A Merry Christmas

I've just sung two carol services, one on Tuesday and one on Wednesday. On Wednesday afternoon here in Hereford it snowed - real snow - for about an hour - just enough for complete strangers to smile at each other and kids to start throwing snowballs.

I was sent this clip last year and I laughed and smiled and sang along when I first watched it...and I'd love to do it with some friends! I can't sing bass like Santa and I can't go falsetto like the lead reindeer, but I could be one of those three 'backing vocals'! Hope you like it:




I've given a few lessons this week up to the 23rd, which pleasantly surprised me, and I'm starting again on Jan 4th 2010. I was worried that business would drop off well before this week and be slow in picking up again in January, so I'm really pleased that things are looking promising.

I hope you all have a very merry Christmas and a happy New Year.

Colin

Windows 7

Just a quick comment on Windows 7 - my experience of it so far. I've set up three new computers in the last fortnight and of course they are running Windows 7. Very similar to Vista but without those stupid 'Gadgets'. Hooray! What a waste of space they were! And - really important, this - it's so much easier to 'shut down'. Microsoft have now put a button on the Start menu that actually says 'Shut Down'...and it does!

Vista has a red button that looks as though it will shut down the computer. But for some weird reason, Microsoft's default setting for this button was/is 'Sleep'. So I would turn up for someone's lesson to find that the laptop's battery was run right down and I would then sympathise and try to explain this annoying state of affairs. Every Vista computer I meet now, I make sure I go into Control Panel and set the Start Menu power button to 'shut down'.

So the message got through to Microsoft, I'm pleased to see.

But I spent some time on my first Windows 7 experience looking for the resident mail client. It used to be Outlook Express and then Vista introduced Windows Mail which was very similar. But now you have to use Windows Live Mail on 7, which you can set up as a client. Took me some time to find out, though!


Anyone else got comments on Windows 7 - or anything else in the tutoring line?

Colin

Gift vouchers

A couple of weeks before Christmas last year, a friend asked me if I would produce a computer lesson gift voucher as a present for his father-in-law. The business was very new then and I was pleased to get any 'lead' I could. I was also pleased to be given this gift voucher idea, so I set to and produced one for him. I rather suspect that it was a little dig at father-in-law to do something about his computer skills - I think my friend and his wife wanted to 'pass the buck' to a professional!

But with Christmas coming round again I thought I'd have a few vouchers ready. And since two pupils had postponed today's lessons through illness I suddenly had a bit of spare time to produce half a dozen...here's one!



I'll put an ID number on the back - hey! I could produce a GUID with guidgen.exe - that would be really scarily geeky!

Then all I have to do is advertise them...tricky! Any ideas? Anyone else doing lesson vouchers?

Colin

Attached to email

I think the biggest topic I teach my clients is email. It's certainly one of the most important for them, up there with 'looking up things on the Internet'. Most of my clients are 60+ and their children have grown up and left home. The children have persuaded the parents that they need a computer. The best-case scenario is that the parents go out and buy themselves a new one. The worst-case is where the children hand over an old one...and I have plenty of stories about that!

So using the Internet is the main thing - and using email is a regular topic for my lessons. I could go off into the topic right now - webmail vs. mail clients, spam, deleting, saving, creating/composing (why can't they just describe it as 'writing'?) - but this would make a very long posting!

When a client is very new to email I always send a mail just before the lesson to make sure that there is something in the Inbox. I sometimes send a 'spoof' too - just to illustrate that there are people out there who mimic 'banking' emails. My harmless spoof usually comes from a well-known senior politician...he's been very useful in helping me teach about emails!

Here are two other guys who continue to help me out:


I always use this picture to illustrate email 'attachments'. It always fascinates my pupils and many of them want to save the picture, which leads conveniently into another topic!

Each night for the last 8 or 9 years badgers have been coming right up to my mother's window where she lives in Dorset. Sometimes as many as four pay a visit. I took this photo with a film camera and flash, just by holding the camera right up against the glass. The badgers didn't flinch - they just kept right on chomping away. They know they're on to a good thing!

Thanks, guys - keep on coming. You've no idea how many people are so attached to you!

Colin

A week has flown

Well just look at the time! Gone midnight - and this is early for me! It's a full week since I last 'blogged', so this is just to say that I am really busy! Not quite as busy with lessons as I was two weeks ago, but extremely busy fulfilling all the promises I have made to several pupils about preparing 'manuals' for them.
It reflects the stage that they have got to, because after 3-4 lessons - certainly after 4 lessons - I feel that I ought to produce something better than the hand-written notes that I take during the lessons. So I turn the notes into illustrated A4 pages, either in MS "Word" or OpenOffice.org "Writer", laminate them and present them in a hard-back personalised binder. It's all 'part of the service' and I hope it reinforces my principle of selling my service on quality rather than price.

But it does take time! Every pupil is different, not to mention their computers! Eventually I hope to have built up a bank of units so that all I need to do is select the various units, put them together and present them. But while there are now likely to be at least three different MS operating systems around and heaven knows how many different webmail boxes in addition to Outlook, Outlook Express and Windows Mail...well, it's all keeping me very busy.

So now, at sixteen minutes past Tuesday, I'm off to a well-earned rest.


Colin

Aaaarrrgh! Stop Press!!!

I went into my local supermarket on Saturday morning and saw my first Christmas tree (since January 2009, that is!)
I have already seen the odd 'Santa' and reindeer in a few shop windows but this was the first Tree. It's eight feet high and totally synthetic.

I'm just a Grumpy Old Man, I suppose. I know that shops have to sell stuff and that they've had Festive Cards available since September - not to mention the mountains of 'Quality Street' etc. but...but...harrumph!!

And then it got worse. I went out that afternoon, to a village a few miles out of Hereford, to put some leaflets through doors...and I saw my first domestic Christmas tree! 7th November and someone already had the Christmas tree up.

Trouble is, we've done Hallowe'en and we've done Bonfire Night and now there's nothing to celebrate until C-----mas. The Americans have got Thanksgiving yet to come, so I suppose they don't make such a fuss about X--s until it's a bit nearer December?

Anyone else enjoy a good harrumph???

Colin

Pimp my ride!

I've been waiting to show you this since Wednesday, but what with an exceptionally busy week and then the English November weather it's taken me til now to make this post.

Here she is...



My wild garden/car park does look a little scruffy at this time of year, so I was determined to find a better backdrop for these portraits. These are taken just around the corner from a new client.

Perhaps the white outlining is a little heavy, but I'm generally happy that I've had it done.

My son says I won't need to lock the car now...no-one would steal it. Thanks, son!

Now I need a sharper photograph to go on the website - the website needs another picture or two.

Mind how you go on the roads...I have to make sure I'm always super-polite now everyone can identify me!

Colin

The Explorers

Two topics that I find I'm always introducing to my clients are

• making an Address Book or Contact List for their email
• making 'Favorites' (as Internet Explorer calls them) or 'Bookmarks' as in Firefox.

They're similar in that they both save you the bother of having to type addresses - email adresses or URLs - which can be long and complicated. My clients are always very grateful for these discoveries and we spend some time practising and making sure they know how to do it. Favourite 'Favorites' - if you see what I mean - are Google, Ebay, Amazon, BBC, budget airlines etc. And if my client uses webmail I make sure that their email inbox - or as near as we can get to it - is a favourite too.

I must admit that I've been a little sneaky just recently. I've been adding my own website to their Favorites/Bookmarks...as an example of the technique, you understand... but OK, also as a brazen publicity 'plug'! Last week I tried to add my URL to a gentleman's newly-discovered list of Favorites by the usual method - type the URL into the browser address window / hit Return / Favorites menu / Add to Favorites etc. etc... but was horrified then to see my website's 'Home' page looking a right mess! The pictures and the navigation bar were overflowing in various directions and I just quickly closed it all before he'd had a chance to look!

My client is using Windows ME on a PC which must be 9-10 years old with one of those old monitors which are twice as deep as the screen is wide. It's only a 13" screen and the gentleman has to scroll across as well as down for most of the webpages he looks at - very frustrating and difficult. So he's seriously thinking of upgrading. He's fairly new to using the Web and I think I managed to excuse myself to him.

But as I drove home I certainly hadn't excused myself to myself! All that advice I'd read about testing testing testing. I could only suppose that I'd just seen my website on Internet Explorer 6 and it didn't take me long to realise that there must be several other people who had similarly old computers who might try to visit my website. After all, I am about to feature my website address on my car - and it already features on my business cards in Sainsbury's. (But THAT'S another blog-story!)

So this weekend I tried to get myself Internet Explorer 6. I wondered if I could download it without affecting my current browser and I did find some download that said you could install 'legacy browsers' without compromise. But it didn't work - or I couldn't get it to work - and I'm always very cagey about downloads anyway, so I deleted it.

And then I remembered that I still had my daughter's old 'Time' computer, which she started using in 1997 and kept as her PC until at least 2004. It's still running Windows 98 and I was pretty sure that the browser would be IE 6. So I cranked it up today, copied my website files onto a floppy disk (remember those?) and transferred the files to her computer. Sure enough, the browser is Internet Explorer 6 so I took a deep breath and opened up the index file, expecting the worst.

It was perfect! I was so pleased, because IE6 is reckoned to be the 'bugbear' of the common browsers but one that you should still try to allow for in your web design. So now I know that my site works OK in Firefox, Opera, Internet Explorers 6-8, Google Chrome and Safari.

The only question remaining is: what has my client got? My daughter's PC is older than his but she probably updated her original browser at some stage. I think my client still has IE5.5 or something even earlier!

So when I see him again I shall update his browser as far as it will go...and then add my website to his Favorites!

And, as a budding web designer with plenty yet to learn, I'm grateful to those web gurus who very pragmatically advise that one can only go so far back in the browser minefield.

I see some of you design your own and other people's websites. Any advice about websites, browsers, 'hacks' etc?

Colin

Taking stock

Just got back from a 'long weekend' paying respects to family. Mother, cat and visiting badgers, sister and brother-in-law...I expect you've all got some of them! Before I left, the helpful guys at Fusion-MX sent me a first draft of how my car could look:

So I took the picture with me for second and third opinions. Mother just thinks it would spoil the car. I reminded her it's the only reason I bought the car! Business-minded and arty brother-in-law agreed with me that it's an excellent advertising idea but needs the phone number, the name should be bigger and not overlapping the logo.

So this morning I went back to Fusion and the guy tweaked it very quickly - using Adobe Illustrator - to how I wanted it. And it's all booked for next Wednesday, which is great because that day marks the end of my business year. The 'new year' kicks off with the BlueTutorMobile buzzing around the Herefordshire roads.

I'd taken Monday off to make a long weekend but while I was eating supper last night the phone rang - twice - with new clients, so that made up for the 'missed' day. October will be my best month so far, just beating February which, surprisingly, was the best until now.

Going into the months' figures reminded me that HMRC is looming so I have hurriedly registered to do my tax return online, which gives me until January 2010. But it would be sense to tot it all up by next week to give myself a fair idea of how this computer tutor enterprise has gone so far... I'll let you know the verdict.

Colin

www.mycomputertutor.co.uk

is now up and running, 0001 Friday 23rd October and I'm off to bed!

Later today (I nearly wrote 'tomorrow'!) I shall test it on Firefox, Safari, Chrome and Opera. As if I haven't already!

But I just can't face it tonight so..........

Good night

Fruits of my labours

Hereford's a rural county. I live right in the middle of the city but I only have to go a mile or so and I'm out in "the countryside". The cider maker Bulmer is still a big industry in this area and we are surrounded by apple orchards. Soon, lorry-loads of apples will be arriving at Bulmers and all through November the smell of baking apples will be all over the city. I moved here in a November - far back in the last century! - and it was comforting to have that homely smell wherever I went.

And on Monday I was given a punnet of tomatoes - including some 'plum tomatoes' - which I made into barbecue sauce. Today, I've been given a large bag of apples and pears - russets and Cox's, Comice and Conference. Not in lieu of payment, of course, but it's nice to have clients who know that I'll appreciate the fruits of the season.

Colin

I gotta new car...

When I started My Computer Tutor almost a year ago I was advertising the business mainly by delivering flyers through letter-boxes. This involves a lot of walking, but I like walking anyway. I thought that if I can walk to deliver the flyers then I could walk to my clients. I also followed the good advice I'd had from a couple of you about parish magazines. So I'd posted a display advert in half a dozen Hereford City parish magazines, forgetting how large some parishes are nowadays. I hadn't allowed for 'word of mouth' either, so despite my attempts at keeping my business within walking distance I took several bookings from clients 3-4 miles away and further.

I realised that some form of transport would be a good business investment for my kind of work and so, two months ago, I bought this car. I knew it well - I'd borrowed it on several occasions before! - and I knew it had been very well cared for. The fact that it was blue was a happy coincidence for my business logo.

Of course I still walk to my local clients. I'd walk everywhere if only I had the time. So the car does spend a lot of the day outside on the 'wild' part of my garden - the cultivated bit is out of shot to the left! And as I'm always looking for advertising opportunities, I make sure that I display an A4 poster in the window and the windscreen. (The pavement is just out of shot to the right) In fact, if I drive to a client I always stick the posters up while the car is parked. Now, I'm advertising further afield and getting some good response. The transport really is a good investment.

But then, whilst browsing around other tutors' websites, I found this:

...and I thought "Hey! That's advertising!" This is how Jackie Raines uses her car for her business in the Thanet area of Kent. You can find this striking picture on one of her webpages.

Inspired by that, I'm making enquiries as to costs and designs...

Any other computer tutors out there advertising on wheels? Let us know - show us the pics!

Colin

Show and Tell?

A few days ago I showed you a screenshot of 'work in progress' on a page of the My Computer Tutor website. Here it is as I showed it:


The question is: Do you put a picture of yourself on your website or not?

I see that some of you do.

If I'm going to post a self-portrait on a webpage, what do I hope it would say?

I should explain that the one you can see here I just stuck there 'for fun', to see how a picture would look in the sidebar of the page. It truly is a self-portrait! I held the camera at arm's length, tried to look 'neutral' - and clicked, fully aware that the background was a shelf of geeky books.


It was my little joke to myself, a reminder that perhaps the most cliched portrait of teachers, writers and people who consider themselves educated - and want to show it - features a backdrop of a bookcase. Oh yes, and you mustn't forget the pen - and generally to give the impression that you've just been disturbed at your studies by the photographer!

I haven't found a computer tutor website with a picture like that, so I think I'm safe in poking fun - I'm sure you've all seen pictures - and TV interviews - like that! But seriously, we want our websites to give some good impression of ourselves. We want to encourage people to contact us, make enquiries and ultimately book loads of lessons. Our advertising should allay all fears of engaging a 'geek' or 'nerd'.

So should we try to look serious, studious, older than we really are, younger than we really are, happy-go-lucky or just happy? Should we just trust the photographer to catch us in a typical pose, showing our 'best side'?

And then what should we write about ourselves? Professional qualifications, marital status, hobbies, complete CV? I think we need to give some information about ourselves, especially as we are offering to visit clients in their homes.

So....any advice out there? Have you looked at those About Me pages? I'm planning one - but what would you want to know about me before you booked a lesson?

Colin

Taking in Washing

Someone has already pointed out to me that the link to my website (over there on the right-hand panel) doesn't work. I really am spending every spare minute on the website and it really will be up and running really soon.

Really really.

Of course, I have a good excuse. I am rushed off my feet with doing stuff for other people. And most of it paid 'homework' which suddenly is coming in. Just when I wanted to get down to finishing the website, I'm getting several requests to help with various projects.

One client has been having fun with a little 'Disgo' video camera - a tiny thing that records sound as well as film. He's asking for help with putting this onto disc, but the main thing will be editing out lots of shots of walls, ceilings and floors etc. Rather than try to do all this in the course of his lessons, I said I'd take it all home and edit it for him. When I say 'all', I mean three videos to be untangled, edited and reconstructed.

Then a lady phoned up last night asking for help with designing a certificate template for her bowls club - and I've ended up taking that home as well. Now I remember, there's a letterhead to update for a gentleman who runs a musical instrument business. He's a world authority in his field - I do meet some interesting people in this job.

So part of the job is rather like 'taking in washing'! And I enjoy that too, not only for the challenge of the project itself, but also for the more practical reasons that I can work at home on my own equipment, knowing (usually) where everything is. The client is always pleased to get the job done and I can give a further session on exactly how I solved it - and how to do it in future.

There's a whole page on my 'Other Services' on the website.....which is on the way.

Really!

Best endeavours

It doesn't happen so often now, but over my first months of computer tutoring I had several phone-calls that went something like this:

"Hello my computer isn't working I can't get on the net it's all gone phut what do I do can you come now............"

And typically just blurted out like that, with no introductions or anything. No "Oh good evening, I wonder if you could help me...."

So far, I've delivered about 10 000 flyers through letterboxes all around the Hereford City area and a little beyond; presumably these people had seen my flyer or poster somewhere.

The poster is basically an A4 version of the A5 flyer. And in designing these, I thought I'd emphasised the fact that I'm offering TUITION.

You can see I start off by trying to make the point......"Tutor", "tuition", "I teach..."

I have been known to set up a new computer and a broadband modem, but usually in the fervent hope that a block of lessons will follow. I often have to face up to some 'trouble-shooting' in the course of a lesson, the most common one being the discovery that the antivirus software has expired - sometimes years ago! But I see that as a natural part of my general computer educational service.

I can understand the challenge of a technical problem to be solved - good grief, I studied computer programming for three years...and that had plenty of problems - and 'grief'. But I refuse to do PC call-outs. There is so much that could go wrong with people's computers - and it's not always the computer!

I am not too proud to tell people that I'm not a 'techie', and I make sure that I always have to hand the names and phone numbers of a few local professionals who delight in that sort of work.


Colin

Website on the way

Yes, I am about to join you out there on the web. This is not the finished article but it will give you some idea of the general style.

I was determined to devise my own site so I started teaching myself HTML about a year ago, just by looking at online tutorials and a library book or two. I liked the idea of CSS - it struck a chord with my programming experience.

I compared what I'd read with what I saw in other people's sites, just by right-clicking on a webpage and then 'View Source'. I noticed that loads of people were using tables for layout and so I thought that I'd better gen up on tables. Then, not long after, I started reading about 'Web Standards' - and dropped my study of 'tables' like a hot brick! I had been barking up the right tree after all. The World Wide Web Consortium likes CSS/HTML separation and winces at tables for page layout.

But it's still all very confusing, what with the different browsers people are using and the width of their monitors, whether or not they've enabled 'scripts' - whatever they are! - not to mention the allowances we should be making for the partially-sighted/blind/colour-blind and whether users prefer a mouse or keyboard shortcuts...

So I do my websites from scratch and try to keep them absolutely under control. The result is that they are pretty simple - no gizmos, no slideshows, no quirky rollover effects - and although the real reason is that I haven't devoted time to studying the techniques for these, I'm pleased that the official W3C view of these things is that one should avoid them anyway. Hooray!

Have you created your own website for your tutor business? How did you learn about web design? Any handy hints?

Colin

"One computer, two computer, three computer, four..."

...you're a tutor, I'm a tutor - are there any more?

Well yes, there are lots of us dotted around the UK - and probably more scattered throughout the world. I looked at loads of computer tuition websites last year to get some ideas before I set up on my own here in Hereford. I was trying to think of a name for my business, and so I was also checking websites to see what your names were so that I didn't clash with anybody.

I'd already realised that the words 'computer' or 'PC' and 'tuition' or 'tutor' ought to feature pretty prominently and it wasn't long afterwards that the poet in me managed to put 'computer tutor' together. But in our line of business that's not enough. Our unique selling point - unique to each of us in our own areas - is that we offer individual tuition at home. And the business name has to reflect something of the personal attention that we provide.

And between you all, you seem to have covered most of the permutations and combinations of
home, tutor, one-to-one, computer, 1-2-1, PC, one2one, tuition....
with of course that most important word: 'you'

I thought I'd cracked it with "Your Computer Tutor" and leapt into Network Solutions to check that the domain was available. It wasn't. It's already taken by Robin in Somerset - and a very good choice too! Damn!

But then I hit on the idea of prospective clients reading the business name. If they saw and read and said to themselves "MY Computer Tutor"...well, I was almost theirs already!

Someone in USA has the .com domain but I have been the proud owner of www.mycomputertutor.co.uk for a year now and, as far as I know, my only rival for the business name couldn't be much further away - in Australia. We're unlikely to tread on each other's toes!

(Any day now the My Computer Tutor website will be launched. I shall welcome your comments.)

What process did you go through to devise the name for your business and domain? Post a comment to let us know.


Colin

A picture says a thousand words...

Over the last 12 months I've looked at lots of computer tuition webpages, gleaning ideas about what to offer in my own home tuition service and how to present it. Some pages really caught my eye - not with flashing gizmos or lengthy-loading 'intros' - but with a well-chosen picture that summed up an aspect of the business.

Here are a few that really spoke to me:

This one is on Colin's site (another Colin) He's in the Leeds area.

Just look at that expression - haven't we ALL felt like that at some time or other?

I wouldn't want to be that laptop!





Here's a lovely cartoon from Richard's site that says it all. He uses other cartoons (by Randy Glasbergen) just as good - but this is up the top and made me read on.

Again...who'd be a laptop? More like a slaptop!

I bet she's typing a document in Word 2007 and the cursor keeps jumping into the middle of a line she typed 30 seconds earlier.

I share your frustration, madam. I can almost hear you, even though you're in Norfolk.......Aaaaaaaaarrrgh!

But now let's calm things down. Take a look at this. A mug of coffee - a pair of spectacles - ready and waiting.

Or perhaps all finished - job done?

Roger's picture speaks to people like me. We like our coffee, we have a pair of glasses that we keep by the computer, because they're useless for anything else! We don't panic - we have a good think about things and then, if we still can't work it out, we pour some more coffee and call a computer tutor.

Have you seen a webpage picture that gets the message across? Are you already using one to good effect on your website?

Colin

Websites for tutors

I've had two replies already from tutors who gave me lots of sound advice last year. ComputerTutor4You in Derbyshire and Swintec in Buckinghamshire/Oxfordshire are running computer tuition services, so if you're in either of those areas and you're looking for help with computery things - or if you know of someone who would need it - have a look at their websites and get in touch with them.

And that's prompted me to think about getting my own website up and running. I have been thinking about it for many months now, although I didn't see it as a priority a year ago. After all, many of my clients want to learn how to use the Internet, so why have a website advertising your computer tutor business when your target market doesn't know how to find websites?

But my helpful friends persuaded me. For a start, a computer tutor should acknowledge the importance of the Web - and how better to show it than by being on the Web yourself? And then I've already met several people who tell me that they don't need any help with their computer but they "know someone who does!"

So all things considered, I am determined to produce a professional-looking website that will prompt the web-savvy generation to sign up a parent, grandparent or maybe a neighbour to a course of lessons.

Colin

Encouraging noises

For these first few postings I'll be looking back to a year ago, when I was persuading myself to start this business and planning all the things that I thought I'd need. And the first thing I needed was some encouragement from people who were already offering the same sort of service, so I typed "home computer tuition" into Google, hit 'return' and spent the next couple of hours going through several pages of results.

There was a wide variety of websites offering all kinds of 'computer tuition' all around the UK. Some people, like me, were totally dedicated to tuition; others advertised tuition as one of many services - such as computer sales, repairs and servicing etc. and some were offering online courses. I picked out a dozen or so who seemed to be concentrating on one-to-one tuition and emailed them. I'd kept my eye on the local advertising and was convinced that no-one in the Hereford area was offering computer tuition, so I was sure that I wouldn't be treading on anyone else's toes if I started my own business here. I asked what sort of response they got in their area, what topics usually came up, and generally whether they would advise anyone else to go into this business.

Within a day I had my first response and within three days I'd had nine replies, all encouraging me to 'go for it'. Some of them sent me quite lengthy emails with lots of good hints and one kind lady offered me her manual specifically written for setting up a home computer tuition business. Not just 'how to set up a business' - there are loads of books that purport to do that - but 'How To Set Up a Home Computer Tuition Business'!

Brilliant! Bang on the nail....thank you JL, you know who you are!

And thank you, all you kind people who responded with tips and advice and, above all, encouragement that there is a market out there. I hope you pick up the emails I've sent you and I hope you take a look at this blog, chip in with comments and - best of all - give me your blog links so we can compare notes and support each other.

Colin

The all-important logo

This time last year I was doing loads of research into what I needed to start this business. Of course the main thing was to get an advertising campaign rolling, and I looked at countless adverts in local papers and magazines as well as notice-boards to try to capture the essence of what makes an effective advert. I already knew the basic pit-falls about mixing too many fonts, 'shouting' at people in capital letters and leaving the text alignment on 'centre' so that your copy ends up looking like a Christmas tree. I needed to identify 'good' advertising, and what always caught my eye - and catching the eye is what it's about - what caught my eye was a logo.

I don't know how many hours I spent in total on my logo. I was going to be working sometimes with laptops...in people's houses...and I was intending to enlighten my clients in the ways of computers. So I knew I wanted the idea of something opening like a laptop and light dawning! I won't bore you with all the prototypes; my first idea featured grey and orange as a crude representation of a house (roof and brick walls...?) which opened like a laptop.....or so I hoped. It was two rectangles and two parallelograms, which implied an arrow shape but the rectangles looked rather blocky. That, of course, is the nature of rectangles!

But the hint-of-arrow encouraged me. Perhaps I could use that as a hint of "progress" and illustrating that "I come to you". Why I chose blues I really don't know. I had to get started on the campaign and I had to have a logo that I was happy with, because that's how people would get to know the business name.

So here it is. Or rather, there it is at the top of this blog. Perhaps I've spoiled a good game by telling you all the answers, but it goes from dark to light, points like an arrow, opens like a laptop and ticks all my boxes.

Dare I ask this question?

Yes, I shall....

What do you think?

Colin

In business

This is my first blog and I was momentarily tempted to write the title "Hello world!" But if that greeting annoys you one tenth as much as it has annoyed me on the opening pages of countless geeky text books, I know you'll thank me for avoiding it.

I run a one-man home tuition business in the Hereford area. I go to people's homes and teach them how to use their PCs and laptops, one-to-one and on their own computer. I've done this for almost a year after a lot of planning and weighing things up - I've never done any sort of business before and I'm a cautious sort of bloke - and I thought now would be a good time to set up a website and start a blog. Well, the website's on the way and in the meantime here's the blog.

This is where I'll be posting all my thoughts on the My Computer Tutor business, so anyone who wants to know all the inner details will get them here! I'll also be seeking advice so feel free to comment.

Colin