Simple Minds @ Thetford Forest

Simple Minds @ Thetford Forest, a photo by rjcb23 on Flickr.

Simple Minds @ Thetford Forest

Well it's been a year, it doesn't surprise me...

There I am getting all annoyed when people don't update their blogs with decent regularity and look what goes and happens; I forget for almost 15 months about my own one.

Oh well, apology accepted, let's get on with things.

A lot has changed since I last updated.

I now no longer work in IT.
I now no longer live on the south coast.
I now no longer commute 2 hours per day.
I am now no longer employed by an employer.

I now work in the automotive business
I now live in East Anglia
I now don't really commute to work as my work place varies from day to day
I am now self-employed

I won't bore you with all the details now, but might, from time to time, explain a little about what I do, why I do it, and how I came about doing it.

Family update time: the kids are great. Daughter is at school now and doing really well. She has become a lot more confident since starting and can now read and even speak French!

Son is a right little cheeky one. Is definitely his own boy and doesn't take being told what to do particularly well! He is very cute though, so that makes up for it!

TTFN

"Is it snowing.....

..... I hadn't noticed."

( I make no apologies for any similarity to a crappily said line by a very bad actress)



-- iPosted this --

It's also been a while since I've had a good moan...

... and today's subjects are "Stupid Satnav Users" and "Beyonce Knowles"

[inspired by iSimon's mini-rant!]

Stupid SatNav Users
As it is that time of year where driving home from work is in darkness, it's pretty easy to see other drivers who are using a Satnav unit to help them get home.
Now, I am pretty sure that half the drivers you see using SatNav are on their regular commute home but know their journeys like the back of their hands, they just like to show off and stick their little clever piece of GPS technology to their dash and pretend they are better than everyone else.
But I digress. It's not these muppets that are getting on my wick; it's those SatNav users who are too dumb to realise that they can switch the damn unit to "night mode" so as not to blind them whilst driving in the dark.
Whilst having the bright light of a TomTom or Navman shining in a drivers eyes whilst he/she is bombing down the M23 at 85 is surely a distraction. I hope that before to long that it will be an offence to have such a distraction in a car.
Sometimes I feel like pulling up alongside them in the traffic, and telling them to RTFM. It's not that hard to switch to night mode.
M23/A23 users be warned. I am on your case.

Beyonce Knowles
Apart from having a truly ridiculous name that wouldn't look out of place in a Vicki Pollard sketch, the one thing that is really, really annoying me is an advert that she is on currently.
It's for Emporio Armani and its the way she sings the last word.
Instead of "...diamonds are a girl's best friend!" she sings "...diamonds are a girl's best fer-wend!" - and it infuriates the hell out of me!!!
See here to be suitable annoyed too: fer-wend

I have a good mind to complain to her dad Nick about this. (or maybe her Uncle Eric....!)

Yuletide Jog

It seems slightly odd.

The thought of donning a red and white suit, a red and white hat and a bushy white beard.



Very odd.

Combine that with running round a park in Tunbridge Wells and you have a strange image.



Very, very odd indeed.

Now picture hundreds of people doing the very same thing on the very same day.



Well that's just plain crazy.

Well it maybe crazy, but it for charity and that makes it all OK.

Late November I will be jogging/running in the British Heart Foundation Tunbridge Wells Santa Jog

Feel free to join me if you like.
If not, to ease the guilt, a simple sponsorship will suffice


* artists impression

So, now it's up to me to get myself in a reasonable shape for this. Should be easy, I ho-ho-hope!!

[Sponsorship link]

Poorly Boy and lovely visits

My six week old son is a bit poorly.

We think its only a cold but it seems to have gone on for about 2 weeks. The problemn with children under the age of 3 months is that you can't use any fricking medicine on them at all. So when he is all "snuffly" there's nothing you can do about it.

When he wakes at 4 in the morning (having already woken at 2 and 3) and sounds like the elephant man breathing, you really really want to do somethning to help him.

Anyway, he's putting up with it and is starting to do a few "coos" and smiles for us, so he's not suffering too much.

Working from home tomorrow (Fri), which is good as it saves me 2 hours of driving. I like to do that when I have a journey to make in the evening (we are off to my sisters)

It will be the first time we have been to my sister's new house since she split up with my brother-in-law. Yes, it's very sad especially after 18 years of marriage, but she and my three nieces seem to be bearing up. My brother-in-law is also doing OK. He's a good man and it's a shame they have split, but nothing I can do about that!

Kinda pointless iPhone apps

I must admit that I am a little bit addicted to downloading iPhone apps.

I currently have about 70 installed but probably have had as many that do not make the grade and get removed pretty quickly.

My latest ones of note are DoodleJump - a pretty addictive game - and ColorSplash which is a fairly cool app that can make ordinary photos stand out with a bit of colour manipulation (or black-and-whiting most but not all of it) Please see below for 2 examples of my handiwork.








Pretty effective I reckon. But also pretty pointless!!!


-- iPosted this --