Resolutions Finale

Posted: Tue 27 December, 2005 | Author: | Filed under: 2005 Resolutions, Thoughts | Leave a comment »

Ah yes, back to that old chestnut for the Festering Season, resolutions. Well hell, it fills some space while I’m away…

Anyway, not much has changed since last time I posted on the subject – bit of a dead loss really.

But this is also where it gets interesting. Because I need to come up with some ideas for the ’06 Resolutions. And that’s what I’m going to be doing over the next few days. Some of the outstanding ’05 ones will probably make it onto the list, but perhaps not all of them.

And in the meantime, yes, I’m thinking about some new challenges and ideas. Got to keep myself mentally active and all that. After all, I’m thirty-bloody-five in ’06…

Weighty Issues

Posted: Wed 7 December, 2005 | Author: | Filed under: 2005 Resolutions, Health, Thoughts | 4 Comments »

Roughly six months ago, I wrote about the weight I’d managed to lose in the first part of the year – at the time I was down to 19st 10lb. I’ve eased up on the dieting a bit since, and not been cycling to work in a while – although I do generally walk home from the train station most days.

Anyway, I weighed myself yesterday, and while I’ve put on a little bit, I’m now dead on the 20st mark. No, that’s not light – but it does mean that even without making every effort for the weight to come off, or to keep it off, I’ve still managed to maintain pretty much the same weight for six months now.

And to me, that’s still a success. Yes, I’d like to lose some more, and there’s some other stuff I plan to do in order to manage that – but equally I suspect that whatever I lose in fat will just change to muscle (I know it’s not a “just change” procedure, but the fat will go and be replaced by muscle that has developed from the exercise) so I’ll still be in a similar weight range, I guess.

These are the kind of thoughts that follow you on a day when you’re sorting out techie stuff…

Photo progress

Posted: Sat 3 December, 2005 | Author: | Filed under: 2005 Resolutions, Photography, Thoughts | 1 Comment »

A very large thank you to the person (he knows who he is) who sent me a monopod for the camera. I’m sure it’s going to come in very useful indeed.

Progress with the new EOS20D has been slow of late – I’m still getting there, but over the last couple of weeks I haven’t really had the opportunity to go out with it and get anything good. I suppose that over time that’s something I need to do more, is make time to go out and take photos. After all, the best learning method is practice, or so people keep telling me.

The monopod will come in handy for a lot of the stuff that I do, I’m sure. I saw one in use at the Euro OSCON in Amsterdam earlier this year, and realised that once I’d got a heavy bit of kit like the EOS20D, it’d almost certainly be something that’d come in handy.

So yes, many thanks again.

More ticks on the list

Posted: Wed 30 November, 2005 | Author: | Filed under: 2005 Resolutions, Travel | 1 Comment »

A while back I wrote about the progressions in my driving since passing the test in August. Last night I checked off a couple of the things on the “still to do”.

I’ve now driven in nearly-central London (Shepherd’s Bush and Hammersmith, to be exact) and done my first stint on the M25. And no problems on either thing.

Of course, it being half eleven on a Tuesday night might have helped a bit, but all the same, they’re checked off the list now.

Resolutions – Progress?

Posted: Wed 16 November, 2005 | Author: | Filed under: 2005 Resolutions | Leave a comment »

Way back in January, I posted a list of my ’05 Resolutions…

  1. Making a photo portfolio, and taking it to a couple of agents, seeing how I do
  2. Sorting out the Driving Test
  3. Doing a few more bits of proper writing
  4. Taking time out, and not running round like quite such a silly bastard
  5. Enjoying life in its new facets
  6. Debating whether to close my current company and restart with something new.
  7. Lots of other things that I’ll list as I go on
    • Change jobs

So, with six weeks to go, how have I done?

  1. Not much progress – I’ve got the portfolio itself, but not done anything with it yet. I’ve also recently found another way of doing it that I haven’t yet experimented with – but I intend to do so before the year’s out.
  2. Done and passed
  3. Nope, not even close. Not even begun, if I’m honest. And no, NaNoWriMo wouldn’t help either
  4. Yes-ish. I have had more holidays this year than last, so I guess that’s pretty much a “check!”
  5. Ditto
  6. Company completely closed and shut down
  7. Yes, Job changed, and much happier in the new one.

Which means I’ve completed five out of the seven resolutions, with a couple of odds and sods still to go. At least I’ve managed to get most of the big bits completed (except that bloody portfolio)

Final Steps

Posted: Wed 7 September, 2005 | Author: | Filed under: 2005 Resolutions, Work-related | Leave a comment »

One of my resolutions back at the start of the year was to look at closing down my old company, and either stay “employed” for a while, or potentially look at restarting under another business name. There were lots of reasons for it, not least that life has changed a fair amount in the last year or so, and a change was needed in work aspects as well. Also, having gone back to “proper jobs” for a while, it seemed reasonable to fold down the old company.

The final steps of that process are now happening. By a happy coincidence, the domain comes up for renewal at the end of September, as does the webspace hosting agreement. After some thought about what to do, and whether to keep the site or the domain (after all, pretty much all the websites I deal with are registered under that company name, that kind of thing) I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m not going to renew it, or the domain name. Yes, in theory someone else could come along and use it, but to be honest the odds are against it in a big way.

So by October 1 the website, email, and domain name will be no more.

And after that? What will I do should more website work come along, for instance? Well, I can always come up with another company name, or I can just do the stuff myself, independently, and leave it at that.