Freelance, Footloose

I've been keeping long days and nights to meet a huge project deadline, so forgive me – the subject of sleep (or lack thereof) is on my mind.

Here's another helpful post: Garry Tan ruminates on 7 super simple ways to stay awake and maximize consciousness. I've always managed to resist the call of Red Bull (#3 on his list), but drinking more water (#6) keeps me going day or night.

Last night I worked till 3:45 am, making it almost a 20-hour day. What kept me going, besides the usual steady intake of water, was a cup of coffee (black, as usual) at 10 pm and a handful of oatmeal raisin cookies around 1 am. I'm not going to make a habit of it, though.

Labels: Sleeping habits

The i-sleep USB pillow --- plug it into a USB port, then it'll inflate when the laptop is closed and you're ready for a quick nap without moving an inch from your workspace. I've dozed off beside my laptop before (not usually on it, because that's when you wake up to a screenful of gibberish and/or run the risk of executing some kind of fatal command on your hard drive) and the little plastic pillow here looks more comfortable than my arm.

What would be neat if it auto-deflates after, say, 10 minutes, so you can get right back to work.

I think this was a student project from a couple of years ago, so I don't know that it's on the market. Would've made a neat holiday gift!

(Via Unclutterer.)

Labels: Sleeping habits, Working at home

I've always considered myself a night person, so of course I had to click on "3 Smart Things About Sleeping Late" --- whereupon I was gratified to learn that creative types tend to be night owls who "fire on all cylinders by crashing near dawn and awakening at the crack of noon."

As I've said before, I don't run on a schedule like that but I know some freelancers who do. Maybe it's the smart thing to do after all; maybe the problem with a 9-to-5 routine is not just the constraint of being stuck in an office for a specified number of hours, but also that it's the wrong hours that are being asked of us.

If creative types tend to be night owls though, I wonder what they/we used to do before the invention of the lightbulb ...

Labels: Sleeping habits

There is something particularly satisfying about collecting a long overdue cheque directly from a client on the penultimate day of the year. I picked it up in person because after ten months and a multitude of emails nitpicking about address changes, I wasn't about to leave anything to chance.

The thing is, the overdue payment was for only S$100. I think the amount of time I spent chasing it down worked out to more than that in billable hours, but on the principle of it I refused to let the matter go.

Here's to a new year with no egregious overdue payments!

Labels: Money

If anyone is still reading this blog, I apologise for the egregious transmission disruption. I've been completely buried by work since the last posting (more than three months ago, I know) and I'm going to rethink this site in the new year after this wave of work has passed.

In the meantime, I think the latest Freelance Freedom comic (special holiday edition!) hits the spot. Merry Christmas, everyone!

Related post: A comic strip for the rest of us

Labels: Site foo

I thought I was pretty clued in to teh intarwebs, but I somehow missed the Post-It Note Jaguar phenomenon from a couple of years ago. Still, it's not too late to contemplate the intellectual property implications of what transpired thereafter. As Melanie Phung recounts in "3M Carjacks the Post-It Note Jaguar":

This is the story of how a $24.5 billion multinational corporation refuses to pay a small licensing fee to the amateur photographer who inspired its commercial campaign.

Unsurprisingly, none of this casts a good light on 3M or on the prospects for the little guy protecting his/her copyright in the current media environment.

In Singapore, I've heard of ad agencies poaching visual concepts wholesale from images on Flickr and other image-sharing websites. To be fair, this was happening in the days before Flickr; as a user named Jamie comments on the post linked above, photo stock agencies have had to settle cases of copyright violation too.

But now, not only are more images and content available online (and therefore easier to steal), the individual content creator also probably doesn't have the resources to lawyer up against a big firm. Given prevailing attitudes towards creative work in Singapore, that doesn't make me optimistic ...

(Thanks, Darren, for IMing me the link.)

Labels: Advertising, Copyright, Legal matters, Photography

Despite how high-tech everything's gotten, I still like and need to use paper notebooks. As I've mentioned before, PDAs are too fiddly for taking notes during meetings or interviews, plus notebooks can be handy for brainstorming or planning before the final version materialises on the computer.

I have lots of notebooks for work, most of them blank and freebies picked up from various clients or events. The one I'm most embarrassed to use, although it has the nicest paper, is a Singapore Writers' Festival notebook; it's embarrassing because it has my name stamped on the cover. And because I don't foresee saving these work notebooks for posterity, it's usually a throwaway one that I pull out at meetings.

Having said that, I like fondling blank books and thinking of what they could be used for, and now I'm lusting for a new one more than ever, thanks to Deeplinking's "Notebook Reviews" (via monomania). It's the most thorough review of (paper) notebooks I've ever seen, and I like that it starts off by pointing out some Moleskine shortcomings and myths. And hey, it rates Muji notebooks as having "very few" minuses, which I totally agree with; I always get a hardcover Muji notebook when I need a vacation journal.

The notebook that was news to me was Rite in the Rain, which it describes as "1.) sturdy as hell and 2.) can be used in the shower, where many people get their best ideas." I'm embarking on a major wet-season travel assignment soon, so I like the idea of having a notebook where the ink won't completely wash out if I get caught in the rain. Unfortunately, there don't seem to be any Singapore distributors for their products.

I was given a Moleskine for my birthday earlier this year (the Ruled Reporter Notebook, if anyone cares), and it's still in its original shrinkwrap because I couldn't think of any good-enough use to put to it. It might end up being used for this travel assignment --- after all, it's been lying on my couch for a good six months now. But I'm gonna feel self-conscious every time I crack it open ...

Labels: Doing business, Writing