Usually at this time of year there is always something vaguely festive going on in my social calendar. For the past three years I’ve had Christmas meals with people at uni, then before then it was the school Xmas dinners. This year, almost inevitably, I was to share it with web developers.

Sunday was a really good night, with a good strong pack of Multipackers descending on Cafe Rouge in Birmingham. There were also a few new faces which is always good, the food was very nice, the waiter was ill-tempered and the beer was flowing.

Despite Trev’s protestations, party hats only really remained on during the meal, and there were some interesting interpretations of the French menu. For example, it took me five minutes to work out what Stu was on about until I finally realised he was asking if I had a prawn cocktail.

After food at two, drinks were served in Lloyd’s Bar and we spent most of the evening there before people finally started to make their own ways. Matt, Leevi, Dave and myself stayed on a bit longer to find another bar and had another couple in Walkabout before making for the station where us last three all realised we’d missed the last train. And it was all down to the Tooheys (brings back memories).

In the end Leevi got the bus and Dave stayed over at mine; a more fortunate end of the evening than Gavin who managed to get his car locked in a car park along with his phone and keys, and so spent the night in a city central hotel.

All fun.

At the moment I’m meddling with textpattern and tweaking some code, but by Friday I’m going to be back on the move again and up in Loughborough for a couple of meetings and then the weekend. I also heard that the headmaster at my old school is going to be moving on at the end of the year. That’ll open up a few discussions I feel.

When I first setup the blog two years ago, I was writing daily. I might miss one or two days, but on the whole it was a pretty thorough catalogue of life. In the past year I slipped away from the daily log, and it became every two days, and now alas, I've not written anything for a week.

Am I losing interest in keeping a personal blog? Well, maybe, but I have this feeling that my interest will renew itself soon enough. Just while I've been living and working from home it is so nice to get away from the desk sometimes, instead of going back for fifteen minutes at the end of the day (which invariably ends up as being longer).

I've got a few plans for how this all might go in the future, but nothing is set in stone. Whatever happens, I don't see me getting rid of it.

I've been shuffling jobs this week. Mockney, a friend of mine from uni who works for a design agency in Kent got in touch and I'm doing some freelancing for them as well as my usual work. My own projects are ticking over, and I hoping to get at least some prototypes launched by New Year.

Also, travelling is high on my list of things to get sorted. Darwus informs me he now wants to go to South America, meaning planning has gained another facet of complexity. I really need to do some work on this as Sammi is disappearing in a month or so and we still haven't got anything booked.

I managed to catch up with a few people over the phone yesterday. Swan filled me in on his teaching, as did Sean, and with DDS I discussed Alex Tew's new venture, Pixellotto.

DDS and I often ruminate on enterprise, and after reading a BBC News article, we both came to the conclusion that some people are really bitter and twisted about young people doing well for themselves. My opinion? I think the boy done good, although some of the comments show a real loathing for a carpe diam attitude. I think if you want to enjoy success in the current climate, seizing the day is exactly what you have to do. One commenter writes,

The embodiment of UK business. A short attention span, no plans for the future, couldn't be bothered with learning new skills so he comes up with something worthless and pointless to make a short term financial gain. He should be chairman of the CBI.

A cynical view I feel? The guy has just launched his second idea and he's got the best track record for this type of thing. He's positioned so uniquely that anything he does will attract interest and I think he has a lot more staying power than this guy gives him credit for. I'm not saying his whole business can be built on successive short term gains, planning is critical, but give the guy some credit for coming up with a financing technique that is a million times better than being extorted by a venture capitalist.

Tomorrow is the Multipack Christmas meal. I'm hungry already.

Christmas shopping is often the worst thing about the festive period. Even though the shops start selling Yuletide products at the end of summer (visit Selfridges in September if you want to know what I mean), December truly heralds some remarkable feats of point of sale. For example in two major departments stores I ended up in today were overflowing with produce out of the doors.

I often find myself asking is who would actually buy this, why yes, it is a fantastic cake cutter, but would it not do better without the option of playing four festive carols with the buttons on the handle? Or this magnificent set of Santa-themed shot glasses; an ideal present for Grandma?

Anyway, I did what I had to do and got what I needed to get. It took me less than two hours and I'm very proud of it. I didn't even get annoyed. Well I did get a little bit annoyed at one woman who was walking in front of me with a push chair and no regard for anyone around her. She casually was running the wheels over people's feet and Christmas shopping, and using her elbows to widen her passage. It all came to a rather satisfying end when some bloke a had a bit of a go at her. Get in the festive mood, road hog.

I took a driving lesson yesterday. Previous experience with driving instructors hasn't been bad, it just could have been more enjoyable, and I have a feeling that this time around I'm going to benefit more from the lessons. I'm hoping to be done with it all very soon - I've got quite a number of miles under my belt now and I'm driving daily, I think it's more of a question of fine tuning in preparation for the test.

I'm in the process of uploading my photo collection to the new server. I've just set 3,003 to upload and that's only two years worth of uni shots. I'm not planning on having to move it again anytime soon.