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I’ve just finally finished jbd2010.co.uk for the eclectic Mr Bracey-Davis and the charity bike ride across Europe in the next few months. Check out his blog on http://jbd2010.co.uk/jbd2010b/

Tis pretty awesome,

I dont know whats the matter with me lately. Im just angry for some reason. Things are getting to me. I dont know why my sub-concious isnt terminating the things that it wouldnt usually get under my skin, and trouble my usual calm exterior.

It’s a brooding sort of anger that I can’t shake, the kind of anger that wont suffer fools, the kind that wants to pick people up and give them a damn good shake. And I can’t switch it off.

I’ve been on some sort of crusade to expunge shit service in all its incarnations, only now my mind has decided that Im expanding my business portfolio,  to incorporate the role of a lone moral crusader.

The problem is that there’s a downside to being a moral crusader and that is that you get labelled, or end up far deeper in something that would have passed by if you’d just counted to 5 and took deep breaths instead of getting het up about it. That’s ok if you can count to 5.

I wanted to do something about the white van man who is renovating a property two doors down, and thought it be ok to throw the two boxes of metal blinds outside on my drive. I took the number and name of his van, ready to ring and kick off. I figured it was his own business. So who would of answered the phone? Him? Would he of cared? No! And all Id of got is some abuse.

I wanted to do something about the people around me who lie, have their own political agenda’s and try all the subversion tactics under the Sun to make it look like butter wouldnt melt in their vile little mouths. But who cares? The world carries on turning and no one gives a damn about doing the “right thing”

I want to speak to my neigbours and tell them they dont need to shout, slam and bang doors, but you cant train people to be decent, there either decent, or their lowlife.

I have more, believe me. Much more.

It is common to hear people say that the present is unlike the past. Yes, and that’s true. For change is indeed constant. If we do not change, we risk being outcast by the wave of societal changes.

At the same time, there are certain generic steps you can take to meet up with the changes and remain relevant with times.

Here are the steps:

1. Notice what has changed around you.

2. Point out what needs to change within you.

3. Check if the changes you need to make will match your values, direction and goal. If Yes, move to step 4. If No, you need to decide which is the priority.

4. Fine-tune the plan you need to make that change.

5. Act on your plan to change.

6. Review the change after sometime to ensure you are on course.

7. Go back to Step 1 regularly.

You can apply these steps to almost any area of your life, from personal dreams, relationships, public speaking and communication to running a company, management and leadership.

The above points remain an eternal cycle of steps that one has to constantly make in order to stay relevant. As long as times have changed, you need to change.

Relevance is important to remain in excellence mode.

Apple’s iPad has already been jailbroken, using a variation of the iPhone method and demonstrating just how much the two devices have in common.

The hack was completed in less than 24 hours. In theory it enables the owner to install everything from Wi-Fi scanners to pornography – applications Apple disapproves of – though for the moment it just allows a remote terminal connection.

The hack potentially even allows Palm OS applications to run on the iPad, thanks to jailbreaking.

But amidst all this excitement over the hack, it seems few iPad customers are rushing out to buy newspaper subscriptions. PaidContent reports that the newspaper and magazine subscriptions through which the iPad was supposed to change the world, are curiously absent from the lists of most popular paid applications. That could be bad news for the media, but we suspect it’s attributable to the early adopters being used to getting stuff for free, so we’ll withhold judgement until Cupertino ships a few more pads.

Apple reckons it’s already shipped 300,000 iPads, but that includes stocking shops and it would be interesting to know how many are still knocking around on the shelves. Gizmodo wandered around some local Apple stores and was surprised to find them well stocked for the revolution, so if you’ve not got your iPad yet (and happen to be in America) then you should be able to pick one up easily enough.

But the kind of buyers interested in newspaper subscriptions won’t be buying an iPad in the first week. They’ll be waiting to see how it develops, unlike the early adopters rushing to jailbreak the device as a techie’s toy. It will be a while before we can say if Apple really has created a new computing paradigm

Chris Ferguson is a former space shuttle commander. Now he moonlights as a drummer for a Houston-based astronaut rock band. “Perhaps we’ll have some more time to practice here once the shuttle program comes to a slow end,” he says.

It’s unclear what else the future may bring for NASA’s elite astronaut corps after the agency mothballs its aging space shuttles in the coming months.

Ferguson’s day job is deputy chief of NASA’s astronaut office. He says that about a half-dozen astronauts typically leave the agency each year to do things like teach, work for the government or take aerospace industry jobs.

After the shuttles stop flying, Ferguson says, “I would anticipate we’ll see a few extra folks over and above our normal attrition rate might seek employment elsewhere.”

The Countdown’s Begun

Though the agency won’t have spaceships, it will still have a lot of astronauts. NASA currently has about 80 active astronauts, as well as nine new astronaut candidates hired last year.

There will be fewer missions after the shuttle program ends, and those will be long-duration stays at the space station. The only way to get up to the station will be in a cramped Russian Soyuz capsule.

NASA had been designing and building a new system of rockets and space capsules, called Constellation, which intended to take astronauts up to the station and eventually on to the moon. But the Obama administration wants to cancel that program, saying it was behind schedule and had been too underfunded to meet its goals.

Instead, the administration would rely on private companies to build new astronaut taxis to low Earth orbit, while NASA focused on developing technologies for going far out into the solar system. Many in Congress are fighting that plan.

“It’s a very tenuous time for everybody here,” Ferguson says. “This is a very large organization and it doesn’t turn very quickly, kind of like a large ship. It just takes awhile to make a 180-degree turn.”

He says “there’s a little apprehension” as people wonder about their future. But they also are concerned about what will happen to all the expertise at NASA that’s allowed America to put people into space.

“It’s certainly not an easy thing to do, and we want to make sure that we preserve that capability and that knowledge, you know, for future generations and whoever ultimately does take us up to the International Space Station and hopefully beyond low-Earth orbit one day,” Ferguson says.

Astronauts For Hire?

This isn’t the first time NASA has had to make a big break with the past. When the Apollo program ended, astronauts had to wait years before the brand new space shuttles were ready to fly.

But the whole situation was different back then, according to Roger Launius, a space historian at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.

“There’s uncertainty that’s in the system today that wasn’t necessarily there in the 1970s,” Launius explains. “Even before the end of the Apollo program, NASA had an approved, follow-on program — the space shuttle — and a firm schedule for getting it completed.”

These days, no one knows what NASA will be doing next. Meanwhile, private companies are moving forward with their efforts — raising the possibility of not just commercial space taxis, but also astronauts for hire.

NASA administrator and former astronaut Charlie Bolden talked about that prospect when he visited Kennedy Space Center in Florida earlier this year, saying it would be a different approach for NASA to rent not just the space vehicle, but also a private crew of astronauts to go with it.

“We need to have the discussion of how important is it to have a career astronaut contingent, as opposed to none,” Bolden said.

He said that NASA’s international partners like the idea of an elite corps, and that he doubted some random person could quickly be trained to perform at the same level as NASA astronauts, who have devoted their lives to preparing for work in space.

“We need to have the discussion of what the future — the next generation of astronauts — will be like,” Bolden said.

That’s why the administration’s proposed new budget for NASA says the agency should have the National Research Council do an independent review of the astronaut corps to look at what the role and size of that corps should be after the shuttle retires.