JC - Technology and Stuff

It’s been a while now since I started using Social Networks in earnest (about 8 months actually), and I thought it was about time to give an update on how they’re working and not working for me.

I have to say up front that there’s no right way and wrong way to use any of the sites I use. One thing I have noticed is that people use them all in totally different ways from one another. What I do works for me, but it may not work for you at all. Just bear that in mind as you read this blog post.

One thing I do know is that I have a different audience on the different sites on which I post. My LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter friends are, on the whole, unique sets of non-intermingling entities. Couple that with the random people that read my blog and my one deduction is that my audience is diverse and ever-changing. Therefore one lesson I have learned over the past months is to try and be as diverse as my audience is. If I am to continue to attract interest and response from the people that read my outpourings of drivel, then I have to adapt to their needs, whatever they are. Of course, in actuality I have no idea of what their needs are, all I can judge things by is the actual response I get to articles I post.

I have managed to work out a system so that information I create gets to all the places necessary. I have tried to articulate that in the diagram below. I create information and post it on either Twitter or my blog. If the information comes from Twitter, then it will get sent to my Facebook status and once a day all my Twitter posts will be posted as a digest on my blog. In turn that digest will get sent to Plaxo and LinkedIn. If, on the other hand, I create a blog post (like this), then it will get automatically sent to Plaxo, LinkedIn and Twitter. Twitter will then post that information as a status update on Facebook. All bases are covered!

Now that I can get information to every place I want to, all I have to do is make sure I post the information that I want and try and remember that whatever I post (unless it is directly on Facebook) will end up everywhere else. Therein lies the responsibility. Remember your audience! Everything I write has an audience of the sum of all the parts. It’s a good job I don’t mind my life being pretty much an open book.

Anyway, enough of the practicalities, what about the Social Network tools themselves? That’s a topic I am going to cover on another day very soon.

In all the time I’ve been using Windows Vista I haven’t really had any problems with it. That is until now. In my continuing saga of trying to use the 1tb external USB Hard Drive I bought recently, I ended up connecting it to my desktop Vista PC and using it for backups (among other things) utilizing the Windows Vista backup utility. The good news is that it works great for my desktop PC.

But, the bad news is that on the other Vista PC I have, no such luck in backing up to it. I did everything I could think of, I shared it, set up directories, everything, but the other PC won’t allow me to connect to the USB drive - so weird!!! Well, actually it’s not weird - it’s extremely annoying. I have a large drive that I can’t use from everywhere on my network. Actually it’s even worse than that. I also have a network Hard Drive (plugged into my hub) that I can’t back up to from Vista’s backup program. It asks me for logon credentials - that I don’t need - and refuses to back-up to it - even though I can quite happily read and write to the drive from every other program (even on that PC). In the end I had to use a different back-up program which quite happily backed up to the network drive (but still not to the shared USB drive).

So, the combination of Windows Vista, the Backup Utility, and USB Hard Drives make Windows Vista a true piece of crap!!! Bring back Windows XP!!!

I very rarely blog about what others write of but this particular piece of information absolutely intrigued me.

It’s really just a map of the world. However it’s not a traditional map, but one that is geared around country income per capita and overall health of population. Click on the image below and be amazed…

Well we’re at the end of what’s turned out to be a very busy 2008. I thought ‘d use the last day of the year to publish the posts from my blog that have proven to be the most popular, just in case you missed any of them.

Top Ten

1. Google Reader Part Three - 1835 hits
2. T-Mobile G1 - Hints & Tips - 734 hits
3. Google Chrome First Impressions - 636 hits
4. T-Mobile @Home - an article about the @Home phone router that allows you to replace your landline - 490 hits
5. Throwaway Ideas - ShamWow, diapers and obituary sites! - 466 hits
6. Microsoft Outlook - Useful Links - 333 hits
7. Windows Home Server Install - Part Two - 310 hits
8. Toodledo - A Getting Things Done (GTD) task processor - 302 hits
9. My Favorite T-Mobile G1 Applications - 237 hits
10. T-Mobile G1 - First Impressions - 224 hits

So there you have it. The blog has been running since July 13th - not quite 6 months - and it’s been an enjoyable experience so far.

I’m sure 2009 will have equally as many exciting experiences to write about and I look forward to discussing more of my life as an ex-techno geek, trying to survive today’s plethora of new gadgets.

Have a great New Year and I’ll catch up with you all again soon.

When I was a kid, after I reached the age of about 13, I really got into gadgets. The electronics and computing marketplace was just taking off and everything was really exciting. Remember, this was 1973 - only a mere 35 years ago!

My first purchase was a Sinclair Cambridge calculator which was an amazing gadget that put my slide rule to a serious test. Of course it wasn’t perfect, and it did take a while to calculate a few things. Then there was ’rounding error’ to contend with too. But the best ‘feature’ was that if you tried to divide anything by zero, it tried to calculate the result for you! Something that would leave the calculator happily engaged forever if you let it.

Next up was the Sinclair Scientific, an amazing calculator that introduced trigonomotry and log / anti-log functions. It was a little faster overall than the Cambridge, but when you asked it to perform trig functions you could actually watch as it tried to calculate the result! Oh, the good old pioneering days of pocket calculators.

A slide rule!

In my later school years I purchased my first programmable calculator, only to find out I couldn’t use it in my school exams! Still, the slide rule and log tables actually sufficed and got me through. Kids today have no concept of a slide rule or log tables. I guess that’s something that has been lost to the void forever now. It’s a shame really as actually these were really good ‘gadgets’ and you actually had to understand things before you used them in anger, unlike modern calculators that just do things mindlessly, even when you don’t know what it is you’re really trying to do.

Anyway, I finally left school and started work in 1978, just as technology was burgeoning. My first purchase about a year later was an Acorn Atom computer which I put together from a kit, used the TV as output and a cassette recorder as input. Its 2kb (yes, 2 kilobytes of memory, or 0.0000019 of a gigabyte!!) of memory served me well. I was able to write all sorts of multi-level player games and eventually added another 4kb of memory and had the world’s best PC! Those were the days.

Time moved along and better PCs were invented, phones became mobile (well to be honest transportable with huge battery packs) and gadgets continued to fill my house. Then somewhere in the early 2000’s I suddenly lost the urge for new gadgets and stopped spending all my waking hours looking at new things. At the time I didn’t know why, but time has given me an explanation.

The simple reason is that the technology market got itself into a mess up. Although there were a few new technological breakthroughs, on the whole there was nothing really exciting being launched. The iPhone changed all that. Suddenly a device was available that was part phone, part PC, part music player, part movie player, and part entertainment machine. This was indeed a technological breakthrough.

Me? Of course I got my T-Mobile G1 phone this year as I’ve already blogged about several times. To me this phone is a next generation ’swiss army’ penknife of gadgets. A device that plays Youtube videos; will give you step by step directions from your home to some other destination, with street maps along the way; will let you send and receive emails when you are away from your desktop PC; will keep your calendar and contacts up to date in one place; will allow you to wile away a few hours playing pac-man; will display a compass on screen in case you get lost; will scan barcodes so that you can make sensible buying decisions. The possibilities are endless. This device is about the same size as the Sinclair Scientific of 33 years ago and a lot smaller than my Acorn Atom PC, but its power is so deceptive. It’s a 1970’s mainframe PC in a matchbox.

So, what do I want for my next technological Christmas? I would love some kind of Heads Up Display (HUD) for my phone so that I didn’t have to wear my reading glasses to read the ever decreasing text size. A virtual 20″ display on a phone would be amazing. Maybe also a virtual keyboard where you could ‘tap’ in the air and effortlessly write your text messages. Throw in much better battery life and a better more intuitive index and retrieval system and we would really be cooking on gas. Oh well, I can but dream.

Star Trek Transporter

Then there are a few improvements I would love to see on the transportation front. In the 35 years since I bought my first calculator the roads are still littered with the same types of cars as they had then. Sure, they’re a little more fuel efficient and robust in accidents. But there are millions more of them around. Getting from place to place is a real bind. What I’d really like for my technological Christmas would be a better form of long distance transport. Where are the transportation devices of Star Trek and Stargate SG-1? Surely if mankind can deliver multi-purpose electronic gadgets it can now work on long distance transportation. We can fly into space, we can return safely in a reusable spacecraft, yet we haven’t solved how to go 50 miles without sharing the roads with thousands of other like-minded drivers, determined to make your particualr journey a misery.

When I was a kid I used to have dreams where I could levitate and then take a journey under my own power, zooming across the countryside, quickly getting to my destination. If I had my choice for a technology gift for Christmas, I think that’s exactly what I would wish for right now. It doesn’t seem so far fetched as it did when I was a kid. In fact I might even trade in my multi-gadget phone for an early model!

Merry Christmas to you all. Be safe in the knowledge that humans are not only the most dangerous beings on our planet, but also the most inventive and at their core strive to make things better for the rest of humankind.

Well it looks like the promised storm finally arrived here in downtown Redmond, WA. We have about 4 inches of the white stuff everywhere and there is no realistic way I am going to be able to get my car to the bottom of my steep drive, let alone onto the freeway. Mind you, from the TV it looks like SR-520 at Redmond is just a parking lot anyway (and I just heard it was closed!).

So in the Christmas Spirit, here’s some warming lyrics and a couple of pictures. Back soon…

Let It Snow

Oh the weather outside is frightful,
But the fire is so delightful,
And since we’ve no place to go,
Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!

It doesn’t show signs of Stopping,
And I’ve bought some corn for popping,
The lights are turned way down low,
Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!

When we finally kiss goodnight,
How I’ll hate going out in the storm!
But if you’ll really hold me tight,
All the way home I’ll be warm.

The fire is slowly dying,
And, my dear, we’re still good-bying,
But as long as you love me so,
Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!

48 years, 3.5 months. That’s how long I lasted without shooting off a gun. Most of you will simply say ’so what’. But that is not my story.

I grew up in England in the 1960’s in a household that never bought its children toy weapons, in a country where even the policemen only carried truncheons (a police officer’s billy club apparently in American). Some of my friends had toy guns and from time to time we managed to get our hands on a cap firing gun as we played ‘cowboys and indians’ around the house. I actually had a nice little indian headdress and called myself ‘big chief tomahawk’ as I rampaged around the house, but that is another story. In my teens a few friends had air pistols and I fired a few from time to time, but I firmly considered them toys that would not do any serious damage.

My first encounter with a gun was in about 1981 when I went on a vacation to Europe and we were driving through Europe and stopped at a bus stop in Germany. Two German policemen were there too, both carrying guns. Most people on the bus commented on this. As I say you never saw guns in England. It was a very surreal experience. Later I remember being at Heathrow airport one time and seeing army personnel carrying automatic guns, dressed in combat gear. That was also a sobering experience. As I got older and also traveled more of the world I saw more and more guns in more and more serious situations and the association grew. Eventually I came to live in America where guns are routinely carried by police officers and I knew just why they were carrying them.

So all in all I associate guns with death and murder and killing. I don’t think I have the same view about rifles and hunting, but I guess that’s another experience for another day.

I’ve always wanted to fire a gun, just to see what it was like and to be truthful I have always been a little excited about the thought of it. Here in Washington I have made a couple of friends who for two very different reasons see guns as a part of life. One is an ex-policeman who was trained by the American taxpayer to routinely carry a weapon and to shoot with ‘deadly and accurate’ force. The other is someone who grew up in rural America  in an age when everyone had a gun and used it on an almost daily basis to shoot anything from tin cans to deer. After much lobbying I finally convinced them to take me to the shooting range so that I could get a taste of that experience.

As the day approached a little trepidation kicked in. After all as I said, guns kill people. There’s no other way to put it. I imagined a shooting range where everyone had their own area and you safely went about your job of ‘loosing a few shots’ at the target. Reality is more sobering.

First off I had to read and sign a two page form about all the rules and regulations I had to obey. This was strict and sobering in itself. Then I had to wear my ear defenders and glasses before I could actually enter the range. Once inside the range, reality hit me like the fresh odor of a dead skunk. There were probably about 20 people just firing away with real guns and real bullets in a totally confined area at uncovered targets in uncovered lanes. All it would take at that point was one unintentional or deliberate mistake and there would be serious casualties and consequences for a lot of people. Yes, just as I had learned over my previous 48 years, guns are indeed very very dangerous things.

My two friends don’t see it this way at all. The ex-policeman repeatedly reminded me that it is people who are dangerous, not guns. That’s easy for him to say. I didn’t know any of these people at all. Anyway, next up on the agenda was the actual shooting.

I was given a plethora of instructions as a .38 revolver was placed in front of me and the bullets were eventually loaded. Don’t do this, do this, point this way, never do that, remember this and above all this is what should happen. You know what I mean. My concentration level was working like my life depended on it as I struggled internally to break down 48 years of conditioning and shoot a gun at a target just like it was a normal day out. After what seemed like an eternity I was ready for that first shot.

Ten yards out was a piece of paper covered with rings of white and gray, leading to a bull in the middle that was inviting me to hit it. I gripped the gun like I meant to strangle it, raised it to point at the target, and squeezed the trigger. As it was supposed to do, the bullet left the gun. I heard and felt the explosion and I very nervously lowered my gun to face downwards, remembering not to turn around to face the others with a loaded gun in my hand. The bullet had grazed the bottom of the paper. Mission accomplished. This was not going to be a walk in the park though, I still had four shots in the chamber that needed to be expelled. I slowly went through the whole experience four more times, with each shot remaining on the paper and one or two making decent ‘kills’. When I knew the gun was empty I gratefully put the gun back down on the counter and walked away backwards. To be honest I was in a bit of a blur at this point. I was very confused. I had broken something that had been conditioned into me. I had been told and had thought that it would be a pleasurable thing. But it wasn’t. Not really. I was still amongst people who were firing live bullets into targets in a confined area. That was still bloody scary.

Anyway, my target was retrieved, people congratulated me, others shot and soon my time came around to shoot again. I did a little better and had three rounds in all with the revolver. A good percentage of the bullets hit the kill area and at least I wasn’t too embarrassed about my aim.

It was about this time that I noticed the gunshot residue that covered my hands. Of course all this did was to remind me of watching CSI and thinking of someone taking a swab from me and I would be guilty of some murder or other. Reality took its grip once more.

No time to stop however. Next up was the 9mm police issue pistol. Five more bullets to shoot off into a new hole free target. At least the edge was now off my trepidation. Although I have to say there was never a moment in my whole shooting experience that I truly relaxed. Bullets made holes just as they were supposed to do and I didn’t feel completely inadequate as I pressed the trigger like I was supposed to, over and over again. I reloaded and repeated the experience.

The .44 pistol was next up and looking at the bullets as they were loaded into the cartridge made me come completely back to reality. These things are not little. They will do very serious damage. Anyway I shot off my five and hit the target, thankful when the experience was over.

Last up for me was the Dirty Harry gun. A long barreled .44 Magnum that weighed far more than I wanted to hold. Not to worry, just take the weight of it on my other hand and shoot I was told. The day had obviously been a little too long for me at that point as I forgot one of the other rules about gripping the gun in the good hand securely. I slowly squeezed the trigger after raising the gun towards my target until the boom of the exploding bullet cried out. The pistol I had been previously using had lulled me into a false sense of security regarding recoil and this huge revolver I was now holding suddenly tried to escape my grip in a totally unexpected way. I managed the situation but not without drawing some notice from the passing gun range warden. I knew I was in a delicate situation when he called me ’sir’. Of course it is always best to call anyone ’sir’ if they have a loaded .44 Magnum in their hands, but that is besides the point. He decided to show me how to stand and hold the gun in a way that would better control it and I thanked him for his sage advice. I raised the gun one more time, pressed the trigger and let rip another deafening explosion, trying to control the recoil a little better than the time before. At this point I was done. It was obvious to me that I was now holding something that was simply ‘too much gun for me’. I put the gun down on the counter and let the others take their turn. Next up was a .500 monster but I left that for the men to have their fun. I was done for the day.

I am glad I got to shoot some guns. It was a different experience than I honestly thought it would be. I have not changed my view of the respect I have for guns. I do not think I will ever buy one, nor use one in anger. But never say never. I am looking forward now to shooting some clays with a rifle. I think I will approach that very differently as I do not have the same associations with rifles that I seem to have with hand guns. It’s tough to break the habits and associations of a lifetime, but it’s also good to try out new experiences. As I was constantly reminded as I watched others in the gun range, life is a very fragile thing that can be taken at any time. We should all live out each day like it could be our last, not guaranteed another tomorrow.

Oh, and by the way as you can see from the attached picture, I hope the bad guys are all watching. I may have only had two shots with that bad boy .44 Magnum, but both hit the target spot on. Very scary

It’s that time of the year when there are lots of things that need doing that seem to bear no relation to day to day living. Take for example Christmas Cards. This is the only time of the year when we spend time and money writing out the same message to lots of people. For some of these people this will be the only time we ever contact them! Hmmm. Sounds stupid when you say it like that, doesn’t it?

Well, all our Christmas cards are posted and a small fortune as usual was spent. This year we again put together a newsletter that spanned the year’s events and at least that way we don’t have to write the same thing in every card. I don’t really know if it’s any quicker though as it still takes the best part of a day to put together and costs us additional paper and ink dollars.

In the spirit of the economy this year we are not buying presents for anyone except the children. Instead we are donating money to charity. We already donated furniture earlier in the year to a battered women’s home in Seattle and we are continuing to sponsor the upbringing of a child in Haiti through Plan International. For the Holiday Season we decided to set up a personal page on the Salvation Army’s website and would encourage anyone who can spare a few dollars to help our cause. There is also a link in the main right-hand panel of this blog and it will remain there until some time in January.

Christmas seems a slightly more downbeat event this year than in previous years and we are no different. It’s just going to be a quiet day at home with a nice dinner, some movies and snacks. I expect the cats will benefit from it the most! Our thoughts will be with our scattered families and with others less fortunate than ourselves who see each Christmas and New Year as a springboard for a better year to come.

My oldest daughter Becki (on the right in the picture) is currently on a three month trip around various parts of the world. She left with a friend to visit Malaysia and Thailand and then travels on to Australia for Christmas. After the New Year they fly on to New Zealand and then in February come to America for the final leg of their tour. They are expected here in Seattle on February 20th. You can follow the exploits of two young English backpackers on the blog they keep.

So that’s about it for today’s blog post. Nothing technology oriented, and no deep thought messages. In the run up to the end of the year, anything that isn’t changing is a good thing. Sometimes we just need to know that the things we rely on remain consistent…

…and I’m not a Mac either! All the TV advertising will have you coming down on one of two sides; no room for compromise. Then there’s the question of phones. Are you an iPhone, an Android G1, or a Blackberry? Surely there’s no room for compromise there either. The world in which we now live forces us daily to make choices; to favor one thing over another. To make one product a winner, and another a loser. And it’s mirrored in the whole of American society. Even in sports. No American sports game can be a draw; there’s always overtime or an extra innings needed to decide a winner. Back one thing or another, but don’t come down in the middle.

Why am I forced to make these kinds of choices daily? Why can’t we just all get on? It starts in school (actually it probably starts well before then, but I’m not even going to go there!), when we choose ‘our friends’. Discrimination is a huge part of society. Some call it ‘choices’, but really it’s discrimination packaged up in a different word. Surely I’m not guilty of that you say, but you are. We prefer to shop at one store over another. We only buy gas at one station. We choose our work colleagues carefully and we support one team over another at weekends. We discriminate.

Now, I’m not actually saying this is a bad thing! I’m just calling it what it really is. Obviously something that’s built into our psyche. Heck, even my cat prefers to sleep in a warm spot in the bedroom rather than next to the fridge!

When I first came to the USA I noticed a huge difference in the TV commercials that were aired here as opposed to in the UK. The UK preferred to use comedy wherever possible and always played up a product’s values as best it could. It never ‘bashed’ a competitor. America on the other hand, used comparative commercials and ‘bashed’ the competition with happy abandon. I’ve lived in the USA for over thirteen years now and so I’m used to the style used here. There are times when I don’t like it but there are also times when it’s definitely useful. In my heart though I would just simply like to be given the choice. Maybe that’s a conditioned thing too.

So, where am I going with all this? Choices and technology. For me it’s always about the technology. Thirty years ago TV commercials only pit the likes of cleaning fluids off against each other. Now it’s PCs and Macs, iPhones and Blackberries, Xboxes and Wiis. Consumer electronics are now the cleaning fluids of thirty years ago. Where will it end? Maybe before I die it’ll be cloning cats or space flights to Mars, or holographic vacations. What now seem like unimagined luxuries will end up being the staples of choice (or discrimination). Why is that important? Well, as soon as something becomes a staple of choice, the bottom line is that it doesn’t really matter any more. It’s no big deal. Seventy percent of people will choose one thing and thirty percent will choose the other (or whatever the ratios are). But bottom line, you’ll get what you want. It’ll be pre-packaged and do what it’s supposed to (mostly). And another choice will have been made.

But technology is really all about the time BEFORE something becomes a staple choice. So, when you go out on Black Friday and buy all those items at hugely discounted prices, just remember you’re not buying technology. You’re buying the results of technology. Technology lives on the bleeding edge. Technology doesn’t pervade people’s living rooms. Technology is something that the few invest in for the good of the many. In actuality very few of us understand real technology. All we understand is consumer electronics (or the current flavor of the day). In the end whether I’m a PC or a Mac doesn’t matter. Either way I’m just buying cleaning fluid.

PS. If you have 30 seconds to spare, watch the video below…

I’ve been busy but not busy recently, if you know what I mean. The last couple of weeks have flown by but I don’t really seem to have anything specific to show for it and no real idea exactly where it all went. Next week it’s Thanksgiving here in the USA and then four weeks later it’s Christmas. Someone reminded me yesterday that this year sees the closest distance ever between Thanksgiving and Christmas. An interesting thought. I guess that means it’ll all be over quicker this year. It’s already less than five weeks ’til Christmas and there are just less than six weeks until 2009 hits us with a vengeance.

Many people will be glad to see the back of 2008, a year of recession and election. I have to say it’s been a pretty good year for me personally, so I’m not going to complain. I do hope that 2009 is even better though.

I’ve written a few articles this year about my personal thoughts and some off topic blog items and they have all been well received. It’s nice to know I can write my thoughts down and people actually bother to read them! I myself prefer to read blogs where the content is original and not just recycled from somewhere else. I’ve found that too many blogs nowadays are just pieces culled from another blog and then quoted verbatim. No original thought whatsoever.

What happened to original thought? I personally think its demise is part of the problem in modern day society. People seem to have smaller attention spans nowadays. They just want to know things and know them NOW! No one sits down and reads the printed newspaper every day anymore. No one wants to read a manual or a good book. Even TV programs are made into bite sized chunks and available online to view when you have 22 minutes to spare. Individual music tracks are available to download at $0.99 a time, and movies are a buck a viewing. We’ve become a disposable society with disposable values, living disposable lives in disposable homes, wearing disposable clothes, sending all our waste to any country that has less money than ours that can recycle the waste to make a little money for itself in the hope of becoming the wasteful country itself. Original thought has been sidelined to the few; and even fewer want to read it.

My personal view is that the economy is correcting itself after a few too many years of complacence by those that matter. There are laws to economics, in the same way as there are laws to gravity and motion. Ignore these laws at your peril. Society forgets from time to time that these laws exist and tries to circumvent them in the hope that new laws will be created. Well, guess what, it doesn’t work that way. Abuse the laws of economics and society will have to be corrected. We are in one of those periods now.

When the economy does finally recover it’s going to be like a steam train leaving the station pulling a whole load of wagons. it’s going to take a while to get back up to full speed again. I only hope that this time around the driver is not going to go too fast and come off the rails again.

But like it or not, some things are here to stay. Movie and music downloads aren’t going to go away. Shortened attention spans seem burned into our psyches and reading is only going to become more online-based and less paper-based in the future.

I don’t want to imagine us degenerating into a totally thoughtless disposable society though and so we all need to take stock of ourselves and ask if that’s what we really want. We all have a responsibilty both to ourselves and to our country’s economy. Next time we throw out our disposable pizza box after watching the podcast on ‘Twilight’, while texting to our buddies, we should spare a thought for those citizens of poorer countries that aspire to follow in our footsteps. Is this really the legacy we want to leave them? Is this the example we should be giving?

Lazyness has become a first world disease and it needs stamping out. Original thought and deliberate action needs to be encouraged again. We all hold our future in our own heads. That wonderful amazing thing called a brain is still more advanced than anything mankind has so far built. Now is not the time to get complacent. We are only just beginning that journey to cross unimaginable technological barriers. Let’s show the rest of the world we care about the future we are creating.

At the beginning of this article I wrote that the last two weeks had gone by without much happening, and that it wouldn’t be long before 2009 would be here. Well, guess what, I am fulfilling my own prophecy here! What am I doing about not being lazy, using original thought and deliberate action? Not a lot really. Recession really gets you down doesn’t it? Recession can lead to more and longer recession if we all think this way. Instead, if we can turn ourselves around we can make a bigger, quicker impression. Like I said in an earlier article, now’s the time to start that project you have been talking about. Now’s the time to plan on your future. You’ll never have a better springboard for the future than now, in the depths of a recession. Get ahead before the market catches up. Me? I’ve got a few things on the go that I’ll talk to over the next few weeks. But in the meantime, I’m going to continue writing what I want to write, in the way I want to write it, all in the hope that it encourages at least one person out there to original thought…