Category Archives: Thoughts

2012–Looking Forwards

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If you have read my post regarding 2011 then you will know, most things turned out well and I managed to tick off most of the stuff I wanted to do.

So now we are into 2012 and it’s time to look ahead and set some goals.

Travel

Heading off as a family somewhere special

We did a lot of this in 2011 and want to carry this on as much as possible. Exploring a new city with a different culture as a family has been fun for all of us.

So far this year we have a trip to Budapest in Hungary booked and our summer holiday is going to take us into Europe once again although this year it might not be France.

In addition I am looking to get away with my camera for a couple of days although haven’t quite worked out where yet and we should be able to sneak a couple of weekends away.

As for business travel, it’s all a bit early and there isn’t anything in my diary but I am sure something will come along

Work

I need to get out of here

To be honest, work is frustrating me at the moment so 2012 is the year I have to fix it. I have been in my current role for the last 11 years and had thought I had seen it all but over the last 24 months, things have really turned for the worse.

The good news is that we have a new CEO (fresh blood) with a new vision. We get to find out what that is in February.

In the meantime I am looking at some of the companies out there that are way ahead of us both with vision and strategy and wondering if this is the time to move. Certainly this is not something I intend to rush into and I have to be mindful that 11 years service is significant but I have to look to the future for both me and my family so watch this space.

Either I am able to fix some of the things that are frustrating me where I am or I need to move which in turn (I hope) will address that whole work/life balance thing that has eluded me over the last few years.

Health & Lifestyle

2011 wasn’t good health wise. At times I wondered what was going to stop working or start hurting next and due to all the medication I was on, I always felt tired.

So the doctor has now halved the medication that was making me tired and I am already feeling a lot more alive and better about myself. In addition the diet I started last year is working. I gave it a rest over Christmas but am now fully committed again. Over the next few weeks, I will be picking up the exercise piece as well.

Finally I am trying to change from being a night time person to a morning person. Easier said than done and I am well on the way but those early Friday mornings still hurt.

Fun

Reliant Robin Racing At Norfolk Arena

Last year Sam and I had some great days out including the Reliant Robin and Caravan racing (yes really) at the Norfolk Arena and also the BTCC at Silverstone. We also had a number of days out and trips abroad so as a family I think we managed to do a lot more fun things with less trips to Ikea.

This year I already have the 2012 motorsport calendar on my desk so hopefully I will get to have some fun with Sam again and with some decent trips lined up and plenty of ideas for days out, I think we are looking good for 2012.

Changes

I have spent a lot of my adult life worrying about how my actions impact those of others and trying to put other peoples feelings in front of my own.

Nowhere is this more apparent that with our summer family holidays over the lest 3 years.

On 3 separate occasions, I have planned and booked our family break to accommodate friends and family and on 2 of those 3, we have been dumped upon from a great height causing upset and expense and on at least one of those occasions putting me and my family in a very serious danger.

Those people are no longer part of my life but it has taught me to start thinking about me and my family more and getting my priorities right. If you want to join in, you fit in with us not the other way around.

Wish me luck

So 2011 was great. I am looking to 2012 to be even better.

I will keep you posted throughout the year but in the meantime wish me luck.

2011 – Well?

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So back in January I blogged These are not my New Years resolutions and set out what I wanted to achieve and see in the coming 12 months and here we are at the end of 2011 so lets have a look at how the year turned out.

I wanted to travel more

I said as a family but also just on my own. I think it is fair to say this was a resounding success.

In April as a family we had Four amazing days in Prague

Prague 2011

In May work took me to a convention centre in Madrid Continue reading →

It’s Official! Google Is Making Me Stupid

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Well I guess we all knew this but recently published research by Betsy Sparrow, Jenny Liu and Daniel M. Wegner for Science Magazine entitled “Google Effects on Memory: Cognitive Consequences of Having Information at Our Fingertips” (snappy title isn’t it) confirms what we all feared.

Google is making us stupid!

So the science bit goes a little like this.

Our brains process information in various ways however when presented with a new piece of information that the brain expects to be able to access from an external source at a later date, instead of remembering said information, it remembers where to find it and in 2011 that means one thing. The Internet!

So people are actually using Google as their own personal memory banks. An extension of their own brains without being conscious they are doing so!

Or in science speak:

The advent of the Internet, with sophisticated algorithmic search engines, has made accessing information as easy as lifting a finger. No longer do we have to make costly efforts to find the things we want. We can “Google” the old classmate, find articles online, or look up the actor who was on the tip of our tongue. The results of four studies suggest that when faced with difficult questions, people are primed to think about computers and that when people expect to have future access to information, they have lower rates of recall of the information itself and enhanced recall instead for where to access it. The Internet has become a primary form of external or transactive memory, where information is stored collectively outside ourselves.

So the full research can be found over at Science Magazine (sorry but you need to subscribe to download the very long and detailed research paper) but it really does appear that without us realising it, our own brains have been moving to the cloud as well.

So are our children destined to just be a collection of meta directories on legs? Do you think Google can find a way to monetise this phenomenon? Will Google take over the world (and our minds)? Do you want fries with that?

I Got Freshly Pressed

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I have been using WordPress for quite some time now as the centre of my online world. I started out self hosting but after a couple of years of updating and tweaking every weekend, it made more sense for me to just take the platform as a service directly from WordPress themselves. I have not looked back since and these days I can concentrate on just creating content for my blog rather than spending time maintaining the blog server itself. It is truly liberating.

Now to be honest, my blog is not the most popular online destination for most people. On a typical day I can get 10 or 20 real visitors. Some may leave a comment but most wont and it hasn’t brought me internet fame and fortune just yet. But it is a place where I can share stuff. Where I can point people who know me to as a jump point to other destinations. So there are links through to my online photo albums as well as contact details and links to my profile on Twitter and Facebook.

But then it happened.

Each day, those nice people at WordPress pick a handful of new blog postings and feature them on the WordPress front page. This feature is called Freshly Pressed

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So last week having just come back from Amsterdam I posted up a handful of photos from my trip that I thought stood out and would be nice to share. They must have been good because they caught the attention of the crew at WordPress who pick the Freshly Pressed sites and I got chosen. I got Freshly Pressed.

So apart from the honour of being picked out from a crowd of 350,000 new posts, I got to discover just how much hard work a busy blog can be.

First of all there is the increase in traffic

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Yes that is over 1500 hits per day compared to the usual 10 to 20!

Next are the comments.

My single post got 90 comments in the space of 48 hours. You soon realise that trying to moderate that volume of comments is a full time job.

I also got a lot of spam. Sure the filters caught a lot of it but there was also a lot of shameless self promotion. To be honest, others trying to get their own blog noticed whilst adding a nice comment doesn’t bother me that much but some of it was obvious with comments such as:

Nice photos, now come and visit my blog at www.getrichquick.com to learn more Smile

But there were lots and lots of genuinely nice comments as well. I have tried to visit the blogs of all the people who left nice comments and have in turn come across some really great blog posts on all sorts of subjects ranging from a great recipe for mango salsa to great travel blogs and loads of great photography.

So to the WordPress crew, thanks for choosing me. It really was an honour.

For all the 3000+ people who visited over the 48 hours especially those who left comments, thanks also. I am glad my pictures were of interest to you.

And finally, the second your Freshly Pressed link drops back onto the second page, the traffic stops. As you can see on the graph above, the traffic went away as quickly as it came but it really was fun whilst it lasted.

Apple Hasn’t Killed The Hard Drive Market Just Yet

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There has been a lot of talk in the press this week about the new Apple iCloud announced at the Apple WWDC.

But it is this article in the Register that prompted me to comment.

Has Steve Jobs killed the consumer hard disk industry?

Now this article goes on about how if all your documents, music, contacts etc etc etc are in the iCloud, you won’t need terabytes of local storage thus the comment about the demise of the hard drive market. Continue reading →