Month: December 2010

What I don't write about

Reading time: < 1 min

Every now and then I get a notion to write about something that irks me, a point of view or statement made by someone else that doesn’t sit quite right with me.

I’ll fire up notepad, create a new blank file, and start typing in an effort to coral both my thoughts and the random words spewing from my head. Inevitably I give up.

Why? Because so much of what I read these days is so badly informed that arguing against it is pointless, or is written by someone who won’t even consider the fact that they might not be 100% on the money, or seems to be written using statements that other people take to be absolutes.

It’s the “absolutes” that really annoy me.

Taking a statement with the presumption that it is complete and full encapsulation of an opinion is very short-sighted, and the usual follow on from that is to presume that you are also in complete opposition with the differing point of view.

So “I like the colour blue” suddenly becomes “I like every colour that is a possible shade of blue” and is extrapolated into “therefore you must hate red”.

So I don’t write those types of things anymore. Not that I wrote all that many of them in the first place but in my continuing quest to avoid negativity wherever I can, I choose not to write about that stuff.

I choose not to write about a lot of other stuff too but that’s for entirely different reasons.

White Christmas

Reading time: < 1 min

I am starting to get royally fedup with this perpetual monotone. I get it, it’s winter. Can we move on now?

Along with the cold and ice and snow, the rapid filling of my calendar is a sure sign it’s the festive season. Communal gatherings of friends and family, and the usual desire to “finish this by the end of the year” has my calendar swarming with outings, tasks and reminders.

And then, on top of all that, my best mate goes and breaks his arm so I need to go and help him wrap some presents. Numpty that he is.

However, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

For all those reasons and more, the year is ending on a high and, whilst there will be melancholy tones here and there (it’ll be the first Christmas morning I’ve spent alone, ever), I’m looking forward to it all.

After that, thoughts turn to 2011, of plans and hopes, attending Glastonbury, taking a photography course, and more travel as I’m determined to stop relying on the festive period as the catalyst to seeing my far flung friends.

There will be ups and downs, as always, but so much of this year has been about change, about looking back and realising what it will take to make the future more of what I want.

2011 will be a good year. Oh yes. Mark my words.

Looking forward

Reading time: < 1 min

2011 looms larger and larger in my view and as we start to plan out our goals and aims for the coming year, so I find myself increasingly struggle to make time to write some blog posts, add to that a couple of weeks of food poisoning, and I’m a little behind with things.

That said, it is looking like we are well placed to enter the new year with all the foundations in place to make measureable improvements to the information we offer. We have routes into customer projects via support call outcome codes (if it was an information related issue, I’m contacting the project to see how it arose and what we can do to fix it), stats on what areas of our knowledge centre are being accessed down to the topic level, via our recent upgrade of Author-it, which will allow us to target the areas of the documentation that are being most heavily used, and we will soon be launching a Q&A style forum within our developer community website, allowing a level of user-generated content to be available to all of our customers.

Personally I’ve started to get to grips with the ISTC website and hope to use some of the time available over the holidays to crack on with moving it to a CMS. There is some restructuring required as well and I’m hoping to start adding some new sections in the early part of the year, more on that nearer the time!

To everyone who has visited this blog, I wish you all the very best for the coming festive period, and in to the coming year!

Ho Ho Ho!

Reading time: 2 mins

I’ve almost finished my Christmas shopping. I have one more item (possibly in two parts) to buy and all that will be left will be to badly wrap said presents.

And I guess I should buy a Christmas tree at some point but that can wait.

Part of my longer term plan for the coming year, financially, was to get a credit card that offered 0% on purchases within the first year, and use that for the few remaining things I need to buy for the flat (a chair, some pots, some kitchen knives and maybe a new camera).

Alas I’m STILL waiting for my name to appear on the credit scoring system check against the electoral roll. It is more than a tad annoying. Nothing is hugely urgent though, although I may need new front tyres after yet another heavy snowy/icy night and the odd bit of sudden wheel spin.

As ever, with Christmas approaching, the weeks are starting to fill up with nights out and Christmas events. Mine kick off on Friday, with our team Christmas lunch, and include a viewing of It’s A Wonderful Life at the Glasgow Film Theatre, a possible ‘Moon’ night (weather dependant) run by Glasgow University, a couple of nights out to clubs, the Company Christmas ‘do’ and the Monday before Christmas a viewing of TRON: Legacy at the IMAX (wheeeee!).

After all that lot it’s just the usual eat, drink, sleep pattern from Christmas through to Hogmanay.

I’ve already got some things sketched out for the New Year, including a few gigs, a photography night class, and I’m thinking about a wee trip to London in February.

But enough of all that. One thing I won’t be doing, as I’ve rarely managed them in the past so thought I’d just skip them all together this year, is any “Best of 2010” lists. It’s been one helluva bumpy ride this year, but it’s ending on a high and I’d much rather look forward to 2011.