Lovin’ my Cats Paw!
I have had an unusual fortnight of work which has involved a lot of repetitive cutting, pasting, clicking, and circular mouse movements for the work required on two different projects. There’s simply no way to get around it. Predictably, my hands are a bit stiff and sore, and my right hand tends to go ice cold from lack of circulation. Lucky for me, while digging through my desk trying to find something or other, I found my Cat’s Paw hand exerciser. I’d completely forgotten about it.
What a difference it makes! 60 seconds worth of stretches with the Cat’s Paw leave my hands feeling absolutely normal and healthy again as if I hadn’t touched my computer at all. My right hand even starts to warm up immediately. Who cares if the product is so simple that it’s almost silly? It actually works.
Dot netted!
Got the November 2009 issue of .net magazine through the post yesterday, went off for a swim and took the magazine with me in my bag, went for a cappuccino after the swim and sat down to read the magazine, and found myself quoted on page 14. After laughing out loud in a way that made other people in the cafe look at me funny, I skimmed through and found myself quoted again on page 106.
See what happens when you try to take a few hours off work? No rest for the wicked!
Thanks to Gary for the hat-tip.
Should you provide your clients with backups?
Yesterday my post on what goes into a good web design contract got a pingback from Smashing Magazine, so I’ve been enjoying a happy little spike in traffic. The ensuing discussion raises the question of whether web designers should provide clients with backups of their site files and what they should charge for them.
The answer is: bloody hell, of course you should be providing your clients with file backups; and no, you shouldn’t charge for them.
I provide my clients with a backup of both the site files and the database on the handover CD that goes to them upon site launch. If the site is a WordPress site, as is 90% of my work at the moment, I activate the WP DB Backup plugin and set up a regularly scheduled backup. The backups are automatically emailed to me and, through an email filter, go straight into a designated folder. I don’t ever have to deal with the files; they are simply there “just in case.” For larger clients, the backups go directly to them, and they are trained on what they need to do with the files during the tutorial process. Backups for all clients are also regularly uploaded to my offsite storage account.
If, in a worst case scenario, something happened which required me to restore a backup for a client, I would simply charge them my standard hourly rate. It has not happened yet.
Providing a file backup does not invalidate copyright for any party. As long as you have defined rights to files and content in your contract, the stated rights still stand no matter how many backups are produced.
If you refuse to create backups for your client, be aware that there are utilities and programs they can use to download sites themselves. You can protest if you want and even threaten to take them to court, but good luck finding a lawyer willing to represent you. Suing your own clients for a situation that you are completely responsible for creating yourself is a no-win scenario. Web design is not about creating an aggressive environment where you are constantly trying to paint your client into a corner, and vice-versa; if you feel it is, it’s time to find a new career.
All in all, backup processes, whether performed as a one-off or on a regular basis, are completely automated and run in the background. Contrary to what a lot of dodgy designers might moan, it’s not difficult, it’s not expensive, and it does not create a lot of work for them. I regularly hear horror stories from frustrated business owners whose dodgy designers never gave them any site backup and want to charge them upwards of £100 to make one. Bull. I laugh at designers who charge their clients for backups, because aside from being daft, it proves that the designer is a bad businessman. Backups are not a “product” and they are not a stream of income. If you want to increase your earnings, raise your hourly rates or factor in two hours of billable time at the end of the project for handover creation. Charging for backups is the sure sign of a designer who has no confidence in his professional abilities. It smells desperate. And desperation stinks.
If you’re a designer, what else should go into a handover package?
Aside from file backups, the most comprehensive inventory of what designers should include in their web site handover packages can be found in Shirley Kaiser’s book, Deliver First Class Web Sites: 101 Essential Checklists.
If you’re a business owner:
Business owners should clarify the handover and backup arrangements with a potential designer before hiring them. Make sure that you will receive a handover package at the end of the project containing all the project files and documentation as well as a backup of the site at launch. If the topic of file backups causes temper tantrums and threats of extra fees from the firm, how are they going to react if something actually goes wrong? Additionally, asking about backups can unveil facts that some designers would rather keep hidden. I have indeed seen cases where the truth only came out at this stage that to create a backup, the “designer” would have to ask the people who actually do the work…in Delhi. Choose a designer with integrity who will not micromanage their relationship with you and can be trusted to make the best decisions for your business.
Accenting the negative
I went networking last night. Overall I enjoy networking. What I don’t enjoy is something I have to deal with pretty much every day of my life:
“So where is the accent from?”
I realise people are just trying to be polite and make good conversation, but does it not occur to them how much it drives me up the wall to be be placed into the same conversation every time I open my mouth? At an event like last night, I end up answering the same cursed round of questions (so where is the accent from, so what brought you here, so how long have you been here, so do you like it here?) about 15 times. On a good day, it’s annoying. On a bad day, it makes me feel like what I came to call the “foreigner freakshow”, where people are only interested in hearing cutesy human interest stories out of someone from that place they see on TV.
Everyone – from networkers, to doctors, to the lassies behind the till, to waiters, to bankers, to strangers on buses – wants to run through the same questions with me. Every day. Multiply that by 365 days a year times seven years, and it’s small wonder I’m ready to scream. It’s also why I generally avoid taking taxis. If I don’t run through the same tired round of questions – which make it clear that I’m now a local – the driver assumes I’m a tourist and tries to charge me £35 for a three mile trip. Ye cannae win!
I wish people would understand that I don’t hear my accent, nor do I hear other people’s accents. I only hear words. I was quite self-conscious about my accent when I first moved to the UK, and realised very quickly that it was a quick route to complete emotional paralysis. So I stopped caring about my accent, and remarkably, so did many in return. But I forget that other people only hear the intonations and nationality, and not the words and context. People can’t of course see with their eyes that I’m now a naturalised British citizen. Legally and emotionally, I have more in common with them now than I do with friends in the US, and I can’t help but wish that people I meet here would approach me from the starting point of what we have in common rather than what makes us different.
The irony, of course, is I don’t have either an American or a Scottish accent now. My accent is hovering somewhere over the Titanic. After years of complete immersion in Glasgow, I don’t sound remotely American, and Americans don’t sound at all like me. But I’m miles away from sounding Glaswegian or Scottish. It’s not something I do on purpose, it’s simply the natural progression that all languages take (as my former boss in Washington will tell you with a 56-slide power point presentation). I sound like me, basically. I can’t be categorised. And if you want to really annoy someone in the UK, be someone who can’t be categorised and ranked into a tiny little box on the spot. It’s waving a red flag to a bull. So the questions will continue every day.
In my business, I won’t work with people who are seeking to make an issue out of my nationality and accent, positive or negative. Another experience learned the hard way. After my disastrous role in the public sector came to a quick close, I learned from a company mole that – as I’d suspected – the only reason I’d been hired was because the managing director thought I would be the “token American” in the company, chirping feelgood enthusiasm and that sort of pish that aligned with his touchy-feely-huggy way of thinking. My skills, expertise, and talents meant less in his mind than the qualities he assumed I toted around in my genetic makeup. It was devastating and yet so obvious. When you get a job, you assume you have been hired because you are the best person for the task, not because someone else expects you to fulfil their ill-informed national stereotype. I learned I had to take steps to protect myself from wasting any more of my best efforts on someone else’s twee “tokenism”. So after that experience, I decided to make my nationality a non-issue. I just wish, when I’m trying to talk about what I have to offer and only receive tedious trivia questions in return, others would do the same.
</kvetch> or </whinge>, depending.
