Currently, I’m suffereing from web designers version of something I like to call “Builders Syndrome”.

Its effecting my base6 Design website which had an updated since around February:

base6 – in desperate need of an update

What is Builders Syndrome?

Put simply, its when you can find the time to work on everyone else’s projects, but never your own. Generally this is because other people (clients and employers) are paying you to work on other things leaving very little time for personal projects. My blog has fallen foul of this many times. Just check the archive to see what I mean (well actually you can’t as it doesn’t work – see what I mean?!)

Think about it like this. Do you know a builder? By ‘builder’ I mean a physical labourer, not a dev-kit builder or application builder. I mean the bloke you call when you need a new stud wall putting up. Or someone who will come over and help you lay a new laminate floor.

If you ever meet a builder then ask them about their house. Ask them about the extension they added or the kitchen they are fitting, perhaps that 2nd bathroom.

Chances are they will tell you that its a mess. They are half finished, in need of significant work and they don’t have the “time” to work on them because of other commitments (like your laminate floor).

EVERY builder I’ve ever met says this. And its the same for many web designers. Its easy to start a new project or set up a funky blog. But maintaining it and updating it 6 months down the line is a different story.

I know I will eventually get around to updating base6 and work on the other things. It has to happen, the portfolio is terrible and I want to merge the branding and promotional items areas into a new single “print design” area so I can simplify my business model as I find the current descriptions confuse people.

A few months ago I set up the England for Obama and its been doing OK in the blogosphere since then.

Last time I checked the page rank was wayyyy down around 2 (not much better than this site!).

But today, it has a rather impressive page rank of 4

SO a big thanks has gto go out to all the writers and contributors. My part in the sucsess of the site has been mearly technical, without the recent content boost the site would be nothing.

Oh dear. Poor ol’ Gears over at one of my favourite gadget sites has had a really bad week.

Try to visit CoolSmartPhone.com right now in Firefox and you get this evil screen:

Quote from the site:

A news story here on the front page had been amended and an IFRAME had been added to the end of it pulling code from a nasty website which was attempting to infect your machines with exe files from various other websites. Somehow it had also amended the forum post relating to this same story, which is a little confusing as our internal systems wouldn’t normally fire edits across to the forum automatically.

Lets hope they can get back online soon.

2 days ago I upgraded to the Mozy Home online backup tool. I’ve been using the free version for almost 2 months and it impressed me so much I thought I would shell out $54 for the a year of unlimited backups.

The free version limits you to 2gb of backup. This was enough for some of my design files, a couple of key websites and some important business notes. This took around 4 hours to initially back up.

Barenaked Ladies would be proud

When I upgraded, I went a bit crazy and decided that along with all my design files and websites I would also backup by entire 50gb music collection and my digital photo collection.

So 2 days down the line, this is what I’m seeing:

Its been stuck on 1 week, 3 days for the past day. 2 days ago it said 1 week, 1 day so its actually gone up!