What’s a Now Page?

“Now” pages are inspired by Derek Sivers. They attempt to answer the question: “What is this person focused on at this exact point in their life?” Whist all the masses of information here and elsewhere tell you what I’ve done, they don’t tell you what I’m doing now, what I’m going to do, nor what’s important to me. You can find hundreds of examples of these (including mine) on nownownow.com.

Last Updated: September 2024.

What am I doing now?

  • I’m currently living in Newbury, Berkshire, UK, and married now for 30 years. My youngest daughter is back with us after splitting with her partner, so myself and the missus lost our empty nesters status. I also lost my beautiful home office and tidy house at the same time.

  • I’ve been running my own company, Cloud Cauldron, as a consultant cloud architect / devops engineer / platform engineer since 2017. My current contract is with MAK System where I’m currently focusing on AWS, Terraform, GitHub Actions, with a touch of EKS, controlled via a combination of Flux and Kustomize.

  • Frankly, my focus at this point in life (I’m 51 years old), is the missus. Every day I feel time taking a bite of me and I don’t know if I’ll be here 20 years down the road, so, I want to spend time with her and go on adventures more than anything else. We went to Odessa, Texas at the end of May to help my parents with some stuff, had a few days in New York City in August, and we had a long weekend break in Scotland at the end of September.

What am I reading?

  • A Walk In The Park - The true story of a spectacular misadventure in the Grand Canyon, by Kevin Fedarko

    A few years after quitting his job to follow an ill-advised dream of becoming a guide on the Colorado River, Kevin Fedarko was approached by his best friend, the National Geographic photographer Pete McBride, with a vision as bold as it was harebrained. Together, they would embark on an end-to-end traverse of the Grand Canyon, a journey that, McBride promised, would be “a walk in the park.” Against his better judgement, Fedarko agreed to the scheme, unaware that the small cluster of experts who had completed the crossing billed it as “the toughest hike in the world.”

  • James, by Percival Everett - (just finished. HIGHLY recommended.)

    It is also a bold re-imagining of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, as the enslaved Jim emerges to reclaim his voice, defying the conventions that have consigned him to the margins.

What am I learning?

In my industry, you can’t stop learning. Ever. At the moment I’m working through this to keep myself fresh and entertained:

And when I find a bit of spare time: