Tons of small tasks this week. Started working on a new website for my (I believe) first swiss client who runs a paragliding business. Did a few things for Instagram, connected with new people from all over the world. Pretty cool. Tried to understand what people like about LinkedIn – again. Don’t get it. Was asked twice in two weeks if I was available for Kirby CMS support. That’s kinda new, I only do support for my own projects. Have to think about that. Usually I don’t like digging through other people’s code.

Duane Toops wrote a cool article about how he uses my little Artifactor project as a basis for his analog collage artworks. Very nice. And also quite flattering.

Just listened to the new The Jesus Lizard record and it's better than I thought. Great bass lines. Albuquerque by The Picturebooks is on high rotation, also bought The Major Minor Collective on vinyl, really cool collabs. Promises by Floating Points is great music to design to. Watched Bronson feat. Tom Hardy last night. Very weird movie but Hardy again is one of the best of his generation. Rewatched The Perfect Storm by Wolfgang Petersen after 20 years or so. Still like it, not necessarily for Cloeney & Wahlberg but for Reilly, Fichtner & Hawkes. Just saw a teaser for Squid Game S2, that could be interesting. Started again with The Creative Act by Rick Rubin. First attempt caught me on the wrong foot. Returned to Debbie Millman's Design Matters podcast for some episodes. Ai Weiwei was surprisingly entertaining. Steven Heller was surprisingly boring. Neville Brody has some interesting standpoints. Tried to listen to Courtney Love on Marc Maron but gave up. Stumbled across Neil Gaiman on The Tim Ferriss Show, great interview.

On October 1st, I will have been self-employed for exactly 15 years. If I had an agency, I’d probably go out to celebrate now, but as a freelancer, it’s a rather sad picture, haha. Anyway, what’s interesting is that I’ve rarely had as many new clients and new client inquiries as I’ve had since the pandemic. It’s as if people suddenly realized, oh, this internet thing isn’t so bad when I need to run my business. But right now, it’s extreme. Inquiries are coming from the strangest places, and some seem desperate. 'You don't do WordPress?? Do you happen to know anyone who does WordPress?' I’d hazard a guess that there are 1 or 2 providers out there.

Checked out the new records by Tycho and Badbadnotgood—both are great. Listened to Teenage Rebel by Nestor, but halfway through, the ‘80s called and reclaimed it. Waiting for the new Devin Townsend album, Powernerd. I did some research on a specific matter: I always thought we saw the Foo Fighters at the Hard Pop Days in 1997, but now I believe it was the Bizarre Festival in 1997. If that’s true, it was The Colour and the Shape tour, already featuring Taylor Hawkins, which confuses me because in my memory, it was the first Foos tour. Anyway, went to see Alien: Romulus this week. Loved the less-CGI approach; it felt almost like a great indie film (not to be confused with the whip-wielding Indy). Rewatched my favorite Bruce Lee movie, The Way of the Dragon (猛龍過江), and also the documentary Be Water. Now I’m thinking about getting a tattoo of the Golden Harvest logo, because that was a sign of an entertaining movie in my childhood.

Back in the game. Summer holidays are over, and they felt so long that I started getting desperate to return to work. However, after just 4 days, work is already piling up again. I received two new leads from my Kirby CMS Partner page, which is great, but I already have to push some tasks back to October. I’ve also neglected Instagram for weeks again, which wasn’t part of the plan. I just can’t stick to it consistently on a daily basis for too long.

Enjoying the new 1984 audio drama, read by some actors, featuring music by Matt Bellamy. Short, but well produced. Went to Wolfmother. They were okay, despite the most bored drummer I‘ve ever seen. Actually liked the support, The Picturebooks, more. Even bought a shirt and had a quick chat. Watched a documentary about the Rockfield studio, what a strange story. Need to catch up with the final Cobra Kai season – the 80s kid in me doesn’t feel as much at home as with Stranger Things, but it’s entertaining.

I haven’t traveled much lately. A week of camping in the Emsland and the Netherlands. Next week I'm going to Zeeland again, and after that, by special request of my daughter, a week in Mallorca. I haven’t been there in over 25 years. Despite the island’s bad reputation, I have quite good memories of my last trip. I’ve booked a catamaran tour. Curious to see how it goes.

Summer break – kind of. Working a bit between two vacations. Good time for some maintenance and to try and get done a few things I've been putting off forever. For instance, finally switching from CODA to NOVA. Damn, I think I've been paying for the license for 3 years already. Anyway, I'm enjoying the calm before the storm. The next projects are already in the pipeline.

Not much is happening on this front at the moment. I've mostly ignored Instagram again for the past three weeks. Although, I was active on an account that no one knows about, hehe. There are two competitions coming up, and one of them has a pressing deadline. Guess I'll have to work on that this coming weekend. I’ve been getting to grips with my Ricoh GR IIIx again, and as an amateur photographer, I sometimes find the technology a bit overwhelming. But I think I’m slowly starting to understand what the camera wants from me. Oh, and I built a new version of the Artifactor project. The images are now pulled via the Unsplash API, and in the process I’m grabbing some data, so now there’s some quirky typography in the artworks. Oh, and I tidied up Notion quite a bit. That’s not a side project, but that’s where I organize them. On second thought, there’s been quite a lot going on after all.

Finally relaunched the shop of a client I have been working for over a decade. Must be the fourth or fifth incarnation of the project. Sort of slowly preparing for the holiday season by getting a ton of small things done and timely informing the clients that I will be away for a couple of weeks. Away, as in "no phone calls, and yes, I am serious". Have to complete one Kirby CMS project next week. Then I'm out.

Just finished the autobiography of Geddy Lee and started with Billy Idol. Both quite entertaining. Stumbled into another round of Stranger Things and can't wait for the final season. Watched some clips from BASEketball, one of the funniest movies ever. Then I found a VHS-to-YT 4:3 version of High School U.S.A. starring Michael J. Fox, which I've never seen in English. Oh my, the good ole 80s. Have to say, the German translation is actually a little less bad. Bought tickets for Wolfmother and Pantera – yes, I think the new personnel is a great choice. Discovered that they have a Live Album from the Dynamo Open Air 1998, which amazingly (or sadly) was the only time I've seen them live (not counting Damage Plan). Revisited The Jesus Lizard, and I wonder how the new album will turn out.

Someone wrote me on Instagram saying "You do graphic design and all this web stuff, that would drive me crazy!". I thought about that. Yeah, sometimes. But, that's not all. A bit photography here, a bit video and audio editing there. Content creation. Social media management. Don't forget taxes and all that bureaucracy. And btw, "web stuff" is a rather loose term. Today I've worked on some frontend mobile optimisation and also with Kirby CMS, Drupal, Wordpress and xt:Commerce ... and it's 11am. It's safe to say that no day's the same.

Last year I rediscovered what is commonly known as “grunge design”, made popular in the late 90s / early 2000s by people like David Carson and Thomas Schostok with his Beast Magazine. I also learned that there's still a pretty vibrant scene on Instagram keeping the style alive and kicking. So I joined in, did some stuff just for fun and got in contact with people. Lately I contributed two pieces for the last edition of 46pgs magazine, which arrived this week. Insane project.

Just excavated my PlayStation 3 to waste some time with GTA V. Amazing that an 11 years old game can still be so much fun. Watched Griselda recently, and I think Gloria does a good job, but most of all the look of the series is awesome. Refell in love with Kavinsky, love that 80s retro stuff. And I rediscovered the podcast "Off Camera with Sam Jones", super interesting interviews.

In addition to the ongoing projects – see previous posts – I've started to work on four more websites as a subcontractor for an agency. These projects won't be added to my portfolio, in fact I won't even be mentioned on the legal pages. I have no problem with that, I can be the busy bee in the background from time to time. No questions asked, just do what makes everybody happy. Shipping is beautiful. Paychecks are beautiful as well.

Recently enjoyed some Matty Matheson videos and podcast interviews. Obviously a freak and super annoying at times, but … what a life story. I am kind of drawn to these VICE characters. Watched the Ashley Madison documentary on Netflix. Never heard about the data breach before and I think it’s pretty funny how they try to make us feel sorry for the victims. Band of the week is Green Lung, great stuff. Revisited Slayer’s Seasons in the Abyss and it was not as embarrassing as I expected.

Looking forward to start two fresh projects this week. Small, creative Kirby CMS sites for nice people. Worked on some logo designs, which is something I'd like to do more again in the future — good distraction from all the web work. Totally behind my own marketing schedules, did not post anything on Insta for weeks. Sigh. My job title should either be Master Procastinator or Mr. Inconsistency. I promise improvement.

In Düsseldorf for a couple of days attending the Beyond Tellerrand Conference for what feels like approx. the 100th time. Knowing showrunner Marc Thiele and other longtime attendees for quite a while now it’s always like coming home. Also meeting the Kirby CMS gang in person which I much prefer over Discord chats. Next weekend I need to drop off my daughter in the Emsland area. While I‘m at it I will probably head over to the Netherlands for a quick visit.

Just finished a bunch of web projects that either launched or are waiting for approval. Had the secret plan to stay away from client projects in May, but again there‘s – of course unbelievably urgent – stuff piling up. People are now calling me asking for Kirby CMS, which is great because then I don’t need to explain why they won’t get Wordpress from me. Had to update nine websites because my Hoster now wants money for PHP 8.0. Also had some graphic design stuff to do and coming up. Variety. Good.

Tweaking the Artifactor project, which is an <?php rand() ?> art generator specialising in what they call grunge design. Still have two 95% finished Kirby CMS themes lying around. I am hesitating to publish them. Guess I fear they need more attention after that and I am already a bit frustrated about the work hours I had to put into client projects recently. Yeah, I know, it‘s good to have them, but I also have 3.000 side project ideas. I‘ll tell you later about the magazine I am working on.

Just found out that I missed two new episodes of Dirt (by Huckberry), love this YouTube series. Watched Dune 2, which was good, but I liked part 1 better. Next up for my wife's and my appetence for science fiction: Rebel Moon 2. Half way through The Fountainhead — sometimes a bit too strange-love-affair-centered for my taste, but still full of life lessons, which is why they still recommend this book after 80 years I guess. Now going to check out if Pearl Jam managed to make a good album this time; they lost me somewhere around Vitalogy. Went to Slash last week, but only to see Wolf van Halen as the support, who was as awesome as expected. I'd like to go to the Dream Theater “Reunion Tour” but 82 € is grossly overpriced.

Preparing a trip to Antwerpen next week with the Stewwood Brewing Co. gang. Until further notice we gonna have a couple of fine locally brewed beers and hit the apparently countless vinyl shops. Also very much looking forward to the Beyond Tellerrand in May to recharge my creative batteries and meet some old and new friends. Planning a trip to LA in the fall with my daughter.