My girlfriend currently resides way down south in Kent and once or twice a month I make the journey down to see her and her family for a weekend. The weekend just gone was no different, I caught the train down on Friday evening and for pure simplicity (as well as a money saver) I opted to catch a coach back on Sunday. I’ve done the journey home by coach two times now and I’ve found both to be exhausting trips. You’re sat down in a cramped space for five and a half hours and when you’re on the window side sitting next to someone who insists on sitting their bag on their lap, it’s a bit awkward asking them to move so you can stretch your legs. Going on a slight tangent for a moment, on the trip back I watched a lecture by Chip Kidd which is available on iTunes U which I highly recommend. Anyway, back to the story. I arrived home late on Sunday night only to realise in my tired state I managed to leave my newly purchased copy of Designing for the Web by Mark Boulton on the coach. To say I was pissed off at myself was an understatement. By the way I reacted you’d think someone had just robbed me or something. The story goes on…
How not to treat your customers
So the next morning I did as you do when you lose something on a journey which you want back, I phoned the coach company. After a couple of phone calls I managed to track down a number for the depot that my coach was due to arrive at for cleaning, fuel etc. I rang and explained I’d left a book and blah blah blah and the guy seemed understanding and like he genuinely wanted to help. He told me the coach was due in the next hour or so (which turned out to be false) and if I call back I should find out if it’s been found. So I waited and called back and was told they weren’t sure yet and would have to go check and call me back. I’ll save myself some typing and cut it short, this happened again and again throughout the day. By the time I left work, I’d rung the depot 7 or 8 times to be told the same thing! I tried once more and this time got an explanation of the procedure they have to follow and when I’d likely get an answer.
This morning I decided to wait until midday to call, and this time spoke to another new depot employee who said they’d check the lost property and call me back in 15 minutes. He didn’t. I waited till after 2pm and called back and this time I managed to get an answer. The book hasn’t been handed in. So it’s either been binned or some cleaner has pinched it! I wrote National Express an email telling them how shitty this fiasco has been and then moved on to the next phase of sorting out a replacement book…
How to treat your customers
Payday is coming up fast but it’s not quite here yet and the book happens to be more than I can afford at this very minute, so I sent an email to the guys at Five Simple Steps telling them I lost the book and asked if they would reserve me a copy.
I got a reply within a few hours from Robert at Mark Boulton Design saying that not only had he reserved me a copy of the book, he’s also sent me a money off coupon too!
Pay attention National Express, this is a shining example how you can make your customers so happy they’ll even part with another £25+ for a book they have already in PDF.
Cheers Robert and all at Mark Boulton Design/Five Simple Steps!
UPDATE: I’ve received my new copy of Five Simple Steps and finished reading it. I’ve still not had a reply from National Express. Douchebags.
Those who read this blog (cheers btw) or follow me on Twitter will know I’m taking part in Project 365 and am currently keeping it up with it, although posting everyday has now been reduced to batch uploading a few days at a time.
I hope I’m not the only one when I say from time to time I struggle to get shots that are interesting enough to post on a day to day basis. My working week follows a routine that rarely changes, and there are only so many photos I can take of the old buildings where I work before I get sick of the sight of them.
I think my problem is that I aimlessly wander around looking for something interesting to shoot and although it often pays off, there have been occasions where the results were less appealing than a photo of my dinner would have been.
I have an idea…
The problem is that I have no parameters, no limitations to give me a focus. I look around at anything and everything which sounds like a good thing in theory but it really makes it harder because there is too broad a scope, too many choices.
I’ve not read about this idea anywhere but here it is: At the beginning of July, I’m going to start setting myself a theme every week for the rest of the year. The themes can be anything from food to architecture to people or macro photography. The hope is to provide myself with something to focus on allowing me to devote more time to thinking about shots and looking for better ways to get an interesting result.
Let me know what you think, I’d love to hear your thoughts and feel free to post up ideas for themes.
As you can probably tell, the realign plan has veered slightly off course into the realms of redesign. I know I wanted to avoid it but after putting ideas down on paper and playing around I started to come up with something that, in my opinion is way better than before. The few people who’ve seen the current draft all love it so it’s a good sign that I’m now on the right track.
As I said in a recent post, I’m not going to say when this will all be finished but what I will say is that I’m making steady progress so hopefully it shouldn’t be too long
Some time ago I announced I was moving away from Expression Engine in favour of using a Tumblr blog. I chose to go down that route because I gave the site a design overhaul and decided I didn’t need a full system to run it. I figured I could set up a simple page and feed the blog directly from Tumblr. For a long time I enjoyed the simplicity of Tumblr especially after I discovered the Tumble iPhone app and could blog directly wherever I was. I still love the simple nature of the interface and still recommend it to friends and family when they want to get away from the Facebook and Myspace blogging systems, but for me it wasn’t really enough and came to the conclusion that it was time to change.
I toyed with the idea of using TextPattern but having used it on a project recently, I found it hard to work with so it just wasn’t for me. I turned my attention back to Expression Engine because I enjoyed using it the last time I built my site with it. This time around I devoted a bit more time reading up on the documentation so I have a better idea of what I’m doing this time around. I’ve still got a lot to learn but so far, I’m not doing to badly.
For me the great thing about Expression Engine, apart from the seemingly endless things you can do with it, is the interface through which you write content and manage your templates. Out of all the systems I’ve used it’s by far the easiest to work with, in my opinion. The simple tab navigation makes it quick and easy to find your way around your site.
If I were to name one bad thing I’ve found so far, I wouldn’t be able to. The only thing holding me back from achieving what I want is the limit of my knowledge. If I could ask for anything to improve the use of the system, it would be an iPhone app that allows me to post directly while on the move.
If you’re looking to switch to another system, or even if you aren’t looking, give EE a try. Hopefully you’ll be as impressed as I am.
Outside of work I’m not exactly overflowing with projects. Recently however I’ve been asked to sort out a few websites for people. I’m not actively looking to do work outside of my full-time job and only took these on because they are for friends of my older brother. They are small projects but I’ve found them hard to work with due to my current circumstances and commitments.
I have one more project I’ve told a friend I’d help out with in the pipeline but apart from that I’m not accepting projects of any kind. There are other things I wanted to get done in the early part of this year which so far have suffered a fair bit so I want to get back on track with those personal projects.
I’m far from overflowing with offers for extra work but I just wanted to put it out there in case anyone lands on my site looking for a worker bee.
