Finally, I feel that I’ve fully caught up with all the bits and bobs that needed doing while I was on holiday, in addition to the regular work I had on last week. Setting up meetings, chatting with people, encouraging folks that they want me to do work! I seem to have a bit of a lull for the rest of the week now. In some ways this is nice (I can actually get on with some development work that has been starved of resources for a few weeks now), but in other ways it feels slightly disconcerting. After all, I’m a contractor. I work on an hourly rate. So when I don’t have stuff to do, it means nobody is paying me! OK, it’s not so bad, because a couple of people pay me just to be there when they need me.

So what am I up to? Well, the development of the new Behind the Medical Headlines site is progressing nicely. I’m only working on it part time, so we’re anticipating it being ready for initial deployment by September, which coincides nicely with the new academic year. I’m awaiting approval to start developing a decent test suite for some code I inherited (which has no testing whatsoever, and I’m trying to convince the client this is not a good thing — what sort of arguments would you use there?).

And then there’s the new project. It’s always been my intention to create some sort of vertical application that I can sell as a subscription-based service. The question has so far been “what should I do?” I’ve been playing around over the past few months with a few ideas, mostly where there are other applications out there, but they’re not good enough or are aiming for a different market segment. I’m not sure I’ve settled on the right thing yet, but since I’ve some slack time, I’m making the most of it by doing some coding. If nothing else, the module I’m working on just now will make it to RubyForge so it’s unlikely to be time wasted anyway.

As always, I’m looking for new contracts, new clients. I’ve got a couple of project proposals in to other people, chatting with some others. Still, if you’re looking for a Ruby/Rails contract developer with plenty experience and bags of enthusiasm, drop me a line. I’m not the cheapest on the market but, in my humble opinion, I’m one of the best.

And the best news from last week? I’ve secured the services of an accountant, and he’s assured me that I can pay myself! Actually, what he said was that I could take a director’s loan of up to £5,000 and we’d sort out the accounts later. So I decided to treat myself to a Canon Speedlite 580EX. I’ve been reading up recently on how to achieve various effects with flash and, in particular, I’m looking forward to having a spare weekend to muck around with water droplets and the stroboscopic features of the 580EX…