Author Archives: lornajane

21 Aug
2007

Sunshine Booties

I’ve been a busy bee since meeting Natalie and have finally got round to making these booties as I promised. Here they are:

The pattern was really easy to follow and had photos at every stage which is just as well because it its a very peculiar shape until you get to the end and it becomes obvious how it all goes together! I’ve got the “Fitted Knits” book by the same person and I’m feeling confident about tackling one of the basic (and much bigger) patterns from the book now.

The booties are crochet and use DK wool and a 4mm hook. I did each one in about 3 hours – a nice midweek project :) I’m desperate to do the ones with big curled pointy toes but I’m not sure if they’re too silly … mind you I suppose the baby can’t argue yet!

21 Aug
2007

Twitter, meet Facebook. Facebook, Twitter

Having recently embraced the social networking revolution, or not, I have recently been getting exasperated by how out-of-date my status gets when I can’t be bothered to update it. And how annoying that there are statuses on both Facebook and Twitter which are both out of date.

I stumbled across the instructions at http://www.jeffsandquist.com/HowToPublishYourFacebookStatusToTwitter.aspx and used these so that when I update facebook, the same status appears as a tweet1 on twitter!

If you use both applications then I’d recommend giving this a try. It uses twitterfeed as a go-between to get your RSS feed of statuses out of Facebook and in to Twitter. If you give it a try, let me know how you get on?

1 I am assured that “a tweet” is the singlar label for an entry on twitter. And furthermore that a person posting these entries can be said to be “tweeting”. So now you know!

20 Aug
2007

First Edition Painting

In case anyone thinks its been a bit quiet on the house front, I’d like to reassure you we’re still pottering away here. We’ve got a loo roll holder and a towel ring in the bathroom, Kevin’s fixed the bedroom door’s rattling and we’ve also painted our first wall!

Wall is possibly an exaggeration since I only painted the top 18 inches of it but we have to start somewhere. I disliked the terracotta paint in the front room as soon as I saw it, here it is:

I put up with it for a while but then I bought red curtains and it had to go!! Here’s the new look front room.

 

I can’t show you the dresser against the new paint to compare it because we moved it get to the wall. The top part lifts off – and its too heavy for me to help Kevin lift it back on, so its on the floor until some strong person visits us!

19 Aug
2007

New Niece

My niece or nephew is here – and she’s a niece called Natalie. She was born late last night and we got to meet her today! Here she is:

Yawning :)

With her Dad:

Some very proud first-time grandparents!

And Kevin and I being very brave and holding the baby ourselves. We’re not used to kids but this one is adorable.

 

17 Aug
2007

Small Company vs Big Company

When choosing a career move, whether its your first job out of university or the next step on the ladder, the type of organisation you work in will make quite a difference. Different sectors are all different and each has their own culture, but the size of the organisation is a big factor as well. So far I’ve worked for companies of 6 people, about 120 people, around 2000 people, and now there’s about 18 of us at my current workplace. I have also spoken with friends with different experiences.

Big Companies.

The advantages Larger companies tend to be better at paying overtime or booking holiday because they have systems to organise this. They are also more set up for supporting employees because there is an HR department and some policies and procedures for getting things sorted out if the need arises. They can also usually cope with people on maternity or long-term sickness leave without too much impact on the business and the other employees.

The disadvantages Large companies, certainly here in the UK, have a bit of a one-size-fits-all attitude to employees. The results tend to be silly things such as if one person is thought to be covering their poor timekeeping by changing their shift pattern a lot, the whole company will be stopped from changing their shift pattern more often than every three months, for example Each role in a large company tends to be quite well-defined and you will not find yourself outside of your job description very often.

Small Companies

The advantages If you like variety and hate bureacracy then a small company is for you. In small companies I have variously rewired phones, assembled furniture, cleaned kitchens, crawled on the floor, sold products and even ordered stationery. I’m a software developer by trade so that’s quite an impressive list. Whether this suits you or not is very personal; I thrive on it but its not for everyone. The other big advantage of a small company is that they tend to be quite flexible, in terms of changing job roles or working patterns. This is something to do with being quite reasonable and judging each case on its merits rather than feeling like they have to be uniformly inflexible in case anyone feels hard done by. And you can all go to the pub together on a Friday.

The disadvantages They’re the same as the advantages! There will be days where you wonder what your job specification actually is. There will be days when your flexible employer will expect you to be flexible too and you’ll be in the office 12 hours after you arrived. If you don’t get on well with a colleague then there is no getting away from them, because the organisation is so small. If you like to have an organised, well-defined job which will not bother you when you leave at the end of the day, then probably a small company may not be the right place for you.

15 Aug
2007

Netball New Year

In my own personal netballing calendar, the season starts today! Its the first training session of the season this evening and I am quite looking forward to it. I’ve updated the Shipley Netball Website with functionality to record results as well as fixtures.

It will be great to see the friends I haven’t seen all summer – and to be reunited with my award which is still in the loving care of Janet.

I’ll be playing this season with most of the same people as last year and for the first time in 5 years I’ll be playing with the same team two seasons in a row, which will be something great in itself. There are some team changes and some league changes all to look forward to and I’m sure plenty of blood, sweat and tears as well. Happy New Year :)

12 Aug
2007

How does your garden grow?

I’m so organised that I forgot to take a before photo, but for those that this means something to, here’s my new-look front garden:

Previously it was a bit of a mess, with gravel just dumped on top of bits of plastic sheeting and weeds coming up everywhere. We went to the garden centre and bought a few bags of slate chippings, some edging stones and some weed-suppressing membrane.

We raked all the gravel to one corner, put in the new flower bed and laid weed-supressing membrane on the exposed ground left over. Then we raked all the gravel onto the new membrane and laid membrane on the other bit of the garden. To plant the shrubs we just made cuts in the membrane and put the plants in with potting compost and slow-release fertiliser, then raked the gravel all around them.

 

Finally we scattered our few slate chippings on top of the gravel – its an instantly much nicer effect and without either paying for or carrying vast quantities of them as well! We can add a few more bags of chippings in the future, perhaps.

Thanks to mum for helping us get this sorted! All that’s left to do is to plant some bulbs and then try to keep it looking as nice as this :)

09 Aug
2007

Women Together

Most people know that I’m active in the phpwomen community, women in technology is something that I really believe in but won’t start ranting about right now (or I’ll not get round to what I was going to say!).

Today I’m getting to grips with irssi which is a command-line IRC client. I was struggling with some quite dry documentation when I came across this tutorial from Ubuntu Women which has really helped me to get sorted out.

Yay for the women :)

09 Aug
2007

Wiki Wonder

I love wikis for workplace documentation. For anyone who doesn’t know, a wiki is a web page with an “edit” button, so you can change the content of it if you have something to add or something is out of date or missing. Wikipedia is the obvious example.

So why is it, whenever I set up a wiki, I spend the next six months fielding requests from people for me to add things to it for them?

09 Aug
2007

Happy Cat Holidays

We have a guest staying with us … a cat named Orbit :)

He actually belongs to a friend of ours who has gone on holiday, so the cat gets a holiday as well, staying with us. Its quite a responsibility but so far he’s doing fine. He’s pining for his owner and keeps going back to the door she left by and the room she had when she stayed, but he’s popping down for food quite regularly so I think he’s OK.