Catching up

This one will take a while 'cause I've not written for a while there's a lot to write about.

Coldplay. Went to see Coldplay at GM Place in Vancouver a week ago. I'm not a mega-fan of Coldplay, but I have to say that the show was the most entertaining I've seen in years. I go to a lot of gigs and I always enjoy them but this one was better than usual. First off, there were two warm-up acts.

The first one was Howling Bells, from Australia. They're kind of a cross between less dreary Cure and Sarah MacLachlan. Needless to say I bought their only album (check iTunes).

The second warm-up was Snow Patrol from Ireland. Another great band. One thing that struck me about them was that the singer had a huge grin on his face all the way through the set. I was wondering if he just couldn't believe that he was up there opening for Coldplay.

Then Coldplay themselves were excellent. The band were all over the stage, the lighting was excellent, they played in three different places in the venue. At the end of a stage in the audience and then at the other end in a spot where 6 seats had been reserved. Brilliant show.

Then last week I went to see The Tragically Hip at the Orpheum in Vancouver. The Orpheum is a lovely place to see anyone. It's an old building and is really designed for plays and stuff like that, which leads me to my only complaint about the Hip show. It was too loud! My ears rang for two days after. The Orpheum is not really designed for amplified music. But the Hip were terrific. I saw them at the Pemberton festival last summer but it was really nice to see them in a more intimate setting. The antics of Gord Downey (the singer) are worth the ticket price on their own.

That's about it for live music this year I think. U2 is coming later on and I might go to that, AC/DC are coming too but no thanks.

Still looking for full-time work. Had a few nibbles but nothing really. One company was looking for someone with my exact qualifications, they brought me in for an interview, and - nothing. Didn't even call me back. Rude. Had a phone interview last week that sounded hopeful but nothing yet.

My own 'business' is not really doing anything either.

Been doing some stuff around the house. Built the bench we've wanted for a while. It's in the mud room and is really somewhere to take off your shoes and for the kids to put their stuff, backpacks, jackets and shoes. My wife has been wanting me to do it for ages and now it's done.

Been out walking a lot, riding my bike a lot too.

Anyway, that's enough for now.

I'm on Twitter as vanmacguy if you want to look me up.

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Some Mac stuff I like

I've been playing around with a bunch of Mac tools lately, so wanted to post them here.

Geek Tool. Geek Tool is not for the feint of heart. It basically displays the results of any Unix script on the desktop. Sounds easy, but you have to have the script first. I have it displaying the current date and time, and it works really well. Here's a link to more information at MacRumors.

Bowtie. Bowtie is a little utility that displays the current iTunes track on the desktop. It's also got a bunch of 'skins' with it so that you can change it's appearance. It's tres cool. Get it here. Oh, and it's free.

Evernote. This is a great application. It's a replacement for the note part of Apple's mail and the nice thing is that there's a matching iPhone application. Works super well and it's become a standard for me. Get it here, it's free too.

iStat Menus. Again, a great, free application. This one sits in the Menu bar of your Mac and displays all kinds of system information. I have mine set up to show me, CPU, active processes, hard drive space, temperatures and network activity along with the current date. I've been using this one for a while and it runs on all my Macs. Get it here.

Tweetdeck. Tweetdeck is my choice du jour for Twitter client on the Mac. It's got a nice interface and you can do every kind of Twitter action from it. Unlike some other Twitter clients where you have to go to the Twitter site to say, unfollow someone. It's free (notice a common thread here? I'm cheap) and you can get it from here. There's also a matching iPhone app, get that from iTunes. It's free too.

One that's for the iPhone is called RunKeeper. I have the free version (surprise!) and got it from the iTunes store. It tracks your run, walk, bike ride and will tell you the distance travelled and your speed. It also displays a map based on Google maps when you're finished. You can have it automatically send your workout details straight to Twitter if you want to share them.

The last one for now is Tinkertool. It's free and you can get it here. Tinkertool lets you change all kinds of settings in Mac OSX. And it doesn't change anything permanently so you can experiment as much as you like without breaking anything. There's a single button to click if you want to restore everything.

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My own business

Hah! Is all I have to say. I don't know if it's me or the economy but the business has not taken off at all. It's as slow as molasses in the winter. So I'm back to trying to find a real job. I'm still trying to do my own thing but I have lots of time to find real employment.

Anyway, the location of this blog has changed. I've resurrected my original website at www.bailie.org. That URL used to redirect to this blog, but I've now put the site back up. It's basically a resume site and this blog is a link off it. I had some good luck with the resume site when I had it up before, and right now I could use all the luck I can get.

What else. Well since I posted last we got a puppy. She's part poodle and part cocker spaniel and is all cockapoo. Her name is Molly. She's very cute and is a lot of fun. We're just trying to get past the house and leash training.

I had a birthday a little while ago too. Ho hum. Started using Twitter, get me here if you like. House projects this summer are to reinforce the floor underneath the main level. It's become a little springy over the years.

I'm learning Objective-C and Cocoa programming on the Mac. I've always loved coding, it's something I've never tired of in all these years. So I might as well add another language to the list.

That's all for now.

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My attempt at starting my own business

Well, today was a big day in some ways.

For the last few weeks, apart from finishing the office (see earlier posts), I've been building a couple of simple websites and getting all my ducks in a row to launch my own consulting business.

The fist couple of things I had to do were to get some kind of logo, build some web site(s) and do a mail out of a brochure-type document.

Well, check, check and check.

Two web sites, one for Mac Support and one for PC Support www.vanmacguy.com and www.davidbailie.com respectively.

If you are in my address book, you already got the mail out and brochure. If you got it, please consider helping out and distributing it to just one person - you can do more if you like though. Starting a business is hard. Especially with no income.

If you're not in my address book, or you are but didn't receive it, and you want the brochure, please comment on this post and I'll send it to you straight away.

Some would say that these economic times would make it even harder to start your own consulting business, but I think that this tough economic climate is actually going to help. The more businesses and small business that lay off their IT staff, the better it is for a consultant. Only time will tell I guess?

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End of office saga

So, it's finally done.

After almost three years elapsed time, thousands of dollars, hours and hours of work and even more hours of planning, it's finished.

It looks great. I'm all moved in, working from there right now, it's warm, but not too warm (thanks to the three Mac's) and is nice and quiet (apart from the aforementioned Mac's).

The creak in the floor is actually going away as the hardwood settles in. The chairs run nice and smoothly, the desks look and feel great and everything works.

Problem is, I've spent so much time planning and working on it, that I don't actually want to be in it now. Hmm. I'll get over that though.

Now, on with the next job. Actually, I'm going to wait until the summer to do that one, I have to reinforce the floors in the house, and it's cold down there right now.

Back to tech stuff.

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Ongoing office build saga

Firstly, apologies. I'm sure no one is interested in this, but this is a blog after all, so I just write crap in here that I'm working on.

The dilemma right now is what to do with the floor. We were going to put tile in, then we decided to put slate tile in. But we decided that as slate is uneven, whenever we rolled a chair over it, the little parts that were uneven would crack and splinter so we'd be left with slate dust all over the floor. Not good.

So we decided back on tile. I did some research on installing a tile floor and while it didn't sound that difficult, it made me realise just how final putting tile down is. If you mess up one tile or one cracks, you just can't get it up again. So we decided to go with hardwood instead.

Great, another job I've never done before. Found the design we liked and went out and bought it. That part was easy. Installing it was actually not too bad either. A tip for all those thinking of doing the same thing. Walls are not straight and most floors are not flat. You can save yourself hours of frustration by making your walls as straight as possible and by ensuring that your floor is flat.

That said though, my walls are not straight and my floor is not flat and it went in fine. I have a creak in the doorway, but that's actually kind of old-world, so I don't mind that.

Almost done.

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So...

My Father-in-law went home the other day. 

The office is looking good. Many thanks to him for helping.

We have the drywall up and one coat of 'mud' on. I've had a drywaller come in and finish it off, so as of today, the subfloor is done, the wiring is all done, the window is in, the door is in and it's ready for paint, slate floor and desks. Then we can move in! Woo-hoo! Can't wait.

The snow is mostly gone compared to how it was and freelance work looks like it's going to pick up. I've had a couple of calls this week already.

I've decided to go at this freelancing thing a lot harder than I have in the past. I've bought a domain name and put up a first cut at a website. Find it here if you like.

Bought the wood for my desks yesterday. I'm going to custom build them into the office with one desk all the way down one wall and all the way across the back. I got Black Walnut for the desk, it was really expensive and is really heavy, but hey, it's not like I'm planning on moving offices any time soon, so I may as well do it right.

I'd like a logo for my freelance thing. Thinking of a caricature. I'd have to have one made though as I have no idea where to begin with arts stuff. I can spell Photoshop but that's about as much as I know.

Anyway.

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Building and constructing

Decided to spend the first couple of weeks of the year finishing my office. For those that don't know (and why would you?), I started the office project almost three years ago by tearing out the sauna that was in my house.

Well the room has stayed in a state of partial deconstruction for a while and since I'm not working it's the ideal time to get busy.

My father-in-law is here now helping me construct. We're doing wiring, external window, floor, insulation, internal pocket door and drywall. Should all be finished in a week or so. Dirty work and my poor hands are all busted up and scabby. Not used to manual labour I guess?

The family got a Wii for Christmas and I just bought Wii Fit. Going to Mexico in February for a couple of weeks so I want to try and get in some kind of less disgusting shape for then. This seems like as good a way as any other to try that out.

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