Last year saw me making my first move into freelance work and starting work on a number of personal projects which are due for release over the next few months. If all goes to plan (and I can actually stick to the plan), I should have these new sites live in the next few months, I want them to look perfect, so time and planning is very important.

I have spent the last year moving from office to office and on my travels and with each move, has seen me encounter new things and new programs with which to work with as well as the learning curve of legacy coding and even picking up some experience with new and exciting CMSs. I feel I have achieved better confidence with CSS and Jquery and now understand how I can use them to best enhance user experience, which I shall be using to move my site forward in the new year, Meincken.com has long sat in a state of disrepair due to other projects that have required my attention although this is something I wish to remedy in 2010, with a nice new shiny coat for my own work.

SO with the exception of meincken.com which needs to have a serious overhaul I have 2 other projects requiring my attention, one is the currently ignored but in need of work Sugar Coated Design, which has a design but awaiting time in which I can work on it, and may serve mainly as a portfolio site for my design and development work, moving much of my portfolio out of meincken.com and into SCD. I had planned to use it as a blogging tool, but I rarely have time to blog as it is so will probably keep it as portfolio site. Also I have a secret project, the name shall remain a secret until I have finalized the designs and started building the platform with which it shall sit, but I have a few little helpers with this project and wish to make it a community project in the future, I am very excited about it and it’s a subject I am hugely keen on.

I am not sure what else I can currently talk about, so may leave it here, I don’t make new years resolutions as I have a tendency to break them or forget about them. I think the only thing I need to work on is getting the balance right in explaining technical details to people. I have spent fair to long working on the tech side of things that I forget that people don’t know the same things as me!

I wish everyone a very happy new year have an awesome one.

I have also had a full month playing with my Netbook and my HTC Hero, both are awesome and the power of my toys is truly great.

The Hero is a true work horse and the Android Market makes the app store seem amateur. Instalation of apps is painless and removing them is even easier. Keeping in touch is great as well, I have all my social media at my finger tips and syncing with my Gmail is great, it took seconds to set up and auto synced my contacts on my phone. Now it took a bit of messing around to sort out my contacts as it stored my phone contacts, Sim and gmail, but after a little sorting it is now all synced up.

My little Netbook has also taken the abuse of a months ownership and has been great, no lag as such and with the exception of Windows 7 Starter being a bit rubbish the whole thing is great, gonna take the plunge and upgrade to home or pro! Some of the programs I run suffer from the small screen size but it’s good for just checking and great for coding quick snippets and posting the odd update, still prefer my big Asus for the proper work.

I also got a Wave account… Not worked out why I should use it, but I got one! Not convinced yet!

I have also backed the Rage Against the Machine for Xmas Number One. I would go onto a rant about points made on Twitter here but can’t really be bothered, and even if I did, it still wouldn’t sink in!

I am also working on slightly redeveloping meincken.com and hope to have something built for sugarcoated design for a release in the new year. I haven’t really had time to work on my own projects for a while but have been trying to make time to get something going, it is like I have designers writers block.

I am still having fun with my Asus Netbook although seriously considering upgrading the OS to something a little better… Windows Ghetto 7 isn’t the best option for this beast. And now I have a new gadget to add to the family and am currently putting it through its paces. This is the HTC Hero, a true powerhouse in the smartphone market and the only real choice, there is the great pretender in the iPhone, but it just couldn’t do all that I wanted it to do and the apple tax was a huge consideration, also the Palm Pre just lacked the mustard (and the OS) to properly compete with the power of open source like the Android OS. I have been using it now for 2 days solid and it has proven itself a great tool, from auto syncing with my google contacts painlessly after entering my username and password, everything was added including my calendar dates and contacts.

I have been playing with the pre-installed widgets and the Peep twitter widget is something of awesomeness, discovering new bits to this each day and the latest being able to geo-cache and post images via twitter. Also the syncing of facebook profiles to contacts is great and being able to have pictures for my contacts finally makes profile pictures for contacts simple and not having to take pics of everyone.

Enough of the pre-installed widgets that this awesome phone has to offer, I have also downloaded a few additional apps from the Android Market and all I can say is I’m glad I don’t need to mess around with the stupid App store on iTunes (a program I have often had major problems with). Downloading free open source programs and installation could never be simpler, the main one I have been using is Spotify which is good if you’re a music fan but does require a spotify premium account, but with a world of high definition music at your finger tips and the ability to store a limited amount of music on your phone (and computer) it’s perfect if you’re on the underground and no longer have a phone signal.

I can’t express how great this phone is, and if you’re looking at upgrading your phone in the next few months I would not overlook the HTC Hero for a high ranking smartphone and iPhone alternative.

OK, three days in and this tiny piece of machinery has left me in awe!

Battery life – 8 hours without even a dent in the battery, I actually had to plug it in last night but two and a half days without touching the power cable. I give it 10/10 for this feature.

System – Right, not happy about some of the features of Windows 7 Starter, it bugs me that I cannot change my wallpaper and wish I held out for Windows 7 Home… Actually considering the upgrade, I would like to be able to run my old XP scanner as it has got to the stage where I would like to use it again. But all in all it’s pretty good, I do feel like I got ghetto style Windows 7 but my system can take anything up to Ultimate so may upgrade if this bugs me to much. OS – 6/10 (pretty sure if I upgraded this would improve).

Browsing is pretty awesome and some of the gestures are a bit scratchy but the web cam is pretty good, and I like the fact I can zoom on pages and it keeps everything in line, the mouse pad is odd in some ways but it is almost there on the gestures, this could of course be me just getting used to them, but its not immediately intuitive. The wireless range is awesome to boot, my standard laptop loses connection like crazy if I move to the living room with it, but this little beast is still showing full connection. Machine – 7/10

Round up – All in all I couldn’t have asked for a better little netbook, battery life is awesome, and the general running of software is pretty good and the overall laptop is awesome… How can I put it… if you’re looking, just get it!

I am also getting the chance to try out Windows 7 starter, and I must say I am a tad impressed although I can see where the problems are going to start coming through with this OS, oh and I cannot change my desktop wallpaper which distresses me a bit!! But anyway, it’s probably the first time I have actually been impressed with an operating system from Microsoft.

I am also currently researching for a new mobile phone… It hasn’t been easy and for the last 3 months have been looking at a variety of phones, all with their Pros and Cons. It was a battle between HTC and Apple… I say HTC because I like the Hero and the Tattoo, both are android phones and both have very good specs!

I won’t go into my choices as to why I have chosen as it’s personal choice but the winner was the HTC Hero!

I will give a full review into my new netbook in a week after heavy abuse and testing and hopefully will be able to report on the HTC Hero.

First off, why do I need to pay for your services? It’s not like you’re going to tell me anything that I don’t already know and didn’t pick out of the big book of search engine improvements. I have my online journal which is how I’m here complaining about your emails (this is good for improving rankings). I also use social media such as Twitter, Flickr, facebook, Delicious and other such social tools for organic SEO improvements.

Let me make a few things clear, site traffic is not an issue to me as this is my personal site and is really only used as my portfolio and test ground for code so I don’t really care about its rank I also use it for the occasional rant about things that annoy me. I design and build websites for a living and if briefed actually know how the sites content and layout would improve my page rank… That info is for free BTW! I also know all the tricks that you are likely to try and tell me to improve and use (so why would/should I pay you). Now I use Wordpress and Drupal and out of the box, both CMS platforms are pretty good for search engine optimization, so if you knew the first thing about what you were trying to sell me, then you would know this… SO yet again why would I employ your services?

I have attended a few seminars on SEO and found them very interesting, usually it has a lot of classic lines from people who don’t know anything about design and development of web platforms and are trying to sell crap that people don’t need to improve something which if the product is right and works can actually sell itself… I know a lot of the time word of mouth works better than any search engine and paying for a service which can’t actually improve anything, which with a little time and energy can do that work for them so conning people with the promise of better google ranking is just pointless. I am not blindly doing this and I am going to list a few sites here so other people can search for this and hopefully make improvements themselves without the need to spend cash. One classic line I can pull from one particular seminar who told me a load of rubbish ( I cannot remember the talker but it’s not important) who felt the need to say that you should still support IE6 (possibly a secret Microsoft lackey). I stopped checking my site in IE but I will cover this now

Here are few key pointers for improving your SEO without paying;

Know your Audience – I know my target audience are designers and developers, but most often it is employers who I want to work for and most of these people work on Macs and use Safari, Firefox or Opera and if they do happen to use IE, it is often the latest version so I don’t have to worry about my site not rendering properly in IE6. I also use google analytic’s so kind of know for myself which browsers are visiting my site and on which operating system, so telling me crap that IE6 is still used by 90% of the worlds internet users is a load of bull and very out of date, can you not come up with some up to date stats and maybe some proof!

Know your code – I am confident that my code is clean and tidy and usually when I develop I try to stack things as they would be read. This is the first rule I learned as a web designer, but it helps working with a good CMS which takes these things into consideration, learning to use a good CMS can make all the difference and both Drupal and Wordpress come with good out the box SEO tools as well as a few bolts on which extend how great they are.

Now If I really wanted to pay to improve my Google rank I would probably go direct to Google and pay for some adwords myself as this is pretty simple and I don’t need to employ the services of a third party to do some pretty simple work. Now for future reference if you want to sell your services for improving my ranking, make it worth my while reading the message… I don’t care much for apparent “white hat” techniques! I could rant on further but instead I will endeavor to post as much as I can on SEO techniques and teach people how easy it is.

Thank you for your time!

Thinking this weekend requires a mad mash around London to dust away some full on hard week cobwebs.

On Drupal I must say it is an absolutely awesome, powerful and scalable CMS! I cannot do comparisons between Wordpress and Drupal as they both have there advantages and pitfalls (mainly trying to create a decent portfolio in Wordpress without having to hack the core)! I am currently only working on my local machine with a theme for another site as well as a few other projects which are using Drupal as a CMS.

I have also just brought a new back wheel for my bike… A Velocity B43 rim over a sweet sealed hub with green and black spokes, it’s nice as it’s going to finish off the colour scheme on my bike… Pictures to follow! I am feeling a bit excited about its arrival and just waiting for it to be built by the wonderful people at Brick Lane Bikes.. I will give you the run down on how it runs when I pick it up! But I am also a tad jealous that Gayle is currently going through the ride to work scheme to get herself a new ride… Possibly the worst thing I have ever had to suffer as she has been umming and arring through 500 odd bikes… Now this all got exciting when Specialized announced that they would be releasing a whole stable of new singlespeed/fixed gear bikes! Now we had looked at rides from 14 bike co and Cavendish cycles and had contemplated a number of bikes from the mighty FMB Sword to a nice Bob Jackson (I would be very envious if she had gotten a Bob Jackson). Now in the interim those sneaky chaps and chapesses at Specialized had been working on new frames for Globe and the Langster range (see previous post). Now the New Langster steel didn’t exactly match up to expectations and looked a bit to racy for Gs standard of bike, but the Globe looked as though it had a more relaxed geometry and is carrying a super sweet Reynolds 520 steel frame with some super sweet off the peg extras for the top of the range model… Although the green isn’t super and at some stage will probably end up in Armourtec for a respray (mine may join it for a nice black respray), but it seems that Specialized have realized that people don’t want their bike covered in crap stickers, just a blank canvas so they can make it there own! It may need a few changes (mainly stem, handlebars and colour) here and there but for a bike that comes off the peg the way it does I would be chuffed to bits and a bit envious that G is getting this ride.

To the spammers.
Thank you so much for your kind comments, I would publish them but they felt personal to me and I would feel wrong leaving them on a public website, especially my own! If you have a valid comment which may have even the remotest inkling to do with the post I would happily publish it for you to allow you to contribute to my site. For the time being I bid you good night.

• New rear wheel – Velocity Deep V or B43 in Lime green over a Dia Compe Hub (impressed very much over the front wheel) or a Chub Hub… Um hub!
• Considering what I need for general riding I need advice on cogs and gear inches.
• Sugino or Paul crank set – Torn by which looks nicest and of course a new bottom bracket as mine is a little long!
• and for aesthetic reasons I want to get some Charge Plungers to protect my lovely green handlebars and some green Halo Courier Twin Rails

Along with this list of bits, I have become a little security conscious and considering another lock for added security but think a second chain would just weigh to much, so may opt for a nice D-Lock by Kryptonite!

I then found myself on eBay checking out frames… Found some awesome frames which could do with some love and attention and would truly suit being set up for single speed use which I may consider to give my knees a break from riding fixed which would mean dumping my broken Specialized Allez frame. This also meant I went on the hunt for Frame sprayers and have heard nothing but good things about Arourtex and it’s handy as it’s just up the road !

Now as you’ve probably guessed I love bikes and lately I’ve been getting a little excited about the new 2010 models coming soon… Here are a few of my favorite picks;
2010 Langster steel (unsure if it’s going to get a UK release… But please Spesh)

Langster Steel (red)

Impressed that the mighty good looking Sword by FBM now comes with forks as it was hard to colour match those awesome frames, and these bikes look absolutely bloody brilliant, I love the shape of these bikes and if I ever thought I could pull off tricks without caving my face in on the tarmac, this would be my bike of choice, I understand Cavendish Cycles will be taking stock of these bad boys in the near future, I suggest you check this shop out as the guys are really nice and helpful and also the place I purchased my Velocity Deep V from (thanks to G).

I also got to drool over the beautiful Cinelli Mash cross over at 14 Bike Co which I must say is one of my all time favorite shops in London… Really friendly and lots of nice bikes, parts and apparel which is perfect for pimping out your ride, and including the aforementioned Cinelli sex machine!

Well anyway… The sun is out and I can hear my bike calling me!

Also at some point I will finish off working on all my web projects… Coming soon Sugar Coated Design and I’m also working on two other projects which I have wanted to rework and now I have the go ahead to do so, but more on that soon. And on an art note, was reading Dalis Mustache the other day and inspired by my own facial growth came up with this Nick version of one of the images… Makes me think what would Dali have done if he had Photoshop and Illustrator at his disposal?

Feeling ispired by Dali!