Where the hell has the last week gone? Seriously. You look away for a few seconds and several day have passed. Of course I wasn’t “doing nothing” during those days, but then if I even began to explain, you might fall asleep where you’re standing. I’ll have to a go, and apologise in advance if…

It’s “Father’s Day” in the UK today – a tradition that seems to have been adopted from the US at some point in the distant past – quite obviously a commercial tactic to sell stationery and chocolates, because what says “I love you Dad” more than a rectangle of cardboard with your handwriting on it?…

It’s been a bit of a week. The Windows laptop has been handed on to my eldest daughter, and the Amazon tablet has been handed on to my other half. An iPad arrived yesterday. We had a couple of iPads in the family years ago, so it’s not entirely alien to me. Earlier in the…

The Mac mini arrived. And the iPhone. The biggest barrier at the moment seems to be my own ability to learn new ways of doing things, or to forget the ways I used to do things. In some ways switching over has been a good exercise – forcing me to “clean house” – sorting out…

My mobile phone came up for renewal last week. After a few days of abject indecision, I finally pulled the trigger on its replacement this afternoon. An iPhone will arrive through the post tomorrow. After several years using an Android phone as a daily driver, I’m heading back to Apple. This was all triggered by…

A few days ago my other half mentioned that she had a couple of Macbooks at work that were being retired, and wondered if I might be interested in them. I tentatively said “maybe”, knowing that we have a house full of computers of all shapes and sizes already. There’s a part of me saying…

After tipping myself out of bed at 7am this morning, I pulled on some running shorts, and headed out of the door to re-start the “Couch to 5K” programme. It’s only been… oh, 20 months since running anywhere at all? Armed with the official NHS Couch to 5K app, and with Steve Cram filling my…

Did you know in Japan there is a phrase for the accumulation of unread books? “Tsondoku”. It means “pile of reading”. I can never quite decide if “having a quiet weekend” is missing out on opportunities to be here, there, and everywhere, or if stepping away from the mayhem is somehow more valuable. I know…

Standing in front of real, living, breathing people – your professional peers – is somehow different. After travelling north with several co-workers this morning, we arrived at our destination and temporary home for the next few days – a typical corporate hotel nestled in the countryside. I always find corporate hotels a bit soul-less. This…

Who wants to lay bets that the next blog post will come from the hotel room? I have to get up sensibly early tomorrow – to meet at a co-worker’s house ahead of a fairly long journey “up country”. Everybody vaguely technical in the company I work for is travelling to a hotel for a…