Freelance Friday: On being a woman

27th January, 2012 on Freelancing No Comments

One question that people ask me (okay, no one has yet, but if they do I’ll direct them here) is “What is it like being a female freelancer, a woman in a male-dominated tech industry?”.

To be honest, from my (limited) personal experience, I don’t think it’s awfully different from being a male freelance web/graphic designer. I don’t feel marginalised, underpaid or intimidated, and I’ve never had any indication that a potential client has decided whether to hire me or not based on my gender. I don’t think I’d win more jobs or get paid more money if I had man-bits. Around half of the clients and people that I work with are female too – intelligent, driven and successful women doing pretty well for themselves in this man’s world.

That said, I do tend to be a bit oblivious to this sort of thing because I was brought up surrounded by tech and never saw any reason why I shouldn’t be as good at things as boys are. I never saw myself as being disadvantaged in any way by being female; if anything, I felt that being good at traditionally male-dominated things just made me more special. I’m also in a country and culture that’s fairly progressive in terms of women’s rights – I wouldn’t have the same opportunities if I wasn’t born into a privileged middle-class life in a Western first-world country, had less encouraging parents, or married a less awesome husband.

I’m interested to hear if anyone has had a different experience – are you like me in never experiencing any real disadvantage to being a woman, freelancing or in a male-dominated industry? Have you ever suspected a client decided whether to work with you or not based more on your gender than your skills or portfolio? If you’re a freelancing mum, how do you balance that with work? Are you ever suckered into doing more chores and errands than is fair because you ‘have more flexibility’ or are ‘always at home anyway’? Any guys out there – what’s your opinion of women starting their own businesses and working in traditionally male-dominated industries?

I have to admit my thoughts on this topic are not particularly well-formed at the moment, but I’d be really really interested in having some discussion around it!

I’m going to try and write a weekly post each Friday about what it’s like to be a freelancer! This is something that I find a lot of people are curious about, and there’s a lot of incorrect assumptions out there. If you have any questions for me on freelancing, leave a comment here or on Formspring.
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Why Kangaroo Meat is Awesome

on Food No Comments

Yesterday was Australia Day (or Invasion Day really, I suppose), and The Boy and I had some friends over for a BBQ. I made the mistake of telling our friends that I was making kangaroo burgers, which resulted in an awkward silence followed by “um, I think I’ll just bring some sausages… you can eat your kangaroo”.

I’ve been pretty much converted to this meat, so here’s a few reasons why:

It actually tastes pretty good

Gamey but not strongly so, and very tender when cooked properly. I’ve been replacing recipes calling for beef mince with kangaroo mince, without much of a noticeable difference in taste. I’ve also done roasts and steaks, which are nice and tender and juicy cooked medium-rare.

It’s better for the environment

Kangaroos emit less methane than cows, for example, and their soft padded feet are better suited to the Australian environment than hooved animals. Most kangaroo available for eating is wild, so many of the other environmental impacts of farming (such as growing corn to feed traditional eat animals, and then pumping them with antibiotics to make up for the fact that what they’re being fed isn’t actually good for them) are avoided.

The species of kangaroo that are hunted are not endangered, and the percentage that is allowed to be culled is varied according to the current population roos.

It’s really good for you

High protein (roughly the same as beef), low fat (~2%, much less than other red meats), doesn’t taste like cardboard. Sounds pretty good to me.

It’s cheap!

I’m a cheapo, so I started buying kangaroo mince because it was a lot cheaper than the 5 star beef mince I usually buy. I’ve started switching out one meal a week that would usually be beef for kangaroo, and using the extra money to buy free range, organic or grass-fed versions of the other meats we eat regularly.

My kangaroo burgers actually turned out pretty nice, and I made almost everyone eat them in the end. The general consensus was that it didn’t taste much different from regular beef burgers. Thanks everyone for being a bit adventurous!

Confessions of a Designer

25th January, 2012 on Art & Design 3 Comments

These ‘Confessions of a Designer’ quotes put together by Anneke of AMS Design Blog made me snigger. I agree with her that there’s often misconceptions about how long graphic design takes, since it’s just “makings stuff in Photoshop” and “choosing fonts” right?

I should probably note that I’ve been really lucky with clients, and haven’t had to deal with these things much!

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Please don’t hate me

24th January, 2012 on Life No Comments

For some reason, people seem confused or even offended when someone wants some kind of money for something they do as a hobby. In the case of blogs I can sort of see why – website advertising at its worse can be annoying, distracting, or plain offensive. But the fact is, running a decent blog is not free. Leaving aside the time spent updating, the main costs are domain name registration and hosting, as well as graphic/web design if you’re not a designer yourself.

I’ve thought about putting some sort of advertising on my site in the past, but always decided against it as I wasn’t serious enough about actually updating content. But lately I’ve been getting a few more visitors (hello!) and have started to put some serious thought into monetizing this site, even just a little bit.

Now don’t worry, you won’t see animated musical banner ads plastered all over my lovely website layout. And I definitely won’t start promoting products that I have no idea about or don’t personally enjoy. I’m going to try and go about this in the least obtrusive and most useful way possible.

At this stage all I’ve done is register for an Amazon affiliate account. This just means that when I review books or other products that they sell, I’ll link through to them on Amazon. The review will still be entirely my own thoughts, and I’m not going to pretend that a book or product is awesome if it clearly isn’t. At this point I’ll get 4% of any purchases through these links (and nothing if you just click through and don’t buy anything), so you can be sure that I’m not going to get rich off of this.

Okay yes, Amazon is a bit evil in the way many big monopolizing corporations are, and their business model is in some ways spelling the end of indie bookstores and traditional publishing. You have to choose your battles, and at this point I’m saving my fighting spirit for sustainable and ethical eating practices. If you’ve chosen boycotting Amazon as your battle then that’s great, I wouldn’t expect you to abandon that – any books that I review can probably also be bought from your local bookstore or BetterWorldBooks.com, which donates books and funds to charity.

I’ll put a note at the bottom of any post or page that has affiliate links. I hope no one holds this against me!

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Pressure Cooker Pulled Pork

23rd January, 2012 on Food, Photography No Comments

One of the wonderfully generous wedding gifts we received is a pressure cooker. I was a little skeptical about how much we really needed another large appliance when The Boy put it on the registry, but I think the pulled pork burgers he made over the weekend have me convinced.

The days are getting longer (and hotter!) here, so I tried taking a few pictures outside in our courtyard and a few inside on our dining table, which is my standard setup.

Outside: ISO 1250, 1/30s, f2.8, 24-70mm f2.8 lens, with speedlight pointed directly up at a white ceiling (the bottom of the balconey of the apartment above us) at 1/64

Inside: ISO 1600, 1/50s, f2.8, 24-70mm f2.8 lens, no flash, lit by our dining room lamp

Inside: ISO 1600, 1/50s, f2.8, 24-70mm f2.8 lens, no flash, lit by our dining room lamp

 

I’ve been playing around a little more with using my speedlight with food photography (only at home of course), with mixed results. Obviously firing straight at the subject produces some horrid shadows, but indoors I find pointing it at the ceiling or (white) walls doesn’t produce the best results so far either. When I try taking photos both with flash and some with just our lamp light, I always end up choosing the lamp ones. I think I need to do a lot more experimentation to get the hang of it, or bite the bullet and accept that I actually have to fork out some more money to get some decent lighting equipment.

On the other hand, using the flash outside seems to produce some fairly nice results that mimicks daylight quite nicely (possibly because it was outside where there was still quite a lot of daylight).

Both of these photos were edited in Photoshop so I suppose they don’t tell the full story (the indoors one had to be lightened quite a lot and I don’t think I handled the white balance very well, for example). I also barely thought about styling at all, which shows. I have a lot more learning to go!

You can see the recipe and other details over on The Boy’s blog.

P.S. Happy Year of the Dragon! I hope you all get lots of red packets. We have to give them this year now that we’re married!

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