Category Archives: Blog

General thoughts on life, the universe and everything. Stuff that doesn’t fit in the other categories!

What did you ship in 2010?

I first saw this on Seth Godin’s blog and thought it was a good idea in principle:

This might be a useful exercise. Doesn’t matter whether it was a hit or not, it just matters that you shipped it. Shipping something that scares you (and a lot of what follows did) is the entire point.

It is, however, quite hard for people who don’t live life in public in the same way that Seth does. I’ve spent a lot of the year doing pre-sales work either with clients that don’t like being named or for deals that we lost (and therefore not something a lot of people would want publicised). And now, in my new job, one reading of my contract means that I can’t even send out press releases.

But that doesn’t mean that I’ve not had a pretty productive year. By stretching the definition of “shipped” to include stuff I’ve completed, a quick list for 2010 would be:

  • Two major versions of Yummy and two minor versions
  • One major and one minor version of www.cut
  • A photo-book of a wedding I was photographer at
  • Painted the bathroom ((I can’t claim all the credit for this of course.))
  • A whole heap of custom demos for the Day Job
  • Delivered training courses and workshops with the Day Job
  • An AGM for our freehold management company

Please let me know if I forgot something!

I think that’s a pretty good list for stuff I mostly did in my “spare” time. The list of deliverables for the Day Job would be pretty long if (a) I could list them; and (b) I could remember them all!

Nine Best Posts of 2010

I didn’t think that I had blogged very much this year, but now that I look back over it seems that I’ve done quite well. There have only been a few PhotoFriday challenges that I’ve missed and I’ve managed a fair few travel and even the odd technical blog.

None of this years blogs have done especially well in terms of page impressions but here are a few that I liked for various reasons.

In terms of travel, I had more than my fair share of problems. A trip to Turkey was cancelled at the last minute due to the infamous ash cloud. A strike very nearly meant that we didn’t get to New York for a wedding. And a heavy work schedule and a new job meant that my annual November trip was in jeopardy.

  • Salisbury. Not quite as glamorous as Istanbul, but given the lemons of the ash cloud I thought we did pretty well with the lemonade of Wiltshire ((Not sure that works but you know what I mean.))
  • Paris. I spent quite a lot of time in Paris this year so I had to include the post about it
  • New York. Like Paris, I’d been to New York before. There’s something to be said for “hanging out” in a city that you (vaguely) know

For me there’s a thin line between “photography” and “travel” blogs but I do occasionally post images that are not directly connected to a trip.

  • Early Snow. This year has been book-ended by heavy snow. I should be getting good at taking pictures of it by now…
  • Corked. I like this because it’s very simple but effective, and not the kind of thing that I normally do
  • The Perils of Working from Home. As with the above, I often get ideas but don’t find the time to actually implement them. This one took longer than you’d imagine but I thought it was quite funny. Yes, I should probably get out more

And, finally, there were even some slightly more technical posts.

  • What is “polish”? I wish more people would understand that there’s more to a good iOS application that pretty icons and slick animations
  • Delicious Debrief. This five part post allowed me to vent my frustration over Yahoo!s handling of some changes they implemented late last year
  • Communication. I had this post in draft form for several years, but I couldn’t figure out how to finish it. I’m not sure this is the best post I’ve ever written but I include it here because I did eventually get it out the door!

I’d also like to add honourable mentions to my Sleeping Japanese and Saving State posts. And, finally, a big thank you to you for reading.

Your Vote Counts

One common refrain after the BNP made an appearance on Question Time last year was that if only more people went out and voted then right-wing extremists would not get elected. Of course that’s not the whole story but there’s some truth in that. Since we will have a General Election this time next week this becomes a very important point.

This got me thinking about my experience with the British electoral system. As far as I can remember, I’ve voted in every election that I have been eligible except for those when I have not been at home. In fact I was in California in this last election when Griffin was elected to the European parliament.

This time I did try to vote even though I would be away. They don’t make it easy.

There are two basic options. First is the postal vote. Sounds ideal, right? Just pop my vote in the post before I get on the plane and I’ve done my democratic duty.

Not quite.

Checking the small print I found that they mailed out the ballot forms a week before the election. Unfortunately I was out of the country for just over two weeks and the election was towards the end of my time away. Chances were good that I wouldn’t have got the form in time. And, of course, we all know how reliable the postal system has been recently. Even if I was home, would my vote get back to be counted on time? (This, I should add, is just be being cynical. The only reason I didn’t go down this route was because I wouldn’t have received the ballot in time.)

There is, however, an alternative. You can also send a proxy to vote on your behalf. Sounds simple, right?

Again, I wasn’t quite able to get it together in time. You have to nominate someone who is eligible to vote and who is not representing more than one other person. I seem to recall seeing that your proxy also had to be resident in the borough but I don’t see that in the current wording; I’m not sure if the law changed or I just misunderstood.

In any case, your proxy needs to vote in the same place that you would, which immediately limits your choices.

(One point that I missed last year is that your proxy can vote by post. Maybe that would have made things easier.)

And it goes without saying that you’d have to trust your proxy. You’re expecting someone to both actually turn up to vote and to put the cross in the correct box. I don’t know why, but this makes me a little uncomfortable. Maybe I should become a more trusting person, but there’s something about the idea of an anonymous vote that’s significant.

Just to be clear, I’m not sure what the alternative should be. The voting system needs to be simple, reliable and something that can be trusted.

But whatever the current system it’s still important to try to vote. It’s just much easier if you’re in the country on May 6th.

Best Posts of 2009

It’s that time of year where all the papers, magazines and websites devolve into the best of the year articles rather than actually generate new content. I didn’t want to feel left out so here’s my contribution.

Of course “best” can mean any number of different things, so I’m going to pick a few top fives.

Here are the most popular pages viewed this year:

  1. Installing Oracle 10g Express Edition on CentOS 4
  2. Professionalism
  3. Oracle 8i for Linux Installation HOWTO
  4. Minolta Dual Scan II
  5. Review: Belkin Wi-Fi Phone

It continues to surprise me how popular the Oracle pages are. They are now very old products and the pages have not been updated for quite some time now.

And here are the most popular pages that were actually written this year:

  1. Professionalism
  2. Canon EOS 50D
  3. Bus Bench for Humans Only
  4. www.cut
  5. Why would you want an ID card?

Of course my personal favourites don’t always make the grade in terms of page views, so here are my choices (in no particular order this time):

If there’s a theme here, it’s photography and the kinds of pictures that I don’t normally take.