Since October 2006 I’ve been self employed doing web design & hosting with Chris / Salt & Light Solutions, the odd bit of computer repair work and, primarily, doing the day to day admin for PocketGPSWorld.com‘s speed camera database. The latter essentially being a full time job (along with app development, web site stuff, customer support etc). I wouldn’t change it for the world.
Well, as the title suggests, working at home this way has it’s pro’s and it’s con’s…
I generally don’t get political but the last couple of days have really annoyed me. Pictures like this make my blood boil:
Luke Macgregor/REUTERS (via Guardian)
These kids are only out for one thing – to cause havoc. Why else would they need to cover their faces and hide their identity?
I’m all for students having a moan about tuition fees although I completely disagree with their thinking that uni should be free. They have a right to protest, but not to cause criminal damage and to assault people. They have a right to an education too. The thing is, they’ve HAD that education. You see, education is only compulsory up to the age of 16 and it is paid for by the government. Not everyone in the world has that privilege even though education it is one of our human rights. On the subject of human rights, today is actually Human Rights Day; Another human right is the protection of your own property – something the students seem to forget about when they start breaking stuff! Continue reading »
OK, ok so my article was clearly(?) an April Fool. See the full retraction here: http://www.pocketgpsworld.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&p=519784#519784
A lot of people ask what exactly I do for PocketGPSWorld.com that takes up so much of my time… Well, I’ve been writing this article for a few weeks in the spare time that I managed to find so head over to PocketGPSWorld.com to go and find out!
Today I had a weird instant messenger conversation with my mate, ‘P’. ‘P’ does computer repair down south and often gets frustrated with people who pretend to know ‘computer stuff’ – I do too. It started of fairly normal (although unless you read any of our previous chats the reference to the XP DVD burning update might seem a bit random) but rapidly went a bit weird…: Continue reading »
I’ve had 3.5 days in Barcelona at Mobile World Congress (MWC) reporting for PocketGPSWorld and Wired4iPhone. It was great but owing to easyJet’s failure to get my boss over there from Gatwick I was rather busy! Needless to say I’m knackered and my calves are killing me… It’s been less than 12 months since I covered CeBIT for PocketGPSWorld but my mind had clearly removed from it’s memory how much hard work these things are! We have, in the past, been accused of ‘swanning about wasting company money’ by some slightly deranged forum users – I really do wish it WAS as simple as gliding around like a swan!
But anyway, short blog as I’m tired…! Have a good weekend!
I would dearly love to show you some video from Monday’s Green Day gig at Sheffield Arena however my iPhone was stolen and was last ‘seen’ in Liverpool, near Kensington Gardens…
On Sunday night my car was broken into as well. Nothing was taken but it did mean I had to pay for a replacement window and the hassle involved.
For those who don’t know I manage the Speed Camera Database for PocketGPSWorld.com (among other things). There’s only me who does this so any time away from processing submissions results in having to do the work anyway so my one week holiday in the Costa del Sol now means I have one week’s worth of camera submissions to process as well as those submitted since my return. In other words, my holiday has now resulted in me having to work twice as hard this week. I call it my pseudo-holiday!
On top of the extra stuff to process for PocketGPSWorld I also seem to have had a tonne of stuff to do for my own websites (new links to add, videos to upload, domain names to park and nameservers to edit) – this in itself is a good thing, it’s just a bad time so soon after my pseudo-holiday…
I mis-set my alarm last night and instead of getting up at the planned 6.30am I had set it for 4.30am… Thing is I didn’t notice and came down and booted up the laptop to start work. I then went into the kitchen to make a coffee and saw the time on the oven read 4.34 – my initial thought was ‘oh, we must have had a power cut’ then I checked my phone* which confirmed it was still stupid o’clock in the morning…
I actually toyed with the idea of actually starting some work but after about 2 seconds I thought ‘sod it’ and went back to bed for a couple of hours!
MaFt
* my phone which now looks rather swish thanks to the awesome free UI, called ‘.Home’ from PointUI.
At about 1 this morning I signed up to a handful of free online business directory thingy’s in the hope of drumming up a bit of business. Each one, however, had a warning that they “have been receiving reports of companies phoning soon after adding a listing to try and sell advertising space, these are in no way affiliated with us”.
Needless to say I’ve had three of these calls this morning trying to pressurise me into giving them £500 over the phone to get an A6 advert into their wonderful magazine that no one has heard of but it will guarantee over 11 contacts each week…
Reckon I’ll give them a miss and just deal with customers directly for now!!
MaFt
