What can I say, it’s the colourful World and people. That is the most valuable lesson I’ve learnt in this town since the day I moved to this town, again.

When you step into a World that deal with people, you’ll see all kind of human being. It’s not something Client From Hell can tell, it’s more than that. If you happen to watch HK TVB: Beyond The Realm Of Conscience, you probably know what I mean.

The whole thing has finally reach full stop. Now it’s time to give full force on WordPress and its development, has been abandon it for weeks

Yes, progress can be a killer. That is what I have to blog about today, to maintain a good balance of myself.

Well, after looking into the matter. What I see wrong is – Communication. There are lots of holes in all the communication when the project was first initialed.

First, the dealer. He who did not give me second contact and did not let me know first hand that he will be having vacation after this week, which the project should be finish next week. Well, God showed me the way before he leave the airport and he gave me the second contact – The carpenter.

Second, the carpenter. I asked to know see the progress in the factory, but they refuse and told me that they are build according to the design the dealer gave them. I keep wanting to see the progress as the material is quite sensitive thing. Ended up it was wrong but I did make the correction after that, however, the carpenter, insist that there is no material like I mentioned.

Thirdly, the partner of the dealer. I never met him before, and I did have a phone conversation with him before. Well, on the phone conversation, when they did the wrong material, he insist me to accept the item, which I declined. Today he shows up, and give me the evil look thinking I’m some sort of jerk. After a short conversation with the carpenter (apparently he insist on using the wrong material), he raised his voice thinking I’m fooling them for keep changing the material.

See, overall, the communication and the insist of a customer right did not reach and ended up an unhappy day. Tomorrow starts another day, and this time, the dealer is back. Things will be clearer.

Delete System Restore

First, delete the System Restore. It may sound stupid for some, but really it taking too much space for nothing. If your computer running well yesterday, by all mean, delete the rest of the backup. Since Windows XP, Windows has System Restore to automatically backup your system everytime you install an application, deleting them will leave only yesterday’s backup. So it is fine, if your computer running well yesterday.

Cleaning the cache and all

Clean thoroughly! This is the harder part, and normally user depending on third party software. I personally recommend CCleaner. I’ve been using it for years and it still keep updating and running well even in Windows 7 Oh, it’s a freeware, don’t worry. This little thing clean almost every possible aspect in Windows, even broken or empty registries!

Arrange the files

Alright, this is one of the most headache process, for some. Since Windows 98, I’ve been doing defragmentation from time to time, normally 6 months once. But it took too much time if you ever do that. I normally use Auslogic BootSpeed, a shareware cost USD49.95. It worth the money than any other I’ve tried. However, there is this free version of disk defrag for download, which works pretty well too.

Web design, WordPress development, xHTML/CSS coding

All I did is all these web related, but not so much related too. Web design, is on of the job I tried to get rid off and focus mainly in WordPress development. The differences between xHTML/CSS coding and WordPress development is that coding need the skills, but WordPress development need the time and experiment and of course, some programming language. However, in current situation, the low pay I have, I need to work on web design as well, and all the rest. Time is chasing me for weeks!

Machines and arrangement

My uncle was a mad man when it comes to business. Since I have a wife or relationship in Indonesia, he tend to ask me to arrange his machine to be import to Malaysia. That alone may require me a 5 times calling and 10 times SMS to Indonesia.

Construction

Recently just jumped into the field. Due to some Heavenly-dropped-chance, I secured a construction deal with some big corporate. However, due to my first time and inexperiences in the field, I’m juggling to the site from time to time to make sure everything is running alright.

Alright, I still need to get back to work… For the 3 main things I’ve been doing all the time

Now what?

This question is crucial for the starter. I have been a web developer for 2 group of people who know their goal, have everything ready, but lack of system.

As a friend, and my previous entry tells me, I am better get myself off the people who I don’t know well, so I am just a developer for them, for free, as a friend (reminded me another topic next entry )

The problem is the system, or in bigger group, management. While you have everything ready, it is time to plan a timeline, a strategy and a discussion group. They have a bad system, I have to be here and there with different people telling different timeline. Discussion group was not attend by everybody, can’t have a strategy that agreed together.

After a few times of discussion with them, I finally made the move to, move out of the project. As I see it, it is a waste of time even working for free. If a project can be success, I would be glad to become a part of it even if I work for free; but if a project is failing, why waste the time?

I myself, has bee naive before. I’ve experiences a few driveway alarm before I get to where I am today. Pure partnership without a goal always resulting a break out.

While I was in college, I tried to work out something for betterment of my future as well as some pocket money with my friend. However, we ended up stopping the project as we did not come to a similar goal. I did it, twice!

However, this time round, the friend who partner with me for the first time, came back to me and asked if I’m interested in another project with him. I rejected without second thought. As I don’t want to waste time on the project that we cannot agree on the goal. We are both not a college student anymore, and have a limited time in making ourselves a living. I would prefer to look for someone who is not so keen on making big buck from one small project.

That remind me of another entry about project-excitement

Weeks back, when I first encounter eChiro, I did not really believe it’s going to help much, until I see some reason. A hard fact always make things more believable

First it was my neck. Due to the sitting posture (I’m working with a laptop) I have some pain on my back neck for years. After the first few session with eChiro, it gets more painful. My mother, who brought me to there insist me to continue it for another few more days to check the result. Well, it works well, my neck is now more relieve.

Second was my shoulder. I have a high and low shoulder. I almost can’t believe my eyes when I check my shoulder after 3 session, they get more balance each time I went for the therapy

Seriously, if you see one, go ahead and give it a trial. It has 4 months free trial, which I am on it now.

P/S: eChiro website runs on WordPress too

Like how we work nowadays, we do things almost manually, even though paying system has a great software to run it, but you can’t deny that a Symbol LS2208 barcode scanner still need to be manually scanned and collect.

HP launched a line of new web connected printers, printers that has its own email addresses.

Interestingly, it helps a lot in drivers and plugging. Nowadays, we have too much plugs to use, and too less plugs to be share. Laptop has replaced desktop, with a maximum of 4 USD port (let’s now putting Apple computer in, they speak wireless by the way), you may still running out of it.

But one thing has HP pointed to, wireless! That is the World after this century maybe. Like the IT manager told me before “I wonder when will everything be wireless, so I don’t need to speed this f*cking time plugging you a computer in office“, it was 2006, way before iMac has bluetooth keyboard and mouse. I’m sure he is happy right now

Almost all the clients I worked with required one for them, for their news and update or press release. But does it work well with it? Not exactly.

For my point of view, a business, depending on the services, a slideshow is a showcase, in a way.

It should emphasize the business itself. Attractiveness is not a priority, but the effect of the slideshow counts. Delaying too long is not good; invisible button is not good; button not clearly shown is not good and so on.

It is always good to use JQuery for the slide instead of Flash, because Flash already breaking the first rules of the slide – Delay. It needs to load and depend on how fast/slow the Internet connection a visitor has. However, overusing slideshows may make it all little boring too…

There are more than 4 stylesheets and more than 800 lines of CSS, in one liner style.

Question: How do you save space and loading time with CSS?. Put in 1 line on each value? Don’t use space? Don’t place comment? Heh… Cache

What I like was the time spending on adjusting all the design to pixel perfection. Heh, another personal project on hand going to do next few months, that is more than this one I guess… It’s going to be fun No time for some shitty machines and softwares now…

Big, heavy and slow. That’s all I can say. But hey, its that machine that helps building whatever I have today. I learn HTML and CSS by that little old machine! With 13 inch screen by the way.

Anyway, a 14 inch fitted nicely to majority laptop users, that is how it claim, and why there are thousand of model with 14 inch screen (Let’s not get into Apple product). So whose standard was that? 14 inch? I’m still prefer a larger 15 inch LCD screen instead.

Nowadays, with HDMI plug, lots of laptop users are hooking up their laptop with a big LCD TV. This has to be thankful to Apple Computer. They are the first to move desktop to laptop, and improved lot of other laptop vendors to improve their product quality to enable us, to run laptop as if it is a desktop.

I haven’t been unplug my laptop for a week now by the way

I seriously need some adult acne treatments now. With 2 frameworks to update. One for a normal usage and one for advance usage. Then some clients who are enthusiast with WordPress 3.0 and have been waiting for it before I finish their project too, have to upgrade.

Well, the good side is… Some features are really helpful for next development

I remember while we both sat on a coffee shop few months ago, he mentioned that since I studies design, so it is easier for me to get into the field. Unlike him, who is a computer studies student jumping into web design.

Well, I do however, have different idea about the web design, computer and graphic design. Unlike sitting for SAT prep course. Web design is a totally new thing in this country, for now. We don’t have a specific course for web design, marketing, SEO or PHP.

I am, for one, struggle for a betterment of PHP and Javascript, where he is a computer studies student who already has the concept of how those work. He is struggling for better web design, where I am a graphic designer.

Each field has its own specific need, but coming to freelance is a whole new field. I guess he is getting it now, or it would be too late for him to understand.

Freelance does not depend on how well you are in web design or any other language programming. It depend how well you know a web strategy. The simplest, 3-click-rules, 960 guide system and etc, are just some basic web strategy.

Basically we all going to start from bottom when we jumped into web design, or worse, freelancing.

I take it that this month, a lot of football fans going to sit on the TV for the whole season of World Cup.

That got me thinking, if most of my clients are football fans, does it mean I’m going to have a silence month for my income? That’s gonna hurt!

Anyway, there you go, the official song of South Africa World Cup 2010

Yahoo!

Back then, Yahoo! was just a directory. Everyone want to have their website listed on Yahoo! and it was free too. For your information, I actually look around in Yahoo! directory for a college to attend. That was the day

AltaVista

Acquired by Yahoo! in 2002 where I’m already start using Google. Honest speaking, AltaVista wasn’t a really good directory compare to Yahoo!. AltaVista has quite a messy front page back then.

My Way

I like My Way for it huge mailbox storage back then. It was a rip off of Yahoo! though, running almost the same design different color.

Google

Anyway, I finally settled down with Google. For it has the fastest loading web and biggest mailbox storage back then. Now that I started to use more and more Google product, like Google Document, Google Reader, Google Mail, Google Code and etc.

With all those changes, one thing I saw improving – user experience. Let’s not get into hanky panky design and interface. User experience is more the job to get a visitor surfing around a web. They all know it