Hergest Ridge

I found a new referrer link in our web logs today. It was from a forum that just started using the Mocha Skin I’ve released a couple of months ago. As always, I wanted to check out the forum so I followed the link.

To my surprise, the credits with a back link to my site have since been removed from the skin. I looked at the source and it still has the final reminder comment that removing the credits is illegal, unless you paid the $39.00 for the permission to do so. Needless to say my PayPal account has not had any new funds go into it, and the skin credit is still very much gone.

The admin of the forum posted a news flash with a poll informing everyone of the new skin. Most people like the skin which is great. What isn’t so great is that someone is ungrateful enough to remove the dang credits from an otherwise free skin. I mean what kind of a weasel does that sort of thing?

I’m still unsure how I will handle this situation. This is the first time I became aware of someone stealing from me like this, and while I know my options I still don’t know which route I’ll take. I have a feeling that this will either go down quickly and be over and done with by the end of the next week, or a drawn out process that will take a year or more to resolve. I doubt in anything in between.

I got really tired of the default header and the very descriptive title. I replaced the header, and threw in a new title, but I think they’re still temporary. A quick job to ease the tension, but not yet something worthy of a full time Webmaster. In any case, hopefully the changes will help you identify my blog from the other people a little bit easier and quicker. :)

Some “Webmaster’s Blog” this is turning out to be. While I have a couple of web development articles started, so far nothing on the subject exists in the published and very limited archive of this blog. Anyway, the name of the blog is temporary, so it could be that I change it before I add any web related content. In the meanwhile, bare with me while I cover some ground on subject matters mainly related to “nothing”. If Seinfeld can have a whole multi-season sitcom based on nothing, why not a blog about nothing?

With my taxes for 2005 handed over to an accountant, I feel like I just received the “Get Out of Jail” card. I like numbers and math, but as a self-employed individual, tax season is a huge hit on the time I have for other things. When it is all over, it becomes a huge hit on the bank statement credit card, which means working more just to pay it all, thus more time spent on dealing with taxes. It never ends. Well, it does. But never ends good… :)

Last few days have been solely “Bytech Days”. Every bit of work has gone towards furthering the business in the long run vs. paying the bills tomorrow. It feels good and is very rewarding. With the debt almost eliminated, I look forward to more Bytech Days (weeks, months, years?).

I am now ready to get started on the “Licht Skin” for IPB. The original name for it was going to be “Light”, but I decided to change the name over to German. The idea is for a modern, simplistic skin with light colours. I am all pumped up about this project. The only reason I have not started on it yet is because I know it will consume me once I get started. With the taxes done and having caught up on everything else with Bytech, the stage has been set for the design to begin.

All this new energy is good, but it can start pulling me in too many directions. Just this evening I saw an advert for a Dell server for $399. Having toyed around with the idea of running my own servers for our clients has crossed my mind more than once, and tonight I almost made the leap to what is sure to be a long, long fall before I’d hit ground. Everything from investing in a high capacity Internet connection, to server security, applet installation, system configurations. All of it would be my responsibility. No more sending tickets if the latest version of IPB doesn’t run on a particular version of MySQL, or some similar problem. Nope, it would all be mine and right now I know that I will do much better without these issues.

Someday will be perfect for those types of problems, but tomorrow ain’t one of them. Tomorrow is a big meeting with a potential new client for a decent size website. That’s the kind of stuff I will concentrate on for now. That, this blog, and the Bytech web design forums.

I think I’ve been pushing myself too hard in the last couple of months. I’m taking the weekend “off” and doing only the work that I enjoy. Well, not totally, but as close as I know how to get to that point. I just upgraded Bytech’s Web Design Forums to the newest version of IPB, and upgrading forums is not something that I would consider “right up there”. Still, it was one of those things that just kept getting put off while other work was done. The forums mean a lot to me, and maintaining them is just part of the whole thing. Sort of like cooking your favourite meal, but turning the kitchen into a disaster in the process. You have to take the bad with the good, or you get nothing.

My mind has been conjuring thoughts of the next skin I’ll develop for IPB. I decided to split my idea into two releases. I am envisioning quite an ambitious project and it will get completed sooner if I can break things down into two versions. The rush from the release of the Mocha Skin was very nice, and the community response was great. At the same time, the release with the credit back to our website significantly improved our search engine rankings. Another skin of a higher caliber should push us onto the first page of search results for at least a couple important search phrases, but I’ll know for sure only after “Licht” is actually released.