Matt’s Journal

Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity?

Posted by Matt under General, Work

I found this through a discussion at work:

Sir Ken Robinson argues that it’s because we’ve been educated to become good workers, rather than creative thinkers. Students with restless minds and bodies — far from being cultivated for their energy and curiosity — are ignored or even stigmatized, with terrible consequences. Source

What do you think?

Off To The Cinema

Posted by Matt under Film

Myself and Katie are big film goers, we probably go to the cinema (movies) three or four times a month. I had seen the new Elizabeth film advertised, but thought that it wouldn’t be a thing for me. Anyway, I am signed up to a few email newsletters, RSS feeds and am sent preview tickets to the new films, in this case being “Elizabeth: The Golden Age”.

The link takes you to the SeeFilmFirst website, you enter a code and you choose how many tickets you want, two being the maximum for this particular film.

You send them a text message and they send you your SMS invitation, so tomorrow at 6.30pm, I will being seeing a film for free!

The Monday Morning Lay-in

Posted by Matt under General

Today is the first lay-in that I have had for nearly three months, it rocks. Instead of me getting up, getting washed and dressed in the dark, Katie is the one waking up turning all available lamps on and preparing herself for the day.

This weekend was a good one, Friday night I had a quiet night in with a mate while our respective other halves went out, painted the town red and came back with paint all over them (Katie was your standard drunk, my friends Mrs however was the kind of drunk where you dry wretch!). I managed to give my mate a humbling on the Wii, owning him on every sporting discipline except a few Baseball games.

Saturday we had a lazy day, watched some of the Studio Ghibli DVD’s that I ordered with my Amazon birthday vouchers, and headed out to another friends to see England get well beaten in the rugby by South Africa. Being the solemn human bean that I am, I had staked some money on both the teams in the final, my winnings were guaranteed to be between £15 and £100, of course the higher win would have been if England had won, you can’t complain though!

Off the back of the winnings, I made another £40 this weekend on my bets, I reckon it won’t be long until Katie says I have a problem!

Clients: Who Needs ‘Em?

Posted by Matt under Angry, Rant, Work

I work full time for a training company, but i also run my own media company with 3 other people. We have been doing work for a client of ours for about eight or nine months now and we have had nothing but troubles.

It ranges from non-payment, to going back on decisions regarding print media and website additions, to plainly not doing hearing or receiving anything from them at all.

The most recent example of the lack of coordination between our client and his business partners are when I received a phone call this morning. It went a bit like this:

Business Partner: Hi Matt, where’s my access to the website?
Me: I can’t give you access, we are building a website in the background and I don’t want to stop our progress if you were to add anything to the root of the domain.
Business Partner: Oh, so whats happening with the site? Seeing as it’s my website, I should be able to see it should I not?
Me: Yes, Ok, if you want to see it that’s not a problem.
Business Partner: So, send me details of the log on and I will have a look at it.

You might read that and deduce that he is just a little frustrated and merely wants to see the website. The problem is, this guy has thrown his weight about before with the end result being that we went to the client and simply asked; “Who are we working for?!”. The client was telling us one thing and the business partner another.

The client apparently had a word and nothing was heard from his business partner…..until now.

To me it’s all part and parcel of the job, but if we had received the wording, the design specs and the notes we needed from the client when we asked, we would be a hell of a lot further down the road with this project.

What Kind Of Blogger Are You?

Posted by Matt under Blogging

Take the quiz!

Oh To Be English

Posted by Matt under Betting, Sport

We win something, we are the greatest, we lose and we are hated for all eternity. This is the rollercoaster ride that is english sport.

After this weekend, we have something to be happy about. The English football team did what they should have done and won and easy fixture against a weak Estonian team. The big news however, was that the England rugby team against all odds defeated a much fancied French team to reach the Rugby World Cup Final, putting themselves in the unique position to be the first team to successfully retain their title. This albeit against the same South African team that beat them 36-0 earlier in the tournament.

Luckily I am in the position to profit from this occasion, I had staked £2 on England to win the World Cup just after their defeat to SA, when the odds were 50-1, so I stand to win £100, I just wish I had staked higher! I also had put £2 on SA at odds of 6-1, so I am able to win even if England lose!

Good luck to the boys, I will be watching the game with great anticipation!