ipad

i have been looking at what apple have done in the past with the release of new products and it dos not look good.

What I mean is that when the ipod came out e.g gen 1 it had some shortcomings and the software had stuff missing, which in hindsight should have been there from the very start, even the Gen 2 and 3 devices had stuff missing, but by gen 4 its good.

Now I own and ipod touch, and I use it very heavily every day, I keep running out of storage on it, is a 32GB device, I keep finding that I run out of app space even when I have lots of storage space for the programmes, I have seen and used a gen 1 touch and its not very good and is underpowered and stuff that would drive me nuts.

So with all that it stands to reason that Apple will do it again with the ipad, so I am going to wait for the gen 2 ipad which I am told will be out at Xmas 2010, so not long to wait.

Updates

As I think I sad in an earlier blog, I have just started to do some work on the new James Follett website, pretty much in the same lines as the Dirk Maggs one, well why not it all seems to work okay and once everything is in the updating of the website is to tell the truth really really very easy and that's one of the main things that I want to gain from all of this updating stuff.

I must admit that the James Follett site is smaller I think, in fact I'm not to sure how they compare size wise. I suspect that over the next few weeks it's something that I will find out from first hand experience.

So then, on the James Follett side of things the database is set up and the core elements that go to make up the website are now all in place, all and I say this lightly all I now have to do is get the content transferred into the new website. This is a task that has to be done manually which is a pain but there dose not seem to be any other way of getting the job done, so manual it is.

I have so far only put the very first page up, mainly to see if it all works and all that sort of stuff that you do when trying out new stuff, it all appears to be working how I would expect it to which is good.

So I now have the long task of converting it to the new format. I don't know if I should tell James or not, as I am not sure if he is that interested in his unofficial website these days.

I will set up the domain so that when complete it points at the new website, and when I have checked that it all works I will delete the old website.

If by any chance James does realise any new material it will be very easy to update and also as an added benefit he could also with the right permissions edit the site, or at least correct it or even add missing information to it.

So lots to do.

Sky

Looks today as if we are going to have a cold but bright blue sky day, which is nice, as its been just a while since we had that sort of things.

Updates

I have started to create the new James Follett website.

229 of 365 - Watch out! It's Lady No Pupil and she's come to eat you alive!

229 of 365 - Watch out! It's Lady No Pupil and she's come to eat you alive!, originally uploaded by elsvo.

Just found this images on the old flickr pages, like you do. What I like about this images is the eyes, I have been told that the eyes are a portal into the soul, if that's true then this is I think an images that tells that in spades.

Reading

I have just finished reading a book which when it was first out in hardback caused a bit of a storm, well for a few days back in 2009.

You will see what all the fuss is about as soon as you see the books name, but just to prolong things a bit longer, I begin to wonder what all the fuss was about as 90 percent of what the author says is well to be simple and straight forward.

I enjoyed the book and there where parts of it that where presented in a way that I had not seen before.

The book I think losses a bit in that not enough examples of the current state of things is given and then saying where he thinks they are going to go. Don't get me wrong the book is okay its just that I think you need to know where you are before you can say where you could or might go.

Anyway it did entertain me and at the of the day that's all that matters for me.

So after all that the name of the book is "Love & Sex with Robots" by David Levy

Updates

The Dirk Maggs website is a bit nearer to being completed as I want it.

I am now working on the odds section, and so far it has some 16 pages, which is a bit of a surprise, I hope to have it all done soon. One thing that I have done is drop pages that are no longer needed as this new website works in a very different way to the old, so much so that features that the old did not have and so had to have pages created by hand to give the feature are now created or done automatically by the new site software, neat!

I think that a another couple of weeks will do it.

The only thing that I will I suppose have to work out in the near future is how to update the software that runs the cms, and do it in such a way that it is safe.

The other thing that I will also have to do will be to delete all the old pages on the website so only the new Dirk Maggs site remains.

Headphones

Finally got my headphones that Donna brought for me as a Valentines present!

The finally bit is that even though the delivery was supposed to be 24 hours DHL decided that not delivering them on Friday was a good reason to delver them on Monday so they had them Friday am till Monday am, not happy about that rather poor service, I expected better, and there does not appear to be a way of telling them what I think about their service.

Anyway talking about the new headphones is what this blog is supposed to be all about, and they are made by Sennheiser they are an upgrade of my existing headphones, they are noise reducing and they are model PXC300.

I must say that for me they work very well, and do exactly what the manufacture said they would do which is good, even though we got them in a sale they still cost over hundred pounds, but so far I would say they are worth the money. The sound they produce for me is good and the sound reduction technology works very well.

My ipod touch seems to like them and that's all that really matters at the end of the day. I have read else where that they are't as good as expected and that they don't cut out all the external noise, but that's where I think people have misunderstood what a noise reduction headphone is designed to do.

But me I like them and they do what I expected them to do, if I want hifi sound then I would have gone for closed ear type of headphone, and these are not that, so by their very design they can never be better than a closed ear design, but you have to ask yourself do you want to go around the streets looking like Mickey Mouse with big ears?

Updates

I am hoping that to day I can finish the layout changes on the Dirk Maggs website, and that after that has been done the site can be called done as far as this round of changes and updates to it goes.

I suspect that the next changes will be if I get new pictures of any of the voice actors that I haven't already got or if Dirk ever does another new radio production or and yes there are lots of or's in this sentence I get new information on any of the radio productions already featured.

Updates

So I have I think got most of the images in on the major pages of the Dirk Maggs website, which is good, I have decided at this time that the interlinking of pages on the website is not needed as I give every user of the website the chance to search the entire website for whatever they are looking for.

Saying that the number of users for the new Dirk Maggs website never hit more than 75-100 people a day so I suppose I am not going to upset many people by removing the links, and any way its my site and I can do whatever I want with it, and if removing stuff like interlinks makes my job easier for no real loss of usability then its a step that I am going to take.

Reading

I have just finished reading the very latest book by Robert Harris called Lustrum which as you may or may not know is book 2 in the Roman trilogy that he is writing. A the books chart the life of the real life figure of Cicero.

So far both the 1st book and this book have both been a good read, and I must admit I don't know where real life stops and the fiction begins, but checking real life with what he has written he dos not go to far from what happened all that time ago.

Part 3 will be out next year if Robert keeps to his publishing time-scale, which is good because I would love to see how he will bring it all to great conclusion.

Updates

Just do a bit more updating of the Dirk Maggs website, and even if I have to say it myself it's going well.

I think that in the next day or so I should have all the pages in all the pictures in. The only thing that will be left to do will be the interlinks within the website, which will take some time.

I also have an idea for the odd extra page here and there after that the only changes will be if new material turns up or a new production by Dirk appears.

Updates

I have made some more progress on the Dirk Maggs website, in that I think I have worked out how to get some of the tables to center up. Its a bit of a cheat in that all I do is make the table width bigger, and some how or other it center itself when being displayed, no I don't understand how it does it, but it appears to work, this means I now have to go through all 200 odd pages, as I did't keep a record of what pages were broken, oh well

Updates

Have some how found just a bit of time to do some more update to the Dirk Maggs website, I have added a few more images and also added some changes to the layout of a couple of the pages, so hopefully making them easier to read.

I still have a layout issue on some pages where for some reason or other the pictures in a frame will not center up in the page, why I just don't know.

So those pages will remain broken until I find a way of correcting what ever the fault is that breaks them.

Cold

So mister BBC weather man has just said that temperatures this week will be 5 centigrade lower than they should be.


I want spring, when is spring going happen.

Nothing

Funny how you can go from having lots to say to nothing, I suspect that I am in my nothing to say period!

Reading Now

I have just finished reading the latest Matthew Reilly book called "The Five Greatest Warriors" and I must admit that it was a great read and I felt that I had been entertained, which is what I want from most of the books that I read.

This book which I have to wait some 2 years for was worth the wait and completes the story which was started back in his earlier book called "The Six Sacred Stones" which I read back in 2006-7!, yes 2006-7 even I had to check the year that I read it.

Matthew writes books that are just all out thrillers with action and some very clever puzzles in them, they will never win awards for literature, but then I don't read that kind of book, I want to be entertained and to go with the help of the author into a movie that is better than Blue Ray and is more 3d than 3d and better sound than Dolby, and I think that Matthew is for me one of those authors who just does it for me, your mileage many vary.

So would I say to others read this book, yes if you like the kind of stories that Matthew writes.

Last Post

This is the last post for this month and all in all so of the projects that I wanted to work on have been worked on, which is good.

The websites that I have, so far only one of them which is the Dirk Maggs Productions website has been updated, work on it will take some months yet but I think there is light at the end of the tunnel as the saying goes.

Updates 7

Updates

I have managed to update the Dirk Maggs website for production year 2001 and 2003. For some reason that I have yet to work out the layout on pages that I am sure I had sorted out are now all wrong with all the headings all hard over to the left-hand side, why this is I just don't have a clue.

Any way these two years all the production pages where looking okay as of this post on my blog.

So that of course means that the next time that I go and have a look they will be broken again!

Moon

Just a note to me that the Moon looked real big on the horizon and the red "star" by it was Mars.

ipad

So the ipad is out, I don't know why but I wanted it to have more than they gave. By that I mean that as a version 1 device it has some failings that to me here in little old England are so obvious that you begin to wonder just what plant so of the folks in Apple are on.

I suppose will will never know what sort of discussions went to to decide what the machine should or should not have but the sad fact is that for what ever very good reasons, some of the stuff that they have left out are well to me just strange.

Take for instance multitasking, if I understand it right the new cpu that the ipad has, is more than capable of doing more than one task at the same time, the OS in the ipad can multi-task, in fact I think I have read somewhere that it does multi-task if you happen to be Apple and its your software running at the time.

So why does it not multi-task? there must be a reason, what it is I just don't have a clue.

The other thing that is not there is a forward facing camera, which would make the ipad just so much more usable, may be Apple don't want to sell too many devices or the cost of adding a camera broke the budget on the build cost.

Talking of build cost, I wonder just how much it does cost to make an ipad?

One thing that makes me really unhappy is that when I use my itouch ( which I do use very heavily, and have also run out of space on lots of times, its a 32G unit) is the number of website that don't work because I don't have flash on the itouch and I now see that for some reason Apple have still not got over there fears, worries about allowing it to work on the new ipad, why?

I am told by those in the know that the machine eg my touch is more than capable of running flash without any real problems.

So I have looked at other version 1 devices that Apple has done and have decided that a version 2 device is the better way to go.

So I have 12 more months to go before I will have to look at replacing my touch , I hope it lasts that long as the use it gets is stupid.

Reading

I have just finished reading the latest Peter James novel that has come out in paperback. Its called Dead Tomorrow and is the latest in the Roy Grace series, and I have to admit that it was a good read with lots going on, and I think this bit is important the characters in the novels do change and progress and the way they act to the world they are in also change.

I like the main character Roy Grace, not sure why? maybe because he is human he makes mistakes and is not flawed like so many police men in fiction you meet these days.

By that I mean you only have to look on telly what is coming out of the USA to see that all the policeman have something wrong with them, if its not that then they appear to have a budget so large that any new kit that that comes out that could be used to catch the bad guys is brought and suddenly every one knows how to use it perfectly.

What I like about Peter James is that in the story money or resources are tight and sometimes Roy Grace can't have the item or resource that he needs, but and this is a big but he finds another way to do what needs doing.

So this book is a good read, you do not need to have read the early books but you do get more from the book if you already know Roy Grace and his world.

I suppose that it will only be time that will tell when it gets to the small screen which I think would be a pity as this is a series that needs you the reader to get involved, a multicast radio series would I think be really good, but these days the money and the interest for such a thing just will not happen which is sad but that's how it is.

I suppose the only consolation to this is that Peter has written the new book in the series, I just wish he was just a bit like Terry Pratchett and published a book every 6 months, cause I need my Roy Grace fix, I want to know what is going to happen next.

Updates

The updates to the Dirk Maggs website are still going on, the only trouble is that for most users of the site you can't see any changes.

The other thing that I have also noticed is that the number of visits to the site has collapsed, where I used to have thousands I am now lucky if I have 20 or 30 a day. Which is a bit of a surprise as I am still very high up on Goggle when you do a search for Dirk Maggs.

I know that I still have the old Dirk Maggs site, but that is not getting any more hits than the new one, so I am not too sure just what is going on.

I also have the problem of working out just how to safely remove the old website without loosing the new one.

Blood

Today is the 1st time this year that I have given blood. Apart from the booking system not working how it should I have now given 114 units of blood.

To say I am proud of myself would be an understatement. As the worst thing to me about giving blood is when they pull the plasters off that hold the needle in your arm, it real really hurts and the number of hairs that get ripped out of my arm is well lots.

But its a small price to pay to help others.

Updates 6

on the Dirk Maggs productions website I have just sorted out production year 1998, so it joins the list of pages that now have some form of navigation.

Still loads to do.

Website Updating

1996 and 1995 of the Dirk Maggs productions website production years have now had there navigation sorted out and do look much better for it.

I have even managed to reinstall some of the cast pictures that have been missing since the move to the new site.

Not to sure just how many more production years there are to go, one part of me is just a little scared in that I really don't want to know just how much more work is left to be done.

but it's nice to say that we have moved forward.

Tuna

Just had to note here for me that Honey and soy hot noddles and tuna is nice but next time find out just how small the portions are, so that you don't end up hungry.

Blogs

Funny how one minute you have lots you want to say in your blog and the next either you do not have the time or you don't have anything that you think needs to be said.

Updates 4

The updating of the Dirk Maggs Productions website carry s on and on or so it seems, the good news is that all the productions from 1987 to 1993 now have there correct navigation system installed.

The bad news or which there are two is that 1 the years 1994 to 2010 need to be done, and in some of those years Dirk did do a lot of radio work, so there are lots of productions to add the navigation system to.

The second bit of bad news is that as I have gone through the productions from 1987 to 1993 I have found that quite a few are missing cast photo's which I know that I have.

It goes without saying that I will have to add the photo's that I have, but this also means that I will have to search out some of the missing ones and credit them if that information is out there.

As my head was starting to spin with all the edits I have called it a day on the edit front.

Blue sky

So today it looks like we may be very luck and have a day with some blue sky, I can't think when we last had a day with it, its been that long.

I also don't know if the sun will be very warm, it does not matter as long as we have some hours of bright daylight.

Website Updating 3

I have done some more work to the Dirk Maggs Productions website, I have now started on the very long road to put a navigation system in for every production by year. This is something that I said that I started a while ago and I am still doing it!


So far progress is slow as each production pages takes some 5 minutes or so, and I find that after a while my concentration starts to go and I start to make errors. So I have sound the best thing to do is to pick a year that I have not done and do it, and if there are not too many productions in the year then pick another year and do that. I have found that sometimes I can do more than one year at a time before I get *issed off with it all.

I think that at my current rate of doing the editing I shall finish in a few weeks.

There is plenty of stuff that still needs to be done, eg sorting out cast photos and getting them all the right size, I suspect that this task will take months and may never really be complete as I hope there will be new stuff to report on that Dirk has done.

The other final very important job that has got to be done is to work out how my host works so that I can remove all the old Dirk Maggs website and just leave the new one.

Snow

The report on the snow we had is this, its finally going, in fact it has been raining and you know what I don't care one little bit that it is wet.

The weather men are saying that we could see some blue sky tomorrow. It will be nice to see some as we have not had any for so long now. What little snow that is left is where it was piled up after being dug off the roads or the paths

Bread maker

Just some great news got a replacement bread maker

Heating

Well we have had a bit of a situation here the last few days. Yes the heating failed, and it is still cold, and I can tell you a house at 10 centigrade is not much fun to sit in.

Lucky as we have four star maintainance with the Gas board they came out the next day after we placed the call, as we made it at gone 6 pm.

The result the main circulation motor had died and the 3 port valve had failed in that the spindle had snapped.

Gas board man said will be back at 10am on Sat to fix it, and he was and it is all working.

House temp at 16.45 hrs was 18.1 centigrade and rising.

Slush

Today in honour of the thaw my word of the day is SLUSH

Dirk Maggs

I got a bit more of the Dirk Maggs website done, in that I think I have worked out a simple page navigation system for his radio work by year. Well it appears to be working the only snag is that I now have some 100 pages to edit and change, and each one has to be done by hand, which is not good.

As each page takes some 10 to 15 minutes to do it is going to take some time to do every radio production, but then there is no rush, as its my website and I can take as long as I like to get it into the format and layout that I want.

Book reading 2

This is the first book that I have finished reading this year 2010, well I think it is.

The book is called American Connections by James Burke, its an interesting read in that as a Brit I do not know how many men signed the American Declaration of Independence, and I did not know just how close it came to being not signed and not needed.

It would appear that a lot of the men who signed the document all made in some way a lot of money from it, may be that was one of the un-written reasons and why they would not compromise.

So I did learn a lot from this book, but I got the feeling that even James had trouble linking some of the men back to today.

Well worth a read if your history of how or who some of the men behind the declaration is non existent

Updates 3

The Dirk Maggs Website was updated a bit more yesterday in fact I found new information for one of Dirk's lesser known productions of the 1990's in fact it's a pilot show that he did that never got taken up.

I still have lots of layout problems and I still have not yet worked out a good and easy navigation system.

Hills

Living at the bottom of a long hill eg its height difference from top to bottom is some 100 odd feet but the distance from top to bottom is much more and that the top of the hill and to add to the fun there is a set of traffic lights as there is a major A road at the top of it.

Add snow about 9 inches

Add no salt


Add no grit


Result I can't get my car out of my road and it is doing my head in

Website Updating 2

For reasons that should be obvious eg the very bad weather, I am too tied to do any updates to the Dirk Maggs Website. Its not as if I don't want to its just that I am just having trouble staying awake.

Snowed In

So I am snowed in in that I live at the bottom of a hill that does not get salted,( which at this time does not work as its too cold) So at 6.45am I started off for work and got there at 10.15am after walking non stop.

Its not something I want to do again, as walking in deep snow is not nice, and I am very tied tonight.

All being well I have a lift (I still have to walk about a mile to the pick up point)

Snow 2

It has been snowing all day and the end result is we have nearly 10 inches of snow, so you can guess who did not go to work today and why.

Tomorrow dos not look any better with the very hard frost and snow due.

Snow

Why do we have to have more snow?

I mean we had some last year do we really need some in 2010?

CM5 Tables

Why cant I get tables to work in CM5?

Its doing my head in

Editing Website

The editing of the Dirk Maggs website carry on and on, as there are over 200 pages to sort it is going to take some time. One problem that I have still not sorted is the layout of tables with all the actors names and what they did in the radio production in question.

The end shot of all this is that some table layouts are okay but others are broken.

Image uploading works and I have now found how to resize..

So some of the pages on the website are starting to look okay.


One thing I can't help but do is add new bits and pieces as I go so the site has already changes a lot since it was installed into the CMS back in October 2009

Reading stuff

The book that I have started to read is called "Love & Sex Robots" by David Levy so far all I have read is the introduction, which was okay but to be was trying to say don't take all this too seriously and this is not something that should be thought of as dirty and a fetish subject.

But with the title of the book it will be seen as just that, from what I have read of the book its been written too early in that most robots and stuff are no where near the point that people will take this stuff as a serious problem and that it should be something that needs to be talked about.

But as I have not read the book I shall have to say here that I will keep an open mind and I will just have to see where David Levy takes us and if he can prove his introduction.

2010

So my very first post of the year, I wonder how many other people will be starting out doing a blog this year, and just how long they will keep it up for.

I see that last year I did my most blogs ever, this year the idea is to just blog as and when I have something to talk about or that I want to record for later use.

I think one change that I want to do sometime this year is to change the layout of the blog, as it's been then same for sometime.

I don't have anything else to talk about at this time so I will spot.

Edits part 3

The adding of images to the Dirk Maggs website, is I think going well in that I can find the images for the page that I am editing, but I still have not worked out how to correctly scale the images so that they are all one uniform size.

The end result is that the pages that I have done all look well a bit scrappy is a word I could use, I am sure that you could think of other works ect to describe it better but lets not get into that.


So I know that I will have to revisit each page once I have found out how to scale the images but at least now some of the pages look better, in that they don't have large empty boxes on them where the images should be.

I have as I have gone a long made corrections or even added stuff to the pages. I have found so far one page that had no content, which was a bit of a surprise as I am sure that I went through each and every pages at least twice to make sure that I had not missed anything in the transfer from the old site to the new one.

But as I am only human it's something that is bound to happen and so when I found it, it was not to much effort to correct it.

So The Dirk Maggs website is doing well I think, I have changed the theme of the site again, but I don't know if I like it that much it will have to something that I will need to look at in the new year, which as I write this is only some 6 hours away!

Last Day

So the last day of 2009 which means that I will have done more blogs this year than i ever thought I would, not that this blog is about how many time I have bloged a week month year, well you get the idea I hope.

Just want to update the progress on the Dirk Maggs productions website, the good news is that I have started to add pictures to the pages!

The bad new is that I have not found a way to scale the images to the page layout yet, not to sure what is going on with that.

The page navigation issue has still not been solved but I think I now have all the content on the site, apart from the images of course!

I shall just get all the images up on each page that needs them and then worry about getting the layout of the pages right later, as its something I do in my spare time it will take a while to sort out.

Reading Now 3 whatever

Just finished what I think will be the last book I shall read this year. Its call How to make a tornado and its by New Scientist.

A good read but very different in character to the previous books that they published over the last few years.

Not sure why the change in book format, there must be one but I for one don't like the change, as I like it when you got everyday people ask the kind of questions that do occur to you and you have no answer yourself to them.

Uploading

Why is it so difficult to upload images to some programmes

Edits part 2

I have just spent some 4 hours updating the Dirk Maggs website pages, and the end results is that to the casual user there is no difference, but the number of things that I have altered and what's not you would think there should be lots of visible changes.

oh well.

Site updates are not complete there is still lots to do.

Website Nav

I have had a series of website since the very early days of the WWW. I had thought that I had solved for my websites the problem of navigating around the sites even if you come to the site via another page and not the front door.

Since I move the main Dirk Maggs website to a databased one, I have found that I don't like the way it allows me to set up the sites navigation system. This could be me in not understanding how the programme works or it could be that the programme just doesn't offer what I want or what I want is just not possible with a database driven website.

You might shout read the manual, well yes I would if there was one and that it covered what I need to know, may be what I want to do is so straight forward that it appears obvious to one and all, except me

More head scratching is needed I thinks.

The Dirk Maggs website did get edited yesterday so it is a step nearer to be back to where it was before the changeover.

Edits

I have had some time, not a lot of it , it has to be said and have got my finger out and done some work on the Dirk Maggs Website, which has been static for a while as other things in real life have got in the way, such as son braking his ankle very badly and then not having a good time under general anaesthetic.

All of which does tend to steal free time.

So as I was saying I have had some time to look at the Dirk Maggs Website of mine, and as you will know if you have rad this blog, earlier in the year I changed over to a web-host with more storage and all that sort of stuff.

The idea was to have the Dirk Maggs website sat in a database, and that is what I have done or am doing if the truth be told.

Progress is not been good due to all the above and also because the website layout and setting up has had to me a bit of a learning curve.

The end result it that at this time most of the website has been copied across to the new one but and this is a big but some stuff has been broken by the move.

One of the reasons for stuff getting broken is that I have yet to work out a good navigation system for the new site, I also have to work out if I want to have full screens of screens with a menu bar down the side on them.

It turns out that these are not easy to sort out and the help system given for the software that I am using is not to forthcoming on how to sort the problems that I have with the navigation. One of the problems is that I have a lot of pages and that they have very specific ways of being organised which appears not to help with the type of navigation system I need and what the programme can provide.

The other thing that got broken by the move of stuff from the hand created site to the database site is that all my internal links and pictures are broken and do not work.

This means that I will have go through every page and put back the images and also to redo all the links, this will not be a five minute job, but then the site was not built in 5 minutes either.

The number of hits that the Dirk Maggs website gets has dropped off as well.

Nearly Done

So 2009 is nearly all done, lots of things have been done, lots has not. I suppose 2010 will be the same, I suppose that I will not be the only one looking forward and backwards as it seems it's something that a lot of folk do at this time of year.

I do wonder if it does you any good all this reflection, and I supposed it must do otherwise lots of people just would do it the once and then give up.

So I think there are a few things that I want to do next year, I just wonder if I will get them all done.

1. is to finish moving the Dirk Maggs website to its new home
2. is to hand over to James Follett the website that I have being doing for over 5 years to him.
3. is to finish a book which book not a clue but a book all the same, which would be good.
4. is to actually get down and compose some music, as it's something I like to do but for one reason or another have not done for some time now.
5. is to enjoy taking pictures again with the camera.
6. is a bit of a cheat in that I already do this but do want to keep doing it and that is to keep reading.
7. is to listen to music and just enjoy it for what it is and not try and work out how it was done.
8. is to have holidays that you can be relaxed at
9. is to update the family tree, I did a lot of work on it a few years ago and then it all sort of stopped for one reason or another.
10. is to just enjoy what I have got and not what I haven't.

As you can see a large list just how many of these goals I will do will be interesting, as some are easier to do than others but they are all things that I do want to do.

2009

So it's getting very near to the end of 2009 and what a lot of different things have happened over the year, some good some not so but overall apart form some nasty weather not a bad year overall.

I hate to try and even think what 2010 is going to be like, one thing that I think I can be certain about is that it will be nothing like how I can think of it now this minute that's for sure.

I do wonder how many blog entry's I will do next year and I think that the answer is it does not matter, I shall just do them when I want.

Boxing Day

So its Boxing Day here in the UK, which is good as its a day off and also no where else do they have a Boxing Day.

Xmas

is wishing a merry christmas to all

How they used to say it

Δόξα ἐν ὑψίστοις θεῷ καὶ ἐπὶ γῆς εἰρήνη ἐν ἀνθρώποις εὐδοκίας

Weather

Good news is that a bit of a thaw is going on, I for one am very happy about this.

Good News

Some time today Ty will be home from hospital which is good for him us and I think the hospital, as I am sure there are people with far more serious problems who are in need of his bed

Work

No more work this year ys!

Ty

Ty is still in hospital after breaking his ankle, we hope that he can be home tomorrow, as hospitals and him don't agree with him.

A good phrase would be hospitals are toxic to him.

Snow & Ty

Well the snow started at 12ish here in Hampshire and did not stop. The result is that Caz had been on the M3 for 3 hours and Donna is stuck on the Farnborough road for 1 hour and she is only going a distance of 5 miles.

Ty is still in Hospital and it looks like he will not be let out until Wendsday some time so all in all the weather has a lot to answer for.

Hurt

I am the parent of two children called Tyrone and Charlene, now Ty as we call him is the 1St born and hats had an interesting life in that he has Asapers syndrome ( not to sure how much) any way he is for various reasons without a job, so today what happens to him he breaks his ankle in 3 places, I am told that it is a serious break in that he will need to have surgery.

As a parent this is worrying to me, I know my son is 23 but still I am worried for him, will it go okay, the date and the time of his surgery is not yet known as one of the problems with ankle injury's is the swelling frank goodness that his pain is under control at this time.

I have just heard that they are x-raying him again why?

see I am worrying about all of this!

I feel for him as tonight he was going out to see Avatar the film and have a meal with the friends that he has mad( this is a big event for someone with aspers).

I am told that ankle injury are one of the more painful injury's you can have so the next six to eight weeks are not going to be very nice to Tyrone.

I do hope that he is out of hospital over Xmas

lets hope so.

By the way he broke his ankle slipping on ice.

Global What?

I do wonder as I sit here looking at the weather station gauge sitting at minus 4 C and think what global warming?

Winter Solstice

So the mid winter day will so be with us I am not sure if it is the 21 st or the 22 nd but which ever day it is one thing that is for certain is that the nights will so start to get shorter which means summer is coming!

This is some thing that I can say I am very happy about, as I think one the whole I like summer more, not for the sunshine and the warm days and nights but for all the daylight and the blue skies which is something that I miss in the winter.

I do wonder if at the winter solstice there will be any one at Stone or wood henge at 8 in the morning, which I suppose is far more civilised than the summer solstice which I think sunrise is at 4 am!

Any way I am looking forward to more daylight and blue skies!

212

I have just noticed that this is the 212th blog of this year which is a record. The last time I had done so many posts was back in 2006! so if I keep doing blogs at this rate I might hit 220!

Hill Starts

Well as you may or may not know this week the winter weather has well happened and today we we got up we found that the weather men had been right for once in that the snow that they said we would get did arrive.

Now I happen to leave in a road that has a hill or incline at each end and the local council for reasons that our not known to us do not grit our road so when it snows getting out of our road on to the major road that is always gritted can be and has been very difficult.

In February 2009 when we had 3 feet of snow the result was that we were snowed in. Today we where lucky in that there was only 2 to 3 inches of snow and that we tried to get out of our road before the road had been turned into a sheet of ice.

It goes without saying that coming home from work was not to bad the only bit of the trip that I was not looking forward to was the last 200 meters or so.

Snow

Lots of very cold weather and so it goes without saying there is snow due and if I believe the weather men lots of it, not to sure if it will hit my part of the UK

Bum

How is it that the colder it gets the more visits I have to do to jobs outside!

Why?

Never happens in the summer, strange that....

Stress

Sometimes I hate this time of year due to all the stress in all the stuff people think you have to do or need to do just so stuff happens on the 25th.

I am beginning to think that it is not worth it.

If it does not get done then leave with out what ever it was that did not get done, I am sure life and universe will carry on.

Colder

So its going to get even colder.


Bum

Xmas Lights

So today I had the joy of putting up some outside Xmas lights, now we don't go for loads and loads we go for light colours that the other folk in the street don't have like pinks and purples, while every one else has blue or white.

Fun no cold yes, end result nice.

Cold

Looks like its going to get colder for the next week or so

Hunt the Lights

Playing one of my least fun games called hunt the missing Xmas lights, this time its a set of blue lights seen 11 odd months ago.

Fog

I have after this morning decided that I don't like to drive in thick fog in the dark

Reading Now 2+1

The other book that I have just finished in the last hour or so is by Jon Ronson and its called The men who stare at goats.

I really don't know what to make of this book, one part of me thinks that its all a load of S*** and that nothing in the book is true, then the other part of me for some weird reason hope that it is true, so the book was not for me overall entertaining, as I just don't know what is true and what is made up.

The book reports to be telling you the truth about some very strange physic stuff that the Americans are supposed to be doing, but there are no references or any thing like that to provide evidence that any thing in the book is true.

There is at the time I write this a film in the cinema called the same as the book, but I think the only thing that is the same between the book and the film is the title and as far as I can make out the film is a comedy of sorts.

Reading Now 3+1+1

Just finished, well not just about 2 hours or so ago another book by Charles Stross called Scratch Monkey, which is a book that I had never heard of but I am glad that I found it and read.

As it usual with books by Charles there are lots of good ideas in this book which I must admit at times did make me stop and think.

The old question? was it entertaining, the answer is yes, but I would say that it should not be your first Stross book to read.

200

Yes I have done it this is the 200th blog of 2009, I feel proud that I have so much stuff that I needed to share it with myself and anyone who happens to get lost on the net and find my blog.

Blogs

I see that this is the 199th blog that I have done this year which is almost a record, the record is 205 in one year, which means that I will pass that total before years end.

Updates 2

As I have said before on here I am now in the process of moving the Dirk Maggs productions website from hand coded into a database driven cms.

I did not realise just how many pages there are in the site, as it goes I will end up having to edit every single page on the site as the layouts from the hand coded site and the cms site are different.

I hope that by spring 2010 the job will be done.

Updates

I have continued to convert the old Dirk Maggs producer website to the new database powered one, progress has been slow as there is so much stuff to move.

I have nearly got all the basic productions by years moved across, with only the years 2006 and 2003 to go, which I think is not bad going as each production page has to be moved by hand.

The next task after that is to make each page look right, as some how or other some of the layouts gets broken in the process of being transferred.

After that task which will I think take weeks I have to restore all the pictures to each page, and I have no idea just how long that will take.

But when it is all done it should make it easy to update the Dirk Maggs pages and also to enhance the content.

Reading Now 3+1

I have just finished reading Genesis by Andy McDermott as entertainment goes it's good and it's a non stop ride, the main idea behind the book is a good one which I liked. For some reason or other some of the things that the characters do in the book are sometime not quite believable, but as this is a book that only has one purpose and that is to entertain I can forgive that as Andy does entertain and very well.

If Hollywood ever got hold of this story I would I think hate it as they would not leave the story as it is.

Cold

Cold and cold and some rain, yes there has been lots of rain and now I see we are due our first frost of the year.

Blues Brothers

Went to Guildford to see the Blues Brothers Xmas Party! yeah I know not something you associate with the Blues Brothers is Xmas, but actually it all seemed to work very well.

I must say that the band of which there where seven members all seemed to be having lots of fun especially the base and lead guitar players because at the end number then actually came down on to the stage and played, which is something I have never seen and it worked real well, all the normal songs that you would expect at a Blues night where there and for most of the songs we that is the audience where standing up and bogeying and singing the songs!

A good night out and as it has been a very long time since I experienced live music its something that I think we will do again

The we in the above sentence is the whole family.

Wet

it's been wet, wet and wet

Reading Now part ??

I have just finished reading yet another book by Charles Stross, this time the book is called Saturn's Children, it was a fun book to read with a some what complicated story/plot line, but in the end it all works out and it was for me good entertainment, which as I have said before is the main reason I read books.

It felt to as if the book had been cut down in some way, perhaps Charles had written too many words and was told to cut out some of them, if so I think we the readers were short changed as I am sure the extra words would have made for a better or smother ending to the book.

Not Happy

some **** idiot for reasons only known to themselves decided to key my car, its only 6 months old! no other car was vandalised.

I hate to think what the bill will be.

Windy

At this time it is very very windy, first big storm of the year.

State of fear

I have just finished reading State of fear by Michael Crichton, and as I said in an earlier blog the book to me was more the authors attempt to say it's not the fault of nations on the Earth for the way things are and the way that the worlds climate is changing.

In fact one thing I have taken away from the book is that global warming is a theory not a law or a fact its just a theory.

The book itself I think suffered as it was difficult to get lost in the make believe world when every so many pages or so there would be a footnote to a real world link on real information about what the characters in the book happened to be talking about at that time.

for entertainment I would only go as far as to say low to medium because of the real world stuff getting in the way of the make believe stuff.

Fog

Lots of fog today

Oh my!

Funny thing coincidence

by that I mean at this moment as I write this I am reading a book by Michael Crichton called State of Fear very recently I read a book by Clive and Dirk Cussler called Arctic Drift, now the first book was written back in 2004 or2005 and the Cussler book 2008 both have settings or scenes that are in the Arctic.

Both mention two British warships called HMS Terror and HMS Erebus no what is the chance of that?

That I pick up two book published so far apart and they both feature the same ships?

I must admit that I did then look up these two ships and it soon becomes very obvious why they are in both books as they are famous for what happened to them and the crews of the ships so in the end the coincidence is not that big as there are very few other ships that are so famous in that part of the world.

Reading Now 5

I have started to read a Michael Crichton book called State of Fear which I think may have been one of the last books he wrote before he died.

So far I am getting the feeling that the book is at the part that I have got to just a mouthpiece for Michael to show how clever he is in proving that there is no such thing as global warming.

he does give lots of real links to the papers that he has found to prove his point. The trouble is I picked up this book to be entertained not lectured at. If I had wanted to read a science book then I would have brought one on the subject.

So it goes without saying that so far the story has not been to me very entertaining.

if the whole idea of the book is to stop and make you think about the global warming theory and that not everything you see in print and on the telly might not be as correct as you should think, then Michael has to me succeeded in making think about the global warming theory.

One thing that I have taken on board so far is that what ever is going on it is not black or white its a grey colour as there is so much information that points both ways in the argument.

So I shall continue to read the book and hope that Michael does not short change me, and will give me a story and some entertainment, if a bit of learning is thrown into the mix I don't mind as long as I get to be entertained

Clouds

Tonight the clouds at sunset were red, this is something here in England big news at for 75% of the time its cloudy.

These were your very red clouds with lots of red shades, so it was really very nice to look at, because of this it was enough of a reason to record it here.

Someone reading this in the future will have no interest in this what so ever, but hey it was really nice.

Light

I have noticed just how weak the light that we are now getting during the day, so I am recording this fact here just so I don't forget.

Book Read

Just finished a fun read book, you know one of those books that is full of facts and for some strange reason you just can't help but read.

The book is called The speed of nearly everything by Peter Macinnis. It's not a big book in size or in the number of pages but it is a good fun read.

Hot news

It has just stopped raining

TGI Friday

As yesterday was my son's birthday, as a family we went for a change to TGI Friday's it was good, I just want to record here that the Jack Daniels sauce is well... great

Reading Now 4

I have just finished reading Arctic Drift by Clive & Dirk Cussler, and as I have said before I read books for entertainment, well this book did entertain me, but and I am sad to say there is a but parts of the book became to me a bit predictable, why this should be I just don't know but that's what it felt like to me.

The ending of the book was also a bit rushed? if you can say such a thing about the printed word, as surely the speed of the story is controlled by how quick you the reader read the book.

But overall the story was good there were a few twists in it that I liked, and as is always the case these days with a Cussler novel some of the stuff in the book is based on real events, which I like, and I am sad enough to go to Goggle and look up stuff and see what is real and what Clive has added to me the story flow.

Would I recommend the book to some one else?

Yes if you are looking to while away a few hours and you want to be taken away to some other place, this book will do that.