aninterestingname.co.uk

October 18th, 2007 by Andy Feltham

Today started so well. I woke up and seemed to have all the time in the world before i needed to leave for work. I have a game on the Wii and even breakfast at home. Traffic wasn’t bad and was still at work before 8am. When i got to work i had a big smug grin on my face and really didn’t feel like i was ‘at work’. I usually grab a tea first thing in the morning and today i decide to take a wonder round the site. And i was so pleased i did.

In fact, today was also the first day in a while that my car had warned me the temperature was getting low ( 3 degrees ) and that helped to make this morning really nice. It was cold but as you can see from the photos the sun was shining, grass still a litte damp, and little bit of mist. It was really great to be outside, soaking up the sun and thinking about everything but work.

Hmm, work. This certainly is not the kind of environment you associate with work. I’m not normally one to be distracted but this morning in particular has been very easy. There is a lot to be said for creating an environment which relaxes people but today it made me wonder if its possible to relax people too much? Maybe its just a combination of things but given that i’m also sitting by a window, i don’t think i’ll get much done today.

More photos can be found here.

October 15th, 2007 by Andy Feltham

Although the talk is slowing down, Web 2.0 is still a big thing. Its changing the way, and the time we spend on the internet as well as what we actually do. Where as before people were reluctant to enter information into online shops, now people of all ages and publically making personal information live via blogs, bookmarks, and other online communities. While i can appreciate that this kind of information doesn’t lead to the same concerns that the early internet shopping does i do find it interesting that the concern has changed from what we are using the internet for, to how and how much we are using the internet.

I’m of the opinion that individuals should be able to do what they want and benefit from the internet within the constraints of their lifestyle. I would have no problems with individuals spending a period of time on the internet, building up a social network, if they get a job done, eat well, and so on. Where i get frustrated is over the ‘how’.

I think i’m of the right age to have grown up as HTML did. I can remember early sites popping up, all very basic and all trying to have a unique presence on the internet. Of course it was slightly wasted given that there were hundreds of others also using similar templates and ending up with very similar sites. Even a couple of years ago that was still true, people were still creating their own presence on the internet but to do it they had much more choice. Many developers were contributing to open templates that anyone could use for any number of content management tools – the options went from thousands to millions of combinations. And this was great. I enjoyed creating my own site and putting a little piece of me on the internet.

Today, its a different picture. I know of some that say their CV is their blog but really there is more to it than that. The wealth of information that you can put out there means its not just about what your write, its about what you do, where you go, who you meet – in other words, your photos, your friends, where you’ve been. Unfortunately none of that is available in one place. Although i have an ‘identity’ on the internet it’s spread out over applications such as Facebook, Plazes, Flickr or Twitter. And when does anyone ever actually look at your site anymore? With RSS nobody needs to.

There are still a few of us that do it the ‘old school’ way, trying to integrate all these tools together into a site that reflects me. But there are so many things i’m disadvantaged by in doing it this way. I’d love to have my photos online using Flickr rather than Gallery but i don’t want them in the Flickr theme. I’d love to show people where i’ve been, but i don’t want people to have to go to a different site. There are APIs around that in theory would allow me to do such things but realistically i don’t have the time to be a ‘developer’, i just want to be a consumer. I want to install something that allows these to be integrated together so that my site is ‘me’ on the internet. Is that too much to ask?

October 10th, 2007 by Andy Feltham

So, last night all was going well – i had eaten dinner, opened a bottle of wine and was in my lounge playing golf ( and even under par ). The kitchen lights were off but light from the lounge illuminated it a bit. On the 6th hole i noticed something out of the corner of my eye move on the kitchen floor. It moved into view but given that we have a plant that isn’t too healthy in the kitchen i expected it to be a leaf that had fallen off. Oh how wrong i could be.Instead, as i moved into the kitchen, the leaf moved! And, as you may have guessed, it wasn’t a leaf but a rather cute little frog that you can see on the left here. After running up to get a camera ( nobody would have believed me otherwise ) he had managed to hop all the way down the kitchen and i managed to get one photo of him before he hopped under the washing machine.

At this point i thought i was never going to catch him so started to find bits of wood to block up the door way between the kitchen and lounge so that he didn’t hop everywhere. I left him to it a bit and went back to look later. I was horrified to find that he wasn’t under the washing machine and really expected never to see him, yet always to think he was inside still. Fortunately that wasn’t the case. I almost missed him but he was sitting, bold as anything, on our back door mat, waiting to get out. As you can see from the photos a mixing bowl and a Sky magazine came in really useful.

Kermit is now down the bottom of the garden, and i’m now wondering how the hell he got in!

October 9th, 2007 by Andy Feltham

Background : My Nann and Granddad used to live in Croyden. In fact so did we, but that was a long time ago. In our familiy most roasts ( and especially christmas dinners ) are acompanied by the odd sausage or two and over the years we’ve come to realise that there were none better than a specific butchers in Croyden. We used to go to this place, a lot.

Since my Granddad passed away, my Nann has moved to Lymington to be in a smaller place, by the coast and closer to family. As a consequence we no longer to go Croyden.

Its an uncanny coincidence.

And i’d love to see the internet shine through in situations like this. Lower operating cost, greater customer base, all that kind of stuff. In fact part of me was even contemplating offering my services just so that Christmas would always be the same. If i had more time, i would.

On another note, on Friday, i was asked for ID. I laughed.

October 4th, 2007 by Andy Feltham

Everyone likes getting awards? Or do they? Given any form of money and i imagine most people won’t complain too much. Recently though its been evident to me how difficult it is to give awards in a way where everyone is happy. As i’m not training to be a techy i find this particuarly interesting.

On Tuesday i recieved 3 awards in the space of an hour. Yay me. Couldn’t quite understand why they all came along at once but none the less, most of them were valid and i felt good for a while. Putting aside the actual reward, it was nice to be recognised for a contribution. That was until i found out today that other people have been given an award. Now, at this point i’ll explain that i’m all for these people getting an award, and i’m pleased for them. Where i’m getting at is over WHY they were given. In this particular case the reason given was something in which i had also contributed to and so either ( as i see it ) a) my part of that work wasn’t good or appreciated or b) the award was given for a different reason.

Now, i don’t know the reason, and nor do i need to for this post. The point is simply to demonstrate how easy it is for people to get the wrong end of the stick, and how differently things can be seem from different angles. In actual fact, people do need rewarding, but for me, being fair is as important as dishing out calculators. I don’t think there is an easy solution to this but it happens all the time. As it turns out, our manager must have used his allocation of 12 in one innings and so one solution might be to dish out awards in small, regular pieces for worth work, rather than in bulk. This would probably remove the effect of giving an award for the sake of it.

Anyway, observation over. Well done all those that have also go similar awards – i’m sure we’ll all be seen with branded shirts, bags, pens or calculators soon.