If you ask any of my family or friends what it is that I do for a living, you will most likely get, at worst, a blank look, or, at best, maybe "web designer?", "computer programmer?", or maybe just "something to do with computers?". It doesn't help that my linked in profile has me claiming to be doing at least three different jobs at a time, and that I seemed to be involved with a number of different companies. I think possibly even those that work with me aren't entirely sure what it is that I do most of the time! I thought i'd clarify what i'm up to at the moment, and how things have evolved over the last few years.

I am a freelance web developer
Primarily I make my living as a freelance web developer. This means that I spend most of my time building websites. By "building" a website I mean taking it from an idea to a finished website - planning, designing, templating, coding and uploading to a web server so that it is live on the internet. As well as web "sites", I build web "applications". These are computer programs that people interact with through a web browser. A web browser is the computer program that you use to look at websites e.g. internet explorer (the blue E), firefox (the fox wrapped around the world) or maybe safari (the compass). As well as looking at websites on the internet, you may be using a web browser to use web applications in your workplace.

But am I a designer?
I occasionally design websites, but it isn't my specialism. If budget allows I prefer to hire a really good designer to come up with the design concepts. I know lots of good designers. I take their design concepts and run with it to put all the technical stuff in place to take it from an idea to an actual website. When I work for a design agency, I am hired always for my technical skills, never for my design skills - let's face facts, I think there's a reason for that! Most of the work on my "portfolio" wasn't designed by me - I usually just did the technical bits.

Do I do any computer programming that isn't related to web sites or web applications?
Increasingly more. I seem to be doing more and more data crunching these days, involving writing scripts that move files around on servers and extracting data from different places and putting things in databases. I would call that programming. Most of this type of programming is actually using skills I learned while building web sites and web applications, but some of the things i've built aren't web sites or web applications at all.

So am I actually freelance, or do I work for a company?
By freelance, I mean that I work for myself, but companies and organisations employ me on a freelance basis. Therefore sometimes I may appear to be working for several companies at once. Sometimes I work directly for my own clients, other times transparently as an additional resource for a design or digital media agency. Either way, I invoice for the work I do on either a fixed price or a "time and materials" basis, and this is how I make a living.

What is Olivewood then?
In 2007 I co-formed a company called Olivewood Data Technologies Ltd, and all my freelance work is invoiced through Olivewood. Olivewood is co-owned by a client and friend, and we set it up primarily as a vehicle for consulting and development services, but also as a legal entity to own the IP for a number of niche eCommerce web applications that we plan to sell to other companies. At one point we thought Olivewood might be a digital media agency, but now we are pretty sure it is a software consultancy.

And what about Foundry?
In May 2010 I sat on the watershed balcony with fellow freelancers Dan Fairs and Dan Hilton and talked about teaming up to be able to take on and pitch for projects bigger than we could handle as individual freelancers. We came up with the name Foundry, and shortly after collaborated on a successful project together. We all still work as freelancers, but hope to spend more time working together under the Foundry banner in 2011 and beyond. The challenge is moving the focus from looking after our own interests and incomes to working together, and to do that we need a big project that would keep us all too busy to take on other freelance work.

Will I fix your computer?
No I flippin' wont! Have you tried switching it off and on again?

Last week I helped aardman digital set up the Wallace and Gromit site to cope with a huge traffic spike resulting from the 20th anniversary site relaunch and "google doodle" logo displayed on the google site across 12 countries. Working with the in-house team, I wrote a script to scrape the live site and create a static copy. The initial scrape was done using wget, and then a command line php script was used to run through the site doing some searching and replacing and renaming of various things. With thousands of pages of forum and user uploads the script took a while to run! The static site was then transferred to rack space cloud hosting which could be scaled on demand as the traffic spiked. Traffic to the main url was then diverted to the static copy of the site, based on the idea that most people would rather browse than interact. Anyone who wanted to log into the forum was then transferred to the live site.

This week we launched the new dshed.net - an "online showcase of creative work, commissions, talks, artist journals, festival diaries, research and archive projects" by the Watershed in Bristol. The site is Drupal 6 based, was designed by Tijuana Design, and built by myself and Oliver Humpage from the Watershed.

I was really chuffed to be asked to help the aardman online team out with the build of the new aardman.com site. I took the supplied photoshop designs and created HTML/CSS templates that were then handed over to be integrated into the CMS. I'm currently doing a lot of freelance work for digital agencies and I haven't been able to talk about the websites i've been working on, so it's great to be able to shout about this one!

One of the projects I have worked on recently is the Holistic Community website - a directory site for Therapists, Training Courses and Treatment rooms. This was an interesting project, as I was originally approached to make a few amends, but the previous developer refused to hand over the php code running the site, therefore the only option was to rebuild it, based on the existing site and a database export. I have to confess that I went about this project the wrong way - the database structure was far from ideal, and also I subcontracted the initial build to an apprentice who was learning php, who then left halfway through the project! As a result I had to rewrite all of the code.

In retrospect this would have been an ideal project to build on a framework or CMS, but this would have been too steep a learning curve for the apprentice. By trying to initially replicate the old site (including numerous multi-page forms), and using the existing database structure (resulting in lots of convulted multiple table joins), and using a novice php developer, and taking it on at a time when I was too busy with other projects, the project dragged on a bit and I probably did more than double the amount of work that I needed to - not ideal on a fixed-price project! However, the bright side is that it is a nice example of a rebuild/ reskin, and I am full of ideas about how I could undertake similar projects in the future in a much more efficient way.

I'm part way to achieving one of my 2009 goals - i've got a commercial project live using cake php 1.2. The site is Kudos Business technologies - a company who specialising in LED lighting and other technologies aimed at lowering environmental impact and saving money.

The site has actually been refactored from a static HTML site, most of the pages are still static, but make use cake's routing, page templates, layouts and elements. The news section is dynamic, and was very simple to put together, but i'm only half way there - currently I haven't got any proper admin forms - that will have to be phase two! The learning curve so far has been very small - i'm looking forward to taking it a bit further.

Recently I decided to standardise on php/zend framework for future ground-up development (where I have a choice/ influence). As some of you may have gathered, i'm a bit of a "jack of all trades" when it comes to web dev and I have a legacy of projects using different technologies. One of these is a sprawling classic ASP/ mysql app for a distribution company which is a (very successfully) working prototype of something I want to rebuild in a more generic, modular and industrial way, as a flagship product for Olivewood to develop and sell.

To be honest the classic asp works fine for most purposes, but is becoming increasingly obsolete, along with availability of developers, and I have been trying to move on from it for years. The obvious choice for migrating a classic ASP app would usually be ASP.NET, but frankly the idea of spending the rest of my working life tied into windows-only development, and the fighting with software licences and scarce availability (it seems, at least in this town) of contractors makes me want to give up try a different career altogether. So I decided on php a while back (mainly because I wanted something open source, with an abundance of developers - I think if you throw a coin randomly in the watershed in bristol, chances are you would hit a freelance php developer).

So with php decided on, I then spent time evaluating a few frameworks. They all look good - this was a difficult decision - but I decided on Zend because Olivewood will be primarily concerned with eCommerce and eProcurement, and with magento being built on zend, and the "big industry" partnerships, it seemed the right fit. It also seemed to be useful and provide structure without being overly prescriptive. Also by writing this here i'm hoping to commit myself to at least something!

So, I also wanted something that would work cross platform, even though the obvious choice is to run open source web apps on linux/ apache, it was important to me that it would also play nicely with IIS, as many businesses have already invested in windows servers and already run other apps on IIS and wouldn't be happy supporting anything else. This gets an indignant response from many "purist" developers/ sysadmins, but i'm basing this on real-life situations, and I hate the idea of a potential client ruling out open source software because it won't run on their IIS server.

The other factor here was that I wanted something that would coexist with my classic ASP app until such a time that I have rewritten everything I need to make it a pure zend framework/php app. The classic asp scripts will handshake with the php code by dumping session data to the database and passing credentials via a cookie, so the session data can be shared between the two. This is vital to the plan, as it is a long term project - and much of the investment in migrating this will be my own time and money.

Installing Apache on the same server and setting up some kind of proxying would be another option, but not on the live server that this app runs on. I also needed to prove that it would work on just IIS before betting my future business plans on it, even if the first thing I would do is suggest that it is run on Apache.

I wasted a monumental amount of time getting this working, although it turned out to be fairly trivial once I had cracked it. The red herring is that there are two versions of isapi rewrite - version 2 and version 3. All the zend related documentation I found (hardly any) seems to be for version 2 (although this wasn't mentioned!), which I just couldn't get to work at all for my setup, but eventually I gathered that version 3 has been almost completely rewritten to work with apache mod_rewrite rules. So now I have a classic asp app, with a single folder (caled "zend") containing my front controller from where all the php will be served the application folder (with all the models, views, and controllers) is outside the site root.

My httpd.conf file looks like this:-

RewriteEngine on

RewriteBase /zend/

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d

RewriteRule !.(js|ico|gif|jpg|png|css|asp)$ /zend/index.php

Remember this is for version 3 of Isapi rewrite. All quite simple really, when you know how. It's a pity it took me about 9 hours to work out how!

Olivewood have recently launched a new drupal based site Green Infrastructure in the west of England.

This has actually been quietly live for a while now, but wanted to monitor how it coped with the fairly heavy load exerted by the AJAX based mapping tool, which bought our dev server to it's knees during original user testing, before being moved to a server with a bit more RAM.

I've just started renting some studio space in the infamous Tobacco factory in Bristol. This will be where most of the day to day running of Olivewood will take place, though I will still be working from the Ubley office from time to time. I actually worked in a studio in the tobacco factory at the beginning of the decade, when a certain large digital agency were based here. This is a much more relaxed vibe though, as i'm renting space from (and sharing tea making duties with) the lovely Fanatic Design.

I've just made a breakthrough in my perception of Zope and its object database. Despite the fact I have been working with Plone for over three years i've always struggled to shift my way of thinking away from relational databases and SQL queries, due to my previous experience of building sites and applications mainly with asp (classic) and php, hooked up to a relational database.
So what caused my Eureka moment? A combination of:-

a. Not developing with plone for a while

Since going it alone I have been doing an eclectic mix of work for different agencies and companies, who all have their own pet technologies and ways of working (so far I have slotted straight into them all with a minimum of fuss- Jack-of-all-trades at your service! Except Perl. I had to turn that one down).

b. Doing a bit of old school Zope

From the moment I started with plone, when I haven't been skinning/ templating, I have worked almost entirely with Archetypes. Archetypes generates forms for you and all the other "magic" - some lovely helpful magic, some dark voodoo that shouldn't be spoken aloud in front of non-programmers (like me). This means that with Zope I never learned how to do a typical build a form that posts to script, script writes to database, script pulls out of database and renders it back in the page/form routine, which is usually the first thing I would learn with any other web technology/scripting language.

c. Starting to think in objects

Once again, this had more to do with not working with zope for a while. Before zope I only had a basic understanding of objects and only used them where I was forced to because I was working with someone elses code. I would encapsulate functionality by sticking a load of php/asp functions in an include file with a meaningful name, but I never took the step of wrapping them up in a class and treating the piece of functionality as an object. Something must have sunken in during my Zope years, because now I find it difficult to not think of something as an object.

So, i'm rambling - what exactly was my moment of clarity? It was simply adding a few extra fields (wait - properties) to portal_memberdata and personalize_form in Plone. I went off searching for the python script that would take the data out of the database and pump it into an object for me to use again in a page template - but of course, being stored in the ZODB, it already was an object. Z.O.D.B. Zope Object DataBase - geddit?

So in summary, I think anyone new to plone development could do with learning things the "old" way before they move onto developing with Archetypes - purely for the sake of demystifying the ZODB, especially if like me you come from a php/asp background and have trouble understanding why you would use an object database rather than a relational database.

Next stop Zope 3 - I've read several reports about the large amount of boiler plate code needed to create something fairly simple with Zope 3, and a few solutions to speed up the process, but I will definitely make sure to understand how it is done "manually" before attempting to move onto using any shortcuts this time.

I'm not sure where I read it, but I remember someone remarking that the term "Road Warrior", was dreamed up by marketing bods to make sales reps feel that there is something glamorous about a lifestyle involving being holed up in a travel lodge in a different place each night, working on a spreadsheet on their laptop. I don't quite fall into that category, but I am working in a few different places (albeit mostly a skateboard/bike/car journey away from home). I'm doing all of this on a laptop (lovely black macbook) - and even when working at home, I don't have a desktop machine anymore, preferring just to plug my macbook into a mouse/keyboard/monitor, rather than consider having a dedicated desktop machine.

I'm trying to avoid gushing about the macbook, but it has so far proved to be a massive step up from my 12" powerbook. The powerbook was great too, but I quickly went out and replaced it when I struggled to use it on a day to day basis in a freelance situation - where I would turn up at a clients site and be expected to get straight down to working all day, without the luxury of plugging it into external peripherals (other than a mouse), and often not being able to get access to other machines for testing in IE etc. My hands would "fall off" the sides of the keyboard, the screen resolution was too low, it was slow, and it was just useless trying to use virtual PC to do testing in multiple versions of IE. So the powerbook will now hopefully see a few more years service as a more than adequate general home living room email, web, word processor, print server and music/ video jukebox machine.

The macbook, with 2gb of ram and a copy of windows XP running in a VM using parallels in coherence mode, has (touch wood) improved the situation massively. The screen resolution is adequate, speed is significantly better, the keyboard is lovely (I actually prefer it to an external keyboard - the "spaced out keys" seem to suit my clumsy typing style) and it has a solid, sleek feel to it. I know some people see them as expensive, but even with the highest spec model it is still under a grand, which makes it cost effective in my eyes, as I hope/expect to get a few years out of it. Parallels is excellent - although I struggled with it before I upgraded my RAM from 1gb to 2gb, it now runs really well and I have it open most of the time, with multiple versions of IE and other windows apps just a click away and opening almost seamlessly, but otherwise working within OSX.

I'm also chuffed to find out that the macbook has wifi reception in the apparent wifi "deadspot" in my garden, where my powerbook wouldn't find my network. I'd been out and bought a wifi range extender to resolve this, but haven't yet set it up, and probably won't need to now. I'd heard before that the aluminium case on powerbooks inhibits the wifi reception, which might explain this.

i've also inherited a PDA phone - a T-mobile Vario II (pocket PC with 3G, wifi and slide out QWERTY keyboard). These have a reputation for being flaky, but it has been reliable for me so far, and incredibly useful - terminal services has come in handy for restarting services on one of my windows servers when I can't access any other way, and I have pocket putty on there in case I need to ssh into a server (haven't needed to yet other than to try it out). The pop email client works well with gmail, although i've disabled it for the time being due to the high volume of email I get. I installed the missing sync software on the mac and syncing works fine, and it is working as a bluetooth modem for the mac after installing a 3rd party modem script.


My main gripes with the Vario would be battery life (less than a day if you are using a lot of the features like wifi), and a bit of fiddliness - I often have to get the stylus out to find a contact and make a phone call. It's also a bit bulky and no iPhone in the looks department. Also I haven't fully figured out the wifi - it seems to randomly try to connect to any available network when switched on, not what I want. Other times (seemingly random) it gives me a list of options via a notification, but not necessarily the options I want). When connected seems to work fine (other than the aforementioned battery guzzling) - good with skype etc.

On Tuesday I went to the Future of Web Applications Roadtrip social at the watershed in Bristol. Carson Systems put some cash behind the bar and we stood around, talked geek and drank the free beer. There was an excellent turn out, probably the biggest turnout of any Bristol web designer/ techie related social i've been to. There were loads of people that I didn't get to speak to, but I caught up with some old friends, met some new people and put a few more names to faces i've been talking to on the underscore mailing list for years, but never met.

There's some photos on Flickr here including one with me in it (check shirt, yellow "well done" sticker!)

Another write up on the live blog

Although I still haven't had time to build my new company a virtual HQ, a real HQ has been found in a small village called Ubley, a short commute out of Bristol. The reason for this location is that we will be sharing office space with my business partners other company (and the company I have been building an eCommerce web app for), who have warehouses on this site. I went to have a look today and was blown away by the view across blagdon lake. I won't be working out here all the time, but i'm looking forward to it

Thought i'd better check in for a quick update since it's been a while since I posted. I'm pleased to say that I have been incredibly busy since going it alone, working on lots of different projects for different people - consultancy, php/asp/plone back end development, html/css front end work and even some design. I'm loving the variety, and now feeling quite happy about the fact that I have diverse enough skills to do all these types of work. It used to bother me that I might be a "jack of all trades, master of none", but I think more accurately i'm a "jack of all trades, master of some". The only downside so far is that I have been too busy - as a new business with barely any money in the bank yet, I don't feel like I can turn anything down yet! I'm loving being my own boss, but it was handy before having a boss to take the awkward phonecalls when I down tools at 5pm!
I've actually got loads of random things in my mind to blog about, maybe when things calm down a bit I will get round to it...

I once remember reading somewhere that leaving a steady job to set up your own business is the adult equivalent of running off to join the circus. But that's what i've decided to do - as of June the 1st I will be my own boss, as after a lot of deliberation and heel dragging I have decided to bite the bullet and leave my contented job at Netsight to go into business with a friend of mine. I have always wanted to start my own business, but for various reasons I haven't, and a business opportunity was put in front of me, that if I didn't take then maybe it would never happen. At this point I wanted to link to the website of my new web application development company, but embarassingly I haven't built it yet, so I'll post about that when I have done it, and talk more about the new company, and the products and services we will be providing.

A few people have asked me if I will be continuing to work with Plone and the answer is basically this: The core business of my new company will be packaged web applications and these will not be built in plone, as the applications aren't CMS-like, and plone wouldn't be relevant. The applications will be built using some* scripting language/framework plus a RDMS. Zope 3 is a contender, but I don't have the experience to hit the ground running with that, but i'll certainly endeavour to get up to speed on it when time allows. However, the company will also be offering bespoke and ad-hoc development services and these will include Plone. For larger Plone projects and implementations I will refer enquiries to Netsight, as beyond the Plone skinning and customisation expertise that I have built up at Netsight over the last three years, the new company will not have the resources or expertise to support large plone projects. I will also still be contracting/freelancing for Netsight on Plone work - intially a couple of days a week, until they change the locks ;-)

Anyway, new company website to follow, and more details about exactly what we will be doing.

* probably unpopular amongst plonistas - check out my previous commercial experience and fill in the blanks yourself!