Robbie's Inner Workings…

Ok, so as some of you may be aware, especially if you read my last post, I was offering people the chance to win a brand spankin’ new Green iPod shuffle. All they had to do to be in the running was to come up with an idea for a name for my new business. I’m sure you’re all dying to know, who is going to win the shuffle… Well, I can tell you that I have successfully acquired  a name that is unique, original, easy to remember, is relevant and usable in terms of domain registration. Now, there is good news and there is bad news… Actually, it’s not really bad news… I’ll start with the not-so-bad news then…

There were some really fantastic ideas coming in and I’d like to really thank you all for your contributions. You definitely gave me some ideas to think about. However, I didn’t feel like I really found what I was looking for. So unfortunately, no one has won the prize of the iPod shuffle… yet… But stay tuned, because you’ll be given another chance to win this fantastic prize and this time it will be even easier! But now for the good news…

After all the submissions I decided to sit down again and see what I could come up with myself, even though having tried numerous times already. Fortunately this time I was finally able to come up with something that I really liked and thought could work. So, After I came up with the name, played around with logos for a bit I had such success that I registered the domain nearly straight away, and thus, it was born.

I would like to introduce you to…

Leafkit! Sustainable Multimedia Design & Development.

What do you think? Like it? Hate it? Something you would change? Honestly, I’m open to ideas, although I have already registered the domain and started on the design obviously! Anyway, I’d love to know what you think of it. The site is currently in “Under Construction” mode, but will be up and running soon I promise! So tell your friends about it!

Now, as for the competition… the Green iPod shuffle, is still up for grabs for anyone. This time, you don’t have to think about anything, no use of your intellect whatsoever!  How good is that?! So, what is it that you need to do? Well, now that the pages are up and running, I’d love for you to go along to Leafkit’s own Facebook page and/or follow Leafkit on Twitter! It’s that simple. Become a fan, follow on twitter or facebook, and be in the running!

Now that it’s established and primarily up and running, I would also like to inform everyone that Leafkit is open for business and happy to provide you with professional design services. Anything that you need! If you’re interested in the services we provide, feel free to shoot me an email to …

Once again thanks for visiting my site! Please come back soon!

Cheers.

Robbie.

Hey everybody. See that little green thing just to the left here? That’s right, you’ve got a chance to win this 2GB Green iPod shuffle! If you don’t know about the iPod shuffle or you’re saying to yourself, why would I want an iPod shuffle? You can head over to the Shuffle page at Apple and take a look. You’ll notice that it’s small and compact, perfect for on the move. I know there are many colours to choose from, but there is a reason that I’m offering a Green one. Although it does look exceptionally cool, it’s more relevant of what I’m asking of you all…

Ok, so here’s the deal. I’ve decided to start getting back into my design work, including but not limited to web design, logo design etc. I’ve got a plan worked out, but the problem I’m having is… coming up with a name for, i guess you could say, the ‘business’. I’ve had a couple of ideas, but it’s hard to come up with something that is unique, interesting, available in domain registration and available for business name registration. It seems that everything I’ve come up with so far is taken in some aspect and sends me back to the drawing board. This is where you come into it…

I’m giving one lucky person the great opportunity to name my new business identity and if chosen, be the winner of a green iPod shuffle! Even if I don’t choose your idea directly, I may choose to follow the direction of your idea in which case you will still be awarded the prize! Here’s the scope: I want to be able to provide design products and services to everyone and anyone that needs it at reasonable prices, and I want to provide these products with the client’s products hopefully being carbon neutral. Hence the green.

Yes, computers, websites and the internet do use energy, directly and indirectly. Carbon offsetting these products means offsetting the the computers used to create the products as well as the servers that hold their websites to reduce their carbon footprint. Think about facebook, which is just such a huge website… Well somewhere in the world, there are servers (like big computers) that are turned on 24/7 to make sure people can access it. That is a lot of computers that never get turned off and use up a large amount of energy, not to mention the millions of people that access it everyday using their own computer.

UPDATE: In summary: All I’m looking for at the moment is a name. Something relevant to the scope of my brand, which is carbon offsets and reasonable prices. Hopefully this clarifies things a little further.

So that’s basically it. That’s my idea. But yep, can’t think of a name. That’s the only thing holding me back so far. So… do you think you’ve got what it takes? Think you can come up with a unique, interesting business name for me? If so, you can email me: rjcoutts (at) gmail (dot) com (replace the at and the dot of course) or you can leave your idea in the comments…

Thanks for reading! Hope you can come up with something new and fantastic!

Cheers.

An idea or concept may or may not be chosen, therefore a prize may or may not be awarded. Only a chosen idea or concept will be the recipient of said prize. Submitting ideas and or concepts transfers the rights of said idea or concept to the author of this post therefore ownership is obtained by the Author. Cheers.

Hey everybody! Oh my goodness what an epic journey it has been trying to get this thing back up and running! It has been more than a year since my last post, and many things have happened since, but I’m back for good now! I promise!

As you can see from the picture and the witty title, I am getting back into the swing of things. This means I’ll be posting a lot more often with interesting (mostly) bits of information for you all. The first bit of information I’m going to release to you guys is basically the whole reason how I made it to this point. You see, for the past year, I’ve been avoiding this website like the plague, because I was afraid. Yep, scared of a website. Why? Because it was in such a mess and I didn’t know how I was going to fix it up. I made a couple of attempts in the past few months, but today, having nothing to do, decided to sit down and have a real go at it, and I did. I’m about to go into some Internet techno-babble here so be warned… For those of you that know WordPress at all, you might know that it’s up to version 2.9.1 right about now… well, I was still on version 2.0.2 with only a manual upgrade possible. So yeah, I tried numerous times to export and import my database in Wordpress to a new one, but was constantly greeted by errors and confusion. So, I did probably what I should have done some time ago and searched the WordPress forums! And Alas I found my solution!

Basically I wanted to export from an older WordPress database to an upgraded fresh install WordPress database. Sounds simple, and I didn’t think it was, but it turns out that it is. So what did I do? After my searching I was lead to the WordPress-to-Wordpress Import Plugin from the guys over at Technosailor.com. At first I thought it too good to be true, but from seeing the comments of 3,000+ I decided to give it a crack. Lo and behold I was finally & safely able to export my precious precious posts, pages and comments. The next part I also wasn’t too sure about, but WordPress has advanced so much that I was simply able to import everything with one click! So here I am, writing in a brand new user interface, installing themes and plug-ins like nobodies business and using little funky things like widgets!

WIDGETS ARE AWESOME!

Anyway, from here on out you can expect to find me posting more often, hopefully with some points that you might find interesting. I tried to use my previous custom theme but as it was built for the previous version is didn’t seem to want to work. So the theme you’re seeing at the moment is just a theme I picked from the ‘featured’ in the theme section of WordPress. It’s the ‘Piano Black Theme’ created by mono-lab. It’s a pretty sexy theme and is compatible with widgets. I hope to be recreating my own theme in the near future and hope it to look as good if not better than this one!

A few other things on the horizon, I plan to re-start my freelance design work, including web design and such. If you’re looking for someone to build and/or maintain a website for you or your company, feel free to give me a shout and I’ll be happy to help you out. Not just websites too, logos, business cards, invitations, the works! Also keep an eye out for a couple of brand new web sites I’ll be starting that some people may find interesting.

Well, that’s about it for now I think. I will definitely be posting more and more so bookmark me and follow my RSS feed!

Thanks for reading!

Cheers.