[dundee] Rails work

[James Le Cuirot]

Gary asked me last month where I work that allows me to work with Rails
on a daily basis. I haven't got around to replying until now because my
work situation was actually in a major state of flux at that particular
moment!

The answer is that I'm a self-employed web and server monkey working at
home in Perth. Have been since I moved here from university in the
summer of 2005. It was really hard at first and if it hadn't been for
my large student overdraft facility (which I think I still have!) then
I wouldn't have survived. Things are very different now. I recently put
away £5000 in savings even though my wedding is in 3 months. Not that
I'm footing most of the bill, mind you! :P I'm not sure how much most
people normally save. The way things are these days, probably not much.

My major client for the past year and a half has been a social
networking site in the making known as The Flex. They're aiming big so
it's taken a while but I'm a little tired of it now, hence the state of
flux I mentioned earlier.

When I announced that I was leaving, my fiancée began to worry. But
before she'd even had a chance to walk into town and tell her mother to
cancel the wedding (not really but I'm sure she was tempted!), I'd
simply picked up the phone and grabbed myself another long term client.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, it's all about who you know.
Contacts are crucial. There's always demand out there, you just have to
know who's making it.

So at the end of the month, I shall be picking up an old PHP code base
for kiosks and updating it to work with photo booths. I'm certainly not
PHP's biggest fan so if the deadline isn't too pressing, I'll migrate
to Rails first. The boss is more than happy to do this.

While doing the big jobs, I squeeze in a few smaller ones along the
way. I worked through an agency to begin with and picked up a few
clients there including a couple of estate agents. I'm still
maintaining one of those sites independently. I'd be maintaining the
other one too if I hadn't shoved it onto someone else. It relied on
screen-scraping and I couldn't wait to see the back of it. Ech! I was
recently contacted by a guy who was previously at The Flex about a
small unrelated job. When you have contacts, you don't always have to
call them. Sometimes they call you! Finally, I know a hairdresser who I
regard as more of a friend than a client. As such, I only charge him
occasionally but there are benefits. I built and have maintained the
Gentoo server in his salon for years. It's been great practise for me
and he allows me to host my own site and forum from it. He's also doing
me a massive favour by doing the girls' hair for free on my wedding
day. I gather that is usually rather expensive.

While I'm here, if any of you really know your Rails and don't charge
two arms and a leg, The Flex is desperately looking for my replacement.
They're based in London but you can work from home as I have and it
doesn't have to be 9-5 as long as you get the work done sometime. For
me, it's usually more like 11-7! If you're interested, check out
http://theflex.com to see what they're all about and drop me an e-mail.

Sorry for the saga, didn't think it would be that long. I do tend to
waffle a bit. Hopefully someone will find this interesting. (-;

Cheers,
James