#124 on feeling like george w bush

I don't recall the details precisely but in a nutshell big george stood on the deck of an aircraft carrier soon after the invasion of Iraq and proudly announced the war was over.

I heard he regretted it in a leaving the presidency interview. the comment not the war but that's another story.

Anyway assuming for a moment that it was his idea to say it and that he really meant it I kinda know how he feels.

Anyone who knows me well will know something of my own personal war I've been fighting over the past few months - not in the middle east, no closer to home in my own head. And I'm feeling that I might just have won...

...but a nagging doubt keeps me wondering if I, like George, am being a little premature.

Probably, but then again, by telling all you lovely hob blogglings I might have fought and won one more battle in my own personal war.

those of you who have held me up these past few months - family, old job, new job, church, the greenbelt set et al - I could not have done it without you. But most of all my heart goes out A. nuff sed.

#123 on post greenbelt blues

i don't have the post-greenbelt blues.

not yet.

but i don't think i'm going to get them either.

greenbelt was very good for me this year.  i didn't hear life changing speakers.  i didn't hear life changing bands.  i didn't see life changing art.

but i did see some dear friends.  i did hear some new music.  and i did start to think about life in a new way.

that's what greenbelt has done to me or for me depending on your perspective.

so i haven't placed myself on to a self imposed pedastool to be knocked off at a later date to be arranged with fate and destiny.  instead i've got a clearer sense of who i am (and who i'm not) and where i fit (and where i don't) than i have in an awful long time.

(i'm crying now.)

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#122 on new verbs

I am not an old reactionary when it comes to language.  I know it is an organic thing with new words and meanings and connotations coming on all the time but, just like misplaced or missing apostrophes, I do get bugged when new verbs turn up without warning.

For example, who decided that tourists would 'do' places when they travelled abroad?  Personally I cannot bear it when people tell me the 'did' the Sistene Chapel after a summer holiday in Rome. 

And now the BBC have got in on the act.  Since when did 'medal' become a verb?  Rebecca Adlington has medalled twice and so have 4 coxless men (sorry a pun not to be missed) amongst others.

It just worries me that we are simply being lazy with language.  Yes I know the point of language is to communicate meaning as quickly and efficiently as possible but are heading towards the newspeak of 1984?

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#121 on lost and found

You may have noticed a small level of activity on the web 2.0 front as I slowly attempt to rebuild my social life after a year of, well there's no easy way to describe it really, so let us say, shit.

Anyway, I don't want to talk about that now.  What I wanted to say is that part of my getting life back in order is that I've been sorting through our CD collection and come across this excellent disk - The Essential Fripp & Eno.  It's a great listen and I really like it but I must confess that I don't believe it actually belongs to me.  So if you lent it to me and have been cursing me behind my back for ages because I haven't returned it please let me know.

Until then i shall continue to listen to it and enjoy.

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#120 on Leoš Janáček

I first came across Janacek when I saw The Royal Opera House production of Cunning Little Vixen years ago and so I have been quietly looking forward to my birthday treat for some time.  For tonight I went with Andrea to the Janacek Prom down at Albert.

Time too short and words too few to describe the experience suffice it to say that it was an evening of immense pleasure and intrigue.  His music has so many facets that I don't think I shall ever tire of it.

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#119 on men's mags

current mood - tired (what else)
current music - from your favourite sky by i am kloot

the other day when travelling by tube i picked up one of the millions of free papers discarded across the carriage. but instead of london lite or metro or whatever i found myself clutching shortlist - a free magazine for men.

i've never been taken by the likes of nuts and loaded. i'd be embarrassed to read them in public so i'd never bothered. having said that i do enjoy gadgets and am trying to staying in touch culture so i suppose i shouldn't have been surprised to find shortlist strangely engaging in a disengaged-pass-the-time-on-the-tube sort of way.

the main thing to report is the lack of t and a. if it had been packed with more tits than a spearmint rhino club i would have ditched it straight away - firstly because it would have been embarrassing (surely porn, however soft, should be viewed as a solo sport) and secondly linking to this is that i know what a lady's upper portions look like and have access to the real thing if you see what i mean. i thought these mags were packed with bikinis or not. but in fact there was probably more eye candy for gay men than straight.

there were lots of lists - hence the name. top 10 this and that. occasionally funny, occasionally thought provoking, occasionally badly researched but often interesting.

there was some journalism - articles worth reading, reviews of gadgets worth considering and news of current stuff in the arts. all pretty lightweight but all perfectly balanced for reading on the tube.

so all in all a good read on the tube. i will plan future tube excursions for thursdays or visit the website for top 10 things to read on the tube etc.

#118 on caleb's flickr set

current music - star mile by joshua radin
current mood - (on the way to being) drunk

you can find all the caleb pics here my dear hob blogglings

#117 on confusion

current mood - tired (still)
current music - real world by matchbox twenty

i'm confused about my phone contract.

my current deal is with talktalk. they've got me for a 18 month contract but i'm relatively pleased with the terms - calls and surf time and who cares. that's not the problem.

the problem is with bt. they regularly write to me and ask me politely to go back to them. eventually, with the aim of either negotiating a better deal and/or stopping the junk mail i rang them and asked them to buy me out of my talktalk contract. which they wouldn't. nor would they agree to stop sending junk mail. until i got cross.

then the phone started playing up. cutting off in the midst of conversations. so did the internet. so i rang talktalk and reported it and after being patronised about have i tried this and being threatened with a £150 bill if it's my fault, i got a fault report code and a promise of an engineer.

but that's not the reason why i'm confused.

today the engineer arrived. a bt engineer. who fixed the problem. perhaps i should have asked why a bt engineer should be fixing a phone line i pay talktalk but, on reflection, i'm glad i didn't.

the answer would have been more confusing than the ignorance. i've only got so much ram, you know what i mean. or as rob thomas was just singing, "I wish the real world, would just stop hassling me".

#116 on not being a geek

current mood - tired (it's a permanent state at present)
current music - my old man by ian dury and the blockheads

i don't have a beard. i don't have a degree in computer science. i know what it is to hold a woman. i own no cardigans. i have no imaginary friends.

but i do run linux on my computer and am proud of it. not just because it's better than windoze. not just because it's free. not just because it simply works in the way i want it to work (and let's face who of us needs to stray far beyond the word processing, web browsing, picture processing jukebox that we want our computers to be)

and as for apple... i tell you in years to come our grand children won't say to us 'grandpa, how come that microsoft were able to make us think that a computer would only work if we used their software and that it was so expensive and that it was basically crap although it tried its best to look good.' instead they'll say, 'grandpa, how did apple ever manage to convince you that they were the ethical alternative to microsoft.'

don't get me wrong, apple make fine products but by heck you have to pay for it. and if you don't like a program, itunes for example, well tough shit basically. the code is closed - as closed as the microsoft code. they make you do it their way or no way.

think open source.

take a look at linux.

you'll never look back.

find out what ubuntu means my dear hob bloglings and it'll all make sense. trust me.

#115 on new arrivals

current mood - tired
current music - precious by annie lennox

Introducing the latest addition to the Goddard Family...

Caleb Reuben Joel Goddard born Monday 31 March 2008 at 2:24am weighing in at 6lb 11oz. Mother and baby both beautiful and well.

Watch this space for flickr link for more photos.

#114 on white balance

current mood - tired
current music - 'out of the blue' by electric light orchestra

just got home from night school where i've been learning how to be a photographer. as opposed to learning how to use a digital camera. a subtle differentiation perhaps but i now have an appreciation for all the variables that affect the pictures that a camera takes; how to combine those variables and how to control those variables for the effect that i want to achieve.

tonight was white balance. in the workshop we fooled the camera into thinking that the light in the room was everything from direct sunlight to fluorescent lights (which ironically enough was exactly what the light in the room was). and the difference in colours recorded was stunning. so now i know why indoor images without a flash are so often yellow and orange tinted.

all in all it leads me to take better photos each time i whip the old D1x out of my bag, so to speak.

#113 on blogging and facebooking and flickring

current mood - sage or delusional
current music - wish you were here by pink floyd


are blogging and facebooking and flickring acts of procrastination or important acts of social networking?

i could have achieved so much more this week if i hadn't made a conscious decision to get my 'on line' life in order. but it was gained at the expense of my 'off line' life which is slowly sinking under all those jobs that there never seems time to do.

well it seems to me that if one keeps one's 'on line' life ticking over then the feel good factor that the experience generates stimulates one to get their 'off line' life sorted.

now that is either wisdom or self deception to the nth degree.

#112 on an hour at the british museum

current music - john butler trio - sunrise over sea
current mood - chuffed

Having said that I wanted to use my camera off of the programmed automatic 'run-home-to-mummy' mode, i decided to wander down to the british museum to take a few pot shots.

the great hall is a sight to behold - the classic pillars contrasting with a geometric sky. it was one thing to be there. it was something even more special to have an hour to indulge oneself in just looking and shooting.

i'm pleased with my results. no seriously i am. they come out pretty well - the only post shooting touching up i've done is to make the black and white seem a bit colder - the ambient lighting was really rather yellow, and to crop the images into trendy squares. no, the main reason i'm so chuffed is that i rejected only about 2 thirds of the shots. my normal ratio of keep to chuck is about 1 in ten so to get my ratio down to 1 in 3 is quite a step up as well.

anyway the flicker link is here so please take a look and tell me what you think.

#111 on my hobby

current music - live in buffulo (2004) by goo goo dolls
current mood - chipper

so my hobby of photography continues to go from strength to strength. having moved on from holding the camera the right way round to taking off the lens cap, i can now truthfully and proudly claim that i have read the manual, all 223 pages of it. obviously i have absolutely no bleedin' idea what any of it means but i'm working on that.

seriously though, i have just begun to take the camera off of the fully automatic mode - this is the run home to mummy mode, it sets up everything for you - i just need to point and shoot. now that's served me well so far. i was very pleased with my australia photos given that i'd only just got the camera but now the time has come to experiment a bit. so today i sped up the film and the exposure and then got n to leap off his trampoline and risk life and limb; a sacrifice worth making for his father's hobby, i think.

then i used gimp (no photoshop for this linux using suburban mediocrite) to isolate the image from the background and ... hey presto!

i've decided i've got enough half photos to slam a favourites collection on to flickr. as soon as i do i'll let you all know my dear hob-blogglings.

#110 on rites of passage

current music - live in buffulo (2004) by goo goo dolls
current mood - satisfied

we speak of rites of passage for our children. and rightly so. n passed an important threshold in his short life today when my hand released his bike saddle he pedalled from me before coming to a controlled, if a little undignified, stop. i remember my brother (and his pal) teaching me to ride a bike and how grown up and in control of my destiny i suddenly felt.

there are rights of passage for parents too. giving birth (a's bit), cutting the cord (my bit) and so on. they range from the formal to the religious but i also believe that they are also informal. you'll never know just how proud i felt as n wobbled off across the grass. it was a perfect metaphor for my job of preparing him for his send off into the big wide world out there.

way to go n. i love you.

#109 on do do da dun run, do do dun run

current music: surrender by chemical brothers
current mood: chafed and chuffed

it's not to find an image that best captures the dunwich dynamo but this one serves quite well when you realise that what you see is hobby cyclists like me asleep on the beach at dunwich in suffolk at 7am having just cycled 120 miles through the night. for fun.

and that's what i did this weekend. the boys were neatly packed off to nanny w, a packed herself off to scotland for a wedding and i packed myself off to hackney for an 8:30 start to the 2007 dunwich dynamo, or dun run as we cycling enthusiasts like to call it (feel fee to interchange 'geek' for 'enthusiast' if you wish.)

the dun run takes place each year on the saturday night/sunday morning in july closest to the full moon. i reckon there was about 500 of us that pitched up in a park in hackney to the bemusement of the locals and the happiness of the local publican before setting off through epping and loughton and into the suffolk country side. i'll not bore you with descriptions - basically because it was so bloody dark you couldn't see a thing. it pissed down pretty much all the way and, not putting too fine a point on it, i seriously thought i had hypothermia after getting back on my bike in the rain in my wet clothes after a rest stop in some village hall.

but the coldness passed, the sun came up at 5 and the rain stopped just as i arrived in dunwich. my brother in law was there just after to meet me and bring me home (thanks again t) and i was home by 10 in a kind of a dream like haze - partly brought on by the lack of sleep and partly brought on by the euphoria of having cycled for further than i have ever cycled before in one hit and through the night to boot.

120 miles, 10 1/2 hours. well dun me.

#108 on the end of the year

current music - surrender by chemical brothers
current mood - enthusiastic

i'm coming up to the end of the year.

no, do not adjust your watches or calendars. i've decided that each year should end on august 31 and the new one commence on september 1st.

why?

well for a start my work life dictates it. as you'll probably already be aware my dear hob-blogglings, i work in a school, so shifting to an academic year makes sense. you stagger to the end of one year in mid july, catch up on all those jobs at home you've been putting off for months and then start a new year fresh in september. yeah i know five and a half weeks holiday is a bummer but being a deputy head is a mucky old job and someone's got to do it.

next of all, my birthday falls in august (hint). so it kinda works to think of a new year starting when it acxtually does, if you see what i mean.

after that is greenbelt. it neatly falls at the end of my year and serves as a great party to round off all that hard work putting together the comedy and light entertainments strand of the programme. actually it's getting easier with each year - this year's greenbelt email box has only 700 odd emails in it. last year it easily surpassed 800 and the year before it had more than 900.

i've managed to avoid tax and mot on the car (accidently) to get them due in august and another of my myriad jobs to do each summer is to overhaul the finances - joint account and all that.

and lastly, i think the december 31st new year's eve is crap. in a scene out of grumpy old men (and women) we stayed in last year, our friends pleaded poorly kids and being knacklered (same as us) and pulled out and instead we watched an ealing comedy in the company of a bottle of baileys before the bbc showed us footage of a sports reporter and a weather girl falling over on the ice at somerset house and then an opera singer i had never heard of (A had but then again she'd never heard of nirvana until i played her both versions of 'smells like teen spirit' one by nirvana and the other by the ukelele orchestra of great britain) knocked out some aria or other and another reporter kept asking people in the crowds why they had come (answer: because it's new year's eve) and then the fireworks started and went on and on and on and then we polished off the baileys and hit the sack.

so to anyone reading this blog consider yourself invited to my end of year party. it's to celebrate the ending of my 39th year and the beginning of my 40th. the date is saturday 1st september and if you reply to this post i'll let you know all the details.

#107 on timetables

current music - billericay dickie by ian dury and the blockheads
current mood - amused (you'll never hear any better double entendres)

do you remember filling in your timetable at school and, if you are a girl, colouring it in? do you remember working out where the hell you were meant to be going, who the hell you were meant to be taught by and, if you ever got there, what the hell you were supposed to learn?

takes you back huh?

well i've spent nearly all day sorting out a whole school's timetables in preparation for the new term in september when all the kids will come back to school wondering what the hell...

now call me a sad arse (and many do) but i've had a great day filling in the boxes, working out how to avoid clashes and generally, well generally doing timetables.

it's been a while since i had a really good day. and today was a really good day.

#106 on Why Linux is cool and I'm not a geek

Lots of people think Microsoft is bad. Bad software, bad ethics. I'm one of them.

Some people think Apple is the ethical alternative to Microsoft. I'm not one of them. Ask yourself if DRM is a good thing (it's the thing that stops you using your music downloaded from itunes etc on your ipod and your computer and to burn it to disc etc.) Ask yourself if the source code for OSX is open or hidden. Ask yourself who owns over 40% of Apple.

Some people think Linux is for geeks who spend longer trying to get it to work than actually using it. I'm not one of them. I'm not a geek (though you'll never know how hard i've tried to be.) Linux works straight out of the box. It plays DVDs without a fuss. It allows me to use my ipod like any other media player. It allows me to install any programs i like and then change them to suit my needs. It does not require any antivirus software. And it is completely free of charge. Not a penny.

Oh but it's not compatible with Microsoft Office. Oh but it is. Oh but it's not compatible with Windows or Apple networks. Oh but it is. Oh but it's not compatible with Windows or Apple software. Oh but it is (though why would you want it to be?)

I've led more people to Linux than I have to Jesus. Come now while we sing....

...www.linuxmint.com

#105 on relative speed

current mood - happy
current music - tour de france podcast

now i'm not the fasted guy on two wheels i accept that. but when i put my foot down on the way to work i can average 24 kph - that's 15 mph in old money. i can go down the hill at common road at 55 kph and have gone faster down other hills.

so when i saw the winner of the prologue, fabian cancellara, do the course at an average 53 kph i find myself in awe especially as he's got another 2300 km to go including the alps and the pyrenees thrown in for good measure.

i truly am in awe. but i least i get to work quicker than the cars.