We’re now living in a little village, and none of the roads that access the village have been gritted/salted. All three roads really only go to the village and that’s it. It’s a cut-through route to other villages, but none of them are apparently important enough to justify gritting even one of the roads. Thanks, local authority.

So travelling in and out of the village is a bit more interesting than usual. Normally you’ve got to deal with mud on the roads, but now it’s snow and ice.

I’ll admit, snowy/icy roads are about the only road conditions that make me a bit nervous. I had my first (and still only) accident on snowy roads, and I’m just not a great fan of driving in those conditions. I still do drive in those conditions, it’s just probably my least favourite situation.

So I’m a) hoping it all fades away pretty soon, and b) thankful that 99% of my current stupid daily commute is on major roads that aren’t going to be a concern on that score.

Take last year’s list, for example :

• Write more
• Take more photos
• Do more websites
• Get more business
• Pay stuff off
• Get off the antidepressants

Not much, really. Yet most of it didn’t quite happen. Work and life got in the way, and things just didn’t quite happen.

Mind you, I did get off the antidepressants, and I did take photos when I got the chance, so that’s not too bad. I also completed a fair few websites, and some other projects – just not for myself.

I think I’ll be keeping the same basic list for this year though.  It’s written with the best of intentions – but the knowledge that things change, including my motivation.  But I think the 2012 list will be (in no particular order) :

• Write more
• Photograph more
• Owe less
• Weigh less

And that’ll do, I think.

As Blue Witch suggested in her comment on the previous post, 2011 wasn’t really a great deal of fun for D4D™ – plus I’ve been busy with other odds and sods.

Being ‘Corbetted’ (as I understand it’s now known) wasn’t any fun at all. Basically, this involves being threatened with legal action because you’ve made comments regarding your personal opinion about someone’s stupidity in light of a very stupid error – and that person then doesn’t have the sense to either contact me (whether by phone, email, or comment on the posts in question) but instead waits two fucking years before complaining through solicitors. We’ll just ignore the fact that Article 11 of the EU’s Human Rights Charter specifically says …

Everyone has the right to freedom of expression.  This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.  The freedom and pluralism of the media shall be respected.

After all, Gore Grimes conveniently ignored it, so I might as well do the same.

So that might explain some of why things went a bit quite here.

The other major change for me was that I stopped wanting to write about some of the more personal stuff that’s been going on. Writing that kind of thing bit me hard at the end of 2010, and the effects of that rumbled through into 2011.

D4D™ used to be a place where I could write, and dump my brain when I needed to. In 2011, it stopped feeling like I could do so.   It affected my desire to write at all, to be honest – well, that and the stupid levels of commuting, but that’s no decent excuse either.

I don’t know what will happen to D4D™ this year. It may be that it’s coming to a natural end. After all, it’ll be ten years in August – maybe that’s a good closing point. I don’t know yet.

I don’t know that I want D4D™ to end. I don’t know that I want to keep it going.  So it’s all a bit up in the air, and I guess only time will tell.

So it’s been a tad “Radio Silence” here – even the upcoming Festering Season hasn’t made much of an impact this year. Commuting has taken a big chunk of my ‘non-work’ time, particularly where I’ve been working in London. Overall, my commuting miles since May ’til the end of this week comes to just over 19,000 miles,and that’s just for commuting. Yes, nineteen thousand miles. I must be barmy.

All told, it’s been an eventful year, what with one thing and another. Work changes (as above) took up a big part of those events, and kept me busy.

Writing in general took a back-seat, and D4D™ in particular. I wonder if it’s coming to the end of its life, to be honest – because I haven’t really missed writing here at all.

2012 is now just round the corner, and it’ll either be a time to re-start, or a time to give up.  And to be honest, I don’t yet know which option will win.

Seriously feeling old.

The GP said it’s apparently tendonitis (or tendinitis, for some reason) and prescribed some weapons-grade anti-inflammatories that have done cock-all.

So I’m due back at the GPs in a couple of weeks, once the anti-inflammatories are finished, and we’ll see what gets said this time.

In the meantime, it has periods of being “OK-ish”, but then there are others where anything at all hurts. And I can’t fucking wait ’til those periods are over and done with.

In general, I have to say I’ve been pretty impressed with it.

On the downside, I’m now on my third one – the displays don’t appear to be strong enough to withstand being carried in a backpack without an additional case. The first one cracked after a couple of weeks, the second one cracked within 24 hours, and the third one has been fine – allbeit because I’ve now got a purple leather case for the damn thing.

Throughout the problems, and the need to replace two devices, I was really impressed with Amazon’s customer services. In both cases, I went to the website, registered the issue, and clicked “Call me now”. Immediately, the phone rang, I was put through to an adviser, and the issue got sorted. The replacement was couriered out (and arrived next day) and I then had 28 days each time to send the broken device back – again, postage paid and done by courier. It was the most painless returns scheme I’ve seen in a very long time – and impressively done.

As for the Kindle itself, it’s a nice bit of kit. The eInk display is a bit slow and weird to update, but you get used to it very quickly. Actually, the entire thing is a bit slow – if you’re used to blipping through options etc., you have to learn to slow down a bit. I think it’s all down to the limitations of the display, but it’s livable-with.

Reading on it is – I find – very simple. No eye-strain (there’s no backlight, so it’s black text on a grey screen) and no problems. The text is clear, regardless of font size, and all told it’s pretty good.  Purchasing books is totally painless – click to order the book, and within 30 seconds it’s on the device. Very nice indeed.

It’s not the same as reading a ‘proper’ book- but it’s also a lot less intrusive, and easier in crowded situations. A lot of the books I’m reading at the moment are “trade paperback” size – which seems to mean ‘about the same size as a hardback’ – and on the Tube or whatever, they’d be a pain to read while people thump past all the time. With the Kindle, it’s a lot easier.

All told, I doubt Kindle will replace my books totally. However, when it comes to reading while commuting, it may just make the difference.