And here we are again, early feb­ru­ary and all those on-line shops start the deluge of “sug­ges­tions” for thing to buy my part­ner to show my love for no reason other than it’s the 14^th February.

No, I will not buy my part­ner a BluRay player.

No, I will not buy my part­ner a 42″ flat screen TV, or a high-end digital camera.

No, I will not buy my part­ner an exer­cise bike or a furry pink laptop bag

There’s a simple reason for all this…

I don’t have a part­ner.

Well, here we are, the start of 2010, and it’s time to make those new-year-resolutions…  so briefly, here are mine…

• Com­plete my 30% Pro­ject as a self-improvement exer­cise (more details on the project’s own website)
• Cut down on my caf­fiene intake — switch­ing to decaf tea, even at work, and redu­cing the amount of cola and other caf­fi­en­ated soft drinks
• Take steps to fur­ther reduce my car­bon foot­print.  I will not be eli­mint­at­ing fly­ing, but will be attempt­ing to cut my car use by walk­ing or using pub­lic trans­port more, and will also be con­tinu­ing on from the Cur­rent­Cost Pro­ject to reduce the energy con­sump­tion of my home — espe­cially at “idle”, and for example by repla­cing light fit­tings to low-energy CFL or LED equi­val­ents where prac­tical to do so.

Now to revisit those 2009 res­ol­u­tions and see how I did…

Oh dear.   OK, let’s not do that…

Instead, let’s take a look at what may be the events to remem­ber in 2010…

• The end of Big Brother on Brit­ish TV– is this the turn­ing point for “real­ity” TV?  I’m guess­ing, unfor­tu­nately not!
• The dis­ap­point­ment with the over-hyped Th13teen at Alton Towers not being the hor­ror attrac­tion people are expect­ing, and turn­ing out to be a fam­ily friendly “pink knuckle” thrill ride instead…
• Jen­son But­ton win­ning his second F1 World Cham­pi­on­ship?  or will it be Schu­macher again?  or maybe Hamilton?

Again, what do you all think is there to look for­ward to in 2010…   I’m told there might be some little foot­ball tour­na­ment going on as well…

As the new year starts it’s 24 hour tour around the world (it’s already 1^st Jan in Aus­tralia, it’s lunch­time on New Years Eve here…) it’s time to reflect on the past year, and look for­ward to the next…

The ques­tion is, for what will 2009 be remembered the most,maybe one of these?

• for Obama get­ting the Nobel Peace Prize whilst hav­ing his forces waging war?
• For Jen­son But­ton finally win­ning the F1 World Championship
• For the con­tinu­ation of more and more extreme weather — hot­ter sum­mers, more floods des­troy­ing homes and communities?
• Avatar?
• Win­dows 7?
• MacOS Snow Leo­pard (was that 2009??)

What do you remem­ber as the “hall­mark” of 2009?

I’ll leave look­ing for­ward to the next year for tomorrow’s post…

Yes, it’s that time of year again…

And yes, there’s more…  lots more…

Read the rest of this entry »

Dur­ing my enforced Face­book absence, I’ve found time to do another pro­ject — fig­ur­ing out how much elec­tri­city I use, and find­ing ways to cut down (without affect­ing my life sig­ni­fic­antly) — I’ll warn you now, this post gets really geeky, really fast.  Also, I’ll men­tion now, that I’m a bit of a new­bie when it comes to Linux, and although I remembered a few bits from my younger days tinker­ing with things (like how to use the vi editor) — this has been very much a learn­ing exper­i­ence. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m start­ing to think that my self-inflicted break from Face­book and Twit­ter is a good thing — I don’t feel as if I’m miss­ing out on know­ing what every­one else is doing in the slight­est — and in fact, not know­ing what oth­ers are doing is, I think, a bene­fit sometimes.

It’s also allowed me to tackle a little pro­ject I’ve had in mind for a while — and when it’s fin­ished (and if it works) there’ll be a write up what I’ve done — basic­ally track­ing how much elec­trical energy I’m using at home…  once the data is gathered, I can no doubt find ways to improve, use less power, and cut my bills.  I’ll post more inform­a­tion on that sub­ject soon.

Well, I man­aged to stay off both Face­book and Twit­ter over the rest of the week­end, hope­fully now that we’re into the work­ing week, it’ll be a little easier to res­ist the tempta­tion to see what other people are broad­cast­ing. Hope­fully going cold-turkey from those two sites doesn’t mean I have to go cold-turkey from con­tact with my friends… A few have been in touch by other means, but we’ll see how this goes… (yes, I know this will be pos­ted to both sites auto­mat­ic­ally, I’ve not dis­con­nec­ted the feeds, as at the moment this is only a tem­por­ary break from social networking)