Government Sanctioned Spam

So, I'm sat here, Sunday evening thinking about activities for next year and I've got banging around in my head that I'm going to do a spot of mail-merging.

Oh, but wait - isn't that the same as spamming? Uhh, no - that's advertising. Surely?

Let's compare. I'm sending out unsolicited information to people I don't know advertising my services. Can't tell whether I'm talking about sending a letter or an email, can you?

So how is it, I could get locked up for sending out a half-million unsolicited emails, but no-one thinks twice about prosecuting the thousands of spammers who dump unsolicited flyers into my postal mailbox year in, year out?

The difference? Well, obviously it comes down to money.

You pay to send mail. You pay 51cents here in Canada for a regular letter, and Canada Post must just be loving it that companies use it's door-to-door service to carry their spam. Millions of either addressed letters from banks you don't want to save with, or the even more irritating 'unaddressed' letter-mail where they'll merrily stuff any old companies crap directly to your door? How is that not spamming? And where is the 'unsubscribe me' information?

Seems to me that people who spam via email are doing nothing different, the difference being that the postal services of the world don't see a dime, and neither do the governments, and that must just drive them nuts. How dare they communicate with potential clients for free. How dare they make a profit on return rates that would get heads of traditional marketing departments fired!

How is it everyone cries out for spam-houses to be closed on the internet, but the very governments that are trying to kill email spam don't go after their recently and very profitably privatized mail services?

In this eco-conscious world, shouldn't we be prosecuting the Citi-Banks of the world who regularly send me applications for credit-cards I don't want and contain no less than 40g of fine paper that's been coated with lovely environment dissolving solvent inks? Oh no, wait - we can't do that, since that creates 'employment' and email spam doesn't.

Seems like a bit of a double-standard to me. Either it is fine to send someone stuff they don't want, or it isn't. It can't be acceptable to spam provided you pay through the nose for it - either via mail or fax, but that it's not groovy if it's for fractions of a cent as an email.

So postulte this. If each of those irritating emails you get advertising prescription meds was individually typed by someone, and they were being paid a fair wage with respect to their local economy - would we still be screaming out to have it stamped (ha ha - punn there!) out? No - probably not. We'd whine and complain, but probably not do anything because we know some effort went into it. When we know it's a machine mass emailing, then we get all hot and bothered.

Seems we've got it round the wrong way...

Love me,

My Big New Task List

Hurrah! Christmas is almost here and I have crap loads on my mind - or at least, did.

Thank god for my bathroom mirror. Yup, you read that right. I've got two dry-erase pens on top of my bathroom cabinet and in true 'A Beautiful Mind' form I'm writing my notes and tasks on that.

It seems to work pretty well. It's the first thing I see in the morning, and just before I crawl into bed I can pour out all the thoughts that I've got banging around so I don't forget them.

Awesome. :)

UK Roadsign Translation Fail

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/7702913.stm

Whoops :)

Congrats to Brent @ Good Under Pressure!

Congratulations to Brent Trevors of 'Good Under Pressure' (Pressure Washing and Graffiti Removal)!! He appeared on the front page (above the fold, no less!) of one of the Calgary Heralds supplements this week with regard to his involvement in Calgarys graffiti cleanup.

The connection here is that I've decalled three of Brents vehicles, of which I've managed to remember to take photos of zero.

Anyway - nicely done, Brent, and all the best :)

Attention Darwin Fans!

Fantastic post on 'The Onion'...

http://mobile.theonion.com/content/node/85766

FPDI #1 On Google!

Thanks to a friend for spotting this, but if you run 'tension sheet' through Google, I come out top! How awesome is that!!!!

I also think I come out third or fourth for 'free decals' as well as 'unspeakably low' for just about everything else. But I'm not focusing on that.

Excellent...

Oooh, Cool!

FPDI is now ranked third for the search 'free decals'. Awesome!

Watch this space 'Fail' and 'Epic Fail' decals coming soon...

Easy Install Vehicle Projects Now Available

I've just added a page to the site that deals with a frequent request - that of custom lettering for vehicles. Lots of clients I've met would like some basic, no frills text for their car, van or pickup but don't know where to start.

So I've put together the idea of a 'vehicle kit' where you can one-stop-shop for lettering and get it shipped right to your door. Swing by the site for more of a looksie...

FPDI Summer of Banners

Summer has rolled into Calgary, bringing all manner of outdoor activities. If you're planning an outdoor event, my 'Summer of Banners' promotion will help you attract attention. Order any banner before the end of July and I'll take 10% off the total. Includes as always free shipping!

All banners are grommeted for attaching to poles or fences, weatherproof and always in glorious full colour. Get in touch...

Just Got Illustrator CS3

Well, I say 'just' - I've had it now for about a week.

I've finally crumbled and bowed to the mainstream graphic arts world and put an Adobe product on my machine. Whoopee ;) Not that I intend to use it for design work, mind you. The only reason I've got it is so that I can take .ai files from clients and then convert them into something that Corel Draw X3 can handle.

Big shout out to 'The Fog Guy' (http://www.thefogguy.com/) who I'm working with again for the third time - helloooooooooooo Tyson - go forth and check out his Blog.

S'bout it, really - take care people...

Cool Stuff / R2D2 Repair Manual Shirt

http://www.uncrate.com/men/style/tees-polos/r2-manual-tshirt/

Awesome...

Thanks To Tim @ CasioRepairs.com

Couple of months ago I was on holiday in Mexico and naturally my camera (Casio EX-Z750) decides to crap out mere hours before reaching the highlight of the week - Chichen Itza, merrily displaying the dreaded 'Lens Error' problem. Grrr!

'Repair Master Tim' at www.casiorepairs.com has worked his magic on it, and now it's all lovely and working again.

So, thanks to Tim for his efforts. Great turn-around time and saved me a whack of cash having to buy a lovely hermetically sealed Olympus unit ;) Thanks Tim!

Oodles of New Goodies Available

$12 decal sheets now available in the store. Right now I've just got some auto-manufacturer logos (Ford, Chevy, Dodge, GMC, Honda, Toyota, Acura etc) in there along with some miscellaneous stuff such as the 'Apple' logo, for sale decal, student driver decal, CND logo, some smileys etc.

At $12 per sheet which includes global shipping you really can't go wrong. Not that I'm biased or anything. :)

Open Call For Artist/Cartoonist

Hey,
I'm looking for someone to draw some cartoon-ish illustrations for me that I can use for decals.

Get in contact if you feel up to it...

WarGames is 25 Today!

Wohoo! WarGames celebrates 25 today (well, 3rd June actually) and American Classic Movies is showing it uninterrupted. Tonight, there will be popcorn - oh yes ;)

...and in other news non-bill paying client got in touch with me so that's all good. Yay.

Keep It Simple, Stupid

Well, the 'Pricing Wizard' set of web-pages was a pretty good idea, but I think it was a bit clunky. So, in light of this, I've reworked it into something a lot more simple. As always it consists of my usual blend of bad layout and even worse HTML, but hey - I never claimed to have liked web design >:)

Let's Get Personal, People

Ahhh, gotta love 'Search and Replace'. Just went through and updated all the info@ and mydesign@ email references throughout the site and changed them all over to leighton@.

Yes, I know - a truly thrilling event here at FPDI. I'm sure that this will result in nothing but an absolute deluge of spam but you know what - I'd rather have that and put a unified 'personal' front on FPDI than hide behind lame, faceless aliases.

Sad Day At FPDI

Sad day here folks. Today - for the first time in four years of running FPDI I've had to unleash a 'nasty demand letter' to a client for non-payment.

Kinda sucks. I'd hoped that I'd never have to do this and in typical (global!) business owner style I let it ride on in the hope that after a few phone calls and emails and faxes that the matter would sort itself out.

Alas it has not, and now I find myself sitting in front of Word making forceful demands to a regular client who I hope - has simply 'forgotten', gone temporarily blind (in that he can't see the faxes, emails) as well as temporarily deaf (in that he hasn't heard any of my voicemails over the last two months).

Basically, I don't want to have to admit to myself that this guy is trying to stiff me.

It's hard not to build up relationships with regular clients and this guy is one of my oldest and now I have to do that hard thing which is extricate myself from the situation and unleash the hounds as it were.

On the upside at least I have something meaningful to put on this blog instead of the usual drivel I put out, so watch this space...

Bad, bad Install

Spotted this little gem at a store that will remain nameless, I thought I'd put it up as a testament to crappy installation.

1. The whole thing isn't straight at all with the top of the cabinetry over which it sits.
2. WTF happened to the 'g'?
3. Actually, WTF happened with the 'ge' of George too?
4. ...I'll tell you what happened - they slipped during the installation :)
5. The 'd' of 'Bernard' is also off, but it's hard to see from this image
6. The 'e' of 'creating' is off too, but again, hard to see
7. The 'a' of 'Shaw' has crowded up against the 'h' and left a massive gap at the 'w' where it looks like it slipped, plus, it doesn't align on the base.

Anyway - that's all I have to offer for the moment - love...

Fun In The Sun

Its 0841 on Sunday morning and Im sat here at Calgary International waiting for a flight thats now delayed two hours.

On the upside I've got my Palm with me with my groovy new unlimited data plan which kicks ass, so I figured I'd update the blog to say 'I'm off to the sun' for a week.

I've got this months 'Wired' and a copy of 'Tipping Point' so I'm hoping to get some reading done. Might even get some blog ideas :)

Should have some automotive decals available in the next month along with some minor tweaks to the odd page here and there.

Shout out to the 'Downtown Prophets' - a local band who I produced some decals for during the week. I know they have a MySpace page but I cant remember what it is.

Later people!

The Importance of Being Idle

I can't be the only person out there who has trouble not being occupied. By that, I don't mean in some strange obsessive compulsive manner, or a neat-freak who's constantly reordering the CD collection - I mean in a 'pursuit' kind of way.

Let me explain further. I started Floating Point, um, five years ago - maybe - not sure to tell you the truth. The first three years were an absolute uphill slog each and every step of the way. I had to learn how to apply decals, there was the website to sort out, the physics of driving a plotter and all of it had to be done while I worked around my regular job - which meant an obscene number of late nights to the point I'd frequently nap over lunch.

Something strange then happened about eighteen months ago - it was all done. The website although tragically crap was more or less done. I'd caught up on my accounting, all orders were out the door, I had a number of prospects in the pipe and all my software was reasonably recent so I wasn't constantly having to fight with bugs. The prospect of not having to do anything to do with FPDI was quite horrible actually. For three years I had performed mental juggling of a constantly changing list of priorities - and now it had crept up on me that that list was down to zero.

It was a bit scary to tell you the truth. I felt like I should be doing something. Guilt sunk in that I wasn't being busy, I panicked and started to learn to fly - which is an entirely different story all together, but it serves to underline a point that I started off with - are small business owners a breed of people who just like to be 'busy' - or is it that we can't stand to be unoccupied but hate Suduko? :)

I've often described to my wife that running FPDI - for all it's pain in those first few years, wasn't a job to me - it was an interest and a self-pursuit. Perhaps it's that sense of achievement that a runner gets after completing a marathon that in someway translates into something more business oriented for owners like myself. Or, of course it could be that we're all just outright crazy and that staying up to 2am and crippling ourselves with debt is far more satisfying than lactic acid coursing through our muscles.

When it boils down it, is it just that - that we see it as a 'sport'? Something that as business owners we work at, honing our skills, getting better and the very irritating problem of simply finding more interesting problems to resolve and work through. Perhaps that's one of the differentiating (I'm not saying 'only' here) factors between those businesses that make it, and those that don't. Those that do have people who are as passionate about their business as some people are about playing bridge. I'm probably not breaking new ground there with that observation but it is kind of neat to put into ones own words.

So here's the really scary question - how the heck will we ever quit? Can we ever 'let go'? If small-business owners retire, do they explode? Go nuts? What happens to them?

I say 'no' - we can't (let go). I've always maintained that if someone came along and gave me a big sack of cash for FPDI, I'd turn the keys over to Lola (the plotter) without a second thought. The sad thing here is that I don't think I'd stop needing to do 'something'. I have no idea what that next something might be, but I don't think after all my life doing 'something' that I could ever really detune from further ideas and opportunities.

Here's an interesting thought and one that Seth touched upon in one of his books - can that 'passion' be taught? Surely, you either like it, or you don't? I'm sure plenty of business have got by with very well trained executives at the helm that hated every minute of the experience. Could they have done as well, if not better - if they'd had passionate staff leading the charge?

OK - back to earth. Last thought and one that started off this whole post. How do you 'declutter' - and by that I mean, stop the thoughts from jangling around so that you can at least get a half-descent nights sleep without lying awake thinking about them? I've got a pad of paper and a pen (which lights up!) by the bed that I scribble on, and I find that helps - but I'd like to hear if anyone else has other solutions.

Bit of a rushed wrap up there, sorry for that - ideally I'd like to burble some more but I need to go to bed. The ideas are calling. >:)

Take care, people...

Random Thoughts on Website Building

How is it that this wonderful technological miracle aka 'The Internet' is still driven largely off of software that's no more helpful than a 1980's wordprocessor?

I'm sure there's better stuff out there, obviously the people at Amazon and Google don't sit there merrily pulling their hair out over layout - so how come this hasn't distilled down to something 'simple' - yet?

The way I see it, you're not really editing a webpage, what you're really doing is desktop publishing but without that icky end bit where you have to print something. So my question is 'Where is Quark Express' for the Internet age?

I'm ranting again because I've just spent a happy hour and a half watching 'Mr Beans Holiday' while I updated a few pages on my site. Nothing grand, but naturally DreamWeaver wants to do nothing other than get in my way and make this process as God-awful as possible. I shouldn't whine, I'm sure that there are far, far worse products out there, but I'm pretty sure that they all boil down to the same old problem that you really have to know what you're doing when it comes to building a site.

Clearly, for the most part - I have no idea. It's no secret that sections of my site do truly suck. They don't render properly on whichever new browser was featured on the front of 'Wired' this month, the text goes all crappy if you increase the font size and in places the pictures obliterate the text if you resize the window. All of this Adobe managed to fix with Acrobat - so why can't we somehow just translate that into something easy to use?

Obviously someone has cracked this problem. Professionally built sites don't suffer from these issues, so somewhere along the line that knowledge does exist. Since this is the case, how is it that that technology hasn't become as enabling (read 'easy to use') to morons like myself.

With all the technological resources that the IT world has to offer, why is it so hard to build a solid website?

Maybe 20 years from now we'll all be using sites to build sites, and that the convergence of publishing to the web, paper or TV is so blurred that it makes no difference anymore. One can only hope. Until that happens I guess I'm stuck hurling abuse at my laptop at quarter past ten on a Saturday evening.

Nicely Formatted Blog!

Oh, this is so nifty. Thanks to Andy at Web-Feet for writing some .asp for me that takes the Blogger blog-feed and merrily formats it nicely to this page. Oh so cool, oh so groovy and I have no idea at all how it works - but I was able to change the colours and the date formatting :)

Figs

Evening everyone,
Just a couple of notes here. First of all, I've put up some sample sticker prices right there on the main page. I figured that it wouldn't hurt to put that where everyone can see them, otherwise you've got to wade through the whole pricing wizard 'thing' that I built a few months ago.

Secondly, I've added to the 'support' section a nice picture and description that talks about how a decal is put together. The more people who contact me via the net the more I realized that I needed something that talk about what exactly a decal was and how it was put together.

Lastly, I've started putting ideas into my Palm about topics for this blog. That way, with any lucky, it won't become just a constant stream of 'Hey, this is new!'.

Take care, people...

New Sticker Packs

Quick announcement - new sticker bundles coming soon - yay!

'Small Business' Is A Crappy Term

It struck me over Christmas that I really don't like the term 'small business'. In some way, it somehow manages to come across as like a parent talking to their child - 'there there, it's ok - you're a small business'. Bite me.

When you think that FPDI has shipped so far to over 20 countries - in that regard, it's not 'small' at all. In fact, if you roll together all the jobs that are maintained by 'small business', surely that makes all of us a huge force economically.

Banks particularly piss me off. "Oh, you'd like a small business loan?". No, I'd like a loan for my globally active business - thanks very much. Then there's that whole sham about how small business are such a risk for banks. Yeah, like Ford isn't losing billions each month along with most of the other North American car manufacturers. Yeah - 'big' business is sooooo much more secure, honorable and righteous - give me a break.

FPDI - so far as I'm concerned has a global mindset and that makes me a 'big' business trapped in the body of a single individual, but a worldwide player none the less. OK, sure - I don't have the production capability of a massive shop, but 'small business' sounds like I'm content to only work with people who are right on my doorstep and that's really not true at all.

Maybe this is just ego talking and if it is well I really don't think there is much harm in having aspirations of where you'd like to see your Company go.

...anyway, that's my thoughts on the subject >:)

...and the blog is linked!

Wahey! Thanks to my buddy for telling me how to do an embedded linked frame. Gone is the lame 'mini-blog', now I can post straight to Blogger and it'll all be groovy :) Who knows, this might mean the blog is updated on a semi regular basis!