Welcome to ArleyM.com

I am Graphic Designer and Web Developer living in Kincardine, Ontario with my beautiful wife Kristi. I am a music enthusiast and a blogger. Welcome to my personal website. You can learn more About Me, about the Freelance and Contract website work I do with my production studio; Debut Creative, or just explore some of my creative outlets online. Feel free to drop me a line or mail me a post card!

Death and/or Taxes

They say there are only two things certain in life; and I think one of them is about Dalton McGuinty. As you may have heard if you live in Ontario (and you'd have to be really listening to hear it since it hasn't received the publicity it should) the provincial government is proposing a combined tax called HST. In effect this would mash GST and PST into one happy number that would be worked into the price of everything.

This is terrible.

It means being charged PST on things that we otherwise don't pay PST on. In effect, Ontarian's could be paying up to 8% more for stuff. To compensate for this new expense products will likely go up in price.

This hits me particularly close to home as I'd have to start charging 13% on my design and development work. That's a huge increase.

This HST bill isn't passed yet, and the province is getting pressured to drop it. Be a part of that pressure, you can email the Premier at Dalton.McGuinty@premier.gov.on.ca

As if Alberta didn't look too good already.

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Revolution or Revolting?

My quest for the ultimate hand held gadget began as a dream in the 80s. Day after day Penny would help her uncle save the day with the aid of her incredible computer book.



Inspiring!

Finally technology is catching up to my obsession with gadgets in a reasonable way. This week Rogers finally announced that they will be offering Google Android in Canada.



As a Google fanboy this is great news, I will not only have access to tools I rely on like Docs, gCal and Gmail, but I'll be able to surf the web. It's all good news right? We'll see. Some pricing was leaked today regarding Rogers pricing. This report puts Android in a similar price area as the iPhone. This may seem reasonable for a similar product - but it shouldn't!

Nothing with the Apple logo on it has ever cost anything close to similar products. Call it brand-tax or whatever you like; that's the Apple allure. Charging the same thing for Android doesn't make sense - especially when you consider that the Google operating system itself is open source and free!

I don't think for a second that the Magic or Dream should be free, but the $200 range seems too steep. Hardware-wise I have read reports that the iPhone has more memory and other specs (though I can't seem to find a reasonable chart comparing specs yet).

As irritating as the whole thing seems, I will reserve my boycott until I have had a hands on with this charming looking Android app. Maybe someday soon I can save the day too.

Will Android change your life? Do you feel that it's worth as much as an iPhone? Weigh in!

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Debut Creative is Live!

After being in business for nearly three years I've finally made a website. I love how ironic it was to not have a site, as I work on websites every day - but it desperately needed to happen.

I've been so blessed with Debut Creative that I've never needed a website: I'm insanely busy though I haven't advertised. I rank well and have never worked on my own SEO. Websites today are more important than ever, and I needed something to show my clients the kind of work that I do.

In the coming months a similar look and feel will be on this ArleyM website. Stay tuned!

http://debutcreative.com/

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☼ Amazon S3

Do you ever watch the bottom left status bar in Fire Fox when a page is loading? I have been noticing amazon.s3 in the loading URLs on sites like Twitter and DropBox. I have also heard of it mentioned it in interviews with developers. So what is Amazon; a book retailer doing on these websites?

Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) is a web hosting service that can be used to host files such as images. You wouldn't host your site here, just assets which would be called into your site.

So why do this? Their data rates are a lot less expensive than many hosts. For example Amazon charges $0.15 per GB per month for the first 50 TB of data transfer downloads (by viewers visiting your site). The Hosting I use allows for 1 TB of transfer and there's an additional charge if I go over this.

For the average site this would be overkill and a needless expense, but sites like Digg.com that see upwards of 40 million unique visitors a month have to watch every kb that their site makes users download.

It goes to show that Cache can save your site money!

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Kristi's turning 30: Birthday Card Request

Hello friends! This May 10th my dear wife Kristi turns 30! I think she's dreading the big 3-0 a bit and is feeling old; so I'm appealing to all my friends to mail her a secret birthday greeting! It would cheer her so much to start receiving birthday cards... best wishes only please

Thanks!

McBlain
PO Box 346
Kincardine, ON
N2Z 2H8

Yeah, she doesn't read my blog.

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Arley McBlain’s got a lot to learn...

After 14 years of making web sites it still feels like there is an infinite amount to learn just in the field of CSS and XHTML. For the next few months I am going to endeavour (deadlines permitting) to learn & document a web tip or best practice every day and post it on arleym.com.

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☼ CSS Positioning

It seems to happen all too often, some Div is being uncooperative and I spend a handful of minute trying to reign it in. When I was in college the only CSS I learned was the colouring of scroll bars in IE6; so positioning for me has been pretty much self-taught and in times of trouble I often resort to some trial and error. Today I finally took the time to get the definitive answers about positioning and found this excellent post http://www.barelyfitz.com/screencast/html-training/css/positioning/

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Day Trip

I got my G2 drivers license only last Fall, so my recent trip to North Bay for a client meeting and to help out with Tim Lum's presentation was a new record journey. Kristi was kinda worried and told me more than once to drive safe and take lots of breaks. It's nothing short of beautiful irony then that I went ahead and got the car mashed up on the very first break. Luckily I was nowhere near the car at the time. It was the parking lot of a Tim Horton's Peppermint tea stop when a cube van clipped me. I don't think the damage is too bad for either vehicle, but still it was a bummer.





I also realized through this trip that even one night apart from my wife is way too long. We love and need each other too much. Neither one of us slept particularly well.

At any rate, the client meetings were fun (I miss working in an office I think), and the presentation Tim did was a blast. I even got to share my 2 cents which I blogged about on the Debut site here.

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Recession, shmecession

Every news outlet is talking about recession, but I'm thinking supersession: The last month has been the busiest time in my career!

I am in my third year of freelancing and contracting. I have never done any form of advertising; in fact I only just launched the beta version of the Debut Creative site that is more than just a business card. Yet somehow business keeps growing! Most of those approaching me for work I know, or have heard of my through word of mouth.

With this new growth I have even had to subcontract a couple projects. I have been careful to ensure that I am still involved in the process every step of the way to ensure my clients are getting the Arley-attention they came to me for, and do not feel outsourced. Working with subcontractors gives me the exciting opportunity to work as a creative director which is a new hat.

If recession has anything to do with this growth it is that companies are maybe avoiding the larger agencies to work with the small shops. These are certainly exciting times.

If I'm blogging less it's only because I'm making hay during times when the weather man is calling for rain!

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Project 1up: The Launch of Debut Creative

I'm entering my third year of freelance and contract work with my business identity Debut Creative, and the website still looks like this.


Yes, as a web designer and developer it is incredibly ironic that I don't have a proper site. I have rationalized it in several ways:

• I'm too busy with paying work


• I've never needed to advertise at all, why start now?


• I love irony

At the same time my colleague, long time friend, and business rival Tim Lum has an equally un-website for his studio PixelFlex.

Tim and I have a friendly competitiveness going on (despite the fact that we routinely subcontract to each other), so we have decided to take part in this years CSS Reboot. Essentially we are going to completely overhaul debutcreative.com and pixelflex.com respectively and launch Alpha on May 1st 2009. At the same time we are going to release "before" shots of our sites as they are before the reboot, along with some site traffic / popularity statistics.

After one year (May 1st, 2010) we are going to compare numbers again. Whichever studio site comes out on top in terms of popularity, wins! The losing studio will then donate time to the charity of the winners choice. We'll have more details a little closer to the date.

This is a friendly and competitive way for Tim and I to pit our SEO and marketing wits against one another while hopefully finishing the sites that we may otherwise never make the time for.

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Music Journal

Dessert Island #4 Live at Folsom Prison

I hate country music. I have always tried to stay open minded about it, but the guy in the pickup truck with the flannel shirt singing soft-rock with cheesy metaphors has always been wrong no matter how I look at it. It wasn't until 2002 that I heard Johnny Cash and the way country music used to be.

Cash's Folsom Prison album is totally captivating, and way different than any live album I have ever heard before. He's in a prison, you hear the men laughing, moving chairs and clapping. It's obviously a major highlight in their dreary prisoner lives. Everything from Johnny's sense of humor, to the songs he plays to his banter is so welcoming. It's hard to put into words.

Why is it on my top5?
This is also not my typical kind of music, but everyone needs change now and then. This album is very light hearted, and if I was stranded on an island I might need that.

This album always makes me remember one muggy garage sale day. I bought a collection of 600 crappy country music records for $20 to hopfully find the LP that belonged in the Folsom Prison sleeve I had found. It wasn't there. I later bought the record for a dollar from a friend.

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Latest Mixtape

Mix 022 - First mix of 2009

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Contact me
Arley McBlain
myfriendarley at arleym.com
519-396-8233
PO Box 346 Kincardine, ON, N2Z 2H8
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