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MickeyFinn

Messages count : 120

Registered since : 30 October 2006

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Forum : General Forum
Topic : Contract
Replies: 7
Like  : 0
Views: 2323

Posted reply 31 August 2014 18:30

What is the union [USER=28514]@elainemoss[/USER]? Personally I would have gone for [USER=119]@glebe digital[/USER]'s strategy too. It may well be enforceable as you have been paid under those terms but the time and wasted energy fighting to get paid would be a drain on energy. So depends how much you were up for I guess...
Forum : General Forum
Replies: 4
Like  : 0
Views: 1814

Posted reply 31 August 2014 18:27

I like a bit of gardening most days but after 20 years doing 10-14 hours work I can feel my lower back is starting to go. Am going to get one of them there fangled standing desks that have motors so I can jack it up for a few hours in the evening. If I like it might get one for the office too...
Forum : Time Out
Replies: 17
Like  : 0
Views: 19486

Posted reply 13 August 2014 09:01

Cheers for Boardwalk Empire [USER=28391]@Juniper[/USER] - looks good. And set to enter the final season too. Might wait until it is done so I can watch them all in one go :D

House of Cards was on the list so will start on that one next!
Forum : General Forum
Topic : IP CCTV
Reply: 1
Like  : 0
Views: 1203

Posted reply 7 August 2014 10:20

Just getting house fixed up and have a couple of blind spots at the side of the house where I am concerned about potential forced entry points. I have had cat6 wiring put throughout the house so been looking at POE cameras. Anyone got any experience. Want outside cams, nightvision would be wicked!!
Reply: 1
Like  : 0
Views: 2910

Posted reply 7 August 2014 09:55

There is no work / life balance, it seems to just be constant work at the minute 😃 House is being torn down around me and then put back together, I am classing as work so don't seem to have much spare time at the minute. I tend to work when the work is there and stop only when ordered to by the Mrs!

What about you? What line of work are you in?

To be fair I have done a bit in the garden this year too. Nice that the weather has been so good, sneaky hour in the garden in the afternoon and then work like a dog in the evenings.

No beer for me though, find it buggers me up the next day - the joys of reaching my 40s I guess 🙁
Forum : Time Out
Replies: 17
Like  : 0
Views: 19486

Posted reply 7 August 2014 09:51

OK, have done Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, Sorpanos, The Wire and Dexter this year so what others are worth watching? Mate told me I should do all of the 24s so guess will get around to that at some point. Picked up the 6 feet under box set a couple of years ago and not had time to watch it - worth a tickle?
Forum : General Forum
Reply: 1
Like  : 0
Views: 1606

Posted reply 13 October 2009 08:19

When Firefox and Chrome (and IE I at a push I guess :laugh2) why would you need another browser?
Forum : General Forum
Reply: 1
Like  : 0
Views: 1810

Posted reply 13 October 2009 08:18

I jumped out of my permie job and went freelancing in Nov 2005. I had enough work already lined up to keep me going. If you are worried about two quiet months causing you cash flow problems (at any time of year) then freelancing now may not be the best option. I would only jump if I had cash reserves to last me 6 months or a signed, sealed contract to show 6 months of future income was more than just a pipe-dream.

There is a lot of work about still if you have the skills but the first few months can always be tricky as you find your feet. December and January are not the best times to take the leap if you have nothing lined up due to the amount of holidays during this period. If you are in a job then keep the pay cheque coming in and plan what to do in the new year to give you the best start and use time off to start on projects if you have managed to land work during this time.

What are your cash reserves like? What is your current notice period on your job?
Forum : General Forum
Reply: 1
Like  : 0
Views: 966

Posted reply 13 October 2009 08:08

Well they must be interested if they are flying someone down - sounds like it could be worth a lot to them!

It will depend on the story as to how much they are willing to pay. Is the story time critical? i.e. does it need to be in print in the next week or so to be of highest value or would it still have the same impact if printed in three months time? If not time critical then don't be in a rush. Try getting two or more papers involved and see what they all offer and then see if you can bid them off against each other. Don't go overboard on this and be careful as you could lose all interest from the papers!

If it is time critical then try and get the best bargain you can. Never accept the initial offer, even if it is more than you hoped for, always try and bump them up a bit :)

Not sure if anyone on here got any direct involvement with current pricing but you never know. If you pop an alert on this thread you will be emailed with any further replies.
Replies: 4
Like  : 0
Views: 2264

Posted reply 21 October 2008 21:43

Cool. If those are your aims and you can already do the design stuff then learn CSS and XHTML. When you can build sites then would recommend PHP for advanced interaction and MySQL. Both are now very robust cost effective. If you get sites that require silly things like member areas or file upload etc then use the freelancers directory to find someone who would take that kind of work on. Get them to spec and quote for any work like this so you can then markup and add to your costs. Don't turn work away just because you don't know how to do part of it 😃
Replies: 4
Like  : 0
Views: 2264

Posted reply 21 October 2008 20:10

GraphicGeez, post: 8769 a écrit : HTML, XHTML, CSS
The building blocks of the web. Web pages are rendered HTML (XHTML is a newer brand of HTML) and CSS that combine to show the content of a page and how it is styled. Do some basic web building courses or read some web design books to get more of an understanding of these. Easy to learn, harder to master as you fight browser inconsistencies and learn the "ways of the web"...
GraphicGeez, post: 8769 a écrit : JAVASCRIPT
A relatively simple programming language. Code is embedded in web pages and causes extra functionality on pages. Unlike the programming languages below it executes on the client machine, it is downloaded as part of the page and all computation and interaction takes place on the viewer's computer.
GraphicGeez, post: 8769 a écrit : JAVA, C+
Here I guess we could add C++, C#, PHP, Perl, Ruby, Python. These are all programming languages. The execution of these files happens server-side, ie the site viewer (or an automated script etc) runs on the server to generate a response. This can be from setting a cookie to remember preferences, perform logins or site registrations by querying or writing to a database, performing calculations or massaging data, or performing file manipulation (creating, moving, emailing all sorts of files, text files, PDF files, images etc) and far more on top of this.

Programming languages like this can be platform specific (to a certain extent) such as C# or .Net which are Windows based and run on Windows machines (yes I have heard of Mono, just trying to help a n00b out here) whereas most of the others can be run on Linux/Unix or Windows machines.

As mentioned above, databases are a very important part of the whole framework you mention above so I would also add:

MySQL, SQL Server, Oracle, PostgreSQL

These are vital in the interactive web we have today.

What are you looking to do? As you can see, there is a lot to understand and there is no way you can tackle it all in one go!
Forum : General Forum
Replies: 2
Like  : 0
Views: 2847

Posted reply 13 October 2008 18:45

Hey wip,

I only compose emails in plain text as I am a bit boring :)

Have just tried a test here and inserted a little image from my desktop to a HTML mail. Worked fine.

What format is the image you are inserting? What resolution is it?

An HTML email is the same as any other screen-only medium, 72dpi is all you need. JPG or GIF file should get you the best results. Once you have inserted the image do not resize it by stretching it or this will make it look naff.

If you want to make a signature with images in it then why not compose an HTML file with embedded images and add it is stationery (Google for Outlook Stationery to see what I mean) or use the signature composer rather than just inserting an image?
Replies: 4
Like  : 0
Views: 1549

Posted reply 1 July 2008 07:18

How have you made the mail? Used much CSS?

Best thing with mailers is make the format as simple as possible (all tables) and use inline CSS where needed - no positional CSS if you can help it.
Topic : Hosting
Replies: 4
Like  : 0
Views: 1843

Posted reply 18 June 2008 14:08

Nothing like winging it eh? :rollin

Hosting - they want you to sort the server space for them. Go with Easily is my recommendation for small sites. Take out the hosting and charge markup on it. This way the hosting is in your name too so if they don't cough up you can turn their site off :happy

Width - we have had the argument on here a few times. I go with 970 pixels as max width, other disagree and still want to accommodate 800 x 600 screen users. They should get with the times IMO.

Flash - depends if they want to appear in Google at all. If search placement is a need for them then don't do a complete flash site.

Happy to give opinions on anything else you want 🙂
Forum : Time Out
Replies: 5
Like  : 0
Views: 4204

Posted reply 18 June 2008 12:44

Glad you like it! Still a few teething problems like replying to this post the smilies extend out over the nav and pop-up sub menus appear way down and to the right of the page, will get these ironed out shortly.

Thanks for the feedback though, very happy to hear the work is appreciated 😃
Replies: 7
Like  : 0
Views: 9703

Posted reply 11 June 2008 20:43

echo around town, post: 7135 a écrit : i hope you are all very happy
They sound a lot happier than you :laugh2
Forum : Time Out
Reply: 1
Like  : 0
Views: 2563

Posted reply 4 June 2008 10:12

If you have just finished Uni then your time for fun is up I'm afraid - welcome to the real world :cool2

Welcome to the forum anyway though...

What tunes you DJ then?
Forum : General Forum
Replies: 14
Like  : 0
Views: 3664

Posted reply 13 May 2008 21:44

JobMatchNow, post: 6532 a écrit : well when work is slow at were i work at i just continue to finish out that why cause i am busy at all time of the day
Eh?

I wish work was slow. Just for one day. Please.
Reply: 1
Like  : 0
Views: 1059

Posted reply 7 April 2008 07:07

Protx seem to be the most widely used and good value as well from what I can see.
Forum : General Forum
Replies: 4
Like  : 0
Views: 1479

Posted reply 3 April 2008 13:36

Mickey's version:

Creativity is plagiarism that doesn't get spotted :rollin
Forum : General Forum
Replies: 13
Like  : 0
Views: 18222

Posted reply 15 March 2008 21:28

What to do in your own time is up to you. None of your boss' concern. Certainly no need to declare it to him and only be worried if you are pinching his clients. No point pinching clients until you have left the job permanently :grin

Good luck with finding some freelance work!
Replies: 8
Like  : 0
Views: 12156

Posted reply 12 March 2008 18:17

playboy_bunnie, post: 5395 a écrit : Well that surely can't be right, its like me charging an extra 40% percent or whatever, because I want to cover the 'expense' of paying tax and NI at the end of the year!!
You cant surely class it as an expense; its Value Added Tax.
I dont think it would go down with the Revenue too well...
You mean you don't add 40% extra to what you work a job out at to cover these costs? 😃

It is right though, the £117.50 is what the print job cost and that is what the client pays Matt. Otherwise he would be £17.50 down on the job.
Forum : General Forum
Replies: 5
Like  : 0
Views: 2109

Posted reply 4 March 2008 13:35

Not sure about legals so always seek professional advice! If they are not holding up their end of the deal then I doubt if they would have much comeback if you jumped. If they are not supplying you with the work as agreed then I would be looking for the next job...
Replies: 5
Like  : 0
Views: 1727

Posted reply 4 March 2008 10:59

Depends how technical you are, how much you will charge per year after the initial year and whether you want a gamble!

1 and 1 do a "value" server for something like £30 a month - I run a few bits of mail through one and use it for messing about on. It has an uptime of over two years so can vouch that they are reliable machines! So if you charge £10 per month hosting you would only need three clients and the rest would be profit.

Of course, if you rent a server then it is your problem if it gets hacked or goes offline etc...

Reseller accounts from the likes of Fasthosts let you rack up a load of sites so could be another option if running your own server does not sound like something you want to get into! Not sure if 123-Reg do reseller packages or not but have a quick Google to see what others are out there.

When looking at this kind of low profit model you would do well to look at costs to make sure you get every pound possible as extra profit but my advice is do not skimp too much on the hosting as if you rack up 50 of these sites then can you imagine the pain in the arse you would have if a host went down and you had 50 punters calling you at once to see where their site had gone?
Replies: 5
Like  : 0
Views: 1727

Posted reply 4 March 2008 10:08

Not a bad idea to build up leads and business. What will you be charging for hosting ongoing? Are you reselling or have your own server? Depends what the profit margins are like on these too.

As for a four page site, maybe you could offer this as a choice from a selection of template designs. That way you could bang a site out in a few hours and you would be looking at something that would be profitable. If they want bespoke design or more pages then the costs increase.

Good luck!
Topic : Hi all!
Reply: 1
Like  : 0
Views: 1214

Posted reply 3 March 2008 23:37

Hey Ross,

Welcome to the forum.

Feel free to put your silly questions up here any time. There are usually people here who are happy to help share their knowledge without flaming. Can't promise not to paste 100 lines of code though 😃

Mickey
Forum : Time Out
Topic : Welcome
Replies: 11
Like  : 0
Views: 4345

Posted reply 1 March 2008 10:43

Hey GD,

Was up until 4 this morning working and have done for the last week. Is the only time I get any peace as have a two year old tot who has not yet learnt what "bugger off" means 😃

You always work from home or are you on a client's site?
glebe digital, post: 5168 a écrit : Stuck in the office, deadline looming
So posting here instead of working? Always something else to do when a deadline is looming!
Forum : Time Out
Topic : Welcome
Replies: 11
Like  : 0
Views: 4345

Posted reply 29 February 2008 23:25

Not a clue. Cleaned out a few spammers this evening. If you are ever doubtful as to the intentions of any posters just send me a PM.
Forum : Time Out
Topic : Welcome
Replies: 11
Like  : 0
Views: 4345

Posted reply 28 February 2008 14:00

Thanks to Calibre Designs for the suggestion of a time out forum. The general one tends to be used for accounting and legal type questions so good to keep that one used for those purposes and have this one for fun!
Forum : General Forum
Replies: 5
Like  : 0
Views: 2734

Posted reply 27 February 2008 10:38

Exactly. And if you do ever go VAT registered then make sure you negotiate all costs before VAT 😃

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