Somehow I managed to have some time off
Tags: Blog, business, travel, websites
Oh that’s right, through all the busy-ness I have been going though of late me and Gem took some time off to have a holiday on the long weekend just passed. We stayed at the Oaks Seaforth at the Sunshine Coast and had a great break together and also celebrated our four year anniversary! 
And of course I took some happy snaps of our break as well.
Happy easter to everyone
Tags: Blog, design, easter, travel, websites
First of all hope everyone has a happy and safe Easter this year. I won’t be having much of a break but looks like Ive got house warming party to go to tonight but other then that not much. My parents have head off to Sydney for the weekend so looks like will be spending it with Gem’s family!
Music to Keep me Working Hard
Tags: design, health, music, websites
I don’t always like to sit in silence whilst doing work but then I also the dilema of getting into the music to much instead of working. I think I have found a good balance of what music to listen to which mostly contains what is called ‘Chillout’. Nice mellow tunes that stop you from getting into it just a lil too much 
I have got a heap of the Ministry of Sound Chillout albums which contain a good variety of these mixes. Infact I have been downloading them from a great ‘legal’ website call AllofMp3. Theres been a lot of discussion in world news about this website however to its ‘legality’ but its still up and running so I advise you to go check it out, when compared to other popular sites for music it defiantly tops the list!
One site that gave me a little chuckle this week was on what happens when you let a developer create user interface, not exactly an appealing interface and shows how many developers are just happy that a program just does what it needs to and leave it at. So many other websites out there have the same problem and with some nice design changes they could easily increase their appeal without a doubt!
Wednesday morning I decided I will start to mod up my bike a little bit and first of all went and bought me some Gloves for the bike, just the style to cover your hands as i have been starting to get some blisters. My main aim at the moment is to keep on doing 10km bike rides 3 times a week to help keep me fit and live just a little bit longer. I also just have now ordered a CatEye Wireless Cycle Computer (not wi-fi wireless hehe) to help me keep track of the distances I’m riding and average speeds etc. and even has a total odometer!
Life Isn’t Always That Simple For Me
Tags: technology, website design, websites
Whilst things always seem to be getting a bit better for myself over time theres one thing that is really really annoying me and is a problem I have had since I was about 12. Not many of you would know, but I suffer from a pretty bad case of Dermatitis. It doesn’t sound like its that severe of a problem but I have it permanently and it affects a large part of my head including my scalp (pre-dominantly around my face hairline), eyebrows and nose. Thankfully with modern medicines I have been able to keep it at bay (except for the odd day) but I still have my bad days and the reason for posting on here is just because its a big daily annoyance for me and maybe someone out there has had some success with other types of medicine to remove the signs of it (other then Nizoral and Derm-Aid).
Onto things maybe a bit more interesting for some others out there, Brent sent me a link to the new upcoming i-mate mobile phone. On the link was to one phone that looks alot like a Blackberry but the other new phone took my interest, the PDAL. It has a very neat design hiding the numbers of the display and infact just after a quick google just then, i-mate already have the full specs on their website. It seems to have most the same specs of my SP5 but just with a more modern and cleaner look.
Whilst I think about it one thing very wrong about the official i-mate website (even though they have just had a new re-design) is that fact that on every specifications page for all of their phones there is no raw text, its all in an image… very user un-friendly!
Also I am still working on the new design, and hopefully not too far off now (lil preview on left). And lucky me have got permission from a favourite artist of mine to use excepts of his work on the new design!
The Bottle or the Can?
Tags: business, red bull, websites
This morning as I opened the office door I was approached with a slight problem, the bottle or the can of Red Bull to start off my day. On Wednesday mornings I have to get up at 6:30am for a morning Business Club meeting that I attend and I tell you what, Im still not a morning person!
* not actual cake
Well yesterday was Gem’s 21st Birthday and also the one year anniversary of her blog, so a big happy birthday out to her and her blog as well! I think Gem has really come down to realise that birthdays are now just not as significant as they used to be when you were younger, but damn she is still able to pull a day off work for it!
As most of you know I own/manage two Australian based car forums, the first being the Toowoomba Car Forum (TCF) and the second being the AU Starlet Club. As things in the business get busier and busier Im finding it much harder to find the time/effort to manage these forums, the Starlet club in particular. Theres a big to do list for me to get done for
there but just don’t have the time at the moment, but also there just seems to be too much fighting and bickering on there for my liking. Its a lot harder to control then most think because
- Im friends with both people that are often fighting
- Because its hard to pinpoint where to start any moderation and what comments are outstandingly out of line.
Im going to try my best on there to keep it clean with a thought of no personal matters at all to be on the forum (personal as in dislikes of others etc.) but its just not as easy as it sounds.
Anyways I better finish up as the Red Bull has now kicked in and in case your still wondering I took the bottle
Happy Birthday Blog
Tags: business, food, websites
Well as of the 14th of November this blog became one year old. As a little birthday present I am currently working on a new design for the blog (other then this half standard looking one) but it still may be a bit off at the rate things are going.
Last weekend we decided to have a nice Italian (hah) dinner which consisted of a Bacon and Egg Carbonara pasta from La Porchetta and also the new Cheesy Garlic Bread from Dominos. Great dinner but one interesting thing from the night was the fact that I went onto the Dominos website to check they still sell the garlic bread and then I noticed they offer online ordering. The funny thing was I found myself not able to trust the online ordering system! As much as I work with online applications and websites all day I still couldn’t find myself to trust in them to order food and ended up just calling Dominos 
Gemma’s birthday is on in less then a week and I still haven’t bought her a present. The reason why is cause I don’t know what the hell she wants and neither does she! Hopefully when we go to the shops tonight she might be able to find a few things that she does like.
Lastly, for the business we have been trying to sort out some kind of good Invoicing system that would allow for better invoice management for us by allowing us both to use it (Web 2.0 sites solve this) and for it to automatically email clients the Invoice.
We first tried Freshbooks which after a while of trying came to the realisation that it is more orienated towards people with customers who are continually buying from them which is not our style of business. Also it lacked any emailed invoice type feature as when it emailed the client it gave them a link to view the invoice, not an email with the invoice in it.
We have now tried Blinksale and it is perfect for what we are looking for. It does all the things we need it to and more such as Basecamp integration. Also its pricing structure is much better for us as each account type is priced by number of invoices and not number of clients as we have a heap of clients but don’t send out a lot of invoices as their usually large amounts of work. So a high recommendation to Blinksale for any other web developers out there!
