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See all posts for December2016

Complete Crystal Balls...

  • December 29, 2016
  • Entertainment/Media/Arts Life
  • View all 1 Comment
Why...

Am I making no forecasts for 2017? Last year due to a mad rush of alcohol to the brain I made a series of predictions for 2016. Had I predicted that Leicester City would win the Premier League in the UK (5, 000-1), Brexit (3-1) and President Trump (75-1), a modest US $100 bet would have won me more than enough money to stop this malarkey and live a life of contented idleness! I got just about everything wrong except Fox buying BSkyB. So I think this year I will give it a miss. The concept there is a predestined rhyme or reason to our life and the Universe, rather than everything that happens is random, is just human hope conquering logic. Staring at tea leaves, examining the creases on your hand or the choice of picture cards chosen randomly from a Tarot Deck seems a pretty haphazard way of finding out if the person you slept with at the office party still respects you or if you will pick out the right lotto numbers. It's the directly opposing views of thinking we have free will, yet wanting to know things are pre-ordained (and therefore prove we don't) that makes our obsession with knowing the future so conflicted.

..and another thing (continue to read this post)

Eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow you will want to strangle the relatives

  • December 23, 2016
  • Food & Drink Kids/Family/Relations Life
  • View all 0 Comments
Why...

Do relatives take priority over anyone else at Christmas? Don't misunderstand me, I adore every branch, root and twig of my family. However I also love my dogs, a couple of classic cars, a Lalique mask, a nicely worn leather jacket, a teddy bear and some very dear friends. Yes all in different ways but it seems at Christmas family is often to the exclusion of all else. Now as a kid I used to find it fairly amusing to meet up with Uncle Tuppy (yup, swear that was his name), Great Aunt Alice, Aunty Sheila and others who now are long gone and no doubt pulling crackers and swilling port in heaven. However as we really only came together once a year the novelty value soon wore off and I thought they were all bonkers and I am sure they felt I was some snot nosed brat (none of the aforementioned had kids). A brief lunch maybe but to stay manacled together for three or four days is a recipe for Lizzie Borden-like hungering for an axe! Distant relatives are like fish. After three days they go off. Christmas is a time of good will towards all men but to achieve that maybe put a time limit on each person? My American cousins are lucky as they have a Christmas doppelgänger a month earlier in Thanksgiving. That is the big family get together, always on a Thursday (see why Click Here). They get that out of the way and have the choice at Christmas to go away, be with friends or again link up the family tree.

..and another thing (continue to read this post)

The Digital Water Cooler and the End of Suburbia

  • December 18, 2016
  • Life Technology Uncategorised Work
  • View all 2 Comments
Why...

Actually go to work? As some of you know, a while back I hightailed it out of the UK to settle in Malta. Contrary to popular belief this was not to retire and endlessly gargle drinks with little umbrellas in them and discuss the good old days with expats and people in Witness Protection. It was to set up a digital business; a revolutionary App that makes language learning fun. LingoZING! (www.lingozing.com) uses the visual storytelling of digital comics and graphic novels with an interactive multi language interface. Basically you can hear and read in two languages switching between the two with an onscreen slider. The actual App goes live in January 2017 but you can get a glimpse on Kickstarter, https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/446245694/lingozing-the-fun-way-to-learn-a-language?ref=recommended) One of the early meetings with a friend (and now investor) started with: "Why should I invest in a company whose people are spread across the globe like so many ticks on a dog's back?" "Coz these ticks bite 18 hours a day, " I snapped back faster than knicker elastic. You see we have a team in Bulgaria, two of us are in Malta, the CFO in South Africa, the CTO in San Diego and marketing people in the USA, France and Brazil.  So in the highly unlikely event of anyone working only eight hours, there is someone working 18 out of 24 hours a day. That's pretty impressive for a start up with low overheads. We of course are not the only disparate group of people all bound by the same digital umbilical cord rather than being anchored to the office water fountain. Connectivity comes from phone, email, SMS, Skype or Zoom. However I feel no less of a homogenous whole than if we were all crammed into expensive office space. In fact it's better. Sure occasionally you take a Skype call at a ridiculous time in the night with a shirt and tie on top but still in dressed below in sweat pants!  I have no commute and the coffee is excellent. My computer screen is the Alice Through the Looking Glass that binds me to my friends and colleagues.

..and another thing (continue to read this post)

Slow...slow...quick quick...slow...you don't know how to walk

  • December 9, 2016
  • Fasion Health & Beauty Life
  • View all 0 Comments
Why...

Has the basic action of putting one foot in front of the other become obsessively scrutinised? In the not too distant past we had Neolithic man....let's call him Uggg.  After he has dragged his wife by the hair around the cave as foreplay before some prehistoric love-making, he ventures outside with his trusty club to find dinner. "Just popping out for a bite, dear." It was a toss-up in fact who would be dinner, Uggg the caveman or Tiddles from next door, the local sabre tooth tiger. This is not quite on a par with you or me popping down to Tesco's for a microwave chicken korma and a six pack of Aussie beer. (Neither of which you actually eat, just rent.) Apart from his club, loincloth, toothless grin and a few fleas, Uggg took nothing else with him. The intrepid Tesco visitor if he came on foot would have a Day-Glo jacket, mobile phone and in case he died from thirst or hunger on the long trek from Acacia Avenue to the supermarket, a bottle of water and an energy bar. That seems a little excessive even for the suburbs (unless it's Texas where you would rather walk naked than without your two friends Mr. Smith and Mr. Wesson).

..and another thing (continue to read this post)

Light bulbs. The devil's own testicles!

  • December 3, 2016
  • Fasion Health & Beauty Life Technology
  • View all 1 Comment
Why...

Is the simple light bulb really the work of Beelzebub? Whenever a lightbulb goes 'ping' in my house, my whole day gets dimmer. Bayonet, screw in, full width, half width, 40 watt, 60 watt, clear, pearl.... pointless and endless variations.....yet on top of all that nonsense I now have to deal with eco friendly bulbs. These are a giant stride backwards. Firstly they are all fugly (f*cking ugly). The shape looks like Mr Whippy has poohed a glass. I guarantee Thomas Edison's prototype got brighter quicker. These new things need an eon to warm up before on full beam. It's like going back to old cathode ray tube tv's. I used to turn those on, go make a cup of tea, have a cigarette, a wee and when I came back my TV was just flickering into life. Eco bulbs.That's progress like saying a cannibal uses a knife and fork! However the palaver of changing normal bulbs pales compared to swapping out a halogen ceiling light. There are more variations how these little bastards screw into the ceiling than excuses Justin Bieber gives for speeding. Firstly as I try and get the inner socket out, ceiling plaster always gives my head a nice quasi-dandruff coating. Next, whichever catch spring or twisting technique Torquemada the builder fitted, the burnt out bulb clings to the socket like a slinky twenty year old Russian to a fat billionaire. So then I make the mistake of grabbing the bulb which is hotter than Satan's underpants and I a) burn my fingers, b) drop the bulb to the ground where it smashes. I try and reverse the whole procedure fitting a replacement. Another dusting of plaster this time in my eyes so I'm half blind as I try and screw the new one in. After wrestling with the fixture until I get neck camps I eventually get the bulb in...only to turn the thing on and discover it's not the bulb but the transformer that's bust. Frankly I'd rather use the man who invented these things as a human candle than have to change another.

..and another thing (continue to read this post)

What is rss? "rss" is about getting live web feeds
directly to your computer.