GAURAV PATELme@gauravpatel.co.ukGraphic Designer

Toast Freelance Ltd is a freelance agency that scouts talent on behalf of companies for temporary/contract work. Earlier this year, I was scouted to work for a fantastic mobile application development studio in Shoreditch, London. This was great opportunity to work on apps for big companies, many of which are in the Featured section of their respective app stores.

I would invoice Toast Freelance Ltd on a weekly basis who would in turn invoice the dev studio. The dev studio paid Toast, who would take their cut and pay me. This system worked well, except for the part where they pay me. I am owed a lot of money for work I did back in June to August.

I knew something was wrong from the first payment run they promised that I would be in. They said I would be paid on 5th August for all outstanding invoices but the 5th came and went. I was told this was pushed back to the 16th. The 16th came and went with no cheque.

I then received this email on the 18th:

Dear Gaurav

I am instructed to inform you that the directors of Toast and its accountants and advisors have made a fundamental change in its company.

Here at Toatlovesyou ( Freelance ) Ltd we have had an internal restructure and decided to cease being involved in the freelance market.

To this end a cheque has been paid to you for payment of outstanding invoices but these are send dated September 1st as we require our accountant to do a final audit to then allow us to close the Toastlovesyou ( Freelance ) Ltd.

Please ensure these cheques are banked on September 1st and no later than September 5th, as our account will be closed form September 10th.

We thank you for working with us and have added a £25.00 extra payment to your due amount to cover inconvenience costs while we make this re structure.

I thought I’d finally get my money. I waited for the cheque and it did actually come, but it wasn’t for the full amount. The email above recommends banking it between 1st-5th September, but the cheque was dated 9th Sept. I was told it’d go through fine and the remaining invoices would be paid next week.

The cheque bounced. I banked it in a few days later as I was extremely busy with a new job I started, but I was told I’d have a few days to bank it. After chasing them up (by chasing them up, I mean days-weeks of constant emails with no reply), they asked for it to be posted back to them and a cheque for the remaining amount would be sent out.

I received this cheque and it cleared fine. What happened to closing their accounts though? I thought they were restructuring and closing everything? Somehow their accounts were still open even after they said they would be closed.

Alas, at least I had some of my money, even if it was peanuts.

A month literally went by with no communication from them. I constantly sent emails but it was like talking to a brick wall. I managed to dig up a telephone number for them. After asking for a few staff members I knew names of, the receptionist said each one was in a meeting. I knew it was complete and utter rubbish. Every time I called, they were all in a meeting.

After a month went by, one of my emails was magically picked up on 27th October and they reacted as if they didn’t read/receive any of my previous emails. If she scrolled down a little bit in the email, she would have seen a constant stream of emails from myself to the company with no reply.

She expressed how shocked she was and that another payment would be made for me in the next monthly “payment run” with a new bank account that would be activated on the 11th November, and rather than a cheque, it would be an online transfer. So, in my eyes, I had 3-5 days until my money was with me after 11th November.

I emailed them daily just to be kept in the loop and to make sure this supposed payment was still happening. The first couple rounds of these emails were replied to by the same person that had been dealing with all of the above correspondence.

I hadn’t received any of my money and on 15th Nov, I emailed them the following:

Hi Odette,

Me again.

I don’t know if you’re out of the office or what’s happening. Yet again I am getting absolutely zero response when this is a matter that requires attention.

I have cc’d in other members of your team and I would greatly appreciate an update on what is happening. This is causing more inconvenience as every day goes by without being paid … and I have been waiting patiently for over 4 months. Needless to say, I am now looking for inconvenience pay on top of what is already owed to me.

I have checked my account and the money has not yet appeared. Today is the third day. Please advise when I should expect to see the transfer completed.

Can someone please let me know what is going on.

Kind regards,
Gaurav

To which I received the following:

Hi Gaurav

Odette no longer works for the company.
I am in discussions with our newly appointed firm of accountants to resolve payments issues.
My apologies in this matter but we have much to unwind.
Either myself or the accountants will get back to you in the next few days.
Best
J

I knew I was well and truly fucked at this point.

Up until 16th Nov, I was liaising with “Odette”, now “Jemma” has stepped in. Great. Jemma goes on to say in a follow up email that she’ll have an update by the following Monday. Again I would have to chase up and she had the following to say on 22nd November:

22/11/2011

Dear Gaurav

Toastlovesyou (Freelance) Ltd & Toastlovesyou Ltd

It is with great regret I write to inform you of the following developments in regards to the above named companies.

Having had exhaustive discussions with both our accountants and other advisors, we find ourselves in the position that we may now need to accept the position of entering into voluntary liquidation.

While we had hoped that to dissolve the freelance company only would have been sufficient action to stem the flow of costs, as running this company in the freelance sector costs have far out weight the sales results but this won’t now be possible.

However before fully accepting defeat I wanted to try one last thing to both save the company but also to allow some payments to be made to the contractors/ umbrella companies that number 11 at present including yourself, whom still have funds outstanding to them.

If at this point we either except liquidation is the only option or indeed allow one of our contractors who are our creditor to take legal action to close the company, as none of the contractors are preferred creditor such as bodies like HMRC whom would be, this would result in no funds being received however if we find a way to trade out of this position then some funds can be used to make payments and hopefully satisfy all parties sufficiently.

What I am proposing is in order to save the company, is if I can ask each contractor to accept 50 % of what’s currently due to them in full and final settlement paid over a 20 week period this will at least ensure you have some funds paid to you.

I am not in a position to do any more than I have already done to save the company, costs have been cut to the bone in all areas and Odette is no longer employed on doing the accounts, so all matters will now only be dealt with by the accountants, so the companies fate and that of your funds and the other contractors, are more in your hands at this point than mine.

We do however need to act swiftly as I can’t be seen to allow the company to trade while a possible insolvent position.

So I would ask you to write in the next 7 days ( they won’t accept emails ) to our accountants at the address below to confirm if you will accept this settlement, if I can get the main body of the outstanding contractors to accept this compromise, payments will be able to be made and the company will be able to trade on.

Of course I expect and would advise you to talk to your accountant / solicitor about this action before replying.

If we can’t find a way forward via this method then I will have to release all current staff employed by the company on December 1st and cease trading in its entirety.

Please write to:
Jo Bromley
c /o
ToastLovesyou (freelance) Ltd
58A High Street Heathfield
East Sussex
TN21 8JB

( This address is the companies registered offices and all post is being forwarded to the accountants direct from this address in order to comply with requirements )

I hope this action will be in some way be helpful and a better result for all than just to fold the company and all payments be lost.

Either I or our accountants will contact you again on Tuesday 29th, when I hope we will have heard from all parties and have a path one way or another to follow.

Kind Regards
J

To summarise: We’re closing the company. If you want to have a hope of seeing any of your money, write to our accountants. I do just that and await a response. I email Jemma a few days later as she states she would have a response for all outstanding freelancers. On 8th Dec, she said she would have an update on 12th Dec. I email her on the 13th and I received this:

Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently:

jemma@toastlovesyou.co.uk

Technical details of permanent failure:
Google tried to deliver your message, but it was rejected by the recipient domain. We recommend contacting the other email provider for further information about the cause of this error. The error that the other server returned was: 550 550 5.1.1 : Recipient address rejected: User unknown in relay recipient table (state 14).

Basically, she’s vanished, with £50-60k (guesstimate) of unpaid freelancer fees.

ToastLovesYou Ltd still exists, but it seems “MRS JEMMA STEPHENSON-OLIVER” is looking to start afresh under toastcreativemedia.co.uk.

If you’re still reading this (I love you) and you have any advice, tips or have had a similar experience, get in touch below.

I only know of two resources that can help me, Companies House & Citizens Advice Bureau.

Throughout this entire ordeal, I have been extremely patient and civilised. I worked hard for the period that I was contracted for, but Toast Freelance/Toastlovesyou seemingly set out to take honest peoples hard earned money from the get go.

Jemma, Odette et al.: If you’re reading this, I hope you enjoy spending my money. Looks like you can only get some cash by illegitimate methods.

tl;dr I got fucked.

I’m impressed.

Unfortunately, it took several patches to get there. However, once you apply these simple patches, this baby flies – for the most part. It does hang every now and then, and it there is much to be improved. There is no excuse for any lag whatsoever.

The hardware is quite sturdy. Unlike the iPad 2, I don’t feel like the TouchPad will break into a million pieces when I put it down on a table. The weight is a little on the heavy side when handling with one hand for me, especially when you’re lying down with the TouchPad in the air, unless you like the risk of a brick falling on your face.

The glossy plastic back does become an issue sometimes and glides like fingers through silk. I don’t know why they didn’t put the matte finish used in their Touchstone back covers. The Pre 2, Veer and Pre 3 all have the same matte finish, so why did they go for something different for the TouchPad?

The weight and slippery back are negligible issues to what is otherwise a fantastic device.

I was not sure what I would find in the App Catalog, or if I would be impressed, but fuck me was I in for a shock. The App Catalog might not have the numbers like the iOS App Store, but I assure you, the actual quality of TouchPad-specific apps is definitely there. The best thing is: they’re mostly indie developers. I will be doing a review of my favourite apps on here so keep an eye out for that.

With the recent news, some say this platform is dying, why buy a device that won’t receive any updates? To these people I say, open your eyes, see the bigger picture.

The firesale has put webOS into a lot of hands. The news of BestBuy wanted HP to take back ~250k TouchPad but after the discounts, they’ve all gone, and they’re getting more stock. Retailers here in the UK had the same demand.

Developers and users have a relatively young operating system, and it’s exciting to see how the OS will be developed for both these camps of users, not to mention the news awaiting who will manufacture or how new webOS devices will come to market.

I want to end this post on saying the people involved in the homebrew community are all awesome. Without this community, who knows where webOS will be today. The work they have put into platform is nothing but outstanding. If you have so much as installed a single patch, you should think about donating some money to webOS Internals.

Update: I forgot to mention something quite big. You know that whole “Synergy” thing where webOS pulls in all the data and contacts from your online accounts? Well, turns out I can’t add quite a significant account: Google.

There’s a bug where you add an account to webOS that contains some special characters in your password where it simply states “Unknown error” and can’t be added. I’m not changing my password on a million devices and setups just because of a silly bug on one device.

So I’m having to do my email in the browser (which is less than convenient) and I have yet to find a nice mobile-optimised site for Google Talk.

Written on my HP TouchPad, using the WordPress app.

So you’ve just opened up your brand new HP TouchPad (or two *cough*) thanks to the recent sales. Allow me to be the first to welcome you to the webOS family.

You may notice it’s somewhat laggy in parts, and this is somewhat down to the fact that HP log a lot of data which can slow down performance. Don’t worry — they’re not out to get you!

Thankfully, thanks to the openness of webOS, you can turn down the logging yourself. To do this follow these simple instructions.

After trying out iOS 5 Beta 4 on my iPhone 3GS, I can safely say it’s nice, but it’s not ready to be used day-to-day (no surprises there).

Downgrading from iOS 5 to 4.3.5 (latest stable version as I write this) is a bit tricker than I remember from the other betas, but that just might be me.

There are a lot of methods to downgrade out there, ranging from Jailbreaks, TinyUmbrella to even Xcode, but they’re all shit.

Downgrading through the usual method, which is the same as below, minus the DFU part, would result in a 1064 error.

Using iTunes 10.5 Beta 4:

1. Download iOS 4.3.5
2. Connect your iPhone
3. Enter DFU:
1. Hold sleep/power + home button for 10 seconds
2. Release sleep/power, continue holding home button until iTunes detects your iPhone is in recovery mode
4. Hold shift and click “Restore”
5. Locate the .ipsw for iOS 4.3.5 that you downloaded previously
6. iTunes will erase and install iOS 4.3.5 on your iPhone

That’s what worked for me, your milage may vary.

As I write this, I should be up in Central London freelancing for a company to take photos of this company’s client. Instead I’m at home, blowing the dust off my blog and typing up this blog post.

Why? I got a call the night before to say I had been replaced by another photographer.

Before I continue, I should point out I’m not annoyed, angry or have any negativity towards the company I was freelancing for. Business is business after all.

The objective of the shoot was to take natural photos of the client at work, in a small to medium sized room. Nothing too fancy, right? Well apparently I was wrong. The client, and this is the part I don’t understand, wanted studio lighting in this room — I don’t have any. I hate using anything but natural light. So I was replaced with another photographer who had studio lighting.

I know there are justifications in using external lighting sources, especially in a controlled environment like a studio and I don’t have anything against people who use flashes/lighting.

I don’t mean to blow my own trumpet, but I think I can do an alright job without with just natural lighting.

Do people just see the amount of gear a photographer has with them and instantly expect their photos are going to be great? I know this is partially true because I used to think that. However, having been exposed to this world a little bit, I know that’s grossly untrue.

I’ve seen work from people who can do so much with such little, that walks all over people who have all the bells and whistles.

It reminds me of someone who has all talk but when it comes down to it, can’t do much.

Yeah, I couldn’t resist. I saw @kosso‘s iPhone 4 image and I just had to do this.

I noticed my iPhone 3GS running iOS 4.0 deletes all text (and photos) in any textbox when you hit the Globe and Backspace keys together. Notes app, the subject field in Mail, the address bar in Safari, anywhere you enter text. If the keyboard has the Globe icon (you must have an international keyboard enabled), it will do it.

The video below shows me doing it:

Yeah, it’s a little find, it’s not world changing, but it’s there.

I haven’t posted anything in a while and I just made this and and and and and and and.

It started off as this, which turned into this, and ended up as above. Oh yeah, I shaved my head.

Yesterday, 4th April, was the day crazy people around the world took to the streets of their local city at 4am for 4amproject.org:

The aim of the 4amproject is to gather a collection of photos from around the world at the magical time of 4am. Everyone can take part and join in! All you need is a camera. We want to see what you see at that moment in time on that one day. What’s your view at 4am?

I read about this through PetaPixel at around 11pm, needless to say I instantly jumped at this. I scheduled to meet my friend at 3:30am, from where we would drive somewhere into Central London. I had no idea what to expect from London at 4am. I’m always drunk whenever I experience the city that late/early.

I did not sleep and I was practically dead when picked my friend up. We drove past Westminster Bridge and saw how beautiful it was at night. We both agreed to park nearby and walk as Southbank, Waterloo, etc were walking distance away.

This is the route we took. Each photo has been placed on the map where it was taken or as close as possible.

Here’s a higher-resolution slideshow of the photos from the morning (or see them on Flickr on lower-resolution):

A remote control arrived that morning and if I did not bring that, my photo strategy would have radically changed and I wouldn’t have been as happy with the results as I am. I instantly knew I would be taking long exposures with the Canon EF-S18-55mm f/3.5-5.6, otherwise known as the “Shit Stock Lens”.

I basically tied my camera to anything and everything using the Joby Gorillapod SLR-Zoom with the ballhead attachment. This was the first time using the Gorillapod and I have to say, for this, it was perfect. The only problem I had was straightening the legs once I was finished with a shot, though if you’re constantly tying it around rails and benches, it’s awesome.

Once mounted, I would use the remote control to control the shutter speed (the camera was on fully manual with BULB setting for shutter speed). What’s awesome is the Canon 500D displays the seconds the shutter has been open for on the LCD.

Protip: anyone can take photos like mine. You just need a stable surface and manually set the shutter speed. This is definitely achievable with an inexpensive point and shoot. In fact, the next time I do this, I’ll take my Sony DSC-T70 and do some more experiments with my 500D.

Despite freezing my chops off and being ridiculously tired, this was definitely worth it. Walking around Central London at 4am (read: sober) is definitely an experience; you don’t see many people but the ones you do see are the ones you think about, like what they’re doing, where they’re going, etc. We even saw a lovely couple broadcast their fornication outside Embankment Tube Station.

This post is already 50 million times longer than I had planned.

Summary: I loved it. I look forward to the next 4amproject.

Goodbye.

If you want to see the all the photos, they’re on my Flickr. If I’ve taken a photo of you and it’s not there, email me.

Holi, the “Festival of Colors” was actually on the Monday 1st of March, so the Borough of Richmond Upon Thames with Arts Service and the Ethnic Minorities Advocacy Group (EMAG) put on a festival on Saturday 6th March.

I did not see this festival advertised anywhere and I don’t live too far away from Twickenham, however the turnout was staggering, as was the diversity of the crowd. I seriously expected to see 2 small Indian families (do they even exist?) and a few couples, but boy was I wrong. There were people of all ages, walks of life, colours, sizes.

I went with my friend and he said something along the lines of if all people came to events like this, there would be no racism or hate towards people of certain ethnic backgrounds or their way of life. The entire day was enjoyed by absolutely everyone, I saw a sea of smiles through my cameras viewfinder and that surely can’t be a bad thing.

Update: As I do for all my events, I compile video and photos from the day and make a short YouTube clip:

The festival started off with 3 acts, a bloke, a woman, and some kids. That’s about as precise as I can get about who they were.

Just after they finished, the coloured powder was available.

They didn’t put all the powder out at once, they seemed to have the perfect amount for the people there and just kept on reissuing it after once in a while.

The music was flowing, people were dancing… and throwing powder at each other

A few local Twickenham Indian restaurants came out in full force, providing food and drink for everyone

The kids absolutely loved it and got stuck in, I didn’t see any fighting or snatching of powder

If I had £1 for every smile I captured …

Nothing Indian is complete without dancing

I think he might be famous

Some organisers with smiles and a proud look on their faces, so they should, it was organised well

With dancing, comes dance-offs. The little girl won.

‘Ello ‘ello officer

Cute couples everywhere

This chick came running up to me with handfuls of powder with the intent on throwing it on my “clean face” but ended up all. over. my. camera.

This was my first Holi experience and it was nothing short of epic. I am definitely going to this next year.

Camera: Canon 500D with EF 50mm f/1.8 II, EF 75-300mm f/4-5.6 USM III