If there is such a thing as computer addiction then I think I’ve got it ….no seriously I really do think so. Why else would someone who works 5 days a week in a ‘computing’ day job and runs a ‘computing’ company in the evenings/weekends, stay up until gone 2am – yes you’ve guessed it on a computer?
You’d have thought that catching some zzz’s would have been far more important and beneficial wouldn’t you. Well I keep asking myself the same question – why. Unfortunately, I don’t know why I do it, I just do – but it isn’t doing me any good.
As a result of my lack of ‘shut-eye’ I woke up like the proverbial bear with a sore head and my mood was as dark and dingy as the gloomy cloud cover outside. Not a good start to the day and the ideal ingredients for an argument – which we thankfully managed to avoid 
For the first time in ages, I actually did what I used to do every Sunday – no not go to church – go to the bathroom to weigh. I was pleasantly surprised to see that I was 16st 12lbs, which given the recent lack of training and my apparent poor diet was far better than I’d anticipated!
Being a glutton for computing punishment, I returned once again to my myriad of laptops, PCs and wireless kit in the office in another attempt to get a darn Cisco Aironet 350 series wireless PCI card to work with my Ubuntu laden Dell Latitude.
It shouldn’t be difficult but getting the whole thing to play ball with my Netgear DG834N router with WPA (TKIP & AES) encryption is proving nigh on impossible. Despite trying several different drivers, ndiswrapper and even a lighter Xubuntu installation, I failed miserably once again. I’ve now finally decided to give in for the sake of my sanity.
It’s been a busy day for me on the website front with the official launch of two new sites for some clients of mine.
The first one is Siop Ty Tawe, a Welsh shop in the centre of Swansea which is part of Canolfan Ty Tawe / Ty Tawe Centre. The shop sells Welsh language books for adults, children and learners as well as gifts from Wales.
It’s well worth a visit if only for a cuppa and a chat with ‘Siw siop’ (the owner) and they’ve got some cracking Welsh t-shirts there too. In fact they stock loads of Welsh merchandise – so it’ll be well worth a visit come Six Nations time
The other site launched was that of Partneriath Pontarddulais Partnership, a site dedicated to developing the Pontarddulais Community through partnership working.
The partnership is a voluntary group that consists of representation from the public, private, voluntary and community sectors and has a number of agencies acting as advisors. So if you’re from Pontarddulais why not get in touch with them as they’re always looking for new ideas.
So here is a shameless plug for my services, aimed at anyone who wants a quality website for an affordable price – no matter what the subject area. If you want to know more, simply drop me an email and I’ll be happy to have a natter with you.
On an altogether more amusing subject, I’m amazed by the number of Leeds fans who seem obsessed with posting comments on the video’s I put on YouTube from last weekend’s game. Thankfully I moderate all the comments, but if I hear one more about it being ‘our cup final’ and ‘how quiet we were’, etc I’ll go potty.
Anyone would have sworn the Leeds United supporting keyboard warriors were obsessed with us sheep lovers from Swansea 
Strange title huh? Well that’s what Wednesday’s are called in DDWT Junior’s school. The reason being that all of the kids have to wear their wellies and as a result get to spend the morning outside in the school’s garden area – having a look at what nature has to offer. Now how cool is that. I don’t remember having that when I was in school 
Having heard quite abit about ‘Twitter‘ (yes yet another social networking site) of late, I decided to take a closer look and sign up for a free account. Basically twitter is a social networking tool which can be updated via sms, IM or online and your ‘friends’ get updated via one of these methods as to your whereabouts/thoughts or whatever you choose to ‘twitter’ about.
It’s also got a nice little widget for blogger (and the other main blog players) as can be seen opposite. I’ll give it a go anyway, especially as I’m got a huge amount of free txt messages per month. So watch me twitter as they say!
After a day off from the running yesterday, it was time to get back onto breaking some slabs lunchtime again. I took the same 2-3 mile route as the other day, but was a minute quicker this time around with a time of 25 minutes 29 seconds. Perhaps what is more worrying is that I don’t feel in any sort of condition to run next weekend’s Swansea Bay 10K!
With me starting my 2nd week of annual leave today, it’s a mighty shame my planning couldn’t have been better – as then I could have been off the same time as the rugby world cup is in full swing.
Still with Wales playing on Sunday, at least I’ll be home to see that one. God how I hope they put in a convincing performance and win. Talking of rugby, I came across a somewhat bizarre but bloody addictive flash game on the Lidl site (yes cheapskate I know) earlier. Get this – the purpose of the game is to drop kick a rugby ball over the posts and hit the passing food items!! The more food you hit the more points you get and there’s even a league table.
You can check it out here – http://www.lidl.co.uk/uk/home.nsf/pages/c.service.g.index – my best score to-date is 110 (as you can tell I was never an outside half).
After my day of relaxation and enjoyment yesterday, it was back to the graft today and time to catch up with some freelance web work I’ve been doing of late.
I’ve got a couple of projects on the go at the moment, one for Siop Ty Tawe and the other for the Pontarddulais Partnership. Both of them are nearing completion and then it’ll be time to do the work I’d scheduled for another client of mine.
All of the the freelance stuff I’ve done over the years has given me a great insight into the world of open source software and an opportunity to broaden my skills and knowledge in this field. I’ve also come to appreciate the hard work of others that have made open source what it is today.
In terms of the web, if anyone is looking for a Content Management System to run their site (whatever the subject – personal, business, community, promotional, etc), then you wouldn’t go far wrong by taking a closer look at Drupal and Joomla for a solution. Couple this with a quality but affordable hosting solution such as those offered by Lunarpages – which I’ve blogged about in the past – and whose packages have improved further since then.
Heck I even run Ubuntu 7.04 server at home as well as my Windows XP machine and despite the former being somewhat of a ‘new kid on the block’ it is certainly a slick and smooth OS. If you’ve ever fancied having a go at linux but are petrified of nobbling your windows machine, grab yourself a copy of Knoppix – the linux on a bootable CD solution. There’s no need to install anything, just put it in your CD drive and watch it booth up – hey presto you got yourself a linux OS to play with. Oww did I forget to say it’s all free as well
Have fun – I certainly have (especially being an anorak like!).
