A Place For My Stuff

Hedonic treadmill

Sun, 25 Jul 2010 16:04:08 -0700

Hedonic treadmill:

One of the many reasons why I have no desire to be rich.

This is so me.

Sat, 10 Jul 2010 17:01:58 -0700

This is so me.

"As for North Korea’s star striker, he is the Japan‑born Jong Tae-se, who plays in..."

Sun, 20 Jun 2010 16:05:24 -0700

“As for North Korea’s star striker, he is the Japan‑born Jong Tae-se, who plays in Japan’s J‑League, drives a Hummer and finds his team‑mates appealingly quaint. Writing on his blog earlier this year, Jong described a stopover on a team trip from Switzerland to Austria, during which his team‑mates were stunned to discover you had to pay to use the gents in a station. “They turned to me,” recalled Jong, “and said, ‘This is truly what capitalist society is like.’” It’s a reasonable point.”

Hey I have an idea, let’s do a show about a retarded...

Mon, 31 May 2010 04:12:45 -0700

Hey I have an idea, let’s do a show about a retarded person, only let’s not say he’s retarded so we can still make fun of him. No? Is that bad? Ok, let’s give him Asperger’s instead.

Interesting talk. I’m definitely present hedonistic.

Sat, 29 May 2010 22:45:03 -0700

Interesting talk. I’m definitely present hedonistic.

The question I’m most often asked is what possessed me to...

Tue, 11 May 2010 23:29:00 -0700

The question I’m most often asked is what possessed me to move from Miami to Portland. This passage from John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley does the best job of explaining it.

Photo

Tue, 11 May 2010 17:58:23 -0700

Sad, but true.

Tue, 27 Apr 2010 02:56:59 -0700

Sad, but true.

Hmm, 8 out of 10. Chicago and D.C. still elude me.

Tue, 20 Apr 2010 22:47:38 -0700

Hmm, 8 out of 10. Chicago and D.C. still elude me.

"America as a nation produces twice the goods and services per person that it produced in 1948...."

Sat, 03 Apr 2010 16:27:00 -0700

“America as a nation produces twice the goods and services per person that it produced in 1948. Everyone in the country could, in principle at least, work a four hour day or a six-month year and still maintain a standard of living equivalent to that enjoyed by our parents. Almost uniquely among the developed nations, America took none of its productivity gains in additional leisure. It bought consumer items instead.”

- Bill Bryson’s Made in America

"Pick your furniture like you pick a wife: It should make you feel comfortable and look nice, but not..."

Thu, 01 Apr 2010 10:06:37 -0700

“Pick your furniture like you pick a wife: It should make you feel comfortable and look nice, but not so nice that if someone walks past it they want to steal it.”

- Shit My Dad Says

If the microbes won’t eat it, you probably...

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 01:15:30 -0700

If the microbes won’t eat it, you probably shouldn’t.

"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to..."

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 00:45:59 -0700

“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”

- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

How to Run a Web Dev Business for $10/year

Sun, 14 Mar 2010 20:14:00 -0700

This is a long post. If you’d rather just get to the meat, here are the services I use to run my web development business for next to nothing.

Craigslist for finding work
FOSS for development
Dreamhost for hosting
Subversion+Trac for managing projects
Google Apps for Exchange-like services
Google Voice for business calls
FreshBooks for invoicing

Being a web developer is one of the easiest and most flexible jobs one can take up. You can learn it yourself with minimal effort, you can do it from virtually anywhere, and – if you can find the work – it pays pretty well. I have in the past helped friends learn how to do this, and I’m proud to say they’re now successful web developers themselves. This article won’t teach you how to become a web developer, but it will show you how to run a web development business for next to nothing.

Getting work

The first step involved in running a web development business is finding the work. I’m not going to go into huge detail here, but there are tons of ways to get business. It can be as easy as looking up the web dev jobs available on Craigslist and other job sites. I look at mine on a daily basis. Most are offering full time jobs, but many are looking for independent contractors that need one project or just someone to help with any spillover work they might have.

It’s good practice to develop a rapport with different agencies in your area. Look into partnering up with ad agencies, development firms, any kind of business that might need your services. It might also be helpful to sign up with talent agencies that will sell your services for you and charge an extra fee to the client. I’m currently registered with Aquent.

It would also be helpful to make yourself known in the development community; visit monthly gatherings and attend conferences. Barcamp, for example, is free and has netted me business in the past.

Managing projects

Once you’ve closed a deal, it’s time to get started. Ideally you want to use some kind of project management software to keep your client abreast of the current status without having to muddle through endless numbers of e-mails.

There’s a lot of popular SaaS (software as a service) solutions out there that handle different aspects of project management; Basecamp for collaboration, Beanstalk for source control, Lighthouse for issue tracking. All of these services cost money, and that can add up quickly.

You can do all three for free using Subversion and Trac on your own domain. (Find out how in the hosting section). With these two services you can set up a new project and have clients log in and view all of your activity.

Subversion is a version control system. Basically, version control is committing your work to a repository so that you can log all of the changes you’ve done and revert to a known sane copy if necessary, regardless of what happens on or to your local machine. This not only saves tons of headaches down the road, but it allows clients to see every commit and progress over time.

You can learn how to use Subversion from the command line, or use any number of free or commercial software to ease the process for you. Versions (€39) and Cornerstone ($59) for the Mac are both great Subversion clients; I prefer Cornerstone. You can also use a free client like svnX.

Trac is a source control manager and issue tracking tool that you can use in conjunction with Subversion. A client could, for example, e-mail your Trac system with any bugs or features they want, you can work on it, and commit changes. You can also share files, and maintain an active wiki with any information pertinent to the project.

So once you’ve got your account set up, what next? Well, here’s my workflow:

Set up a new project
Add client as a user so they can see my work
Set up milestones and work towards them
Collaborate using Trac’s wiki, file sharing, and issue tracking

A client is happiest when there are open avenues of communication, even if they don’t take advantage of it. They might not care to know everything you’re working on at every moment, and might never even log in, but the peace of mind of knowing they’re not getting ripped off is good enough.

Development

The most important thing you need are the tools for the job. Luckily for you, most of these are available for free. I’ll list my own setup, but this is entirely subjective and I’ll offer some free/cheap alternatives.

I work exclusively with the LAMP stack and use MAMP (free) to create a local host for testing. Whenever I start a new project I create a new virtual host, usually something like “domain.dev”, and all of my development is done locally until which time I deploy it remotely for testing.

I use both BBEdit ($99) and TextMate ($59) for editing. Why do I use two text editors? They each have essential features the other lacks, and are better suited than the other for certain projects. Neither of these apps are cheap though, and there are great free alternatives out there like TextWrangler, jEdit, and Eclipse.

For database management I use Sequel Pro (free). It’s leaps and bounds better than using phpMyAdmin or the command line. It’s especially great for importing and exporting data in a variety of formats.

For file transfer I’ve been using Transmit ($35) for the better part of a decade. The latest version lets you mount FTP shares as volumes on your desktop. This lets me work with remote files in apps that don’t normally support it. For free alternatives with the same functionality, try Cyberduck and MacFusion.

And finally, I’d like to mention one bit of free software that has brought me the most lucrative business in recent years: Drupal. I’ve been using Drupal almost exclusively for over three years now. There is very little I haven’t been able to make it do, and for rapid web deployments there isn’t a better free system out there.

Hosting

Web hosting is the only bit that actually costs money. In truth, $10/year is a promotion that you may not be able to get. I’m referring to the 777 discount that Dreamhost occasionally makes available. For less than $10 a year you get a free domain and a free year of hosting; 92% off their regular price. You could then theoretically use the free domain and hosting to build your company’s website.

In fact, that’s exactly what I’ve done. Earlier this year I switched from a considerably more expensive host to Dreamhost and have not had any issues thus far. Below is my current website running Wordpress (free).

Another great feature of Dreamhost is that it provides easy Subversion and Trac hosting, all you need to do is set up a domain (or subdomain) and add Subversion from the “Goodies” menu.

Yet another nice thing about Dreamhost is they make it easy to set up Google Apps to create Exchange-like services for free. All I needed to do was sign up for a free Google Apps account, check a few boxes within Dreamhost’s control panel, and I had push e-mail, calendaring, and document sharing services hosted under my own domain.

Phone Service

To give your business a more professional feel you could also add a business line. This can also be done for free using Google Voice.

I have a local Google Voice number that is then forwarded to my cell phone, and if I can’t or choose not to answer, it goes to a business-oriented voicemail message instead of my personal voicemail message. I can even choose to have different voicemail messages depending on the person that calls. You can use this to create client-specific voicemails with project status or your current availability.

Google Voice also lets you redirect calls to a Gizmo5 account, which allows you to receive calls over the internet. You can be traveling anywhere in the world and clients could still reach you at your local number or leave a message for free. This is what makes Google Voice great; you’re not tied down to any one carrier.

Accounting

Now we come to the most difficult part of running any kind of business – getting paid. I’ve been using Freshbooks for all of my time tracking and invoicing needs since 2006, and I couldn’t be happier with them. To date, I haven’t paid them a penny for their services. I would be happy to, but their free option serves me perfectly fine. Because I was an early adopter my account has a few more features than their current free offering, but it should still suffice for most small independent developers.

When I work I track my hours using their Dashboard widget and submit it to Freshbooks, usually with references to milestones, issues, and changesets from Trac, and at the end of a given cycle I generate one of their beautiful invoices and e-mail it to the client. They can log in, view and print estimates and invoices, and even pay online.

For an added bit of convenience and professionalism I’ve added a Google Checkout account in Freshbooks so that clients can pay me via credit card when they receive their invoice. This feature is free, but Google will charge you 3% per transaction.

Freshbooks is a pretty great service, and I’m always surprised at all the new things they’re adding and give me access to for free.

Profit!

So that’s about it. This is my current workflow for finding, doing, and charging for work at almost zero cost to me. I’m thankful for all of the freely available services out there that make it easy for me to make a living.

I love living in the future.

Sat, 13 Mar 2010 11:36:53 -0800

I love living in the future.

"If we wished to find a modern-day model for British and American speech of the late eighteenth..."

Sat, 13 Mar 2010 08:25:00 -0800

“If we wished to find a modern-day model for British and American speech of the late eighteenth century, we could probably do no better than Yosemite Sam.”

- Bill Bryson’s Made in America is fascinating.

Perfect analogy.

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 19:19:09 -0800

Perfect analogy.

I think it’s safe to say the producers of Back to the...

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 20:33:12 -0800

I think it’s safe to say the producers of Back to the Future were a little off on what Lea would look like at 48.

Why A Salad Costs More Than A Big Mac

Sat, 06 Mar 2010 16:32:11 -0800

Why A Salad Costs More Than A Big Mac

Amazing (via ArtieTSMITW)

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 19:35:22 -0800

Amazing (via ArtieTSMITW)