Category: notes from JK

Newborn baby induced sleep deprivation brings a new found appreciation for the glorious powers of coffee. I've always loved coffee but our life-long romance is finding new depths in these sleepless days.

Over the years I've tried more than my fair share of coffee from all over the world. Costa, Starbucks, Neros… of course. Blends from Whittard, Nespresso, supermarkets and small shops. I've tasted espressos in Rome, Toronto, Paris, Montreal and Havana. Drinking Jamaican Blue Mountain beans I'd actually bought in Jamaica was a particular highlight – wonderful beans which are absurdly expensive in the UK. I mourn the old Seattle Coffee Company that thinly veiled Startbucks investment vehicle which they then acquired to officially enter the UK market after Seattle had proved the market's viability. Their Sugar Daddy Americano was quite gorgeous. I'm not the only one who misses them it seems.

But all that doesn't matter as a about six months ago I discovered, without doubt, the greatest coffee in the whole wide world. I was at Clapham Junction station, on my way to see a client. It was cold and I needed a pick-me-up so I stopped at a tiny coffee kiosk on one of the platforms. Covered in orange panels it proclaimed to sell fairtrade organic coffee. I'd passed the kiosk thousands of times without trying it, today was the day.

I ordered a latte and the friendly staff encased in their tiny box of a kiosk began their ministrations on the steaming monster of a coffee machine.

When I received my drink and tried it, I couldn't believe the taste. Rich, earthy, deep and slightly sweet. I looked inside, yes it was coffee – amazing! It was reminiscent of that Ally McBeal coffee tasting scene with Georgia…

Anyway I asked them where they got their coffee from and it's from a fine company called Union Coffee Roasters. They have a incredible selection of roasts and blends which you can buy from their site. I started off with their Espresso Collection to help me sample their roasts – they were all wonderful. But for me the winner was and still is the blend I first tried that cold day in Clapham. The divine Organic and Fairtrade Natural Spirit Blend.

Enjoy. I do, a cup at a time!

At 1.03am on Sunday 19th March our little baby girl, Ella Izabela Kitcat, was born. We'd planned a home birth but we ended up in the hospital. It wasn't the cosy experience we wanted but mum is totally ok and we now have a beautiful, big healthy girl.

First up, it's true true true, sleep does seem like a very distant memory. But the joy and laughter she brings is just boundless – the effort that goes into caring for Ella diminishes into nothingness with every grin, gurgle and squeak. She's just so adorable.

Some tips for others about to embark on their journey into baby life. You get inundated with so many product samples, brochures and coupons around this time it can get overwhelming. Here are three pointers:

Mea culpa I thought baby wipes were a dumb marketing ploy to squeeze more cash out of parents. But I take it all back – baby wipes save the day with every nappy change. We use the wonderful unscented bio wipes from Nature boy & girl which are sold in Boots.

What I was right on with was that Dr Harvey Karp's Baby Bliss: Your One-Stop Guide for the First Three Months and Beyond was a life-saver for us. It's simple, easy-to-follow advice based on what cultures around the world have been doing for hundreds of years. If you have a baby under 6 months check it out now, it all works.

Finally we tried the whole gamut of nappies for newborns. The big brands didn't really work that well for Ella. Also we weren't happy with the bleach, perfumes and other chemicals in those brands. As I expected, we ended up with an ecological, biodegradable brand, the Moltex Oko. It peforms better than the other brands, is bleach and other chemicals free and really good value when bought online.

That's it for now. I promise not to bombard people with kiddie stuff… Instead for more great parenting advice visit Netmums

We're in the waiting room called “Life Will Never Be The Same Again” as everyone tells me when they hear that our first child is due any day now… You know what? I understand that I can't possibly understand how different things will be. I'm comfortable with that and don't need to be told that it “Will… Never… Be…. The… Same… Again…” Thanks.

In the meantime we've been doing something which is apparently rather common among the expectant. We've been tidying. More specifically I've been getting a disproportionate amount of pleasure from finishing off, chucking out and giving away all those little things – pots of dried herbs, ancient after-shaves, prehistoric bottles of bleach – you name it.

I knew I was in trouble when I got excited about cleaning a cupboard and wiping the shelves. Shampoo samples have been used, shower gels finished and old razors chucked. Having less stuff is brilliant, it's easier to find things and you have more space. It's so liberating – really you need to try it.

I've just posted two new columns written for LinuxUser up on this site.

LinuxUser can now be purchased online in PDF format so if you're interested do visit their site

I'm packing in the final push of work before jetting off to Poland for the holidays. Time for a quick look-ahead to 2006, no retrospectives as I'm not sure I could look back at 2005 without writing a book!

What's coming up?

I think the simplicity meme is just going to just run and run. There's so much room for improvement in our world where even understanding how to open some doors can be made a challenge by poor design.

At Swing Digital we're really championing the elimination of complexity from school systems. Our software is helping to manage parent, pupil and alumni relationships without creating an additional burden on already overworked school IT managers. Web software rocks – when done right – but the richness of desktop applications has a huge amount to offer and we shouldn't forget that in the Web 2.0 rush.

The right tools for the job is how we need to keep looking at software. The savings in time and money by going for the most basic, standardised tools possible often far outweigh the disadvantages of having a few more 'advanced' features.

Key thing to remember in 2006

Doing things manually is often much cheaper than you might think. Automating a process can cost many orders of magnitude more than you ever imagined.

What geekery I'd like to see in 2006

• Blackberry 8700 available in the UK (and RIM not hobbled by dumb patent lawsuits)
• A new PowerBook with a serious speed-bump (and please don't lose the FireWire ports)
• Cross-platform reliable Video VOIP on the Mac from Skype, iChat or whoever – just make it work
• 8Mb/s broadband in my area

What to watch out for

• More nefariousness from vested interests, bad laws, crappy patents and awful DRM.
• Some nice new links between local and national services on Directgov and its like.
• A bushel more WiFi standards to get used to.
• One Google service comes out of beta – maybe.
• Lots more blogging here…

Have a great Christmas and New Year everyone.

What a week. Wednesday saw me at the excellent e-democracy 05 where all the great and good of the e-democracy mingled. Thursday was the launch of Brighton & Hove's own search engine p2b.net at lunch time then the Brighton web awards in the evening. Today I'm helping out at the d.Construct conference where there's loads of web 2.0 goodness being discussed. More on all these events when I catch a moment.

Positive feedback is rolling in for my January workshop, Managing Web Projects, everyone I talk to about it either wants to come themselves or knows a bunch of people who would love to come. I'm looking forward to some quality discussion and ideas-sharing on professionally delivering web projects.

In the meantime some more goodies to tempt fence-sitters into registering. I've confirmed that there will be free wifi across the whole venue for the entire day.

Also the lovely people at New Media Age are giving our workshop delegates a 31% discount on a 1-year subscription.

To sign up, see more information or just ogle the deals our partners are offering delegates, visit http://www.kitcat-workshops.com

I’ve been writing a column for the excellent LinuxUser Magazine for much of this year, I’ve been a contributor since 2003. For reasons I don’t quite understand they’ve had an on-off policy on archiving their content online. Personally I think if magazines like Wired and FastCompany can do it for free, there’s no reason why all magazines shouldn’t. Anyway with some arm twisting I’m happy to say all my columns will be archived online on my site here.

Here are some of my favourite bits from previous columns…

On Linux in Poland

In a country with high unemployment and low wages relative to the rest of the EU I was expecting FLOSS to play a major part in Polish digital life. I was very wrong… more

On Transport Direct

40 million quid well spent then. Once again we’ve seen the Government spend piles of good cash on not just average or bad but terrible ‘solutions’. Transport Direct is a slow, unusable, non-standards compliant site with unreliable data if you can figure out how to get to it. When such wonderful easy to use systems as Google Maps, WriteToThem.com and BaseCamp exist how can we keep pumping out such plain awful government sites? It’s time for it to stop… more

On FLOSS license incompatibilities

I get that sense that the multitude of different FLOSS licenses are blocking up the positive use of different open projects in other open works. The good intentions that go into building any freely available lump of software are based partly on the idea that others will benefit. If license incompatibilities prevent that then we are losing the key benefit of going for FLOSS in the first place… more

On Technology’s impacts

We’re all alone, floating isolated in bubbles of our technology. We’ve built ourselves cocoons of entertainment which make it easier for us to avoid meaningful relationships with other people and the world at large… more

I'm rather surprised and extremely honoured to have been chosen as a finalist in the “Best Personal Site and Web Blog category” for the Brighton & Hove Web Awards 2005. Neat!

In the spirit of these things: Please do vote for me!

The finalists are: * Sketchy Animation * Yummy Wakame * j-dom * Assistant Blog * Zender Bender

Good luck to them and all the other participants in the awards, which you can see here

Little Venice, here we come!

My workshop “Managing Web Projects” will be in the wonderful Amadeus Centre, we're going to have the whole place to ourselves and free wifi too. I'm already looking forward to the yummy lunch, their kitchen smelt incredible when I visited. The learning will take place in upper hall with breaks in the lower hall and dining room which are downstairs.

We had to bump the date by one day to fit in, so the workshop will be Thursday 26th January now. Looking forward to seeing you there!

http://www.kitcat-workshops.com