30 days of Me. Um. Yay? Day 5... A picture of somewhere I’ve been to

Way back in 2007. I went to Iceland. I still regard this as my favourite holiday destination ever - I loved absolutely every square inch I got near, and would love to have seen every other square inch.

This was one of my first photos ever taken in the Arctic Circle. I love the puffins, and brings back the memories and awe I felt seeing the long, long cliffs covered in nesting birds. The howling northerly wind. I was lucky to share this with Kenneth, a volcanologist, and Paula, a yoga teacher and a fantastic photographer. I have another photo of us standing on Grìmsey's Arctic Circle monument, but I'm wearing a goofy beanie so won't be disseminating that to the masses any time soon.

My dream is to return to Iceland. A truly wonderful adventure dreamland. There are not enough superlatives in my thesaurus to do this country justice.

30 Days of Me. Um. Yay? Day 4 - A habit that I wish I didn’t have

So what's a habit that I have that I wish I didn't?

I don't smoke, I don't do computer gaming, I hardly drink, I exercise pretty regularly. Perfect guy really? Well, maybe not. I'll start by saying that I have kicked the habit that used to bug me. I was one of the great all-time nail-biters. And now I'm not. What was the cure? Well it was three-fold:

1. I bought a pair of nail clippers with a file so I could maintain them before they got too long.
2. I got my family to point out when I was biting my nails.
3. I stopped watching the New Zealand cricket team playing.

And that was it. Grim determination. Support of family. Adding positive tools and techniques for dealing with the motivators for the bad habit. Removing the bad influences from my life! A pretty good formula for solving any personal problem.

I need to apply those same principles now. Since I started refereeing, I've come to the realisation that there is a possibility that I could do very well at it. There's one major aspect holding me back. It spills over, literally, into other facets of my life and interferes with my goals. It's my diet. I keep making poor decisions about the fuel I am putting into my body. I keep eating the wrong things, not in small amounts, not in moderation: but in excess. Some of my best friends are supporting me on this, but others are not. Ones I usually rely on. My family does not yet fully support me 100% of the time and haven't been the same pillar of strength that I could lean on.

I have a problem eating junk food. McDonalds, Tim Tams, Toffee Pops, peppermints, milky coffee,... all delicious vices and often comfort food that I consume when I should be going for something more substantial that requires a little more effort to prepare.

That's my habit! I'd love to lose it.

30 Days of Me. Um. Yay? Day 3... A picture of me and my friends

This is something of a bummer. I don't have anything in my photo collection that would even come close to capturing me and my friends. It's also something of an impossibility. I have my friends from different jobs, football, high school, family and now some new ones from Twitter. How would you capture all that in one photo? Especially as a lot of them have now dispersed across the world and reunions are few and far between.

I suggest that my Facebook and Twitter accounts give a "snapshot" of my friends and me. Also, I'm usually the one behind the camera, so that stops me ever being in front of the camera. (I can hear you all shouting "Hallelujah" from here... bastards!)

So. If you want to see what me and my friends look like:

1. My Facebook profile
2. My Twitter account

 Simple, really.

30 Days of Me. Um. Yay? Day 2... the meaning behind my blog name.

I'm assuming they mean "Joffin". One might guess it's a somewhat childish pronunciation of my first name. Indeed it once ended up as one girlfriend's pet name for me. Sickening, I know. However, thinking way back to when I had to choose the name for this blog... I believe it's the dirty love child of the words "Jonathan" and "boffin".

That's all. Nothing to it really!

30 Days of Me. Um. Yay? Day 1... A picture and 15 facts about myself

Hello world. So this is me. This is 30 days of me. Thirty blog posts. Given my prestigious lack of blogging activity, I'm unlikely to get through to the end... But here goes!

Thanks to Jethro Carr (his blog is the Link of this post) for the list of things I have to post about...

Me tramping up Mt Fyffe, Kaikoura.

And now... 15 "interesting" facts about myself. Pay close attention identity thieves.

1. I am left-handed. So is Osama Bin Laden. So was Queen Victoria. Read into that what you will.
2. I grew up on Waiheke Island. My childhood was filled up roaming native bush and beautiful white sand beaches, fishing for snapper off the rocks, and sailing in my own sailing dinghy in one of the most stunning parts of New Zealand.
3. When I was ten years old, I spent hours sliding in firefighting foam covering a hill owned by Margaret Mills, who was on board the Rainbow Warrior when it was blown up!
4. I learnt the violin at intermediate school.
5. I didn't learn how to tie my shoelaces until I was 11 due to owning Bata Bullets (velcro shoes) for my primary school years!
6. I cannot swim. I grew up on an island, love sailing... but never learnt how to swim. I am now 30!
7. I captained the Canterbury Colts cricket team when I was 15. I scored a dismal 17 runs in three innings and never opened the batting again; nor did I play for another rep team again)
8. I trialled for the Otago indoor cricket team when I was 18.
9. I've played winter sports forever! I played football at primary school as a chubby centre-back. Played rugby at high school as a chubby prop. Was a slightly-less-chubby hockey goalie at Otago Uni. Played rugby for Sydenham on the wing when I was at Canterbury Uni. Now I'm a football referee and am constantly in the wrong position!
10. I had a crush on my French teacher at high school. (Hope she isn't reading this...!)
11. I have written quite a bit of poetry on scraps of paper I now cannot find. (A bit gutted about that)
12. My favourite poets are Spike Milligan, Ogden Nash, and Philip Larkin.
13. I use the "Oxford comma". (See Fact 12)
14. I was a child philatelist. Sorry.
15. There are only 14 interesting facts about me. (Some might say considerably fewer...)

More coming soon! And maybe a 15th fact if I can think of it.

So I forgot all about blogging?

The truth is, Social networking sites have killed blogging. Why bother with this when I can use Twitter and Facebook for that instant gratification of internet communications?

My, how my life has changed since that last post on March 22, 2008. Back then I think my life status was:

• Working at SunGard
• Girlfriend
• University student
• Not exercising much at all

What has changed?

• Still working at SunGard
• Changed girlfriend
• No longer at university
• Exercising a lot more and refereeing football like there's no tomorrow!

Maybe I'll write a further update at some point in the future, but I doubt there'll be many requests for it.

Get me on Facebook if you really want me.

Insomnia, decaffeinated coffee, too much to learn!

Ya know, I'm still awake at three in the morning. It might have to do with the decaf coffee that I spiked with caffeinated beans because we ran out of decaffeinated ones....

I'm starting to yawn now. About bleedin' time. In the meantime I've been doing research on multicore software, .NET 3.5 and F#. Insanely, the three are intertwined. However I hopefully only need to learn two of them. There is now apparently some new toy in VS 2008 that abstracts the multicore processing thing and will now do much of the hard programming for you. Nifty. I'm trying to find good ways to boost the performance of the software I work on. It's not parallelizable at the moment and any moves in that direction would be highly desirable for my career advancement.

The other activities one gets up to when dealing with insomnia include playing guitar (very quietly so as to not wake anyone else), reading Facebook, updating my LinkedIn contacts, and searching for something slightly interesting on the internet.

Add blogging to that list.