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What do I do for living?

Sometimes, people ask me "What do you do for living?" I usually answer "I do PHP scripting on call". In most of the social networks that I'm registered in, I add "time saver" as the tag line, where other people write "CEO of XY-company". But that's what describes best what I do when people approach me with a technical problem. After the job is done, most of them tell me that I saved them a lot of time solving their problem.

To do things like that for living, I need larger projects, usually worth several thousand dollars over a time frame of several month. I get these by being recommended by other customers. This business is not a steady one, so I may earn $10.000 one month and only $200 the next one. When I'm not working on a large project, I have more free time. That means I can do some research on new technologies or learn some new programming language or software program. It can also mean that I get bored. Without a concrete projects, it's hard to focus on something.

That's why I did so much research on virtual working platform during the last weeks. It helps to fight boredom if you can get a concrete project. And as a nice side effect, you'll get paid too, even if the payment is not as high as for my regular projects. So I developed a habit over these last weeks to apply for some virtual projects. I choose only those tasks where I see a chance to learn something new or where I can improve my existing skills.

As a result of this strategy, I have now acquired a lot of knowledge on how to create and customize WordPress themes. I was able to do that before, but after developing about a dozen different layouts with very specific requirements, I have improved my knowledge of HTML, CSS and JavaScript a lot. Especially jQuery, that I use to apply JavaScript to my WordPress themes, is a valuable framework that I can recommend to everybody who needs to develop web pages. It helps a lot to create designs that should fit in all browser version, including the outdated Microsoft Browser IE6.

After a while, I've got bored with WordPress themes, so I applied to create Facebook fan pages. Facebook can use a special markup language known as "fbml". It's an extension to HTML and it's used to create your own design for a facebook page. I did some experiments with this before, but since I worked on two customer projects, I have now some deeper knowledge on how all this works. I learned about some of the workarounds that are needed to implement a required design. The first one was one simple page with just an image and a hyperlink. The second one did include a contact form, which was not as trivial as it seems to be.

For all who are interested in having WordPress themes or Facebook fanpages created, I currently do them for a fixed price in the range of $60 to $90 per layout. All I need is an image, preferably JPG or PNG, and an original PSD or Gimp file. This offer is valid only as long as I'm bored and don't have regular projects to do.

If you are interested, have a look at the virtual platforms where I'm active and check my portfolio and my ratings:

My oDesk profile

My VWorker profile

10/12/2010 09:15:38, von Marian , 575 words, 2843 views   Categories: Just for fun, Articles

New species found: the oxabeaver

Ok, this is not a serious post, it's just a short test for my upcoming SEO workshop on WizIQ. Anyway, I need to announce that a new species has been found. It's named the "oxabeaver" and it can be found in north America. The oxabeaver has been seen only once in a valley near a small town in Wisconsin called "Gimp Valley".

The oxabeaver is extremely shy, about 4 feet long and a very good swimmer.

picture credits:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CH_cow_2.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:American_Beaver.jpg

04/06/2010 16:55:23, von Marian , 95 words, 949 views   Categories: Just for fun

What is chat roulette?

Did you ever wonder if it's possible to connect to complete strangers via video chat in no time? Watch this cool video about chat roulette.

http://vimeo.com/9669721

03/04/2010 17:05:36, von Marian , 28 words, 702 views   Categories: Just for fun, News, evomlit

Future of Media

Have a look at what the Internet may be in 10 years from now:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xj8ZadKgdC0

06/16/2007 08:59:19, von Marian , 21 words, 4961 views   Categories: Just for fun

1 comment

Daylight Saving Time

04/08/2007 08:49:41, von Marian , 0 words, 4935 views   Categories: Just for fun

1 comment

if a tree falls ...

02/14/2007 06:36:08, von Marian , 0 words, 1649 views   Categories: Just for fun

How many lifes do you have?

Ok, I have to admit: I just got an account for SecondLife a few days ago. As web-developer and web-tutor, I have to know about this technology (it's always good to have an excuse for playing on the computer).

The Question is: what can you do in SecondLife? Is it just another computer game? No, it is not. It's a virtual world. For Star-Trek fans it's a technology that comes very close to the "Holo-Deck" of Starship Enterprise (the Next Generation, not Kirk's Enterprise).

=> Read more! (How many lifes do you have?)

02/08/2007 09:04:35, von Marian , 287 words, 6514 views   Categories: Just for fun

Don't worry I'm a Web developer

01/28/2007 12:26:43, von Marian , 0 words, 1613 views   Categories: Just for fun

Find strange Names for your web 2.0 project

This is a link that I found in one of the German blogs that I read. It's a name generator to invent cryptic names for your web 2.0 project. Now you know, where names like flickr or zoho come from ;-)

What's really cool with this site: it can also check if the generated name is still available as domain name.

01/27/2007 09:55:24, von Marian , 59 words, 2415 views   Categories: Just for fun

See my face in Times Square

Now, the average New Yorker can see me on the NASDAQ and Reuters Board on Times Square:

http://www.multiplyyourself.com/details.php?image_id=4001

I like this idea for advertising which comes from Intel to promote their new Intel processors. Between Dec. 20 and Dec. 31 2006 you can just upload your photo to the site and it will be shown for a few minutes on the Times Square video board.

You can also win a notebook with an intel processor, but I did it just for fun because the sweepstake is only valid for US residents.

12/26/2006 12:39:02, von Marian , 95 words, 3975 views   Categories: Just for fun