23/04/2018, 10:42
Saturday, April 21, 2018
Getting ready to watch Nottingham Forest v Cardiff City with a Cardiff supporting friend. There might be need for a celebration agreement before kick off. #nffc
Longform
22/04/2018, 19:49
Friday, April 20, 2018
@colinwalker just exploring your method of adding the date to a tile of a status post, does the code in this post go in functions.php?
04/05/2018, 19:25
Saturday, February 24, 2018
Enjoyed a little trip to Oxford to see Designing English at The Bodleian Library. Good to get out and about a bit on a Saturday, but now time for serious introverting.
Establishing New Habits Without Apps
Saturday, February 17, 2018
I’ve been trying to establish some new habits lately so this was a timely post from CJ Chilvers. I’ve been using the app Streaks like he mentions to keep focused on some of my habits, but there is a certain lack of accountability that goes with it. When a big streak gets broken it’s very hard to find the energy to start again. One thing I’ve found a bit easier to face when starting—or restarting—a project is to break it down to months.
My Secret Battle – a Grief Shared
Friday, February 16, 2018
This week I can across the blog is Simon Thomas. He’s a Sky Sports presenter and a Christian, known by many in the U.K. He lost his wife to cancer in September last year and has been blogging about his grief. This week he shared a post about his Secret Battle with depression and anxiety. It’s a very honest and open account of the battle he has, and still is, facing.
Quantity not quality
Friday, February 9, 2018
There’s an odd pressure when you’re trying to exercise the muscle of discipline, it’s tempting to want everything you do as a part of that to be the best that it can be. Sometimes you need to just push through and exercise that muscle. When you’re starting out, quantity is often more important than quality. You need to get used to doing something regularly before you can focus on doing it better, otherwise the fear of not good enough can hold you back and prevent you from making the progress you want to make.
Book Budget
Monday, February 5, 2018
I just added a new category in my YNAB Budget under Quality of Life Goals, it’s name? Books. Since I started using Goodreads in 2013 I’ve read 104 books. That’s an average of just under 21 books a year with a low of 17 in 2013 and a high of 34 books in 2016. Clearly I like to read, so it made sense to actually budget for these books financially since I’m already making time in my life to read them.
Thoughts On Just Turning Up
Wednesday, January 31, 2018
I’ve been thinking a little more about the link I posted to Austin Kleon’s blog the other day. I finished it with the line Instead there should just be turning up to write down a thought and seeing where it takes you. It’s a sentiment that you hear quite regularly around the Internet these days. Just keep turning up every day and do the thing—whatever your thing is. The phrase turning up is just a less intimidating way of saying be disciplined.
Thoughts as Nest Eggs
Tuesday, January 30, 2018
Today when you say “nest egg” many think of money saved and put away, but a literal “nest egg” is a real or fake egg that you put in a nest to encourage a bird or a hen to lay more eggs there. So what Thoreau is saying is that by simply writing down a thought, you encourage more thoughts to come. When you have enough thoughts pushed together in the same space — a collage of thoughts, juxtaposed — they often lead to something totally new.
A Home Screen Update
Sunday, November 5, 2017
I used to post a monthly series that looked at the Home Screens of my iPhone and iPad. Over time though I realised it didn’t change as much as I expected and so I lost interest in the process. Things have changed a lot recently so I thought it was time to post another look at my iPhone. A few of weeks ago I put in to the practise the ideas in a post I linked to about setting up an iPhone home screen.
Walking
Tuesday, May 30, 2017
Back in January 2015 when I realised I was ill, and consequently started a course of antidepressants, many people encouraged me to exercise. I had been a keen cyclist and they encouraged me to keep at it and get out on my bike as much as I could. I was told, and in fact read many times, that exercise was a great way of countering some of the symptoms of depression.
He Is Risen!
Sunday, April 16, 2017
Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?” John 11:25-26
Depression Days
Thursday, August 18, 2016
Sometimes a day hits you when things that are normally easy to do become the hardest things. I mean simple things like getting out of bed, going downstairs and making a coffee. That's the nature of depression. When it happens you have to find ways of getting through because giving in to it can be crippling. Giving in can be the start of a downward spiral, a spiral you don't want to be in and that can take a long time to get out of.
The Desire to Tinker
Wednesday, August 17, 2016
The desire to tinker is strong in this one. I have this problem when it comes to my blog. The more I start to post to it, the more I want to tinker. The more active I am on the site, the more I notice little things I don’t like and want to fix. The more I post to it, the more I want all my internet posting to originate on it.
Permission
Sunday, August 14, 2016
At the start of last week I set myself the challenge to blog everyday between then and the end of the year. Yesterday I didn't manage to post to this site, in some people's eyes I've failed the challenge already. Maybe I have, but it's not going to stop me carrying on. These types of challenges are great to do, they add an extra bit of impetus to get going on something you want to do.
What Do You Write About?
Tuesday, August 9, 2016
I know what you’re thinking. It’s only the second day of the challenge I set myself, to post to my blog everyday from now until the end of the year, and already I’m asking the question of what do I write about. I would imagine it’s a familiar story to anyone who’s decided to undertake such a challenge. Going from barely writing or posting to your blog to posting everyday it’s only natural to find yourself wondering what to write about.
The 2016 Blogging Challenge
Monday, August 8, 2016
I've written 442 posts on this site. The first one was written on 17th January 2011, that's five and half years ago. It equates to around 80 posts per year and about 1.5 posts per week. It's not bad going, but it could be better. During those times there's been many spells of inactivity and many spells of multiple posts per day, this is what I would like to change most about my site, the inconsistent posting patterns.
03/05/2018, 19:28
Monday, May 16, 2016
As I was leaving the coffee house this evening something made me look up, this was my view. As I snapped the photo I was reminded of something I once said to the student group at church. It was a small phrase to remind them and prompt them to keep their life in perspective. Look up, look back, look forward. To look up at God our father as the first thing we do in life, to look back at what he did for us through Jesus' death and resurrection and to look forward in that knowledge and security that trust and faith in him brings.
One Twelfth
Monday, February 1, 2016
We’ve done it. All of us. Good job everyone. We’ve made it through January and we’re into February. I always find January a bit of an odd month, it’s full of the initial hopes and dreams of the year ahead, yet it’s a hard slog. We spend the first week getting back into the swing of things, the second week doing our utmost to get new patterns of behaviour, thinking and habits off the ground.
Holocaust Rememberence Day
Wednesday, January 27, 2016
Today marks the 71st anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, a place which is known world wide for the atrocities that our Jewish brothers and sisters faced during the Second World War. Atrocities that I didn't know the depth of fully until I visited Yad Vashem in Jerusalem on my first visit to Israel a few years ago. Reading through the account of the holocaust in that place made me feel physically sick, I knew from my history lessons at school that it was a massive operation but I had no clue of the depth of it.
Let me make a note of that
Wednesday, October 21, 2015
Ever since I got my first iOS device, a 2nd generation iPod Touch, I've been on a quest to work out the best way to take notes. I've tried a shed load of different apps, Simplenote, Evernote, Notesy, the built in notes app, NVAlt… in fact if you can name it I've probably tried it. I've always read with interest articles on note taking setups, how people use them, how their go to app on their iPhone works so well for them, and I've always struggled to figure out how or why that is.
Bored
Wednesday, July 15, 2015
I wonder how often the phrase I'm bored… came out of your mouth as a child? I know it crossed my lips a fair few times, during my years at primary school. As I grew older the phrase appeared less and less, in fact I can't remember the last time that phrase crossed my lips and I don't recall it ever crossing them in my years since university. That's troubling.
Building
Wednesday, July 1, 2015
I'm great at making statements and promises about things that I want to do. It's easy. I think of something I wish to do, decide there and then a means by which to do it, then post to my blog declaring it in the public domain. In principle it’s a good tactic. The public declaration should be enough of a motivation to make sure I stick to something, but the reality is that more often than not I fall short.
Rediscovering the Personal Site
Wednesday, April 29, 2015
It's been an interesting start to the year to say the least, but one positive from it has been the renewal of my interest in both my own blog and the blogs of others. I've been reading blogs, or personal sites would probably be a more accurate term in 2015, since I came across them in my second year at university in 2006. Back then I loved the idea of people publishing something to the internet and quickly set my own blog up.
Thirty Things I've Learned in Thirty Years
Friday, October 10, 2014
When the year turned 2014 I began to reflect on my life, who I am, where I am and what I'm doing. Why should a simple year change cause such a mood to dawn on me? At the end of September I turned 30, it also happened to mark the 10 year anniversary since I left home and moved to university here in Cheltenham. These are two significant events in my life that mark the beginning and end of the last decade, one which has been full of happy times and inevitably it's fair share of low times.
The One Where I Announce I'm Now Self Employed
Friday, August 31, 2012
There are some posts you dream about writing, posts you'd love to write but never think you actually will. This is one of those posts. A few weeks ago I wrote a post about change. Changing the way I approached something has lead to exciting guidance and a big change in my career. It started with a conversation with two very good friends of mine. One asked how work was, then followed it up with a query about what I really wanted to do.
Change
Sunday, July 1, 2012
For the last few years I've been praying about something. I'm sure many of you have as well, but this particular thing has occupied my prayers for several years. I've been praying about it in the same way for pretty much the entire time, asking for guidance and direction in relation to the thing. During that time the urge to do that thing has grown. One could say its developed into something close to a permanent longing, something that left me unsettled because I'm not doing it and I've never really known why.
Reading Stories, Food for the Imagination
Sunday, January 22, 2012
I work as a graphic designer. Like many other folks in my profession I find it hard to turn off. I may not be thinking about projects from work all the time, but I'm always thinking about projects I'd like to do or reviewing the things I see all around me. I see every piece of design and mentally critic it, 99% of the time I'm not even aware I'm doing it, but it's there, almost like a 6th sense wondering what questions the designer faced.
Wecloming 2012 and Setting a Few Targets
Monday, January 2, 2012
It's that time once again when many people are posting reviews of the year just passed. I always enjoy reading these posts, seeing the people I follow who have achieved all that or more than they hoped to whilst hoping those who didn't are able to in the coming year. I'm always drawn to writing something myself, and whilst my last year contains many highlights – my trip to Israel, a summer in North Wales and a deepening of friendships that have become increasingly valuable – I always feel somewhat hesitant to “review my year”.
Motivation
Monday, May 4, 2009
These days, I'm sure like many, my primary source of reading material is via the internet, or more specifically my feed reader. There's a lot of great content out on the web and filtering out the cruft to get to it can be a bit of a mission. We are bombarded with information clamouring for our attention the moment we open our web browser, so finding a way of weeding out the crap to reveal the good stuff is imperative.