Sometime in the next couple of weeks I will be performing a major software upgrade on the server that hosts this blog, as well as a number of services I host on behalf of my clients.
What this means to you
Hopefully nothing.
All being well, there should be no significant downtime and the services hosted by this server will continue uninterrupted.
If you are a client of mine, I will be contacting you directly in the next few days with more details about when the upgrade will be performed and how it might affect you.
I apologise in advance for any possible inconvenience this may cause.
Well, it’s been a new year for a little while actually, but 2013 has been a busy one so far. I’ve been working hard on some interesting things, but I still managed a sneaky skiing trip.
2012 was an awesome year; I welcomed it in rawkus style with my former housemates, and then a few days later, after the hangover had cleared of course, flew my first passengers as a newly qualified pilot!
I went to birthday parties, ate some great food, climbed, and enjoyed the company of some great people. I played Capoeira with my group at the Oxford Olympic Torch event, but otherwise managed to miss the worst of the Olympics by camping in the Czech wilderness followed by some epic climbing in Italy.
I have some big plans in motion for 2013, hopefully I’ll be able to dial up the awesome a few more notches! I want to finally get to grips with a foreign language, and ideally live abroad for a while in the native country. I want to progress my flying career in some way, advance to more complicated aircraft or perhaps do an aerobatic qualification. I intend to see more of the world, and climb more mountains (both figuratively and literally!).
This video, done by the fine people at RSA animate, was doing the rounds a few months ago but it really strikes a chord with me so I thought I’d re-share it here.
When I rule the world this will be mandatory viewing for anyone in a management position.
Company culture is set by its founders, and this can be one of the hardest things to get right. As a company grows the culture and humanity of a company tends to get diluted, and hierarchy and middle management put in place. Companies which have a failing culture (which I define as a company whose employees by and large hate going to work), have among their many failings a number of things in common.
Firstly, they all tend to have fairly deep hierarchies with layers of unnecessary abstraction between those in charge of strategic planning and those doing the actual work. Secondly, those at the coal face, so to speak, don’t feel as though they have any control of their own destiny and that their ideas don’t matter.
Companies which seem to do well, certainly those I’ve worked with where I’ve got the most enjoyment out of the interaction, listen to those in their employ and empower them to act on their own initiative to solve problems. They have flat hierarchies, value and give credit publicly to those that made a contribution.
While it is often raised as being a primary issue when workers are dissatisfied, money is generally a proxy for other issues.
This video, done by the fine people at