Archive for the 'Miscellanea' Category

A beautiful video

Monday, October 13th, 2008

I’m a fan of typography, and this is a wonderful rendering of a great document - the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Sabbatical Progress

Friday, July 25th, 2008

I’m now about half way through my sabbatical year, so I thought a progress update would be in order. You may recall that I wanted to see if I could do two things:

  • Integrate more cycling into my habits.
  • Find out if I have the capacity to start my own software company.

Taking the cycling first, I haven’t much. Indeed, I cycle as infrequently as when I had a full time job. An early start has fizzled out, and my main activity has been to watch this year’s Tour de France. However, I got a nice new cycle computer for my birthday last week, so perhaps the trick of ‘new equipment’ will get me going (it has worked in the past).

On the software company front, I have made more progress, although I don’t claim to have a going concern yet! I have formed Transmission Begins, and developed its first product, My Own TV Channel. This is now just starting to be used by people other than me. It’s well received whenever I discuss it, so my current plan is to improve it somewhat and then focus on building a service business around it. The software itself is available for download with an open-source licence.

Spotted on my travels

Tuesday, May 27th, 2008

Apologies to those of you who don’t know a speaker of a little known language, ook. Clearly there is a sufferer in Grantham.

No pixels were photoshopped in the creation of this post.

Readers contributions

Tuesday, April 15th, 2008

As the second in an occasional series, Philippe sent me this pic he took. It’s a rather nice image of cyclists showing at the Catto Gallery recently. It looks like I’ve missed the chance to see it for real. Ah well, thanks Philippe! David Gerstein Cyclists

Homepage updates

Tuesday, March 11th, 2008

My homepage now updates itself from various places, including this blog and twitter. One less maintenance chore on this website.

last.fm profile live

Sunday, February 24th, 2008

I’ve joined another social website: last.fm

I’m digitalreality, and the house music computer is ladyhamilton. Spotting why it’s called that shouldn’t be hard if you know a little about me.

I’m looking forward to hearing some new music.

On Sabbatical

Tuesday, February 19th, 2008

I’m one month in, and I’ve not even blogged about it. Oops!

I’m on sabbatical for around a year. I’ll try to write a little about what I get up to.

Late last year I was thinking through my options, and decided it was time to try something a little different. As I was wrapping up for this sabbatical, I ran through all my holiday records. In nearly eight years of working in the UK with 5 weeks of holiday time each year, I had only once had more than a week in one go (And that was to come out to far-flung parts of my family, so was good, but not stress free!). What would I be able to do if I had a little more time?

After ten years in the software industry, I’m in the position to take some time away from my regular job as a sabbatical. I want to see if I can learn some things about myself:

  • Do I want to integrate more cycling into my habits?
  • Do I have the capacity to start my own software company?

I’ve got a year to figure out the answers (Eleven months from now…).

A lovely cake from Konditor and Cook

Sunday, February 17th, 2008

I thought’d I’d share the pic that Jenny mentioned.Stop CakeI assume it was as tasty as the other products Konditor and Cook sell!

truly, madly, unimaginatively

Thursday, February 14th, 2008

Advert for meish.org/vd

I’m not the worlds biggest fan of Valentines day, despite being a bit of a romantic at heart. meish.org says it so well!

Hello to my readers from Symbian who may be missing this posting from ‘Chat’.

2007 Photos

Saturday, January 5th, 2008

Drinks in Paris My photo album for 2007 is now live. As usual, I’ve removed images of people who don’t appear on the web elsewhere. The rise of flickr and the like means there are more people here!


Train of Thought is © John McAleely