Fuzzy Orange

I’ve been meaning to put a bit of an “end of year” post up for weeks now but time has flown by and I’ve had a cold/flu bug for ages now so I’ve not got round to it until now

2009 is officially over and a fresh start with 2010 is upon us

I want to start by listing a few things I’m thankful for from 2009 (bit american ‘thanksgiving’ style but meh)

Leah – having a girlfriend that lets me do what I want when I want and supports me in the things I want to achieve is amazing. Love you babe x
My Mum – she’s had a tough year for various reasons, but as always she’s been there whenever I’ve needed her. I couldn’t ask for a better mum!
My Job – I’ve had a superb year at work. I’ve launched a massive project (DespatchBay) which I am incredibly proud of, and i’ve finally made the leap from web developer to web development team manager. Those of you who know me know that I don’t usually stick at jobs for much more than a year – but I’ll soon be coming up on 2 years at my current company and I’m still loving it!
dSLR / Rick Nunn – My best mate Rick got a dSLR this year and it convinced me to go out and buy one and try a new hobby. As with most things time and a lack of motivation has meant I haven’t done as much with it as I wanted, but I love it as a relaxing hobby and I’ll be doing much much more in 2010 with photography

Now I don’t want to do a new years resolution because I never stick to it, but I do want to list a few things I aim to achieve in 2010.
I’m hoping to revisit this list monthly or bi-monthly and see how I’m getting on with it

Get Fit – I’m heading back to the gym 3 nights a week (workload permitting) and aim to lose 2 stone by next christmas. I also want to strengthen my knees up as recently my old Ice Skating/Hockey injuries to my knees have been causing me a lot of problems
New Car – I’ve owned Peugeot 106’s for 8 years now (and as most of you know I run the 106 Owners Club in the UK), but I feel it’s time to move on. I’m currently stripping my car back to standard for the new owner and eying up Clio 172 Cup’s. I’m excited about learning a new car and getting back into modifying.
New Blog – I bought phil-barker.com a few months back as I’m sort of trying to phase out my old “Fuzzy Orange” persona, but I put wordpress on it and started a skin and completely ran out of time. I’m aiming to get this skinned up in the next month and migrate the posts from here that I want to keep over to my new blog. So ermm watch this space
Scuba Dive – I’m not sure where I’m going on holiday this year but I really want to try scuba diving!
Nurburgring – I’m heading over to Germany in october with some good good mates this year to drive the nurburgring. Looking forward to that immensely!
Launch Another Project – There’s another project on at work which I’m hoping to get my hands on in the next few months. Me and Rick are very excited about its potential and I want to see that get launched this year!
Photography Projects – I want to do a few mini projects (people, self, cars, etc..) to try to push me into learning some new skills with my camera.
Be More Sociable – I want to spend a bit more time with my close family and friends this year, and a bit less time sat behind a keyboard
Save Money – I still rent my house at the moment but I have a 3 year plan to buy myself a nice detached house away from the things that annoy me (mostly other peoples screaming kids). So this year I’m starting to try to save some money for a deposit on a house.

I hope you all had a great christmas, and I hope you all have a fantastic 2010!

Stood in Netto buying my budget 99p sandwich for lunch (It’s payday on Friday – I’m always broke this week – You’ll get the irony soon!).. I noticed the newspapers today talking about the government introducing new Eco Tax’s.

I’m going to skirt around the issue that global warming is nothing more than a media-produced reason for governments to earn more money – that’s a post for another day.

What really has p*ssed me off is who they are targeting with their new eco tax, like you couldn’t guess. Motorists and home owners.
Proposals to introduce a tax on people who use too much electricity/gas – and triple the fuel tax for everyone.

Why the hell don’t these consultants understand the simple difference between Necessity and Abuse.
Owning a 4×4 landrover and only using it to take the kids to school at 12mpg is abuse.
Owning a family sized car and using it to get to work and back is Necessity.

The UK has an APPAULING public transport network. A bus from my house to the local town takes 1.5hrs – it takes 25minutes by car.
A train to my local town costs a little over £8 – it’s about £4 in unleaded in my car. And the trains stop running if a leaf hits a track which is dead handy if you’re going to a job interview or actually want to be on time for anything ever.
For my girlfriend to go home to Wales to see her parents – its either 3 comfy hours with some music in her car, or 4 different trains where the changes are mostly sitting around in a town center train station surrounded by drunken football supporters on her own!

I don’t get in my car every morning because I enjoy sitting at 40mph all the way to work behind the 92 year old who can’t see over her dashboard. I don’t enjoy dodging the giant potholes in the UK road network. I don’t enjoy any part of my drive to work. But I have to do it or I wouldn’t have a job – it’s that simple!
I don’t enjoy having a house – it offers me virtually no pleasure at all. But sleeping on the pavement is a little inconvenient.

It’s just much much easier to tax people on things they can’t avoid doing and then when they complain tell them its their own fault because if we walked to work every day and didn’t use any central heating in winter we could avoid the tax.. utter joke

Everyone has to work, everyone has to provide a place for their family to live. All of that currently involves burning fossil fuels – which are running out. But until alternatives are provided its necessary. Yes that means the earth is slowly dying, yes that means the human race is doing a pretty good job of killing itself, no that’s not necessarily a bad thing!

Thinking for a 5 year plan for myself – the way the UK is going there’s only 2 sensible options.

Move to another country .. or .. quit my job, sit in a house paid for by the government, heating on full, with a couple of screaming kids running about the place and claim benefits to spend on vodka like all the other people my age do..

Well done Labour.. well done

I’d like to love Snow Leopard, I really would. It has so many nice new features and updates. The new expose is gorgeous and running it per application when you have a load of emails open saves to find a window saves so much time. BUT, and its a big but, the current ‘bug’ with the play/pause button on the keyboard ALWAYS launching itunes is really starting to annoy me.

At home I have iTunes open all the time as it syncs with my AppleTV – so it’s not so much a problem. Though it is hugely annoying that when Im listening to spotify and I press pause – it starts playing a track from itunes grrr.
But at work I don’t use itunes for anything – I listen to my iPod or Spotify. So when I press pause or play while in spotify and suddenly itunes loads up – its rather frustrating.

I don’t know if this is a simple bug or if Apple are heading down the MS route and trying to force people to use itunes instead of any “competition” just like MS used to try to force IE as the default browser. I’m hoping its just a bug

If anyone knows a way to fix it that isn’t some horrid renaming patch please let me know