Lady Gaga just came on TV. My lovely lady wife said “I don’t even know her real name”. Obviously, iPad in hand, I had the answer in a gaggle of picoseconds. And then the sagely question was asked by the beautiful one across the room from me “what did we do before the Internet?”. Well. I thought. Many years ago, in those tobacco brown...

Back in 1991 I left University and started work. I came from Glasgow to live at home with my parents in Edinburgh. But my job was in Glasgow. The weekend before my first day, I went into Princes Street and bought 3 books to keep my entertained on the train journeys to Queen Street. The books I got where Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American...

Apropos of not very much, earlier tonight I saw an advert on TV for Barclays Business Banking. In it you see a very slow transparent shoe making machine. The voiceover tells you that 4 out of 5 business loans are approved and suggest that this particularly shoe company get a loan, get some big shiny cogs in their machine and suddenly they can make shoes faster. Now,...

As I approach the end of my 20th year of professional life, I’d like to leave this short note to myself just in case, by some miracle of future technology, I end up reading this in the past. First thing to say is that choosing to work in IT wasn’t a bad choice, far from it. I’ve had a lot of fun, met some great people and I got to spend a lot of...

I like to be busy. And I usually quite enjoy being too busy. I was once given some very wise words. You should never say you were too busy to do something. Instead you should just say that you were doing something else more important. Being “too busy” sort of implies that you are perhaps a little out of control rather than aware of the all the necessary...

I’ve been pottering about on Twitter for a few years now but 2010 really felt like it become part of my daily come and go. Whether it was as a simple SMS replacement or a way of making X-Factor entertaining, it has permeated through most aspects of my daily life. This is obviously as a result of all the lovely people on Twitter who take the time is listen,...

Are we all enjoying the snow? It has been interesting to watch the emotions ebb and flow as the horror of the ongoing winter has hit us all. I think it has gone a little like this. I wonder how many winters like this we’ll have before this cycle changes and we add ‘preparation’ and ‘indifference’.

A few years ago I did this ranty blog post about the new disastrous trends in language used in business. Well, over 3 years on and guess what? No one listened ( debatable, even, that anyone read! ). In fact, it’s got worse. What can I say, they’ve asked for it, I gave them a chance, here it is, ranty blog post #2. All this was triggered by a single...

Avid followers of the World Cup will know that Portugal play Spain tonight in a last 16 game. Clearly a game to look forward to with a vast array of talent on display (if ever there was a way to guarantee a dour 0-0… ). In the UK, we are rightly focused on our traditional rivalries and less aware of the depth and ferocity of the rivalries that exist elsewhere....

Not long now until the start of World Cup 2010 and, as ever, I’m very much looking forward to it. I love the World Cup. But I have sensed over recent weeks that not everyone does. I started thinking about why I liked it so much and many, many memories flooded back. I thought I’d scribble them all down. A rare lump of autobiography here, but hey,...