To steal a line from a friend of mine, this is the personal website and blog of Helen Elliott. None of the views represented in it reflect those of my employer, which basically means I can say what I like without getting sacked. But trust me, I’m not that stupid.
Where’ve I been
Up until this point, right now, sitting here writing this, I’ve had a go at a few things. Like a lot of people I had a go at uni, found it full of people more mature than me, got scared and ran away. Never wanted a degree anyway. Since then I’ve had a series of jobs, including data entry, lifeguarding, swimming teaching, goat farming in Western Australia (not recommended) and Personnel admin. That’s sort of what I’m still doing now, and although I don’t think it’s very cool to say this if you work in local government, (oops, gave that away) I love my job. If you want to see some of the more off the wall work related things I’ve done, check out the Projects page.
What else do I do
I admit it. I can, at times, have workaholic tendencies. I stay late, talk about it when I get home and get a little bit disappointed on Fridays when I’ve just had a really good idea and I can’t do anything about it for two whole days. I know it’s sad, I can’t help it.
When I’m not at work, (and most of the time when I am), I’m a bit of a tech geek. That doesn’t mean I could rewire your PC and create my own freeview streaming software (like some people I know), but I could set you up with a website, write you a bit of Flash, troubleshoot most PC problems and teach you how to do most things in Windows over the phone. It’s self taught, mostly through the marvellous medium that is YouTube and Google.
Earlier this year, thanks completely to the halo effect generated by my iPod Touch, I switched to Mac. I’ve already found it much more intuitive but I’m still learning to get to the level of competency that I had reached with PCs. Working on Windows machines during office hours doesn’t really help, but I’m sticking with it.
For the tech obsessed amongst you, I’m using an iMac G5 running Tiger, 16gb iPhone on O2, a 16gb iPod Touch, and, for emergencies and work related experiments, a Dell Inspiron laptop running Windows XP. My desk is also adorned with rather gorgeous JBL Creature Speakers in red, and a universal iPod dock that I’ve just bought an iPhone 3G adapter for.
That’s really all you need to know for now.
Why publish?
I’m going to use this site to comment on the world around me, the things I see and what they make me think. I’m not a particular expert on anything so don’t take anything too seriously. I want to use it to stay in touch with friends, and generally keep a bit of a diary that I can look back on. I’ll also stick my photos on here to share with friends and family.
Whoever you are, you’re welcome in here. Take your shoes off before you come in. You know where the kettle is. And don’t put anything hot down without a coaster.