Ruby on Rails
This is the year I fell out of love with PHP. It’s also the year that we started looking for new technology. If there’s something that helps our business and more importantly allows us to get something done quicker, we’ll use it. Because we don’t want to work.
Ruby on Rails is the single most important thing to hit the Internet since our company started. Not only does it allow us to develop things quicker and more easily, those who really understand it and use it will gain a competitive advantage. It allows the little guys to catch up and take over from all those people shoehorned into ASP, PHP and JSP.
Next year? XUL with Ruby on Rails. Probably.
Tori Amos: Piece by Piece
I don’t read many books, but this one is vital. I read it whilst listening to Tori’s back catalogue, which probably isn’t how you should experience either, but it worked for me. The music and the words feed off each other and intertwine to the effect that you feel you really know Tori by the end of it. When I’d read what she’s been through, my own troubles seemed pretty insignificant.
One month off
I don’t do holidays. They never seem long enough, and besides I get bored easily. However, in May 2005 I spent one month in and around Ottawa, Canada, staying with my uncle and seeing the sights. This gave me enough time to switch off sufficiently to forget about work, although I kept in touch with our office and dabbled a bit on some websites. Unfortunately, come the last week, I started thinking about work with dread. The pressure was on before I went on holiday and I expected the same when I came back.
Getting Things Done
One of the little voices in my head told me to read Dave Allen’s Getting Things Done book. I ordered it whilst I was in Canada so I could read it as soon as I returned to Inverness.
I didn’t get much done during my first week back from Canada. I wasn’t in the mood to work and found excuses to faff around the periphery of my tasks. In any case, a couple of days after returning I need to fly down to London to see Tori Amos on her Original Sinsuality tour.
Gig of the Year
This is a bit of a non-starter. Because I only went to one gig in 2005. I ordered Tori Amos’ concert DVD Welcome to Sunny Florida shortly after I had bought her new album The Beekeeper. It’s her only official concert DVD, but I loved it. And I just knew I had to see her live. So shortly after returning from Canada, I zipped down to London to see her perform.
But more importantly, as it turned out, that trip gave me an opportunity to read Getting Things Done while I was holed up at my hotel and make a list of all the things in my head. That list was horrifyingly long.
When I got back to work on the Monday after Tori’s concert I spent a couple of days making all the preparations for ‘getting things done’. I was convinced that it would help me become more effective at my job. But I wasn’t prepared for the difference it made.
Really Getting Things Done
One thing you shouldn’t do when ‘getting things done’ is to follow the system as a fixed set of procedures. The best thing to do is to learn it and forget it. That is, follow it explicitly until you work out how to adapt it to your own traits. It then becomes a natural way of doing things.
Frankly, this time last year I felt horribly down with everything. There was too much pressure, too much that was going wrong. But this all changed suddenly when I got back to work in June. Looking back, the things that contributed to this are my holiday, Getting Things Done, Piece by Piece and not least the constant support of my friend and business partner Mark.
My e-mail ‘in-box’ is now non-existent and I can respond to demands more quickly and effectively than before. Everything I need to do is recorded somewhere (and I know where those places are), so I no longer need to worry. This is life-changing. Sure, the pressure is already on next year, but that’s going to make it an interesting time.
One more lesson learnt, in spades: do what you feel is right for your customers, not what your customers want you to do for them.
Installation
My new home entertainment system or more correctly, my new hi-fi. My first hi-fi which doesn’t sound like a hi-fi, because the sound just seems to live in the room, it becomes part of my home. It’s not, like, over there. And it puts paid to the myth that MP3s cannot replace CDs. They can, provided the quality is right and the rest of the ‘processing chain’ is great. (Listen to Sophia by Nerina Pallot on my set-up if you’re in any doubt.)
Product
A tie, between the sleeky scratched iPod nano, and my Logitech Harmony 885 remote. Both things to make life easier, and in the case of the iPod, the tiniest most perfect way to carry around music.
