I have just started reading “Shakespeare’s Local” by Pete Brown. It’s about the George, a pub near London Bridge that can trace its history back 600 years. It’s more about beer and London history than about Shakespeare, but it seemed appropriate to start reading a book with Shakespeare in its title as we approach the… Continue reading Backing up
In the late 1990s I delivered several months’ worth of training sessions to civil servants, training sessions that combined computer use with tips about publishing and printing. The delegates were about to start using their computers in a way that would save time and money in a clearly quantifiable way. This doesn’t happen with every… Continue reading Hyphens, En Dashes and Em Dashes
Do you have “version control issues”? Do you have multiple copies of the same documents (digital or printed copies) and end up with confusion about which copies are most up-to-date? I remember this being a problem 10-15 years ago but it feels like we are over the worst of it now. It’s a problem that… Continue reading Version Control
An alternative title for this piece was “Time Management in 15 Minutes”. That might be true for some of you – maybe you could learn everything you need to know in the next 15 minutes – but for others it will be the starting point. I have read dozens of books and hundreds of articles… Continue reading Time Management: the first 15 Minutes
“Say the third thing that comes into your head.” This is advice I heard a year or two ago in a TV interview given by the comedian Reginald D Hunter. He is from the American South but has lived in the UK for many years. When he returns to America his English style of humour… Continue reading “Say the third thing that comes into your head” (contains rude words)
We had some very welcome house guests during half-term, Steve (an old work colleague and good friend), his wife and their two daughters. Steve and I worked together, on and off, for over seven years, until the middle of the last decade. We have seen many of the same things in the world of IT… Continue reading Flow Charts
When I first started working with computers, in the late 1980s, companies had “IT departments”. As I have had to explain to people under the age of 10 and people over 70 IT stands for Information Technology. Since the 1990s schools have taught ICT, which stands for Information and Communications Technology. Some companies now have… Continue reading ICT, IT, or just T
Why do people use computers? It may seem an obvious question, or a pointless question, but every now and then it’s worth asking exactly why we do the things we do. For me there have always been three big reasons why we use computers: one, to help us to work better; two, to make us… Continue reading Three reasons to use a computer
Last month I received a Questionnaire, an NHS GP Survey, through the post. I dislike Questionnaires very, very much and rarely fill them in, but decided to fill in this one. It struck me that it was worded to make it difficult to say, simply, “I am very happy with my GP and have no… Continue reading Questionnaires
Yes, the title says “Introdution”, not “Introduction”. If you didn’t spot it, don’t worry. Neither did the graphic designers at a training company I worked at in the 1990s. And it was the sort of thing that they were paid to notice. This piece touches on first impressions and attention to detail. It goes back… Continue reading Introdution
The Compartments 