Matt Daubneys Blog

Recently I’ve been fighting off depression and it’s made me take stock of what I do quite a lot. Sometimes it’s necessary for me to stop what I’m doing and often it’s because I’ve looked at what I’m doing and become a bit confused. When ever I do this I end up looking at what I’m doing and asking “How is this me?”. It seems like a silly question sometimes, but life is consistantly changing, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse, so it’s necessary now and again to stop and define what things really mean.

Who am I? I think it’s safe to sat that what you do and how you act defines you, so I shall pick a few things on what I do and how I act to try and define myself.

Physics

How is this me? I’ve always felt that everything has a reason that can be understood. When told that the universe has been created I always ponder if this was true, how was it created? What where it’s initial ingredients? How can you set off a system with a few simple rules to create such a complex system? What are these rules and can they be replicated. I’ve always felt that this is part of me, and the more I understand of how the world we live in works, the more I see that it’s important to find a place in it.

I always want to understand why something has happened, how something has gone wrong. These in some ways drive me to do things. As I’ve struggled recently with the depression I feel that I’ve been losing this drive a bit and become too accepting of facts and not questioning things enough. This is me.

Linux and OSS

How is this me? While the idea of financial gain is nice, it somehow seems unnerving. In the land of software, it sometimes seems as if it has got to a point of being all about financial gain, and not what can be done.

Linux and OSS are not just about freedom, they are about being able to push what you can do and do it faster, more intelligently to save effort. A lot of proprietry software seems to think that the software is the important factor, but it’s what the user can do with it that’s more important. If a piece of software can’t do something I need to do, then why shouldn’t I be able to add that functionality? If I needed that functionality chances are someone else will do someday to, so I can give that back to the people who originally made the software. While this doesn’t make me monetarily better off, somewhere it will make someones life easier. This is a net saving in frustration and seems to be worth far more than a few pounds extra at the end of the month.

Linux is also about a community, and more of life should be about this. I have found that the UK Ubuntu community is made up of some of the nice, most helpful people I’ve talked too. Some of whome I have started to regard as friends, and hope to make that so once Uni has finished by taking part more and giving more back to those who have given me so much. Much of the philosophy of this I try and take forward to other parts of my life, not just software.

Photography

How is this me? It’s one of the things that makes me stop and look at the world. Sometimes days can get so busy with repetitive, thoughtless tasks that I don’t stop, look or think. When I’m out with a camera I’m always looking, at the way the grass bends with the wind, the way the sun shines across the waves in the bay, the orange glow of the sun rising behind Port Talbot. Small things that seem to be more interesting when you think about what they are, how they happen and what it all really means. Somehow being behind a camera really makes me look enough to appreciate these things the way they should be.

Friends, past and present

Life is incredibly short on cosmological timescales. People come and go, but everyone you meet leaves a mark on you somehow. People I used to be close to have slowly moved away, some people I haven’t seen in a long time. Some friendships are worth more to me than others, but all are individually valuable. These people in a way have formed who am I, what I believe is rightor wrong and what I feel is important in the world. In many ways, bits of everyone I have met are me.

My future wife

In many ways she has shaped the current me more than a lot of other factors, and that isn’t a bad thing. I have known people I would give up a lot to help, but she is the one person I would give up everything for. She is the reason I look forward to a settled married life. There’s no need for piles of money in that future, just enough to get by and her by my side. In a way she is the little piece of the world I have been looking for, and feel like I’ve almost found somewhere I want to be.

There are many other things that are me, but these few I currently feel are the most prominant. So now, people of the interweb, I challenge you to find out just who are you?

Today I started the first fact finding mission for my new project. The Mrs and I went for a walk from Langland Bay,long the cliff tops to Mumbles.

This walk was in the end about 3 miles in length. The start was on the route of the number 12 bus from the Quadrant Station in Swansea town center. We got off the bus near Caswell Avenue and walked along the Langland Golf course, avoiding the occasional golf ball and made it down to the bay.

A Panorama of Langland Bay

This is quite a nice little place for rockpooling at low tide, and the rock formation on the east side of the beach are very interesting to say the least.

We walked across the bay, wandering through the various rockpools and taking a gander around before heading up the cliffs along the footpath. One thing we really didn’t expect to find was a toy fire engine wedged between two rocks. Wonder if it was a native one or was lost at sea.

The path along this cliff top was edged with gorse, some of which had already started to flower, and the views from the top where amazing. Pick a nice day to go this way and the views will literally knock your socks off. This path splits into two half way along, one goes up along the top, and the other skims along the base of the cliffs. We started on the top one, then half way along that dropped down to the bottom one to watch the coast guard doing exercises.

Helicopter Rescue

After this we wandered along the cliff tops to Mumbles, stopping at the cafe near the pier for a mug of hot chocolate and some lunch. Then we pottered along to Verdis for a breathtakingly tasty icecream to munch on while we walked around the Bay to Oystermouth, where we caught the bus back to the bus station.

A nice short walk, with some breathtaking views.

Just had a really nice weekend at home, away from the noisy, horrid traffc. Just the lovely smell of clean air and the sound of the wind, the birds and , on occasion, the church bells.

Did start recording walking tacks today. Went for a short walk up and around Coombe Gibbet, got a lovely picture of the landscape on the way up. Will have to get a wiggle on and build the walking site now. Hopefully get a nice walk around the gower this weekend too.

I’m sat writing this on the train back to Swansea, with my phone on charge through my freeloader. Technology is wonderful!

Back to work when I get back to Swansea. Finish off my report and print it off this evening, and then comment my code ready for it to be submitted for assessment. Hopefully I’ll get my laptop hard drive back relativley soon, but I’m not sure I will after the bizzare packaging standards of Western Digital!

Picture to come later……..