Simon Whiteside's blog

I recently "discovered" permaculture - through reading about Ben Law's self-build house.

It wasn't a term I'd come across before - and it's at least 30 years old.

There's nothing particularly "new" about it - but it combines a load of ideas under a single title - most of which I've come across and been interested in before.

A "new" one for me was the concept of the "Permaculture Design Course". At first this seemed odd - I associated "design" with designing fashionable looking objects out of plastic or metal.

In fact the "design" is of how to arrange your life so that you live sustainably. In particular, which interests me most, how to design your house and surrounding land so that you can grow your own food, generate your own electricity and maintain a healthy ecology of plants and animals.

I've been an (very) amateur allotment holder for many years. The permaculture ideas are inspiring me to look afresh at our garden and the small plot of allotment land we have.

The more I learn about Javascript, the more I like it.

Could it be used server-side as well as client-side?

It has closures, like Ruby, but has a nice regular syntax like Java.

What's holding it back?

My life seems to be full of startups these days... it seems that London is awash with them.

Most are concerned with social networking and are caught in the tail wind of the mega sites like Facebook and Flickr.

It all reminds me of my own experiences back in 1999 trying to do my own startup (FillMySpace - an idea before its time? Modelled on the US site Homestead and prefiguring MySpace in some ways).

In the current bout of startups and advising and thinking about the whole thing I've come across some really interesting thoughts from others:

Getting Real - by 37 signals (who invented the Rails framework).

Full of sage advice - basically keep it lean and mean. A philosophy I've always adhered to.

Also a great blog by Marc Andriessen of Netscape fame:

http://blog.pmarca.com/.

He has the time (and money!) and generosity to share his hard-won wisdom. I've really enjoyed reading articles on startups, hiring and venture capitalists.

It's funny to compare the silicon-valley-based experience in these books/blogs with what's happening in London/UK at the moment.

Most of the ones I've come across are not looking for venture capital - at least in the short term - and are funding stuff with their own money.

This might be a reflection of the lowering costs of starting up an IT operation these days.

One of my favourite musicians has at long last released a new album.
(Same timeframe as another favourite - Bjork. It's like Christmas!)

I've listened to the album twice, and am in the delicious phase I always have with her music.

The first listen everything things both strange and samey.

The second time I begin to remember the different tracks, and become drawn in.

Subsequent listenings will embed the music in my brain and I will be addicted, as I am to all her other music.

A strong memory - walking around Wivenhoe in Essex listening to 99.9 degrees fahrenheit on my walkman. My personal life a mess, but beautiful surroundings and the feeling of becoming addicted to the music.