Mac
From Dreams to Reality, from Macbook to iMac
Nov 14th
It’s barely real.
Or at least, it feels very unreal.
When I started this blog, I had dreams of one day upgrading from my little 13″ Macbook, to eventually getting my own iMac. The fact that I would forever remain a mac devotee, already well established, the only thing that remained ‘up in the air’ as it were, was the timeframe.
My Macbook had been the brilliant re-entry to the MacWorld for me, and took me from fledgling photographer, to full time professional, and I then further branched out into graphic design. To underestimate the role that my macbook played in this transformation, would be silly. It is the very thing itself which allowed me to believe in my abilities. To encourage me when I got tired, (by it’s sheer tenacity and will to keep my programs, projects and files safe from nasty viral harm), and to forever spark my imagination to strive for greater heights.
My Macbook, changed my life. Or at least, gave me the tools with ably assisted me to transform myself.
Then, the unthinkable happened. My back was turned for a few minutes, and little toddler hands, sent my Macbook smashing to the floor.
…
Thank god for insurance! For all risks, all damages insurance!! You always moan about your insurance, until the day you need it.
So…I checked out our insurance papers. The insured amount would be enough to cover a new Macbook, but since the majority of my work was now being done from home, I realised that perhaps the time had come to trade the mobility of the Macbook, for the more ample screen space of the iMac. Closer inspection of my local apple reseller’s website, set my heart pounding. The 20″ Aluminium iMac, was retailing for the same price as the new Macbook…
Several sets of paperwork later, and my insurance company obtained a quote to ‘fix’ my Macbook. It amounted to about 80% of the value of buying a new one, so they then obtained a quote to ascertain the cost of buying a new machine instead.
I thought disaster had struck when the sales guy went and quote them on old stock (that they still had on their shelves, but a newer model than my 3yr old Macbook nonetheless). But this would mean that I would simply have to pay in an amount of around ZAR1200.00 in order to finally get my desired iMac. I signed the insurance paperwork agreeing to them paying me out for the broken machine, and then set about the exciting prospect of buying my 20″ iMac.
One phone call to my local apple reseller sent my heart straight back to my boots again, when the salesman told me that they had NO stock of the 20″, and no date as to when stock was going to be replenished. He did however say that there was a rumour that Apple would be releasing a new model in the next few weeks and that it might be prudent to wait for that. About 20 phone calls later to every single Apple Authorised retailer in the COUNTRY, and it confirmed for me that there was absolutely no stock left anywhere (unless I wanted a low spec second hand educational model machine…which I did not). I wasn’t sure what to do, given that I did not have the additional funds for the 24″ which was still sporadically available, or to wait for the possible announcement. Thankfully most of my clients were totally flexible and understood my dilemma, so I decided to wait and see. The stress levels at this moment was proving to be the best fat burner a girl could want!
48hrs later, and Apple announced the beautiful new 21.5″ iMac
A quick call to the very helpful sales guy confirmed that they would know in a day or two when their stock would be arriving…the only thing remained, would be the pricing…we would have to wait and see…
Continued tomorrow…
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The Ultimate Mac Office: Seminar Chair!
Jul 21st
Chances are at some point in your photography or design related career, you’re going to give some kind of seminar or workshop. Knowledge sharing is a big in the world of SEO right now too. People are wanting to learn, and others are willing to share, and we’re close to a perfect world than we think!
Like how funky and cool are these? Way better than ordinary chairs, and so much more like classroom chairs for the 21st century.
Heck if I had cool funky chairs like this at school, I might have paid more attention, owing to the more vibey environment.
These would go so well with some of the other furniture we’ve chronicled here in the Macnessa.com ‘The Ultimate Mac Office’ Series.
Do check out the archives, or click the “Ultimate Mac Office” tag in the tag cloud in the side bar if you’d like to see more.
Add these chairs to a bright white table and you get an instant funky workshop vibe working right away. Stand them on hardy and versatile beechwood finish laminate floors and even better!
Just think of how you could co-ordinate soft furnishings with all the great colour choices!
These are definitely going on my ‘going to buy when I open my own design studio – for the collaboration/meeting area’ list!
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5 Easy Ways to Save Money on Business Overheads
May 26th
1. Recycle Paper
Yes, you heard right! You can recycle paper RIGHT there in your office.
It doesn’t matter whether it is your home office or a large corporate environment, there is always a way to reuse paper.
No, I am not suggesting that you load up all the shredded bits of paper and invest in paper presses for the basement (although there is a large market for fancy recycled paper – and you could probably EARN some money from doing that, and employ a few more people in the process), but I am talking about reusing accidental printouts, or achive stuff that can be ‘thrown out’ otherwise.
How many times haven’t you printed something out, only to discover that you either forgot to proof read properly, or run spell check, or it printed out only in 2 colors instead of 4 because some idiot did not replace the toner properly – anyway – instead of just throwing it away (and yes if I ever see you simply crumple that sucker up and toss it in the trash, I WILL be having words with you). You can easily take this paper and use the other side of it for the following:
- scrap paper for your desk (your choice whether you cut it down into neat squares or not)
- paper for making notes in meetings
- if you use a plain paper fax machine – you can load it so that the blank side receives the fax (although environmentally speaking you *should* be using an electronic fax solution)
- donate it to a playschool/nursery/pre-school or elementary school providing it does not have confidential or financial information on the back, because to a child a blank piece of paper is a WORLD of possibility
2. Insurance Is Mostly, Money for Nothing, Until you Need it.
Please do not go and get rid of your insurance just because I said that. You ALWAYS need insurance. However, in the current economic times (more so than ever before) we need to be saving our pennies. Make a note in your diary to phone around for a new insurance quote every month.
Insurance companies are keen to keep their clients, just as other insurance companies want to get as many new clients as possible. Most insurance companies will offer you some sort of no-claim bonus as well. However, I would rather pay less insurance to begin with, than rather hold out for 4 years for some bonus that may never arrive.
You can easily switch insurance companies and reduce your premiums as many times as you can get a reduction in tariff.
Please take note of:
- The fine print, make sure that they are not increasing your excess in order to reduce your monthly premium
- Make sure your coverage is the same as before, it is YOUR responsibility to check the fine print of the contract (no matter how boring and long winded it may seem) before accepting it.
3. Volume Licensing
This relates to software, and more for a corporate environment with more than one employee/computer.
If your company owns several computers, it may be possible to negotiate a volume licensing deal with whoever created the software you’re running (providing of course that the software you’re using requires a license to operate commercially).
4. Better Yet, Go Open Source
A prime example is to ditch Microsoft Office (I just heard a collective gasp from the corporate world in general), in favour of an Open Source product like Open Office or Neo Office. You will save THOUSANDS of dollars.
5. Even Better: Switch To Mac
It is a known fact.
Macs ARE better.
They cost less in the long run if you look at total cost of ownership, follow up training and software required to make it useable.
I still don’t understand why more companies aren’t making the switch. If I hear one more person say, Oh but Macs aren’t very good at running spreadsheets I may just have to slap them around the head.
Macs are better at everything since I last looked, and if you’re that much of a technophobe that you don’t want to switch because you’re afraid of learning a new operating system (you’re probably one of those people that still uses Internet Explorer ((shudder)), then buy a Mac. Because they can run Windows. Better than a PC.
Although be warned, a lot of PC users will try to tell you that “Macs are getting viruses now too” and then laugh in a stupid, neanderthal way, and you can laugh right back at them and say, “Yeah, that’s really only affecting the Macs that are running Windows.” I have yet to meet ONE SINGLE PERSON that has made the switch to Mac, and then run Windows on that Mac exclusively, because that would be like walking into a Michelin Starred restaurant and ordering a Big Mac and fries.
Plus, Macs are SO PRETTY!
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Design Work and New Directions
May 20th
As designers we love our work. It’s rare that we work on designs that we do not like, because we all have personal style, that is reflected in our work, regardless of what our clients want. The trick is to find that common ground with your client between what they think they want, what you know is best, and what works for them, and what looks best to you. Does that make sense to you?
Sometimes though we need to be able to drop what we’re doing, and go in a completely different direction if something is not working out right. I’m working on a particular project at the moment which is setting up a website (blog format) for a local printing company. The work has primarily consisted of optimizing an already established blog design, and tweaking it to meet the clients expectations.
The beauty of using the blog format is that we can upload and work on the content, and *then* tweak the design bits and pieces, without losing the content if we suddenly go off in a new direction. Which is what I found myself doing just yesterday. I’d been struggling with a blog header for this site for awhile, and getting it to fit properly, and get all the other elements to work together nicely. So I decided to take the plunge and stick in a fresh new template that I found whilst trawling the internet, and go for broke.
Sometime during the day after I installed the new template, and began to optimize it with customized headers and buttons etc, I got an email from the client, saying “I like what I see!”, so even though it was virtually a whole new look and feel, and it had been a leap of faith for me, it was clearly a step in the right direction, and ultimately a good decision.
Several emails followed with suggestions from the client, and I tweaked and made changes where they were requested, and it turned into a very productive afternoon. I worked from home, the client was at the office, and we had a perfectly do-able collaboration without so much as a phone call to one another.
So, lesson learned. If you hit a brick wall, with a design, take it as a sign to take the plunge let go of your initial work, and go in a totally new design direction, because the chances are that it will be a great decision and work out for the best.
Here is where the header from my last post (with the photo, and the mountain) has gone to. It’s totally different, but it works.
Now, one of the key design brief notes was that the business owners face had to be featured prominantly on the website. So when I went off in a new direction, I could not simply ignore that instruction, but I had to find a way to work around it. So I introduced a profile box on the right hand sidebar. Like so:
The reason for the prominence of the business owners profile is simply because she has been successful in the local printing industry for 20 years and her name is synonymous with integrity and great service in her business. To *not* have it there would have put the website at an immediate disadvantage, so it was imperative to make it a feature.
Beyond the clickable image, in otherwords linked to the profile box, is the story of how she originally came from Zimbabwe, (then known as Rhodesia), and grew her business from scratch, relying on sheer grit and determination to be successful.
I chose the textured paper look, and the ‘American Typewriter’ font type to give the profile box that retro printing look, a bit like an old newspaper. The story of her rise in business is actually taken from an article written about her a few years ago, so it all fits together beautifully.
Lower down the page, I’m using the ad-space slots provided in the template, for a completely different function entirely – to showcase the other members of her team.
This is one of the wonderful things about using the blog format for web design, because there are just SO many possibilities and opportunities to be creative!
Right enough talk, time for action, and it’s back to the grindstone!
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Blog Header – For a Printing Business
May 14th
Blog headers are hot right now in my world 
Well, I’m loving it!
This particular header is part of a web presence that I’m developing for the company. We’re using the blog format, for SEO purposes, and frankly, this is just the way that websites are done now. They’re not so much websites any more, as content portals! Using wordpress as our content management service of choice, makes it easier for the client to keep the information up to date and the webmasters happy!
Now, this blog header is particularly true to what the client asked of me. They were quite specific about the business owner appearing in the header (owing to the fact that she is well known locally and has loads of clients who ask for her by name) and that the header should contain a picture of Table Mountain, to ensure customers that this is in fact where the business operates from.
Here is a sample of the header so far. There are still some more details to add, contact details, address etc, so this is just the bare bones of it at an early stage.
I’ll update you as I make progress with this project so that you can see the final product being developed.
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Freebie Frame No. 7
Apr 10th
Here is one that I call ‘purple frame’. It’s actually the first one I did when I was planning the month of giveaways. Hope you like it. I was thinking of wedding photos when I made it, but you can use it for anything it lends itself to!
Enjoy!
Purple Frame
To Use:
- Click image to download (downloads served by Mediafire)
- Unzip and open in either Photoshop (Tested in CS through CS4) or Elements
- Open your chosen photo (that you want to frame) and drag your photo between the ‘frame’ layer and the ‘background’ layer
- Enjoy!
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What's the Difference Between Vector Graphics and Bitmaps?
Mar 5th
Time to share the knowledge!
This is one of those questions that so many people ask, and even more people ’sort of’ know the answer, but don’t really know the definition.
So here is the definition as *I* understand it:
Bitmaps are pixellated at a high magnification. The file size is larger than a vector, because information for each pixel is stored, location, color, etc. You can edit bitmaps in many applications such as Paint, Photoshop etc
Vectors are shapes, at high or low magnification. The file size is smaller than a bitmap, because only the shape color/location is stored along with information about the background. Vectors are desirable for use in tasks such as logo design, where crisp clean images are required at various sizes and resolutions. Vectors are best edited in professional applications such as Adobe Illustrator.
Hope this snippet of information is helpful, it’s certainly helped me with my studying, to make sure I have nailed the concept.
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Take Your Customers By Surprise
Feb 18th
There is a local computer store, which is part of a chain ’round these parts.
I used to love to shop there. The shop assistants were true geeks. Helpful geeks. This was back in the day before I had a Mac.
Then they went and got regular dumbass shop assistants. I knew more than them (maybe it was me that got smarter I don’t know), assistants that had to go and ‘ask someone’ the answer to my question, and then leave me standing on the shop floor for way too long.
Then they got pricey.
So guess what happened? Of Course.
I simply stopped shopping there.
Then I got a Mac, and not only did I NOT shop there, I told everyone else to stop shopping there too. Because they sucked.
Let’s fast forward a moment to yesterday. With my youngest at day care (half day) as of this week, I suddenly found myself with some time on my hands (after working for 2 hours straight at a local wifi hotspot on a clients website), and a little time to kill in the mall before fetching my eldest from school. So I ventured inside.
OMG.
They are now a certified Apple dealer.
They had a real 20″ iMac on display, ready for me to fawn over.
They now sell Mac software (though the range is VERY thin).
They have a trade in deal going on now. As in bring in your old hardware, and we’ll give you discount on new hardware.
The deal they were offering on the iMac was cheaper than if I had it sent out from the USA.
I was honestly and totally gobsmacked. They’re no longer sucky, evil, highly priced, corporate asses.
They’re enlightened, community uplifting, school donating (the old hardware), ecologically aware, DISCOUNTING, MARVELS!
I was and still am surprised. Way to go Incredible Connection! You have a new supporter in me! Now if they just had some tv deals for me to look at too, I’d probably be back there today again.
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Why I Need An iPhone…
Jan 1st
Apple iPhone
Seriously.
Obviously, I’m a huge Mac fan. All their products aside from being brilliant innovations in technology, are BEAUTIFUL.
Seriously. When last did you look at one of their new products? Or even old products? Gorgeous I tell you.
So of course I don’t so much as want an iPhone, as really, really need one. But I’m patient, at least.
I’ve had a run of bad luck with cell phones lately. Seriously.
I had a Samsung E350. I loved it. One day I saw it going round and round and round in that little window in the washing machine. Sadly, she did not make it, and her cold lifeless steel body is nothing but a dummy phone, destined to spend the remainder of her days in a display case somewhere, merely pretending to be real.
So I replaced Samsung E250 with Sony Ericsson something.
She was quite cool looking, given her reasonable price. A teal colored flip phone. Her ring tones rocked my world. Real Music at last!
One day I switched her off, just a month after we first met, only to have her vibrate feebly in my hands when I tried to switch her on again. She is *still* in that no mans land, where all the socks and paperclips go, that is ‘cell phone repair land’.
So, I bought Sony Ericsson replacement phone. Determined not to get too attached to her, I didn’t personalize her all that much. Just two weeks after we first adopted one another, I had to jump into my pool fully clothed (with her in my jeans pocket) to fish Reebok out of the pool – (he’d slipped off the step where he was playing and I was watching from – thank god he was totally ok, just coughing and spluttering a bit), less than 3 seconds in the water and pffft. Nada.
In total despair I told MacHubby of my misfortune. After berating me for doing something SO STUPID AS KEEPING MY PHONE IN MY POCKET FOR BUCKETS SAKES, he suddenly whipped out one of his old phones, also of the Sony Ericsson sisterhood. A phone so funky it even took a micro sd card! So she keeps me company now, while I wait for Teal Sony Ericsson to reappear.
But really, none of this would have happened if I’d had an iPhone. I just know it. Because instead of treating you with utter disdain (like PC’s and other technological brands), I just know my iPhone would love me back
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Wouldn't It Be Great, To Source Photography Work Overseas?
Dec 17th
Today I was asked (tongue in cheek) by a friend living overseas if I didn’t mind, just popping over quickly and taking some photographs of her kids, because she really liked my work.
Well that’s a really nice thought, and I thanked her for her compliments, and then proceeded to indulge myself in a good quality, highly realistic, full colour daydream of how nice it would be if I could just hop on a plane, dash over and do the assignment and come home again.
…
Then I got to thinking… What exactly would it take, for that type of business to become ordinary for me?
What sort of rates would I have to charge in order to make that kind of dream, a reality in my work?
Most importantly I suppose, would be, how to source clientele of such great means to justify those rates?
Given the current (horrific) exchange rate, I reckon I could do that kind of work for about $3500 (USD). That would get the client, me (!), for say 3 days of undivided attention, being able to shoot, edit and produce all the photos they could want, while I’m there. I came up with some bullet points of what I would need to do to prepare for such an assignment (come on this is fun, indulge me!).
- Source reasonable airfare using One World Alliance Partner Airline (I’m a member), and so far the cheapest fare I’ve found is about $1500 with BA. Although, flying with them, I’d have to repeatedly take the best diet pill possible, in order to squeeze into the economy class seats, clearly designed for emaciated models.
- Source local supplier, able to produce good quality prints within the correct time frame so that final delivery could take place before I leave.
- Obtain the necessary visa
- Declare my camera equipment, trusty Macbook and graphics tablet at customs so that they don’t charge me import duty on them. I’d only need to take my Canon 30D, 50mm F1.8, 18-55mm F4-5.6, and tripod.
- Enjoy the trip!
- Provided my costs in-country don’t run to more than say $1000 for print production, accomodation (remember I’m only there 3 nights) and the odd bit of internal transport, I’d still turn a profit of $1000 which in our local currency is R10207.00, and ample for 3 days work (plus 3 days travel time there and back).
Okay, now I have the ‘how’. Any takers? Anybody want a great portrait session, or have a wedding planned? If I’m there for 3 days I’d be happy to see 2 or 3 clients for portrait sessions if they wanted to book together.
Cough…eh hem…I really am that good, plus I never get jet-lag, so I could hit the ground running… Let’s not think about ecology for now, and what my carbon footprint would be if I kept jetting overseas okay. Let’s not think about that.
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