Save not only time but once working prevents mistakes. This weekend I've been updating a site with 4 new templates for sale. However I upgraded the site back in October and never got around to updating the product listings page so that it pulls the details from the database. Not something I feel like fixing right now, however I wanted to get the new templates online. So I've added the new templates to the database however whilst these details are pulled into the single template page, the listings page is simple a manually coded page, so updating this has been a little more tedious purely as there are many factors unique to each template as there is a paypal button next to each item so each needs to ensure that it has the correct price, item name and code attached to it.nnHowever with the new designs now in place and more to come (the new designer has said 1-2 per week) it's given me new motivation to spruce up the site and add a few new features to hopefully help push sales a little further. Thankfully things have quietened down a little this week so I'll have a little more time to get the various jobs on my AIS sites sorted out that I've been meaning to do for ages!nnBut for now it's Christmas so I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas and leaves the computer alone for a couple of days

It's been a bit quiet round here which is the complete opposite of my daily life right now! Apologies to anyone who's been getting annoyed about the lack of posts, once Christmas and New Year has past I'm hoping to get back into my usual routine. I've neglected all of my blogs and online projects over the past couple of weeks as I've just not had much spare time at all.

Part of this has been from work. I've been trying to finish off the work I have left so that I can try and start the New year with a clean slate. I've almost got all of this done now however with the Christmas period oncoming clients have stopped responding leaving me to just guess on some work and not finish other stuff. I've got loose ends to tie up on one site, another site which we're ploughing through pretty quick and then that just leaves my ongoing work with my contract job and another large site I maintain. So the light at the end of the tunnel is getting brighter!

We came down to my parents last Sunday as I had meetings in London at the start of the week and needed to sit down with my Mum to go over my accounts and that looming tax bill that's due next month (all donations welcome!). It's been pretty cold down here and also foggy. I have to say that cars with two fog lights are extremely worse that cars with one, especially when people don't know when to use them and when not to. Last night we popped out to pick up a couple of final presents. Figured 7.30pm was a good time to go out. Visibility was at about 75-100m with wisps of fog around but I could see cars coming from far away fine. Yet so many people were driving around with their rear and front fog lights on, dazzling everyone without a thought for the poor sod (me) behind them. I can vaguely remember learning for my driving theory test that 10m was the minimum distance of visibility before you should put on fog lights, otherwise normal lights would suffice. The Highway code website now simply says to use them sparingly and remember to turn them off, but I wish they'd put a proper alert out on the television to explain to people how to drive in this fog. We've had it for almost a week now so it's not like it's a one off thing, but people clearly can't drive in it properly.

We'll be driving back home on Boxing Day to go to our second Christmas day with Dave's family. Hopefully we won't hit the traffic we did last year which was pretty stagnant on the M6. At least this time we're more aware of the cross country short cuts if we need them. Then it's back to work on Wednesday and possibly shopping in Birmingham on Friday with my Mum Will see what warm thick clothes I can pick up as all of my trousers seem to be as thin as anything!

Anyhow, that's a quick round up, I'm off to look through my boxes of what else I can take home with me this time. Have a Merry Christmas and good New Year.

45n5 has tagged me on the latest meme doing the rounds. I seem slow on the uptake as half the other blogs I read have already done this! Anyhow, 5 things you may not knownn1. I have a Mathematics degreen2. I'm a qualified Austria Ski instructor and spent 3 full seasons teachingn3. I lived in Germany twice, from 10-13 and 16-18, on an RAF basen4. I've lived in 25 different houses/flats – and I'm only 29n5. I adore cooking and love everything about foodnnTime to tag. Most people who read this blog have already been tagged I think (sorry if I've missed someone, it's been a long week!). So 5 people…nnDave (aka Hurricane)nMattnDave GnChris HnRuttynnOn a sidenote, it's been a mad week of last minute meetings and a round trip to Cardiff, plus we're off down South for Christmas on Sunday, so next week better posting will resume

Reselling is a great method for AIS. The experts do the hard work and you simply sell their products. I have two product selling sites up and running. One sells Tattoos the other sells templates. In the past week I've been given about 14 new Tattoos and I've struck a deal with a new template designer who's supplying templates to me and hopes to do about 2 a week. My job? To simply add the thumbnails, a quick title and description and the price into the database table. The PHP deals with the rest of the work, displays the template and sets it up for the sales.nnThis is great for me as besides my own time of a few minutes, there's no expense on my part. All sales are paid for before I pay out for them, and providing I spot any fraud or out of the ordinary payments, I shouldn't be out of pocket. I do have my doubts with PayPal at times however. Over Christmas I'm hoping to set up a download system so that I can send people a download link and let them download their own purchase. After reading Burt's post on protection against refunds a while back it gave me food for thought that perhaps it was possible to survive the PayPal dispute. I have however heard of scenarios where despite being able to clearly prove the buyer/disputer is in the wrong PayPal have still awarded in the wrong favour (these are scenarios from close friends not online hear-say). However, with the products being digital I'm more comfortable with this issue and we've not had a problem yet and if I can get the new download system in place hopefully we shouldn't have a problem at all.nnProduct selling also makes a lot more per sale. I can make up to around £25 for a sale at the moment on the existing products we have. One of those a day would pay for my new car easily. It seems I'm focusing on product selling even more right now as I have another new site to hopefully launch at the start of next year which will offer a great set of products in small niche market, and by the time the site is fully finished (it's a big staged job) it will rival only one other site on the web, and the other site operates in the US. Seems products are on the horizon for me

Ashleigh, Dave's neice, came to stay with us yesterday and we all went down to Chester for the morning. The first Wednesday of every month there is a regional Farmer's market there which I'd been waiting to go to since September! Why hadn't I gone earlier? Well we weren't here in October or November due to the lack of ADSL, so this has been the first Wednesday of the month that I've been up this end of the country (she says as if she's majorly far north!!!).

Anyhow, we found the Farmer's market which I'll write more about over at Food 'n Drink. I bought my Dad some real Cider (none of that fizzy rubbish ) which he'll enjoy. We then took a wander around the main shopping street. I've not been in Chester for about 5 years and it was just how I remembered. Chester is so amazingly pretty. It's got a beautiful old english feel to it, and it makes use of two storeys for the shops. You have the shops on the street or you can go up stairs onto a type of balcony on either side of the street and wander along past more shops. I really should have gotten some photos but we'll definitely be going back in February when the market is on again (January's date is moved to just before Christmas).

Around the shops we picked up a few more Christmas presents for people and watched Ashleigh shop, and shop, and shop After finishing in Chester we dropped the bags off back home and then went down to Cheshire Oaks outlet park to get some lunch and pick up some more presents. We've now got virtually all of the Christmas shopping done, all of them are wrapped which just leaves the cards to write