I’ve decided to change from a package rate to an hourly rate on logo design. A logo needs to get the job done, and a package with a set number of trial & errors is not the best deal for the client. I can still offer a flat-rate on logo design, if you really like it, but I was considering raising my price to $1000, and that punishes clients who know exactly what they want and those who communicate effectively, make quick decisions, and the times that I hit the nail on the head the first time.

I decided to stop punishing the easy logo design clients, and start rewarding them instead by charging hourly creative charges. My creative charge is $70/hour because being creative is as tough as being technical (this is the same rate for my technical skills clients). This charge is at an hour minimum, charged in 15 minute increments, rounded up. So an easy logo can cost $70, a tough case can go for several hundred dollars, and you get to choose how long you want to nitpick over details (and it’s your logo — you SHOULD nitpick over the details!!!). Designing business cards, flyers, post cards, etc. goes under this category.

So what about people who need something easier, less creative?

While it can be time consuming, some clients just need artwork cleanup rather than creatives. If you never received a clean copy of your logo design suitable for imprinted products, or scaling up, Eclectic Tech is charging less for artwork cleanup charges. In-trade (printers, promotional product consultants, screen printers, designers, etc.) the charge is $50/hour. For one-time-only clients, i.e. direct-to-consumer, I’m charging $60/hour. So please come to me if you need your logo or artwork cleaned up for a project. Most artwork doesn’t take more than hour to clean up. Half-hour minimum, charged in 15 minute increments rounded up.

If you give me anything from a vague idealistic concept of what you’re looking for through a rough sketch (back of a cocktail napkin or computer mock-up rough) of what you’re looking for, it’s a logo design charge. If you have finished artwork that just isn’t up to snuff for the project at-hand, needs a text change, a color change, etc. then it’s a “light design” charge and goes under artwork cleanup. If you already have a business card, and you want the exact same design with a change in a phone number or color, the charge is an artwork cleanup charge.

Prices may change in the future after this blog entry. Please check my website for current charges.

My first client for artwork-cleanup is Prisms Promotions — I’ve done almost a dozen cleanup projects for them, and I’ve decided to advertise the service. See my portfolio page or testimonial page for more information on who is using this service.

I’m a website designer & programmer. I can work with anyone, anywhere in the world. I chose to be different and do most of my work in the local region. But like I said, that’s different. Many of my colleagues think more is better, and try to price low and gain money on quantity rather than quality, both of their clients and of their services.

When searching for a service online, I don’t care if you’re looking for website hosting, website design, logo design, custom graphics, or an alarm company (the only item in this list that I’m not providing), you probably want — or need — to know where the person is.

So how do you figure it out?

I wanted to use a specific set of examples in this post. Top-of-the-search engine results with fantastic prices, and absolutely no phone number or address to be seen on their website. Sites that ended up being in other countries. Websites with blatant grammatical errors that obviously still rake in enough cash to get to the top of Google search results on pay-per-click hot topics that are highly competitive.

But they asked me nicely to remove their website address and information from my blog. So I’m removing it. Not exactly sure what offended them about the post, as they were only a live example and it was true that they were in a foreign country, but I’ll remove it to keep the peace.

Some cliches exist for a reason. “You get what you pay for” is one of them. In a vast sea of choices and no education, people choose the products by lowest price. There’s either too much information, or not enough, to educate the consumer into making informed choices.

There are real dangers in sending your money to a foreign corporation. They can be of the most stellar reputation, 100% honest, hard-working people, but you are still never afforded the same protections and conveniences you have working with someone in the same town or at least the same state. It is much less convenient to do business out-of-state, or out-of-the-country. If it’s out-of-state you have the additional complications of figuring out which state/jurisdiction to interpret your contract in, and where you have to travel to in order to arbitrate disputes. In foreign matters, unless you have the type of money it takes to go to International court, you don’t have legal protections no matter what the contract says.

If you are going to a local company, you can check their mailing address, their reputation, get a real referral from someone you know to someone you know you can trust. You can track their professional affiliations, check the Better Business Bureau to see if there are complaints against them. And more.

So how do you figure out who people really are? There is a database that stores their legal domain registration information. There is real consideration to abolishing this information on the web, but in the meantime the more of us who are using it for legitimate reasons (to check on the idenitity of a service before purchase) the better. This database is accessible at http://www.whois.net/

If you enter theirdomainname.com into Whois you can see their registration record. Enter “theirdomainname” in the field for looking up domain registration data. Make sure the right suffix is selected (”.com”) and click GO!

Not all domains show legal registration information online. The domain owner can hide that information by paying their domain registrar a few extra bucks to make even that anonymous…. Then you need to get into some website gymnastics to figure out who these people are, and I am not sure it’s worthwhile. If they’re hiding, maybe they have something to hide. More often, though, people are banking on ignorance. This blog post is to help some people wake up and smell the scandal. The flip side of this idea: If you run a legitimate business, you should not be anonymous on the web, and prospective clients shouldn’t need to resort to the “whois database” method above, just to figure out where you’re located. I get a few junk mails and a junk fax or 3 for having my information up — the worst is the domain-registration related spam, but that’s a hazard of doing legit business on the web.

I suggest you look at people’s Contact Us page and check that their information matches their WhoIs registration — check their professional affiliations and their memberships in local chambers of commerce. Ask if there have been any complaints against them.

If you’re in the local region, you could ask for a face-to-face with the person you’re doing business with. The only way to see eye-to-eye on any project is to actually be able to look someone in the face.

Moral: You pay for what you get.

Good luck!

I don’t mean the sponsor of Eclectic Tech — I mean OUR sponsor. Every gerbil, human, fish, amoeba, building, dishwasher, diamond ring, space shuttle, barrel of oil — ALL of us.

I’d like to make a multi-faceted argument, so I may explain an awe of the relationship between the planet we live on and our people, our companion animals, our vegetation, and our creations. I can look at it from theology, from philosophy, and from a pseudo-scientific standpoint.

Someone said that mankind owes its entire existence to a six-inch layer of topsoil and the fact that it rains. I don’t know how many people really think about that statement. I want you to really think about that statement. We owe our existence, our persistence, and every one of our inventions to a layer of fertile soil and the fact that it rains water and not ammonia. Look at what other planets have for ice, and feel lucky.

On theology and as an Interfaith minister, I want to make a statement about humanity’s neglect of our relationship with the Earth: We wave a book — either a most holy book or the greatest work of fiction ever — that we will gladly interpret as granting the God-given right to abuse the planet and its creatures, as if that’s a good excuse for our neglect. I suggest that everyone reread that section. We were not appointed by any God to be the despoilers and abusers of the earth, but the caretakers, the tenders, the shepherds. Not to be above, but to be in love with every critter, and take loving care thereof (because one of the most inoffensive statements I’ve ever heard in trying to define “god” is that “god is love”). Those of us who don’t have those books usually have a similar idea of our relationship with the earth and its creations. It’s amazing how many religions incorporate not only gratitude to their powers-that-be, but to the earth and its children. And some go so far as to attribute spirit to all things, whether or not they are created by mankind. Above all, through the ages we have noticed and respected the fickle relationship between ourselves and our environment.

Oil, and thus gasoline and propane, plastics, and petroleum jelly, are taken from the veins of the earth like blood from a donor. We who would consider it unjustifiable to strap another human into a chair and bleed them day in and day out for years upon years without consent are doing this to our Earth. Our planet. By our, I mean every insect, every human, every fax machine, every toaster, every car, every tree.

The cluelessness astounds me. The neglect frightens me.

Somewhere in this terrifying rollercoaster of how we treat our planet, I wish someone had the ability to push the red button that makes the ride stop. But we don’t. As individuals, we can’t push that red button. But we can refuse to take that ride.

It’s not enough to watch the rollercoaster of destruction. We have to run around the amusement park planting trees, picking up litter, playing less games, winning less “prizes” that we can’t take into the afterlife anyway.

There is only one thing that will make a difference beyond this lifetime — relationships. Whether you believe in absolute blackness after the flesh dies, whether you believe in Heaven, or reincarnation — the lives you touch will live beyond your time, just as those who are gone have touched your life. And relationships can be relatively carbon neutral. If we spend our time building dreams for the bigger prize of love — and here we are back at god again — we can consume less, plant more, and maybe other people will decide it’s more fun doing what we do than to embark on that terrifying ride that ruins our planet.

Everything has a spirit, because everything, and I mean everything we surround ourself with, is a part of us. We breathe the same air. We eat the same carbon. My molecules are yours. My energy is yours. My spirit is yours. WE are Mother Earth. Every lightbulb. Every stone. Every living, inanimate, and dead being on the planet. We are Mother Earth. Why are we killing ourselves?

I volunteered at Live Earth in New York — I stuck my hand out and pointed to the right recycling bin or composting bin for concert attendees, and stuck my hand in when they messed up, and fixed the problem. I spent about 5.5 hours stationed near concertgoers getting sore feet in the name of raising awareness.

I’m exhausted. More about saving the planet when I’ve got a moment. Take care of the Earth!!

I have a client. Not a loud client all over my portfolio, a pretty quiet client. A good client. A repeat client. I worked with Kevin Burke of Lucid Marketing last year doing piecemeal projects while their systems administrator was out.

He’s started a new company named Light Iris, with a focus of marketing to new mothers.

He had a notion one day that he should get a better perspective on being a new mother, and has been wearing a 35-pound pregnancy suit on his off-hours. Not to parade around town, but to get an idea of what it’s like to have all that extra weight on.

He’s doing this experiential experiment for a month. You can read about it at http://blog.lightiris.com/

I’ve been working on the Orange Environment website, and one perk is that I’ll have a table at the Earth Day event in Warwick on April 21st.

I’m a very conscientious person, so I have to scrutinize myself to justify being there. When people walk up to my table and ask me why a web designer is there at a booth on Earth Day — what can I say to defend my “position”?

• My office runs either on sunlight from a big bay window or compact fluorescent lights
• I use 100% post-consumer paper
  • loosleaf for client notes

  • multi-use printer/copier paper for my laserjet
• when I get mail or fliers that are only used on one side, I keep them by the phone for quick note jotting.
• when a paper is used on both sides, I recycle it (sometimes shredded first)
• I have a home office only
  • the same heat for my home is heat for my office (the office room adjoins the kitchen; it’s a one-zone house, but at only 830 sqft it should be!)

  • I save on auto fuel & auto wear-n-tear
• I drive a used but still energy-efficient car for business & personal use (1994 honda civic at up to 33mpg)
• I turn the printer off when not in use
• I work by sunlight whenever possible
• I leave any extra computer equipment off whenever possible so only one computer is running the majority of the time
• I use wash-n-wear clothes for the most part
  • the washer is a high-efficiency front-loader rated exceptionally for water efficiency

  • the dryer has a dampness sensor thus is self-regulating
  • I use a scent and dye free detergent
  • I don’t use a fabric softener
• I use refurbished toner cartridges
• we have a duplex printer, and I print on both sides of the page for any multi-page documents
• whenever possible I print 2-up duplex, for reference documentation, because I don’t mind reading tiny print, but I do mind wasting paper
• I save the plastic &/or cellophane windows of envelopes I receive for craft projects (they make great filling for homemade cat toys!)

There are still areas in which I’m a culprit, however. I could (always) do better. We occasionally use whiteboards in my office, and I’m not really believing the EAP certification regarding the inks. I want desperately to know if there’s such a thing as soy laser toner cartridges, or any other alternatives that won’t turn the laser printer into a hunk of waste. I could use dryer balls, and I’m considering that (if they make the dryer even a tad more efficient it’s worth a 1 time expense). I could scold my roommate for leaving the bathroom light on. I printed up letterhead I could hardly afford, it came out lousy, now I have a ton of letterhead that shouldn’t have been printed in the first place, and should have been on recycled stock — live & learn. That letterhead is now the back of any one-page fliers I produce as handouts.

So I guess instead of feeling guilty, I could try to relax and realize that there are a bunch of things about me that cause me to stand out in a crowd of web design/programming professionals that could be considered when positioning myself in the “green” community as well: I’ve been an herbalist for about 15 years, I’m an Interfaith Minister, Reiki master, & Shaman. I guess having a booth isn’t such a bad idea after all!

The new Orange Environment website went live today, celebrating 25 years of rigorously keeping an eye on the environment. They have upcoming events - March 1st there’s a free conference for farms/agriculture, and on April 21st they’re celebrating Earth Day in Orange County, NY.

Please help this terrific non-profit survive another 25 years!

Slashdot rejected my question submission, so I’ll write about it in my blog and see if anyone is interested in answering it.

I have insurance, but I want exactly the RIGHT insurance. My insurance agent says that what I have may very well cover what I do, but is hunting high and low for insurance that will explicitly rather than implicitly cover both the design AND the programming portions of my business without making me broke. All she’s finding are either policies with specific exclusions for web programming, or policies that are exceptionally expensive.

The problem is that every programmer is being lumped together. That means that programmers working on the stock exchange big bucks applications with billions of dollars in transactions a day at risk are being lumped in with smalltime web programming outfits like mine. I’m a programmer on the PmWiki project, and I create custom plug-ins for PmWiki for clients before contributing what I can back to the project, or accept bounties for plug-ins made directly available to the general public. I’ve also made alterations to other plug-ins for other open-source projects, and I’m creating an open source project or three of my own.

Now, I am not belittling the risks to my customers. I know that their business is everything to them, and that’s why I’m looking for insurance. But I don’t play with the big boys and my customers are not forking over the big bucks to cover the overhead I would have to pass along to my customers to cover the big insurance policies.

If I’m installing ZenCart, and ZenCart has a bug, am I covered? I never touched the back-end of the program, but of course every application — open source or otherwise — has inherent bugs and risks. I trust open source because the bugs are squished in a timely manner and I don’t have to pay for upgrades. Would all those policies with programming exclusions cover this?

When a policy excludes programming, I see there being a really fuzzy line between “web design” and “web programming”. Certainly there’s a point at which something is very clearly web programming, but is it programming if I create a script that processes a webform to email the results to my client? Is it programming if I’m creating JavaScript DHTML DOM alterations? What about when I’m working on a design for a Smarty template? There’s pseudocode and even PHP code in there, but it’s all about the design.

In any case, what I want to know from my fellow collaborators in the world is:

What, if anything, do you do about insurance for your web application or programming company?

Do you have any suggestions for underwriters for open source programmers?

If you aren’t insured, have you even considered being insured?

Today my son asked me about whether he could mix milk and honey. I hear about the land of milk and honey, there are dozens of blogs named milk and honey about cooking, cookbooks called milk and honey, a honey cookbook that I have on my shelf, and a medieval recipe book. None of them have a single milk and honey recipe — unless you’re looking for soap or enemas.

So I put myself to the task. Here’s the recipe:

4c milk (skim, part-skim or whole)
1/4 cup honey

heat milk over medium heat (I used skim)
slowly add honey while stirring until dissolved
(coat measuring cup with a little milk to help the honey pour, or rinse with warmed milk to get out the remainder of honey.)
remove from heat before it boils (I removed it before it even scalded)

Makes 8 half-cup servings — note that it’s like candy. A full 8oz cup would probably be a lot.

This is VERY SWEET but it’s also REALLY good. If you don’t like things candy-sweet try less honey or add an extra cup of milk. Organic milk and raw fresh honey would probably be great — I’d just remove it from the heat ASAP to keep the honey and milk from losing too much of their vital nutrients to the heat. Adding honey to cold milk doesn’t do the same thing at all; the honey pools on the bottom of the cup.

I’m drinking it hot, and I’m chilling the rest to try it cold. My son is very happy with it. It feels like it would soothe a very sore throat.

May make a good substitute for eggnog for people who don’t like the idea of drinking eggs I didn’t try adding any spices to it, and I’m sure that using whole milk would make it thicker and of course more fattening (thus probably tasting even better). If I try adding spices I’ll add them to the comments.

Note that milk and honey baths are used to prepare livestock for county fairs and shows. LOL

I bought fresh spinach and feta cheese at Sam’s Club in Middletown. The plan was to make Spinakopita, one of my son’s favorites — I was going to make it with pie dough. I have a clue what dealing with filo is like — so it was “spinakopita” — I know it’s not, but who cares as long as my son eats it?

Then the spinach scare. Ok, so I throw out the spinach. Even though it was “organic” and probably didn’t go near any other spinach — with so many people in the hospital and someone dead, it’s not worth spinakopita-ish to make everyone in my family sick.

So then what? I have a pound of feta and no place to go. So I bought a LOT of fresh broccoli. About 4 florettes. I steamed it. I thawed 2 pie crusts.

I cut up about 3 cloves garlic fine.

I didn’t have a yellow onion so I used about 1/8 of a hefty red onion. — about 3-4 tbs when chopped fine.

I fried up the garlic & onion in olive oil, tossed some crumbled up feta in briefly — probably a good 1/2-3/4 cup. Only for about a minute or less — I removed it from the heat when the cheese started melting a little — just enough to make some creamy oil in the pan, but not to make a gooey mess.

I burned a finger from the steamer — that is definitely a prerequisite!

Then I used tongs to hold pieces of broccoli on the cutting board (they’re HOT!) and chop them up with my handy veggie cleaver — cutting up the florets and stems into tiny chunks and a bunch of bittie flowers. I tossed this in with the stuff from the pan in a bowl, mixed it up and made some very sloppy loaves with quarters from the pie crust — I cut the crust dough into quarters, then rolled it out thinner with a rolling pin. You may want to cut them, ball them up, re-roll them and make loaves like empanadas. I was short on time. If you seal them well, take a sharp knife and put slits in the top.

Now I am waiting for them to cook so I can eat them. I’m trying cooking them at 375 even though pie recipes cook hotter.

…

Mmmmm — I waited until they were crisp but barely brown, and they’re YUMMY! They also passed the son test.

Enjoy!