Seriously, I only got 6 days into my “30 Days of me” before I faded out! So… obviously something has to change.

I have an idea but I will make no grandiose promises here other than to say that either something significant or nothing at all will happen to conceptfusion.co.nz in the coming weeks and months.

It is frustrating to me that I have so many idea’s and area’s of interest and yet, it seems, so little time to act upon them… but I’m not here to make excuses, simply to draw a line in the sand and place a marker. This endeavour will go one of the two ways stated above… all or naught… and if the latter should be the winner then I shall gracefully retire.

On a separate note, I’m writing this using the new full screen writing view in WordPress 3.2 RC2 and OMG it’s good! While the tweaked Admin UI in 3.2 is truly awesome, the zero clutter full screen writing view is a beauty to behold.

Iron Man. ‘Cause he’s cool… duh!

Ok, so he’s a regular(ish) guy with no “actual” super powers, assuming you don’t count the nuclear power plant embedded in his chest, and he has lots of cool geeky toys that make him awesome.

Actually, it’s like looking in a mirror… with the exception of the neclear power plant and the cool toys… so not really.

In a word? Procrastination!

Day 03 – A picture of you and your friends

It would seem I am unable to comply with this directive… I hunted high and low through my 17000+ pictures and couldn’t find a single one of me and friends… me and family yes but that would be cheating. That is not to say I don’t have friends or that I don’t see them… simply that any photo’s that have been taken I am behind the camera not in front of it. Sad I know.

Having realised this I must make more of an effort in the future to include myself in such photographs!

Concept Fusion is the name I traded under when I was a freelance Web Designer back in 2004/5 and it has just stuck with me ever since. I chose it after much brain storming and hunting for available urls as I couldn’t get my own name.

1. I was born at Torbay hospital on June 18th 1974 and grew up in, what at the time was purported to be, the largest village in England, Kingsteignton.
2. I have worked almost my entire career in web design and development… everything from web design and interaction design to being a “knowledge management consultant” which still amazes me as when I graduated design school in 1995 the world-wide web as we know it today barely existed.
3. I enjoy watching movies and TV (on demand as regular TV drives me insane!), something that along with a propensity to procrastinate and more recently the addition of my two beautiful little boys has a rather negative effect on my productivity. I can only imagine what I could do with a little focus.
4. I listen to a broad and diverse, often disturbing range of music… but I tend to fall back on the cheesy bordering on awful as it seems to  work best for helping me focus on what I am doing. This will no doubt be evidenced on days 10, 15 and 30 of this exercise.
5. I have lived in New Zealand for almost 12 years, most of my adult/professional life.
6. In January 2011 I will marry for the second time.
7. Having worked for myself in the past I long to do it again, even more so now that I have a young family at home… but it scares me sh*tless!
8. My absolute favorite TV show is The West Wing so I am really looking forward to seeing The Social Network (Aaron Sorkin is the writer of both).
9. I really want to learn to play the Piano and have repeatedly tried over the years, and as recently as last year… having purchased a $3000+ keyboard a couple of years ago I really should follow though on this!
10. I think Italy is one of the most magical places on earth, having spent just two weeks there on our European holiday a few years ago. I would love to return and spend more time there… and learn Italian.
11. Those that know me well know I love to RANT! The subject is not always important…  but life can always be trusted to offer plenty of opportunity!
12. I love to drive… I just wish they would stop ruining all the good roads (Rimutaka Hill) by straightening them or applying lowest-common-idiot-denominator speed limits.
13. I use Ellipsis way to often when typing and instant messaging… as evidenced by this post… this very fact even! I think it reflects the way I talk in the real world, or at least how I think.
14. I cannot begin to describe the love I have for my two boys… words simply fail me… for a change.
15. I miss my family… I wish I were able to spend more time with them.

Wow… that was harder than I imagined… 15 “Interesting” facts about myself… are they in fact even interesting? I’ll let you be the judge… this really made me think though , it’s not until you sit down to write a list such as this that you realise just how un-interesting you really are… or at least how much you take everything for granted.

Here’s how it will (should?) go:

• Day 01 – A recent picture of you and 15 interesting facts about yourself
• Day 02 – The meaning behind your Blog name
• Day 03 – A picture of you and your friends
• Day 04 – A habit that you wish you didn’t have
• Day 05 – A picture of somewhere you’ve been to
• Day 06 – Favorite super hero and why
• Day 07 – A picture of someone/something that has the biggest impact on you
• Day 08 – Short term goals for this month and why
• Day 09 – Something you’re proud of in the past few days
• Day 10 – Songs you listen to when you are Happy, Sad, Bored, Hyped, Mad
• Day 11 – Another picture of you and your friends
• Day 12 – How you found out about Blogger and why you made one
• Day 13 – A letter to someone who has hurt you recently
• Day 14 – A picture of you and your family
• Day 15 – Put your iPod on shuffle: First 10 songs that play
• Day 16 – Another picture of yourself
• Day 17 – Someone you would want to switch lives with for one day and why
• Day 18 – Plans/dreams/goals you have
• Day 19 – Nicknames you have; why do you have them
• Day 20 – Someone you see yourself marrying/being with in the future
• Day 21 – A picture of something that makes you happy
• Day 22 – What makes you different from everyone else
• Day 23 – Something you crave for a lot
• Day 24 – A letter to your parents
• Day 25 – What I would find in your bag
• Day 26 – What you think about your friends
• Day 27 – Why are you doing this 30 day challenge
• Day 28 – A picture of you last year and now, how have you changed since then?
• Day 29 – In this past month, what have you learned
• Day 30 – Your favorite song.

Lets see how far I get before I fall off the {band}wagon! I’ll take bets on the first missed/late post… anybody?

I’ll also be taking the the opportunity to give the site some much needed love, upgrading the theme and implementing some additional functionality.

Look out for the first post later today in the next day or-so!

In no particular order these are some of the things I want to focus on:

BuddyPress
I’d like to write some plugins and/or themes and really get back into the BuddyPress scene as well as emersing myself more fully in the WordPress community.

Develop and Release!
I’ve been sittting on a number of personal projects for far too long that I want to get off the ground this year so watch this space.

Blog
Yes, this blog! I plan to be a better blogger and blog more regularly. If I start to achieve some of the other things in this list at least I’ll have more to talk about!

Photography
I’ve had my Nikon D80 Digital SLR for nearly 3 years now and I’ve yet to spend any time experimenting and learning to really use it for anything but point-and-shoot style photography, mainly of my son which to be honest was a large part of the reason for puchasing the camera in the first place! This year I’d like to get back to my creative roots and really start to push the envelope a little.

Piano
I started learning Piano (for the third time) last year and while I’m still on the folksy beginners stuff I’d like to be able to play some “real” music before the end f this year… music like this.

So there it is… there are a few other things I’d like to do such as learning Italian but I think the list above will keep me more than busy enough, and there are some other upcoming developments that I think might consume rather a lot of my time… but more on that later

Yes, the Mac has some nice features, and there is no denying the allure of some of their hardware, although some of it is a little on the industrial side of “industrial design” for my tastes… yes I’m talking about you Mac Pro! But to say OSX is better than Windows (even Vista) is just crap.

I work in an office where more people use Macs than PCs… and yet more people use Windows than OSX. Sure, we’re a software development company and a Microsoft (.net) one at that but it’s still a telling fact that a large portion of of the Mac loving crowd simply can’t do what they need to do with a MAC alone… for this you only have to look at how popular products like Parallels, VMWare Fusion and BootCamp are. How many Windows users on the other hand run OSX for this reason? None? surely this can’t be!

I use Windows… I have used it since the days of Windows 95, having started out on a Mac, and while like ALL operating systems there are things I don’t like, I enjoy using Windows, especially Windows 7 which I have been using without issue since the early betas. The “Macs are better than PCs”articles are really startin’ to piss me off as they are so completely one eyed and completely ignore any negatives on the Mac side even going so far in some cases to raise the cost of upgrade as a negative for Windows! Seriously?!?!  How many times have Apple cut there users off at the knees in the last 10 years?

Window’s Vista had problems yes… most, after the first few months, were perception based however, helped and guided lovingly by Apple of course. Windows 7 is at a minimum the equal of anything in the OSX world and in my opinion a far superior OS. It’s stable, easy to use and has great features… Apple can try in their advertising to tie Windows 7 to the mis-guided perception issues that plagued Vista but it’s an argument they will ultimatly lose. They’ll have a much harder time convincing anybody to “Switch” when the OS they are already running is this good.

So it’s great to see articles like this occasionally that put some of the BS arguments used into some proper perspective.