Craig Soup Web Design Blog

Well, the Flash Forward conference is in full force, and Boston is beautiful! The weather here is absolutely perfect right now! The sun is out in full force but without the oppressive heat of late-summer Texas. In this weather, I’d be just as comfortable in a light sweater as in a short sleeve polo . . . which is fortuitous, because all I brought was short sleeve polos and t-shirts!

The sessions so far have been great! Thus far I’ve been to sessions on Flash games, the SWX data format for Flash, and website branding on social media sites (digg, twitter, MySpace, etc.)

One quick note on MySpace . . . Even though it’s ugly, bulky, and downright icky, MySpace can still be a very powerful tool for driving traffic to your website. There, I said it. Enough about MySpace!

I’m really excited about the next session I’ll be going to. It’s called “One Man Bands - Flash Animators Going it Alone.” Aaron Simpson will be the speaker, and I can’t wait to hear what he has to say.

More later!

As you’ve probably noticed, I have historically posted about whatever was on my mind. Most of it has been design-related, but every now and then, I’ve thrown out a few things that really have nothing to do with the world of design or freelancing.

That’s going to change.

I plan on refocusing my blog in an effort to make it more relevant to anyone out there who may be reading it. Instead of writing whatever comes to mind (I’ll save my personal blog for that), I plan to create posts that deal with with design, freelancing, and sometimes blogging.

Hopefully this narrower focus will enhance the quality of my content and keep readers coming back.

Thanks for reading!

My wife and I recently had a discussion about our budget and why it was that even with a cash budget, we were still spending more than we should each month. After careful consideration, we discovered that we needed a small shift in mindset in order to make a significant improvement in our spending habits.

Unfortunately, I’ve always operated under the mindset that a few little splurges here and there wouldn’t hurt anything. And for the most part, I was right. None of the aforementioned splurges in and of themselves were significant enough to make a big impact on my budget. The problem was with the mindset.

Simply convincing myself that little indulgences didn’t make a difference always ends up biting me from behind, because all the little indulgences eventually add up to an exorbitant amount of money that was supposed to go towards paying off debt.

So with the help of my wife, I’m changing my mindset. I am now totally convinced that little indulgences DO make a difference, and even if I see that something I want will only cost me a nickel, I refuse to buy it unless I can do so with the money left over from my weekly cash budget allowance.

I’ve also discovered that this mindset can be applied in any area of life. Take freelancing, for example. If I’ve got an extra thirty minutes on my hands, I have to make a decision on how I’m going to spend that time. I could either spend it watching TV, or I could use the time a little more wisely and jump on Guru.com to make bids on some freelance projects. Sure, the TV may be a little more relaxing, but what if I’ve missed a really great bidding opportunity just because I decided I wanted to watch a rerun of Arrested Development?

So take the time to examine your own life. Are there areas you’re struggling with where this concept of “every little bit makes a difference” could apply? If so, change your mindset. You won’t regret it, I promise!

Hemmy.net recently posted several images showing how Disney animators have reused animations over the years. The pictures were very interesting and entertaining to look at.

I’ve never noticed this before, but it makes perfect sense why they would do it, and I think we could all learn a little bit from it. As Mathias Meyer talked about on his blog, if in the course of your work you’ve had to do something twice, automate it.

For example, if you’ve had more than one customer ask for the same type of Flash slideshow, then there’s no reason to reinvent the wheel. Tweak the slideshow you’ve already created. Keep a directory of files that you could possibly reuse, and when the need arises, resurrect the desired piece and reuse it.