Archive for the ‘Thoughts’ Category

Plans for next year being on topic recently I got thinking about living arrangements, namely this summer is going to involve me having to a) move all my stuff and b) fit it into a new room. Which should be fun. Unfortunately, not literal fun.

I will give me a chance to redesign my room and I have begun to think about that too. After all everyone needs some escapism and what can I say, carefully planning how to make the most efficient use of space does it for some of us :P.

Never the less I feel an extensive culling of my stuff is probably going to be in order.

It is a strange time of year. Often the large amount of procrastination that occur at such periods as this sends people towards the blogs encouraging a flurry of posts. But things are for the most part silent at the moment. Hell, even my blog has been fairly infrequent recently. We’re talking days between posts. Days!

People on the whole have been fairly quiet. It’s a mix of people not being here and people generally being dispontent. The usual suspects can be found in DEC-10 every day – myself, Si, Dan, Jezz, Chris S and crazy Spanish guy.

Stress levels seem to be flucuating quite a lot at the moment. I felt fairly good about Rationalist Week this morning, I had found us some places that would rent us a van and things were falling into place. But it occured to me this evening that if we don’t get our funding sorted by the end of the week – we are going to have to cancel Rationalist Week.

Yeah.

Then there is FYP.

Yeah.

Then there is post graduation plans.

Yeah.

The moral of the story is, you all need to blog more. So the rest of us have something to read when we’re supposed to be doing things that will affect the rest of our entire lives.

I have a feeling it’s going to be a rocky few weeks.

It hasn’t been the best start to Easter ever. I had a nice little square of four issues that knocked me out of my stride somewhat. I feel like they are gradually clearing up but then maybe I’ve just decided they are clearing up and as such is only going to make the fall worse then they don’t.

I guess we’ll find out soon…

It’s not often I feel the need to berate an entire gender.

But sometimes I wonder that if guys talked to each other about relationships more the popularity of the phrase “uh, men!” would soon be superceded by the phrase “uh, women!”

I mean, if I’m not busy being an asshole about what someone did on the previous weekend or having to explain to women how men work, I’m busy discussing the commonality in experiences of woman. Because it turns out they are just all too familiar when you hear them from someone else.

Does anyone else miss…

• Sending a group text round on the spur of the moment rather than planning pub sessions and lunches a week in advance
• Actually making a stand rather than just creating a group about an issue
• Talking to people in a social environment rather than writing on their wall
• Expressing emotions in real life rather than conveying them with an array of emoticons and status changes

Traditionally I enjoy my somewhat cryptic blog posts.

Recently though I have begun to reconsider their use. After all, my blog has a public readerbase and really they don’t mean anything to the author. They tend to leave everyone else a little nonplussed.

Sometimes though, your blog simply needs to serve as an emotional release. So this is me, as if driving at the speeds I just drove back at and talking it out with Moz weren’t enough, releasing my anguish onto my blog. You can stop reading here. This really won’t mean anything to you.

But I mean seriously, WTF?

WTF?

It isn’t just me right?

Because the sad truth is I already know. But I don’t want to admit it. Or maybe I geniunely don’t know. But is that the seeds of doubt I wish were there because I’m in denial?

And seriously, why are you still reading?

Having received an email through regarding the upcoming TKD grading I feel I need to express my appreciation for Mr. Smith’s blunt and to the point style. Allow me to pick out some examples…

2. ‘Ironed’ means that that you get a household electrical appliance called an ‘iron’. If you haven’t seen one or used one get a friend to help. After you have ironed your dobok fold it as neatly as you can to take to class. If you stuff it in your bag it isn’t ‘ironed’ anymore.

…

If your dobok is heavily creased or grey or dirty you will be killed before the start of the grading.

…

5. If you try to wear any other type of tshirt with a fun/music/anything print on then you will be killed.

…

7. ‘I don’t trust the internet’ is something your grandparents would say. I will ridicule you if you say it.

…

9. If you completed the form less than 3 weeks ago and you email me to say ‘you said to email you I hadn’t got my licence book through’ I will come to your house and throw bricks through your windows.

10. If you completed the form less than 1 week ago and you email me to say ‘you said to email you I hadn’t got my licence book through’ I will come to your house and kill you in front of your housemates.

…

13. Unless you have already been spoken to about an assessed grading and you ask if you can double grade because you missed the last grading then you will be killed and left in the corner of the hall out of the way until the bin men come.

Enjoy your grading and try not to get killed.

Good advice all round I feel :D.

Having been reading the debate regarding Jason Calacanis’ post how to save money running a startup I feel I should step up the mark and take on my usual roll as devil’s advocate.

The first point I would note is that many of the critical responses to Jason are just plain harsh. They seem more like attacks than criticisms.

More overly, though, I agree with a lot of what Jason has to say. The fact is, you do need the people in a startup to work really hard. Whether this is a case of hiring the right people in the first place or getting rid of them when they don’t work hard seems to be irrelevant. Have you seen the failure rates of startups?

Other criticisms seem to be just in denial about the world. Stilgherrian writes that Jason is basically suggesting we should “hold meetings at lunchtime so people never get a mental break from work.” Let’s not pretend most companies don’t do this because most of them do in some form. Work at any office job and chances are you will end up eating lunch at your desk because the company wants you to so you will be thinking about your work all lunch time. It happens at The D too, get this, managers on a night (because there is only one of them) can’t clock out and go off and have a break because there has to be a first aider on shift. So they have to eat their break food in the office. Point is, its nothing new for people to be encouraged to be work focused on their breaks.

I would also dispute the point that the workaholic lifestyle can’t be maintained. I am fully aware there are many arguments to say I don’t work as much as it would seem (uni holidays are long, some work doesn’t really count as work, etc) but I generally do something like a 50-60 hour week and I work every day. Even if you don’t count that, I was working every day over summer doing a real job if you don’t wish to count a full-time degree and again that was doing 50-60+ hour weeks and going weeks on end without a day off. I’m still here, I haven’t exploded yet. Why? Because I love a lot of what I do.

Allen Stern (http://www.centernetworks.com/mahalo-employees-like-prison) seems a bit more supportive but some of the comments seem a little naive to me. Dual screens are like cell phones and dishwashers. You get along fine without them until you actually try them, then you can never go back. Well worth it. Flexible hours is also incredibly important. We geeks, as a people, are not known for our 9-5 lifestyles.

I passed through Chrismukkah without much of a stir, not really engaging in the spirit of the holiday if there were such a thing as it were. Much to Michelle’s disappointment no doubt.

However, I have recently concluded that it isn’t due to the fact that I am cold and empty inside. Notably because, while Chrismukkah isn’t my celebration of choice, equally such Christmas lovers as Michelle do not feel the same affinity to such events as Rationalist Week.

The reason I bring it up is because it’s two months till Rationalist Week which while in the planning terms isn’t too far away, from an outside perspective it is quite a while away, and yet I am beginning to get madly excited about it. It was when I found myself jumping up and down in the shower shouting “it’s nearly Rationalist Week” that I realised how much my actions echoed those of Michelle’s when she began talking about Christmas in October.

While this is an interesting point to meditate on, I also want to talk about something else – namely, that Rationalist Week is coming! We’re already in the planning stages putting together provisional events timetables, getting quotes for the various stuff we need to hire, fund raising, etc.

It’s all so exciting!

Seriously, it’s been a long, long time since I’ve had such a headache as this stupid Rocky Horror night. We just can’t get a venue anywhere. We now have 5,000 flyers, subTV adverts and posters telling people a no venue wrong date event and advising them they can buy tickets from CATS despite the fact the tickets haven’t even gone to print yet.