unculturedswine

Well, tonight I started up another new design for Unculturedswine. This time with a different focus; it’s time to start marketing myself a little better so I’m going to make it more oriented and my web design and my photography. I might even install a 2nd blog for web design, heck, maybe a 3rd blog for photography! Then I can keep things a little separate, right? Maybe? Perhaps. Who knows.

As mentioned in my previous post I’m ready to become more professional, more career driven. I know what I want and I’m making the road map in my head. Sometime in the next 5 years I hope to go ‘freelance’ again by opening my own custom, small web design firm. Fewer projects, bigger paydays, killer deliverables and much greater control of my time. And I will make it happen.

I’ve been so danged busy lately I’m just tired and not so productive. I work hard core from the second I sit down and work to the second I leave that when I get home I’m too tired to really do anything I need or want to even. I’ve got thousands of wedding photos to wrap up and I’m terribly behind. I’ve got some leftover personal web stuff to finish up but that too is hurting. I need more hours in my day, and I need more relaxation to prevent burnout! We’ll see what the next little while holds in store for me.

Right now I’m working on a cruise with friends; anyone who wants to come and can come. I hope I can make it work, I had so much fun earlier this year I’d love to go at it again. So, if you’re reading this, consider yourself invited! Grab a friend and let’s go! Mexican Riviera, 7 nights on Royal Caribbean.

So, that’s my life in a quick post. Things are good, looking up, making some progress; I’m just pretty tired. I promise to get more pro-active on this site, it’s time to start utilizing the power of the 5 people that visit me monthly!

Yesterday I decided to jump on the upgrade train and, well, upgrade my first gen iPhone to the latest iPhone 3GS. Less than 24 hours into the purchase I’m very happy with it. The everyday, usual, application to application use of the phone is so much more responsive and snappy – Everything works as you hope it would. Apps load up about twice as fast as my original, and the 3G internet whoops the EDGE that I was confined to before.

Throw in some cool circa 2004 features (Video Camera, MMS) and it’s finally a phone that isn’t out-done by $30 flip phones in some categories. The video is fantastic quality, 640×480 VGA (Standard Def) and I’m capable of editing right on the phone and then sending it straight to my YouTube channel. The camera is a nice improvement too, with selective auto-focus (just tap the screen where I want it to focus) and a much sharper picture. It’s not quite up to a Point N Shoot level, but it’s still very useable at 3MP.

Enough techno babble. I love the upgrade! The speakers are improved too, so using the speakerphone is a much easier task. Oh, and I got the 32GB version – that’s a lot of space! My entire iTunes is only 12GB, which would leave 20GB for movies and TV shows – easily every season of Lost if I had that (which I will….). Plus full length movies and other shows. Throw in the Apps and well, I might just hold myself up for months and not talk to anyone – I’ve got plenty to keep me occupied!

Well, this should count as a blog post, I’ve been slacking somewhat on that front on here. Everything is going great, I have 2 weddings next week (Friday and Saturday), photography is going pretty good right now. Just hammering through the summer rush of things.

My life has been kind of bumpy, generally a good ride, but bumpy. I’ve never been able to just settle anywhere very long. I was happily working as a trainer in Nu Skin when they decided to axe me. I really enjoyed my time there and made some great friends but man, aside from a few glorious moments (thank you summer Lagoon party 2006!) that place was out to get me. I got bumped.

Enter Heritage. I don’t have many nice things to say about that place other than I really learned how to use Photoshop. Any web skills I learned there have been dumped into the trash cause it was just garbage. But I learned Photoshop, and I made some terrific friends. Got a little cozy and then… I bumped again.

Main10 then hailed me over, and I had a great time there. Unfortunately, money was tight and work was scarce and I kind fell in to working for myself. But not after being introduced to CSS and the beauty and necessity of it in modern web design. However, the money-pinch caused me to, once again, be bumped.

At home, working for myself, besides not making any money (2008 is the year of the broke) I did decide to finally jump on the Valid wagon, fine tuning my code to match those stupid W3C standards; something I always thought was impossible due to the arcane methods that they tell you your code is invalid. (End tag omitted, but OMITAG NO specified… is that English?) However, I learned that Coda validates on the fly, so I could see the instant I messed up and learn how to correct myself, which I successfully have. And now I’m pretty anal about – if I can do it, so can you! And once that was discovered, I was bumped again.

Hello Only Websites. More specifically Law Firm Sites cause that’s what I deal with mostly – lawyers. They’re a curious breed of people. I really enjoy working there, and am feeling appreciated for what I can do. Sometimes it’s a little overwhelming to be the ‘go-to’ guy every time a project goes south, but I keep delivering so it’s all good.

For a few years now I’ve claimed that web design makes me money, photography is a side job, and that hopefully one day I’d reverse that and have photography be my staple with web design a fun hobby on the side. Well, I don’t think that’s my goal anymore. It seems that all my bumps have taken me step by step into the world of web design, and it’s time that I up my professionalism. I turn 30 in a few months and it’s time to make my career move and establish some goals for the next part of my life. I’m positive I’ll keep bumping into where I need to end up, I just need to start looking forward instead of off to the sides at the pretty people.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not dropping photography. Quite the opposite actually. This summer is proving to be my busiest one yet and I’m really enjoying it. I’ll just keep going the way that I am. Web design is my career. So, I’m setting a few goals.

Career Goal – I’m on that path, keep working my way up the web design ladder until I”m making a solid living making specialty sites.

Cool Goal – Create a CSS design that gets picked and featured on CSS Zen Garden. Sadly, I don’t think designs get picked for that very often.

Field Goal (No, not football) – Become so enamored and understanding of code that I can have a blog that a few people might turn to for web design/coding advice. Get a little following if you will.

Awesome Goal – Figure something new out and get a featured article on A List Apart. I’m a little ways off from that, and by a little I mean a lot but hey, I have years ahead of me.

Goals are worthless unless written down, and it’s been said that once it appears online, it’s almost impossible to make it disappear. Google snaps everything and gets rid of nothing. So there… my goals are written down pretty permanently.