Furthermore

I have moved

This site is now at www.furthermore.org.uk/blog

All new posts will appear there, but don't expect frequent updates.

Current archives should continue to work for now at least. This page will stay up until I can be bothered to write some kind of overall intro to the site.

Valedictory

I think that just about wraps it up for Furthermore in its current incarnation. I shall leave the current pages up for a while, but then I think I'm going to move the site and its archives (yes, I know, a blogging sin - so shoot me) and start using Wordpress. There will be occasional updates, but I doubt it will be more often than monthly.

I'm also thinking about posting to my LiveJournal. I use it for private posts and commenting at the moment, but I'd like to have somewhere to be able to blog some more personal stuff without having it easily linked to me by anyone who cares to google my name. So if you want to see that (I'm not promising how much there'll be yet) and you don't know where my LJ is then mail me.

Winding Down

I don't seem to have posted for a month or so, and I think that may be a sign that this blog is going out of commission, at least for a while. There may be a new Furthermore when I have something new to talk about, but don't expect many more updates here. I will let you know how I get on in the marathon though.

Tuesday

I had an amazingly productive day on Tuesday - I got up about 6.30 and went running, then spent the morning at work fixing a problem that had been bugging me for several days.

I took the afternoon off, did a bit of shopping and then went to CB2 to meet the MySociety people to see what I could help them with. They were very friendly, so we had a good chat, and Tom put me in touch with Richard Pope who's hopefully going to help me get going with a screenscraper for his planning applications website.

After I left there I bought some food for tea, then headed home to eat and help put the girls to bed. Then back out to the Alexandra Arms to host the Cambridge Amnesty group's letter writing evening. Fortunately for me I had been given a bunch of template letters by a friend in the Blackheath and Greenwich group, so we were able to use those to write about 20 letters between the five of us.

Still managed to get home in time for a reasonably early night.

Not blogging but running

Not a lot to say at the moment I guess. I am thinking of porting this site to Wordpress (that is, I've done it, except the style sheets, but I can't be bothered to finish) so maybe that's why I'm reluctant to post here - it's the Furthermore-original-flavour epilogue.

Anyway, running is going well - I did just over 17 miles today, in just under 3 hours, so that's about a 10m15s per mile. For some reason the 17 mile run had become something of a source of anxiety. I've never run that far before, and I was afraid I was going to screw it up I guess. As it was, the weather was nice, and I even managed to get on the road before 8am so I was back just before 11. Here's the route - the section by the river up to Baits Bite, and then Milton Country Park was very nice. Running back down Milton Road, not so much.

More about Today

I wibbled on so much about running and coughing that I forgot to mention that after yesterday's rather disastrous trip out, and with today being such fine weather, we thought we would go out into town today.

So we had a good lunch at Teri-Aki. L protested, but then she did try a few things - she liked tempura, and she even tried one of the fish eggs from the sushi, but decided that was nasty. That's the sushi that is marked "challenging" in some restaurants I've been to, so I don't think she did to badly.

While we were there, we saw Prof Hawking - nice to see that he's still able to get out and about. After lunch we walked up Castle Hill - none of the family but me has been up there before for one reason or another. When we reached the top, the rain immediately began to fall, so we quickly descended again. The rain then stopped, so we walked back into town through Trinity College, and stopped for coffee and cake at Michaelhouse.

Back at home, Mrs F found that her new OU course material had arrived, so she was pleased, having started the day a bit down after a bad dream and a poor night's sleep (see below about coughing).

It was a really nice day out, and it's so nice to be able to relax with my family and not feel the need to be constantly doing things. I want to have more of that kind of fun in the coming year.

Post Yule

Haven't updated for a bit as I've been feeling pretty ropey since before Christmas. I've had a mix of cold and cough, but it's mainly the cough that's been bugging me - it's very dry and it just seems to have been going on forever. It was keeping me awake for several nights, but I've now discovered the wonders of Cough Nurse (ie like Night Nurse but for coughs) which seems to have just taken the edge off it.

So apart from sickliness, what else:

• Christmas itself was good - we had duck for lunch, with a bottle of Chateau Musar (my favourite wine). Lots of presents were exchanged, with Mrs F particularly pleased with my getting her the DVD of Miyazaki's animated film of Howl's Moving Castle.


• Then the 28th was E's birthday, so we had a few people over (there would have been more, but it seems we're not the only ones who are ill) but it was really nice to see Jay, and Guy + Susie and family again - Ella loves playing with their older boy Gabriel. I don't think E could claim to have been hard done by for presents, given the proximity of her birthday to Christmas.


• Yesterday we tried to go out - we thought to go to St Ives, but the weather and traffic were against us, so we ended up having a rather disappointing lunch at Bella Italia (which has previously been quite good).


• Today I managed to go for a run for the first time in over a week. Possibly I could have gone before - it's hard to judge when running will make you feel better rather than worse when you feel a bit off colour. Anyway, I did about 6 miles, so I shall treat that as the run I should have done last Saturday, and treat myself as just a week behind on my schedule. Of course I didn't think about losing time in the training schedule when I started running, so I haven't left any spare weeks to catch up the time I've lost. Hopefully I can make up the distance on some of the later long runs, but I think there's a lesson there for another year.

That'll do for now. I want to do some end of the year personal round up type stuff, but I need to think about that a bit more.

Harmonica

L got a toy harmonica on the cover of one of her magazines. Turns out to be a swizz, as it only has two notes - the others are intentionally non-functional. This means you can't get any kind of tune out of it, and the notes that do work produce only a kind of plaintive squeaking - the sound you imagine a gerbil might make if it were pulled slowly into a mincer.

As of yesterday

I don't seem to be doing much blogging lately. Maybe it's the running using up my time. Saturday I did a ten mile circuit of Cambridge - knees felt fine, but it was very cold, and I foolishly didn't take my gloves, so my hands got absolutely freezing. I thought they'd warm up after I'd been out for a while, but no such luck. Then in the afternoon Mrs F's sister came to visit, which was nice - she brought up some presents for the girls, and they like playing with her. Unfortunately Mrs F started to come down with a bug as the afternoon wore on, and ended up having to go back to bed. So that meant I had to cancel my night out at the BBC Backstage party at very short notice (sorry, Ursula). One of those things I guess, but I was pretty pissed off at the time.

Sunday Mrs F was somewhat better. I took the girls up to Histon playground (L likes the little helter-skelter there). It was a bit cold though, so we went back quite early, except that I left a bag behind with all the changing stuff (+ drinks, snacks etc) behind. I had to go back after lunch to look for it - fortunately it was still there. As I was still in quite a bad mood about the previous evening, I thought I'd take a bit of a drive round. I ended up at Upware, so I had a quick pint at the Five Miles, then negotiated the tiny back roads back to Cambridge - I love the sensation of being in the middle of nowhere, and the fen landscape is great when you just want to be on your own for a bit.

I took Monday off as Mrs F had been planning to go to London to meet a friend and see the Holbein exhibition at Tate Britain. Unfortunately her friend had to cancel, and she was still feeling a bit off-colour, but she decided she'd go anyway, and just not stay out too late. I took E into town (had to wait ages for the bus in the rain) and managed to get Christmas cards + various other things I've needed for a while. Since Mrs F was back early I was able to go out and see (at Jay's suggestion) The Scissors at The Cellar Bar. It was pretty good - Jay has blogged it more amusingly than I could. You may have to be one of Jay's imaginary friends to read that though.

Sickly

Ah, it's all been sickness in the Furthermore house this week. Wednesday night L woke up very poorly, and Mrs F had to stay up with her, with me doing backup vomit-cleaning duties.

Then Friday I came down with the same thing (although not so badly) so I had to leave work early. Saturday was a complete write-off, and today I merely felt grim. Actually I'm starting to feel a little better now, which is good, as tomorrow is Mrs F's birthday, and I booked it off work so we could go out together.

bits and bobs

MeFi meetup was good fun, and it was great to go to a formal hall again - real hit of nostalgia for me. I cut my run a bit short the next day - only did an hour.

Today I managed to do quite a bit of my finance course revision + worked on the family tree program for quite a while - I can see it's going to take a lot of effort to get all the information into it that I have now, never mind adding new people in.

It's good though, I feel like I've caught up with myself a bit, and that I'm doing the things I want to do. I seem to have got through my mini mid-life crisis. I don't think it was any single thing that did it, just a combination of GTD, and reading and thinking about what I wanted to get out of my life. It's helped as well that the children are a bit older and more able to play by themselves or with each other.

Now I just have to get over my procrastination demon - but I've found quite a good book on that too - The Now Habit by Neil Fiore. Interesting stuff - maybe I'll write a bit more about that too.

Wire and Rain

Had to run in the rain this morning which wasn't so great. At least it wasn't cold.

This evening I watched episode 1 of season 1 of The Wire, which teh internet people seem to rave about. I thought it was good, and I'm going to carry on with at least the other episodes on the first DVD (1,2&3). Since it's on rental, I'll see what I think after that - all the series DVDs seem pretty popular at Amazon so it may be a while before I can get the next one anyway.

Tomorrow evening I'm off to the Cambridge Metafilter Meetup, so we'll see what that's like. It's going to be at Trinity Formal Hall, which should be good fun at any rate - I haven't been to a formal hall since about 1993.

Le weekend

Friday I was in London again for a presentation skills course. It was pretty good, but a secondary reason for going was to see the shiny new offices in the CitiGroup tower in Canary Wharf. We were pretty high up and the weather was clear, so the view was incredible - you could see right across to Wembley (if you had good eyesight like I don't). You could really see the smog over the city as well. The course finished quite early so I managed to meet up with Rachel, who had to leave early to revise for a ton of job interviews she has lined up, and then Tony, who I was at college with, and I haven't seen for a few years. He and his wife had just had their second child, so he was quite tired, so we had some food at a nice Italian place near Farringdon, and then I headed back home.

Saturday H went into town in the afternoon. The girls and I went out in the garden until teatime, when I thought H would be back. Since she hadn't turned up, I thought about what to get them for tea and came up with boiled egg and soldiers. Just as I was about to put the eggs on, H arrived home. "Sorry I'm late - the bus didn't come. Did you get my message?" she said.
I didn't know anything about the message because we'd been out in the garden. H played it and it suggested that I give the girls boiled eggs and soldiers for tea. Obviously the mind-melding is proceeding apace.

I took L to the fireworks in the evening. Really good this year I thought. L liked them, but she got a bit bored after a while. Next year I think we might try to bring everyone into town, which will make the logistics harder - with just L, I can take her on the bike (although I need to get a trailer bike, as she doesn't really fit in the child seat any more).

H and I watched Torchwood on Sunday, which I was quite looking forward to from the trailers. It was absolute cobblers though. (Spoilers follow). I don't believe for a second that Ianto could keep his partly cyber-converted girlfriend, Lisa, in the Torchwood base for months on end without anyone knowing. And that was just the start, after that the implausibilities came thick and fast, culminating in Lisa's self administered brain transplant into a Pizza delivery girl (whose brain death doesn't even rate a mention from the team). The team then casually shoot her body dead to kill Lisa. No consequences follow for anyone (although I guess it's going to be hard for them to get any more pizza).

Might give it one more go, but that's it.

Londonist

I had a course in London on Tuesday, but it was only in the morning, and they even finished a bit early, so I booked the rest of the day off. I went up to Euston and met one of my Woolwich-era friends for lunch. Then I went to Tate Modern to have a go on the slides.

Unfortunately I hadn't reckoned on how popular they would be. Tickets (free) for the highest levels had all gone, and the level 3 slide only had times for about 4.30 which would have meant hanging around for 2 hours. I've been on slides before, and it didn't quite seem worth it. Fortunately, there were two slides that were just queue and go, so I went on those and called it a day.

Then I did a bit of shopping, although I only managed to buy a few stocking fillers for the girls. Probably a good thing really as I would have spent a fortune otherwise.

Finally I met up with a couple of friends at a pub and we had a good evening of catching up. Gotta go to London again tomorrow for another course, so hopefully I may be able to catch up with some other people after work then.

Weekend

It's been a pretty good weekend. I cooked on Friday night - just steak with potatoes+bacon in a vinaigrette and some purple sprouting broccoli. The Jamie Oliver 21-day matured steaks in Sainsbury's are actually very good - I cooked them properly this time, but last time they were still tasty even after I overcooked them horribly.

We started watching Sideways, which we rented from Amazon's DVD rental service. We're on the basic £5 a month for 2 DVDs package, but I don't think we'll get through many more than that. We both enjoyed the film - very nicely observed, and there are some hilarious scenes - mostly nearer the end. Not much happens in the film though - it's just two middle aged guys in the wine country of California.

Today I took the girls over to see Chris + Kirsty and Xav in March. We took the train, and got there just before 12. Had a good lunch, and L and Xav played together. Neither L nor E were very happy to meet Holly (the family dog). They would both scramble onto my lap whenever she was around, although they did relax a bit eventually. Got home about 5, which meant H had most of the day to work on her history and Latin.

Next week I'm in London on Tuesday and Friday - I have Tuesday afternoon off, so I'm thinking I might go on the slides at Tate Modern or something.

Talking to my daughter

(skip if you're allergic to cute kids stories)

L often asks to have a little talk with me before she goes to sleep. Here's yesterday's:
Me - What would you do if you were really rich?
L - Buy 10,000 scooters.
Me - What would you do with them all?
L - Ride on them, and give them to the children.
Me - That's very generous. Anything else?
L - I'd buy 10,000 glasses for the grown-ups. And 10,000 dressing gowns for the poo-poos.
Me - Why does a poo-poo need a dressing gown?
L - To keep it warm in the toilet of course!

Birthday

My eldest daughter L was 5 on Friday. She's been very excited about this prospect for months now. I took Friday off and H's parents came to visit. L hasn't seen them for quite a while so that was nice for her + it meant she got two lots of presents in one day.

Then on Saturday she had her birthday party. We had 5 guests, so fairly manageable, particularly as one of the mums stayed to help, and Jay also came round to provide wine and make party food. My contribution was a treasure hunt, and Pass the Parcel, and that just wrapped it up nicely. L was pretty grumpy the next day though - I think partly because of tiredness and partly because of the comedown to normality.

Her sister E is now saying "Happy to You", and "Birthday Cake" at every opportunity.

Thursday night

The weekend started on Thursday evening as I had Friday off. I went out to a leaving do from work. Cycling down Mill Road I was knocked off my bike by a woman who walked into the road without looking where she was going. I was knocked flying and was lucky only to bruise my arm and leg (and ruin my coat, break my pen and damage the bike).

The woman immediately blamed me for not having lights. I pointed out my lights, the well lit street and the fact I was wearing a bright yellow high-vis jacket. I suggested she look where the fsck she was going and then one of her friends intervened to calm the situation down.

I'm mostly glad I didn't notice the damage (particularly to my coat, which I got in New York) till later, as it would only have made me more angry, and I don't think that would have helped. Still I don't feel I was as angry as I should have been, given how dangerous the incident was to me. If I'd been driving the car, I think she'd have looked more carefully.

Best to chalk it up to experience - it's only my second serious incident cycling in Cambridge for over 5 years.

Big year for weddings

We went en famille on Saturday to Donna and Simon's wedding reception at Bassmead Manor just outside St Neots. Although they are the third couple we know getting married this year, they're the first where we've actually been able to get to the wedding (the others were in Wales and Australia, respectively).

Bassmead Manor was beautiful and very peaceful. There was a nice garden area for drinks and nibbles on arrival, and then the reception meal was in a marquee set up to adjoin the converted barn where the ceilidh band played afterwards.

The food was good, and there was plenty to drink (although I was driving unfortunately). A lot of thought had gone into the planning - L and E got party bags with toys appropriate to their ages. H got dairy free food with no problems. We had lots of little amusing things on the table to help break the ice - little quiz cards, and puzzles and sweets etc.

A bonus for me was meeting an old friend from school - Jim, who I knew before I met Donna in fact, so I've known him over 20 years now - a terrifying thought.

Anyway, it was a really good afternoon and evening. We had to leave about 9, although the girls were enjoying the ceilidh - E kept pointing and saying "DANCING" in a very excited way. They both did a bit of dancing, but you could see they were really tired by then (to say nothing of their parents).

Catching Up

I seem not to have been blogging for a while. No particular reason, but I just haven't felt like it. Anyway, this is just a quick catch up post.

Running is going well - I did an hour this morning and felt fine. Whenever I look down to see where my right knee is going, it's going to the right place (ie above the second toe, rather than collapsing in like it used to). My physio was pleased with progress when I saw her on Monday, so I don't have to go back again unless I have problems. Now I just have to start doing a third run in the week, and I have the basis for my marathon training all set.

What else? I've been out a couple of times - once in London after a day working onsite for one of my company's clients. I saw an old friend and we had sushi at Moshi Moshi in Liverpool St. She's looking for a new job, so if anyone is looking for an experienced C++ developer in London let me know and I'll pass your details on.

Then the other Thursday I went out with some old friends from college at the Kingston Arms in Cambridge. We were joined by Jay and one of her friends and a good evening of drinking and talking ensued. I can't drink beer like I used to though - I was wasted after 5 pints, although I didn't seem to suffer too much the next day.

That's about all, except to recommend the Thursday night comedy on BBC2 - Extras didn't quite get going, although there were some excellent cringe-making moments. Mitchell and Webb were genius - I loved the SS Officers sketch ("our badges are skulls - does that mean that we're the baddies?") and the drunks who think they are heroic crime-fighters (that one could have come straight out of my brother's imagination in fact). I wasn't expecting much from Mock the Week, but it was great. The bit about the dinner witch had me creased up, but too long to quote. Maybe it's on YouTube somewhere.

Preaching to the uninterested

I saw one of those guys in town on Saturday who have to get up on a box and talk about Jeeesus for the benefit of the rest of us heathens. I was quite impressed though, that he'd come up with a novel approach. Rather than the usual straightforward haranguing, he was offering a test with a cash prize of £20. You had to answer a few questions to prove you were a good person, and then he'd give you the money.

I'm not quite sure what the catch would have been - if unsubtle, it would probably be that you don't worship Jesus; if subtle, it would probably be a more Socratic attempt to show that nobody lives up to their own standard of goodness, and that therefore we all need - guess who? - to help us on our way.

The whole scene was ironic on so many levels though: firstly, nobody was taking him up on his offer. Everyone could see it was a trick, or they didn't think they needed someone offering them £20 to know whether they were good or not, or they thought it politest to ignore him. At any rate, the effect was that the chap was standing there offering free money, with no takers.

Except one. The whole time I was there, there was a guy standing right in front of him, his hand slightly raised in an attitude of supplication. The preaching guy was desperately trying not to pay any attention, only acknowledging the man's presence by saying "Take the test! You just have to be sober and speak English!"

So to sum up, the preacher is trying to do good by spreading the gospel. He wants to give away his own money, except that the only person who wants to take it is seemingly not worthy to receive it.

Personally, I'm tempted to say that Jesus would have given the drunk guy the £20. As an example of charity, I'm sure it would have had more effect than any number of hours of preaching.

A somewhat Jonathan Carroll moment

I was eating breakfast when I noticed some movement in the street outside the front of my house. It looked as if a person was bobbing up and down outside my garden, so I went to the window to get a better look. Outside was a metallic helium balloon.

I thought maybe someone dropped it so I went out to look. At first I couldn't see where the balloon had gone, but then I noticed it about 20 metres further down the street. It was tethered to a small weight, so it was bobbing along as the wind picked it up. There was nobody in sight and no indication of where it might have come from.

I took it in the house and gave it to my children. It says Happy Birthday.

Happy Blog Anniversary

Three years blogging at Furthermore today. I've posted about 330 articles in that period, so I guess that's roughly one every 3 days.

You'll notice there's been a fair bit of family history just recently - I was spurred back into it when I got an email from someone who is another descendant of my great great grandfather, John Freestone. The Freestones seem to fairly well covered now, and one of my mum's relations has done a lot of work on my mother's maternal line, so I thought I'd pick up the remaining two and see what I could do.

Adorable Child Blogging

Skip over this if you don't like cute stories about kids. You have been warned.

I was putting L to bed last night, and she asked me, "Daddy, what does 'startastic' mean?" - I assumed it was something she'd heard on kids TV so I was trying to explain about making up words based on other words but then she said, "no, no, it's like when you say 'I really like your dress' but you mean 'I really don't like your dress'". Finally the penny drops. L can do a really good sarcastic voice, and I'm just a bit worried who she's going to use it on.

I also discovered that L sees (at least some) words as colours - she volunteered the information quite spontaneously. I say the word, she closes her eyes, and opens them, and then she tells me what colour she can see. Everything I've tried so far seems to be purple or pinky purple though. My mum and brother both have some synaesthesia, so maybe she's picked a bit up too.

Meanwhile E has acquired a fantastic new trick. She'll say, "dot, dot" (knock, knock). If you say, "who's there?" she says "dotta hoo" (Doctor Who). She's been listening to L of course, who is obsessed with knock, knock jokes. She can repeat quite a few, but she still doesn't quite understand what makes the format funny. Until recently she'd make up jokes like this:
Knock Knock
Who's there
Elephant
Elephant who?
Elephant lampshade

Now we've progressed to a more sophisticated version, where the "who's there?" is likely to be answered with just an initial sound or letter, and then the reveal will be something beginning with that letter. So now she gets the importance of the link between the responses, but she's not quite sure how to make it funny.

Barbeque

We had our annual barbeque on Saturday, which seemed to go really well. We had nearly 30 guests, quite a few of whom I don't get to see very often, so it was really good to be able to catch up. There were quite a few children there, so L and E both had a good time playing with their friends. Weather was nearly perfect - sunny, but not so hot as a couple of weeks ago.

We were all done by about 8.30 or so, and various people helped clear up, so there wasn't that much work to do the next day. Generally a great day.

Wrapping up the Mid-Life Crisis Blogging part 1

As my regular reader will know, I've been blogging occasionally about where I'm going with my life at the moment, and I think I'm now at the stage where I can summarise some of what I've done.

I'm planning to do this in three parts: one on the "big stuff" - what I think I've learned, mission statements, all that kind of thing. One on what I see as the difficulties I face, and this one, which is the easiest, on what has actually changed so far as a result of my recent navel-gazing and introspection. There may be occasional follow-ups, but hopefully this will get it out of my system.

So what has changed for me? The main one is that I've decided I have to have a bit more fun. I'm kind of rubbish at having fun - I'm always telling myself that I've got to do this or that thing. So now I have to officially relax a bit, and enjoy being married and having children.

Update: on re-reading, this struck me as very much a reaction to losing my job back in 2003, and then having various further upheavals during the following year: I think I started acting like "I can't mess about or more bad things will happen". Of course, life doesn't work that way, but it's easy for me at least to think that if only I can be good, then I won't be punished.

That said, I do actually enjoy doing things. It's partly just that I had lost sight of what I wanted to do for myself, so I've been picking up various things to try out. What's currently sticking is:

• meditation - I learned to meditate with the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order at college. I had an excellent teacher, a chap called Ratnaprabha, who ran sessions in Kings College. I've done it on and off since then, but I'm now trying to sit at least twice a week, even if it's only for 15-20 minutes.
• activism - of a gentle and middle class kind. I've started going to the Cambridge Amnesty group, and I'm now membership secretary and deputy web-wrangler. Last weekend I finally did a bit of leafletting for No2id, having done little since I helped set up the group around the end of 2004. I'm also gradually trying to do some small tasks for MySociety, but I've not got so far with that yet.
• web-wrangling - I've been meaning to learn more about this for a while and I eventually realised that one thing that was inhibiting me was the fact that I didn't want to screw up the Furthermore site. But domains are cheap now, so I just bought another, and I shall be fiddling about with it real soon now.
• running - admittedly I didn't stop out of choice, but I'm trying to gradually build back up now to a point where I can do the marathon next year.

The main things I haven't got anywhere with are to do some drawing, and language learning - I'm torn between going back to Japanese, and trying to improve my lamentable French, since Mrs F will be doing it too soon enough, and it'll probably be more use to me. I still don't really feel I have enough time for either at the moment, but they're there on the someday/maybe list at least.

And on re-reading that, it sounds like I've learnt nothing - just bound myself up with a whole load more commitments. Not so though, or I don't think so. I'm only committing myself to things I really want to do, or believe I want to do. I'm not doing things because I feel I ought to.

Tune in next time for the deep stuff, if I can bring myself to post it.

Man Bags

Man bags seem to be in the news at the moment, thanks to Mr Roddick. I've been carrying various kinds of courier bag for several years without thinking much about it, but recently Mrs Furthermore pointed out that my standard bag was rather too big if all I needed to carry was say, a novel, notebook, phone and PDA.

So I went looking for bags. Nowadays, I tend to look on AskMe for this sort of recommendation. I liked the sound of the Timbuk2 stuff, so I ended up buying one from Ebags (UK link) as they seem to be able to get Timbuk2 stuff in the UK.

I bought a Metro - described as a "small tote". Lots of useful inner pockets and cunning features. You can, at a pinch, fit an A4 notebook in, but it's really designed around A5 kind of sized objects.

When I first got it I was kind of horrified - I really thought it looked a bit handbaggy. So I put it in the cupboard for a couple of days to see whether I'd really made a bad error. When I got it out again, I quite liked it, and now I'm using it all the time (except when I actually need a big bag).

When I showed it to Mrs F, she said it looked like a handbag too, but (as she put it) like a manly handbag. I'm kind of glad I didn't show it her right away though - I think that comment would have done for me. Now, I kind of like that it's a handbag - clearly, I just need a handbag, and at least mine is manly.

Great Weekend

We have had a really good weekend - yesterday we went to a party at our neighbours over the road. They did a fantastic barbeque, and we let the children stay up later than normal - E was fine, but L slept in till nearly 9 this morning - very unusual for her.

Then today we went to the fair, which L really loved - she went on a big inflatable slide, then the helter-skelter (which would have terrified me at her age), then a kind of tiny rollercoaster thing with a barbie car to ride in, and several others, including a traditional "galloping horses" carousel.

Of course, when we left she complained bitterly that we hadn't been on a bouncy castle, and sulked all the way home. But apart from that, it was lovely.

Cute child related stuff

Feel free to skip this one. E is really starting to talk now - she's beyond just saying mummy and daddy, and she's now saying garden (taga), spoon, nose, mouth, bath and quite a number of other things.

She recognises things like "garden" especially, and goes to get her sandals so she can go out. If you were just mentioning that "I need to water the garden later" then she's most annoyed that she can't go outside.

L is discovering cheek and basic profanity - when I was putting her to bed last night I pretended to listen to her balloon whispering to me. I told her it told me a secret. So then she had a go - she told me the balloon kept saying that I was a poo-poo. I said she'd better tell it to stop, or Mr Balloon might suffer a nasty accident...

Perfect Sunday

I think Sunday was just one of those days where everything you do goes well - I managed to get the girls up, bathed, and out to the Coleridge playground. The paddling pool had been filled up for the nice weather, so they both had a go in there - although E decided she didn't like it this time, and L fell over and got completely soaked - next time remember to bring swimming costume.

After lunch I fitted a triple socket in the hall (I found that Homebase do a single to triple converter - you just take off the original plate, wire up the new one, then it fits onto the same screws at the back as the single one). Then since I was on a roll I fitted a double socket in the garage - the one in there has been broken for ages because if you plug something into it, it will get hit with the up and over door and smash into pieces.

Then L wanted to go out on her bike so I walked with her up to the corner and back - she's got the pedalling pretty well now, and she's learning how far she can turn the handlebars safely.

After that I had a fantastic idea about how to fit another shelf into the bookcase in the hall (something that we've needed for a while). Even with my rudimentary skills, there's something quite satisfying about making things from wood with saws and drills. And the result even looks quite good. Still need to make another one - and paint the bookcase too I think.

Mrs Furthermore and I got the kids to bed, then we had an enjoyable evening together without them :-)

Some Kind of Denouement Occurs

I had quite a busy week for me - went to the beer festival on Tuesday, which was good. I split my time between work colleagues, and meeting up with old friends - Ian, Chris, Donna. The beer fest is often a place where you meet people serendipitously (there's only so many geeks my age in Cambridge after all). Not that night though.

Saturday I was doing the door for the penultimate Amnesty Big Gig event at the Romsey Labour Club (the final event is tonight, at The Junction - tickets still available as they say). The music was a mixed bag - there was some Celtic-ey folk-ey kind of group on first (Emily something - I can't be bothered to google right now), then Indie rock - The Pony Collaboration. I quite liked that.

Then there was a Capoeira group. It's not music, it's a Brazilian martial art combined with dance. You know the two guys who mock-fight on a rooftop in the BBC programme links? That's Capoeira. Anyway, some of them were fantastic - you have to be really strong to perform the moves all in slow motion. I was quite taken with one of the performers, a really fit (in all senses) woman with cropped hair and very tight top. She may well have been gay I suppose, or is that just sour grapes because I'm married :-)

Finally there was another band called The Beards. I think it was kind of funk perhaps. Didn't do much for me anyway, but it went over well with the crowd. We took quite a bit of money (I'd guess £250-£300) and the place looked quite full towards the end.

Didn't do much over the BH - just a bit of gardening, played with the kids, tried to do my finance course (forwards and futures, feh). I did come across a lovely little short story sketch by John Crowley, from which I've taken the title of this post. Check it out. On the literary theme, I'm also quite taken with Jonathan Carroll's blog - he has a lovely eye for the poignancy of everyday life.

Last week or so

Nothing very exciting happening. I saw the consultant about my knee again on Thursday, and I'm seeing a physio tomorrow - I'll talk about that after I've had the appointment. It's strange really - I watched the marathon this morning and I didn't really feel bad that I wasn't there, but I do miss running.

Doctor Who was too scary for L last night. She watched about 15 minutes then asked to go to bed. Fortunately she was already in her night clothes and just had to be tucked in. Smart decision, as I think it was one of the most scary episodes so far. L also seems to have suddenly gone to another level in maths - she's started telling me things like "3+2+1 = 6. Because 3+2 = 5 and one more makes 6". I don't think I could do that when I was 4.

Oh, I've started a "my adorable family" post haven't I. Oh well, while I'm at it, I may as well add that L is currently planning to be a ballet dancer for her hobby, and a private investigator for her job. She's going to live in a pink house near to us. And she's decided that since her house will be pink, no boys will want to live there, so she's not going to get married. Except possibly to a girl.

Smallest of all has learned how to throw her arms up in the air and go "raaaargh" like a monster. Kawaiiii desu ne!

Self Motivation Links

While I've been thinking about what I want to do with myself, I've accumulated a number of useful links, which I'm posting here.

• Paul Ford on Good and Bad Distractions - trying to make the difficult distinction between being distracted by something you need to know about, vs aimless fact-gathering. There's too much to know, and it's now too easy to know it. Make it harder for yourself to be distracted pointlessly.
• Michael Nielsen on Tough Learning - how to learn difficult material. The key points of the talk are that you need a purpose or meaning to get you started, a vision of where you're going, and a social environment that promotes the behaviour you want to achieve.
• Steve Pavlina on Self Discipline - six part, thorough account of building up your ability to do what you tell yourself you will.
• Richard Hamming - You and Your Research - interesting talk on what it means to dedicate yourself to your work. A bit like the Tough Learning talk, but more hardcore.
• One Quality of a Leader - interesting comments thread on what makes a good leader.
• AskMe thread - on soul searching, and knowing what you're looking for.
• How to stop procrastination - very interesting psychological account of different types of procrastinators and what the underlying causes are.

Bits and Bobs

Just a quick summary of what I've been up to:

• been to visit my parents just outside Lincoln, taking Smallest of All with me. H told me afterwards that L said she missed her little sister, even though she didn't think she would. She's actually been nicer to her since then as well, so perhaps it was a good thing for them to have a day or two apart.
• wireless goodness now infuses both machines in the house, and I've also got a workgroup network set up, although I think there are still some glitches with that. Installed Google desktop search too, and it's worked really well - I have thousands of files and emails that I'll never be able to organise in any other way than search.
• Jay babysat for us on Saturday night, so H and I went to the Peking restaurant on Burleigh Street. Really good food. I highly recommend it - it's not cheap, but I'd say it's the best Chinese I've had - certainly in the UK.
• disappointment - the John Crowley Little, Big 25th Anniversary edition hasn't got enough subscribers yet, so I have to wait another year to find out if they're going to produce it or not. I'm kind of annoyed that if they were not getting the sales in quickly enough, that they didn't publicize it a bit more - I'm sure a lot of the subscribers would be keen to recruit other suckers, ah, customers.

Mid-Life crisis blogging

My reader tells me that this is what I'm engaged in at the moment. The project has stalled a little though> I started reading Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and I've kind of got stuck.

Parts of it are good, parts of it are just kind of cringe-making, and there's a sort of taint of Christianity to the whole thing - not that I have anything against Christianity per se, just that it reminds me a bit of reading the Narnia books - you get the impression that Covey is not-quite stealthily-enough trying to tell you that this whole principle-centred living business would be a lot easier if you'd swallow the damn wafer already. Mmm, cynical today.

Anyway, I think the point is that the relevant bit of Covey's advice for me is to decide what it is I really want to do - Start With The End In Mind as he would put it. Some part of me really doesn't want to do that, and it's driving me slightly mad at the moment. Maybe I'll read Getting Things Done again, that one was much easier to deal with.

Ivor Cutler is dead

Very sad. Good links of appreciation here on MeFi.

Mrs F and I saw Ivor when we lived in Blackheath - he performed at the concert hall there on a sweltering summer night. I first heard him on the John Peel show of course - The Aggressive Onion Vendor is the one that sticks in my mind from that time. I also have a couple of his books with fantastic illustrations by Martin Honeysett.

What am I here for?

Well, I kinda had a third part ready for this, but now I want to think about it some more. In the original piece I wrote, I tried to imagine my perfect life, and then compare it with where I really am and see what didn't match.

Now I think the idea of that is about right, but I don't think I tackled it seriously enough, so I'm not sure about posting it. Although I may, just as a starting point.

I've just finished one book that gave me a completely new perspective on my current quest for meaning: Keith Ferrazzi's , Never Eat Alone. I found it really interesting since he's coming from a totally different worldview to my own (basically, Keith is 100% extrovert, and the book is about how you find yourself through connecting with others). I might post a bit more about that tomorrow, just as a way of trying to digest some of Keith's ideas.

What am I here for? (part 2)

So this part is a bit more general, about a few things that I've been reading lately, and how that's made me think about what to do next. The key quotes are below:

The most dangerous form of procrastination is unacknowledged type-B procrastination (MF - working on unimportant things), because it doesn't feel like procrastination. You're "getting things done." Just the wrong things.

Any advice about procrastination that concentrates on crossing things off your to-do list is not only incomplete, but positively misleading, if it doesn't consider the possibility that the to-do list is itself a form of type-B procrastination. In fact, possibility is too weak a word. Nearly everyone's is. Unless you're working on the biggest things you could be working on, you're type-B procrastinating, no matter how much you're getting done.

- Paul Graham, Good and Bad Procrastination

Ow. To be fair, GTD is pretty agnostic about what you should be doing. Dave Allen's take is that he gives you a tool to make you more effective at whatever it is you choose to do. The interesting thing he also says is that if you do it for a while, most of the clutter in your life will disappear, leaving enough space for you to consider the question above.

Onto another one:

If you encounter difficulties in choosing a life purpose, the problem may be further upstream. Dive deeper into your understanding of reality. Question your beliefs, especially the ones you were taught never to question. What if you’re wrong? My current beliefs about reality bear little resemblance to those I was raised to adopt. Through interaction with the real world, I found my initial beliefs to be inaccurate. And that led to more than a decade of searching for truth, one that still continues to this day but which has gotten a lot easier.

- Steve Pavlina, Deciding what to do with your life

There's a lot more on living consciously on Steve's site, and a lot of it makes good sense. Steve is either one of those scary people who can do everything and still be a nice guy, or he's a brilliant liar. I'd bet on the former.

So I guess that's the core of it. I've reached a plateau where I'm feeling good. Now along come Paul and Steve and say, "yes, but are you really pursuing your dreams? Do you even know what they are?"

I think those are very serious questions, and I don't want to immediately start an answer of the form, "I can't do something great because I have to code to put food on the table for my family". Having said that, listen to Paul again for a second:

Some errands, like replying to letters, go away if you ignore them (perhaps taking friends with them). Others, like mowing the lawn, or filing tax returns, only get worse if you put them off. In principle it shouldn't work to put off the second kind of errand. You're going to have to do whatever it is eventually. Why not (as past-due notices are always saying) do it now?

The reason it pays to put off even those errands is that real work needs two things errands don't: big chunks of time, and the right mood. If you get inspired by some project, it can be a net win to blow off everything you were supposed to do for the next few days to work on it. Yes, those errands may cost you more time when you finally get around to them. But if you get a lot done during those few days, you will be net more productive.

This advice may be a necessary condition for doing something amazing, but it's also going to make you a total pain to live with unless you are rich enough (as Paul is, I guess) to have a PA or someone who doesn't get to blow off their errands.

The thing I don't like is that it seems like only some kind of self-selected elite get to do "great" things, and the rest of us have to pander to their whims. Plus, by definition, you don't know you're going to do something amazing up-front, so it may be that all you'll achieve is being really annoying for many years.

Perhaps this is a bit of Buddhism in me coming out, but I feel you've got to try to be a good person first, and then try to fit your passions in to what you've already committed to (although the Buddha is a pretty bad exemplar, as he left his family to seek the truth).

There's a fine line between using your commitments as an excuse to not get things done, and accepting that you have responsibilities to other people that are not optional. I'm sure Paul Graham is lovely in person. I'm just saying that achievements are not everything.

So in the final part, I'm going to look at my own answer to Paul and Steve's question, and try to resolve the tension between pursuing what you want with doing what you've got to.

What am I here for? (part 1)

It was my 35th birthday on Friday 3 February. I've been taking stock of my life for a while now, and my birthday makes me want to try to draw together a few of the ideas that have been in my head.

I'm going to do this in 3 parts. This part is about where I am now, and how I got here. The next will be about what I've been reading, and my responses to that. The third will be some sort of thought experiment about where I go from here.

This is a bit more personal than I usually blog, but I want to see how much of this I can make public. Partly to make it more real for myself, and partly in the vague hope that it will be useful to other people.

The main thing I'd say is that I'm really happy at the moment. Although they're almost too obvious to think about, it's worth remembering the basic things that I take for granted:

• I'm healthy
• I have a place to live
• I have enough to eat
• I have what posssessions I need
• I live in a (moreorless) free country

More specifically personal reasons:

• I have a lovely wife, and two beautiful daughters
• I have an interesting job, which is reasonably well paid
• I have a life outside work
• I have a pleasant environment to live in

I'm not trying to boast here, I'm just saying I have all the necessary conditions to be happy. A lot of people don't have those things. A lot do and are still not happy for a variety of good and not-so-good reasons.

I'd say in the last year or so that a couple of things have happened that have made me evaluate what I'm doing. Firstly, back in October 03 I was made redundant from a job based in the City. I got another job in Cambridge, which I didn't enjoy, and so I had to leave that pretty quickly and start another new job. Around the same time as that, my dad had a serious stroke, and I was pretty worried about him.

So, I think the combination of the redundancy, the bad job experience, and my dad's health meant I just didn't really settle in at my new job, and I ended up having a few problems there because they still weren't sure about me. I think that gave me a bit of a shock and fortunately I responded positively to that.

I started working harder, but fortunately I also discovered Dave Allen's Getting Things Done book around that time. Once I'd grokked his system I was able to get control of a nagging sense I'd had for a long time that I had a large number of things I wanted to keep track of, but no way of doing it that would ensure I actually got reminded of what I wanted when I needed it. I won't go into why GTD works here - there are loads of sites on that. For me though, it has gradually sunk into the framework of my life, and made me much more focussed and efficient at getting done what I want to get done, and also reduced the amount of mental clutter I deal with.

So, having got to this state, and having succeeded at work (I'm now managing a small group, which I've wanted to do for a while), I've reached a plateau - I feel relaxed, productive, open to new things - it's a great feeling. At the same time, it's given me a space in which a new question has opened in my mind: what do I want to do with the rest of my life?

This is maybe the first time I've consciously asked myself that question. It seems strange to me to say that in a sense I've been on autopilot since I was a child, but there's a lot of truth in it.

Now I don't really want to psycho-analyse myself, but I think a little history will help make it clear how I got to be where I am today. As a child I was a classic brainy, shy kid. I found it difficult to make friends (although I always had some) and I was teased and bullied quite a bit. I was good at maths and science, and I got a ZX Spectrum at an early age and learned to program it.

So I enjoyed those things, and found human contact difficult and often unpleasant, although I also craved affection. So I emerged from the education system with a good degree in mathematics from Cambridge University, and very little self-confidence that I could do anything other than hard thinking.

I initially thought of carrying on into further study. I tried that, and it didn't work out for me. I did Part III maths (not a good choice of course, I think) and just found it an incredible struggle. In retrospect I think I was actually depressed during that year, and when it was over I had no desire to continue with academic study, at least in mathematics.

So what then? Get a job of course. I didn't question the idea that I should. That's just what you did when you finished studying. I thought software development sounded like the nearest thing to what I knew already. It required technical knowledge, abstract thinking, and little interaction with the "grubby" side of actual business.

So having got into that, I slowly followed a technical career path: CASE tools, analysis and design, C++ and object orientation, Java. I had an idea that I should try to keep myself marketable by learning skills that were generic, such as OO, C++ etc, but it never occurred to me to look outside the box marked "software development". Not until I was at Mercator, and even then, not until quite late on was I thinking that I had skills that weren't just writing code and specs.

My wife tells me that ever since I've discussed moving out of development and into management with her, I've talked about it in terms of managing my career - ie, I believe that as a guy in his mid-30s, I'm now surrounded by people who are younger, cheaper and in many cases better at programming. That's certainly true where I work now, where the standard is really quite high. I think that to still have a career in 10 years time, I've got to be more focussed on the business side of what I'm doing.

So there's a lot of things there that I "have" to do: I have a wife and a family, so I need a certain level of income to stop us being thrown out of our house. I want to stay in Cambridge, so I have only so many companies I can go to. To get the kind of salary I have now, I need to be either a developer or manager. As a developer I think my career options are limited, and will get more so as we get more outsourced development going on in India or Eastern Europe. So I "have" to become a manager. But what do I want to do? Apparently I never talk about that, and I think it's because I'm scared that the answer won't be "become a software development manager" and then how will I reconcile my life with what I want to do?

So in Part 2 I'll link to a few of the things I've been reading lately that have stuck with me, and try to say a bit about how I responded to them.

Quote from Mrs F

We're watching TV when an ad comes on for the George Foreman grill. My wife turns to me and says,
"Is that the George Foreman that fought Idi Amin?"

I would have liked to see that fight.

The Book of Gold

The Book of Gold is the name used by the librarian in Gene Wolfe's New Sun books to describe the magical book encountered in childhood that opens up the great world within books for a particular child.

It was also a short-lived Gene Wolfe fanzine, published twice in 1989 by a chap called Jeremy Crampton in the USA. Both editions are largely concerned with the Soldier of the Mist series, although they touch on other works.

Jeremy was also good enough to make copies of Castle of the Otter available when it was pretty much unobtainable outside the US, for which I am very grateful - I still have my copy, even though I have the more recent, expanded version too.

Why am I telling you this. Mainly, I'm telling Google. I've responded to a couple of requests for copies from the Urth mailing list, but I don't read it much anymore, so if anyone else wants a copy, they can contact me here, and I'll send them one.

Another quote from my daughter

Okay, so I said I wouldn't do this, but I thought this was great. L and I have been playing at swordfights with rolled-up tablemats. I've been killed several times over and I decide to rise from the dead and fight as a zombie.

"What's a zombie, daddy?"

"It's a dead body that comes back to life again."

"Jesus was a zombie, wasn't he daddy?"

Going to the Gym

I tried out Keeping in Shape on Mill Road on Monday evening. It's a fairly small gym that runs circuit training sessions. Rates are not too bad - about £25 a month for one session a week + access at weekends. Users (on the night I went) were a mix of men and women of various ages. Dave (who runs the gym) seemed to know his group pretty well, and spent time with me to make sure I was using the right weights etc.

I enjoyed it, and I need something to help keep me fit while I'm not running, so I think I'll sign up from next week.

Out of the mouths of babes

Well, I've waited 4 years, I figure I'm entitled to one post of amusing things my daughter has said. This won't become a habit, I promise.

L - I don't believe in god, but I do believe in fairies. Fairies are real aren't they daddy?
Me - umm.
L - I know fairies are real, because there's the tooth fairy.

Checkmate. I did win one over Christmas though:

L - Even if I don't get anything from Father Christmas, I'll still get the presents under the tree won't I daddy?
Me - (thinking quickly) I think Father Christmas takes them to give to the good children.
L - (considers whether to cry)
Me - (quickly) but you've been a good girl haven't you? So I'm sure you'll get presents.
L - Oh yes.

Secret Sites and Personal Blogs

I just linked to this piece: Secret Sites at Kottke. It's about using "private" web journals as personal journals. I'd been thinking about similar things for a while - one of the things that I've begun to find frustrating about Furthermore is that I don't feel comfortable posting a lot of personal stuff here because it's effectively going to be preserved for ever, which is a long time for transient thoughts to be kept. At the same time, it is meant to be a personal blog, rather than being "about" some particular topic - I'd quite like to keep all my personal stuff in one place rather than have a lite and full-fat journal. Possibly what this shows is that you shouldn't associate a personal blog directly with your real identity.

What I really need I guess, is fine-grained access control. Maybe I should move the blog elsewhere and just keep Furthemore for projects (which I never get round to).

Feh. Maybe this is all just a post-Christmas slump - I feel like I've had a week off and accomplished basically nothing at all. Which would be fine, but I don't really feel relaxed either. Just fed up.

A couple of literary notes

I just heard on the news that John Fowles had died. I've not read much of his work, but The Magus made a lasting impression on me. I re-read it recently, and it was still powerfully evocative - the sense of being on that island in the mediterranean is so strong.

Also, quick link - I just saw an interview with John Crowley from earlier this year. I don't think I've seen it before. He talks mostly about Lord Byron's Novel but also a bit about The Translator and the forthcoming Endless Things which will conclude the AEgypt series.

Not much happening

Avian Flu Preparedness

I read a couple of things recently:

• Making Light - a bit US centric, but interesting stuff on being prepared for emergencies
• Charles Stross - how "just in time" supply makes economies brittle and susceptible to shocks

Without going all tinfoil-hat about it, it made me think that I could usefully be a bit more prepared for the very likely case that we will have a flu pandemic. The main thing that seems sensible is to buy in enough food, medicine and supplies to last a week or so without having to go to the shops. Stuff that will keep, stuff that's easily digestible when you're feeling ill. Stuff that doesn't need to be prepared more than just heating up - Mrs Furthermore and I could both be ill and someone would still have to look after the children.

Realistically, I don't think there's much I can do against serious breakdowns of power etc other than keep the car fueled to go somewhere else. Not sure where, but better to have some options than none.

Ah, very cheerful.

Nor am I out of it

Shameful admission time: I switched my home PC back to Windows XP from Mandrake Linux. Why? Well, I thought it would be good to use Linux - get some experience of a Unix platform, stop supporting the kind of idiocy perpetrated by Microsoft, open formats yada yada - all that good stuff.

However, there are just too many niggling problems - my printer stopped working one day, and I can't figure out how to make it work again. I can't easily sync my Palm to my PC. Hardware generally is harder to get working. It's harder to install or upgrade anything. I used to find this kind of thing was a spur to learn more about the platform, but now I just find it's a pain.

On the other side, Windows is now much more stable, more secure - provided you do sensible things like using a firewall, using Firefox, not running as admin when you don't have to - and generally more familiar to me when things don't work right.

So back to Windows I go - at least for the time being. I'm still not enamoured of Microsoft, and I'm not keen on the proprietary file formats (not that it affects me that much - I don't use Outlook, and I can convert Word and Excel to Open Office if need be). I think next computer I buy may be a Mac (Unix and Shinies, as someone put it) but that's not going to be for a year or two.

New phone

I've been thinking for a while about getting a new phone. I was considering replacing my Palm IIIc with a Treo, but it looked too expensive to justify. I realised that the feature I really wanted was a decent camera in the phone - I want to be able to take photos for this blog - probably using Flickr. I know that if I buy a separate digital camera that I'll forget to take with me anywhere, plus I can't see I'm going to need all the resolution and features of a separate camera, so a decent camera phone is really two birds with one stone.

So, I googled, and I found this useful MeFi thread. Checking out some of the recommendations from there, I found the best compromise of cost and function looked like the Sony Ericsson K700i.

I got an unlocked one from Ebay for a reasonable price - now I just need to get a SIM and a cable to copy pics to my PC (I'm not so desperate to upload things that they can't wait a few hours). I've had a play with the phone using my wife's SIM, and it looks pretty good - the joystick control is a bit fiddly, but the display is good, and the camera looks fairly easy to use too.

Oh, look, you can get them on Amazon too (yes, I signed up to Associates - I'll post about that too I guess):

Wiki Wednesday

Smile Banking Site

I've been banking with Smile for a while now, and I recently sent them an email on what I'd like to be able to do with their website. I've had a generic response, but I thought I'd blog it here to see how much of it actually happens:

• back button - minor thing, but it keeps catching me out: make the back button work. I know there are some security problems to work out, but it's so annoying to be logged out when you inadvertently press it.
• security - Passwords and security challenge questions are okay, but leave you vulnerable to man-in-the-middle type attacks. Are you thinking about either a second channel for authentication - I've seen sites which send a text message to your phone with some generated key that you have to enter to complete a risky transaction (eg big withdrawal) - or some form of transaction authentication would be good. You could give account holders (optionally perhaps) a hardware or software security app. I seed it with a PIN you send me and then when I want to do a big withdrawal, you send me a challenge code which I enter into the device. It spits out a response based on some well known crypto protocol (which you should ideally make public) which I then put in the site to authenticate that transaction.
• statements - My immediate gripe is that 50 statements seems ridiculously low (and is it per account, or for all accounts?). The storage is minimal so I'm not sure what the reason is - why can't all statements be online forever (or at least for 7 years, which I seem to remember is the statutory limit). It seems to me that now you're online, you have a great opportunity to improve the functionality here beyond basic statements. I'd love to be able to search transactions, and even better, to tag them with personal categories which I can then use to create ad-hoc statements of some budget category (eg personal spending, household budget etc). At present I do that locally with spreadsheets, but you could add tremendous value to the site by making it possible to do some of this online. Or, with a web services API, I could write a spreadsheet that would pull data live out of the site and let me analyse it locally. I realise that as a slogan, "Smile - now with web services API" probably won't directly appeal to a lot of people. It might create a community that would build services for you though. Plus, get in first and you have the de-facto standard.
• notification - I don't want email (I have too much already). What I would like is RSS or Atom.

Horror and Terror

My brother has now got a website up at HorrorAndTerror.org

You can hear a related piece of work by him here

Cambridge Open Studios

We went to an exhibition by our neighbour, Ellis Hall as part of the Cambridge Open Studios events.

Ellis takes photos often using reflection or distortion to create unusual perspectives. This year a lot of the photos used the horn of a tuba to create strange panoramic views. Of course, L, my eldest daughter was fascinated when the actual tuba itself was produced. The lady who owened it played a tune, and L had a go too and actually managed to get a note out of it (she's only 3).

I hope she will want to learn to play an instrument, but I'm also rather hoping we can persuade her to something other than the tuba.

Back from my holiday

Just back from a week away in Watchet (near Minehead). It was really nice to get away from work, email, blogs etc for a while and just spend some time with my family.

I'll try to work up a post about what we did and where we went, but I'm not really feeling up to it at the moment. I still seem to have the tail-end of a cold that started the week before we went away, and just about lasted through to the end.

I meant to write about going to the London Geek Dinner, which was great fun - everyone I met was really friendly. I got to meet Bob Scoble - ironically he'd been up in Cambridge all day, and I'd just come down from there to meet him in London. I spoke to him about the idea of having a geek dinner in Cambridge but since then my cold and the holiday intervened so I haven't pursued the idea any further yet. Bob - I will get in touch, and you can tell me if this is a really a good idea or if you were just being polite to me :-)

For any newcomers who may have wandered in...

I'm going to the Bob Scoble + Hugh McLeod Geek Dinner in London tomorrow night so I'm unlikely to be posting again till I get back. Since a few people might check out the site as a result, I thought I'd just post a brief intro to what's going on here.

So, I'm Matt Freestone. I'm married with two young daughters, and I live and work in Cambridge (UK). I work for Sungard as a software developer in their trading and risk group. I don't really blog about that, but I'm happy in my job - I'm working with some smart people, the company doesn't mess me around, and I'm close to home. My CV lives here if you are interested in that sort of thing.

I've built various websites pretty much since I got a Demon account with some webspace in the early 90's. Furthermore is the latest incarnation - it's been going nearly 2 years now. As you can tell, it's a personal site - I get about 20-30 site visits a day, according to latest stats. Some things you may want to check out:

• Cambridge - posts about living and working here. I've been back here nearly 4 years now - I studied my degree here, then moved to London for several years. I'm currently cataloguing Cambridge blogs - you can see my list on Del.icio.us, or there's an OPML file you can use if you want.
• Book, film, and TV reviews.
• Family Tree - I've been trying to get some of the family tree online. This is the tree so far.
• Jobhunting - from late 2003, but it still gets a lot of hits. I was working for a company called Mercator that was bought out. Pretty much all my office were made redundant. These pages are about how I went about getting a new job.
• Existential Horror Song - written and performed by my brother. Just the thing to cheer you up.

Update on Things to Come

Writing the piece on Henwood below makes me realise I really do want to post a bit more about investing - I have various thoughts on investing and pensions and what I'm trying to achieve, and it would be good to get them out there to see how mad they look when exposed to public scrutiny.

While I'm thinking about my list of things to post about I see I also mentioned redundancy consultations - I think that will have to go on the back-burner for a bit (uh, if there is a burner any further back that is). Touchy subject at the moment.

After tentatively trying to formulate answers for Options, Futures and Other Derivatives into blog posts I've given up on the idea - I'm getting through the questions now, so I don't really feel the need to post.

Updating the site is still on the agenda - just a question of time. I'm also still monitoring my Cambridge blog list so I'll be updating that at some point with an idea of how regularly the various journals are updated.

Gmail invites

Things to Come

I feel slightly nervous writing about what I'm planning to write about, but maybe it will give me some impetus to actually get on with it. Let's check back in a month and see what I've managed to do:

• pensions - I've just managed to turn my mass of work and personal pensions into something I actually understand, so I figure some notes on what I did might be helpful to a few people.
• redundancy consultations - I was made redundant from a software company in late 2003. I was an employee representative in the consultation, and while there are things I'm not allowed to say about the process, a lot of what I learnt generally would be useful to people dumped into the same situation.
• Options, Futures and Other Derivatives - I'm in two minds about this - my idea is that as I do the exercises, I should blog them. It'll give me an incentive to actually do them. Or will it just make me nervous? I'm going to give it some thought.
• Site design - I want to tweak the design a bit - I want a right hand column into which I can push my delicious entries. I know it's only a template away, but it might take me a while to get round to it.

For Sale / Free

I've got a few things I want rid of:

high chair - good condition, it's just a bit big for our house and doesn't fold down much. If that's not a problem for you then you are welcome to it - free to good home.

Big collection of 2000AD comics. Everything from prog 2 to about prog 750. I think there's one missing. The early ones are variably well preserved, but all readable. More recent ones (about 400 onwards) are in good nick - £50 ono. These are at my parents' place, so if you are interested, let me know, and I'll go up there and bring them back here.

I've also got annuals from 1978 to 1991. Make me an offer.

Interzone - issue 27 to 176 (maybe one or two gaps). £50 ono.

If you're interested in anything, email me: matt at this domain.

Not Reading

Back after another longish hiatus. I just finished my first book of this year: Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Looking back at last year, I see I only read 19 books altogether, and it looks like I may do even worse this year.

I'm not too happy about that, but I just don't seem to have the concentrated bits of time in which to read anymore. Or at least, when I do have them, I have other things I want to do more than reading. It makes me uneasy though - I've always enjoyed reading, and I think it's important. What does it say about me that I'm ceasing to be a reader (or at least, a book reader - I still read online sources).

Timisoara cathedral

Another old picture, this one is from August 1999, when I went to Timisoara in Romania with some friends to see the solar eclipse. I stayed with a Romanian family and it was a great experience.

New Baby

The reason I've not really managed to blog anything for a while is that Mrs Freestone and I just had our second baby, Eleanor. She's just starting to go crazy in the baby carrier strapped to my chest as I write this so it looks like I'm not going to get anything more done this evening either.

Piccy for those who are interested.

St Ives

So, no post for a while - been busy with work and other stuff. Anyway, today we had a drive up to St Ives, which I've not seen before. To be honest, it's not that exciting, plus the weather was absolutely freezing. We had lunch at the Golden Lion in the High Street - kind of generic chain pub food, but it was cosy, and the food was fine.

Then we walked up to the Ouse and I saw the Dolphin Hotel (may be called something else now) and I realised I had been to St Ives before. When I was a student and secretary of the CU Humanist Workshop, I had lunch there with Gerd Sommerhoff. I remember the food being good (although since I was a student, I was hardly accustomed to eating in hotel restaurants) but I'd totally forgotten about the meal until I saw the hotel again. Quite a strange deja vu experience really - uncovering a little bit of lost past.

Getting Things Done

I recently read Getting Things Done by Dave Allen and I thought it was great. I guess it's been blogged to death by now, but I thought I'd just add my tuppence worth.

It gives you a system for managing all your tasks and projects. It's lightweight, works from the bottom up (ie you don't have to define your life goals before you start) and I've found it really works for me. I have a much clearer picture of what I want to get done, and mainly for that reason, I'm actually doing it.

It's fair to say that I'm in a bit of a stock-taking phase of my life at the moment anyway, so perhaps I would be doing these things without the book (or, perhaps the book attracts me because it chimes in with what I want to do) but I've found that applying the system at home and at work has really given me a lot more control.

I think I'll be writing some more on this when the first enthusiasm dies down, but I also kind of expect that once the mountain of small stuff is out of my head, it'll give me more time to think and do the things I've been putting off by saying I have too much other stuff to do - ie the things I want to do, but which frighten me a bit.

Wha' Happen?

So what happened to the blogging I was going to do? I had several things lined up and then I just haven't got down to doing it. The main reason is that I found (for various reasons) that I'd become addicted to my feed reader. Not in a crack-cocaine sort of way, but it became apparent to me that I was using up time reading stuff in there when I should have been doing other things.

I'm not normally susceptible to this sort of thing I think, so it was interesting to me that I'd got sucked into a kind of irrational behaviour. The main reasons I think were firstly a desire to escape from what I should be doing (for reasons I won't go into at the moment), and secondly, the way feeds are presented attracts the obsessively tidy part of me - once I see an unread item I have to read it or at least decide that I don't want to read it. Hence, the more often I check the feeds, the more stuff I have to read.

The thing that became apparent to me since I stopped is that there's also a really strong (but largely fake) sense of community in the blogosphere. I don't mean that there isn't a community of people who are genuinely communicating with each other - of course there is. But for me, I realised that I had found myself thinking that if I read the things those people read, and made the odd peripheral comment, then I was part of it too. Crazy. But it's always attractive to think you're part of the in-crowd.

Anyway, I feel I have a better handle on how I need to act to get the best out of feeds and blogs now. I'll maybe talk a bit more about that another time.

Rice Dream

John Peel is dead

This is very sad news to me. I grew up listening to the Peel show late at night - he introduced me to The Smiths, The Pixies, The Wedding Present, and a great deal more that I can't even begin to list.

More recently, I've been listening to Home Truths on Saturday mornings. I hope they keep it going, but it won't be the same without him. My sympathy goes out to his family.

New York 97

Not sure why I feel moved to write about this. A lot of the details just kind of popped back into my head. Perhaps it's because I seem to have something of a continuing obsession with the place, even though I haven't been there for 4 years, and I'm not likely to go back for a few more years yet.

Anyway, I was single, and needed a holiday - i'd always wanted to go to New York and it seemed like a good opportunity. I grabbed the Rough Guide and found a cheapish hotel in Manhattan - the Westpark (308 W 58th Street, 246-6440) just off Columbus Circle (I partly picked it because it was near Central Park, and I thought I'd like to do a run round there).

Since it was late September and quite chilly in Blackheath where I was living, I dressed for autumn, so I got a bit of a shock when I got off the plane and walked into what seemed like a heatwave. The sultry weather only let up the day I was due to leave.

Anway, I did the usual tourist stuff - the Empire State Building, the Metropolitan Museum, MoMA and the ferry. I did some sketching of the skyline from Liberty Island - I'll see if I can scan that in.

[Update: pretty bad scan, but I did it with my webcam just to see how it would come out]

What else? I got a Big Apple Greeter tour from a guy called Larry - he walked me half way down the City from the Flatiron Building down to the World Trade Centre - and he was in his 70s. He showed me the big Barnes and Noble on Union Square - this was before every bookstore had a coffee bar - I was impressed. We also stopped by the Gourmet Garage and got sandwiches. I recommend Big Apple Greeter highly - it's free, and the people really know what they're talking about.

The main dilemma of the week came on Wednesday - I could either see Morrissey play in Central Park, or I could go to an SF reading downtown (Dixon Place, somewhere off the Bowery I think) where as luck would have it, Michael Swanwick was reading from Jack Faust which I'd just read on the plane over in proof form after my friend Tony gave me a copy. I chose downtown, and I met some interesting folks.

Then later in the week I went out to Long Island and met up with some people at the University of Stony Brook who I'd been talking to on the internet as they had a science fiction group out there. We had dinner and they put me up for the night. They had their own newsgroup, where I make a brief appearance.

I also had an interesting evening out with a guy from Japan - Keiji san, who I met by accident. I'd gone up to the Rainbow Room to have a drink and watch the sun go down (I know, very touristy but also quite spectacular) and I just met him at the bar. He was having a holiday in New York much like I was, so we had a few beers and it was a good evening.

The last day the weather cooled and I took in the annual Bookfair which closes off 5th Avenue (uh, I think it was 5th). I found a Japanese shop and got a terrific book on modular origami.

Anyway, it was a great holiday. I've been once again since then, which was even better (it was my honeymoon) but I'll write about that another time maybe.

Making the most of Summer

We managed to have a barbeque a week or so back - the week leading up to it the weather was bad, but miraculously it cleared on Saturday, and lots of nice folks showed up, so we had a good time.

Last weekend - the Bank Holiday - didn't manage to do all that much. We did go out to Shepreth Wildlife Park though. It's really close to Cambridge - 2 stops on the Kings Cross line, and right next to the station. Little bit expensive, considering that it's pretty small - I think it was £6.50 for adults and £4.50 for children of 2 and over. Yes you read that right - once you're past your second birthday, you have to pay. Extra also for the bug world display (which we skipped).

They do have quite a good selection of animals - tigers, monkeys, wolves, a snake, an iguana, etc. It's about the right amount for a young child, probably a bit boring for an older one. There's a good playground too, though again, aimed more at little kids than big ones.

We went in the afternoon, so we had lunch out at the Live and Let Live on Mawson Road in Cambridge - good food and good beer. Highly recommend.

GMail

I just got a GMail account through one of my work colleagues. I haven't really decided what to use it for yet. I'm thinking of putting my mailing lists and whatnot in there to make them easily searchable.

What would be nice would be if I could upload my existing mail archive (which is only a few meg, even after 10 years or so) and have it all searchable online. RSS feeds for particular streams of mail would be good too.

Useful BoingBoing post on GMail notifier apps.

Update - just discovered this via Slashdot. This chap has written a program to upload your mail to GMail.

Upgrade to 3.0

Why I'm doing it

I've been thinking a bit more about why I originally started blogging, and what I think I've got out of it after a year. Thinking back to when I started, the main motivations were firstly technological: that I wanted something to replace my old site, but which I could maintain more easily. I also had a proper hosted account for the first time, so I was able to install Movable Type, and I thought it would be a good way to learn a little bit more about the technology.

On the more "social" side, I wanted to establish more of an online identity, after reading something by Loic LeMeur. I have a kind of ambivalent feeling about how much I want to expose on the web - on the one hand I take Loic's point that you need to control your "brand identity" online, or it will be done for you - in the extreme case by identity theft, but more likely just by someone having the same name as you. I also read David Brin's "Transparent Society" pages which takes the idea still further - if you can't hide anything, you had better start thinking about how to talk about yourself in a way you feel comfortable with.

I haven't taken this all the way - in particular I try not to say much about my family or my precise address online (though you can find it out if you are net savvy - I won't say how) and I don't publish photos of us. I also haven't talked much about things that are very personal - again you can find stuff on me quite easily, and I haven't bothered to have the posts taken down - they are a part of who I am, or was, and I don't feel comfortable with censoring my earlier self. I suspect that as time goes on, I may relax these rules somewhat, or perhaps I will end up with some kind of subscription control so that more personal material can only be viewed by certain trusted groups.

What I still haven't really achieved is dialog. I write what I do for my own satisfaction, but part of that is knowing that people are reading and using it. I would like to turn comments back on, but I can't do it until I sort out the spam problem (I probably just need to upgrade MT and use Typekey - when I have a bit of time). I would also like to find a community where I can be a recognised participant. The trouble I find with this is that I don't tend to have a huge amount to say, so I tend to appear as a lurker in a couple of places - cam.misc and Joel on Software in particular. I feel a kind of need to be involved in something - I'm interested in "online" political issues, and open source, but I don't seem to have found something I feel I can actively contribute to without it having to be an all consuming thing.

Anyway, I'm quite encouraged by the modest success I see from my stats - I shall try to write more reviews, and I shall see if I can find a few more offbeat things to post occasionally - more albatross stories, and I also have an idea of trying to collect some of the Mullah Nasruddin parables. I'd also like to write some more technical pieces - they tend to be very time consuming though.

One Year On

Well, yesterday was my one year blogging anniversary, so in a shameless piece of self-publicity, I've trawled my extant log files to see what people are actually reading. The table below has been stripped of all crawlers, although I haven't tried to ensure hits are unique. The stats go from 29 March 2004 to 8 August 2004 - so about 4 months worth.

Surprises - I hadn't expected the jobhunting stuff from when I was unemployed to be so popular (I think the popularity of November 2003's archive is also a proxy for this). The article on Harald Penrose also gets a lot of hits - more than I've shown here in fact, as I stripped out hits on individual pages in the series. I'm pleased to see a few of my reviews creeping into the list, and also the pieces on employee consultations, moving to Cambridge, and my "what to do around Cromer" piece.

I may try to do a bit more analysis of how the hits are changing over time - I know the headline figure is going up, but that may just be crawlers. I discovered from the stats that there seems to be one person reading my on Bloglines (Hi Julian), and another on Livejournal - I didn't know it syndicated blogs tbh.

Anyway, I'm encouraged to carry on.

Exhibitions

I saw a couple of good exhibitions at the weekend - I went down to London on Friday to meet up with an old friend, and then stayed over. Met Mrs Freestone and the offspring in the morning, and we went first to the BP Portrait Award Exhibition at the NPG. I always enjoy it - the variety of faces and styles somehow restores my faith in humanity.

After a bit of lunch, we went round the corner to the National to see the Russian Landscape exhibition. We both thought some of the pictures we'd seen in the papers looked pretty amazing, and I wasn't disappointed. I liked the Shishkin pictures of deep, elemental forests, and also the luminous landscape pictures of the Dnieper and the steppe. Some of the other stuff I could take or leave, but overall I enjoyed it a lot.

Bits and Bobs

Still in a bit of a slump at the moment - I just can't seem to motivate myself to do very much. Yesterday was the deadline for comments on the ID cards consultation - missed that. Last night on TV I saw the appeal by the Disaster Emergency Committee appeal for Darfour. You can give online at that site, and I urge you to do so.

I'm having an ongoing problem with NTL's phone service at the moment, so I may post some gripes about that soon, depending on how things are resolved.

Blogging hiatus

I seem not to have blogged anything for nearly 3 weeks, which wasn't an entirely conscious choice - although blogging burn-out seems to be a topic du jour. It was more a combination of circumstances - some personal worries (now resolved positively), and a large dose of domestic chaos as we re-decorated the study which meant the PC was packed away for a while.

For the same reason, I haven't really been as interested in what's going on - Darfour, Iraq, ID cards and the rest have all proceeded to go bad in various ways without any intervention from me. I feel something of a tension between wanting to speak up on what I consider to be important issues and realising that my voice is really not important to the outcome (not mentioning any Home Office Consultations on ID cards in particular you understant) and I might as well spend my time elsewhere.

I used to be quite active in Amnesty International at a local group level (my ancient html skillz are still largely visible in the design of AIBG) and that seemed to hit a sweet spot between commitment and personal reward. Since moving to Cambridge though, and particularly since having a family, it's much harder to get involved in anything where I feel I can have an impact.

That seems to lead me towards reading a lot of political stuff as a substitute, which becomes kind of frustrating - reading about politics bearing a similar relation to activism as porn does to sex. A substitute, but ultimately unsatisfying.

Links

• EFF - notes from the WIPO broadcast treaty meeting. So many things to complain about, so little time!
• via Crooked Timber - terrific Grauniad piece about the Soviet offensive that took place at the same time as D-Day. Sobering quote: Thank Ivan. It does not disparage the brave men who died in the North African desert or the cold forests around Bastogne to recall that 70% of the Wehrmacht is buried not in French fields but on the Russian steppes. In the struggle against Nazism, approximately 40 "Ivans" died for every "Private Ryan". Scholars now believe that as many as 27 million Soviet soldiers and citizens perished in the second world war.
• via Ongoing - text of Greg Chaitin's fantastic book about mathematical incompleteness. It's a bit puppy-dog enthusiastic, but it's top class stuff from a brilliant mathematician. I'm reading it now.

NotCon

I was hoping to write a longer piece on NotCon, which I went to a week ago, but I'm not sure I shall get round to it now. Anyway, I had a great time and I heard some really interesting talks - particularly Brewster Kahle's inspiring talk on Universal Access to Human Knowledge, and the launch of TheyWorkForYou.com - scraping Hansard into an accessible House of Commons LiveJournal.

After the con, I had dinner with a group of London bloggers, and Joi Ito. I won't link to everyone individually - Joi has a meetup page here with links to most people and also post meetup reports. Anyway, I had a great time, and I was sorry to have to leave a bit early in order to get back to Cambridge.

Cambridge Mao

I played this game a few times when I went skiing with a group of computer scientists and mathematicians of my acquaintance. I could never really get to grips with it, but the concept fascinated me. The key points are that you are not allowed to explain the rules, and as the game progresses, more rules can be added by the players.

A lot of the links for Mao on the web seem to have rotted, but the following still work as of this post:

• Overview
• Ka Wai Tam - this chap has done a neat trick, by giving a transcript of a typical game, so he doesn't give away the rules as such.

Bits and Bobs

I seem to have had quite a busy few days. I've been working in London to try to learn about one of our systems from the chap who knows everything about it at present. Tomorrow I'm going to go into my local office to try to replicate what I've done down there.

I've finally managed to write my MP about Darfour (only a month or so after I said I would). Faxyourmp still seems to be down, so I've sent an email - I hope my MP will respond or it will be even more of a waste of time.

Tomorrow I'm hoping to go to the Cambridge Beer Festival. With a bit of luck this year will be the first when it hasn't poured with rain the day I decide to go.

What else? I got the new Morrissey album, but so far I'm just not that impressed - it doesn't really seem to have moved on from where he was when the last album came out, which was years ago now. Also finally finished the bloody REM book. Not that it was bad - far from it (apart from some woeful solecisms) - just that it took me so long to finish it. I only really did it because I had time to read on the train. At the moment, reading just doesn't seem to fit into my day. Well, that's not true - I read blogs, but I can do that while waiting for a build, which I can't do with a book.

I went running too today - standard circuit, just under an hour. Weather was very hot though, so I had to walk a few sections.