Running your own business means a lot of extra effort, relative to a ‘normal’ job.  True, there are the benefits of being your own boss, working the hours that suit you, taking holidays when you fancy, setting the prices you like.  But in addition to being a Web Designer I also have to handle the accounts, pay the tax man, and do all the boring day-to-day stuff that proper businesses would palm onto someone else.  Thankfully, because my business is relatively small and simple, this doesn’t take too much effort.  Mr Tax Man doesn’t bother me unduly, and the general running of the business tends to just happen.

Of course, there are ways of making life easier for myself on the business side of things.  For instance, keeping track of the business’s money is something I’m keen to do, since numbers are not my strong point, so having a system in place that makes it all blindingly obvious is a must.  So far I’ve been relying on spreadsheets to log the work I do, with a different spreadsheet for each client.  It works, but it’s not particularly efficient.  I’ve looked around on the ‘net, and not found anything that fits my requirements exactly, so I decided I’d make my own.  Nothing like reinventing the wheel every now and then, just for kicks.

And so mWork was born.

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The geniuses (or should that be genii??) behind the Firefox project have come up with a nifty bit of marketing to get everyone to download the latest release of their web browser.  Instead of just releasing it, they’re hyping it up and going for a world record to see how many downloads they can accumulate in the space of 24 hours.  Firefox 3, available for PC, Mac, and all those ‘other’ operating systems, should be a massive step forward compared to Firefox 2, and challenges most other browsers too.  It claims to be faster than Safari on the Mac, and faster than IE7 on the PC, and with the enormous community base and a massive library of add-ons available, Firefox’s finger in the pie is surely set to grow.

However, there has been significant confusion in the world-wide-web community, because it’s still not available.  We were told that Firefox 3 would be available on 17th June.  It’s been 17th June all day, and here in the UK we’re running out of day in which to download the darn thing.  And yet there is no sign of it on the Firefox web site.  There are some clever people who have managed to locate the actual download separate from the web site, but that’s cheating somewhat, and I wonder whether those results will count in the world record stats.  Take a look at the comments on this news item and you’ll see people from around the world thoroughly confused at the lack of the promised download, wondering how, why and who screwed it all up.

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It seems only yesterday I bought Neddy, my lovely little Mini Sidewalk, unadulterated and raring to get into the Mini scene.  I’ve since added my own refinements, like 5-spoke alloy wheels and a carbon-fibre dashboard and suchlike, but it’s remained essentially the same car.  Cute, friendly, stubborn at times, but a great friend.

Odd, then, that I should be even considering letting that car go.

Unfortunately, that’s the way life is at the moment.  Minis are great fun, and I can’t think of a car better suited to me, but in all honesty they’re not the most practical of vehicles.  For just me, it’s fine, but my wife wants to learn to drive, we want to have kids, and there just isn’t enough room in a Mini for all that.  I wouldn’t want Ellie learning to drive in a Mini, not because I’m afraid of her breaking anything, but more because I’m afraid of it breaking her – Minis don’t have crumple zones.  The inevitable upshot of that looming eventuality is that Neddy will need to go.

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Over the years I’ve owned a motley collection of computers.  My first (other than family computers) was a little laptop I came to university with.  It was relatively cheap, being in an end-of-line sale at Novatech, so it wasn’t exactly state of the art by the time I bought it.  It had a 360MHz AMD processor, 32MB of RAM, a 5.6GB hard disk, and ran Windows 95.  Not exactly impressive, even then.  Still, it did me fine for a year, though it did spend most of its life sat on my desk and wasn’t really mobile much.  After that came a 1.2GHz tower, with 128MB RAM, 20GB hard disk, and Windows XP.  Even though it was still entry-level it was a significant step up for me, and allowed me to play games.  Not very good games, but they were games nonetheless.

However, it wasn’t long before I grew tired of the plastic look of XP, and started modding my desktop with all manner of programs, making it look very little like Microsoft designed it to be.  Eventually I found myself themeing everything I could lay my hands on to make it look more like a Mac, striving for that perfect interface.  It was no surprise then when a few years later I bought my first Mac, a second hand G3 Blue&White.  Although originally it would have been only 450MHz the previous owner had stuffed a 1GHz G4 upgrade chip from Sonnet in there, which made a big difference.  In terms of numbers it should have been slower than the PC it replaced, but in fact it was still faster and smoother and certainly more satisfying to use.  Hooray for Apple!

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Well, that’s quite possibly the longest blog post title I’ve ever written.  But with good reason – I have a lot to say in this post.  So feel free to skip bits that you find boring, I won’t be offended.  Just don’t expect me to mow your lawn for free unless you’ve read every word.

For a slightly more complete description of the above title, allow me to elucidate.  This weekend started on Friday, which was a little odd, with Phil and Esther’s wedding.  That was followed by a fairly taxing drive back home, and very little sleep that night on account of my cold.  On a lighter note, I picked up my new computer on Saturday (on which I am writing this very post), and in the evening I had a house full of people to watch the final of I’d Do Anything, Doctor Who and Pushing Daisies.  All in all, quite a busy weekend, and most of that happened without my wife – Ellie was helping out at a church weekend away, so I haven’t actually seen her since Friday afternoon. (more…)