“ The quickest way to double your income is to halve your expenses.
On why I moved my writing.
I have moved my articles over to Tumblr, which I used a while back but since then has had a major makeover and is now rather awesome.
Tumblr fits in more with what I want to achieve with this site - that is, a collection of articles, photos, snippets and other bits and pieces that I find interesting, and you might too. Or you might not.
On why the industry is undervalued.
So you can use Photoshop? That does not make you a designer. You can knock up a site in Dreamweaver? Chances are you’re not a web designer.
The problem with doing client work is that every now and again a client will expect something done for little or nothing. The industry is undervalued – why should I pay £X for a new website, when my friend/son/dad/cat can do it in a couple of hours in Frontpage?
There’s a big difference between tinkering with a bit of software and living, breathing and sleeping design work. Understanding a client, their business objectives and their culture is critical to producing relevant, beautiful work. People undervaluing their services has caused a general perception that you should pay peanuts for design work, as that’s what it’s ‘worth’.
If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.
Awful product name, awesome strapline
On why ordering with Dell is a pain in the arse.
Ordering a new computer should be an easy, stree-free process. Not so with Dell.
Recently I tried to buy a new computer from Dell (not for myself, mind), and I really struggled. My main gripe was the sheer amount of information that was thrown at me at every stage.
Why do I need to know all that information at once? Why do I care what VAT is on it if I’ve already said I’m not a business customer. I don’t need or want a loan.
I want to know what I’m about to buy, and how much it’s going to cost me. From selecting the item to buying should be less than 3 clicks, perhaps even a single screen.
Dell offered me every option under the sun with regards to customising my PC. Now, I’m willing to bet that the majority of people that order a Dell computer don’t know what half this stuff means, and frankly don’t care.
Tell me what I want, why I want it, and why I want it now. There is such thing as too much choice.
On why there's no such thing as a scaling problem.
There’s been a lot of talk in the past about ’scalability’, and how an application or site copes with increasing traffic. It almost always seems that the people that comment on this in a negative way (”I can’t do it this way, as it won’t scale”), have never reached a point where they actually have to worry about scaling issues.
The most common argument against the web framework Rails is that “it doesn’t scale”. Whilst I don’t think there’s any great debate over Rails (or more to the point, Ruby) not being lightning fast, there’s plenty more to scaling an application than its framework.
Scaling a web application will affect the whole infrastructure and architecture – servers, databases, amount of caching, and so on. A well-coded, thoughfully-planned Rails app will scale better than a poorly-coded, hacked-together PHP app. It’s all relative.
Besides, once you get to a point where you seriously need to consider scaling issues, you don’t have a problem – you actually have an opportunity. If you have a good business plan in place, as David Heinemeier Hansson says, “it could be the most expensive server in the world, and it wouldn’t matter”.
When scaling problems become a real issue (that is, not considering scaling a problem before it actually is a problem), it means business is booming, customers are demanding your service, and you have the opportunity to scale in order to meet that demand.
Thousands of daily hits and requests from (hopefully) paying customers? Doesn’t sound so much of a problem now, does it?
