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09
Mar

Work Lately

Ginger

Lately, I’ve been doing odd jobs and tasks in my local area. Hubby’s hours have been cut of late, so anything I can do to bring in more funds is a good thing. I’ve been making heavy use of a few specific services in my Freelance blogroll that feature tasks, whether it’s a session of dog walking, grocery delivery, computer or internet tutoring, cooking, event planning, or a myriad of other services that don’t require any particular skillset other than fierce entrepreneurialism.

That doesn’t bring in much but it does get me out of the house, off the computer, and lets me interact with my neighbors. I’ve met quite a few people that way who wish to utilize me for longer-term assignments, which of course I’m all for. Now that the car is running again, I can greatly widen my serviceable area, and the number and variety of tasks I’m able to perform. So huge thumbs up for that.

One of my personal websites were hacked and there was an insidious script somewhere in there that was redirecting traffic to various other sites that I certainly didn’t intend my visitors to see. It took me a couple of days to weed out all the bad code, but I seem to have succeeded on that front, as it hasn’t resurfaced. I acquainted myself with the most current security risks and measures for my specific webhost, changed passwords across the board, and went over everything meticulously to make sure everything was locked up tight. Seems to have done the trick there. I’m considering another webhost that has tighter security than mine provides. We’ll see.

There are a couple of long term goals I’ve worked out for hubby and me; it’s great motivation to do something each day to work towards that. New barriers and bumpy roads have cropped up that threaten that. It just makes me get more creative about getting through and over them.

A former friend came out of the woodwork to say hi; I’ve dissuaded all interaction, I’m too busy to make myself open to emotional attacks that don’t do anything but rile up tempers and further distract me from my goals. He’s welcome to the rest of the population for that. I’m out.

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11
Jan

Links, Gigs, and Biz!

Ginger

I’ve been adding a lot more freelance gig-getting websites to my blogroll. It’s been a slow time for short-term freelance assignments. One of my long-term clients has been giving me small assignments, editing video, photos, and website administration. I’ve been able to do most of the work on my iPad (first generation, no 3g)–I can’t tell you how much of a relief it is to be able to pick up the iOS tablet and wander around the house, sitting on varied surfaces besides my computer chair, or going to wherever there’s another pocket of WIFI, at the watering hole nearby or the grocery store when I want a change of scenery.

If it were not for the car repairs I’m saving up for, I would have totally purchased the second generation 3g iPad 2, to be truly untethered by location and to be able to do even more with the onboard cameras on the device. I even had the tablet in my shopping cart the other night, shipping calculated, and personal information shared, all ready to hit the “buy” button. Practicality prevailed, for now. The cost is just too much. Heck, I got this iPad 1 on deep discount through one of those one-deal-a-day websites. I’ve been scouring Craigslist for any iPad 2, only to find that any individual selling theirs wants the same unreasonable rate. I’ll wait.

There are more photos and videos to be edited for my longest-held client. I’m also spending the week recoding a website for a local food business who wanted more social interactivity along with their updated menu, hours, and other info. I’ll probably volunteer to do some webwork for a nonprofit, just to give myself something to do.

I asked my husband about a hair-brained idea I’d thought up the other day, and he gave his assent, so I’m poking at it. I’m starting a new business venture, designing the website for it, and getting a framework of electronica built up to assist me. He and I have been sharing a phone ever since we met; that’ll change when my new Android phone arrives, wherein I can receive professional queries and assignments on my own line. Again, found a great deal on a phone I couldn’t pass up. I required my husband’s input on the business idea, because it will involve relocation, and I asked him how badly he wanted that. He’s quite open to the idea, and it won’t cost us much to try, so I’m going for it. I’m going to see if I can set up some temporary employment for both of us while we get resettled. I found that he and I really do want to relocate to my former hometown, even if it is not through the means we thought we would have been, when an opportunity came up a year ago that we’ve been chomping at the bit to see realized since. And that’s a very clunky sentence, I apologize, it’s the middle of the night.

I purchased some fabric for a nifty sewing project in mid-November, though by the time the fabric arrived in the middle of December, I was deep in retail employment and couldn’t find the time to attack the project before the winter holiday arrived. With things as slow as they are, I don’t see a problem with getting started on that project as well, though I need to purchase more fabric, as I’d well-underestimated how much I’d need for the items I want to make.

I will someday learn how to work this sewing machine–haha, yet another project on my wild array of burners.

The cat has interjected himself on my lap, and I can’t think of anything else that’s come up that I feel like updating about, so I will now tend to him. And brainfart today’s goings-on.

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14
Nov

In More Professional News…

Ginger

I’m coding a fourth iOS app based on a brainfart I had the other night, regarding the local transit system and the open source API they have. It’s a little confusing to work with but I’m enjoying the exercise in getting to learn it a little more intimately.

I’m also redesigning one of my podcast websites. My roommate recently purchased a 52″ plasma TV (gotta love those spontaneous impulse buys, hehe) and I got to view my website on a very large screen, and decided I’d figure out a design that incorporates that along with everything else. Oh yeah, and I podcast too. :)

When I’m not coding, redesigning, or nanoing, I like to volunteer. I’m tackling a project I was approved for yesterday, helping translate a book’s worth of text into English from Spanish. They’re using an online translator and I’m editing up the text to make it more readable to a native speaker. I never thought my three years of high school Spanish would come in handy, but here we are. :) I’m being shadowed by a bilingual editor who will look for technical errors, but their focus is readability for native American English, and aforementioned editor didn’t want to have to clean up the text as well as edit, so, there I am.

I have a retail job lined up for December, 1) because I rocked the position so hard last year and was asked/begged to return, lol, 2) because extra spending money for the holidays is never a bad thing, and 3) just around the time that I start getting annoyed that I have to stand for 8-9 hours a day, it’s time for me to go work from home again. I enjoy interacting with the public very much, this unusual seasonal position isn’t very difficult, and I get to manage myself for the most part. There was one woman from another department who tried to micromanage me, she’s not there now and I daresay that those directly in charge of me know that I know what I’m doing.

One assistant manager even told me to knock down my output a little, there were way too many finished products as it was. *laughs* My philosophy is that people can’t buy your stuff if your stuff isn’t on display. (My product involved fresh fruit.) I’d rather have a few overripe bananas than for someone to feel that there wasn’t enough choice. Bananas are literally cents. The cheapest product was around $20. You do the math.

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18
Sep

This Week’s Goings-On

Ginger

This week, I decided to do a bunch of tasks through Fiverr at the cost of $5 per task, just like the website advertises. I tackled a bunch of new WordPress installs, including themes, for people who were interested in such (their domain and webspace were already there, or purchased separately), and did a few whimsical banners for those who were searching for such. There was one person who wanted a theme customized beyond what I considered to be mild tweaking, and so we negotiated an additional $5 for that. lol I have a list of plugins for WordPress that I group into different packages, depending on the client’s website needs; for example, a band would need to show booked events and showcase their music, while a realtor would require a consultation request form and a gallery for photos and layout diagrams. I love WordPress.

I’m about halfway through my current volunteering assignment, a social media campaign for an international nonprofit; Twitter is gaining a lot of momentum in the form of @replies, personal messages, and new subscribers, and the Facebook app has proven very popular. I’m not associated with the Adsense advertising also going on, but that’s also garnering a lot of web traffic for the organization. I get an email whenever a new ad goes up, and I watch the statistics spike as more and more people either click a link, or use Google to search for more information on the organization. Very fun. This would be the same firm for which I initially created the social media accounts, mentioned a few weeks back. The vice-chairperson I have the most contact with has expressed his approval of my work so far, and has asked me to train an English-speaking volunteer in France to continue the work I started. The vice said specifically that he’ll keep my contact information in mind for future projects regarding the various social networks out there. I am always pleased to gain another repeat customer.

My calendar of events is now virtually unlimited–for a couple of years I have had set hours due to the various real-life demands on my time each weekday. For example, I transport a friend to and from work. I gave her notice that with the recent changes to my household, it would be difficult to coordinate her schedule on top of everything else that is going on. My last day of transport was this Friday last. I don’t feel as frazzled about juggling online and offline responsibilities now.

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12
Sep

Something Something Complete

Ginger

Good gravy, I’ve been busy.

I wanted to make sure I had a volunteer gig set up for today, September 11. I remember what happened in 2001, and I also remember how people came out of the woodwork to help each other. I try to schedule something wherein I can give to my community. Today, that something was the suicide hotline; I (wo)manned a chatroom and talked to people who needed an empathetic ear, for a total of five hours. It’s something I do roughly once a month, and it’s not something I talk about often. Today, I heard from a few individuals who were very triggered by the date, and one in particular who had a sibling on one of the planes. Everyone was really cool.

After that, I left the house for a few hours with a task in mind; I was to meet up with a friend to acquire a car. The car has been acquired, it’s sitting in our parking spot, insured and all that good stuff. I haven’t driven a station wagon before but apparently I will now, hee.

Hubby spent the last couple of days dogsitting for a serviceman friend who had to go do army stuff for the weekend. Having sat in the friend’s house for a couple of days without A/C in sub-100°F heat, hubby was quite ready to get out of there for a bit. We went on a minor joyride to get him some edibles and me some noms. We then housesat together until our friend got home. We awayed with ourselves to home, soon after leaving once more to go to the store, because we could, and were way too gleeful about it. “Hey honey, I’ll go wait for you, out by THE CAR!” “THE CAR” was our exclamation for much of the day, giggling fiendishly at all the stuff we can now do with it.

I’m chomping at the bit to get more fabric and go nuts with sewy things, but I’m thinking it’ll be mildly prudent to sit on that and have gas money set aside for the week. Upon writing that, I realized that my roommate will likely have need for me and said car, so that will push the gas need up a bit.

Gosh, I cannot tell you how happy I am to be mobile again–Portland is a nice city but never being able to get out of its limits really gets to one. One longs very much to see the stars without city light pollution, for example.

The moonrises and sunrises have been dramatic lately–there aren’t any forest fires in the immediate area, but there are a few in the Cascade Range, creating a vague haze along treetops and hills. The satellite and the star are much redder. In fact, the other day, I was startled to see that the sunlight streaming through the blinds was shining on the walls a very vivid red.

So, I was using zingiber.us as my “business” website, but after considering it, (and I kept wanting to share my sewing tinkerings which are not at all business-like,) I decided to copy the few entries I had over to this domain, and make a blog out of it. Why? Because it was bugging me and now it’s not. Also, most of my usernames are identical to this URL, and why double-up on stuff like Twitter accounts, Facebook pages, and the like, if I could use the same thing for everything?–

I am sorry, I have had a very long day and my writing-themed brain cells went to sleep hours ago. I think I’m going to follow them to bed.

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01
Sep

Charitable Goings-On

Ginger

I’ve been busy again!

Recently, I finished up a Facebook app for an organization for underprivileged kids in India. I was given two weeks to incorporate custom social media links to Twitter, Blogger, and a few other major websites, create badges for subscribers, and create a portal script through which the public, the fundraising organizations and major corporation representatives, and the Indian organization could communicate, share ideas, develop and participate in contests and fundraising campaigns. It was a really ambitious project and I wasn’t sure two weeks would be enough. Constant contact through Skype and Yahoo, and a little subcontracting on my part for the easiest, most time-consuming portions, and the project was completed just this morning.

I love my informal team, my cohorts are always willing to step up and help whenever I ask, especially on these unpaid ventures. We’re all professionals, some of whom work from home and some of whom are just connected to the internet seemingly 24/7 for professional purposes. Thanks, guys and gal!

Also on the volunteer front, I had a small influx of fresh photos and descriptions for animals to be listed on Petfinder. I’m usually told when an animal whose profile I developed has been adopted, if only to update the adoption status and depreciate the profile. Seven of the eleven animals, four cats, a puppy, and two birds, have new homes. Another two cats have promising leads; their fosters will let me know what comes of them.

I was looking at some of my other domain names, and wondered if I might make a personal blog out of one of them. I keep wanting to write about my offline crafting ventures and ideas, but I don’t really think zingiber.us is the right place to put those thoughts. There are a few entries that could be cross-posted to both blogs, but I’m thinking it will be a largely separate entity. I’m still brainfarting about that one.

Oh! I have a standing engagement to write weekly posts regarding another charitable company’s goings-on, copying the info on a few different social networks, for eleven weeks. They forward me their emailed conversations, so that I can glean some sort of overview of what’s going on, and try to encapsulate the weekly news tersely and accurately. It’s what I call “spinning“, wherein I flex my writerly muscles and summarize what the client wishes for me to convey to the public. As a subset of that, I’m in charge of @replying those who take the time to comment on the company. I’m wearing my social media manager hat for that.

I’ve been spending a few hours of each day off the computer, sewing of all things. My SO’s been listening to an audio book in the only room with good lighting; I’ve been considering listening to podcasts while I do my thing, so that I’m amused. It’s not that the audio book is boring, but I don’t want to listen to that every day. But enough about that non sequitor. I think about more projects I could be doing online, and I write them down if they seem especially important or attention-getting.

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27
Aug

Video Campaign!

Ginger

An idea had presented itself a few days ago, and I think I’m going to act on it. I wanted to create a series of video résumés in a variety of styles. The mental image of each separate video is making me giggle–they promise to be as amusing and silly as they are informative and representative.

I thought it’d be a nifty thing to upload to YouTube.

Also, I’ve submitted my first for-pay app to the Apple Store. I will be sure to update you on the whys and whatfors as soon as it’s approved. I have a number of free ones on there, but this one I’m especially proud of. Yay!

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26
Aug

Quiet = Busy

Ginger

I try to think of something most every day to post on this blog, be it an idea, an assignment, or a project I’m gnawing on. If I haven’t started or finished something, I’m always at least working on something.

I don’t update as often as I’d like, because sometimes I bury myself in something and don’t come up for air long enough to remember that there’s a blog here. There are days that are entirely devoted to somethingoranother that I’d like to work on, or a puzzle to work out.

For the past few days, for example, I’ve been busying myself with a newly found development kit. I made a pit stop here long enough to share a new link, and then I was back at work, or performing a daily errand, or I’d gone to sleep for the night.

Right now I’m playing with a text-to-speech app for the iOS, emulating the vocal properties of a couple specific famous people, and figuring out how best to render a static image that will automatically lip sync to whatever has been typed. It sounds silly but I have a specific audience in mind for this.

I’ve also added a few more freelance websites to the link list. I have an active profile on each site listed. Business is steady, the projects are small, but I’m having a lot of fun, and I pretty much get to afford foofy coffee, a recent and disturbing habit.

Woo, an update!

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19
Aug

Guess I’ll Make My Own

Ginger

Recently, I’ve been digging around the WordPress Plugin Repository looking for any social “add me”/”share me” buttons that 1) incorporate the social networks and link-sharing websites I use most often, and 2) allow me to customize the display of such, the button images, where they are inserted. To a lesser extent, I wish any of the existing plugins out there had a complimentary widget that would allow someone to link to the site’s homepage, share the RSS feed, and again allowed me to choose which social networks would be featured.

Very few plugins out there currently incorporate Google+, which I would greatly like to add to my rotation of social networks. The few plugins that do allow G+ as an option have a very limited way of displaying G+, or do not incorporate the other networks I use often. Yes, I could adapt the source code, but every time the plugin updates, I would have to adapt it anew.

I’m thinking that the best solution right now, for me, is to code my own. I’d wanted an excuse to make my own WP plugin anyway. I’ll be using PHP, MySQL, and a bit of AJAX in option settings to make it purdy.

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17
Aug

Business Partner

Ginger

There’s someone online that I’ve known for ten years, and we’ve never met in person. When I first met him, he was a young adult in his third year of college half a country away, working towards his dream of belonging to a professional orchestra playing French horn. He competed for individual honors and awards, and worked closely with music instructors who had great things to say about his work.

There came a time in his life when he assessed his life, and decided it’d be more responsible for him to be gainfully employed, and so he left the state university, began working in retail as a salesman of electronic doodads, and gained a comfortable life, had a couple interesting relationships, and picked up a couple of pets along the way. To this day he still wishes to pursue music, but it is not a practical way to make a living, and he persists in not only the retail position he started with, but has taken on a number of other sales jobs he has participated in concurrently, juggling up to three formal jobs at a time.

Not only that, but he also maintains two major online businesses, and is looking to create three more. In fact, that is why I’m writing this entry, because all those years ago, he talked with me about how he wished he could take the entrepreneurial track, and own his own business online. He was fuzzy about what he wanted to sell, until a few years ago when he started working for someone who sold a single product line, made in China and shipped overseas. My friend eventually started his own business to compete directly with his then-boss, because the gentleman was doing unethical and negative things, and my friend felt he could do better.

Throughout all of this, he interfaced with me nearly daily, to talk about his ideas, gather information about how the internet can be used to conduct business, what tools he needed to acquire in order to begin, and how to protect himself against as many failures as could be foreseen between the two of us. We grew from friends into business partners, with him fronting the entire cost of getting his business off the ground, and me guiding him and providing both perspective and knowledge concerning all there is to do online. I had a hand in most everything from consulting him on technologies and business practices, to what he required in other employees, to brainstorming a problem-solving session, to editing photos and web content for his website, editing videos, audio files, and word copy. I provided him a plethora of resources both human and technological, continually updated him on the latest technologies and services that could augment his business, and I have even stepped in to become a part-time employee to answer phones and take orders, update his website in real time, and interact with his designers in order to convey an idea. I’m the one who provides tech support and network administration when he needs it, as well.

There is very little that I cannot do for him, and it’s generally easy to find someone who can provide whenever I cannot. Our friendship and partnership remains solid, and we remain in daily contact to this day. There’s always another photo of another product to be edited and uploaded, another block of text to be added to the storefront, a new technological fun thing to play with and incorporate into the business.

It’s amazing what can come of a simple conversation in a chat program online, between two people who feel similarly about managing small businesses, especially when that conversation spans years.

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