MonkeyDispenser

On Tuesday this week I passed my driving theory test. Not that I don’t already have a driving licence, I just don’t have a motorbike licence and that’s what I’ll be aiming for next month by taking a direct access course. In theory, by the end of the course I’ll have my full bike licence. It’s a good job I passed the theory test though; failing that after nearly 20 years of driving would just be embarrassing. The official test DVD (the one that costs 10 quid, not the freebie they send you when you book your test) is pretty much a collection of the actual questions you get on the test. The test certainly isn’t hard if you’ve been driving for a long time, but if you can’t afford to fail (like me!) then I recommend the DVD.

Things are moving along quite quickly. I already have my protective gear ready and I’m in the process of getting hold of a bike similar to the one pictured. It’s a funny position to be in; on one side are a group (the bikers) telling you it’s by far the most enjoyable way to travel and on the other side is another group (the non-bikers) telling you you’re more-or-less going to kill yourself. Hmmm…nervous now.

Also it’s an entirely selfish thing to do if you have a young family like myself, which probably doesn’t make me quite as excited as I would otherwise be. None-the-less I’ve been wanting to do this for years and I’m determined to see it through successfully.

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My youngest is now at the walking stage and recently won a whole batch of hair ties at a school fete. When I say won, she obviously received a little help from her brothers given that she is 1 year old and doesn’t quite understand the concept of gambling yet.

I know girls and boys are quite different, that’s fairly obvious and a biological necessary for the survival of the species, but it’s the small things that seem to be built in which always interest me. For instance, Holly already appears to like dressing up. Now that’s not unusual as her 6 year old brother does too – but his motives are very different. He dresses in superhero costumes so he can do a bit of harmless showing off whilst Holly just seems to like dressing up because it’s what girls do. It is a fairly normal girly trait but I didn’t expect to be able to see it before she was intellectually capable of understanding the concept, or before the peer pressure kicks in when they start full-time school.

Anyhow, I digress. The fact is it can be slightly eerie. She seems quite happy to have her hair dressed with these new ties, something the boys would never suffer until old enough to be reasoned with (not they they would have hair ties now, but there are entirely different reasons for that which involve their own reasoning over the difference between boys and girls). I have no real exposure to girls of this age, let alone raising them. I’m from an entirely boy family – except for my mother, obviously. Girls don’t seem to stay little for very long. Boys are eager to grow up just so they can do ’stuff’ and often talk about how they wish they were older. Girls just seem to do it while you’re not looking.

Seeing Holly with her hair tied is cute but spooky at the same time. I put a lot of it down to having read too much manga…

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Today my new Samsung 226BW arrived, which pretty much ends my spending on gadgets for the foreseeable future. Setting it up wasn’t quite as easy as I’d hoped since my video card (an ATI Mobility Radeon X1400) refused to provide it’s native resolution of 1680 x 1050 using an analog connection. After three hours I resorted to the digital connection and it worked first time.
Continue reading It’s what I do for a living so don’t call it ‘playing’!…

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This is something I’m having a real problem with right now. For a while I go without television, or at least I think I do, and feel quite good about myself. Then I suddenly find myself sitting in-front of the tv one evening whilst trying to do some work on one of my projects. Inevitably I get next to nothing done and end up feeling more than a little frustrated with myself.

It’s not like I don’t have a lot of things to do. Since starting down the road towards Getting Things Done I have realised just how many things are on my list. That doesn’t worry me, which is how it should be, but when I waste an evening  without even realising it I end up frustrated and annoyed with myself. Both of these feelings are counter-productive.

So what should I do? Here are a couple of ideas I’ve had:
Continue reading Breaking the TV habit…

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I recently read a book entitled ‘Coach Yourself: It’s Your Life, What Are You Going to Do with It?‘ by Anthony Grant. It’s an interesting read, especially if you’re one of those people who, like me, always talks about making big changes in your life and never really gets around to it.

There’s a reason I never got around to it, I know that now. If you’d asked me then I would have talked about it not being the right time, it needed more thought or other complications in my life meant it was difficult for me to do something like that right now. The classic excuse was that I was just too busy. It’s not just me, I have heard this sort of excuse from colleagues time and time again. I think we all know it’s an excuse but we’re all playing the game to make ourselves feel better.
Continue reading Ambivalence and the freelance software developer…

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Being self-employed, and in the fortunate position of being able to work from home quite a lot, I have often considered what other opportunities there are for working outside of the office. Working from home is fine especially if you have a dedicated office space (which for me is the loft). But what if you don’t have somewhere away from the other tenants of the house, or there are times when you just need to get out? Getting out can be important for home workers that don’t want to go out of their minds.
Continue reading Working from home? How about the cafe?…

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Another major update to the site, this time involving the move across to using WordPress. When I first created the site (properly) I used it as a project for learning PHP as well as a few dynamic html techniques. The blog-type format was fun to write and taught me a lot of things that I now use in my day-to-day work on other projects.

But, in terms of a fully functional blog site I was never going to be able to reproduce something with this level of technical ability without some serious time commitments. And it’s not like anyone was going to pay me to do it either!

So far I’m very impressed with WordPress, and its plug-in framework means it can easily be expanded to suit other needs. I think that when I come across a client who wants a blog-style site then this is where I’ll be starting in future. It’s easy to set up, well supported and I can save the innovation for the unique features they require!

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I think this is why I bought a Mac…

Continue reading iMovie – ideas above my station…

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Finally I took the decision to get a MacBook. I’ve been worried for a while that only having one machine could cause problems as a freelance software developer should that machine decide to go belly up.

Also I just wanted to expand my knowledge a little by moving across to a new platform, at least part time. This way I still have the security of my big-beast-of-a-Dell laptop whilst keeping my private life on the MacBook. Oh yes, I’m a sucker for iLife and I look forward to getting all of my music and photo’s onto it. Once I’ve fixed my network that is since I had to rebuild it just to get the Mac to use the wireless access. Apart from that everything just seems to work…so far.

The built in camera is a revelation. I wish I had more friends (or at least friends with Macs) so I could video conference!

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Somehow I was talked into entering a competition after less than a year of training. Oh well, I suppose the easiest way to know how you’ll do in a fight is to actually be in a fight. We were quite lucky since Sensei Liam is big on competition and was prepared to do some proper kumite training for those of who are still at the ippon kumite stage of our Karate journey!
Continue reading 22nd KUGB KYU Grades…

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