Freelance work pricing

They taught an awful lot in my "Interactive Media" course, but they did not cover how to charge and quote people for freelance work very well. It kind of keeps me from going out and looking for work because I have no idea if I should charge by the page, the project, or by time. I am just finishing up a website now for a friend. My actual first paid website making job. I decided to charge by the hour and just came up with an estimate of how long it would take to finish the project. My estimate turned out to be off by about 5 hours, so I don't know. For my own reference, here is an approximate breakdown of time HTML/CSS site with some jQuery 1:30 to modify existing template to match new design 1:30 to add home content, and tweak things, make funtional 1:00 to add 6 basic pages 6ish to get those pages looking right, and fiddling with style to get everything looking perfect Joomla install & Basic Free Store (using simple caddy) 3:00 to install Joomla and modify existing template to resemble look of website 3:30 to find correct extensions, perfect template styles, and create working store framework In addition to these times there was probably another 1 to 2 hours of miscalanious time I did not record and 2 to 3 hours of talking over, emailing, and teaching to client. So the final time varied between 16 and 22 hours. A bit more than my original 12 to 14 hour estimate. I'll have to reflect back on this at some point in the future to help me figure out how to quote and charge for any new projects.

posting animated GIF to blogger

just a test to figure out how to post an animated gif onto blogger.

In this case you have to host it somewhere. It can be something like photo bucket or your own hosting. Then use a code something like this replacing "your.gif" with the url of your gif. This code will take users away to the hosted page if they click on the image.


"<a href="your.gif" target="_blank"><img src="your.gif" border="0" alt="moops"></a>"

Custom "vanity" Facebook URL

Here is another nice Facebook tip for creating nicer URL for your Facebook profile.

Simply go to
http://facebook.com/username
and set a new name for yourself.  This will give you a shorter url so in my case http://www.facebook.com/mmohler3 rather than something with loads of random letters and numbers.


This is even more relevant when you have a Facebook page for a business or something you want to advertise.  In this case the process is the same.  Follow the same link and give your page a more relevant name making it much easier to advertise and link people to your page. 
* It is important to note that at this time you need at least 25 people to like your page before you can give it a custom URL. 

Adding Blog to Facebook page

I wanted to create a Facebook page for my wife's business that would automatically import and update from an existing Blogger account she uses.

It took a little while to get it straight, but it turns out to be very easy.  Of course Facebook changes things so frequently that this method may not work an a years time, but it should get you on the right track.

First of all you need to create or have an existing Facebook page and Blogger Blog.
Click edit page from the page's profile
On the left side, choose apps and then under notes click "Go to App"
then on the left side of the screen you should see "edit import settings"
Then all you have to do is enter in the following URL, substituting 'blogname' with your blogs name.

http://blogname.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss


for more info, and a video I found this link to be the most helpful
http://davesaunders.net/2009/01/how-to-find-the-rss-feed-for-your-blogger-blog/

Flash animation hints

It has been a while since I tried doing some animation in Flash.  I had forgotten the technique I had used in the past.  As a result I spent two and half hours fumbling around with movie clip symbols and layers and classic tweens.  The problem with intermediate to advanced Flash animation is that there are so many ways you can do things, it is hard to figure out the best.

When you search online you mostly get tutorials that teach you how to move something across the stage or spin around, change color, and silly stuff like that.  But what do you do when you want to make a character or something more complex?

I finally found this link
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flash/articles/design_character_pt1.html
Which, is pretty long, but has some great and simple information in it that will get your off to the right start.


Important tips include:
-add you individual pieces as graphic symbols into your library .
-use motion tweens (CS4 and above) to move things around.
-name all of your symbols and layers descriptively.
-don't be afraid to use lots of layers and it is ok to group symbols within symbols.

You will have to figure out the rest yourself, but the link is very helpful and those tips will get you on the right path.

Webcomic Plug

I have been working on rebooting my webcomic the last few weeks.

It is about robots and space and stuff.

www.bigfoldy.com

Flash: Cleaning Garbage + Debugger

I found a good Actionscript / Flash Blog that has a good collection of handy tips and info.

Here is a link to a post that might be handy in the future about garbage collecting to free up memory and improve performance in flash.
This might have been helpful for my major project last school year which suffered a bit from slowing down.  At the time I used .unloadAndStop() to shut down my loaders, which helped a bit but not as much as I would have like.

It also mentions a debugger that I had a quick play with:  MonsterDebugger