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 If anyone out there still reads blogs, and you'd like to know where I'm thinking of setting up a new one, let me know in the comments, please.

Viele Danke

I've been very lucky in a lot of ways. Since I was last here I've been fortunate enough to travel to Germany for work, to the beautiful medieval city of Regensburg. It worked out cheaper for me to fly on a Saturday and have an extra day there than to fly on Sunday, so I had the chance to explore a little.

Everyone over there that I met was very friendly and, fortunately, spoke wonderful English - with the exception of the taxi driver who drove me to the office. He was one of those taxi drivers who loves to chat with his fares and it clearly drove him crazy that we couldn't converse.

It was another of those opportunities that I never thought I'd have. To see places that were only ever names before: gazing into Bavarian forests and dipping my hand into the Danube.

As the medieval city centre is still largely intact, I was able to spend a day wandering down narrow streets and alleyways. I could've stopped and taken a picture at every corner and it wouldn't have been wasted. From churches and cathedrals to coffee-houses and bierhauses the entire experience was one I shan't ever forget. The training that I went over there to deliver seemed to be well received, too, which was the only reason I got to go!

The whole trip reminded me how charming people in general can be. Hotel receptionists, bar staff, priests and air stewardesses - they all have their own lives and their own worries but a little kindness and patience with strangers can make a big difference to them. That's a lesson that I'll take from the trip. Viele danke, Regensburg. I hope to see you again someday.

The Truth Is Out There

Truth is not the same for one man as it is for another. "Truth", therefore, is a relative term not an absolute. While we all endeavour to live by whatever truths we hold sacred, expressions of them may occur in the most unexpected of places.

For some people, the expression of their complete truth is found in the words of the Bible or the Quran, in the words of a holy man or prophet. They'll have no doubt or reservation about the words that fulfil them. Their life is defined, enriched and sustained with the truth that they feel.

For others, "truth" is a more elusive concept. Some people may spend their entire lives searching for an expression of the truth they feel inside, which glides, tantalisingly, constantly, out of reach. Sometimes a song reaches near to it, in tone or in words. Sometimes the metre of a poet, long dead, or maybe surging with the vigour of life. And sometimes, just sometimes, the medium of television brushes a finger over the truth...

"Chance meeting your perfect other, your perfect opposite - your protector and endangerer. Chance embarking with this other on the greatest of journeys - a search for truths fugitive and imponderable. If one day this chance may befall you, my son, do not fail or falter to seize it. The truths are out there. And if one day you should behold a miracle, as I have in you, you will learn the truth is not found in science, or on some unseen plane, but by looking into your own heart. And in that moment you will be blessed - and stricken. For the truest truths, are what hold us together, or keep us painfully, desperately apart." - Dana Scully

Proof Against

We've got away lightly so  far weather-wise in Cork. There's been rain (obviously) and a chill in the air, but we haven't had the kind of snow that's hit the UK. The forecast for tonight is for a few inches of snow but there's no sign of it so far.

You all know by now that I'm not one for hot weather. One can say that one likes the winter but what one really means is that one likes to feel proof against the winter. To walk and play in the snow and then to come to a warm dry house, a change of clothes and a mug of hot chocolate; to sit by a window and watch the rain lashing down outside. So I'm about to head for bed, snuggle under my duvet and pretend that tomorrow doesn't require me to do anything!

Naïveté

Even though I don't live in the UK any more I keep up with the news over there. No disrespect to the Irish Newspapers and News Agencies but there's no-one quite like the BBC. Anyway. This isn't the BBC.

This story from The Independent bothers me:

The racist video in which a woman calls a man a 'smelly Nigerian' and he punches her shows two wrongs don't make a right - Comment - Voices - The Independent

It doesn't bother me for the reasons you might think, though. I'm not for a second condoning her reaction to his stepping on her foot. Neither am I attempting any defense of his response. What bothered me the first time I read the article and continues to do so is the first 13 words:

"Nothing is particularly shocking about a racial altercation taking place on the Tube"

If it isn't shocking, it should be. It should outrage and horrify people. It should incense them and inflame them. The fact that the author of this piece considers that it isn't shocking is one of the most profoundly depressing pieces of journalism I've read in an awful long time. People of London - is this true? Is a racial altercation on the tube really so commonplace?

And it's not only come from the author. This has been passed by an editorial team on a respected newspaper. Maybe I'm more naïve than I thought.

Carry Out

Does the convenience of digital music and mp3 downloads outweigh the majesty of a 12" vinyl record in a gatefold sleeve? No. Not even close, but I'm a realist. Not everything that's released now has a vinyl edition and vinyl is still fraught with the same dangers it always was - fingerprints, scratches etc.

So I store my music in two places. On an external hard drive and on my iPod. I have an iPod Classic with 160GB capacity. That means, in the format I use, I have over a month's worth of music I can carry with me. The iPod is starting to wheeze a little as it climbs stairs, though. It's not going to last many more years. I'd looked at the other options (ie not Apple) and there are very few options at the moment. High-capacity mp3 players aren't in vogue, with the current focus on "The Cloud".

I'm not over-enamoured with the cloud-storage idea. One is paying for it continually and it assumes a constant internet connection, or multiple connections. Another solution is expected later this year, though. Modern mobile phones use micro-sd memory cards. At the moment, the maximum capacity is 64GB but the internet is alive with speculation about a 128GB micro-sd card. One of those would probably work in my phone.

Let's be clear about this, because this is a mindjob. The amount of music that, when I was a young man, used to take up enough record cases to fill a small room, can now be carried around on a gadget which is about the same size as a pack of cigarettes. And in the very near future it'll fit onto something about the size of a stamp, that'll slip into a slot in a phone I carry around in my pocket.

Wow.

I Got The Music In Me

I work with words all day. Comparing them, refining them, editing them, finding ways to organise them to convey their meaning more clearly. I've said before that this sometimes means that I'm "worded out" when I get home and can't find the enthusiasm to blog.

This state of affairs cannot be allowed to continue.

I'm lucky enough that I work with something I'm interested in and I mustn't let the "work" kill off the "interest". If I make one resolution for the year to come and beyond it's to play with words; to find the fun and the magic in them. Whether I wish it or not I'm never going to be a Clapton, a Blackmore, a Page, but give me an instrument with the 26 strings of the alphabet and I can make music. Will others want to listen? That's not my concern. I wouldn't be so pretentious as to say something like "ars gratia artis" but you get my drift. I'm here because I want to be.

So I'll be back. Repeatedly. Until I come up with a better idea, something better to write, I'll be here practising my scales, toying with riffs and making sure that my hands fall naturally into the shapes of the chords I want to use.

Another One Bites The Dust

As a year draws to a close it's very easy to let one's eyes drift back over the previous 12 months, sometimes with less positivity than one deserves.

That's a rather convoluted way of saying that we tend to be too hard ourselves, retrospectively. So not everything in 2012 went as you wanted it to. You're still eating too much McDonald's, you can't get through the weekend without a glass of wine and a flight of stairs leaves you wheezing. Big deal. Another year, another day, is another chance. Make the most of 2013. Make good choices.

Speaking of choices, I've made one. I prefer Blogger to Wordpress. The feature range at Blogger is more aligned with what I want than the free Wordpress accounts. So for those of you reading this at Blogger there's no need to adjust your bookmarks. If you're reading this at Wordpress, then occasionally you'll find posts consisting of just a link back to Blogger, unless I can get a recipe at IFTTT that works for me.

Whatever. Happy New Year, everyone. I hope that 2013 is kind to you and yours and brings with it a whole new world of wonderful possibilities and opportunites for you.

Seasoning

Imperceptibly, the nights are getting shorter. Apparently. It probably says a lot that my impression is of nights getting shorter as opposed to days getting longer. Not that I don't like the daytime - I'm just not a "summer person". Spring I adore and I'll live through the violent glare of summer days to see the glow of summer evenings and the soft warmth of summer nights while I wait for autumn.

I couldn't live somewhere without seasons. The world turns and hurtles through space, hair gets greyer and lines get deeper. I like to have something other to judge the passing time against than merely the face in the mirror. And it's not about the colours. Okay, it's not all about the colours. Each season has a different feeling - the freshness of spring; the close weight of summer; the ochred brittleness of autumn and the crisp fragility of the winter. They're all so different and have all enspired people far cleverer with words than I throughout the years. I love the change of seasons.

So we roll on. Things change and things stay the same. Every day is much like the last except that it's different. Except that it's all different. Always. Every heartbeat is subtly different to the last. Your heart has never done it exactly the same before and will never do it exactly the same again. Each of the drops of rain I now hear dancing on my front door is an individual, as much as you or I. Each of them a marker, a defined point in the flow of time. Listen. That's a clock keeping time with the rhythym of life.

Posting By E-mail?

Now there's an option I hadn't considered before now. Again, my concern is going to be about the formatting.

I guess there's only one way to find out how it looks!

One More

This is the last of the test posts. Promise.

Well, it's the last of the test posts for now. If this doesn't work how I want it's either back to copy & paste or finally choose between Blogger and WordPress!

Dimmed

As the nice people at Google were kind enough to bring out an update for the Android Blogger app I ought to test it out.

It's nice having dimmer switches for the lounge lights. Subdued lighting while watching a movie is a good thing. I remember, a long time ago, there was a little boy whose mind was completely blown when he first encountered dimmer switches. That such a thing might be possible, that someone had thought of it and that it was in homes. That it was in people's homes!

And now the little boy has grown up. He lives in a house with dimmer switches. He watches movies on a computer he can carry around and has a telephone that's a small computer itself. Using that telephone, he can write in a diary that's stored somewhere he can get at it from anywhere and choose whether to let no-one else read it or to let everyone else read it. Everyone. Writing in the third person, on a telephone, by the light of a dimmer-switched bulb. Crazy.

Holding My Hands Up

Yes. Mmmm. I have a confession to make.

That picture in the previous post? Pretend it's not there please. Actually, just disregard the whole post.

I can't speak to the road to Hell (although some may say different) but the last couple of days of October were filled with good intentions. And the last day was also filled with an absolutely stinking head cold. I tried, I really did, but I could only just get my head around words enough to manage at work - there was just no chance that I was going to be able to generate any kind of invention beyond that.

So I'll give up for another year. Good luck to everyone who has the creativity to press on with NaNoWriMo, whether they reach the end or not. Kudos.

Words are tricky things, sometimes. I don't think that people have a limitless supply of them in a set period of time. You have to let your Word Store get new stock. I guess that usually happens when we're asleep (don't ask about people who talk in their sleep - that blows the whole analogy out of the water) but maybe not so quickly when we're poorly. Fingers crossed that over the next few days my restocking will get quicker again.

2nd Time Lucky

Six years after my first attempt, I think I'm going for it again...

 

Wish me luck. There might not be many words here in November. I have limits! I'll keep you posted, though.

It's been a long time since I rock & rolled...

Yesterday evening was lovely. Out for a meal  with my Lovely Lady and then to the movies to watch Celebration Day. 

Call it a happiness hangover maybe but today has been a strange one. When one is working for a living one expects some days to be more stressful than others but I'm not talking about stress, necessarily. It's just been kinda...weird. There's been a lot more bustle out in the square than usual for one thing, and I certainly didn't expect to spend part of the evening having an e-mail conversation with a house-hunting ex-DJ.

So tomorrow is Friday and it'll be a week until the blessed relief of payday. Of course, I have to get through the weekend to get there but I'll pull my big boy pants on, square my shoulders and cope like a man (i.e. whinging and complaining). I've spectacularly failed to do any housework at all this week, aside from running the vacuum cleaner round quickly, so I'll have plenty to keep me busy.

I'm sat here just waiting for the computer keyboard to come up with something that I can work more Led Zeppelin lyrics into. I guess it's not going to happen, unless I'm less than subtle about it, though.

"If my wings should fail me, Lord, please meet me with another pair."

As I have another alarm call to answer in the morning, I'd better stop tapping away. The typing is starting to fail me and what little inspiration I sat down with has run as dry as a very, very dry thing.

Fingers Crossed...

...but I think I may just have fixed my Blogger template. What a palaver!