Techboy

Jamie Oliver is great at selling books – in 2017 he sold more books than any other author in any other category, in the UK and 4 other countries; but he hasn’t been as fortunate with his restaurants. In January 2016, six Jamie’s Italian restaurants were closed In March 2017, the last of his four ‘Union Jacks’ pizza restaurants closed In January 2018, it was announced that twelve additional Jamie’s Italian restaurants will close, as well as two Barbecoa steakhouse restaurants 25 of the…

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Like most men past a certain age, I shave most days. As shaving is a necessary daily task (not something I actively choose to do), I want it to be a quick, easy, reliable and pain-free process. I used to use electric shavers – I’ve never owned a foil type, only a couple of the top end Philips shavers with round heads which contour to your face. One was to be used exclusively dry and the other could be dry or…

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Okay, it’s definitely not broken. It’s feeling a lot better today. I hurt it when attempting to ride my longboard. I’m still hobbling around now, but less like the Hunchback of Notre Dame and more like the Dave Myers! By the way, this is just a joke, I think Dave is an awesome guy – really funny and very knowledgeable. I actually stood next to the Hairy Bakers a few years ago, in the Waterstones bookshop in Milton Keynes!

After watching too many videos of people with skateboards on YourTube, I decided to get a longboard. I got a brand new one from Germany for £17 off of eBay – very cheap, but I don’t care if I trash it. It seems pretty good though – sturdy enough and very long. I hadn’t been on a skateboard since I was around 14. I got pretty good at snowboarding about 5 years ago (rails, jumps, regular, goofy, etc.) riding a…

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This is the story of my second, first Uber taxi ride. My first, first Uber taxi ride didn’t happen – that should have been two weeks ago when I wanted a lift from my house, to the Jaipur restaurant in Milton Keynes. At this time, I could see one Uber taxi in Milton Keynes, six minutes from my house. I tried calling it several times from the Uber app, but it just kept timing out, so in the end, I took my…

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I like to be creative – I find writing, photography, website design, website development and many other things all fun to do. The I have is one that I’ve always had, which is too many hobbies, too many ideas and not enough time. For a long time, my dream has been to ditch the corporate world and to build up a small, focused business with my brother, which should equal or better the (high) salaries that we both get now. This would enable…

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This is a list of apps that I have installed on my Android phone. I’ll update the list, add descriptions, categorise, etc. when I have time. Nova Trigger UberSocial Google Drive MoveToSD Authenticator Device Manager EDF Energy Nest Dropbox FastConnect Email Calendar Chrome Clock Twitter Facebook Google+ Evernote OneNote Play Books Flipboard Feedly Amazon Kindle Analytics Asana gAnalytics WordPress GetMeCooking mention Trello Camera Contacts Gallery Photos TuneIn Radio Audible Spotify SoundCloud Play Music SoundHound YouTube 4oD BBC iPlayer Chromecast Cineworld…

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In the good old days, you could get a 12 month mobile phone contract, so you could update your phone every year (great for a geek like me). My friends and colleagues always knew me as the guy with the latest phone. In recent years, they phased out the 12 month contracts, replacing them with 18 and 24 month contracts. Now they only have 24 month contracts – that means that you get stuck with a mobile for a whopping…

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I’m writing this blog post in a sort of reverse order – inspired by the blog post ‘Scott Hanselmans Complete List Of Productivity Tips‘ by Danny Schreiber. Specifically by the paragraph: Keep your emails to 3-4 sentences, Hanselman says. Anything longer should be on a blog or wiki or on your product’s documentation, FAQ or knowledge base. “Anywhere in the world except email because email is where you keystrokes go to die,” he says. I had already written some long…

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I built this website in 1996, after getting my first modem for Christmas of 1995. The site started out as PerformIT (my business site), but then Steve Bush at Barclays Bank (my first full-time job) kept calling me ‘Techboy’, so I decided to get the domain name and put my personal stuff on here! I wrote it from scratch – initially using plain HTML, then PHP so I could do some clever things. Now I’ve decided to move it to…

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