I was chatting briefly to a friend of mine this evening, shortly before I had to go out. When asked where I was going, I told him that I was going to the "Ferrari Garage" as I often do. It has been a ritual of mine for many years that when I am struggling with my motivation, or I am feeling a little bit lost, I go and look at Ferraris. As you will know by my Ferrari Challenge I am looking to buy one in October (2007), but this is something I have done for a long time. It was easier whilst at uni as I lived next to a garage, these days I have to drive for half an hour to get there.

Anyhow, he didn't quite get my point of view, so "Well you have to have goals" I furthered to him. "Yes, but I don't have to go and look at cars to achieve mine" he quite understandably replied. To this, I explained how it helped get me through the tough times. "Freak" was his conclusion.

It got me thinking. I realise that my methods are a little unorthodox. My girlfriend commented that my bedroom made me look like a "bit of a physcho" (maybe because I write quotes that inspire me in permanent marker on the walls - I will decorate sometime soon!). I know I may be a little of key, but then don't you have to be to make a difference? How many amazing things were done using ordinary methods? If you muddle through your 9 to 5 and dream a few dreams, play by the rules and do the expected, how do you think you fair in your quest to do something special... something out of the ordinary? This is me breaking free in the best way I know how.

Besides, credit where credit's due. Much of my craziness is encouraged by quotes as inspiring as the following:

Ordinary Actions = Ordinary Results

. A big thanks to Ramit for that one.

I'm glad Duncan brought this up, but it's something I have been enjoying enormously for the last few weeks.

Pandora is a wonderful site which lets you create your own internet radio station(s) packed full of you very favourite songs. In essence you "seed" it with a song or artist which describes your mood and it picks all the other songs based on this. It sculpts the station based on your feedback too, so you just create a different station for each mood you want to enhance.

It's supposed to only be for US, and requires a Zip code, but any digits will do. I apparently come from "90210" now.

Anyhow, thanks to Duncan Riley for making me remember to post this up.

OK, so in the job I do I really don't have call for many meetings, but certainly in the Uni years meetings were incessant and often very tedious.

Well there's a great piece on meeting styles in LifeHacker, well worth checking out. My favourite is a comment about how CISCO meetings are had standing up so people don't sit in their chairs and procrastinate. Anyhow, I found it interesting to learn hoe to run a meeting google-style

So some of you may have noticed that I have been playing with the technorati tags feature a little and that there is a new part to the sidebar on the right hand side of this blog. If not, it looks a little like this:

(don't know if that will render quite correctly!)

so here's just a little heads up that things might be changing a little around here as I experiement with some new (to me) techniques on raising this blog into the blogosphere and letting it get its head above water.