When I Grow Up
Posted: Tue 30 October, 2012 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Domestic, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Own Business, Resolutions, Thoughts, Work-related, Writing | 2 Comments »In the run-up to turning 41, I’ve gone back to wondering what I want to be when (if) I grow up.
And the truth is, I still don’t know.
I’m lucky, in that the work I do at the moment I actually something I do love doing – and would still be doing even if I were doing something else as a ‘proper job’ – but I still keep coming back to thew question “Is this what I want to be doing for the next 20+ years?” (Or even the next 10) The answer to that is also “I don’t know”.
Of course then there’s the follow-on questions – If not this, then what? Why? How? And again, I don’t know.
So it’s a case of asking the questions, and then trying to find the answers – and I think in some cases that’s what the next year or so will be about. I’ve got some ideas, and want to work a bit more on those over the next few months. That is, basically, the plan.
Who knows? By the end of it all, I may actually have some better ideas of what I want to do and be when I grow up…
Progress – What’s Next? 2010/11
Posted: Sat 6 November, 2010 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: 2010/11, Change, Depression, Domestic, Getting Old(er), Introspective, Own Business, Photography, Thoughts, Work-related, Writing | 2 Comments »So, following on from how (badly) I’ve done in 2009/10, what’re the plans for 2010/11 ?
Honestly, I don’t really know. I guess the main points can be brought down to :
- Write more
- Take more photos
- Do more websites
- Get more business
- Pay stuff off
- Get off the antidepressants
Other than that, more of my activity will be down to altering life, seeing friends, travelling, doing other odds and sods along the way.
I don’t know what the run-up to 40 will bring, but right now the thing that I do want to do is not stress about it over the next year.
We’ll see.
Progress, or Lack Thereof
Posted: Fri 5 November, 2010 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: 2009/10, Domestic, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Getting Old(er), Introspective, Own Business, Thoughts, Work-related, Writing | Leave a comment »This time last year, this was the list of what I wanted to do in 2009/10…
- Mortgage renewal
- Build up own business
- Design/Launch some of the sites I’ve got ideas for (I know, that’s an ongoing thing – but different sites/ideas this time, as always)
- Write more – I want to get at least one solid piece done. I failed in 2009, but it’s still a plan for 2010 instead.
- Photograph more – again, I’ve got some ideas for big projects on this, I just need to get started on them.
- Lose more weight – I want to lose at least another stone in the next year, and ideally more. But a stone will be the target for now.
- Get to the gym more – something I’ve really slacked on this year
- Do some business planning, and figure out (to some degree at least) what the fuck I want to do next with my life.
- Get back in touch with (and visit) various friends I’ve been useless with for the last couple of years.
So, how did I do?
- Yeah, didn’t do the renewal.
- Still working on that, allbeit slowly
- I did launch a couple of new sites over the year, but nowhere near as many as I wanted to. Mind you, I’ve also culled out a number of the ones that aren’t going to work out, too.
- Certainly written more, along with submitting a couple of small pieces to competitions and the like.
- Photography hasn’t been so successful. I haven’t had the inspiration or motivation as yet – there’s been a number of things I have done, but not what I was planning to do.
- Lost weight – I’m down a stone on where I was, with the intention of losing more.
- I didn’t get to the gym at all
- I didn’t really do much in the way of business planning, although equally I’ve had enough to keep me going over the year.
- I got in touch with friends, saw a few, and then went back to being crap.
All told, not a great year for achievement. Stuff’s been done – just not as much as I wanted to, and/or not in the sections I planned it to be. All told, it’s a bit of a worry, with the culmination in a year’s time of that five year plan – but then, there’s been lots of change in that five years, if I look back to where I was when I started it. So I can live with that – there’s been progress, work and change, they just hasn’t taken me along the path/road I expected them to.
Culling 2
Posted: Wed 20 October, 2010 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: 2009/10, D4D™, Depression, Domestic, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Geeky, Own Business, Work-related | Leave a comment »As well as cutting the number of links in the Blogroll yesterday, I’m also in the process of cutting out a number of the domain names I own. In all cases I’ve had plans or ideas for them, but they’ve not been done, so I’m going to cut down on the outstanding list.
It may be that in time to come I regret this, but for the most part I’ve had those domains long enough that I really should’ve done something with them if I planned to. I’m keeping some – the ones where I’ve really got ideas – but a goodly number are going to fall by the wayside.
In some ways it annoys me that I’m giving up on these. In others, well, it seems like common sense to do so. I think that reducing the number of things on my “want to do/try” list might actually help me get the ones done that remain on the list once this purging process is over and done with.
Of course it might not, too. We’ll see.
Cost Less, Make More
Posted: Wed 11 August, 2010 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: 1BEM, Business, Cynicism, Own Business, People, Thoughts, Work-related | 1 Comment »Another work(ish)-related post, but a subject close to my heart, and usually good for some thoughts and rants.
In this case, we’re currently considering buying one of the most-pirated pieces of software in Christendom, Adobe’s Creative Suite. The reason it’s massively pirated is simple – the fucking ridiculous cost of it.
If we look at getting one licenced copy of the full bells-and-whistles CS5 Master Suite, it costs no less than £2,700. For a piece of software that’ll be updated/outdated within a year. What small company (or even medium-sized company) is going to pay nearly three grand for CS5 ? Let alone what little one-man-band web design company. And yes, you can get a smaller/cheaper CS5 Web Premium for web design. That’s a mere £1,680.
Even more insane, that’s the prices if they send the software in a box. For download purposes, CS5 Master Suite is – um – £2,780. Yep – it costs you more to download the fucking thing than for them to box it up and stick it in the post. What?
Adobe are forever bitching that their software is the most pirated. There’s a reason for that – it’s priced itself out of the “reasonably affordable” market.
I’m pretty sure that if Adobe charged (for argument’s sake) £270 for the CS5 Master – 10% of the current price – the piracy figures for it would drop like a stone. £270 is reasonable for the software – perhaps even a bit more, but 10% was a nice example. Piracy wouldn’t stop completely – there will always be those for who even a pound is “too much” – but it would reduce epically. More people would buy the software – my own suspicion is that they’d actually sell more and make more by having the software at the cheaper price.
Sure, the price has been cut by 90%. But if you get 100 people buying it at £270 instead of one or two at £2,700, you’ve made a shitload more money on your bottom line than you have at £2,700 per copy. Even on the upgrades, people would be more likely to pay again for an upgrade, rather than pirating it.
And that’s the logic that seems to escape these companies. Reduce the price to a sensible/affordable level, more people will buy, less people will evade. Seems logical to me, anyway.
Photographage
Posted: Sun 11 July, 2010 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Norfolk, Own Business, People, Photography, Work-related | Leave a comment »Today I was out in Norwich, doing some photography for an event. A couple of the people I did the NCFE Photographyt course with were involved in the planning, and had volunteered us to do all the photography. And today was the day.
It was actually really enjoyable – although I’m knackered now, of course – and pretty productive.
I focussed (pardon the pun) on people more than anything, as that’s always my weakest subject. So ad hoc street photography ahoy, and a fair dollop of wandering around the area, just trying to get the right shots as they came up.
I’ve got about 150 photos out of the event, some of which I’m pleased with, some less so. I know I’ve got a lot of editing to do regardless, as there’s blown-out highlights in lots of them. Still, it’ll keep me busy for the week.
@Media 2010 – Thoughts
Posted: Sun 13 June, 2010 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: @Media 2010, Geeky, Own Business, Reviews(ish), Thoughts, Work-related | Tags: wdx. #wdx | Leave a comment »So last Thursday and Friday I was in London for the Webdirections @Media Conference. It was the first time I’d been in a couple of years (I last attended the 2007, I think – holiday for the ’08 one, and tubularity stopped me from attending the ’09 one) so it was interesting to see what had changed – and of course what had stayed the same.
Of course the big difference was that @Media is now run/organised/owner by WebDirections, rather than through Vivabit as it has been in previous years. I’d not heard of WebDirections before, but apparently they’ve done a number of similar conferences in Australia etc.
To me, it seemed that the focus of the conference had changed quite a bit this year (or maybe over the last couple of years, I don’t know – can’t really comment on the ones I didn’t/couldn’t attend) to be more about design and programming, rather than the accessibility and user experience themes of previous @Medias I’ve attended. And that’s a disappointment.
The focus this year was very much on Javascript (which used to be a real no-no) and about telling designers to not worry so much about making designs work in all browsers and versions. There was virtually no mention at all of accessibility, except in one session through the two days. For a conference where accessibility and so on were paramount at the start, that’s a pretty sad state of affairs.
The other thing I really noticed this year was how corporate some of it seemed. In previous ones there’s been sponsorship from big companies and so on, but this time it was more going down the “stands in the public areas” type of promotion. Again that could be something that’s happened more in the last couple of years that I’ve missed, so it’s not such an eye-opener for other more regular attendees.
It was a good conference though, don’t get me wrong – I’ve got a lot of stuff to take out of it, bits that I’ve learned, bits that will make sites I work on better in anumber of ways. I’ve enjoyed it – it’s just been interesting to see what’s changed.