Good leadership involves responsibility to the welfare of the group, which means that some people will get angry at your actions and decisions. It’s inevitable, if you’re honorable. Trying to get everyone to like you is a sign of mediocrity: you’ll avoid the tough decisions, you’ll avoid confronting the people who need to be confronted, and you’ll avoid offering differential rewards based on differential performance because some people might get upset.

Ironically, by procrastinating on the difficult choices, by trying not to get anyone mad, and by treating everyone equally “nicely” regardless of their contributions, you’ll simply ensure that the only people you’ll wind up angering are the most creative and productive people in the organization.

I think it’s one of the best things I’ve read in a long time, and something anyone who’s managing projects and people should read and really understand.

But anything I think was good I buy on DVD – and I have nearly 500 of them now

It is annoying though that a lot of the time watching a film on DVD is a lot more annoying than watching an “illegal” download…

I’ve just put “never back down” on – which is a personal favourite of mine – and compared the download to the dvd

Download
Click on the film on my apple tv – it plays

DVD
Sit through an advert for some shite looking B rated horror flick.
Sit through another advert for some chick flick
Sit through an advert for red bull (seriously WTF)
Choose play from menu – it plays

I got a similar experience with House M.D
I love that show so much I spent £80 on a box set of all series
But with the box set I have to sit through a load of bloody “pirate dvd’s are illegal” adverts that I can’t skip – before watching the show. Ironically on my downloaded versions I can just watch it without that hassle

Why can’t the film and music industry realise that more people would pay for stuff if they didn’t fill the discs up with crappy adverts for films that we don’t care about?

I bought battlefield Bad Company 2 – but how anyone can say that’s a better game is beyond me. The single player campaign is a joke, enemies just appear from fresh air in front of you, and several of the maps you can just run down the side all the way to the end without ever shooting anyone! The battlfield fans (and I used to be one – BF1942 on PC was awesome in its day) will tell you it’s superior because of the environment damage. I’m sorry but it’s clearly not. Yes you can shoot a telegraph pole down, but then if you run at it you can kick it along the floor like it’s fresh air – it never really feels like you’re actually in the game

But anyway, moving on – I mostly love the COD:Modern Warfare series – but in MW2 there are 2 major problems which are nearly making the game unplayable

BOOSTING
Not 5 minutes goes by these days without getting a message from someone I don’t know saying “FREE 4 ALL BOOSTIN ASK 4 INVITE”, which is frustrating, but worst of all it is very VERY rare that you can play a free for all game without finding 2 people in a remote area of a map shooting each other.

For those who haven’t come across this (you must have had your head buried pretty deep in the sand for the last 6 months) it involves 2 friends joining the same free for all map and boosting your score using tactical insertion.
One person puts a tactical insertion down and the other person then shoots them in the head, when the first person respawns they put another tactical insertion down and get shot in the head again. Repeat this as you work through your killstreak (helicopters, ac130, then finally a NUKE) and you get a load of points and finish 30 for 0.

What a fucking stupid thing for the game developers to allow!! Also how retarded do you have to be to think spending 3 hours shooting the same person over and over in the face just to get to rank 70 prestige 10 is a fun way to spend your spare time?? Arggghhh!!

Sniper Rifle Scope Bug
The sniper rifles are good in MW2 – very good. You have to hold your breath for a steady aim (unlike battlefield) and the scopes are quite realistic. HOWEVER a massive bug makes them get completely misused.

If you pull the left trigger to go to a scoped view – but halfway through the gun coming up to your eye you then pull the right trigger to shoot – it will 99% of the time kill whoever is in front of you, regardless of if you’re actually aiming at them or not. Which means people use sniper rifles for single shot kills from the hip.

How utterly stupid is that bug? I’m 99% sure people don’t run around in real life with .50 cal sniper rifles rapid firing them from the hip or halfway up to their eye..

Every search and destroy game I play is ruined by the sound of 15 snipers all firing rapidly across the map!

Rant over

I’ve not been to a car show in quite a long time now, but the weather was lovely last weekend and I decided to head over to Peterborough Showground to the Modified Nationals show. The cars there were utterly garbage but I did have a chance to practice a bit of glamour photography (if you can call it that).

I’ve upgraded a lot of my camera gear recently and am now using a Canon 50D with a 24-70 ƒ2.8L and a 70-200 ƒ4L. Both brilliant lenses and I loved taking photos with them.

Check out the rest of my shots on my flickr!

Started a mini 7 day project – A Week in B&W

I’ve uploaded the first 5 photos so check them out on my flickr! 2 more to go

Had a really nice day out today at Twycross Zoo

Even though it was about 3c all day – I got a few shots I’m really happy with

Check my flickr for the rest

Most of you that know me will know I have owned a Peugeot 106 (either my quiksilver or my current GTi) for nearly 9 years now! I also run the Peugeot 106 Owners Club.

Recently I’ve not been feeling the passion for it all that I used to (it’s tricky to stay in love with anything for 9 years!) so I’ve sold my car!

I’ve been working most of the winter in -6c stripping it down and putting it back to standard. All the modified parts have been sold and the car is being picked up on Monday night and driven away.

Mixed emotions about it all – I’m excited about having something different, but I’m definatly going to miss 106 ownership – such a fun mix of speed and handling I’ll probably not feel again

On a completely different topic though I started a Project 52 today on my flickr. I’m taking a photo every week during 2010 – aiming to try to make them all sort of sum up my feelings about each week.
This is my first photo – you can see the rest over on my flickr

2009 is officially over and a fresh start with 2010 is upon us

I want to start by listing a few things I’m thankful for from 2009 (bit american ‘thanksgiving’ style but meh)

Leah – having a girlfriend that lets me do what I want when I want and supports me in the things I want to achieve is amazing. Love you babe x
My Mum – she’s had a tough year for various reasons, but as always she’s been there whenever I’ve needed her. I couldn’t ask for a better mum!
My Job – I’ve had a superb year at work. I’ve launched a massive project (DespatchBay) which I am incredibly proud of, and i’ve finally made the leap from web developer to web development team manager. Those of you who know me know that I don’t usually stick at jobs for much more than a year – but I’ll soon be coming up on 2 years at my current company and I’m still loving it!
dSLR / Rick Nunn – My best mate Rick got a dSLR this year and it convinced me to go out and buy one and try a new hobby. As with most things time and a lack of motivation has meant I haven’t done as much with it as I wanted, but I love it as a relaxing hobby and I’ll be doing much much more in 2010 with photography

Now I don’t want to do a new years resolution because I never stick to it, but I do want to list a few things I aim to achieve in 2010.
I’m hoping to revisit this list monthly or bi-monthly and see how I’m getting on with it

Get Fit – I’m heading back to the gym 3 nights a week (workload permitting) and aim to lose 2 stone by next christmas. I also want to strengthen my knees up as recently my old Ice Skating/Hockey injuries to my knees have been causing me a lot of problems
New Car – I’ve owned Peugeot 106′s for 8 years now (and as most of you know I run the 106 Owners Club in the UK), but I feel it’s time to move on. I’m currently stripping my car back to standard for the new owner and eying up Clio 172 Cup’s. I’m excited about learning a new car and getting back into modifying.
New Blog – I bought phil-barker.com a few months back as I’m sort of trying to phase out my old “Fuzzy Orange” persona, but I put wordpress on it and started a skin and completely ran out of time. I’m aiming to get this skinned up in the next month and migrate the posts from here that I want to keep over to my new blog. So ermm watch this space
Scuba Dive – I’m not sure where I’m going on holiday this year but I really want to try scuba diving!
Nurburgring – I’m heading over to Germany in october with some good good mates this year to drive the nurburgring. Looking forward to that immensely!
Launch Another Project – There’s another project on at work which I’m hoping to get my hands on in the next few months. Me and Rick are very excited about its potential and I want to see that get launched this year!
Photography Projects – I want to do a few mini projects (people, self, cars, etc..) to try to push me into learning some new skills with my camera.
Be More Sociable – I want to spend a bit more time with my close family and friends this year, and a bit less time sat behind a keyboard
Save Money – I still rent my house at the moment but I have a 3 year plan to buy myself a nice detached house away from the things that annoy me (mostly other peoples screaming kids). So this year I’m starting to try to save some money for a deposit on a house.

I hope you all had a great christmas, and I hope you all have a fantastic 2010!

I’m going to skirt around the issue that global warming is nothing more than a media-produced reason for governments to earn more money – that’s a post for another day.

What really has p*ssed me off is who they are targeting with their new eco tax, like you couldn’t guess. Motorists and home owners.
Proposals to introduce a tax on people who use too much electricity/gas – and triple the fuel tax for everyone.

Why the hell don’t these consultants understand the simple difference between Necessity and Abuse.
Owning a 4×4 landrover and only using it to take the kids to school at 12mpg is abuse.
Owning a family sized car and using it to get to work and back is Necessity.

The UK has an APPAULING public transport network. A bus from my house to the local town takes 1.5hrs – it takes 25minutes by car.
A train to my local town costs a little over £8 – it’s about £4 in unleaded in my car. And the trains stop running if a leaf hits a track which is dead handy if you’re going to a job interview or actually want to be on time for anything ever.
For my girlfriend to go home to Wales to see her parents – its either 3 comfy hours with some music in her car, or 4 different trains where the changes are mostly sitting around in a town center train station surrounded by drunken football supporters on her own!

I don’t get in my car every morning because I enjoy sitting at 40mph all the way to work behind the 92 year old who can’t see over her dashboard. I don’t enjoy dodging the giant potholes in the UK road network. I don’t enjoy any part of my drive to work. But I have to do it or I wouldn’t have a job – it’s that simple!
I don’t enjoy having a house – it offers me virtually no pleasure at all. But sleeping on the pavement is a little inconvenient.

It’s just much much easier to tax people on things they can’t avoid doing and then when they complain tell them its their own fault because if we walked to work every day and didn’t use any central heating in winter we could avoid the tax.. utter joke

Everyone has to work, everyone has to provide a place for their family to live. All of that currently involves burning fossil fuels – which are running out. But until alternatives are provided its necessary. Yes that means the earth is slowly dying, yes that means the human race is doing a pretty good job of killing itself, no that’s not necessarily a bad thing!

Thinking for a 5 year plan for myself – the way the UK is going there’s only 2 sensible options.

Move to another country .. or .. quit my job, sit in a house paid for by the government, heating on full, with a couple of screaming kids running about the place and claim benefits to spend on vodka like all the other people my age do..

Well done Labour.. well done

At home I have iTunes open all the time as it syncs with my AppleTV – so it’s not so much a problem. Though it is hugely annoying that when Im listening to spotify and I press pause – it starts playing a track from itunes grrr.
But at work I don’t use itunes for anything – I listen to my iPod or Spotify. So when I press pause or play while in spotify and suddenly itunes loads up – its rather frustrating.

I don’t know if this is a simple bug or if Apple are heading down the MS route and trying to force people to use itunes instead of any “competition” just like MS used to try to force IE as the default browser. I’m hoping its just a bug

If anyone knows a way to fix it that isn’t some horrid renaming patch please let me know