Alex’s Blog

I’ve been on a sabbatical for the last six months while I’ve been developing my own software business, Axe Software. It’s been an interesting experience, and I’ve learned the following things:

• Working from home is excellent. I’ve loved not having to get the tube every morning. I’ve loved having the freedom to take advantage of a sunny day to go out on my bicycle – I’ve even managed to lose a bit of weight. I’ve also quite enjoyed being able to watch Working Lunch, which I only ever used to watch when I was sick.
• Working for yourself is expensive. I’ve made Axe Software break even over the last few months, and it is now making more money than it did before. But it’s nowhere near enough to keep me fed with a roof over my head.
• Being your own boss is difficult. I’ve tried to keep myself disciplined, but in the War on Procrastination I did lose the occasional battle. It’s easy to spend the whole morning getting absolutely nothing productive done, except perhaps tidying the kitchen, which isn’t going to make you any money whatsoever. But then it’s also easy to spend the whole evening mindlessly tapping at the computer when you’re probably better off just giving it a rest for a while.
• I really like computer programming. Nothing new there, but I’ve discovered that I like developing software so much more than trying to sell it. When you’re developing software, you know immediately whether it works or not. But when you’re marketing software, you can’t measure whether you’re doing it “correctly” anywhere near as easily. You have to wait for the sales to come in, or not. And there are no quick fixes to make something suddenly start selling well.
• The lack of office banter hasn’t really been a problem, but I did used to kind of enjoy it. And I’m starting to miss those regular trips down the pub after work (even if we did used to spend most of them just complaining about work).

So, the sabbatical has come to an end. I haven’t quite achieved the dream of being my own boss, but it’s been a worthwhile experience. I can thoroughly recommend it to anyone who’s got a business idea – you’ll never know if it’s viable unless you take the plunge, and if you can get a sabbatical from your employer, that’s a nice and safe way to stick your toe in the water.

If nothing else, you might get a lot fitter, and your house will be tidier than ever before.

It’s only mid-April and already the temperature is 20 degrees Celsius in London. This is quite a pleasant amount of heat for me. I can go outside without bothering to wear a coat, and I’m not likely to get sunburn or spontaneously vapourise.

But, if it’s this hot now, what the hell is it going to be like in London in July? Time to stock up on the aftersun – but it’s worse than that. Because I’m not going to be in London in July. Oh no. I’m going to be in the south of fucking Spain.

Bugger.

I’ll have to stay inside between 6am and 10pm, and even when I do venture out in the fading twilight, I’ll still have to grease myself up with factor 25 lest I singe my epidermis. I’m just too pale to live comfortably in even the British summer these days, and in a few years’ time you won’t be able to recognise me for tumours.

A few years ago, when I had a shaved head, I managed to severely sunburn my scalp. I woke up the next morning and my hotel pillow, which was pristine white when I went to bed, was bright yellow from the pus oozing out of my head.

It looked pretty strange. I wonder what they thought when they came to clean the room. Maybe that somehow, during the night, I had urinated through my eyes.

Oh dear. I did have plans for the Easter weekend. Well, not big plans, but plans nevertheless. Back at home with my parents, I was going to catch up on some reading,  watch a bit of telly, and gorge myself on good home cooking and Easter eggs.

But then I discovered Facebook.

I’ve dabbled with social networking sites before. I’ve got two MySpace accounts – one personal and one for my music. The trouble is I’ve only got about four friends on each account, and they get bombarded with spam messages and spam “add friend” requests from desparate friendless American teenagers.

I had an invite thing for Facebook a few months ago, but I’ll confess I didn’t bother with it because I thought it would be pretty much the same. But then my sister showed it to me on Thursday and I was embarrassingly excited.

Facebook is a like a combination of:

• MySpace – but with all the crap bits taken out. No “unofficial” profiles of popular sitcom characters. No pretending that you’re on first-name terms with Russell Brand. No rubbish music blaring out when you click on somebody’s profile. No brain haemmorage as you suffer what somebody else thinks is a “kewl” colour scheme.
• FriendsReunited – but with all the crap bits taken out. No paying money just to send someone a message. No removing of email and website addresses from profiles, so you don’t see silly things like “email me at .com” or “my website is http://” because the owner didn’t realise.
• Flickr. I expect there are some crap bits about Flickr. I’ve not used it much.
• Blogging, but you don’t even have to tell people about your blog because you can just import it into your Facebook notes. Genius.

And it seems pretty much everybody I’ve ever known has a profile already.What an annoyingly good idea. I wish I’d come up with it.

So, instead of the nice relaxing Easter weekend I had planned, I’ve spent much it trying to remember the names of everybody I’ve ever known. If I go away from the computer to read or watch TV for a while, it’s not long before I come running back to the computer to search for somebody else I’d forgotten about, or just to check if anybody else has added me as a friend.

Facebook is not without its faults of course. I’m a mere normal person, and not a student, and I’m self-employed (for now) and don’t have US phone number, so I can’t “verify” my account. That means every time I want to add a friend I have to enter one of those annoying image verification codes which are always an interesting challenge. Sometimes these don’t even come up, so when I click the “add” button I get told that I got it wrong.

Also for some reason all the times I see are an hour ahead of the real time.

But these are just minor flaws. The thing that really worries me is, where are the adverts? There are hardly any. Who is paying for all of this? Are they just getting us all hooked until we depend on Facebook for normal human interaction, so they can then stick the knife in and make us pay exorbitant fees just to keep in contact with our friends? Or do they really think they can sustain their business by getting us to occasionally pay for a small picture of a cake to appear on somebody else’s profile?

I think I’ll have to start limiting my Facebook usage, as I could easily spend all my time on it. There is a danger that you can almost use it as a replacement for real life – living vicariously through your News Feed showing what your friends are up to. It probably won’t be long before people find out they’re dumped because their News Feed tells them that their girlfriend or boyfriend has changed their status to Single. And I don’t think paying $1 for a small picture of some flowers is going to fix that.