Money makes the world go round

My current conerm is the blog, like my life, may become a bit stale from general busyness and neglect. Work 9-5 is heading more like 9-6:30 as I try and get some good code into my first release at the end of June, meaning home time is "do the basics" of cooking, cleaning and another level of the Gamecube "Jeu du mois". Then blow off steam and booze away the weekend, pausing only to nurse sore limbs and occasational hangovers.

All of which is fine, but since travel I am seeing a greater hole in this pattern. No advancement - no change - nothing new to stir the blood. Whenever this instinct struck on the travels, you just picked up your bag and walked off. In most cases, your roots were minimal and plans wern't neccesary. But the longer you sit still, the more your roots grow, and I do find myself worrying that I am growing deep roots in a situation that I would put down as "acceptable, but no better". I mean, I see lots of my mate and have some good times, but there is all this commuting around and London stresses that I put up with too.

On a more positive note, mt attempts at better cooking has been going well though - every Monday I'm trying to bash out a meal for any housemates who are around and myself. A couple of acceptable meals, and a couple of really nice ones so far. At least in my opinion :)

Equally I have been looking at gadgets and gizmos to play digital video files thourgh my television, before deciding everything was far too "early adopter" and shoddy, and just buying a 10m long Computer -> TV Scart cable and using my laptop to wirelessly drive it all with some remote desktop software. Homegrown solution are always more geeky and fun !

With my retail therapy cash no longer sunk into gadgets, I considered other things to blow it on, and then had a moment of selfish guilt. Before travelling, I used to give a bit to charity, and since I got back and was paying off debts I hadn't considered getting back into that. But having discovered Pledgebank and more particularly the give one percent pledge on it, I am inspired to start giving again. The great idea behind pledgebank is "I'll do this, but only if X other people are doing it too", so you can feel like you are truely working with others to make something happen rather than floating out there on your own. And it truely can be a pledge to do anything.

Happy that I was on track to make a difference (assuming 392 more people sign up !) I then went off on a virtual shop and got myself some funky disc storage for all the DVD-Rs I am collecting these days. Yay gadgets !