Time is everything lately. With the day-job workload, re-working my first novel, and the imminent moving house, it’s tough to find quality time to sit and draw. But keeping up the practice is essential. draw365 was the answer. ---- All rights reserved. nd.com Read on...

Started by Regina Agu, draw365 encourages the creation of at least one drawing, ever single day. That’s a tough call for those of us hardly finding the time to do anything other than work these days. But that is partly the beauty of the idea.

Any drawing is good. Whether it be a multi-hour piece or a simple scribble, putting marks on paper to represent something is a worthy exercise and, simply, you cannot improve without actually doing it.

Limited time and limited life

One of the strongest periods of my illustrative development came when I worked as an editorial artist for a daily newspaper. During the original Gulf War, I had the daily task of meeting the 12 noon deadline by supplying the appropriate diagrams, maps, illustrations for that day’s news. It taught m to work and think fast and to meet a very tight deadline at all cost.

draw365, to me, reminds me of that exciting time. I spend between 15 and 45 minutes on average on a draw365 drawing. Much less than I would like, I’ll admit, but that is about the limit of what I can slot into my day around the essentials.

Yet that time is enough. I have some specific aims of look and style I want to achieve when working in materials such as charcoal and compressed charcoal. The brief time commitment of the daily draw365 enables me to experiment and explore in a way I had not considered before. It loosens the inhibitions to try a new technique, a new style, because the time investment makes potential failure that much less painful: if I waste 45 minutes of my day, it really does not matter!

Just over a month

Each day I feel as if I am homing-in on my target. As I look back on the past month of drawings I see progress – progress based on my own, personal measure of whether a piece is successful or not (generally a set of parameters of what I want to achieve with each individual drawing). Sure there are some clangers in there, but the dead ends are as valuable as the triumphs.

draw365 is exciting and motivating. And using it for exploration and experimentation brings an extra level of value to me, making the time and effort that much more worthwhile.

My most recent draw365 creations can be seen in the sidebar of this blog’s home page, on my draw365 posterous blog, and on my flickr. Plenty more draw365 artists on twitter and flickr.

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The opening salvo of a sales pitch for a new FTP application that is part of the current MacHeist bundle offer, begins by criticising users for continuing with a tried, tested, trusted product that I have used for many years:

Are you still using Transmit, an app that dates all the way back to MacOS 8? Well, if so, then it’s time to make room for the new kid in town… Flow

That’s right, they open their sales pitch in that way, and continue with snipes at Transmit with reference to Transmit’s very basic text editor:

And we’re not talking about a gimped editor…

Panic’s Transmit is one of those apps that I never hesitate to upgrade. Along with hardened, mature tools like BBEDit, they have remained at the core of my day to day development work (BBEdit is even set to auto boot when my Mac starts).

Am I behind the times in my choice of tool? When I find a new tool that stands the test against those I trust, I’ll make the switch. But strip away the bells and whistles of most new tools and I generally find poor substitutes for those that already enable me to do my job.

Of course, tool choice is a personal one and there are many who would never make the same choices as me. But to go so far as to be critical of a user’s choice is an immature, insecure and ignorant form of marketing. Not the kind of company to which I want to make a professional commitment.

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This was to be a hernia repair. Possibly the result of lugging a humongous 32-inch Sony CRT television set up two flights of stairs a couple of years ago (as at least two people who will read this will no doubt remember). On the other hand, who knows? ---- All rights reserved. nd.com Read on...

The hernia is nothing serious, spotted early, and highly treatable. From the surgeon’s perspective, entirely routine. Ah, Consultant Surgeons, those well spoken individuals who have graduated from being titled “Doctor” to “Mr”.

I have undergone two (more accurately, one, twice, thanks to inept tree climbing) surgeries during my teens and have no harrowing memories of either event beyond having to eat a bowl of prunes for breakfast. Thankfully, they had evolved to suppository laxatives by the second of that pair.

There was one significant difference now: in my first experiences, I remained in hospital for several days, but here, I was scheduled as a day-patient, arriving at the hospital at midday, then being released during the evening of that same day, probably “around five-thirty”, they explained.

I sat in my allotted chair at my allotted bed – number 9 – awaiting the string of admittance staff. The bed was fully loaded with oxygen and all manner of we-can-deal-with-anything paraphernalia.

First a nurse to check my details. Then the ward doctor to re-check the same details. An anaesthetist to cover additional details (plus the previous ones). The surgeon’s assistant to discuss the procedure’s details (and check some of the initial details), and… well, you get the picture by now, I’m sure.

The underlying theme of all the activity in this pre-op ward is clearly to ensure you are who they think you are. It gets a little tedious, but instills confidence you’re not going to wake up missing the wrong limb.

Between these repetitive exchanges I pretended to snooze – sometimes slipping into the real thing just to fool anyone ’s suspicions – in order to avoid inadvertently encouraging those kindred day-patients about me to engage me in conversation. I was particularly trying to avoid Mr. “I’ve got the heart of a 25 year old woman” opposite.

Fun in the pre-theatre anaesthesia room consisted of manipulating the bleeping of the pulse monitor.

Once the surgical team arrived to make the final preparations, I will admit to being anxious. No attempts to slow the beeping worked as they jabbed in the necessary pipework. As I started to drift off, I can remember my vision blurring and the beeping accelerating.

I never expect to remember absolutely nothing while under anaesthetic. While coming round, I am convinced I have simply dozed off and am still awaiting the procedure. But, gratefully perhaps, there is simply nothing. If you have never experienced it, it’s quite disconcerting.

Once awake, it was back to the day ward for some toast and a cuppa (that’s when you know you haven’t been whisked out of the country while asleep), and a couple of hours of close monitoring to ensure you are recovered enough to head home.

Unfortunately, I was not. Whether a reaction to the anaesthetic, or a dose of pain-killing morphine, I turned the day ward into a scene from ER television. Doctor and nurses buzzed around me when my blood pressure dropped and I leaked sweat out of pretty much every pore. The result was saline drip, oxygen, and the decision that I would have to remain in overnight for observation.

I was concerned for Jen. Myself, I knew I was safe in good hands. But also knew she would be forced to head home and leave me unexpectedly at the hospital.

The day ward is just that: day, no night shift. So I was carted off to Ward 4 for my overnight observation. One of the day ward nurses stuck with me until she was absolutely sure I was stationed and my new keepers fully in the picture as to what had happened and what was required of them.

A long, troublesome night followed. A typical shared ward with snoring, calls, buzzers, wandering staff and patients, but the a most comfortable bed. What little sleep I managed was disturbed by the regular blood pressure, pulse and temperature monitoring.

The following day was uneventful. The food delivery guy and I had a little exchange about not wanting lunch. “I’ll be gone by then” I insisted. He offered me a good natured, knowing nod as I was still sat in my bedside chair as he wheeled past with his lunch delivery trolley. I was let out soon after.

Throughout the process, even through the weeks of the consultation process and initial tests, I cannot fault the way I was treated by the staff at two hospitals. Thoroughly communicative, friendly, patient, and understanding. I felt as if each one cared, about me, about what I was going through, how I was feeling. I felt they genuinely wanted to make me comfortable, well and to have me feel safe and secure.

I went through a relatively minor procedure, with a hiccup. But I have come away from the experience with a respect and trust for the staff. I would have no concerns about putting myself in the hands of these people again in the future.

Of course, I’d much prefer to not need them!

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For many of us, eBay remains the default location for second hand goods on the net. Paper-based classifieds having long gone to the dogs and most online classified still not having a solid enough traffic base to offer a good chance of selling. But eBay is moving away from the second-hand, average-Joe’s boot sale, to a professional marketplace. And it is doing it covertly while alienating its private (non-business) sellers in the process. ---- All rights reserved. nd.com Read on...

Rules and selling constraints are popping up everywhere. Usually allied to specific categories, limitations on postal charges, limitations on returns policies, etc. are being imposed that make selling a challenge. Yes, I too have been irritated by unscrupulous sellers reducing item costs and inflating postage costs, but eBay’s solution is draconian and ill-considered.

Two specific examples:
I have a large stack of Playstation2 games I no longer use. eBay does not allow any postal charges for games items other than Free.*
I also have a steering wheel controller fo the same console. By weight, insured post (recommended by eBay to ensure everyone is covered), would cost £9. In the specific console steering wheel category, eBay will only allow me to charge a maximum of £5 for postage and insurance. If I were a professional seller, I could likely arrange postage at that level, but as a private seller, not a chance.

Let’s talk about commission…
eBay now charges a whopping 10% commission on the closing value of private seller auctions.  Ouch! As a professional seller – meeting eBay’s targets for monthly sales turnover, ratings, etc – one can achieve much lower  commission rates. Add to that sting the cost of placing an item and the associated Paypal fees, and you could see a significant slice of your selling price being eaten up.

The alternatives?

Searching around I found a number of alternatives, the closest in style being ebid.net. Selling on ebid.net consists of paying a fee to become a seller, from $1.99 for a week, to £49 (discounted within the first 24 hours of sign-up) for lifetime seller status. In return there are no item placement fees, and no final value commission fees. A good deal if you have a lot of stuff to sell over time.

I think ebid.net has one fatal flaw from the buyer’s viewpoint, however. Sellers can post an item “until it sells”. Sounds good for the seller, but there are numerous comments around the web from buyers wishing to buy items that have remained on ebid.net for some time and are no longer available. (ebid, you’re driving buyers away with experiences like this.)

Other options come in the guise of more conventional classified services such as gumtree.com, preloved.co.uk, and others. But they all face the problem of not having the level of traffic compared to ebay, particularly for niche categories. Without the traffic, you stand much less chance of actually selling the item.

eBay’s future?

eBay have promoted their profits having taken a hit last year, so some change is inevitable. But I feel they are over-reacting and alienating a large segment of their users. If the rules for professional sellers tighten further, even they will find selling on eBay an inconvenience and will look elsewhere.

The more you slap your users in the wallet, eBay, the more will turn their back on you.

* In the end, these games went to musicmagpie.co.uk, a games and DVD trade-in site. Sure, I got less money in my pocket for the whole lot, but after counting the real cost of eBay and Paypal for each item, the enforced postage pricing (not to mention the additional hassle of individual items and buyers), the ease of sending one, pre-paid box to MusicMagpie was more than worth it.

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Right now we are working on upgrading all our themes to new Magento release. The good news is that all upgraded templates will be based on our new improved Magento template framework with new improved seo code. Most popular themes will be available till the end of the week. We are planning to finish upgrading all themes within 3 weeks. ---- All rights reserved. nd.com Read on...

Good to see they are on the case, and a three week wait is not unreasonable considering the number of templates they have made available.

Magento templates are not independent

Template providers for Magento tend to create their products using parts of the default Magento template to supplement their own code. Magento therefore uses parts of the default template, combined with the custom template, to build the site.

This method of easing template creation by not having to reproduce every last element from the default template is a cost-effective means of developing, and consequently brings the cost of each template down. But inevitably leaves developers at the mercy of the Magento developers. If they change the default template structure, it could easily break the third party templates.

This is no criticism of TemplatesMaster, this method of template creation is commonplace and quite acceptable, particularly for complex template structures such as Magento’s. But it does demonstrate how we remain at the mercy of core product developers of large, commercial products such as Magento. Their product development is commercially motivated (as it should be), but this can lead to the broader community of developers having to hop around when things change.

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Insomnia frequently lurks nearby and rarely do I find a night’s sleep properly restful. Elements such as stress, food, or inappropriate light levels, can cause my sleep patters to stumble. ---- All rights reserved. nd.com Read on...

For example: particularly during grey winter months I use a bright daylight lamp in my office to help in maintaining concentration all day. But should I lose track of time and stay under such light too late into the evening, I can find myself still awake at 2 am in the morning – tired, certainly, but sleepless.

Having tried, and learned from, various forms of sleep diaries, a very clever use of accelerometer technology in the iphone, might give me a level of understanding about my sleep that I never thought possible.

Accelerometers (movement sensors) are appearing in all kinds of devices in recent times. Unfortunately for devices such as the iphone, they are to often used for ineffective reasons, such as clearing content of a screen or throwing some dice, where a button would provide a more effective user interface.

Sleep Cycle has taken the accelerometer technology – which is quite sensitive – into a new area: to monitor your sleep.

Its primary intent is to act as an intelligent alarm clock. You set the alarm to your desired time, and the application monitors your sleep in an attempt to wake you during a period of light sleep, rather than deep sleep. If at some point up to 30 minutes before your alarm time, it sense a lighter sleep phase, the alarm will sound.

The instructions show how to place the iphone face down in the corner of your mattress near (but not under) your pillow. The application must run continuously, so connection to a power cable is essential. It is also placed under the mattress sheet to prevent it falling off.

As you move around at night, it senses movement in the mattress using the iphone’s accelerometer, and continuously records your sleep state based on those movements. Once the alarm sounds, it will store that data and provide a visual representation of your night’s sleep.

Of course, this is not as accurate as having electrodes stuck to your head (and presumably also attached to an appropriate monitoring device), but provides a genuinely useful understanding of one’s sleep patterns throughout the night.

This is my chart from the first night I used the application:

Sleep statistics for 03 – 04 Feb (Thu).
Went to bed / woke up: 00:00 / 06:00
Total time: 5h 59m

I have no way of confirming it’s accuracy throughout the night, but I do remember waking up at a sniff after 3 a.m. to look at the bedside clock. And as you can see, the chart registered that I was in an awakened state around that time.

Here’s is a chart from the third, and significantly more disturbed and less restful night:

Sleep statistics for 05 – 06 Feb (Sat).
Went to bed / woke up: 21:29 / 07:01
Total time: 9h 31m

A marked difference in the sleep pattern, and clearly reduced very deep sleep. (The cause of the poor sleep described in this chart was the result of staying overnight away from home, in a strange bed and strange environment, and after many hours of driving.)

The application allows direct posting of the graph and data that you see above to your facebook account, or export and send to an email address.

I would like to see one more thing added to this application: the ability to attach notes to a particular night’s data. This way I could record anything that might have affected the sleep pattern.

What will I get out of this?

In the past, my sleep diaries consisted of timing notes, activities and food from the previous day, and how I felt when waking in the morning. With this application I hope to gain some deeper understanding of the differences between good and bad nights of sleep.

Precisely how much this will help in day to day life, I am not sure. But having some grasp of that mysterious unconscious period between going to bed and waking will, I am sure, provide some comfort through understanding.

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MTECH9 – for 20% off £35/$50 or more

MTECH10 – gets you a .com domain name with 30% off, including renewals

MTECH25 – 25% off $100 / £65 or more (expiration extended indefinitely!)

MINOR20H – for 20% off 1, 2 or 3 year hosting packages

MINORSSL – gives you a standard SSL Certificate for a mere $12.99

How do you use these?
Just pop over to GoDaddy.com, drop some items in your shopping cart, and insert the most appropriate code above into the clearly visible box in your shopping cart, just before you complete checkout.

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Magentoexpert has the solution which requires a couple of lines added to /cron.php:

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Pet portraits are not overly challenging and very rewarding creations. When I did them years ago there were few artists working specifically on pets. So trying to inject more creativity into day to day life in 2009, I made the straightforward decision to start with what I already knew. ---- All rights reserved. nd.com Read on...

I should have done my research first…

Now, the world is awash with pet portrait artists. Far too many are, sadly, awful. But there are some who are excellent, who can deliver character and a clear likeness, and push their work beyond simply duplicating a photograph. What has also become clear is that I cannot compete with these folks on pricing.

Pet portraits are heavily labour-intensive, particularly to get the quality I strive for. To bring my pricing to compete with most of the good, established artists around, I simply could not survive. Add to that I would need to be chained to a drawing board for 8-10 hours every day, plus the tasks of promoting, order processing/shipping, etc. I’m not sure how some of these artists are able to offer the pricing they do.

There is also the problem of growth: there isn’t any. There’s a maximum level of productivity for one person creating art. And with a saturated market, there’s very little opportunity to increase pricing over time. and poor opportunities to create additional works.

The more I looked into this aspect of the art business, the more I realised what a nightmare it could become.

I will still produce pet portraits here and there as commissions, of course, but will not be actively promoting them as a specific service.

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I helped in the background to get absinthe-shop.com online last year (where you can, of course buy absinthe!) which gave me a scant grounding in working with the Magento e-commerce application. Magento, though free in it’s basic form, is a very capable, heavyweight shopping cart and order management tool. For absinthe-shop.com, a more traditional online store with a specific range of stocked products, it was the obvious choice. To sell artworks, it seemed, at first, less than ideal. ---- All rights reserved. nd.com Read on...

What is more important?

Online stores are most effective when they make the purchase process as straightforward as possible. After messing with a bunch of other shopping cart solutions (and knowing from the off that the level of complexity I needed prohibited a bespoke build at this time), I found all to be lacking in the practical requirements of managing stock, organising orders, invoices, and most importantly, integrating accurate shipping charges. This last point was the clincher. It became clear very early that a system which would ensure the goods were properly insured when shipped would win.

Add to this the need to create connections between groups and types of products (an original artwork and it’s limited edition prints, for example), and nothing could quite match the flexibility of the magento solution without significant expense.

Sawber.com was born just before the new year. Currently only stocking my artworks and prints (Jen’s coming soon), it makes life as easy as it can be to order and to manage those orders from the extensive administration. With full payment gateway integration, orders can be processed by PayPal or directly within the store, and the system presents only the most appropriate shipping options based on destination, package weight, and insurance value.

I think if we only stocked original artworks, then it might be far too hefty a solution. But having to manage hundreds of limited edition prints dictated the need for a more capable application.

The art business is slow

No surprises there, I’m sure. With the ongoing empty pockets of most people and the post Christmas period, we’re not seeing people buy original art at quite the rate we hoped. But it is very early days. Gradually, word is getting out and traffic coming in. We are building with the long term in mind, so though a big initial splash would ring well with our wallets, the last thing we want is to so rapidly run out of art stock that we are unable to replenish it!

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