Happpp-y nooooo yrrrrrrrr etc.
2011 has gone really quickly and I find myself inclined to write a new year post, but without very much to say.
I’ve had a very very busy end of 2011 so it’s nice to have time to stop and think. The trouble is that when I stop and think, I end up taking on a load more stuff. I’ve had three days off and I’ve already made a LOT of resolutions/plans/etc, so I’ll put them out there for the world to laugh at in a year’s time. In no particular order, in 2012 I plan to:
- Restore my Citroen BX track car.
- Er, restore the other BX track car that I am buying as spares for my track car.
- Restore our Saab 900 and sell it which will mean I’ll need to
- Learn to weld.
- Play my guitar a lot more.
- Ditto bass.
- Build a massive media centre spanning our whole house, with TV in the front room, small TV in the kitchen, and serving media to my mac, macbook, windows laptop, wife’s Android tablet and our iPods.
- Lose 2 stone.
- Cycle to work, like, all the time.
Written down it all seems a bit ridiculous. And obviously I’ll be needing to spend a lot more time with my new daughter and possibly go Daddy Day Care at some point if her mum wants to go back to work. So is there any hope? Will this year be a year of accomplishment, or will I get to the end of it jaded, disappointed and feeling like a failure as usual? Who knows eh. lt should be fun finding out.
Anyway, having some time off means that I get to spend lots of time on the internet looking at cool geeky stuff and here are a few things I’m excited about.
- http://www.raspberrypi.org/ - a Linux box for £16. I have never really got into Linux - I had a bash around with Red Hat a long time ago and was put off. Then I had Ubuntu for a while and it still didn’t work for me. I think I need to begin at the beginning and this box is aimed at getting people to do that. Seems wise, since we are being subjected to so much dumbing-down of our technology that there must surely be a shortage of people exiting education with any sort of useful skill at all.
- http://www.plexapp.com/ - the aforementioned media server. Looks excellent. Will report more when I’ve found out if it’s any good or not.
- I’ve joined Google+. Not sure why yet.
- Bullet points are great!
- http://www.recordingrob.co.uk - my new site for work stuff.
Until next time.
What a long time it’s been…
“Just think”, said I to Mrs Kay about a year ago, “by the end of 2011 we could be in a new house, with new jobs, and a baby.” “Let’s take it one thing at a time” said Mrs Kay, with a thinly-disguised look of terror.
Just over a year ago we packed all our worldly goods* into a Transit and buggered off to rural France for four months (Click here for our blog, ruralcheese.tumblr.com), leaving behind our friends in Manchester, our jobs and our lovely house with our lovely neighbours. We would return to Bristol in February with miniKay v1.0 brewing, to a lack of jobs, no friends and a new city. Why did we move again?!
Funny how things work out. It’s still a couple of months to the end of 2011 and we have a new house, new jobs, new church and Averil Lily Kay is already 7 weeks old.
Surely, then, time is ripe to resurrect Rob’s blog and the three followers thereof.
* that was the plan, but they wouldn’t all go in, so some of them went in Laura’s attic instead - thanks Laura.
Putting packing our lives up on hold for the Blue Bell pub quiz. Priorities in order = check!
Engineering BeBe Vox today, it seems. No idea what the kit is. Compressor and vocal effects packed… just in case…
Something glib and memorable. Retweet me
If anyone would like to send me to San Francisco to check out the AES conference then that would be lovely.
The HPI
Along with millions of other people who also like to make themselves feel as if they’re a bit cleverer than probably they really are, I sometimes watch things from the TED talks website, and recently saw this one… http://www.ted.com/talks/nic_marks_the_happy_planet_index.html
As well as some interesting stuff about measuring the “worth” of nations by seeing how efficiently they make their population happy, Nic Marks also points out the “five a day” of how we should make ourselves feel happy and fulfilled. Namely: connect (with others), be active, take notice (of your surroundings), keep learning, and give (to your neighbours or communities). Times article here. OK, a bit New Age perhaps, but fundamentally sound. It’s interesting to consider how those pointers match up with the Bible. Even more interesting is that I believe online social networking contradicts all of the above. Overall, I’m quite willing to believe that our web 3.7 revolution (or whatever we’re up to now) has made us all more miserable. Let’s get out there and talk to each other, ride bikes through some nice countryside, give stuff away, and… er… do maths?
