jon.blogs.com

Freelance vs. Full Time

The following would make me more inclined to join a company full-time:

1) Freedom. 9-5 sucks and unless you are customer facing, makes little sense. Let me work from home, or come in 11 - 7,  7-3 etc. instead.

2) Growth. Set aside a day to allow your programmers to work on personal (related) projects (a 'la google), or to help building open source products (like Plone).

3) Interest. So many big agencies have great working conditions, but boring, demoralising work. I know it pays the bills, but I don't really want to be working on flash based shampoo sites for the rest of my life. It's not particularly inspiring either.

Plone hosting recommedation

Do not :

1. Use fussy credit card merchant.
2. Take 2 days to reply to emails.
3. When payment finally succeeds, cancel it, because you have no accounts available that day (rather than asking if I mind waiting).

(Well known offending plone host will remain nameless)

Windows SVN Problems

Subversion file control (SVN) is quite often a life-safer. However, on both *nix and Windows platforms it can be a pain to set up. In the hope I save someone else some time, here's some notes from a recent Windows set up I completed:

Honesty is always best.

"In the interest of getting to know our clients right from the start, we have deliberately not automated the account creation process. This means that setup times vary, depending on the current queue and other unavoidable things such as sleep."

Excellent. Compare and contrast this honest approach from TextDrive, to that of Webfusion.

Excuses #2 - "Increased popularity"

Do any banks provide a service to manage your money saving matters anymore? Or are they all only interested in fleecing you?

(I moved my account of 15 years from this particular culprit, in disgust at the list of new charges they were adding)

Culprit:

Lloyd's TSB Bank

They say:

"Due to the increased popularity of foreign travel [and foreign internet purchases], card transactions are becoming more common. The new overseas fees have been introduced to help cover the cost of foreign exchange conversion. "

What they meant to say:

"More people are traveling abroad. We saw a new revenue stream we could exploit. Forget providing a banking service to customers, think of the shareholders instead."

Excuses #1 - "Unprecedented demand"

First in a series of grumpy old man complaints, inspired in part by Signals Vs Noise : Bad Faucet Design

This particular message has appeared every time I've ordered a new system in the last 2 years. You'd think I learn

Culprit:

Webfusion Hosting

They say:

".. due to unprecedented demand for WebFusion VPS we are currently experiencing extended set-up times for these systems."

What they meant to say:

"We have more sales staff than technical staff and as a result can't keep up with demand.

We'll continue to sell our products, without alerting the customer to potential delays before they make a purchase.

It's very doubtful we will redirect the money we make into more technical staff, as sales are what drives the company, not customer service."

Squint Illustrations & Animation

Great new blog of doodlings and illustrations, from my friend with the "accent no one can place". Visit it now and hire him!

Hurricane Katrina - Personal Stories

My post will be one among many on this subject I'm sure, but if you only read one account of Hurricane Katrina, then make it this one from two paramedics from California that were attending the EMS conference in New Orleans.

MIT Weblog Survey 2005

Own a weblog? Complete this survey.

"This is a general social survey of the greater weblog community being conducted at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Our goal is to help understand the way that weblogs are affecting the way we communicate with each other. Specifically we are interested in issues of demographics, communication behaviors, experience with weblogs and other technology, and the meaning of various types of social links within the blogosphere."

Odeo, iPodder & iTunes 4.9 Podcasting

I've been using iPodder and Odeo for a while now (ever since i 'got' podcasting). They're both great applications in their own respects. Odeo is a great web based podcast directory. iPodder is a great desktop app and covers virtually all my bases, although it is a bit of a resource hog.

However, with the release of iTunes 4.9 Podcast integration I really can't see any reason to keep either service any longer. Which oddly enough is a bit of a shame, as they are both really nicely written applications.

Can anyone persuade me otherwise?