Does anyone still do blogs?

Is is a good question to ask, in such a fast paced world of the world being at your finger tips, everything on twitter or instragram zipping round the planet faster than the flash, is it even worth still having a blog these days?

Well, I for one say yes ( despite the fact that I have been very remiss and not posting stuff up here for the last few years ) because for one thing you can just write and write and then walk away, without the interruptions of adverts or the stress of having to ensure that you have trawled through a sea of posts from people you barely even know, much less have actually met in person.

I am not sure what I am trying to say here, but when I do I will come back and finish this.

1816 : The Year Without Summer - Unredacted Cthulhu Almanac - Cthulhu Anthology - Cover Artwork

I am very excited to say that a few months ago I took the plunge and set up my own indie publishing house so that I could write, edit and sell copies of a new set of Lovecraftian horror anthologies.

It is my first serious writing I have done in awhile, and I am rusty in the general every day rambling style, especially as my current writing exercises has been a strict 100 word Drabble format.

That said, it has been a real pleasure writing and editing this anthology, and the KickStarter is available now, with the book available on general release around October time.

Here is a link to a KickStarter campaign where you can help fund this project, including buying a digital copy, a paperback copy, a T-Shirt, an A3 Poster, advertising space and even get your name included as a minor character in one of the stories.

Kickstarter Project Link - 1816 : The Year Without Summer

Wedding - Dec 2017

Well I never thought that it would happen, but it happened.

I finally married the love of my life, the beautiful and delightful Adda.

We have known each other for many years, having met online years ago, but through all the highs and the lows we could never have known that we would end up together, getting married in Morelia.

It was a fantastic day, and I will stick the photos up soon, but for now this little post and picture will have to suffice.

A Howling Success

Life at the moment has been hectic and busy, but for all the right reasons.

Tonight was the chance to finally try out the new boardgame cafe near me in Rochester, called Playopolis. I had seen it open about a year ago, but for a hundred pathetic reasons I hadnt gone in yet, however tonight the stars aligned, it held a tournament and I was at a loose end and so I decided to stop off on my way home and check it out. I was so glad that I did.

The place is really well decorated, plenty of space to have individual games or pull all the tables together and have one gigantic multiplayer game.

Tonight's game was Ultimate Wereworlf, and with about 16 players each game lasted long enough to feel like you were really participating, and even if you were the first one killed ( like I was on the second game ) it is almost as much fun watching as taking part.

I guess if everyone was taking it seriously then peopel might try and use tactics and deductions, but part of the fun was that we were all drinking and being silly so nobody much cared who won or lost, nobody was keeping score, and as random chance dictated everyone got to be a werewolf at least once in the night.

I guess it was kismet, as I was also wearing my "zombie killer" t-shirt, totally coincidentally, but it went down well, and despite me being one of the olderst there were enough people to throw around a few python quotes, which is always a good sign.

All in all, it was a lot of fun, and I will be back for more before too much longer.

Update using Emails

Let’s see if I can remember how to post to my blog via my email automatically, shall we.

 

Here we go

 

3

 

2

 

1

 

… go

2 posts in as many days - you should feel lucky

So after last nights valiant effort to try and breath some life back into my blogs I took another look at them today.

First off is that I have removed the cuisine blog - I never really got going into the field on food from around the world, and its not something that I have time to get back to right now.

Secondly I am now aware that blogger has completely removed my other blog - perhaps I just didn't log into it frequently enough, but whatever the reason it is gone and I cant get it back for love nor money.

I am still very much getting back in to the practice with this, and things have changed a lot in the last 6 years since I was seriously posting here, so bare with me.

Another Long Overdue Update

Well, what can I say.

For starters, I didn't realise that my blog was still linked to my old email address - and it has taken me a few weeks and a lightbulb moment just to get back into my blog.

Secondly, I am still a bit miffed that blogger thinks that my real name is some sort of obscene word and thus won't let me use it to create an account - but perhaps by the 22nd century they might stop being prudes and actually let Richards call themselves what they will.

Since 2013 I have had a few more failed relationships, got a new job, almost finished paying off my travelling debt, learned a bit more Spanish, lost a few friends, found Steampunk and Renaissance cosplayers a great replacement, and had a couple of short stories published.

Next thing for me is potentially moving to Mexico to be with my fiance, and the starting up of a online youtube channel all about Steampunk. ... watch this space

Oh - and for those who are interested in my story is published in a book called "The Infernal Clock", and its available to buy as both a physical book as as a kindle via Amazon :-

The Infernal Clock - Available to buy as ebook or paperback via Amazon

Update on my life

Wow, has it really been this long since I have last put up a post on my blog ... tut tut, shame on me.

I think that the reason why I stopped is because Blogger in its infinite wisdom began being really touchy with my reworking of the source code to tailor make my blogs for their own specific purposes, but hopefully they have calmed down now - at least enough for me to come back here at least for a short time.

I have posted new poems up, I will be going off to Edinburgh at the end of August, during which I will no doubt take hundreds of photos and put the best ones up on my album page, and when I get round to dong any more artwork that will go up too.

For now this is Dickon back on the bloggersphere

My Thirty Fifth Birthday Barbecue

A few weeks ago I was having a little crisis of self about turning thirty five and yet not having completed some of the things that were high up on my bucket list.

This Friday just gone was not only Easter Good Friday, but also my birthday and so as it marked the midpoint between being thirty and forty I decided it was reason enough to hold a party.

Being a lover of barbeques, I had planned and sent out invitations over a month ago inviting my nearest and dearest, mentioning that it would be a barbeque if the weather was good and a chilli con-carne if not.

Thankfully as the week progressed and Friday neared the weather forecast improved from dry and warm to clear and hot, the perfect conditions under which you should hold a barbecue.

Having ordered the food and drink online to be delivered a few hours before the party started, when Friday morning came all I had to do was clear up and clean a little, making sure that everything looked as nice as they possibly could.

The first guests arrived almost bang on time, being my eldest sister and her three young daughters, and we were soon joined by my friend Sue who is loud enough to be a party all by herself.

Within an hour the house and garden filled up, so much in fact that I doubted that my small garden would be big enough to accommodate them all, certainly I did not have this many garden chairs.

As per the Springate's custom, I was not expecting to receive any presents, having passed the age of twenty one many years ago, but I also knew that my mother would probably smuggle a little gift into the party anyway.

I had chosen to use round charcoal briquettes to cook with, as they last longer than wood or the black imitation wood splinters, but they do take a bit longer to get good and hot.

Another of my bright ideas was to get a few extra large burgers instead of a bargain bucket load of cheap smaller burgers, an idea which ended up being a bad one as although they were very tasty there was also not enough to go around and they took up so much of the barbeque that most of my guests had to wait quite some time before there was anything for them to eat.

Despite this minor hiccup a great time was had by all; there were no tears or crying and nothing got broken or damaged that I noticed, not even my bank balance.

By the early evening most of the guests had ate, wished me a happy birthday and left, yet Paola and Lendel were still due to arrive, having had to wait for Lendel to finish off his shift before they left.

As they had never visited Gillingham before I ensured that I met them at the train station and together we all walked back, remarking at how different Gillingham was compared with Central London.

Being a typical British party and a small house, it was quite different from the loud Latin parties that they were used to, but they still seemed to enjoy just chilling with me and a few friends till it was finally time for everyone to go home and catch their train home.

As is my own custom, I decided to delay the massive after party clearing up session until the morning, made myself a bacon sandwich and then spent the last few minutes of wakefulness watching the last few episodes of Boardwalk Empire before I retired to bed.

Constructive Critism

There is an old English saying that goes, "If something is worth doing, it's worth doing well" and though that may be, it doesn't exactly end the argument.

When I first set up my blog back in 2006 I spent hours and hours trying to get it to look just right, and I had done well.

Then a little over a month ago I decided to give it an overhaul after witnessing the new template and widgets that blogger had to offer, and again I spent hours and hours on it and again I did well.

Which brings us up to today, as I have spent much of the last two days rejigging my blog yet further, after a friend suggested that it now encompassed so many different elements that it had lost its direction, purpose and identity and was thus beginning to sink under the weight of its own content.

So what I did was to create several similar websites that all ran from the same main account, transfered across all the entries and comments, gave each website its own identity and feel and then linked them all together again, with an end result that I feel proud of and again I feel I have done well.

So getting back to my original point, at each stage I had done a worthy blog but as the software, my skills and my understanding increased between each effort I felt that I had to go back and redo a former good job that ended up looking old and not as polished as it once did.

Dickopaideia

Having recently had a run-in with a rather annoying bunch of Irkites, I have decided that rather than attempt to continue to shout down the masses, I will instead simply provide my own educational tidbits every now and again under the terms of my own encylopedic reference henceforth known as the Dickopaideia.

The first of my new words is of course, Irkite - [people who I personally find to be irksome - pronounced (Er-Kite)]

Another of my new words or phrases is alg - [alg, acronym for 'a little giggle', used in preference to the much overused and tired expression 'lol' meaning to 'laugh out loud']

Finally, as it seems clear that these particular bunch of Irkites are a waste of space I furthermore spent a few minutes playing about with my internet browsers and have now set up defaults to enable me to search the web without being swamped with their biased opinions and search hits.

Blog Formatting

Having decided that my blog was due an overhall I have been playing around with the formats and layouts during any my freetime in the hope of finding a perfect layout.

Not being a whizz at computer lingo anymore I had to resort to modifying a default blogging templates, but the problem with this is that there was no one type template that I liked the look of.

I have always been one for shading and curves, yet the template that had those in abundance also had some rather ugly bits stuck in as well, which took more than a few minutes to find out how to get around.

A lot of it was trial and error, and as such I am not even sure if I could do it all again if I tried, so I am very thankful that by the end of a weeks playing I had come up with a layout, design and colour scheme that I was happy with and didn't look too blocky.

It might not be everyone's ideal colour scheme, but it seemed just fine and dandy for me, and so hopefully I will not have any more sudden urges to muck around any more and I can get back to the serious matter of what sketches to stick up, my next poem or even - heaven forbid - cracking on with the second volume of my travelling escapades.

All I can say is that I am glad my blog's fans and friends have stuck around long enough for me to get back into the habit of regular postings and looking forward I intend on updating it with at least one picture, recipe, photograph or journal entry at least once a week.

Updating My Blog

Having volunteered to help my friend Paola create and set up a website/blogsite for her modelling, I had such a lot of fun playing around with all the new features and settings that the latest blog templates had on offer that afterwards I knew that I would have to give my own blogsite a bit of a facelift.

After a lot of playing about, changing and rechanging settings and a lot of fiddling about with creating backlinks and uploading images I finally had a new blog website that I was once again proud to own and use.

The old had served me well since it was first set up in 2006, but five years on and its simplicity and lack of features or menu's was something that I was very glad that I would now be able to correct. In fact the only tiny slight thing I was not entirely happy about was that I had to use someone elses stock photo for the background image as whenever I uploaded my own it didn't bleed out to the edges of the website and thus looked iffy.

A writer and published author

An old friend of mine once said, or possibly paraphrased, that in order to become a writer a person must only do one thing, write.

Well I today found out that assuming that such a person also wants to be paid for his craft, for an unknown writer to burst onto the scene they must either have money to burn, have contacts in high places or be very computer literate.

Following a throw away comment made by my youngest sister saying that 'I had better get a wriggle on' with my travel writing, I realised that I had been back from travelling now for almost two years and as yet there was still no sign of any book for anyone to read.

This comment was posted in reply to a FaceBook status update that I had posted, saying how far I was coming, but pondering it I then made the decision to break up my travelling into two volumes and push the first one out now instead of together later in the year, or even early next year.

About a week ago I finished the actual rewrite, and I thought that it would then be a doddle to get it self published as I had already done all the hard work.

Over the last weekend I laboured long into the night, almost missing my sisters engagement party, and with barely 10 hours sleep over 72 hours I pushed myself the entire time to get the draft, and the front and rear covers complete. Even this was not easy, as I had to root around and find several different art and publishing packages in order to get it all done.

Having to go to work Monday, I worked as usual on the train into and out of work and pausing only for a sandwich I remained up until gone 1am ensuring that I went through every section tweaking and refining it.

Setting my alarm for before 6am this morning I woke early in order to put the finishing touches on my book so that when I arrived at work this morning all I had to do was upload it onto the website and then set things in motion. If only!

First the website wanted a pdf, then it said that I hadn't embedded the fonts on the file - which I had to find out how to do. Once I did that it still do not accept it, so I had to wait to lunchtime to try again.

Over Lunch I edited it, resubmitted it and then had to rework and resubmit my cover designs as they were not in the chosen format either - despite having them saved in three different formats.

With a lot of huffing and puffing I finally got it to work and ordered myself a copy right away, and then as I was also going to try and sell it I had to create an on-line profile. Once that was done I then had to link in all the other profiles, which took up the remainder of my lunchtime - and this from a guy who has spent his entire adult life working with computers in one way or another.

I would hate to think what chance a less pc-savvy would be author would have upon getting their own book out there, as they would probably either give up or else have to pay a fortune for others to do all the fiddly bits.

Having done it once, I now know how and what to do, so the second volume should be that much easier to write, edit and produce, but still I feel that after all this I deserve a break from writing before I attempt the slightly longer return journey volume.

But back to what my friend originally said, I am not in disagreement about having to write in order to be a writer, but I now see that being a writer and being a published author are not necessarily the same thing.

Diet - February 2011

I stood on the scales and weighed a little under 14 stone (196 lbs) , 3.5 stone heavier than my normal and also at least 2.0 stone into a technical body mass index (BMI) rating of obese.

How I could possibly be considered obese was beyond me, but then I had been tucking into the chocolates and fizzy drinks over the Christmas period and was snacking on several biscuits a day while in my office at work.

Now I know its true that few people would call me a fatty, but for years I was around 10.5 stone, even before I went travelling, yet recently my trousers have been too tight to put on and it wasn't that they had shrunk in the wash.

I still walk to and from Victoria train station and my works office in Bond Street most days, so it was not that, thus I knew that something else has to be done.

So, a complete overhall was needed.

Firstly, for general health if nothing else, I started taking daily multivitamin tablets, as I had heard that when people try a diet their forget about the basics that a body needs on a daily basis and so fall ill and end up back where they started.

Secondly, despite there still being several bars of chocolates and packets of biscuits just lying around the place waiting to get eaten, I put them all in a tin and stuck them on a shelf - instead of thinking 'oh, I will start the diet just as soon as I have finished them!'.

All my fizzy drinks I switched for their zero or diet equivalent, which was a bit more expensive as not that many places stock Dr Pepper Zero, but as I like at least one can a day this wasn't really a choice but a requirement.

I bought ultra skimmed milk for home and bought two jars of candarel sugar substitute - one for home and one for the office - as I am also used to having about 6 cups of tea per day and with fatty milk and 2 sugars in each cup, it soon mounts up and eats into my daily allowance of both.

I threw out my chocolate spread, replaced my spreads/jams and margarine for fat/suger low substitutes and increased the amount of vegetables and fruit that I normally bought.

I drew up a detailed excel spreadsheet showing the complete nutritional breakdown of all my daily food and drinks, and studied it to work what was actually high fat or high sugar.

Having calculated what was a true low figure actually was, ( as opposed to being considered low only when compared to a non diet equivalent of the same item ) I was able to figure out what I could eat a little of, what I could eat a lot of and what I was going to have to cut out of my regular weekly diet completely.

I was surprised that some things were extremely high in one or the other, even in items branded as 'healthy' or 'diet' - and also pleasantly surprised that by substituting for alternative brands my grocery bills did not go up by that much.

So now, the specific calories/fat/sugar count I consume on a daily basis has dropped through the floor ( e.g. around 1250 calories compared to the 2000 as suggested for a normal adult or the 2750 that was actually what I was consuming pre-diet ) but you would never know it from just looking at the food I am still able to eat.

I still take a small packed lunch to work along with a can of drink, a yoghurt and a packet of crisps, but they are all slightly different from normal, ( e.g. instead of fatty potato crisps they might be of corn, wheat or rice.)

I was not expecting any overnight results, and in fact I didn't even bother to weigh myself for the first week as I wanted to give my body a chance to adjust and use up the fats / sugars already in my system before I even began to try and chart my progress.

As it is still winter over here, it is far too cold for me to do much running and a monthly gym membership is one expense too many, but at the moment I am losing 1 lb per day and not feeling any negative side affects.

In fact I feel fine and have discovered a whole range of foods I never thought to try before. True, some stuff tastes a little bland and I miss not eating cheese more than anything else, but so far so good.

I also am a non smoker and only a weekend alcohol drinker at best, so giving up a couple of cans of cider on a Friday night have not really been much of a hardship.

I did read up about a reverse diet that seemed to make some sense, ( reverse as in a big breakfast and a small dinner ) but as I already get up ridiculously early in the mornings I did not feel that I would be able to incorporate this into my daily routine without going to bed at 10pm!

Day 8 - weight 189 lbs

Day 11 - weight 186 lbs

I plan on keeping this up until I am able to start doing a fraction more exercise in the summer and once I am back to around 11 stone I will see if I want to get any slimmer and/or maybe think about reintroducing a few medium to high fatty / sugary treats once a week to see how it affects my weight then.

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.