I tried using a broadband dongle down in Cornwall for a week without much success due the location of the house really, but now I’m back on the dongles because I’m on the move – not physically myself, but between landline broadband suppliers. I’ve done a lot of research again and decided that if you are lucky enough to be in an area covered by the BE Broadband up to 24Mb service then this is by far the best broadband deal available. I can’t apply for the new BE Broadband until my phone line has been taken over by BT so there are at least two delays built in to the transition. With a T-Mobile 3G pay-as-you-go broadband dongle I can activate it for one month and get up to 3 gigabits of transfer, and then a bit more. There’s no contract, so as soon as the home broadband is up and running again I can stop using the dongle, and keep it handy for future travels, simply activating it for any month it becomes necessary or even for one day at a time on day trips to work away from home perhaps.
One of the advantages of being employer independent if not location independent is the opportunity to shift around the hours and days to suit myself rather than somebody else.
Day Shifting
Saturdays and Sundays are not really the best days to take a weekend break. There are too many other people off work, school and life and the transport is always worse with less trains and busier roads. So we’ve taken to having Wednesdays and Thursdays off instead, and that seems to be working out OK. We don’t have to stick to it if something else comes up, but at least it’s a routine that gets us out and about once a week, roughly. Fr example, last week I did some work on Wednesday afternoon because that’s when it needed to be done and then in the evening we went out to Havering Folk Club as usual. On Thursday we had a nice day out at Kew Gardens although it started to get a bit too hot in the afternoon which brings me to my next point:
Time Shifting
I’m a bit of a morning person these days and at 6.30am or 7.30am it’s nice and cool and quiet – my brain is active so that’s the best time for me to start work. Then by about 1.00pm or or 2.30 it’s getting too hot and I’m tired so it’s time to stop. This is a good time for an afternoon nap after a light lunch and then in the evening I might do a bit more work, especially if I feel like it between around 9.00pm and midnight.
If I was at work today I’d go home sick but since I work from home I’ll just carry on working. If I was at home sick I’d probablt be bored out of my mind by now, so I’m glad of the computer and communication to distract me from my aches and pains. This would be good practice for everybody when the swine flu pandemic re-emerges in the autumn and we all have to stay at home for a month or so.
Art and science combined in Gormley’s 2000 sculpture called Quantum Field in London
Announcing the new Theatre Breaks Magazine for news and reviews, West End Guide, Hotel Deals and Theatre Breaks in London
I’ve been using a program to make sure I take regular eye breaks and longer breaks as well. It’s called Time Out (Free Download) and only works on the Apple Mac computers.
It is very easy to fall into bad habits when using a computer for hours on end. You care about what you are doing, so can sometimes push yourself too far, or over-strain yourself. The human body isn’t built to sit in one position for endless hours, gripping a mouse or typing on the keyboard. Dejal Time Out is here to help. It will gently remind you to take a break on a regular basis.
Time Out has two kinds of breaks: a “Normal” break, typically for 10 minutes after 50 minutes of work, so you can move about and relax, plus a “Micro” break: a very brief pause of typically 10 seconds every 10 minutes, so you can remember not to tense up too much for long periods. You can disable either kind of break if desired, and the breaks are automatically paused when you go away from your computer, and can be reset when you come back.
You can configure how long each kind of break lasts, and how long between breaks. Each Time Out is announced via the screen slowly dimming, with related graphics materializing, and when the break is complete, it fades out again. You can change the time these transitions take… and you can even change the color and the level of transparency during the break. So if you like, you can make it mostly transparent so you can continue reading while on your break… though it’s better for you if you give your eyes a rest during the Time Out.
While in a break, a progress bar shows how long till it is over, and buttons are available to postpone or skip the break if you can’t be interrupted right then. Starting with version 1.5, you can change the number of minutes for the postpone buttons, or even hide them and/or the skip button, if you want to encourage yourself to take the breaks.
I’m still not sure whether I’ll keep this going long term, but for the moment it’s definitely doing me some good.
Blue
BLUE by Andy Roberts
This version of Blue is a photomontage set to an original sound recording of a song by Andy Roberts.
Pictures by andyrob
Blue - Andy Roberts on PhotoPeach
Clever idea and practice from Earthworm:
Cereal Box Mailers
Bubble wrap envelopes are not recyclable plus they are manufactured and you have to buy them, so I have created a template with which to make mailers from cereal boxes. I have tested it by sending a book to myself and then to others who reported back. The secret is in the way I do the corners. Corners are very vulnerable with books. This way the corner of the mailer takes the brunt of it.
Do you prefer working at home to in the office?
I do , but feel free to add your own opinion.
Screentoaster is an online screencasting facility for multiple platforms. I had difficulty getting it to run from Camino but got it working in Flock eventually. This is the first test, embedded here after having been recorded directly to my andy roberts screentoaster account.
No video exists on my computer as far as I can make out, but there is an option to export an avi version for download, which I could then upload to youTube if I wanted to. So how does this compare with Snapz Pro X which I’ve already used and paid for?