Massive thanks to Carly and Charlie at Ocean BMW for the loan of their i3. It's fair to say our recently acquired 10-year-old Audi A3 hasn't filled the big hole left by our departing BMW 1 Series. I loved that car way too much. IBM's not so great company car scheme, UK company car tax, and … Continue reading The BMW i3 experiment
Roofing came with a choice to make: To loft space, or not to loft space. More of a debate than it sounds given our open plan living space... Do we sacrifice storage for increased ceiling height? Yes, yes we do. The loft space would have been tiny, costly and hard to access vs. much higher … Continue reading Adding a roof
Getting out of the ground was easier than anticipated. A refreshing and novel change to the stress of getting the land, and issues dealing with planning. Four years of nothing but bills and hassle vs. three weeks from 'waste ground' to foundations. Karma perhaps, or another reason to be grateful for my great-great-grandfather's shrewd investment. … Continue reading Block Work, and creating our heat store
Cornwall's rich mining heritage is one of the reasons we have our land. It is also a cause for concern when it comes to what's hiding underneath. Fears of contaminated soil, mining features, mining spoil, undocumented offshoots of known/unknown mine shafts, and more. What lies beneath? All of the above could negatively impact the chances of getting a mortgage, and easily cost … Continue reading Getting out of the ground
The forge, fire station, and coach house In the late 19th century, my Great Great Grandfather returned from a cross-Atlantic-adventure. An explosives engineer and miner, he and his brother went to seek their fortunes. The demand and rewards working across the Atlantic were high. He struck gold and returned to Cornwall a wealthy man. On returning to Cornwall, … Continue reading Why the Old Bus Depot?
Intro Who hasn't sat and watched Grand Designs and considered what they'd do differently. How you'd manage a budget differently, or not have put the wall there in the first place. How silly the people were to think it would only cost £XXXXXX to build, and how laugh out loud funny it is when they say they'll … Continue reading Our house build: the Old Bus Depot
Last year Agile On The Beach 2013 was approached with an excited anticipation of the unknown, and relatively newly having joined the Agile party. With lessons learned and applied from 2013 I was keen to capitalise on Agile On The Beach 2014, and bring new ideas and things to try back to my team. This year is the … Continue reading My Agile On The Beach 2014
My Dad's aging Mac Mini has done him a great service. A late 2009 A1283 model we've already upgraded the RAM to 8GB but didn't take the opportunity to address the 160gig hard drive. Sadly for Dad this meant, while processing photos, he ran out of space at the weekend. No problem... Lots of 2.5inch … Continue reading Mac Mini Hard Disk Upgrade with Clonezilla
Last year I had the pleasure of attending Agile On The Beach 2013. My first Agile Conference and first Tech Conference in Cornwall. As a relatively new team to Agile it was a great launch pad, with lots of great ideas and takeaways to try with my team: Agile should always focus on removing barriers from productivity … Continue reading Agile On The Beach #AGILEOTB #ATOB 2013 and 2014
Post DN10 (Destination Nurburgring 10) depression and work have kept me sufficiently busy that this post is now inversely proportional lateness to its relevance. It's also melodramatic... 75% happy to have been able to attend DN6, 8 and now 10. 25% sad an imminent grown up things mean this may be my last DN and Nurburgring … Continue reading DN10 – Sticking to even numbers
Olly Brand 