Animal Top For Sale!
Cam, I still have your animal top and I dunno where you are, I have a new number by the way. If you type “/the name of your Mum’s road” after the URL at the top, it will take you to my number.
1 comment October 12th, 2008
Autumnal Euphoria.
I love this time of year, the crisp autumnal mornings, the rich tapestry of colours in the trees whilst kicking through the leaves amidst a plethora of birdsong, uninhibited by the inane squawk of the seagulls that once circled the skies above. I try to soak as much up as possible as autumn is the precursor for winter, although winter can hold some beauty, it is somehow masked now by the mild, wet and windy turmoil and endless overcast days that cloud your well-being and drown your ambition. There hasn’t been a descent snowfall in 12 years, every year the rivers would freeze and our landscape would be transformed, snow covered, silent and serene for days into weeks, a tranquility lost.
I always hold hope that things will reverse, nature will stabilise, but I am not necessarily the kind of person who thinks of his glass as half full, more like double the size it needs to be. So as the financial crisis takes it’s grip and the world dissolves into chaos, I will be seeking moments of calm and quietness all the more.
1 comment October 9th, 2008
Immortality?
Society could be likened to a machine towards immortality, are we are being administered legal toxic chemicals enabling certain diseases to proliferate thus subsequently providing a platform for practice to eradicate such diseases? Controls on responsible organisations (BBC, The Press etc.) who are left to continuously glorify things such as binge drinking (Chris Moyles comes to mind) and the endless exposure of arseholed celebrities, not to mention the ones who are leniently dealt with by the courts over possession of class A substances, are non-existent and the problem of the relaxed attitude towards things such alcohol or drug* addiction is often left to the intervention of the British public at the receiving end of the media, let’s face it, most of us Brits find it easier to just let it be rather than jump up and down and complain. (* loosely phrased – including any medication)
The bio-chemistry of the liver is highly complex and we still have a lot to learn about how it functions, alcohol remains legal, cheap and in plentiful supply. Before we knew about the myriad of complications created by smoking, it was legal to smoke in public places, cigarette companies had a free run in the advertising sector and smoking was not seen as the anti-social habit that it has become today. This is possibly because there is not much more to be learned from the serious diseases that smoking can cause and proliferate. Anti-ageing creams are another issue, we don’t fully understand how the daily application of billions of nano-particles that can easily skip the barrier of the skin ending up in the bloodstream will affect long term health, but still there are no restrictions on their use. And of course there’s the controversy with mobile phones, it’s a fact that if you bombard living cells, especially in the brain, with high energy electro-magnetic radiation at reasonably high frequencies (900Mhz-1800Mhz in UK phones) it will damage them clearing the way for tumor growth, there are restrictions on the effective radiated power (ERP) of phones however. So it seems apparent that until things are more fully understood we will continue to consume the notion that it’s all under control when in all honesty, a lot of it is highly under-researched and thrown out into the public with government controlled backing, the government who know well enough that it could be a risk but will never know for sure otherwise, so in effect, we are very much a part of the research.
1 comment October 7th, 2008
Time
It’s Wednesday, and I’m sitting rather dazed at the thought that there is only two and a half days until the weekend, as we all know time tends to accelerate Monday-Friday so the latter part of the week goes quicker. I was chatting with my daughter Kayleigh yesterday and she mentioned about going to the cinema today with the college, something they do every Wednesday to see one of those odd unheard of matinées as part of their study, yeah right! My reply was, “You only went the other day!” At which point she emphasised ‘that was actually last Wednesday,’ we both agreed that time had flown by the past week and I pondered if it was relevant to many other people. Weekends to me are mostly just a blink of the eye until time seems to hit a wall at 6am on Monday morning and the cycle starts over.
Odd to think that Mondays are usually quite depressing, is this because time is actually going slower? Or do i just perceive time traveling slower because I feel depressed that it’s another 5 days until the weekend (cause or effect). In practice it seems the happier (busier, less bored) you are, the faster time seems to go the or vice versa. The irony is, if your busy and time seems to be traveling faster, you get more done than if you’d had the same amount to do in the same period when time was traveling slower because you were bored. Erm…yeah.
1 comment October 1st, 2008
Is There Hope?
Here I am on a Friday morning, the sun is beating down and I am unusually reluctant to join in the bright, cheery atmosphere that surrounds me. My mood, although stable, has been slightly melancholy over the past few weeks, no excitement or pangs of nostalgic euphoria, no frivolity or looking forward, just nothing. It maybe to my advantage if I use this period to make some big changes, I have already begun to set the wheels in motion, October I believe will be when I start to see the direction they are travelling.
2 comments September 26th, 2008
Tiscali – Don’t Go There.
After yet another dissapointing telephone coversation with one of the Tiscali numpties, I’m told they can’t enter my bank details onto their system due to some kind of technical glitch, could I ring back the following day, after I had been on the phone to them for god knows how long. This isn’t the first failed attempt at getting them to bill me, it’s been going on now for 2 years!!! I also originally signed up for unlimited downloads and a while back I was sent a letter saying I was regarded as a “Heavy User” and could I not use the internet at peak times unless only for general browsing??? So after a month or so I receive another letter saying my bandwidth had been restricted at these times as I’d ignored their previous request. After receiving red letters from them about payments they were supposed to be taking from my bank and trying again and again to sort out a payment arrangement only to finally have my sevice suspended, I decided enough is enough, so I politely asked them for my MAC code and signed up with 02.
5 comments September 22nd, 2008
Welsh Radio
So I wake up in Wales this morning to a lovely sunny day and I pinch myself, no it’s reality all right. Chain’s wandering about somewhere in North Wales so I brought my 2M radio, I was meant to fit it in the car this week but I am still undecided about a mount for the antenna. With my old Dagenham Dustbin the choice was obvious, drill a bloody great hole in the roof! Job done, but the new car is quite clean and tidy and I don’t really want to be drilling holes in the bodywork, though it is still an option. The plan is to venture onto a hill somewhere, there’s one or two to choose from, and try to access a repeater near him, a technical challenge that I’m quite up for. As I don’t have an antenna fitted on the car I have brought with me my homemade J-pole (click diagram) that I built a couple of years ago and proves to perform quite well, plus I can just stick it in the ground. Until then I need to do some research on the local geography and find out which repeater it is that Chain can access so I can set up the CTCSS tones etc. I think a yagi (directional) antenna would be more appropriate for the situation but I don’t have one.
2 comments September 13th, 2008
No Internet
Hmmm… Seems Tiscali have suspended my internet access, time for a new ISP me thinks! Will have to update this from work until then I guess. Anyway it’s POETS day and it 3pm so I’m sodding off home!!! Yay!
Add comment September 12th, 2008
No Virus Here!
After 3 reports that my blog contains a virus, I have removed what I believe to be the offending code so hopefully all is well. If there are any more occurrences, please let me know.
1 comment September 7th, 2008
Alright then are we Boyo!
A week off… Yes!!! Arranged to spend half of it in Wales like you do, Jade my daughter, was in Gloucester (North Nibbly) so I picked her up on Sunday and kept her all to myself… Looks like Greg and Clare’s house warming went off well and somehow Greg ended up with the keys to the local pub! Result!!! The weather wasn’t that pleasing but we ventured into Cardiff for some bowling and an Italian meal, very nice too. With everyone munching ice cream in Cardiff Bay I meandered towards a cash point to retrieve my share of the bill only to have the machine flash up “You Have Reached Your Withdrawal Limit Today!” But I hadn’t taken any money out since Friday, it is now Sunday. Alarm bells start to ring!!! I checked my balance and surely enough £800 odd pounds have been withdrawn… This is a feeling I do not like, I’m usually quite unceremonious about most issues I see other people get excited about, but if I could have got hold of the Wanker who stole my money, I would probably be behind bars right now. I’ve calmed somewhat since and Julie has loaned me enough to see me through until the fraud investigation is complete and my money is returned.
Tuesday I went shopping… this is with 4 Women… 3 of which teenage! Though slightly painful and being a little conscious of always ending up in the underwear section, I was reasonably content but had to rearrange the odd mannequin and try on a few hats/ear-rings/bras etc. for amusement.
All in all it went swimmingly well (literally) and it was nice to chill out, I believe Jade got on quite well with Danni and Tara and they seemed to have fun too which is a bonus.
In any case I am now back home with that over-whelming sense of pointlessness, so I’ve decided to sort through all my crap and flog some gear on Ebay for no other reason other than something to do, oh, and maybe make a few quid too 😉
Add comment September 4th, 2008
