Boycotting the Post & In Praise of the Kindle

Today, my Royal Mail boycott has begun. I am really not happy at all with the increase in postage cost and I refuse to pay 60p for a 1st Class stamp. If I do need to send anything to anyone, it will be scanned and e-mailed or faxed. The only occasion on which it will be posted will be if there is a a Freepost address or if the postage is prepaid.

I have spent some of this afternoon tinkering with my friend's new Kindle and helping them to connect it to their WiFi. The network settings are hidden away in a sub menu and it took a while to get it all setup. Next came the job of getting a book onto the device. This can be achieved in several ways though in the end we plumped for the USB connection. It is possible to download books on the move using either the WiFi or 3G connectivity.
From what I've seen of it, I'm actually very impressed with the Kindle. There is far more to it than meets the eye including the ability to interface with Facebook and Twitter. E-mails can be sent directly to the device and it also has a web browser. Something else I found very useful is the MP3 compatibility and the ability to listen to music and audio books. Add to this a battery that lasts three months, and you have a very clever device. So, it's all good. What's even better is the fact that I will have my own Kindle very soon. My dear friends have very kindly bought me one and I am absolutely delighted. I will use it for catching up on news whereas my son can use it to help with his reading and my wife can download her favourite books. It will certainly be used and I will write more about it over the coming weeks.

What a difference a day makes... today's weather has been wonderful - the complete opposite to what we had to endure yesterday. Here by the Wash we've had blue skies and bright sunshine for most of the day, and it was mild enough for me to get a lot done in the garden and the conservatory, including planting some more seeds for herb and tomato plants.

A Little Job & Olympic Worries

I've had a couple of small jobs come my way this week. A work colleague of my mum-in-law has a laptop with a faulty keyboard. It's a strange one this, as all the keys work except for J,K and L. I've taken the keyboard out and taken a closer look but unlike laptops of old, there is literally nothing that's serviceable. They keys do come off, but that's it apart from the contact sheet underneath. So I've recommended a replacement which to my surprise will cost just £25 to procure. Computer spares must be the only things that have actually decreased in price over the years. The same customer has a tower unit which 'blue screens' on starting which could frankly be a number of different things so I'll be taking a look at it once the laptop is repaired.
So that's all very good. I do love fixing things especially computers and if I can earn a little by doing it, then happy days.

Weather, oh weather. It has been nothing short of horrible for the last two weeks. It all came to a peak last night when we had very heavy rain and strong winds, which persisted well into today and have only really eased in the last hour or so. There are flood warnings almost everywhere at the moment and there are rivers where their banks have already burst, such as in York. Yet we are told we still have a drought. So why not try to collect some of this water, the same way I am in my garden, but on an industrial scale?

In the news we've had the Leveson Inquiry and the furore surrounding the Culture, Media and Sport Minister Jeremy Hunt. I've certainly been glued to the coverage surrounding this and I firmly believe that there remain many questions to be answered and I believe there are rough times ahead for the current government. I could spend an hour or more writing about my thoughts on this subject, but I won't. Suffice to say that I believe not one word of what we are told by our government or Mr Murdoch, regardless of how plausible their explanations and excuses may seem. They may think we were all born yesterday but I for one am not going to be taken in by it, not a single word of it.

Twitter. I've written on numerous occasions regarding the power of Twitter and its influence on our society is clear given the media coverage it has received lately. Admittedly, the coverage has been for the wrong reasons and unfortunately, it is all too often used as a weapon to offend or humiliate.
But I do see it very much as a tool for making comment and observation, and on many occasions over the last week, I have received replies and even had my tweets read out on radio. I already have over 100 followers, to my surprise and how many of these read my tweets, I do not know. But the fact that my tweets regarding electricity providers were picked up by Eon and NPower and my tweet regarding the mis-treatment of Christopher Tappin was read out on-air by LBC, it does make me feel good about using this relatively new medium. What started out just a couple of years ago as an Internet SMS service has grown into perhaps the most powerful tool of communication and opinion in the World today.

No week would be complete without a crisis and this time it was a flat tyre. I had spotted it just before my wife was due to leave for work. Of course it was all too much for her but we managed to get someone to come and collect her. I managed to get some air into the tyre and drove gingerly to the local garage. Within half an hour they had located the puncture and repaired it. Wonderful, and all for just £20. A huge relief given the fact I was expecting to pay £40 for a new tyre. So a major crisis was averted thank goodness.

There is concern at the moment regarding the ability of our immigration control services to cope come the Olympics and the predicted hundreds of thousands of extra visitors. This has arisen after complaints by entering passengers who had to queue for up to 3 hours at Heathrow. Mobile phone footage showed long queues of disgruntled passengers and I can't help but imagine the scene in three months from now when Olympic devotees begin descending on the capital.
We are being assured that the airports are prepared for the influx, buy haven't we heard all thins before? Do they really know how many people are expected? I doubt it. I fully expect to see huge queues at our airports, caused in part by delays in processing passports and in the inability of our transport system to transfer the masses to the Olympic site.
Somewhat amazingly, there is discussion at the moment regarding the siting of ground to air missiles and the surreal suggestion to place missile batteries on top of apartment blocks and other tall buildings. We are being assured a complete no fly zone will be enforced over London during the Games, but mistakes do happen and I could easily see a situation where a plane or other airborne object could stray and a missile be launched in response. The results of this would be catastrophic for anyone below.
And of course there's the hoaxer and the chaos that would ensue following any warning deemed credible.
Of course, there's every possibility the whole thing will pass without incident, and I hope it does. But I do have serious doubts as to whether the current infrastructure will cope under the additional strain and I seriously doubt our preparedness. Time will of course tell.

Still the Rain Falls - Mid-Week Update

It is still raining and there is no sign of it letting-up, except for a brief glimpse of the sun now and then. It is raining as I type this. Everything I can use as a container in the garden is now full of rainwater. My water butt is overflowing and as soon as I empty something to water my plants, it fills straight back up again. I'm by no means moaning, but I do find it slightly ironic given the fact that it wasn't so many days ago that we were beginning to panic and worry about water restrictions and a prolonged drought.

I have spent a worrying amount of time following the Levison Enquiry on TV. They have been questioning James and Rupert Murdoch in light of the phone hacking scandal and press ethics. One advantage of being a 'stay at home' dad is that I get to watch things like this. Though to be honest, if I was at work, I would be stealing myself away to watch TV via the Internet. I do find these things fascinating and I am grateful we live in an open society where these things are public. It wasn't so long ago that inquiries such as this would have been conducted behind closed doors.

I have a little job. My mother-in-law is giving me a laptop to repair. It belongs to one of her work colleagues and it sounds as if the keyboard has become damaged as some of the keys have stopped working. I'm pretty confident I'll be able to fix it. I'll remove the keyboard and remove any liquids and give it a thoroughly good clean. I do enjoy things like that, fixing faults and getting things working again. It was pretty much all I did with my little company a few years ago. The problem was two fold - I didn't charge enough and what I did charge, people didn't want to pay. So in the end, it was costing me money so I had to stop doing it. Shame really as I did enjoy working for myself.

My father had his dressings removed from his face and neck on Monday. He also received the 'all clear' meaning they had removed everything they needed to. He has been told to exercise extreme care from now on and told that on no account should he spend any time in direct sunlight. This is a shock. He loves the sun and always has, perhaps a little too much. He spends all of his spare time in his garden and it shows. Nothing will change this, but he must heed advice and cover up. He's had a scare, we all have, and he must follow the advice he has been given.

My wife is at home today. She woke up feeling poorly and I called her boss to let her know this morning. It's quite unusual for my wife to have any time off work. She's normally very healthy, despite suffering with Asthma. Tiredness is perhaps her main problem, which is no wonder given the hours each week she spends on her feet. She seldom ever gets time for lunch or even a coffee break. It's rather odd to have her at home. I am conscious of her being here and I do feel a little as if I'm under her watchful gaze, eager to know what I get up to when she's not about. The truth is, I actually get up to very little. I try to keep to a routine - breakfast, job hunt, lunch etc. I've pretty much kept to this routine punctuated by frequent checks to see how my wife is feeling and whether I can bring her a cup of tea.

I have given some thought as to whether I can sustain both a written and spoken blog. The truth is that I do find the addition of a daily audio journal very difficult to maintain and wonder whether a weekly version would be more appropriate. The main problem is committing to a regular schedule of recording the journal, particularly when I need to take about 10-15 minutes out of each day alone with my recorder. This is frequently easier said than done. A written journal provides the ability to record my thoughts more easily I feel and without the same level of fuss.

I have a joke. I don't take the credit for it as I stumbled across it on Twitter. It goes like this;
'I bought a dog from an Ironmonger the other day. As soon as I got it home, it made a bolt for the door. '

I'll get my coat...

April Showers

My goodness, how quickly the weather can change. It's sod's law that as soon as we have a hosepipe ban, it rains. It had rained pretty much constantly  the last week. We have a drought and reservoirs are less than half-full. Though despite the heavy rain, we are told we need at least three month's continuous rain before reserves can return to anything near normal. So, I continue to catch as much rainwater as I can. My water butt is full and every bucket and vessel large enough is in the garden catching rainfall. I've even applied for a free water saving kit and entered a competition for a free water butt with Anglian Water. They're giving away 5,000 apparently.

I've begun recording an audio blog.  It's something I've wanted to do for some time and I'm hoping it will provide a daily journal of sorts in addition to my written musings.  I had originally planned to use Podbean but discovered after a few postings that there is a monthly usage limit of 100mb, which is frankly useless. So I've decided to use my own site at pcknowledge.co.uk
I've been trying to do something practical with the site as I've done nothing with it for years, despite paying for the ownership and hosting. I'm no expert on websites and I suppose it should be full of stuff computer-related, but to be honest, I could never fully commit myself to keeping it maintained. So I expect it will just be kept as a personal site for now. That is of course unless I get a good offer for it :-)
I will certainly continue to write about my experiences of depression and how it affects me on a daily basis. I already write openly via this blog and will continue to do so, but I wonder if I might dedicate a small section of my site to the subject.

I've lamented previously on the loss of analogue TV across the UK in favor of crisp clean digital. Last week saw London make the switch to digital and the conversion of the Crystal Palace transmitter. This has a level of significance for me as I used to live in South London, under the gaze of the Crystal Palace transmitter, and I recall with fondness the hours spent tuning my TV and the attempts to obtain a good picture. Quite often I would fiddle about until I got a good picture on ITV only to find that the BBC channels were covered in 'snow' or 'ghosting'. Although there are many who question why the switch to digital was made, it is clear the conversion has gone extremely well. The advantages are obvious to anyone who takes an interest in this sort of thing and the increased number of channels provide a level of choice previously impossible under analogue.

The Bahrain Grand Prix has been in the news this last week. There have been calls for the race to be canceled due to criticism of the government and its treatment of protesters and opposition groups. It is clear to me that given the evidence appearing on the Internet, the government are certainly guilty of using extreme measures to control and put down any attempts at protest and this should rightly be condemned. It is also my opinion that the race should be canceled as a sign of our disapproval. Unfortunately though, where there is money to be made, justice and liberty take second place and as our own government have so much invested in this dictatorship, I suspect nothing will be done apart from the odd low-level rebuke.

I am worried about my father. He has recently had several moles removed from his body including his face and is due to have some stitches removed tomorrow. The hospital have been sufficiently concerned to remove anything they consider to be suspect and this has frankly left him resembling the victim of a road accident. I was quite shocked to see the dressings do find myself worrying as to whether this may be the prelude to something more serious. I am more convinced than ever that years spent gardening and working on his allotment in blazing sunshine has been the root cause and that the presence of moles has provided the environment for cancer cells to develop. This is a dreadful lesson and one that isn't sadly learned early enough. It is only when it is too late that the lesson is learned and it serves as a reminder that what we do in our former years can have a significant and sometimes devastating effect later on. I am hopeful that everything has been caught and removed in good time, but I know my father. He will not make a fuss if he feels unwell. He very rarely discusses his health and if there was something more seriously wrong, I fear he wouldn't mention it, not even to my mum. This worries me deeply.

Pirates & A Titanic Week

Another week has passed and not a great deal has changed. My attempt last Tuesday to reap some kind of reward from my private pension pretty much failed, though the chap we went to see did comment that it was one of the largest he'd seen for someone of my age. Sounds good I know, but a fat lot of good it will do me at the moment. At 55 (in 16 years from now), I will have access to it but nothing can be done with it until then. It is possible, he told us, to transfer the fund to the bank but it couldn't be used as security against our house. So that's that. I'm sitting on a small fortune but can't do a thing with it.

On Monday of last week, my wife and I took our son to see the new Pirates film at the King's Lynn cinema. We were determined to treat him ourselves after his trip to London and found that tickets were being sold at half price - £3 instead of £6. So we booked them online, which turned out to be a good thing as when we got there, it was sold out and the queues were very long indeed. It had been some time since we had been to the cinema and it was the first time we had ever taken our son. The film was in 3D so we each had a pair of 3D specs and found seats down at the front. I'd never seen a 3D film before and had thought it was all a little over-hyped but I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed it and found the whole effect quite wonderful. My son was quite enthralled and at several points during the film he raised his hand to touch whatever he thought had appeared in front of him. I have only one complaint and that is to do with the brightness and contrast of the film. I'm aware that they now use digital projectors over the traditional film and I did find the whole thing a little dim. But all in all it was a very nice experience and the film was pretty good too. I tell a lie, there is another little niggle and that's to do with the people we had to share the film with. The constant up and down of people to relieve themselves and the consuming of food really was quite irritating. A child behind us could be heard crunching its way through a boiled sweet and someone else a couple of rows away rustled a bag of some kind from beginning to end. You've probably guessed that I'm not a big fan of the cinema - I much prefer to recreate the experience in the comfort of my own home.

This week will be remembered for the 100 year anniversary of the Titanic disaster. Now I know there are some who are frankly a little sick of the numerous documentaries and general media coverage and I suppose there is a level of sympathy for this. I do though think it is important to mark the event and for those who have links to the lost, this anniversary has a special significance.

I've written of my fascination for Twitter and I have to say that I have certainly developed a keen fondness for it. I'm not quite at the stage of checking every two or three minutes but I do find myself updating my status at least once an hour. I do also really quite heavily on it for news and celebrity gossip. Breaking news does seem to appear on Twitter before it does anywhere else and where else could you discover what  your favourite celebrity had for breakfast or what their pet looks like? Trivial I know but for me it is another source of information. It's a constant stream of 140 character nuggets. Most of them are rubbish, but once in a while you do come across gold.

I am toying with the idea of keeping an audio journal. I think I've mentioned it before but this time I'm pretty determined to get it going. I really want to leave something in addition to the usual written thoughts and photographs. They won't be very long in length unless I have a lot on my mind. They will simply journal my life, as it is, day by day. I do already listen to a couple of audio journals, one from Richard Vobes and the other by Lloyd Bayley. They are both quite unique and in their own way very interesting.

I was going to complete a job application I had started a few days ago. It is for the role of IT Technician, again at a local (ish) school. I had pretty near completed it this afternoon when I discovered the position reported to an IT Manager. This immediately precludes me from the role as I have held senior positions previously so I didn't take the application ny further. It's a shame as it's the sort of role I'm looking for. The problem I have is the fact that I've held very senior positions and therefore applying for and being accepted for lesser roles is damn near impossible, such is my dilema.

As for my 'elephant in the room', I've been pretty much OK this last week, apart from the constant financial worries and fear of the post. I hate receiving post, particularly anything in a brown envelope or marked 'personal' or 'confidential'. I've written before that it's a constant struggle to stay above the water. Provided we managed to avoid a crisis, then I seem to cope. We're contributing a little toward the mortgage which is keeping the wolves from the door but it can't continue indefinitely. I know this. I'm made to feel worse this week as, because of our wonderful government's tax changes, my wife now has to work an additional day each week for us to continue to receive working tax credit. My wife had always wanted to reduce her hours to spend more time with our son, and hopefully care for a second child. This all seems further away than ever and I simply cannot see any remedy to the situation.

New Neighbours

We have new neighbour's. They moved-in during the last week slowly bringing their possessions by car and people carrier. I don't know where they are from or how long they will be staying. You see the property next to us is rented. The last people who lived there were foreign and from Eastern Europe. They never spoke a word and all the time they lived there, apart from their parties well into the night, they kept themselves to themselves. They left overnight, one day they were there, the next they were gone. I assume they went back home, but they could be anywhere.
Our new neighbour's appear to be a family and natives to the UK. They haven't spoken yet and will most probably also keep themselves to themselves. People around here do. They're a strange lot really as I know in other parts of the world, a point is made of making yourself known to your neighbour. Here it is very different. People seem to move here to get away from people and many shut themselves away behind tall fences and trees. We have many around here that do just that. They are very seldom seen. Strange people indeed in the eyes of many but I suspect there are many who hanker for a life away from the prying eyes of others, however well meaning they may be. I expect that over time will will come to know them better as they slowly relax their guard and realise that we are quite normal, talk the same language and perhaps have much in common. Whatever their origin or reason for living here, I wish them well in their new abode.

Yesterday was the 158th Boat Race to take place on the Thames. Unfortunately the race was disrupted by a protester who swam in front of the boats causing them to stop. Trenton Oldfield was removed from the water and now faces a public disorder charge. What is significant to me is the fact that someone was able to swim so close to the event. I worry very much for the Jubilee and the Olympic Games, two huge events taking place in London and around the UK in the coming months. I predict that we will be seeing many more attempts to protest and disrupt both events and while security remains lax, I fear that we could face far worse than a lone protester. I really hope I won't be looking back in a few months from now reciting this paragraph.

Earlier today I listened to a wonderful programme on BBC Radio 4, The Reunion, which brought together former Greenham Common women protesters with those in charge of protecting the newly stationed nuclear deterrent. This has long been a subject that fascinates me, when utter madness driven by fear was driving our politics.  The fact that I lived through one of the most precarious periods in history blissfully unaware of the true danger hanging over all our heads. I of course knew that Greenham Common was significant as it headlined the TV news for much of the 1980's. I recall the images of the human chains formed by women protesters and the police wrenching them from the wire fences and the paths of convoys. It was never explained to me back then exactly what was going on. I am sure my parents and teachers knew but I wonder if they paid much attention to it. In the end I had to find out about much of it myself and it's only really in the last 5-10 years that I've managed to fully understand the events and their importance. What was clear from the programme was that the feelings and opposing views were as alive today as they were back then 20 years ago. There is still even an element of anger between the protesters and members of the military at how the women had been treated, the wounds still very raw. It was fascinating to see that the same political doctrine that existed back then responsible for the placing of cruise missiles in the UK is still alive today, and although the missiles were removed between 1989 and 1991, they do still exist.

In other news, teachers have balloted for strike action in the Autumn and I'm afraid that I do find myself sympathising with them and supporting them. The jobs they do have become intolerably difficult and frankly, they deserve more. They also have the right to work to a realistic age knowing they will have sufficient pension funds to provide for a comfortable retirement. It is complete madness, as I heard on BBC Radio 5 Live during the last week, to expect a PE teacher to work until he or she is 67. This is a real case and one which defies common sense. Teachers deserve better.

Government websites have come under attack over the weekend from the hacking group 'Anonymous'. They have forced a Denial of Service attack against the Foreign Office and Number 10 websites. This eventually leads to the site crashing unable to process the enormous number of requests. Unfortunately, I fear this is something we are all going to have to get used to. Online information is extremely vulnerable, it always has been and always will be. This will be a huge embarrassment for the government but it should also be a wake up call to highlight our reliance on a still young and relatively insecure Internet.

My Son's Away Day

My son is off to London tomorrow. It' his first visit and he's really excited about seeing the sights and a long ride on the train. He'll have a great time. I am though slightly put out that it won't be his parents taking him. I've written about this before, my in-law's generosity. They do the things that my wife and I can't afford to. Of course that's fine and a lot of the places they go to on holiday would never appeal to me at all. But when it
involves my son, I'm just made to feel useless and a bad father. I would love to see my son's face as he stares up at Big Ben or walks across Tower Bridge. I just wish I had the money to spend on a trip to London. But I don't and once again I am indebted to my in-laws for doing the things I should be.

We have had a hosepipe ban imposed on us today. It's not just us, but most of the south-east of the UK as far as Yorkshire. We are now officially in a drought and must begin using water sparingly. If we don't then we are told we will face a crisis resulting in further restrictions and rationing. I'm not actually a hosepipe user. I use a watering can in the garden filled from a water butt that collects rain from the downpipes. It is currently full following the heavy rain yesterday and should last about a week.