What advice should you have listened to?

I was surprised, though I shouldn’t have been really, at the amount of advice that people were willing to give to us as new parents. We didn’t even have to ask – the advice was flung at us from left, right and centre. Sometimes the advice would be given to us more than once if we foolishly failed to follow it the first time.

I’ve never been good at receiving advice, especially when it has a chance of touching any part of my ego – in this case my parental skills, which I am only just developing of course. So nearly all of the advice went into the garbage can in my mind. Which is a pity because 6 months down the line we see that we should have followed some of the advice.

What advice should you have listened to?

What I do

I’ve never been a great fan of the old question “What do you do?” I’ve never been a great believer in defining myself by what I happen to be doing from 9 till 5 at the time.

And one of the problems is that I do a lot of things. Probably too much but that is how I’ve always been. Always having ideas and starting on them – whether I ended up finishing them is a completely different matter and worthy of a much longer discussion.

But it’s probably worth taking a look at what I am doing now, partly to shock myself and partly so that you can check out other stuff I am doing,

Redevelopment of a website for 1 client
Creation of a new site for 1 client
I’ve just finished redeveloping another site for a client
A large project for development of numerous web-based tools for a client

CreditCrunchDad.co.uk
LifeRiot.co.uk – this is my series of websites that includes;
GamesRiot.co.uk
LaughRiot.co.uk
MovieRiot.co.uk
MusicRiot.co.uk
StageRiot.co.uk
and two new ones coming soon.
Also Liferiot.co.uk/twitterviews where do the occasional twitter interview.

I am also working on two new projects, one with one of my brothers which is due to launch in early 2010, and the other is with a friend and has a launch date of March next year.

I wonder sometimes why I feel knackered and my to-do list only ever seems to grow….

Oh yeah, and I am a new father…

Day-to-day worries

It’s been about 4 and a half months now since Max was born, but it does seem like forever. It’s difficult to imagine life without him around.

And it’s sometimes difficult to live with him around, because it’s difficult to stop some worries.

It’s a cliched thing but I still catch myself moving in close to his crib, holding my breath and listening to hear his own sounds of breathing. Or if I can’t hear him for whatever reason I gingerly lay a hand on his chest, feeling it rise and fall.

My fears dismissed I then usually turn the attempt to leave the bedroom without waking him into some sort of Inspector Clouseau series of pratfalls as my arm catches the crib, or I stumble over something on the floor, or walk into a bed, or go to grab something and end up juggling with it in a mildly impressive way!

Shortly after all this clumsiness he wakes up – and then I get concerned that he isn’t sleeping enough.

Vicious Circle anyone?

iPhone Parenting Apps

I’m a geek. I am also now a father. Before the birth I purchased an app to keep track of how far we were in the pregnancy, and also keep our list of potential names. Since Max was born I have been using the iPhone even more to help me do and remember things – here are a list of my favourite 8 apps (in no particular order).

– Things
I’ve become a big of David Allen’s GTD philosophy but always fell down on the list-keeping activity as I never previously had something that was always on my person, and that I could easily manipulate the info. Things is the answer to my problems – it’s on my iphone, and on my mac, it syncs and allows me to see my tasks in numerous ways. Now I just have to find the time to do them….

– eBay Mobile
We had quite a few baby things given to us when Max was born, but as fast as he grows so do his needs and requirements, so we are always on the look out for the next thing for him to sit in, play with, etc. eBay Mobile puts all those searches and the chance to bid in my pocket. Read the rest of this entry »

Work from Home issues

One of the reasons that I haven’t written much on this blog is because I always planned to have a Welcome video, where I introduce myself and tell my story.

But I have yet to get around to it. Admittedly I did decide not to on a number of occasions because I looked awful, staggeringly unshaven and tired that nobody should be subjected to seeing such a thing on the internet.

However the main reason that I haven’t done it so far is the lack of time and privacy that I need to actually do it. And this is the same for so many other parts of my work. Read the rest of this entry »