links for 2010-02-07

links for 2010-02-05

Awake After All These Years

Some of you know that I’ve been having trouble sleeping over the past couple of years. Actually, more accurately, having trouble *staying* asleep. Only being able to sleep for an hour or two before waking got annoying enough that last November I checked into hospital overnight for a sleep study for an uncomfortable night covered in electrodes.

What they found astonished me. I wasn’t just waking up every hour or two. I was stopping breathing over 75 times an hour — waking each time so that my breathing restarted, without being aware of it. They have diagnosed severe sleep apnoea. The condition wasn’t necessarily a huge surprise (anyone unfortunate enough to have had to share a room or even house with me knows my snoring is pretty epic – my dad is just the same) but the level of severity was.

They immediately gave me a CPAP machine which forces me to breathe during the night by blowing a gale through a mask at me. The effect has been pretty much immediate — the first morning I felt infinitely more awake and I have a huge amount more energy than I have had in years.

The weird thing? You’d assume that having had no REM in over 18 months, I’d *know* just how tired I was. But I really didn’t. I’d occasionally fall asleep in front of the telly, but otherwise I experienced hardly any daytime sleepiness (one of the key symptoms of the condition). But having had some decent sleep over the last week since I was given the machine, I can suddenly feel the difference. I have more energy, I feel smarter, more awake and much more balanced.

Net, my one and only resolution for 2010: To sleep more and get more done.

Any of this sound familiar, either for you or someone you know? The Sleep Apnoea Trust has a decent FAQ section, more info available at NHS Choices.

links for 2009-11-12

Support Louis & Willem on SA’s Got Talent!

My best friend from back home, Louis van der Merwe and his brother Willem van der Merwe are through to the final 21 in the first series of South Africa’s Got Talent. They sing opera (although they are both techies in their day jobs) and have absolutely amazing voices.

Please consider helping to support them by checking out www.louisandwillem.com (notably, watch their initial audition), joining their Facebook fan group or if you are in South Africa even voting for them this week when they perform live in the semi-finals. If you’re on Twitter you can follow the craziest week in their lives by following @louisandwillem.

They were featured in YOU and Huisgenoot this week so hopefully there’s a good swell of support for them already building back home :)

links for 2009-09-06

links for 2009-06-20

links for 2009-06-13

links for 2009-06-11

Useful Links For Buying A Car

Our poor old Polo died over Xmas and so we found ourselves looking for a newish second-hand car in what is definitely a buyer’s market.

Here were some of the useful sites we found:

  • The Which? Car Buying Guide is useful, particularly if you haven’t yet fully absorbed every Top Gear episode in existence. Worth signing up for a 1 pound month trial.
  • The reliability stats are also useful, though I’m sure it won’t be too much of a spoiler if I tell you basically you should buy Japanese if you don’t want it to die. If you insist on European, go Skoda.
  • Parker’s is great for used car values. I put together some depreciation charts that were a great tool when bargaining with dealers who assume women will buy anything so long as it’s the right colour.
  • WhatCar? generally has a refreshingly different take from the very sensible Which? reviews, with the added bonus that there is no gate fee to view. The valuations are a good rule of thumb as well.
  • The Motley Fool Loan Calculator is a nice simple tool to check much your payments will be and for how long.
  • In the UK, I find AutoTrader a good place to look for listings.
  • Once you’ve shortlisted some options, your money is well spent doing an HPI check. I tried a couple of places and found that the cheap and cheerful offering from MyCarCheck was perfectly sufficient and highlighted that two of the cars we were considering really were too good to be true.

Any other suggestions? Add them in the comments :)

For those interested, we were deciding between a Toyota Yaris, a Skoda Fabia and a Honda Jazz. Found the Yaris cramped and not particularly fun to drive, the Fabia pretty much a carbon copy of our Polo and the Jazz spacious and engaging to drive. Went for a Jazz but likely would have been happy with a Fabia if we didn’t want to have as much back seat / boot room for cross country Xmas trips.

links for 2008-08-28

links for 2008-06-06

My New Book!

(Cross-posting from Geek | Manager)

Principles of Project Management cover I’m pleased to announce that one of my own projects has just come to fruition. My new book, The Principles of Project Management has just been published by SitePoint. It’s a short book aimed at folks like myself who have come from a technical background and are increasingly finding themselves in need of project management skills — whether to officially take that role or to help make the hard work they put in as developers or designers actually mean something, by ensuring the project is delivered properly.

The book was expert reviewed by Kevin Lawver and Drew McLellan who both did an admirable job of ensuring that the content stayed applicable to all sorts of projects and teams, both big and small. They also bravely took on the role of managementese-weeding and survived with remarkably few lasting scars ;-) Drew has written some thoughts on the book on his own blog. I thoroughly enjoyed working with both Drew & Kevin, as well as the team at SitePoint.

If your interest is piqued, then check out The Principles of Project Management book page or download a sample chapter.

In the interests of full disclosure, I would highlight that all the links are affiliate links — i.e. if you buy the book via that link I will both be able to track it and get something back :)

My Year in Cities (2007)

Here is the list of cities I visited in 2007 — please take it both as a long-overdue post to the blog and an apology/explanation of why posting frequency is so low at the moment!!

It’s also the reason that Dopplr is firmly entrenched as my favourite new application of 2007. Flickr also remained a firm favourite, even if I don’t always upload as regularly as I ought to… You can see photos from some (but sadly not all) of these trips here.

OVERSEAS:

  • Cincinnati, OH, USA*
  • San Antonio, NM, USA
  • Albuquerque, NM, USA
  • Austin, TX, USA
  • Hong Kong, SAR, People’s Republic of China*
  • Manila, Philippines
  • Sydney, Australia
  • Melbourne, Australia
  • Amsterdam, Netherlands
  • Cape Town, South Africa**
  • Port Elizabeth, South Africa**
  • San Jose, Costa Rica
  • Playa Jaco, Costa Rica

UK:

  • Newcastle upon Tyne [Home]
  • Exeter, Devon*
  • Tiverton, Devon*
  • Bath, Avon*
  • Bristol, Somerset*
  • Weybridge, Surrey*
  • Woking, Surrey*
  • Market Bosworth, Warwickshire
  • Cambridge
  • London

For reference, I also wrote a similar summary in 2006.

* Denotes multiple visits
** And everywhere in between. We visited Durbanville, Darling, Simonstown & Boulders, Knysna, Mossel Bay, Plettenberg Bay, Stellenbosch, Franschoek, Hout Bay, Cape Point and numerous other smaller destinations. Photos available on Flickr

links for 2007-11-19

links for 2007-11-18