Now I'm a believer

I've just been on Ginny's blog and saw a link to find out whic hreligion is right for me. I'm sure I didn't fill out some of the questions properly but here's the results. I would agree that I'm an agnostic so fair dinkum to the quiz.

You scored as agnosticism. You are an agnostic. Though it is generally taken that agnostics neither believe nor disbelieve in God, it is possible to be a theist or atheist in addition to an agnostic. Agnostics don't believe it is possible to prove the existence of God (nor lack thereof). Agnosticism is a philosophy that God's existence cannot be proven. Some say it is possible to be agnostic and follow a religion; however, one cannot be a devout believer if he or she does not truly believe. agnosticism 75% Islam 58% Buddhism 54% atheism 54% Hinduism 54% Paganism 42% Christianity 42% Satanism 33% Judaism 33% Which religion is the right one for you? (new version) created with QuizFarm.com

What is dying?

The ship

What is dying?
I am standing on the sea shore,
a ship sails in the morning breeze
and starts for the ocean.
She is an object of beauty
and I stand watching her
till at last she fades
on the horizon
and someone at my side says:
"She is gone."
Gone! Where?
Gone from my sightthat is all.
She is just as large in the masts, hull and spars
as she was when I saw her, and just as able to bear her load of living
freight to its destination.
The diminished size and total loss of sight is in me,
not in her,
and just at the moment when someone at my side
says, "She is gone"
there are others who are watching her coming,
and other voices take up a glad shout:
"There she comes!"
and that is dying.

Bishop Brent (1862-1926).

They spun a web for me

I've done the Preston Hellings Football Club website!

I started playing for Preston at the beginning of last season August 2004 and thought it would be good to have a website. I made a few incarnations but due to lack of content they were shite, and in the end I removed the site and replaced it with a splash screen.

I thought that if you can't do a job properly then don't do it at all and so I was happier with just the splash screen and was willing to wait until my emphusiam gained momentum and I actually had things to put on the site (It's no use having a site if it doesn't actually do anything).

After my revelations of a few weeks ago and my kick-start I've done the site and it's actually getting quite a few of the players visiting.

The key has been the installation of a forum which is providing feedback for the team, information about upcoming matches, and also a place for the team to socialise and chat when not meeting up on a Sunday to punt a ball around.

Due to the dark nights we stopped training in September and so it was only Sundays that we would catch up with each other so hopefully the site will help in other areas.

I'm happy with it and now that other members ofthe team are having an input I'm sure it will be a success.

Laters

Stand by your man

I've just been going to a few blogs and I got around to Statue Johns brilliant "Stand By Your Statue" and behold I'm famous!

It's been a while

It's gone a bit quiet at this end hasn't it?

I must admit that I just haven't been bothered with blogging which is a little annoying as I hate it from my point when I visit other people's blogs and they haven't been updated for ages.

I'm back off to work in 1/2 hour so this is your lot for today.

I must admit that even typing this small amount is quite nice and maybe I will do a bit more blogging soon.

More stories from Ademland coming soon.....

Knit one, Pearl one, Drop one, Curl one

Football Manager 2006 is out tomorrow. I've pre-ordered it on play.com so hopefully it'll arrive in time to have a quick game tomorrow before I head off to Kentish Town for a house party on Fiday evening.

Joy.

When you’re through with life and all hope is lost, Hold out your hand ‘cause friends will be friends, Right till the end

So last week after a trip to Chichester (where I lived for 5 years) I decided that I'd lost touch with quite a few old friends from Uni and that it was about time that I actually got proactive with something as simple as emailing them. I'm still waiting for some email addresses from Jamie (I should probably ring him) but I did get in touch with Mike, and on Sunday I received an email from Tim SJ asking what I was up to. Now for a bit of history:

Tim was Vice-President of the Students' Union in my 3rd year and we got to be good friends as I lived next door to him, and I was also the Communications Officer for the SU (a voluntary committee position). We drank, hung out, played PS2, bitched, and worked well for the SU, even getting their first website off the ground, so I guess I owe Tim for getting me into webdesign. He had a few girlfriend problems and left Chichester when his sabbatical position finished in 2002. We still kept in touch and made the odd visit but after a while nothing.

The last time I saw him was about 1 1/2 years ago when he came down to visit me in Chi and we went to a nightclub in Bognor with Owen and Sam, got stinking drunk, and spent the whole next day eating pizza and playing Sega Bass Fishing on the PS2....Truly a 'Men Behaving Badly' scene.

I was at Pub work last night but actually checked my emails around midnight to find a message in my inbox asking what I was up to. I told Timmy what had been going on in Ademland, and then went off to Sleepyland. This morning I checked my emails at 8:30am to find another reply from Tim telling me that he was doing a Graduate Teaching Programme and was actually doing part of the course at my Campus where I work! I couldn't believe the coincidences and rang him up and we met up at lunchtime for a pint and some grub at the Pub.

It's weird how I haven't seen him for such a long time but on a whim sent him an email and got an email from him the day before he was going to be in my neck of the woods.

Crazy.

Can I kick it? (yes, you can!)

England are through to the World Cup finals in Germany and have finished top of their qualifying group. Nuff said but I do look out for other teams' results..in this case Turkey. England will always be my first team but Turkey come second for me.

On wednesday they finished 2nd in their group which included Ukraine, Denmark, Greece, and also Albania, Georgia, and Kazakhstan. This means that they've been entered into the playoffs with 5 other European teams with only 3 of them going to the actual World Cup finals.

The draw was this morning and the teams in the draw were Spain, Slovakia, Norway, Czech Republic, and Switzerland. The final draw was:

Spain v Slovakia
Switzerland v Turkey
Norway v Czech Republic

I think Turkey have got quite a good chance of getting past the swiss although it'll be a tight set of matches (Matches to be played 12 and 16 November)

On another point I put 50p on them to win the World Cup at 125-1 a few months ago (I think that the odds have lengthened now though...dammit)

I'll tell you what's going on

It seems I've become a fairweather blogger lately, only posting a few times a week, when I used to try and blog every day.

So what's been happening?...Well nothing of great interest.

Me, and a group of friends have been having HUGE email conversations about going on holiday next summer. Ian started it off because he wanted everyone to be able to get the time off and also save enough money. He first of all suggested Las Vegas and maybe another part of the USA, although this will be very expensive. I said I'd rather go somewhere a little more cultural, although with lots of fun too, and so Egypt has entered the equation. We're still decing on where and when but hey, we've got another 9 months eh?

I was off work yesterday. I never have time off ill but I had felt the ill effects coming on since last Friday, and I finally caved in to some R&R when I had a sore throat, headache, aching joints, and wasabsolutely knackered. I lay on the sofa all day and watched daytime TV, the highlight being "To Hell and Back" - The true WWII story of Audie Murphy, the most decorated soldier in U.S. history, based on the autobiography of Audie Murphy who stars as himself in the film. The film was made in 1955, when he was 31, but he was playing himself between the ages of 16-18 which was when he served in the Army. Hollywood eh? Still he did well and it was some good escapism TV. And I feel better now.

On Monday after my great weekend away I got working on a website I'd promised to a former work colleague who had left the Students' Union a couple of months ago. Liz is a really talented lecturer, MA student, and also artist, and is branching out into drawing portraits with a difference. I did the site in one day so why not check out MangaPortraits.co.uk

I've now got a few websites under my belt and feel comfortable enough to actually make my own web & logo design website. I'd been putting it off as I needed some sites to put into a portfolio, but I should be able to put something good together. I've been researching other design sites and am going to take a while putting it all together as I really want something that's simple for others to use. I surf a lot and know what I hate and what I like and would like the site to be accessible to all, provide competitive prices, and be something that I'll enjoy doing. A while ago I got the domain SolidMedia.co.uk and this is where it'll be hosted. I'll keep you posted [P.S. Does anyone know the tax/law about having another business? It might not make any money, but what if it does? Anyone got any tips?]

I was lost but now I'm found

Isn't life strange? In the last post I was lamenting lost friends and aquaintances and was wishing to get back in contact with a lot of people. Well yesterday I got an email in my inbox from Mike, who was Vice-President of the Students' Union when I was a fresher, and also ran the bar for a while the year after that. I wouldn't say we were best mates but we got on well and had a fair bit in common, and it's nice to catch up with him.

I'm not too sure how he found my site, I probably got googled, I must find out. But my blog has inspired him to start his own which you can find at http://stinkies.blogspot.com/. It's in its early day but who knows..

On the point of googling I typed in a few people's names but got back nothing...tsk...who would've thought that....

gonna try with a little help from my friends

I've just got back from my weekend jollies away visiting friends.

I left Ramsgate at around 2pm on Friday and got back at 9pm on Sunday so I had a pretty long break away, the whole weekend virtually.

My first port of call was Chichester. My friend Sam is the Bars and Entertainments Manager at the Students' Union, and I'd rung him a few weeks ago asking when would be a good time to visit Chichester (usually shortened to Chi), and he's suggested Friday as it was the Graduation Ball. I went, I saw, I had a few drinks, and I saw a few old friends.

On Saturday in the spirit of Lord Bargain and Ka I met up with a fellow blogger, this one was Phil, from Bournemouth (I do know Phil though). It was good to catch up with an old friend who I haven't seen for over a year and nice to chill out. We did Pizza Hut, Serenity at the cinema, visits to loads of DVD and games shops in Bournemouth and Poole, and had a good chat and a catch-up.

On Sunday I returned to Chi for a game of footy (this used to be a sunday tradition at Uni) saw a few more old friends and then came back home. All in all I did 420 miles in the old car. Not bad.

For those of you who read my blog regularly you'll remember that a while back I was pining a bit for Chichester and the life I'd left and I wrote this post. After this visit it's clarified things quite well. Chichester has changed a lot and it's not what I rememeber. The University where I spent my time studying and working for 5 years is changing into something completely different to the place where I had so much fun and from what my memory recollects. That was the past and I'm better off for it. I left just before the Student's Union moved into their new building (which I had a part in designing) and before a lot of changes to the way the University was developing. I think that if I'd stayed I would've ended up hating the place and that I would've had to leave or have a bit of a break down as it doesn't have the same identity as the place I loved. I guess I need these little visits to confirm this to myself.

One thing I do miss is the friends there. I keep in regular contact with a handful of them but there are more that I forgot about and have lost contact with. This was brought home to me when I learned that not one, but two of my old friends had given birth! So congrats to both Hannah and Erin! I am a bit sad that I didn't know about this but I've just emailed another friend, who I never contact but who I saw today, and asked him to send me lots of peoples emails and phone numbers who I've lost contact with.

On the drive home I had a glow about me and I felt that everything is going to be great.

Now off to bed for some well-earned sleep.

I've been working all week and I'm, Just living for the weekend

SwissToni has been telling us all about how terrible certain days of the week are....but now we get to one of my favourites...Wednesday. It is the day that divides the working week and from now on all I'm doing is thinking about the weekend.

So what's so special about this weekend?

Well I'll be going on a road trip down to Chichester to my old Uni's Graduation Ball (featuring Nemone, The Cut-up Boys, and loads of cheese I'm sure). I've still got good friends down there, namely the Bars and Ents Manager, Sam, who is gonna put me on the guest list which means I save myself£25, and let me kip on his sofa. I'm gonna leave work around 2ish and so I'll get there before the afternoon has ended, and I'll get to catch-up with other peeps in the Chichester area.

On the saturday I'll be heading down to see Phil of Freespurge fame down in Bournemouth. I think we'll be watching Serenity and also having a few beers no doubt, but I'll see what else he's got planned for me as I haven't seen him for over a year, also he's going one better than Sam and gonna give me a fold-up bed...5-star all the way.

Then on Sunday I'll head back to sunny Ramsgate knowing that I've actually had a good weekend [although a bit tired from driving nearly 400 miles]

[Wednesday is often reffered to as "hump day" because of its position as the middle day of the work week. If the work week were a hill. Then Wednesday would be the crest. It is all down hill from there. (Whether the down hill ride is a coast or a descent into a swamp is left to the individual.)] - http://www.indepthinfo.com/weekdays/wednesday.shtml

You know that I've been drunk a thousand times,and these should be the best days of my life,

If you've been in your town centre on a friday or saturday night then you'll see large groups of 18-30s drinking alcohol. Fair enough, they're old enough and have worked hard during the week so they're entitled to relax. But what about the increase in binge drinking? Those levels of drinking are the cause of many other ills of society, such as violence, vandelism, sex attacks, but what about the other ill-effects? What about the harm to your relationships and what about the harm to yourself.... Physically and mentally?

This brings me to my little poser today. Obviously the blame for drinking too much lies first with the individual but it must also lie with the suppliers, the pubs and clubs, but what about the people like me who serve the drinks?

I am on the frontline and actually see the results of alcohol consumption. Last night I was at the pub and first one guy punched another guy whom he thought was insulting his girlfriend, and then their girlfriends got into a argument in the toilets. Luckily I went in there [pervert] and tried to get them to calm down upon which they broke into a fight which I had to separate. They hadn't drunk a huge amount but the friction of too many people drinking caused it.

I also see those quiet drinkers who are in there everyday drinking large amounts, and no doubt doing themselves harm.

In other areas of life I try to be ethical and moral....but what about this area? I've worked in bars for 5 years, have seen what alcohol does, but I still work there. Technically I am a drug dealer.

Is it morally right to work in the alcohol industry when I see what harm it causes?

I've seen so much, I'm goin blind, And i'm braindead virtually

Surprise surprise....a new report by Dr Aric Sigman, who is an Associate Fellow of the Surprise surprise....a new report by , who is an Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society, is out claiming that TV is bad for children and can stunt their brain development. The next few paragraphs have been lifted from Yahoo News:

"Television viewing is also now linked with stunting brain development in the child's frontal lobes leading to reduced impulse control and increased antisocial behaviour."

"Teachers are under pressure to vie for the child's attentional resources which have been damaged by exposure to fast changing screen images. This leaves teachers facing a generation of children who find it more difficult to pay attention and thereby learn but also exhibit poor self-restraint and anti-social behaviour," Dr Sigman added.

Even moderate amounts of viewing can dramatically increase their risk of myopia, slow down their metabolic rate and may trigger premature puberty, according to Dr Sigman. It was also found to lead to a "significantly elevated risk" of sleep problems in adulthood, causing hormone changes, which in turn directly increase appetite and body fat production and damage the immune system leading to a greater vulnerability to cancer.

I can believe parts of this report but there are other parts that are sheer scaremongering and making assumptions to appear to tie in with conclusions they already made.

I think it boils down to being lazy. If you sit around watching too much telly, and not exercising of course you're going to experience slowed metabolism, sleep problems, and increased appetite. I get that if I spend even one day loafing around, so imagine what it's like for a growing child. I suppose this report would be an easy solution to the problems facing our children, and we could ban television and save the children but not all television is bad.

The main problem is the sheer dirge of programmes on offer to children and adults alike. If what children watched was regulated by parents and guardians, then TV would have a great place in society, instead of somewhere filled with gardening and makeover shows, puppets talking gibberish, and mindless soaps.

The brain is a muscle and needs to be exercised, if you don't exercise it, then it will cease to function to 100%, or somewhere nearing that amount. I've had times when I've not stretched my mind, gone with the flow for weeks on end and not been able to cogitate or articulate to a level I know I'm capable. But I've corrected this by trying to read more or see more by either reading more books, catching up with the internet, talking to people outside of my usual spere, and also watching selected TV programmes.

There is a load of crap out there but there is also a lot of good on the old gogglebox. TV's primary use is as a form of escapism and it's secondary use is for education, therefore there will always be a load of shite to get through before you get to the good stuff. TV programmes are made as a source of revenue, simply there to make you watch the adverts in between. It's sad but true, and therefore TV for the masses rules.If there's nothing good on Telly then don't watch it. Turn it off, and better yourself. You're bigger than a machine.

I've got to go now......Neighbours is about to start!

Whoa, whoa, back-up

Yeaterday morning I got up at 8am thinking I would be the only one up as it was a Sunday morning, but there in the front room was my sister (visiting for the weekend) on the laptop doing teaching plans for the whole week. I made myself a bacon sarnie, and started running a nice muscle relaxing bath as I had a football match at 10.30am in Margate and was getting a lift with Dan at 9:30am.

Everything was going to plan when my sister 'lost' all the work she had been doing. Apparently she was copying her files to another folder when they 'dissapeared'. I thought she was being stupid and ran a search for them thinking she'd maybe just dropped them into the wrong folder. I was wrong they had gone. I started a recovery programme to find the lost files in the clusters of her hard-drive and some came back but very corrupted. I was doing my best but by now it was 9:30 and I had to go to footy. I didn't have my bath, which was waiting there for me nice warm, taunting me, and so I chucked on some jeans and a t-shirt and when to Footy (incidently I strayed on the bench all match).

When I got back my sisters boyfriend had managed to get some more useable documents off the hard drive and it was a semi catastrophe averted....or so I thought.

I went onto the net on my PC to check my emails and one was a request from my friend Jo for some files from her website which I maintain. I went into my website directory which is in \my documents\sites to grab the files and SHIT....the folder was completely removed! Then it hit me. During the early morning I had downoaded several recovery programmes from my computer onto her laptop using her USB stick and obviously whatever virus/trojan had done that to her laptop had now done it to mine.

I was very pissed off but luckily because it's my web directory, nearly everything is on the web, and it's a matter of just downloading the sites from my remote directory. I've lost a few old files, or works in progress, but every so often you need something like this to realise that the web isn't infallable. I've left the PC downloading my folders (around 450MB worth) and when I get home I'm gonna back-up the ass offa my computer. I did read the Tao of Backup which puts backing up into perspective.

I guess the lesson of all this is make sure you've got everything backed-up that you can't replace. I've got Norton Internet Security 2005 on my PC and it has protected me constantly and not let a thing in so I'm annoyed this 'thing' has sneaked in. I ran a full system virus check but it came back with nothing so I hope it was just a file on the USB stick. If this has happened to anyone else and they've got some tips then let me know.