Slowly but surely I am progressing towards my goal. Baby steps. That’s what it’s all about.

I was talking to a co-worker today about having a GST number for your own business and all the advantages it can give you. While it does sound tempting I was a little hesitant in getting one for myself. However, tonight, I made the jump and applied for one online. It was really too easy.

Next in line is to register my company name in Ontario so that I can get a Business Identification Number. The only problem with all of this is that I will have to figure out all the legalities related to charging taxes on my services and who is required to pay and who isn’t.

My future magazine will be selling internationally so I am a bit confused as to how to go about charging taxes. Hmm… I guess this is what running your own business is all about now, isn’t it! Oh fun!

I just finished watching the movie Sideways starring Sandra Oh and Virginia Madsen amongst others. It was an unexpected surprise as I had no idea what I was getting into.

It was a movie about two friends spending the week in California’s vineyards with one trying to get over this ex-wife’s marriage and the other doing what he must do before getting married. Two completely opposite characters – one a failed writer, and the other a partying, L.A. – based actor – connecting in more than one way, experience friendship and hardships.

It struck a cord in many ways as feelings of love and lust intermingled together while their own passion for wine brought them closer together. The four characters were each portrayed superbly by the actors and I felt as if I could relate to each of their experiences through my own encounters.

What does it mean to be married, honest? Who really are your friends?

Coincidentally, I had a similar kind of conversation with a friend today at work. She insisted that marriage requires effort and hard work and that eventually – even though you may have problems at first – you grow to love each other as you work through your issues. Is love and marriage really like that? I like to believe that a love where true compatability and happiness is evident right from the get-go does exist without the “effort” and “hard work” that she thinks is necessary. Am I old fashioned in my thinking? Are we living in a new millenium now?

It’s tough… and the worse part is, we may never know the answer.

Last night I finally got my delivery of my europebound magazine that I had made. It was a long wait but well worth it. I was quite surprised at the size of it all. It is printed on North American letter-sized paper but since it’s using 80lb paper inside, it makes it look a lot thicker. Very nice indeed. The perfect binding makes it look a lot professional than a simple coil binding or even saddle stitching.

The print quality: It’s not bad at all. I think it’s hard to tell in some cases with my magazine because I had no choice but to re-scan in a lot of my images straight from the photo itself and not the negative. Those photos turned out quite dark and with fewer details than the photos that were digitized straight from the negatives. Regardless, I am happy with the outcome.

A few errors: Europebound is my experimental magazine as I used it to test out the services of this Print-on-Demand printer. I now know that it doesn’t handle the following:

• InDesign drop shadows do not turn out well unless it’s strictly on a white background
• Some type was either hidden from the binding or didn’t even print at all. I’ll have to analyze my book more to see how I can fix this problem.
• Some transparancy features within InDesign do not print out properly. In some cases the type printed with no colours while in other cases it was really faint. Again, I’ll have to analyze this further.

Apart from that, I think I am OK-to-go with my upcoming photography magazine. Now, the real work will begin… more on this in the coming days.