Please help my friend
A very close friend of mine has been wrongfully arrested and detained in Dubai since the 26th of January. So far, without being officially charged.
31-year-old Cat Le-Huy, Head of Technology at Endemol UK, was detained and arrested during a tourist visit to Dubai for carrying melatonin, an over-the-counter jet lag aid. Though once in custody Le-Huy tested negative for drugs and his melatonin was cleared by officials, he is still in Dubai jail with no charges and no release date.
Full story can be found on the Truth about Dubai page. All of his family and friends (myself included) are shocked and worried.
Please take the time to sign the petition set up to help secure his release and spread the word around that Dubai is NOT a safe place for Western tourists, regardless of what their advertising campaigns say.
More information about this and other similarly horrible cases can be found on the BBC news site.
Us and them
Being a contractor is weird. I never know how to refer to things anymore. Is it “our website” or “your website”? Is it “We should do X” or “You should do X”? I just seem to alternate between these fairly randomly without really making any concrete decision about the proper etiquette.
Will my head eventually explode?
The truth about freelancing
- There is always more work you could be doing
- You can easily end up working 10 hours a day, 7 days a week
- It never ends
- Most of the essential work you do doesn’t even pay, but still needs to be done if you want to stand a chance of ever making money
Why did nobody tell me this before I left my last proper job?
Oh yes, everyone did.
Do I regret it? Fuck no.
Finding web hosting in the UK - what a pain in the ass
After about a week of unexpected down time for this and (more importantly) my more commercial site. I’ve decided to find a new host for my other site so I can run my impending CPA advertising campaign without being liable to pay anyone damages for making them send traffic to a site that couldn’t possibly convert anyone.
It’s been a looooooooooooooong time since I had to look for actual paid hosting and, seeing as I’m skint, I was not particularly thrilled to begin with. However, I soon realised that the situation is even more annoying than I originally envisioned.
Seattle followup
Just going through some of my past posts. Two random things I learned in Seattle:
- The original Starbucks really does have the original mermaid on the sign, just like
- Mathew said (nipples and everything!).
- The Moore Hotel I stayed at while at SMX is actually the best deal in Seattle. It was cheap ($70 a night or so), not too glitzy (more shabby-chic decor-wise but perfectly clean) and pretty no frills, except there actually were some frills, they were just really odd ones.
Here is a picture of my bath:
And here’s one of the hand towels folded into a swan:
If that’s not frilly, I don’t know what is.
My room was huge, the people were friendly and I even had free wireless in my room (which never happens in the US) and my own bathroom. A private room with a shared bathroom at the hostel would have cost me $7 more (and wasn’t available anyway).
I will be away until the 15th of May
I’m going on holiday to Morocco 
Breaking up is hard to do
Today, I told my boss I have decided to leave the company. I’ll most likely hand in my notice next week. It was a perfectly pleasant conversation. I said that my personal projects are beginning to be more demanding and full time work is no longer a viable option for me, unless I’m willing to spend yet another summer working 7 day weeks, which is not an experience I’d care to repeat after last time. I was sort of smirking to myself in my head remembering the recent Stuntdubl post about breaking up with bad clients. I didn’t mention the fact that this decision was a process that came about after my growing dissatisfaction of the direction the company has been going (i.e. from independently owned startup to corporate-owned “standard” company) drove me to go and interview at an agency and that it was only then, when I was offered the options of several interviews for jobs that were much better than mine that I decided I didn’t really want a full time job at all right now.
I was shocked to discover how much I was affected by the whole thing. I thought I would feel a lot more relieved but really I feel quite sad and not a little bit scared, as I have nothing lined up so far and am not going to be looking for a bit (and I am not very good with money). The way I reacted really reminded me of some break ups I’ve had when I knew things weren’t working and decided to get out before we started hating each other. I know it’s the right decision: I’ve been bored and depressed as of late and have been feeling grossly undervalued; I really need to go.
I’ve not even considered changing my mind, but it’s been a longish relationship and I don’t hate anyone enough there for this to be easy. That is the problem with amicable breakups.
The revolution will not SUCK
So I kept seeing the ads on the tube about the “information revolution” and was wondering what the whole thing was about. Being somewhat of a nerd (in hindsight) I thought maybe someone had it in for Telehouse or something. Then I saw one of the ads on a website and decided to click and see what the whole thing was about…
My god, how sucky is that? I mean, I know Matt Cutts already pointed out the problems with this campaign from a search point of view, but from an advertising point of you, it sucks even more.
You’d think this massive corporation was suddenly overrun by communists or something. First they ditched the posh butler (obvious symbol of the opression of free will) and now this.
Can you smell the reek of tries-too-hard? I can smell it from here! There’s nothing people hate more than the stench of tries-too-hard. In a month that gave us the lamest PR campaign in the history of mankind the Ask.com campaign may be dwarfed into insignificance (like the product it promotes), but we can’t just let it die without honouring its gross ineptness, can we? Oh, I think not.