chinese curse...?

The one I'm thinking on is 'may you live in interesting times' .

We've just spent a bomb on upgrading servers, new gear in the form of workstations and screens, tablets etc. So what happens?

We've just had a couple of weeks of technology problems. Super duper (hideously)expensive printer decides to throw a wobbly, our new servers didn't want to talk to each other and lastly, our broadband went down with the outage last weekend that hit 500 or so companies all over the UK. So we reconfigured our router, then discovered that the local area workgroups (3 of them) had also lost their settings. Ahh the joys..

All fixed now however, and no clients affected.... but we are looking at a dedicated leased line...

Forgot to say...

We have finally taken over unit 17 Cotton Street. It's small but really necessary for us to spread out....

Serving the nation ..?

Totally misleading title, that one! Just a short one to tell you about the installation of more servers at our studio (running Lucid Lynx as per usual). We decided to stick with HP Compaq technology a while ago, using G5 & G6 servers with dual Xeons, and seem to have made the right choice.

In addition, we are swapping out our old custom-built workstations with end-of-line HP XW workstations. Ooooh.. fast...

thanks for all the fish...

Seriously, many thanks to the many applicants for the graphics assistants job. Sorry to tell you but this position is now filled. We are currently trialling Ross Fraser in this position for a couple of months.

However, we are expanding, so watch this space...

time for a new view...

We are looking for a graphics assistant and we have had experienced people apply for what is really a minimum wage job for a starter.

Why? The colleges are hugely over-producing media and design students.

Some of them are also coming out of college with egos that are really scary. I've had people tell me that I was doing things wrongly, when they have had days worth of experience. Time for the colleges to give students a sense of perspective of where they are in the scheme of things.

student reactions...

Well, we've just passed that time of year again. Student art cards... I think we've got the pricing and the formula right, because the students were flocking in for biz cards and flyers. We did more than twice as many this year as last, maybe due to a direct competitor letting some students down... really surprising, as this is the most important time for the students, and the last thing they need is to have an unreliable supplier...

We also sponsored the end-of-year show at Aberdeen College again this year. Someone asked why we didn't have banners etc up telling the world, to which we replied that we were doing it to support the students... not our business...

Killer Karla at Karting...

Karla, Maaj and Lyyne were renamed Killer Karla, Mad Maaj and Loony Lynne after last nights' kart-racing at KartStart.

All 3 showed a killer instinct on the track, and backed up by Nutty Nikki and GoGo Jo, had Ian, Keiran and myself scared senseless on the track.

Then it was off to the Old School House for a few pints to refresh...

All really good fun though. Who says females are delicate....

plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose...

For those who don't speak french, basically it means - always change, but always things remain the same... I understood how wise the French were to come up with that saying when I realised, during a week off last week, that myself and the whole team are working flat out, and have been for several years now.

So to cheer them up, I'm a) looking for some new people and b) taking them karting in a few weeks (this is before their sky-dive for charity)...

Should be fun...

busy, busy....

Well, the news of no price increases has gone down well with the business community. We've been inundated with work on all sides, from loads of print and design for print for Rocket through to our sister company Paradox being snowed under with branding, websites, advertising work etc (see paradoxsolved.blogspot) .

Apart from starting to attract the interest of the Oil industry, work we've never particularly gone after, we've had a number of senior businesses suddenly expressing an interest in using our services.

It could be due to the AIFF work Paradox completed a couple of weeks ago (We were asked by a consortium of senior Aberdeen businessmen to rebrand the Aberdeen International Football Festival (one of the older ones in the world) and create a new ideolect and website.) . This high-profile job has been amazingly well received and is shooting up the rankings in Google.

Whatever it is, I'm not complaining...

new services...

We're in the process of adding new products and services, which along with our new e-commerce site (finally) will make our lives ever more interesting. With the advent of our club flyer service (which seems to be much liked) the pubs and clubs are coming on board in their droves.

New York, New York...

Karla is off to New York today for a tour round the sights. Knowing her, she'll come back with some prime contacts in the design world....

another fiscal year...

We have been sitting down and figuring out our new print prices.

That was quite easy... no changes to most prices.

1000 business cards full colour 2 sides on 400gsm card are still £39 inc VAT
1000 A6 flyers full colour 2 sides on 400gsm card are still £59

The only price to rise in four years is 1000 letterheads & compliment slips, up from £178 to £198, and that's only because we are now printing on a very high quality 120 gsm bond paper.

Unlike some other online and discount printers, what you see is what you get.... no need to entice with spurious special print deals (which never turn out to be real) on the front page of our website, instead just totally transparent pricing for genuine premium quality cut-price print, which our clients seem to like...

btw..

Amazingly well done, rocketprint girls... already up to 85% of their target for the skydive.

See more at www.justgiving.com/rocketprintgirls.

I can see they're going to smash the figure,,,

stupid is as stupid does...

A favourite Forrest Gump saying... it really applies to certain situations. I recently (today) managed to do an amazingly silly one.

We are in the midst of sorting out servers. Why? With the hundreds of fast-moving and high-traffic client sites we are currently hosting across a number of servers, we decided a bit of file-keeping was in order. Though we don't host any sites created by others, one of our own sites (rocket-print.co.uk) is testing for e-commerce at the mo'. I decided to swap servers, forgetting that I would have to create the space then switch it off till it went live. The end result was a very quiet day in the rocket print studio as no emails came in.

To clients out there, apologies, but normal service is resumed as of 4pm.

duhhhh...

aha skidiving....

Three of our staff, Maaj, Karla and Lynne, are intending doing a skydive for charity this year and have put a blog up on www.justgiving.com/rocketprintgirls. They're trying to raise £1500 for McMillan Cancer Support. If you want to help them raise some money, go to the link above and pledge some cash - any amount is good....

The title? a typo on the rocketprintgirls blog ....