a full and much large screenshot. Under this is an explanation of what my job was on each of these projects, because of course you could be part of a big project, but just be the intern tea boy and not actually work on any part of it creatively.

In total I hope that this proves to be as effective as I aim it to be. I don't want to forcefully shove projects that I have done down peoples throats, but I do at the same time need to be able to advertise my work.

Obviously, all of this is aimed at freelancing in mind, I do want to try and make some money from what I can do. In the short term though; I'm scouting the Freelance Switch Job Boards, I will get something I'll jump at soon.