Happy New Year
Most people will be waking up this morning to a brand new year. I on the other hand never really went to bed. I can now proudly state that I have passed the ...
Posts from 2017
Reflection And Goals
I’ve never quite understood the mania that some people experience at the end of each year - setting out either a list of the things they achieved over the pa...
Photography
Giving up the smartphone may end up being a blessing in disguise - because I’ve become incredibly lazy over the last few years - just allowing Google to uplo...
Waiting For Nothing
While walking between the lounge and kitchen this morning, wondering if to empty the washing machine next, or empty the dishwasher, there was a thump thump t...
The One Where I Scrapped The Bullet Journal And Returned To A Filofax
We all knew this was going to happen, didn’t we.
Slowing Everything Down
While browsing Twitter late last night I happened upon an acquaintance wondering how some people generate so many comments on their blogs, and scrolled throu...
Being Noticed
I’ve never really felt like I “fitted in” anywhere. Throughout college I was not one of the popular crowd that hung out together, and through my twenty-somet...
Christmas
It is late afternoon on Boxing Day, and the children are still playing a marathon board game called “The Battle for Hogwarts” in the lounge with my other hal...
Continuing A Tradition
Our youngest just received a phonecall from Santa en-route. He got our postcode wrong. We heard the shouted conversation on the upstairs landing, and the thu...
Christmas Shopping Complete
Today was really just about buying bits and pieces that were not on lists. A family board game to play, stocking fillers, and so on. I had planned on going o...
War Horse
This afternoon we went on our annual “surprise” family Christmas outing, and managed to keep a lid on it right up until the moment we arrived at the theatre ...
Finished For Christmas
At 3pm this afternoon I finished for Christmas. I go back on the 4th January. I don’t think it’s really hit me yet - it won’t until we get Christmas morning ...
The Last Jedi
I just got home from the cinema. I’m happy, sad, excited, weary, elated, and torn - all at the same time. So many emotions.
Frankfurt
In spring this year I was assigned to a project that involved travelling to Frankfurt in Germany to spend several days on a client site doing “proof of conce...
Turning A Corner
Final conference call done. Final expense claim filed. It feels like I’m lifting rocks from an imaginary back-pack and casting them aside, one at a time. I h...
First World Problems
Given all the things going on in the world, it often feels ridiculous to complain about the situations we find ourselves in. We bottle up our stresses, our c...
Counting Down The Days
Apart from a conference call that will determine much of the year ahead for me, I have little to do this week at work. I’m not entirely sure what I’m going t...
Starting Early
The alarm clock was programmed for 6am this morning. I woke at 5:50am after a pretty spectacular dream about some sort of school reunion, and watched the las...
Nothing To Report
It’s been a very quiet weekend from my point of view. In the past I’ve managed to fashion a blog post out of little or nothing, but today I just don’t seem t...
Heard While Christmas Shopping
In-between chores, and delivering children to birthday parties, we managed to get some Christmas shopping done today. While browsing the books in our local b...
The Night Before
Last night I was invited out to the local brewery, which holds “members nights” every so often - for paid members to visit (along with two guests per member)...
The Morning After
When the alarm clock ticked over at 7am and filled the bedroom with the local radio station, I woke with a start and rolled upright in bed. It turns out movi...
New Phone Ordered
I ordered a new mobile phone this morning - it will arrive in the post tomorrow. It’s the 2017 version of the cheapest handset Nokia make. Before you think “...
Contemplating Armageddon
I thought about retreating from the internet today. I’ve done it before. I thought about tearing down this cardboard construction of blog posts, photos, stat...
Two Glasses Of Wine
For the last year or so, Tuesday nights have seen me break all manner of pretend fitness app step records, trudging around town to pick children up from one ...
Working From Home
Following the blanket of snow that fell on the surrounding area throughout yesterday, most of the local schools announced their closure, along with the offic...
The Beginning Or The End
This week Deep Mind - the Google team behind the “Alpha Zero” artificial intelligence project - tried out the game of chess on the system.
Snowing On Sunday
After spending the greater part of last night stood in a good friend’s kitchen drinking beer and telling stories, we arrived home a little before midnight, a...
Slow Start Saturday
The radio alarm clock exploded into life at 7am, filling the bedroom with the local radio station, playing pre-recorded news from the big networks. I rolled ...
The One Where I Deactivated Instagram
I suppose this has been coming for quite some time. While waiting for a virtual server to spin up at work this morning, I logged into Instagram (where I had ...
Late Night Shopping
I took the photo accompanying this post while wandering back towards home this evening - after most of the streets had already emptied of the thousands that ...
Channeling Flynn
I spent the entire day buried in programming again. Another thousand lines of code, some user interface design, and some workflow wrangling. Don’t ask what I...
One Thousand Lines
Today I wrote over a thousand lines of programming. Tomorrow morning I’ll try executing them, and hide behind something sturdy while they spew error messages...
Through My Eyes
I started uploading photos to Flickr earlier today. Quite when I’ll get around to properly labelling, tagging, and curating them is something of a mystery at...
The Arrival Of Poppy The Hamster
I thought I was going to be standing on the touchline of a rugby pitch at 10am this morning. After sliding out of bed a little after 8am, and finding my way ...
Adding Photography To The Mix
Many years ago - before the advent of Instagram - I had a Flickr account. Thinking about it, I had a Flickr account before Flickr was owned by Yahoo - a lon...
Saturday Happened
I suppose, strictly speaking, Saturday isn’t over yet. Having cleared the fridge ready for groceries to arrive (other half is out shopping right now), helped...
Reaching Out
I signed up for a Snapchat account yesterday. My third of the last few years. When Snapchat first appeared I didn’t have a good enough phone to run it, so ca...
Procrastinating Famously
To be perfectly honest, I’m not getting an awful lot done today. It comes to something when the only accomplishment you can really think of for the morning h...
Parachuted In Again
I pulled somebody else’s code to pieces today, in search of an oversight that a client is calling a bug. It took half the day to build a test environment, an...
Rebuilding Miss 17
Last night was a perfect example of the challenges faced by two parents attempting to parent three children. The eldest - often thought of as the most level ...
Everything Changes
David Karp is leaving Tumblr. It feels strange, finally seeing the various valley blogs breathlessly posting the news out to the internet - describing how he...
Coming Home Early
I came home from work early today. It turns out spending the whole of Saturday with somebody fighting a terrible cold pretty successfully transfers the germs...
Peace And Quiet
My younger daughters have walked into town on some sort of secret mission, my other half has gone to visit her mother, and our eldest daughter is holed up in...
Rice Cakes Manga Anime And Cosplay At Hyperjapan
After sliding out of bed at 6am this morning, jumping in the shower, having shave, and throwing on clothes prepared last night, I knocked on Miss 17’s bedroo...
New Brakes New Lights New Haircut
A few minutes before leaving the house this morning the telephone rang. My other half.
The Early Train To London
It’s 6:31am, and I’m sitting on the train to London Paddington railway station. One of the advantages of travelling so early is the train is almost empty. I’...
Happy Thanksgiving
Just a quick post to wish all I know around the world that are celebrating thanksgiving all the best. We don’t celebrate it on this side of the world, but I ...
Falling Asleep On The Train
I fell asleep on the way home. More than once. I’m pretty sure that I was only asleep for a few moments, but you never really know, do you. For all I know it...
Here There And Everywhere
It’s Tuesday evening, just gone 9pm, and I’ve just sat down. I left work a little after five, and have spent the intervening four hours walking back and fort...
Contemplating A Second Blog
I’ve been sitting around a conference room table in a hotel all day with co-workers, taking turns to talk about the various technologies we find ourselves us...
Its A Dangerous Business
I’ve just re-written the title of this blog post three times. It started out as “Reflections on a a Few Weeks of Trying Harder”, and then “Expending Effort”,...
Living On The Edge
You might say the title of this post is every so slightly sarcastic. We just spent the greater part of the evening sitting in the gymnasium of a school playi...
The Sweet Spot
Following my self imposed imprisonment construction of a catch-net for Miss 17 this evening instead of sitting in a rugby stadium with the rest of my family ...
Not Going Out
I had tickets to the England Ladies rugby game against Canada this evening. I left work early so we could set off in time to get there and find our seats in ...
Theres Always Something
This morning was… interesting. By “interesting”, I probably mean lots of other words, but I’m unsure if I should write them down or not. Some of them will be...
Crossing The Streams
No, I haven’t built a working prototype of the “Proton Pack” from the movie Ghostbusters, and no I’m not doing battle with a giant version of the Staypuft Ma...
Ashes To Ashes
Today has been a day for reflection. A day to get through. A difficult day. Today an old friend was buried.
A Few Words For A Departed Friend
You might recall that during my last visit to Germany I received word about an old friend and co-worker that was killed in a motorcycle accident. I’m attendi...
Mr Cranky Pants Goes On Tour
My body performed it’s usual magic trick of waking up a few moments before the pre-programmed alarm clock this morning. I silently switched it off, and crept...
Tilting At Blogging Windmills
I bought a magazine yesterday morning - a magazine all about blogging. Within it’s pages there are interviews with “bloggers of note”, lots of explanatory ar...
Recreate A Single Day
Somehow I have made it to day fourteen of the WordPress Blogging University “Every Day Inspiration” series of daily prompts. Yes, I know I haven’t doneevery ...
Blogosphere Magazine
While escaping from the house this morning on a mission to buy groceries, I happened upon a magazine I first saw a little over a year ago, called “Blogospher...
A Weekend Off
Well this is unexpected. No scheduled football match for Miss 13, rugby cancelled due to lack of numbers, and football called off for Miss 12 due to an unpla...
Unexpected Popularity
The strangest thing has been happening. Maybe not strange, but certainly unexpected. People have been reading my blog posts. Lots of people. Well, a few. Mor...
If We Were Meeting For Coffee Right Now
Although I seem to have missed a few of the WordPress Blogging University “Every Day Inspiration” prompts over the last few days, I am doing them as and when...
A Few Words This Morning
Given that I will be heading south on a succession of trains this evening, I’m taking the chance to write a few words now - at 7:45am.
Writing And Not Writing
Today’s WordPress Blogging University writing exercise is asking me to consider what I might write if I had more time to write:
Hotel Life
It’s 7:50am, and I’m back from the hotel restaurant after attempting to eat a cooked breakfast big enough to feed most entire families. I don’t usually bothe...
Heading Back To Yorkshire
My backpack and suitcase are packed, my personal phone, work phone, and tablet are charged, and I’m debating on polishing my walking boots, rather than wear ...
An Update On The Bullet Journal
For the past few months I have been trying out a “Bullet Journal”. Rather than re-purpose my pre-existing Moleskine notebook, I went out and bought an offici...
Let Social Media Inspire You
Today’s writing prompt for the WordPress Blogging University “Every Day Inspiration” challenge is to “let social media inspire you” - to go look at social me...
Where Do You Write
Today’s writing prompt from the WordPress Blogging University “Every Day Inspiration” course asks me to describe the place I write. I think I’ve described th...
The Colour Of Magic
Fantasy is an exercise bicycle for the mind. It might not take you anywhere, but it tones up the muscles that can. Of course, I could be wrong. The above ...
The One Where I Met Myself
While getting on with my work this morning - yes, it happens sometimes - I noticed a raft of emails arriving in Google Mail, and curiosity got the better of ...
Replying To The Past
I was reminded by a wonderful friend this morning that back in 2007 I wrote a post on the blog titled “A Letter to my Future Self [https://strangecodex.wordp...
A Story In A Single Image
The Blogging University “Everyday Inspiration” prompt for today is “A Story in a Single Image” - encouraging you to look at a selection of photos accompanyin...
Regret
For the better part of 2007 and 2008 I commuted into London each day - leaving the house at 6:45am each morning, and returning at 7pm each evening. The door-...
Trick Or Treat
While cycling home from work this evening, I couldn’t help but smile at the young children out with their parents - variously dressed as Witches, Faeries, Ba...
Lets Write A List
Today’s writing exercise from the totally fabricated faculty of Blogging University is a list. It could be any list, but I’m guessing a list of goals, inspir...
Late Night Gibberish
I’m sitting on a chair in the corner of my eldest daughter’s bedroom at half-past midnight. We both have Chromebooks propped on our laps, and we’re both writ...
I Write Because
I’m doing well this week. I signed up for one of the WordPress University [https://dailypost.wordpress.com/blogging-university/] courses yesterday, and then ...
Unwarranted Anxiety
I am going on-site with a new client on Wednesday. I discovered this via a random email last Friday. You might think “So what? you travel all the time with w...
Adrift On The Internet
Over the last few months I have continued to post almost every day, tried to read those that I follow, and kept putting one foot in front of the other - it’s...
Retro Video Games First Posts And Stranger Things
After escorting Miss 17 to a famous fashion retail establishment this afternoon, I left her to peruse their wares and crossed the road to see what the second...
2Am Netflix Marathons Ftw
I sat up with our eldest daughter last night watching back to back episodes of “Stranger Things” on Netflix. We watched the first four episodes of season 2 w...
Stranger Things And Rebuilding Teenagers
Tonight is pizza night, and Stranger Things 2 has been released on Netflix. That solves what I’ll be watching throughout the weekend. I may stop on my way ho...
Third And Final Day
Here I am again, sitting in the junk room at home, emptying my head into the keyboard. I have no adventures to relate as such - other than wanting to kill ne...
Slowing Everything Down
It’s my second day off work, and the world finally seems to be slowing down. Yesterday was spent washing and drying clothes, fetching children from holiday a...
Tiny Letters
I’m thinking about giving”Tiny Letter” a try. It’s owned by MailChimp, and is provided as a free service for individuals - it lets people subscribe to you, a...
The First Of Three Days
I have three days off work, starting today. I didn’t even wake up until 8:30am. How does that work? Usually I’m awake and up at 7am. Maybe I need to add one ...
Turning The Pedals
Cycling to work this morning seemed like hard work. It’s amazing how sitting in a hotel for a week can take the formerly super-human strength from your legs ...
Nerding Out
Would you like to know why I didn’t write a blog post yesterday? Would youreally like to know why? Then I shall begin.I spent several hours yesterday migrat...
Running On Empty
I’m not entirely sure how I’m going to make it through this blog post. I’m home, I’m sitting at the desk in the junk room, and I’m typing. It’s been a long d...
Final Night In Frankfurt
I fly home tomorrow morning.
Oreillys
After work this evening I changed from the vaguely smart shirt and trousers I wear every day (clean shirt each day, obviously), into the vaguely less smart j...
The End Of The Beginning
I woke several times during the early hours of the morning and checked my phone for messages in the aftermath of yesterday’s awful news. I buried my head in ...
Watching The Clock
When I woke at 6am this morning, I instinctively checked my phone for messages, and discovered my flight to Germany had been cancelled. Ten minutes later, wh...
Dealing With Bad News
I just discovered a guy I worked with for several years was killed in a road traffic accident on Sunday morning. His wife is 7 months pregnant. They were goo...
Chocolate Coated Cardboard
It’s 8pm, and I’m sitting in a hotel less than 100 yards from the place I will be working tomorrow, munching on chocolate coated cardboard. At least I think ...
Sunday Rugby And Silently Stressing Out
Today will be spent standing at the touchline of rugby pitches - watching Miss 12 and Miss 13 diving around in the mud, shouting “DEFENSIVE LINE!” like littl...
I Should Be Asleep
I have a taxi to the airport arriving early tomorrow morning. At the time of writing it’s ten minutes until midnight, and yet here I am, still up. I thought ...
Round And Round
While writing this post, the washing machine and tumble dryer are rumbling away in the background, I’m half listening to an old playlist on the ancient iMac ...
Returning To Frankfurt
I’m clearing the decks today - early on Monday morning I’ll be making my way to the railway station, then on to the airport, and to Frankfurt in Germany once...
Nablopomo And Lisa
One of the great benefits of having taken part in this curious online world for so long, is you know the back-story behind things. As many of you will know, ...
Things That Go Bump In The Night
On Tuesday nights one of our children has a dance class, while another goes to football training. I get home from work, eat whatever is available at quite so...
Working From Home Again
I’m sitting in the study at home once again, trying to concentrate on work, but being stopped by the plumber every few minutes to relate the latest bad news ...
The One Where We Gave The Children Their Own Bank Cards
Two mysterious envelopes arrived in the post this afternoon, addressed to my younger daughters. After spotting the postal return addresses on them, I almost ...
Everything Changes
After trying out Medium (the darling of the web publishing hipster crowd) for a few days, and trying to like it, I’ve admitted defeat, returned to WordPress ...
Dark Skies Roast Dinner And Cancellations
The nights are starting to draw in. While cycling home from work this evening a pervasive blanket of darkness seemed to be readying it’s fall upon the world....
Behold
I have decided on a new name for this blog (and theTumblr [https://strangecodex.tumblr.com/]account, because I’m a bit insane like that). It only took ooh fo...
All Good Things
I’m sitting in the study at home while a dehumidifier rumbles away in the remains of the bathroom upstairs. I very nearly went into the office today (the plu...
Working From Home
I am working from home this week. I agreed it with myself yesterday after discovering my other half had booked a plumber to come and rip the upstairs bathroo...
Thirty Days Until Nanowrimo
For the first time in recent memory, I have no plans today. No obligations. No expectations. Of course I have still filled the washing machine and dryer, sta...
Resurrecting The Imac
While my other half was standing at the side of a rugby pitch in the middle of nowhere this afternoon I took it upon myself to tidy up the junk room at home.
Old Friends
After getting the usual Saturday morning madness of standing on the touchline of football matches out of the way, and tipping colossal quantities of noxious ...
Better Off Dead
Our middle girl screamed a great many nasty things at us this morning. She claimed she was sick, and couldn’t possibly go to school. We countered that if she...
Prodictivity App Madness
After yesterday’s carpet-bombing of the various social platforms on the internet, I thought I might move on to ripping productivity apps a new one today. It’...
Approaching Overload
Do you ever feel the online world is becoming overloaded? Thoughts have been rattling around my admittedly tiny little brain for the last few months - that t...
Running Around In Circles
Today began with a late start - leaving the house in time to arrive at the local hair cutting establishment just as they opened for the day. I chose the one ...
Persisting With The Bullet Journal
It’s been a few weeks since starting out on the Bullet Journal adventure, so I thought it might be worth recording a few thoughts.
Sunday Evening Book Report
The clock is ticking inexorably towards the end of Sunday evening, and my mind is trying to avoid thinking about work tomorrow. Something didn’t work as well...
Quiet Insanity Rules
I rescued my old netbook computer from almost certain doom earlier in the week - it had been sitting on the corner of a counter in the kitchen along with a f...
Something Wicked This Way Comes
I suppose technically it’s already Saturday morning, but I’m writing this before falling into bed on Friday night, so I’m classing it as Friday still.
Searching For A Reason
I have found myself thinking about “the point of things” recently. I’m not sure what brought it on.
Lack Of Belief
A friend challenged my apparent lack of faith earlier this evening, causing me to really think about my opposition to “faith”. It’s worth pointing out that I...
Rearranging All The Things
After an extended game of e-mail ping-pong between three people, one of whom’s only function seemed to be the person that talks to the ship’s computer and re...
Decompressing
Tonight you find me sitting in the dark of the junk room, listening to the “Favourite Coffeehouse” playlist on Spotify, with an incense stick burning on the ...
Seventeen
She was always the least sure of herself, the one who worried the most - the one that watched others from a distance. Now she is seventeen, and I’m wondering...
Resurrection
I deactivated my Tumblr account a few weeks ago, and then posted on Facebook that I had done so, because I didn’t want to lose touch with anybody. A friend m...
Resurfacing
I re-installed Tumblr on my mobile phone last night. I’m still not sure if it was a wise thing to do or not, or if I will use it much. After deactivating my ...
Home
It’s Saturday morning, and I’m finally home. The washing machine and tumble dryer are rumbling away in the background, the kids are out at football matches a...
The Road Less Travelled
It’s Thursday evening. I fly home in the morning. I’m sitting in my hotel room once again, listening to the rain pitter patter on the window, and figuring ou...
Wednesday In Frankfurt
This morning began with the wail of a fire alarm in the hotel at 6am. Given that I only fell asleep at 2am following a snap decision to listen to “Chess in C...
Tuesday Morning In Frankfurt
Written at 9am in the morning while perched at a coffee shop table among the skyscrapers of central Frankfurt, and posted at 8pm the same evening while sitti...
From London To Frankfurt
It’s been a long day. A very long day. The alarm didn’t burst into life at 5am, because I woke at 4am, and didn’t really fall asleep again. I had fragments o...
Sunday Morning And Virtual Shenanigans
It’s a fairly normal Sunday morning - the younger children have gone to rugby training, the washing machine is on, clothes are already hanging on the line, p...
Returning To Frankfurt
I’m winding things down at work today, ahead of travelling to Frankfurt in Germany next week. The flight is booked, the hotel is booked - I just need to turn...
Saying Goodbye To The Netbook
This evening I erased the hard hard-drive on the old netbook computer that’s been kicking around the house for the last few years, and gave it to my other ha...
Adventures In Babysitting
In the grand tradition of discovering movies thirty years after everybody else, I finally sat and watched “Adventures in Babysitting” this evening with Miss ...
Walking Away Again
I deactivated my Tumblr account last night. I dread to think how many times I have re-joined Tumblr over the last three, four, or five years. Every time I wa...
Has Anybody Seen My Hangover
We were invited out to a 50th birthday party last night, hosted at the local rowing club on the river - the same rowing club where you might typically have f...
The Weekend Begins
After much thought and deliberation last night - you know - a few seconds worth - I have decided to stop writing draft blog posts in a text editor and storin...
September Really
I’m working from home today. This really means I’m answering emails, carrying on the research I was doing yesterday, running back and forth between the washi...
The Slippery Virtual Slope
During a break from the regularly scheduled mayhem at work this morning I ran the “Second Life” client software on my work laptop, wondering if it still work...
Getting Over Myself
I woke with a start at 6am this morning - from an apparently thrilling dream that I cannot remember. While contemplating the bedroom ceiling, and watching a ...
Bank Holiday Monday
I got up a little over an hour ago. After heading to the shower, brushing my teeth, and getting dressed, I wandered into the lounge and discovered the younge...
Weird Dreams Gameshows And The Hogwarts Express
After watching the boxing match between Connor McGregor and Floyd Mayweather at 5am this morning, I looked at the clock, and decided to go back to bed for a ...
Saturday Morning
After scraping myself out of bed this morning, jumping in the shower (not literally), having a shave to reverse the very impressive neanderthal impersonation...
Mcgregor Vs Mayweather
I’m sitting in the dark of the junk room at home, debating with myself it it’s worth staying up to watch the fight between Connor McGregor, and Floyd Mayweat...
When Nothing Is Something
I have nothing to write about today, so will prove that nothing is something by writing this. Tada!
Nothing Of Consequence To Report
I haven’t really stopped all day. I planned to - I planned to give myself an hour at lunchtime to write some thoughts into the blog, but then one thing after...
Fighting Fires And Making Plans
Today has been interesting. Of course I don’t really mean interesting - I mean tiring, frustrating, irritating, and all those other words. You don’t really w...
Returning To Germany
While headbutting my desk spectacularly this afternoon after discovering yet another bug in a major software product sold by the biggest operating system man...
Back To Work
I think it’s fair to say I’ve been dreading returning to work - for the last two weeks I’ve been burying my head in the sand. After wading through the worst ...
Washington Square Park
While skimming updates posted to the social internet by far flung friends earlier this evening, I got sucked into reading a post recalling somebody’s formati...
Swimming On Sunday Morning
A little after waking up this morning a little voice called from the children’s rooms. I grinned at my other half, and predicted the next sentence.
Saturday Morning
It’s heading towards 9:30am on Saturday morning. The washing machine and tumble dryer are rumbling away in the background, the dishwasher has been emptied, t...
Theme Park
Today marked the last “day off work” of my staycation. We decided earlier in the week to gather all of our various coupons together, and spend the day at “Th...
Running Out Of Days
It’s Thursday morning, and the days of my “stay-cation” are slowly ebbing away. Just today, tomorrow, and the weekend left. After that I will be back to the ...
Mobile Phone Madness
While sitting in Starbucks with Miss 16 this morning, taking the regulation photograph of my coffee cup that all people with Instagram accounts are required ...
Refusing To Play The Game
I have been writing a personal blog, and publishing it to the internet for somewhere in the region of fifteen years now. Throughout that time I have never “p...
Victoria And Albert
The alarm on my mobile phone ripped into life at 6am this morning, and woke me with a start. I was in the middle of an intense dream about something or other...
The Bullet Journal
At the start of this year I gave serious consideration to ditching the Filofax I have been carrying around for the better part of the last decade, and using ...
Unblogging
If you’re doing a double take, and wondering where you’ve seen this post before, you might recall that I posted it back in February 2014. It’s in the archive...
Birthdays Friends Beer And Video Games
I’m amazed I don’t have a hangover this morning. I visited a friend last night to help celebrate his birthday - he had organised a “boy’s night”, complete wi...
The Junk Room
This morning I took it upon myself to clear up the “junk room”. We are fortunate enough in our ramshackle house to have a room that isn’t really used for any...
A Nice Day For A Walk
For the first few days of our self-imposed “staycation”, we have been knocking around the house, or wandering into town for one thing or another. Today we de...
Beer Music And Rain
Yesterday evening I was invited out to the “members evening” at the local brewery. If you become a member of the brewery - which costs an annual amount - you...
Haircuts Bowling And Bad Movies
While the other occupants of the house sat around sipping tea and watching breakfast television shows this morning, I jumped in the shower, had a shave, got ...
Putting Pen To Paper
Over the last ten years I have emptied my head from time to time into the pages of a paper notebook. I remember buying the first one - a Moleskine, because t...
Achieving Nothing
In many ways today was the first day of my vacation. The first day when I wasn’t racing through chores in the usual breakneck effort to achieve something app...
Unexpected Compliments
While catching up with a distant friend on Friday, I got told that my blog was “GREAT”. I of course questioned what she had been drinking or smoking, and imm...
Two Weeks Off
Watching the clock tick down this afternoon at work was interminable. It reminded of countless begging sessions with grandparents when I was little, when the...
Counting Down The Hours
I have a little over seven hours left in the office tomorrow before two weeks vacation. To say I’m looking forward to it would be a colossal understatement. ...
Starting Over
Over the last few months I experimented with writing under an assumed name - not for the first time. While it was fun to contemplate the idea of writing abou...
Street Party
We live in the corner of a green, which is surrounded by houses filled with many families we have never met. That all changed today after a number of the loc...
Autopilot
Do you ever have moments, hours, or even entire days when you feel like you have been running on autopilot? I do. Maybe not entirely offline, but sometimes i...
Powered By Wine
It’s heading towards 10pm, and I have acheived very little this evening other than eat a curry, an entire family bag of peanut M&Ms, and drink half a bot...
Hours And Hours
A support call came in late yesterday - reporting that something didn’t appear to be working correctly on a client site. It got assigned to me. Everything ge...
Tuesday Evening
The clock is ticking towards 9pm, and I have done nothing all evening. Actually, that’s not entirely true. After returning from work I hung a load of washing...
Falling Down
No, this post is not going to be about the Michael Douglas movie from the 1990s where an average guy goes on the rampage and holds up a fast food restaurant ...
Letting Go Of Things
It struck me recently that I’m surrounded by a world of things I don’t really need. Miscellaneous gadgets, books, pens, pencils, computers, tablets, phones, ...
Alone For The Week
The younger children are at Guide Camp for the week - somewhere on the coast - and my other half is visiting the Lake District for a few days - at the opposi...
Ready Player One
The first teaser trailer of the “Ready Player One” movie was released yesterday, and although I’m looking forward to it, I’ll already admit to being downhear...
The Weekend So Far
Yesterday evening my other half headed out to a local music festival with her brother, and I had planned to have a quiet night in with my daughters - watch a...
Working From Home
No, the photo accompanying this post is not of my desk - it may as well be though. Why get on with work, when you could quite easily spend all afternoon arra...
Work Money And Ethics
My parents are by most people’s standards, “independently wealthy”. Our family had a family business when I was growing up - a pretty major quarry that made ...
Up Periscope
I decided yesterday lunchtime that having the blog name appear in comments in place of my name was ever so slightly ridiculous, so have changed my name in al...
Memories Of Ms Dos 5 Windows 30 And Gnu Linux
In early 1992 I saw Windows 3.0 for the first time. I had asked to use the laser printer of the IT department at West Oxfordshire College to print out a poem...
Somebody Finally Noticed Me
I don’t own a car. I cycle to work each day, and travel by train when visiting far-flung client offices. The cycle route to work is only three miles each way...
One Word
I just spent the last four hours pouring over the programming I have been working on recently, after an “all up” test late yesterday went disastrously wrong....
Migrating And Curating
My phone has been sitting on the corner of my desk at work all day, quietly having a nervous breakdown. I installed the Flickr app on it, and told it to star...
Game Of Thrones
After getting in from work this evening, eating dinner, washing up, and clearing up the kitchen, I went searching on the internet to find out how much it mig...
Building A Better Bat Cave
It struck me this afternoon that my attempts to drive a wedge between the “professional” me that wanders around the country pretending to be clever, and the ...
Sushi J Pop Anime Manga And More At Hyperjapan London
My body performed the miraculous trick of opening my eyes five minutes before the alarm this morning - at 5:55am. It was a good job it did, because I forgot ...
Programming Temper And Trophies
I’ve written somewhere in the region of 1,700 lines of code this week for a client project. I’m doing it single-handed - responsible for design, coding, test...
Hyper Japan
I have a very early start in the morning - heading into London on the train with Miss 16 to visit “Hyper Japan” - a festival of all things Japan at the Tobac...
Shakespeare Never Wrote This
“What light through yonder window breaks? It is the Javascript Client Object Model, and I am the Sun, burning everything to ashes around me while celebrating...
Idiocy Is A Key Skill
For the entire time I was playing with Blogger, hoping for it to be better than it actually was, I was secretly cross-posting into a hidden WordPress blog. I...
Another Awards Evening
I left work an hour early this evening, in order to get home in time to feed the children before heading out to another school awards function. The children ...
Awards Assembly
This morning I attended the school “Awards Assembly” - where groups of kids get marched up in front of the school to have a nervous breakdown in front of a m...
An Old Friend Returns
While hiding in the junk room earlier this evening, in-between sessions of washing dishes, clearing the kitchen up, and brokering peace in the latest argumen...
Monday Morning
I’ve been head down writing programming since the moment I walked into the office this morning - well, since I filed my time-sheet for last week to keep the ...
Ignoring The Amazon Echo
The mighty everything store in the sky is offering wondrous deals at huge discounts today, because it’s “Prime Day”. It’s kind of like saying “Here’s some mo...
Has Anybody Seen The Weekend
What on earth happened to the weekend? It feels like I only walked out of work an hour ago. Of course that ignores the hours spent washing clothes, washing d...
Watching Again
I started watching “The OA” again tonight. I originally watched it on my own while holed up in a hotel with work - the entire series in one night on Netflix ...
Aligning The Planets Again
I guess with this whole re-boot thing going on, I get the chance to re-write my about page - or even not bother with one. Do I write a self-aggrandizing pile...
You Cant Make It Up
For the past several months project work has been lining up in front of me like an endless snaking train. It just so happens that I have lucked into having t...
Skull Island
After clearing the dinner things away this evening, we huddled around the TV in the living room, turned the volume up, and sat down to watch “Skull Island” t...
Conference Call Anxiety
Am I the only person that suffers from anxiety before a conference call? I had a client call at 10am this morning, and for half an hour leading up to the cal...
Hello Again
Well this is an unexpected turn of events. If you arrived here via an email I sent you, or a blog post you read elsewhere, you’ve just learned that I upped s...
Down The Internet Rabbit Hole
In what could easily be described as a fantastically stupidthing to do, this morning I created both a Facebook Page, and a Google+ “Collection” for this blog...
In The Office
I’m back in the office today. Currently taking a break, writing things into the Filofax, and comparing calendars between home, and work - figuring out what I...
Struggling
I have been quietly struggling with “blogging” for months, and resisting the temptation to write about about it, because who wants to read a blog post about ...
Rest In Peace
It started like any other Saturday. I woke at about 7:30, gazed at the ceiling for a while, checked my phone, then eventually wandered downstairs to have a s...
Its Been A Week
I don’t think “drained” is really the right word - “empty” might be a better word. Half an hour before leaving the client site yesterday the code was in piec...
Wednesday Night Hotel Club
I have been sitting in my hotel room for the last two hours, mindlessly scrolling through Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and a succession of news websites in sea...
Tuesday Night Hotel Adventure
I signed out of the far flung building I occupied the 5th floor of at 6pm this evening and trudged back to my temporary residence through the puddles brought...
Rebooting My Music Collection
Late one night over the weekend I decided to delete everything I had uploaded to Google Music, and start over. I guess it was a “nuclear” option of sorts. A ...
North
It’s been a day. I’m not really sure where to start. I’m guessing the beginning might be as good a place as any.
Rock Bottom
Contrary to the rather misleading title, this post is not about a personal disaster resulting in “hitting rock bottom” - it’s about the local summer music fe...
Another Train Journey Another Hotel
Tomorrow lunchtime I will make the familiar journey on foot to the local railway station, head first towards Kings Cross in central London, and then on to th...
Something I Struggle With
When any of you post a nice photo, or tell a funny story, I’m invariably late to the game. I think “I have to write a comment on that” - “awesome photo”, “be...
Contemplating Change
For the last week or so I’ve got in from work, done the chores, then sat outside and watched the cats, hedgehogs, bats, and whatever else go about their busi...
Dads Night At The Girl Guides
After getting home from work this evening, eating dinner, and washing up, we headed straight back out to “Dad’s Night” with the local Girl Guides. I guess th...
Meh
I’m sitting in the office at work after spending much of the morning writing documents. The temperature has been steadily climbing throughout the morning - i...
Marilyn
I’ve noticed a few photos of Marilyn appearing over the last few days, and thought it might be time to tell my Marilyn story - for those that haven’t heard i...
Nerd Problems
My “go to” computer at home is a Google Chromebook, because it’s fast, it lasts for ages on a battery charge, and it “just works”. Here’s the thing though - ...
Fathers Day
After waking up with the rest of the house this morning at 7am - they were heading to a football tournament - I arrived downstairs to find Miss 13 waiting fo...
Good Friends
We were invited to a friends this evening to eat, drink, and spend a few hours catching up with one another. We sat in the garden, ate wonderful food, drank ...
Information Overload
When it comes to catching up with the news, I have become increasingly lazy. In the UK we all pay for the BBC to exist, and along with that funding comes a n...
Strange Dreams
I don’t usually remember dreams. I’m not sure why. I remember the dream I had this morning though - and again, I’m not sure why - perhaps because I told my o...
The In Between
I’m back in the office today, and curiously devoid of immediately pressing work. I have a notebook full of notes from the day-out yesterday, but suspect the ...
Welcome To Cardiff
Greetings from a Travelodge hotel in the centre of Cardiff, Wales. I left home early this afternoon, jumped on a train, and began a journey that took me acro...
Sunburned Sunday
It’s been a pretty long day. After over-sleeping for the first time in months and not arriving downstairs until 10am, I jumped straight in the shower, had a ...
Stop The World
Do you ever have days when you wish the world would just slow down for a bit and give you a break ?
Revisionist History
We seem to be surrounded by soap-box philosophers at the moment, comparing political ideologies against each other, and comparing current public figures to t...
Resisting The Urge To Vent Spectacularly
I got back from travelling around the country with work a couple of hours ago. On the final leg of the journey home I picked up a copy of the “Evening Standa...
Dinner For One
The world malfunctioned this morning - instead of deciding to rain, or to be sunny, it got stuck on the “sprinkler” setting, and drenched the world with a fi...
Returning To Manchester
Today began like any other work-day - scrambling through breakfast time with the children, before retrieving my bicycle from the shed in the garden, and peda...
A Surprisingly Productive Day
I woke a little after 7 this morning - with the faint sound of an alarm from another room in the house. The sound finally fell silent, I remembered it was Su...
Crossing The Streams
About a year ago I reduced the number of people I call a friend on Facebook down to just those I know in the “real world” - old school friends, the parents o...
Thinking Too Much
I resurrected the WordPress blog yesterday - the one connected to my real name. I had been “taking a break” from it for a few weeks - deciding if I really wa...
The Perks Of Being A Wallflower
Tonight I finally got around to watching”The Perks of Being a Wallflower” - ahead of reading the book, which has been sitting on the shelf in the junk room f...
Scrolling
I have just spent the last twenty minutes scrolling through other people’s lives on Tumblr - watching their thoughts, dreams, nightmares, hopes, wishes, memo...
Nothing
It has been a bank holiday in the UK today. I haven’t achieved anything, other than a little tidying up, a little washing up, and a trip to the supermarket t...
Living Vicariously
I admire so many of the blogging community so much through the photos and thoughts they share. They are all by turns brave, honest, fierce, beautiful, intere...
First World Problems
At the moment I seem to be caught in a battle for the heart and mind of my organised self. The protagonists are the phone, a collection of various internet s...
Contemplating Darkness
While sorting through the various detritus in the study last night (we laughably refer to it as the study - it has more akin with Monica’s junk cupboard in “...
My Daughters Get It
I have three girls - aged 16, 13, and 12. Tonight they made me perhaps the most proud I have been of them in quite some time. We were talking about the bombi...
A Rare Day Out
It’s rare that I ever get the chance to attend any kind of event to do with my work - conferences, meetups, that kind of thing. About two weeks ago I receive...
Half An Hour To Save The World
After sitting in the conference room since I arrived at work this morning, I’m finally back at my desk, with a half-hour window to post this before heading i...
Sunday Sunday
This weekend seems to be doing it’s level best to vanish without a trace. I’ve been stuck at home all day, washing clothes, washing dishes, hanging stuff out...
Saturday Morning
I woke a little after 7am this morning, and stared at the ceiling for a while, listening to the clock radio. I have no idea how to re-program it not to kick ...
Late Night Thoughts
I guess technically I’ve already missed posting anything for “Thursday” - it’s already nearly 1am on Friday morning. I’m playing the age-old game of “staying...
Not Much To Say
I don’t seem to have much to volunteer to the internet at the moment. There are only so many ways you can tell the story “cycled to work, worked, cycled home...
Nothing To Report
It’s just gone 9pm on Monday evening. I’m not sure where the day went. I seemed to spend most of it holed up in the conference room at work - either watching...
Wembley Stadium
We got on a train early this afternoon to Wembley Stadium in London, to watch the women’s FA Cup final between Manchester City and Birmingham. I suspected on...
Tinkering Again
For the last few months I have kept two blogs going - one at Tumblr, which is easy and fast, and one at WordPress, that looks nicer, but is more time consumi...
Falling Off The Blogging Horse
I feel like I’ve fallen off the blogging horse just recently. It’s not just that I’m having trouble getting back on - more that I’m wondering”what’s the poin...
Dont Be A Stranger
Over the past couple of days I began todoubt if my membership of Second Life might go anywhere. I logged in a couple of times, but as is usual, life the univ...
Distant Loss
Somebody I vaguely knew via the internet died today. She was not the first, and will not be the last, but it was another reminder that our time on this plane...
Worlds Without End
A few days ago I wrote about Second Life - the virtual reality portal that burst onto the internet perhaps 15 years ago, burned hotter than the sun for a few...
Second Life
Late last night I started watching a documentary on Netflix about Second Life - the online virtual reality community “game” that appeared about ten or fiftee...
Crossing Paths Again
On Monday evening, shortly after arriving back from the coast with a car full of dirty clothes,I turned tail with our youngest daughter and walked into town ...
Minimum Effort
I’ve been trying to write this blog post for the last three hours. Being honest, writing ranks lower than any other draw on my time - which probably explains...
A Weekend Away
I was going to begin this post with some sort of clever remark about nobody searching me out to discover where I have been for the last few days, but then re...
An Australian Sports Bar In Frankfurt
Trying to find authentic places to eat in central Frankfurt is futile, because just like any modern international city, it’s filled with every cuisine you co...
Walking The Streets Of Frankfurt
After finishing work unexpectedly early this evening (who knew mainland Europe were all work-shy? I want to move here immediately). Seriously though - I’m us...
Preparing To Fly
In a couple of hours I’ll be on the first of a couple of trains, headed towards London Heathrow airport. I’m flying to Frankfurt in Germany for the week - li...
Departure And Arrival
Departure I’m sitting in the departure lounge of Terminal 2 at Heathrow Airport, just outside London. I got here far too early. Official guides tell you to a...
Human
While walking into town to buy groceries this morning I whiled away a few minutes scrolling through the Tumblr dashboard, and happened upon a distant friend ...
Nothing Is Simple
I have meetings until 4pm today, and then I’m out of here. I have no reservations on the train, so will most likely be standing up for the first three hours ...
The Lady In The Restaurant
Today was a good day. I woke at ridiculous o’clock before contemplating the ceiling of the hotel room for several hours. I skipped the ridiculously over-pric...
Here There And Everywhere
I returned to the office this morning - just long enough to clear email, and start fixing issues discovered on a client site. After a couple of hours working...
Bank Holiday Monday
It’s a bank holiday in the UK today. You’ll be pleased to learn that I have achieved nothing at all, all day so far. At the time of writing it’s just past 2p...
Easter Sunday
It’s been a slightly crazy day. Miss 13 woke us at 6am this morning, asking if she could get up yet. All she had on her mind was the Easter Bunny, and the pr...
The Harry Potter Studio Tour
After a week off work achieving very little, the weekend has been a full-on sprint so far - filled with days out, nights out, and more days out. Somewhere al...
Birthday
Miss 11 becomes Miss 12 today. I’m wondering where the time has gone. The tiny little girl with blonde curly hair has become a leggy gazelle with athlete’s c...
After The Party
We are still alive - and most credit goes to the staff at the local bowling alley, who seem to have the entire children’s birthday party routine figured out....
Miscellaneous
Builders were supposed to arrive at our house today to finish replacing the flat roof at the back of our house. I got up at 7, had a shower, shave, brushed m...
Mid Morning Radio
There’s something they don’t tell you about having a “staycation”. While you’re sitting quitely in the lounge with your laptop mid-morning, and the radio is ...
One Day After Another
I have the week off work. You would imagine that would lead to a deluge of blog posts from me - unloading the darkest corners of my brain into the internet i...
Self Publishing
Ever since I started posting ablog on the internet, I have been quite careful to keep a backup copy of the words I have written - it stretches all the way ba...
Relationship Advice From A Machine
A little while after arriving at work this morning, I opened my email with the requisite amount of trepidation (I have grown to fear opening my work email ev...
Shhhh
The office is remarkably quiet at the moment - no doubt because most families that have disposable income or plan ahead have sodded off for Easter. The commu...
Tinkering
In-between putting fires out at work today, I have been tinkering with the archive of my personal blog. Rather than bore you to tears with a tale of teeth gn...
Flights Booked
Cutting a long and boring story very short indeed, this morning I have booked plane tickets and a hotel reservation to travel to Frankfurt in Germany with wo...
Winning And Losing
After arriving at work this morning and feeling pretty okabout life, the universe, and almost everything for the first time in ages, I opened my e-mail and d...
Pictures Dont Always Tell The Story
Anybody looking at the photographs I posted to the social internet via my phone this afternoon would have thought I had a delightful day wandering in the sun...
Childhoods End
For the last several years we have been amassing a collection of bicycles in the shed behind our house. Bicycles our children had either been given, or had b...
Nothing To Report
I’m sitting in the living room, on my own, in the dark. It’s heading towards half past eleven in the evening, and I’m the last person up. My other half went ...
Have Bike Will Cycle
Not a lot of people know that I cycle to work every day. I don’t actually own or drive a car. It means we save a small fortune every year, and it also means ...
The Finish Line
This afternoon I finally dragged the project I have been working on over the finish line.Of course this is only the first finish line. The monstrosity I have...
Carrying A World
I’m still buried in a huge development project at work - I dread to think how many thousand lines of Javascript are now in play. For the last couple of days ...
Morning
I woke several hours ago, and stared at the bedroom ceiling for a while - daydreaming about whatever it is you daydream about in the moments after you wake u...
Returning To The Fold
If you were wondering where I have been for the last month or so, I went on something of a blogging adventure, writing under an assumed name at Blogger. I th...
Falling Off The Blogging Horse
It feels like ages since I last opened up in a blog post. Since the start of the year all I seem to have done is turn the pedals of the internet - doing the ...
Above Top Secret
I went somewhere rather special with work today. I would love to tell you the story of my day, but can’t. I’m not even going to give hints about where, or wh...
Slow Start Sunday
I didn’t get out of bed until 10am this morning. I can’t remember getting up that late in months - maybe even years. I stumbled downstairs and discovered the...
Leaving Town Alive
It’s just gone midnight on Friday night. I arrived home a couple of hours ago. The first train headed south from Leeds after work was cancelled - after queue...
Running For A Train
It all looked so simple. When I ordered the train tickets a few days ago, I thought I would be daring, and order specific times for specific trains. This sna...
Preparing To Travel
Here we go again. At lunchtime today I will walk to the local railway station and begin a journey first towards Kings Cross in London, and then on to Leeds i...
Best Intentions
I was going to stop for lunch today. I had every intention of downing tools for an hour, kicking back in my chair, and gazing at the ceiling for a while. Of ...
The Lifestyle Distortion Field
It struck me this evening that I may have stumbled upon a direction for this blog - or rather, the direction I don’t want it to go in.
Tantrums Tears And Tiredness
I’m sitting in the dark of the junk room, listening to a James Taylor album. I’ve tried to write this post about six times so far. Each time I write half a s...
Slowing Down
There was something about the expression on the puppy’s face in the photo accompanying this post (it’s a stock photo, if you were wondering). I think it’s th...
Probably A Mistake
I quietly re-joined Tumblr [https://telespoke.tumblr.com/] a few days ago. I’ve been posting links to the forgettable detritus I post here, but can feel grav...
Coming Up For Air
I’m sitting, gazing absently at the computer screen, and can’t think what on earth to write. I’ve been buried in a vast software development project at work ...
I Cant Even
It’s been a day. And that’s all I have to say about that. I’m not going to empty my head, and record a potentially destructive record of everything that went...
Second To Last
Before we start, it’s probably worth pointing out that the above photo was scraped from a Google search. Any similarity or likeness to our table of reprobate...
Procrastination Books And Lazy Sundays
In preparation somewhat for the next few weeks, I made the conscious decision to not do anything today, and you know what? It was really hard. Aside from the...
Another Year Older
A few minutes before the end of work yesterday, I heard a familiar sound climbing the stairs through the building towards my office, followed by a co-worker ...
Relentless
I feel like I’m on some kind of treadmill at the moment. Almost every day is the same. The same routine from the moment I get up, until the moment I fall asl...
Another Day
I am now five days into the desperate sprint to build what has turned out to be a far more complex project than anybody imagined when the brief arrived in my...
Building A Wish List
Tonight I have been tasked with putting together an Amazon Wish List full of affordable things that my family might choose from for my upcoming birthday. Bef...
Parents Evening
At 2:45pm this afternoon an alarm went off in Microsoft Outlook on my work computer, and reminded me that I needed to race home soon to meet my other half, a...
Strangers
[https://strangecodex.files.wordpress.com/2017/02/ab412-c00ed-pexels-photo-266046.jpeg] While wandering through town early this morning on a mission to comp...
Missing A Day
Well of course I didn’t “miss a day”. I didn’t lose a day. Thursday happened. I just didn’t post anything yesterday - mainly because if you’re a software dev...
Submerged
I hit the ground running this morning, and started the programming for a new project. I completely lost track of time, and before I knew it there was only an...
Back To Work
I returned to the office today after the better part of six weeks either travelling around the country, or sick at home. I will admit to a certain amount of ...
Haircuts And Days Off
I had a day of leave booked today, so took the opportunity to get my hair cut. I also took the snap decision to get my hair cut somewhere completely differen...
The Lady On The Bus
I travelled to town on the bus this morning, on a not-so-secret mission to buy this and that from the high street shops that we all feel guilty about using b...
Dinner And Friendship
I was invited to help celebrate a birthday last night - a simple evening of food, drink, and conversation with close friends. After the month long battle wit...
Friday Morning Coffee
After being sick for the better part of two weeks, my body finally appears to have remembered it has an immune system, and has wandered off to see what on ea...
Books I Have Not Read
Now there’s a title for a blog post. Of course I’m not talking about all books in the published universe that I have not read yet - just the ones on the shel...
Why
Somebody I have known on the internet for years emailed me this afternoon, asking why I chose Blogger over WordPress. I suppose the question really opens a c...
So I Had This Dream
I had a weird dream last night. I can’t remember much about it now, other than it made a lot of sense in the dream to shut this blog down, and start again el...
Breaking The Silence
It’s been four days since I last posted anything to the blog. I’m still sick. I have to make a decision in the morning about either calling the doctor to try...
Home Already
I was supposed to be at the far end of the country all week. Given that I have been sick for the last two weeks, and was gradually getting worse, leaving in ...
One More Week
In about three quarters of an hour I will leave the house for one more week on the road. One more week of living from a bag in a hotel. One more week away fr...
Sunday Morning
After an early night to give my body every chance possible of fighting off the virus that’s been hanging over it for the last week, I slid out of bed a littl...
For One Day Only
I’m back in the office today - for one day only - enough time to fileexpenses from the last several weeks, sit in on a few meetings, and then trundle home on...
Running Out Of Words
When you’ve been on the road non-stop since the start of the year, you start to run out of anything noteworthy to say about your day. Each day becomes much l...
Tuesday Night With Idina Menzel
It doesn’t feel like Tuesday night. Do you ever get that? When you get to a certain point in the week, and you think “Really? Is it really only Tuesday? Sure...
Random Utterances
It’s 9pm. I’m hundreds of miles from home again. Holed up in a hotel again. Scheduled to arrive at an office block across the city I’m staying in tomorrow mo...
A Unicorn Of Sorts
While reading a comment from a long-time reader of my blog earlier, it struck me that there are relatively few of us left. By “us”, I mean the bloggers of th...
Words From The Way Home
The following words were written yesterday while on the train heading back down the country. I had planned on posting it last night, butnothing ever seems to...
Increasingly Distant
While swimming against the tide for months or years on end, struggling to keep my head above waterto keep my boat pointing in vaguely the right direction, or...
Thursday
Just a few words tonight - mainly because I left the charger for my laptop in a conference room, somewhere in the depths of a very big building across town. ...
Not A Teacher
I’m teaching again. I hesitate to use the word “teaching” though, because I know lots of teachers, and respect them enormously. If they heard me tell anybody...
From Manchester To Leeds
After another day stood at a lectern, pretending to know what I was talking about, I finally escaped late in the afternoon, and began dragging my suitcase al...
Media City Uk
After standing at a lectern for the better part of the day, trying to sound somewhat clever, I wandered back to the hotel this evening along a puddle-strewn ...
The People On The Train
Rather than tell the story yet again of how I sat on a number of trains for a number of hours, I thought it might be interesting to record the various people...
Obama Change And Distant Friends
It’s been fascinating to watch events unfold on the other side of the world this week.Quite apart from having family in America (my uncle and cousin live in ...
Heading North Again
Tomorrow afternoon Iwill walk to the railway station across town, and spend the greater part of my Sunday evening travelling north towards Manchester. After ...
From A Distance
While reading the blogs I follow at lunchtime, I spotted a post from a friend that has been absent for some time. They have been rattling around the back of ...
The Mindfulness Of Cats
While becoming increasingly stressed about the vortex of expectations and obligations surrounding me at the moment, it struck me that cats are rather expert ...
Booking Tickets For Future Travel
I spent the majority of today either filing expense claims for recent travel, or (rather craftily, I thought) filing expense claims for trains tickets that h...
Monday Night Hotel Club
I’m sitting in a hotel room 200 miles from home. I got back from the hotel restaurant a couple of hours ago, and all I have done since is obsess overthe thin...
Accidentally Via Oxford
While walking to the railway station this afternoon I took a look at tickets the machine at the station printed out, and noticed the overall journey ticket w...
One Blog To Rule Them All
I killed my Tumblr account last night. I know - I’ve done it before. Last night felt like the final time though, because it wasn’t so much about me, as the p...
Miss 13 Joins The Social Internet
My middle daughter turned 13 years old this morning. Before going to bed last night she made a point of telling me her phone was on charge, ready to install ...
Hoping For The Car Crash
If you listened to the weather reports in the UK yesterday morning, you would have thought the second great ice age was about to begin. A storm was approachi...
A Long Slow Journey Home
I left the office at 12:30 this afternoon. The lady on reception in the office building called a cab for me, and I busied myself with calling home while wait...
The One Where My Stomach Re Programmed My Brain
I took the remains of last night’s pizza with me to the office this morning - wrapped up in the sandwich bags I bought from the supermarket while waiting for...
Remembering Thoughtcafe
In early 2000, while learning about web development, I built a simple website for people to post stories to. The site began with a few pieces of writing of m...
Tuesday Night Pizza Club
After escaping from the office at a little after 6pm this evening, and making the epic journal (about 100 yards) to the hotel, I dropped my backpack, got cha...
Last Man Standing
While sitting on the train, rumbling towards the north this afternoon, instead of reading, listening to music, or watching movies, I watched the world go by....
Four Trains And A Taxi
You find me sitting in a hotel room, the better part of three hundred miles from home. The room is clean and tidy - or rather it was tidy until I arrived. I’...
Re Packing Bags
Tomorrow afternoon I travel to the far end of the country one again. The journey would normally take me into the heart of London, and back out, heading north...
Expecting The Unexpected
Both of our younger daughters play football for town teams. Football was completely their own idea - when the kids were little we imagined a future filled wi...
A New Suit Of Clothes For The Blog
I finally changed the look and feel of the blog this afternoon. I’ve used this design in the past, and it’s always been a favourite. The design (called “Asce...
The Common Cold
For the last few days I have been soldiering on in the way countless other parents do, pretty much ignoring my body’s attempts to combat a common cold virus ...
Ignorance Is Bliss
It struck me today that social media is becoming just as toxic as fashion and beauty magazines. There is probably a direct correlation between the photo-shop...
A Blogger Of The Old World
I watched a film on Netflix last night by Werner Herzog, about the history of the internet, and the way it has affected life for people in the developed worl...
Cancelling Travel Plans
All of the plans I made this week have now been torn into confetti and sprinkled around the office. The train tickets and hotel booking have been cancelled. ...
Tlc For The Trusty Steed
After splashing out on new tyres and inner tubes for my bike a few days ago, I finally got around to giving it a much needed clean, and swapped the tyres ove...