Flockey - Flockey Web Development

Hello everyone, yes it’s true the contest is almost here. I have been talking on Twitter about it for a couple of days now and we are almost all set to go. I just want to apologize for the lack of posts recently, just had a lot of client work and trying to get the contest all set. I can say we have some nice prize giveaways, so look forward to it.

I think just now I will give you a break down of how it’s going to work.

Okay, so basically to enter the contest you will have to blog or write about the contest and link to the contest on your post. Then (read this part - very important!) you will have to subscribe to the RSS feed by email, so it is much easier for us to select all the emails and then randomly select the winners using this nifty little tool (thanks Gareth)!

I won’t say no more. Look forward to it tomorrow!

Anyways, moving on shall we? It’s true. I have a new little project in the works. I have eventually gotten around to designing business cards and going to be locally distributing them around the city of Glasgow. If you want to check out the new website here it is.

That’s all for now folks, sorry I have rushed this a little bit. No worries though, contest tomorrow. Look forward to it Be sure to follow me on Twitter for all the details

Regards,
James

Hello everyone I am here today to announce that I have guest blogged on an extremely popular growing blog called WebDevLounge. You have probably heard of it already because it has a very nice contest on the go were you can win up to $1730 in prizes.

The blog post that I posted is 10 Top Methods of Becoming A Better Designer. It discusses just some simple and effective ways of becoming a better designer at the computer and away from the computer. Please do so and have a little read if you can and let me know what you think.

Also, please subscribe to the RSS feed

Thanks, James.

If your someone like me who loves to keep track and subscribe to blogs for either useful information for specific research or just a nice general read, then look no further. Listed below are some of the blogs which I read and some blogs which give very useful information to web related topics.

FreelanceSwitch speaks for itself really. With more than 23,000 subscribers it has lots of content and useful content at that. FreelanceSwitch also has a job board which I am apart of, its very useful for any freelancer to is available for hire and is looking for work.

SmashingMagazine really is smashing! One of my personal favourites, just because the writers and bloggers at SmashingMagazine find all the teeny weeny bonus’ on the web such as amazing typefaces and fonts. They also have very inspirational posts such as their most recent one - Sexy, Bold and Experimental Typography.

BootstrappingBlog has just recently been added to my feed reader due to me doing more research into “Bootstrapping”. It covers all aspects of “Bootstrapping”, from tips & tricks to cut costs when starting up a project and it also covers the widely subject of Guerilla Marketing & Advertising which is a very interesting topic indeed.

Personally, I have never spoken with Tyler Cruz but after reading a few of his posts a while back, I became totally interested into his blogging. Ever since, I have been a huge fan of Tyler keeping up to date with his ramblings. This is one of few personal blogs that I read and it’s one which I will continue to read due to its heavily detailed & exciting posts.

Jon Wheatley is a good friend of mine and is yet another one of few personal blogs I read. Jon’s blog posts differ from a lot of other blogs though. With posts such as these. Jon keeps a fun & humorous vibe about his blog which is one of the main reasons why I read it, but he does have a lot of very constructive posts, mostly on his latest projects which I love hearing about.

IndieStartups is a blog which is aimed at the little guy. The ‘little guy’ being us… freelancers, internet entreprenuers, web freaks - trying to make thousands, maybe even millions online without VC (venture capitalist) funding. IndieStartups cover a lot of online web applications and web 2.0 startups which have been put together with little funding and little help (usually a one man job).

I guess thats all I have in store for now, but above are some awesome reads. I would recommend all of them and I would recommend subscribing to their RSS feeds.

I hope you enjoyed this post, if so why not subscribe to my RSS feed, it would be greatly appreciated.

Hello everyone, I have been planning to get some new posts up, but at the moment it is so hard due to university coursework being so demanding. Anyways, these kind of posts are something which i’ll be making a habit of doing, updating you with all my latest work which I have done.

So, below is a link to the design and a little description.

I was asked to design a forumbit and a postbit for a canadian forum called Jeeps Canada. I went for a very conceptual header for the website, to hopefully have the visitor lead into the forum and scroll down. Due to the big advertisements, the forumbit is hidden although that was a main part of the actual design. Have a peak. Comments are welcome.

This design was designed free of charge for a good friend Oliver, who happens to own a lot of websites. I have also collaborated with him on a project called Blogussion (if your a blogger yourself, you should sign up). Anyways. As a friend, I offered to re-design his current image upload service Upload3. I am a regular user of Upload3 and thought it needed a little change, so I came up with a different colour scheme and a relatively simple structure for it. Check it out and again, all comments are welcome.

Thats all I have to show at the moment.

Moving on, I’d like to inform all the mac users out there of a really useful mac application which has just been introduced to the web called >GrabUp. GrabUp allows you to quickly grab a screenshot of an image on the web and share it instantly with your friends or whoever. You can view the full features with the little video on the home page.

Say goodbye to the slow and annoying task of sharing a quick screenshot, GrabUp is the way forward. Please check out the website and leave all your thoughts in the comments section.

Hello everyone, well its been nine days since my last post and its flew in. It’s wonderful how university coursework can take over your life for a week or so. But I have managed to find the time to update you all with a nice little post.

I was browsing Digg earlier and I found this cool post. The post is about extremely weird but conventional inventions, that do/could make a difference. My favourite has got to be the little rubber device which is used to help open and close screw top bottles.

Check it out. I’ll have a better update soon

Regards.

Subscribe to the RSS feed. Thank you.

A couple of hours ago I came across a post on BootStrappingBlog about Guerilla Marketing and I went onto YouTube and did a little search. I’ll leave you with a little video, that gives you a lot of different examples of Guerilla Marketing.

If your looking for various tactics and how to come up with ideas or so for any Guerilla Advertising. I’d suggest again looking at one of BootStrappingBlog’s posts.

So. How powerful is the Mighty Mouse you ask? Well after my switch from a PC to a Macbook last year (i’m not fully converted as of yet, still to get my iMac, but I’ll be a COMPLETE mac user by the end of this year) I have found the Mighty Mouse probably one of the best mouses (grammar?) if not the best mouse I have ever used.

From the sleek white hygienic look (like everything of Apples), to the ergonomically fitting shape, this little baby is my all time favourite Mac hardware. The reason why I love it so much, is the not because the look of it, but its because of the feel and what it is actually capable of.

“The Mighty Mouse is made of white plastic and has a recessed Apple logo on the mouse’s face. The mouse has four functional buttons: a left button, a right button, a clickable scroll ball and side squeeze buttons. The scroll ball enables users to scroll a page or document in every direction by rolling the ball in the desired direction. Currently Mac OS X is the only operating system that fully supports the mouse. When used with Mac OS X the buttons can be set to launch applications or trigger features of the Apple operating system, such as Dashboard and Exposé. If not used with Mac OS X, the mouse behaves as a four button mouse with a vertical and horizontal scroll wheel. There are third-party drivers (XMouse[1], AppleM[2]) that provide more functions to Windows users. The Mighty Mouse does not report whether the right and left mouse button is pressed simultaneously. This means that the Mighty Mouse cannot support mouse chording, used by CAD software, games, web browsers, and other applications where multiple functions are mapped to the mouse.”
Wikipedia.org

Above is a short paragraph about the Mighty Mouses’ capabilities. To narrow it down to my favourites, its got to be the squeeze buttons which activate Exposé and when the scroller is clicked it opens up the Widgets area.

Exposé is a function which enables you to jump from one application to another. As you can see on the thumbnail when these squeeze buttons on the side of the mouse are pressed, this window opens with all the available applications which are activated at this moment in time, so for example, if you have MSN running and have two or three conversations, you can simply squeeze these buttons and jump from one conversation to another. I find this very useful as I am usually chatting to a lot of folk and the fact that I run two MSN names.

The second feature which I love is the Widget-Click, when you click the little scroller it takes you into the Widget selection were you can select various widgets and your default. Also when in Safari, you have a little Widget Crop Tool and you can select a certain area of a website which you want widgetized and all you have to do next time you log on to your mac is simply click the scroller and then you will see this area that you’ve selected either updated with new news or so, depending on what you widgetize.

Overall, I think the Mighty Mouse has been a great investment of £50.00. I was with a mate at the time when I bought it and he thought I was crazy paying that amount for a little mouse (Wireless ftw!), but now thinking back, its been £50.00 well spent. I recommend any Mac user - maybe a stupid recommendation… but here goes - that hasn’t got a Mighty Mouse to buy one now! I don’t think I could go back to using the trackpad, as much as I like the trackpad for lying in my bed and just chilling, I find myself more at a desk of some sort now

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Following up from the previous post, I thought I’d elaborate on a comment which was made. The comment was the following by Alex.

“For me I find that being in a clean and comfortable is a must, a light one at that, somewhere where i feel able to express myself. I read an article somewhere that backs up your claims about music and all that jazz (excuse the pun) .. apparently it triggers emotions and some neuro-bod worked out that creativity can be sparked from emotion.”

The text in bold is a perfect example of what I tend to do, and sorry for not mentioning in the previous post (I forgot). I cannot work in an untidy environment. Its impossible. Everything distracts me, somehow I always fidget and you will probably agree here, but you do fidget quite a lot when your doing anything online. Keeping a clean and tidy desk or work environment is a must and you should start tidying and see if this helps your work progress.

I remember reading one of Tam Denholms blog posts once and in the post he described his everyday life and inside this post he said something like;

I always tidy up around my desk or work area before I even log onto my computer.

I seriously do not know why on earth I remember him saying that, but I do tend to get in the habit now of tidying up all the time so I have a really nice clean environment. There is nothing worse than having a cluttered workspace and trying to make a quick sketch or something and your sketching over a mobile phone, ipod, pen, cables, you name it. As I am writing this post, my workspace is a mess to be honest. It’s coursework period in university at the moment and there is sheets upon sheets of paper everywhere.

So do you have a clean work space? Or is it a complete mess? I was a big fan of Deskshot, but I hardly go on there now. If you have any camera shots of your desk or workspace, comment with an image of it. I’ll be glad to see them

I recommend using Upload3 to upload your images if your going to do so.

Now that I am back to blogging again, it’s great to punt out some articles. So here is the first one on Flockey and it’ll discuss ways of which I get myself motivated to either start a project or finish one.

The first thing I do when I hear someone has been at their computer all day is have a good long chat with them and tell them how stupid they are at frying so many brain-cells (no I’m just joking) but I do tend to ask why.

Spending hours at your computer throwing away draft after draft, whether it be a design or whatever just doesn’t help you get yourself motivated. Taking a few hours break will refresh your brain and you’ll probably even pick up a bit of inspiration to go back onto your computer and create something outstanding.

Doing the most simplest little things like having a shower, brushing your teeth, even listening to the radio in the morning can get me motivated enough to go and get some work done.

From the beginning of the day to the end of the day, I have listening to at least 2 hours of music which gets me going. Another thing that gets me motivated is watching TV. To be more precise I love to watch Tattooing shows such as Miami Ink & London Ink. I also love watching Bear Grylls and those type of survival shows. I know thats weird, but its a great motivator for me.

Main Motivator

So what is my main motivator? The most useful and best motivator for me is designing while listening to music. I listen to music every time I design. To be honest, I don’t think I could design without any sort of musical sound. To be more precise, I really like listening to all different types of music, but I love listening to instrumentals, were you can just hear the beat without any lyrics.

So, now that you know my main motivator what is yours? Is your main source of motivation different from mine? Why don’t you share with me

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