Ben Hughes

After yesterday’s navel-gazing, I thought I’d go with something completely practical - some advice on buying a pram (that’s a baby carriage if you’re not a local). 

About 3 years ago we started looking at a pram for our oldest son, who’s now 2 and a half. After a lot of messing about in baby shops we settled on a Mountain Buggy because it was light-weight, tough, folds effortlessly, is easy to manoeuvre and didn’t come with a heap of useless crap like cup holders. We both had plans to run with it, so we figured there was no point cheaping out. Once we bought a rain cover and sun cover, it ended up somewhere around the $1,000 mark. Which, frankly, I still think is a bit insane.

It has, however, lasted fantastically well. It’s been used pretty much every day since Jeremy was born and we walk a lot more than we drive. It’s often loaded up with 10-20kgs on top of the kid’s weight, but is still effortless to push. It’s amazingly easy to run with and has really taken a beating. We’ve had friends who went with cheaper options who have gone through a couple of prams in the same time. But would I do the same again? Nope.

Not long after Will was born we realised that having him in the pram and Jeremy in the stroller just wasn’t going to work. Not only was the stroller damn hard to push, but it was starting to fall apart. Which isn’t really surprising, given that Jeremy’s a couple of kilos over its maximum weight. So Ange decided to chase down a second hand mountain buggy, seeing as the other one had lasted us so well. It also lets us swap accessories etc. 

We ended up picking up a 4 year old model for $300, including sun and rain covers. And it’s like new. Not bad for 1/3rd of the price! That said, despite all its beatings ours is also pretty much like new too. 

So at the end of all that, what’s my advice? Go shopping and find a really good, indestructible model that you like, and then go and find one that’s a few years old. For less than the price of one of the cheap options you can end up with something that, other than a few minor design changes, is essentially identical in function to the $1000 model. And it’ll last forever.

It’s been a pretty average week at work, so I was happy to look at job ad when someone sent one my way. It sounded awesome: big picture, big results stuff. I was thinking about applying until I realised that it would be a non-technical role, which completely put me off. 

A few months ago I moved from a part management part technical role to almost purely technical, and I’ve been seriously enjoying it. But despite that, it doesn’t feel like what I want to be doing for the next 30 years. 

What do I want to be doing for the next 30 years?

I enjoy technical work so long as it’s tied to a higher purpose. Collaborative problem solving and technical leadership stuff are also up there, and I’m fairly comfortable with looking after staff. But start talking about budgets, Gannt charts,  project plans and “resources” and I’m looking for the door. Which leads to a bit of a confession: I’m not a finisher.

I mean, sure, I get things done, but by the time I’m 80% there I’ve lost interest. All the “personality tests” back this up - using HDBI terminology I’m imaginative and analytical, with a decent amount of interpersonal, and almost no sequential aptitude. That is, big on ideas and problem solving, decent with people, and not so good on the details. Knowing those traits is one thing, but mapping them to a career path is something else, particularly in my current organisation.

So why, when a job comes along that seems to be a great match for me, do I brush it aside just because there’s no technical component? What’s so important to me about being a developer anyway? Is it just the comfort of working from a safe knowledge base, or is it something deeper?

For many reasons outside of this, now is not a good time for me to be looking at changing jobs so I won’t be applying. But if I want to make any sort of progress from here on I think I need to understand what’s holding me back.

Maybe I need a life coach. Hell, maybe I just need a holiday.

Raising boys is a fantastic book about how boys tick. It focuses on helping boys become well balanced men by directing the energy that can otherwise become quite destructive.

The author doesn’t pull any punches - particularly when it comes to the importance of male role models, the failure of current education systems, and the differences between how boys and girls develop.

Sometimes it’s just comforting to read that the craziness that your son is going through is relatively normal

I’d highly recommend this to anyone who is responsible for caring for boys. It’s a fairly quick read and well worth the effort.

When I came up with the by-line for this blog I had no idea what “other things beginning with P” was referring to , but it felt right, so I went with it. Today a lightbulb went off, and the answer was so obvious I was astonished I hadn’t already realised: Parenting.

I’ve been working part time for over a year now, solely so that I can spend more time with my family. It started with one Dad and Jeremy day a week when Ange first went back to work, and that kept up for around a year until Will was born. I’ve dropped back to 3 days a week until the end of the year so that I’m only working the days that Jeremy is in school.

My point being - parenting is a big part of my life, at least as big as photography and work combined. I’m not planning on starting rants about how to be the perfect parent - Lord knows I’m far from it. But I think I have come across some useful stuff in the last couple of years, and have leant some lessons that might be interesting. So you can look forward to seeing something in a completely different vein very soon.

As an aside, you can use RSS to subscribe to any of the categories I publish entries in, rather than the everything. To do this, click on any of the categories in the right hand navigation, then add “/feed/” to the end of the URL. For example, to the feed for the Programming category is

http://benhughes.freehostia.com/blog/category/programming/feed/

That way, you can keep a track of only the content that interests you.