Yes, I am Indeed Alive and Well
March 17, 2008
Being a one-man show has its drawbacks. I simply don’t have a lot of time to get to things that aren’t billable – like writing anything here that might be considered “news”. Or eating and sleeping. I do, however, have a bit of info on some upcoming things for Masuga Design.
First, April 1, 2008 will be my second anniversary of “the solo gig” and what better way to celebrate that then moving to a new office. This new place is bigger, less expensive, and closer to my home. How can I lose?
Second, I was at SXSW this year and had the pleasure of meeting the EllisLab team – the folks responsible for the crazy-powerful ExpressionEngine CMS that I know so well – among other very cool people. I’m thinking I should probably get out more.
Third, I almost have the development site for Masuga Design off the ground and ready to take over this old hunk’o WordPress. What else would the dev site be on? ExpressionEngine, of course. I need to eat my own dogfood, as it were.
The new site will be much easier for me to update and will bring with it portfolio updates as well as forums for the AJAX Star Rating script for which so many of you have visited this site. Instead of a bloated demo page with over 300 comments (and instead of everyone filling my inbox with questions and comments) I decided to install EE’s own forum module so that people using the script can get help from other people using the script. Everyone wins that way.
The goal is to be in the new office and have the EE-powered masugadesign.com up in April. Which, if I’m anything like Apple when they announce releases, means the very end of that month, not the beginning.
One last thing: I’d like to say thanks to everyone who has kept me so incredibly busy since the last time I wrote anything here back in September 2007. Those months were incredibly busy but I learned a lot (jQuery, anyone?, added a lot of web development skills to my ninja-belt, and threw some new things into my bag of tricks. All of that hard work even allowed me to take a much needed two-week vacation to Hawaii in February of this year. Thanks again – and now, back to work for me.
March 18th, 2008
It was great meeting you also! Its nice knowing that EE users are as cool as you think they are ;)
When I was doing the freelance thing (8 years) I started to get overwhelmed and “turtle”, and the only way I could force myself out of it was to commit an hour a day to doing administrative work - part of which I felt included writing to people, socializing, meeting colleagues for coffee or beer.
Learn from my experience though… beer != 60 minutes usually…
March 19th, 2008
Hey Ryan,
It’s great to hear that things are going so well for you. If you can spare the time, we should get together for lunch before you move your office away from downtown.
March 19th, 2008
Karl, you are on for that. It would be a pleasure meeting you. I will make sure to wear my Devo Energy Dome so you can’t miss me. I’ll drop you a line soon.
March 19th, 2008
I had forgotten I was subscribed to your RSS until I saw this entry popup :) Congrats on your success thus far. As a fellow Expression Engine developer, I look forward to seeing what your new site looks like and how you integrate EE into.
Best of luck moving forward.
March 20th, 2008
Hi Ryan,
I might be in the GR area this summer visiting my dad. If so, I’ll shoot you a line.
Your business has done so well since its opening. You juggle a lot of different hats and skills. I’m impressed!
April 11th, 2008
Well done Ryan!
It’s great how ExpressionEngine has enabled us to make it a core feature of the business and has propelled me from simple site monkey to dynamic ubermeister.
Learning jQuery with Karl? Some people have all the luck :(
Hey Karl, fancy moving out to Cairns?
June 18th, 2008
I understand the pain and drawback of being a one man show as I have been thru this before. I think you are managing this pretty well as you are focusing on things that are billable only. best wishes