MediaGirl Toolbox

Monday, June 14, 2010

Hello Facebook

I've just set up a MediaGirl, Inc. page on Facebook if you'd like to follow what's going on here in the office.

Filed Under: MediaGirl

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Nothing For Free

In my many years as a full-time freelancer, I've worked hard not to underestimate the value of my work and contribution to a project. Thankfully, my clients have always understood my value as well and I've never had to experience this nickle and diming drama (trauma).

I'm not a taco stand, I can't do $8.50, I don't do tests, I don't roll costs over to the next project, I can't help you out, I can't "do this", I don't need "opportunities" and I won't show you how I made it!

Warning... If you are one of these clients, I'm booked for life with other work.

Mad love to my awesome clients.

Filed Under: For Laughs

Saturday, May 29, 2010

Where Are The Women?

When I look at conference lines-up, I tend to checkout how many women are on the speaker list. Imagine my disappointment to see that out of 25 speakers for next week's EECI conference, only two are women... Lea Alcantara and Leslie Flinger.

Come on EllisLabs, there are a ton of amazing women designers and developers who have rallied around ExpressionEngine and CodeIgniter... surely you could have balanced that speaker list a little better.

Filed Under: Expression Engine

Thursday, May 27, 2010

One Awesome Database

Just grabbed this screenshot from an ExpressionEngine project I'm working on. It's been up since I was 9 years old! That would be 1983 to be exact... and yes that makes me 36.




What are the odds... Two nutty database uptimes in the same month.

Filed Under: For Laughs

Sunday, May 16, 2010

ExpressionEngine Coder

For many years now I've worked exclusively as an ExpressionEngine coder and I'm pretty happy with that decision when I reflect on it. When I started I had the fortunate luck of being the go-to coder for an ad agency in Albuquerque that was just getting started themselves. Thus started my career as a coder for hire to agencies and designers.

My tool of choice at the time and now is ExpressionEngine for a myriad of reasons... the first being that I know any design I'm sent will work just fine within EE's templates. There might be a few tweaks needed, but nothing that will have me telling a client I can't build their project. Top that with the explosion of great EE addons and modules that have been coming out over the last couple of years and I know I can build just about any project that comes across my desk.

That isn't to say I don't tell people EE isn't right for their project... I actually say it a couple of times a month and as EE is becoming more popular, I seem to be saying it more often. Folks come to me saying "I want to use EE, oh and here are my project specs". They've selected EE as the software without fully understanding the software's limits. I personally don't get involved in projects that aren't right for EE. I don't want to be that coder who says "sorry, it actually can't be done" a month after the project started or "sorry, I need more money" to have someone recode EE to do what you want. I ask a ton of questions and know for sure I can build the project before I will quote it.

In the end, ExpressionEngine has proven to be a solid tool for me and I would like to tip my hat to all my fellow coders and to the folks at Ellis Labs who make it all possible. Cheers!

Filed Under: Expression Engine