I'll probably jinx it by writing this, but the reason why I haven't been blogging much lately is because we (WebWeaver Productions) have been very very busy. Recession? What recession? (Ha! Now I've really gone and done it!)
In fact, we're so busy right now that I've actually stopped taking on new work until September at the earliest - and depending on a couple of proposals we're currently waiting on, it may end up being October before we can take on anything new. Crikey!
I never in my wildest dreams imagined we'd be doing this well. Which is why I keep on looking over my shoulder waiting for all the work to suddenly dry up. But so far, it hasn't. Hooray!
I really miss my blog, but I'm so busy right this minute that I'm working during the day and in the evenings as well in order to keep up with everything. That's not normally how I like to work - I think it's really important not to take on too much at any one time - but sometimes it can't be avoided.
Projects do run over sometimes - external forces being what they are - and occasionally projects come up unexpectedly that you really have to do straight away, and I like to be able to accommodate clients if I possibly can. It's only for a couple more days anyway, and then I can get back to concentrating on one thing at a time, which is how I prefer it.
A few people have suggested that, seeing as we're so busy, rather than turning down work we should take on a few more people and expand the business.
I've thought about it, and decided not to.
I'm an information architect, designer, developer, Flash animator and writer. I'm also the project manager and client liaison person for all our projects, and right this minute I think I have the balance just about right.
That is to say, if I took on more people it would end up with me doing more admin and project management, and less design and development - which would sadden me, because that's where my passion truly lies. I'd hate to be giving away HTML/CSS work to someone else to have fun with while I got stuck with all the writing of proposals and stuff!
Plus I'm just a tiny bit of a control freak (and that's just a tiny bit of an understatement), which means that I do actually like doing the proposals and the project management and client liaison for our projects - so I wouldn't really want to give that away either.
We're doing OK right now, and I have no wish to be Master of the Universe, and no plans to create a WebWeaver Productions empire. I like us just the way we are.
It's interesting that every project I've worked on this year has come through my networks, my contacts, and friends-of-friends. We still haven't had to respond to a single cold call for submissions in order to find enough work to do.
I'm fully expecting my list of people who know people to eventually run out - at some point surely we'll have built beautiful websites for everyone - but right now there are no signs that this is happening - in fact it seems to be getting even busier. Crazy! But in a good way.
My strike rate is pretty high in terms of winning jobs with the proposals I write. I'm not sure what a good success rate would be for the average web design company, but I reckon mine is somewhere over 75%, which seems pretty good to me.
I'm not entirely sure what our magic ingredient is - whether it's the way I write, or our winning personalities (!), or maybe it simply boils down to cost in the end - but I know that for most of our more recent pitches we've been up against a number of other web design companies, and more often that not, the client selects us. Hooray for us!
We're able to keep our costs down because Tom, Sue and I work on a co-operative basis - collaborating when the project demands it, and doing our own thing in between times - and we all work from home which means we don't have the overheads that come when you're a larger company with offices and support staff and stuff. It does mean we work about twice as hard as you do when you're working for someone else, but hey - that's what being self-employed is all about.
I get the feeling that being a small company is working in our favour on a deeper level too. I think that, as well as the obvious financial benefits in choosing a small company over a larger one with larger overheads and higher costs, there might be a bit of psychology going on as well.
Seems to me that in a recession there's a need to feel that you're really getting your money's worth - and that unconsciously it might feel as though you're doing your bit for the company if you choose the good quality reasonably-priced option rather than the larger, more luxurious and more expensive option. That might mean picking us over a larger, more high-profile and more expensive company.
There's certainly also a definite down-sizing of projects this year - more re-skins, more temporary solutions - and as budgets come down, more of them fit into our price range, which means there may well be a bit more work out there for companies like us this year than in a normal boomier year. Whatever the reason, it's all working out well for us so far.
I'm loving it. I still miss Shift - but every once in a while I get to go back and do a bit of contract work for them, which is awesome. They are such great people. It's nice because the projects we work on are about one-tenth the size of an average Shift project, which means our client bases are completely different. This is a Good Thing. I wouldn't really want to be in competition with my old workmates, after all!
It's funny how things turn out, eh? When I was writing Eulogy for my job at the end of last year I didn't imagine things would be going so well for us six months later. Long may it continue. And please Karma Gods don't jinx me for actually putting pen to paper (keyboard to screen?) on this very delicate subject!
I just think it's good to celebrate the fact that in the midst of tough financial times, you can still make a living if you work hard to get the work - and then you work hard actually doing the work :)
Technorati tags: WebWeaver Productions, WebWeaver, work, employment, self-employment, success, finding work, freelance, contract, web design, web development, website, WebWeaver's World, webweaver.
Monday, July 13, 2009
Why so quiet on the blog front, WebWeaver?
Thursday, November 20, 2008
All blogged out
I think I'm all blogged out right now. I haven't written a post for over a week. Eek! Must be something to do with my marathon effort throughout October and early November.
I'll get back into it soon enough, I'm sure. I'll have to, there's so much to talk about - not least is the fact that I'm going to DC for Obama's inauguration!
Go me!
Well actually - that should be Go me and 4 million other people
Holy shit! That's the entire population of New Zealand! In the Mall!
Good job I like crowds! Oh wait - I don't.
Ahahahahahahahahaha
Technorati tags: Barack Obama, Barack, Obama, President Obama, inauguration, 4 million people, Washington DC, January 20, Obama's inauguration, the Mall, US politics, WebWeaver's World, webweaver.
Sunday, November 09, 2008
Would you like to be a Follower of my blog?
Pretty please...
From my SiteMeter stats I know I get a decent number of hits for such a little blog on the far side of the world. I know about half my visitors come from the US. I hope my American political blogging has been of interest to you over the past couple of years.
Rest assured I won't be stopping any time soon - although now we have our very own President Obama I might be able to fit in some more personal blog posts once in a while as well! I haven't written about Clay Aiken, my teevy boyfriend, nearly often enough recently - and I know there's a heck of a lot of you that read those posts too!
As you can see, I've just added the Followers widget to my sidebar, and so far I have a rather sad total of one follower. Thanks LadyinRed! I *heart* you!
Blogger says:
Do you have a favorite blog and want to let the author and readers know that you are a fan? Well now you can do that and more with the Blogger Following feature! You can even keep track of the blogs you follow via your Reading List on the Blogger dashboard.
More info about Following.
It's easy to become a Follower of this or any other Blogger blog. On this blog all you have to do is locate the Followers widget at the top of the sidebar, and click on the "Follow this blog" link. You'll get a popup window which will give you the option of following publicly or anonymously.
Whether you subscribe publicly or anonymously, being a Follower of my blog means that:
- You will be subscribed to updates for my blog which will appear in your Reading List on your Dashboard
- You will also get a subscription to my blog in your Google Reader account.
If you follow publicly, your profile image and a link to your Blogger profile will also appear in my Followers widget.
If you follow my blog anonymously, your profile image and link to your profile will NOT be displayed in my Followers widget.
More info about public and anonymous Following.
Once you've decided whether you'd like to be a public or anonymous follower, click the orange "Follow" button which will appear in the popup. It is that simple, you are now a follower of my blog!
I'd love it if you decided to become a follower of WebWeaver's World. At the moment I feel the same way I did when I first joined Facebook and I had only two friends - and they were my cats...
Technorati tags: Blogger, following, follower, follow, blog, blogging, widget, follow publicly, follow anonymously, LadyinRed, US politics, President Obama, Clay Aiken, WebWeaver's World, webweaver.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Blogger most popular posts widget - the good and the bad
A week or so ago I added the Spotplex Most Popular Posts widget to my blog - you can see it in the side bar.
I thought I'd do a quick assessment of how it's running - the good and the bad.
First of all, speed. It's speedy. I've noticed no slow-down in loading time of my blog having added the widget. This is a good thing. My last Popular Posts widget (AffiliateBrand) was slowing down my blog so much I had to remove it.
Look and feel - it's OK, although I'd like to change the styling of the number of readers and the links within the widget. As it's generated via a piece of JavaScript embedded in my blog, I'm not able to do this, as the widget has its own styling that I haven't been able to figure out how to override in my own stylesheet. If anyone knows how to do that, I'd love to find out!
Article count - this is not good. For some reason, and I have no idea why, Spotplex thinks I only have 30 posts on my blog, and it's only scoring these 30 posts, rather than the 250 posts I actually have. This is annoying, because I've got a few older posts that continue to be read on a regular basis (my SiteMeter stats tell me so), but these aren't appearing in my most popular list. I'm pretty sure the 30 posts it's counting are the 30 most recent (from the last 6 months or so), and there seems to be no way of getting Spotplex to do a recount and include all my posts in the list.
I've emailed the Spotplex crew, but I've had no reply to my email, which is also annoying. What's the point of having a Most Popular Posts list if it doesn't count all your posts?
*sigh*
Apart from AffiliateBrand, this is the only popular posts widget I've found that works in Blogger, so I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place. Either my blog loads so slowly I lose my visitors before they arrive, or I only have 30 out of 250 posts ranked.
Does anyone know how to get Spotplex to count all my posts, or do you know of any other Blogger most popular posts widgets out there? I'd really like to get one that works properly...
Technorati tags: Blogger beta, Blogger, hacks, widget, visitor stats, most popular posts, popular posts, AffiliateBrand, Blog Window Widget, Spotplex, web development, blog, blogging, JavaScript, web analytics tools, WebWeaver's World, webweaver.
Saturday, March 01, 2008
My blog's more popular than John Key's blog...
This cracked me up.
The other day over at Tumeke! they posted the nz blogosphere rankings: January 2008. I've visited Tumeke! before, but didn't know they were doing the rankings - I found them by following a link off my SiteMeter stats.
So of course, as you do, you do a bit of ego-scrolling to find where you are in the NZ rankings.
First comes Kiwiblog (#1) (sigh) followed by Public Address (#2) (yaay!) and frogblog (#3) (yaay!). Then there are a bunch of others including a couple of my favourites like No Right Turn (#6), and Just Left (#15).
Scroll down a bit further and you come to WebWeaver's World (that's me!) at #31 (up from #40 - gawd, it's like when I was watching my favourite single run up the charts when I was a kid!)... and right behind my blog, at #32, is none other than John Key's blog.
*Sniffle snort choke gasp*
I find it absolutely hysterical (and rather amazing) that (in the month of January at least) more people were interested in reading what I ramble on about, than were interested in what the Leader of the Opposition had to say. And I didn't even write much in January - a grand total of 5 posts in fact.
Also not-as-popular as me were The Fundy Post (#33), the Maori Party (#50), the execrable dad4justice (#51), United Future (#56), Bill English (#68), ACT on Campus (#75), and Alliance New Zealand (unrated). Plus a whole lot more.
In case any of you are now certain (as if you weren't already) that I am nothing more than a great big giant ego, let me reassure you that I write this with my tongue firmly in my cheek - while at the same time being quietly amazed (OK, perhaps not so quietly!) that my little old blog is doing so well. It's a million miles away from the number of visitors who spend time at the most popular New Zealand blogs, but still... it makes me happy!
Technorati tags: blogs, blogging, New Zealand blogs, ranking, nz blogosphere ranking, Tumeke, John Key, Public Address, frogblog, No Right Turn, Just Left, Kiwiblog, WebWeaver's World, webweaver.
Blogger - a new most popular posts widget
As I mentioned the other day, I finally had to ditch my old AffiliateBrand Most Popular Posts widget, because of the inordinate amount of time it was taking to load.
Today I did bit of googling (because I really liked being able to see at a glance which of my blog posts you were reading) to see if I could find a similar widget, and I found Spotplex: What people most read today.
When you first arrive at the site, it's not immediately obvious what the site can do for you, or how to get your widget, but basically it works via a bit of JavaScript on your blog (same as most widgets) which measures which of your posts are getting the most hits within a given period of time. These results are displayed in the widget itself which you also add to your blog.
In addition to allowing you to measure the most popular posts on your own blog, Spotplex also rates the most popular posts on all the blogs that use the Spotplex widget - and it displays these on its own website.
I found Spotplex via a very good post describing how to install the widget - Assess My Blog: Popular Posts Widget for Blogger, so I would recommend that you go there and follow the very clear instructions.
The Spotplex homepage includes no real instructions on what you're supposed to do, and seeing as you have to click on two separate buttons on the homepage in order to get your widget, and there's nothing there to tell you that this is what you have to do, I found Assess My Blog's instructions very helpful.
A couple of points:
Step 3 in the Spotplex process (once you've registered and provided info about your bog) is to get the JavaScript tracking code to add to your blog. The site provides you with a code number and also the line of JavaScript you'll need. There's a button within the form that reads "Install Spotplex Widget" which automatically adds the JavaScript to your sidebar.
It's a little misleading, IMO, to describe it as "installing the widget", because this doesn't actually install the widget itself, only the JavaScript. Actually adding the widget to your sidebar is the next step in the process. You can choose whether or not to include a Spotplex logo with the JavaScript. Personally I prefer not to - I don't like cluttering up my blog with other people's logos.
Instead of automatically creating a new sidebar element that holds the JavaScript (and logo if you want to include it) you can also choose to simply copy the JavaScript and add it to your Blogger template by hand. This is my preferred option, as I have a range of analytics tools on my blog, all of which use little bits of JavaScript. I paste these into the very end of my template, just before the </body> tag.
If, like me, you forget to make a note of your special Spotplex code number and then you close the Ajax-generated window in which it appeared, you won't be able to use your "back" button to get back to it. You can, however, find your code number by looking at your piece of JavaScript - it's the 6-figure number included in the URL inside the JavaScript.
You get the widget itself by clicking a very small button labelled "get widget" on the Spotplex homepage. This opens a new Ajaxy window where you can make choices about the size of the widget, the duration of time being measured, how many post titles to display - and also whether you want it to display the most popular posts across all blogs, or just within your own blog.
Once you've made your selections you can choose to preview the widget. I would recommend doing this, as the first time I tried it, I got a system error message in the preview box. When I added this code to my blog I got the same error message and no widget. I went through the process again, this time I got a proper preview, and the widget worked fine when I added it to my blog.
It might take some time for the widget to start displaying any results - because people have to be visiting your blog in order to generate hits which can be counted. I happen to be writing this post (having just installed the widget) in the evening in NZ, which means many of my American and European visitors will be tucked up in bed, asleep. Hopefully within a few hours I'll start getting some results.
Although this widget doesn't appear to be customisable in terms of design like the AffiliateBrand one was (with a bit of hackery), it has a nice, generic-looking design anyway, with neutral coloring and Apple-like shading. This means it fits well into most blogs, unlike the very blue-and-purple AffiliateBrand widget.
I've been checking the loading time for my blog now that I've added this widget, and it doesn't seem to have slowed it down, which is good. The very slow loading time of my page with the AffiliateBrand widget was what made me eventually remove it.
The Spotplex website also allows me to log in using either my code number or the URL of my blog, and provides me with a graphical display of my traffic trends, as well as a summary of my latest posts. I'll describe this in a bit more detail once I get some results. :)
It's looking good so far. I'll update this post tomorrow once I've seen it in action for a while...
Technorati tags: Blogger beta, Blogger, hacks, widget, visitor stats, most popular posts, popular posts, AffiliateBrand, Blog Window Widget, Spotplex, Assess My Blog, web development, blog, blogging, JavaScript, web analytics tools, WebWeaver's World, webweaver.
Sunday, February 24, 2008
Bye bye Most Popular Posts widget!
Those of you who've visited my blog before will know that, until yesterday, AffiliateBrand's Most Popular Posts widget featured prominently near the top of my sidebar. I redesigned the CSS to match my blog when I first added it, and then when they redesigned it with lots of blue graphics I figured out how to entirely rebuild the thing so that it still matched my blog. You can see the tutorials I wrote on how to do it here, here and here.
I really liked the thing - even when it wasn't working properly and was pissing me off. I hung in there, fixed things when the dudes at AffiliateBrand changed stuff and broke (my version of) the widget - and basically I did everything I could to keep it, because I thought it was really clever, interesting and useful.
I don't know how many of you used to refer to it and were encouraged to click on another blog post just 'cos it was listed under "Most Popular", but I know I used to keep quite a close eye on it - just to see at a glance which of my posts you guys were reading...
But it had gotten to the point where my blog was taking 5 minutes to load each time I tried to access it - like, really 5 minutes (not just "30 seconds that feels like 5 minutes online"). Sometimes I'd just give up and go and do something else while my blog was loading. And occasionally I'd look down at the status bar of my browser and it would always read "Waiting for AffiliateBrand"". Bummer.
I imagined how a potential visitor would act if they arrived on my blog via a search engine referral (which many of you do). Give up and go elsewhere, I'm sure - after about 20 seconds (if that!). In fact I'm surprised I'm still getting as many hits as I do - you guys must be pretty patient!
So I've given up. I'm guessing that this particular widget has become too popular for its own good, and that the server just can't handle it any more. Which is a pity, because I really liked it. I also liked the regular visitor stats they sent through, even though I couldn't read the formatting of their emails in Eudora...
Ah well - maybe AffiliateBrand will get a bigger, faster server and it will all be fine again - or maybe I'll find another Most Popular Posts widget somewhere else. We shall see...
Bye bye widget!
Technorati tags: Blogger beta, Blogger, hacks, widget, most popular posts, AffiliateBrand, Blog Window Widget, Gene Kavner, web development, blog, blogging, WebWeaver's World, webweaver.
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Phew! Charlie's OK!
I have a bunch of favourite websites I visit on a regular basis - Daily Kos for American lefty politics, Guardian Unlimited for world news, Public Address for erudite Kiwi discussions - and for fun I occasionally pop over to the very wonderful Dooce, who cracks me up on a regular basis.
It was Dooce who introduced me to my "awwwwwwww" factor favorite website - The Daily Coyote. It's the story of Shreve Stockton, her cat Eli, and the wild coyote Charlie, who was orphaned at the age of 10 days after both his parents were shot for killing sheep. Shreve adopted Charlie, and has been taking photos of him every day since then.
Charlie was born in April '07, and in September '07 Shreve began writing The Daily Coyote, chronicling Charlie's life from the day he came to live with her. For that reason, the blog has a 5-month time-lag - in other words, a post she publishes today actually happened 5 months ago. It's a feature which can have interesting (and unintended) consequences for her readers, especially those new to the blog, who haven't quite figured out the time-difference...
A couple of days ago, Shreve posted that Charlie was very ill with parvo. This is often a fatal disease in canines, and it's incredibly fortunate that Shreve realised immediately that something was wrong, and got help. If she'd waited a couple of days, it would have been too late and he would have died.
Now those of us who've been following Charlie's life for a while understand that there's a time delay, and that Charlie actually got parvo in September of last year - but that didn't help allay everyone's fears. What if Shreve had been inspired last September to begin writing The Daily Coyote as a result of Charlie getting parvo and dying? How would we know? Oh nooooooooooooo!
Some of the blog's more observant readers had figured out that Charlie must still be alive because there's a photo of him, nearly full-grown, romping around in the snow (which was presumably taken some time after September in the winter of 07/08) - but the link to the photo's pretty small, and not that noticeable, so most people didn't figure that one out...
It was fascinating to read the comments on the blog during that time. It was this crazy mixture of "OMG! I hope he gets well soon!" from those who didn't understand the time lag, "OMG! What if he died in September and we never knew!", from those who had got the time lag but hadn't seen the snow picture, and "OMG! Don't you people pay attention! Timelag-snow-picture-he's-ok-stop-freaking-out!", from those who'd figured it all out already.
In the end, Shreve just gave up trying to reassure the freaker-outers and posted this short and to-the-point missive...
Phew! Well that's OK then....
Funny how easy it is to get caught up in the life of someone (human or animal) living on the other side of the world, whom you will never meet, and who will never even know you exist. In a funny way, I find it rather reassuring.
Technorati tags: The Daily Coyote, Shreve Stockton, Charlie, Eli, coyote, wild, pet, cool websites, favourite websites, kewl websites, Daily Kos, Guardian Unlimited, Public Address, Dooce, WebWeaver's World, webweaver.
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
The Gathering documentary
My poor old blog - I've been neglecting you so badly recently! I do have a good reason, however - I've been working like a mad thing doing a final big push to get The Gathering archives website and blog ready to go online.
I've got the blog up and running - it went live a week ago - and it's been a lot of fun getting it working. It runs on Wordpress (the on-my-own-server version), and it's been quite educational teaching myself how to adapt existing templates and redesign them to look how I want them. I'm still working on adding more widgets - but I'm happy for that to be an ongoing process, in the same way as I work on WebWeaver's World.
The most popular post on the blog so far is, of course, the one about The Gathering documentary 97/98 - which I spent most of the long weekend putting up on Google video. It's had a couple of hundred views so far, which is great - hopefully there will be many more to come. Every time I go to check it out on Google I end up leaving it running in the background - as a kind of soundtrack to whatever I'm doing. I love it! I pretty much know it by heart now...
Here's what I wrote to accompany the video on Google:
The Gathering was New Zealand's biggest and best outdoor dance party, which was held every New Year for six years between 1996 and 2001. This is the first Gathering documentary and was made about the 97/98 event, which was held at the magical Canaan Downs site on top of Takaka Hill near Nelson.
The documentary includes behind-the-scenes views of the setup and running of the party; the wild and crazy days and nights of the party itself; interviews with the crew, and you - the party animals; and interviews with "grown-ups" like the Mayor of Tasman District and the local police.
We hope you enjoy it and that it brings back some awesome rave memories. Check out the new Gathering archives website at http://www.thegathering.co.nz for more Gathering-related goodness! And be nice humans :)
On the blog I've written a bit about the story of how we came to make The Gathering documentary - and I've also linked to the large-screen version of the video on Google video.If you were at The Gathering and want to re-live some happy memories - go check it out!
Technorati tags: The Gathering, The Gathering documentary, documentary, 1997/98, 97/98, outdoor, dance party, rave, New Zealand, Takaka Hill, Golden Bay, Nelson Bays, Canaan Downs, dance, music, doco, YouTube, Google video, WebWeaver's World, webweaver.
Saturday, August 25, 2007
20 things I learned at FullCodePress
Hmmm. I've been thinking again... and these are just some of the many things I learned at FullCodePress, based on how the Code Blacks peformed:
1. Great teammates
When they pick you for the team, pray very hard that your teammates will be people you can get along well with - especially under stress. The Code Blacks were incredibly lucky in that, not only did we mostly know each other already, we also like each other - and I can certainly say that I like all the boys even more now that we've gone through FCP together.I work with Thomas every day at Shift and we get on really well; Zef is one of my best friends - I've known him for years; Zef had worked with Jeffrey at Provoke for a couple of years before Jeffrey moved to Xero; I've worked with Mark at Shift in the past and we knew each other before that through the Welli dance scene; and I first met Peter a few months ago. In fact, the only person none of us knew before the event was Steve, our wonderful designer from Hamilton.
2. The project manager
Hope for a geek as your project manager - it'll make all the difference in the world. Thomas has been using computers and doing internet stuff since before it was invented (almost!) - which meant that within moments of the final team-member (me) being announced we had a wiki, a blog, a bunch of domain names for the blog, a chatroom and even a Skype linkup with Steve for when we had planning meetings in Welli.Thomas also twittered and blogged throughout the event itself, which kept us in touch with the outside world, and allowed people to see something of what we were doing, even when there was nothing to see on the server.
3. Team identity
As soon as you can, figure out your team name, your team logo, style your blog to match, and get those T-shirts printed. It may not seem like much, but I think it gives you a tiny psychological edge, helps you to feel like a team, looks great in photos (and there will be many, many photos!), and gives you a web presence through which you can communicate.I expect we'll pass our Code Blacks name, logo and assorted paraphernalia on to the next NZ team next year - although we might keep the T-shirts - but there's a screen made and paid for now, so they can always have more printed...
4. Know your judges
Take very careful note of who the judges are, what their specialisation is, and (most importantly) what they think about any potentially controversial issues they might be judging you on. Go read their blogs. Check out their websites, and for gawd's sake, if they have taken a stand about something in the world of, say, accessibility, make sure you use the methods they recommend. Or have a really really good reason why you have chosen to do it differently, and be prepared to defend it.This one could have really bitten us in the bum - as we found out during our "judges grilling session" when a disembodied voice from a laptop (Derek Featherstone, accessibility consultant from Canada) asked us whether we were aware of the controversy over access keys - and why we had decided to use them. Ulp! Derek's not convinced they're a good idea - and we had to do some fast talking to show we'd thought about it and why we'd decided to use them anyway.
5. Setting up your workspace
Aim to set up your workspace so it resembles your RL workspace as closely as possible. Again, this might not seem very important, but believe me, after 24 hours of high-stress coding, it really makes a difference.
If you're taking your laptop, and it's not the one you use at work, make sure you have the same software installed (and same versions if possible) that you're used to using at work. Ensure that your teammates know what software you're using, and check that everyone's versions are compatible. If you need a test machine with stand-alone versions of IE - and you're the one who's good at bug fixing - take an extra PC laptop with you. I made a big mistake here and didn't take one with me - and my laptop is a Mac. I had to rely on using Steve's PC for testing, which was a stoopid idea because he was using it pretty much the whole time. I do have VirtualPC on my Mac but it's slower than a very slow thing - and therefore pretty much useless.
Take a mouse and keyboard with you if you're using your laptop. It might be fine messing about on the lappy at home while sitting on the floor watching TV, but when you're going 24 hours straight on a conference table that's not ergonomically designed to be a used as a desk, you really need your nice big external keyboard and your mouse. Borrow the bibles or the phonebooks from your hotel room to raise up your laptop so you're sitting comfortably. There's nothing worse for your back than crouching over a laptop on a table that's too low for 24 hours.
If you use any kind of ergonomic stuff for comfort and to combat RSI/OOS at work - take it with you if you can. I use Ergo Rests (aka 'robot arms'!) and I'm VERY glad I took them with me. I think my arms would have fallen off if I hadn't had them. Note that many conference tables are built with the base frame very close to the edge of the table top and that your Ergo Rests might not fit properly. Take the extra-high clamps with you just in case (as well as your normal ones) and be prepared to swap tables if you can find a better one, or beg the organisers for a piece of MDF to put on top of the table that you can attach them to.
6. Losing the plot
Accept that somewhere around 2am your team will pass through an hour-long period of losing the plot. The work pace will slow to a crawl, things will start to get silly, Thomas will get a little too in-your-face and Ali will snap at him (considering this was the ONLY time during the entire 24 hours that there was the slightest bit of tension between team-members, I think we did pretty well - love ya, T-dog!). Don't panic, though - the team will eventually break through the doldrums to get their second (or third or fourth) wind, and all will be well.
7. The timewarp
Plan in advance for the fact that the first 12 hours will move at a normal pace - but that during the second 12 you will slip down an interplanetary wormhole, and end up in a place where time speeds up to twice or three times as fast as normal. You will NOT have enough time to do everything you want to. As time ticks down, start prioritising like mad, and use your time wisely.8. Be nice to everybody
Duh! Yeah of course you're all nice people and this goes without saying, but there's more to this that simply representing yourself and your country in the best possible light.
For a start being nice to everyone (whether they be client, organiser, judge or volunteer) certainly won't do your cause any harm. In fact you never know when someone might wander back into the judges' room and say "Gosh those Kiwis are such nice people - they really deserve to win on sheer niceness" - and the message (especially if it's delivered at 4am when the judges have had a few red wines and are suffering from sleep deprivation) might stick in someone's subconscious just enough so that they give you an extra point when it comes to the marking - and that might make all the difference :)
Being nice to your client also goes without saying (and of course we're ALWAYS nice to our clients!) - and it really helps if you strike up a great bond with your client straight away, like the Code Blacks did with Debbie and MrDebbie (they were LOVELY!). Remember that, in the context of the FullCodePress competition, your client will be grilled by the judges and if she likes you, and if she feels that you "got" where she was coming from and delivered what she wanted (or more!) she's gonna say positive things about you - and that's a Good Thing. Knowing deep in your soul that you're being nice to everyone will also help when you're too tired to think straight, and it might just help you to get through the meltdown at the 23rd hour when everything goes pear-shaped and you've got 5 cameras right in your face hoping to catch you completely losing it. Mark - you did an amazing job - if it'd been me I think there would have been blood on the floor (or me in a corner, weeping...)
9. Information out... and information in
Think about what you want the judges (and the watching world) to know about, and what you don't.
There will be many and varied volunteers and judges mooching in and out of your room as you work. They will catch you unawares and chat to you during dinner. They will then blog about your conversation and tell the judges what you said. They will drag you out of the workroom when you're least expecting it and interview you on camera when you're dog-tired and have no idea what you're saying. By the wee small hours you will no longer remember who's a judge and who's a volunteer and who's an organiser, and you won't really care either, because the pressure will be well and truly on.
If you're planning some amazing thingamybob for the website and you don't know if you're going to have time to implement it, it's a good idea to mention it to someone - anyone - because it's bound to get back to the judges. If they know you've thought about doing something, even if you didn't quite get it finished, at least they'll know it was in your head (and possibly in some state of (in)completion on the server). While we didn't consciously plan to do this, I think it might have happened anyway, and when there are only a couple of points separating the teams, that bit of extra information might just make a difference. Who knows if it did - but there's no harm in getting it out there anyway.
Conversely, if you have a completely brilliant idea at 4am and you don't want the other team(s) to know about it - don't mention it to anyone who's not on your team. It will be blogged or twittered about, and if the other team is on their toes (and you know they might be), they'll read about it. And you don't want them nicking your idea at 5am and doing it better than you did. Not that this happened - but better safe than sorry.
10. Sleep
Don't expect to get any sleep. You won't.
11. Food and drink
Don't eat too much dinner - it'll make you sleepy and you will lose focus for an hour or so afterwards. Better to snack throughout the 24 hours to keep yourself going.Keep your fluid intake up. Coffee (a must-have), water (another must-have), your choice of other caffeine-enhanced power drinks (not for me - I hatesss 'em!), alcohol (probably not until afterwards...).
Remember that there's no way you're going to want to stop for breakfast on the second morning, because by that time there will be only a couple of hours to go and you'll be panicking like mad trying to get it all done.
12. Get there early
If you can, get to the venue a couple of days beforehand. If you're coming from overseas you'll need a day or so to acclimatise and get your body clock somewhat sorted. It's also good for the team to have some time to kick back, do some touristy exploring stuff and generally relax before the Big Day. You'll all be feeling a bit stressed and keyed-up before it starts, so take some time-out and chill out.13. Setting-up time
Give yourselves the maximum amount of time to get set up in the venue. You know the networks will be a nightmare to sort out, and that it will take you at least three times longer to get ready than you thought it would. Getting there as early as possible will also give you a chance to rush out and buy anything you forgot or couldn't bring with you - even an extra laptop if you have to.
14. Winding-down time
After the competition is over, plan to stay an extra day at least, otherwise you'll be totally buggered. Remember that once the 24 hours is over you won't be able to crash out straight away because you'll have to wait a few hours for the judges to deliberate - and you want to be awake when they announce you've won :)Thomas and I flew home from Sydney on the Sunday night, which meant that by the time we got home we'd been awake for about 40 hours. Not a good look if you need to get to work the next morning (needless to say, I failed dismally on that score...). The rest of the team stayed until Monday afternoon, which meant they got 18 hours' sleep from Sunday afternoon until Monday morning - and were already sleeping soundly in their comfy hotel beds while Thomas and I were trying desperately to stay awake in the airport lounge...
15. In-your-face - and not looking your best :)
Recognise that, as an international celebration of all that is geek, part of FullCodePress is that your every move, thought and inspiration must be blogged about, twittered about, photographed and Flickr'd or filmed and stuck up on YouTube. That's part of what makes FullCodePress so special, and you just have to accept it, and go with it.It means they will be in your face when you have a meltdown (see point 8), it means they will be constantly taking pictures of you and trying to interview you when you're trying to concentrate, and it means that you are guaranteed to see bloody awful pictures of yourself looking your most haggered at 3am when most normal people would be tucked up in bed with no-one to see them but the moon, their SO and their cats. You will look like shit, you will seem to make no sense when you review those videos on YouTube the next day, and you will wish you'd at least smiled when the cameras came round - and that you didn't look so serious and/or double-chinned and saggy when you're concentrating.
Let.it.go.
It's part of the fun - and honestly - who wouldn't look like shit after 24 hours of coding?
16. The dreaded brain-freeze
Accept (and expect) that you will suffer complete brain-freeze for at least the first hour after you get stuck in to whatever it is they selected you to do. I know that Mark, Jeffrey and myself all experienced this when we each began coding/programming during the competition.Something that you could normally do without breaking a sweat suddenly becomes an impossible task which you can't figure out for the life of you. You can waste half an hour trying to see why something isn't working, only to realise that it's 'cos you made a typo 30 minutes earlier. The simplest bit of coding is beyond you - you start to panic and think "Oh my God! I can't do this! I'm going to let the team down! The whole country is going to hate me once they find out I was completely crap!"
Do not panic. This too will pass. Stick your iPod on and disappear into the music that you work by. Do something so easy that even brain-frozen you can manage it, and move on from there. Go for a walk around the block, or a cigarette, or whatever you normally do when you need time-out. Surf the net for 5 minutes and laugh at the crappy photos of all your team-mates. Run up to your room, scream into your pillow, and come back down again.
You know you can do it. You do it every day. You're one of the best in the country - that's why they picked you. After a while your brain will stop doing "deer in the headlights" and it'll start clicking back into gear. It's scary when brain-freeze happens, but it will get better. I promise :)
17. Give yourself time to fix the bugs
This is a tough one, because it all depends on how long it takes to get things up-and-running, but... we learned that trying to tidy up pages of text with 20 minutes to go, when you've been coding for over 23 hours and you can't actually see straight any more - is not an easy task. You will not complete it if you don't have enough time - and that's annoying 'cos it'll look messy when it should look perfect.One extremely useful thing we discovered is that using the same HTML/CSS techniques can be invaluable when you're pressed for time. With an hour to go we finally got to see Jeffrey's templates in IE6 - and they looked a bit sorry for themselves. You know what IE's like - it's a nightmare for bugs! The nav was all over place, and half the links were missing. However he'd used the Sliding Doors technique to build the main nav, so it was a two-minute job for him to add a couple of things to the stylesheet (cribbed from my own website where I've also used Sliding Doors) and bingo! He'd recreated his perfect main nav in IE6. Phew!
18. Courting controversy
Realise that if you do something unexpected - like attempting to build a full CMS, database management system and website from scratch in a single day (as opposed to adapting an existing CMS), people will not only think you're completely mental (and will tell you so), they'll also talk about you (and it) all over the internet for days afterwards, and demand that you explain yourself.This is a good thing. You will be forever known in geek circles as "that crazy Kiwi who built an entire custom CMS during the inaugural FullCodePress" - and you will be able to put it on your CV and explain that, yes you were insane to even consider doing it - but you made it work.
19. It's supposed to be FUN!
Do not take yourself (or the competition) too seriously. This is supposed to be FUN. If you are too intense and serious about it, you will lose the fun-ness of it. Yes, yes, I know if you're a Kiwi you will suddenly understand how the All Blacks feel before a big game, and if you're seriously into your work and set great store by how well you do it this will be difficult but...
Let.it.go. Just a bit.
Just enough to enjoy the experience and get the most out of it that you can (while putting the most into it that you can). This the most intense thing I've done since the days of The Gathering, and once I got over myself, I had a ball.
20. Win or lose, we're all winners really
As the judges deliberated in their secret enclave, I think most of us Code Blacks didn't think we had won. We hadn't finished everything, there was stuff broken on the site, and there were a bunch of things we'd wanted to do that we hadn't been able to do in time. Jeffrey was confident (he says it's because he's an Arrogant American!), but I'm not sure any of the rest of us were. I certainly wasn't.
So when they announced that the Code Blacks (NEW ZEALAND!!!!) had won by 2.7 points out of 100, I about fell off my chair in shock. (I was actually sitting on the floor at the time, but you get the idea). I felt really sad in a way that there had to be a team that didn't "win". The Aussies (Koding Koalas? Web-savvy Wallabies?) did an awesome job and they were all lovely people, so I felt sorry that they didn't get to jump around for joy at the end.
In the end, though, we were all winners because we'd achieved amazing results in just 24 hours.
And the MOST important thing - which was at the forefront of our minds from the moment we each applied to take part in FCP - was that two charities got a brand-new website built by some of the best web professionals in Australasia.
We've developed a really strong bond with Debbie, and we're going to maintain and grow that relationship over the next year at least. In the short-term we're tidying up and finishing off the site, ready for their big launch in October.
In the longer term we want to see how we can use the website to develop and strengthen the work that the Grampians disAbility Advocates Association already does, and leverage their web presence to create a real community amongst disAbled people and their carers in Victoria. That way, as well as standing beside the people that they help, the GdAA can help them to help themselves, and to support each other in their daily lives.
And that's truly winning, however you look at it.
From left to right: Thomas, Mark, Steve, Ali, Jeffrey, our client Debbie Verdon, Peter, Zef
Technorati tags: FullCodePress, Full Code Press, Peter Johnston, Jeffrey Wegesin, Mark Rickerby, Zef Fugaz, Steve Dennis, Thomas Scovell, Alison Green, Code Blacks, CodeBlacks, YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Grampians disAbility Advocacy Association, Our Voice, Debbie Verdon, Webstock, WIPA, Google, Adobe, Red Square, SitePoint, Mort Bay Communications, Derek Featherstone, Matthew Magain, Matt Voerman, Natasha Hall, Steve Baty, James Magill, WebWeaver's World, webweaver.
Sunday, July 01, 2007
The trouble with widgets
I love widgets. They're such a great way to add value and information to your blog. I've added a whole heap of them to WebWeaver's World, as you can see. I like playing around with widgets and adapting them to my own needs, or to the look and feel of my blog. I'm not skilled enough to invent and create my own widgets, but I can certainly tweak already existing ones, to "make them my own".
Sometimes though they can be a bit of a pain. That's because, even though I tweak them, they still "belong" to someone else. That is, they are still controlled elsewhere. And sometimes even the best of them have a little hiccup along the way.
Over the last few days, for example, a bunch of my widgets have been misbehaving in various ways.
My very wonderful Archive Calendar Widget from phydeaux3 seemed not to have noticed for a few days that I'd put up a new blog post - so it didn't appear on the calendar or in the archive list for a while. No drama, and it's all fixed now, I was just a bit sad that had forgotten me!
Today, the most excellent Technorati Ranking widget from PurpleMoggy seems to have forgotten how to measure my ranking (it does that sometimes - some glitch at the Technorati end) so it looks like I have 0 links from 0 blogs. Waaa! Still have my ranking, though, which is good. It'll fix itself up again soon I'm sure.
The most annoying one right now is my Most Popular Blog Posts widget from AffiliateBrand. For the last couple of days my all-singing all-dancing restyled version has been displaying horribly - with the list of posts all jammed up in the left-hand side of the iFrame, and a great big gap to the right of each one. Ugh! So here I am, on a rainy Sunday afternoon, trying to figure out why, and to force it to display properly again. Which isn't easy, seeing as most of the visual controls live at AffiliateBrand, and not on my blog.
Ah well, I always did like a challenge. And I'm sure I'll figure out a way to fix it - somehow. Apologies for the not-perfect look of my blog in the meantime though. I don't like it at all when my blog doesn't look right.
UPDATE later the same day: Fixed it! (In Firefox, anyway - I'll have to check IE at work tomorrow). Yaay!
Technorati tags: Blogger beta, Blogger, blogging, widgets, hacks, archive calendar, phydeaux3, Technorati ranking, PurpleMoggy, most popular posts, AffiliateBrand, WebWeaver's World, webweaver.
Monday, June 04, 2007
Oh gawd, what shall I write about today?
I'm working on writing more in my blog - I did pretty well in May, and I want to keep it up. Thing is, sometimes I just don't have anything particularly exciting or world-shattering to say. The conversation in my head goes something like this:
"Shall I do a "dear diary" type piece today instead then? But who wants to read that stuff anyway?"
"Well, I guess my friends around the world who pop in from time to time to see how I'm doing, might like it."
"Yeah guess so. It's hardly going to get me bazillions more dedicated readers though, is it?"
"Oh - is that why you're keeping this blog then? I thought it was for the love of writing... Fame gone to your head now has it?"
"Well no, I'm hardly famous - not by a million miles..."
"But you really liked it when all those thousands of people came to read about the first Wii fatality though, didn't you?
"Yes, but..."
"And what about those visitors from all around the world who came for your impressions of the Roger Waters concert? You liked that, didn't you???"
"Well yes but I..."
"And what about the dedicated members of the ClayNation who come and see what you've written whenever you mention our Teevy boyfriend? You're thinking about writing something new for them, aren't you?"
"Yes - well, I have been feeling a bit guilty about my current MIA status within the ClayNation and I was thinking of..."
"I see you sneaking peeks at your Technorati ranking, and your visitor stats, and your Google Analytics and all that stuff you know. I'm in your head, remember, how can I avoid it?"
"OK, you got me - I confess that I do look at the stats pretty often. But what I like most is when I write something I'm really proud of - and/or when someone takes the time to write me a comment, and/or when they think what I've written is worth linking to. That makes me really happy. Anything else is just icing on the (blog's birthday) cake. Know what I mean?"
"Yeah I know. And hey - look at that - you've written a whole page already! Now that wasn't so hard, was it? Sometimes writing regularly means writing through the days when you don't have much to say - as well as the days when you do."
"Cool. Thanks. Nowgetoutofmyhead."
Technorati tags: blogging, writing, visitor stats, Google Analytics, Technorati ranking, writer's block, Wii fatality, Roger Waters, Clay Aiken, WebWeaver's World, webweaver.
Thursday, May 31, 2007
I missed my (blog's) birthday!
I was going to do a rant about "Bishop" Brian and his ridiculous and racist demands that NZ declare itself a "Christian nation" but I simply can't be arsed. He's such an idiot I really can't be bothered wasting my time on writing about him.
But HEY! I just realised I MISSED MY BLOG'S FIRST BIRTHDAY! It was on Sunday when I was busily meta-blogging screeds and screeds on how to restyle widgets.
Happy Birthday to you,
Happy Birthday to you,
Happy Birthday dear blo-og,
Happy Birthday to you!!!!
We should have a cake or something! I'll go find a pic off the internets... hang on...
OK got one! That's better...
So... a year of blogging eh?
Here's some stats for ya:
- Number of blog posts: 177
- Number of comments: 360
- Current Technorati Ranking: 90,756 (78 links from 53 blogs)
- Highest Technorati Ranking: somewhere in the 50,000s a few months ago (that must have been before everyone and their dog got themselves a blog... at least I started before the dogs got in on the act!)
- Total visits: 47,839
- Total page views: 63,636
- Current average number of visits per day: 99 (has been higher!)
- Current average number of visits per day: 134 (has been higher!)
- Current average visit length: 1 minute 58 seconds
- Percentage of new visitors: 79.46%
- Search engine referrals: 63.18%
- Other site referrals: 26.50%
- Direct (that's people who know my URL!): 10.27%
- Biggest month: November 2006 (29 posts)
- Laziest months: August and October 2006 (7 posts apiece)
- Most used tag/label in my label cloud: My life (67 blog posts)
- Least used tag/label in my label cloud: Gardening (4 blog posts)
- Most popular blogging subject (in terms of numbers of visits and amount of feedback I get): Clay Aiken, without a doubt - followed by the slow burner that is web geekery, and in particular, Blogger hackery
- Least popular blogging subject (because I write a lot about it and it almost always gets universally ignored): American politics
- Most visited page of all time: First Wii Fatality - watching our video go viral (15,000 visitors in 48 hours thanks to a one-word link from The Inquirer - and I'm still getting referrals even now!)
- Most comments of all time: 26 comments on Is Clay gay or straight? It's none of your business!
- Current most popular post (and has been for some time): Roger Waters - Dark Side of the Moon Live - Auckland 2007
- Most underrated blog post (IMO): The death of habeas corpus - and the best way to boil a frog
...and my favourite stat of all: number of countries my visitors come from (since I got Google Analytics a couple of months ago): 110
- and here's the list, in order of popularity:
United States, New Zealand, United Kingdom, Canada, Hungary, Australia, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Germany, India, Netherlands, South Korea, Belgium, Sweden, Mexico, Spain, Peru, Philippines, Czech Republic, Italy, France, Ireland, Malaysia, Singapore, Norway, Switzerland, Romania, Colombia, Denmark, Indonesia, Portugal, Poland, Austria, Turkey, South Africa, Finland, Israel, Hong Kong, China, Slovenia, Japan, Greece, Thailand, Uruguay, Ukraine, Taiwan, United Arab Emirates, Slovakia, Sri Lanka, Egypt, Brunei, Latvia, Estonia, Iran, Croatia, Russia, Venezuela, Bulgaria, Ecuador, Vietnam, Lithuania, Barbados, Liechtenstein, Trinidad and Tobago, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bangladesh, Serbia And Montenegro, Macedonia, Bolivia, Malta, Cayman Islands, Gibraltar, Luxembourg, Puerto Rico, Vanuatu, Pakistan, Costa Rica, Tanzania, Jordan, Nepal, Kenya, Nicaragua, Congo (Kinshasa), Georgia, Panama, Cyprus, Botswana, Antigua and Barbuda, Moldova, Nigeria, Maldives, Grenada, Guam, Algeria, Guatemala, Tunisia, Ivory Coast, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Morocco, Lebanon, Bhutan, Iceland, Jamaica, Mauritius, New Caledonia, Cuba, Dominican Republic.
Crikey!
I love my blog.
Happy birthday, blog! May we share many more!
Technorati tags: Brian Tamaki, blog, blogging, birthday, my blog's birthday, 1st birthday, my life, blogging stats, visitors, visitor numbers, Technorati ranking, visiting countries, WebWeaver's World, webweaver.
