I’ve mentioned before that I play football for a team sponsored by my (former) employer. We won the league cup the other year and I still count that as one of my fondest sporting memories. We finished mid-table last season despite stringing together some very good performances (including being the only team to beat the league champions).

It’s a Summer league and this Winter we joined a 5-a-side league with most of the same teams in it. A couple of guys from another team joined us and it was really good fun. We couldn’t get a team out for a couple of games at the start and dropped points straight away but after then we managed to get it together and we were very tough to beat. In fact the two games we did lose were as a result of key players not being available (due to illness and injury) and not being able to replace them with like-for-likes.

In the end we couldn’t catch the runaway league leaders and finished second but what I did learn was that having a settled squad - just like in any game of football from amateur to professional - brings consistent results. When playing with the same people each game everybody knows when to attack, when to defend, what position to go into under each circumstance and where each person will make their runs. It’s almost like telepathy and the game seems easy. But take one or two players out and suddenly it doesn’t click any more and winning gets harder.

When I was at school and University I used to play individual sports like tennis, squash, swimming, running and biking and really enjoyed them. But what I love about team sports like football is if you don’t play as a team you don’t win. It’s not about individual skill and one person scoring and winning the game single-handed - it’s about everybody contributing and working for the team so that that person can get the ball in the right place at the right time to score the goal. If one person doesn’t put the work in then everybody suffers.

For example, I very rarely score more than the odd goal - in fact I scored exactly one goal in every game we won - so you can’t rely on me to score enough goals to win a game. However I’m not bad at making passes that can cut through a team and give someone who can score lots of goals a chance. Also I’m not bad at tackling and winning the ball, but I’m not great either so you can’t rely on me to win the ball all the time. But that’s ok as long as we have someone else who can play that part (which we do). And so on. Together we make a team and cover all bases but if one of us takes our foot off the accelerator then the whole thing breaks down. If we don’t win the ball, don’t pass it into space and don’t get someone on the end of it who can score, then we don’t do well (to simplify things somewhat).

The great thing is when everybody plays for each other, the team clicks and there’s no better feeling than going off the pitch at the end of the game having won a tough match - it’s one for all and all for one (sorry, that line probably set off your cliché detector). As I get older I have to do quite a bit of training and flexibility work to stop my knees from falling apart and continue playing at a decent level - but it’s no hardship since playing in a team with quality players against good opposition is great fun. I’ll enjoy it while it (and my body) lasts!

Everybody gets their 5 minutes of fame don’t they? Well I’m no exception, although unfortunately it’s not the sort of fame you’d use as a chat-up line when attempting to court young women at a local pub. Well, not the sort of real-ale serving pubs I like to go to at least!

The sad fact though is that despite getting my photo in the local newspaper (they spelt it wrong as is the custom), despite being flown down to London for an awards ceremony, despite earning the respect of my peers, despite earning the kudos and admiration of the teachers at my school (there you go, I’m giving it a time-frame now) it seemed that my 5 minutes of fame was to disappear into oblivion. Googling for this momentous achievement - my crowning glory if you will - never returned anything relevant. There’s no Wikipedia page for it (speaking of which, where’s my Wikipedia page?!). Even my award certificate had vanished (assuming I’d ever been presented with one). No, all I had were my memories and I was going to have to bury them and recant the tale to my poor grandchildren in decades time starting with the line “Have I ever told you about my 5 minutes of fame…?”. Like a true grandparent I’ll ignore the moans of despair from them (as they’d heard it a hundred times before) and tell the story anyway. Of course by then I’ll wonder if it ever happened at all or if I’d just imagined it…

However my father is moving house soon and while clearing years of rubbish out he came across my hallowed award certificate. It proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that I have indeed had my 5 minutes of fame and yes, despite attempting to join the Royal Marines (and coming damn close), despite playing tough, physical sports like football, despite climbing many mountains and competing in several endurance events, despite having a crew cut for many years (although not at this particular time) - underneath it all I’m a complete geek. I’ve hidden it well but must finally hold up my hands and tell you the truth…

I (and some classmates) won THE TIMES TOURNAMENT OF THE MIND!

“The Times Tournament of the what?” I hear you ask? Well back when I was a kid at school the national newspaper (The Times) ran a competition set by brainiacs Mensa. My memory is vague but I believe that each week a set of questions would be printed and teams of schoolchildren around the country would try to solve them and by some iterative process one team would win outright and earn a prize for their school. If you’ve ever done an IQ test then you’ll know the sort of brainteaser questions they set. You’d get a set of shapes and have to work out what the next one was. Or some puzzle whereby two cars are moving towards each other accelerating by a certain amount to certain speeds and you have to work out where they pass. That sort of thing. They’d get more fiendish and tricky every week to the point where even the teachers (who weren’t supposed to help) would get stumped.

Fortunately myself, 9 of my classmates (who I’m sure were all much smarter than me) and our maths teacher - Ken Nisbet - managed in 1989 to get all the way through to the final and win it! It was quite an experience and considering we were competing against children much older than ourselves I think we did rather well. We won a computer for our school which was a big deal back then along with a trip to London (which seemed a million miles away from St. Andrews at the time).

And that, for the record, is my 5 minutes of fame.

As an aside, Ken Nisbet (who I believe still teaches at the school I went to - you can see him in that photo of the team above) was and no doubt still is quite a character. He had a real enthusiasm for maths and managed to make learning about triangles, calculus and all sorts of other aspects of maths actually seem interesting and entertaining. I really looked forward to his classes. The fact that I’ve managed to build a successful career as a software developer - which at its core is all about maths and problems solving - is thanks in no small part to the way he managed to capture my imagination. It’s easy to live your life and forget the people who actually got you where you are today - but to people like him I owe a great deal of gratitude. Thanks Ken, you’re a star!

One of the frustrating things about starting a new job is the time between starting and the time I’m actually productive. I’ve had 6 jobs in the last 10 years and the process usually goes something like this (in a sort of rough order):

• Say hello to everybody then immediately forget their names.
• Find out what the product or products I’ll be working on actually does and start trying to understand the field I’ll be working in (be it financial, sales, electronics or whatever).
• Figure out how the source code for the software is organised and have a look at it to get a basic idea of the quality of the software, how it’s organised and what not. Nothing too in-depth.
• Try to understand how the team culture works: do they have friendly banter? are they all-business? are they all prima donnas? (if so polish the CV and get out).
• Get my first piece of work. To do this I need to…
• …work out who “owns” each system or sub-system. When working on a system there’s always someone who understands it intimately and has some sort of ownership of it (whether they want that glory or not). Since software is a complex beast you can’t always understand all of it all of the time and when you’re working on it you’ll invariably have to interrupt this poor person quite a lot while you learn about it.
• Following on from that I need to know who the business brains are. They are either customers or colleagues who are less techies and more business types. These are the people who appreciate the software from the user’s perspective, understand the problems the software has to solve and I need to build up a relationship with them. Doing this means less of me misunderstanding what I’m doing and having to go round the houses again and again.
• Slowly get up to speed with the business as I do more projects / pieces of work. Writing software is the easy bit, working out what the software needs to do and all the nuances of the business that the software operates in is the tricky part and takes time.

As I progress through those stages I become more and more productive and the quality of what I deliver gets higher and higher. But it takes time and when you hire new people you have to appreciate that despite having to pay recruitment agents you also have to pay for the time it takes for them to get up to speed and the impact on their colleagues as they learn the business before you see a healthy return on your investment. I always find it frustrating because I know I can gather requirements, write specs, build and deliver software, but like I said they’re the easy things.

However this time it’s been a lot easier. Since I’ve joined a team I’ve worked with before I already know the people and I know the culture they work in. I’ve already worked in the industry (financial) with them and have done all the learning about what the market entails, what the software we’re building needs to do and enough to be effective when I worked with them last time (it’s amazing what knowledge gets buried in your brain but can come back when you need it). I know how they organise their code as I helped them choose the systems to do it. Since we’re working from home most of the time and I know the guys so well I don’t hesitate to pick up the phone or use IM to talk things through - whereas if I was a new-hire who’d never worked with them I’d probably feel a lot more isolated as it’s hard getting to know people via non-physical communication channels.

As it’s a new product we’re building I still have to learn about the software (how it’s designed and where everything lives) but that’s a much quicker process than getting to know people and learn about the industry you’re working in. All in all it’s slashed my start-to-productive time. Although that’s a double-edged sword as it means I’ve got no excuses for delivering pretty much straight away! I better get back to it!

Podcasting (in case you don’t know) is a cool way to listen to your favourite radio show whenever you like on your iPod instead of at the allotted time it’s broadcast. The idea is that you subscribe to a particular podcast (such as the Adam and Joe BBC 6 Music show) and each time a new episode is released it is automatically copied onto your iPod (or any other MP3 player for that matter) and you can listen to it at your leisure, such as when you’re taking the train to work. Sounds great!

Of course, back when podcasting began it wasn’t so cool and I pretty much ignored it (which is what I tend to do with most technical things until they prove themselves capable of making my life better). Initially the only podcasts out there seemed to be recorded by American men droning on in monotone voices about some boring technology or other (or making some interesting technology sound boring as a result of their monotone, droning voices) - which is exactly the last thing I wanted to listen to on the train in the morning. So I steered clear.

But more recently mainstream media, such as the BBC to name but one, have picked up podcasting in a big way. Pretty much every radio show of interest has its own podcast and with the tight integration from software such as iTunes, it’s incredibly easy to subscribe to them. And that’s exactly what I’ve been doing. Much like getting Sky+ revolutionised the way I watch TV - I “series link” all the things I’d like to see and watch them at a time of my choosing instead of being a slave to the schedules (and as a bonus feature I never have to watch ad breaks) - podcasting now means I don’t have to turn radio 5 on at 11am on a Saturday to listen to Fighting Talk. Instead the next time I hook my iPod up to my Mac the latest episode is automatically copied across and I can listen to it when I want.

As well as audio podcasts there are also video podcasts produced by a variety of people and organisations (even NASA) although personally I prefer not to squint at a small screen while on a train so will stick to audio for now. But as is often the case, something that I thought was a bit of a waste of time when it first came on the scene has grown into a huge success that’s been bought into by most mainstream media companies, not to mention talented individuals who would otherwise not be able to show their skills without getting a job in radio or TV. Still, better late than never!

Oh, and before you ask, no, I have no plans to ever record my own podcasts. I’d just drone on in monotonous tones about my hair, the weather and a whole bunch of other things nobody would ever be interested in. This site does enough of that already!

Now that I’m predominantly working from home I am unrestricted in the amount of good coffee I can drink and the amount of singing I can do while listening to some of my favourite music. (In an office full of people it’s not really a good idea to burst into song unless you’re starring in a musical or can actually sing - I qualify in neither of those categories).

For the coffee I use my wonderful Gaggia Classic machine using freshly ground coffee from my local coffee shop (it’s one of those places that I love going to as the beautiful aroma of dozens of types of coffee fills the air when you walk in). And for the music I use my recently-bought iPod Touch (which is still a great piece of kit) wired up to play through my stereo.

Anyway, I just went downstairs to make myself a latte with some Hawaiian Kona as I’ve done many times before. The fun thing about making a latte is that you can create a pretty pattern like this one, although I don’t bother because every time I’ve tried I’ve completely failed. Until today where I managed to somehow create this:

If I’m not mistaken I’d say that’s a pretty good representation of the Apple logo… I’m beginning to think I like my iPod and Macbook just a little bit too much and worry that their iPhone ads on TV are starting to get to me…

When I was on holiday on the Isle of Arran back in August of 2007 I sat down and wrote an article I’d written many times over the years about the death of my mother. I’d wanted to explain what the process of losing her had been like from the first days up until years later when I’d come to terms with it. But every time I sat down to write it I just wouldn’t be happy with it and hit Delete. Not so this time.

I hadn’t really thought about the loss of my mother for a while but for some reason after a day out walking on the hills I just sat down and wrote Losing My Mother (what I believe to be the best piece of writing I’ve ever done) in about half an hour. When I read it back to myself with tears streaming down my face I realised I’d captured the essence of what the experience of losing my mother and learning to live with it was and is like. I handed it over to my good lady (who knew my mother very well and felt the loss almost as much as I did) to proof read (she proof reads most of what I post here believe it or not) and she soon had tears running down her face before agreeing that it was “a lovely article”. Almost immediately I felt like a weight had lifted off my shoulders having put into words what I’d spent the previous 5 years learning to live with.

But it wasn’t until a couple of months later that I actually published the article here and was very tempted to just post it with comments disabled. Fortunately I thought better of it and left comments open and I’m so glad I did. If you have a look at the comments people have left you can see that I’m by no means the only person this has happened to and a lot of people have thanked me for expressing the same things they’ve been feeling and offered their own thoughts too. From my point of view it’s so nice to realise that I’m not alone with other people out there having gone through the same thing as me. It’s given me a great deal of comfort and those people have often said they feel some comfort from what I’ve written.

Friends often ask me why I have this site and why I talk about my life so openly and I can never really answer them other than to say “because I do”. But writing a very personal post for me more than anybody else on a subject I’d not often talk about in the real world (it’s not a good topic to bring up at dinner parties) and getting so much positive feedback, connecting with people I’d never have touched otherwise is a pretty damn good reason if you ask me.