I had been thinking about buying a new Mac for about a month and I finally bought one last week…a beautiful new 3.2GHz i3 iMac! It’s great. It was my first purchase from the Apple online store; I seriously thought it would take about a week to ship but I got it in less than 48 hours.

The display is amazing. The colours are so vivid and bright. I’ve done some photoshopping already and it’s so much better than using my Macbook. I don’t know how I was using such a small screen for so long. The 21.5″ screen is pretty much a perfect size for my desk set-up. I didn’t realize how much a bigger screen would make web browsing more enjoyable.

I’m getting used to the wireless keyboard (it feels really small!) and I actually really like the wireless magic mouse, it’s very sleek.

I can’t wait to do some more work on it. I think I’ll be more inclined to use my wacom tablet…

Also still daydreaming about the Macbook Air….

So my little blogging initiative that took off this year has evolved into a freelance web services business.  In addition to the designing part I want to do more of the strategic online marketing stuff.  I’m reading an excellent book on SEO by Kristopher B. Jones; it has a lot of useful advice.  I’m also taking on email newsletters as part of my service, which I think will be challenging, but a great skill/marketing tool.  My Web Solutions website is nearly complete and can be found at www.robertabaker.com/websolutions — might have to get it’s own domain.

In other news, my other focus has been my prom fashion site.  I’m really startled by how much traffic picked up around back-to-school time up to now.  I think for October I’ve had over 100 visits everyday; each month the traffic is growing, which is awesome.  My twitter following has also been doing very well.  Gotta work on more content; I have some ideas of what I wanna do.  My Shop Sense ads have been doing pretty well.  Aesthetically they are superior to google ads, plus theres the added customization option.

My other blog I started, Fashion Blogging 101, is totally on the backburner right now.  I was finding it too time consuming, but I will get back to it eventually.

So that’s what I have on the go right now…next big challenge is to find some clients (I’d be happy with one!) to create a website for.

I knew I wanted a better way to manage the images on my site, and also wanted something that was easy to update. I found this awesome portfolio theme, which I love for it’s elegant look and simple navigation.  It was a perfect match for what I wanted to do.

I’ve added some new photos and web samples and divided my photography in to three categories.  Other than that, most of the content is the same.

Here’s a look at my previous portfolio designs: