Congratulations to Languagenut: Top 20 EdTech Company
5 June 2013 | 1 comments | languagenut, client, edtech, award
I have been lucky enough to work regularly for the last few months with a great educational outfit, LanguageNut. They have great drive, plenty of ambition and are growing fast, and that's been rewarded this week!
LanguageNut have been named as one of Europe's 20 Fastest Growing and Most Innovative E-learning Companies. The top three companies will be announced at EdTech Europe on the 14th June. Good luck!
As a new freelancer, your cash flow is everything. You can produce stellar work, on time and under budget, but if you run out of money then the game is over. Here are a few tips for minimising the risks.
On Tuesday 5th February I was lucky enough to become a father for the first time. As a new freelancer, this posed some challenges! Here are some of the tips and tricks that worked for me, and some of the ones that didn't.
A cheat sheet for poker, including how to play the three most common variants, hand ranks, and basic positional play.
If you ever utter the words "It's definitely not that.", it's 100% certainly, without a shadow of doubt, exactly that.
Settlers of Catan Cheat Sheet
24 January 2013 | 9 comments | catam, board games, cheat sheets, games
A cheat sheet for the awesome board game Settlers of Catan, including lots of potential alternative (house) rules.
Setting your rate as a freelancer isn't easy. This freelancer rate calculator has been built to help you convert a daily rate into an annual salary, taking into account holidays, tax and expenses.
On September 10th, I started a new chapter of work as a full time freelance web developer. I'm a month in, and I've already learned some valuable lessons.
Open Source PHP E-Commerce Platforms Compared
29 August 2012 | 19 comments | php, development, ecommerce, open source, magento, opencart, prestashop, drupal, oscommerce, wired
Just a few short years ago, options for Open Source PHP ecommerce platforms were extremely limited, and often the only way to put together an ecommerce store online was to have a bespoke system built. Not any more, though - now there are plenty of options. We take a look at the top five contenders to see what each has to offer.
From early September, I'm going to be leaving my former employment, where I've spent the last four years wrangling code deep in the bowels of the likes of Magento, MODX, Drupal and OpenCart. I want to build something for myself - and that means leaving the stability of full-time employment and venturing into the lesser-known realms of entrepreneurship and self-employment.
This will give me a great chance to spend more time with new technologies. Agency life often doesn't provide much time to get properly to grips with new languages or skills, unless they are already in use within the agency. I'm looking forward to spending more time with Python, node.js, SQLite and other technologies that, so far, I've really just dipped a toe into.
Even more exciting, this move offers the potential for me to spend more time working on my own projects. Cheatography and Envoy have been running for a while but lacking the attention they deserve. Newer projects, on which I'll write more shortly, have also suffered from a lack of available time. This decision should allow me to turn more of the ideas floating around my head into actual working websites, with a view to then becoming profitable ventures.
If you're reading this on the site, you might have spotted a few changes here as well - a new logo, new homepage and new portfolio being the most significant changes, all geared towards making a more prominent feature of my services and previous work.
To begin with, though, my focus is on making sure I have an income that can comfortably provide for myself and my growing family. So I'll be taking on freelance projects and focussing on the things I know best and that I've spent the last few years with - PHP development (especially Magento, MODX and Drupal).
I'm enthusiastic, capable and, in a few short weeks, available for your project!
