A Simple Life of Luxury

Sometime website development can be very frustrating, and as a freelance web developer with few people to turn to when I come across a problem I really get to experience the highs and lows.

Just the other day whilst working on a fairly complex project that I have on at the moment I came across a bug in my coding. The application I’m developing requires members to register and be logged in before they can access the data. This was all working well, the sign up process worked perfectly and the restrictions were in place, but then we noticed that when members tried to go to the 2nd page of a series of results they were logged out of the system and couldn’t access them. If they then logged in again they were free to go wherever they wished within the site as they should be.

It took me over four hours to track down the bug. I rewrote loads of things, checked that the sessions and cookies were getting written properly, tested, re-tested and tested again but all with no joy until I noticed a missing hyphen in a URL. All of that trouble due to a single missing hyphen, just a pesky little - !!!

For those in the know, what was happening was that my scripts were writing sessions and cookies associated with a domain with a hyphen, but the script that generated the links to the various pages were getting the base URL from a database. When entering the URL into the database I had omitted the hyphen.

Now, normally this would have been easy to diagnose as the incorrect URL would have thrown up a ‘domain not found’ or ‘page not found’ error. However, in this case, my client had also registered the hyphen-less domain name and had it pointing to the same server. This meant that the page was being found on the other domain but the user was logged out as the session / cookies had been written for the domain with the hyphen.

I have to admit though it was quite satisfying when I did eventually find the error, fixed it, tested it and all was working! I guess without little problems such as these there wouldn’t be any satisfaction to be gained from such activities.

Working as a freelance web designer here in deepest darkest Wales can be a fairly isolated job at times. Many of my clients keep in contact with me via email and I rarely even speak to some of them let alone meet them in person. They simply send me an email telling me what they would like me to do next, I do it and then send them an invoice. Because of this it is always good when I get feedback from my clients as it helps me improve and offer them the service they require.
I’ve recently been working for Headcandi, an online headphone and earphone shop and had an email on Friday saying that they were so pleased with my work they had sent me a present in the post… Well, it arrived yesterday, a pair of top of the range Sennheiser HD595 headphones. Now, I’m no audiophile but I can tell that this is a quality piece of equipment, excellent sound quality and very comfortable.
Of course, the fact that my clients are so pleased with my work that they took the time and thought to send these actually means more to me than the monetary value of the headphones themselves. It is always good to know that I’m doing a good job and better still to know that my clients appreciate it.

I shouldn’t complain (and I’m not), as it is good as a freelancer to have lots of work on, but it does get in the way of life a bit!!… Busy, busy busy, no time to play!

I’m quite busy work-wise at the moment and for some reason couldn’t sleep last night so I got up and started work at 3am. I stopped at 7am and then worked again from 8am until midday, which by my reckoning makes a full 8 hour day… I therefore decided to treat myself to an afternoon geocaching in the Welsh Hills.

First stop was Dinas Mawddwy and a strenuous walk stright up the side of the hill past lots of interesting quarry and mine workings. The cache itself was located right at the top of the hill but was easy to find. there was a bit of drizzle, but that kept me cool for the climb. This is just the sort of cache a like, a fairly hard walk to get to it, lots of spectacular scenery, peaceful surroundings and a decent hiding spot.

After finding the cache I headed back down the hill got in the car and headed off along the scenic road towards Cross Foxes. All was going well until going up the hill the engine management light came on again… I thought this was sorted as it hasn’t come on for a few weeks, but it appears to still be a problem… Back to the garage again. I’m still having problems with the tracking o the car as well as it pulls quite badly to the passenger side so I’m having to steer towards the right all the time…. Grrrrrrr….. Cars!!… Why are they so expensive and why do they always go wrong when I buy them!?

I stopped at the top of the Tal-y-Llyn pass to look for another geocache. It was pouring with rain here and I got drenched in no time at all and to make matters worse I didn’t find the cache either. At least switching the engine off for a couple of minutes meant the warning light had gone out and the car was back up to full power.

next stop was Aberlefenni and a pleasant walk alongside another quarry to a nice easy cache. Again the landscape was pretty stunning, not exactly untouched by humans, but impressive all the same. I love the noise of walking over slate tips too.

A nice day out in Wales, a little damp at times, my car is annoying me again now and no one had done my work for me when I got home, but it is good to have some fresh air now and then and I’m sure I’ll sleep better because of it tonight.

Regular readers of this blog will know that one of the key factors that allow me to live a ‘Simple Life of Luxury‘ is the fact that I chose to turn my back on my geology training and become a freelance website designer. I guess there was never a conscious decision to become a website designer, that side of things just happened, but there was a conscious effort NOT to get a ‘normal’ 9-5 job. Being self-employed seemed to offer numerous advantages along the lines of more flexibility with my time and the ability to work when I want to work.

Of course, nothing is ever that simple and I do still generally have to work fairly normal hours most days in order to fit things in around family life. Morgan needs collecting from nursery each day, I need to spend time with Anna in the evenings and I need to sleep too. However, I can if I wish take time off during the week to go windsurfing or geocaching, I quite often do and my ‘Simple Life of Luxury’ is better because of it.

Self-employment does of course have its downsides, I do often work in the evenings just to keep on top of things, there is of course always the worry of where the next client of next project will come from and whether or not I’ll have enough work on to pay the bills next month, or this time next year. Working from home means I get work related phone calls at all hours and can’t ‘go home’ from work. But overall the benefits do outweigh these

I’m pretty busy at the moment so seem to be spending quite a bit of time in my office, hence the photo of my ‘workspace’. At the moment my main tasks are:

• As always I’m working on Fairies World.
• Keeping Forces-of-Nature, my personal site ticking along.
• Building a website for the South African and Rhodesian Engineer Corps.
• Building an Amazon affiliate store for an electrical gods shop.
• Working on various scripts and things for HeadCandi, a headphone and speaker shop.
• I’ve just set up a new site for Geocachers in Wales.
• Working on a website for a running shop in the Forest of Dean

And of course as a freelancer I’m spending plenty of time keeping on top of the books, answering the phone and generally running my business.

I did try to go windsurfing just now, but the wind dropped off, so I’m back in my office writing this… Annoyingly this is actually the 2nd time I’ve written it as a power cut meant the last one disappeared before my very eyes!

Of course, now that I’ve finished this, the wind has picked up again!

Off to Egypt next week and I’m getting quite excited. I’m not exactly a seasoned traveller, but who would have though there was so much to do as far as organising a week off was concerned. Flights, accomodation, taxi transfers in Egypt, trains to the airport here, sunscreen, shorts, passports, travel insurance, various other bits of paraphenalia that I need to take etc. etc. None of that takes into account any of the things that I need to do as far as running my business goes either. There’s just so much to do and I’m already dreading coming back to the mountains of e-mails and answer-phone messages that will be waiting for me. Catching up after a week off will be a nightmare.

Still, the week away from it all should be good. I just hope its windy while I’m there.

Tax return time looms, so I thought it was time to re-assess the way I keep track of my business finances. So, I have recently spent some time on the not very exciting task of finding some decent accounting software to help me keep track of my business income and expenditure. I just couldn’t find anything that would do everything I wanted it to:

• Keep track of time I send on each project and bill accordingly
• Print invoices, reminders and receipts for me
• Allow me to customise those invoices etc.
• Keep track of exactly what I earnt and spent on each project and within certain categories
• Produce repts that I can use to fill in my tax returns etc.

I still haven’t made my mind up fully, but t looks as though I shall have to use a combination of either TaskTime4 or TimeNet to track the time I spend on projects and MYOB business basics to keep a track of the financial side of things. I’ll probably use TaskTime as I have been using it for a while already and have therefore already paid for it so no changes there, but MYOB should be a better option than manually producing invoices, receipts etc. and it should keep track of my finances better than the home-made FileMaker Pro database I have used in the past.

Of course, I’m still open to suggestions if anyone knows of a better solution.

I’m sure the my life as a freelance web-designer isn’t the best for my health. I’m getting RSI from long hours using a mouse and keyboard, I’m sure sitting in the same office chair all day isn’t good for my back and no doubt my eyesight isn’t getting any better staring at these computer monitors all day long either. And that says nothing about the lack of physical exercise I’m getting and the numerous cups of coffee I drink whilst sat here.

It isn’t all bad as it can be quite challenging mentally so at least my brain gets a bit of a work-out, but to be honest I’m sure thinking about web-sites, HTML, PHP and other scripting languages doesn’t really do much for my overall sanity!

However, all is not lost as I am not your run-of -the mill website designer. As many will know, living here in West Wales often means you have to be versatile, so, while I was at university I used to help make ends meet by doing various ‘odd-jobs’ for local people. Most of whom were ME sufferers. When I left university I continued doing some of these. Now, I’ve been helping some of these people out in their gardens and with the odd bit of painting and decorating for 10 years, so I can’t just stop doing it and let them down, so I still spend some time each week doing manual work.

We’ve just had a couple of glorious days here in Wales, so it was my first chance this year to mow some lawns. I spent all day outside working in peoples gardens and despite the blood and sweat, it was, I’m sure good, for me. Physically it has to be good for me, good old-fashioned hard work and fresh-air, what more could a man want! I’m sure it was good for me mentally as well. Lawn mowing, hedge trimming and other such tasks are quite meditative in a way, giving me a chance to either switch off completely or just simply think. I’m sure I end up solving many of the little web-based puzzles and problems that present themselves to me whilst doing such work.

Of course, I’m sure by the end of the autumn I’ll be looking forward to a few months out of the gardens and a little more time in my nice warm comfy office, but at the moment, as long as I am on top of my web-design workloads then mowing lawns and other gardening tasks are actually quite inviting.

I still haven’t sorted out my broken laptop but will be sending it off for an independent fault report soon. I’m still under the impression that a £2000 laptop should last more than 20 months and that my statutory rights under the Sale of Good Act covers me for such eventualities over an above any warranty provided by the seller or the manufacturer. Hopefully the independent fault report will show that there was an inherent problem with the machine and I will be entitled to a repair/replacement.

Trouble is, all of this has taken ages to sort out and actually getting the machine to someone capable of carrying out such a report from here in rural Wales isn’t easy, so in the meantime I have been forced to buy a new computer so that I can continue my work as a Freelance Web Designer.

The new computer has arrived and setting it up was surprisingly straight forward thanks to the Migration Manager software that came built into the Operating System. When I first started it up it politely asked me if I wanted to transfer files and settings from an old computer. I said yes and off it went and did it. It worked perfectly as well which surprised me as the old computer was running a much older Operating System than the new one is. The new operating system (Mac OS 10.4.5 or Tiger as it is known) has a few nice little improvements over the older one, some visual enhancements and some new functionality. Some of which such a ‘Automator’ I haven’t tried yet, but I like ‘Dashboard’ and the ‘Spotlight’ search facility is extremely useful.

I only hope this computer lasts longer the laptop… It had better do as I can’t afford to buy a new one every 18 months!

One of the objectives of deciding to live here in West Wales, away rom the rat-race, was to eliminate as much stress as possible and live a relatively simple life without too many worries. Has it worked??

Well, most of the time I would say it has, but nothing is ever quite that straight-forward. We would like to say that we don’t have any financial worries and in general we don’t. We could always do with more money as we don’t have much, but our only debt is the mortgage (and my student loan, but I don’t earn enough to have to pay that back at the moment). We tend to live fairly well within our means, but we do still of course have to pay the mortgage, the bills and put food on the table. Thankfully Anna has a fairly secure job so there should always be some income from that. She has however taken quite a pay drop since going back to work after Morgan was born (that is another story entirely), the result of which is that my income is now an important part of the money we need to survive each month. As a self-employed freelance website designer my income can be extremely variable from month to month and I can never be sure of where my next pay cheque is coming from. This obviously does introduce some stress into the equation, but so far our frugal lifestyle means that financial worries have been minimal.

Occassionally my job itslef can be quite stressful too. There can be deadlines to meet, I try to set these myself but sometimes there are things that people need done immediately. There is also a lot of responsibility involved in building and maintaining peoples websites. Sometimes this responsibility gets to me and work can be quite stressful. I think in a way I am guilty of being too conscientious to the extent that even the smallest of problems become a major thing for me. Working on my own means that I can’t ‘pass the buck’ or even get support and advice from a colleague.

Invariably the things that get me stressed turn out to be nothing and I soon get them sorted, but I think I’m becoming a bit of a worrier. My conscientious nature forces me to think through all the potential problems before they occur. This should be a good thing as I can then prevent any problems, but for some reason simply thinking about them ends up with me worrying about them. I’m inventing stressful situations in my head and worrying about them. This needs to stop, there really isn’t any need, and it isn’t doing me or anyone else any good.

A stress-free life by the sea? Well, life could be MUCH more stressful and the worries could be real, but it could be less stressful too if only I stopped inventing things to worry about.