I’ve been hankering to change my career since last fall. I have worked as a developer ever since graduating way back in 2005. I started off as a Flash Developer (I know right), then progressed into Web Tech. The last 2+ years I’ve shared my time as a developer, working freelance for the BBC as a Technologist for an internal technology insights team — BBC Blue Room. I’ve totally fallen in love working within this specialism. …

Exactly a month to go before Disney+ arrives in the UK. And UK content creators, broadcasters and distributers should be worried. There’s more behind the scenes of Disney than the otherwise simple offering of a new streaming subscription choice for audience.

A year previous from the March 24th UK launch date; March 20th 2019 marked the entry of Disney to the list of the biggest media consolidations with the acquisition of 21st Century Fox stock for an impressive $71.3 billion (~£55.1 billion), only just fending off Comcast. …

.. turns out pretty damn old.

No matter how old you are or what year it is that you’re reading this article. We’ve been conditioned all our lives through media to want to talk to robots, to have robots serve us and for them to have their own space in society. I’m willing to bet that just a few seconds of thought is all it takes for you to realise how true that statement is.

I grew up with the on-screen likes of C-3PO and R2-D2 in Star Wars 1977. Data from Star Trek - his first appearance in 1987…

It will be 3 years to the day on the 13th February 2017, that I went solo and chose to work as a contract / freelance developer. I don’t earn mega bucks & I haven’t paid a visit to the sales desk in my local Mercedes showroom.

Contractors and how much they earn feels like they’ve been taking a political battering recently and it really stresses me out to be tarnished with a rough, colourful ‘you make more money, so you should pay more in tax’ brush. …

I need to make a decision: I believe it involves spending money to make money. This is how I’ve approached assessing my idea’s risk.

Working as a contractor means you get periods of free time in-between contracts. Freeing up my time like this by working for myself was one of the huge deciding factors of why I did it. And I did it, because I want to work hard and spend some ‘real time’ to grow some personal projects.

Starting to write, means I’ve started to read more. I recently…

In the last 12 months and in this order, I’ve taken the following steps to take the leap in to the world of self-employed…

1. moved into my own place and starting living on my own for the first time
2. changed jobs
3. left new job
4. went to Australia over Christmas & NY
5. started to work as a contractor / self employed

All 5 points above have been events and actions based upon my decisions to try to both control how I work and what I get from work.

To better my life / work balance & make me…

I’ve had countless (and sometimes heated) debates in the pub about this. And I still stand by that I can’t help but think it isn’t. Well, my opinion is somewhat limited to my own profession, of course.

So to start my debate; in the digital space certainly, I can’t see how it can be relevant anymore. I’ve worked for sometime in digital, albeit I like to think I’m still young, I’ve been in it for 10 years as of this year. And in all my working life I’ve done nothing but encounter late nights. Whether this has been working with…