Things have been all very busy lately, with much that is strange and new. So I have fallen out of my normal routine, spending more time on things than I normally might, and doing things that I normally might not.
I set myself a sort of target to do a blog entry a week, but seeing as I have missed a couple of Saturday's, I posted a short story that I wrote a while back by way of recompense. I'm not sure what anyone else will think about it, but reading now, with enough time elapsed for me to have forgotten the detail of it, I still think that it reads very well. It is so difficult to get perspective on what you write, it is easy to be over-critical, and as soon as you are familiar with something, it is impossible to be objective. You really need to be able to look at something with a stranger's eyes. So with my stranger's eyes, I still like it, so content to upload it here.
Part of the point of writing a weekly blog is that it rather forces me to loosen up on what I write, my self imposed target is to write something every week, and that just forces you to write something/anything. My other stipulation is that I write it, check it, then upload it. So it is not something that is considered and redrafted and reconsidered and redrafted, just something done and up there. Quite refreshing to do something with such low expectations.
We are coming to the end of the holiday season, so the girls go back to school, a couple of colleagues are off on a final week of leave, but all will be back to normal before too long. I've not really made much of the holidays, there was the stay-cation, which was all very nice, and plenty of ad hoc days off, but all very low key. Once again, I have failed to sort out all the problems of the world. But modest progress has been made. There has been a major push clearing junk out of the loft and now the long hard slog of making best use of it. I'm buying storage boxes from IKEA, and thinking about how best to store all sorts of things. I want to find ways of storing things such that they are accessible, but reasonably compact. So there are all manner of processes in hand,

1 work through stuff to get rid of the third to half that is actually rubbish

2 source better storage options for the remainder

3 put like with like, so that it becomes obvious when enough of something tips over into too much

I am used to jobs that you can actually split into tasks and project plan, but sorting out the loft is not really like that, you can identify near future stuff to do, but as you work on, it creates opportunities, and demands new solutions, so you never quite know where you are going, but you do have a direction of travel. I guess that a lot of stuff is like that really, more a direction of travel, than a clear project.

Other stuff, I was helping out at a couple of events that someone else was running. This meant reading up on a new policy area, meeting some new folk, and working with some new stakeholders. All positive stuff. However I am part of a pool of volunteers that help out with events, and despite there being something like a hundred people in the pool, only two of us volunteered! I guess that most people don't enjoy these things the same way that I do. Anyway, a chance to work with some bright sparky people, and do something different for a couple of days. The downside is being shattered by all the travel, but hey ho.

Also trying to get my head round what I need to do this week, when various colleagues are off. After being distinctly not busy, a gradual head of work has been piling up, and I now have ample stuff to get on with, some of which is even getting worryingly old and needs pretty urgent action. I would like to see a bit more structure to things, but with luck I can start to push things along in that direction. It would be wonderful to deal with the world the way that we think that it ought to be, but the real trick is in dealing with the world the way that it is, while managing to subtly move it in the direction of where we think that it ought to be. This is self effacing stuff, less about you, than quietly and gently achieving your vision.

The garden progresses, a wet year, so beyond keeping on top of the weeding, and the mowing, there has not been much terribly dramatic this year. I could easily spend a week out there, and really get the garden more how I would like it to be. However there is probably another solid week of work in sorting out the loft, as well as a week of painting and fixing stuff round the house exterior. Giving myself credit, I have felted the shed roof, painted the bathroom, pushed on the loft vastly, and over the past year made a step change in the household IT set up. I'm never exactly idle!

This week has been my long awaited week off work, though as ever, nothing is quite what it seems, or says on the tin.

I did end up going into work on Wednesday for a job interview, which I suspect I was not successful in, although the interview went okay, there is a lot of tough competition these days.

While most people have moved over to stay-cations, where they don't leave the country, we have barely left the house. It has given us a chance to catch up on things, though the nature of the things you catch up on, is that they still never get entirely finished! There are just too many things, and big things beget small things and perspective means that ever bigger things can hide behind the visible things, so that when you deal with the visible things, other equally big things, though slightly more distant things, hove into view.

So, I have been dealing with things, but having got some of the great looming / depressing things done, it is at least possible to see the landscape of things more clearly, and get a better grasp of the lay of the land, thing-wise

We have -

• painted the bathroom
• found a skip load of what can only really be described as rubbish, in the loft. I think when you cannot be bothered to get rid of things, you just kind of think, ohh, it might come in handy, lets just stick it up the loft. Still a work in progress, but it is like finding a whole new room up there, now that the big indeterminate piles of stuff have got sorted through and in part, thrown out.
• put mdf panels on the back of a couple of cheap shelves, so that they don't wobble about all over the place, and they now hold all my wife's jams, chutneys, and associated paraphanalia.
• emptied out one of my composters, and blitzed the garden, trimming hedges, pulling out weeds, and regaining control of some of the bits that were getting totally lost beneath weeds. My fruit trees and bushes and now looking much happier, now they can get some light and air in about them.
• We have modestly cropped the garden, using redcurrents for a crumble, volunteer potatoes, as well as dill and parsley. A bumper crop of apples is not far off, I've also foraged for Billberries, as per my last blog.
• Number two daughter has been appointed soux chef, to my wife, and has been spending afternoons in the kitchen helping her to prepare some really splendid meals,
• we have been buying the odd copy of the Mail for the free DVDs, and the girls have been getting into costume dramas, Pride and Prejudice was a huge hit, they have also seen Emma, and are all now half way through Rebecca.
• I've sorted through the bulk of my clothes, getting rid of stuff that I have not worn since University, with all my stuff now sorted into neat piles, weekend tee shirts, polo shirts, smart jerseys, not so smart jerseys, trousers for the garden (the biggest pile), smart casual trousers (ie trousers that I have not yet spilt paint on) and office trousers.
• I've made major in roads into a foot tall pile of old newspapers, and recent magazines,
• the dog has had plenty of good walks
• I have also been setting the girls little projects, to try and get their imaginations working, building robots from Lego, recording music on Garageband, researching how to use crops from the garden, mini projects on a garden plant of their choice,

All in all, it has been very pleasant to have a bit of time together with a modicum of purpose.

Finally I'll include some Chic Murray jokes that were in the Sunday Times found in that big foot high pile, because,

(a) I think that he is just hilarious, and;
(b) they make me smile

Doctor, I've got butterflies in my stomach
Oh, what have you been eating?
Butterflies.

Sergeant, get those screaming women into my tent this minute.
But they're not screaming, sir.
They're not in my tent yet.

Good evening madam, I'm from the environmental health department pest control division,
Aye well, you'd better come in, he's not home from the pub yet.

Colour television, whatever next? I won't believe it till I see it in black and white.

It was so boring six empty seats walked out.

For years, I've admired you from afar.
Mmmm, that's about the right distance.

Yesterday I managed to add another crop to my list of grown and gathered edibles. I was aware of some bushy plants covering some banking in the woods. More recently I spotted some small berries on them, which confirmed that they were bilberries. I think that American Bilberries might produce larger berries, ours produce berries larger than pepper corns, but smaller than grapes. They are the black blue that blueberries are, perhaps blacker than that. It is worth pointing out that gathering a crop is time consuming, I must have been ten fifteen minutes to gather a cup full. If you were to make jam, then you would be looking for about a kilo, so unless there is an army of you, and acres of bilberries, it is probably best to find something else to do with them.

We fell back on that old staple of sprinkling them on ice cream, which was really nice. They did not have any particular flavour, possibly sweet, certainly not sharp, the pleasure was in the crisp crunch of their skins, like little grapes being broken by your teeth. I suppose you could also add them to a plain yoghurt to make you own yoghurt.

We are descended from hunter gatherers, so it seems obvious that we must have evolved to survive on a rich mix of opportunistically gathered wild crops. There is certainly a school of thought that berries are the nutritional super-food. I'm not sure I believe in super-foods, but a really diverse and seasonal diet must be a good thing.

The classic text on wild foods is of course Food for Free by Richard Mabey, which now comes in a rich mix of different editions. He describes Bilberries as

widespread throughout the British Isles, except the south and east of England, and locally abundant on heaths and moors. An erect shrub, growing 9 to 18 inches high, with hairless twigs, and oval, slightly toothed, bright green leaves. Flowers; solitary, drooping, greenish pink globes. Fruits from July to September, small round and black, and covered in bloom.

I suppose that what is distinctive about it is how it forms a shrubby mass, not high, but expanding out, rather like a wild and slightly shaggy cousin of box, or a more erect version of the cranberry, to which it is of course related. As with all the vaccinium, it requires acid soil, so don't even think about trying to grow it if you cannot offer acid soil. I'm not sure how worthwhile it would be for cropping, it is a fairly modest crop that is a lot of work to find, but it does seem to act as a decent ground cover over banking so it might well earn a place in my garden on those grounds.

With our current house, we inherited one shed, and I bought another one for the top of the garden. The top quite literally, as you climb all the way from the front to the back. Gardening is pretty much a case of constantly climbing and descending. The shed in the middle of the garden has gradually been losing its felt roof. Initially nailing a couple of battens on held the flappy bits down, but that only works for so long. So off the the DIY shed to buy some roofing felt.

Hey how difficult can this be?

I even reckoned it was do-able in about an hour, having assembled a few modest tools.

An hour later the old roof felt had come down, an hour or two later the new felt was on the roof, but...

At this point it became clear that if you were to build a shed then you would be much better doing it properly like everyone else. This shed is idiosyncratic in the extreme. The main point in its favour is that the bulk of it is made of wood not much thinner than railway sleepers. Less appealing features are the fact that you need to bend down to go through the door. And as became obvious on trying to fit felt to the roof, it, the roof, is basically four oddly shaped pieces of plywood, nailed onto the incredibly robust framework. Being entirely lacking in any of the normal roofly accoutrements like some form of ridge, or any bracing, it is impossible to nail anything to the body of the roof, because if just bounces in and out. Hence fixing the roof felt involved using battens at the edges where there was enough rigidity to nail on battens with which to at least hold the felt on.

That was about as far as I got a couple of weeks ago, so there has been some more flapping about in the wind, before I could spend today trying to finish the job. I was intending to reinforce the roof internally, in order to allow me to nail on the roofing felt, but that would have taken forever. So, a complex sequence of fixing sides, taking off battens, layering on strips, heftily fixed with a thick bitumen glue, from “evo-stick”, rather than the more exciting “evil stick”, that my daughter thought.

The felt is now three layer deep in parts, and there are two litres of evil stick holding it all together, as well as countless galvanised clout nails, and a whole forest of battens.

Will it leak?

Probably, but it should last a year or two, and hopefully I might even be a bit more organised about it all next time.

What have I learnt?

Roofing felt is the most insane material to work with. It is like some giant piece of wet kitchen roll. Sure all is well when it is rolled up, but trying painting it with evil stick and carrying across the garden, then lifting it above your shed, and then straightening it out, all the while not creasing it at all, or it will suddenly go all precious and crack. I suppose if shed roofs were in more convenient places then all would be well, but unfortunately they are usually at the top of a shoogly ladder, and sometimes it might even be windy up there.

The fact that the felt was full of these characterful little wrinkles, that are one step away from roofing felt fragments blowing in the wind, meant that there was a lot of layering of additional felting layers to try and ensure at least some impermeable-ness in the the general roof area.

And what about the shed roof?

Heck, next time, I might just take down the decidedly feeble and lopsided ply wood, and take a day or two, putting a proper framework onto the top of the shed, then fix some decent plywood on as a roof, such that it is even, rather than just reaching the wall on one side, and overhanging it so much at the other, that roof felt snaps getting bent over at that acute angle.

With a fine day, a Workmate, saw, hammer, pencil, square, crow bar for taking of the old, ladder and stool for putting on the new, I could enjoyably enough spent a day or two putting a proper roof onto the shed.

With the time for it, and the tools, there is a certain pleasure to be had fixing something, working out what you can manage, and what seems to be working, what corners to cut, and which to re-inforce. We have our whole lives for tinkering and looking after things, when did we ever get to thinking that we were too busy.

Time just seems to be flying by these days. And the more things fly by, the more difficult it is to actually step back and think where you are going. You just get into a default position of reacting to stuff, rather than actually controlling your own agenda.


I suppose marketing plays on that, wrong footing you with buy now, time limited offer, so you allow yourself to be bounced into buying something you don't really need.

I have fallen prey to a couple of marketing efforts recently, the recent MacHeist offer on Parallels for half price, only available until the end of the month, and TalkTalk broadband available free for the next twenty years if you sign up now.

PARALLELS
I'd done a bit of research on Parallels before, so I just bought it, it was not much. However on looking at just how much a Vista/XP license would cost, and just how much of an anorak you would need to be to install and run Linux, I've not got any further. I'll maybe get a Linux install as a cover disc for one of the magazines, and I'll keep my eyes open for cheap Windows OS.

Never actually having been in the business of buying software for a PC, I foolishly assumed that it was all pretty cheap, as PC owners do tend to focus on the inordinate expense of running a Mac. However I was really struggling to find an Instal OS disk for less than £100, there seemed to be a million Amazon pages with slightly different versions, at widely different prices. And of course, you have to remember that however wonderful the OS actually is, it does not actually do very much, you still need to buy the actual software that you might want to run, the price for full set of Microsoft Office is at the kind of level that I would associate with the price of a second hand car.

Bearing in mind the fact that a load of CDs and a box cost virtually nothing, and practically every computer in the world seems to run Windows and Office, the surprise is that Bill Gates is only as rich as he is, he is not just sitting on a goldmine, it is like having won a whole set of licenses to print money, he is probably the one person that could afford to buy his own planet!

Being peevish, it is obvious that money does not buy taste, he certainly does not dress well, his offices look like somewhere that sell bulk office stationery, he has not acquired the aloof snooty sheen of academics or the meritocracy. However, as a Mac user, the script is to hate Bill Gates, but he is actually reasonably likeable, probably mildly autistic, and fiercely competitive, he has taken the intellectual stance of pursuing the game as ruthlessly as he could, and the fact that regulation failed to check him is a failing of legislation rather than him. I suspect that he simply does not look at things in terms of decent fair play, just as I cannot conceive of the meaning that a mathematician would see in numbers. Being different is not being bad.

TALKTALK
Having rambled on about Parallels, the other marketing blandishment that I fell prey to was someone phoning me to try and sell me free broadband for life with TalkTalk. As ever, the person was probably phoning from Dehli, and is probably a really lovely person, who just happens to be annoying me. Of course the offer sounded tempting, but it was difficult to get a word in edge-ways, and they were starting to tell me things that I knew were not true, like that there would be no problem curtailing my current broadband contract. You kind of get a feel for when people know less about something than you do, though they don't always have the sense to talk less simply because the know less.

Anyway having had to politely hang up, family stuff going on, the poor guy still grinding out the sales pitch, I checked out the reviews on that interweb thingy. I suppose that Broadband reviews will always tend towards the extreme, this service sucks so hard, that it is creating an anomaly in the space time continuum, stole my kidneys and had sex with my gerbil. However even by these hyperbolic standards the reviews for TalkTalk seemed ‘mixed’, in fact I do rather wonder if the few good reviews came from Charlie Dunstone and his immediate family.

Getting broadband running is about as much fun as doing open heart surgery on yourself, I think that I can find it in myself to pass up on the chance of free broadband, with some of the worst reviews going.


Anyway, having wibbled on about nothing, time to go find something useful to do.
I'm posting the odd photo to Flickr, and starting to think about what makes a good photo, basically it only has a few things it in, so it is not a distracting mess of detail.
Still listening to Geekdad,
....

PS - lame joke
why did the vicar have a Mars bar on Sunday morning?

because a Mars a day, helps you work, rest and pray.

PPS
I had to explain that to my daughter Megan, still not sure that she got it

A week of interesting diversions, been listening to the Geekdad podcasts, because, well, I suppose, I am, a geek dad. Though probably not quite fully signed up to all the cultural reference points. I do not have box sets of all the Buffy series, though I did watch them all, and I only have one copy of BladeRunner, but overall pretty geeky.

Also, pretty obviously, I'm a dad.

I've been listening to the blogs back to back, so I've just caught up to 2008, which is feeling a bit more contemporary.


I've also just bought the latest issue of Monocle, I've been watching the podcast for a while, but the city special is the first actual issue of the magazine that I have bought. It is a good read, though like the Economist, there is just so much of it you feel deterred from buying it because you cannot manage to finish it. An entertaining read, though all rather silly in that all the readers are looking at these pricey architect commissioned houses, while commuting back home to their semi's. But I rather like getting ideas from these magazines, and then trying to recreate them myself, a bit of harmless escapism.

It is intriguing to read about what they reckon makes for a great city, albeit for the rich global nomad, more interested in eating out than getting a weekly shop or something to do with the kids.

Consistent features seem to include bicycles, eating out, diversity of shops, arts, tolerance, genuine mixtures of people, good design/architecture.

Not mentioned explicitly but implicit, would be a welcoming attitude. I do wonder if we are all feeling too emancipated now to work in service professions, seeing them as menial. I think that there is a nobility in any job done well, and we would all do well to increase our civility, manners and tolerance. For the very rich stealthy wealthy, the whole world is open to them, so they can easily enough decant following some bad experience. For those of us who are less mobile, it is civility that makes our cities tolerable.


Why I don't like Doctor Who anymore - nowadays Doctor Who is written as a soap opera that happens to be set in a science fiction setting. However it is the set characters who drive the plots. Note how seldom they ever visit anywhere that is particularly alien, the lack of genuinely different looking aliens, the lack of compelling ideas in the plots, the xenophobia. All in all I'm getting bored of Doctor Who, so will probably give up on it, save for the odd Stephen Moffat episode, as he remains an inventive and amusing writer.

Austerity starts to bite - our old fixed term mortgage has ended, and suddenly we are paying nearly an extra hundred a month for what we are getting. It would be good to be able to invest more in the depressed stock market, but the routine outgoings are as ever non-negotiable. Time to hunker down and weather the recession as best we can.

Why write this blog entry;-
I have been reading Miracles of Life, an autobiography of sorts, of JG Ballard. I've been reading JG Ballard since secondary school, and even wrote a dissertation on him when I was in sixth year. Needless to say, that was either right at the start of the eighties or even at the end of the seventies, so he was not as well known in those days. Having read so much of his fiction, reading now about his life, is strangely informing.

However, despite these digressions my point is, he has written about the people that he came across and their impact on him. I suppose, looking back on your life, this is an incredibly natural thing to do. But in our hurry we seldom do look back, or think about the people we have come across and the positive impact they have had on us. He describes a family he knew and their relaxed approach to family life, combined with a decency and a love for each other, and others more widely. This family was in part a model for how he chose to bring up his own children later in life.

Of course, I could write at vast lengthy about all the people who have made a positive impact on my life, but thinking of my life as a young child, I was particularly struck by an elderly couple that moved in across from us, the Maules. It was so long ago that I don't remember much, in terms of appearance, I really don't know, they were probably grey or white haired, certainly not broad Scots, in my minds eye just a stereotypical elderly couple who smiled and made people happy. They must have enjoyed the attention of children, I was one of four, and we certainly were not the only young children in the street, but they would make us tablet with peanuts in it. We were too shy to mention that we all disliked peanuts, so we patiently took them out. I must have had some conversation where the word Lauriston came up, for they gave me a postcard and a page torn from a book, with a poem Lock the gate Lauriston. Tearing a page from a book is something that still shocks me now. Where we were, you might find brown red stones on the beach, well worn, but with some sort of whirl of other material across a face. Pretty and unusual. They had collected such stones, and set then in cement, in a little corner.

They struck me as the kindest of neighbours, but it was also their curiosity and creativeness. Here were adults that could be whimsically creative, who took a gentle interest in the buzz of no doubt tiresome children, people with a real interest in things and a love of sharing it.

When it is our very memories that shape our sense of reality, it is disconcerting just how partial and fallible they are. But I'm sitting here now, thinking of the Maules all those years ago, of their contentment and the pleasure they took in the things around them. I suppose that amidst the rather conventional, and aspirational neighbours, who were by and large too busy for us children, they were rather eccentric, but they were kind and gentle. With luck, when we see something we admire, it might sow the seed of something similar in ourselves.

A week of this and that. There seems to have been a run of public holidays. So, in theory, I should be catching up with the paperwork and such-like. Fine in theory, but in practice, I can always find vastly more to do, than I can find hours and energy to do it with.

I have also decided to mix up what I'm doing a bit more. So, rather than spend the whole day doing the garden, I'll do the garden upto lunch-time, and then do something else. I'm not sure whether it is more efficient breaking up the time like this, but it does sharpen you up, if you know that you only have a fairly finite amount of time to spend on something. A day seems pretty vast at the start, and it is only towards the end that it becomes clear how little a day's work can achieve with some tasks.
I have been lucky, in that I have recently had some of that weather that is so good, that I feel that it would be a shame to be doing anything else but being out in the garden.
So I have been excavating the fine plants that I am growing, from in amongst the vast and profligate weeds that are often dwarfing them. One part of me thinks that I should be working systematically to a laid down scheme of work. One part of me thinks that I should just dad about doing whatever catches my fancy. I'm currently steering a middle course, perhaps slightly on the dadding about side. There is always something to be said for doing whatever happens to catch my fancy, rather than working to some sensible but uninspiring list.
Some plants have been successfully excavated, and the garden now looks a bit more like a garden again.
Offering a couple of observations
• at this time of year, a good gardener always has vastly more to do, than he has time for
• the perfect garden is one that is just big enough to keep you busy when you want to be out gardening, but not so big that you have to go out when you don't feel like it.
• the only gardener who has does not have weeds in his garden, is the one that does a LOT of weeding.

Otherwise, I've been playing about with my new digital camera. Much impressed. I would love to have more time for just playing about with digital cameras, and websites, and Fontstruct, and reading the Sunday papers, and ...

If I am off during the week, and have to go shopping for something, there are all these really miserable folk there, really really miserable. I can't imagine that I would ever run out of things to do, or end up grumpily wandering round garden centres. There is so far too much to be doing.

Just finished yet another book about the Shakers, this one on the Shaker Garden. I do like the Shakers, doubtless pandering to my obsessive neatness.

A bit of an odd sort of day, following an odd sort of week, I guess. I've been playing around with Fontstruct, which is really quite engaging and restful, tinkering about, a letter at a time. My first font, was straphanger, which was a display font which I wrote about last week. I am working on a softer gentler version - which is more legible. I'll call it Commuter. I am also working on a dingbat font, with little people or whatever. The limitations of the tiles, basically mean that rather than deciding what you will draw, you start experimenting, and gradually proceed towards something that you can actually make some sort of representation of, which generally has no relation to your initial intention. Currently only Straphanger is a public font, but I'll make the others public once I get a bit more work done on them. I would love to actually get a Fontstruct pick recommendation. Something to aim for. Today the weather has been iffy to say the least, so I have been catching up on paperwork, but in a rather halfhearted fashion, as I cannot really be bothered. Attended a few interesting seminars and meetings during the week, always good to get out and meet folk. Next week there are a few holidays so with good weather, I should be able to make a dent in the weeding next week. I managed to put a pretty severe ding in the blade for the Flymo, so had to order a new blade online. I'm so used to ordering things that you can download, actually having to wait for something that arrives by post, just seems, like incredibly, like slow now. However replacement blade now safely here. However still in the annoying - waiting pile, still to get an external La Cie hard drive fixed. They did indicate that I would get a replacement, but still waiting for the proper details on that. This is a long running saga, I suspect that most people would just have given up by now, but I am feeling stubborn. I might think of something more sensible to add tomorrow, but for now, this will have to do.

After last week, with my incendiary impulses in full flow, I am once again burning things. This week the slightly less fragrant, burning of old chipboard offcuts.

When we moved into this house, I floored the loft, no mere bagatelle this, it was the Sistene Chapel of flooring, but I digress. I seem to recall that there was one piece of chipboard that did not need cutting to length, and I have found a use for some of the offcuts, but this left behind a pile of offcuts about my height. I did of course feel that they might come in handy, and was considering constructing furniture out of glued together chipboard offcuts. However I never got round to it, and I figured that if I was to reclaim any useful space in the loft, then I would need to get rid of some of my precious treasures. So I looked the mountain of chipboard in the eye and decided to get rid of it. All ferried out, and my galvanised burning bin, has duly been fired up, a smokey burn yesterday started it going, and today I have returned to the task. Once established it is not too smokey, which is just as well, as the smoke is boggin'. The burn has been going since ten this morning, and it is not even all that clear that much progress is being made on the pile, however I am resolved to just keep burning the little blighters until they are all gone.

As ever, the reason these little tasks never quite get done is generally that they really are not little tasks at all. This burn could still be going in the wee small hours. Nevertheless my stubborness is starting to kick in, having started on this, I really don't want to be returning to it again. In any event the offcuts are now sitting right in the entrance of the shed, so unless I can get rid of them, I'll never get into my beloved the shed again.

The upside of this chipboard offcut flit and firing, has been that with a little bit of careful rearrangement, I once again have some useful floor space in my loft. While the loft is mainly for storage, it is useful to make use of the space in the middle, where you might almost be able to stand up. Initially I thought that this would be for woodwork, but it now looks more likely that I'll end up with overspill IT equipment up there. It is not unattractive looking, with a couple of comfy chairs, outsize clock, and whitepainted walls! I would like to put in some shelving, so that some of the books that live up there, might be stored a little more usefully.

I'm not sure much else useful has happened this weekend. We had a trip to a couple of garden centres yesterday, and I bought some bamboo at one, and more compost at another.

Also printing off papers for my meeting next week. Also, now that I think about it, my new printer arrived, so I have set that up, put the old one up in the girls room, and put in the new USB hub that I bought the other day. The mail order company I buy my ink cartridges from, were offering a free printer, if you bought a stack of ink cartridges, so I opted for a combined colour inkjet, scanner, copier. It seems okay, not the quickest, but for the price, pretty impressive. Also great to get back to having a scanner, for copying those odds and ends that seem too useful to throw away.

As with the loft, I have tried to rearrange purposefully, so that there is useable working space.

Casting my mind even further back, it was good to get out of the office, down to a board meeting on Monday, which strained my feeble ability to travel to breaking point, although the meeting was interesting and the people were great. At the other end of the week, we had an awayday, which was held in my old university halls of residence. Of course the uninspiring halls that I used to stay in, were demolished, to be replaced with something much more swish. Life has clearly gone all coffee shop for students, not bitter brown and hot, from polystyrene beakers, but milky in a big cup. I particularly like the planting, they have a raised walkway, with huge bamboos down below. By having an area of purely bamboo, with big clumps of different species, it really makes you feel like you are somewhere completely different. Not sure that I could achieve the same effect with my garden, but it is always wonderful to visit places that you really find inspiring. Also while I think about it, I was at an all day seminar in the middle of the week too, so it has been a curious week.

Probably more absent minded than normal, as we are currently basking in the glory that is the long weekend, or in our case, being kippered in the fumes of burning chipboard, so not only is my mind on weekend things, but having an extra day, probably attempting to do things that would not fit into the normal horrifically short weekend.

Anyway, out to chuck another offcut on the fire, ...

This blog is fulfilling a long held ambition of mine, to actually do some work, well it is work in the loosest possible sense, on my laptop, in my garden.

However the dream is not quite as advertised, as with bright sun, it is almost impossible to use a laptop, I am sitting on some steps in the shade, with the screen just legible and no more. Still it is nice to be out, and I won't quibble at the sun.

Spring has finally arrived, it is very warm this weekend. I have been making the best of it, by spending time in the garden. Yesterday I did a burn of old bits of wood that had been lying about, and today I have been doing a mix of weeding, planting stuff that has outgrown pots, and seemingly endless amounts of shifting stuff about. Unfortunately our garden is anything but level,it must rise the height of a two storey house from front to back, with numerous steps, and slopes everywhere. Therefore no need to buy a wheelbarrow, everying is lugged, with attendant grunting. Good old Attendant Grunting, always there when you need him, though he does go on a bit sometimes, we would not be without him.

Anyway the once sodden soil is now starting to crust up, and weeding has metamorphosed into pulling the leaves off things, it is too hot, my hands are all tingly with stings and scrapes, so catching up on my blog now. Over the weekend I have done a fair bit, so not feeling guilty, and it always seems more productive to mix up the tasks.

There is nothing more natural than being out. The real beauty of gardening is that it gives you an excuse to get out when you need one.

My cold come flu is still hanging around, like the remnants of some nightmare christmas turkey, that come new year everyone is growing to detest.

What with being flu of the cold, and the recent spate of public holidays, things have not been moving terribly rapidly at work, so I'm keen to knuckle down and shove things on apace. Of course if this cold does ever actually go away, then that would be a start in the right direction.

Clocks went forward last night, so I have adjusted
one watch - the battery on the other one needs replaced
one battery powered alarm clock that is so basic that I can work it
my pendulum clock
my wind up mantlepiece clock

I do also have one of those remote control clocks that has the benefit of coping with the clocks going fore and back, but the disbenefit of completely beyond me, so that if ever I needed to set an alarm clock to wake me up, that I could rely on (usually a good feature) it certainly would not be this one.

I ordered some cables last week, and they arrived during the week.
One ethernet cable, which I'm running upto the girl's bedroom to give them internet in their room, and a midi usb cable.

The ethernet cable works fine, and I'll just have to figure out the least obtrusive route to run it from the living room to the upstairs bedroom. I suppose someone bolder than me would rely on powertools and just drill some holes, but I'm routing it round the skirting instead. Compared to the high cost, and periodic moodiness of wireless, simply running a cable is not that bad an option.

The usb-midi cable seems fine, but there don't seem to be any drivers available for the Bontempi organ, so that is one fine idea, that has not gone far. I'm sure that the cable will come in handy in due course.

Nothing much else doing, I'm still taking it pretty easy, hoping to finally shift this cold, rather than trying to get lots done and then collapse.

Late posting this blog, nothing terribly much to report.

I've decided to escalate my recent cold to flu status, as it has been sorely afflicting me for the past few days. Flu bug Bob, has outstayed his welcome, joyless nasal precipitation, general facial crustiness on waking, opportunities to practise blowing my nose as a novel wind instrument, a sort of snottery flugelhorn, with fine burbling undertones. My IQ has dropped enormously, and energy levels have gone through the floor. Of course I am not one to feel sorry for myself, or moan on, well I am, but folk just make their excuses and leave.

I've just taken it easy this weekend, not doing terribly much. The weather has been fine and crisp, which for this time of year, is my favourite kind of weather. It is great to get out with the dog, and walk over frosty ground, avoiding the usual slippery muddiness. Even though I've not been out much, feeling the sun come in the windows, has a wonderful effect.

Watched Shoot Em Up last night, which I had got for my wife as a Valentine's present, I think Clive Owen was part of the appeal for her, but we do have a mutual weakness for mindless entertainment. In those terms, it is an absolutely fantastic film. A non stop romp from beginning to end, a live action Bugs Bunny film, with cartoon violence and logic.

Also been struggling again with backing up to one of my hard drives. Problems with backups stalling part way through, and just never finishing. After a lot of fiddling about it seems to be going okay. I think that you just end up getting into a vicious circle with these things, getting impatient, layering problem upon problem, which is something these complex systems really hate. Once things start going wrong the odds seem to be against getting them back on track again if you just start madly tinkering with things.

Anyway not entirely sure that I have got the the bottom of things, but the hard drive is indeed working again, I suspect that a dodgy cable had something to do with it. Keen to get to the bottom of whether the drive is reliable or not, while it is still under warranty, but these technical things are like one of those old style sets of fairy lights, where all the bulbs are in series, and just one dud bulb means the whole thing doesn't work until you have identified and replaced it. Who knows what little bit of technical doo hickery was to blame.

I do wonder at just how complicated all these things are becoming. Maybe we will all be having home IT consultants in future, the way we have plumbers now, popping round to do a bit of tech support for folk. I've got the job here, but I'm interested anyway and have the time and knowledge to do it. I'm not sure it would really be worth most people's time to get that involved in the tech support if all they want is a running system, but as soon as you get at all technical in what you are doing, you will bump up against a not inconsequential number of technical problems.

We probably also need people to come and set up our televisions too, I must confess to being totally lost of all the various options.

Also of note, daughter number two, the noisy one, who I love dearly, has been away elsewhere on a sleepover, so it has been possible to take a breath without her jumping in with something. Which has made the weekend a great deal more relaxing than it might have been. When you are down to your last brain cell, this is much appreciated.

Finally, the latest Mountain Goats album will be out next week, looking forward to it.

I had this terrible dream, it must be because I had seen a bit of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory the day before, but I dreamt that the entire cast of the film were chasing after me, it was terrible, I must have been in a cold sweat, they were all running after me and trying to catch me, when suddenly I woke up and sat straight up, boy was I glad that I hadn't been caught by the oompah loompahs.

I've decided that there needs to be some more humour in this blog, so if I can think of any good jokes then I'll be sure to put them in.


One thing that I have been thinking about recently is that often poetry can have a sort of internal melody, if you take a line like
tyger tyger burning bright
and you check where your tongue is as you pronounce each syllable, then it is
high low, high low, high low, high

so even beyond the simple rhyme that you can have between lines, you can have an internal repetition.

Of course this probably quite a poor example, in that it repeats the same word twice, but one of my favourite lines of my own is
we passed quiet cities in the night
which I would translate as
middle low, high middle, high middle, high middle high

which is a sequence of repeating descending sounds.


I'll not elaborate any further as it does rather hurt my head to figure this out, and there is unfortunately no easy way to cheat and look it all up on the internet. Anyway it is something that I thought that it might be worth noting.


Going round the usual circuit of my favourite topics, I have been spending more time with Devonthink Pro, and experimenting with DevonAgent.

By way of clarification Devonthink Pro is difficult to describe, it could support a paperless office, or act as a personal wiki, or even just a repository for writing. It does actually combine a number of features from shareware products (do they still call them that) that I actually use, and have paid for,
for example
I could use it as a sort of wiki - like voodoopad
or to provide a whole screen solution for typing - like Writeroom.

On the other hand, DevonAgent will intelligently aggregate the results of internet searches from a number of search engines, weeding out duplications. It has a variety of different scripts for searching. It was dreadfully slow, and seemed rather pointless, but I figured out that I had it on the wrong one of these scripts, there is a pull down available at the start of the search box. Once fixed, it seemed to run just dandy. What with the recent MacSanta and sundry other online software purchases though, I'm trying to cut down, so I'll just let the very generous free tryout period for DevonAgent play out, and see if I still want it then. I have discovered that even if you don't actually cut down on your expenditure, if you can just manage to postpone it for a while, then it is almost as effective.

So I am now wondering whether I should spend my time aggregrating various writing into a Devonthink Pro database, rather than the current rather haphazard scheme where it is split up between various software applications.

However to be honest, I suspect that little of this stuff is so dazzzling that it worth adding yet more faffing about organising it, instead of just actually writing anything.

Accordingly, I'll probably just push on for the moment as is.

Work wise, I have been tidying up from my old job, ready for a new job. It is amazing how brutal one can be about handing over and deleting stuff when you know that you are moving on. The fact that we had a change of government has also meant that a lot of stuff from before May, is really of no use/interest any more.

Anyway, new job on Monday, so new challenges ahead. I guess that new challenges keep you young, or like new children, just perpetually knackered.

I'm not sure how worthwhile it is doing this blog, I've already done an update on our trip to see the Mountain Goats, and there is not a huge amount to add beyond that.

I've been spending the weekend writing Christmas cards, and wee notes to put in with them. Not that I actually have that many to write, it is just that I'm not terribly quick. Just as well I have a deadline to work to, or I would never get them done. Christmas is certainly a once a year, imperative to drop a note to all sorts of good friends that you don't see often enough.


One thought, amongst many, obviously, I was thinking about my job.

I'm a bit of a perfectionist and I'm always beating myself up that I don't manage to do absolutely everything that I hope to do. I suppose my job, in common with many these days, is largely self defined. I decide what I need to do, or what I ought to do. That's why you get paid smart guy rates, because you have that degree of autonomy.

That means that there will always be a tension between the two extremes -
that old standby of how little do I need to do to avoid being sacked
or
doing everything possibly in my power to sort out all the problems of the world.

And part of my comfort level is to find a balance between these two extremes, a comfortable comfort level, one that I don't feel guilty about.

In order for work to be sustainable, you really need to be comfortable in yourself. Being guilty, angry, worried, all the time, will tire you out.

I should be more accepting of the fact that I cannot do everything under the sun, that I possibly might.

Another balancing factor, is being able to split work into different strands, so that you can spend some time on one strand, some time on another, that way, if you are never getting to the bottom of anything, at least you are keeping things ticking over nicely.

Similarly, you need to be able to split your life into different strands, so that if one strand is not going so great, then at least the others are more satisfying.

Finally coming round to the initial point that I was intending to make, I was wondering about what I could do to make myself better at my job.

I don't think that it is as easy as just working longer, it is more complex than that. It is about skills, and creativity, networks and experience.

I'm not sure that I could bottom it all out in one go, but simply tackling the task with a loose methodology, which is kept under review, usually works.

I guess that important things to do would be to
1 make time for development, for example
2 pick up on opportunities offered at work
3 personal study, social policy and social research for a start
4 network
5 identify useful skills to develop, for example
6 negotiation
7 plan and track, and think innovatively about my development.

I'll think about making a personal project of this for a while, ....

Other jottings, I have just figured out how to send files between my computers by Bluetooth. Boy it is so cool.

Nearly tripped over a young deer this afternoon, out walking the dog, and this little deer shot out from just before me, and hopped off away across the field. Its little white rump bobbing up, as it skimmed over the field like a stone across the water.

Of course my dog was too busy pee-ing on something to spot any of this.

Another week, another blog. Strange how things change, like the seasons slowly creeping up on you.

Pretty quiet week, I’ll be moving to a new post in the New Year, so trying to focus on clearing up old tasks, rather than starting on new ones. Letting various folk know that I’ll be moving on, it is good to let people know in person when I can, so although I’ll still be in post for a while yet, it will probably be the last time I see a few of them.

I suppose I am inclined to get a bit sentimental, I’ve been involved in some interesting pieces of work over the past year or two, and some decent projects have come off well. Of course I’m only a contributor to the successes, they all very much team efforts, but nice to have been around and played my part.

I have been rather touched by the reaction of people to hearing that I’ll be moving on, you never really get much impression of what other people actually think of you, but quite a few seem genuinely sorry to see me go, and grateful for all my help over the years. I’m a bit of an Eeyore at heart, I never feel that I manage to get done as much as I intend to. I do my best to get back to people quickly, and do what I promise to, but I’m acutely aware that I never quite manage it all. It is heartening to hear that nonetheless the general impression is one of helpfulness and genuineness, rather than gormless incompetence.


I’m still struggling out of a cold and seem to feel pretty run down much of the time, so I am just trying to take things easily. It does just feel dark all the time, and it can be perishing cold. I have been out to the shops a few time, and the fellow shoppers seem to be demonstrating the seasonal rat-like selfishness, panic behind their eyes, as they rake through consumer goods stacked high, seeking something made in China that satisfies some joyless duty to swap gifts. When did Christmas ever end up so joyless. Joyless is the most depressing of words. Etiquette can make kindness joyless, Christmas seems to make shopping and giving joyless. Basically, I think that whenever something is getting joyless there is something far astray.

I’m probably on schedule with my gift getting, but hopeless on suggesting anything that anyone else might get me. I rather wish that I had just toughed it out, and said, give the money to charity.

Not much else to report, I’ve figured out that all my IT problems with my new MacBook backing up, must be down to the external hard drive I bought being defective in some way. Of course getting a new laptop, external hard drive, and upgrading the OS, and installing all sorts of software, all at the same time, made diagnosis a pain.

My best guess is that there is some intermittant problem in the Hard-drive that crashes backups, and this corrupted the system on my laptop. I reinstalled the original operating system, and it seems to be running okay now. I’ll proceed slowly, and if all is going well in a week or two, maybe run the OSX Leopard upgrade again.

I’ve reported the problem to LaCie, but I seem to be stuck in some tech support hell, where they take days to respond. I don’t really want to be doing basis diagnostic stuff for the next month, when the hard drive is pretty obviously crocked, so I’ll try and push for a quick replacement.

Learning lesson to all this, in things IT, take little baby steps and make sure that you are on sound ground before proceeding to the next stage.

Once I get the External Hard Drive sorted out, I’ll probably get a new desktop, which will let me retire my current one to my daughters room, which will let them play Sims, and ArtRage etc to their heart’s content. That would bring us upto a three computer household, which does not seem unreasonable as there are four of us.

Of course there are actually more computers than that. There is a really old Acorn in the loft, which is less powerful than your average mobile phone these days, and a bondi blue iMac, which went phut, probably a defective power block.

I guess a lot of this IT stuff nowadays, is probably written off totally within three years, so I always get much more use out of them than that. I’ll not feel unduly guilty. Any IT kit here gets a good home, and is well used.

I am intrigued by the speed of the laptop, my impression, confirmed by speedtests in the magazines, is that the laptop is actually slower than the desktop, this is despite them both running the same system, and the laptop having IGB ram, to the half gig of ram on the desktop. I guess that it must be other components making the difference. To be honest, I’m not sure that it actually makes a vast difference, but I’ll maybe look at picking up some more RAM.

Moving to using the laptop, and desktop, means that file synchronisation is now rearing its head. I’ll need to figure out how best to organise things so that they are where I want them to be when I want them to be there, without running a spaghetti bowl of wires all over the house all the time.

Cool software - Rogue Amoeba Radioshift, lets you listen to, and record streaming radio. Not all the possible channels seem to be streamed, but the obvious BBC ones are, and as far as I can tell, you need to be connected to the internet to do the recording, but the quality is impressive, you can edit the stuff, and save to iTunes. I don’t seem to have figured out the editing yet, but I’ve not even read the short instructions, so more a comment on my relative density, than the software. I bought it Friday, upgrading from demo, instantly persuaded by the opportunity to record an episode of the Burkiss Way on radio 7. I have fond memories of radio comedy, including the Burkiss Way, so I’ll maybe need to scour the schedules to build up a little stock of radio comedy for my iPod.

Also recommended, check out MacSanta for deals on Macintosh shareware this month!!!
Yaaaayyyyyyy!!!!!!!!

Full of the cold, head like sticky glue. Pretty fuzzy for the first couple of days, and hardly rocket powered the last couple of days. I'm starting to get more tolerant of myself not always being one hundred percent. Looking back not entirely sure what I did this week, but although I may not have been the most purposeful, I am sure that I was beavering away. All a bit of a catholic guilt, puritan work ethic sort of thing.

Met up with my old boss for lunch, and had a fine time, she is looking really well, and clearly retirement suits her well. We hardly mentioned work at all, which suited me just fine, and as a parting gift, I gave her some of my wife's fine jams, and preserves, including the new favourite, High Dumpsie Dearie Jam.

I was successful in applying for another post recently, so I will need to put my house in order, either get things done, or hand them over to someone else. It will be after Christmas when I move, so that sounds a long way away at the moment, but I suspect that it will creep up on me mighty fast, if I don't start beavering away on stuff. More puritan work ethic stuff going on.

Still persevering trying to find a way to backup my new laptop. I have deleted a lot of old stuff from my laptop, particularly stuff that came from previous machines, I suspect that there is even stuff that I had on my first System 7.1 laptop there. Also got rid of CyberDuck from my laptop. Following a suggestion on one of the podcasts, I am trying iBackup. I did set it to back up everything last night, but was still stalled when I came down this morning. I gave things a right clear out this morning, it backed up okay onto the desktop, so now I am trying to back it up to the external hard drive.

If that works, and I'll be feeling decidedly cocky if it does, then I'll try and run time machine backing up to another partition.

Other stuff, I really will need to start thinking about Christmas stuff properly, but it just feels so alien these days, when everyone has everything they want, it is a bit like that rather gross Mr Creosote sketch, where we are all being encouraged to have just that little bit more. I have that niggling feeling, that with a bit of lateral thinking, something less consumeristic, and more useful could be arrived at.

Otherwise, not much to report, it is really really cold, actually really really really cold,

Long rambling blog warning - long rambling blog warning - please ensure that you do not leave your luggage unattended, and take care when alighting -

Now that I think about it, I'm not actually sure whether alighting, is a-getting on, or a-getting orf a train. You only ever use the word in the context of trains, so it must be particularly helpful advice for foreigners with only limited English.

Various matters afoot.

Finally, finally ordered a laptop, which will bring us back up to a two computer household, the old one went phut a while back, which meant that we have all been queuing up around the single computer, albeit a very fine computer. I'll get another iMac in due course, and the old iMac can go to the girls room, but in the meantime, handy for me to have a laptop. I keep an eye on the refurbished stock on the Apple Store, and was holding out for a decent laptop, for under a thousand. Obviously, if I was looking at a non-Apple computer, it would come in a lot cheaper, and as the new basic mac laptop, is pretty cheap anyway, the savings on the refurbished ones are good compared to what they would have cost new, but less startling when compared to a brand new computer. Plumped for one with 1GB of RAM, which is more than my current desktop, and took out three year AppleCare, as the laptops are more prone to problems than the desktops. All in, not too expensive.

I really don't see the point of having a laptop that is so shiny, new, expensive, that you are afraid to actually use it.

Of course once it arrives, I will need to figure out how Migration Assistant works, and whether I will need to buy Family Packs of software, etc. Oh the life of the family tech support guy, is an exciting one.

It will be one of the white laptops, which I like, though maybe not as manly as brushed aluminium, they seem jolly things. The ones with the really big screens, just don't look like laptops to me. The whole point of a laptop is that it is portable, not carrying about something the size of a easel all day.

Other stuff - been out plenty lately, probably worth a few notes on what I have been upto. Of course the flipside is that I have a vast pile of paperwork for dealing with, today is Sunday, and I'm back at work tomorrow, unalloyed job.

Apple Store - again - another trip to Glasgow, another trip to the Apple Store. Asking about the rumored new chips, but they were all toeing the party line, and saying they knew nothing. A bit of an internet scour, there are new Intel chips coming out, but not clear when they will find their way into Apple computers, and the chip in the MacBooks was updated in early November. Thinking logically, the iMacs are pretty new, so by elimination, wherever they were putting new chips, would not be the desktops.

Bought myself another LaCie hard-drive, which means that I could start backing up immediately, if/when I got a new desktop. My existing external hard drive is partitioned, so could easily back up a laptop on there too.

Police HQ - went to the police HQ a few weeks ago, rather like the school trip to the fire station that I never got. The place was deserted and dark when we got there, strikingly geometric, and squarely lit, we got in by speaking into a speaker at the main door, and were then trapped in a deserted reception, found a door open from there, wandering round locked offices, headed towards a slapping noise, and found a cleaner in the gym, she directed me to a traffic policeman sorting envelopes in the mailroom, and he phoned up to find our host. After a presentation, we saw the large, larger than a basketball court, and tall too, room where all the urgent and routine calls were handled. Relatively tidy desks, but each had two, three or even four flatscreens on them, fixed to metal poles, with different data screens on them. All the time, large monitors at each end, relayed through a series of messages, red tickertape messages too, and a big plasma screen of the News. Whiteboards round the walls with more data. They were constantly logging the number of calls, and longest wait, via big red numbers displayed on the wall, and when pressed, folk would be pulled off tea breaks. Apparently the break during Coronation Street, and after an afternoon of drunken summer barbecues are particular times for high call volumes.

Then went to the CCTV room, eighty or ninety monitors, constantly panning and scanning, all over the county. I suppose you could be appalled at the Big Brother-ish-ness of it all, but there were some drunken folk swaying, one lying down, no-one was calling out the police, and from the images, unless you were wearing your football shirt with your name across it, you would not be too readily identifiable.

Striking features - the whole place was like something out of a movie, empty offices, brightly lit, they could even scan the environs, as if in defence against some attack themselves. The vision of people at desks with multiple monitors, was also striking, perhaps the way of the future. Finally shown round an empty room for running emergencies, all the standard stuff too hand, but impersonal, just a place for getting things done. After all - emergencies are just a job for someone.

Did some facilitation work - keeping my hand in, as I have done a fair bit in the past, so it is good to just volunteer and help people out. On the one hand, enjoyable, but also quite exhausting, with just enough of an adrenaline rush to keep you going. There is nothing quite like a mixed group of people, talking through an issue that they care about. I'll have to make time to do more in future.

A couple of evening meetings, one of local groups, and a presentation for those winning awards for their areas, for floral displays and the like. Some interesting people, and what a wonderful way to regenerate an area, these people are complete heroes. It is the local volunteers that turn round communities, and sustain those that succeed. Unseen, unheard, invaluable.

Local meeting of members,and former members of the Cix bulletin board - kindly got an invite (I'm a former member), to meet up, and have a drink. As any big city evening engagements, are inevitably concluded with the train trip home, trains once per hour, usually leaving five minutes before you reach the station, and drinking and promptly catching trains are incapable of being done in the same evening, I tend to be more anti-social than my general preference would be. I had simply intended dropping in, but had such a good time, the time flew by, looked at my watch, saw it was nearly nine, and had to leave. Around 11.00 by the time I actually got home! However fascinating chatting to people who have been bulletin boarding for so long, IT is surely a means to an end, not an end in itself. I rather like techies. They are trying to Web 2.0 the bulletin board, and it was interesting to look at and discuss functionality and ease of use. In many ways the old bulletin boards, which allow threading of conversations are still vastly better than the rather frustrating comments and forums that abound now.

Finally yesterday at the Scottish Parliament - big meeting, as ever bumped into people I knew, but was not expecting, I don't think I'm a full time meeting junky, and I do think that I get stuff out of it, actually it is a good to catch up with folk that are doing interesting things, and often the mingling is far better than the sitting and being talked at, but it was actually an interesting meeting.

At work on Friday with my boss, started off by discussing what tasks I was to lead on, and what tasks my boss was to lead on, and ended up discussing all that we need to do in the next few months, pretty much agreeing a plan of attack, unexpectedly, and now things seem to be kicking off in a more vigorous fashion. I suspect that I might revert to my old role of project managing the different work strands, which does feel presumptuous when I'm not actually in charge of the work, but has worked well in the past, and is probably necessary again.

Usual mixed bag of material this week

in trains - a work in progress
some jottings entered as a separate blog entry
these are just random jottings inspired by the time I spend on trains, which is a lot of time. Except for the black train, which is about suffering from migraines, which has the relentlessness of an unwanted train journey.

@work
finally getting on top of what seemed like an endless volume of work, but I need to find fresh challenges, though not sure what they are. Overall getting itchy feet for some new issues to get my teeth into, it all feels a bit too quiet.

apple store
dropped in at the local apple store again. What an odd shop. I really don't think that it is about selling stuff. I cannot imagine that they actually make money. Rather they are about ensuring that Apple products are displayed to their best possible advantage, something that retailers have signally failed to do in the past. There is a long history of retailers stocking apple, then failing to display properly, or have any knowledgeable staff, then wondering why they don't sell any. Even at John Lewis, when buying an iMac, they had to call out a techie in a overcoat to talk to me about it, and even then he did not have one at home himself. Other stores were even worse, with apple computers stuck at some Sad Mac prompt - sitting there unloved.

What sold me on the iPod was when my daughter instantly got how it worked without any instruction, seeing a demo model at the local Currys. If a child can get the clickwheel, and love it, then apple is doing something right.

The perennial downside is that there is not much software, but with the growing role of cloudware, and online purchasing, then it really is not that much of a problem now. And to be honest, the off the shelf iMac now comes with a tremendous suite of software, you don't need that much more, unless you are getting pretty specialised.

I suppose that I am an apple fanboy, but would like to see them doing more to put worth back in the hands of users, some of their activities feel more like revenue streams.

I have just heard that new Apple Chips will come out in mid November, so another reason to postpone buying a new Macintosh. Perfect knowledge just makes life so much more complicated!

Note to self, I would like to get some shares in apple sometime.

mountain goat - going to scotland
from the blogosphere, and forums it sounds like my current favourite band, the Mountain Goats will be Going to Scotland.

They are very impressive live, so I am strongly thinking about getting tickets. Probably a mountain of logistics to worry about, particularly now I have a job, and children, but hey, what is life without a little mid life rebellion.

Stewart Brand supports nuclear power
I heard on an Economist podcast that Stewart Brand, one of the people I list as an inspiration, has now come to the view that nuclear power is sufficiently safe, and climate change sufficiently threatening, that he now supports nuclear power. I'll have to dig up the original quote for myself, but certainly an interesting view. I have been somewhat torn on nuclear power for some time now. I was impressed with the professionalism of the people working in nuclear power when I met them through work, and although my preference would clearly be for everyone to reduce their demand for energy to sustainable levels, I really don't see that happening any time soon. Therefore we will probably need nuclear power in the short term to help transition us to less intensive energy use. I actually see the growth in broadband and computers as a positive thing, if we start living our lives more virtually, then audiobooks replace dead tree books, downloads replace CDs, broadband replaces unwanted journeys. I don't think a world where we are all housebound is desirable, but getting rid on unwanted trips cannot be bad.

I hold a modest shareholding in a nuclear power generator, and have found it difficult to square this with my desire to hug trees, but I am coming round to it not just being a pragmatic move, but an important gesture too.

Nature seems increasingly out of whack these days, if cars were elephants, we would be petrified at the sheer number of these hungry beasts tearing up our environment, but they are not flesh and blood, but iron and oil, and we don't even notice them. My intuition is that a system will struggle, struggle, and fail catastrophically, like collapsing fisheries, we are all on that brink of environmental catastrophe.

writing losing definition - books that inspire me
I have decided to start work on another novel, with a working title of Losing Definition. The title refers to how your sight loses its sharpness as you age, and similarly issues and opinions also become less clear cut. I suppose that the temptation is to withdraw within yourself, or a fantasy world. I'll probably just assemble it as a collection of blog style entries, and then reorder them until I am happy. I'll probably take some stuff from here, but writing as fiction would loosen it up a bit, and make for more fun.

I worry that it should have more of a plot, but I'm really not that bothered with plot, characters, or dialogue, so it will just be what it is, rather than some mainstream genre. If seeking inspiration, or parallels, then I suppose my little shelf of wonderful books would be
Confessions of Zeno - by Italo Svevo
Tristram Shandy - by Laurence Sterne
Jonathan Wild - by Henry Fielding
Way of all Flesh - by Samuel Butler
Dark as the Grave Wherein my Friend is laid - by Malcolm Lowry
m - by John Cage
jPod/Microserf - by Douglas Coupland

also a dash of science fiction, that most liberating of mediums, recent reading of ten best science fiction novels, included,
the following films
the Saragossa Manuscripts
the Falls
Wim Wenders - road movies, especially the State of Things
Art films I saw at University generally

and finally a dash of Burroughs, Ballard and Sladek.

As none of these have hit the mainstream, I will write to suit myself, and aim for self publishing onto the web, rather than anything more lavish. However I have enough to live by, and would prefer to write what I want anyway.

Fonts and Clifford
I remain very confused about all the different versions of the Clifford font that you can get, but have decided to buy a couple of the individual styles for use as my default font. Until now I have used Palatino as my default typeface. Also checking out the various half remembered theory behind fonts, etc, for example how we now use font to mean typeface. It is curious how fonts seem to have gone from calligraphy, to hot metal, to digital printing, to lcd screens, without any big issues, when so many other information mediums have made such heavy weather of the issues of transition. And strange that I am coming back to a typeface based on calligraphy, for displaying on my iMac screen, or printing on an inkjet printer.

One of the words we should all know is skeuomorph

we surround ourselves with comforting skeuomorphs, are we afraid of the new.

Doing a bit of tidying up today, (wet day)

• surprised by just how many items of each type of clothing I actually owned, once I sorted out all the polo shirts, or shorts into a single pile, it was incredible. And of course while there are some examples that I really like, mostly I'd forgotten I had them, and don't particularly care for them one way or the other.
• I suppose like everyone, I have a few clothes that I basically wear almost all the time, and a few that I also wear, and then there is the vast remainder
• lots of stuff too tatty to be smart, but too smart for the garden.
• got rid of some stuff, though probably not enough, it never is, really
• Also nice getting away from iGTD which has a long list of stuff to do, but rather sucks the fun out of anything.
• struck by the fact that I have a huge pile of surplus shoelaces and bootlaces, and never seem to buy them anymore, BECAUSE nowadays the laces last longer than the shoes. Something wrong there.
• cut up some old stuff for sticking in the composter, taking off the buttons first. In theory, if buttons were infinitely expensive, you could have a finite number of buttons to last a lifetime, and simply take them off your worn out clothes, and put them onto your new buttonless purchases.
• I generally have four shoes, two black, two brown, though in practice it is slightly more, as leather shoes gently fade into soggy footed uselessness

Took the dog out for a rather wet walk, he loved it as ever, sniffing and peeing everywhere, something that not many of us can get away with these days. Up on the hilltop, looking over the town to the distant bridges and slight hints of more distant hills through the mist.

Caught up with some emails, it is always quite nice to bottom out the email intray every week.

Looking over the FontShop website reading about Akira Kobayashi - though to be honest I had to google akira clifford to remind myself of his surname. His most famous creation is the clifford font, which is rather nice. I like Japanese woodwork tools, and they have an interesting approach to making things. Accordingly intriguing to read about how he approached font creation, he spent five years designing clifford. And yet it did not seem to be a pretentious noodling away design process, or endless craft for the sake of it. It is an exceptionally fine font. I rather like the asceticism of spending all that time on something so everyday that most people would never even notice it.

Trying to find a big ceramic bowl, which we must have chucked out years ago, so that I could put all the fruit into one really big bowl, rather than the current array of smaller bowls which means you inevitably forget some musty oranges someone else bought. Anyway. Annoyed that I could not find it, but more importantly I really want all the fruit in the same bowl. Same principle as putting all the shorts into one big pile, how do you know what you have unless you can see it all at the same time.

Been getting a bit annoyed with a few things, where it just seems that no matter how much I do, by and large nothing much happens, however things now vastly improved on various fronts as the work is shared out better and a few of things that have been sitting around unloved, seem to have started to sort themselves out. At root it is not really the amount of work that is annoying, it is feeling that you are doing it all, and no one else is, and the frustration of seeing the same stuff sitting and sitting.

A disconcerting week,

currently slightly pre-occupied, as I lost my pass for the office, and it has failed to turn up. Probably not the end of the world, but having mildly obsessive compulsive tendencies, I really dislike mislaying things, dislike to a disproportionate and illogical extent. Basically I like things to be just so, so losing something is the complete - non just so. As far as I can figure out, I must have lost it on the way home by train. However it may turn up amongst the clutter.

Clearly on a roll, I then mislaid my earphones for my iPod, too early to tell yet, whether I simply left them on my desk at the office, and then buried them in paper.

I must have jiggered my back, because for the first half of the week I had a really stiff and sore back. Hence moving in robotic way, and only able to sleep in two positions, and in order to change position I had to wake up, sit up, and then sit down again. So on top of the sore back, add the perils of not actually getting much sleep.

Despite these misadventures, Friday finally happened along.

Things seem to be falling into place at work, a few pet projects are demonstrating encouraging progress, other folk seem to be picking up on them and running. As ever my role is one amongst many, but hopefully by keeping the process going, when it might otherwise have fallen, and bringing new people on board, the process is facilitated and kept going.

I think that I am really getting the benefit of all my efforts in getting out to meet people, and proactively build up networks of people interested in my area of work. It is time consuming, but this networking has delivered results that I could never have delivered on my own. To be honest I would happily do more networking, but the preparation and follow up is essential to make it worthwhile, and there is always a rising tide of stuff at the desk, emails etc, that won't go away.

I have mainly been listening to bootleg downloads of Mountain Goat concerts, which I would recommend. However part of the appeal of the Mountain Goats is that it is an extensive and inter-related oevre, so the more you get into it, the richer it seems. Accordingly, as I am pretty into the Mountain Goats, I really don't know what someone coming new to them would think.

Checking random blogs with references to the Mountain Goats, this almost obsessive interest is certainly not unique. I read a posting where the poster had become obsessed with the Mountain Goats, but had decided to stop short