Welcome back to Self Employed Mum. Thanks for visiting!

Friday afternoon again, and if you’re in the mood for a shirking session, I have just the online delight to share with you.

Last year I raved to you all to Samorost, now from the same Amanita Design stable comes their latest masterpiece: Machinarium.

It’s a simply stunningly rendered point and click adventure game in the same style, but replacing Samorost, we have a robot who needs our help.

The puzzles are still frustratingly tricky at times, but there’s both a help forum, plus in-game hints if you get really, really stuck (which I did do at times!).

Machinarium combines beautiful graphics with spookily atmospheric music and a complex storyline which you uncover bit by bit as you progress through the game. The fantasy world is a delight to move through and the attention to detail is exquisite. Characterization is strong and you find yourself rooting for a happy ending for the little robot. It’s also mind-bogglingly addictive – time and again I promised myself the current level would be my last but then had to carry on, just to see what would happen next.

The first few levels are free to play, then if you fancy stretching your brain muscle a little more, you can download the remainder for $14.99 (PC and Mac versions). Be warned, it’s as horribly addictive as their previous adventures!

I love these quirky fossils of the future, according to their creator, KB Sculptures, this is how our ancestors will remember us!

This one is a mouse fossil (the computer kind) and it’s set with lots of ” fossils” in a lump of rock. A great talking point for your office desk and the perfect present for the computer geek.

It’s cast in Herculite and makes an ideal paperweight too.

Approximate  size 14 x 9 x 6cm

Price: £11.50 plus  £2.50 postage.

This week my Macbook has become painfully slow. In fact, it would be easier if I got out and pushed.

To combat this unexpected turn of events, I did what I usually do and googled my problem. I was presented with a gazillion different things to do from modifying firefox (and add-ons) to cleaning up my desktop (admittedly the desk top is as cluttered as my actual desk!)

When all this failed to fire up the Quatro, I fell back onto the “download a bit of software from the net – that’ll do the trick” option and used a recommended programme, cutely called “Macaroni.”

Macaroni seems to do the usual sorting out of hard drives stuff, with the ability to schedule daily, weekly and monthly clean ups. It also had one addition I’d never thought of before: the “foreign language clean up.”

Yep, it removes all those files in other languages on your Mac. To be honest, I’d never given much thought to the uselessness of having Albanian versions of Read Me text files before. Or how much hard drive space they were taking up. However, with the click of a button all was revealed. rather a lot, as it turns out.

Voila, Macbook now souped up and running at top speed again. Thanks Macaroni

Macaroni – FREE 35 day trial and then $9.99 to buy.

photo credit: Pink Sherbet Photography

Even geeks can grow office plants!

This planter from the Science Museum puts NASA’s proven technology to good use, helping even the most green-challenged gardener grow plants.

The planter defines soil-less gardening, and provides an ideal growing environment for herbs, flowers and fruit. All you need to do is seed it, feed it and leave your plants to grow. With no soil to mess up your desk, it’s the perfect home-office solution!

Power Plant £35.00 plus delivery from £4.95 (UK only).

If paperweights make you swoon then feast your eyes on this simply gorgeous paperweight from UK designer, Panic Tuesday. “Vintage Time” is a resin paper weight with watch parts, beads, a vintage button and a fabric rose, plus natural inclusions.
The width of the domed paper weight is about 3 inches and the base is covered with black felt to protect your office desk (my desk needs protection from myself!) This would make an unusual present and is also gift-wrapped free of charge.

£22.00 plus £2.00 postage.

Regular readers will know of my eternal quest (encouraged by Nat) to develop ultra-organisational abilities. As a geek, I’m also a sucker for anything online and techy. Often, I get as far as a road test before giving up, but one online tool I am still using every day, months after signing up, is project management software, Huddle.

UK based, Huddle is an online workspace that you can use to work together with people. I use it to manage my virtual assistant, work with a couple of business partners and liaise with my internet marketing clients. It is this type of flexibility that makes Huddle such a good solution for those organisationally challenged peeps like myself.

Huddle gives you a range of communication options including sharing and storing files online and creating and editing documents online. Discussions can be managed through unlimited discussion forums and whiteboards (like Wikis). You’re able to notify group members immediately of any changes to the workspace, ask for approvals for documents or let peeps know you’ve uploaded files.

Add into the mix a task management facility which links to an online calender (which can also be synced with iCal) and you have a pretty nifty way to keep projects on track. Oh, and there’s also an app for your iphone

My only criticism is that if you have several projects running it can get pricey for the small business to add extra workspaces to their account, but you can take advantage of one free workspace to try Huddle out and see whether it suits.

We were tagged by Antonia over at Family Friendly Working, to say seven things you didn’t know about us, so here goes!

Ali’s 7 Things…

1. I love handbags with a passion. You will know I’ve made it when I sport a Chanel black 2.55 as my arm candy.

2. The last time I sang in public was when I was 18 and played Mrs Peachum in The Threepenny Opera.

3. I’ve had a crush on Harrison Ford for 33 years…

4. I suffered from secondary infertility.

5. I’m a big Sci-fi fan.

6. I have all of Nigel Slater’s recipe books and I hold him responsible for my current punishing diet.

7. I was once a very political animal.

Natalie’s 7 Things…

1. I was brought up in Dublin so I have a mixed accent. When I started blogging and was anonymous, people assumed I was fair skinned with red hair…

2. I’ve been doing acupuncture for 4 years as it helped me to recover from an immune system disease, Sarcoidosis.

3. I have about 100 pairs of shoes although most have been neglected since I had kids…

4. I was asked by a very famous rapper to go back to his hotel room with him and his entourage but I declined telling him that ‘group activities’ aren’t my thang…

5. I watch at least one episode of Sex and the City each week.

6. I have an early baby picture of me being held by Bob Marley (as shown).

7. I’ve lost a Mulberry handbag in my attic. I keep meaning to do a clearout…

We’re really pleased Self Employed Mum is hosting this month’s business mum’s carnival. We’ve got a whole stack of posts ready for you for your delight and delectation.

As usual, if you like what you read, then don’t forget to add a comment to the blog!

First up is Helen Lindop over at Business plus Baby. She has the thought provoking post Why Mumpreneurs Should Make a Decent Profit…

A blog post to make you smile is over at More 4 Mums, where Lynn Hogg explains how she managed to influence the Government through a few tweets!

Becky Goddard Hill shares How to Plan the Best Party on Earth over at Baby Budgeting.

Over at Mumazing, Sam Thewlis is asking how we find the Measure of Success ?

Time Management Mum, Nadine Hill, has a few pointers for industry on her wish list Tips for Companies Who Market To Mums.

Rachel, who’s currently Girl Friday at her local church, shares a typical working day with us over at Tales from Lewis Lodge.

Over at Support 4 Women, T-J is Taking Stock… While Elaine at Little Sheep Learning is Setting Targets.

Mums The Boss share a post by Susan Odev inspiring you to stop asking and start listening to your inner voice in I’ll Go Where The Muse It Takes Me.

Finally, Antonia over at Family Friendly Working gives some insight into herself by sharing seven things we don’t know about her.

Enjoy!

photo credit: Vince Alongi

Is this the ultimate in office relaxation?
The USB Aromatherapy Oil Burner delights your nose and clears your mind with just one drop.
Simply add one drop of the included aromatherapy oil onto the little X on the USB stick (see above). Step two, pop the stick into a USB drive (horizontal drives preferred to prevent drips – boo – not good for my Office Mac).

I’ve just about had it up to here with Microsoft Office (if you’re not able to remote view I’m holding my hand up to my forehead). I got a new laptop about two months ago and since then I’ve been struggling. I followed the instructions and installed my previous software on my new machine but I’m having all sorts of problems. Registration problems, registry issues, Outlook having a hissy fit and crashing every time I try an open an email with embedded images, Word doing the same when I try to use the thesaurus, the list goes on.

I’ve always used Microsoft Office, mainly because it came pre-installed on my laptop and virtually everyone in the business world uses Word and Excel as standard so it’s convenient to have documents in that format.

But on the advice of a friend, John Baldwin of NETS Ltd, I’ve switched to OpenOffice.org. If you’ve never heard of OpenOffice.org, it’s time you did.

The programme has six full-blown applications: the Writer word processor, Calc spreadsheet, Impress presentations program, Base database program, Math equation editor, and Draw graphics program.But best of all, it’s free!

I’ve been using it for about a month now and I’ve found it really easy to use. It has all the features you’d expect, but some very nice extras as well, the most useful being the wizards. I now use OpenOffice.org for all my personal stuff as well as writing blog posts and basic bookkeeping jobs such as cashflow forecasts and expense/purchase lists. It will also open other programmes so you can still open Word and Excel documents, and it will save as these formats as well.

What is OpenOffice?

“OpenOffice.org is the leading open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. It is available in many languages and works on all common computers. It stores all your data in an international open standard format and can also read and write files from other common office software packages. It can be downloaded and used completely free of charge for any purpose.” – OpenOffice.org website

Never heard of open-source software?

It’s software that has been developed in collaboration by programmers and end-users. They have access to the source code (hence the name) so they can modify and improve it. It’s free to download, use and distribute, by anyone for any purpose.

But what if I have a problem?

No problem, there’s a wealth of free advice and support out there. No hanging on the end of a telephone line whilst being charged exorbitant call rates!

If this sounds too good to be true, I promise you it’s not. Open-source software is probably more common than you think. If you use WordPress for your blog, Mozilla Firefox for your internet browser or Joomla for your website then you’re already using open-source software.

So if you’re looking for an office programme that’s both free and easy to use, try OpenOffice.org. I’m a convert, are you?

P.S. I used OpenOffice.org to write this post!

Kassia is our new contributor here at SEM. She runs Bright Angels, a company that helps small and medium sized businesses with their bookkeeping, marketing, and admin services. She also blogs at Working Mum

I have one of the most untidy desks around – but I’m sure it would be a different story if I had one of these cool Campervan Desk Tidies.

Some self assembly is needed but the neat trick is that it is fully customisable with a range of fun stickers.

£5.99 from Gadgets.co.uk.

If you’re so hard-core for your morning coffee you stand by the kettle yelling “hurry!” then this might be the ideal piece of office candy for you.

This coffee and espresso maker uses sophisticated technology to brew your coffee to perfection, giving you the ultimate-full flavour experience. And an added bonus, the brewing takes just one minute from start to finish..

Price: £35.00 plus £4.95 delivery from the Science Museum Online Store.

I find it hard to resist anything sparkly, and when it combines glamour with geekdon, I say bring it on!

These cute mini optical pc mice (meeces?) are hand rocked to order with your choice of Swarovski crystal colours – citrine, topaz, clear, fuschia, jet, rose, light rose, sapphire, light sapphire, peridot or siam – so lots of choice there then!

It has all the functions of a regular optical mouse and is sized to fit a notebook, computer or laptop. The optical sensor means it can be used any any surfaceand it is complete with a retractable cord that can be locked to 3 different lengths.

If you’re ever tempted to try “Bejewelled Blitz” - a game on Facebook – then my advice is not to!

A deceptively easy concept – it’s one of those flash games you just have to line up the “jewels” to score points in just one minute. This cunningly conceals the fact that it’s the online equivalent of crack cocaine.

When I first started I found it hard to score into double figures – Facebook handily puts you onto a team scoreboard to play against the rest of your Facebook Friends – I now get the odd 100,000 + score but not very often.

Some of my “friends” though seem to score upwards of 200,000 and I only just manage not to call them out as black magic voodoo dabblers, as I can see no way that these scores are legit.

Must go, off to see if I can beat my last score… You have been warned…

Tribute office mug to 70′s weatherman icon, Micheal Fish.

It’s magic – all you do is make a hot drink and watch the clouds disappear.

What more relaxing way could there be to spend a tea-break than turning grey skies to blue?

Price £10.00 plus £4.95 delivery from the Science Museum online shop.

Once you’ve collected your business cards from conferences, networking events etc. you’re left with a problem – just what do you do to keep them all together?

Don’t buy one of those little books with the pockets in – that’s way too corporate! And don’t follow my lead by having little piles stashed around the office.

Try this instead. This little file cabinet looks like a shrunken version of the real thing, but holds up to eight hundred business cards. Two drawers pull out, letting you shuffle through your entire collection. There’s even lettered-tabs to help keep everything organized.

$12.99 from Think Geek. International shipping.

I once worked with someone who had one of these on her desk.

Galileo first dreamed up this invention over 400 years old, but it will never go out of fashion. The ornamental glass thermometer has five precisely-weighted coloured balls which rise and fall according to the temperature.

Beautiful and useful, too. £15.00 plus £4.95 delivery from the Science Museum online shop.

Rosetta Stone Mouse Mat

One for history buffs, here’s  a uniquely shaped mousemat based on the Rosetta Stone, one of the key exhibits in the British Museum.

Apparently it’s made from a wipe clean polycarbonate surface with non-slip base.

We think it’s just too cool for school but will look great in our office!

£8.99 from the British Museum shop online – FREE Delivery!

Am I the only person who gets so engrossed in the ‘puter that my coffee is either drunk lukewarm (yuk) or banged back in the microwave for a heat up?

Well, today I seem to have stumbled on a solution.

May I introduce to you the USB Mugwarmer? – a kind of hotplate for your coffee mug powered by your ‘puter!

Simply plug this little gadget into your USB port, pop your cuppa on the hot plate, and it’ll extend your drinking time by up to 30 mins – problem solved!

£9.99 plus £4.99 from inwantoneofthose.com.

Mouse Rug from the British Museum online store.

Bored of the usual mouse mats?

Then why not treat yourself to your very own “mouse rug” ?

Based on designs from small Safavid silk rugs which are “united by their clarity of design, delicate patterns, precise craftsmanship, weave structure, and size.”

This piece of Office Candy is available from the British Museum Online Shop for £14.99 with FREE Delivery !