One of the things that voice in our head often does is provide us with excuses. Maybe you have a project which you keep saying you want to start, but you “don’t have time” (probably the most common excuse for everything), or maybe you want to change jobs completely but “I can’t throw my career away”, or “I don’t have the training”. People in corporate IT departments are especially good at excuses – trying that new platform / environment is “too risky” or allowing the CEO to use the device he wants to use would “break corporate standards” or “risk network security”. Maybe that customer or employee has a great idea for a new service or change in approach, but it’s “too hard to get there from here”, or “would probably cost too much”.

Very often, excuses are just people building a natural safety buffer about themselves to avoid having to deal with something that’s a little bit scary, difficult or unknown. If you tell yourself (or other people) that there’s some considered reason or analytical risk which stops you from going out on that limb, for taking a bit of risk, then that’s a comfy position to leave yourself in. It’s not you making the decision to resist taking that step, it’s an unavoidable environmental factor. A global immutable constant. It’s comforting to think about it like that, because then it’s not your fault that another year passed and you feel like it’s a re-run of the one before.

We’re all complex and I’m not going to tell you what’s right or wrong for you, but here’s my experience: taking a few risks, trying new things, embarking on something when you have no idea where it will take you – these are all good things, and you do yourself a disservice by avoiding them. Now, I’m not a huge risk taker, I’m not high-rolling in Vegas or blagging my way into risky business ventures or anything, but I recognise that taking some considered risks, and putting yourself outside of your comfort zone, is necessary to get anywhere – something that I’ve come to appreciate a lot in the last few years particularly. Besides, it’s almost never as bad as you imagine, and having taken the plunge you might be surprised how well you can figure stuff out as you go along.

So when I find myself coming up with a list of reasons why I can’t do something, I find it useful to roll out a simple mental phrase: ‘No Excuses’ . For added effect, imagine it’s being boomed out by James Earl Jones, who is staring down at you with that intense, serious gaze of his – there’s just no bullsh*tting him . There’s a decent chance that some or perhaps all of those things that you think are impediments are really just excuses – and you’re really better off without them. No excuses, just try it – what’s the worst that could happen?

Joby Gorillapod

When we’re on holiday I often spend time trying to find places to put the camera so we can do a timer shot with us both in the picture, and when you’re in forests and up mountains finding a level spot is tough. I’ve gotten quite good at it, squinting at rocky outcrops and tree stumps with an almost film director level of interest, but it’s still awkward and sometimes precarious; this year in the Canadian Rockies I placed the camera on a rocky slope and only realised when I had to charge down again how many rocks were between me and the ‘mark’ I had to be at within 10 seconds, and I almost came a cropper, much to the displeasure of my wife.

I’d seen the Gorillapod before but kept forgetting to buy one before we went on holiday, so this time I bought one as soon as I thought about it, even if it’ll be sitting around unused for a while. Basically it’s just a small tripod made from a series of ball joints, each one perfectly stiff under the weight of a camera but easy enough to move, and with rubber surrounds on every joint and on the ends for grip. It’s very bendy and yet very sturdy once it’s set, so you can use it as a regular mini-tripod (but can adjust for uneven surfaces really easily), or you can suspend it from tree branches and poles, secure it up on top of fences or bollards just by bracing it, and all kinds of things. It just clips on to a small tripod mount and folds up really small.

It’s just an incredibly useful little gadget that I wish I’d had for holidays ages ago, and I imagine regular photographers would find it invaluable too.

Bicycle iPod Mounts (for drum kits)

I don’t ride a bike anymore, but after setting up my drum kit I realised I needed somewhere to mount my iPod if I was going to hook it up for practice, rather than having it on the floor or using gaffer tape or something. Surprisingly there didn’t appear to be any standard accessories to do this (a bit of an oversight on Roland’s part I think since this must be a common requirement), so I was nosing around in the VDrums forum and discovered that most people were just using regular old bicycle mountings, and attaching them to one of the cymbal riser arms (since they’re about the same diameter as bicycle handlebars, compared to the main drum frame which is much thicker).

They were cheap so I gave it a try, and sure enough it works beautifully – you wouldn’t know that the mounting wasn’t made entirely for this specific purpose in fact. Score one for the community

The doses in the research were fairly high though – 500mg per day, or about 5 cups of coffee (the US standard for espresso is 64mg caffeine per fluid ounce, which equals 96mg per shot). I might have got through that in a day at one stage, but I’m not chain-chugging Red Bull and coffee like I used to a few years ago. I do tend to double-shot my home-made espresso so I’d need to drink 2-3 a day to keep up with the mice in the test – not too bad, but still more than I usually have these days (I go for quality over quantity).

Of course, they don’t say how much the mice started twitching, how many heart palpitations they had, and how they coped with the inevitable post-caffeine crashes. But overall, I think everyone would take those ahead of a degenerative mental condition. Here’s hoping this research continues to go well.

Modern Warfare 2 has tried to get in on the act too, releasing on 10th November 2009, which in US date format translates to 11/10/09 – so almost a nice countdown idiom, although who starts counting down from 11? Besides Spinal Tap that is.  They really should have done this in 2008 instead (10/09/08). Of course, unlike the Beatles game, neither really works in an international context; here for example the release date is 10/11/09, losing all symbolic relevance due to our dd/mm/yy convention. Which, I have to say, is entirely more logical, since the denominations of time increase from left to right rather than jumping erratically about the place

What other date-related shenanigans can we expect in 2010 I wonder? Surely an Arthur C. Clarke tie-in is unavoidable?