Fishing Trawler

I know quite a few vegetarians who have, for various reasons, changed to pescetarianism or pesco-vegetarianism, which is essentially a vegetarian that also eats fish, but avoids other forms of meat.

I have always felt that if it was necessary for me to abandon vegetarianism (for health reasons or similar) the last thing I would do is revert to eating fish.

More than 20 million people employed in the fishing industry may need to be taken out of service and retrained for other work over the next 40 years if the final collapse of fish stocks in oceans around the globe is to be avoided, the UN warned today.

Source: Guardian Newspaper

In my mind, when it comes to the question of sustainability, the concept of pescatarianism is seriously flawed – entirely due to the unsustainable nature of the fishing industry (in it’s current form).

Whilst I’m not suggesting that there aren’t issues in other food related industries don’t face their own issues with regard to environmental impact, those other industries are likely not endangering such a vital part of the earth’s eco-system to such an extent.

The Guardian article linked to above is well worth the read, and it refers to a UN report which is also worth reading.

Photo by adstream on flickr

Date Added: July 3rd, 2010 | Leave a comment!

Work was insane for me between the end of WordCamp Malaysia and the end of last week. I didn’t take a day off in that time. I feel a lot better now for a weekend off and normal working hours during this week.

Check out the computer usage below, taken from my Wakoopa account which tracks individual application usage.

Too many hours

It’s quite the bulge

Legend

• Blue: Internet
• Green: Audio/Video
• Red: Development
• Orange: Utilities
• Purple: Office
• Grey/Olive: Design

And before anyone says that clearly I just spend all my time browsing the internet, well, in some ways that’s true – but it’s me either making CMS modifications on a customer website, browsing forums for solutions to Magento (that was a lot of time spent in the last month, I’ll have a wee rant about Magento in a future post), and of course some general net browsing and maybe the occasional writing of a post on this site!

The only thing it doesn’t include is time spent writing emails to clients on my phone, which should be a relatively small percentage – still it’s definitely visually describes the reasons for my current exhausted state!

No more 70 hour weeks for a while thanks.

Date Added: July 1st, 2010 | Leave a comment!

With some upcoming business address changes in the works, I thought I’d investigate PO Box services from An Post, as changing your business address is an incredibly time-consuming process. You have to change bank addresses (multiple ones, and it requires form filling out and signing of stuff), phone accounts, CRO, documents, contracts, email signatures and on and on and on.

So I thought: given that we’re a business run by two people, now on different continents (and another relocation could be not too far away) it would make sense to have  a PO box. Change address again? No problem, just change the redirection of the PO box. Not a single document change required.

I looked at An Post’s PO Box service information page.

As an individual or a company, you can rent a PO Box or Vanity PO Box, and either collect your mail from your local Delivery Services Unit, or arrange for it to be delivered to your home or office.

Ok, so far so good. That makes sense and is easy to understand. Then I looked at their pricing table.

Nonsensical Pricing Table

What? What the hell is this even saying?

We, in theory, would be interested in the PO Box Delivery option. From what I can deduce if we ordered this service and read the table in a logical manner, the cost would be as follows:

• in January we’d pay €940.00;
• for the month of June we’d pay €548.33; and
• December would cost us €78.33.

I’ve looked at this over and over and it just doesn’t make any sense to me. I can’t even work out what I could be missing, or any method by which you could read this table and have it make sense. The only thing I’ve spotted is that the “December” price for PO Box Deliver and PO Box Forward Delivery, when multiplied by twelve, equals the January price. However that doesn’t explain the first two cost columns. Have a look for yourself: An Post PO Box Services information page.

There’s no other information on their page that helps to clarify this; the oddest pricing structure table I’ve ever seen. If anyone at An Post reads this, you definitely need to change that table. Perhaps have a look at how modern sites offer easy to understand pricing structures.

If you’ve got an idea how to interpret this I’d love to hear about it in the comments.

Date Added: June 22nd, 2010 | 5 Comments

I feel a bit like this

I’ve got a few blog posts lined up in my head, but I know they’re long ones and each one will take at least an hour to write (if I do them properly, which is something to which I aspire with most posts).

Unfortunately things are such that right now I don’t have the time to allow for even an hour to write a blog post. The overdue and it’s-taken-much-longer-than-it-should-have short film on which I’m working now has a final mix down date set for the 3rd of June. I’m not delighted about the fact that I’m not mixing it, but at this stage of proceedings I’ve happily resigned to the fact. Another large project is due on the 7th June, and then there’s a bunch of other small things in the works.

So, everything is on hold: playing with my fancy new camera; going out; watching movies (I can justify watching a couple of 30 minute shows every once in a while); doing nothing.

If you hear from me on here over the next two weeks, you should probably point out that I should really be working.

Image by slworking on Flickr

Date Added: May 26th, 2010 | 3 Comments

I want to smash a chair

I bought an office chair when I set up my office space in Phnom Penh. After far too short a time the chair started slowly slipping, dropping me lower and lower such that my arms were no longer level with the keyboard.

Such a thing is incredibly frustrating, mainly because it ever so slowly and incrementally drops in height, so much so that you’re barely even aware of it.

I brought the chair back to the office furniture shop and complained a lot. They fixed it.

It’s broken again.

Incrementally dropping in height, slowly slowly driving me up the wall. Like a water-torture (although obviously slightly less extreme).

Image by drewleavy on Flickr

Date Added: May 24th, 2010 | 2 Comments

Pixelapes Logo

When we built a new server for PixelApes hosting clients we had to pick a name for it. I’ve always enjoyed naming my computers (all my current machines, whether they be phone or laptop/desktop) are named after Frank Zappa’s children.

With our hosting server it seemed to make sense to stick with the simian theme that our company name heralds. A lot of thought went into it. First we had to decide on a hosting package name, and due to the majesty of the hosting server we had built, we decided to call it Silverback Hosting – the silverback gorilla being the mightiest of the apes.

From there we thought a lot about the name for the server, in such a way that would relate to our hosting package name. We settled on Jambo, the name which had been giving to a very famous silverback.

As you can imagine, the video below, as a result of all the above, I enjoyed an awful lot more than I really should have!

Date Added: May 20th, 2010 | 5 Comments

I just left the office. Nearly 11pm. On my way to get dinner I passed a big group of Cambodians out on the street, holding hands in a big circle dancing.

They parted hands to allow a motorcycle to drive past and then re-linked hands and carried on dancing. I could not hear any music being played.

Now I’m sitting in the outside area of a restaurant, sipping a banana lassi, waiting for my dinner to be served, and watching the world pass by.

I love this place.

Date Added: April 9th, 2010 | Leave a comment!

Yesterday I decided to treat myself (given my recent sale of a soundcard on Ebay) to the Motorola Milestone, a recently launched phone running Google’s Android OS.

I’m posting this using the even more recently launched WordPress app for Android, which appears to be a highly polished app for managing multiple WordPress blogs. Nice work Automattic!

The Milestone feels good. Beautiful screen, responsive, easy shifting from one app to another. I just read my feeds over breakfast and it was definitely a pleasant change from the small screen on the E71. It’s one of the reasons I decided to get this phone – my move to Cambodia has resulted in me having a lot more time away from a laptop/desktop and I’ve been using my mobile for a lot more web browsing, communication and social interaction. Having a phone with a nice big screen might save me from going blind.

I had been tempted by the Nexus One, but the high price over here, coupled with the lack of a physical keyboard pushed me towards the Milestone.

So here I am, sitting on my balcony in my new flat, sipping coffee and posting to my blog. Nice. The photo at the top is the view from my balcony and taken with the 5mp camera on the milestone.

Date Added: February 9th, 2010 | 3 Comments

Am I stressed? Yes.

Remaining time to complete film

Timer courtesy of countdown.onlineclock.net

Date Added: November 6th, 2009 | 4 Comments

What happens when there’s a terrorist in your child’s drawing?

I’m not exactly sure whether this is originally by House of Grindlebone, or not, but it’s a great image.

Date Added: November 4th, 2009 | Leave a comment!