If you read anything about blogging you’ll know that you’re not supposed to apologise for not posting, but umm, sorry for not posting for a couple of weeks. Oops, there goes my blogging credentials down the drain!

Anyhow, the last couple of weeks have been a bit of a learning experience. A major IT mishap, which I could have handled better and possibly prevented, coupled with lots of commitments and deadlines, meant that I just had to get my head down and get through each day an hour at a time. Some people might be fine with that kind of stress, but I learnt that I am not one of those people. Thank goodness for lovely husbands who not only understand, but get tea ready for you when you do a 12 hour day in the office.

Back when I started this blog, I used to post occasionally on time management, and Getting Things Done (GTD). I don’t post as much about it now, as I have a system that sort of works for me (a hybrid moleskine/Remember The Milk setup if you’re interested), but one of the key things that has really been hammered home over the last couple of weeks is the need for some kind of weekly review of commitments and tasks. That has just about kept me on target, even though it takes a good couple of hours per week to complete. Just being sure that all the tasks are written down, and therefore not clamouring for head-space, is incredibly helpful in keeping stress to a minimum.

The final things that I should know already, but ignored in a slightly gung-ho style: Never Ever believe that things will “Just Work”, and Never Ever mess with the computers without doing a full backup first. ‘Nuff said. I am chastened.

So- I’m off to Cambridge this afternoon as I’m speaking at the Association for Geographic Information Technical Special Interest Group Open Source Event tomorrow, but hopefully normal service (such as it was) should resume after that. Look forward to my slightly belated take on the whole file formats for spatial data storage and transfer issue, some news about the UK Local Chapter of OSGeo, and perhaps even an announcement on Portable GIS in the coming weeks.