Freelancer`s Manifesto – A Collection of Advices
A few weeks ago a very nice article called, “Freelancer`s Manifesto – A Collection of Advices†was published on cgarena, by an artist called Anselm V. Seherr, or 3Delicious. The article gives some tips and advices, for artists that work as a freelancer. Like how to deal with projects and get organized. And the author mentions Blender in the article!
Interesting.
Sorry about this, but my mum’s an english teacher.
The word ‘advice’ is an uncountable noun and therefore ‘advices’ is not a word.
I hate myself for saying this, but it had to be said.
Sorry.
Yay freen, my English sucks, and now i learned that new, so thanks!
and sorry if i make a mistake
@freen:
That’s no reason to hate yourself. By nature, people like to learn. When you share knowledge with someone who doesn’t have it, you’re helping them out, and you should never hate yourself for being helpful. As long as you’re not rude about it, you’re probably making yourself a valuable resource as a rule.
That said, “Freelancer’s Manifesto – A Collection of Advices” is the title of the article being discussed here, not a typo on Allan’s part, so technically Allan shouldn’t change it… that would be up to Anselm, if he thinks it is important enough.
I didn’t read the whole thing, but I liked his views on cooperation. I also like the part of spending the first hour of the day surfing the net. Is like those “drink all the coffee you want” diets.
and I didn’t know that about the word advice. I like getting advices on language too, so many thanks, now my English is more better.
@Freen: Unfortunately, you’ve provided a beautiful example of what’s wrong with english teachers (and apparently their spawn as well)… inability, or maybe just unwillingness to check answers before laying them on unsuspecting victims.
Quoted from our friendly neighborhood Dictionary.com
Advice
n.
1. Opinion about what could or should be done about a situation or problem; counsel.
2. Information communicated; news. Often used in the plural: advices from an ambassador.
It doesn’t seem to be an incredibly common usage, but it’s an accepted usage, and a quick google search shows over 5,000,000 hits. Is it too difficult to check a dictionary before telling someone else they’re wrong?
It’s a nice manifesto containing many important issues one should be aware of. Only thing I would like to put more emphasis personally is the importance of backups. Backup your data well. A basic rule of backups says that storing data on three separate places should give it good chances to survive. Why three then? Sometimes when your hard disk or whatever the main storage place of your data is fails it is possible that in the worst case your only backup has gone awry as well. Or it is possible that your main data and backup are on the same place physically and it gets demolished somehow. Third backup is the savior in these cases. It is not that big an investment to learn to backup your data well. Consider it as a sort of an insurance. Nothing is more painful that to lose significant amount of work due to a bad backup policy.
@Some Crank: Well, without starting flame wars in here, I’m afraid I’m inclined to agree with Freen, despite your apparent evidence – in fact I have never (before now) heard the word ‘advices’ used.
Anyway, that was an interesting article (though you can see it’s no surprise the guy is a freelance artists, not freelance journalist – his grammar is shocking!) and had some good points, such as having a decent website which people can access, and joining/contributing to various communities, etc.
BeBraw does have a good point though, about backing up data. I personally have encountered a project that, despite making incremented backups, I saved a version of a file, and it corrupted one of the files it linked to, because it crashed while it was saving. This meant that the last 5 versions of my project also became corrupted, since they, too, linked to the same file. Thankfully I knew exactly what I’d done in the last five versions and could reconstruct my project quickly. But it was a serious lesson – if I had backed up those five versions to a different location before they, too, became corrupted, it would have saved me a lot of trouble…
I’ve never heard the word advices used. If anything its good advice for alans everyday spoken english. Dont flame the poor lad who tried to help
Maybe is because it means news here, not just a counsel. :P
Anyway nice article, and thanks allan for the link.
Notes and saved emails are very helpful for learning to know the relationship between a given goal, methods to reach it, and their costs. Learn to write specified invoices, and you’ll learn to make good estimations, and show your clients that you know what you are doing.
Also, my advice to the set of advices on language use is that English is a public language; not private, and therefore, we should comply to what the dictionary says.
Personally, I sincerely agree with the breaks, checking emails and stuff at the beginning, and especially with taking down notes. Excellent article!
@Some crank:
You make a good point, and I don’t want to come across as being in any way negative, but I would like to add my two cents. I’d like to point out that a definition and a few million hits on Google don’t necessarily make a word. For example, take “Alright” (32,000,000 hits) and “alot” (50,000,000 hits) which each have definitions readily accessible on the Internet as well. That isn’t to say that “advices” can’t be a word, but it may well be as frowned upon, if not more so, than these others.
Come on it was just pure pwnage :p
It’s not worth arguing over “advices” versus “pieces of advice”, and you can take or leave my advices as you wish.
Back on topic…
The article is good and I have forwarded it to many of my freelancer friends.
Nice one Anselm!
no need to appologize freen, never heard of uncountable words before and i’d love hearing wich words are. Maybe you can ask your mum to add a complete list?