This month I've taken the biggest step ever in my career. I've gone freelance. I am now 100% responsible for finding the clients, managing the projects, writing the code and ensuring that there is a pay packet at the end of every month. It's scary but the most liberating feeling ever!
I took this decision for a number of reasons:
 
Work-life balance My son is now almost 8 weeks old and I really want to make sure I see him grow up. Working for myself and not being fixed to a 9-5 life I can balance my time around him, remaining as flexible as possible. I'm free to spend time with him in the week and make up the time on the evenings or weekends.
 
Enjoyment Let's face it, most of us spend half our waking lives working so it really needs to be something we enjoy! I know that not everyone has the opportunity to start their own business but if you stay in a job you hate for the simple reason of a 'safe' paycheck makes for a pretty rubbish life.
Of course family and financial commitments have to be the number one priority and you need to have the marketable skills and certifications to make your business a success. Don't take any unnecessary gambles with your security but if those boxes are ticked then there may be little standing in your way,
 
Plain old ambition I want to lose the safety net and have the opportunity to make a success of my own business. Building a business from scratch puts my fortune firmly in my own hands and no-one else can hold me back.
 
Although it's early days yet, I'd certainly give the following bits of advice to anyone thinking of going freelance:
 

• Make sure you have at least three months rent/mortgage payments in the bank just in case.

• Have at least a couple of decent clients lined to make sure you can hit the ground running. Spending your first few weeks waiting for the phone to ring is not a good way to start.

• Have as many potential revenue streams as possible. Different clients, personal projects, additional part time work etc should hopefully all add up to both a decent income and a decent safety net in case one or two don't work out.

 
I'll let you know how it goes...

Being an animal lover and living with two excellent rabbits and two ridiculous guinea pigs that my wife and I found at rescue centres I have very strong moral feelings on the benefits of adopting from rescue centres rather than purchasing from pet shops. The basic argument is quite simple really - when there are thousands of animals in rescue centres throughout the UK that desperately need a loving home, why would you pay a breeder to bring more into the world for profit?
In addition the treatment of the animals is vastly different. Rescue centres take in unloved animals, often unwanted pets, more often taken from breeders that have been closed down by the RSPCA for neglect or mistreatment, and care for them with love until they find a new home. Pet shops (Pets at Home is a prime example of this) have no regard for the welfare of their animals, they simply want to turn a profit on them as quickly as possible. I've seen animals experiencing terrible neglect, animals that are clearly unwell (wet bum and scabs around the nose are classic signs, along with evidence of an upset stomach) and animals that are far too young to be sold. In Pets at Home recently I saw a litter of baby rabbits that couldn't have been more than two weeks old that were all up for sale. The shock of being separated from their siblings and thrust into a new home will have likely killed half of them!
Finally have you ever wondered about where many of the more interesting breeds come from? Bulldogs, pug dogs, long-haired guinea pigs and many many more breeds have been created by people who wanted an animal to look a certain way without any regard for its health in the process. Let us not forget the amount of inbreeding needed to produce these breeds in the first place and then maintain purebred descendants. Inbreeding leads to a wide variety of health problems - joint problems such as arthritis and rheumatism being very common.
I have adopted two long haired guinea pigs which have been bred so that their hair never stops growing meaning they must be trimmed every couple of months or it will cause serious problems. To breed an animal to be unable to care for itself and need the care of a human just to live is truly awful.

With the 9/11 anniversary just passed, fanatical american pastors wanting to burn korans, outcry over the 'ground zero mosque' (which is neither), fighting in the Middle East etc. I just wanted to take a moment to express my own opinion about religious intolerance - particularly in the main three western religions.
Christianity (and all its different sects), Judaism and Islam all worship the same god. You emphasise different prophets and worship in different ways but you're all trying to show your love and respect to the same overlord. Agreed?
Now if I had three children, one of whom showed me love by bringing me chicken wings, one by bringing me pie and the other by bringing me a pint of quality real ale I would love them all the same. No child would be right or wrong with his/her choice of token of affection, as the actual token doesn't matter, simply the sentiment behind it. Exactly the same applies to religions - no faith is more or less correct in it's form of worship, just different.
So let's stop all the fighting!

I was raised by Buddhist parents and spent most of my teenage years wondering about what religious ideas were out there, what made sense to me given my lifelong scientific inclination and how their ideas govern the way you live your life. After years of agnosticism and no small amount of time spent in the Buddhist world I finally reached a point where I could no longer try to rationalise any ideology based upon any form of supernatural beliefs. Yeah there is plenty that science has yet to understand fully but the basic laws of physics definitely preclude overlords, creationism, heaven etc.
Now I've heard many ridiculous ideas about the nature of Atheism over the years, the top ones being:
 
"Atheists don't believe in anything"
I think you'll find that's Nihilism. Atheists simply don't believe in supernatural religious ideas.
 
"Atheists can't have a moral code"
What? just because we can't be scared by any sort of 'god is watching you' ideas doesn't mean we don't know right from wrong. Equally when you see the scale of war, pain and persecution brought by followers of one faith upon another you can never claim that religion in itself provides any kind of moral code. Good and bad exist everywhere. Deal with it.
 
"Atheists have nothing to live for"
So because we accept that when we die we are gone for good we must therefore live out our lives in abject misery knowing we're doomed? Screw that! I'm here, I'm healthy and there is a whole load of living I want to do. In fact I think that Atheists can have a much greater appreciation of life exactly because they know they only get one shot.
 
I actually prefer to refer to myself as a Humanist rather an an Atheist. To me the word 'Atheist' defines me by what I don't believe, whereas the word 'Humanist' defines me by what I do believe in - life, love and the goodness of people :)

So after years of straddling the line betwixt Windows and Linux - both loving and hating each in equal measure - my company offered to upgrade my computer to a brand spanking new 24" IMac. She so beautiful. From the day it arrived at work it was less than two months before I'd saved my pennies and bought one for home too and now I'll never go back!
Macs in general though are rather a chimera of ideas from the computing world. They are Unix based and as such are extremely powerful and efficient with resources, yet like Windows the hardware support is excellent (kinda easy to do that when you know exactly what hardware you will be running on eh Apple?). While there are many apps for OSX that are free, it's very much more a premium platform that requires you to put your hand in your pocket for the best apps.
So here is my rundown of the best apps for working efficiently (and fairly cheaply) on OSX.

BBEdit

Being a big believer in Textpad under Windows I found this a much more intuitive application than Textmate. Lots of available plugins, great Subversion integration, nicely customisable highlighting and indentation. In short, everything I need from a decent editor and although at 5 it's one of the more expensive editors Id say it's worth it.

CSSEdit

Live previewing of CSS in a Safari-integrated browser. Plus lots of controls to speed up your work and keep your styling valid. A bargain at .95.

Shades

Although I love my Mac, one of the first issues I had with it was the screen brightness. Even at the lowest setting I'd have a headache at the end of a full day's work. Enter Shades - a free app that can take your brightness level right down to zero and will even work independently on seperate monitors.

IStat Menus

Enables you to put a vast amount of system information on your main menu bar. CPU load, memory usage, network traffic, disk space, temperature... this app has it all. Plus it's free and version two has recently been released which is fully functional in Snow Leopard.

Size Up

For .99 you can bag yourself an app that allows you unprecedented control over your windows. With a couple of key presses you can stack and tile windows in every possible configuration. It takes a little time to setup/learn the shortcut keys but when you're done you'll wonder how you ever lived without it.

MAMP

A free application which, when run will launch a self contained Apache/MySQL/PHP web server complete with PHPMyAdmin and a host of other tools. Even if you have another web server set up on your computer this will work away quite happily, avoiding any conflicts. It even comes with a neat little widget for turning it on and off.

Keyfixer

A Firefox addon that fixes your home and end keys to work properly on OSX. 'Properly' meaning that 'home' takes you to the start of a line and 'end' takes you to the end. No more of this top/bottom of the page rubbish!

We have quite a big environmental conscience here at TheDaddy.org. The planet is such an amazing place (and of course the only home we have) and it's in such a fragile state at the moment that everyone needs to start doing their bit to protect it.
As such, our newest venture is Future Footprint, a site designed to help inform people of what is going on with the environment, its biggest threats and practical ways in which you can help. Also we're really enjoying building a 'mythbusting' section which aims to bust all of those ridiculous myths about the environment that seem to serve only to help ignorant people ignore the realities of climate change.
So, what we really need to help get this site going is more content. If you have an opinion on climate change, want to critique a few governmental policies, comment on current issues, provide some useful advice to living a more eco-friendly life or talk about any other related issue then we want to hear from you. You can get in touch through the Future Footprint contact form or emailing info [at] futurefootprint.co.uk