watch tHe skies

This was recommended to me by many people, so I picked it up on amazon. A fairly light read, concentrating mainly on plot and leaving description of people and places to the reader’s imagination. Essentially the story follows the monomyth structure, as an everyman gets his opportunity to follow his dream and become aware of the omens pointing him in the direction of that which he desires most - treasure buried near the great Pyramids in Egypt.

On his journey, our hero encounters many interesting characters, each of which adds a little to the boy’s awareness of the world, in his quest to discover the whereabouts of his treasure. Littered with nested stories of following one’s dreams and realising potential, I found the book to be very interesting until the point at which it revealed it’s true colours as to the view of the universe, and its religious undertones put me off. I actually left the book alone for a while at that point, however I returned to it as I don’t like to be defeated by a book, particularly a little one like this. This religious theme, coupled with the lack of descriptive text left me a little cold - I needed more emotion and introspection from the boy to draw me in, to have me sympathise with his journey and perhaps make a metaphoric link to my own life, in the way that I suspect the author intended.

In the end all I really took from the book was the idea of interconnectedness, the benefits of pursuing your dreams and being aware of “omens” or opportunities to help you closer to your goal, all of which were more effectively communicated in books by Brian Tracy or Robert Anton Wilson (Check out Goals! and Prometheus Rising respectively). An interesting effort at communicating on a metaphoric level life lessons discovered by some of the most successful and happy people in recent times, but the religious and spiritual elements left me cold.

So this week we finally finished 24 Day 5. Delayed mostly because of I’m A Celebrity (Jenny was hooked like a really hooked thing), we survived Jack Bauer’s fifth worst day battered and bruised, feeling somewhat like an invincible lemming, veteran of so many cliffhangers, twists and turns.

Day 5 begins with a bang when former US President David Palmer is assassinated in front of his brother. More assassinations followed, seemingly targeting those few people who know that Jack is alive and well, having shaken off the wrath of the Chinese government by faking his own death. Soon, Jack is called back in to action when CTU uncover a genocidal plot to kill thousands with nerve gas.

It’s been a while since I’ve seen 24. Since it went off terrestrial TV we’ve waited each year for the DVD box set to be released. The following fortnight included many late nights, where we intended to stop at 11.30pm but found the cliffhanger too much to bear, only to discover at 12.10 that the next cliffhanger was even worse.

Released on DVD back in August 2005, the new series only came out in November, so since we last watched 24 we’ve experienced the first 2 seasons of Lost, and our datum for great telly was calibrated against the island drama \ soap thingy. Lost is great but 24 is brilliant. Day 5 is by far the best of the bunch. Amazing drama, action, humour, everything you hope from a decent trip to the cinema stretched over 24 episodes. The storyline is gripping, and at times completely mental, however the plot stretches are carried by brilliant acting and direction. Check out the performances of Jean Smart and Gregory Itzin (Martha and Charles Logan), both nominated for Emmys, who absolutely steal every scene, which is a tall order given some great turns from Mary Lynn Rajskub (Chloe) and, of course, Keifer Sutherland as the seemingly indestructible Jack Bauer. 

So, if you’ve yet to experience the show, pick up the first series on DVD and be happy in the knowledge that each series you get is better than the last. It might just help you through the torrid TV that smothers every channel over the festive period.

Well I did write a highly humorous post at work the other day and I emailed it to myself. It was about fog, alien invasion and, er something or other. Unfortunately it never arrived in my home email account and so its humour is lost to the world.

So, it’s Christmas Day and fair play to you for visiting my site when there is a roast on the table of some kind.

Me? I’m off on some british motorway somewhere, visiting someone. So I leave you with a photo of Ben the Christmas Elf, and would like to wish you a peaceful, heartwarming and very Merry Christmas .

(click on more to see our little man)

(more…)

So I don’t remember there ever being fog like the fog we have in the UK at the moment. Fog usually lasts a day, maybe two, but not a whole week, which is making me suspicious.

Extreme phenomena (cue muppet theme) like this only happens in the movies, but as we say in our house, truth is stranger than fiction which logically leads me to believe with conviction that we can expect an alien invasion or extreme natural disaster in the next few days. Typical really because it had to wait until I’d spent some considerable time shopping for presents and also renewed my gym membership, paying for the year in advance, yet in the current inclement weather it is actually hazardous for my health to drive there.

Should there indeed be an alien invasion, at least little Leicester will be one of the last places they get to. After all it poses little or no threat to the alien hordes, having only the National Space Centre that is of interest outside of the shire. Who knows, perhaps we will survive? They will probably have to finish off Nottingham before they come for us, and as the most armed city in Britain (rumours have it that there are more automatic weapons and short range artillery in circulation in the city of Nottingham than in the entire British Armed forces), it will probably put up a fairly good fight. So the aliens will certainly be weakened before they arrive at our gates to a defensive wall of curry houses and shopping centres.

Navigating the city of Leicester in their bizarre three legged contraptions will indeed be difficult given the uneven road surfaces and extremely bad traffic congestion. Their best bet would be to arrive at around 4am sunday morning when all of the taxis and ambulances are congregated around the clocktower.

Of course once Leicester has fallen to the bug-eyed freaks, our little village of Countesthorpe will follow shortly. Even its brief fame as the place at which grubby indie band Kasabian formed whilst at school won’t be enough to defend us from disintegration rays and the huge earth burrowing machines that churn the ground over in preparation for new inhabitants.

And that will be that. Probably before Christmas Day, so I had better go and get myself prepared. Whatever that means. So this will be my last post. If through some technical hitch on the aliens’ part the invasion is postponed, I would like to wish you a very merry Christmas and I’ll speak to you in a few days…

My gadget budget has dropped severely since Jen went on maternity leave in April. So I now am restricted to hunting out bargains on ebay to sate my gadget appetite.

So my latest attempt to streamline life is to capture all of my ideas (bright, dim, and outright stupid) on voice recorder, less they sink back in to the depths of my psyche without being given the attention that they deserve.

So after some searching I acquired a right bargain of an Olympus WS-200 digital voice recorder off ebay. A little larger than a memory stick, with a stereo mike and direct USB connection, this is a dream of a little device that fits snugly in to your hand and could easily, using a shirt mike, allow you to be “wired” to record conversationss with druglords and the like in true Miami Vice style. Where would I hide the unit itself in such a situation I hear you ask? Alimentary, my dear Watson. 128mb RAM means I can ramble on to myself for hours and record the insanity for posterity, or even convert it to text using some clever software I have still to find.

So I have the device, I just need an idea to record on it. However, I suspect that my ideas department has stage fright, because not even a single outlandish concept has bubbled up from the depths of my psyche since I’ve had the recorder in my pocket. It, like me, probably feels like a bit of a prat, in a David Brent stylee, actually recording my mad ramblings. Perhaps I need to eliminate my stage fright before the brainstorms return…

Hooray! It seems that this site has climbed beyond the peak of my expectations and is now ranked number 1 in google!

Okay so perhaps I should give more detail.

Number 1 in google if you search for the term “maghook”.

Yes, the legendary life-saving device used by Matthew Reilly’s uber-nails Marine, Shane “Scarecrow” Schofield. Not the magnetic hook you can buy off the market.

Should you want to experience first-hand, this google-topping page, head over to maghook central for a look. Keep your expectation dial down to a 3 or 4 though…

I found this interesting article from a hypnotist talking about the public perception of hypnosis. If you are in any way suspicious of hypnosis and or have fears of being made to dance like a chicken, head over to the article and have a read.

The other weekend I attended a Negotiating Course (by Simon Hazeldine). I attended his “bare knuckle selling” course earlier in the year and thought that it would be a good idea to beef up my negotiating skills in a similar fashion to my selling skills.

Negotiation to me had always been about “haggling” - that bit where the seller starts with a high price, buyer with a low price and somewhere in the middle they meet. This, for me, has always been a nightmare scenario, even on holiday in Egypt. Jenny, however, daughter of a sole trader, takes to it like Del Boy Trotter to a market stall, whilst I cower in the corner.

I say cower because I realise that the reason I avoided it wasn’t because it was trivial (that’s what I told myself), it was because I was afraid of the confrontation. So i’ve sorted that one now and i’m happily negotiating in situations that I would have previously avoided or simply accepted the normal outcome. My first attempt (negotiating a better deal at the gym) didn’t work out too well and reminded me that preparation is everything (I should have known that gyms don’t negotiate on price in December or January - doh!). However, as Brian Tracy says, everything fails the first time and the average number of times people try something new is less than one so it’s important to get back on the horse.

Anyhow, I digress. I thought that I would share with you the key learnings from that course so you can negotiate for yourself:

1.) Prepare prepare prepare!

The strongest point you can have is one of preparedness (is that a word). You are more likely to negotiate a good deal if you are as, or more prepared than the other party.

2.) Don’t accept the first offer, it makes everyone sad

If a first offer is accepted, the seller realises that they started too low and the buyer realises they could have gotten it cheaper, so no-one is happy with the deal.

3.) Win-Win is the best way

It can be macho to screw the other person but it won’t pay off in the long term - you might not get the customer service you expect, or a bad attitude in repeat business, so look for a solution that is positive for both sides.

4.) If ______________ then _________________

A very useful language pattern - conditional acceptance makes it hard for the other side to not give you the IF you are asking for.

and finally

5.) No free lunches.

Never give anything away for free, as you will have a reputation for it and your offerings are devalued. When offering even the smallest thing, ensure that you get something of equal or better value in return, it will grow your negotiating confidence, and respect from those that you negotiate with.

So there you go, my 10 second guide to negotiation. Hope you found it useful!

So I’ve returned to work after a 3 day intensive weekend on the 3rd module of my NLP practitioner course. Looking back I’m still trying to remember all of the stuff we learnt because there was so much to take in my brain feels like a toaster that has been wired to too high a voltage. Why a toaster? No idea it’s the first inanimate electrical item that came to my mind. There’s a metaphor in there somewhere if you want to find one. (more…)

So I spent saturday doing my christmas shopping. I don’t venture in to the shops much nowadays, preferring to do my shopping online. However my recent illness set me back by a fortnight on my shopping programme so saturday was do or die.

It was hard work but I achieved my goal in the one day. My debit card is still glowing a little… But my sanity didn’t fare so well.

It was the buying behaviour all around me that disturbed me greatly. It seems that half of the stuff people were buying was, for want of a more eloquent word, crap. Novelty stuff that won’t be of interest to anyone past boxing day. And this stuff ain’t cheap - I would imagine millions of pounds are being spent every day in december on stuff that no-one is interested in past boxing day, and it is a sad indicator of the state of our society when our hospitals and police force are under-resourced and yet we are openly encouraged to spend money (that many don’t even own) on crap that we don’t need.

Suddenly I am sounding a lot like Tyler Durden. So I’ll stop and go and have a lie down. Perhaps my “Mr T in your pocket” can help me relax. All together now, “you are not your television set”…