aninterestingname.co.uk

April 28th, 2009 by Andy Feltham

So i’ve been catch up on my Google reader backlog of articles and specifically i was reading Andy’s post about job titles. The topic in question is something that i have a strong belief about to the extent where i very specifically do not claim to be or try to live up to any type of job title. I’m not a software developer – i can develop software but its not all i do. I’m not a project manager – i manage what i need to in order to get the job done. And i’m not a team lead – i will lead teams but i’ll lead them in the way i do things : with energy and enthusiasm, not because of a job title that i or someone else invented. I say invented because i would imagine that only a small percentage of so called job titles are unique. The fruits of this i think show through, when you aren’t restricted to certain roles and responsibilities – you just do the job. By this time next week hopefully i’ll be celebrating this fruit.

However, the post had more to it than that. Andy spoke of a personal brand which i can get on board with and although i’m fortunate to have a site online to demonstrate this persona two things came to mind. Firstly how can people convey this without personal blogs and sites. Secondly is my online presence accurate?

While i can’t do much for the first, the tag cloud on the right goes some way to describing me however the thing that i noticed were a few obvious omissions which until now i clearly haven’t written about, and will proceed to do over the coming weeks.

Ultimate – i couldn’t believe that i didn’t have a tag for this. Its a team sport that i’ve been playing for more years than i can now remember and its unlike most. In fact its a cross between lots such as basketball, netball and american football. Unlike others though it has no referee and relies on players spirit of the game to officiate itself. I used to play with the university team and now have ( together with a few others ) created a new team called Rawhyde. Its a game that can be played at all levels and during my ‘career’ i have also travelled the world to play, including a 3 year stint playing for Great Britain ( the last of which i was the captain ).

April 20th, 2009 by Andy Feltham

On Saturday, after a nice lie in and a good old english fried breakfast i completed the Swimathon Challenge. This was actually the first time that i had completed the 5k challenge either during training or since 1999. I’m pleased to say that i was aiming for a target of 1hr 15min and i managed to complete it in 1hr 11min 34sec. Having not really done the distance and not being sure how many people in the lane might slow me down it was good to finally remove those doubts. And in actual fact i did better than i could have imagined perhaps mainly due to the poor organisation of the event. At the moment i’m not sure if a lot has changed since the last time i did the event or if it was just this pool in particular but the organisation was poor. Very poor. The worst of which was probably not being told i wasn’t allowed to tumble-turn until about 300m into the 5k. As i’m sure you’ve guessed 5k is a lot of lengths and can make a difference to the time and in this case i was forced to touch-turn for each lap! This may have helped me keep my breath and swim more consistently, i don’t know. Although i didn’t notice for while, i understand that the life guards and attendants spent a good number of lengths chasing me up and down the pool trying to get my attention to ask me to stop. I believe i got my rewards on one length by soaking them during a turn. I actually would have quite liked to see that.

All in all, i’m disappointed about the organisation of the event ( and not being timed properly ) but i’m really pleased i completed it, raising £375 for charity in the process. Thank you to all of you that have donated money.

Now on to my next challenge…

April 17th, 2009 by Andy Feltham

It seems like ages ago ( maybe jan ‘09 ) we visited friends in London who took us to the Natural History Museum ( NHM ) for the Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition. I can’t even start to think when i was last in the Natural History Museum and so that alone was quite fun to see the tRex in the lobby etc. The exhibit itself is divided into categories such as Birds, Underwater, Plants, Wild places, and Creative Visions. Each category had maybe 10 photos in and in total there were probably 200 photos to see. Aside from the obvious quality of the photos, what really stood out for me was some of the Junior awards. These are photos from children between 11 and 17 and quite frankly some of them were no different to the adult photos – they were very impressive. However, what stood out is an 11 year old kid with £4k’s worth of digital camera on safari in Africa! Makes you wonder who else would be a good photographer if they had those sorts of experiences from a young age.

The exhibit is something that i would go back to next year ( maybe even EVERY year ) and at the time i was even contemplating buying some prints of the photos. Its taken me until now to actually find out if you can get prints and hence deciding to blog about it! Fortunately for me, some of the photos are available to get on print and i’ve included links & thumbnails to some of my favourites on the right. Please click through the links to find more information about the photograph and photographer.

April 15th, 2009 by Andy Feltham

Thats right ladies and gents i’m learning how to sink and what makes it even more strange is i’m actually paying to do this! Okay, let me explain… 

I’m and Advanced Open water SCUBA diver and as you’ve seen from the swimming i feel very comfortable in the water. Although i haven’t been diving for a couple of years anywhere hot, when i do typically i also snorkel. Whenever i did snorkel i always used to enjoy ducking under the water every time i saw i fish i wanted to swim with or some coral i wanted to see. The more i swam underwater, the more i enjoyed doing it and this is why i’ve enrolled myself on a Freediving course. This is essentially swimming underwater in a way that conserves your energy and allows you to spend more time underwater.  There are a few varients on this that vary on using weights and / or fins but essentially the theory is still the same – relax and make the most of the air you have ( at least as i understand it at the moment ). 

Fortunately i don’t have to go to any great lengths to try this out and in fact at the end of may i’m making my way over to Portsmouth to make use of their Submarine Escape Training Facility ( SETT ) as part of a Freediving Course. The tank in question is 30 meters deep and as you can see from these two videos ( #1 & #2 ) the technique seems to basically get to the point where you sink so that you don’t have to swim down. I’m sure thats a very simplistic approach for now but needless to say i’m looking forward to finding out more and seeing for myself. Although it would be nice to say that i managed to get down to the 30 meters after a weekend based on how i enjoy what i do now, and what i’ve read in articles, i’m really looking forward to giving this a go.

April 15th, 2009 by Andy Feltham

Ask Dr Emit Brown and he’ll tell you “If you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything.”. Okay so he’s a character from a film but the point is still valid and is a good line to live by in my opinion. I’m sure that most of the people that have climbed mountains, sailed around the world or made businesses have a similar approach and after what is probably going to be my last early morning swim i’m hoping the same is going to be true for me this coming saturday. As i look back through all of the swimming and running times that i’ve collected over the past four months i’ve clocked up 35 miles running and currently 44 km of swimming in 5.5 and 11 hours respectively. When you think that most of the swimming has been in the morning i think that it works out to be about a days worth of sleep i’ve given up in order to achieve the 5k in the time i want and to raise money for a very worthwhile cause. I have the same approach at work and in everything that i do – anything is achievable. I’ve been asked if its likely that i’ll get back to the stamina and speed i used to have as a teenager and so far all signs suggest that i’m going to achieve what i want to achieve. The only difference is believing in what you want to do. Regardless what it is – some development, a project on the house, winning over that certain someone or achieving the promotion that you deserve, belief is the biggest part of overcoming the problems. If you believe you can do it, then you’ll do what you need to do to make it happen. Even if that means loosing sleep for it.

Guess when i decided to do the swimathon!

April 2nd, 2009 by Andy Feltham

Well, my virtual home has anyway! Hopefully you haven’t actually noticed the change but behind the scenes the server running the site has moved from a US based company to a UK based one. Largely this was because of cost, speed, and the amount of time i was spending trying to maintain the server. Although this is only one of many sites that need to move, so far its gone well.

It has made me think though. What is the point of websites any more? By this i mean that the various ways of accessing the data contained on sites are changing in such a way that means the look and feel of the site is becoming less and less important compared to the data that is on it. I was thinking this as i’m looking at the tag cloud that appears on the right hand side of the site – it looks ugly, i hate it. Then again, those that are reading this site, chances are they are reading the updates through a news reader such as Google Reader. How many people actually see the tag cloud? The same would apply for any other style, images or menu’s that are on the site. I like the thought that things like my Twitter updates are also visible on a public site but it certainly changes my thoughts about how much time i spend correcting issues to do with style.

In some ways this ties in with the video i posted last – how are things going to change over the coming years. Putting aside shops ( perhaps ) for a second, could you see a time where even BBC news doesn’t have a front end, and everything is through feeds? I know i can. Feed consolidation makes it much easier to keep in touch with lots of sites and it even removes what can be annoying advertising that can get in the way. Really, the next step about making sites tool agnostic would be making products available as part of a similar ‘api’. After that, i’m sure it won’t be long before you start seeing adverts appearing in your feed readers. Remember, you heard it here first!