It’s been over a month since I’ve posted anything.  I can’t really say that I’ve been too busy—I’ve been enjoying the summer.  Since the kids got out of school, it’s difficult to get much work done.  So, everything is on hold until September.

I haven’t even been tweeting lately.  I guess I feel social media fatigue and am waning a little on Twitter, Facebook, blogging, etc.  Everything I think of to write about seems too mundane to write once I start typing it.  So, I don’t write it.  This is not what a blog is all about.  A blog should allow you to write what you want regardless of whether it is worthy of someone’s attention—if they want to read it, they will (or won’t).  I seem to be experiencing an inexplicable self-consciousness whenever I start writing something lately. It will pass soon, I’m sure.

On the tech side, I’ve been playing around with Silverlight a lot.  I have a hot and cold relationship with it.  Sometimes it seems like such a gimmicky technology which flies in the face of web standards.  At other times it seems like something that is so cool, you shouldn’t ignore it.  I’m getting a lot of agents calling me about WPF work in the banking sector—so it may be picking up soon (since WPF will probably lead to Silverlight work).

I just got back from a week-long holiday in Paris—well, actually most of it was spent at Disneyland.  I listened to some Michel Thomas French CDs before going over and tried to use French as much as possible with varying levels of success.  Despite learning Mandarin and Vietnamese, I failed the only semester I took of French in high school and always had trouble with masculine and feminine nouns (I had the same trouble when learning Hindi and Spanish).  I think I learned more in the past few weeks than I did that entire high school course.  Still, my French knowledge is really lacking—but having finally visited France, I am motivated to learn more of it.  It was a lot of fun, and very easy to travel to from London on the Eurostar.

Now that summer is drawing to a close, it’s time to get back to work.  I’m going to either start looking for more Overpass clients or find a contract somewhere.  The next few weeks will be pretty busy.

Last weekend I took my family to the Cornbury Music Festival near Witney in Oxfordshire.  It was my first music festival—there weren’t many (I don’t know if there were any) near San Diego when I was growing up.  There are loads of festivals in England—they call this the festival season.  We saw some great bands like Squeeze, the Blockheads, Joshua Radin, etc.  I get the impression it’s a festival for the older crowds (30s and 40s), but there were some younger crowds too.

Cornbury was recommended as one of the most family-friendly festivals there are.  It has three stages.  This is only the 7th year, but they’ve had some big names play it.  This year the headliners were Jackson Browne and David Gray.  The kids loved it.  This was their first camping experience.

One of the highlights was watching Charly Coombes & The New Breed on the Riverside Stage (the small stage).  I had never heard of them before and there was only a small crowd watching.  They are obviously a pretty new band, but I’m sure we will be seeing more of them.  I’ve already bought their album on Amazon.  Here’s a video I found on YouTube:

It was a great festival and the weather was reasonably nice.  It was very cool to bring some blankets and a football into the Arena where we could watch the bands while kids could play football off the side if they were bored.  I highly recommend it—especially if you have small children.

Four years ago, my colleagues at BNP Paribas gave me an iPod Nano as a leaving gift.  It worked great and I use it all the time for running.  I have a big iPod Classic too, but this little 1Gb gadget is perfect for my runs (since it has the flash memory and I find it easy to navigate the music while running than I did when running with an iPhone.

The problem is that a few years ago, after running with it through the rain, the click wheel stopped working properly.  It works eventually but you have to fiddle with it.  For example, the menu button wouldn’t work until you clicked it about 5 times.  It was annoying, but I learned to live with it.  I thought about replacing it, but it hardly I couldn’t really justify the expense to myself to get a new one.

So the other day, I stumbled upon some videos on how to fix various problems with iPods, iPhones, etc.  Since my Nano was probably way outside any warranty anyway, I decided to fix it myself.  Around my house, I’m known for fixing things and making them worse (like flooding my own kitchen or making a small leaky tap to a large leaky tap), so it went against my better judgement—but I tried it anyway..

I bought a new click wheel for £3.99 from http://www.appleiphoneparts.co.uk/.  It was tiny and it came in an envelope the next day.  They have loads of parts  I also bought a iPhone toolkit from E-Cell on ebay (http://stores.ebay.co.uk/E-Cell-Global) for £2.95.

I then watched a video made by  DigiExpress in the US (http://www.digiexpress.us/) which walks through how to replace it:

I had to pause this video loads of times at each step, but I got it to work.  It took me about 20 minutes.  My 4-year-old Nano is just like new. When the battery goes out on it, I will be able to replace that too.  I’m chuffed about saving some money by fixing myself, but I’m more pleased that I didn’t have to add yet one more piece of technology to a landfill somewhere.

The weather here in Oxfordshire has been fantastic the past few weeks.  It’s not like English weather at all, but a lot more like the California summers I’ve grown up with.  The weather has been sunny and about 80 degrees Farrenheit.  The other day while I was driving with the windows down in the car and the music blaring, it reminded me of taking long drives in the States—except that I was sitting on what should have been the passenger seat and driving in the lane that should have had oncoming traffic.

One of the things people ask me a lot (during small talk, of course) is if I miss the California weather.   I do, but not so much.  One thing I’ve found since moving here is that English people are a lot more concerned with the weather than people who grow up in California.  The weather in San Diego was always nice, so there was never a need to chat about it.  Sometimes it rained, but not so often.  In England I can see why there is an obsession with weather.  It’s not that the weather is rainy all the time, it’s just that you get a lot of gray, bleak, days.  When the weather is nice, you feel like you need to really enjoy it.

When it’s 80 degrees, people start to complain about the heat.  It’s too hot to do anything.  I’ve lived in Texas for a few years—now that was heat.  I worked at Sea World of Texas in San Antonio through the Summer where every day reached over 100 degrees.  But after living in the UK for the past 12 years, this weather is too hot.

The past few winters have had record snowfall and it has nearly closed London.  But it’s nothing compared to the times I’ve visited Minnesota in the winter.  But the infrastructure here is not geared for extremes in weather.  Most homes don’t have air conditioning and most towns don’t have many snow ploughs.

This weather will end soon, but I’m enjoying it while it lasts.  As I write this, I’m sitting on a blanket in a part watching my kids play in park sprinklers.  Life couldn’t be better.

So, immediately following my blog post about how great blogging is and how you should get a blog yourself, I go a month without posting anything.  Sometimes, although I have loads of energy, the things I think to write about seem either so trivial or so complicated that I don’t want to sit down and write them.

But here’s a patchy update on what is going on with me.

I’ve been working a bit over the last month.  I’m just doing some contract work while trying to get some business development going.  It’s funny when you’ve not been working a regular job for a while how un-natural it seems to get dressed up everyday and leave your normal life for 12 hours each day.

I’ve also been getting interested in meditation.  I’ve been meditating twice daily for two and a half weeks now.  It was difficult at first, but I’m getting better at it.  I’ve read so much, researched so much, and had so many experiences that I will write a post on this in the future.  I feel more calm and free from some of the anxiety I feel from time to time.  I’m really enjoying it, but it hasn’t been easy getting started (for me, at least).

I’m still getting up early.  I’m still running.  I still have my American accent, but am experimenting with using the word ‘fortnight’ more often.  Life is good.

Yesterday I ran the Reading Half Marathon for the second year in a row.  My time was not great.  I came in at 2:03:47.  Last year I came in at 1 hour 54 mins. 

My problem was that I started at a really good pace—too good.  I couldn’t keep it up.  I was fine up until the seventh mile when I the little voice that was urging me to walk for the previous two miles finally won over.  I stopped and walked for a few minutes.  Every time I started up after that it was difficult.  It’s funny how much psychology is involved in running these distances.  If I had better music on my mp3—something that let me think about other things than running—I may have done a lot better.

Last year, I trained a lot more.  I’ve been running regularly, but usually doing only 3 or 4 miles three times a week.

It’s funny being the walker.  The guy who just gives in.  Some people patted me on the back and they ran past.  The people cheering at the side of the road were saying “come on, you can do it.”  I even started to fake a limp just so they would think I was running through an injury.  When I started running again, my legs felt awful and stiff.  My feet pounded the pavement even harder than they had just a few minutes earlier—like the cushion had disappeared from my running shoes. I had the same problem when I ran the Honolulu marathon back when I was 22.  Never stop running!

Still, I’m happy with my time.  I didn’t walk that much.  2:03 is not bad.