Monthly Archives: January 2009

ts dw

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Does anyone else get fed up of video? Not youtube, but the embedded news videos? I go to a news site and instead of the written story you have to watch a video. 100% guarantee I will never click to watch. Far too often you get the “You need something else” to watch the video, or it shows ads, or there is some creepy plastic woman presenting it and even if they are not there (a rarity) it’s just too slow. I want to scan a page and then decide if I have read enough or if it deserves a proper read. I can’t scan a video. It is subject to all manner of distractions and I’m sure is there more to push the station idents rather than the actual news. And the more video = less time I spend on the sites and that is less chance of my clicking on an ad.

Stephen Green makes it up

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An atheist campaign claiming “There’s probably no God” has been reported to the advertising regulator. BBC

But Stephen Green, national director of Christian Voice, said: “There is plenty of evidence for God, from people’s personal experience, to the complexity, interdependence, beauty and design of the natural world.

“But there is scant evidence on the other side, so I think the advertisers are really going to struggle to show their claim is not an exaggeration or inaccurate, as the ASA code puts it.”

Mr Stephen Green is brainwashed and talks complete bull.
There is NO evidence for any god at all from any of the world’s religions and what you actually mean is there is only evidence for your god, only your god and nothing else anyone of any other religion could be calling god.
And there is masses of evidence that everything came about without any sort of “spiritual”influence at all.

If you weren’t afraid of atheists you wouldn’t be complaining, would you?

I trust that Mr Green and his god-fearing zealots have also alerted the brewing industry to the claims by Carling that they brew “Probably the best beer in the world” and that they have “Probably the best website in the World“. There must be lots of people say different and this too in a market that relies on money (like your church Mr Green) yet no-one has taken them on.

Mr Green – if I said I was rearing crocodiles in my underwear you would not believe me unless you actually saw it. Even if there was blood gushing down my legs and I was thrashing on the ground wailing like a maniac you would still say you did not believe me because you had not seen it. And to say you believed it without seeing it makes you a liar. So, can I meet your God please?

I bought an alarm clock

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The assumption when people are told that I work at home is that I can lie in, go out when I want, play games, watch films ….. which I can but this thing called Work is still there. I am still developing my routine into something better for me. Take six months ago – I would be up whenever, do work, help J, do work, do housework, do work etc. ‘do work’ was slotted in around everything else. Which was great for the work part. I would answer tickets quickly and otherwise do other work. And I did this 7 days a week (I don’t mind working that many days and I certainly have never seen the attraction of a weekend off. Why be off when everyone else is?) because it’s how the work is done, not when. So my whole day was spoken for and because of the work thing I rarely gave myself any time. This was not good.
I did not give myself time because work needed doing and I got the priority wrong – something I have eventually figured out how to address. People do say I have these lie-ins etc. Now what they think is that I get the lie-in, I get to do what I want and I also quit at 5pm. Ah. Wrong. That’s where their vision fails. Start late – finish late. And because I finish late I need the lie in, I feel rushed to get work done, I try to do everything at home and work and get no time for me. Not good. So over Christmas – because it was quieter at work – I started getting up early and doing it deliberately. Big difference.
J normally gets up around 9, the dog wants a walk after J gets up and I have to stop work to get this done. So if I got up just before or at the same time I did not start work until late and so the day went from there. I could not add more time at the end of the day and if I did not only was I more tired I was also putting that time in when incoming work had dropped – I was catching up. But getting up at 7:30 means I have at least 90 mins of work time. No phones, no helping J, the dog couldn’t care what happens. Because there are no other distractions – and because I have a supply of Red Bull in the room so no need for the kettle – I am getting so much more work done and that does free up time in the day, it does mean things should not pile up (hopefully) and it does mean that at some point I will give myself permission to do what I want (I keep telling myself to back to the gym… Just paying for it does little good..). Of course buying the alarm clock and setting it for 7:30 means I now wake at 7:25 It actually feels very odd too. I am ‘finishing’ what I normally set out to do in a day earlier. So whereas before I’d feel the need to work til 9pm or more now I feel more relaxed at 7pm. I still do more and always will – there is always work to be done – but just this one change of getting up early (why did I not think of this before?) seems to be making a positive difference. The real test will be gaming I think. If I can get back to playing some games regularly I’ll know I’ve cracked it.

iCrash

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Somehing on the computer (that’s an apple “It just works” computer) crashed. I restart it (because nothing at all worked) and iTunes has just doubled EVERYTHING. I have twice as many albums, twice as many other tracks. I only noticed because I used it for apps, went to play a track and it repeated. Joy. The whole damn thing is screwed even though I took care to import everything once. Just once. If this was software from any other company it would be slammed for what it is – a mess of drm, upsell and bloat. I really wish I could delete this junky crap.

A very silly girl.

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Warning over youth mental health
This is a terrible article.

One in 10 youngsters questioned in a survey disagreed that “life was really worth living”. Those not in work or education were less likely to be happy.

This is not necessarily a mental health issue.

Of those questioned, 29% said they are less happy now than they were as a child and one in five said they felt like crying “often” or “always”.

Fair enough, this fits with depression scales. But ‘less happy when they were a child’? So they were happier without bills, without money worries, without boyfriend/girlfriend issues, without responsibility? That would seem to fit that statistic.

Almost half (47%) said they were regularly stressed.

Means nothing. What precisely were they stressed about?

The Prince’s Trust says it plans to train all its frontline staff to recognise mental health problems

Which means over-diagnose probably.

And listen to the video there. The girl says that people need to be told what to think (!!) and that she was helped by talking about how lucky she was. Did she mention cognitive behaviour therapy? No, so she probably did not have that. What she says is she was reminded of what was nice so she doesn’t need her meds. Great. (This of course means her GP mis-diagnosed her or she had very mild depression.) Some parent or spouse somewhere is telling someone they are not depressed, they should be grateful for all the nice stuff in their life and they will expect this person to ‘snap out of it’. This is hugely damaging and to expect a kid who has had the narrowest experience to answer for anything but her is stupid in the extreme.
The BBC gets worse and worse both in what they are posting on their site and the nonsense shows like Breakfast put out.

Tiptoe theft

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It’s 20:18 here and about 2 hours ago an alarm went off outside. Could have been a car alarm so I looked through the blinds briefly. Nothing. No cars, no people. Just after that P comes upstairs to tell me that the neighbour had been around and it had been his house alarm, that he had been burgled. Hmm.. quiet village street that has a dead end, no cars heard, no voices, no people seen (my view from upstairs is pretty wide). Police turn up but do not come to talk to us – we are the same house (being semi-detached to each other). So…. I reckon that either (a) something got broken at the New Year’s party he had or (b) someone said “hey, if I take that for you, and you claim on the insurance ….” happened.

Sipping through sludge

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My niece has been working in Argentina and when she visited last she was drinking Mate. Leather covered gourd on a stand, a fairly ornate metal straw (bombilla) and a mash of green inside the gourd where the bombilla was buried. It tasted like cheap tea. But apparently it has nice chemicals in and I’m all for those.
My gourd, bombilla and bag of leaves arrived a few days ago. I cured my gourd (so to speak, I still need those other chemicals) and have now had 3 ‘experiences’ – by which I mean 1 flask full of hot water which I use completely. So.. put lots of green into the gourd, place bombilla in there, fill with hot water. Wait, sip until it gurgles, fill, repeat. The taste starts like very cheap tea. With smoky grassy bits in. Not unpleasant but I’d rather suck a toffee. The second refill mellows it slightly, like taking the rust off a cheese grater. And from the third there appears to be a hint of flavour. Only a hint though. With each refill the sludge swells but the fourth and fifth are actually quite nice, they tasted like proper tea.

If you have ever drunk whisky then you’ll know there are 3 sorts: falling down water, scotch and malts. That’s how I consider them and the difference between them is significant. (For the record I always liked Laphroaig the most with Jack Daniels – yes I know it’s bourbon, not whisky at all – as my regular drink). Back to Mate. I’m sure that with this pack of green it could be a little worse for the travelling (like the Irish say that Guinness – another great drink – does not travel well) so while I experiment some more with quantities of green in the gourd I’ll look for some better grade green.

Or maybe I’ll throw a whole wad into the coffee press and see what that does for my reality.

Timesonline non-story

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Big freeze turns roadside tree into a giant artwork

Skelmersdale Walkers stumbled upon a winter wonderland in Skelmersdale, Lancashire, when they discovered a spectacular 10ft (3m) natural ice sculpture on the outskirts of the town on the road to the village of Newburgh.

In a sign of how low temperatures have fallen recently, the extraordinary phenomenon was created by cars splashing in puddles at the side of the road. The water spray quickly turned into icicles hanging from the branches of a tree.

There is no picture with this. No photograph, no video, no artist’s impression. Nothing. Which renders the report pretty much useless. (Image free link)

31 and counting

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On treating cancer:

Most of the general public will not have heard of the 31 day rule. The 31 day rule says that, once a cancer has been diagnosed, treatment must be started within 31 days. The hospital employs 31-Day rule commissars.

NHS Blog Doctor