Empty Handed

I’ve now received my ‘proper’ Moo Flickr-cards, the set of 100 I ordered and mentioned here. They’re really nice, but I’ve made some errors! The first thing I realised when I got them is that I made some poor picture choices. I think I’ve picked too many shots of the kids. These are good pictures which I like, but they’re not really right for a calling card. It’s not that they’re inappropriate in any way which would see them being exchanged on some dodgy website (with the possible exception of the one of them in the bath, but even that one is completely modest with only their upper halve’s visible). No, it’s just that they’re of my kids! I can’t imagine giving them to anyone who is not part of the family or a close friend. And I can’t really think why I’d want to give such people my calling card. D’oh! Ah, well. The other problem with my picture choices is the format of the cards - think extremely wide-screen and you’re pretty much there (or look at the picture of them to the side there if you’ve got imagination issues). Now, this is not news to me, I knew this when I ordered the cards, as you have to select how the picture should be cropped. It’s just that I didn’t pick well in some cases, picking pictures I liked rather than images which would suit the ratio of the card. To be honest, I picked them in a slight hurry coz I was doing it late at night and was trying to get it done quickly, but even so, I’m pretty sure I would have made some poor choices anyway.

With the benefit of experience, I wouldn’t have picked this one or this one. Basically, if you have to cut something out which is important to the picture don’t use it for the Moo cards! Seems pretty obvious, I guess.

The other mistakes I made were in the choice of text on the back of the card. Here, I made two mistakes. 1) I included a web address, which (doesn’t exist yet, but) is basically part of this site, and would pretty much lead anyone who chose to visit it to this blog. Why is this a mistake? Well, I’m not sure I want anyone I would be likely to give these cards to to know about the blog. Like family, friends, colleagues, associates and acquaintances. Not because there’s ever likely to be anything untoward written about them (but there might be), but because I mingle in different circles in real life, and, although we may not like to admit it, or may think it’s some sort of weakness, we do tend to behave differently depending on the group (well, I do, even if you don’t). Now, if everybody I know is a potential reader of this blog (OK, I know that technically they are anyway) then which persona should I adopt in my posts!? It’s not that I’m taking any great pains to be anonymous, or anything, but it’s just probably a little too extreme to actually encourage these people to find the site. Hmmm. Tricky. This error in itself probably means I will not actually use these cards.

Anyway, mistake 2) is my phone number. No, I didn’t get it wrong per se, it just turns out that I’ve been labouring under a misconception about international dialling. I’ve put my cell phone number down on the card as 00447770 nnnnnnm where my number has the dialling code 07770, so I’ve put down the UK international dialling code in place of the leading 0. This doesn’t work from landlines in the UK. Oops. It’s fine from another mobile (and I store all my numbers on my cell phone in this format so they just work from anywhere), and it would be presumably fine from pretty much anywhere outside the UK, but just not from a UK landline. well, how was I supposed to know!?

So, the pictures are wrong and the text is wrong. Gah, I’m an idiot. On the plus side, the cards themselves are lovely. The format and the nice thick-card with matte finish really help to improve the quality of the pictures themselves, making even my lousy snaps look rather splendid.

Looks like I’ll be ordering some more Moo cards pretty soon, then. At only 20USD they really are a bargain. I may order 2 lots - One set to use as calling cards (no web address this time and a proper phone number) and one lot to give to friends and family just with my Flickr address on, so they can find my photo stream - that set would be nice and safe (and sensible) to have pictures of the kids on.