WordPress and another day in the life of Josh

A few loosely-strung-together observations about today:

• I need to build a caffiene tolerance. Last night became 3am before I realised (but I did get lots done, so it’s not all bad)

• O-week-day sucked. Hardly any corporate types handing out free crap this year. Not that I’m one of those acquisitive types, oh no. :

• Went to a UNSW English lecture — just for kicks — and stuck my hand up to answer a question — again, just for kicks. It’s one thing to randomly rock up to lectures at another uni, and another thing altogether to actively partake in them. Good times. It’s kinda like the agony that was ENGL1005 only with tacit acknowledgement that it is, in fact, well within the realm of linguistics. It was a cross-listed english/lingustics course-coded course, and they’re focusing on systemic functional linguistics instead of pure functional grammar — the NCELTR/Butt UFG text was sitting on the lecturer’s desk, but she didn’t mention it.
  Which is, in my mind, probably more sensible. The lecturer clearly delineated that there are, in fact, two different disciplines at work in that course which can serve to complement each other, unlike in ENGL1005 at USyd where everything just got heaped into a mass grave and students were left to sort out the bones. The UNSW course is more like a well organised, air-conditioned morgue. (I jest, though feel that more than any other subject thus far, 1005 nearly killed me).
• UNSW have a nice relaxed library lawn at lunch. It’s like the front of the quad only more intimate & shady & with added live music… though that might just be them sucking in first-years in the opening weeks.
• I was not the only UNSW imposter today, which was at once strange, amusing, and scary.
• I am not a good songwriter and revel in sharing that general ineptitude in an amusing way. It is fun having someone around who can play the guitar well, even when they sing worse than you do.
• WordPress 2.1′s front-page-as-page capabilities are abysmally over-rated. Or, at least, I abysmally over-rated them when the feature was announced. There’s a reason it was a point-release addition, methinks. I’m using a mixture of post-chronology and the usual hackery that I tend to get by with. I’m renouncing Semiologic’s front-page-plugin because it’s easier to just hack it up in the templates nicely. I get by.
• I am scared of designers.
• I feel increasingly like a designer as the days go by.
• Everyone is getting business cards printed at a thousand different print shops. I am beginning to think the only thing that differentiates them is turnaround time. Mine takes ten working days. I need them in seven. *fingers crossed*
• I dislike having to wait on people for things with looming deadlines.
• I am looking for an excuse to complain about a certain website’s hosting so I can campaign to get it moved somewhere I trust (and not in a conflict-of-interest type way, for I wouldn’t touch running hosting for it with a barge pole)/with a better track record of reliability
• I signed up for a Voice over IP service with DID without really knowing why. Something to do with redirection and giving a mobile a landline number without incurring ridiculous bills in these dark post-Orange days. And no, 3 have nothing to offer me.
• A certain Pharaoh got very seriously pwned in the exodus of the Jewish nation from Egypt in the Bible. Everyone (yes, including the other people of the Egyptian nation) saw it coming, including himself: “Pharaoh hastily called Moses and Aaron and said, “I have sinned against the LORD your God, and against you. Now therefore, forgive my sin, please, only this once, and plead with the LORD your God only to remove this death from me.” So he [Moses] went out from Pharaoh and pleaded with the LORD.” — he pleads hastily, and begs to be forgiven only this one time. I think this is like people praying in extreme circumstances today — they don’t necessarily know anything about God, and just turn to him as a very last resort. But as soon as he’s forgiven (in this case, he wanted to be forgiven because locusts had just eaten every single plant in the entire country, and “the land was darkened” there were so many of them) his heart is hardened and he refuses to release the people of Israel from slavery.
• I am feeling particularly un-on-top-of-things at the minute, and anticipate this may get worse once uni starts up again. I’ve been working stupidly lots this week to try and get in front but it’s like trying to climb out of quicksand (hint: the best trick is not to move). Well, maybe not moving would be a bad thing, but even so. I’m only doing 3 subjects and hoping that’ll be beneficial in balancing various commitments.
• I am too excited about freelance things. They are the subsistence farming of web & creative employment. And pouring everything into a job is the subsistence farming of life… it’s never going to be quite enough. I am trying hard not to fall into that trap but can’t resist it by my will alone.
• My sleeping patterns need to be beaten back into submission. Last year I was more regular in holidays than any time uni was on, but this year I’ve been working from home so that means I’m free to work caffiene-powered 13-hour days if the need should arise. Less of this would be more healthy.
• As would joining uni gym and eating less pizza. I really have no idea where to start, though.
• I am going to bed 3 hours later than I had planned to.

*files under “everything”*

Making web stuff again

It’s freelance but still very exciting. The website itself isn’t technically exotic but is for a generally exciting & unique business concept, so it’s quite good to be involved with. It’s also brushing up on much-needed web skills for the slowly (oh-so-slowly) approaching CYIADA build… very good to be back in the field again facing challenging problems I’d nearly forgotten existed. I will be getting very little in the way of SEO practice on this one, though, because “nextgen learning” is a very low hanging fruit right at the minute. It’ll be taken by this site probably as soon as I make this post! Search traffic isn’t going to be a key business driver though, so it’s just important people can find the company by its name at the minute. I’ll probably do some optimisation around other keywords at a later stage, but it is in many aspects an establishment-phase business at present, so we’ll wait til it’s alive & kicking before pursuing anything further.

I picked up hosting from SegPub for this project today, so we’ll see how that goes. They’re actually using US-based servers from the look of things, but I’ve not read anything bad about them and they are Australian and have nice local phone numbers for me to call and are cheap and people had said their support was friendly (it is, I used it setting up!) Never content to just direct a client to a web host (they’d get lost, or something — I can’t think of anyone paying for web development who would want to know much about the geeky stuff — that’s why they pay someone else to take care of their website) , I had to set it all up so I can resell things… which meant assigning one domain under my control to them. I didn’t have any free and didn’t feel like mucking around with josh.st or joahua.com, so bought the surprisingly-untaken Aussie personal domain street.id.au. I know. I legally own it and it sounds like it’s got commercial potential — Sup dawgs, get yo street ID-izzle here! — and I think that’s even within the realm of allowed possible applications of the domain. But I’m not really that interested :P It was pretty cheap for Aussie namespace, too.

Anyway, that’s got the SegPub holder up at present and I might change it at some point in the future. It’s quite a cute little holder graphic they’ve got going there, actually… I’m a fan.

I’m contemplating replacing it with something more interesting but probably won’t in the forseeable future. There’s the possibility of giving various family members email addresses/websites there but that has potential to turn into a horrible responsibility: SegPub aren’t astoundingly cheap, and I’ve only heard they’re reliable… at the minute it’s just a sandbox project & one client in there, which makes it easy to bail if I need to. I’m vaguely hoping to pick up a stack of potential freelance work in a week or two when I present at a conference, so I’ve got between now and then to find a suitable host for a decent number of new clients… at the minute I’m not exactly making money on hosting, but given the target audience (boards co-ordinating state school scripture & funding) it’s probably not going to be the toughest bunch to support. No-one’s going to be wanting RoR apps, for example (though SegPub do support that :P)

Having said that, I’ve got to figure out how best to show how to setup a website and sign up with PayPal to start accepting online payments in about half an hour. Actually, less than that.

I’m thinking I’ll focus on the PayPal side of things in terms of live demo and save Web Publishing 101 for a handout, because it’s important to communicate that e-commerce on the web doesn’t need to be scary & out of reach — though I often think it is. Part of that is a burning desire to do things well in terms of user experience, because that’s been drilled into me (from my own reading, research, and practice) over the last three years, but also because of a general distrust of 3rd party providers. Which is stupid, really, because a faceless API for a payment gateway is exactly the same thing, only without the UI-lameness factor.

I think the biggest challenge for this presentation in particular will be to stop thinking like there’s an audience who will be sold to by the aesthetic complement to functionality that we (rightly) place such value upon in other spheres. FEVA have been saying we should care about design for years (I’ve read/heard Malcolm Williams give the same spiel in about 3 different contexts, but it’s a good spiel so that’s okay!), but, here in particular, it’s worth trying to think the other way. Of course if they have resources that would be beneficial to consider — but, as I understand it, the people using these websites will be there for a purpose. Good design can help that, but for things like making a one-off donation or setting up planned giving (and, for the record, I have no idea how to do that with PayPal… I think that’ll have to be a version-2 advanced seminar!) and downloading a PDF newsletter, it’s probably not a really big deal.

In essence, it’s not trying to reach people who need to be convinced of the value of their project, or that they take it seriously/care. Seriously bad websites aren’t something to aspire to, but if mediocre ones are easier and achieve the goals they need to, then why not? Not the kind of clients I’d like to work for, but a lot of these people won’t have any money to spend on a website, anyway, so it’s hardly a big deal.

In summary: I’m excited about making web things again, good first impressions of SegPub as a host but we’ll see over the next two weeks, and I’m presenting soon to a bunch of people who don’t care about the web (as an amorphous we-are-the-web collective-entity being) but are enthused about the potential benefits it can bring.

CS 3 leetness

Can’t wait. Just watched this CS3 preview video and am generally quite pumped. Mind you I’ve spent the day going between conversations about design so that’s probably a part of it. I’m especially excited by the new selection mode, but the perspective thing has got me pretty pumped, too. I actually hadn’t discovered that existed in CS2 yet, but it’s frustrating now knowing that angle selection is coming and I haven’t got access to it yet! Bring it on. Adobe just keep coming up with ways to send me broke!

RTA P2 test anomaly

I <3 government agencies. (Bondi Junction, in case you were wondering).

(And, just for the record, my vision’s completely fine… the door hiding the eye test was open a tiny crack and I could make out one of the letters on the bottom line okay)

Is there anything Apple can’t do?

I know this is an old story, but I stumbled across it again today & found the phrasing amusing:

“They revolutionised Britain’s music industry, conquered America and now the Beatles are set to dominate the download charts after settling a trademark dispute with Apple computers.”

Apple computers can be used to settle trademark disputes! Yes, even lawyers can use them!

Heh.