watch tHe skies

Since tuesday I haven’t received a single email due to my hosting company having some disagreement with the UK data centre. Apparently they are carrying out jiggery pokery on each and every account.

So I thought I could handle it. Wednesday was tough but I survived. Thursday was a test; I checked my email many times just in case it was working again. Friday and today are a challenge - I’m missing out on all of those lovely jokes and people commenting on the pointlessness of my blog! Hopefully it will be back soon and the nightmare will be over!

Thanks for all of the emails suggesting that I stop posting and hand the blog over to Andy, my over-qualified, under-utilised mate whose giant intellect is clearly wasted in IT. He should have his own show. This week he explains to us a little about evolution, specifically, even though we are evolved from apes, how come monkeys aren’t human yet?

“Some would consider monkeys more human than humans! I would disagree on the grounds that, they sit around in cages in zoos flicking pooh at each other.

The reason monkeys are not humans yet is because the genes controlling hairiness, language and love of bananas are not yet ’switched on’. Early trials using gene therapy have had limited success, the best example being the bloke from Simply Red. He scored well on language, fairly well on hairyness [his urang oo tang (trans. ‘man with wood’) genes shone through there], however his craving of bananas eventually runied him.”

Honestly, he does have a pHd, in microwave transmissions or something.

Baby Ben has made a few discoveries this week. The funniest one is that he is very good at blowing raspberries. This was amusing on friday night as we were getting to sleep - we would be just dropping off when he would let rip and then giggle to himself.

Unfortunately this was quickly accompanied by him discovering his ability to shout. Very loudly I must say. To the point where we gave up watching TV because the telly simply couldn’t compete with his deafening gibber.

This became less funny at 2am this morning when he decided that sleep was out, and raspberries and shouting were in. As a result I suspect that work today is going to move very slowly indeed.

Poke me if I start snoring….

Aaaah the wonders of ebay. Buy a pocket DAB radio for £50 and sell it for £60 on the very same website. Amazing.

Still, sad to see such a thing of beauty go, but as it would only pick up a signal in the village when I was standing still on a hill it was never going to help me listen to the footie whilst mowing the lawn. I guess I should have known, considering that I fitted a DAB aerial in the loft and piped it through the TV co-ax to each room to get a better DAB signal.

In fact I’ve taken the opportunity whilst I was on ebay to clear out some CDs before no-one buys them any more. Sure I’ve made more profit off the postage than on the CDs themselves, but the extra revenue and space can be used to procure a new gadget to keep the monster happy.

Blue makes me think of the sea. Standing on the beach, watching the waves roll on to the golden shore, accompanied by that gentle rumbling sound as they return to the sea. The feel of the warm sand under foot, as I gently work my toes deeper in to the beach for no apparent reason. This is the place I come to when reality is becoming too real, and I find myself seeking solitude to gather my thoughts. Strangely this place is nowhere in particular, rather a mixture of places I’ve been, islands I’ve seen or read about. Or perhaps it’s my psyche’s idea of paradise - no ringing phones, demanding customers, or news reporters telling me about the latest moral panic. And as I stand here, I decide that this is indeed paradise, as I spy my beautiful wife, making her way through the shallow waters, smiling, and walking towards me.

So I got hold of a demo copy of The Reader’s Edge, a piece of software discussed in my blog yesterday. The software is designed to take any reader from the reading age of around five, and give him or her tools and exercises to gradually increase reading speed.

Much like a personal trainer, the software first encourages you to benchmark your reading speed and comprehension levels, so there’s no point in trying to fool yourself, as reading too fast will result in a low comprehension, and the programme tells you that you are skim reading, as your comprehension level is too low to suggest that you are reading every word.

The software then allows you to set your target reading speed (say 100wpm above your baselined), and then it offers a number of exercises to improve your reading skills. An example exercise is horizontal span, where you are given an arrangement of words and phrases, and then have to pick the correct one from 4 offered. Sounds easy, but when you set the speed to 100wpm above your baseline, you will quickly find it quite tiring and requiring concentration. In other words, the software is genuinely working your brain. (more…)

I was shocked to hear about Richard Hammond’s accident whilst filming for Top Gear. A BBC TV show about cars, for you foreign readers, it is as well known for the general larking about by the presenters as it is for the cars they feature. In fact my missus loves it and she couldn’t care less about the cars - it’s the crashed caravans, sinking amphibious cars and rolling of white vans that appeals to her, and most of us actually.

Yesterday Richard Hammond crashed whilst filming a landspeed record attempt in a jet-powered car at an airfield in Yorkshire somewhere. I hope that he recovers fully and is quickly back on our screens out-buffooning Jeremy Clarkson.

Don’t ask me to explain the cat theme, but here he is again in arguably the only interesting posts on the site. Still, here it is, more scientific buffoonery from the over qualified and under-engaged Andy, explaining Schroedinger’s Cat theory.

“Schroedinger puts a cat in a box. he never liked cats.
He threatens it for a little while. Cat gets hungry and meows.
Cat molester considers poisoning cat. Cat goes quiet.
Schroedinger suddenly has an inspirational idea about particle duality and ponders on the coexistence of two simillar subatomic particles.
Schroedinger smells cat wee and puts cat outside.

An unusual fact about Schroedinger. He invented potato waffles.”

I wonder who exactly paid him to do a pHd? The tellytubbies probably.

Continuing my interest in all things that increase productivity, and particularly with the concept of speed reading, I have been doing some research around the subject. As you, my loyal reader, already know, I have been learning Photoreading for some time. However I am a great believer in reading around a subject to get balanced knowledge and skillsets from different viewpoints in much the same way as Bruce Lee did for martial arts, but hopefully without the mysterious death and legendary conspiracy theory.

So I also had a look at QSR and a new twist on traditional speed reading, in addition to giving an update on my quest to photoread. (more…)

With the popularity of the Pirates Of The Caribbean movies, talking like a pirate has gone up a few notches in popularity, and it is of course, talk like a pirate day today me hearties.

So shivver me timbers, break out the hornpipe and raise the mainsail, an’ head over to www.yarr.org to find out more.

www.talklikeapirate.com has some excellent pirate chat-up lines, including the legendary “Avast, me proud beauty! Wanna know why me Roger is so Jolly??” Even Captain Jack Sparrow would struggle to beat such a charming phrase!