Travel Photobook

I have finally uploaded a copy of the best 636+ travel photo into a picture journey around the world.

http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/1602191

This impressive photo diary is presented in a magnificent hardback format, 13" x 11" and can be yours to keep for the price of only £77 (included P&P).

This works out to be around 10p per photo and is cheaper than having your own set of prints developed.

However, for those who just want to view the photos you can email me your address and for just £1 plus P&P I will burn the 630 photos onto a DVD and post it to you.

Travel Writing

After a few days of clearing down and clearing out systems, to ensure that my laptop was still working I sat on the train this morning, opened up my word processor and found that I had deleted all the word documents from my harddrive.

I only hope that I had not also deleted the backup copies on my external harddrive when I was similarly clearing space on that as well!

Google Analytics

No one that is familiar with my blog would say that it is all about s e x, indeed far from it.

However, from using Google analytics I can see that the top 10 search sources currently directing new traffic to my website all involve the words "m a s s a g e   p a r l o u r" or "r e d   l i g h t   d i s t r i c t".

It's something of a shame as I had hoped it would be either my unusual name or any of the destinations in my travels, or even about a home made trebuchet, but no ... proof positive that s e x generates more interest than anything else, sigh !!!

Slow Life Updates

Well as even the most occasional reader of my blog can tell, life for me have been very quiet recently with not a lot going on worth telling the whole world.

True, I had some friends over from Bahrain for a weekend, I have a new London job, I even tried to dye my hair blond and it went orange, but those have been the bright sparks in an otherwise dull and dreary couple of months.

In my new job I have an office to myself which is a blessing and a curse, and there are only a few other people here in the building and so socialising and chatting about life is a non event.

I am missing not having the money to do what I want these days.

I am missing not having the same group of friends I once had, as they all seem to have got married off and seperated the fartest corners of the UK.

I am especially missing a very special person or two who I used to talk to every week and now no longer see.

I am saddened by the fact that most of my overseas friends have given up on writing back to me, which means that my email inbox is empty more than it is full.

I had not realised how much of a dead end my local town had been til I went for a walk on a Friday night, passed at least a half dozen pubs and not one of them could boast more than 10 drinkers in their establishment.

I am missing not having anyone around the house to talk to, though this is also a good thing as I have the place to myself.

My laptop went screwey, I lost half my updated travel writing and I had to replace both the harddrive and the RAM chip to get it alive and working again.

My snooker buddy has taken a new job with better potential but less immediate salary which means that he can't afford to play snooker anymore.

I have tried to get interested in online poker, but the games are all rigged and I have taken more than my fair share of bad beats which have wiped out my user chips.

All in all, my life is very quiet and uninteresting at the moment, and despite my best efforts to liven things up it isn't really having much effect.

However, as always, tomorrow is another day, so who knows . . .

Lads Night Out

It has been awhile since I have gone out and got drunk but this weekend I was invited to two lads nights out on the tiles.

On the Friday night I had been invited out, but I just couldnt get into the mood and when the train delays meant that I got home even later than usual I just couldnt be arsed being honest.

After a working Saturday I came back to rainy Gillingham just in time to meet up with the other lads in rileys snooker hall, which was about all I thought was going to happen.

However, after a pint and a couple of games I got chatting with my friends brother and as soon as we got started on our various travel stories the night took on a life of its own and I didnt even care about the pool, which is very rare for me to say.

Following that we ended up drinking down in Rochester, but at £3.75 per pint I quickly remembered why I dont like going out and getting drunk and also why i am such a cheap drunk. At these prices I will be damned if I am going to spend a weeks wages on booze just to throw it all up again a few hours later.

I don't remember everything that was said or done, but I clearly remember inviting them all to my retro party as well as suggesting that in a few months time we all go for a lads week to Japan, as seems to be the one place where we all want to go but none of us have.

Thing was, I couldnt have had that much to eat as i ended up back at mine crashed out and waking up in the morning still wearing last nights clothes and having no idea where my front door keys were. Its been a looooooong time since I have got that drunk, but once every now and again with the right crowd its worth it.

Typical Working Day

Wake at 6am (tired and groggy)

Get up, dressed, breakfast, make packed lunch and out the door

Walk to train station 7:15am

Train to Victoria or London Bridge

Arrive at work 8:45am

Lunch 1-2pm, light snack and maybe something that I cooked and froze days ago

Leave work 6pm

Train home leaves London 7pm

Get home 8pm (tired and exhausted)

Destress, unwind and eat 8-9pm

Free time to socialise 9-11pm

Bed at 11pm

---

I am happy to have a well paying London job, but I would have preferred 9:30 to 5:30 and not 9 til 6.

I am also glad that I have firmly given up thinking about finding a partner, as in my average day there just isn't any time in which to socialise or go out and meet people.

So here is to the weekends ... may they soon be 3 days long

Not my best 24 Hours

It was not my best 24 hours, and I knew it from the moment that I woke up.

I had a relatively ok Wednesday, nothing too bad at work beside trying to get the hang of things at properties that I haven't really got a clue about and having to teach myself what to do with them in record time.

The bad day started with the journey into work, as not only was the commuter train full of people that wouldn't shut up but after installing some "important windows updates" last thing last night it my laptop will no longer boot up. I tried restarting the machine several times and mucking around the with boot up settings but no joy.

The keys to my office drawers have still not been found, so unlike everyone else in the building I cannot put any of my stuff away and have a neat desk.

Next the water was cut off from our office from outside, so that meant no cups of tea and no using the toilets, which is never a good sign.

Lunchtime which should have been great as I was meeting up with some friends, turned into a fiasco as I spent half the time walking about to meet them, when we met up it was not a 'cheap' lunch by any means, nor was it enjoyable.

They had changed the menus that week but had no new menus printed out, so our first order was unable to be processed.

The girl behind the bar took part of the order but took so long that my friend ordered hers from another member of staff, only for our original girl to get confused halfway through and then just walked off and started to deal with another customer.

We were told that it would take no longer than 20 minutes to arrive, and we were already running late at this point, but it came after 35 minutes and was both burned and dry as a bone.

Heading back to work I got back late, and the new boxers that I had bought were really starting to chaff and rub me up the wrong way for some reason.

The new front door fobs arrived and everyone in the building got one, except me.

The property that I am trying to sort out is just a mess and nothing is properly organised or complete, making it a right headache for me to get anywhere.

My new mobile phone battery was not keeping its charge any longer than the old one, so I am guessing that my handset is buggered and for some reason draining battery power much faster than it should. I don't think that only sending 2 text messages should not be enough to drain a full powered battery in less than 24 hours, especially when much of the time it was stitched off.

Outside our offices was a guy also having a bad day with his girlfriend / ex girlfriend / lover / wife or whoever, and for at least an hour I could hear them both screaming and shouting, coming in loud and clear through the open office window.

On my way home, I decided to try and have a relaxing massage to sooth my nerves, but the first place was closed and the second the girl told me to be silent and be perfectly still during the first few minutes, which upset me even more as I didn't think I was doing anything wrong and just to lie there like a piece of dead meat is not what I call relaxing.

Then it started raining, so I decided to try and take the underground, only due to an earlier signalling failure I was stuck at Oxford Circus on a very densely packed platform for over half an hour, growing more frustrated at the bare faced cheek of the staff having the temerity to get arsey with the travellers. Their station announcements were of no help and they had failed to display that there were any problems on any lines or announce them on the actual tube trains.

Because I was so long stuck on the platform when I finally did reach Victoria I was not at all surprised that I had missed my next train home by only two minutes, as that was exactly whey I thought of taking the tube and not walking in the first place.

Attempting to feet my sisters cats did not go according to plan, as the little one who needs her pill was out somewhere and I was in no mood to sit around and wait for her to come back in her own good time.

Finally getting home I struggled to get my laptop back up and running and almost wished that I hadn't, as I found an email from my tenant saying that she was asking for the whole of the deposit money back – which was against everything that she and her father had told me they were doing on Tuesday night.

Getting to sleep after midnight was far later than I had planned and I had not even had a chance to have a bath or shower.

This morning I was out the door a fraction later than normal and missed the train due to the other people on the platform standing in the way of the doors, even though they were not getting on or off and were waiting for the next train.

WARNING – ABUSE IMMINENT

If you are NOT getting on or off a particular train then stand the FUCK AWAY from the doors you bunch of inconsiderate BASTARDS, or else next time I will quite happily barge right past, through and over you in order to catch the train – and if you end up in a heap on the floor because of it then its YOUR OWN DAMN FAULT!

I am only hoping that the bad luck curse has finally worn off and does not continue into today, but then from past experience I had learned that is probably not going to be the case.

Life Update

Following a manic week, I am now about to move back in to my own house as well as starting a new London based office, with slightly longer hours than before but still local to where I used to work and for a slightly better pay.

 

I only hope that things continue to go well and don't slip back.

Dangerous Dogs

Guns don't kill people, gun users kill people.

Knives don't kill people, knife wielders kill people.

Land mines don't kill people, land mine planters kill people.

Drugs don't kill people, drug pushers kill people.

Dogs don't kill people, dog owners kill people.

Alcohol doesn't kill people, off licences kill people.

Tattoos don't scare people, tattoo sporting thugs scare people.

Burberry clothes don't scare OAP's, rowdy smoking drunken teenagers wearing hoodies of burberry trying to earn their peers respect scare OAP's  

Cigarettes don't kill people, tabacconists kill people.

Cats don't kill mice, cat owners kill mice!

The arguement is never as simplistic as it first seems and on closer investigation it just doesn't stand up any way you look at it.

There is no definitive answer one way or the other, but you can't just go around banning everything that is potentially dangerous in the wrong hands, as in the wrong hands even a paper fan can be a weapon.

The only answer is to comprehensively stop dangerous items/pets, etc. getting into the wrong hands, i.e. the hands of nutters who think its fun to use them on each other and on random innocent civilians.

In order to tackle these and similar issues, we need to strongly enforce the existing laws we have rather than dream up new ones or massage the statistics.

World Cup 2010

Every four years there comes a great football tournament that gets the whole world excited like nothing else, and that is the world cup. This years event is hosted in South Africa and starts 11th June 2010.

With the fairly recent online betting world taking off, last time round I didn't research my teams enough and was a little too slow on the uptake to take advantage of some of the great odds being offered in certain draws.

Some online betting agencies were offering odds of up to 5,000 to 1 against the chances of anyone scoring at least 6 goals in one match, and had I got in early enough then I could have made a kiling with high scoring teams like Argentina and Spain.

This time round the bookmakers have learned their lesson, and even an unbelievably high score line of 9-0 ( which has only ever been managed in the final rounds twice since its inception in 1930's and none in the last 35 years ) are only a pathetic 100 to 1 against, so is no longer worth the risk.

However, the first group stages for this years competition seem very uneven, with each group having one clear favourite and one lucky-to-be-here outsider, allowing plenty of scope for adventurous betting with accumulators that still have a high probability of getting at least your money back if done correctly.

If you have never gambled, or are very unlucky when you do then I would suggest that either you don't bet at all or only a few pennies per accumulator.

My prediction for qualifiers of the the groups are as follows ;-

Group A - France            &   Mexico

Group B - Argentina        &   Nigeria

Group C - England          &   USA 

Group D - Germany        &   Ghana

Group E - Netherlands    &   Cameroon 

Group F - Italy                 &   Paraguay 

Group G - Brazil              &   Portugal 

Group H - Spain              &   Chile

Although there is always the possibility of a shock surprise, like France being knocked out the first round without scoring a single goal (World Cup in Korea/Japan 2002) , I feel fairly certain that my first pick team in each group will qualify either first or second.

My second choices are much less certain, and often I have picked an African team purely on the basis of them having the home ground advantage, as they will be used to the pitch conditions, heat & humidity, climate, water quality, time zones, etc.

Personally I have avoided anything beyond the first round, I have avoided predicting final scores (and other very risky bets like time of first goal or how many yellow cards and fouls commited) and I have only selected a few individual games to bet on.

That said, with online betting making it simple to pick your choices and offering a multitude of different combination bets, I have set up several combination bets with at least four of my sure things together with a single second choice to create some realistic accumulators that still have worth while odds.

None of my bets conflict with each other, as if I have learned that trying to cover myself with spread betting (betting both sides) does nothing more than guarantee that some of my bets will fail, and this is the fastest way to end up with nothing at the end.

I have also had a purely silly moment with a single 1 x 10p accumulator bet on all my second choices that if it comes off will net a huge windfall, but the combined odds are worse than the lottery so I am not holding out any hope on that one.

Overall, I will be not only be dissapointed but indeed very shocked if my system does not at least make my money back, with the added potential for making between a small and a medium size return upon my investment.

I am also going to make a small prediction here of who I think will make the quarter finals, but there are so many possibly minor changes that would affect the first and second placings of this set of results that I myself don't feel it is worth the risk of betting upon it.

Quarter Final 1 - France vs German

Quarter Final 2 - England vs Argentina

Quarter Final 3 - Netherlands vs Italy

Quarter Final 4 - Brazil vs Spain

Being Patriotic I am not going to curse fate by saying any more, but as 6 of my 8 predicted finalists are from  Europe there are good odds that this years winner will be European, with South America being the only other choice according to my estimations. 

All Quiet

All is quiet on the Chatham front.

At the moment, life is fine, but life is also quiet and uneventful.

Apart from spending a few hours every day searching for jobs, I am pushing myself hard to revamp and finish off my travel book, hopefully in time for my "back from my travels exactly one year today" anniversary, but if not then so be it.

I'm single, the weather outside is still generally grey and it gets dark far too early, so I dont feel that I am particularly missing out on anything right at the moment.

I'm neither unhappy nor depressed, just without anything exciting to say and too busy writing to go out looking for adventure at the moment.

However, if I looks like I'm about to get abducted by aliens or plan to run off and join the peace corps, I will of course post the details on here before I go.

Immigration Problems

Now I have many foreign friends, have done plenty of travelling and have people I love and care about all over the world.

However, I have for a long time been saying that the UK has been used as the dumping grounds of the world, especially Europe and Africa, and that it would one day become a case of me being in the minority.
Well, I am very sad to say that the day has arrived and I am still in my early 30's.

I live in Kent, the closest of the 92 UK counties, or 39 English counties, to mainland Europe.

The Medway towns is the most densely populated group of towns / cities in Kent, thus Medway is the most densely populated region in Kent.

In the Medway towns there are about 112 schools, and having contacts / associates in the council I am now aware of how bad the immigration problem has become.

When I say immigration, I mean the RECENT immigration problem, not the fact that there are non-white people living in the UK who were born and raised here, I mean the fresh-off-the-boat and can't speak a word of English kind of immigrant.

I have never had a problem with genuine hardship cases who come to the UK to find work, a better life and try to become British. But, I cannot stand the people who come here, have no intention of looking for work, have no interest in learning out language or culture, who demand benefits for everything and who are contantly saying that it should be more like "their country back home".

I have only one thing to say about THOSE kinds of people, and that is, "If home was so much nicer then do us all a favour and F**K **F back there, cos we certainly don't want you here and your ruining it for the rest of us who actually quite like it, or at least we did til you and your was ilk came along".

The Medway Towns with its 110 (or so) school has at least 5 of the UK's worst schools. This is a number that is higher than any other region in the UK, even when compared to larger populated areas with over 500 school, there is still no other area that has 5 of the UK's worst in its catchment zone.

There is a school where over 57% of all the pupils are immigrants, and this is not a specialist school but a normal, run-of-the-mill state run school.

There is a school where there are over 50 separate languages spoken in the school.

There is a school where a single classroom has 1 teacher and 6 interpreters for each lesson.

There is a school where 40% of all the pupils come from families that are travellers, with no fixed abode, no proper set of records and where the pupils never stay long enough to get a complete education or complete exams at the end of their final year.

And all these are DIFFERENT schools in the Medway area.

The problem is even more hard to see, as to protect and offer anonimity to individual children, if a school has less than 5 of a certain language or ethnic background it is not allowed to include them in any kind of statistical makeup of the school, and thus the only way you know that they exist is by adding up the numbers of all the the groups and counting how many are missing from the total number of puils.

This huge immigration problem is not as much of a problem over much of the rest of the UK, which is much further away from Kent and from their prospective its all one big NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard).

Because we had so few MP's representing us, and we have to show to the whole world how generous, accepting, tolerant and welcome to all that the UK is, parts of Kent are not just becoming but have actually already become overrun with immigrants.

The walk from the train station to my mothers house is a short and direct three minute walk, but taking that journey every time means going past groups or individuals and these days it is a rare occurance when I can even accurately guess what language they are speaking.

This is a problem that historically has affected too few of the UK people and thus they have chosen to ignore it, but of course the problem didn't go away and instead as it was passed over and unchecked it has now got to where it is of epidemic proportion and there is nothing that the good old english folk from kent can do about it.

Kent was once called the Garden of England, but now the beauty and greenery is gone and all that's left is a multiracial junkyard where nothing works properly anymore, nothing makes sense and before you can even try and get on with your neighbours you have to identify and learn the language of the week, which of course will be replaced before the year is out with yet more strangers speaking foreign tongues.

I do not recognise the Gillingham of my youth, it is gone now and forever with the only remnants being glimpses in my mind and in the family photo album.

Legal Insanity

Here is some more legal justice insanity.

Within 48 hours of learning of the ridiculously light penalty of Pete Doherty, comes another equally unbelievable report at the opposite end of the spectrum.

According to Sky News today, a man in Ayreshire was given a £60 fixed fine and 3 points on his drivers licence for blowing his nose while stationery stuck in traffic and having already applied the handbrake.

That story goes hand in hand with the owner of a car who has 3 times been fined for speeding while driving at 0 mph, while they were not even inside the car, as it was parked outside their home.

So have a runny nose and driving a car is worth £60, owning a car near a fixed speed camera is double that and yet owning so many drugs you have lost track is a piffling £835.

It really makes you wonder if anything is logical any more.

UK Legal System

Why is the criminal system in the UK such a joke?

Example 123,901 - Pete Doherty

This latest gem was brought to my attention by the Yahoo Editors corner of their news section.

The Babyshambles front-man was fined just a total of £835 for walking into a court room with 13 wraps of heroin and dropping it on the floor.

In reply to this appauling behaviour, his lawyer defended this latest act of lunacy by saying that "He has a great many items of clothing - suits and clothes going into the hundreds. There were residual drugs which he had left in one coat pocket. He didn't necessarily choose the coat for himself."

So, not only can't the guy even dress himself and has so many stashes of drugs that he has lost track of them, but even when he openly walks into a court flouting the law he still manages to escape a proper punishment or being forced to serve any jail time.

I say to you that THIS is why the people of this once proud nation no longer call it Great Britain ... as it is great no longer.

A daytrip to London

Since returning from China I have been unemployed and constantly looking for work but unfortunately thus far I have not been able to secure many interviews.

Today, however, was one of those rare occasions when I had got one to go to and with it being up town I was hoping to make the most of the opportunity. Having been twice refused travel expenses after the fact by the DSS, I wasn't about to gamble a third time, and so had previously taken a trip to my local office to pick up a travel warrant in advance. Oh, and I also picked up a few new ties while I was in the high street at the same time.

Having finally managed to swing a travel card, I left messages with a few of my uptown friends to see what they were doing ahead of time, and as luck would have it I was able to arrange both a lunch time and an after work gathering.

The interview itself was at 11am and despite my best efforts I was only able to impress upon the interviewee that I was as good as anyone else and failed to shine through, but much of this I put down to the fact that he already had in mind what he was looking for and nothing else, no matter how brilliant, was going to raise much interest out of him.

At 11:30 I left, fervently hoping that the rest of the candidates would fare equally as poorly and yet still had almost a couple of hours before I was due to meet my friends. I had with me a nice Clive Cussler reading book, but finding a quiet place to sit and read without being disturbed or moved on by security guards in London is not as easy as it looks. Well, not unless you don't mind sitting on a park bench and freezing your butt off!

I chose to kill this time by doing some good and headed off to find my regular blood donor station only to find it was closed for renovations. But of course, they still need the blood and so a temporary trailer had been brought in to accept donations and this was parked just a few roads away. With most of my travelling being more than 12 months ago it meant that I was not asked too many additional questions and so before long I was lying on my back with claret draining out of my left arm at a hefty flow.

I must have looked a lot worse for wear after, however, as my attending nurse insisted that I lie down again and wait a little longer than normal for some colour to return to my cheeks before she would let me go on my merry way. As anyone will tell you, despite being a massive horror fan, the sight of real blood and me have never got on too well, so I am always pleased with myself that I neither throw up nor faint each time I give blood, even if the thought does pass through my mind more than once.

Lunch was a double blessing as not only did I get to meet up with two of my favourite latina friends, but one of them even splashed out and bought me to lunch, a rare and welcome treat and just one more reason why I love them both dearly. Catching up with them is always a pleasure and I look forward to returning to work in London so that we can go back to doing it on a regular basis.

After a round of farewell hugs I then had several more hours of doing nothing til I was due to meet my other friend from work, so with the weather still chilly and grey I decided that I could do no better than to find a nice quiet corner of a pub to sit and read, and as luck would have it I already knew the very spot.

Refusing to let the scenery beguile me into getting lost amid taking photographs yet again, I managed to find my way unaided back to one of Londons more refined and inviting haunts. Despite the warming growl offered by its real open fireplace, the place was empty and so I had the kings choice of which comfy chair I chose to lounge in while I read. The whole experience was marred by only two tiny hiccups, the first was that they had run out of the heavenly Fruli they serve on tap and the second is that a friend I know who lives nearby appeared to be out and unreachable by phone.

So it was that for a few hours I had the entire bar to myself, seated as I was near a crackling fire and content to sit there undisturbed and read my book of intrigue and adventure on the high seas.

It was almost a shame to leave my retreat and head back out into the cold, but I knew that there would be something even better waiting for me at the other end of my next little jaunt, a cross London trip that took the best part of an hour.

Just a few stops south of Victoria I met my last friend of the day, another lovely latina and cousin to one of the girls I had met earlier in the day. The last time I had managed to catch up with her was before my long travels and so we had plenty of catching up to do, and for this we retired to a place we had been to a couple of times before, an Italian Vodka bar and restaurant.

Lady luck was firmly with me by this time as not only were they doing 2 for 1 deal on all pizza's that night but we also guessed right a coin toss which won us 4 cocktails for the price of two, so thus it was that we ate and drank our fill for a very modest sum indeed. Indeed there is nothing I like more than the happy conversation of an old friend over a few drinks while I slowly gorge myself on food til my belly is full to burst.

By the time I had to say goodbye and head on home my good fortune must have finally run out as the first train that I got on developed a fault and so we were all switched to another set of carriages before we left Victoria station, but I didn't mind overly as it just gave me more time to get further into my book.

Pulling into Chatham I was still a few chapters short of my books finale, but all in all I had had a much better than average day and could only hope that the rest of the month continue in a similar vein.

Global News Update

Well, the snow is mainly finished in the UK for another year, thank god, and I have just got over a flash 24 hour attack of food poisoning, most likely caused by not properly defrosting my sausages.

I am still unempoyed, still trying to get my benefits sorted out and life without money in the snow is damn boring with not much going on worth writing about.

I did have an amusing day listing all the movies that I liked, and was staggered to find that I could list over 600, with S being the runaway winner in terms of number of films alphabetically and X being harder to fill than Z ( except for Chinese films which ALL seem to start with W or X !!! ).

So, I just thought that I would bring you a few bits of new around the world this week instead.

- - -

Tahiti is still reeling from an earthquake measuring 7.0 on the richter scale and up to 38 after quakes that have so far caused over 100,000 deaths and many more wounded or homeless. Many Tahitians are angry at the lack of international aid and so have started to build road blocks with many of the corpses that still litter the streets.

The scientific council has moved the nuclear Doomsday clock back to 6 minutes to midnight after a year of global cooperation and Barak Obama being made US president. It is only the 18th time in over 50 years that the clock has been moved.

Dubai has just unveilied the new worlds tallest building, the "Burj Khalifa" at a staggering 2,717 feet. It is almost double the heigh of the worlds second largest building, the Taipei 101 of only 1,571 feet. It is damn ugly looking, as it had to be designed and constucted very specifically in order to prevent the the winds forming pattern or currents around it that could shake or damage it in any way.

While the UK has been brought to a standstill through the worst snow in 30 years, on the other side of the world Australia has been melting with temperatures topping 43 degrees.

The Chinese government are defending their right to censor the populations internet browsers and content, stating that sites like google are just funnels for pornography. The funny thing is that although sex is rarely discussed in Chinese culture it is available in massage parlours and salons on almost every city street.

Although Long John Silver and Captain Jack Sparrow are long dead, Pirates are still active and thriving in the world of today. Up around 38% from 2008, over 400 ships were attacked by pirates last year, many being held for ransom with more than half being attributed to the African country of Somalia - despite many of the attacks being more than 1,000 nautical miles away.

On the smaller scale, in the UK yet another dumb guy in his early 40's has had to have his penis removed from a piece of metal piping - though he would not comment on how it became stuck there. Come on, it isnt hard to figure out how or why but what I find amusing is that you never ever hear of women getting their bits stuck anywhere or having to have sink pungers removed from their breasts, so this must definitely be 'a man thing'!

In Japan a woman was arrested in her home after knocking into and killing an old lady who smashed through her windscreen. The bizarre fact was that the shocked driver was unsure what to do so continued to drive, with the corpse stuck halfway through her windscreen, til she got home where she then told her boyfriend.

Snowball Trebuchet

For the last few weeks the UK has been deluged by snow and apart from making everyone feel like stocking up on food and messing up public transport, it makes most people feel like staying in and doing nothing but watching the television or sleeping.

Well, if I am not doing anything important that takes a lot of my attention then I can get bored fairly easily, and so with no money, too far away to visit friends for half an hour and too cold to do much outside I was going a little stir crazy.

I have no idea why, but in an effort to alleviate the boredom my friend and current landlord suggested a scrapheap challenge to make a snowball Trebuchet. Now anyone who has been to his house, knows that in almost every corner of his place there lurks some sort of mechanical part of gizmo, but in the efforts to keep things relatively tidy he suggested his old Fischer Technik building set.

Technik is a bit like a plastic cross between technical lego and meccano, in that it comes in strips, blocks, wheels and spindles and you can clip some of it together while other bits needs to be bolted together with tiny rivets.

It was good fun trying to learn how to use it, as when I was younger I did love my lego and meccano ( and even baco, though admittedly not as much ) and pretty soon we got ourselves a very basic version of a Trebuchet.

Although to the eye a Catapult and a Trebuchet may appear similar or do the same job, there is one distinct difference that separates them, and that is their workings. A standard catapult uses elastic / similar tension holding material to propel its munition through the sudden release of its built up tension.

A standard Trebuchet uses a heavy mass as a counter balance to a much lighter throwing arm via a central pivot, then after being raised into position the weight is drops and thus flings the throwing arm. Many Trebuchets also featured the addition of a slingshot at the end of its throwing arm, which gave greater speed and distance but required slightly technical more work to effect a successful release.

Sadly, with the materials at hand and in the quantities that I had available, I was unable to build a model of any great scale or to include and perfect the slingshot mechanism, but after a few hours or learning and working I was able to fashion a very basic version. However on release it only chucked a fairly small snowball about 2 feet, hardly even worth the effort.

After looking at it, and going back to the drawing board ( plus using standard AA batteries as extra weight ) a couple of hours later I was able to build a device that would hurl a snowball around 4 feet.

A Few more tinkerings and I tried it out in the back garded, and filmed it with mixed results. On the down side as that the first time I released it outside it' collapsed upon itself, but on the upside not after we captured the full throwing motion and upon viewing the tape was able to see a glaring technical fault.

Without the slingshot release mechanism built in I was relying on the sudden stopping of the weight as it hit the supports to launch the snowball, but the angle of release was far too forward and instead of it throwing the snowball up and forward it threw it almost directly down into the ground, hence the short distance.

As it was now already 3am, I packed it up as a job half done and went to bed, however it must have been buzzing through my mind all morning as I slept, as I woke at 8am filled with a desire to do better.

As the plans had already burned themselves into my mind, it took barely an hour to construct a much more streamline and tall machine with a counter balance of almost a kilogram in weight and looked quite beefy and serious looking. In trial runs it could throw a snowball at least 6 feet, but with so much weight it was still prone to smashing itself up during / after each release.

However, I feel that the main problem of the device was just that on a scale model the counter weight just never got a chance to build up any serious speed as no sooner had it started to fall than it had reached its bottom position, thus doubling the balance weight was having precious little to the speed.

I noticed that changing the angle of release, the angle of pivot, the position of pivot, the amount of swing of the counter balance weight, the overall weight of the counter balance, the height of release and the aerodynamics of the throwing arm and the projectile of the design all affected the performance - but not having a proper slingshot release was its biggest downfall.

Cadbury's RIP

According to Yahoo and Reuters, US group Kraft are about to buy out Cadburys, and become the single largest sweets / confectionary conglomerate overtaking the Mars-Wrigleys consortium.

I cannot believe that even the mighty Cadburys is not future proof against the credit crunch and market forces, and I only hope that at least they keep the logo on their chocolates as it just won't be the same buying Kraft Caramel, Kraft Buttons or Kraft Fruit & Nut.

Alas poor Cadbury's, I knew it wellllllllllll - oh no.

Bogus Job Interviews

I have recently been made aware of the fake Job Interview Scam, mainly because I just fell for it.

It is not a unique scam, but I feel that with the modern era of technology it is being used more frequently.

It runs pretty much like this.

You are a new copany, just starting up, and have bought yourself all these great bits of new software but have absolutely no idea of how any of it works.

The software company sets up the basic of basic forms and then your off an running, only you have no idea how to do it or why. You spend a few hours fiddling around with it and can barely get it to print out your name, let alone anything else.

Now, you plan on doing everything else yourself, and you dont really have the money or work load to justify employing someone else, but you know that the IT people will charge you £50 anhour to correct a mistake but wont consider doing any data inputting, which is your job, so what do you do?

Well, what you do is to contact an employment agency and say that you want to hire someone part time and then explain that the first interview will be a bit longer than just an hour, as you want to do a whole run through with any new applicant.

Then when the interviewee arrives you basically get him to input all the stuff you want, writing notes as you go, and try to ensure that you check that every process is fired up correctly and well documented.

Finally, at the end of the interview you say that you are looking for someone to come in basically one afternoon every other week, knowing full well that noone in their right mind will take a job offering such a ludicrously small amount of hours in the day.

End result, is that you have got a whole days worth of work out of someone, plus some handy 'how-to' notes and all for the price of a phone call and a sandwich lunch from around the corner. Not bad, eh!

So, if you want to avoid being similarly scammed, ensure that you know in advance how many hours per week you can be expecting as well as remember the golden rule that no interview should take more than an hour without some form of guarantee or payment upfront.

Double Wahey

I woke up this morning to find that my google analytics was working again, and that as many new people are hitting my blog for the photos as for the written content.

The other bright spark of the day is that I am off to an interview today, and I plan to make this the start of things to come.

Watch this space ...

Full body scan at Heathrow

According to Reuters and Yahoo News, BAA have just announced that they are going to introduce full body scanners at Heathrow, which should be good news.

The justification is that there was a failed bomb attempt on Christmas Day on an outboard US airplane.

However they also say that the new scanners would probably not have spotted or prevented the latest bomb threat anyway.

So, because a perfectly good security system was successful in stopping an "allegedly" genuine bomb threat, they are going up update said system with a new, more expensive and more invasive system that would be no better at stopping bomb attempts than the old one!

- - -

The BBC show Click also documented a shops displaying all the latest high-tech, small, powerful, and harder to detect personal surveillance and key-logging devices.

However when they questioned Julia Wing, the stores salesperson, about the legitimacy and invasiveness of their devices, she defended their lines with words to the effect of 'it all depends on how the devices are being used. They were originally designed for parents to prevent unruly children and for businessmen to protect against industrial sabotage by their cleaning staff. But of course, such devices can be mis-used'.

When pushed on whether licences or restrictions should be places upon such devices she rallied back with the golden oldie defence of "the innocent have nothing to worry about and it is only the people that are up to no good, who should be scared".

The fact that it is the very criminals who will be using these devices to perfect their crimes seems to escape her.

For me also the whole "it is only criminals who should be scared" arguement totally sidesteps the fact that such devices can and frequently do strip a person of their modesty, dignity and rights of privacy, but I guess it is only celebrities who can fight the system and demand their right to privacy, to sell it to the highest bidder or both.

- - -

Both the above just further nudge us in the direction of a big brother overseen distopia, one that I would happily leave behind for hotter climates, were it not for the majority of my family and friends being back here in good old blighty.

I would be more happy with the whole thing IF I was also allowed to have a direct say on what constitutes a crime and what the punishment should be for each crime. However, with the sentencing totally out of whack for the crime and with new laws seemingly passed every week to create more criminals, I fear that soon every man, woman and child will be guilty of having committed at least one crime, whether they did so intentionally or not.

And the fact that being a kind, honest and law abiding person does less and less to protect my rights and civil liberties with every passing day, I see no reason why I should toe the line or help create and pay for a system that will inevitably one day find me guilty of something and punish me accordingly.

Image Vs Reality

In the past someone called me a psycho, the definition of which is someone that has a warped view or grasp on reality.

Having discussed the matter with a few friends, it does indeed appear that I have a very different take on reality than that of most people, and while it might make me interesting to talk at times it can be a handicap.

During these discussions however, I also realised that I am not alone in this pyschosis and one of the reasons is that people lie, both to one another and to themselves. The problem is, that if you have incorrect information ( i.e. you are believing and acting up on a lie ) then you cannot make a sensible and balanced decision and this results in your view of reality being different to other peoples.

A good personal example of this, is with my previous and fairly disasterous attempts to date women overseas who I met online.

Ignoring the fakers and scammers that I came in contact with, a frequent occurrence would be that I would meet a woman online and after corresponding for a few months we would agree to meet up. And of course with me being the "rich" ( even though I never claim to be rich ) one of the two of us, I would fly out and meet them and spend some time with them before returning home.

The problem would be that they would often have a 'fairy tale' image in their mind of what it would be like to date a rich and famous travelling foreigner, they see me as this and it is this unrealistic ideal that they continue to base their decisions upon.

However, when I arrive and we start to do the same normal and everyday things that they would do if they were dating a local man, then the routine reality of life shatters this illusion and the relationship falls apart.

Another problem was that they loved the idea of being in contact with a rich guy from overseas, and get all enthusiastic about it, but at the same time they feel very safe and brave believing that I would never actually keep my promise to travel and meet them, thus they get caught up in their own imagination and make all sorts of outrageous promises.

Then, when I actually do fly out and try to meet them, the 'long distance' safety barrier of living in a different country is suddenly stripped away from them and they are confronted by a person who wants to do the things that had been discussed but they don't have the confidence to go through with them.

So as they are unready or unwilling to do keep their promises, they have to adjust their reality in order to regain some control. Sometimes they ask that we take things slowly or that we try to just be friends for awhile so that we can get to know each other, as before they were never actually trying to get to know the real me, preferring instead to enjoy the illusion and make believe world they had created for themselves.

Of course, the big problem with this is that once they then start being more honest with both me and themselves, we soon find out that we actually have very different views, likes, hobbies and interests from each other and are not such a good match after all.

So, the fact that this or something very similar pretty much describes almost every long distance relationship I have had, go to show that it is not just me that has a distorted view of reality and why from now on I have given up on looking for love or romance overseas, as people are just not honest enough ... not with me or with themselves.