This is the most last minute post I have ever done. It is 1740 and you will probably not be getting this on time. Sorry about that.
Also my WiFi has been on the fritz today so I am writing this on my iPad instead of my laptop so there will be no pictures today as I am not sure how to add them on this thing – yes I have the technical expertise of a goldfish sometimes.
It is funny how we have come to relay on all this technology. That might be a redundant statement considering this is a blog – a word which has only been in existent since 1999. And it is scary to me just how long ago that was.
I remember having one laptop for the whole family and having to go off line if someone wanted to use the phone! It seems like such a long time ago now. That might be because it was but it also seems almost impossible that that is the way things once were.
I have had a reasonably productive week but I am not sure I have been productive with the right stuff. After finishing up here I am going to get some dinner and finish (hopefully) a chapter of my novel to read out at my writing group.
Have I mentioned the writing group before? I think I did. I go every Monday that I possibly can and it is important to me. Reading out every possible week is helpful and it holds me accountable as people will be (again hopefully) interested in the next instalment; rather than it just being a sad lonely guy writing in his untidy flat. Well it doesn’t stop either of those things from being true.
Next week is my last week before my holiday and I cannot wait. I may only be away for three full days but it should be amazing. I am going down to Tenby and I certainly need to relax – for me that is a challenge.
I still have six days in work but hopefully they will pass quickly.
I’ll see you all next time where hopefully I will be a bit more with it. Bye for now!
We are at the end of another week. We are at the beginning of another week. Both of these contradictory statements hold a degree of truth for me. I have always thought of Sunday as being the last day of the week – but, for where I work, Sunday is the first day of the week. And because I like a degree of consistency I tend to mark my time in that way too. And the reason you are getting this short post today is because I ran out of time.
If I can quote a show I love and have it make some as semblance of sense I will.
The other day, when I might otherwise have been blogging, I was prepping for a job interview. I have had the interview now and I think it went well. It is always hard to tell being interviewed is like being on the most awkward date ever. So since I won’t know anything about the job for a little over a week I am trying to put it out of my mind.
Not the best quality but it is hear for the dialogue.
Paul Darrow died on Monday. I know him from Blake’s 7 playing Avon. Avon was a wonderful character and easily my favourite. Here are some of his best bits. Blake’s 7 was a most enjoyable show. It was made on a shoestring budged but had a good cast and some fun stories – following the adventures of a group of criminals as they fight the evil Federation.
Don’t you just love TV theme tunes.
I couldn’t substantiate the quote but I remember one of the creators of Blake’s 7 saying they had the budget for each episode that Star Trek had for its tea break.
So while this is a short post this week I have at least given you a show to watch (or re-watch) and next time the post that is currently in draft will be up. I hope you have a great week ahead.
I just wanted to say that I have checked this post. I really have. Unfortunately my particular combination of dyslexia and dyspraxia makes it really hard for me to spot typos. Please enjoy and I’ll try not to make too many errors.
Isn’t it weird how we divide ourselves into groups? I am not talking political groups this is not going to turn in to a political debate. Actually come to that I want and don’t want to talk about politics. OK…fine… that had been the plan but I think that this is something I should discuss. The word of the age… Brexit. The politicians have managed to make a complete pig’s breakfast of the whole thing.
I voted remain back in the 2016. I stand by that and still believe that it is the best thing – even if I do not have that many facts to back that up. Looking at the news and the way things are going it looks like I am in the minority in that regard – or maybe it is just that the powers that be are not listening.
There are questions that need to be answered about how the campaign was conducted. For some reason the irregularities in the leave campaign have not been enough to get the referendum declared null and void. Maybe we will manage to stay in the EU – maybe not.
Satire at its finest.
This seemed appropriate in the current situation. If there is one thing that is quintessentially British it is the ability to laugh at ourselves.
I agree with this completely.
First and foremost I consider myself Welsh. That comes before anything else and now for the controversial part…
I don’t see much of a difference between Brussels and London. They are both far away places that I have little connection with and frankly I would rather decisions, those that are not made by the Welsh Assembly, be made in Brussels than in London. I like the diversity of the EU and there is a lot we could learn from the other countries. We could even learn something as simple as getting the trains to run on time. And the Scandinavian countries are frequently shown to be amongst the happiest in the world.
I would one day like to see an interdependent Wales as part of the EU. That may just be a dream of course. Maybe all this comes from growing up with Star Trek. The idea of the Federation is wonderful. I would even like to see an end to borders. To live in such a way that country is much less relevant – maybe only in connection with competitive events.
So, will our next Prime Minister be our eminent Chancellor or our distinguished Foreign Secretary?
That’s what I wanted to ask you, which do you think it should be?
Hmmm. Difficult, like asking which lunatic should run the asylum.
Sir Humphrey and Sir Arnold (Yes (Prime) Minister
Yes here in the UK we will be getting a new Prime Minister before too long. The favourite is Boris Johnson which sounds like a joke. Anyone who has seen Mr Johnson on Have I got News for You will know exactly what I mean. For those of you who do not Mr Johnson has a reputation for being very gaffe prone.
I want to end this post by referring to what I had originally planned this post to be about – the more trivial ways in which people group themselves. And the far more important grouping. Are you a nerd? Are you a jock?
This is the classic grouping we see in high school. This maybe more of an American thing than a British thing but I think it is worthy of mention. This type of division is trivial and thus easier to dissect. In the real world a person can love football and Star Trek equally. They can know all England’s world cup rankings since it began and know that Worf was the son of Mogh.
Divisions continue all the way down the line. Star Trek fans even have a bit of a debate going about what they call themselves. They have debates over who is the best Captain. And I will admit if someone said Archer I would think they were very wrong but everyone is entitles to their opinion. Now I am going to attempt to wrap this all up.
The point of my ramble is how much humans have a predilection for division both in trivial matters and in more important matters. Science fiction fans can all be united in their love of the genre. And more specifically Star Trek fans can be happy together despite wildly different opinions. This maybe something I will discuss next time. (Unless I can’t find enough to say or I forget.) Division in fandomes is interesting and infuriating – on the whole though I think people can have calm discussions about their differences. (Your millage may vary) Politics is a little different.
You might be thinking that Brexit is an all or nothing thing and that remain and leave cannot co-exist. That might be correct but I think there must be some way of reaching a compromise. We need something more than just repeated that ‘brexit means brexit’ – I don’t know what that compromise could look like but then I’m just a blogger not a politician.
I wonder what discussions are going on behind closed doors at the moment.
I just wanted to say that I have checked this post. I really have. Unfortunately my particular combination of dyslexia and dyspraxia makes it really hard for me to spot typos. Please enjoy and I’ll try not to make too many errors.
The Eurovision Song Contest is a uniquely weird annual event that has been going since 1956. Nowhere else would you see such a wired mix of costumes, peoples, and strange presenters. It might be unfair of me to say this but sometimes in seeing the presenters the phrase: ‘Where do they find these people?’ Comes to mind. If you have watched the show you will know what I mean. Then it comes to the spokesperson for the voting. All these people have to do is to read out three numbers – with them all I can think of is: ‘Don’t bury yourself in the part!’
…and the winner is.
The winner was The Netherlands. In my family we have the tradition of eating the food of the host country. So next year it will be edam and gouda. Those being the only dutch foods that come to mind – other than the chocolate sprinkles they have for breakfast.
This was my favourite.
This song from Denmark was nice and simplistic. While I am not completely sure about the ladders it was a good performance and, as an aside, being able to sing while climbing a ladder is quite impressive to me.
I voted for this one too.
This entry from Australia was interesting too. Such a wonderful unique idea for the staging. All it all it was a good year. I enjoyed most of the songs and the UK entry certainly didn’t deserve to have so few points.
I actually rather liked it.
Perhaps the weirdest thing about this contest is that despite it having representatives from so many countries there are always a few that are in contention for the victory. I am surprised at this degree of agreement on what is a good song. I would expect the votes to be a bit more spread out. Still it was a very enjoyable yeah and I will be watching again next year.
I just wanted to say that I have checked this post. I really have. Unfortunately my particular combination of dyslexia and dyspraxia makes it really hard for me to spot typos. Please enjoy and I’ll try not to make too many errors.
Isn’t sleep a weird thing? To be a healthy and effective being it is required that we spend a third of our day unconscious. I say a third but how many of us truly get that amount?
Another question could be do you sleep?
I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with sleep. I would like to get more of it but that would mean not doing something else. For some reason my brain only decides it is bed time at around midnight.
It is also important to not use electronic devices before bed. The light from a mobile phone can badly effect a person’s ability to sleep. This too is not easy and I am sure almost everyone reading this feels the same. In fact you might even be reading this now when you should be trying to sleep.
I think the midnight thing is the same as the human attitude to almost any problem. We do not deal with a problem until it is upon us. Like the problem of climate change – changes could have been being made for the last twenty years – maybe longer – we didn’t – so now we are running around like crazy trying to stop the end of the world. And so my body only thinks it is in desperate need of sleep now that it is tomorrow.
So after having successfully linked lack of sleep to the end of the world it is time to conclude this post. A couple of years back I had a friend in America and we spoke often online. She was so sweet though that she kept an eye on what time it was for me and when 2300 came around she refused to talk to me any more – and you know what? I did actually go to bed.
I miss her – and not just because of that sweetness. Talking to her meant I was focused on one person rather than on the endless void of social media. I think the main reason I go to bed so late is loneliness. I think if I wasn’t living alone then I would talk to that other person instead – and we would both be aware of the time. While conversations might go on into the night it would be far more full filling than the time spent on YouTube or Facebook.
Even as I right this (It is Saturday) I know that I will not be getting enough sleep tonight. At least this time I have the excuse of being on a late shift at work.
I just wanted to say that I have checked this post. I really have. Unfortunately my particular combination of dyslexia and dyspraxia makes it really hard for me to spot typos. Please enjoy and I’ll try not to make too many errors.
I had a week off a few weeks back. I had leave to take rather than going anywhere. I really should have gone somewhere – that is a different story of me having the planning capabilities of a gnat. Instead I was following my ridiculously detailed to-do list. I made a useful discovery though. I am trying to do more things than I have time for. In short my list would only work if the days were longer than 24 hours. I am moving to Bajor!
I have spoken many times about my attachment to my to-do list, my attempt to get things done, my feeling of never doing enough, and in general managing to stress out about stuff that only I care about. I discovered I was trying to do over twenty hours – a struggle on a week off – impossible on a normal week. Well maybe not impossible but you are forgetting my proclivity for procrastination – so much procrastination. Perhaps a more accurate statement would be that I suck at prioritising.
I didn’t just ineffectively follow my list. I say ineffectively because I never did get the feeling of a good thing done. What was the other thing I was doing? Binge watching Bones. That counts as productive, right? Right?
In other thoughts… These blog posts are always written over several sessions. It takes a while and doing otherwise might mean I didn’t do something else – things like meditation, my diary, and Duolingo. The apps I use keep track of progress and therefore I don’t want to miss a day. The problem is the ebb and flow of my metal state.
I may start a post on a bad day and thus the post is morose and unhappy. Then I come back to it on a good day and suddenly the hopelessness previously shown makes no sense. Meaning it is difficult to pick up where I left off.
It is like playing with Lego as a child. Perhaps you are building a space rocket and then mum tells you to go to bed before it is finished. When you wake up the next day you want to make a submarine. So you take apart the rocket but bed time happens before the sub is finished and the cycle goes on and on.
At the moment I am okay. I am not feeling the hopelessness I sometimes feel it is more of a resigned feeling. More Puddleglum – less Marvin the paranoid android. Are those two characters too similar for this example to work?
And here is a beach because I like beaches and walking along one on holiday always has a calming effect. Whoever you are reading this now – thank you and I hope you are doing well.
I just wanted to say that I have checked this post. I really have. Unfortunately my particular combination of dyslexia and dyspraxia makes it really hard for me to spot typos. Please enjoy and I’ll try not to make too many errors.
An alternative title could have been: Oops, I did it again. Did what you may ask? Left this to the last minute.
I love deadlines. I love the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.
Douglas Adams
My mind is all jittery at the moment. I am trying to do about three things at once and thinking about the things I am not doing. I have been in work today (Saturday) and we were busy. So much to do in work and a mind all a jumble. It is confusing and distracting. The mind needs to be quiet. The mind needs to be quiet.
I want to write but what? So many projects like a sculptor chipping away at several stone tablets – but adding new ones too. In an endless cycle of unfinished work. I want to yell stop. So my head stops spinning. I want to exist outside of time and get things organised. So I can exercise and otherwise improve myself, so I can get stuff done. Time marches on though and pushes me with it. All I can do is try to work things out. I am crumbling a little at the moment – but little things help. Such as a co-worker asking how I am doing because she is experiencing some of the same and understands. That is something that helps.
I just wanted to say that I have checked this post. I really have. Unfortunately my particular combination of dyslexia and dyspraxia makes it really hard for me to spot typos. Please enjoy and I’ll try not to make too many errors.
I bought an iphone. I had it for about two days. Got it at about 1800 on Monday. I had returned it by 1000 on Wednesday. I was seduced by the idea of the iphone. They are very shinny.
If you love Apple products then that is great. I am not writing this to criticise anyone’s choices. I have an ipad which I am happy with – even that though might have been bought owing to a lack of imagination on my part.
I didn’t buy the iPad on a whim I spend some time considering. I knew I wanted a tablet computer and the only options seemed to be Samsung and iPads. Since the reason I was making the purchase was because my Samsung phone was having some issues an iPad seemed logical. There were, it turned out, other options they just weren’t immediately apparent to me. I am a bit dim when it comes to technology. So an iPad it was and it was expensive. I not convinced it is worth it but I do like it.
When my poor little Samsung started to show its age even more I knew I needed a new phone but which one? That choice is rather a bewildering one. There are so many options and, for my needs at least, almost anyone would do. The phone I now have is a Huawei and cost me £199 in an outright purchase. So why then did I initially get a phone that would have cost £1,224 (including minutes, texts and data) over three years?
I have no idea. Well maybe not no idea. iphones are smart – some might even say sexy. Then the slippy slope of bad decisions started. First I thought about a second hand iphone, then I thought about an older model but bought new, then I settled on an iphone 8 – which is also an older model but not as old. That is how the slope works. Each step seems reasonable just like ordering the large instead of the regular at a cafe – only a little more.
The thing of it is I don’t know what happened. As I was going into town to buy a phone I said: ‘I don’t need one with all the bells and whistles.’ and yet came home with an overly priced phone. Maybe this is a serious sign of a complete lack of self control on my part and that might be something I need to address.
Actually there is no maybe about it. For now though I can celebrate I dodged a bullet and was able to exchange the phone without fuss. Only spending £199 on a phone eliminates the worry. I could almost afford to replace it every month if I needed to – rather than it costing nearly a month’s earnings to do the same with an iPhone.
I write this post as a cautionary tale for any purchase you might make. My Huawei does all that I need. It might not be as special by some metrics but it does the job and, at the end of the day, that is the important thing.
I just wanted to say that I have checked this post. I really have. Unfortunately my particular combination of dyslexia and dyspraxia makes it really hard for me to spot typos. Please enjoy and I’ll try not to make too many errors.
It is Sunday. Once again I am writing this in the eleventh hour; actually I have eight hours until you will read this. I wanted to share this song with you a song I think I have shared it before.
I had trouble getting out of bed this morning. Maybe I was just tired but I was too alert to go back to sleep and too sleepy to get up. This happens to me sometimes. On a work day I can force myself to get out of bed – in that case other people are relying on me and I need to be somewhere. When it is just me though it is easy to just stay in bed.
I haven’t listened to this one in years but it was in my mind this morning.
So I was in bed. I looked at some YouTube videos I wasn’t really interested in and wished I was getting up. Does this happen to anyone else here? That you really want to do something but some how you just can’t make your body do it? In the end it took about two hours and even now I am still feeling groggy maybe the morning isn’t the best time for me.
Sometimes they play this song in work…on Sunday! Now isn’t that ironic?
I want to be a morning person. I have spoken here before about getting up at 0500 and the days when I have have been productive. However they are also days when I don’t get enough sleep. My grogginess is nothing to do with sleep, not that I am a doctor of course, but I have felt more alert on days of six hours of sleep than on some days of nine.
Rushing around indeed, Dido
The problem is I seem to be neither a morning or an evening person. I would love to do an experiment of what times I would do things if I didn’t know about time. It would mean having another person around to record what time it was.
Not really relevant but I am talking about time. (Plus this episode is excellent.)
With work we all have to fit in to the idea of mornings being the beginning. Now that is a weird turn of phrase but it is true. The stereotypical job begins at 0900 but some people don’t really feel like they’re capable of doing anything till later in the day. Perhaps it is because I work shifts but I have not yet figured out my best time to get my stuff done.
Yeah. Pretty much.
I have got some of my stuff done this week but there is still so much more to do. And without access to a time machine it won’t be possible. There are so few hours and so many more distractions. I am also the king of procrastination and sometimes even when I have been productive I am not happy about what I have done but annoyed at what I haven’t done. And… you have probably guessed it the gym was one of the things that didn’t happen this week.
I can’t wait to watch this with my nephew.
When I am feeling uncertain, sad, worried, lonely, concerned, or just thinking of a future that may never be there is always nostalgia. Watching a show you know well can be helpful because you know how it ends. I may not manage to figure life out, I may not get published, I may not have reciprocal love but International Rescue will always save the day.
Whoever you’ve been today; happy, sad, lonely, worried, tired, or energetic I hope you’ve have an excellent day and that your Monday isn’t too manic.
*** I just wanted to say that I have checked this post. I really have. Unfortunately my particular combination of dyslexia and dyspraxia makes it really hard for me to spot typos. Please enjoy and I’ll try not to make too many errors.
Cannot run out of time. There is infinite time. You are finite. Zathras is finite.
1. Infinity is a relative concept. This may not be true in a literal sense – I’m a writer not a philosopher. I was changing my mobile tariff today. It comes with unlimited text and unlimited calls. The data was not unlimited but since it is more than I have ever used in a month it might as well be.
2. A treat is only a treat if it is rare. I used to enjoy having a Chai latte when I came into town. Now so that I have been living in town for a while, and the coffee shop is fifteen minutes away, it has ceased to be special. It is probably why Cadbury’s, so the story goes, didn’t mind staff eating chocolate from their production line. They knew they would be tired of it sooner or later.
3. My leg has gone to sleep so I am writing this one between steps.
4. Brexit is a complete mess isn’t it? It is almost like watching an unfolding soap opera. Since I have foolishly brought up the subject I am on the side of remain. Hopefully we will have a conclusion one way or the other soon.
5. I am in the park and have found a rock to sit on. There are stones surrounding it and I am wondering how old this arrangement is. There is never a sign around when you want one.
6. The park is nice today. The sun is going down and the people are spread out so it is quiet. I like the quiet. The only thing that would make it better is if it was warmer. Maybe I am sitting too much in the shadows. I see a patch of sun. Let’s go and take a look.
7. I like summer and it feels like it is nearly here. I hope it is a good warm one. It will be nice to go to the park and the beach in glorious weather.
Blogging while walking is nice. It still feels relaxing even if I am holding a computer. I still have almost 2500 steps till I make my target so a bit more walking is in order. First though I am going to sit by those trees and schedule this post. See you next time.
*** I just wanted to say that I have checked this post. I really have. Unfortunately my particular combination of dyslexia and dyspraxia makes it really hard for me to spot typos. Please enjoy and I’ll try not to make too many errors.
Unstable Orbit 