May Bank Holiday Weekend

I received a letter in the post  on Friday. It is from Lincolnshire NHS asking me to become an NHS Volunteer. There is a form I need to complete and details regarding an interview, induction and training to take place in Sleaford. That's all rather good. I am very keen to do more, particularly in the area of mental health and stroke recovery. I haven't completed the form yet, I need to be in the right frame of mind and currently my head is full of things such as content for my blog and my review of the Amazon Kindle Touch. Once I've off-loaded this, I will be able to concentrate fully on another task. I expect I'll do it tomorrow.
Deep down, I'm hoping very much that my involvement will eventually lead to a paying role. I know one of the questions asked is whether I have any skills I feel would be appropriate to bring to the role. In answer to this, I would suggest my experience in caring for and providing assistance to a stroke sufferer, my experience of anxiety and depression and my more than sixteen years in IT and computing. I have already suggested that a chaperon should be provided for new members of our support group. I know how daunting it can be to be thrust into a group of people, alien to you and anxious to know all about you. I've been there. It can be very difficult and any help in overcoming that 'first hurdle' can often prove invaluable and an enormous sense of comfort to the person involved. So this is something I hope I will be able to provide. I also wouldn't mind getting back into computer tutoring. It's something I used to do a few years ago through a local college, and I enjoyed it very much. So we'll see how that develops.

I've mentioned my new Kindle and I intend to write a full review about it on my PC Knowledge Blog. I was rather sceptical at first regarding its benefits. But having played with it for a few days, I have now managed to find a niche for it in as much as it provides my daily newspapers. These are downloaded automatically each morning and appear on the device ready for me to read. I do like to stay in touch with news and current affairs from home and abroad and the Kindle provides an up to the minute source of news which is easy to read and navigate my way through.
Books take second place strangely. I do enjoy books and I have downloaded a few to the device. These happen to be rather old books of ghost stories and creepy tales, rather a penchant of mine. They appear on the device in their original print format together with the cover and other illustrations. I've also sourced a number of books for my son, again with illustrations though my wife has yet to download any. There is an inbuilt text to speech facility allowing for books to be read to you. This works rather well though I am anxious to see if the default male and female voices can be changed. I understand there are people out there looking at this though a way has yet to be found.
All in all, I'm rather impressed with it. It's by no means perfect - there are a number of things I will be suggesting to Amazon - but as a book reader and news reader, it does what it says on the tin. It's also surprisingly easy to use. The appearance of text on-screen is as good if not better than printed text. It is incredibly clear and the ability to adjust font size and spacing is very useful. Though the screen approximately 6 x 4 inches, the device does appear small but it is surprising just how much text can be displayed.
I'll write more in my technical blog, but my overall impression of the Kindle Touch is a positive one and I certainly recommend it. It by no means replaces books, it merely makes books more accessible.

I see that our beloved Weetabix, so long a staple of the British breakfast table, has been majority bought by a China owned company, Bright Food. It is of course the latest in a long line of UK brands to be bought or majority owned by foreign owned companies. I did see a tweet asking if 'Weetabix would now come with a set of free chopsticks in every box'... I doubt it, but an interesting image nevertheless.

There is a wonderful series on BBC2 looking back and documenting the 1970's. It's appropriately called 'The 70's' and is presented rather well by Dominic Sandbrook, a historian and new face to TV. I have found the series so far quite fascinating, made all the more so due to the fact that I grew up during the period. Yet, I actually recall very little and certainly nothing of the events that shaped the decade. I was quite shocked to discover just how difficult life was during the period and how much of it was spent without the guarantee of running water, electricity, fuel and food. The conflict between miners and the government of the day threatened on more than one occasion to bring the country to its knees and the Pound came very close to collapsing, making our current troubles pale into insignificance in comparison.
Women's rights was something else that surprised me and the fact that equal rights for women has been a relatively recent consideration says something of the madness of our society back then. There were even shops in London where women were not served. I find it incredible that this sort of thing even went on, and if it wasn't for our well documented history, I doubt whether future generations would believe it.

Lastly, I have stumbled across some audio-visual gems from a bygone age when we as a country were proud of what we did and how we did it - and didn't mind shouting about it. The films can be found at the website of the British Council and can be watched online in all their glory. I understand the films were made for a foreign audience and used to sell the country to overseas nations. As such, most if not all the films have never been seen before but they do each provide a wonderful glimpse of how life used to be and the pride we once had in our country and the people who ran it. I dare say a great many lessons could be learnt from these films. I thoroughly recommend a visit.