I’m going to be 34 soon, and it’s got me thinking about what being grown up means to me. It’s easy to know when someone isn’t acting in a grown up way, but I found it much harder to get an idea of what that actually involves. It’s not age. It’s not how much stuff I have managed to acquire. It’s not having a kid, or getting a mortgage.

Traditionally, being grown up meant leaving the parental home, getting a job so you were financially independent, getting married and raising a family. Things have changed – jobs are no longer for life and marriage is less important to a lot of people. So what is left?

From an afternoon reading various websites (studiously avoiding Yahoo Answers…) I have the following shortlist as markers of what I consider to be a grown up:

• Being financially independent – not on the dole or sponging off parents/partner/friends
• Ability to look after myself – cooking, cleaning, washing etc
• Emotional maturity – to identify and use emotions constructively, accept them and not be dragged around by them
• Interdependent relationships based on mutual respect and friendship rather than dependency
• Doing what needs to be done as well as what I want to do
• Taking responsibility for my behaviour and the consequences – this includes not whining about things I can change or blaming others for things I have chosen.

Curiously, I am doing OK with this list but still don’t feel like I have grown up! I met some of Beth’s friend’s parents last week and they all seemed like grown ups to me as they are of the previous generation. So is it more of a personality difference than something everyone hopefully achieves at some point? My next door neighbour is married with a career, mortgage and grown children, yet he is still flippant and playful. Maybe I will never feel grown up…

I saw Trading Eye quite a while ago but did not have time to have a good play with it. Now I have, so downloaded the trial localhost version and got busy.

Now don’t get me wrong, I am a geek/nerd/whatever but installation was not easy. It needed a PHP loader module adding to my local MAMP setup before it would even let me do anything. Then it wouldn’t accept the license file, and I think it was because I used the wrong program to extract the files from the downloaded installer zip. Not very smooth.

However, with the help of the Trading Eye forums and a large dose of stubbornness I got it installed and working. The admin system is gorgeous yet simple and has all the functionality I or my clients will need for running a small shop.

I am hoping that an upcoming project has the budget to use Trading Eye as I would like to offer this as standard due to its accessibility and standards compliance straight out of the box.

More to follow when I have had a good look…

Nick

Men and women seem to be coming from opposite directions some of the time. There are a number of frameworks for understanding this, the most popular being John Gray’s Men are from Mars, women are from Venus. While an interesting read, it doesn’t quite cover the reality of men and women’s interactions, because of one fundamental assumption – that all men are thinkers and all women are feelers. This needs unpacking a bit.

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Been-Seen.com:: Cool Stuff – Guerilla Drive-In.

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