Who am I?
Hi. My name is Pete O’Shea, well actually it’s Peter but pretty much everyone calls me Pete. I am happily married to my lovely wife Shirley—the one that is usually first to comment on most posts—and we currently live Somerset, down in the South West of England.
Why am I writing this blog?
I had an unfortunate accident a while back where I added a new disk to my linux server and then formatted the wrong disk wiping all my data from the old disk. I had some stuff backed up but the most recent backup was 6 months old. There were certain things that were lost for ever so this has made me cautious.
You would think that I would have learnt my lesson and back everything up religiously but the process of deciding what gets backed up seems to distract me from the actual process of running a regular backup.
I have become an expert at procrastinating. Even though I seem to be constantly busy nothing seems to be getting done.
To help with this I have been reading a lot of stuff recently about ways to improve my productivity and efficiency, see Getting Things Done for example. A recurring theme seems to be that you should Write Stuff Down, preferably the minute it comes into your head.
This is supposed to help focus your thoughts by putting things into words. There is an added benefit that once written down it doesn’t need to keep rattling around your head anymore. Before fixing your thoughts into words I find that they keep interrupting other thought processes. The more thoughts rattling around in there the harder it is to focus on any one thing and do it well.
Anyway this blog is my attempt to Write Stuff Down so let’s wait and see how it works out over time. Basically it is simply meant to be a place for my to collate my thoughts, and hopefully a few insights, on areas that interest me.
Just to make you aware some of the links on the site may be affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, for example, I earn from qualifying purchases at Amazon after clicking through an affiliate link.
What interests me?
I am a software developer by profession. I am currently working for a small company which uses Delphi as the tool of choice. I also dabble with web stuff, mainly HTML, Javascript & PHP and hope to get into some AJAX stuff as well.
Open source seems like a brilliant way to go but if I was to develop some software of my own how would I make any money from it? This is something that I might look into in the near future as I plan to do a little development in my spare time.
Linux is great but I only really use it for server based stuff at the moment. So my main operating system is Windows, currently Vista x64. I like the idea of doing some cross platform development but may just end up doing web based applications instead.
Some other interests that are likely to crop up from time to time are Photography, as I am a keen amateur photographer, and Travel as I have an insatiable appetite to see more of the world. This will hopefully include insights from places just around the corner all the way to the other side of the globe.
Check out my Bucket List if you want to get a better idea of which direction I am likely to be heading in.
When can the content be used?
After a bit of thought I have decided to license all the content on this site using the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. There might be some exceptions to this though. If I include photos in my posts from external sources, for example, but there will always be mention of who owns the copyright for the images somewhere in the post.
So feel free to do whatever you like with my content all I ask is that you credit me where appropriate. Either link back to the original article or just the front page of this blog, or simply mention my name somewhere if a link isn’t appropriate.
If for some reason you do not want to credit me then these restrictions can be removed if you get my permission.
Where can you contact me?
The easiest way is to simply comment on any post that takes you interest. I try to respond to all comments I receive on this blog.
You can also get hold of me on Twitter or the Facebook page for this website. I am still trying to get a handle on the best way to keep track of social media so you may not get an immediate response but I try to read every post, comment or tweet when I do get around to check them.
You could also send me an email if you prefer at: mail@peteoshea.co.uk. Please bear in mind that to allow me to stay productive I no longer keep my email program open all the time. I aim to check my mail it at least once a day, when I am around to do so. So please try and keep any messages brief and to the point and I will try to respond to all mail when I get the chance.
