Pencil Case Studios

Freelance to Full-time

2010-06-10T00:00:00-07:00

This June is the first month doing Pencil Case Studios as my full-time “job”.

It started out as a hobby in 2007. I knew this would happen. It was only a matter of time. What I did not think was that it would happen this soon and in Zambia.

It’s scary and exhilarating but it feels like the right place and the right time.

I hope I can keep you on board for the ride!

Names

2010-06-03T00:00:00-07:00

How did you choose the name of your business?

I was going to call this business “Sweet Potato” because it sounds (and they are) delicious. To my chagrin, close friends talked me out of the nutritious name. To back them up, the domain name was taken (wretched domain squatters, to this day, really!).

In Zambia, when I say the name “Pencil Case Studios”, I smile inside because people look back at me with an expression of, “That sounds rather impressive”. It isn’t really but I’m glad you think so. It’s a shame that foreign names sound more impressive, exotic or nutritious. This is generally true wherever you go. I know this from a life of experience living as “Silumesii”.

I chose the name because it reminds me of school and learning. Passing, failing, log books, physical education, cross country running, group assignments, friendships made and broken, experimentation, working things out and figuring out how things work. It is overall about being open and willing to challenge yourself and grow (sometimes, even when you don’t feel like it). The pencil case is like an icon for this sentiment. A reminder that I’ll always be a student.

Perhaps I should have picked something local or local sounding like “Inzy”, “Kalulu” or “Ubuntu”. Alternatively, I could have used my surname, taking a leaf from the Japanese who have given us “Toyota”, “Mitsubishi”, “Sony” and “Nintendo”. Maybe something whimsically vernacular like, I don’t know, “Katwishi”, anyone?

A name may be a first impression but this particular first impression is overrated. Something simple, familiar and rememberable should be enough to get by with. And, in true Web 2.0 fashion, if you want to pick a business name there’s an app for that! Although, I would not recommend going this route.

At the end of the day, however, I think the reputation means more than anything. For example, I can’t say “Internet Explorer” any more without feeling an acute sense of pain in my left ventricle.
“Would you like an apple?”. Of course! An Apple what? iPhone, MacBook Pro … what? you meant fruit!? What kind of nutritious torture is this …

See what I mean?

So, it may start with a name, but you will be providing some kind of product or service that will leave a mark in the mind and maybe even the heart of the person who chooses to interact with it. Make it a happy mark!

This article was an exercise to see how many times I could use the word “nutritious” and make it sound natural. Now, I feel hungry …

Little Green Machine

2010-05-20T00:00:00-07:00

It is amazing just how successful the mobile phone is in Zambia. I’d be interested to hear people’s views on why this is the case.

Pencil Case Studios is getting in on the action. Now, two weeks in to trying out a Kazang Timpa, from Spargris in Lusaka, we are officially in the talk time business.

The little green machine generates mobile airtime vouchers for Zain, MTN, CelZ and TelZ. Personally, I would have preferred a smaller form factor and longer battery life but overall it is easy to use and portable.

You can learn more about Kazang through their website. Currently, I do not have a URL to link to Spargris but get in touch and I can send you their contact information.

Groundnuts

2010-05-13T00:00:00-07:00

I love groundnuts. On my twenty-ninth birthday, everyone at work pitched in to buy me twenty-nine packets of roasted groundnuts. A heavenly birthday present and a wonderful surprise!

I love good customer service. It is a welcome experience any time an individual or a company under-promises and over-delivers. Instances when that happen are like finding buried treasure.

Imagine my sheer delight to have a great customer service experience when buying groundnuts.

Street-wise

Behind the Protea Hotel at Arcades Shopping Center in Lusaka are a number of street-vendors. They are a dedicated, consistent and lively bunch. I doubt that they have work schedules but every Sunday on my way back from church, I see them without fail. That’s right, I said Sunday.

This season is groundnut and sweet-potato season and they wash and lay their fresh wares out in the warm sun to dry.
Last Sunday, I walked up to their “shop” and was greeted warmly. I asked for K10,000.00 worth of nuts and was given that and a lavish mbasela without even asking. On paying, I had K50,000.00 on hand for which my generous shop owner did not have change. Instead, she politely asked me to take the nuts and come back with the change on my way back from wherever I was going. I tried to insist that I leave the merchandise and return with the correct change but she was firm.

Impressed, I went about my grocery shopping for the day and returned about an hour later with K10,000.00 in hand. She was appreciative and the business transaction was done.

Book-wise

It is likely that my groundnut vendor has never been to school. Where then did she get the insight to be so adept with her business?

In Zambia, school produces some of the most sour customer service people I know. They seem to answer phones and greet customers with preemptive disdain even with regulars. The groundnut buying experience was quite the opposite. I was treated as a friend and not a hostile stranger. I was meant to feel trust-worthy and that the transaction was about me getting what I wanted, not about them getting their money.

What are books doing wrong that the streets are doing right?

Money-wise

Perhaps, the difference is ownership. Owning a business and being employed by one are very different things.

An employee may feel a sense of comfort about the fact that despite poor service they will get a monthly salary. They may even feel entitled to it because of their education.

A business owner, on the other hand, knows that their own money is at risk with every customer that comes in.

In basic terms, money is a stake and the person with the higher risk at stake will be more motivated to provide good service. However, even by this standard, our groundnut vendor went over and above the call of duty. Will I shop there again? Of course. In fact, I’ll do one better and ask you to support their business too.

Keep Swimming

2010-05-06T00:00:00-07:00

Pixar’s Finding Nemo is one of my favourite movies of all time.

Image copyright Disney/Pixar.

I had Dory’s song stuck in my head recently. It is a cute reminder that sometimes you just need to keep doing the thing you are doing to get where you need to go.

The 2010 list of people writing software in Zambia

2010-04-29T00:00:00-07:00

The software development space is ripe for the picking. Here are some outfits in Zambia who are ready for the harvest:

SMSize Solutions Zambia

Updated 2010-04-29

If you write software in Zambia, I’d be glad to add you to this list.

This is a re-post from “Itigi” a software development blog I used to write. The content from Itigi will slowly find its way in to the Pencil Case Studios blog.

Are Content Management Systems Making Us Bad Web Developers?

2010-04-22T00:00:00-07:00

This year’s Face of Africa calls Zambia home. I wonder what impression visitors to the online “face” of Zambia think when they visit our websites. It is a stark contrast. For such beautiful people, we make some very ugly websites. Why is that?

My guess is that anyone who can download and install a Content Management System thinks they are a bona fide web developer. This type of thing is ruining the trade for those who genuinely care and are doing a great job of it. It is putting reputations and livelihoods at stake. This breaks my heart.

Could it be that CMSs encourage developers to be lazy? With the wealth of templates to choose from is there any impetus to be creative about putting a website together? Are content management systems making us bad web developers?

I think so.

Software Lessons from a Tree Cutter

2010-04-15T00:00:00-07:00

Some weeks ago, after what seemed like two weeks of continuos rain in Lusaka, the skies cleared. The moisture-laden soil was too soft to hold a very tall, very old tree at my Aunt’s house. When it fell, it filled the whole backyard. It was an act of God that her house was not damaged. She called in one Mr Zulu, a tree cutter, to chop it down to size and asked me to watch him work. She called me to be a supervisor. I did not expect to be a student.

Small Teams Are Awesome

I am continuously impressed with how a small team of people can accomplish large tasks. This was no exception. Mr Zulu worked with two other tree cutters to take down what appeared to me three days worth of work. In about five hours they had done most of the job of taking the tree down to size. One could now see one end of the yard from the other.

Divide and Conquer Intelligently

Computing Science theory has a lot to say about reducing problems into sizable chunks and tackling those. I had never witnessed this with quite so much elegance. My take on the tree cutting would have been to cut the tree in half from the main trunk and then smaller and smaller pieces. Mr Zulu’s approach was to prioritise his dividing. There was still a stray branch that had settled on the roof of my Aunt’s house. He began on the roof, carefully making sure that area was clear first. Had he taken my approach that branch could have torn a hole through the house!

Cover Your Teammates

Another observation from Mr Zulu’s team was that even though they worked on the tree simultaneously, they were always “covering” each other and making sure that each of the others around the tree was safe. There were dangers from falling branches, trunks, flying wood-chips and even having an axe slip from one’s hands.

Trees Are Tangible, Software Is Not

I wish software was as tangible and tactile as the fallen tree. This intangibleness makes problems in the software space harder to deal with. The ideas, however, still translate.

It would have been a challenge to have more than even five people work on the tree. Extra effort would have had to go to managing who was doing what. I can imagine that more people would have been “resting” than getting work done. That kills morale.

Divide and conquer is a powerful tool that produces even better results when done intelligently. In this particular case had a brute-force approach been taken (my initial approach) the result would have been catastrophic.

Working in teams is about working together. Covering each other in software can be done in bug-testing, documentation, communication or simple observation. The earlier a problem is noticed, the better.

Every Day Is an Opportunity to Learn

As the chips of wood fell out from the tree as the tree cutters’ axes collided with it, I realised that there are lessons to be learned everywhere. Who would have thought that observing people hack away at an old fallen tree could help me be a better software developer?

This is a re-post from “Itigi” a software development blog I used to write. The content from Itigi will slowly find its way in to the Pencil Case Studios blog.

May I have my change, please

2010-04-08T00:00:00-07:00

If you shop in Zambia, you’ll be familiar with the round-off change phenomenon. Essentially, we have become a “no small change” zone because it is no longer practical, in our currency, to use denominations smaller than K20 (K100 in most cases). For example I have been presented before with a bill of ZMK8,526.00 for minced meat at the local SPAR and they rounded up K24 which they pocketed (although, sometimes they round down and loose some Kwacha).
Why are we content to be billed amounts that are impossible to pay accurately?

As a software developer, I enjoy working through everyday problems like this one. I find the round-off problem particularly delicious because it touches several areas well before it becomes a question that software can address. Not all problems have or need software solutions.

One way to deal with the issue is to have vendors price goods to compensate. My minced meat would now cost ZMK8,500.00 or ZMK8,550.00. Problem solved? Perhaps for our local vendors but not quite for our international ones (who make a significant majority).
The problem now becomes, how do they convert from Rands or US dollars or other foreign currencies to Kwacha and then price in the round-off? This could be done but I can imagine that with the daily fluctuations in exchange rates this would be an accounting nightmare.

Even if one could internally round-off, a contributor to the small values showing up at the till is our 16.5% Value-added Tax (VAT). There is a chance that even after rounding-off prices on the shelves, VAT would cause small values to show up again at the till. Why not just get rid of VAT. I jest but this is a “solution”!

The solution I’d be inclined to implement involves accumulating the change. Vendors would supply customer reward cards to their patrons to accumulate the loose change as well as give loyalty incentives. It would not be too long until that change added up to a pack of bubblegum or packet of crisps.
But perhaps that would take too long. Besides, that would mean each vendor would have their own card which could get left at home, lost or never used in the first place.

OK, perhaps a card tied to a particular vendor would not work. How about if the card accumulated mobile phone air-time? Considering that sending a text costs K250 it would not be long until the change accumulated into something useful. Do we have a wining solution here? I think so and this could eventually be implemented as software. Among Zain, MTN and CelZ I am sure one of them could snap this idea up!

Remember, not all problems have software solutions. It is tempting for me to think so because IT is what I do. In writing this post, I hoped to demonstrate that an everyday problem like not getting the correct change at the till could have a component which software could handle quite elegantly.

This is a re-post from “Itigi” a software development blog I used to write. The content from Itigi will slowly find its way in to the Pencil Case Studios blog.

Proudly Foreign

2010-04-01T00:00:00-07:00

Today Pencil Case Studios changes its citizenship. I am taking a leaf from the foreign investors we have in Zambia. They have attractive tax benefits, get speedy service and are actually taken seriously. I’d like some of that too.

I have not decided what to switch to but for today, at least, Pencil Case Studios is “proudly foreign”.

How do you spell "Success"?

2010-03-25T00:00:00-07:00

Meanwood Finance is a financial company that gives Zambians various ways to borrow money. I find that the design of their website is engaging. Traditionally, websites that have anything to do with banking are boring. Meanwood Finance is refreshing.

I noticed a spelling error on their website on my first visit – “success” was spelled “seccess”. If I could have noticed it then the developer would have too and would be doing something about it … I assumed.

Days later, a second visit and the typo seemed to me the only thing visible. Mustering enough courage to contact Brand Central Zambia, the site developers, I explained that I liked the site but not the typo. They kindly responded, indicating that the correction would be made. I had been a good citizen of the Zambian World Wide Web. Progress!

A month later and the typo was still there seemingly larger and bolder. I emailed the company themselves. No response. No correcting of the typo.

Meanwood Finance appears to be a fantastic financial institution. Brand Central Zambia have an outstanding web portfolio. Alas, here we are.

I am tempted to extrapolate this series of events in to an essay on how Zambia is where it is because:

we do not pay attention to detail
we do not follow-through on the things we say we will do.

Can someone help me to see this situation for what it really is.

Textbook

2010-03-18T00:00:00-07:00

Before Pencil Case Studios, I began work on a personal project – a Content Management System (CMS) that I lovingly called “Textbook”. The project got me on to blogging, website design and development and was the germ that started this Studio.

Inspired by Dan Cohen, Textbook was written from scratch in PHP with posts generated from text files rather than a database. I wanted it to be lightweight, portable and have as little configuration as possible. It was a great project to learn Source Code Management (SCM). The tool of choice was Subversion.
If I had to do it again I’d probably have used CodeIgniter (at the time I did not know Ruby).

Here are some mockup screens that were going to make up my first Textbook-powered blog. I guess I have a thing for brown and yellow!

After Textbook, I stumbled upon Wordpress, Drupal, Ruby on Rails, Camping, Jekyll (which I currently use) and was introduced to Git. Had it not been for Textbook, I may never have chosen to become a freelancer.

Perhaps some ideas are meant to die to give life to better, stronger ones. Can I get a witness?

Patience Fruit

2010-03-11T00:00:00-08:00

It has taken me over a year to piece together thoughts for this article. To recap, I am reflecting on Galatians 5:22-23, the fruits of the Spirit, and how they affect me as a freelancer. The truth is that I still have nothing profound to say about patience.

The dictionary on my laptop says that patience is:

the capacity to accept or tolerate delay, trouble, or suffering without getting angry or upset : you can find bargains if you have the patience to sift through the dross.

Delay, trouble, or suffering. We don’t want to go there do we? Patience, then, is a preemptive strike against things that we don’t want.

What are some of the things we do want? I want more clients now. I want Internet Explorer work now. I want my files to be uploaded to the server now. Funny how we don’t get simply because we want. Patience becomes a filler between our wanting and our getting.

A natural reaction is to ask why patience is necessary in the first place – what if nobody had to wait for anything they ever wanted? Wouldn’t that be bliss! I don’t have a good answer to that except to say that this is the way things are.

If there is a trick to being patient, I think it is to use the waiting to do something (else) because waiting for waiting’s sake is frustrating and boring. Thankfully, patience is like a muscle. It can be exercised and one can get better at it.

What do you think about patience?

Dreams

2010-03-01T00:00:00-08:00

I remember sitting down and imagining what I wanted Pencil Case Studios to become. I had organisational charts, lists of people to work with, income estimates and all sorts of intricate details that could only be real in my mind.

Here is the staff I imagined having on the team, intelligent, multi-cultural, vibrant and ready to take on the world:

At one point many of them had email addresses and FaceBook profiles! Great, but none of it real.

There is something to be said for the power of an idea or imagination. However, living in the future is a sure-fire way to frustrate the business of living now.

If dreams are like kites, then there has to be some kind of anchor to hold them down – something tangible to hold us over until “that day”.

To that effect, I stripped the Studio down to its bare essentials. If I had ten seconds to talk about what this was about what would I say?

“Pencil Case Studios is a website development studio”.

It has a bit of a ring to it, don’t you think!

Materialising the dream in to small, actionable parts gave me the space to actually do some work in today. Every now and then I can dream about what could be.

Onani maluba, mitengo ku wama

2010-02-22T00:00:00-08:00

Zambia has lots of land. Acres and acres of it. Verdant in this season, arid and thirsty for colour in the next. Red soil, deep dark black soil, on plains and hills that stretch out as far as the eye can see. It is gorgeous.

We are surrounded by so much beauty and I think I only just realised it.

Sometimes, I think I look to other people’s website designs too desperately for inspiration. All I really need to do is look outside.

“Onani maluba, mitengo ku wama” – See the land, the trees and how beautiful they are.

How do you perfect your craft as a web developer or designer?

2010-02-15T00:00:00-08:00

In secondary school, I used to love mathematics. One of my teachers advised that the only way to get good at it was to practice everyday. I did this with religious fervour and became quite good. Is there an equivalent for web design and development? How does one perfect this craft?

The Complexity

The trouble, I find, is that making a website isn’t just one thing. It is a right and left-brain undertaking. Throw in client interactions and you have a mix as beautiful as a flame lily or as deadly as a black mamba.

In designing a website as a freelancer, there are several things to consider and weigh out including audience, language, how much or how little information to display, where to display it, colour palette, mood, tone, body copy. Then there are technical factors like bandwidth, search engine accessibility and analytics (which doesn’t even sound like a real word). Not forgetting your bread-and-butter concerns like price, deadlines, payment options, payment plans.

Yes, it can be overwhelming.

Where to start

I’ll suggest three steps to getting you from “here” to “there”:

Start small
Work on an area where you are weak
Practice

Start small

I had a loathing for CSS, getting started. Rather than hack away at a large project, I’d break out my problem in to a mini-project focused specifically on the element I was having trouble with. I quickly learned that cascading is a powerful part of CSS but also a bit of a nuisance if you aren’t paying attention.

Work on an area where you are weak

Right now, Javascript is an area that I am weak in so I am working on a project in which I am having to write AJAX. Debugging is proving difficult but a bit of Googling lead me to Firebug for Firefox. A Godsend!

Practice

Kariba dam was not built in a day and it is unlikely you’ll have your website project completed in a day either. You can save yourself time in the future by practicing your skill now. Start a personal project or two even if you know you’ll throw it away.

I’d highly recommend reading other people’s books, blog posts and the like but there is no substitute (that I’ve found) for actually doing some flexing and working things out yourself. I have my math teacher to thank – practice is a powerful exercise.

Crossover

My examples have focused on XHTML, CSS and Javascript but I find that the principles cross over. If setting a price is an issue for you, why not make that the focus of your efforts for a while. The same goes for the other aspects in the long list of elements required to make a website.

Start small
Work on an area where you are weak
Practice

In a sense you are the ultimate project. A tweak here and a nudge there and after some time you’ll be a lethal website ninja!

Tools worth every ngwee

2010-02-08T00:00:00-08:00

What tools do you choose to spend your money on? If there is one concept a freelancer would do well to understand it is value. The yucky feeling one gets when they are sold short is all too familiar. Looking back, are there any gems that you feel to this day were money well spent? Here are some of mine.

MasterKey

I have been a computer-guy most of my life but until just three years ago, I could not touch-type. The change came about when I feel short in a job interview because my WPM was less than the IQ of a goldfish. MasterKey came up in a Google search for “Mac typing software” and I downloaded it.

The trial version was so effective, I purchased the full version probably a week later. I’ve never looked down at the keyboard since.

Textmate

The Ruby on Rails community is big on Textmate. Somehow, I managed to catch the wave before the hype. Textmate really is the missing text editor on the Mac. Bertrand really should consider doing away with TextEdit and making Textmate part of Mac OS X.

CSSEdit

CSSEdit makes an already delightful process (styling markup) even more of a pleasure. It is beautiful software that does an elegant job of helping me work with CSS.

Keynote ’08 (iWork ’08)

With Textmate, CSSEdit and the command-line, I have all I need for doing client work … save the actual design tools. I confess – Photoshop intimidates me. I get lightheaded looking at all the palettes, and menus with exotic labels like “Bezier”. I actually do mockup work in Keynote and convert it to XHTML once I get a good sense of where I want to go with a design.

Keynote makes for a very flexible environment and browsers have far too much character, opinion and personality to make pixel-perfect Illustrator or Photoshop mockups worth it for me.

Yummy FTP

Needing an FTP client to work on a Drupal project, I came across Yummy FTP from a Lullabot screencast. It seemed functional and had a delicious name. It has saved me on quite a few projects where SSH access (my personal preference) was not available.

12" PowerBook G4 with AppleCare

This purchase takes the cake. The 12" PowerBook was the first computer I ever bought. I saved for an entire summer to buy one and nearly got it without the Apple warranty. Two and a half years later, the hard disk decided to meet its creator and I was left with the most beautifully designed paperweight imaginable (I thought).

A trip to the repair-shop could not bring my precious back to life but instead filled me with the some of the best news I’d heard since the announcement that Apple had designed the 12" PowerBook. Since the computer was still under warranty and could not be repaired, Apple would exchange it for the closest equivalent model they currently had. My three-year investment had just about doubled itself in value. And that is the story of how I got my 15" PowerBook G4 which I write you from today!

Value

You’ll notice that I don’t have the latest hardware or software. I don’t intentionally keep myself behind. I do think you extend a things value but taking care of it and using it well perhaps even to the point of wearing it out.

That said, I’d gladly take a donation of a 15" MacBook Pro. Contact me at …

What do you think of the Zamtel website?

2010-02-01T00:00:00-08:00

Zamtel have a poll to get feedback on what users think of their website. “This is different”, I thought to myself as I prepared to vote.

Three options are available to choose from: Excellent, Good and Poor. My mind had already made itself up about the site before I had even seen the poll – poor!

The face of communications for Zambia

The poll has been online since April 2007 and since then almost half the visitors to www.zamtel.zm think the site is poor. What! Zamtel is the face of communications for the entire nation!

A nice bar chart to show how much Zamtel users have disliked www.zamtel.zm since 2007 … but why should they care?

If you created a poll wouldn’t you arrange the items on the list in some order of priority. This looks like a multiple-choice list (Special Paper 1 perhaps).

Wouldn’t ascending or descending order of feedback make this poll more intuitive?

I can’t help but read in to and extrapolate from the result. The Zambia of present is not renowned for its customer service or attention to detail. It is embarrassing but it is true.

Once proud and free

Somewhere along the way we stopped being proud of the things we make. Zamtel is a prime example.

We’d rather import or let someone (foreign) do the work we are fully competent and capable of doing. This is the case in the analogue and digital sense. Our web developers and designers are doing the same thing with website Content Management Systems (CMSs), stock photographs and illustrations. A sampling of major national websites illustrates just this fact. I challenge you to find counter-examples. Yet, we could easily be writing our own CMS themes and generating our own content.

So, what do you think of the Zamtel website?

The 2010 list of people who make websites in Zambia

2010-01-23T00:00:00-08:00

A few months ago, Pencil Case Studios signed up on Sortfolio – a way for web designers to find clients and for clients to find web designers. At the time it was called “Haystack” but later had to be renamed.

We did it to find clients and help clients find us but also to humour ourselves assuming that we’d be the first and only Zambian offering listed. We were right but now it is getting lonely! We know there are other tremendously talented operations here. Finding website developers and designers in Zambia does not have to be like looking for a needle in a haystack.

Here is a list of of people we know who make websites in Zambia. Get in touch or add a comment to this post and we’ll gladly add you to the list.

People who make websites in Zambia

Updated 2010-03-08

Fighting with Internet Explorer again

2009-11-16T00:00:00-08:00

Developing websites is therapy for me. It allows me to exercise the artistic and logical parts of my mind simultaneously. It is also a great exercise of character. Technology has an uncanny ability to try one’s patience, sometimes.

The Leopards Hill Memorial Park website is a project I have had the recent pleasure of working on.

During the testing phase of the project, I discovered that my markup did not render as intended in Internet Explorer 7. Website testing has been a notorious challenge for me because I do not have regular access to a Windows machine. At one point I would have abandoned Internet Explorer testing altogether but as a good friend advised “Microsoft: don’t fight the beast. You cannot win. Period.”

It’s funny because it’s true and for Zambia it is exceptionally so.

Here is what the site looks like in IE7 – the title is eaten up and the navigation menu displays as steps.

This is what it should look like and does so in Firefox and Safari.

How do we fix this?

It is times like this that I appreciate the value of a University education. If nothing at all University has helped me create knowledge networks and give me different ways to look at and solve problems. There are two approaches I could have taken to solve this:

Go it alone and debug and fix it
Ask for help

Option 1 is the path I usually take but time was of the essence so I had to try something new. Google came to mind but this time experience came to the fore and I remembered a book by Dan Cederholm on styling navigation menus.

A quick search on Safari Books Online and voila! Solution found on in Chapter 2 on pages 30 to 37.

The result renders correctly in IE7, Safari and Firefox:

Lessons learned

Internet Explorer is a very big part of the reality of the web developer (despite how hard I try to differ)
Test, test, test (I do, however, draw the line at anything below IE6)
Asking for help is not a bad thing

So Excited!

2009-10-25T00:00:00-07:00

Zambia is starting to excite me again and it has been such a long time since that happened. I can’t quite put my finger on it but there is a pulse about the place that is impossible to ignore — like the sound of a drum calling from the distance to come and join in a celebration.

We are on the verge of something significant, I think.

Designing for the Web in Zambia

2009-07-17T00:00:00-07:00

I am reflecting on some articles I wrote for Citizen Uganda and trying to see if they are still relevant to the current reality in Zambia:

In general, the arguements still hold.

Zambian Web Developers Are Still Designing Without Standards

There is a trend towards using Content Management Systems (CMSs) like Drupal, Joomla or Wordpress leaving standards implementation to the CMS developers. This is a lazy choice and the lack of understanding of valid markup shines through once the site is finally implemented regardless of the Content Management System.

Roles Are Still Misunderstood

The perception is that the web-developer is the Network Administrator, the System Administrator, the Help Desk, the Hardware Technician and should take care of everything to do with technology. That is extremely ambitious! For the few that actually do a decent job, they are not compensated equal to their ability.

Infrastructure Failure

Failure is part of reality. However, I do not get the sense that Zambia learns from its failures. In mid-June this year, the entire country had no power for over twelve hours. Yesterday, all four DNS servers that point to google.co.zm failed. Do we implement the necessary redundancy to care of the failure of critical systems? Do we learn from these experiences?

A New Horizon

The adoption of mobile phone use in Zambia is astounding! Everyone has a cellphone. In some cases, it is cheaper to have two or more to prevent hefty cross-network calling charges.

The mobile device is setting itself to be a common denominator for connectivity in Zambia the way the email address has been in the West.

Are our developers ready to adopt standards and develop content, applications and services for mobile devices? Sadly, no.

The question then becomes, “Will our developers step up to the challenge?”. For Zambia’s sake, I sincerely hope so or (as have already experienced) someone else will …

Vancouver Art Gallery FUSE May 2009

2009-06-05T00:00:00-07:00

The Vancouver Art Gallery held its reputable FUSE event on May 29th. This FUSE was many things and I think the Georgia Straight describes it quite succinctly.

An ironic karaoke lounge, a sample-looping cellist, and a retro hair salon: it must be time for the Vancouver Art Gallery’s FUSE event.

Eclectic? Always!

In particular, I enjoyed:

Ought Apartment — a set of installations of middle-class apartment rooms from the 1950s, 70s and 80s by Reece Terris.
Two Visions — collections of works by Emily Carr and Jack Shadbolt.
Vermeer, Rembrandt and the Golden Age of Dutch Art Masterpieces from The Rijksmuseum. Although, the artists’ fascination with skulls was bewildering, the camera obscura exhibit was well worth seeing.

And performances by

House of La Douche — a 1980s throw-back dance group.
The attendants of the FUSE at the karaoke lounge.

The Vancouver Art Gallery is doing a fine job of making the traditional art gallery less austere and more accessible. While I feel the price tag is a little on the steep side to make for regular attendance, FUSE speaks to and feeds the simple-minded critic and the artist in me.

The Road Not Taken

2009-05-29T00:00:00-07:00

The plunge in to freelancing and small business is rarely a path of least resistance. I have been struggling with that decision over the past few months. I found the words of the poet Robert Frost inspirational and hope you do to.

The Road Not Taken

by Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Balance

2009-05-22T00:00:00-07:00

Balance is a myth!

I do, however, advocate for seasons. In one season, it is opportune to plant and in another to reap. The idea of balance gives me the impression that as one sows, they reap simultaneously and that simply does not make sense — growth takes time.

There is a time and a season for everything (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8). The key is to make the best use of the time in the season that you find yourself in.

Login Problems With Wordpress 2.7.1 On Safari 4 Beta

2009-05-15T00:00:00-07:00

Our Setup

The Studio is taking the plunge in to Wordpress Theme design and development. While getting the work environment in place, I ran in to issues logging in to the site when using the Safari 4 Beta. This post describes how I worked around it and I’d appreciate feedback on an actual solution (and the root cause of the problem).

Our Problem

The installation of Wordpress 2.7.1 went without a hitch. Wordpress has nailed the issue of making installation easy. On the login screen, however, I’d get redirected to the login form whenever the login in formation was correct. No error message. No warning. Nothing.

If the login was wrong, I’d get a message saying:

ERROR: Incorrect password.
ERROR: Cookies are blocked or not supported by your browser. You must enable cookies to use WordPress.

It speaks!)!

I’d never had an error like this before so I fired up Firefox and sure enough, I was let in to the Wordpress administration panel without any qualms.

Our Solution

Since the problem seemed to be with cookies, a quick check of the Safari Preferences was in order. The default cookies setting is to Accept cookies: Only from sites I visit. On switching the preference to Accept cookies: Always, the login redirection problem evaporates and in to the administration panel we go.

This is not a solution I particularly like because the default cookie setting seems to have worked fine until this point. Nevertheless, I hope you find this helpful.

Portobello West April 2009

2009-05-08T00:00:00-07:00

The Portobello West Market is a great place to meet designers, jewellers, artists and other small business owners and entrepreneurs in the Lower Mainland. If you have not been before, it makes for an intriguing afternoon out. I leave on a creative high every time I visit. It puts the principle of supporting local enterprise right where it should be … in your hands.

I am giving thought to having a Pencil Case Studios display at an upcoming market. It is an excellent way to make local connections and support local enterprise.

Here are a few operations that caught my attention:

Donkey Ink Design and Project Industries by Jamie Purches was one of two stalls that catered directly to men. We appreciate that Jamie!
The Raven Iron produces jewellery from reclaimed sheet metal that you have to simply see to believe.
Squareware designs intricate ornaments from glass.
Photography by Frida Saltiel has a penchant for striking imagery.
Ayala Moriel is the first olfactory business owner I have met. This was quite an experience for the senses.

Without question, this was the most impressive Portobello West Market I have attended.

Changes

2009-05-01T00:00:00-07:00

Changing How We Blog

I stumbled upon Jekyll a few weeks ago after reading a post from its creator, Tom Preston-Werner. Jekyll helps me to blog the way I write code and for the time being, that is a good thing. The little blogging monster also integrates with GitHub via GitHub Pages. I love Git so having a hosted, version-controlled website and blog made immediate sense. The site starts out as a repository and you are looking at the result.

Changing Our Hosting

Canadian Web Hosting has been phenomenal for Virtual Private Server hosting. Unfortunately, I have not been watching the Studio’s bottom line closely enough. As such, I will be turning off our VPS and working on ways to make more money so we can use them again soon.

The Studio site pencilcasestudios.com will redirect to pencilcasetudios.github.com while we clean up and finally turn off the VPS in the coming days.
Please update your bookmarks.

If there are any errors with the site or redirection you can submit an issue and we’ll get cracking on it.

Changing Our Income Streams

You can help the Studio grow by donating specifically to our Open Source projects on GitHub or to on our general campaign on Pledgie. The donation badge looks like this:

I figured that if I asked (nicely!), we may get a few helping hands.

Hope you find the changes useful.

Peace-Fruit

2009-04-10T00:00:00-07:00

I have been wrestling with the idea of “peace”. I am finding it an elusive concept to grasp. At the instant that I think I have a grasp of it, it slips, gently, out of reach.

For freelancers, right now might be a particularly trying time. The financial tumult provides a perfect excuse for all kinds of panic and unrest. Perhaps the excuse is too convenient.

I think the writer of Galatians talks about the Fruit of the Spirit because he knows that it is far from natural to us to not be affected by what is going on around us. Peace is about what is going on inside. Peace is about calm in the midst of the storm.

This is not as easy to live out as it is to think about. Who do you rely on in the midst of your storms?

When Git Clone Does Not Work On Mac OSX

2009-04-03T00:00:00-07:00

We had some trouble with Mac OS X and getting Git clone to work over SSH on our local network last week. In case you might be in a similar situation, here is how we went about solving it.

Our Setup

Our repository server for this was a Mac Mini running Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.6 and we used MacPorts to install Git.

server$ sudo port install git-core +doc +gitweb +svn +bash_completion

This installed Git version 1.6.2.

We set up a test project on the server in a bare git repository called confabulator. We also have an account reposadmin with permissions to configure Git repositories:

server$ sudo -u reposadmin mkdir -m 770 /path/to/repository/confabulator.git
server$ cd /path/to/repository/confabulator.git
server$ sudo -u reposadmin git --bare init --shared=group

From the development machine, we pushed the working confabulator project in to the new bare Git repository on the server.

dev$ cd confabulator
dev$ git remote add reposserver ssh://server.local/path/to/repository/confabulator.git
dev$ git push reposserver master

All was right with the world and we were beaming from ear to ear.

Our Problem

Eager to begin coding, we tried to clone confabulator using SSH and got a strange error.

dev$ git clone ssh://server.local/path/to/repository/confabulator.git
Initialized empty Git repository in /Users/florence/Desktop/confabulator/.git/
bash: git-upload-pack: command not found
fatal: The remote end hung up unexpectedly

Hung up unexpectedly? Hell hath no fury like a repository scorned!

The problem is that on Mac OS X, a non-interactive login does not set up environment variables using the bash profile in ~/.profile.

Our .profile on the server includes this:

...
export PATH=/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:$PATH
...

Since Git, on the server, lives in /opt/local/bin

server$ which git
/opt/local/bin/git

and the correct $PATH does not get loaded, it does not know where to itself and hastily breaks communication because of its identity crisis.

Our Solution

In non-interactive mode, you can force login to pick up the correct environment variables.

In our particular case we also learned that a non-interactive login loads ~/.bashrc instead of ~/.profile. As such we created a symbolic link on each server account to .profile called .bashrc. This means that whether in interactive or non-interactive mode, the $PATH variables will now be identical. Notice that this will have to be done for each user.

server$ cd ~
server$ ln -s .profile .bashrc

And all was right with the world again.

dev$ git clone ssh://server.local/path/to/repository/confabulator.git
remote: Counting objects: 527, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (467/467), done.
remote: Total 527 (delta 52), reused 527 (delta 52)
Receiving objects: 100% (527/527), 1.11 MiB | 884 KiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (52/52), done.

Hope this was helpful.

Command-line Tools

2009-03-27T00:00:00-07:00

This year, we’ve been on the hunt for simple productivity tools to bootstrap Pencil Case Studios. By being willing to let go of the graphical interface, we have stumbled upon some powerful and elegant programs that are making life at the Studio a little easier.

Emacs, Org-mode, RememberMode and Git

Until now, we have used Emacs as our text editor of choice when no graphical user interface was available. Some people live in Emacs. We are not there yet. We are, however, receiving the full benefit of their passion:

Org-mode

Org-mode is an Emacs mode by Carsten Dominik for managing notes, tasks and outlines. It is a surprisingly intuitive way of organising stuff in a way that is flexible and organic. Getting started is a bit of a challenge but once you are in, it is a satisfying way of working.

RememberMode

RememberMode is another Emacs mode written by John Wiegley. It is meant to capture interruptions. It allows you to switch context from what you are currently doing to capture notes on the issue that has been brought to your attention and then quickly switch back to work when the interruption is complete. It is as slick as QuickSilver but without the pizzaz.

Ledger

Ledger, also by John Wiegley, is a simple command-line accounting system. To use it, you will need to become comfortable with double-entry accounting. The documentation for Ledger prudently introduces basic accounting principles. This is one manual that is worth a close read.

Ledger generates reports and can do time tracking so may end up becoming our billing and invoicing tool as well.

John is currently working on version 3 of the software. If you are proficient in French, Spanish or German, he could use the help to translate the documentation in to those languages.

Git

So, now that we have the tools, can we use them collaboratively? Well, with Git, yes!

We are currently experimenting with a shared Org-mode repository to share tasks and notes on projects. It is proving to be much more focused than sending emails back and forth.

Since Ledger uses text files as does Org-mode, we are experimenting with Git to collaborate on our financial record keeping.

Taking it Further

The next steps we are looking in to are:

Diving deeper in to the functionality of Emacs, Org-mode, RememberMode and Ledger
Allowing clients to access the Ledger and Org-mode files as appropriate

We’ll keep you posted on the progress!

Possible Improvements For Snow Leopard

2009-03-20T00:00:00-07:00

Snow Leopard as a re-focus release of Mac OS X. Instead of adding features, Apple is working on making the operating system smaller and faster. I am looking forward to it and hope the following things get a bit of attention too.

Bug Fixes

Fast User Switching With Screen Share

Boundaries give me a warm fuzzy feeling inside. I live in Expose, Spaces and stepped that up to separating my different roles in to different user accounts. Fast User Switching makes this a relatively smooth way to switch context. Unfortunately, it does not seem to work with Screen Share.

Nice-To-Haves

System Preferences – User Account Templates

Setting up new user accounts is tedious since one has to log in to each account and make sure the preferences are exactly the way you want them. It would be nice to be able to be able to create standard templates with and simply copy Finder, Safari, Screen Saver and Security preferences and so on from that.

Wider Data Synchronization

If users of the iPhone have Google Contacts synchronization in Address Book I fail to see why it is not available for everyone. The same goes for iCal. Google Calendar’s Calaboration utility is amazing but has the challenging side-effect of not supporting iCal to-do lists. After seeing the attention paid on Safari 4 (currently in beta), I’d really like to see iCal get some love.

Finder – More Control over the Speech Service

The Universal Access services in Leopard are phenomenal. I use VoiceOver to re-read my blog posts to see if they sound right. It would be powerful to have transport controls (play, pause, skip back, skip forward) for the service.

Finder – Application Launching – Quicksilver – Standard

Now that I use Quicksilver, the Dock seems a strange place to put inactive applications. Spotlight application launching is fast but Quicksilver is like lightning.

Software Update

Updating software should be as unobtrusive as possible. I remember a time when Apple used to boast that their software updates occurred without the need to restart the machine. This is no longer the case and that “feature” of Mac OS X is not something we talk about any more. However, it would be great if third-party applications could tie in to Software Update. It is tedious to separately have to update the operating system, and then Firefox and then every individual Fluid application and then …

Quicktime Pro – Standard

Quicktime Pro should come standard even if that means adding the extra $30 to the price of Mac OS X. It just should.

iTunes – Radio Improvements

Radio is one of my favourite features in iTunes. It would be fantastic if I could have some control over what radio channels I have on it and could add or remove channels at will. The Radio interface is lacking some attention as well seeing as how there are different views for Music, Movies and Podcasts but only the list view for Radio streams.

Textmate – Standard

I love Textmate! I am indifferent towards Leopard’s TextEdit. Why not trade TextEdit for Textmate?

Must-haves

UNIX and XCode – Package management – Standard

Every mature variant of UNIX has some kind of package management. The MacPorts project is doing a phenomenal job of bringing package management to the Mac. Having package management as a standard feature on Mac OS X would greatly simplify managing the Open Source tools Mac developers know and love. After-all the Mac is the killer development platform, right?

UNIX and XCode – Git – Standard

No software development project should go without version control. Not one. Having CVS and Subversion bundled with the Mac OS X taught me just how important versioning is. Unfortunately, their work-flow has some fundamental limitations. Chiefly, they have a central repository philosophy. Git shines in that it was designed from the ground up with collaboration in mind. It works with Subversion, embraces decentralised projects and is all around a beautiful tool to use. If Apple does nothing else but include Git with the Mac OS X Developer Tools, I’ll throw a party in honour of Bertrand Serlet!

Joy-Fruit

2009-03-06T00:00:00-08:00

I have an exercise for you to try with the next person you interact with. Ask them these two questions:

What makes you happy?
What gives you joy?

If you can, take the time to actually listen to what their responses are. The questions are simple. The answers, most likely, will not be. Are the two questions the same? More specifically, what is the difference between happiness and joy?

One of the criticisms of “The Pursuit of Happyness” was that it seemed to suggest that money makes us happy. The pursuit of money for its own sake is insatiable. On achieving a financial goal, we quickly set another more lofty one. I am not trying to be facetious or naive. Money is important but do we ever stop to think about “enough”?

I have not figured this one out yet, but I think that happiness and joy are very different creatures.

Happiness seems to come from an immediate state of being – I am happy because I just had a great meal, I am happy because my client is excited about my design proposal, I am happy because I got to see a good friend today. With happiness, there always seems to a condition that needs to be satisfied. Happiness is about satisfaction. Take away the condition and happiness dissolves with it.

Joy, on the other hand, is about contentment. Contentment understands “enough”. I am joyful. Full-stop. No precondition.
Joy is an incredible motivator and a source of strength. It can see us challenge incredible obstacles and emerge victorious!

The intertwining between joy and happiness is intricate. It is possible that we are most joyful when we are most happy. I am, however, particularly interested in exploring what happens to joy in the absence of happiness. The application to Freelancer’s and Small Business owners is obvious. These are people who choose uncertainty and give up sure reasons to be happy.
How can Freelancers cultivate joy? Where does it come from?

Love-Fruit

2009-02-27T00:00:00-08:00

On starting a new small business venture or taking the plunge to freelancing, one will often be advised to find something they love. Steve Job’s 2005 Commencement Speech at Stanford University is right on the pulse of this sentiment. We talk effortlessly about love between people but is the word an accurate descriptor when talking about work, career, vocation and entrepreneurship?

I think that love is word that is regressing to to describe something very different than it used to. It has been robbed of its nobility and drenched in evaporating emotion. It is mostly used to describe things that we “sort of like”. So should we invest our lives in to opportunities that we sort of like?

I think that love is either simple or complicated. It can not be both. So what if we thought differently about love?

A chief divide in a discussion on love is where it originates. Popular opinion suggests that love starts in the seat of our emotions. I think love is a choice. The distinction is a bottomless chasm. If love is an emotion, then we are doomed, if it is a choice, there may be hope for us yet. If love is an emotion, then we have every excuse to begin a freelance or small business venture today, grow tired of it tomorrow and abandon it the next day since the heart wants what it wants. Emotions are powerful, enthralling, visceral and most of all fleeting. If, however, love is a choice, we can muster the impetus to see an endeavour through peaks and valleys.

With a clearer understanding of love, we can begin to pursue those things we choose to love be they people, creations, careers or vocations. This is what love is about – the long-term and important and not necessarily the urgent or immediate. If we truly love something we are by definition willing to nurture it over time – to see it grow.

Fruit

2009-02-17T00:00:00-08:00

I have immense admiration for people who make their livelihood from their environment be it land or water. Subsistence farmers and fishermen understand, intimately, what it means to reap and to sow in season. Their lives depend on that delicate balance. Overzealousness on either end of that balance could cost them their lives in the immediate but also have repercussions to those who would come after them. They understand “enough”.

Does enough apply to freelancers and small business owners? I sure hope so.

This post marks the beginning of a series of posts on fruit. I am taking inspiration from Galatians 5:22-23 and the kind advice of Sameer Vasta. Sameer is a fantastic writer and challenged me to put who I am in to what I write. It is going to be hard that is for sure but I do hope you’ll stick around for the discovery.

How do freelancers and small business owners bear fruit? Can we do so and be profitable while at the same time being mindful of enough?

Building Slowly

2009-01-14T00:00:00-08:00

Happy New Year!

The turn of the year is about as good a time as any to do some cleaning up. The Pencil Case Studios site will be coming back online in phases. Hope you like the new organisation of things.

All the best for 2009!

Pencil Case Studios

Freelance to Full-time

Names

Little Green Machine

Groundnuts

Street-wise

Book-wise

Money-wise

Keep Swimming

The 2010 list of people writing software in Zambia

Are Content Management Systems Making Us Bad Web Developers?

Software Lessons from a Tree Cutter

Small Teams Are Awesome

Divide and Conquer Intelligently

Cover Your Teammates

Trees Are Tangible, Software Is Not

Every Day Is an Opportunity to Learn

May I have my change, please

Proudly Foreign

How do you spell "Success"?

Textbook

Patience Fruit

Dreams

Onani maluba, mitengo ku wama

How do you perfect your craft as a web developer or designer?

The Complexity

Where to start

Start small

Work on an area where you are weak

Practice

Crossover

Tools worth every ngwee

MasterKey

Textmate

CSSEdit

Keynote ’08 (iWork ’08)

Yummy FTP

12" PowerBook G4 with AppleCare

Value

What do you think of the Zamtel website?

The face of communications for Zambia

Once proud and free

The 2010 list of people who make websites in Zambia

People who make websites in Zambia

Fighting with Internet Explorer again

How do we fix this?

Lessons learned

So Excited!

Designing for the Web in Zambia

Zambian Web Developers Are Still Designing Without Standards

Roles Are Still Misunderstood

Infrastructure Failure

A New Horizon

Vancouver Art Gallery FUSE May 2009

Related

The Road Not Taken

Balance

Login Problems With Wordpress 2.7.1 On Safari 4 Beta

Our Setup

Our Problem

Our Solution

Portobello West April 2009

Changes

Changing How We Blog

Changing Our Hosting

Changing Our Income Streams

Peace-Fruit

When Git Clone Does Not Work On Mac OSX

Our Setup

Our Problem

Our Solution

Command-line Tools

Emacs, Org-mode, RememberMode and Git

Org-mode

RememberMode

Ledger

Git

Taking it Further

Possible Improvements For Snow Leopard

Bug Fixes