250,000

Bloody hell – sometime in the last couple of days, d4d™ had its 250,000th page impression. Quarter of a million page views – that’s not bad going at all. Of course, I missed the actual event because I wasn’t paying attention, and somewhere along the line it looks like I’ve also lost a couple of days of logfiles (they’ll be around somewhere, I know – it’s just finding the bloody things!) so it was probably really about a week ago that it went over, and I’ve only just noticed.

Mea Culpa, but all the same, bloody hell, quarter of a million. Colour me chuffed.

Inertia

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve found myself really settling into the idea of moving come January. I’m tied in to the current contract ’til then, which is a pain in the bum, but for once it gives me some opportunity to get organised, to look at what I’ll be doing when I’m down there, and generally just to get sorted prior to actually moving.

However, one thing I’m really bad at is waiting. The decisions have been made, and given a choice, I’d be getting everything done now, and moving within the next month. I can’t, because of the contract, and that’s frustrating. I feel like there’s an inertia effect, things have started rolling on, and now I’m just waiting for it all to happen.

In the meantime, though, it means I get to look at some of the things I need to deal with. Finances (yick), Letting Agents (yick yick yick), Job sites, Work agencies, that type of thing. Even down to filling in an iProfile for work agencies to use as a reference point. Scarily organised.

I’m even looking at stuff on the social side – thinking about doing a couple of evening courses once I’ve moved, and even ordered a prospectus to that end. Hell, I’m even looking at photography and gallery resources down there.

I don’t know, though – is all this preparation just making me realise how much I don’t want to be up here any more? Or is it simply sensible and prudent to be thinking about these things now, rather than my more normal method of moving and then sorting out all this sort of thing?

Employment Agencies

Thanks, Karen, for the advice. I’m now a lot more sorted out with regards to opting-out (and yes, as I’m a single-person limited company doing contracting, opting-out seems to be the best option) and happier about the entire thing.

Sometimes the internet’s just bloody great.

Photographic Geekery

Blimey, it’s official, I’m definitely heading into the deep dark world of photographic geekery. The evidence of this is that I’ve just ordered my first two filters for the camera – a polarising filter and a UV one. Quite honestly I’ve no idea as yet what I’m going to do with them, or what effects they’ll have on photos, but it’s all getting a bit more advanced than just point-n-shoot.

And yes, that digital SLR is looking more and more likely for the future. A sign that perhaps I should consider getting out less. Or something.

Ceefax

I bet Diamondgeezer writes about this tomorrow, but did you know that it’ll be Ceefax’s 30^th Birthday?

It’s amazing how long the service has been going, but I can understand in some ways why it still gets 20 million users per week, even in the age of broadband etc.

Happy Birthday, Ceefax.

Shit-pit

As regular readers will know, the local council is spiffing up its offices for the CPA (Corporate Performance Assessment) next month. The outside walls have been sandblasted and pressure-washed, bits have been repainted, paving slabs replaced, so forth, so fifth.

I’m not sure quite what all this prettifying has to do with corporate/council performance as the CPA is more to do with making sure that information is accessible and understandable, and that there are policies in place for relevant things like housing, social services and the like. But that’s not something I get to care about.

However, you’d think that any organisation worth anything would have figured out that if you’re cleaning the walls of the building, it’s a better idea to clean the roof first so that the shit from the roof doesn’t wash down your nice clean walls come the first rain-fall…

Paranoia and Persecution

One thing I’ve noticed about the UK (and that I get reminded of at inopportune moments) is that you really have to work at being self-employed and so on in the face of epic levels of bureaucratic shit. As most people know, I’m an IT contractor, and in the last week I’ve been taking a whole shed-load of flak lately regarding the Conduct Of Employment Agencies Act.

Currently, no-one I deal with actually seems to know a bloody thing about this act, except that they’ve now got to comply with it. Apparently as a contractor I can opt-in or opt-out of this act, but no-one can tell me which is the best option, and the only company that I was recommended to contact about it turned out to be approximately as useful as a fart in a tornado.

I think that what’s frustrating about this is that it’s supposedly something important, yet no-one knows a chuff about it. It’s bad enough having to go through all the guff of tax, NI, companies house, customs and excise and the countless other hurdles and hoops that bureaucrats hurl into the path of the self-employed, without then having to deal with even more shit that is utterly mysterious and – ultimately – pointless.