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I am thrilled to share with you my latest web project for Earthartist.

Earthartist Planning and Design create innovative, safe and beautiful natural playgrounds and outdoor learning environments.

“For a small child there is no division between playing and learning; between the things he or she does ‘just for fun’ and things that are ‘educational.’ The child learns while living and any part of living that is enjoyable is also play.” ~ Penelope Leach

Visit earthartist.com and let your inner child be inspired by these amazing playscapes!

I have been working with Oxanna Adams, an amazing abstract artist in my home town of Guelph, Ontario.

I am thrilled to showcase her beautiful work on my latest project – OxannaAdams.ca. Be inspired!

I found this great WordPress maintenance checklist that details the key steps you need to follow to keep your website robust and healthy.

Although a critical first step, keeping your site working well requires more just updating your plugins and your version of WordPress. A full site maintenance audit should be done every couple of months to ensure that your visitors continue to have a great user experience.

Maintaining your WordPress website also improves your SEO score and maximizes your chances that your site will not go down.

Contact me if you would like me to review your site and take care of updating /optimizing your setup.

source: https://bigrockcoupon.in/wordpress-maintenance-checklist/

Being a Digital Nomad has so many advantages when it comes to managing our time. We can choose to work at any hour of the day or night, and on any day of the week.

So for many of us, that means that we are often at our computers after dark. While this works for our lifestyle, staring at our display after the sun goes down could damage our eyes and also have an adverse effect on the quality of our sleep.

A study published last year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that “exposure to short-wavelength-enriched light emitted by these electronic devices, given that artificial-light exposure has been shown experimentally to produce alerting effects, suppress melatonin, and phase-shift the biological clock.”

Melatonin is a light-sensitive hormone produced by the body every evening and during the night. Melatonin helps us get to sleep and also helps our body keep track of whether it is morning, afternoon, evening or night. If our melatonin production is out of whack, we will feel tired at odd hours of the day and not get a restful night’s sleep.

And when we are travelling, dealing with jet lag is tough enough without adding more confusion to our already challenged circadian rhythms, so read on …

A bit of science

If you think back to your high school science class, you may remember that sunlight contains red, orange, yellow, green and blue light rays and many shades in between to make up the visible spectrum of sunlight. Combined, these light rays create what we call “white light” or sunlight.

Rays on the red end of the visible light spectrum have longer wavelengths and have less energy. Rays on the blue end of the spectrum have shorter wavelengths and have more energy, so they pass through the cornea and penetrate all the way to the retina. Studies have shown that exposure to too much blue light can damage our retinas.

When we are looking at computer screens and other digital devices that emit significant amounts of blue light, we are not only affecting our sleep cycle, we are increasing the strain on our eyes.

So what is a Digital Nomad to do?

We can change the amount of blue light that our devices emit by installing a free app called FLUX

This app changes the color of your computer’s display, automatically adapting to the time of day – warm (or less blue) at night and like sunlight during the day. It knows your sunrise and sunset times based on your location, so once it is set up, you don’t have to change anything – it even adjusts for daylight savings time. But do remember to change your location when you are traveling or you could be looking at a very orange screen at 2 in the afternoon.

You can install this app in a few seconds, set your location, and away you go. Since I am often at my computer for many hours a day (and use 3 monitors when I am at home!) I have tweaked the default settings to “warm up” my screen during the day, and warm it up even more at night.

If you are a photographer or a designer and need to have an accurate color rendition on your screen, you can set FLUX to be automatically disabled when using a specific application such as Photoshop. How cool is that?

The app works on most devices, so load it on your phones and tablets too. The download is available for Mac OS X as well as Windows, Linux, iPhone, iPad, and Android. No more waking up to a 3 am call and getting blinded when your phone lights up!

Give it a try – you will sleep better and your eyes will thank you!

Photo credit: Jamie Handley

Are you ready for a change? Have you dreamed of creating a lifestyle that gives you the opportunity to work and travel?

I came across this course at UDEMY and thought I would share it with you so that you can learn a bit more about what a Digital Nomad lifestyle could look like for you.

The offering is now 91% off for Black Friday Deals – only C$18 for a course that usually goes for C$205. This Coupon is valid until Nov 24, 2016 7:59 AM UTC, so check it out now and explore how you can design your life as a Digital Nomad.

This course will serve as an introduction to lifestyle design and becoming a digital nomad. The video for the introductory lecture is free, so click on the image below and scroll down to the lecture list to check it out!

This is not an affiliate link, and I am not associated with UDEMYU in any way.

Image credits: Patrick Tomasso

As a freelancer and digital nomad, it is critical for me to be able to manage all aspects of my business from my laptop. Over the years I have researched and tested several business tools to help me streamline my daily workflow.

One of my favourite productivity apps is Paymo* – the simplest and most feature-rich tool I have found for project tracking and invoicing. You can review all the feature details on their site, but here are a few reasons why I love this app.

Project Timer

My favourite Paymo feature is the project timer. Each time I sit down to work on a project, I click on a button at the top of my Mac’s menu bar, select the project I am working on, add a few notes about the tasks I am focusing on, and start the timer. If I take a break, the timer is stopped. If you get interrupted mid-project and you forget to stop the timer, the timer can tell that you are not at your computer and gives you the option to count or to not count the off-line time after 5 minutes of inactivity. How cool is that?! You can also manually add time to the time sheet if, for example, you get a client call while you are away from your desk.

Super simple invoicing

Managing invoices is super easy. You simply create a new invoice, select the client, click a button to automatically add all the un-billed time entries for your client/project, and voila – done! You can also track expenses and add those to your invoices with one click.

Invoices are sent electronically, and you can enable online payments via PayPal or your preferred payment gateway. The system also allows you to set up your payment terms and generate automatic payment reminders. No paper, no hassles!

Transparency for clients

Your clients will love Paymo as well. You can create a real-time, online report that your clients can view from a private link to get an up-to-the minute view of all the time you are spending on tasks, including the running total of costs to date.

Check out the Paymo* site for lots more detail on all the features of this app. Effectively managing your time and money is the key to freelancer success – make it fun and stress-free with Paymo.

There is a fee for this app, but if you are the only person in your organization, the cost is less than $20 a month. Customer support is amazing, and you can send in a question via a chat window directly from the Paymo dashboard.

Give Paymo a try free for 15 days!

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* This link is an affiliate link. When I share a link to a product that I really like and you choose to purchase that product from my link, I might earn a small commission. I only do this for products that I use myself and believe would be of benefit to my clients.

Photo Credit: unsplash.com/@oria_hector