@Home

A few times during my working career I've ended up working from home for some time. I find it can be quite a strange existence.

I am now in such a situation, although somewhat different from previous times. Usually I have some pretty agressive timescales and opt to work at home in order to focus on the important stuff I need to do. Right now I'm at home because there is no one else in the office anyway.

I work about 30 minutes car journey from home and I was leading a team, producing a telecare product. At the end of March, money became very tight and my entire team either left or were made redundant. Since then, myself and the sales chap have been going into the office twice a week, since it makes little difference, most of the time, where we are physically sitting. This has worked quite well, and although it's a big change from being in the office each day with lots of people, the variety of home and office has been OK - at least for novelty value, if nothing else.

Now, the sales chap is leaving. So that leaves me and our two directors in the company - directors who seldom show up in the office. So now I wonder how to divide my time between home and office. There are, of course, some things I need to go into the office for, but many things I don't.

There is also the question of motivation. A company which has an ever shrinking workforce, a lack of money and no customers is not the most inspiring place to be. Even when you believe in the product itself - and I do - it's difficult to find the drive to do all the things that need to be done - especially when you're at home and there are the inevitable distractions. I guess it's all about balance and finding the right mix of work and non-work to keep things sustainable. Having spent 2 years battling and working flat-out to get the product completed it's quite a shock to the system.

I guess I'll just have to see how it goes.

Novelty value

Oh dear.

Having finally received a Wii for my birthday about 3 weeks ago and having been totally focused on Mario Kart, I've now just started playing Mario Galaxy.

Oh dear.

I can see many, many hours of time being dedicated to this. I really didn't expect it to be quite so enjoyable, frustrating, annoying, fun and downright addictive. The last time I got into a game like this was the very first Tomb Raider game on my Plavstation. Not having had a games machine since (and not really missed it), I thought I might be getting too old to enjoy such things.

How wrong I was.

Windy Miller

After much research, soul searching, peering at speadsheets and general waving around of arms, we've decided to switch to green electricity. Apparently it's similar to the normal blue type, except it doesn't involve decimating the planet in the process.

Being a (very, very relaxed) eco-warrior and all-round planet friendly sort, I thought this was doing my bit for the environment. It does, however, seem to be enormously complex and confusing and you go cross-eyed looking at pie charts of energy production and graphs of sustainability and all that jazz.

In the end, I pseudo-gave up and opted for a plan that seemed to be financially reasonable, whilst green enough to let me sleep soundly in my bed at night - I chose Juice from NPower - which is one of those buy back ones where they can't be bothered to produce the green power themselves. Although if the prices go up too much more, I shall be installing a windmill on my chimney (and only having the lights on when it's windy).

However in the meantime of course, I'll be able to leave all the lights on and my computers at full belt and yet feel totally guilt free.

Red Kites

The Red Kites are back. We can see them from our house.

They seem to have been a bit scarce of late, but they're back again now. It's amazing to watch these big birds circle around the house, calling to one another. They're particularly impressive when it's windy and you can see them adjusting their wings and tail in response to the wind.

I've never lived in a place before where you get such fantastic views of birds like this. It's mesmerising - especially when you should be working.

Wrong script?

I may be missing something obvious, but what on Earth was Doctor Who all about last night?

The episode was called "Midnight", and it all started off fairly normally - Doctor managed to ditch Donna - hoorah! and it looked kinda interesting, but then what happened?

Now, I guess the point is that I actually found it quite interesting in some ways. They had a go at developing some of the incidental characters, although in a rather half-hearted way, they had something that even the Doctor didn't really seem to understand and I thought the repeating of words et al was quite effective.

But the fact there was no big monster, no TARDIS, only minor use of the sonic screwdriver ... this isn't what I signed up for!

In all seriousness, I like it when the scriptwriters push the boundaries. I like trying new things, and so I guess not everything will always work. My favourite episode of the new Doctor Who is "Blink" (the one with the weeping angels) which, rather than sidestepping the whole concept of time travel, tackled it head-on. Some wonderful paradoxes and a really effective look into the meaning of time for individuals - plus, of course, the video, which was such a great plot point. But I digress.

Bottom line is that I don't think "Midnight" worked. It could have been Doctor Who's Three Men in a Boat, but it wasn't - nearly was, but not quite. In some ways I liked the lack of resolution at the end (why do things always have to be neatly tied up?) and in some ways I didn't. So I'll give credit for trying new things, but on this occasion I'll put this episode aside and move on - perhaps I'll watch it again and see if I've missed something, but on the other hand, I think I'd prefer to watch "Blink" again - sending people back in time instead of killing them directly ... genius.

Movie: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Well, what can I say. I was a fan of the original 3 films. I felt each one brought something new to the series. I guess this one did too.

The 3 act format has never been more crudely realised than in this film. The first act which culminated in Indy surviving in a fridge during and atom bomb test was basically pointless. It didn't _feel_ right and it added little to the overall story.

The second act was the real Indiana Jones stuff. We had the hat, the humour, the action and a good old-fashioned adventure to get your teeth into. From time to time I could believe I was watching one of the old films and it was great.

The third act was complete nonsense. I won't go into too many spoilers, but it was as if the ending was grafted on from a completely different film and existed only to use up what remained of the special effects budget. It wasn't believable, it didn't fit with the Jones legacy and it didn't even really make much sense.

If I score the 3 acts individually, I get 1, 3 and 0 giving me the final score:

4/10

Ducks

We have ducks in our garden.

They are Mallards and they are wild.

Herself keeps feeding them, which means they keep coming back in ever larger numbers. Which means more noise and more poo.

They can spot you through the window, even upstairs, and they get very excited and expect to be fed. This involves queueing up outside the door and quacking - sometimes loudly, sometimes not. If you do venture outside, they will follow you everywhere in the hope you might drop some seed.

I have to say, though, although they can be annoying, there are also hilarious. I particularly like the way they sit underneath the bird feeders we have in our trees and beg the sparrows to drop some seed - which they do, being very messy eaters - the ducks then mop this up with great efficiency. Also, once they've eaten, they all setting down for a snooze for an hour or so, and then walk off somewhere else.

I am constantly amazed that they can actually fly. They seem to be the wrong shape. Admittedly, flying does seem to take a tremendous amount of effort - and they certainly don't have the hang of landings - you can almost see the look of panic on their faces as they get near the ground. They also almost always topple over forwards. Probably why they prefer to walk everywhere.

Mostly Harmless and insecure pink fish

Having spent the last few days pondering on my previous post about the last decade, one thing - or rather one persion - keeps popping into my mind.

In the late 70s, when I was in my formative, primary school years and you could still have a good night out for 3 and 6 and have change for the bus fare home (I gest), I happened across a recording of a radio show that one of my cousins had made. Although I didn't quite understand it all (and as time went on, I realised how little I _did_ understand) it grabbed me in a way that nothing had before, shook me by the lapels and made me realise that radio wasn't all about the music charts (which I was a little too young to be in to) and The Archers (which, living in a small rural town, was just like normal life - only with more cows giving birth).

The show was The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy and it went on to have quite an effect on me, but that probably wasn't apparent at the time. Over a long time I've come to realise that my slightly odd sense of humor and my love of words and language came directly from this influence. The dense, multileveled language of both the radio series and the books opened up new possibilities for the written word to me and later insired me to write all kinds of odd things in all kinds of odd places, including poetry, music lyrics and endless nonsense such as this. I already had a well developed interest in technology by the time I first heard the Guide, but it showed me that technology wasn't all serious - like it was on Tomorrow's World - we could have Nutrimat machines, depressed robots and chatty doors.

Later, after listening to the radio series more times that I care to contemplate and having read the first four books a ludicrious number of times, I also came to hear of the author's after-dinner speaking on technology and related topics. And he had a lot to say. And it made sense - proper sense, not just some technologist babbling. Later still, he became entranced with the natural world and with ecology and conservation, and he showed his natural flair for getting across an idea intact with feeling, context and emotion.

I met Douglas Adams once, at a book signing. Being quite a fan I was totaly unable, of course, to come up with anything spontaneous and witty to say to him when my 5 seconds of proximity came along. I've thought of lots of things since - but actually prefer it that way.

I only bring it up because thinking back on the last decade it was one seminal moment - he died in 2001, very suddenly. I'd have liked to have a chance to hear him talk and I'd like to have read a couple more of the books that he never wrote (he was, after all, terrible at actually getting down to the whole buisness of writing - but when he finally did, the results were always excellent). I do, however, take great comfort in the fact that a number of his phrases seem to crop up in the English language now - often without the user having any concept of where the phrase came from - a little like Shakespear.

So when I hear "Life, the Universe and everything", "Share and enjoy", "When you are tired of you are tired of life" or the number 42 - it gives me a small tinge of enjoyment - much like a Poghril telling their favourite joke (q.v.).

Landmark

I was 40 this week.

Seems very strange to be saying that, since I think I'd only just about got used to being in my 30s.

Lots of things I can remember so clearly (and don't really seem that long ago) are now 2 decades in my past - at a time when I only HAD 2 decades of past.

Looking back, I feel that my 30s have been my best decade to date. I think I found out a lot about myself, did a lot of things I should have done a long time before and generally finally felt OK about being me. My 20s were much more about being irresponsible and having fun - not that I don't continue to do these things - from time to time. Getting married is probably the most obvious example of the change in me - I can't imagine even thinking about it when I was 28 or 29.

I grew up in an age where in 1999 the moon left the oribit of the Earth and in 2001 we found signs of intelligent life on the moon (must have come back by then). So much was predicted "by 2000" - including thinking machines, nuclear war and space travel for all. It's easy to think that little has really changed, but in fact much has, although in more subtle and insideous ways that we could ever have imagined.

I was just turning 30 when I had my first real exposure to the internet - and now I find it hard to imagine a single day without it. I had my first mobile phone just a couple of years before that - and by the time I was 30, GSM was making big headways and we all got introduced to SMS. We now routinely use computers in our homes and offices which are incomprehensibly powerful and can store ridiculous amounts of information - however because the software running on a lot of them is so poor, we hardly notice.

Some things seem to be cyclical, though. Having spent years moving computing power away from huge mainframes onto the desktop, we're now told cloud computing is the way forward - back to the big data centres - albeit in a far more elegant way. I, once again, drive a Mini - having learnt in Minis and last driven one back in the early 90s. OK, so it's not a _real_ Mini, but it still has the same feel (for me, anyway).

And so, as I wave farewell to that decade, I can reflect that it's really the first decade of my life I was really aware about entering and leaving. Too many other new things were going on when I entered my 20s that I didn't really notice (and it didn't seem such a big deal).

What will the next decade bring for me? Probably about time for a mid-life crisis, I think.

Surprise trip

It was my birthday yesterday.

Much to my surprise, Olga arranged for us to go and stay at a hotel. Not too far away, but just for a change, and to enjoy all the things that go with it.

We had a great time. Played tennis (well, some strange variation of the game which involves lots of mad swiping at the ball, finally hitting it in a random direction and lots of searching in the bushes to find out where it went) for the first time in many years, went swimming and had a rather good meal, with some profoundly nice wine.

All things which are highly apprecated by me.

To round it all off, she'd even bought me a Wii (and Mario Kart). My wife is lovely.

Sorry, no photos. Photo site is broken right now.