emyrderfel.co.uk

Employed by a small company, I enjoy the freedom of choosing my own tools and frameworks. Every programmer has days when the predominant emotions are frustration, hate and (occasionally) despair.

After 6 months of butchering second-hand PHP and creating modules for Drupal, I started using Grails as my first choice for new projects.

In the last year I have been a reasonably happy customer of Sub6 Ltd, better known under their trading banner Clook. Now that I am employed as a professional webgeek and general network monkey, I have access to servers upon which I can host almost and site I like and save myself two beer vouchers a month.

See, anyone can play the "silly poster, serious point" game.

Today I bought this 150 piece toolkit from Halfords, which contains almost everything I'm likely to need for my mechanical meddling. The tools have some nice touches, including eject buttons even on the extension bar. I'd prefer if the allen keys were longer and had ball-ends, but they're essentially a bonus in this toolkit.

Later this year I'll probably invest in a good 24"+ torque wrench and a few larger sockets for specific components such as hub nuts. I'll also be looking for a good jack and some axle stands.

Supermarkets are killing the shopkeeper we are often told. Whilst many butchers and greengrocers have found themselves shutting up shop over the last twenty years or more, I believe there still exists a niche for small businesses in food retail.

As other retail businesses have sought to expand their services to cope more effectively with the competition provided by online retailers, grocers must seek greater attractions for their customers beyond sheer convenience of location and opening hours.