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!

For The Day That's In It

Today is, apparently, World Mental Health Day. It's crazy that I didn't know that.

Okay, we've got that out of the way.

I just nearly typed "people fortunate enough to have good mental health need to cop the fuck on", but it's not about that. It's about realising things like depression affect more than 350 million people of all ages, and in some countries fewer than 10% of those who need it receive treatment. We're not talking about moodiness here, or that dude at work who's as crabby as hell in the mornings before he's had three coffees, I'm talkng about The Black Dog - real, clinical depression. The sort of thing that, if left unaddressed, has the power to turn bright, charming, intelligent people into uncommunicative agoraphobes. 

Now, if you're sat there muttering under your breath "They should pull themselves together. In my day etc etc" then I was wrong earlier - you do need to cop the fuck on. Depression isn't a lifestyle choice and it's not something that people can always overcome without medical help. Even with help, it may be something that's "managed" rather than "cured". Unfortunately, even reaching out for that help still carries a certain amount of stigma. 

Do yourselves a favour, people. Look after yourselves. Yes, mens sana in corpore sano by all means but be aware and be understanding. Don't be too hard on yourself. Sometimes the most grown-up thing you can do is ask for help when you need it. 

Missed!

I have the feeling that there's something I was going to say here. Can't for the life of me think what, though.

If it were earlier I could maybe sit here and waffle on in the hope that whatever-it-was would come back to me. As it's now pushing midnight I probably shouldn't be doing that now, though. More's the pity. This could be the moment when a great work of literature goes unstarted or a profound insight into the human state is missed.

Both of the above are unlikely, I'll grant you. But there's always the outside possibility that I might have typed something vaguely amusing. Maybe I'll try again tomorrow.

What??

It is, incidentally, entirely unacceptable that Blogger appears to have broken my template with no interference from me. Have they not noticed that I also have a blog at Wordpress? They haven't broken my template!

If I'd been messing around with the html coding then that would be fine - my own stupid fault, as it were. But I haven't and it ain't! Growl.

A Tale of H and S

It's funny - but not in the "ha-ha" sense of the word. When I'm at work I can usually keep going and going. It's only when I stop that things seems to seize up and it's happened again.

To use up the last of this year's holiday allowance I took Wednesday, Thursday and Friday off and I've struggled on all three days. I've been blah, I've been meh and I've been many other words ending in h as well. Especially sneezyh.

In between sneezing fits I've been enjoying my cable internet. Fat enough for me to comfortably stream video even while my significant otter is sett up working from "home". See what I did there?

As it's a cable connection, it comes with capability for a landline. This is something that I haven't had since I moved over here. I shelled out for a home telephone today and I'm hoping that it'll help to make up for the frankly crappy mobile phone signal I get here. Whether I'll be able to work out call transfers while I'm at the house is an open question.

It's also a question for tomorrow. I'm sleepy and a little shivery, and I'll like to snuggled up in bed now. I'd also like the s key on this laptop to start working properly again. Thanks very much.

Lesson Learned

I did something exceptionally stupid yesterday. I locked myself out.

It's not the end of the world, I know but even so. The least offensive word that sprang to mind was "gah". I had a wander around some of the local businesses to try to find a ladder, as the bedroom windows were open. Perhaps mercifully, no-one had one. I don't have the greatest head for heights and climbing from a ladder through a window might have posed a few gravity-related problems.

In the end, I bowed to the inevitable and called a locksmith. Thanks to the young fellow at the Foam Services office who had a Yellow Pages. Mind you, I think they call it "Golden Pages" over here!

Thanks also to the young guy from Maclock who was with me within half an hour and was very sympathetic and friendly, while totally professional and efficient. 30 seconds and I was back in the house. Luckily, I had the cash in my wallet to pay him.

Lesson learned, then. I didn't really want to have to pay €90 for that kind of lesson but I guess it could have been worse!

Define it...

This evening, I'd like to briefly illustrate the concept of irony for you.

I used to treat my previous house almost as a bedsit. I'd live in the bedroom and really only use the lounge for storing things in. Oh, and for ironing in. I digress.

My beautiful new home has a quirk all of its own in that the mobile signal from my provider is non-existant in most of the house. As my internet connection is via a 3G dongle this poses challenges.

The only place in the entire house that I can get a stable enough signal to be able to connect to the internet (until my fixed broadband is installed next week) is in the bedroom.

Irony. Thank you.

Packing

I've been making lists and organising things in my head but tomorrow I suppose I ought to start packing.

Have I mentioned that I'm moving?

It feels a little odd, to be honest. As strange as it may sound, this is the first place I've ever lived alone. Yes, I've had a pretty regular house guest but basically I live by myself. Moving from one place to another under these circumstances is a new experience for me.

I've built a lot of memories in this little house over the last three years. Practically all of the good ones involve being here with my Pretty Lady. In fact scratch the "practically" from that last sentence. I've also got some less good memories of the place, most of which involve coming home from work (or waking up) to find pools of rain from where the house wasn't entirely weatherproof. Oh, and not being able to keep the place warm in winter because of the stone floors. Anyway.

So I can move in next Tuesday. That's ideal in a lot of ways as it's payday - if there's anything I need to pick up for the house I'll have the moolah to do so. I'm very excited actually. It's a lovely quiet area. Down a very narrow lane (which will take a little negotiating with the car!) you come to two rows of terraced houses and mine is an end terrace. And the view from the top of the lane is wonderful...

 

Back within earshot of the bells!

Olympians

BBC Sport - Ennis, Rutherford and Farah light up London 2012 Olympics for Great Britain

"Great Britain claimed six gold medals and a silver on Day Eight of the London Games to enjoy their most successful day at an Olympics in 104 years."

I've lived through some days that'll be written in the history books. Today was one that'll go into the sporting history books.

The first Olympics I can remember was Munich '72. The terrific sporting achievements there are usually overshadowed in memory by the violent deaths of 17 people, but I'm slightly ashamed to say that my six-year old self was more interested in the games themselves. 

I remember Mark Spitz, Olga Korbut, but most all Mary Peters who won the hearts of the Bavarian crowd, a gold medal and brought a smile to the face of Belfast for a while.

The Olympic Games have held a special place in my heart ever since.

Foxed

It's far too late to be up typing this, as I have work tomorrow, but I'm extremely vexed and need to get it out of my system.

Basically, I'm annoyed with Firefox and the way it refuses to play with this extension I use to blog. Using the extension, Scribefire, in Chrome as I am now, I get asked to manually enter login and password details to publish to my backup blog at Wordpress. In Firefox, the same extension redirects me to Wordpress, I click on a button to authorise the extension and I get a message saying that I've entering a "bad login/pass combination".

Given the way that Firefox now takes a noticeably longer time to load pages, especially those with Flash content, this makes me think that I might be using Chrome for personal purposes for a while. I'm still obliged to use Firefox for work so I can keep an eye it.

This saddens me, to be honest. I've bought into Google wholesale for Calendar, e-mail etc but I like the idea of Open-Source software and I'd love it if Firefox was still the best, as it used to be. At the moment, it's not, though.

November Calls...

We lose people as life goes on. It's just the way that it is. We're never quite ready for the jolt, the feeling of sudden emptiness when a loved one passes away and we set about living with the hole in our life.

I say "loved one", really meaning someone close, like a close friend, family member or our significant other. Love casts a wider net than that, though. If we can assume that someone who has made a lasting impact on our lives, without whom we wouldn't be the same, is someone that we can love, then I mourn for a man that I loved.

Last Monday saw the passing of a man who has been widly hailed as one of the most talented musicians that ever graced our world. Jon Lord was a rare talent as a keyboard player and as a composer. Rock, blues and the world of contemporary classical music have lost a giant, whose like we are unlikely to see again. 

Possibly more importantly, everyone who had the pleasure to meet him agreed that he was intelligent, erudite and a gentleman. The world is a poorer place without him in it. My sincere condolences to his family and friends.

Duplication of Content

So I didn't delete the previous post. Sue me.

One thing about browsing the internet is that one tends to stumble upon horror stories about websites and tools that one uses regularly. For example, I read something this morning about Blogger randomly and accidentally deleting people's blogs. Gulp. I may not be here as much as I intend to be but the thought that Twirling might disappear is slightly unnerving.

With that in mind I signed up for a free Wordpress account and imported everything over to it. I plan to run it as a back-up for Twirling here, as I have a clever little blog posting tool that'll ask me if I want to post elsewhere when I click to publish.

I know that a lot of people swear by Wordpress but I'm not convinced. I'm aware that this is my OCD rising to the fore, but I can't get a template over there that'll indent the beginnings of paragraphs, unless I pay for it. Yes, it has some nice features but I want my paragraphs indented!

If any of you good people are Wordpress experts and have any tips, I'd be glad to hear them.

For the time being this site is still the primary one. I'll let you know if it changes.

Playing with Chrome

Pay no attention - I'm just playing with an blogging extension to Google's Chrome browser.

If you're lucky enough to see this post then either you've been very quick, in which case "well done", or you subscribe to my blog's feed, in which case "thank you"!

Paragraph.

Paragraphs have to be indented, of course!

Reichstag

Third of a Year

It's been a long time since I was here. I bet some of you had started wondering whether you'd ever see me re-appear. Oh ye of little faith.

February to June. Four months. More than four months now, actually. It's been a four months in which remarkable things have happened. I've been rained on and shined on. People I knew and loved have passed away, leaving the world a poorer place. I've had another birthday and am now older than I ever really expected to be.

I've seen places that I'd only ever heard about before. I no more expected to have stood in front of the Brandenburg Gate, and touched the remains of the Berlin Wall, than I had to have seen the bottom of Africa! Strange days indeed.

Although both Cape Town and Berlin are wonderful places to see, I had a weekend trip to a town that I didn't expect to see again so soon. Stepping off the train that day set my nerves a-jangling and I'm not sure that I could have done it at all, if not for the steadfast figure at my side. Despite the sad circumstances, it turned into a joy to see so many old friends again and to be able to introduce them to my Pretty Lady.

Who knows what the rest of 2012 might bring? Not I. It's like to be any other year you could name - laughter and tears, good things and bad. Hopefully the laughter and the good things will outnumber the tears and the bad.

Introspection

I need to know myself better.

Sometimes I get surges of sadness, melancholy, "growliness", call it what you will. I'm not always even aware of them and it takes someone else to point out the sudden change. I have no idea, sometimes, where these come from, from what twisted root they've sprung. All I know is that I don't want these things growing in my garden.

They unsettle me and, occasionally, those close to me. Tonight, I don't relish turning out the light.

The Day Of Rest

I compared a migraine to a hangover today. The more I think about it the better I think that the comparison is.

Imagine the worst hangover you ever had. Every light is too bright. Every sound is too loud. You're nauseous, dizzy and you hurt everywhere! Even resting your head on a pillow hurts so much you can't keep it in the same position for long. Oh, but did I mention that every move you make is a living hell?

That was my Sunday. And not the hangover option.

The Longest Month

Hmmm. I understand that the longest January on record lasted for 836 days. This one only seems to have gone for for about 600 so far, so it has a ways to go yet to hit the record books but it's a formidable attempt all the same.

I'm referring to the gap between paydays here, of course. It's damned decent of The Company That Pays Me to put my salary in my account a week early at Christmas but it does mean that instead of going from the 28th to the 28th, I find myself having to negotiate five weeks with only four weeks worth of moolah. And this with various festivities thrown in for good measure.

So I'm skinty-poo, as Billy Connolly once said. So much so that even my Humour Account is overdrawn and the first line of this is a piece of shameless plagiarism. Mind you, it was nicked from Twitter so fair game, eh? I never bought into Twitter. I didn't "get it", if you will. Therefore anything anything I steal from there counts as being picked up "somewhere on the internet" and as such isn't covered by any kind of copyright legislation.

Should I make it a Resolution to blog more often? The pull is starting up again (I know: I'll go blind!) so I may be here rather more often than I have been. especially late at night when I'm trying to fight off a craving for chocolate that I don't have. If the local corner shop were open 24 hours, I'm sure they'd do a roaring trade in chocolate and soft drinks. Probably in rolling papers too, considering I live in Student Central.

Or what about chocolate vending machines like bank ATMs? Incidentally, has anyone else ever noticed that the word "chocolate" is one of those that it's impossible to type correctly without serious concentration? There are several of those - ordinary, run-of the-mill words that just don't flow comfortably from a computer keyboard. "Thanks" is one for me. It always seems to come out as "thnaks" first time. Five letters but far from simple.

Where was I? Oh yes, January. Thnaks for reminding me. As the weekend falls where it does (crash!) I may well find funds available to me next Friday. Besides treating myself to something and paying bills, I shall try to squirrel a little extra away in hopes of getting some time away with my Pretty Lady later in the year. And, of course, there's the little matter of a Post-Peak Party to attend!