Raw

The days are getting longer, sap's rising and I'm in a positive frame of mind so seems a good time to jot down what I'm up to.

Personal Cruft

A few months ago I went on another bit of a down, and predictably fell back on my usual (lousy) coping strategy, drinking loads of wine. I wasn't working, so have drained all available money. But I've pretty much pulled out of that patch now, regained a bit of optimism and am currently on the wagon. Still living in rural Italy on my own aside from 2 dogs, 2 cats, though have got romantically involved with someone, albeit (very) remotely so far.

Work-Work

The past couple of months I've been coding on Apache Stanbol, getting paid indirectly through the Fusepool project. My role there is near-enough in line with my long-term plan of creating a loose consultancy. I'm only now getting anything like up to speed on Stanbol, but it's interesting material and when I actually get stuff done, pays ok. It'll still be a while before I can relax, credit card is still maxed out etc. but at least things seem to be going in the right direction.

Coding

I've neglected my own code for a long while, first just not being in the mood and then having to concentrate on work-work. A big problem I have frequently had is having too many balls in the air meaning nothing ever gets finished. I've been using Workflowy for (hierarchical) todo lists for a while, but the number of items on the lists tends to increase much faster than I get things done. So I'm going to limit myself to about 4.5 projects, and cycle through them, just making an approx. one week to do list for each on each cycle. The projects are:

• Seki (server-side node.js) - a bit of linked data middleware
• Scute (desktop Java) - a Semantic Web hacking utility
• JEdwards (desktop Java) - a custom text editor optimised for working on Javascript/node.js, is a sub-project of Scute
• Web Beep (server-side Java) - text to tones and back again
• Site - anything to do with my online presence (admin, blog, docs, services, vocabs etc.)

Writing

No professional writing in the pipeline, I was finding book writing a bit too stressful for the benefit it provided (last thing was working on a revision of Beginning XML). Got a few ideas for online tech pieces, longer than typical blog posts, that I'd like to assemble as a kind-of book. But there are no deadlines (or payment) associated with them. Still haven't started the novel...

New Place

Although it was on hold over winter, I'm still in the process of renovating the house opposite. The other day I took a load of photos that I put into a presentation format as a visual todo list (the text items the pasted into Workflowy - data reuse!). I've said several times that I plan to be in there by xmas, but now it actually seems within reach. The biggest job, which had become a bit of an albatross, making the windows, is getting close to completion. None of the other things really prevent me from moving in, so now I can realistically say "in by summer".

Other Stuff

Way too much time on Facebook, at the cost of blogging, Twitter and G+. I've continued to read a lot of tech stuff but haven't been interacting on any mailing lists or working groups (in fact I got bumped from the HTML5 group because the renew form didn't work for me - I told the given contact but was ignored, well bugger 'em). That's liberated a lot of time :)

I have been doing a little bit of woodcarving, music and electronics. No travel plans, but all being well a certain someone will be coming over here from Australia very soon.

Main thing, I'm now available for work. Ideally coding/related or writing, part-time, but anything considered. It has to be remote working, I've too many commitments here for anything other than occasional travel.

So short term I'm just up for anything that'll help pay the bills. Longer term, my plan is to operate under the umbrella of hyperdata.org. I'm labeling it a consultancy, with primary focus around Semantic Web technologies, but that's only a first approximation of what I've got in mind. Yes, I'll be available as a consultant (and for hands-on coding etc), but there will be two key differences from most traditional consultancies.

The first is that if I'm not convinced I personally can handle the job in question, I know a lot of people working in the related fields. I'm confident I can find appropriate expertise. So in that sense, hyperdata.org will operate as a kind of agency (initially I intend to organise this very loosely, informally, but if it seems appropriate a more formal setup is always an option). [If you've got free cycles let me know.]

The other novel aspect will be the approach to research & development. Many tech consultancies have ongoing dev projects, but they tend to be very focused around the core of their consultancy work. In the extreme (but common) case is that a particular piece or set of software is at the heart of the business, the consultancy in effect being an extended kind of support for that software.

I want to go in a different direction, actively trying to avoid any predetermined path, rather taking a more exploratory approach. The idea is to do a lot of "spike"-style development - comparatively agile and rapid, in general only taking things to the proof-of-concept stage. My little seed (and feasibility check) for this was Web Beeps. A small but fairly novel idea, which I developed just enough to get a live service running, and which in turn has spawned a load more ideas for experimentation. Web Beeps took me about a month part-time to take from notion to service, and that's the kind of ballpark timescale I've got in mind for discrete research projects.

The primary intention behind this R&D is to inform other activities, to discover effective techniques and processes. Think hobby coding or Googlesque 20% time, but on the one hand with a slightly more formal approach (a clear, typically finite life cycle for projects), on the other hand with no fixed time/resources allocation - depending on other work, it can vary between 0 and 100% of work time. If there's a contract to fulfil, that takes total precedence.

A side effect may be that certain spikes suggest themselves as suitable for further development towards some kind of commercial product. In such a case, my current feeling is that it will probably be preferable to spin them off to third parties at the first opportunity. Time will tell how that pans out. As I'll mostly be working on my own, I do have the huge advantage of being able to be flexible about business model, so if any avenues do look particularly promising I can change practice to suit.

On a personal note, experience suggests I'm most productive at computer-oriented work when I'm putting in about half the hours of a typical full-time job. Given my current circumstances, that's actually a positive. I've no great ambition to get rich quick, the motivation is just to pay the bills doing something interesting. My cost of living is relatively low, which helps. Also I'm still renovating a house, and have got loads of other hobbies, so restricted hours is a good fit.

If you think I may be of use to you, let me know.

Main thing, I'm now available for work. Ideally coding/related or writing, part-time, but anything considered. It has to be remote working, I've too many commitments here for anything other than occasional travel.

So short term I'm just up for anything that'll help pay the bills. Longer term, my plan is to operate under the umbrella of hyperdata.org. I'm labeling it a consultancy, with primary focus around Semantic Web technologies, but that's only a first approximation of what I've got in mind. Yes, I'll be available as a consultant (and for hands-on coding etc), but there will be two key differences from most traditional consultancies.

The first is that if I'm not convinced I personally can handle the job in question, I know a lot of people working in the related fields. I'm confident I can find appropriate expertise. So in that sense, hyperdata.org will operate as a kind of agency (initially I intend to organise this very loosely, informally, but if it seems appropriate a more formal setup is always an option). [If you've got free cycles let me know.]

The other novel aspect will be the approach to research & development. Many tech consultancies have ongoing dev projects, but they tend to be very focused around the core of their consultancy work. In the extreme (but common) case is that a particular piece or set of software is at the heart of the business, the consultancy in effect being an extended kind of support for that software.

I want to go in a different direction, actively trying to avoid any predetermined path, rather taking a more exploratory approach. The idea is to do a lot of "spike"-style development - comparatively agile and rapid, in general only taking things to the proof-of-concept stage. My little seed (and feasibility check) for this was Web Beeps. A small but fairly novel idea, which I developed just enough to get a live service running, and which in turn has spawned a load more ideas for experimentation. Web Beeps took me about a month part-time to take from notion to service, and that's the kind of ballpark timescale I've got in mind for discrete research projects.

The primary intention behind this R&D is to inform other activities, to discover effective techniques and processes. Think hobby coding or Googlesque 20% time, but on the one hand with a slightly more formal approach (a clear, typically finite life cycle for projects), on the other hand with no fixed time/resources allocation - depending on other work, it can vary between 0 and 100% of work time. If there's a contract to fulfil, that takes total precedence.

A side effect may be that certain spikes suggest themselves as suitable for further development towards some kind of commercial product. In such a case, my current feeling is that it will probably be preferable to spin them off to third parties at the first opportunity. Time will tell how that pans out. As I'll mostly be working on my own, I do have the huge advantage of being able to be flexible about business model, so if any avenues do look particularly promising I can change practice to suit.

On a personal note, experience suggests I'm most productive at computer-oriented work when I'm putting in about half the hours of a typical full-time job. Given my current circumstances, that's actually a positive. I've no great ambition to get rich quick, the motivation is just to pay the bills doing something interesting. My cost of living is relatively low, which helps. Also I'm still renovating a house, and have got loads of other hobbies, so restricted hours is a good fit.

If you think I may be of use to you, let me know.