watch tHe skies

Is it me or is tere an enormous amount of hype surrounding the new Bond movie; Casino Royale? Ford have been telling us for weeks that Bond drives a ford, the film reviews have been unbelievably positive, Sony are encouraging us to buy their 007 memory sticks and every Bond movie has been re-re-re-released on DVD. Even our local radio station has been playing Bond themes every hour on the hour.

So it had better be good. Granny is looking after Ben tomorrow whilst we sneak off to a 6pm showing. Deluxe seats too - very nice, if only they were fitted in an Aston Martin…

My interest and training in the field of NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) has led me to develop an interest in hypnosis. After all, much of NLP is related to managing states of mind, understanding the link between conscious and unconscious, and using this knowledge to help break people’s problems (NLP practitioners don’t fix people - they break their problems so the person has a choice again).

So there is an overlap between NLP and hypnosis. Fortunately when you talk to people about NLP they generally either react with “huh? what’s that?” in which case I tell them it’s like being a Jedi without the ability to levitate stuff. If they have heard of it they generally reply “oh so you can fix phobias and stuff?” to which I happily answer “yes” - if someone wants to stereotype me as being someone who helps, I’m comfortable with that.

However, mention an interest or training in hypnosis (i’m planning to study hypnosis next year) and you get an all together different reaction. Unless they have an interest in hypnosis, the reaction will likely be negative. It is as big a conversation killer as owning up to an STD. People view you with suspicion, avoiding eye contact (presumably in case you charm them with your jungle book eyes a la “trusssht in meeeeeeee!”) and listening carefully in case you are trying to hypnotise them. And god help you if you check the time with a pocket watch! (more…)

I found out with some amazement yesterday that Channel 4 have lost the rights to the third season of cult show Lost. From this sunday, the show with a rather large following will be aired exclusively on Sky One.

Now it would appear that I’m behind the times, as this deal was done way back in October, and it follows the pattern previously set by Sky when they poached 24 from the BBC some years ago.

However you can’t blame Sky - if they are prepared to pay £20m for a show, the US studio are within their rights to get the best deal possible. It’s just a little unfair on the loyal fans that have made it a success and don’t have Sky (which for you overseas readers, costs £30-£40 per month on top of the normal TV viewing costs).

In fact it remains to be seen whether Channel 4 have made a cunning decision. Lost started looking a little long in the tooth towards the end of the second series, and both Jen and I agree that the format may not stand up for another couple of series. However, we’ll be there watching it on sunday night, just to see if we’re right.

Perhaps Channel 4 should move to sign up NBC’s Heroes - the highest rated new show on US TV, and from what I’ve seen of it, shaping up to be an excellent purchase.

Whilst we wait for Richard Hammond to regain full fitness enough to return to Top Gear, I thought that you would enjoy this clip of the hamster being hypnotised by Paul McKenna. See Richard forget how to drive a car, and then be sure that the toy 911 in the studio is indeed his real Porsche. Cheap laughs, but funny nonetheless and yet another reason why you wouldn’t invite Paul McKenna to the pub.

The other week, Jen, Ben and I stayed a night in Great Yarmouth. It’s close to my brother and sister in law, and given that we live as far as is mathematically possible from the sea in England, it was good to enjoy some fresh sea air before heading down the perilously slow A47 back to the Midlands.

Since my last visit to the golden sands surrounding the mouth of the Yar, they have constructed an offshore wind warm at Scroby Sands, very visible from the Yarmouth beaches.

A little bit of googling tells me that this is a 60MW plant, using 30 2MW wind turbines. All good, low impact energy generation. Plus, in my opinion, they look great.

I know that there is plenty of objection to wind farms as polluting the environment with big, ugly blades, lots of noise close-up, and the considerable hazard to birds who don’t get out of the way (to which I say “survival of the fittest, lads”), however when you weigh up the effect on the ambience compared to the increasing likelihood of getting skin cancer and tropical storms in Market Harborough then it may well be a price worth paying.

Personally I find windfarms very pleasing, even hypnotic to look at - the long slowly rotating blades have caused me to nearly veer on to the hard shoulder a couple of times. I did look in to getting one at home (around £1000, plus there are local grants available) however so far I’ve not gone for it due to concerns over annoying my neighbours and the fact that the windows need replacing first.

£100m? That is the jackpot available for tonight’s eurolottery. It certainly is a lot of money, and when I heard about the draw tonight I shot off in to a daydream about what I would with all that money.And it’s a fantasy that can put you in to trance - I started to imagine how happy my friends and famy would be when I handed over all of that cash. I imagined myself buying my Aston Martin and driving in to work and putting my notice in. Soon I was constructing this entire fantasy world about what it would be like to be uber rich.

The funny thing is, I can’t remember ever creating such a rich fantasy based on becoming uber rich from my own success. Now surely THAT is a better use of my daydreaming time. Imagine that same scenario of uber richness, only this time it’s the result of your own achievements and POW! That feels great! When I do that it reinvigorates my enthusiasm to succeed and take responsibility for my own success which is a great feeling.

So perhaps I won’t buy that lottery ticket tonight. Instead I will spend some more time on that business plan I’ve been procrastinating over…

As I regularly do I was reading through Adam Eason’s blog and came across this really interesting post on “hypnotic takeaways“. Actually what he is talking about is the “reverse psychology” of selling something to someone who can’t be sold to, in other words giving people reasons why they don’t need whatever it is that you are trying to sell them. This is similar to the homeopathy approach of pushing someone slightly further in the wrong direction to drive that innate instinct we have to resist being pushed in the direction of change. The reaction is that we seem to want something even more when we are told that we don’t need it.

Confused? Well to see it in action check out the page for Adam’s latest product. Halfway down the page there is a title “this is not for everyone”, the ad then explains this in more detail, however whilst you are reading that your neurology is still screaming “don’t tell me what is and isnt for me! this is for me if you say it isn’t!”. In fact Adam’s site is covered in hypnotic and persuasive language (as it should be) and is worth modelling if you sell on your website.

It is with a mixture of excitement and dread that I opened the package I received yesterday. Excitement because the latest series of 24 has been released. Dread because it means that I won’t be getting much sleep for the next fortnight.

24 is a TV show set over 24 hours of a day, usually where terrorists are up to no good and CTU (Counter Terrorism Unit) Los Angeles are out to stop them. Led by Jack Bauer (Keifer Sutherland), each episode plays in real time as the good guys race to catch the bad guys before innocent people pay the price for their government’s something or other.

The show moves at such a pace, and with a cliffhanger at the end of each episode, that pulling yourself away from the TV without “watching just one more episode” is akin to going cold turkey (perhaps).

So last night we put Ben to bed and sat down to watch “one or two episodes, just to see what happens”. After all we have lived through four previous bad days for Jack Bauer so, you know, we can handle it, take it or leave it, no big deal.

Four episodes later we crawled in to bed happy that Jack had saved the hostages in the airport, exhausted from edge of seat sitting we were pleased that there was a lull in the action, albeit so the bad guys could retrieve their bioweapons…

We might watch one tonight, only one though, you know, just for fun…

So I finally got around to watching Mission Impossible III - a film I desperately wanted to see at the cinema but couldn’t so as soon as it hit the shelves on monday I was there to buy it, and back home to watch it… (more…)

No, it wasn’t a fad, I’m still looking for the best way for our family to become carbon neutral, and a neat way to do so is to sign up to targetneutral, a BP led programme to contribute to environmental compensation programmes to offset the carbon generated by our motor vehicles. With my business mileage and Jenny’s shopping mileage, our offset would cost around £20 per year, which seems a small cost to compensate for the damage to the environment.

I’ve also proposed to my company that we sign up to such a programme to compensate for the emissions caused by our many corporate vehicles travelling all over the country.

However this programme doesn’t cover home energy usage or flights, so I’m still looking around and would be interested if you can find something that wraps up all energy usage in to a single compensation programme.