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Archive: Commuting

The future of this blog

27 April 2010 00:14

Categories: Admin, Blogging, Commuting, Fife, Games, Personal, Politics

The observant among you may have spotted that it is a month since I wrote a post for this blog. It is interesting that I have not even found the motivation to write about the General Election. This is not a conscious decision — I genuinely have not been moved enough to put finger to keyboard.

This is due to a combination of factors. Partly, I became disillusioned with politics a couple of years ago and have not felt the need to write about it for a long time now. But it goes beyond politics writing.

Just now I don’t have as much spare time as I would like. Depending on whether I can borrow my dad’s car or I have to take the bus, I am currently spending between two hours and three-and-a-half hours a day commuting.

The spare time I have left is spent on other activities. Partly, that is finding somewhere closer to my work to move, so that I can build some more spare time into my life. Finding somewhere to live in north east Fife is not as easy as I would like, but I think I am getting closer.

I also lost a lot of my motivation for blogging, and have turned my attention to more relaxing pursuits. After around a ten-year hiatus, I have rediscovered gaming after my truly awesome brother got me an Xbox 360 for Christmas! I may blog more about that in future, but for anyone interested my gamertag is ‘doctorvee‘!

Anyway, the point is that blogging seems like so much hard work in comparison to unwinding pretending you’re Travis Pastrana. Those who follow me on Twitter may know that recently I had a minor bout of blog depression, when I wondered what on earth I should to about that blog I don’t bother to maintain any more. It had become less fun and too hard-going.

The problem was that I had begun to feel like everything I was writing was inflicting readers with something they didn’t necessarily want to read. This was exacerbated when I merged vee8 (my old Formula 1 blog) with doctorvee. I originally separated out the content because I realised that my F1 posts had such a different audience to the rest of my posts.

This was echoed in the responses on Twitter. Some people said that I should continue, although they personally skipped over the F1 posts. Others said that I should continue, although they only ever read the F1 posts.

I found it easy to get wound up about that sort of thing, but at the end of the day no one minds and certainly no-one dies. Part of the reason for merging the blogs again was to help me become more at-ease with that. But I got neurotic about overwhelming the blog with F1 commentary.

The problem was that I had turned this blog into something where I felt as though everything I published had to be a beautifully-written, 1,000+ word long potential Pulitzer prize winner. Quality control is good, but I had gone too far the other way.

My best blogging years were between 2004 and 2006, when I was more prolific, more spontaneous, and more hit-and-miss. The quality was lower, but the readership was higher, and I had much more fun that way.

So this is just a heads-up to say that I will be making an effort to nudge this blog back in that direction again. I have made a few subtle design changes to make me feel more comfortable about that (the main one being to reduce the font size of the post titles to make them less preposterous if I am writing about something frivolous or personal). There may be a few more to come as well — I will probably experiment.

The upshot of it is that there will probably be a change in tone around here. There will probably be more posts, and I will try to become a bit less squeamish about writing about myself again.

But as you can see from this post, I still can’t resist allowing the word count to go sky high!

Thanks to everyone on Twitter and Facebook who offered their support and advice about where I should take this blog.

10 comments

Merry Christmas — looking back and forward

24 December 2009 18:00

Categories: Admin, Blogging, Commuting, Current affairs, Fife, General, Personal, Politics, Scotland, Technology, Work

I would like to wish everyone who still reads this a very merry Christmas.

As time has gone on, my updates have become increasingly sporadic. I am surprised and touched that people keep coming back to read and comment on what I have written. Looking back, I have actually written almost a hundred articles for this website in the past year (I am surprised it is that many). But at times it has been at the rate of just a few a month.

My year in brief

It has been quite a strange year. It started with me losing my part-time job at Woolworths. The closure of the store was itself quite an odd experience.

But losing that job didn’t hit me so hard. My long term future was never going to be with Woolworths. I graduated in summer 2008 and was hoping to find a job that could have reflected this. But it wasn’t happening.

I spent several months visiting the Jobcentre while experimenting with being self employed. While the bits and bobs of freelance work I was doing was good in the sense that I made an amount of money that was greater than zero, it didn’t provide anything like the security I needed in order to make plans for the long term.

Over the summer things slowed down quite alarmingly. I took a break after I was amazingly invited to a tour around the Williams F1 factory and museum.

It was the first time I had gone on anything resembling a holiday for a long while. I hung around in Oxford for a day or so then on the way back went via London to briefly visit friends. But because of the last-minute nature of the trip it was very hectic and felt rushed. It is the only time I have ever felt what I would call being intensely tired.

I arrived back to bad news on the work front. After another month or so of inactivity, it had felt like things had hit rock bottom.

Luckily, it was rock bottom. Since then, the news has all been good. Having decided that doing anything was better than rotting at home, I applied for an internship in the office of an MP. Unlike the freelance work, I did not earn more than zero by doing this. However, I can safely say that nothing has been more valuable to me in terms of gaining confidence in my abilities, which had been totally shot.

I only had to spend a couple of months there before — finally — finding a good job. My first month working at the University of St Andrews has been great. The only problem is the journey from Kirkcaldy, which is a bit on the long side. But apart from that, things are going well. In complete contrast to earlier on this year, I now feel lucky in so many ways.

The future of my online activities

Now that I am settling down to some kind of routine, I am hoping to be able to update this website more regularly. Certainly, once I move closer to St Andrews I will hopefully have more spare time in the evenings.

But now that I am in full time employment, I don’t have the time or energy to continue running three separate blogs, as I have been doing for the past couple of years. At the start of 2007, I decided to stop writing about motorsport here and set up a separate blog, vee8, to act as an outlet for my thoughts on Formula 1.

That worked really well at first. But over the past year or so, as I have had less and less time on my hands, it has meant that both doctorvee and vee8 have been neglected too much. It is so easy to concentrate on one blog and forget about the other. I feel that now both websites are suffering.

So I have taken the decision to close down vee8, and bring my writing on motorsport back onto this website. I know this won’t be popular with everyone, but it no longer makes sense to have these two separate websites when I no longer even have the time to properly maintain one. The change will happen some time in the new year.

In preparation for the change, I will remind those readers who are not in the least bit interested in F1 that the F1-free RSS feed still works. So if you want to subscribe to this website without being bombarded with opinion on motorsport, subscribe to the F1-free RSS feed.

Merry Christmas!

Until that happens, I hope you all have a relaxing Christmas period. I could certainly do with a wee break to recover from the hectic nature of the tail end of this year, and the extra time will come in handy for working on the changes I am making to this website.

5 comments

The Edinburgh Twestival

14 February 2009 02:15

Categories: Admin, Blogging, Commuting, Edinburgh, Entertainment, Food and drink, General, Internet, Music, Personal, Scotland, Technology

I had a great time yesterday at the Edinburgh Twestival, an opportunity to meet other local users of Twitter while at the same time raising money for charity: water.

A comment I heard a lot from other people was that the event wasn’t quite what they expected. It certainly wasn’t a total geekfest as some may have expected. BBC Scotland’s tweeter noted the friendly atmosphere in an article about EdTwestival on the BBC News website. It felt a bit like a gig really — just one where people were staring into their iPhones a lot.

The venue was a bit odd. It was somewhat posher than I was expecting, and I was rather peeved that only expensive beers appeared to be available. I can tell you it was the first time I’ve ever paid £4 for a pint. I know Edinburgh is supposed to be expensive, but phweesh! I’ll have to stay on 99p Deuchars at Wetherspoons for a while to balance things out a bit.

The main action was happening in a room which appeared to be the outside on the inside. Or something. I only realised we were “outside” when I saw people smoking. There is an experience I’ve not had since 2006. The strange environment also prompted many to note how cold it was. A toasty atmosphere, but a cool temperature.

Meanwhile, I had trouble finding my way around. I was rather desperate for the toilet. I hadn’t been since I left my house at around half past three, having spent the couple of hours since I arrived at Edinburgh in deep discussion with a new acquaintance in a coffee house. I was becoming rather anxious to dispense with it.

So I started to wander around looking for the toilets. But they were nowhere to be seen. I consulted the floor plan, where I immediately found toilets on the second floor. So to the second floor I went, but when I arrived there I couldn’t see any signs to show me where to look after number 1. So I did what any sane person would do: stumble around until finding something that vaguely looked like a toilet.

I thought I had struck gold when I came across a door that had “GENTLEMEN” written on it (although it’s usually better not to dabble in the gold stuff in the toilet). Sadly, life is not so simple. As I reached for the door a person asked me where I was going. “Toilet,” I grunted rather impolitely, as I was rapidly running out of time. I was then asked something about an interview. I can’t remember exactly what my response was. Probably something like, “I don’t know, just let me take a piss.”

Suspicions grew further when there was no lock on the door. And there was a shower in the room. Had I begun to lay a yellow cable in someone’s en suite bathroom?

Possibly. I don’t know. While my Austin Powers-style jet was in full flow, I gradually realised what had happened. The room was being used by one of the sponsors (I forget which) of the Twestival for filming interviews. When I say “the room”, obviously I don’t mean the toilet itself. The room containing the toilet. That would have been really weird, though things were awkward enough as they were.

So when I came out I apologised profusely and to be fair the least I could do was go through the interview. Thankfully it wasn’t too bad, although I am now cringing at some of the answers I gave.

So that is a warning to you. If you see me on some website somewhere looking a bit flustered and awkwardly answering questions about my Twitter habits, it was my post-tinkle chit chat. Someone please warn me if it turns up somewhere.

That mishap aside, though, I had a great time at the Edinburgh Twestival. I met some cool people. It’s quite unusual to be recognised by the Twitter username on my name badge rather than something more traditional such as my face. I had a great chat with @Sarabian who recognised the name doctorvee not from Twitter but from this blog — specifically my posts about Woolworths.

There was also much fundraising fun to be had. Sadly, the raffle threatened to descend into farce when all of the tickets drawn were orange 3XX — whoops!

There was an auction where some of the items went for some rather low amounts, especially given it was for charity. Obviously everyone was saving up for the British Grand Prix tickets, which went for £300! Well out of my price range unfortunately. I sent a tongue-in-cheek tweet about it.

One of the coolest things about the EdTwestival was a projection which displayed all tweets mentioning #EdTwestival. Otherwise, I was locked out of the Twitter world. My phone is a bit of a relic so it was SMS only for me. But I saw my brother’s reply to my tweet about the British GP auction on the projector! That was a nice moment.

There was some good music from Peter Gregson, Plum and Epic26 — all new acts to me, and fun to discover. Unfortunately, the power went down while Epic26 were playing, and by that time I had to run for my train.

I also had to cut short conversations with @Sarabian and @happyseaurchin. Sorry guys! That’s the miserly First Scotrail for you though.

Overall, Edinburgh Twestival raised over £3,500 for charity: water. Not bad at all! And well above what the tweegies in the west raised. Which is what counts. Right?

I’d love for there to be another Edinburgh Twestival soon. It was a great evening. Hopefully by the next time I will have improved my mingling skills. And I won’t take a slash in the wrong toilet.

1 comment

Spare part

15 January 2009 00:44

Categories: Blogging, Commuting, Current affairs, Economics, Fife, General, Personal, Scotland, Technology, University, Work

I see that the BBC’s iPM blog is asking for the human stories behind the current unemployment figures. Well, I am a human face of two recent news stories.

As readers are no doubt sick of reading by now, one of those stories was the loss of around 27,000 jobs at Woolworths. The other is the shortage of graduate-level jobs.

I graduated last summer. I didn’t have a job to walk into straight away because I wanted to take time to think about my future plans. Plus, the economy seemed bad enough at the time, and I thought maybe things would improve a bit later down the line. Now I have more or less decided what sort of work I would like to do, but of course the economy has deteriorated further and the jobs simply aren’t there.

The thing is, I’m not the only one. I can’t think of anyone who was in the same school year as me and has found a graduate-level job. I haven’t kept in touch with many people from university, but those I have heard from are either working in part-time retail jobs or more-or-less volunteering. I am still in touch with a lot of people from school, and no-one I know who was in the same year as me has found a job yet. I’m sure there are loads of people of my age who have found a decent job — I just don’t know any of them.

Many are doing five year courses anyway so are still studying. One or two have opted to go onto further study, while the rest of us are still searching for employment. And I’m not talking about people who got thirds from Shatsborough Poly by any means. I know someone who got a first at St Andrews University and is currently working in a shop.

A few months ago I still had the luxury of working in a shop. Of course, staying on at Woolies was never my long-term goal. It would have been useful as a back-up plan though. Not exactly a plan B, but maybe a plan C. As it stands, I’m still waiting for something to turn up in the realm of plan A, I need to wait and see with plan B, and plan C has totally fallen through already. For now, I’m onto plan D — D for “dole”.

So the news that there is a shortage of graduate places is not exactly news to me. I’ve experienced it myself and I’ve shared that experience with my acquaintances. What is really worrying is that a situation that was bad for the class of 2008 looks set to become even worse in 2009, with no sign of a recovery.

I had long feared that my degree wouldn’t be worth much. When I was at my lowest ebb, I thought that the whole higher education machine was a bit of a scam. When you are at school, you are pretty much told by everyone that going to university is the only option if you don’t want to spend your life being a street cleansing operative. Parents want you to go to university because of their pride. Schools want you to go to university, probably because of some kind of target, or league tables or something. And governments want you to go to university because of their peculiar obsession with having 50% of school leavers in higher education, and probably also to keep unemployment figures down as well.

Quite why I should have wanted to go to university is a bit of a mystery now. It was fairly clear early on that my degree wouldn’t be enough to set me apart, mostly because people began to tell us. There was that old joke about the university graduate who went on to become the best barman in town.

I could see why it was the case. The intellectual range of students is surprisingly large. I studied alongside many students who did not seem very bright (and spent much of their four years at university consuming alcohol), but were obviously quite good at exams. I think I am relatively smart and hard-working, but I don’t happen to perform so well at exams (my essay marks were always higher). Both types of student are likely to get a 2:1, but one of those types is surely the better for the employer. I have few ways of signalling to an employer which type I am.

The fact that employers do not value degrees very highly at all is evident in the fact that most blue chip companies will have job applicants sit their own exams, aptitude tests, diagrammatic reasoning tests and so on and so forth. Simply, there are too many degrees sloshing about in the system and the value of a degree is now so low that it tells you almost nothing about a person’s ability to do a job.

Maybe in the long run it will pay off and I will be pleased I put myself through four years of stress and horrible three hour round-trip commutes. In the meantime, I look at the people around me who have never been to university and think what I could be doing now had I taken their path. If I worked in a shop from the age of 16, I could be in management by now. If I left school at 16 and took up a trade such as plumbing, I would be perfectly comfortable and happy with my life already. I might even be running my own business. As things stand, I just feel a bit lost and I don’t know what my prospects are.

What I find notable is that the few opportunities I have had have arisen as a result of my blogging activities. No-one is interested in me because of my degree. There are plenty of people with one of them, and they’re all looking for jobs too.

The loss of my part time job last week came as a further blow to morale. Even though I was planning to leave my job at around this time anyway, there is nothing like being made redundant from a low-paid shelf-stacking job to make you feel like a spare part to the world. I need to remember that it’s not my fault.

Unemployment has affected me more than I thought it might. While I have never been unemployed in the official sense before, I have had periods of downtime before — summer breaks from university and the like. I thought it would feel like that. But it doesn’t. A whole lot of baggage comes with unemployment.

I have found myself being quite down at times. The scariest part is not the lack of income (for the time being) but the potential that I might end up isolated. You might not get along with all of your colleagues, but they are nonetheless like a second family. It’s a whole set of people who are there, prepared to listen to you and offer advice. Regular contact with people keeps you connected to society. With many of my friends either still studying or gallivanting somewhere else, I am a bit worried about becoming isolated.

Jennifer Tracey asks on the iPM blog if there is less of a stigma attached to being unemployed now that the economy is in such a bad state. I couldn’t help but feel rather self conscious as I took my first trip to the Jobcentre and I almost felt like the spotlight was on me as I walked up the steps to the entrance. I suppose that is quite silly really, because in this part of the world the Jobcentre’s steps are quite well used.

But what other people might think doesn’t bother me as much as what I think does. The prospect that I might be unable to positively contribute to society for the next while vexes me a lot.

17 comments

Losing the blogging mojo

25 September 2008 02:02

Categories: Blogging, Commuting, General, Internet, Personal, Technology

It’s not great. Technically, I’m still a bum — but I don’t have the time to blog? Something is wrong.

I guess this is all to do with that theory. If you have a demanding full-time job, go to night college, look after kids and do all the shopping and you have to do something, no bother, you just do it. If you are a bum who does nothing all day, gets up in the afternoon and spends two hours deliberating over what you should have for breakfast, you just get nothing done. I’m in the latter stage at the moment. I’m working on rectifying that, but it’s difficult to get going because I spend three hours a day deciding which font I should put on my CV.

It’s not that I haven’t been blogging. You may know that I have another blog which is dedicated to Formula 1. It’s that stage of the season where there is always something happening, even if it has to be contrived by the FIA. And since F1 is just a big soap opera with races in between, you don’t even need races to have loads to write about. So now I spend much of my time pontificating over the finer details of the debate over whether Buemi or Senna should get the second Toro Rosso race seat.

In the meantime, I’ve been neglecting this blog. And it becomes worse when you spend such a long time away from a blog, because then you feel this pressure to make sure the first post back is a good one. I could have easily written three or four posts by now, but I was worried about them for one reason or another. Blog depression, a truly 21st century disease.

It’s silly to get worried about it. But when you lose focus for a couple of days, suddenly it becomes a couple of weeks and then it becomes a struggle to avoid it becoming a couple of months. I’ve been blogging for a few years now though so I know how these things work. If I can just get going I will be back in the swing of things. But now it’s got to the stage where I have to either write this grovelling excuse or practically throw in the towel completely.

So I’m sorry, this is the one. I make no apology if I write about loads of nonsense for the next week or so until I get into the swing of things, although I do promise to write something or other here.

I recently bought myself a new toy, an Asus Eee PC. I did this partly so that I could get some blogging done when I’m not at home, perhaps if I’ve missed the train in Edinburgh and find myself having a couple of hours to kill (damn cheap day returns). I normally spend those couple of hours wandering around the streets of Edinburgh trying to convince myself I’m busy. Now I can tap some keys on my laptop trying to convince myself I’m busy.

Of course, there’s no guarantee that I’ll find any wifi hotspots so I am discovering the joys of Windows Live Writer. I heard rave reviews about that when it was first launched, but I had no need to use it because whenever I was at a computer I had internet access. Now I am using it on my Eee PC and can say I am quite impressed with it.

The thing about it is that I can now effectively blog in my bed. I have not yet decided if this is totally awesome or totally pathetic. In one sense, it is a great way to use that time I spend being unable to sleep doing something that I can pretend is vaguely useful. On the other hand, that is probably a sign of dire internet addiction.

I’m currently umming and aahing over whether I should buy a wireless router to accommodate this new toy. The current router is full up so when I’m blogging in my bed I’m actually doing it offline. And then the next day I have to faff around with the cables just to be able to do something with the excellent writing I did the night before. I can see that wearing pretty thin.

Anyway, that’s my comeback post. Sorry for disappointing.

9 comments

doctorvee