Apex81

One of the first things I get asked when doing a website for a new company is if I know a great place around town to get business cards, and advertisements printed.  Unfortunately, I don’t know anywhere around town, but I do know of some great resources online.  It turns out that most of these companies offer affordable printing for most your needs. By affordable, I really mean, a hell of a lot cheaper than anything in my neck of the woods.  I’m in the process of  moving all of my needs to one of these companies, but I have heard great things about all of them around the internet.  Check them out if you’re in need of some new business cards. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been all about Firefox for a couple of years now, but a new browser is catching my attention.  Flock!  You should check it out.  It has a pretty good Newsreader, Integrated with Flickr, and runs pretty smoothly for a relatively new browser.

Blogged with Flock

My midterms are done… thank god!  It was a pretty brutal exam period for me.  Some how my Anthropology exam was harder than my economics exam… and in the worldof Apex81 anything math related should be, hands down, the more difficult of tasks.  Who knows, maybe the tide is turning, or maybe I should have spent more time studying for the easier exam.  Although to my defence: only one question on the entire exam was based on the unit objectives and study questions… how unfair is that.  Last time course objectives are supposed to be the most important concepts of the course… you know… the kind of concepts that find themselves on exams.

Now i just have like 13 assignments and 3 finals to do in the next three weeks! I can’t wait for this semester to be over.  It seems like everything that can go wrong has gone wrong.

I also have two websites I need to start busting my ass off on, clients are starting to get unruly! I’m starting to get in over my head.  Everything is coming to a bulk head, and I have no idea how to even start to work these things out.  Two sites almost down, and two sites to go.

Today was the first time that I was glad that I make customers sign contracts.  For the first time I had to cite a couple provisions and clauses in my contract to ensure that I was paid fairly.  Man oh! Man, I’m glad I made the client sign one of those.   In my contacts I have a payment schedule that ensures that if clients decided to cancel their projects for any number of reasons they have a scale of payment that they must meet.  Essentially, if a client withdrawls from the contact within  a couple of days they get 50% of their money back, but if they withdrawl say a month later they have to pay the full amount of the contact.  This essentially protects me from clients who continually encourse their sites design and creation, and then upon deciding that they don’t like it withdrawing from the contact and cancelling the project.

Lets just say i’m glad I was protected today.

So, I consider myself a tech-saavy internet user. I read tons of blogs, spend most of my time on the internet, I even spend most of my spare time messing around with new web technologies. I love it. It’s exciting times for us geeks! But, i’m starting to get a little bit worried. Read the rest of this entry »

Taking a quick break from my studies today to watch some playoff hockey, and catch up on some news around the web. I stumbled across a pretty cool website that demonstrates the power of todays web technologies, if you get a chance check out scrapblog.com. Every time I stumble across today websites I’m simply amazed at how far we’ve come since the days of geocities.  Unbelievable.

Anyway, I’ve been pretty busy lately. I’m pretty behind with my school work because I’ve been spending a majority of my time working on some designs and planning my upcoming wedding. Sometimes I think I was crazy to think I can handle all of this.  Other times I think its been a breeze.  Ah well… no looking back now.

I need to get back to work.

Part Two to follow.

Sorry about the lack of updates lately. I’ve been super busy. My school work is starting to catch up with me. Between school and these web pages i’ve been designing I’ve been super busy. Its starting to look like I’ll be spending some time on the road implementing a couple os OS X servers for a school board in Oshawa, ON. Sounds pretty exciting. It’s going to be a bit of a challenge, but definantly as step in the right direction businesswise. I’ve also got potential clients lined up in Maryland, and Texas. Hoping I don’t have to travel to those locations, well, Houstan could be exciting, but Maryland… we’ll I don’t know much about it, so who knows.

On the wedding front, things are starting to get put into order. Appointments and down payments are being made, reservations and decorations are well underway, so it looks like everything is on schedule. Hopefully we’ll get the invites out soon.

Anyway, I need to jet to a meeting with a photographer in Ottawa regarding a website. So, I’ll post a better update when I get back.

Oh and if you want to waste huge amounts of time check out justin.tv, talk about a cool, yet bizarre project.

So, that new project that I’ve been working on has had its docs dropped on the latest podcast at The Weekly Roar , so I figured I’d fill you all in. Jaimie (My finance) and I have created a new review site for music and books. It’s called The Smart Fool We were hoping to get a bunch of reviews and posts up before we went public, but looks like we’re out of the hat now. Anyway, check it out. Drop us some recommendations. We’d appreciate it.

It has been by far the busiest/non-productive week this year. I’ve been working non stop on a couple of websites–some new, some old–and some how I feel as if I’m not further along then I was at the end of last week. Craziness. I think I’m going to dedicate a whole week primarily to school work this week. I’ve fallen way behind and I’m starting to fear that I will be unable to catch up. It’s time to do what I do best–cut corners. Skip readings, rush through articles, barely take notes. Yup… now that I think about it. I’m right on course for the par. hah! *Sigh* Read the rest of this entry »

So, i’ve had to signup for usenet access yesterday for a number of reasons (primarily school).  I was a little unimpressed with the price for a month of usage.  But, let me tell you this–download speeds are amazing.  I’m easily getting 1.2 mbps down.  That sure blows the doors off of any bittorrent files I’ve gotten.  I think it might be worth it especially  since I need to use it for school.  I managed to download 5 Office episodes in 10mins.  I think I’m in love! lol