Category: Universal Blog

Here you’ll find all my most recent blog posts – if you want to narrow down your the range of subjects just click on one of the Blog menu items. Happy reading.

Sourdough Starter Recipe

Loaves of sourdough bread

Sourdough is formed when naturally-occurring yeast start to ferment and feed on flour. This process can take anywhere from a couple of hours to a day to really get started which is obviously not practical when it comes to baking. In order to get around this problem we use a…

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Do you want to live the good life?

Half empty of half full?

Are you living the good life? What actually makes a life good? I love an amazing wife and our four young children. We live in a home with a spacious garden. I have good friends living close by. I enjoy working to empower other people in their lives. But it’s…

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Twenty years from now

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do, so throw off the bowlines, sail away from safe harbor, catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore, Dream, Discover.

— Mark Twain

Why I make promises I can’t keep (and what to do about it)

Broken Christmas Decoration

Promises. The world is littered with broken promises. Wild, unfounded promises. Sleazy-salesman’s promises. Solemn and sincere promises. Just-to-keep-you-quiet promises. Made-in-the-heat-of-the-moment promises. With each broken promise the sense of regret or resignation to the inveitable, “How could I have been so stupid?” or, “Did I really expect them to keep their…

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Life lessons from 1960s Computer Science

Dustbin snack bar

Logic. It’s simple. Follow a series of predetermined steps and you’ll arrive at a final outcome that is most definitely correct. What could go wrong? Unless, of course, your starting point is not what you thought it was. Then you’re really in a mess. The acronym GIGO was coined back…

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Make peace with the past

Make peace with the past

Standing at the threshold of yet another year, what are the thoughts that come to mind? No doubt a mixture of emotions will surface as you allow your mind to trace the journey of the year that was. Moments of drama, of angst and relief. Perhaps joys tainted by sorrow,…

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Happy Christmas!

Happy Christmas 2015

Christmas Eve carries a significance beyond the familiar for my family. In the autumn of 2003 I became seriously ill with Ulcerative Colitis and convinced that I was living out my last days. However, from mid-December I started to respond to the treatment and, at about 5pm on Christmas Eve…

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