Well what can I say, the past 12 months have been gruelling and cruel. A Masters Degree is not something to be taken lightly, and I wasn’t prepared for the amount of work required to complete the 1 year course. Think of it as completing an Undergraduate degree in a year. Well here I am, 18 Courseworks, 8 exams and a 20,000 word thesis & software product later, all finished. The year has been tough but the Masters Degree is now over. I guess I could call myself John Large MSc BSc PGc PGd now if I was really pedantic with the qualifications (and could even stick Microsoft certs in there) But I won’t. John Large MSc is sufficient.

So we draw a line under the past 12 months and move forward with big plans. The Badge business is doing great, and sustaining us both so that’s terrific, and I have another business which is pulling in a fair amount of capital, however it is a business where I’m simply a stakeholder so that’s fine with me. Over the next year, Vicki & I are concentrating on our student debts and trying to pay as much of them off before moving down to Cornwall in the summer. This has been a long term goal for a long time now, but the lack of work in the IT field (especially in Consultancy & tech which I work in) has always meant that it has had to wait. Now we are earning good money and can work out of wherever, it seems as good a time as any. I will continue my writing, continue developing web software and tinkering with hardware as usual, and all the while our Business should keep a nice roof over our heads and food on the table. Things are looking good.

Before we move, we are having a huge sort out, which includes selling alot of stuff on ebay, which you can checkout here . This is really a clear out of the office, but there is quite a bit of legacy hardware in there for any geeks, including an old Creative DXR3 Mpeg decoder card, and an Intel Pentium II 450Mhz (slot type) processor. I have been holding on to it for years, but its time to let go. Sorry but the Xbox controllers and the ADSL modems have now sold.

Tech wise, I’ve been playing around with Mac OSX 10.5.5 a lot recently, and while I really enjoy using it, I still prefer XP. My XP machine is just quicker, snappier, plays games perfectly and feels more like an old friend than OSX. Funnily enough, my 8800GTX Graphics card blew up my PSU by drawing too much power. I was playing COD4 on max settings and the old 600W Single Rail PSU blew up with a huge explosion. Luckily no other hardware was injured and I have a new 700Watt dual 12V rail PSU now which purrs away sweetly, even under excessive load.

Also while we are on the subject of Tech, my HANNSpree 32″ TV decided to give up. The Samsung panel just died, we still had sound and backlight but no picture output. Luckily it was still under the 2 year warranty (at 13 months old) and HANNSpree sent a courier to take it back. We are still waiting on getting it back, and the lack of High Def Xbox360 is killing me…..

Well I will leave it at that for today. Sporadic I know, but I have neglected the blog whilst studying, so It’s time to get back on the horse and start writing again.

Until we meet again!

Current Project – Developing Designobjects.co.uk