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Posts from the ‘Lifestyle’ Category

6
Jul
airplane

Place your dignity in a clear plastic bag

Coming back to Jersey from England last week I came to the conclusion that flying is not exactly the most dignified mode of transport any more.

In its heydey – the era of Alan Whicker and the jet set – flying was all champagne at your seat and comfort first. Read moreRead more

11
Mar
glasses

Choosing new glasses is all about instinct

From a very young age I’ve been getting a new pair of glasses about once every two years – I’ve tried contact lenses a couple of times but was never happy with them.

I know exactly where I am with glasses, I know where I stand with glasses and to be honest I just feel really weird when I’m not wearing them – they are part of my identity.

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8
Jan

A night stuck in the North Terminal

The following article was written over three days in the departures hall, past security in departures and back at my parents.

The British love the weather, especially when we get a chance to complain about it. And in fairness to us Brits we do actually get ‘weather’.

By this I mean a variation – snow, rain, wind, sun – and that’s just one Thursday in October.

But the fun, friendly ribbing we give the weather falls completely by the wayside when it turns nasty.

When, after a week away on the DAY you’re due to fly home you wake up in the morning to the worst snowfall in 30 years.

When you wake up, get dressed, get the cases ready to go, and leave the house to 10cm of snow – I sank in the stuff.

We complain about the rain – flooding, damage etc. We complain about the heat – burning, sunstroke etc.

100_0496But the one thing that makes the British wake up and complain the most is the white stuff that causes a whole national transportation system to roll over and scream ‘leave me alone, I’m going back to bed’.

Snow is a curse to the British – anyone planning to go anyway on a day that heavy snowfall is predicted would stand a better chance of recontruction a scale model of the Eiffel Tower out of mechano – unless James May beat you to it.

And that brings us on to the night in the Departures Hall – boarding passes in hand but unable to go through security or check baggage.

We got to Gatwick Airport on 6 January for our flight to England at 10am – it was touch and go whether we would make it or not in the first place.

We couldn’t get a large cab out that would take us all the way to the airport so we needed to a smaller one, and my dad to take us to the train station;

This wouldn’t normally be an issue but when you’re treking out in 10cm of snow it becomes a little bit more difficult.

When we finally get to the airports South Terminal we need to make our way to the North Terminal with five bags, a pushchair and three kids by shuttle bus.

Then we find out our flights been cancelled – the queuing begins.

I got my wife, the kids and the bags all sorted on one of the VERY few seats left and went up stairs to wait inline at the British Airways ticket desk to change our flight for hte next available one.

That, unfortunately wasn’t until the next morning at 8.30am but I didn’t find that out until I’d been standing in a line for 7 and a half hours.

That wasn’t a mistype – I said to my wife “I’ll go and queue up and should be back in a couple of hours” thinking I was exaggerating - I wasn’t.

I waited in that line for just over seven and a half hours – and that was just to re-book my cancelled flight for one the next morning.

A night, a horrible night in the airport later and we finally get through to departures at 7.00 only to find further delays.

I have a feeling this was caused in part by backlogs from a day without any planes leaving, in part because there is still heavy snow on the ground and in a very big part because Jersey Airport was closed until 9am.

And those damn safety announcements – it is 10pm, there are hardly any people travelling tonight and hundreds sleeping in the airport.

Yet they still feel the need to put out LOUD safety announcements about the excalators every ten minutes.

They give you just enough time to start drifting off and then a mans voice booms over the tannoy about not taking suitcases up the bloody escalator.

With every flight we booked on to being cancelled and only able to get on the waiting list for the final flight likely to leave for Jersey – we decided go back to my parents.

Not wanting to face yet another night at Gatwick airport we braved the snow and got a train back to St Albans.

Then there was the hunt for a big enough Taxi prepared to take us all and to take on the heavy snow.

Still, you don’t realise how wonderful a comfortable bed is until you get to lie down in it and fall asleep.

The one thing I will say – despite all the queueing, announcements and delays – all credit to BA staff for being considerate, smiling and unbelievably helpful.

And just one final rant – couldn’t Gatwick at least get ONE of the five wifi providers to make it free for the day where hundreds were trapped overnight?

And, isn’t it about time airports started increasing the number of plug sockets? I’m sat on a freezing cold floor writing this plugged into a slightly dodgy looking socket in a pillar with another person.

EVERY available socket is now full in the North Terminal – how about offering a row of them under seats or something?

In fact here’s an idea – how about a geek zone – I’ll pay you £5 an hour to give me a comfortable seating area, a couple of plug sockets (who only has one device to charge up) and high speed wifi.

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21
Aug

A random stream of consciousness

I’ve been blogging for six years now and in that time I’ve tried my best to write something at least reasonably informative.

With this new template it puts a big image at the top, I have some pretty cool pictures I’ve taken of funfair lights – so I’ve decided to write a ‘random stream of consciousness‘ blog post.

Basically after this paragraph what I write will just be random words partly from my sub-conscious and partly just from the mechanical typing of my fingers being left to get on with it while my brain disengages.

Walking tours of strange houses, a town and a goat, the river meanders long beyond what’s often known.

Girls cry and boys laugh as rabbits get shot and children often think of things that cause distress.

But lest not you wonder why the children care for nowt, as tomorrow brings the wonder of a susauge and gout.

The lights are bright as they shine in the sky, as they spin around and around on a pole up, down, high and high.

Lifting up to reach the starry hights of the day, the clouds are looking bright and shiny hiding in their way. Watch it cloud the plane is coming to break you apart – but you win you bold bold cloud as the plane just fly’s on through.

Enough of this nonsense, bring it to an end, write something sensible next time you fool.

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27
Jul

Something to help me decide…

I’m a big book fan, I love reading and I love the feel of books, the sensation of the paper turning in your hands, the spine cracking as you get immersed in the story – just the tactile response you get when holding the few hundred pages, tightly bound in your hands.

I probably read somewhere around four books on a good week and two on an average week – double that if you include audiobooks.

I’ve tried reading books on a computer, I’ve tried reading books on a PDA and I’ve even played with ‘eBook readers’ but none of it comes close to the sensation and immersion of reading an actual book made of paper and ink.

My boss once said to me: “In a world where everything is going computerised, you being a massive tech head but still loving books leaves me feeling a lot more confident for the rest of us.”

Don’t get me wrong though – I’m not completely against eBook readers or reading on a Smartphone. There is something to be said for not having to cut down six trees so I can read a story, there is more to be said for the ease of holding a small Smartphone (hand sized) compared to a slightly larger than hand sized paperback.

Harry Turtledove at Worldcon 2005 in Glasgow, ...
Image via Wikipedia

Then there is the capacity – for something half the size of that same paperback book I could carry hundreds of books around with me, and in the case of the Kindle – get any book at any time on a whim.

But I still like a book, I know I’ve killed six trees and am probably personally responsible for sinking a small island somewhere – but it is just nicer to hold, a better experience and the batteries won’t die on me half way to work.

My comprimise is that I read some of my books in Audibook form – no paper, no ink – just someone talking into a microphone for a couple of days, a decent set of earphones (never underestimate the importance of a decent pair of earphones) and a device capable of playing it (lets be honest here – for most people it will be an iPod of some kind).

But this post really isn’t about my love of killing trees because of a desire to hold on to an ancient method of passing on stories – no its actually about finding those stories.

I’ve already talked about my love of books, my thirst for stories – but I tend to get stuck in a rut of reading the same authors or books based on the same television programme.

I’ve got dozens of Doctor Who books, more Torchwood books, I’ve got Sarah-Jane Adventure books, Stargate books and even the odd Star Trek book – they make me feel safe, I know the characters, I don’t NEED to get to know any new ones.

But I WANT to get to know new characters. The problem I’ve got is that I have fairly limited tastes – I cross genres all the time but I like to be challenged, I like to feel suspense throughout (not guessing in the first chapter what the ‘big reveal’ is going to be.

Cover of
Cover of A Thousand Suns

So I tend to stick to the same book – I will occasionally buy a book from a charity shop, read the first couple of chapters and then either give it back to the charity shop – or get my hands on EVERY book by the same author.

I did that recently with Alex Scarrow – I found A Thousand Suns in a charity shop, read it by the next day, left it on a bus with a note (I’ll explain in a minute) and then went out hunting for the rest of his books.

So far I’ve found Last Light, which I’ve just started and will look for the rest when I’ve finished that. I’ve also got a book by  James Rollins for when I’ve finished the Scarrow later this week – before that my obsession was with Harry Turtledove.

I’ve got half a dozen Rollins to work through, half a dozen Doctor Who and Torchwood books, a couple of Turtledoves and two Scarrows – after that I’m left on the hunt – I’ve been through Fry’s, I’ve finished Clarkson, Hammond and May (plus I’m really on the hunt for STORIES and not columns).

So what I really need right now is a website that has a number of forms, I fill out those forms/answer the questions, and it gives me a list of authors I should read – I can then work my way through them.

It could be a social service as well – so people can comment/tag books to help the forms work better – just as long as I get my author list at the end I don’t care – as long as it isn’t GENRE based as that is normally bollocks.

With the exception of Alt/History – that’s a genre where I’ll give almost any author ago as long as it isn’t TOO bizzare.

So – ideas? Do you know of a website that does the above? If not any suggestions for books I should read? Maybe I should got and build it myself – but that would rely on tagging thousands of books to get the right answers – maybe a mashup involving Amazon could be the answer to that problem – coupled with a social media element – a new Twitter game?

Oh and the bus thing? Basically when I’ve read a book I write a note in the front cover (without my name) that basically says ‘I enjoyed this book, hope you will to’ and then leave it somewhere – usually a bus seat.

The hope is that somewhere else will find it, enjoy the story and possibly even find a brand new author they wouldn’t have considered otherwise – and it helps cut down on the number of dead trees at the same time.

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19
Jul

What to do with books you’ve read?

What do you do with books after you’ve read them? Collect them on a shelf? Sell them to the highest bidder? Give them to a carity shop? Keep them in a box for future use? Or just hope they’ll go away?

We have a big bookshelf in our living room where we keep a selection of our favourite, or unread books – most of these books belong to my wife and re-afirm the ‘housewife’ stereotype. The bookshelf has five shelves, the first three are my wifes, the fourth is my babies and the bottom one belongs to me.

The top shelf is books about children and healthcare, things you apparently ‘need’ to know to bring up children. These sort of books used to fill up three shelves until we had our second child, then it was two shelves.

Now we have our third it is just half of the top shelf with the other half filled with bits and bobs we need to keep out of the children’s reach.

kailenbooks

Kailen poinnting to his books

In case you were wondering – the two older children have their books on a bookshelf in their bedrooms – we keep the toddlers (mainly touch and feel) books in the living room because he likes to help himself to them throughout the day.

The next two shelves are all cookery books and my wife tries to argue that these are there for both of us to use. But as my cookery involves throwing everything in and hoping for the best (including my pizza dough technique) I’d say they’re hers.

Anyway back the point, or at least the debate I was trying to have with myself in blog form – my shelf.

As well as those three shelves of books my wife also has about eight large banana boxes of books somewhere in the back of the garage come storeroom – she takes the ‘store for later’ option with the odd ‘give it to a charity shop’ when I push her.

I have all my books on that one shelf at the bottom of the living room bookshelf. That isn’t because I don’t have very many books – over time I’ve had as many boxes of books as my wife – but I get rid of them when I’m finished with them.

But my most recent book clear out has left me in a little bit of a dilema over what to do with the books.

Normally I read a book and then dispose of it – sometimes that involved giving it to a charity shop, sometimes I give to family or friends and occasionally, when it is a more unusual (or at least less well known) book I’ll leave it in a hotel room, on a park bench or even on the bus for other people to discover.

I put the question in the title out on Twitter and asked my tweeterers what they do with books when they’ve finished. Two responses at the time of writing this said:

squawkbox@upyourego Pass them onto friends/family… Once they have read them, then they can deal with disposal!

spicysaurus@upyourego Do you have Half Price Books there? That’s where my unwanted books go. I do keep and reread many of them, though.

However, the books I’ve just got round to sorting through are ones I’ve been hoping to ‘collect’ and so didn’t want to get rid – but I came to the conclusion that I need the bookshelf space for what is an increasing number of books and less time to read.

My bookshelf

My bookshelf

I’m talking about my Doctor Who books.

I’m a geek and one of the ways you can identify my geekyness is my obsession with ‘completing’ collections. I have every vanilla Doctor Who DVD, every episode of Yes, Minister and dozens of other TV series – including Red Dwarf, Bottom, The Young Ones and Fawlty Towers.

And I’ve tried to apply the same obsession to the Doctor Who and Torchwood books – at one point or another I have owned them all. But they are a lot bigger than the DVDs and aren’t as re-usable – you really wouldn’t want to read it more than once in a couple of years.

So I’ve read it and passed it on in one of the ways I mentioned above. But now I’ve got two children reading and one obsessed with books. Both the older children love Doctor Who (although they’re not quiet up to reading the DW books yet) and my eldest loves the Sarah Jane Adventures books.

In a couple of years, possibly even less at the rate she seems to get through books, my eldest will be up to and interested in reading the Doctor Who books and a couple of years after that my middle child will be looking towards them as well.

So I’m now left with a) a slightly guilty feeling at getting rid of all those Doctor Who books over the last few years and b) wondering what to do with the ones I’ve got now that I’ve read – or at least heard in Audiobook form.

And that’s another thing – yes I might have listened to it in audiobook form but what have I missed by not reading it and capturing the imagery for myself? Will I want to read it myself in addition to the audiobook or will the magic have gone by the time I get around to it?

I’ve decided to hang on to the books for now and just put them in the garage in a box – if my wife can get away with it then so can I. Although if I could convince her to give me another shelf – they would look pretty cool on display.

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10
Jun

Please reply in English next time

Earlier this year I must have e-mailed the Department for Culture, Media and Sport – or at least filled out a form, petition or wrote something somewhere.

What I sent was obviously something to do with children’s television and the state of it in the UK – or at least the lack of homegrown children’s tv outside of the BBC.

Below is the response I just received – although it doesn’t really give me any clue to what I may, or may not have asked them in the original e-mail/form/petition…

See if you can make any sense of it – but from now on – please reply in English! Or if you can’t manage full on plain English – how about something that’s at least understandable to non-political normal human beings.

Thank you for your e-mail of May 2009 regarding the level of output for Children’s television programmes.

In our interim report, published on 29 January, we identified children’s content for all ages, but especially for the over 10s, as one of the priorities to be addressed by the new framework for public service content that is being designed. This would include content both transmitted on television and on new media platforms.

This approach was supported by the evidence set out in Ofcom’s statement on public service broadcasting, “Putting Viewers First”, published on 21 January, which reaffirmed their view, first set out in 2007 in their report into the children’s TV sector, that there was a market failure, especially for older teenagers and young adults, which would need to be addressed.

We recognise that this is a key area of concern for both parliamentarians and stakeholder and we will be outlining our proposed approach to this problem in the final Digital Britain report, which is due to be published shortly.

I hope this information helps

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3
Jan

What’s happening to me?

When I was a teenager at school I was (and there really is no other way of saying this) a little git.

Homer at School

I was cheeky, I talked back to the teachers and would refuse to do things I didn’t like the idea of. I was suspended from lessons (but never school) several times – usually for refusing to go to those “pointless” detentions.

The main problem I had with school was that I just didn’t see the point in it. I was constantly being asked to do things I didn’t really see the point in and it didn’t help that the teachers got annoyed with me when I asked them to justify their reasons for asking me to do it.

Math - Teacher Education - 3D Shapes
Image by Old Shoe Woman via Flickr

I’ve always had something of a problem with authority and authority figures – especially being asked to do things I’m not convinced are of any real benefit to me.

I’m still a little bit like that but as I get older and (painfully) rapidly closer to the big 3 0 I can’t help but see things from the teachers point of view.

I now have two children in school – one in reception (foundation stage) and the other in year three (key stage two).

When my children were young, before they started school I was adamant I wouldn’t make them do homework – that, if they ever got a lot I would stand up for them and tell the teacher I disagree with homework and demand they don’t give my children any.

But  age, maturity – whatever you want to call it has mellowed me and actually I can see the point of homework – it also helps that my daughter (son is too young for homework at the moment) actually really enjoys it.

In fact some of the homework my daughter gets can be a lot of fun – I oft times enjoy making boats, creating simple animations, teaching her how to write articles and stories etc…

In fact – getting involved in parents evenings, school events and activities as well as helping my daughter with her homework and reading through some of her school work at the end of time has really made me wish I worked harder while I was at school.

I’ve decided that blogging for me is the chance to do those – home time – reports (remember I write for a living) that I never bothered with while I was in full time education.

Photo credit: Classroom Chairs (seen on homepage) by James Sarmiento – Creative Commons via Flickr.

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9
Sep

Who am I?

Flag

A friend asked me how I would rank the places and things that impact my identity the other day.

The concept behind it was to rank the things that make me who I am in order – starting with national identity and then gradually working down the list.

So the first thing on the list for me, as a British citizen, would be … well British but the concept then allows for anything to be put in the order of identity after that.

So it could be Geek, Musician, Drummer or even English, Magician or Lunatic. I’ve personally gone for geek as, in terms of personality I think of myself as a geek before I think of myself as English (even though I was born in England and spent the first 18 years of my life there).

Anyway, I’ve been thinking long and hard about it and this is the list I’ve been able to come up with so far – it may change depending on my mood.

  • Father
  • British
  • Geek
  • English
  • Journalist
  • BBC
  • Jersey
  • Blogger
  • New Media/Web
  • Drummer
  • Hemel Hempstead

I don’t actually factor European in there at all – anywhere – mainly because (and don’t get me wrong I like the European idea) I don’t feel European or any connection with the continental idea of Europe.

When I think of Europe I get all stereotypical and imagine old French philosophers sitting at a cafe smoking and debating the world. I’ve never lived in France and only visited once and I’ve visited the rest of Europe (with the exception of Portugal) even less.

So my knowledge, understanding and relationship to Europe is limit to two week holidays in Portugal, having a cousin from Germany and a day trip to France in Primary School.

Anyway – I did toy with the idea of showing this list in other ways but in the end a good old fashioned list was the best way of displaying a few items.

What defines you? My wife suggested that I didn’t need to make a list as the tag cloud pretty much defines me already, that what I wrote about on my blog was a measure of who I am already – but to me that’s more a measure of what I like than who I am.

Here is the tag cloud as of now:

apple Arts audio BBC BBC iPlayer blog blogging british channel4 comedy Design download Entertainment facebook google interface internet iplayer ipod itunes itv James May Jeremy Clarkson jeremyclarkson jersey Last.fm Media mobile Music newmedia News Podcast Radio stig Technology Television top gear topgear torchwood tv UK United Kingdom Video writing youtube

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