Last week flew by. I got a new mobile after a free upgrade with my contract. The phone is great. It's so much easier to use for email, I love having a calendar display on the front screen and it was handy when I was away from the house for a long day on Thursday.

We were suddenly given a new design for an existing website this week, which has an awful mess of code running it at present. So we've had to set to work on getting this integrated with the existing site and I'm trying to fix up little bits as I go along too. I know it's bad practice but if we get it looking right first then at least we get some breathing space from the client to get what we as serious developers believe need fixing and keep the client happy as the site can still run live.

On Thursday I went down to Cardiff for the day. Have to say it was a long day. Over 6 hours on the train and then a non stop day of speaking to everyone going and just not having time to even stop for something to eat. It was a hard going day on Thursday with a few ups and downs after suddenly feeling very insecure about my contract job there. So I now realise I need to do a bit of impressing to ensure I've got that job security and that just because I don't go into the office I'm still with them. We're off back down there for a few days in a couple of weeks, so hopefully I'll get a better vibe and reception this time around.

This weekend was beautiful weather. The sun was out and the sky was blue both days. I managed to get back out into the garden on Sunday, get the first of the Chilli seeds planted and get my little greenhouse up. Have to say, I'm really looking forward to the gardening this summer as I'm a lot more organised and keen to start with everything.

And that was the week that was

My mobile phone contract is due to finish so I've been eyeing up the new phones available over the past month or so. After looking over the Nokia website I discovered the N Series and instantly fell in love with the available options on these phones.

Luckily Vodaphone had the N73 available for free, and my price plan has actually dropped by £15 a month! So a quick call yesterday to upgrade means I am now in the possession of a brand new N73 which is gorgeous. You can see all about it on the N Series page (go to Products and N73, sorry I can't directly link) however my main reasons for getting this phone are

1. 3.2 MP Camera with Flash – I know I have a 7MP camera however I have my phone with me 100% of the time and it'll be great to always have the option of taking photos.

2. The Business apps available – okay they may not be just for business but for my business they're perfect. I've always set up email on my telephone since I had web/wap access. My last phones, 6230 and 6230i, actually had an email application and whilst it was very handy to check my emails whilst out and about, it was still a bit frustrating with a max no of characters per page and not being able to view attachments. Now I can do all of that and more. The email app is so easy to use and view, and I can open doc, xls and pdfs easily, along with images and a variety of other files.

3. Not a reason for getting it (as I wasn't aware) but another good reason if you know. It has an RSS reader. Simply go to the RSS url, it will subscribe you and then you can read feeds at your leisure.

4. Another initially unknown but great, great reason. Finally Nokia have caught on to the fact that people want to use their mp3 player and/or camera when they can't have their sim card roaming ie. on a plane. That was the major downfall for me as I don't own an MP3 player and relied on my phone (it's just as good!), however had to switch it off on the plane, but that is not the case any more. You can take your phone offline and essentially switch the telephone/sim card part off and still use the rest of the phone as normal. It also means you can take your SIM card out (for whatever reason) and still have use of the phone, another issue that Nokia seemed to have previously whereby you couldn't even access your photos if you didn't have a SIM card in the phone.

So I've been playing off and on all afternoon, sorting my settings out (it happily transferred my old phone data, contacts/calendar/notes, straight to the new phone, no computer needed!) and setting my email up. I've probably run my GPRS bill up today as I've been playing around on the web, grabbing RSS feeds etc. However the phone is now set up and ready to go. All I've left to do is nick the SD card out of my camera and put it in the phone to store some music on it until I get a new SD card. I've got a 6 hour train round trip on Thursday to Cardiff and back so I'll be glad of the music. Plus the sound from the music player is pretty amazing and very stereo! I've tried reading a PDF on the phone however it'll only be used when absolutely necessary, which I've found also on the PDA. At least I have the option and functionality to read files if I need to.

Anyhow, I've got a new toy to play with for 18 months until my next upgrade

My business is there to make money. I don't really have many direct overheads (direct meaning that the overheads are caused by being in business), I don't pay wages I just employ freelancers who are also trying to build up their business. I earn enough to cover my bills and save a little. Luckily my outgoings for where we live are not that high.

My opinion is that a business should earn the same amount as it would (in theory) pay out in wages. I think one of my clients once said a business should earn double what it pays out (so 66/33 cut) however I'd be happy with it being a 50/50 cut for now.

So if I've earnt £x, the business should have a turnover of at least £x*2. Why at least? Well there is not just my work to take into account as I employ Dave virtually full time, so the business should be making double what he gets too. However going by the past 6 months, whilst the figures look good and are on target to increase last years figures, they don't add up to what they should for a business that's meant to be making money.

So why do we seem to be working so much but the turnover doesn't seem to show this? I can only assume it's a mix of quoting too little and also spending more time on work than we realise, or should I say believing we spend more time on work when really we're managing to waste time.

Clients sometimes don't help with time management. I'm finishing off two websites right now, both of which should be up and running and both of which have been delayed due to them still populating the sites with information and products.

One problem I have found is clients change their minds after they've signed your quote. Yes this is understandable, as you work on their site you come up with ideas, they come up with ideas and suddenly your workload has doubled. Despite writing on a quote 'changes to this quote may mean the final cost being reassessed' it seems to go unnoticed. I've got a meeting with a client on Thursday who's added 3 extra dynamic product sections to their site that weren't quoted for. Despite reusable code cutting down some of the time, each section is very different from the next and so I still need to discuss the extra costs now involved. This is the part of business I hate as I'm just a programmer and am really not a business person! I feel bad asking for extra money, even though my business is due it, and I definitely don't want to annoy the client as there are several more projects being lined up with them and they're good clients to work with (ie. hassle free!).

That aside, how do you manage your time? Even though I try to avoid reading blogs and forums between breakfast and lunch, and lunch and dinner, I still feel like I don't get as much done during the day as I could/should. Perhaps it's all the phone calls and emails I have to deal with too (which reminds me, Matt I'll reply tomorrow – I promise!). I really do feel like I lose time during the day however, and I don't know where the time goes.

This morning I awoke to an email from Amazon saying a book I was waiting for has now been delayed to 3-5 weeks. As I took the Super Saver delivery option this would mean that the book which can be dispatched in 24 hours will also be delayed. Being the unpatient person that I am I figured that I'd just cancel the delayed book (which I can get in Borders for full price) and perhaps add a CD I'd been after to keep the order over the £15 threshold for free delivery. Can you do this? Not as far as I can tell!

I logged into my account, selected the order and cancelled the delayed book. It then asked me to confirm my delivery method with no option of adding anything more to it. I figured at that point I could add an extra item onto the order right after, you usually can. So I confirmed the first class postage, checked the final order and then went to my wish list. Suddenly noticing a boxset I'd been after had been reduced down to £20 I clicked on that, added it to my basket and straight to checkout. I then went back to my account and clicked on the 'combine these orders' button. Couldn't do it as the book was now being prepared for dispatch less than 5 minutes after I'd confirmed the order! Speed is great but what was annoying was on the second order it said "If you order any other items within the next X minutes (about an hour I think) we'll combine it with this order to create fewer deliveries". Great idea in theory but why can I not combine an order I'd altered minutes before and add a new item to it?

I tried to cancel the order but again, because it had been sent for dispatch I couldn't. At least I know for the future, if you're going to cancel an item and perhaps add another, as annoying as it is, cancel the whole order and start from scratch, you get more flexibility and more options then, plus you'll probably save money! I've now got £30 of items coming to me and am paying almost £3 in postage!

I've spent today fixing a site that was creating invalid code from images and PDFs with spaces in the filenames. I have to say that the whole MS Windows invention of allowing filenames with a variety of characters and spaces in has just added to the web developer's job.

Despite explaining to clients that spaces and all these other characters shouldn't be left in filenames before they're uploaded, it just seems to fall on deaf ears. All it takes is one incorrectly done filename to invalidate the code on a website. Not good when you pride yourself on producing valid code for your clients. The more I develop sites to allow clients to upload files, images or documents, the more I'm slowly anticipating that I cannot trust that the Client will listen to what we've told them and am trying to ensure that there are fixes in place to prevent this causing a problem.

For anyone who wants a simple function to clean up filenames, this can easily be done in PHP using:

function cleanURL ($string) {
$string = str_replace(" ", "%20", $string); // replace spaces with %20
$string = str_replace("&", "&", $string); // replace ampisands with correct coding
return $string;
}

This is only a simple function which cleans up the major issues I come across. You could use the urlencode() function too, which would cover more characters such as an apostrophe, however that uses plus signs to replace spaces and I'm not sure how that would work in the browser (I'll try it out one day!).

These little methods to second guess your clients will help keep your code valid and also have more chance of preventing site breaks.