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2004-12-31 15:55:26 Source: Web
So another year draws to a close and while this year has been hugely eventful, there are no signs of things slowing down either!
The main event of the year of course was our wedding. The first half of the year was spent planning it (and doing DIY on the flat, which was also a form of preparation) and the second half of the year spent recovering from it ;-) Seriously, we had a fantastic time and our thoughts go back to the wedding and our wonderful honeymoon all the time.
For those who haven't seen, there is actually a gallery of wedding photos available here. I can't remember whether I posted the link before. If you're reading this and have photos to add to the gallery, just go ahead and create an account.
Other than that some of the big events of the year were:
- Cycling my first 300km cycle race in appalling weather and with a knee that gave up after 220km!
- Kayaking in the Gotheburg Archipelago - must do more of that this year!
- Snorkelling in Malta - also on the "must do more" list!
- Being made redundant and within 3 hours realising what a great opportunity it was for me to start my own business
- Lotta giving up smoking - 3 months and counting!
- Dave and Octavias wedding in London
- Having family and friends visiting so much during the year
Have a great New Year - I know we will!
2004-12-26 10:03:50 Source: Web
I hope you all had as great a christmas as we did! Christmas Eve was spent with the in-laws (which sounds dodgy, but I probably have the world's best in-laws!). I had time to chill in the morning and work on my business plan. Then in the afternoon/evening we had the traditional Swedish christmas celebration. Great food, warm company, presents and plenty of good cognac - what more could one ask for?
Waking up on the "real" christmas morning we had a white christmas. It was only a sprinkling of snow though and it melted away pretty quickly - but still, it set the tone for the day. I spent the day working in the kitchen and with a little help from Delia I put together a traditional Christmas dinner with all the trimmings.
Even if I say so myself, it came out perfectly and the reception was so good that I'm afraid I just created a new tradition for our family here in Sweden! Oh well, it's fun putting together a meal like that and with some planning the day was actually pretty stress free. Thanks Delia!
We sat around last might chewing the fat until the wee-small-hours and then got a taxi home with a driver who looked for all the world like Stan's sister from South Park!
Today I'm planning to cycle back out to Lotta's folks, pick up the car and head back again. It's been a while since I was out on my bike so that should be fun - if I wrap up warm ;-) On top of that it's time to knuckle down to some more development work for my business. This is my chance now to get a bunch of preparatory work done before my last month of employment with my old company. Come February it's make-or-break time. I'm looking forward to it.
2004-12-20 10:53:34 Source: Web
It definitely feels christmassy here in Gothenburg. We had a snowfall last night of around 3 inches and it's nice and crisp and white everywhere today. I'm pretty sure though that by tomorrow it will either have frozen into a slick ice surface on every pavement, or it will have rained away *sigh*.
I have a couple of days of work left before a week and a half of time which I can devote to programming and planning for my own plans. I currently have the help of a local economics student who is helping me put together my business plan. Tomorrow we're starting our marketing survey which will help me define exactly which area my products should be focusing on. It's good stuff and pretty exciting work. We'll be following up that with a we-based survey aimed at individual potential users after the new year.
Aside from work, my plans for christmas are pretty much in place. It's Lotta's birthday today, so the main focus has been there, but I have pretty much all of my xmas shopping done. I'm planning on cooking a traditional British turkey dinner for the family here in Sweden on Christmas day. They celebrate on Christmas eve here in Sweden, so we'll have a traditional smörgåsbord (lots of herring in various sauces (ugh!), ham, meatballs, cheeses, gravad lax (salmon) and more) and then follow it up the next day with turkey and all the trimmings. Yum!
2004-11-25 12:35:01 Source: Web
An interesting discussion on communicating design goals here.
I added a comment with my point of view, but here's a copy for posterity's sake...
As a non-designer who often has to communicate with both designers and clients this is an issue I have thought about a fair amount. I think that a very important point is to be clear on the values that a client wishes to communicate with their design.
I try to make sure that when invloved in a design job that there has been a brainstorm session between a client and a designer where the goal has been to define a "vocabulary" for the project which can later help when the client and the designer are discussing potential changes and alterations.
I work from the premise that the finished design has to communicate something to the viewer. By defining the values that the design should communicate (professionalism, speed, ease-of-use etc) and by also defining the feelings the viewer should experience ("I want to buy that", "Cool!", "They look competent") the client and the designer have a set of common reference points.
In this way, the client when viewing a design suggestion can say "I feel that design "a" does not communicate competence, but this feature in design "b" suggests competence more strongly". The designer too can relate the way that they have produced their design to the client's expressed goals.
Again, bear in mind that I am a non-designer, but this method has certainly worked for me often and certainly helps to bridge the communication gap. This is an interesting thread - I hope more people will post their methodologies and experiences.
2004-11-23 15:27:41 Source: Web
Finally I can come out of the closet and make my current plans known on my blog. I had been keeping quiet about what I am up to until I had reached a certain decision point and "come out" as it were to my current employer. Finally the time felt right.
Basically I am starting my own company. I have a killer business idea (imho!) and the will and the means to try and make a go of it. Having been made redundant helped catalyse the process, but the idea had been kicking around in my head for a while before that. I'm not going to say too much about the actual idea for the time being, but suffice to say it combines my interests in training, programming and gadgets!
To get things off the ground I am going to have to put in a lot of hard grind. I'm going to be doing consultation and web development to bring in an income and get things rolling. I am already waiting for a final decision on my first proposal and have some interesting contacts underway. I'm also working hard on developing my business plan for the core business idea and getting ready to register my company and make things official.
I'm still working 3 days a week at my current job, but at the end of January it will be full steam ahead and I will have to be supporting myself. Scary - but exciting at the same time.
So if you know of anyone who needs some web development, don't hesitate to drop me a line and let me know. Those of you who are reading this already know that I stand for quality and can deliver a great result!
Watch this space - the future is going to be very interesting!
2004-11-20 09:39:02 Source: Web
A week later, I'm still coughing and snorting like an old man, but I've started to feel human again at least ;-) This has been a pretty rough cold - and to top it all Lotta got it as well, so she's lagging almost a week behind me in the process. Poor thing!
During the last couple of weeks I've been working on teching myself to program ASP.NET (if you know what I'm talking about then I don't need to explain what that is, if you don't know then I probably can't explain ;-)
I've been looking at .NET for quite a while and it's definitely a step up from traditional ASP that I've been using for the last 6 years. I've found it pretty difficult to get my head around the main concepts and do things which I consider simple in ASP. I seem to have made a bit of a breakthrough the last few weeks though and I now have the skeleton of a simple Content Management System (CMS) up and running on my home machine.
I'm pretty pleased - but I'm still a long way from being up to speed. Every step is slow and needs to be looked up online, but I do think I have got my head around a lot of a base concepts and I now have some basic code for doing regular tasks such as fetching and updating data in databases. I've also gotten to grips with handling some of the different ways of displaying result data and am very pleased with the results I have been able to get from using a DataGrid control (thanks to the info in this tutorial).
The advantages of learning this will be that
- I can keep my skills current (most job ads in Sweden these days seem to want either Java or .NET programmers - and I hate Java!)
- I can expand the range of my programming as learning .NET techniques will allow me to more easily learn to program Windows applications
- Eventually Microsoft will probably phase out ASP
- Once I get up to speed, certain regularly performed programming tasks will be much faster in ASP.NET
So today I'm going to work on expanding the basics of my CMS and display the results of the menu editing tool that I have put together. It's nice to be stretching my brain again as for the last couple of years I have been doing the same sort of programming over and over again.
2004-11-11 17:19:45 Source: Web
Jeez I feel crappy. I've had a stinker of a cold for the last 3 days. I turned up for work for two of those days, which is pretty dumb considering I've been made redundant. But my work ethic doesn't let me off that easy ,-) There were things that needed doing so I made sure they got done.
Today though I've been at home as I was just feeling too rough. I'm taking it easy, making some fresh chicken soup and tinkering with my PC. I've also put a couple of things into an online auction for the first time, I thought I would give it a try and see how it goes. I've actually got lots of crap sitting around that would be worth scraping together into an auction, but I thought I would get some positive feedback going first with a few items before I do anything on a larger scale.
It was my birthday a week or so ago which was nice. It was quiet, no major cause for celebration this time ;-) But I did have a nice time and got some fun presents like >Pikmin 2 which I've been finding impossible to put down, the Star Wars DVD box set and a wonderful little Living Dead Doll from Lotta. Who says presents have to be boring when you're 35 eh??
Right now though I would just like to get back to feeling like a normal person again though!
2004-10-26 14:16:54 Source: Web
Oh my! I just got the news that John Peel has died.
It's not often that the death of a celebrity affects me, but I was actually listening to one of his shows (hosted by Robert Smith as Peelie was on holiday) at the time I heard the news. I have to admit I've shed a tear or two.
John Peel was one of my absolute heroes. I listen to his shows religiously (thanks to BBC Radio's listenback service) and his death will leave a huge gaping hole in the alternative music scene.
My condolences to his wife "The Pig" and his family and coworkers. John - you'll be missed by thousands of people with great taste in music...
2004-10-17 11:30:08 Source: Web
I am sitting on a train heading back from Stockholm after the long awaited Tunnel Race. I'm pleased to report that I made it round all 4 laps with no major problems despite the very wet and slippery outside sections and that the race was 46km rather than the 42 advertised. I got round in 2:20 and a bit.
I'm going to see if I can manage to upload an image from my phone. Otherwise I'll add some pics later..
2004-10-14 06:38:30 Source: Web
A rare quiet moment - helped by the fact that it's early in the morning ;-)
I'm making great progress on my new project. It's been a lot of work the last few days and I doubt it will get much slower any time soon. It's great!
I also got another new set of wheels for my skates. I bought a set the other week to replace a set that had worn down a lot during training (and had even worn a flat spot on one of the wheels - ba-dunk ba-dunk ba-dunk...). However when I tried them out at the weekend it was a disaster. I skated out 10 miles and thought everything was going OK. However when I turned around I realised I had been skating with a following wind.
The 10 miles back were a real struggle. The wheels I had bought were obviously the main cause of the problem. It felt like skating through clay and when I stopped for a little rest, I could feel my foot sole vibrating like mad.
The problem was that the wheels were too *plasticky* for want of a better term. All the vibration from the tarmac was being passed through my legs to my lower back and sapping my energy. When I got back to the bottom of the hill we live on, I didn't even have the strength to skate up and ended up walking up the hill in my socks. The shame!
So this week it was an emergency order to Bladerman to pick up a new set of the wheels I had used before. As the guy who runs the place is a local chap, I was able to go and pick up the wheels yesterday. So all's well that ends well.
Hopefully I'll be in good form for the race on Sunday. I'm taking the train up and back so I'll have plenty of time during the weekend to work on "the project". I'll be trying to get in a couple of short, but intensive training sessions to just warm my legs up and get the blood flowing. I'll report back on how it goes on the day!