It’s all oriental…

I am currently watching Victoria Wood, doing stand up.  Genius, total pure genius.  The other reason why I am watching her is because it’s stand up, and as we can only see half the screen of the telly, stand up is ideal as you can see most of it and it doesn’t move around too much.  Why can we only see half the TV screen?  Well, I would be stabbed mercilessly if I start whining about this.

But the building work seems to get louder and more mentally intrusive each day that passes, so much so that today the banging and drilling was joined with a whining drilling noise which only served to send Lau in to manic-mode as her blood pressure went supernova.  Dare I say anymore?
The whole situation with the housing association has now got to a point that I feel is irrepairable, a situation where no figure of compensation will heal the stress that has been caused.  So, I am sitting back and seeing what happens pretty much.

Flue or Flu?

As I right this, I have the feeling that I am having my brain pulled out of my right ear.  I am dizzy and wretched beyond belief with Flu.  Ugh.  For ages I was convinced that the spelling was Flue, but I have found out that refers to Flue as in the part of the chimney.

I managed to bust the power jack on my laptop earlier, only had it for a few days.  Ah well.

Somalian Pirates kidnap phone

This morning I received a letter from a band of Somalian pirates who hijacked my phone when I lost it.  They want five thousand pounds for it.  I explained that I didn’t really care too much about it as I had a new one, however they just got angry.  I put the phone down and then about half hour later, three burly african chaps came to the door and tried to hijack Sweep.  She inflated to three times her size and dematerialised to the 7th dimension.

Laura is still ill, poor thing, and I am still slightly short of about five sandwiches in relation to the proverbial picnic

BNP membership posted online, fascists exposed, witch hunting time.

Like the obsessive and irrational McCarthy witch hunts that plagued liberal America in the fifties, and even before that in the great witch burning times of the 17th century, I am predicting a new witch hunt.  The BNP managed to ‘lose’ their membership list in to the hands of a former hardliner, and boy what fun the Anti Fascists are going to have.  I won’t tell you where to find it as that would be bad but it begins in W and ends in leaks and has ‘iki’ in between.  It’s a .txt file too.

People will be dismissed from their jobs, turn in to social pariahs within the social circles, friends will be lost but then maybe new bonds will be formed.  We could find that the jilted BNP members will become a stronger more philosophically cohesive group of violent angry hate mongers.  It’s a thought but lets look at the situation rationally.

If you are going to sign your life away to an organisation that represents hate and fear in a country built on centuries of social integration and acceptance then what do you expect?  I am not a paid up member of any political party, simple reason that things like this can happen and it breaks one of my fundamental rules.  Never talk to people you just meet about politics or religion, because both are incredibly divisive and will be a ticket to elusiveness and social exclusion.  People will spit on you and dogs will curl big poo’s out on your lawn, simply because all your neighbours will train them to.  Babies will deliberately vomit over your shoulder, your credit cards will be stopped and the world will hate you and inevitably the ground will open up before you and you will be sucked in to a fiery molten hole in the ground.  All because you rather liked Tony Blair when he first took office, or you’re an Atheist or something vaguely controversial.
So, it unnerves me when you find out that people you either work with, or even really good friends with have views that fly straight in the face of everything you stand for, and with the publication of this list I feel that we are going to see repercussions across the country as the result of this.

However, I hear you cry “they’ve taken it down, no one can get the list!”.  Ah my dear reader, you are sadly mistaken.  People like downloading things, especially servers and search engines.  I can gurantee that when the story went out, hundreds and thousands of people have gone on to the internet to look for it, some have been astute enough to search for a text file and others have either gone straight to W**il*e*ks to hunt for it.  So now it has multiplied itself 400 fold in a matter of days and will remain in the public domain for eternity.

I am going to refrain from entering in the fully blooming tirade about the despicable and highly repulsive nature of the BNP, but despite the nature of this episode as I am sure some people see this as fates revenge on those that have a particular point of view, I actually feel slightly sorry for those on the list.
I am slightly contradicting myself, I know, but think about the culture that we do live in.  We live in a culture of free speech and democracy.  What makes our country stand out over regimes such as Mugabe or even regimes of history past where free speech was banned, is that people like the 2000 odd names on this list can actually say what they think.  I know that it is full of hate and zenophobia, I know that these people are political and racial zealots whose opinions are on the opposite scale of what I believe in, but they are allowed to say what they think, and that is what makes this country a better place to live then China or Russia where the press are controlled and the state censors everything no matter it’s political content or religous mania.  And what makes an open mind?  Listening to what people have to say and not making judgements about their message.  They have the right to say what they want, and we have the right to ignore it.

The BBC news website has the full story here

Amateur Astronomy…is it for me?

With my acquisition of a telescope, it’s natural to move on to the next stage.  Looking through it.  But what to look at?

I looked at the cat through it which didn’t really work as she just came up looking like a large dark furry blob (no change there), so I am hoping that stars will work a bit better.

So far my impression of amateur astronomy has been mixed to say the least.  Firstly there are many astronomers out there who contribute a lot to the scientific field of astronomy and who do lots of valid research work, and then there are the star admirers who are happy star gazing or like me, who want to do something valuable and worthwhile.  There are countless websites, set up and ran by these characters and who are all immensely passionate about their cause.  However, there are countless thousands, which means for the inquisitve amateur, trying to find one reputable site to use as a reference point is a little like a needle in the proverbial pile of hay.
Secondly, it’s really geeky.  Not just vaguely geeky but nearly as bad as my fascination with Organs or my admiration of certain forms of locomotives.  No I am not a trainspotter, but I am fascinated by certain types of train.  I say fascination, as it’s not about recording and collecting numbers, it’s about looking at things and admiring them for what they are.  Same with stars, but whilst admiring them I can record what I am looking at too.
This is turning in to a ‘Confession Of A Geek’, sounds like a good idea for a book.

Anyone that knows me will know I have my ‘phases’ in which I find something that interests me and just goes mad with it.  I had a painting phase, various money making phases, a poetry writing phase (which is still going), two train phases, a web design phase, a writing phase (which comes back occasionally), a poker phase (which is still going very strong), a DJ phase, and now an astronomy phase.  I guess these come as a result of keeping my mind occupied given my situation with my health, but in retrospect I put it down to an active mind.

I am an active believer in trying new things, and I guess these are all connected with my love of trying out new things.  Reading up on a subject and then engorging myself as much information as possible seems one of the most effective ways of learning about, well, everything.  Some things have stuck, Poker and poetry are two things that have not left me, and other things have dissappered very quickly such as the DJ phase and the money making phase (I didn’t really like the music that much and I am not a natural businessman.  I realised that qualities that you would need to either start a business, are not so much learnt but they are intrinsically connected to your personality, bolt on tools, more then anything.  I know about profit, loss, capital, VAT etc. but knowledge is not just about knowing it, you have to use it effectively, help you make decisions and take risks.)
I am determined to come back to painting one day. Laura bought a lot of equipment that I have not really made the best use of.  The constant argument of ‘well I bought you all that stuff and you haven’t used any of it’ is not unfounded.

I’d love to know if anyone else has a similiar pattern of interests, please? So long it’s not just me!

So today, apart from maybe playing a bit of poker, having my staples out and releshing the last few hours of freedom before I go back to work tomorrow,  I expect I’ll be trawling through the countless mountains of websites and stuff, looking for information about astronomy.  And housework, and also getting to grips with Windows 98.

Windows 98 and a simpler time…

In 1998 I was 16. A young incredibly naive disaffected youth who listened to amazing music, who had a close but small network of friends and a very fragile understanding of humanity and it’s flaws.  I loved my oversize knitted baggy jumper, my highlights and my burgeoning sociailist state of mind which was only egged on by my politics teacher Mrs Padden.
Weird as it is, I look back at one of the hardest and most confusing parts of my life with a certain amount of affection, dare I say it’s almost nostalgic?

This morning I got up quite early and went down to the Marsh Barton car boot sale, the deserted roads and the quiet yet distant calls of the seagulls invited me in to a world inhabited only by janitors, the end dregs of last night staggering home and the lonely tramps, muttering to themselves in a world unto themselves.  It is a weird realm, only seen by ‘nine-fivers’ if you go on holiday, or are awoken by the seagulls as they serenade the silence with their piercing and incredibly annoying squawks.
And in this realm lies the forgotten world of the carboot sale.  The regulars know that the best time to get there is about 8 o’clock when there are still plenty of good bargains to be had and when the sellers have just finished getting set up.

I decided to go down and have a look to see if I could find a telescope to do some astronomy with.  I have always loved the stars and wished to know more about them.  After a few minutes of weaving in and out of the maze of tables and stands my eyes laid on a laptop.  Something in my head that said ‘You don’t need another laptop’ which normally comes on in these times failed to say anything.  A minute later, I got the nice man down to a fiver and I had a small vintage Windows ME laptop.

Exactly what I was going to do with it, I wasn’t sure but I had bought one anyway.  However, something in my heart sunk as I realised that I hadn’t bought a telescope which was what I had come down for.  However, low and behold, shimmering in the moonlight, so to speak, was this telescope.  The lady wanted £4 for it, but I explained I only had £2.50 in my pocket.  Luckily she accepted it and off I went with telescope and random laptop.

So I have got it home and as ever I am fiddling with it and trying to see if it’ll go on the internet.  It has no USB port so I thankfully have a PCMCIA Wifi card, however I installed a stripped down version of Windows XP and it didn’t detect the card.  So, failing that I have reinstalled Windows 98 and hopefully that’ll prove a bit more fruitful.  I might sell it, but it has a good battery on it so I might use it as a spare laptop if I can  hide it.

Whilst I sit here installing Windows 98, I am taken back to the time when I first encountered a PC.  Nigel (Biernacki) had just got a PC.  It had 16mb of RAM and a 1GB hard drive with some antiquated processor.  A friend who lived across the road from me got one about the same time with Flight Simulator 98! which was the height of technology at the time.  I distinctly remember sitting watching him fly around for 4 hours, just agog that PC’s could do something like this.  The best I had was an Amiga 600 which died because the cat was sick over it, typical.  I also remember Karl destroying some demo discs that I had got free with a PC magazine because he was convinced that they had viruses on them, this was a little while before we moved to Clyst St Mary and I still recall how angry I was because I knew perfectly well that viruses were not found on demo discs.  It’s funny how some memories remain with you like flabby bingo wings you just can’t shift no matter how many diets you go on.

So today has been fun so far, no poker today as I played it a lot yesterday, but instead I am happy playing with the laptop and cleaning things and looking at the cat through my telescope.  Discovery is having a NASA day about the Space Race and the Apollo missions so I will watch that I expect.  After all, what else are Sundays for?

Spend Spend Spend…your way out of the recession?

I have been avoiding writing about this, as there are already enough bloggers having their two cents about this.  The bloggers worth reading are those who are actually economists such as Prof. Greg Mankiw or Tim Harford’s blog hosted by the FT. Why do I say that?, beecause I could gurantee you that most people don’t understand the reasons behind the recession, and those that do are only half right or they have misunderstood it.  If you want a good digestable introduction as to why we are in the pickle we are, then head to the BBC’s explanation showing what helped start off the recession and a really good timeline which takes us up to date and gives a blow by blow account of what really brought us our economic knees.  Now you should be in a better position to actually make sense of all the financial jargon that is floating about at the moment. 

I was listening on the radio to a debate between the Lib Dem shadow chancellor, Lord Howe who was the chancellor during the 1981 recession and a few other knowlegable types, as I came back this morning from a really nice breakfast in Sainsburys after a vigourous food shop.  The Lib Dems are talking about ‘if we were in this position I would do…’ this and that, and one of them was to put together a ‘Fiscal Stimulation’ package.  The great thing about the Lib Dems is that they can get away with some pretty radical thoughts normally, and although I was half expecting them to say that if it had been up to them they would have made everyone eat mud and cultivate ring worm in their guts, to sell to eastern asian countries as a delicacy or some other slightly half-brained rhetoric, they actually said something serious.  OK I am sorry that was uncalled for, but seriously, Lloyd-George was the last liberal prime minister that was 1918-1922.  Are they ever going to get the hint?…

I digress, again.

The argument now seems to rage between two distinct sides, Keynesian economics or the opposite to that which I guess would be a total laissez-faire policy (Government spending, the ’spend and borrow’ approach or ’sit back and do nothing’, laissez-faire meaning minimal government intervention).  The Lib Dems and Labour seem to find common ground with a Keynesian approach by throwing money at the situation and hoping that this will kick start some sort of economic stimulation.  The Tories on the other hand believe that rather then pump money in to the system but instead cut taxes which will give people more money in their pocket for them to then spend.

Although I see myself as a liberal minded sort of guy, I am inclined to agree with the Tories but one must amalgamate this with a Keynesian approach to personal finance.  Easier said then done, I know, but ultimately we must not cut our spending by anymore then we have already done.
It is up to us to keep spending our money, if not large sums (I doubt many people have large sums anymore) then little and often.  It is up to our skill at budgeting our own money and managing our personal debts, that will keep the economy going in my opinion.  And here is where it starts.

The way to look at it is this.  Money we spend in our pockets goes circulates and will eventually end up in a bank.  My shopping this morning cost a little over £40 which will keep us going for about a week.  If you look at the profit path of that figure it goes to many different places.  First off it goes to Sainsburys who then put it in a bank, it then goes off to the producers who then put it in their banks and then the assistant who served me, who’ll then put it in her bank and so on and so on.  By spending less on small things, we only serve to shrink the economy which means our recession deepens.
So long as the banks have more money, they will then feel more confident in lending and as a result the economy will start to expand and the recession will end.

In my opinion, Northern Rock should not have been given money through the top end so to speak, but this should have been given to each customer as a savings account for them to either spend it or either save it with a lucrative rate of interest with a guranteed return in the first year.  Then likewise for the other banks, everyone should have been given lump sum which would have then helped stimulate the economy from the bottom up.
So, will we get out of the recession?  The quicker politicians realise that throwing money at things doesn’t work, the sooner we will sort ourselves out.  Alistair Darling was rubbing his hands with glee when he announced this week he’d be giving a pre-budget speech which would be a further extension to the misery that we are already experiencing.  I expect he has trimmed his eyebrows especially for the occasion.

I can imagine most of us are ‘feeling the squeeze’ or ‘digging deep’ or any other sort of over used cliche to avoid actually saying, ‘we are all poor’ without saying it.  So here are a few good links to personal finance websites.  The most important thing is this, do not bury your head and ignore it, because that will make it alot worse.  If you have problems then please for the love of everything that is good in the world, talk to someone about it.
If things go from bad to worse to f*£$ing awful then talk to Payplan.  Unison (my Union with which I am a Health and Safety Rep) Welfare representatives recommend this as they are free and they’re not out to make profit as they are funded from donations from the credit industry.  Where you might not have got to that stage yet you can find great money saving tips from the GetRichSlowly blog, also have a look at this post from SitePoint about how to actually make money on the internet (doesn’t involve pyramid schemes, these are legitamate ways of making extra cash).  A good way of analysing your spending and is maybe joining a money management website.  There are many out there, but beware a lot of them are based in the US so they’ll be bias towards US dollars etc.  However, a good website to look at is Wesabe as it shows in a visual graph your spending habits and can show you exactly what is coming out and going in.  Don’t forget to Google ‘Money Saving Tips as well.

It’s poker time..

Well I thought it was last night, but according to my beloved I don’t play ‘real poker’.  We saw a Friends episode last night in which the girls are taught poker by the guys (really old episode) and they keep losing eventually Rachel beating Ross in a final showdown.

According to power that is, Holdem isn’t proper poker.  Stud Hi/Lo is, or any other sort of draw poker.

Well I stand corrected obviously.

So when I said, “I’ll teach you how to play poker” I didn’t realise quite how complicated it was and made a mess of it, especially after I insisted the cat play too.  So after messing up the blinds, we spent most of the time trying to stop Nieztche from eating the matches which we were using as chips and me, umming and muttering.    The end result was that Laura was more confused as she expected me to teach her draw poker rather then holdem, I was annoyed as I cocked it up, and the cat had licked all her matches which meant they were wet and unusable.

My method behind my madness was that I could at least have a go at playing poker in real life, rather then online.  Yeah, online is great fun but there is something missing, as in, other people.  Online poker is quite a solitary pastime.  So if you’re having a house game or anything like that, then don’t forget to invite me.  Does that sound desparate?  I hope not.

Sore

My head is sore. I guess as the skin calms down the staples are aggrevating the tender skin underneath, it hurts but that is what painkillers are for

There is an increasing realisation that we are going to be running out of money if we don’t do something soon.  It’s strange that you can waddle through life without thinking that the ‘credit crunch’ is going to have an effect on you, and then you suddenly realise that prices are going up and interest rates are also going up.  We had a generally productive meeting with the housing association cheeses last night who said they would make us an offer in regards to what we owed them in rent, and then we would have to work out what we could comfortably afford to repay.  That’s great, but we need to repay it by next year before our fixed rate runs out and we end up paying something ridiculous each month.

So, in a bid to increase the amount that we get in each month, I am going to look for another job or a second part time job.  Crap eh?  But then the bills have to be paid and we have to survive one way or another.  It kind of craps on the bizarre dreams that I had of being about to play professional poker, become a bestselling writer/poet, and publish a religous text all by the time I am thirty, but then I guess I can dream.

In trying to work out what I want to do, I have so far got as far as this.

1. Not in an office
2. Not working 9 to 5
3. No life or death decisions
4. No specialist qualifications needed prior to the job.
5. With a car, or a laptop, or both. But not selling things.

So on that, I can either be some sort of travelling circus charging people to look at my messed up head, or I can become a wrangler of some sort.  Chicken wrangler sounds awesome.

I have been classified!

Chris Gower’s Dewey Decimal Section:
928 (Optional number)
Chris Gower = 3889975358 = 388+997+535+8 = 1928

Class:
900 History & Geography

Contains:
Travel, biographies, ancient history, and histories of continents.

What it says about you:
You’re connected to your past and value the things that have happened to you. You’ve had some conflicted times in your life, but they’ve brought you to where you are today and you don’t ignore it.

Find your Dewey Decimal Section at Spacefem.com