31Three

The 411 on 313

A few weeks ago our family went to church and Heather decided to leave Lucy in the nursery for the first time. Each child is assigned a number when they check in, so that if the nursery worker needs to notify a parent that their child needs attention, they can display that number on a small screen at the front of the church. Lucy’s randomly computer generated number was… (drum-roll please…. ) 313. Cool eh?

Wait… it gets better…

Permalink // 48 Comments // January 15th, 2008

Moved Out

Man I’ve been neglecting this blog lately. You’d think finally getting an off-site office after working out of the house for 5 years would be at least worthy of a mention. I actually moved out of the house around 3 months ago and am just getting around to posting about it now. Lame.

My house (and former office) is located in a funky little part of Grimsby that has some really cool history to it. The community was originally a Methodist campground during the mid 1800’s, and most of the houses were built as summer cottages. Summer cottages != spacious, so when Lucy showed up on the scene, I knew my days of working at home were numbered.

Along with space issues, Sadie (my 3 year old) was starting to wonder why I had to work during the day, and couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t just want to play instead. It wasn’t that she was distracting me from work, I was just getting concerned that she would start thinking that I valued work more than her. So when a good friend of mine offered me some office space and bookkeeping services in exchange for a bit of design work each month, the decision was a no-brainer.

I don’t have any pictures to post of the new office, because it’s basically just a cubicle right now. Nothing that you would find inspiring. Come spring time though, there are plans to move the office into a newly renovated building, where I’ll get a lot more space to work with. If I’m on the ball by then, I’ll have to post some photos of the decorating / furnishing process.

Any suggestions on quality office furniture? I think I’m going to forgo making my own this time around.

Permalink // 14 Comments // January 12th, 2008

31Three.com Redesigned

This site has been looooong overdue for a redesign. I gave it a small refresh back in October of 2005, but the basic design has remained unchanged for the last three years. Three. Years. My business has changed a lot in that time, and my previous site just wasn’t keeping up.

The largest change I’ve made with my business has been shifting my focus from web development to web design. As a result, the vast majority of my clients are now developers. In order to reflect those changes on my site, I’ve dropped all mention of logo, print, and full website work, and have instead given much more room to showcase my web designs. I’ve also tweaked the copy quite a bit to better target the market that I would like to work with. Continue Reading →

Permalink // 122 Comments // May 23rd, 2007

Happy Daddy

I received an email last week that really caught my attention and put a good smile on my face...

I know you're busy, but I thought I could ask again, with a perk this time... See below to see your sign on bonus, a brand new unopened Nintendo Wii, this will vanquish "Grumpy Daddy" forever! I heard you liked bowling on the Wii and know this is perfect for taking breaks.

If you can do just 2 pages and new identity, I can have this to you in 2 days. Don't you owe it to your family to be "Happy and Fun Daddy"?

Continue Reading →

Permalink // 22 Comments // April 6th, 2007

From Blinksale to BillingOrchard

Along with doing website design and development, I also resell hosting and domain names to approximately 45 of my clients. This makes for a great recurring revenue stream, but handling the invoicing for all of these can be a little tedious at times. I tried various scripts aimed at the hosting industry (WHM AutoPilot, ClientExec) but found them somewhat frustrating and slow to use. Around 6 months ago, I signed up for a Blinksale account when they brought out the recurring invoicing feature. And although it was better than anything else that I had previously used, it still had it’s shortcomings when it came to the invoicing of my hosting clients. Continue Reading →

Permalink // 22 Comments // March 17th, 2007