There is some really amazing stuff out there if you have the time to track it down, or are lucky enough to be pointed in the right direction.

Brad Sucks, is a musician who has made the most of the opportunities offered by the web to find an audience without going through the usual record industry A&R men. He has been making his music available on an open source basis, although he does have material available for purchase now, via CD or iTunes, but he does point out that it is freely downloadable, so people can certainly listen without paying. I really like his explanation, he would love to make a living from his music, but if he could not manage that, then he would prefer that people listened to his music and enjoyed it, rather than it being unheard.

I think that is a far better mindset, than commercial artists under contractual obligations to produce an album a year.

Anyway I heard his track Sick as a Dog on the GeekDad podcast, stuck Brad Sucks into google and found his website, downloaded the album, dragged it over onto my iPod, and was listening to it on the way into work the next day. Quite simple, alternative rather than lo-fi, catchy without being trashy, well put together, without any filler material. Recent favourite bands of mine have been the Mountain Goats and Throw me the Statue, and this is in the same sort of ball-park.

But the bottom line is, it is free, try it, you might like it.

The Mysterious Geographical adventures of Jasper Morello, was likewise cited in a Wired listing. It is a short animation, a sort of steam punk Noggin the Nog. Every frame is a work of art, beautiful gothic extravagances of clockwork transports, iron airships, populated with stock Victorian characters. It is all rather Edgar Allan Poe, or Jules Verne, or the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen or Laputa - City in the Sky, depending on your reference points.

There is a fantastic trailer on the website, but the short film itself seemed difficult to track down, a CD for sale in Australia, or part of a US compilation. Finally, almost by accident thought to look on iTunes, and it was there for £1.99, which is a bargain in anyone's money. The first short film is number one in a short sequence, it would be amazing to track down the others somehow, or manage to persuade iTunes to distribute them.

Maybe there have always been amazing people out there, doing amazing things, but now the web lets us find them, rather than the bland homogenised entertainment that commercial channels insist on. The traditional media have lost their way, and it will take more than a website and some phone in competitions to bring the impact of web 2.0 to them.

The broadcast is dead, long live the podcast.

I am an inveterate filer of things. There is a certain virtue in a world that is ordered and neat. Tidyness is a form of virtue. I could easily have become a librarian, efficiently finding the right place for things, even in my house, I am obsessed with finding sensible places to put things, logically placing like items with like items. Putting the frequently used to the front, the less frequently to the back.

In office terms, you had to file, if you did not file, you lost, and if you lost, you might as well never have had, and you were done for, you might as well never have been.

And so, my email is filled with folders within folders, my hard drives have folders within folders. There is a certain overhead to this, though virtual filing is certainly less onerous than physical filing. But it is a system that serves me well, I can generally place my hand on anything of note pretty briskly.

But computing is all about metaphors, because we do not think in binary, we apply metaphors to make meaning. Folders are a paper based metaphor, because you put things in them, then ordered them neatly. We know folders, we like folders, so we have virtual folders in our virtual lives. But folders exist because processes like duplicating and sorting and finding are all labour intensive in a real world. But when you have four gigabytes of RAM, and a terrabyte of storage, then processes that might seem unimaginable if performed physically suddenly become a mere commonplace that come at no real cost.

So we are moving from filing to finding, you don't need to file something logically, so that you can find it again. You can simply title it and leave it in a big dump of stuff, and search for it if you ever feel that you need it. So what if your search turns up twenty possible documents, it will be there anyway, and it only takes a moment to pick the right one.

But have we just swapped one metaphor for another. By making searching faster we can get rid of filing, but it is still a rather manual mindset that we are thinking in. Surely the point of computing power is not just that it does what we do a little quicker, or a little cheaper. That is like employing servants just to do what you cannot be bothered to do yourself, knowing that basically the servants came with pretty much the same design specification that you did, only their hourly rate is cheaper than yours, so you can get them to do all the stuff that you cannot be bothered to do. Like your family really.

But computers are not just a mini-me, they are something completely different. Why are we trying to get computers to comply with our outdated metaphors, and ways of working. We could instead look to what computers are good at, use them to compliment ourselves, while we have abilities that it would be impossible for computers to equal, they equally exceed us in other areas.
I suppose that this is the sort of hive-mind idea that is floating about, without any particularly clear articulation, because it is all a bit too blue skies to really be able to assimilate. We are uncomfortable about pushing away from the side, losing our metaphors. On the one hand artificial intelligence could offer a potential future, but isn't that just all about trying and failing to make computers think like we do. Like people making two legged robots to climb stairs. We did not design motor cars to duplicate horses, that could eat grass and jump fences. We built them to run on specially built roads and come in attractive colours.

It is about accepting the differences and changing our world a bit to accomodate what computers unfettered could offer.

I'm no smarter than anyone else - I don't know the answers, or even what they would look like, they will be different, that much is for sure.

THINGS THAT WORK NOW

• storing incredible amounts of data works well - especially now that computers can search and sort it so easily,
• paths - allowing the wisdom of crowds to sort out the most crucial of stuff
• living on line lives - minimal barriers to putting stuff on line
• communities of interest, rather than geographical communities

ISSUES TO WORRY ABOUT

• the internet is still a scarce resource, we are not touching the sides yet, but soon will.
• Datafarms already use about 3% of the UK's energy. Factor in how difficult it will be to produce energy in future, with peak oil and the declining acceptability of fossil fuels, and this could be an issue
• internet pipes are not infinitely fat pipes, they were designed for stuff like email, as were the protocols. So stuff found its way through, not instantly but efficiently. There was enough capacity for all, you just had to wait a wee while sometimes, or the site you were after might be down.
• But now people are using broadband as a means of accessing vast amounts of data, watching TV programmes on iPlayer, phoning each other by skype. These are hungry and need to be pretty quick to be useable, so they have hungry protocols that don't play nice and share so well.
• There is an internet infrastructure and new internet infrastructure needs to be paid for. But current charging mechanisms don't really help fund infrastructure.
• I would expect the internet infrastructure to start creaking in a serious way in the next few years. I would also expect the electricity grid to start creaking too. In America they are used to brown-outs when the amount of power reduces. Fine if you are running an electric fire, not so great if you are running a data farm. An interesting point about datafarms is that they already select hardware on the basis of power efficiency, it is that crucial a factor for them.
• I know that digital inclusion is a very trendy term, and I know the theory that some people are excluded access to the internet and this serves as a barrier to their full participation in society. I don't really disagree, but although there are people with good reasons for being excluded, through disability or infirmity, or inability to cope, most of those who are excluded choose to be excluded. People without a computer either cannot afford one or are not interested. Often enough they can afford games machines, they simply choose not to spend their money on a computer. Even if you were to magically place an easy to use computer in every house - would it really get used in any useful way. Just as children use a dictionary to look up rude words, or prop up a table, there is no guarantee that people will use the internet wisely. If you simply want to passively interact with a medium that entertains you, then that is the medium that you will find on the internet. The challenge is to make people make more use of the potential of the internet, to join these communities of interest, to create the wisdom of crowds. The internet should raise our potential, or what use is it.

POSSIBLE FUTURES

• the death of computers - because in future everything will be smart - to an appropriate degree
• your boiler will tell you when it was last serviced, who your service contract is with, and supply competitive quotes for fuel, service and insulation services, as well as responding to ambient temperature, preferences and holidays.
• your cup will advise on the presence of off-milk and beverage temperature
• not just some blade-runner esque nightmare of continuous and cretinous advertising, but useful functionality. Why should we spend so much time shopping, mostly we don't like it.
• the death of applications - because in future everything will be smart, why switch on your computer, it switches on so as to be ready for you as you come in, it advises you of your tasks for the day, and any urgent emails, finds reading material for work and leisure, suggests contacts that you might want to follow up. You switch seemlessly from email to browser to word processor, the computer offering appropriate options based on your previous behaviour with appropriate wild card options.
• the smart paths - wisdom of crowds model will extend beyond shopping, what about politics with smart crowds, what about meaningful social change!
• what about work with all the boring bits taken out, a work that responded to you, rather than fitting you into some strait-jacket of how the office liked to function.

I really will need to do some serious thinking around this. Safe bets would appear to be that human skills like interpersonal skills or creativity will be more valuable than stuff that can more easily be duplicated by a computer. We all want to feel valued and happy, and computers will only ever be able to go so far in making that happen.

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

After writing about names for imaginary fonts, I have finally had the chance to create one, as per the banner above me. Fontshop, where I indulge my love of fonts, has just released a web-based font creation tool, FONTSTRUCTION. Rather than being vector based, it is tile based, but there is a large and growing selection of tiles available, and after all, constraints are the mother of creativity. Once you have created an account, and logged in, both easy, it is then incredibly easy to play around and create individual letters. There are a variety of character sets available for your font, so it is possible to create something pretty professional. Once finished, you can make your font available to all and sundry, and even download it as a truetype font to your own computer.

HOW COOL IS THAT.

So, I have been distracting myself lately developing my first font, straphanger. Basically, I just started at A, overshot slightly as I was laying it out, but quite liked how it had turned out, so I just carried on with the rest of the alphabet to match. I tried to keep it simple, down to just three tile types. There are a few little flourishes, and some idiosyncracies, so I cannot claim that it is high in legibility. However, hopefully the individual letter shapes are appealing, in particular the upper case ones.

I have taken inspiration from the Operina font, which uses very ornate upper case letters, and high ascenders in the lower case, as well as one of the Rian Hughes fonts, where the upper and lower case are similar, but there is a slight stylistic variation to mark that they are different. One of the appealing things with Operina is that it is nice to look at, but not always very legible, which is not necessarily a bad thing sometimes.

I've published straphanger now so that it is available to all and sundry, though it might well still be a work in progress. There is always a little more tinkering to be done with these things.

Having done one very pixilated font, I should try something a little more mainstream next, or maybe do a dingbats set. Anyway, safe to say, I will be playing with Fontstruct for some time to come.

If you key in, what is the time, to google, it will actually tell you the time. Whereas if you key in, when is now, it will suggest an album you might buy. It is like the maddening book that Borges wrote about with an infinite number of pages, filled with random text and drawings.

I've got a little bored with the format of recent blog posts, so being a little bored with it, I will throw it out altogether and write about something different.

I find writing therapeutic, not in a bland sense, but in the sense, that it genuinely helps me to record, recognise, reorder, rationalise, and then move forward on, my thoughts. I have doubtless written in this blog, in reference to the Getting Things Done methodology, that for me, any number over three might as well be infinite. In my head, without making a specific effort, I can generally retain three thoughts, like a juggler juggling oranges, but after that, there is no guarantee that oranges won't be hitting the floor.
I suppose, that is why I love writing lists for myself. They rationalise my thoughts, and demonstrate that once you start to write them down, there are not actually that many things to do.
I have also found the suggestion from Get Things Done, about carrying a notebook, and writing down my ideas, a useful devise. I suppose that the blog is another dimension of that process.
I suppose some of writing is just about the craft of trying to capture in evocative words, the essence of something. Some of writing is about making sense of a confusing world. Because in reality, we are insignificant actors in an uncaring world. But when we read, we see ourselves at the heart of meaning. Writing is about meaning, that is what language is, meaning conveyed. Life is not, life is living experienced. There is a tension between the two. Maybe what is written is the world as it ought to be, all neatly seen, processed, ordered and rationalised. Just as Darwin and the geologists saw the neat patterns in what lay chaotically around them. We are are own personal Darwins, applying meaning to the chaos of our lives.
Looking forward we marshall our resources, set out our plans, and set sail into the future.
There is something heroic about this sort of writing, something very human about having that boldness to understand, and then want to make an impact on what we know is an uncaring world.
But too much that is written now, is written by the yard, to fill a quota, to meet a deadline, generic fiction, bland analysis. In writing, like in life, one should be careless at times, show a strategic disregard and jump not knowing what lies out there in the dark.

Nothing much to report, possibly the result of writing this blog late afternoon, rather than the more usual early morning. I suppose some times are just more conducive to long blogs, and others to short ones.

Busy at work, getting through stuff, but nothing that I can think is worth noting here.

At home, the weather is thinking about spring, though still prone to snow and hail. I've set up a couple of outdoor chairs that I leave out all summer, and started to look at what will need done in the garden, but just not quite warm enough yet to tempt me out. When the weather is right, there is nothing better than the excuse of garden to have you pottering about outside.

I've run a 30 meter ethernet cable through the house, so that the girls now have internet access in their room. However it is all a bit curly, so I'm tempted to take it all down and do it all again properly. However it must be just on the cusp of being able to run along skirting boards, rather than nipping across the ceiling. There are a few extra loops left, but whether it is enough for the more aesthetically pleasing long way round is near impossible to estimate. Possibly a job for a 30 meter piece of string and some drafting tape. However that can be a job for another day.

Monthly community meeting yesterday so paperwork from that has swallowed up a fair chunk of the weekend. Also all the usual stuff around the house.

My new favourite font is the operina font, which is based on a sixteenth century book on calligraphy. Being calligraphy based it is splendidly wonky, and eccentric. It is a pure pleasure to use, because you never quite know what to expect, when some gothic embellishment will suddenly appear.

A curious week.

I ordered a new re-furbished iMac from the AppleStore last weekend, and sure enough it arrived during the week. It actually arrived on Thursday, I had a day off then anyway. So I had the dining room table set up with three different computers, running migration assistant to transfer over everyone's files to the new iMac.

The new iMac, is one of the twenty inch aluminium jobs.
Impressions ?
• the screen is very glossy - plus point it looks stunning, minus point, it is way too distracting if you have light behind you.
• the aluminium looks okay, but in a tactile way, it is wonderful. Oddly they seem to have used the aluminium on the keyboard to give it more heft. This combined with the shallow keys, make it a wonderful thing to use. Easily my favourite keyboard now.
• the mouse looks out of context, against all this aluminium splendour, a new mouse must be on the way
• the screen is big, but not unpleasantly so. It is getting towards that tennis watching scenario, where you turn your head to see the other side of the screen. I suppose you could simply work in one corner, and use the other for less frequently consulted stuff, as you would with two screens.
• it has that lovely new computer smell,
• it seems a little bit faster than you would expect

And with a new computer, new housekeeping to do. I'll need to order some extra memory, (Dimms?), from Crucial. I'll need to set up a proper backup regime. I currently have three LaCie external hard drives of varying sizes. There is a troublesome one, drive number three, which seems to stall when doing backups using SuperDuper or TimeMachine, and accordingly is not much use. I've brought this up with TechSupport at LaCie, and they asked whether it worked okay connecting up via USB, rather than FireWire, and indeed it does. I'll see what they come back with next.

Anyway, I'll also need to think a bit more about how I am using my dot mac account. I must confess that I have yet to get my head round how it all works. My free trial was just about to expire, so with rather ill grace I upgraded to a paid for dot mac account, but really I do feel that it is very poor value, for what is a rather indifferent product. However I do really need the ability to sync between different computers.

As ever these days, everything seems back to front in money terms. Things that would have made good expensive wedding presents, like a set of cutlery, are now cheap as chips, and all the bills, seem to be on the up escalator.

Computer hardware is all phenominal value and getting cheaper, but you are paying out for the associated services. Broadband, dot mac, software, iTunes downloads, in my case.

My share portfolio is taking a tumble, a big screen full of red for the stockbrokers. I track the average purchase cost of my shares, so when the average price dips below that, I simply view it as a buying opportunity. I'm in it for the long term, and intend to have these shares for years, if not decades. All very Warren Buffet-ish. Currently spoilt for choice on what I could buy, and there is always the possibility that my best bet would be to just sell the lot, and repurchase them all cheaper in a few months.

Pretty quiet at work, currently readying ourselves for the next batch of work. The office is reorganising at the weekend, so we all got kicked out at lunchtime on Friday. IT staff coming in to roll up all our keyboards and phones, wrapping the cables round them. I've moved about every six months for the past year or two, so I'm getting quite used to it. For the first time, I had only a very modest amount to pack and move.

Met up with an old colleague for lunch, something that I really ought to be doing more often, as I really look forward to it, enjoy it, and look back on it as something valuable. Anyway, said colleague, has not been doing so well. No adverse comment on her abilities, thinking back to when I worked with her, she was running the most fun, most worthwhile, most brave, most innovative, place that I have ever worked at. This was not just my impression either, we all of us, felt that there was a real buzz about the place, that it was something different and something special. I think that we were all given the opportunity to try out new things, and develop ourselves enormously. That said, it was not without its frustrations, but with hindsight, these were pretty trivial, and when you care deeply about things, then the disagreements have a bit more bite to them.

Her current unfortunate situation is more a reflection of the vagaries of working in the very very real world of the voluntary sector, where you are at the end of a very long chain, and dependent on the grace and favour of a great many people for funding. Falling out of favour is no reflection on what you have done, or not done, it just seems to be a fact of life sometimes.

Anyway, I hope that she finds something that suits her talents, strangely many of the people that have impressed me most recently, are struggling to find work commensurate to their abilities. However that certainly does not diminish my view of them.

Busy week, all done.

After blogging the other week about the potential for home IT support, there was an article this week in the Times about the growing multi billion pound market for such services in the UK. Obviously I am ahead of the curve for journalism, but not far enough ahead for venture capitalism.

I know that Macintosh is marketted as the computer for people that don't want to get bogged down with the technology, just plug in and play, but being honest I don't think that is terribly realistic. If we just wanted a machine that did a few basic things, without any new sexy features, then of course we could buy a rock stable machine, and still be using bakelite phones, but we don't. We want all the sexy new bells and whistles, and things that we don't even understand, but heck we want them anyway. Hence new operating systems, that look zingy, but are hardly rock steady. Leopard, I'm talking about you now, you are one mean kitty.

A related point, if you want to use computers seriously, you are just going to have to knuckle down and learn how stuff runs, how to do backups, partition your drives, and the like. It really is not a serious option to just muddle through, unless you want to lose all your data, or miss out on most of the potential that is on offer. When you live in a world that runs on magic, you need to start learning a few spells.

Something else that occured to me, we tend to rate homely architecture and settings, the village square surrounded by cottages, settings that suggest we are an integral part of a small cozy world. We tend to dislike settings that suggest we are a nearly insignificant and meaningless element of a large impersonal world. No one loves the high rise, and motorways with chronic gigantism. But the latter is the reality, the former an affectation that only the rich can afford to pretend to. Maybe we are struggling for a new set of symbols and understanding that let us feel at home in our own brave new world, rather than just hiding behind the mock tudor facade in the suburbs , while sleeping through the mindless commute with thousands of people just like us.

Interesting conference at the tail end of the week, all went well, and I was impressed by the very solutions focussed approach that a lot of the people there had. I always like pragmatism, but this was not some gloomy pragmatism, to which I am prone, but a very upbeat version. Interesting and inspiring.

Also reading in the papers an article about someone that helps people establish their own personal brand. I suppose that if I was pressed, my core values would be
thoughtfulness
creativity
making a difference

On other topics, there were some refurbished Macintosh computers going cheaply on the Apple Store yesterday, so I have bitten the bullet and ordered one. I've not told my daughters yet, but it will mean that they can get the old iMac running Tiger for their room, and we will get the new 20" iMac for the main computer. I'll look at setting up wifi in due course. However keen to avoid my previous mistake of having far too many new things on the go at once.

And the weekend is about done, back to reality again tomorrow.

I really don't take enough of my annual leave, I carried forward an excess amount, so I have been taking the odd day off here and there to whittle it down.

Unfortunately so full of the cold, that it has generally been a lazy day off rather than a productive one. However it is nice to find the time for pottering, rather than just chasing round doing things all the time.

I devised a spreadsheet for tracking my investment portfolio, which is a rather modest selection of shares supplemented by £100 each month. Clearly I am not about to rival Warren Buffet any time soon, but I suppose that it has the same appeal as horse racing, having some money on one of the runners does increase your interest quite dramatically. Trading with this kind of sum of money is a bit tricky as the risk is that transaction costs will easily exceed any potential earnings. So my aim is to build up around £1000 book value in a small number of shares, and add an extra share occassionally. Now upto five shares, with a total book value nearing £4k, but in the current market, actually having a valuation below that.

However ever the shares optimist I am viewing it as a buyers market, though I am not expecting it to bounce back any time soon.

I'll probably go for an investment trust next, as it would be prudent to diversify beyond these shores, but buying individual foreign shares won't be cost effective at the volumes I am trading at.

Anyway, currently transcribing details to a spreadsheet, so that I can track my portfolio better. All very colourful and scientific!

Also very keen to get an Airport BaseStation which would let me set up a wifi network in my house. I am steadily building up the IT infrastructure in the house, I suppose a computer for each of us eventually!

Other news, I have had the latest Mountain Goats album for the past week. Slowly getting into it. Initially a little disappointed, but with repeated listens I am getting into, and the hooks really do get into you. Worth checking out the reviews and the pages of comic art which supplement the songs, as they are a more thematically disparate selection than usual. Written from a variety of points of view, with no particular theme, though a clear propensity for horror hokum.

Another foible of the modern age is that there were various permutations of bonus tracks. I think there was an option to pre-order and get a couple of bonus tracks. I bought on iTunes, and a few days later an extra track appeared. At present there are two versions of the album on iTunes - both for the same price, one with 13 tracks, one with 14 tracks. I contacted iTunes support and got a credit for the extra track, which was pretty sporting of them. According to the forums there was another bonus track available through Amazon US, as the anoraks all know, Amazon US does do music downloads. Amazon UK does not currently. I suspect that Amazon US would identify my credit card as UK and get iffy about me buying the bonus track from them. I did however manage to track it down on the 4AD website, which let me buy it. I also bought a few other rarities that had appeared on the b-sides of Mountain Goats singles, and were available to download. Had a quick listen, and barring one which did not grab me, they seem a pretty strong bunch.

I have finally gone digital with my bank account, so profitable swapping around of funds awaits me. What could be more exciting than online banking. Well more exciting than standing in a queue to pay in money during my lunch hour anyway.

I would like to point out that my geek credentials are now complete! I actually get a mention on in the credits for the new version of SuperDuper (macintosh back up utility). This follows on from some correspondence with the developer on how I was confused with partitions, and I suppose part of the origin for their decision to create a version of SuperDuper that worked with TimeMachine without the requirement to operate on different partitions. Of course my query is completely inconsequential in comparison to the amount of work required in actually doing the coding and making it work, but it is incredibly gratifying to get some sort of acknowledgement. I have probably mentioned it before, but this is the sort of area where small software developers really score. Their support and customer focus is just incredible, and puts the major developers to shame. You certainly would not get the same sort of service from Microsoft, nor Apple.

One notable exception that I would like to note though it Bento, the new database from Filemaker, which not only is incredible, but comes with enthusiastic support. Someone has clearly learned from the fantastic service that the smaller developers offer.

Final Shoutout for SuperDuper, it remains totally essential, even with TimeMachine, being able to create a bootable backup remains vital. I certainly would not be without SuperDuper, and would recommend it to anyone.

Finally, we are at the tail end of winter, nothing much growing, just marking time till the seasons start up again. The bulbs are popping up, my snowdrops have appeared in the front lawn, and those muddy fields I pass on the train have somehow been carpetted in green. Very windy, angry crows bobbing on the wind like corks in the waves, while stubborn pigeons fly lower, making steady progress. As ever, the birds seem indifferent to us.

Someone told me recently that downloaded films were becoming the new Gym Membership Syndrome. Which you can probably just about work out, but just to clarify, you join a gym, pay them money, but never have the time or the inclination to actually go, similarly you download the films, but never find the time to actually watch them.

Which meant that we then got onto talking about how we all used to tape mountains of programmes, creating wobbly piles of videos, indifferently labelled, and simply lost the will to ever watch them. I think I still have some episodes of Star Trek - the Next Generation up the loft that I've not got round to watching yet.

It is the same with those boxes that record tv programmes for you, you back up episode upon episode until the thing fills up with stuff you will never get round to watching.

I suppose that there are two sides to this, there is the feeling of worthiness, that this is something that you really ought to be doing, and the feeling of guilt that you never really want to admit that you aren't going to watch the stuff.

The big pile of unread newspapers, the unfinished books at the bedside, I suspect that gym membership syndrome is taking over the world, or at least taking over my house.

Onto other things, I've just installed additional sim memory to my laptop, seeing as installing to the desktop seemed trouble free. A little less trouble free this time, sims installed, computer failed to start up. Eventually figured out that it was just a case of not shoving the sims in far enough. I should have done them one at a time, and then that way, I could easily enough of shoved the new one in as far as the old one, which would have taken the guess-work out of it. You live and learn.

I'm intrigued at the idea of TimeCapsule, which would provide me with a wifi base station and allow me to back up my laptop without plugging it into anything. Maybe something to investigate in due course.

Otherwise, a busy week, more travelling than I would prefer, interesting stuff, but exhausting. Like a fine wine, I really don't travel well.

Whither

whither technorati, whither google?
I used to rather enjoy typing in things that interested me into technorati and seeing what came up. However lately it seems to be filled with junk postings, and my own blog which might have appeared has not.

Like so many things, it seems to have failed to scale, or been a victim of its own success and been spammed out of usefulness. I'll maybe give it a few more tries, but it is at risk of going from one of my frequently used sites, to simply that I used to use.

Similarly things are increasingly difficult to actually find on google. There have been a few instances where I have failed to find what I'm looking for on google, despite no shortage of suggestions.

I have been experimenting with DevonAgent. I did download a whole slew of discounted software on the back of the MacSanta promotion. One of which was DevonThink Pro, however I did not get round to downloading DevonAgent. Basically DevonAgent is an enhanced web search engine. It does create a neat little graphic of interlinked themes, much like that electronic thesaurus that is around.

I'm not sure that it adds much value beyond google at the moment, but, I'll experiment a bit further and find out.

At the moment if I am doing a search for something, most of the time I can get by by using a site like Wikipedia, IMDB, or AMG.

Maybe we will need a new paradigm for internet searching, in case like technorati the old way of doing things has failed to scale or been spammed out of usefulness.

And while google is pretty much synonymous with internet searching, it has broadened its brand very substantially, I certainly use google mail, google maps, etc a lot, I maybe don't actually search as much as I used to. Well certainly not using google to search for everything.


While on the topic of 'whither', whither this blog.

the lesson with successful/popular blogs seems to be to do regular postings on a topic that will be of interest. So unless my thoughts are indeed a topic of interest to anyone, then this blog is likely to lurk around the blogosphere, and won't ever make me a fortune.

That said, I enjoy writing it, it is a useful discipline, and actually spending half an hour writing about something, certainly encourages you to think about it all the more. Blogging lets me develop and document my thinking. I guess then, that this year, 2008, will include more of the same, that is more stuff on completely different and random topics that catch my interest.

Last time I checked the google search box for the blog did not seem to work, but the one on the home page did, so something else to put on my tech support matching hat and anorak set for there then.

Yesterday I made a start on getting my new laptop all set up.

My plan of attack, and results are as follows

• backed up my desktop computer - still running Tiger, using SuperDuper
• Ran Migration Assistant to move files across, but only copied across the accounts for myself and my wife
• plugged in the usual ethernet cable, and the new laptop was successfully on the net, running via my router
• ran software update, which fixed a glitch where my iTunes was not accessing the iTunes library - created with a different version of iTunes
• ran the EFI firmware update - which came with detailed instructions!
• checked all my key applications, which are listed in the dock, except for Mail which I won't use on the laptop, as my emails will get all out of sync.
• all my applications worked okay, though a few wanted to update keychain, and some had upgrades. The only one which had a problem running on two computers, was RapidWeaver, which seems fair do's and as with Mail, there would be version control issues if I was using it to update the same site from two different unsynchronised computers.

then installed Leopard - which went smoothly, and seemed to launch up okay and everything. By this stage, I was probably coming in at slightly under my half day estimate for the work.

Set up the new 320GB LaCie external hard drive, connected it up with the FireWire 400 cable and set Time Machine running.

Various attempts, various tweaks, it hung overnight. Took off Desktopia, which alters the desktop, amended the settings to the laptop so it did not sleep, or go to screensaver, checked the name in system preferences shared - various tweaks to TimeMachine, checked permissions, and verified disk for the internal hard-drive. Partitioned the external hard drive, as directed by apple support. Still no joy, the first backup via TimeMachine would start off okay, then just hang, and you could not even Force Quit out of it.

As ever various checking of the apple support page, other forums, a check on Technorati, and the blogs. My impression is that TimeMachine users fall into three categories,
1 works perfectly with no issues
2 works after some tweaks
3 won't work

I do have a problem with Time Machine, in that it does not, to my knowledge create a boot-able drive, in case of disk corruption, rather it provides a ready source for stuff you might have deleted in error.

Well, Duuhhhhhhhh

with huge disk capacities nowadays, why delete anything at all, ever???

And - an internal hard drive will always corrupt eventually, in an office setting you would not keep much of anything on your C-drive, all your data would actually be on a remote server, with proper backup routines. In a home setting you rely on the internal drive, and back that up to a single external hard drive. In the case of an office setting, if your C-drive corrupts, then it is a simple reinstall, and nothing personal is lost. In a home setting you have the worry about getting the operating system and all your purchased software up again, and the issue of your personal data. Backing up a useable system along with your data is much the best option.

So having persevered with Time Machine, I got to the point where I figured that I was in the stubborn group three, who was not going to get it working. In any event, it did not do what I wanted it to do anyway, and continuing to try using it, with the machine crashes, was more likely to corrupt my system, than provide anything that was a useable backup.

Therefore, the wheee - fun - of playing with Time Machine has been abandoned, at least until a few patches come out, and I've just partitioned the external hard drive up again, and I'll use SuperDuper to back up to partitions, as I have done before.

Time Machine does look to be a triumph of style over substance, if it could not work with a straight out of the box laptop, and straight out of the box LaCie external hard drive, both bought from Apple within the past month, then it does suggest that the pre-release testing must have been cursory in the extreme.

I'll report more fully on my experience with leopard in due course, initial impressions are that the changes seem pretty subtle, but experience may reveal more.

Another fairly eventful week,

my new laptop arrived, so I have got it unpacked, charged up, and played around a little. However it runs system 10.4.10 which is the OS I'm familiar with, so nothing new there, I've not yet set it up to connect up to the internet either.

I was surprised to see that it arrived with some extra disks, including the new OS Leopard. I suppose in theory, Apple say that all new computers ship with Leopard, so even although it is a refurb, it ought to have Leopard, but it had never occured to me. Also a demo disk for the new iWork, which I may or may not buy. I currently run Appleworks, which used to be Clarisworks, back when I first bought a computer in nineteen oatcake. Apple stopped supporting it quite a long time ago, and it runs sluggish, but basically does all that I need.

I'll set aside a half day this weekend to

• run migration assistant,
• instal leopard
• instal demo disk,
• transfer over or install a few applications

As laptops are eminently nickable, I would prefer not to fill it with personal information, likewise, I don't want version control running wild, so I will probably use the laptop as a typing machine, where I want to do a lot of typing, and then simply transfer over the finished document. Therefore need to think carefully about exactly what software I will install, and how I will use it. I have already decided not to copy across all the family accounts. I might just set up as myself/administrator, and guest.

Another thing that had not occured to me, I'll need to find a secure spot for it to sit, when not in use, mainly so that it does not suffer from bags of shopping, hot mugs of tea, etc plonked atop it, when no one is looking, it is a busy house.

Another thing that had not occured to me, I'll set it up to run timemachine. I have already bought an extra external hard drive, and I might as well try out timemachine. To be honest, my preference is to just stick with SuperDuper for day to day use, as it backs up the entire system, but figuring out timemachine will really require running it, so running it with non crucial stuff, seems fair enough.

Other stuff this week,
getting awfy dark, and the dog hates fireworks, poor soul.
Monday - Day of lectures on older workers on Monday, really first rate, good lectures, and every conversation I had throughout the day was fascinating. The sort of day that I would have paid money for, rather than having to be paid for.
Tuesday - over in Glasgow for some lectures, also interesting, and catching up with some people. As ever a trip to the AppleStore, and picked up a sleeve for my new laptop. Bedlam at the tills, what an odd shop, but always worth a visit, and always busy.
Wednesday - more meetings, useful catch ups.
Thursday - saw an advertising agency. Always a bit wary of advertising and marketting types, but impressed by this lot. They had done their homework, I'm used to dealing with researchers, and once commissioned, they do their homework, and almost instantly seem to know more about the subject than you do. These advertisers actually employed people from a social research background, and commissioned external social researchers for some of their work. All in all very impressed.
Friday - a couple more quick meetings.

All a bit spaced out with all these meetings, getting a quiet day to lay into the emails is invaluable every now and then.

I'm starting to think about maybe doing some more studying, around the social policy area, I've been dabbling with the subject for quite a while now, and it would be useful to have an academic basis to my understanding. The brighter and more capable people all seem to have a lot of qualifications these days, so there is a degree of running to stay still!

The OU stuff all looks expensive, but I'll have a look round and think about it.

Cool stuff that is on the web

the MP3 for one of my favourite songs ever, so out of print, that you need not feel guilty listening to it for nothing

Swann's Way singing Soul Train

http://www.scarlet-fantastic.co.uk/mp3/soul_train.mp3

FontShop - browsing fonts, and the I am Font - project. A cool idea for graphic designers, or just to make you think about design and fonts.

http://iam.fontshop.com/

The advert for the new shuffle, featuring a wonderful video by Feist, which is well worth downloading. Downloadable via i-Tunes, though like everything else it probably appears on You-Tube too.

http://www.apple.com/ipodnano/ads/

The alternative Kitchen Garden pod-cast, which has some splendid stuff, as well as just reminding you of contented garden pottering. One word of advice though, listening to the pod-cast while pruning is not recommended, you might, like me, just find yourself cut off unexpectedly, with a snipped pair of headphones round your head!

http://www.coopette.com/akg

This is my desk.

Browsing the MacFormat forum, posting on people's desks, I was drawn to a blue lamp in one of the photos. It is one of these things from IKEA that is a sort of lamp, in that it includes small LEDs and you plug it in, but is not exactly a lamp, in that it won't exactly flood the room with light. Anyway desks with computers are all so dull and samey, and it really brightened up a dull corner, and made things look a bit more mysterious and futuristic, so I decided that I wanted one.

So bought one at IKEA yesterday, and here is a photo of my desk. I should point out, that I do share this computer - with everyone else in the house, and they do occasionally leave stuff on the desk, although in fairness most of the junk and clutter belongs to me.

Running through the IT kit

one iMac 17"
one La Cie external drive
one wireless mighty mouse
one Epson colour stylus colour 740

one Ikea Tybble - blue light

other relevant stuff
camera vivitar - vivicam 3105s 3.2 megapixel camera
ipod nano - blue

I bought the camera as it was the cheapest digital camera in the Argos catalogue at the time, and I was not sure whether I would get much use out of it, on the basis that it cost £30 it is pretty good, but I would like to trade up to something a bit better.

On the subject of desks and clutter, worth remembering that this is Al Gore working at his desk !!

Today has been dreich. Sleary rain, and no sign of the sun. These days I have been so tired at work, it feels obvious that a break is long overdue. Therefore I have not felt too guilty to have a bit of a lazy day. My wife has been reading a £5 Asda copy of Harry Potter, and I have been pottering about on my website.

I have tidied up all the pages, giving them proper names, inserted proper tags for the images, watched a couple of vodcasts on using RapidWeaver. I used Cyberduck to tidy up the redundant files that have been uploaded to my webhost in the past, but never deleted. Accordingly the old website now only exists as a home page, the links beyond no longer link up to anything. A little more tinkering with the google search boxes, which don't seem to be doing anything useful, but as they are based on the google webcrawl index, and I'm making pretty major changes to the website on a continuous basis, the content probably is just not picked up yet. Anyway I'll wait see if it catches up with the content. The search facility is not essential, but it would be nice to get it working.

Then had a bit of a look round the web, and blogs on RapidWeaver, and tried out the various Your Head plug ins for RapidWeaver. These are
accordion
blocks
carousel
collage
columns

the easiest way to get the hang of them, simply seems to be downloading them and using as demo versions. I have left some tryout pages on the site, though I'll doubtless delete them in due course. The pricing does not seem unreasonable, so I registered three of them, with a 15% off offer. Though I must confess to finding the website pretty confusing, you pass pages, never to see them again. I probably would have bought all five as a bundle with 15% off, if I had found the page when I was looking for it.

They seem really good, and actually add necessary functionality to RapidWeaver, which is actually quite constrained once you get beyond the existing page templates.

I could quite happily spend days playing around with RapidWeaver, gradually expanding this website.


At work, my little branch is gradually filling up with staff again, and I will shortly return to not running things. I did rather enjoy running things, but was becoming aware that I lacked the experience to tackle all the work I would have liked to. I guess that there is simply no alternative to gaining experience, but hopefully I will continue to gain useful experience over the next year or two. Getting the team staffed up will also let us get moving on doing stuff, rather than just spinning plates, which will also be most welcome.

This week I have been listening to In Debt To ... by Napoleon IIIrd. Checking the blogs, he was reportedly a bit of a prat at someone's party! How small the world is these days. It is an odd album, with its pauses, and odd musical interludes, it is more like a landscape that you find yourself in, than a traditional set of songs. To date my favourite tracks are Guys in Bands and Kate's Song, the former sounds like something off Eno's Here Come the Warm Jets. The latter has shades of Lou Reed in mellow mood. Anyway worth checking out, and approaching with an open mind. Currently only available on download, but folk are already searching for it on Amazon, so it seems to be gaining quite some momentum.

In a rather slack way, I have been thinking about consumerism, and what post consumer thinking would be like. I suppose that post consumer thinking, would celebrate the world around us, our everyday creativity, what we grow, our pleasure in each other, undue focus on spending money, blinds us to so much that is worthwhile.

There has been a bit of speculation on why Apple would want to introduce an internet browser for the PC market. On the face of it it is an odd decision, granted making a browser can be quite profitable if search engines are paying to be embedded, but I don't really think that is the reason.

My take on it, is that you need to follow the money. These days Apple is making a lot of money from things that are not actually Mac OS platform specific, the iPod works equally well for both PC and Mac, the iTunes site likewise, the iPhone does not require you to own an iMac.

Not only are these good revenue streams, but they probably have better margins, and a more realistic potential for a growing market. Even if Apple only manages to snag a small fraction of the mobile phone market the potential revenues are huge. People replace their mobile phones far more often than their desktops.

We are now entering the world of the post-pc gadget. Granted everyone will probably have a computer of some sort, but that is pretty much a commodity market now, people can get a laptop for a few hundred, and unless there are compelling reasons, then they will simply buy computers that only offer a tiny margin to the manufacturer. There is now little scope for compelling additional functionality to append to a computer, and it is not a highly visible object that you feel compelled to keep updated to be fashionable.

So if Apple wants to grow, then it will not be looking to sell more iMacs, or new operating systems, it will drive forward in the post-pc market, and find compelling ways of offering content online.

It is not inconceivable that the Mac OS might cease to be radically differentiated from any other operating systems, as more and more of our lives are lived via broadband, the amount actually residing on our hard drive is bound to diminish, so less applications on your desktop, and more as cloudware. The internet is driving our lives now, and as it is already operating system neutral.

In short, Apple operates in three realms,
hardware and associated software, the iMac, iLife,
cloudware like iTunes
post PC devices like the iPod and iTunes

the market they have been in longest, is not the one with the most potential, so why restrict your potential by tying in either your cloudware or post pc devices to the Apple OS and hardware, a PC version of Safari, is merely a component of this strategy.

Actually quite an eventful week, so I will need to be careful not to ramble on unduly. Topics as follows ;

1 Audiobooks and Scott Sigler

2 Re doing my webpage

3 Internet access

and anything else that occurs to me.

Audiobooks,
we are now operating in a totally different world. With technologies like podcasting, there are very few barriers to entry for people that want to create content. Rather than struggling away trying to even get your work read by a publisher or agent, when minor celebrities can attract a huge advance and have their ghostwritten books remaindered a few months later, you can simply make your work available to the world via the internet.

For the old music publishers, a major technology shift is nothing but good news. Suddenly, all these people who stopped buying music years ago, go out again, to buy the same old albums again, but just in a new format. That is why they loved CD, but worried about downloads. They wanted the free hit, of lots of additional revenue, coming off of the same old back catalogue. But the real opportunity lies with the Long Tail phenomenon, where we can now access material that is really specialist with complete ease. For print media there are the same challenges, the old print publishers are simply trying to get more money out of their existing, pile them high, sell them cheap, back catalogue. But do we really just want to read/listen to the same old stuff, in a new format. I would prefer to read/listen to new stuff. I listen to a lot of podcasts, often lectures from universities, etc, and if I really like the speaker, then I just add their book to my Amazon wishlist, and that way I am never short of thought provoking stuff to read. I can read stuff that I find well written and thought provoking, from anywhere in the world.

Another paradigm shift is the degree of closeness between those who produce material, and those who consume it, I can put a comment on my blog about the audiobook I have just read, the author can pick this up on technorati, or google alerts, and drop me a note. Authors are vastly more accessible, and this creates a degree of loyalty. Even just a small degree of contact, increases your overall impression of a producer, and your loyalty to them. Now you can buy material by people you have corresponded with.

I am really impressed with what Scott Sigler has done with his audiobooks, like google and amazon he has clearly decided that the more traffic and awareness he can generate, the better he will do. He is producing a professional quality product, and despite setbacks, has just used the new possibilities to reach and create an audience. Clearly we don't know what the future looks like, but I think it looks a lot more like what Scott is doing, than what it does now. This has to be a good thing.

Re doing my webpage -
I have finally found some software that I like, and can afford, so I have started to update my webpage. Currently running the old site and the new site, in the same directory, with the new going by index.html, and the old by index.htm, so it is probably pot luck which site you will get. However putting together a site with RapidWeaver is hugely easy, so I don't think it will take too long to put most of my content onto the new site, and then delete the old one. I cannot really be bothered archiving the thing, because I would need to rewrite all the links to the homepage. The bulk of the site was coded using a text editor, which means that all the coding was done by hand. It is a pretty good way of getting to know html, and actually quite fun, in a puzzle sort of way, but now that blogging is so easy, who has the time.

Anyway, I absolutely love Rapidweaver, and the revised website is coming together pretty quickly.

Internet access -
listening to a podcast from the iTunes University, someone was explaining how the current internet capacity was built up, and from his explanation it sounds as if the current reliability and resilience of the internet may come to be seen as the exception, rather than the rule. We are currently enjoying a massive overcapacity in the network, largely built from people building capacity, going broke, and their assets being bought out by others very cheaply. Clearly not a model for building major infrastructure that is likely to work twice!

And finally,
I really don't get the iTunes University, why don't they just podcast like everyone else, why does the content need to be badged over at some virtual university, when they could simply set up podcasts that people subscribe to, great idea, but a complication too far for many I suspect.

Write about TwentyThreeBlog here.

Online Identity
I was listening to a pod-cast which was talking about marketing your pod-casts, and using your online identity as a brand.

I suppose that I could market my pod-cast, but it is not really about anything in particular, and will likely remain like that. Well I suppose it is about something in particular, it is about whatever happens to be of interest to me at the time of writing, but I have quite varied interests, so that hardly helps.

There is also the whole issue of an online identity. At the moment, I do not pass on details of this blog to people I know, and although I would be contactable via this blog, it is a standalone identity. I do not intentionally lie or mislead in my blog postings, but then again, I do not really write anything that would make it tremendously easy to identify who I am. Despite that, this is hardly the most impenetrable of disguises, and I could be identified from this blog, with relative ease.

My point being that one of the benefits of the internet is that one can establish separate identities, that meet your various desires and needs. For most people the appeal is that these are separate, the person one chats to about software glitches is not necessarily looking at photos of your family holiday, and vice versa. As in normal society, you choose how much to reveal to others, you focus on what is of mutual interest, but bring in extraneous material at your discretion.

However with searching now so easy, it is far easier for the curious to pull together these disparate identities. For people in the public arena this is probably not new, but for your average person, it is a disconcerting thought, and your average person is far less equipped to cope with any unexpected consequences.

At Work
My role at work continues to evolve. Some time ago, I was the junior member of a small team, now I am the team. Initially it was my role to promote a piece of work, but with a change in administration, my role is now more one of spinning plates, and potentially taking on more plates. Obviously I now have vastly more work to do, but the more important point is that I am expected to do that work in a different style. Because I am now leading the team, albeit one consisting solely of me, I am judged on the big ticket items, rather than the more mundane. The last year has been so intense, and I have such a long commute, that I personally feel that increasing my working hours is not really an option that is sustainable. So, in the jargon, it is a case of working smarter rather than harder.

In practice, this has meant that I am now picking up a lot of engagements, either speaking at, or simply attending meetings, that my boss would have handled before. I am also having to initiate meetings to progress what I want to do. Accordingly when I am in the office, I need to work through incoming work much more effectively. I have adopted a slight variation of the GTD principles,

if it can be done in a few minutes, simply do it then
if it relates to a category of work, simply put it in a folder with other similar work, so that I can devote a half day to it all sometime
if it needs a bit more work, and has a deadline - set up a paper folder with the deadline and quick description on the front
if it needs a bit more work, and has no deadline - simply flag the email

also for when I am at my desk, I tend to work away from the desk whenever I can, for example, if it is reading, I go through to our canteen, if it is something that I don't want interrupted on, I go down to a hotdesking area. That way I am reasonably available, people can leave a message, that I will get back to, but my availability is not slowing me down.

There is a need to be able to work effectively away from my desk, so I have set up couple of pencil cases with everything that I need, from indigestion tablets, to marker pens, and my favorite little film tags, for highlighting relevant material. I suppose that I could be better organised about carrying about work that I could do, but I have generally found that I will have some task that it usefully completed over a cup of coffee somewhere, like writing an agenda, or organising my thoughts on something.

I suppose that in essence, this is a top down approach, consider the most important priorities, first, and fit the rest in round them,
generally, in the past I have taken a bottom up approach, considering all the things that need done, and then trying to fit them in.

Of course the former approach is fine for a team leader, with some discretion, but it is not so applicable for a team member when your tasks are very fixed, and you have less discretion.

Anyway, interesting to see how I am coping with the current challenges, and changing how I work. My gut feeling is that I am probably pretty good at working at this level, but only if the work is of a manageable intensity. I can see that it would be incredibly easy to burn out working like this.

At Home
I am writing this on a Sunday morning, yesterday was wet and dreich. I suppose that I should have done a lot of useful stuff, but to be honest, we were mainly faffing about. Headed up to the new local garden centre, which also sells food, and pretty much everything else. My wife bought some food, I bought some slug pellets, I am finally giving in with having an organic cold frame. I have tried everything, a sandy base, copper tape round my pots, beer traps. This place is not a cold frame, it is an eat all you want slug conservatory! The little black pieces of snot, are dining on tender shots of basil and camomile, and are presumably looking forward to dining on wormwood and feverfew once they sprout. Nothing is growing in the place, I water it faithfully, the slugs and snails eat their fill, leaving it stripped bare!

I also bought a copy of Getting Things Done to send to a friend.

My girls, bought a couple of books for me - Father's Day - and got their faces painted, and one of them even got a goody bag for appearing on the radio show that they were doing when we were there. Easy enough to see who got the best end of this deal.

Also watched a few vodcasts, is that a word, the new Steve Jobs address and the interview along with Bill Gates. One does wonder where they got the idea for PC Guy and Mac Guy, presumably they wanted to cast Bill Gates in the PC guy role, but he was otherwise engaged.

Interesting and thought provoking stuff, technology is at quite an interesting stage at the moment, and I think that we just have to bite the bullet and reckon on buying a new computer every year. Interesting to see that only a small minority (10%) now use an MAC operating system other than 10.4 or 10.3.

Certainly my advice has been that the computers now are so good, so well specified, have so much additional functionality, you would be a fool not to buy one.

Of course running the IT for a family of four is bound to be expensive. Over the past year and a bit, I have
got a new computer, bought, set up, and working with peripherals
moved from dial up internet, to broadband, much wailing and swearing, and a lot of time doing that sort of English as a foreign language teaching, that you do whenever you phone technical support somewhere
got my wife and myself, both using our own iPods
got the whole family set up with their own iTunes and email accounts, and able to share their downloads when they want to
sorted out an external hard drive and an effective back up methodology.

I am now looking to buy a second computer, either a laptop pre October with extra Ram, and upgrade to Leopard, or maybe wait until October and get something with Leopard.

Amongst the many interesting ideas on the vodcasts (does anyone actually call them that, and indeed what about those phonogram recordings, that were all the rage) is the emphasis on post-pc devices, which includes iPods, iPhones, personal organisers, and I suppose anything else that you can find a use for, extending out to a set top box with a hard drive, like tivo, a handheld gaming device, digital image photo frames, and all sorts of other things that I have not really registered. Apple is pretty good at pushing out the boundaries of what a computer is, look at the all in one computer and display of the current iMac, the unloved Newton, the iPod, the Mac Mini, or even the early luggable portable macintoshes! Clearly the model of desktop or laptop, and nothing much else, is unlikely to continue.

Another interesting thing was that Steve Jobs did not really want to predict where computing would be in a few years, which is quite a sensible position for a clever person. There are simply too many unknowns and variables, for it to be constructive to speculate. We can think of possible directions, and good luck to those who want to make money out of them, but it would be insane to think you know what will come. Sometimes it is useful to accept uncertainty, and develop strategies to deal with it effectively. Simply knowing that things are uncertain, is not the same as relinquishing any control, you simply plan and control in a different sort of way.

Keeping myself organised

To run through the sequence, will help put my thoughts in context.

I’ve always worked from to-do lists, but found writing a fresh list each day tiresome, as often it was entirely a carry forward of a previous list, but just with new stuff.

On reading Getting Things Done - I worked out a rough list of a dozen projects to record against. These were a mixed bag, from Garden, to Professional Development, and also including my Birthday wishlist. I allocated these projects a page each, and used film tags to provide a usable indexing.

I used a similar system at work.

For both I also used a daily A4 sheet as a shorter term to-do list. Lately I have split this into two columns,
quick stuff and prioritising
longer stuff

Anything not done within a day or two, can be transferred as a task into the proper GTD jotter. The GTD jotter is reviewed each week.

I have been running this system for about a month - does it work?

Well it does work upto a point. The daily to do list works more effectively. The longer term GTD jotter is starting to seem a little old. Stuff is initially entered when it seems like a good idea, obviously a month later, the precise idea might have evolved a bit, so it will be useful to revisit some of the pages. Maybe there is a need for something a step up from a weekly review, where tasks are reviewed more critically, and amended as necessary.

However the main impetus for change is that I am increasingly using Voodoopad on my computer. It is like some Borgesian concept of the ultimate jotter. It allows you to apply a sense of organisation, but also allows freedom and anarchy. I have gradually been putting more and more stuff into Voodoopad.

At present the index on the home page is

. AllAboutMe
. BirthdayWishlist
. BlogS
. BooksRead
. EmergencySurvival
. GTDSoftware
. LifeHack
. MacFormatArticles
. PersonalProductivity
. RandomStuff
. RegistrationCodes
. SelfSortBlog
. Trivia
. Voodoopad
. WebPosts

It is quite sweet that it assumes that you know an html home page is best named index.htm

I always find following a set format restrictive, that is why I prefer working to a more freeform style. A filofax is better than a diary. Voodoopad encourages this.

The ability to store everything to my ipod, also means that I can carry all this stuff about quite easily anyway.

It is easy enough to amend stuff on a computer, simply amend, it is easy to find, no need to rely on film tags, it is always legible.

My preference for using a jotter initially was based on the fact that software did not seem to offer substantial benefits that I could not obtain from using a jotter. A jotter was always physically accessible.

The use of Voodoopad changes this slightly. The software does appear to offer significant benefits, you can easily paste in text, images, links, even put in your own sketches.

The material is accessible from my ipod anytime, albeit not in an editable format.

The major problem is that I need to share a single computer with the rest of my family. Therefore I cannot simply noodle away on the computer entering stuff into voodoopad whenever I want to.

Increasingly the solution would appear to be buying another computer.

I always feel that keeping parallel records going that do exactly the same thing is a recipe for trouble. They always end up out of sync, and then what do you do, waste time trying to figure out which one is right. Much effort, to no useful end. Far easier to develop proper processes, such that you capture all the information in the same place.

I quite like the fact that I am evolving processes that work for me. Once I get things just right, I’ll doubtless lose interest, and it will just slip into the background as one of those things that I do without thinking.

I have been missing my blog. I am developing a hierarchy of recording stuff. I keep a number of notebooks. I say, a number, because I would have to count them.

Firstly - I carry around a small pocket notebook to record stuff.

I keep a jotter for work and one for home, that I use for the run of the mill notetaking, for example minutes of meetings, and working notes. I glue a business card to the front of each, and write the dates covered on the cover with a marker pen.

I keep a notebook for creative ideas for woodwork and the garden, it also includes clippings that I find inspiring, and might want to pick up on to some extent.

I keep a notebook of what I have done and planted in the garden. Initially this was organised into helpful categories, and also included a running diary, but I never used the helpful categories, and now I just use the running diary, but this means that I cannot find things without a lot of effort.

Following on from reading A Year with Swollen Appendices,