My name is Stuart, online I go by NxFIFTEEN or nxad for short. I’m a caffeine dependent life-form, often happiest when things don’t work so I get a chance to fix them again.
For almost two decades I have loved all things science fiction or technology. I write software, mostly in PHP – please forgive me I’m leaning NodeJS too. I may have been analogue at birth, but I’m digital by design.
I can no longer remember who I stole my bio from or why.
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This is a question most people who, at any level, class themselves as self-employed. During my research I found this quote I love.
You know you’re a hairdresser when your invited to a dinner party and everyone else is asked to bring a plate, but your asked to bring your scissors
I’m not a hairdresser, but I am a geek and do IT support. I’ve lost count of how many times I’m asked to take a quick look at someone’s laptop, iPad, printer or any other digital device.
Specifically though lets talk NXFIFTEEN.
I wanted to host my own emails. I wanted something with full groupware support, email, calendar and contacts the full range. Since then things have grown. More and more family and friends have been added to the server and as server usage has grown.
I’ve had to upgrade my hosting more than once to support more people. I’ve been covering these costs cause I was stuck in a mindset never changed, at start it was something I wanted and everyone was just tagging along. The problem is, it’s not as true as it used to be.
In the beginning I had a host that matched my needs, but over the years I’ve added more memory, a faster processor and recently a bigger hard drive. Not to mention my time spent updating software making things secure and backing everything up.
So at what point am I no longer doing this for myself but start doing it everyone else. The truth is it’s long since passed.
Now do I start charging for the services I offer or do I continue footing the bill?
The truth is I don’t want to charge, and that’s my choice. Others in similar situations may feel differently. There really is no one size fits all rule. So I’ve had to weigh up my own pros and cons, plus consider my own feelings but in the end I want to pass on the bill to someone else – after all how do I decide how much to charge anyway.
So if I’m not planning to charge, whats the alternative? I’ve opened the site up too contributions…. who knows what this will end up like
Steps so far for 2018
Steps taken in 2017
My Blogs
Everybody Writes
The only way to improve my writing is by writing. So what do I write about? I intend to write more tutorials and how to guides, but since I’m resolving to give my work the time of dwarves these will take time to write and research. So what do I write in the mean time? […]
Self Control Isn’t Working Anymore
Full disclosure, I hate reading self-help books. In my 670 library I think there are only 4 such books. That all said this post was spurred on from such a book. As many may know I’ve been on a health journey for more than a few years now. And to say I’ve been taking the […]
What is food
We all need it and we all eat it. We have a relationship with food and I think that relationship defines our health. I want to eat healthily, but I’ve not been for years so this is still something I need to talk myself into. When I’m good it’s easy, when I’m not I slip. […]
Friends Don’t Let Friends See Ads
I’ve run this site for years and like all things it costs money. Hosting, domain names and even some of of the Wordpress plugins I use and highly recommend. These things all have costs involved, costs I happily fork out each year. I’ve tried monetizing this site in the past with little or no success, yet I’ve decided to try once more. But this time I’m thinking about it. I have come up with a plan.
Growing My Site
My site has been kicking around the months, with periodic bursts of content. The strange thing is as I look back at the last few months there’s hardly a day gone by where I’ve not done something to the site, so where’s all that effort going if not too content.
Week 17 Day 2 – What Can I Do
I’ve been at this whole fitness and health lark for almost six years and yet I’ve never weighed more, or felt so unfit.
EU rules on .eu domain names post Brexit
On Thursday the European Commission announced it would bar individuals and organisations from registering or renewing .eu domain names following the UK’s departure from the European Union. Since I own and operate a .eu.com domain I’ve been obviously concerned.
Restore Zimbra, OSE, from backups
This morning I thought to take advantage of the long weekend and update my Zimbra installation – this didn’t go as well as expected. Instead I ended up with a corrupted server. I was left spending the morning restoring from my latest zmback.sh backup. The process was simple enough, but since I couldn’t find a […]
Week 1 Day 2
What a nothing day. I really don’t like Tuesday’s, it’s also it day which doesn’t help at all. But I started my day off with the same breakfast as yesterday but this time I paid attention to portion control and stuck too the 45g serving. But Pain Au Chocolat for morning break was a key […]
Another Monday
It comes around sure as clockwork. I don’t hate Mondays, honest. I find them fairly harmless today more than most. I started my day with a mostly healthy breakfast. The problem I’ve got with cereals is portion control. I don’t know about most but the standard 30 gram serving just isn’t enough for a full […]