Categories
Miscellanea

The end of my Sabbatical

It’s time for another update on my sabbatical year. It’s time to declare it over.

At the start of the year, I posed two questions to myself:

  • Do I want to integrate more cycling into my habits?
  • Do I have the capacity to start my own software company?

The first, I can answer with a resounding no. As I wrote in the last update, I haven’t cycled any more than I did when I was working at Symbian. Whilst I’m a little disappointed with myself, I certainly hope to revisit this question some other time in the future. I certainly love cycling when I do it.

The second is a qualified yes. And qualified only until the company becomes a going concern, since I’m confident I’m on the right track. Transmission Begins was founded during the year, and after a flurry of activity while I wrote the first version of the My Own TV Channel product, things have been publicly quiet for the last few months.

Well, I was busy delivering Transmission Begins’ first income generating contract. (Perhaps I owe myself a couple of months sabbatical in the future!). Who I contracted with is a confidential matter (at their request), but to those of you who read this, thank you for a very enjoyable few months.

Now that is done, it is time to focus on Transmission Begins again. Today I’ve launched a blog on Transmission Begins website, and if you’re interested, I hope to see you there.

Categories
Miscellanea

A beautiful video

I’m a fan of typography, and this is a wonderful rendering of a great document – the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Categories
Computing Miscellanea Video

Sabbatical Progress

I’m now about half way through my sabbatical year, so I thought a progress update would be in order. You may recall that I wanted to see if I could do two things:

  • Integrate more cycling into my habits.
  • Find out if I have the capacity to start my own software company.

Taking the cycling first, I haven’t much. Indeed, I cycle as infrequently as when I had a full time job. An early start has fizzled out, and my main activity has been to watch this year’s Tour de France. However, I got a nice new cycle computer for my birthday last week, so perhaps the trick of ‘new equipment’ will get me going (it has worked in the past).

On the software company front, I have made more progress, although I don’t claim to have a going concern yet! I have formed Transmission Begins, and developed its first product, My Own TV Channel. This is now just starting to be used by people other than me. It’s well received whenever I discuss it, so my current plan is to improve it somewhat and then focus on building a service business around it. The software itself is available for download with an open-source licence.