Trains of thought

So there's this b&w film starring Will Hay called "Oh Mr Porter" a cracking comedy. Anyway, early in the film he says Sic Transit Gloria, (latin meaning "Glory Passes"), and I am reminded of the full quote sic transit gloria mundi as in the glories of the world pass, which reminds me of the early Punk/Goth band Gloria Mundi (Eddie Maelov's band), one of whom I am sure played with Generation X, who strangely are missing from the canon of major punk bands, which is strange as they were well connected had an early punk hit with Ready, Steady Go.

So it goes.

Houses are too expensive

I am watching a programme on BBC about the credit crisis, not an inspiring piece of journalism more populist than insightful.

However what beggars belief is the representative of the Council for Mortgage Lenders suggesting that we need to get the housing market going again, and everything will be all right.

What! Have we all missed/forgotten the fact, yes fact, that this credit crunch is the result of the housing bubble, call it "sub prime mortgages" if you like, it's the same thing. Lending money to people who couldn't afford it based on the assumption that house prices will continue to rise at a faster rate than the economy is clearly not a long term strategy.

Sadly it is a strategy that successive UK governments have been pursuing since about 1979. This year we are all paying the price for all that excess.

Thatcherism/Reaganomics, call it what you will, I just hope it has died.

But it's only chicken Pox...Part 5

After a mammoth wait, and some prompting by people, I am eventually starting Part 5.

The next thing is, that I wake up. Well when I say wake up I really mean that they wake me up by stopping the anaesthetics. The Doctors have decided that I am well enough to start breathing on my own and it is time to get better.

This is all well and good, except that when I come round, I am completely bonkers. Sorry not completely bonkers but pretty close. For a start I am not sure that I know what I am doing there, you see along with the anaesthetics they also give you paralytics (to paralyse you) and other drugs to make you forget. So I have no ideas where I am, what I am doing there, who these people (medical staff) are or much else. I know my name etc. but not a lot more. And this is where the weirdness kicks in.

I am not sure whether it is my brain trying to make sense of the world, or whether this is a result of dreams I had when I was under, but I have all of these not so much memories as realities. I am unable to tell what is real and what is not. I therefore have a number of scenarios all of which are equally real (and in some cases mutually exclusive).

Examples:

I now have six children, two of my own, four who I adopted, two I adopted from their dead mother (one of which was mine), two who where orphans in Scotland who I rescued from an institution where they were being held - this was as a result of an interaction I had with one of them fifteen odd years ago.

I was held by renegade US Soldiers who were part of a secret mission that used psychological warfare techniques, including drugs. Unfortunately they went a bit off course, forgot how to use their equipment/techniques etc. I stumbled across them and they captured me and were trying to brainwash me, I got help using a modem, got rescued, captured agian and rescued again and they were all re-patriated.

I have a whole bunch of memories about a 2nd world war project to communicate via windmill like structures and paper cards, including visiting the last working example.

and many more.

The thing about these is that however mad they seem now (and they are) they were so real at the time I could not tell them from reality. So when Elaine came to visit I was genuinely asking her where the other children were, and who was looking after them (I neglected to say that there were a Dutch couple trying to steal two of the children) as I was so worried about them.

Poor Elaine didn't know what had hit her.

Roll on Part 6!

Max Mosely wins Libel Case

Latest news on the celebrity front is the award of £60k damages to F1 boss Max Mosely, see the BBC report at news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7523034.stm. All well and good, he didn't do anything illegal, some people may agree or disagree with his actions, but that is personal choice.

I just wonder how he's going to celebrate his win ;-)

Semantic Web

Stuff about the Semantic Web that I research (in a minor way) and have a technical and commercial interest in is on my company blog at blogs.pancentric.com have a look if that is your thing.

Not Bitter, now

I have been thinking about starting a new blog/website nolongerbitter(.com) to lay to rest some of the issues that I have been carrying around with me for far too many years now.

I am prompted if you like because I spent yesterday evening on a "meet the teacher" session at my sons' Primary school meeting their teachers. In particular meeting Mr Richardson my elder son Matthews teacher. The way he spoke about Matthew and the clear interest he had in Matthew almost brought me to tears. Which is completely silly.

I realised (and understood that I have been hiding this all for far too long) that I still have all sorts of issues about my time at school, and other parts of my life that still affect me in a deeply emotional way but about which I am no longer bitter.

This simple statement feels like a catharsis, not there yet but a starting point, just being able to say that takes a huge pressure off. I am no longer bitter, I may not yet be reconciled, not have closure, still feel a deep lack of something, but I am no longer bitter.

So, Mrs Harding, Mr French, Mr Nicholson, Mr Mcglaughlin, and all the others (and they are just from school) I no longer care. You did your worst, and I not only survived but have prospered. And I am no longer bitter. You won in the short term, but in the longer term I have prevailed, I am stronger than your influence.

You know, what I find difficult still though, and I feel I am starting to understand some of the reasons that I feel this way, is my extreme discomfort when anyone is nice to me. This is to the extent that I have to push it away for fear of breaking down in tears. I feel it now and can only stop it through a real effort. This is of course all part of my lack of worth, how can they possibly be nice to me, excpet as a way to humiliate me, which I will not allow any more. But, I am no longer bitter.

Funnily (well it really does amuse me) I was reading a book on Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP, see I am dealing with this) and realised that I have a way to go before tit works for me, because lots of the exercises require you to think of a time, place etc. where you are happy - and I can't think of one, ever. There are ones, but I can't get to them yet, I will though.

To paraphrase the marketing of the film Alien, and I have seen my log files so I know no-one reads this, on the Internet no one can hear you...

Virtualbox update

I have praised virtualbox in earlier posts, it is a good replacement for vmware. But, maybe no more . In general I am a Sun supporter, used the in the 80's when they were truly great. They have now (well as of february '08) taken over virtualbox and released a new version 1.6. Great I thought, until it broke my networking. I was using host networking for running win2k ver ubuntu 7.10, and there seems to be no way to run except as nat. Grrrrr.

Elderly Japanese?

On my recent holiday to Egypt (more on this later) our hotel had one of those strange visits by Japanese tourists. You know, the kind where they are clearly on a whistle stop tours that tick ll the boxes on the been there, seen that, got the t-shirt front, where a group of elderly Jaanese turn up, wander around for a while and then disappear off to the next destination.

Well, anyway it struck me, watching from my poolside vantage point that a lot of old japanese, particularly the men use a kind of low impact way of walking where they seem to have a very precise and measured gait, placing their feet and then moving their weight forward in a slow controlled procession, in exactly the same way as the Sony robot. Which came first I wonder?

Are the aged Japanese tourists really robots? I will ponder this further.

Truly good things

I have just ordered a new digital camera, and as you would expect, I have spent far too long in deciding what to get. But on the positive side, waiting has saved me about £150 pounds so I mustn't grumble. Canon EOS 40D fyi, great deal at http://direct.tesco.com/q/R.200-1666.aspx add to that the £45 cashback at Canon (until the end of May 2008) http://canonetailers.onlinerebates.com/main.aspx and I'm a happy man.

But that isn't really the thrust of this message, what I am hoping to convey is that even in this throwaway, built in obsolecence upgrade every year kind of world you can still buy things that are truly good and lasting.

And I say this sitting typing on my venerable Sony Vaio FX108K. Utilising an Intel Pentium 750 Mhz 15.4" screen 20gb HDD 256Mb RAM and WIN2k. It is seven years old and counting and it runs like a dream, has never gone wrong, still has one of the best displays I've seen on a laptop it is clear bright and has no duff pixels. Every time I use it I fall in love with it again. The keyboard is great, even the mousepad (of which I am not a fan) works for me. OK so it is a bit clunky to carry around (so I have an eeepc for that) and the battery doesn't last that long (easily replaced) but it's plus points far outweigh its bad. It works without fuss and I would buy one again without hesitation, in fact I could have replaced it, but couldn't find anything that could get close for a price I was willing to pay.

The point being that it is a truly good thing, a great piece of hardware that I would be really upset to lose.

Proof if you like that we still make great things. I just hope my new camera falls into the same category (it is replacing a venerable Olymmpus OM1 that has given me 20 years of more of great service!).

Anyone out there have any similar recommendations or experiences in a similar vein?

Bring me the chevy impala of alfredo garcia

Well, not his, but Benny's. I have just watched this film again and fell in love with the cherry red Chevy Impala convertible that Warren Oates character Benny drives. Apart from the cool looks it sounds like heaven, pure lazy V8 power.

One of the all time great films Warren Oates has one of the most fantastically expressive faces that veers from utter charm to utter evil in no time at all. A classic movie of a flawed man falling to pieces and int madness. Losing everything because of his greed.