Recently in reactions to life Category

I built a shed yesterday, whilst Lucy looked after Oscar. I made a building in fact, the first I remember creating. It is an oddly powerful feeling. A space to store our things that is dry and safe for them. I can understand part of why people feel attached to them. I know the other half is escape and peace and quiet, but this one is 80cm by 210 cm and too low to stand up in.

See Lucy's picture of me making the shed

Today when I went down to the kitchen, there was something where yesterday there was nothing. One seldom gets to make a building, buy them, let them or stay in them, but not build them.

It made me think more about this house we bought and the irritation with the plumbing we are having. There is something appealing about starting afresh, what I like about Victoriana is not necessarily the age, more the style. With the age comes everyone else's compromises and shoddy workmanship. I'm tempted in my next house to start with a clean slate as much as possible. Here in Walthamstow, we rewired, part replastered and put in a new bathroom, given more time and money and hindsight, I'd have replaced all the plumbing and the kitchen too. Plumbing is the worst, every plumber dislikes the style or shortcuts of the previous incumbents.

That however is an immense amount of work, so to return to the shed, there is something appealing about a new building, hence the public appeal of Grand Designs I guess, making a big statement with the place you live in is tempting. A green oak framed barn would be nice, maybe someday, I'd need somewhere to build it though, which is a whole other blog post.

So, maybe a bit early to be thinking about New Year, but my plans for the next year have already coalesced. I'm going to get out and run more, I've been rubbish this year, since the summer when we went mountaineering, I've done nothing. I'd blame it on house moving plans and changing job, but really I just haven't had the inclination.
Second on my list is to add to my writing repetoire, regular readers will know I've been writing for Macworld on and off this year, two features and a few reviews. Recently, I discovered a strong desire to write fiction, it is a reawakening of a five year old plan to write, born out of a storyboarding course I went on at Central St Martins. I'll probably start with some shorts, which might well end up on here.
Lastly, I've also got a real desire to write code again, Python and Ruby in particular appeal. So I've been plugging my way through the Ruby on Rails tutorials and am booked on a Python course too. NovelContext needs some work, so I'd better get on and make that prototype. Releasing some open source software would be satisfying, we'll see.

Lots of excitement happening off-blog at the minute, over the past few months, we've put our flat on the market, found a nice house in Walthamstow and are nearing exchange and completion, which is really exciting. I'm looking forward to living in Walthamstow, north of the river for the first time since I arrived eight years ago. Being near a big daily market and on the tube will be fun too. It is also near Epping Forest, which is lovely and lots of friends are nearby on the other side of the River Lea/Lee.

Also, I'm leaving the BBC after four years and will be working for the Nature Publishing Group in November. I'll be their Product Development Manager, building new social software tools for scientists, they already have some great existing products - Connotea (download the code) which is a group reference manager cum social bookmarking application and their various gateway collaboration websites. I'm really excited by the move, though of course sad to be leaving my friends at the Beeb.

This post explains why I've been feeling a bit frazzled, mainly down to the joy of buying and selling a house in the UK. Living in SE London and house hunting in NE London is time consuming. Each property might be the right one, then you see that the current owners have ruined the place, or it just isn't as it seemed in the description. Every property reflects a life time of design decisions, some of them for the better, but all of them right for someone at the time. The variety of shapes and changes of the stock Walthamstow two/three bed Victorian terrace never ceases to amaze, as does the variability of the estate agents. More on old houses in another post, later, though the 60s and 70s did sad things to victoriana.

Anyway, back to being stressed, a while ago, whilst trying to get talkeuro live, stress felt like big heavy things closing in on me. Recently it has felt more precarious, unfinished, I guess it is the desire for closure and my inability to control the process. Hunting for the right house and waiting to hear about a job are the same kind of stress I think, neither is resolvable entirely via your own actions alone.

I think it is interesting how we refer to these different feelings by the same name, being stressed. The talkeuro feeling was more like a kind of pressure, I wonder if the feeling drove the name or if my imagery comes from the name. There was a sense of inescapability to it, more like work stress, too many things to do and not enough time.

Buying a house is more unresolved, too many possibilities and decisions to make. Wait for something else; buy that one; buy a cheap knackered one and refit it; buy the perfect one and move in... waiting to hear about a job has less variability, but the same sense of waiting for the right thing to happen.

So, pressure and tension are names for types of stress. I've got Getting Things Done on order, but one thing I feel is helpful is DoingLessStuff™, pick one thing and do it well, if you get stuck more on. Easy to say, but from the conversations I've had with people quite hard to manage in practice.

In this light I've started to shed projects I have no longer anytime to complete, so that I can concentrate on SocialDocument ideas, my forthingcoming new house and my new job. So pick the bones clean of these ideas on my Backpack page - crazy schemes and loose ideas.

Gavin's guide to DoingLessStuff (tongue firmly planted in cheek)

• write down all the tasks you are planning, fairly high level
• write down the rest of the things you are doing
• pick 4 of them (this number will vary for you)
• remember you have a job and a personal life (household) to run, so there are two already
• workout which other two things you'd love to do
• write them down
• check up in a fortnight and see if you are still doing all four, it is so easy to drift.
• If you drift put one of them down again.
• lastly, finish things, half finished is worse than not started.

So, a plan of sorts that I've been following for the past few months, not always that well, but it has helped me attain that all important focus. Of course, I'd love to be a wildlife photographer; finish that novel I've half started; run the other five web projects I've got plans for; apply for the funding for the SocialDocuments ideas; and a dozen other ideas, but I ain't got time. Realising that is obvious, but hard to maintain.

Given that I've not read GTD yet, this is probably straight out of there and I've just absorbed it from the collective, still this rocket science helped me over the summer, well that and eating frogs... doing the hard tasks first.

Hmm, I was really looking forward to the berliner format Guardian, but having seen the example front page (preview edition, explaining what and why, I like the size, but that white on blue title is just wrong... maybe it'll seem different in the flesh.

More on Monday

I have never written about footbacl on here, but my home team's defeat of England does need a brief mention. It certainly made my Dad happy, I'd just finished watching the first episode of Lost (excellent BTW) and I think the football was more bizarre.
Still there is always the ashes and you are only playing Australia, if Northern Ireland can claim a victory from 85 years of defeat, perhaps the English can get one after 18 years.

I visited New Orleans for CSCW2002, thanks to my friend Elizabeth and the BBC. It is sad to see such a unique city laid waste. The conference was great, but I also took time to explore the French quarter and look at the architecture of the timber buildings, now probably lost forever. I also went up river to see the Audubon Zoo, which was/is one of the best in the world.

In the zoo they had a swamp exhibit, I guess the whole place is like that now. They also had a mud hill, called Monkey hill, one of the highest points in the surrounding area, when the zoo was built, the hill was made from spoils I think. Kids in the area used to take turns walking to the top, as there was nothing similar for miles around. I guess it might have been 30-40 feet high. The Zoo seems to have fared alright, with only some flamingoes dead, see Mongabay and Dallas News, but who can tell how they'll hold out.

Back then, New Orleans was very proud of the future investment in their levees, the American army were building major improvements, but their funding seems to have been withdrawn or reduced in scope. The whole thing is sort of like a hollywood disaster movie, but no one hired Bruce Willis to save the day, Euan's take is a bit different.

I can't comprehend how hard it seems to be to get bottled water to those in need, they can drive coaches in and fly helicopters in. A litre of water is one kilogram, so 10,000 is ten tonnes, so a truck can hold 30-40 thousand litres of water, so a convoy of 10 trucks could give most people a litre of water a day, but it seems that people are dying of thirst. Water is on the way, but by boat. The shooting and looting are difficult to understand too, looting more so, people have nothing so need clean clothes, nappies, food, water. Maybe not electronics and jewellery, but a beer is just clean water... Bush and the federal Government do see to be on the backfoot, this is no terrorist attack, just something that plenty of people had predicted. To see the world's biggest military power letting its own poorest people suffer and die is hard to stomach.

On a slightly brighter note, there are some rapid and interesting web applications being developed by individuals, see the geowanking mailing list for information. BBC News picking up on some geohacking, visualisation and other interesting internet based ways to help. Fast work, new apps in 2-3 days, mainly mods on Google Maps. Finally this image from Nasa, shows the scope of the flooding.

I've heard about this race for a good few years, via Lucy's running magazines mainly and thought that four legs good, two legs bad would always be the case, but it seems not. It is the annual Man vs Horse race run over 20 odd miles in Wales and a south Londoner has won it and 25k in prize money too.
Quite amazing and yet another encouragement to get out there and pound the streets for me. When the current launch abates and certainly before I collapse exhausted on an alpine mountainside at the end of the month.

This week it has rained a lot after a short burst of sunshine. So I find it difficult to understand why people have decided that flipflops are now practical springtime footwear. In London when it is wet they must the the most manky thing to wear.
Flipflops are beachwear, not for cities. Wearing them does not make it sunny, wear some proper shoes and stop parading your tired feet around the streets. They may look cute in the shops, but have an honest look at 5pm on a rainy day.

Having somewhat recently decided to make a bird table, we immediately attracted a host of very keen and hungry squirrels. This was not quite the desired result, as the squirrels were already keenly emptying the bird feeder in a most amusing manner.
They were simply climbing up the post of the table. So, we needed a cheap and easy way to stop them. A flowerpot is the answer, turn it upside down and cut up one side of it and then make a rectangular hole in the bottom of it. this hole should be smaller than the diameter of your post that holds up the table, Stretch it to fit over your post and then use some gaffer tape, or other waterproof tape to reattach the sides of the pot together. Finished results look like this picture and you get some mightily perplexed squirrels as a result, more photos to come.
Subsequently, I've had to add another pot so that the upper pot overlaps the lower one and the squirrels are now defeated, I think. Use a small nail to fix the pots in position on the upright of the table.
Now, instead we have attracted some urban pigeons. At least we do get some smaller birds and I suppose all the creatures are hungry...