Andrew Roberts

Farming joke

AndrewRoberts — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 09:08:46 +0000

A man owned a small farm. The Inland Revenue claimed he was not paying proper wages to his staff and sent a representative out to interview him.

‘I need a list of your employees and how much you pay them,’ demanded the rep.

‘Well,’ replied the farmer, ‘there’s my farm hand who’s been with me for 3 years. I pay him £200 a week, plus free room and board.’

‘The cook has been here for 18 months, and I pay her £150 per week plus free room and board.’

‘Then there’s the half-wit. He works about 18 hours every day and does about 90% of all the work around here. He makes about £10 per week, pays his own room and board, and I buy him a bottle of whiskey every Saturday night. He also sleeps with my wife occasionally.’

‘That’s the guy I want to talk to…the half-wit,’ says the agent.

‘That would be me,’ replied the farmer…

Willow fish, hearts, tunnels and domes!

AndrewRoberts — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 22:21:28 +0000

After the very unfriendly willow planting weather that has compressed the entire planting season into four very busy weeks, we’re finally away. We’ve just finished our largest structure to date, a 400 square foot willow maze of tunnels in the shape of a giant fish or sea serpent. We’ve also completed a large dome at Ysgol Mydroilyn and a smaller dome with tunnels at Ysgol Mynach. More images can be found here.

I’ve also been working on some dried willow sculptures – this willow heart is made from “brown” Flander’s Red willow rods.

Time management

AndrewRoberts — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 14:26:20 +0000

I’ve gone back to keeping a little notepad window on the desktop to keep track of things I need to do and that I want to record immediately, while I think of it. Now as you’d expect this grew and grew and grew … and all got a bit depressing as the last thing that I need is yet another TODO list (I’ve already got a list of my TODO lists: mobile messages, phone messages, text messages, notebook, Outlook task list, TODO pile on my desk, emails!). So then it occurred to me – here it comes, the obvious but important realisation – I’ve got the rest of my life to be doing all of this stuff. Instead of having this enormous list of things I really need to get round to soon as possible, I can assign a day to each item on my notepad list. And, wow, what a release. I now actually feel like I’m achieving stuff if I get through that days list. So now I have got a new list – my “what to do in the next few days” list. Using this along with the five-minute rule (if you think of something that can be done in the next five minutes, don’t put it off do it now – another of my favourite FLAs – JiFDI – Just Fucking Do It) stuff actually feels like it is getting done. I guess what came across to me was you can hear something, some advice, some tip, some nugget of information, but if you’re not really receptive to it at that time it just falls on deaf ears. You can intellectually know something but sometimes you really don’t take any notice of it until it becomes experiential knowledge; something you’ve actually experienced to be true or worth knowing. That’s also got me wanting to re-read slowly every book I’ve ever read as I much have missed so much. So this would be a good as time as any to get how I manage my time out in the open, so here it is:

Andrew’s timekeeping tips:

Five minute rule or JiFDI. Record it all when you think of it and either do it now if it’s a five minute job or
Give it a slot. Don’t just stick it on some bottomless, “get round to it one day, but hopefully yesterday” list. If you actually want to get it done it doesn’t have to be done NOW. Assign it a realistic, if not pessimistic, time slot some time in the near future; you’ve got an awful lot of it to spare – hopefully time and near future.
Under promise and over deliver. Something I try and always use with customers is not to be over optimistic about what you can achieve and when you can achieve it by. Hopefully you’ll always come in ahead of schedule with more than expected and always have a happy customer. Try and use this on yourself as well: over optimistic deadlines for yourself are only ever going to end in tears.
Does it REALLY matter if you don’t get it done? Another biggy for me: over attachment to deadlines and getting things done that I’ve decided I have to. When if I really sat down, and gave myself a bit of slack, would realise don’t matter that much and the world ain’t going to stop spinning if I don’t get to them today, or ever.
If it ain’t play give it away. Delegation. This is another hard one for me; surely no-one can do a good a job as I can! Well mate you’ve only got one life, if it ain’t play give it away and let someone else take the strain.

Now, what else did I have to do today …

Living Willow Maintenance

AndrewRoberts — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 16:12:57 +0000

The willow will be dormant soon, so I’ve put together a list of maintenance tasks to keep your structure looking tip-top and not reverting to becoming a small grove of willow trees!

You can download the list as a word document or PDF by clicking on the appropriate link:

This post is also on the Living Willow Wales website.

Free PC Health Checklist

AndrewRoberts — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 23:22:18 +0000

Been digging around for stuff that people might find useful, and as my main business and interest is computing I really ought to have a few more blogs on the issue – I am a geek; no really! So here is a copy of the PC Health Check that I use to:

make sure customer’s computers are all working OK before the leave the shop and I’ve finished playing with them and
to use when I check over any computers I have maintenance contracts for.

So if you are feeling really keen, you could run through this list on your own computer every six months or so to head off any problems and keep me away!

Click on this link to download a Word version of the list: PC Health Checklist

Blogging offline with an Weblog Client/Journal Program

AndrewRoberts — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 18:29:24 +0000

New toy. New toy! Today’s whizzy gadget is a blog client. For no conceivable reason (been happy copying and pasting offline posts from Word up to now) I’ve been looking at ways of writing blogs and keeping a journal when I’m not online (heaven forbid).

I’m writing this entry with David RM’s “The Journal” as recommended by Steve Pavlina.

I was initially more interested in just finding out about a program I could use as an electronic diary which is what the blog was initially about. But there are some entries too boring, too unfinished or too personal (not quite ready to bare my whole soul just yet – but watch this space) to be posting out into cyber space. And then I noticed that one of the features of The Journal was offline blogging: you write the blog and rather than spending hours (well, seconds) copying the text and pasting it into my blog admin page I can do it now with just one click (well, three). But hey when did a gadget ever need a real purpose. So I’ll have a play with this and see how it goes. The main tasks I want to try are:

Posting blogs
Import the present site into The Journal
Try posting with embedded images (hmm, wonder how it will cope with that)

I’ve had a quick play with other blog clients, well one, namely MS Writer. But, although a competent blog client it didn’t have all of the journal facilities of “The Journal”, so don’t if I’ll look at other blog clients too closely.

Anyhow, lets see how this goes.

Living Willow Wales at the Lampeter Apple Day

AndrewRoberts — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 08:10:17 +0000

Living Willow Wales stall at Lampeter Apple Day Oct 10th 2009

Living Willow Wales (me and Lisa) did our first willow stall back on Oct 10th 2009 at the Lampeter Apple Day, and lots of fun it was too! Getting everything together was hard work but it seemed to be appreciated. And we even had enough space to put up all of the willow letters we had made. I was a little worried about this as although planned to be smaller our letters ended up each being about a foot high. We put on a little mini workshop for the children by bringing along a couple of Rose’s small table and chairs and providing paper, charcoal pencils (willow of course), willow rods and various willow shapes to copy. Rose did get a little territorial at one point and excluded all other children from the stall by building a barricade of chairs – she’s such a sales women! Several children where running around with willow wands (a simple willow star shape) by the end of the day. We also brought along samples of eachof the different kind of willow that we grow. We’re mainly using and selling the fast-growing structural willow (Viminalis and a viminalis x triandra) at the moment but are building up our stocks of various ornamental and basketery willow. The Salix Ethroflexuosa being the most visually impressive, being corkscrewed and bright red. We had lots of interest in the photos we’ve got of some of the amazing things people have done with willow especially Marcel Kalberer. I wouldn’t say we’ve done anything truly amazing yet, but I’m quite excited about the 40ft space ship we’ve got planned this winter!

As well as us, and apart from the appley things going on (people could bring there apples for pressing), Gary was there with his Maesyffin Mushrooms - loved the pate; a local shoe maker; a miller with flour created using one of the few genuine water mills still in operation; Transistion Lambed; and a couple of other stalls I didn’t get chance to look at.

So with the great weather, all in all a great day out.

The Matrix rocks!

AndrewRoberts — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 18:15:50 +0000

I’ve just finished watching the last of the Matrix trilogy that I’ve been working my way through over the last week. Wow. I’ve watched them all a few times in the past, but I’d forgotten – well the sensation had waned – what a monumental achievement this series of movies was, is. The rush just sitting here as the credits roll and the music subsides. I just wanted to capture it and my feelings at this moment. Should I be working on something like this? Should I be working at the bleeding edge of special effects and story telling? Nah, that’s not my strength. I don’t want to be spending hours poring over a hot special effects workstation or dreaming up some amazing tale or writing inspirational music. My strengths are learning and applying stuff, taking information and making judgements and sticking at that learning and decision making process. But most importantly I want variety and freedom to explore new things and then tell people – who might be interested about those things.

But, man, great movies!

Organics Apple Day

AndrewRoberts — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 20:55:17 +0000

We (Living Willow Wales) will be having our first ever willow based stall at Organics Apple Day on Saturday Oct 10th at 11am until 3am.

From their site: “It’s apple and pear time of the year. In our shop we are now selling a wide range of UK produced apples and pears. To celebrate this year’s apple harvest, in conjunction with the local Permaculture Group we are organising an APPLE DAY. This year it will be held on 10th October at our shop in Lampeter, from 11am to 3pm. A local apple and tree specialist will be attending and we aim to have a range of local products and producers to help us celebrate. Hope you can join us.”

The Story of Stuff

AndrewRoberts — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 07:53:50 +0000

A great little video to watch in the run up to Xmas. Certainly made me think if I really need this year’s gadget.

The Story of Stuff