Right now the blog is a bit of a mess, while I figure out where i want to take the design. All parts of the site should be functional, but it lacks a bit of polish. Still, I like the texture I created for it so I will make it work!

At the moment it only uses 2 images, and yes, the menu needs making up, so does the footer (needs a bar around it, of some kind, i think) etc. And it looks a lot nicer on a large screen, on low res that pattern looks weird.

The new working title of the blog is the lst line from the poerm “what the dog perhaps hears”, one of my favorites just read from Lisel Muller

What is it like up there
above the shut-off level
of our simple ears?
For us there was no birth cry,
the newborn bird is suddenly here,
the egg broken, the nest alive,
and we heard nothing when the world changed

It’s a simple whimsical poem - full text online here http://plagiarist.com/poetry/3139/

Of course the title on this blog will probably change again…

dog illustration by vgfreddy on deviantart http://vgfreddy.deviantart.com/art/the-faithful-dog-82171082

Stats show I have 10 regular readers! Who are the 5 new ones, the same people from work?

This blog used to have a lot more back when i was following games & silentpc in a bigger way, and there was the AGHL crowd. But from these days remains still quite a bit of google power, it seems, and that means hundreds of people come here hoping to find information about a product or something. Sorry. At best you’ll find a paragraph why I liked whatever it is you are looking for.

Now most of my input happens elsewhere than my site, which is strange. And wrong. Must fix this site and use it more again.

EDIT: after checking analytics I have over 30 returning readers (not counting me) - I’m quite puzzled as to who they are now, cant think of 30! Leave a comment!

Happy news today. My super friend Lene and I have found out that there was no draw for the 4 days of Nijlmegen and therefore we are in.

For information this is a 4 day walking festival in the netherlands - it is surrounded by a music festival and loads of other things.

http://www.4daagse.nl/index.asp?taal=en&pagina=homepagina

I am very excited now, but I also must train up a little. I know that I used to do whole weeks without much training, or 100 km straight.. but I was a bit younger.

Some of you know all that happened over the summer, but some of you didn’t, so I think it is a good idea for me to post a summary.

* I completed my work in my last job. It is now time for me to move to the next thing. I am not sure what it is yet, but my plan was to wait till the end of summer - since I had a few things peppered throughout the summer and it is not always a good time for finding jobs. As it turns out it could have been had other circumstances not changed things.

* My plan was to spend the summer split between outdoors activities, work on house/household chores delayed too long, working on this site and creating a separate blog for my professional interest, and possibly some photo or painting or crafting (perhaps even a course) on the side. I also had the 4 days hike of Nijmegen (4daagse) in July to prepare for, and a trip to Colorado planned. All in all a great summer!

* I decided to get a dog - always wanted one and now I think I can organise my carreer so I can have the time and space to have a dog. It so happened my friend Lene had a lovely dog that she couldnt keep, since she was doing the gutsy thing of going back to University. I thought about it for a month or so then decided it was too perfect. It turned out quite complicated to get a dog out of Denmark into the UK, but that’s a story for another blog post.

* I went to see my mother some more, after a really bad health scare in February. She had been in the hospital all winter and I went to Switzerland for a while to allow her to go home a bit. She was (psychologically) better than she had been for years and it was a pleasure to see her be her old self again. We did alas realise she would be too weak too live home alone, but were trying to find some solution perhaps with home care, to avoid her living in some kind of palliative care hospice.

* I went back to the UK for a week to go to @media at the end of May. Had a great time, met lots of interesting people, and was really pumped up to start my own blog(s) on several topics, and also to investigate new things both on the technology and the business side. If you met me then and wondered why I never connected, the reason comes next.

* Right at the end of @media I received a call telling me we ought to come back to Switzerland as my mother was not doing all that well - after the week at home where everything went so well it was a bit of a surprise. I spoke to my mother and she seemed fine. She died while we were driving on our way back.

* Needless to say this changed my summer plans - instead of being in switzerland spending time with my mum and writing a blog/painting or whatever, I ended up in Switzerland trying to organise a funeral, sort out a flat, and coping with my and everyone’s grief. This ate June and parts of July, killed any time I would have spent on the blogs as well as my hiking preparation.

* I head from a great startup looking for a CTO and tried to fit an interview in there, but I fear my head and heart were not quite focused enough. They were nice enough to tell me I was one of the last two, bless them, but I know I wasnt quite at my sharpest or even at my average sharpness. I also found out that during my time at Nexus I had taken the bad habit of being “a little vague” about technical matters, as a way to let both my staff members and my suppliers fill the blanks. I had found it worked well in this case, whereas using all the precise terms could make them feel a bit threatened (as if I was trying to entrap them, perhaps?). This is a habit I must get rid of if I am going to be interviewing! It is a shame as this would have fit one of my life plans perfectly.

* I still went to the 4daagse of Nijmegen although I suffered a little more than necessary since I barely trained in June. I still had a great time - and did succeed in the 4x40 - and want to do it again. I might blog about it later in the catch ups.

* I spent most of the summer moving between London, Leeds and Lausanne, Switzerland - it’s been a crazy time with not more than 7 days in any one place in a row, including a week in the Netherlands, a week in Colorado surrounded by 2 short stays in Iowa. I think the amount of miles travelled would be a record for me…

See for yourself:

May 16-22: Switzerland
May 22-30: UK London
June 1-16: Switzerland
June 17-24: UK Leeds & London
June 25-July 5: Switzerland
July 5-12: UK Leeds & London
July 13-21: Netherlands
July 21-30: London, Leeds, London again
July 30-Aug 20: US Iowa, Colorado, Nebraska, Iowa
Aug 21-23: London, Leeds
Aug 24-26: Denmark
Aug 26: Denmark->Calais
Aug 27-28: London
Aug 29-31: Leeds
Sep 1: London
Sep 2-14: Leeds
Sep 15-16: London
Sep 17-20: Leeds
Sep 20-22: London (@media Ajax)
Sep 22-Oct 7: Leeds (for now)
Oct 8-11: London (FOWA)