Just Random Shit!

  • Goals

    Goals

    Having a goal can be extremely motivating. Whatever it is – running a marathon, achieving a particular weight, having a certain bank balance – having a target focusses us in a way that few other things do. And then bolting onto the goal some other scaffolding, like a penalty for failure, a support network that…

  • Thoughts on 30 Days of Writing

  • Fuck Christmas! Do They Know What Day It Is?

    Fuck Christmas! Do They Know What Day It Is?

    All of us of a certain age can remember where we were for Live Aid. That charity concert in 1985 that brought the whole world together. It was a moment in history like the assassination of JFK, or the moon landing, or the death of Princess Diana, where everyone who was old enough remembers exactly…

  • Missing the Boat

    Missing the Boat

    I got my first connection to the internet in 1993. I accessed via a DOS prompt and used a 2400 baud modem. I could use email, download files from file servers and use bulletin boards. It was a far cry from what we know as the internet today. Although I was fresh out of law…

  • Space

    I was at an event recently. Lots of people. Lots of interesting things to see and do. Lots going on. One of the venues was large, with lots of space. People sat in seats and there was enough space to leave chairs between individuals or between groups sitting together. People sat comfortably and watched the…

  • Houses to Hotels

    Houses to Hotels

    Like most kids I grew up in my parent’s house. When I was younger my Dad would often say, “You treat this place like a bloody hotel!” I was never really sure what he meant, since the only hotels I’d stayed in were places like guesthouses in Blackpool, where the comparisons with Fawlty Towers were…

  • Death and Taxes!

    Death and Taxes!

    Why is it so difficult to switch from a mindset of asset acquisition to one of asset depletion? We spend our working life focussing on asset acquisition and growth yet if we are to not render our work worthless at some point we need to switch our focus to that of spending what we have…

  • Why Have One Thing When You Can Have Three?

    Victorian gentlemen were impeccably dressed. Every day their valet would press and arrange their shirts, trousers and ties. They would heat the heavy iron on the stove and using a cloth carefully eliminate every crease from each item in turn. In modern times we have a steam iron that presses clothes perfectly in a fraction…

  • Atoms and Stories

    Atoms and Stories

    We are all just stories. A collection of atoms and the stories of what those atoms have done while they hung out together in the form of us, for a brief period, along a path called time. We are real. For now. But the key word is now, because the ‘you’ that was real when…

  • Volunteer Remuneration Strategy

    Always remember to pay your volunteers well. If that seems like a contradiction or an oxymoron then bear with me. If you think that volunteers are people who give their time to you and ask for no payment in return then you are wrong. They want no financial remuneration but that doesn’t mean that they…