I’ve had an election post bubbling around in my head for a around a week now.  However, I read an article in the Guardian by Polly Toynbee entitled “Your heart might say Clegg. But vote with your head.” which has pushed me over the edge (very slowly, it was over a week ago!).  In the article, she says that the Liberal Democrats are a hopeless case, with the system stacked against them.  Since they cannot win, she argues, we should vote tactically to prevent the Conservatives from getting into power.  So in any given constituency, Polly thinks that we should vote for the party to the left of the Conservatives that has the biggest chance of winning in that constituency.

This view may be pragmatic and sensible for people with a “keep the Tories out” agenda.  Personally, though, I find it soul destroying and  depressing.

The  reason that we need “tactical voting” is because the electoral system is broken.  Tactical voting depresses me because a tactical vote is not for a person or party, but against a person or party.  It is fundamentally negative.

This week, in 2010, tactical voting feels to me like surrender.  Surrender to the brokenness of the electoral system, and surrender to the profoundly depressing idea that there really is no choice of a government outside of the Labour and Conservative parties.  I have gone along with this in the past.  I remember tactically voting for Labour in 1997, because as part of the “keep the Tories out” deal with the Liberal Democrats they had promised electoral reform.  This promise was discarded once the size of the Labour majority in Parliament became apparent.

So we need to fix the electoral system.  Except, we are told, we can’t do that because it would result in a “hung parliament”.

Certain elements of the press are very exercised about what they are portraying as the awful spectre of a “hung parliament” or “coalition government” as the rest of us might call it.  Unfortunately, the media are politically active entities, with the possible exception of the BBC which at least tries to be neutral.  Media organisations have a stake in how elections come out, and I increasingly believe that it is very often to do with placing more power and money with very rich people who don’t live here, and much less often to do with right and wrong, or what is best for those of us who aren’t media barons.  At the very least, there is room for voters to question their newspaper’s opinions in the light of its interests.

Oh, and by the way… if Murdoch is so keen for the Conservatives to get in, that’s a definite strike against them in my book.

At any rate, I don’t feel inclined to swallow whole the media view of the disastrous nature of government by coalition.  Clearly it will be challenging – we haven’t had to work this way for over 30 years, but disastrous?  Really?

The thing is that I’m not so sure that we’ve been well served by the thirty-plus years of overall majorities that we’ve just had.  The bigger these majorities have been, the more that they have been abused to push through crap legislation.  The Poll Tax and ID Card bills both spring to mind.  Except when large numbers of MPs rebel against the whip system, which very rarely happens, it is very hard indeed for anyone except the governing party to exert effective influence on the actions of the Government, however bonkers.

Perhaps if we’d had a coalition government, the undemocratic ramming through of the awful Digital Economy Bill could have been avoided!

To be honest, I quite like the idea that the power of politicians is limited by the need to maintain a coalition.  I want them to have to debate properly, and explain themselves, and compromise, and think twice, or even thrice.  This makes a coalition parliament very attractive to me. In one of the debates David Cameron said that the politicians in a coalition would spend all their time “squabbling” rather than taking action.  I think he should take the lead and make a personal commitment to not squabbling should he find himself leading a coalition government on Friday morning.

So how do we get electoral reform?  Well, Polly Toynbee’s tactical voting might keep the Tories out, but I don’t believe that an overall majority for either Labour or the Conservatives will achieve electoral reform.  I think that their instincts go against it, because the current system has served them so well in the past.

So, I’m going to vote for the party whose policies best match my beliefs about what is right for me and mine, and for the UK.  In other words, I am going to vote for something, and not against something.  I hope that everybody else in the country does the same.

If the result is that the popular vote and the distribution of parliamentary seats are substantially different, then I hope that we will be able to use that to mount a vigorous campaign that will force our politicians into actual change – change of the electoral system.

If we can have that then I, at any rate, will consider it a win.

So, these are my 2010 resolutions. I have learned some lessons from last year’s exercise, and I think that 2010’s resolutions are better as a result – at least in the sense of being more specific and measurable.

First off then, following the miserable hell of November and December 2009, I am resolving to get ruthless about allowing access to my time (not ruthless in general as the picture might imply!).  I intend to use my calendar, or a spreadsheet, or an OmniPlan file or some other tool to reserve time for everything I’m working on that takes more than about an hour.  I will use this to ensure that I have time for stuff that I’ve said I’ll do, and also to make it a lot harder to add new stuff to my workload when I’m already busy.

In addition, I am resolving to keep a daily journal.  This will help me to monitor some things in my life, including my progress on some of these resolutions, but mainly I am hoping that it will help me to reflect both on things that happen and things that I do, so that I can better learn from my experiences.  It’s a bit experimental for me, however a lot of people maintain that it’s a very useful exercise, so I am going to try it and see.  I haven’t yet decided whether to do it electronically, or on paper.

In the creative section at the bottom left of the mind map I have been much more specific, and have resolved to produce something, rather than just suggesting some areas to play with, as I did last year.  Last year, my “creative output” was really only in the area of photography.  In the other areas, I didn’t do anything that amounted to much more than messing around with the tools, which is fun but not that rewarding.

After the Great North Run last year, I decided that I wanted to keep on with the running, but then didn’t quite manage to follow through. The 500 miles that I have resolved to run in 2010 equates to about 10 miles per week, which should be very achievable.  Having said that, I just fell over on some ice and hurt my ankle, which probably won’t be helping me get off to a great start.

Last year, I didn’t manage to consistently eat better or sleep more sensibly, so these resolutions are carried forward.  It’s well worth continuing to work on those fundamental things.

I’ll report back in December 2010 when as a result of the above I will be happier, more accomplished, more healthy, and less stressed.

Some might remember that at the beginning of this year, I posted my resolutions for 2009.  This would seem to be an appropriate point to run through them, and say how I did.

So, clockwise from the top:

1. Sleep 11 to 7 (Mostly)
   Well, I’ve had at best patchy success at this.  During the last quarter of the year, my sleep has been awful, involving several instances of being up working at 4am and one all nighter. It was better earlier in the year, but I can’t honestly chalk this one up as a success.  I will carry this one forward into 2010.
2. Cycle to work
   This has been much more successful.  Mostly, this year, where it has been possible I have cycled to work. I’ve bought some waterproof trousers and a jacket which have kept me cycling during this winter, and my Brompton remains a credit to cycle-kind.  I’ll keep doing this in 2010, but I don’t think I need to carry it forward as a resolution, as I have cracked it!
3. Be Creative
   Mostly due to the Ilkley Flickr Group Meetup, I have made some good photographs this year. The On The Spot Challenge [PDF] that we did this month was particularly good fun with some good results. On those other fronts, I have more musical instruments than I started the year with, although I can’t say I’ve made any significant music, I have a new book about drawing, and I have signed into Second Life at least three times this year.  Oh, and I tried to do NaNoWriMo, but failed due to bad timing – I tried to do it at the same time as November.
4. More Time At Home
   I probably spent a very tiny bit less time at home this year, as compared to 2008.  I don’t think I have much actual power over this, so it was probably not a sensible thing to resolve about. Perhaps I should resolve to leave Stevenage for the bigger IBM world, but I’m not going to do that at this stage, although it could well happen.
5. Eat Better
   Hm, perhaps I shouldn’t be reflecting on this just after Christmas.  I’ve eaten a very great deal of crap this year, much as usual in fact.  My weight this year has gone down (running and Weightwatchers) and back up again (run up to Christmas).  This one will be carried forward to 2010.
6. Great North Run
   Well, I did it in two and three quarter hours, which wasn’t too embarrassing.  Oh, and I raised over £1000.  So not quite as much as I’d resolved to do, but I’m still proud of myself and count this one as a success.

I shall soon be posting my resolutions for 2010.

Today is the first day of  National Novel Writing Month, popularly known as NaNoWriMo. Around ten years ago, a group of around 20 friends in California got together and made a pact that they would each write a 50,000 word novel.  Several of them actually completed their goal.  Since then, the event has grown to the point that this year’s event has over 100,000 participants around the globe, all of whom have made that exact same commitment to 50,000 words.  Feeling suitably inspired, I signed up around a fortnight ago.

I started my novel at midnight last night and wrote five hundred or so words quite quickly.  The problem is that I don’t know what happens next. I’ve started my novel with no preconceived plot, characters or settings. However, fortunately for me, the goal is emphatically not to write the perfect novel, it is simply to write 50,000 words into a first draft.  This means that I can just play it by ear, and however terrible the resulting novel is, providing that I complete the requisite number of words, I will be a winner.  The pace that is set by the 30th November deadline means that there is no time to agonise over plot points, or rework the beginning to fit better with the middle.  All the words that I write count as they are, and time spent changing them does not help me move towards the required total.  The trick is to plough on.

Traditionally, I’ve not been very good at writing big things. I’m hoping that my participation in NaNoWriMo will break through the barriers that inhibit my writing, silence my inner critic, and end in victory and 50,000 words.

If you’re a fellow traveller, then I would love to be your buddy on the NaNo site – click on the graphic to visit my profile.  If not then wish me luck – I’m going to need it!

The Daily Mail’s Jan Moir wrote a column on 16th October about the untimely death of Stephen Gateley of the band Boyzone. The column was originally entitled “Why there was nothing ‘natural’ about Stephen Gateley’s death”, although it has subsequently been retitled.

A lot of people found the content of the article offensive, and a storm began to brew on Twitter, with a lot of tweeting and retweeting, some of it offensive in its turn to Ms Moir.  In her response to the furore, Ms Moir described the Twitter response as “clearly a heavily orchestrated internet campaign”.

To suggest that it is possible to orchestrate a campaign about anything on Twitter, or other social media, is a bit silly. Ms Moir said things in her column that offended a lot of people sufficiently for them to start talking about it. The more they talked, the more other people heard them, and some clearly felt strongly enough to begin talking themselves. The social media aspect has hugely accelerated and magnified an otherwise ordinary word of mouth process, but that’s all.

Instead of seeking to blame imaginary conspiracy theories, Ms Moir should exercise her empathy, and try to re-examine her column from the perspective of someone who is gay, or someone whose brother or sister or cousin or son or daughter has unexpectedly died at a young age. That might help her to understand that this strong expression of feeling is a consequence of the fact that the Internet provides a lot of “ordinary” people a platform in aggregate that is in some ways just as powerful as the one that she has in her newspaper column.  It’s not a conspiracy, rather it is democracy.

Columnists like Ms Moir need to understand that if they are going to use their platform to publish controversial content, then we might equally use ours to object.

It’s only fair, after all.

Amazon Kindle

When I found out that Amazon had released an International version of their Kindle e-book reader, I knew immediately that I wanted one.  I love the idea of e-books, and e-book readers.  I love the thought that I can carry a bookshelf round in my bag, and that I can add to it wherever and whenever I want to, especially without even needing to mess about with a computer.  Add to this the bookmarking, annotating and searching, and it starts to sound as though the e-book is far superior to simple ink on mere paper.

It’s not that simple though.  I was brought up in a house that was full of books.  I read compulsively as a child, devouring my parent’s bookshelves at an ever increasing rate, as soon as I first learned to read.  When I start to think about it, I find that I want my children to grow up with the same access to books as I have had.  Not unobtrusive insubstantial digital copies that must be sought out, but the real physical object stored in long uneven shelves with all manner of different colours, sizes and bindings.  There’s something magical about actual real books – something in the feel of the paper, and the way they age, picking up marks and coffee stains and wrinkles as you read them and re-read them.  A tablet made of glass and plastic just can’t compete with that.

I suppose that the function of books, which is to say the conveying of stories or information, is captured at least adequately by e-books.  However the physical form of books – the covers, bindings, and pages – this is a different matter.  This design has had centuries of usability testing, with incremental improvements and modernisation along the way.  Although there are some very well designed e-book readers, they just don’t yet come close to having had this level of scrutiny and refinement.

Of course, the other thing about a physical book is that once it is in your possession, you have it.  You can lend it to a friend, register it on bookcrossing.com and give it away, or put it on the shelf, knowing that you can come back to it in 30 years time and read it again.

This seems much less certain with some e-books.  Astonishingly, the publishing industry seems to be devoting effort to the non-problem of pirated e-books rather than the real problem of the decline of reading. So yes, despite the lessons from the music industry, we are to be afflicted with the inflexibility, inconvenience and irritation associated with Digital Rights Management or DRM.

So, if I invest my pennies in Kindle, I won’t be able to lend my books to my friends, or read them on a Sony e-Reader or other device of my choice.  Amazon’s proprietary file format and DRM has seen to that.  The ePub open format for e-books is better, but since it provides a framework for DRM, and not the actual DRM scheme, there’s no guarantee that an ePub reader will read any given ePub book.  The device would have to support the same DRM as well as supporting ePub.

In fact, it’s all just too complicated.  Conveniently for the vendors, therefore, you will probably end up buying the books and the reader from the same source, just to have a level of reassurance that it will be compatible.

I still own (and sometimes even read) books that I bought in 1979. Will I be able to read today’s DRM protected e-Books in in 2039?  In the last 30 years there have been many file formats and media types that have come and gone.  Many of these are extremely difficult to read today.  Do you still have access to a floppy disk drive? What about the ability to read files from Lotus AmiPro, the word processor I remember using when I joined IBM in 1994?  Where will Amazon and its proprietary formats be in 2039?  We have no way to know.

However, despite all these complaints, I have to say that I am reading e-books.

I’m doing it on my iPhone, using the excellent Stanza application from Lexcycle (I hope that their recent acquisition by Amazon bodes well for the future of that company’s e-book strategy).  What am I reading?  Well, Stanza knows about various online libraries, containing a variety of books, both free and otherwise.  I have read a lot of books ranging from The War of the Worlds and The Time Machine by H. G. Wells to Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow, and so have been able to download them all for free and from within the Stanza application.

This has been a positive experience that hints at what would be available with the Kindle, and despite everything, that is what I really want.  The DRM and proprietary nature of the Kindle stick in my throat, but I suppose I get the same thing from Apple, and somehow live with it.

I can’t decide…

This is a live blog from Photocamp Bradford 2009. No promises about completeness or relevance! Apologies in advance to any speakers who I’ve accidentally misrepresented. The fault is all mine – let me know and I’ll fix it.

1030am:

I’m currently sitting in the kick-off session for Photocamp Bradford 2009 at the National Medium Museum. The media museum is an impressive place – apparently there are 3 million photographs in boxes in the basement, as well as the exhibited shots.

There’s a rich variety of sessions – too many to choose from really, but we’re not allowed to complain about that

1040am:

Now listening to Miss Aniela, aka Natalie Dybisz, who is now making a living as a successful photographer based on her Flickr self portraiture.  She’s showing a slideshow as she’s talking, with some stunning self portraits.  There are quite a few images where she appears multiple times – my favourite so far is one with a boat, where she’s sitting in the boat and at the same time standing outside pushing it out from the bank.

She’s making some very interesting points about what being a professional photographer online means:

• She is recognising the relentless Internet self promotion thing, and appreciating connecting with real people at events like this
• She questions the nature of professional photography, discussing high art, commercial, and other genres. She’s done something differently from that – how could you define her style? Galleries like things to fit in genres, but she’s stuck to her guns, and has been exhibited (quite a lot, it seems)
• Interesting point about successful pictures on Flickr, and how they are the shots that look good at thumbnail size.

This talk has caught me by surprise – I’m really enjoying it. Particularly loving the clone pictures… I hope I’ll be able to get into her compositing workshop later.

1135am

Not in the Strobism talk after all, it was oversubscribed.  Now upstairs having arrived late in a Project 365 talk, by Alex Wolf who is doing 101 things in 1001 days, which sounds pretty cool in itself.

It’s interesting that a lot of the pictures depict things other than self portraits – people just take pictures of stuff from their day.  I hadn’t understood that about Project 365.

“Your Life is Unique – the events in it are replicable but the details, people and circumstances aren’t.”

Cool Project 365 things on Flickr:

• There’s a “resignation letter” group on Flickr, apparently. So people are documenting things in their lives, not confining themselves to self portraits. Someone wrote their resignation letter on a cake
• Photographs of yellow stickies with cool quotes written on them.
• New job pics – an NHS lanyard, a picture of a screen showing Dolly Parton’s 9-5 playing.
• Breakfast pics!
• A cuddly toy that has “more of a social life than some people in this room”. Well I laughed anyway.  Since it manages to make it to a pub on Friday night, it’s doing better than me anyway.

Damn, I love Flickr. Things like this lead me to wonder what other amazing and wonderful things are going on in Flickr groups that I’ve never seen or heard of.

I really hope that she puts these slides on Slideshare. Lots of cool images! Feeling quite inspired to do this now I know it doesn’t all have to be self portraits.  I must say that I greatly respect people that manage to do the self portrait thing every day and keep it alive and interesting…

12:45pm:

Inspired by Alex’s talk earlier, I am now attending a panel discussion moderated by John Fotohouse with Joanna and Simon about the Project 365s that the panel are all finishing off tomorrow.

Loving these slideshows of the panel’s 365s. Such imagination! Some of these pictures have clearly been the result of a significant amount of work. Apparently, the received wisdom is that if you can’t think of anything, stick something silly on your head!

John has posted one picture every day, but it isn’t compulsory – you can save them up for a couple of days.

Joanna: People do themes – rainbow themes, alphabet, and she is doing a countdown theme down to the end of the 365 tomorrow.

Little vignette about compositing – John puts shots in layers in Photoshop, and erases through to allow the versions of him on the lower layers to show through.

The panel all agree that their pictures must have them in, and have clearly thought it through quite carefully – whether footprints or shadows count, etc. This is a quite different approach from the shots that Alex showed – I think that if I do a 365 I’d like the shots to at least have some sort of link to me or my day, but I won’t necessarily insist to myself that I have to be in them all.  All are in agreement that however you choose to do it, it’s a personal choice. Set your own constraints and live within them.

Constraints breed creativity!

Well, today seems to be all about self portraiture for me.

1:45pm

Lunch time!

14:54pm

Back in room 1 of the conference suite again, for Miss Aniela’s workshop on compositing. It should be good if her excellent talk this morning is anything to go by.  Apparently a lot of other people agree with me, because the room is crammed.  I managed to get one of the last chairs.

So, Miss Aniela is saying that she has always been fascinated by the post production side – likes being able to change how the picture looks. “Photography is not just about the camera, it’s about the whole process.”  She’s never used film.  She has three categories, to illustrate how much change she’s done to them:

1. Tweaking.
   Very little processing – perhaps colour rebalancing, levels, simple filters, etc.
2. Moderate changes (aka 50:50).  Removing the surroundings, b&w conversion, mirror image.  May go through some compositing, but generally are composed as in the camera.
3. Large changes (aka composites).  Something creative and substantial.

She’s going to cover clone images, where there are lots of her in the shot (like the boat I linked to above), flying/levitating images, composites where bits of more than one image from a shoot are used, not necessarily obviously.

She’s saying that there are a lot of people playing with compositing (just look at Flickr!).  It’s easy to do, but it’s also about how the things in the frame balance with each other.

In Photoshop, she uses the pencil tool to draw roughly round figures to be cloned, makes it into a path, creates a new layer with the selection, and then drags it into the master composite. (Hope I got that right!)

For illusions, like flying, etc. taking a lot of shots with each limb in position, then compositing them together with little bits from each picture.  Alternatively, use a chair or other furniture and edit it out.  Putting in the shadows is really important, so that the light makes sense.  Uses the dodge tool for shadow.

Fascinating to see the images from which these amazing composites are composed.

Things to remember when compositing:

1. Keep camera still – use a tripod!
2. Get an image without you and any objects
3. Look carefully at the lighting – it’s a make/break thing.
4. Keep it simple – don’t overclutter the image, or it’s just more work to do later.
5. Do what you can in the actual shooting – solves many lighting issues, etc.

Can also use compositing to get around lighting issues.

(It’s very warm in here!)

Also, using compositing to get everything in focus. Adding main subject in focus as close foreground while keeping separately shot background in focus.  Try using Image->Adjust->Shadow & Highlight in Photoshop – Miss A uses it on a lot of pictures.

Know when to stop!

This is a lot to take in – I wonder if she is going to publish her slides anywhere (apparently yes, keep an eye on the Flickr group).

4:45pm

The Future of Photocamp.

We all seem to have enjoyed Photocamp this time.  The Flickr online community really adds something.

We’re now discussing the busy-ness of the event. Some are saying that this is the first time that space is an issue.  However, I think that a lot more people are here than were at OBH last time.

How could Photocamp go forward.  It sounds as though the intention is to retain the Barcamp-derived format, and remain in dialogue with the Media Museum as long as both parties are interested.

Vigorous debate on anarchic Barcamp vs more structured Photocamp-so-far.  People don’t think that the uncomfortable Barcamp anarchy will work for something like Photocamp, because of the more general audience with more varied skill levels, who might not be prepared to pay the £7.50 for a blank agenda.  I don’t know if I agree with this – it feels like a knee jerk response to the lack of control. I’m on the fence on this one I suppose.

Interesting discussion about the social aspects. It feels as though folks have met less new people than in the past, this time. Not sure what kind of social activities could be put on to remedy this.

Talking about potential sessions for next time: remaking classic pictures, short talks “what’s your passion”, analysing iconic images asking why a picture is great, …

I think I just volunteered to help, next year… doh?

Remember back in September 2007 when the iPhone v1.0 came out? There was considerable competition between various carriers to be allowed to be the Chosen One in each country, and to enjoy the exclusive right to sell the iPhone. I’m pretty sure that from O2’s point of view, it’s been great business here in the UK.

This level of competition allowed Apple to include onerous conditions in the contract, and one of these was a never-before-seen clause to allow a handset manufacturer, that is Apple, to take a share of call revenues. I seem to remember that this was talked of as redefining the power balance between handset manufacturers and carriers, and not to the advantage of the carriers.

Then the iPhone 3G came along, and with it the App Store. Apple now had a new way to make ongoing revenue from the iPhone.

And that has led me to indulge in some speculation. I imagine that the contract clause requiring call revenue sharing was deeply unpopular with O2 and the other carriers. I speculate that, with the introduction of the App Store revenue stream, Apple allowed this clause to be dropped from their iPhone 3G distribution contracts with O2 et al. If true, this might have led O2 to allow immediate upgrades to its customers because it got them off the phones to which the revenue sharing applied, and and moved them back towards a more standard arrangement.

That would have been a special case, though, and there are no such conditions prevailing now.  O2 are following the industry standard practice of making people wait to upgrade until their contracts are finished. This is in some sense understandable and fair enough, although I suppose that it feels pretty random to customers, many of whom had an expectation based on last time.

So,  January then…

I’m not sure I’ve ever done anything like a product review on here before, but I’m really excited about Pzizz at the moment.  It’s a software package that generates customisable random soundtracks that combine NLP techniques and binaural beats with music and sound effects to help you sleep.  I’ve never had any trouble getting to sleep at night, but what I *do* suffer from is periods of low energy during the day, particularly in the afternoon, and that’s where Pzizz comes in.  Pzizz lets me take 20 minute “power naps” that give me a significant boost, out of all proportion to the amount of time that they take.

This may sound a bit fanciful, so here’s an example.  Three weeks ago, I had to get some stuff finished, and pulled my first all-nighter for some years.  I was on the go from 5am on a Tuesday morning until 5am the following Wednesday .  By about 10pm on Tuesday, I was seriously flagging and went to bed for a 20 minute Pzizz nap.  After that, I got up and was able to keep going for the remaining 6.5 hours.  That’s not to say that I wasn’t in a sleep deprived haze for the following two days, but it helped me to get the job done.

You can use Pzizz to instantly produce a nap soundtrack on the spot, but I normally use the batch export capability which creates a bunch of mp3s and automatically adds them to iTunes for export onto my iPhone.  I’ve managed to nap in all sorts of unlikely places, using this, including on planes and trains.  When I’ve listened to them all, I just delete them and create some more.  It would be a bit more convenient if it added them to iTunes as a podcast, which would give them a flag to tell me whether I’d listened to them or not, and allow iTunes to automatically manage them for me.  However, the real solution here is a Pzizz iPhone app, and I’m happy to note that there’s some evidence that they are at least thinking about doing one.  If you want to have a try of Pzizz, there’s a sample mp3 on their download page.

Another thing I like about Pzizz is the people who make it.  I like that they license me to use it on up to 3 computers, which can be any combination of Mac and Windows.  I like their lifetime free upgrade policy, which is the same now as it was in January 2006 when I first bought it.  Most of all, I like the fact that real human beings answer the e-mails that I send to them, and in a friendly personable way, rather than with corporate PR speak.

I have been recommending Pzizz to people for around three years now, and I’m sure that I’ll keep doing so.  Great product, great company.

(You can wake up now!)

2009 Resolutions

Originally uploaded by smithi1

These are my New Year’s resolutions for 2009 – the things I need to work on, or achieve. You’ll notice that there are no work related ones – well, that’s because the work changes I need to make will fall naturally out of doing these.

I’ll check back in at the end of 2009 to evaluate how I did.