Hergest Ridge

A few people have expressed a concern regarding some of my Bytech marketing costs. Without getting into details, the questions “Is it worth it? What are you getting back?” creeped up multiple times, and I wish to address these for what hopefully is the last time.

Look around you, be it the newspaper, a drive through the city, on TV, or the Internet. Everywhere you look, advertisements. Most folks think of them as minute details of everyday life, yet thousands of companies out there are paying serious money to have their message heard and seen.

Running a business is not free. I’m not referring to the obvious costs of computers, phones, rent and payroll. Those things are not a business on their own. By business, I mean finding and serving the clients. Without clients, you don’t have a business.

There are many ways of finding clients, and over the years I’ve tried many methods of building a loyal client base. Most of these marketing efforts involved paying someone for a service, and keeping track of how much business the transaction brings, if any. Low key spending, unnoticed by friends and family.

These days the Bytech marketing budget is spent in ways that are by default highly visible. The budget itself has increased somewhat, but a large portion of the highly visible investments are not the result of extra spending, but simply a redirection of funds from the other, less obvious marketing expenses. I am not spending a whole lot more than I did previous years.

Anyone who tried doing anything entrepreneurial knows that even the best ideas don’t catch on quickly. People are cynical. Most have at some point bought the next must-have item, only to realise it is an utter piece of crap not worth a dime. These kind of experiences turn trusting individuals into skeptical consumers.

We’re all skeptical consumers, which explains why my marketing investments will need a while before they repay for themselves. In the meanwhile, the skeptical consumer in you may be wondering about the wisdom of these investments. Rest assured that the money you see me spending was always being spent, and that I more than you, want and need these investments to work out well.

Friday’s skating at Kildonan Park was great. I finally caught the snowfall while skating on the little pond and connecting river. The place was mostly empty, but for one family with a little girl. The girl was wearing proper skates – not those double bladed kind – and spent most of her time learning how to get up off the ice, a difficult task as I would later discover for myself.

Today, the snow is blowing like crazy. Time for a drive, with some hot tea, and maybe the GF too. While I’m out there ‘braving’ the elements, I leave you with some pics of last summer’s camping trips to St. Ambroise, Manitoba.

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Another evening slipped away quietly, most of my plans unfulfilled. This isn’t the first time, and is not a bad thing per-se. Planned on some reading, a walk, vids, and guitar, ended up with lots of educational YouTube on the subject I intended to read about and my daily Sudoku calendar solved into early February.

I’m beginning to think maybe I’ve lost the desire to play video games, and all that is left the old imprint. In the last 2-3 weeks I hardly played any games, and it isn’t due to lack of opportunity. Tonight’s run of events resulted in the extended pursuit of things likely to bring long term benefits, from musical skills to scientific and philosophical enlightenment.

I full realise that the last sentence sounded quite drab and uninteresting to a large segment of the population, to which I can only reply – with a smirk on my face – ‘bite me’.

Speaking of productivity, I’m releasing the second of my two IPB skins later today, Licht (German for ‘light’ – as coming from a light bulb, not relating to weight, nor the opposite of ‘dark’), of course now IPB 2.2 compatible. I’ve spent the last couple of days working on it, and while it isn’t perfect, I think the shortcomings are going to be noticed only by myself. For everything else, there is the bug report form.

Now, if you’re wondering as to some of the titles of my entries, they are the titles of tracks I’m listening to while writing here. If I can’t think of a title for an entry, I just use those. Today’s kinda fits with the evening I had, and is by Nightwish (thanks Rebecca).

I’ve gone through some of the photos I took in 2005 and ’06, and found a few I thought worth sharing. Converting them from full size to usable proportions takes a while, so I’ll post a few at a time. Most of these will be uploaded to sxc.hu with no usage restrictions. I’ll link to the accepted, full size sxc.hu picture versions, right from the images here on my blog.

The pictures are from a boat trip on Lady Rose starting at Port Alberni, heading to Bamfield (Vancouver Island, British Columbia). My girlfriend received two tickets for the ride as part of her birthday present, and shared the gift with myself.

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Wow, has it really been three weeks or so since my last entry? Unlike so many other bloggers, I am not about to spend half of this post apologising about my absence. If I have to explain how life can get caught up like that, I’d have to explain everything else I write. It’s a road to disaster, you see?

So, where do things stand now? Well, for one I am busy with trying to raise the virtual profile of bytech.ca. I’ve set a few goals for this year, and have a rough idea on how to get them accomplished. Right now I am in the process of making the second of two IPB skins I designed compatible with the latest IPB version, and then I plan on a third IPB skin, and maybe get into making a few WP skins. I think those will be just a tad bit easier to turn out than IPB stuff.

Weather has finally been cold enough for me to strap on my skates and cruise down the river. Ice was still pretty soft, and a few holes along the way nearly resulted in a face to face with the frozen river. I hope to head out to Kildonan Park today, and try my luck on the frozen creek, and the tiny artificial lake. The scenery for skating is right out of a movie at KP, especially with the few snow flakes coming down like they are right now.

Okay, so this “proof of life” entry is coming to an end, but I hope that it helps me get back into a habit of regular posts. I’ve been working on balancing a few things on daily basis, vs. the ‘all-day-doing-one-thing’ method which leaves me feeling like the day was wasted no matter how productive or fun it may have been. I try to avoid doing anything for more than two hours at a time or even per day, be it reading, working on a specific project, playing guitar, or video games. So far, so good.

And now, my fresh, fresh bread which I just picked up is calling my name. Note to self: try eating my first meal of day before 11:00, not at 14:00.

Next time someone tells you that you’re holding the guitar wrong, point them in the direction of Andy Mckee. Granted, you probably don’t want to start out with this particular grip, but it does serve as a nice reminder that if everyone did everything the same way, life wouldn’t be nearly as exciting.

If you know why you are being told to do something in a specific way, and have a reason to do it differently, go to town and experiment!

Last eight waking hours have gone towards getting my laptop back into working order under Linux. The old Mepis had my Wi-Fi working out of the box, but the newest release won’t play nice. Kubutu, PCLinux, and a couple others are great, but none will give me WiFi. By now I can’t even remember why I nuked the old Mepis. I have a feeling amnesia kicked in to protect me from a realisation that I shouldn’t have messed with the system. Yes, I do have the old Mepis, but don’t try to talk me into installing it. I’m sure I had my reasons for killing it.

After the holidays and the few days I took off, you’d figure I’d be back into work mode, ready to kick some ass. Not so this time around. Usually a few days rest energise me, my priorities become clear, and I’m eager to take on another hill. Today, all I want to do is play with my PC, read, play vids, play guitar, and walk through the streets covered by lots and lots of snow. Work is the last thing on my ‘passionate mind’. It has me worried a bit, but I’m thinking the 7 o’clock tomorrow morning will help me get a kick start and I’ll be back on track after my late morning nap that day. [g]

Today I’m going to head down to the library, check out a few books that have been bouncing around in my mind, get some bread straight from the bakery, and then head down to the book store to get something for my nieces birthday. Two of three are celebrating their birthday today, and I’m only sure of one. I hope I get this right, or someone will be left with a gift they are likely to find unusable. It’s too late to verify who’s birthday is being celebrated. Mom’s gone to work, and party is in the early afternoon (Shit, I hate rush hour – what’s up with a 16:00 on a Tuesday afternoon? Just because I decided to slack a bit today don’t mean I want to have the license plate of the SUV ahead imprinted on my brain. I’m going, I’m going, but I do reserve the right to bitch in my own private blog.)

Okay, it’s 14:02 which means I should have stepped out the door two minutes ago. It’ll be another 15 or so before I get that far. The rest of my rant will have to wait. Speaking of rants: the link to this blog has been removed from the Bytech main menu. With the association to the blog from the business front gone, I’m pulling out a few stops. As the saying goes, “Put on your seatbelt. I want to try something.”