The whole damn world

Towing a caravan on an alien world.

2012-01-25T23:49:00.000Z

Thrust used to be one of my favourite games back when I had an Acorn Electron (I couldn't afford a proper BBC)

Fight gravity! Shoot reactors! Collect fuel! Squeeze through narrow caverns with a big, inertia laden ball in tow!

All for free on a PC.

http://members.home.nl/wdw/thrust.html

driving lessons in Wallasey?

Wordle for this blog:

2012-01-23T23:37:00.001Z

Get your own HERE

driving lessons in Wallasey?

The milk of human bickering

2012-01-23T22:57:00.000Z

A war has been going on under my very nose and for a week, I knew only that things were not quite right on my doorstep.

It all started with a two litre plastic container of semi-skimmed. It appeared outside our front door and although we should have recieved a pint of semi-skimmed in a glass bottle, we thought little of it. A simple mistake perhaps, or some temporary shortage of our usual delivery leading to the milkman providing an alternative.

But the same thing happened the next day.

The day after this, we should have got 2 pints. Instead we got 4 litres. Our fridge was becoming crammed with plastic bottles of milk, much of which was beginning to turn.

The next day was Sunday. No milk. On Sunday night, I put a glass bottle out with a note asking what was going on, stating clearly what our requirements were, and stating that we were not prepared to pay for all this unwanted dairy produce.

The note disappeared along with the bottle. In it's place on Monday morning, there was a two litre plastic bottle of milk.

On Tuesday morning, around 9am, I was awakened by a phone call. The caller rang off before I could answer but I pressed 1471 and got a local number, which I then googled. This number belonged to the Dairy Crest Dairy in Saughall Massie. I gave them a call and was informed (by someone who I think was the dairy manager, or possibly the replacement milkman) that my milkman no longer worked for Dairy Crest, and the deliveries were probably a mistake, and that the manager had recieved my letter. He asked what it said on the plastic bottles, and I dug one out and told him.And he told me not to worry, since the milk was free.

This seemed odd, but I assumed he meant that my old milkman had been replaced, that the new milkman was leaving the wrong amount by mistake, and that because it was the fault of the dairy, we would not be charged for this unordered milk.

The day after, (tuesday) we got yet another 2 litre plastic bottle of milk. This was a surprise. I assumed that since the dairy had taken my note, they would make sure their new and inept milkman got the message, but no. Seemingly not.

And then on Thursday, our old milkman knocked on the door asking for payment.

This too was a surprise, because we'd got it sorted so that it was all done online, with payments by direct debit. Bren refused to pay and demanded an explanation for what had been going on.

So here, as far as I can tell, is what happened...

Milkmen, like so many working people these days, are self employed. They have a franchise. A dairy supplies them with customers and produce, takes care of some of the admin, such as collecting payment and advertising etc. The milkman either pays the dairy a certain fixed amount or percentage of his takings, or buys the milk at a price that is profitable to the dairy. It appears that this last arrangement existed between our milkman and Dairy Crest increased the price the milkman was having to pay them for his milk.

Since he was no longer buying his milk from Dairy Crest, our milkman was sourcing his milk from a different dairy. Why he was leaving us with the two litre plastic bottles rather than 1 pint glass bottles is unclear. Why we weren't being left milk by both the old milkman and the new is also unclear right now.

Our old milkman (who is actually our current milkman - we've chosen to stay with him rather than continue to get our doorstep delivery from that particular dairy) never recieved the note I left, because someone from the dairy, possibly the same person I spoke to on the phone, took it.

This seems bizarre. Was this guy trawling up and down the streets of Wallasey looking for notes in milk bottles, in order to fuck over our milkman? He could have explained things better over the phone. Instead he gave me the impression that our old milkman was no longer doing the job, and that we could have the milk that had been delivered for free. Generous of him, since it wasn't him or his dairy that had left it.

Dairy Crest come across as a right old bunch of snide tossers, and I'm glad Bren chose to stick with our old milkman.

Our old milkman could have handled it better though. A simple note left with the delivery, explaining what was going on would have been useful.

driving lessons in Wallasey?

Busy bees. Blue arsed flies, etc.

2012-01-23T00:25:00.000Z

Not much time for blogging.

Some days I'm only doing a few lessons, but with the exception of January 1st and 2nd, so far this month I've only had one day without doing any teaching at all.

I certainly am not complaining. I have another day off this coming Tuesday. I shall be playing a round of golf with my dad.

driving lessons in Wallasey?

Little and large

2012-01-18T14:12:00.000Z

It all started with something small.

At the bottom of each page on my website is a testimonial statement, randomly selected from the comments my pupils have left for me. After making various changes to the format of the main page, I'm very close to what I want, except this particular bit is too far over to the right. I've attempted to move it over by setting it's alignment, but ultmately, the problem lies with the table structure of the page, which has become somewhat chaotic because of the edits and redesigns I've been doing.

The bit I want to change is pretty much invisible in the wysiwig part of dreamweaver, and I'm not getting what I want using the code editor side of things either.

Loading a different, less messed about with page, I find the table structure is much more intact, but that existing table structure no longer gives me quite what I'm looking for.

This is a shame, because I could have just shoved the content of the main page into a temp page for safe keeping, pasted the table from a working page, and repasted the content back into it.

But I'm increasingly feeling like I want to just start again. Obviously, still keeping those lovely bits of code safe somewhere, but making an entirely new table and working things from there. This would then have to be propagated across all the accessible pages of the site, for the sake of coherence.

And all because one little page element is not quite in the correct place.

Still, I think it will be worth it in the end.

driving lessons in Wallasey?

Smoke Fairies

2012-01-17T21:03:00.000Z

Get your ears around this.

driving lessons in Wallasey?

Sliding ever onwards...

2012-01-17T18:17:00.000Z

Now this is something like...

http://www.paulsharpdriving.co.uk/test.htm

But now I'm not happy with the page layout. I want to make the top banner take up a lot less of the screen.

Might as well do a completely new graphic I suppose.

Watch this space...

driving lessons in Wallasey?

Best thing since..

2012-01-16T16:08:00.000Z

You can't buy thin sliced bread at the supermarket anymore.

I wanted to buy thin sliced bread because a) it would go a bit further. b) I'm trying to lose weight. c) Out of sheer pedantic bloody-mindedness.

You see, in the supermarket, you can buy medium sliced bread, thick sliced bread, and extra thick sliced bread.

Now forgive me, but if I have a small thing, a big thing, and something that is between those two extremes, it's that middle, mean, median, modal one that's "medium". If I take the small thing and replace it with a giant thing, the one that was formerly "big" becomes the new medium.

So I take exception to the thinnest available bread being labelled as "Medium". It isn't. It's "Thinnest" if not actually "Thin".

Preferably, I'd like to see them sell "Thin" again, but presumably because it goes further, there's less bread to be made from it.

driving lessons in Wallasey?

Child benefit cuts - the frog in cold water

2012-01-14T01:06:00.000Z

The theory goes like this:

You throw a frog into a pot of hot water, and the frog will jump straight back out again. Throw the frog into a pot of cold water and it will swim around contentedly, not realising that the water is getting hotter and hotter.

So imagine the outcry if the government announced it was abolishing child benefit.

Instead, they will abolish it for high earners.

Makes sense doesn't it? If someone is earning £1,000 a week, why would they need £20 child allowance?

It will make it more complicated to administer now of course. People will have to assess the income levels of claimants, instead of everyone with a child being eligible. I don't know how much extra this will cost, but more importantly, a principle is being established here.

And a year down the line, it will be people earning £500 a week that will no longer be eligible. And peope earning £200 a week the year after that.

Feeling the heat yet?

driving lessons in Wallasey?

Mmmmmm....

2012-01-12T23:00:00.000Z

An ice cold glass of...

Ribena.

I really don't want to take the first step back to where I used to be right now.

driving lessons in Wallasey?

Day of rest

2012-01-12T22:41:00.001Z

Tomorrow, Friday, is the first day off I've had since January 2nd. Even when I've not actually been teaching, I've been doing quite a lot of driving, to pick stuff up for the shop.

So hooray! Tomorrow, I can do what I like.

In practice, I will wake up early because my body clock is so used to getting up early. I will get up, because I just can't lie in bed once my eyes have opened.

My desktop computer has once again developed a seemingly terminal problem with it's hard drive, so presumably, some of my time will be spent shoving a different one back in (I have loads of semi-knackered hard drives to choose from) and reinstalling the operating system and all the multifarious gubbins that make the graphics card and sound card and wireless internet bits function properly. Again.

Tonight, a part of me thinks I'm thirsty and tired. Another part of me is thinking just how nice an ice cold tequila flavoured lager would be right now, and that having done all that work, I sort of deserve it.

driving lessons in Wallasey?

Sliding along nicely....

2012-01-11T13:14:00.001Z

This is by no means the finished product, but here's where I'm up to.

http://www.paulsharpdriving.co.uk/test.htm

Currently the images are not clickable. In the finished version, each picture will send the delighted clicker off to it's own dedicated page.

The images themselves are really just to make sure the concept works. The final images will be substantially different (probably) The layout will become more compact. I will have 4 or possibly 5 pictures in the slideshow. The current order of slides is not how things will be when finished.

But apart from that, it's exacly how I want it. :)

driving lessons in Wallasey?

Slip slidin' away

2012-01-09T23:13:00.000Z

While keeping the same basic format of HOME | PRICES | CONTACT | LINKS, I have plans to make the "HOME" bit a bit more razzle-dazzle.

What I have in mind is to create a series of images, each of which is made up of text and an image. The text would be in a light colour, the image would be colourful. The background would be #000000. The image would occupy almost all of the area beneath the link bar and logo.

Then, probably after reading this tutorial about a hundred times, I will copy and paste the code and modify it's contents to point to the images I've created.

The result being a slideshow of images, each of which can be clicked to take the viewer to a page on the site that gives more information. Not tonight, mind, but in the next few weeks hopefully.

driving lessons in Wallasey?

In other news...

2012-01-07T23:00:00.004Z

You, dear reader, being the attentive and intelligent person you undoubtedly are, will have formed a mental image of me as you've read my musings and mutterings.
I have no way of knowing whether you find me boring or interesting; what I look like in your minds eye (you might have seen pictures of me from time to time on this blog of course); whether your mental image is anywhere near how I wish to be percieved, etc.

Let me add something to the jigsaw and say that I'm not a mechanically apt person. My middle name isn't "dexterity".

"Dexterity" by the way, derives from "Right Handed".

So in the strict sense of the word, I am far from Dextrous. I am in fact, Sinister.

Muhahahahahaha!

I am also cack handed. Both in the sense of being left handed, and in the sense of being clumsy.

Or so I've always been told.

"It was a Naccident" was a catchphrase my Dad invented for me. It kind of took the joy out of getting a junior toolkit for christmas.

No matter. I have other skills. I'm perfectly dextrous (with either hand) if you give me a steering wheel.

This week though, I've fixed a car.

You heard me right. I've taken a car that had a fault, and done what was required to make the fault go away. I can't take the credit for diagnosing the fault. That has to go to Bren. She reckoned that the HT leads were the problem. The HT leads take electrical energy from the battery, and feed it to the spark plugs, via something called a distributor - the sparks have to happen in a certain order to make the engine turn the crank)

First part of sorting out this problem was to get off my arse and buy the appropriate make and model HT leads from ebay. When we got around to trying to exchange them, we found that although the connections between the spark plugs and the distributor cap were sound, where the lead from the battery went into the distributer cap both male and female connections had completely corroded. Instead of shiny coppery metal, we had green copper oxide dust. It was remarkable that the car would run at all really, but it was only in damp conditions that it would fail to start.

So I then had to buy a distributor cap. And then I had to fit it. It was fitted over the distributor by two screws. The top screw came out relatively simply with a flathead screwdriver, but the awkwardly placed bottom screw resisted repeated attempts with a variety of flathead, and phillips screwdrivers. Then, looking at the screw I had got out, I noticed that the screwhead was not round but hexagonal. Bingo! I brought pliers, adjustable spanners, and a small mole grip to bear, but still, the screw refused to budge.

So I took the screw inside the house and asked Bren if we had a socket that would fit over it. She dug out the small sockets, and I found one that fitted snugly over the screwhead. Having found the right tool, the stubborn screw offered little resistance, and I was able to remove the old distributor head, replace it with the new one, and correctly put the leads back in the right order, having thoughtfully made a note of their positions prior to removing the old ones.

Now I'm sure that anyone reading this with any aptitude for fixing stuff reads this, they'll be saying, "huh? Big Deal. It's a piss easy job." But I'm pleased with both what I achieved, and how I went about achieving it.

Something else I set my mind to has also borne fruit.

As we were returning from one of the furniture runs I wrote about earlier, I got a text message. This was an enquiry from my website contact form. As it happens, I didn't have my diary with me, and it was getting late so rather than phone the enquirer, I emailed her when I got home.

She called today and I will be giving her son a driving lesson tomorrow. She's talking about doing an intensive course with me, which mean's he's potentially worth several hundred pounds of business to me, which makes the 10p the enquiry cost me, and even the £10 or so I invested overall seem like very small beer.

Good times within the greater gloom. Still smelling smoke. Tired out and bedbound. That's all for today.

driving lessons in Wallasey?

Smoke gets in your eyes.

2012-01-07T21:00:00.004Z

As I was saying the other day, I've not smoked for quite a few months. Prior to me giving up, I'd never smoke indoors. Tobacco smoke is a migraine trigger for Bren, and even if that wasn't the case, a tobacco smelling house is unpleasant for non-smokers. When I lived on my own, I'd happily smoke in my living room, bathroom, even occasionally the kitchen or bedroom, but since moving in with Bren, I'd go outside, come rain or shine. So the ban on smoking indoors in public spaces was just a small progression from that.

Bren, by the way, has been a busy lady over the last few weeks and months. She'd planned to open up a space offering locally produced art and craft goods for sale, with a space for crafting workshops. These plans were facilitated by government funding to help bring empty shops back into use. She found the shop she wanted, applied for funding, and had her application approved.

So wheels are turning. She's had to battle to view the property thanks to the lax attitude of the estate agent assigned to the property, but having done so, she's at the point where she's trying to get a business account (and overdraft) at the bank, attempting to engage the services of a solicitor to sort out the lease, and putting together a planning application for a change of use from a taxi office to a shop/workshop. This should be straightforward. The shop needs a lot of work doing to it, both decoratively, and to a lesser extent, structurally. Internal walls need to be removed. Fixtures such as sinks and hot water boilers need to be installed. And the whole thing needs cleaning up and repainting. (the ceiling in the office behind the front of shop is dark brown with nicotine and general grubbiness. The upstairs has a functional bathroom, but everywhere is filthy.

Until the lease is signed and the key handed over, there's nothing we can do about this side of things, but Bren has been buying all sorts of stuff on as slim a budget as possible using ebay. Bookshelves, Wardrobes, sideboards. All will find function as display cabinets. Hopefully giving the completed shop an air of shabby chic. So we've been out and about in her Son's Ford Mondeo Estate. An amazingly roomy car. We managed to fit two large shelving units in it on our trip to Frodsham. A 7 foot 6 inch bookcase was accomodated with a rope and slightly raised tailgate on a trip to St Helens, and the wardrobe we will be picking up from Chester (or is it Bolton?) should go in if flatpacked. It could probably manage a python if you folded it in half. The python I mean, not the Mondeo.

As well as such fixtures and fittings, Bren also picked up some stock. Crafting materials from a house in a place called Clock Face.

Clock Face is only about 20 miles or so from where I live, on the outskirts of St Helens. I'd never ever heard of it. Despite living so close, I was totally unaware of the existance of a place with that name.

The river mersey is a psychological and cultural barrier as well as a geographical one. I could name pretty much every little hamlet and suburb on Wirral, even parts of Wirral that are about the same distance away. Ask me where Little Stanney is, or Puddington, or Poulton Lancelyn, and I will take you there unerringly.

Anyway, at least one of the people in the house, from whom we bought the crafting materials, was an indoor smoker. We were there for about 45 minutes while Bren went through the stock, selecting the stuff she was interested in buying. That was about 24 hours ago now.

And somehow, I can't get the stink of stale tobacco out of my nostrils. I've washed my hair. Changed my clothes. Shaved my facial hair. But all day, I've been intermittantly plagued by this smell. And not just the smell. It's even making my eyes sting. In the car. In the living room. Now, in my computer room.

It's not something that induces craving. No sirree.

Nobody else seems to be aware that I smell of cigarettes strongly enough to may my eyes sting and my nose wrinkle with disgust. Could it be psychosomatic?

Still not drinking. Emphatically still not smoking. I don't think my weight has changed much. And I'm working for ten days straight. My first day off since the 2nd of January will be on Friday 13th. Good job too. We have to find the money for the wardrobes and sinks from somewhere.

driving lessons in Wallasey?

Fragments.

2012-01-07T00:59:00.002Z

Funny what you remember.

I was ten years old, and had recently moved house. New house, new school. I was in either 3rd or 4th year primary school, and the teacher, who's name eludes me right now (she was a female teacher, married to a male teacher with the same surname - Mrs Veats?) was reading us a story.

It was actually just a bit of a story. She would have read the preceding bit the previous day. She would read the next bit on the day after.

This is part of what happened when you were at primary school. Teachers would read you stories. I had Jonathan Livingstone Seagull read to me when I was perhaps 8 or 9 by Mr Dolby, my teacher in my previous school in North Wales, and I can still recall the sense of wonder I got, even if I didn't really understand it in the way I would now.

Anyway, on this occasion, Mrs Veats scared the living daylights out of me, because she ended that day's segment staring at the class, round eyed, and saying, "They weren't stars at all. (dramatic pause...) They were eyes."

There is nothing else I remember of this. Just that one fragment, and until about 10 minutes ago, I'd never thought I'd be able to expand on that. But of course, these days we have free and easy access to everything that ever was thanks to the internet, and typing that one phrase in revealed that the book it comes from is called "The Owl: A Novel of Extraordinary Fantasy" By Allan Sussman.

If you're ten years old, I strongly recommend it.

Edit: Just looking further, ths one was written in 2009, so it's not the one I thought it was. Ooops.

driving lessons in Wallasey?

Keeping track...

2012-01-03T23:26:00.003Z

Here is at least some of where I've been today. (First lesson the logger was being charged)

Starting in Wallasey, I drove to Saughall Massie, and collected my pupil. We then spent two hours driving around, mainly working on improving her ability to reverse. With it being a 2 hour lesson, we had both the headspace and the physical space and time to be quite relaxed about things. And it worked wonders. Whenever she struggled, we were able to work on each thing. Now this pupil can really make a car go backwards around a corner!

I chose to take her to Meols Promenade, because I wanted her to experience as strong a wind as possible (today has been stormy.). She was fine with that too.

If you're interested, you can download today's route by clicking on THIS LINK

The more observant and logical reader may, on close examination, be able to work out where we did a turn in the road, where we did a bay park, and possibly even where we reversed around a corner. The resolution of the logger is even good enough to show where we parallel parked.

Total logged journey distance: About 34 miles.

Today's weight. 13 st 4 lbs. Change in weight: 0

Alcohol drank today: None. Amount drank this year? None.

Finally, welcome, Tabloid Watch to my blog roll. Assiduous they are, in pointing out the weaselly hypocricy of the British Right Wing Tabloids. A worthy addition, I'm sure you'll agree.

driving lessons in Wallasey?

Resolutions, in higher resolution.

2012-01-01T22:10:00.000Z

I intend to be quite structured and organised about things this year. There are tools at my disposal.

First off, there's a Wii, with a Wii Fit board. I intend for this blog to be a record of my weight (and waist measurement)

I shall try to do this weekly, but not necessarily every seven days.

Second tool for me to organise and tabulate my life with is a GPS logger that I bought with the Amazon vouchers I asked people to get me for christmas. It records a track that I can import into Google Earth. I intend to use it to publicise the fantastic and adventurous things I do with my pupils, to record the track of any bikerides or walks or anything, and possibly just to show where I've been on any particular day.

You, the Eagle Eyed Blog reader will no doubt have read my earlier contrite post when I announced to the Whole Damn World that I'm a reformed character, and would no longer be drinking.

You'll also no doubt have noticed that I failed to record the fact that I'd started again.

Guilt and shame are harder to post about than good intentions.

Anyway, I'm trying again now. I hope I have the courage to admit I've slipped, if I do slip.

The day, in figures:

Distance Travelled: I don't know. I didn't have the logger with me. Went to Moreton for Lunch with Family. Came home. That's about 10 miles I reckon. All done by car.

Alcohol drunk: None. Cigarettes smoked: None.

That is a success story. I have no desire to restart. It's just a non-issue. I suppose it's about 5 months since I had one. I will try to record the 6 month and 12 month milestones on this blog if I remember.

My weight is 13 stone and 4 pounds. I'm 5 foot 8-9 inches tall, which makes my BMI somewhere around 28.5.

The middle number is unlikely to change much. The other two should hopefully diminish.

driving lessons in Wallasey?

Resolutions:

2011-12-31T23:12:00.000Z

Stop drinking

Lose Weight.

Try to build my business.

Let's just keep it at three.

driving lessons in Wallasey?

Gimps, Gears and Geeks.

2011-12-23T22:42:00.000Z

Gimp can make animated gifs. I never knew this before.

Here's one I made earlier.

The reson I made this particular animated gif is because I had this idea that if I was so excited by the prospect of chucking a really quick car around a track, then presumably the sort of person that goes looking for driving lessons might be too. So I intend to do a prize draw in 2012, with the supercar driving experience as the prize.

On a similar vein, I've just sent an enquiry to a local (ish) company that does skid control lessons with a view to offerering one of their things as a prize, or even some kind of collaborative venture where they offer some kind of discount, and I incorporate them into my curriculum.

driving lessons in Wallasey?

The blunt horns of a nice dilemma.

2011-12-20T17:01:00.000Z

I became 44 on Thursday. I celebrated by getting up very early, and heading up Moel Famau. I had visions of it being a bit like the last time we did it, but with the added lustre of a blanket of snow.

Sadly, the weather wasn't with me. I drove to Wales in heavy rain, which eased off nicely as I got towards the mountainside carpark. The roads were snowy but drivable with care. The path up the mountain was covered by several inches of fairly fresh snow that crumped and squeaked as I strode lustily forth.

As I neared the top, it became apparent that although I was seeing daybreak, I was not going to see the sun rise. The top of the mountain was shrouded in cloud. An icy wind drove tiny splinters of ice into my face. I took a few photos then hunkered down in the lee of the tower and had a warm coffee and some cold hotdogs.

The view out over the vale of Clywyd, though, as I trudged back down, was magnificent. I will post some piccies soon.

For my birthday, several of my relatives clubbed together to buy me a supercar experience. A great gift for a petrolhead like me!

At some point in the next few months, I will get the chance to chuck a performance car around a track. But which car? I have to choose between an Aston Martin Vantage, a Lamborghini Gallardo, a Porsche 911, a Ferrari 360 or an Audi R8.

Agghh!!! The agony of indecision!

driving lessons in Wallasey?

Why wait until the weekend?

2011-12-13T20:20:00.002Z

Here's a little something for now.

driving lessons in Wallasey?

cloud music

2011-12-10T23:37:00.001Z

Click on the picture to activate the player. This music player is brought to you courtesy of the Cloud Appreciation Society, and the standard of music offered is of an unexpectedly high standard.

QR Code

2011-12-07T23:56:00.001Z

This...

should take you to my website. I think.

So if I understand things correctly, if I was to get this printed out as a vehicle graphic, and stick it on my car, someone would be able to point an iphone at it, and the iphone would read it and send that someone to my website?

driving lessons in Wallasey?

So just what business is being done?

2011-12-07T10:13:00.000Z

Of the 32 vouchers that people bought, so far, 3 people have called.

One is pretty much at test standard. She's had a couple of driving tests, and failed. She reckons she was put in too early. I will be doing a 2 hour assessment of her driving in a day or two, to find out where she's up to. She probably won't need more than maybe 10 lessons.

Ditto the second one. She's had quite a lot of lessons, and gets a lot of private practice in her own car, so my job will be to assess her driving, and to try to smooth off any rough edges to get her through her test.

Finally, I had a call this morning from a woman who's bought a voucher as a christmas present for her son. He's an absolute beginner, and she will be buying him more lessons for his birthday in January. Potentially a full course of perhaps 35-40 hours here.

driving lessons in Birkenhead?

Here is as good a place as any to keep tabs on how effective this form of marketing has been for me. As more come in I intend to add to this post.

Doing the business...

2011-12-05T19:45:00.004Z

The daily deal format is pretty new. Here's how it works.

A merchant contacts the daily deal website, and offers a substantial discount to their subscribers.
Interested subscribers buy vouchers representing the deal. They give their money to the daily deal website.
The website then gives some of that money to the merchant.
So the subscriber gets a product or service at a knock down price. The website take a big chunk of the money given by the subscriber. The merchant gets business.

Today, my driving school has been the focus of Wirral deals on the Living Social website.

Instead of the usual £20 per hour, Living Social subscribers are being offered 3 hours for £19. Of that, Living Social take about £9+VAT, so I actually get about £8.50 per voucher. Less than £3 per hour, but of course, some of those subscribers will go on to take proper full price lessons.

So how well is it being taken up?

It's exceeded my expectations by quite a long way. Getting the deal up in the first week of December was a huge bonus of course. These vouchers are the perfect christmas gift to give a teenager, and about twenty quid is a pretty typical amount for people to want to spend on nephews or grandkids or whatever.

So far, 20 people have bought vouchers. If all of them went on to take a full course with me, and they were all absolute beginners, and they rook the average 43 hours to get through their tests, that would be 20 people x 40 hours (43 minus the 3 cheap ones) x 20 quid. That's £16,000!

That's not going to happen of course. And that £16,000 is income, not profit, but still, this looks like it's going to have been a really good way of getting business. Certainly better than giving some arrogant parasite £130 a week. So far, Living Social will have made somewhere around £200 from me, but it looks like I'm going to hit the ground running in the new year.

Some of those subscribers (21 of them now) will already have had lessons. Some will be just going from cheap deal to cheap deal, regardless of how well they've been taught. Some may not redeem their vouchers, or may not like me or my methods. We can't all be born with taste after all!

I will probably do this again sometime next year.

Optimistic for a change!

The deal page has also been driving traffic (excuse the pun) to my website.

driving lessons in Wallasey?

Update: With around five and a half hours to go, I'm now up to 30 vouchers. 90 hours work, for £262, and the potential to bring in as much as £24,000. I have access to a list of purchasers and a bit of demographic info. 78% of purchasers have been female. Over three quarters of payments were made via computer. 10% was by Iphone. Quite a lot of them have been bought as gifts. One person has bought three vouchers, each gifted to a different person. Merry Christmas to them!

Might even be able to get the roof mended some time in the spring.

Further update: 7 dec 2011...

Living social are extending my promotion by another 72 hours - a second chance thing. not as the headline promotion, but further down the page.

So, it won't be generating customers at the same high frequency. Apart from it being less high profile, those interested in driving lessons will presumably have already seem this offer and acted on it. Still, 3 more days of it, and all the stuff about ideal gifts still being true, I could potentially double the 32 vouchers sold.

I hope I haven't bitten off more than I can chew.

There's something very heartening about listening to someone rant their head off sometimes.

2011-12-04T10:23:00.000Z

driving lessons in Wallasey?

Rrrrrrr

2011-12-03T14:55:00.000Z

Oh, and while I'm at it, just stonethrow away, there's another lake.

This one is a beautifully formed 'r'. It even has a bit of a serif going on. Geoglyphs in times new roman.

Shame about the bit sticking out of the top, but you can't have everything can you?

abcdefghi jklmnopqrstuvwxyz
ABC D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W XYZ
1234567890

driving lessons in Wallasey?

Mmmmmm.

2011-12-03T14:25:00.000Z

Not got much to say for meself at the moment, truth be told.

It's been a while since I posted any new letters though. Having completed the upper case lot, I lost momentum.

But I've just found a lake near Walton on the Naze, which looks like a lower case 'm'

Do I have one of those already? It's been a while. This one looks like the typeface that Roger Dean used on the album covers of proggy archetypes, YES.

abcdefghi jklmnopqrstuvwxyz
ABC D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W XYZ
1234567890
driving lessons in Wallasey?

Backgammon IRL

2011-11-26T03:16:00.000Z

I've been playing backgammon for donkeys years. I started in my late teens, or possibly early twenties. A few friends together, with beer or pot or both.

We would experiment with variants, such as acey deucey, and tric trac, and with different starting positions, like starting with all the men off the board. We'd even play for small amounts of money. But we never used the doubling cube.

Dutch coffeeshops used to almost always contain backgammon sets. Why backgammon? I really don't know, but they did. Last time I was in Holland, this custom was rapidly disappearing, and they seemed more like cyber cafes. I hope it doesn't die out completely.

Anyway, when I discovered the internet, one of the first things I did was start playing backgammon online. I've done so ever since, and I've gradually improved as a player, and now I'm capable of holding my own against some good players.

Backgammon is a mixture of luck and skill. You use the dice rolls you're given to maximise your chances and limit the options for your opponent. It's called Backgammon, or "The back game" because if one person ends up far enough behind in a game, they often get the opportunity to turn things around. Using the doubling cube properly is another important thing to be able to do. The stakes are initially set to one. Either player can double the stakes by offering the cube to their opponent. The opponent can either forfeit the game, and lose the current stake, or can accept the cube, after which the stakes are 2. The player that doubled can not double again until their opponent has doubled. The doubling cube is a form of psychological warfare!

Anyway, tonight, I went to Liverpool, where the Liverpool backgammon club holds a monthly meeting. There were about 12 people there, and I got to play real matches against 6 of them.

Some of them take things very seriously! There are rules and etiquettes to follow that just don't occur in online play.

For example, a player's turn doesn't end until they pick up their dice. If you roll your own dice before then, it's considered very bad form, and the player who hasn't yet finished his turn has the option of forcing you to either re-roll, or use the roll you took.

You must roll your dice onto the right hand side of the board. this presumably avoids confusion, although given the previous rule, how the two sets of dice could mistakenly interact is hard to explain.

Most of the players there tonight were of quite a high standard. A few were less so.

I beat a good player in my first match, partly because of some outrageous good luck. I lost to a very good player in my second match. Then to a less good player in my third match. I lost by the shaving of a gnat's whisker in my fourth match, to a very good player, and again in my fifth match, before beating a poorer player in my final match.

It was good fun, and I shall try to go to more in the future.

driving lessons in Wallasey?

The road goes ever on and on...

2011-11-22T19:27:00.001Z

Today, I had no work.

I had a lie in until about 10.30, mooched about the house for an hour or so, then decided to finally do the Wirral Circular trail on my bike. Because of one thing or another, I actually left the house at about 12.30, and, noticing that the wind was blowing from the North, decided to start my journey southwards.

It took about 4 and 3/4 hours to get around the entire route, but I didn't rush, and stopped from time to time to take pictures.

The weather was perfect. Light winds, cool, but not really cold, and generally quite sunny. I knew I'd end up back after dark, but I have lights, and once I'd reached West Kirby, I had the security of knowing that if things got too much, it was only going to be a short bike ride to the nearest Merseyrail Station. I got back to my starting point at about 5.15.

Here's what it looks like in Google Earth.

That blue line is exactly 36 miles long. The lowest point of the route is sea level, rising to 187 feet above sea level on the straight bit along the bottom.

It was good to do this, but I'm suffering a bit now. My palms are a bit bruised. My wrists have taken a bit of a pounding. My thighs are a bit weak and achey, particularly if I go up or down any stairs. But all of those things pale into insignificance when you compare them to where my body intersected the saddle. Painful pressure points, perineum, pudenda and... patootie.

Here are some of the photos I took en route.

The trail does it's best to keep walkers and cyclists off busy roads. Occasionally busy stuff is unavoidable - probably the worst bit is getting across the A41 in Rock Ferry/Tranmere. That's a busy road, and you have to get across several lanes of fairly fast moving traffic. It makes use of the full 12 mile length of the Wirral Way and the pedestrianised sea/riverfront promenades from West Kirby round to Birkenhead Priory.

It's a good place to live in a lot of ways, Wirral. It's close enough to some major cities for a lot of culture to be within easy reach, but there's loads of open space and countryside too. There is quite a sharp difference between the east and west sides of the peninsula. All down the west side, it's very rural. A smattering of towns and villages surrounded by farms and woodlands (and golf courses), while the East side is pretty much one continuous conurbation, from New Brighton right down to Ellesmere Port.
driving lessons in Wallasey?

Incinerator!

2011-11-21T22:58:00.000Z

I was in a band when I was in my mid teens.

When I say "band", I mean me and a couple of mates in someone's garage, making a bloody racket and pretending to be rockstars.

We were called Incinerator, and we got the name, not because of some nihilistic graagghhh-metal doomslayery fuck-the-world-ness, but because Peter, who's garage we practiced in, had one in his back garden for burning garden waste.

We were truly awful. Cringingly bad. We somehow didn't realise this at the time, and harboured secret hopes of playing Knebworth.

I used to have a couple of fragments of us on an old TDK D90, but alas! It is no more. It would have been an exercise in self-flagellation to post any of it here.

driving lessons in Wallasey?

"Petrol prices have tripled in the past two decades."

2011-11-15T17:04:00.000Z

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-15730087

Well what does that mean then?

If you have annual inflation of 7% prices would have quadrupled in that period.

Well, according to this site, the average inflation rate over the last 2 decades has been 2.017045%

The doubling time at that rate is 35 years, so clearly the price of petrol has increased above the rate of inflation.

Yet, as this table shows, as recently as 2009, petrol prices, when adjusted for inflation, were lower than in 1983.

So why 20 years? Well petrol prices were at record cheap levels in 1991 and 1992, according to the table linked above. It was actually cheapest in 1992, but saying "Petrol prices have almost tripled in the last 19 years" would have sounded a bit odd.

Want to make something sound expensive? Compare it to when it was cheapest.

So, allowing for inflation, petrol prices have doubled from the lowest point.

Most of that rise has occurred over the last 2 years. And the demands of Tory MPs and the Motoring lobby cannot be met for that much longer, no matter how strident the calls.

driving lessons in Wallasey?

sigh... not again...

2011-11-09T13:53:00.002Z

My desktop computer has buggered up again.

It's a fairly high performance machine, but I keep having problems with the CPU temperature. Every now and again, the computer just suddenly switches off.

These sudden shut downs aren't good for operating systems, and sure enough, when I tried to restart, I found that a file was corrupt and windows wouldn't load.

The file is called vgaoem.fon and I have no clue as to it's purpose. It could be like the bit in the Hitch-hikers guide to the galaxy where the spaceship is kept from making it's journey because an automated system is waiting for a consignment of small lemon scented paper napkins. Or equally, it could be something crucial to the running of windows XP.

I tried using the console repair thing, but although it seemed to go through as it should, when I rebooted, I got the same error message.

Now there is another way. That involves going further into the install XP process, then selecting a repair option.

that's what I'm trying to do now. But...

I have two hard drives on my PC. The computer shows them both. My O/S is on the D drive, so I select the D drive and press enter. The computer responds by telling me that the C drive is unformatted, corrupted or formatted with an incompatible file system.

Not the D drive. The C drive.

Stupid bloody damn bollocking thing.
So the next step will I suppose be to physically remove the non o/s drive from my computer and try again.

It gets worse... Looks like the hard drive itself has failed. Time for yet another clean install. It's taking an age to reformat, and there's no guarantee that the thing will actually take an operating system.

In addition, my XP disk is now showing signs of wear, as disks that have been used quite a few times are apt to do.

What I do have, however, is a proper genuine serial number. Presumably if things don't happen, I can get a copy of XP via a torrent. More messing around though.

driving lessons in Wallasey?

Cloudy, with a chance of Baked Spuds

2011-11-05T22:52:00.002Z

driving lessons in Wallasey?

The Unexpected Lyric Quiz!!!

2011-11-03T21:16:00.018Z

Most songs just use straightforward words.

But every now and again, people will insert things from dustier corners of the dictionary.

Some of the songs and artists are pretty obscure, but many of them are mainstream acts.

No artists are represented twice in my list, but the point here is to find a song that contains each word. If it's not the same as the one I have, that's OK.

Happy Hunting!

Parallelogram
Pentathol
Pneumothorax
Pacman
Stickleback
Aplomb
Pogonip
Filibuster
Posthumous
Boobs
Dermatitis
Plebian
Parasol
Annoint
Paramours
Cubicles
Mohair
Yonks
Spiffing
Pesto
Pompatus
Epistemology
Pancake
Pavlovian
Facsimile
Humdrum
Backgammon
Pneumonia
Gavotte
Semolina

That's the list. I've thought of another couple, that I might tag on to the end later. They are, Silicosis, deliquesce, Fecundity, Contraflow and effervescing.

Below are some answers.

parallelogram, Motörhead , Motörhead , submitted by John.
pentathol,
pneumothorax,
pacman,
stickleback,
aplomb,
pogonip,
filibuster, Birdhouse in your soul, They Might be Giants, Submitted by Jim Bliss
posthumous, Forgotten Sons, Marillion, Submitted by John
boobs,
dermatitis,
plebeian,Cry me a river, Various artists, submitted by Jim Bliss
parasol, Parasol, Tori Amos, submitted by Jim Bliss

Monster in your Parasol, Queens of the Stone Age, submitted by John.
annoint, Silver Waterfalls, Siouxie and the Banshees, submitted by Jim Bliss
paramours,
cubicles,
mohair, Mohair Locker Room Pinup Boys, submitted by Jim Bliss
yonks
spiffing
pesto
pompatus, The Joker, Steve Miller Band, submitted by Jim Bliss
epistemology
pancake, St. Alphonzo's Pancake Breakfast, Frank Zappa, submitted by Jim Bliss
pavlovian
facsimile, The Collector, The Legendary Pink Dots, submitted by Jim Bliss
humdrum, Humdrum, Peter Gabriel, submitted by Jim Bliss

Humdrum, The Dean and I, 10cc, submitted by Nanook
backgammon
pneumonia, Dust Pneumonia Blues, Woodie Guthrie, submitted by Jim Bliss (could only find a cover version on youtube)Rockin' Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu, The Flamin' Groovies, submitted by John
gavotte
semolina, I am The Walrus, The Beatles, submitted by Jim Bliss

Semolina, The Residents, submitted by Nanook

Effervescent, The Effervescent Elephant, Syd Barratt, submitted by Jim Bliss

driving lessons in Wallasey?

I feel a quiz coming on.

2011-11-03T00:47:00.005Z

Watch this space...

driving lessons in Birkenhead?

OK. It's a music lyrics quiz with a difference.

You see, if I was to post even obscure lyrics, they'd be somewhere in cyberspace.

So the quiz involves unusual words. The details will follow in the next few days, but there will be a list of words you wouldn't ecpect to find in a lyric from yer average modern beat combo. Simply find a song that contains the word.

The Mat sat on the Cat.

2011-10-28T22:57:00.005+01:00

Saddo that I am, I woke up this morning thinking about noun order.

In the case of the title, the order matters. The thing doing the sitting comes before the thing being sat on. It could be otherwise, but "sat" would have to change to "was sat on by" to maintain it's original sense.

Other nouns are placed in a certain order because of cultural reasons.

These include both common nouns, and proper nouns.

So it's always John, Paul, George and Ringo (John - Alpha smart arse male, Paul - a bit like john but a bit wishy-washier, George - Played Guitar and didn't sing as much, and hardly wrote any of the tunes, Ringo - Ugly fucker with a lousy voice hiding behind a drumkit)

It's always Adam and Eve. Never Eve and Adam. Also Mr and Mrs. Not Mrs and Mr. This is a man's world.

Try asking for any of these:

Vinegar and Salt flavoured crisps.
Chips and fish.
Squeak and Bubble
An Onion and Cheese pasty

It never rains dogs and cats(although if there was a massive explosion in a Japanese car factory, it might rain Datsun cogs).

(Sorry.).

You never get Lizst and Brahms (that one's the way it is because it's rhyming slang - it wouldn't work the other way around of course - see also "Apples and Pears" and "Dog and Bone") If I fell out with you, we'd never be at sevens and sixes. The Union Flag is always Red, White and Blue. Never White Blue and Red. It's always Cheap and Cheerful. We fall for things Hook, Line and Sinker.

I'm sure there are many many others, so this post may grow if I can be arsed.

driving lessons in Wallasey?

Malletocracy

2011-10-28T00:41:00.001+01:00

There's no such thing, but there should be. Power goes to the person with the biggest hammer.

Oh.. Hang on...

A google search for malletocracy will now yield one result.

driving lessons in Wallasey?

*except it doesn't. It yields 54. Every post contains the word in it's sidebar archive bit.

Truly cornered the market on Malletocracy .SEO.

Ode to potatoes

2011-10-27T00:19:00.000+01:00

O spuds! O earthly treats!
For one that eats no meat
A fine old thing to eat.

We planted one and dug up twenty.
Now we've filled our horn of plenty.

Dug from mud
this humble spud
fills the space twixt starter and pud.

We've just dug up the last of them. The kitchen is full of sacks and bags and buckets full of Pink Lady Fairapple, and Desiré. We had mash and chips for tea tonight. Again. We're giving them away to all and sundry.

Free potato with every driving lesson!

We also had Burdock today. You eat the root. It's pretty bland, so you eat it with other stuff. In this case, mashed with carrots (also from the allottment). Not found a way of growing my own Linda McCartney pies yet, sadly.

Taters have only been part of the UK diet for a few hundred years. It's difficult to envisage life without them. They're pretty ubiquitous, and I'd imagine they're the biggest non-cereal crop. (They are. I checked)

Potatoes are the world's number one non-grain food commodity. Unlike major cereals, potatoes are not a globally traded commodity and thus prices are not influenced by the vagaries of international markets.

driving lessons in Wallasey?

Bombs for the homeless.

2011-10-20T23:00:00.000+01:00

Just a thought...

Give each homeless person a bomb, to do with what they will.

It would then stand to reason that the fewer homeless people there are in our society, the safer we will all be.

driving lessons in Wallasey?

Stone Roses

2011-10-18T21:56:00.001+01:00

Various bands have grabbed me by the ears over the years.

In my mid-teens, I got totally and obsessively into The Beatles. I could sing every nuance and "huh" and "hey".

Then as I got into my late teens, I went down a fairly typical stoner route of Floyd/Led Zep/Doors etc. Then I met Dave, who got me into more Avant Garde stuff (at least to me and my small town circle of mates). A mix of old stuff like the Velvet Underground and 13th Floor Elevators, and contemporary things like Julian Cope, REM, Camper Van Beethoven, and Pixies.

And Stone Roses.

I don't remember the exact occasion, but I know how it must have been.

We'd have been out to the pub (Probably the Greenland Fisheries Hotel) and would have come back to Dave's house and exchanged pleasantries with his mum and stepdad, really wanting them to go to bed so that we could start skinnning up. I'd get all blissed out on the sofa while Dave put some sounds on his high spec turntable. I know that the first time I heard it, I was instantly smitten. I'd have demanded to record it onto a cassette, and I played it on my walkman, pretty much every day as I cycled the ten miles to work or college or whatever it was I was doing then. It was 1989 or 1990. I was 21/22 years old.

Now 20 years have gone by. Stone Roses are reforming. People are striking their enthusiastic/cynical (delete as appropriate) poses on the discussion boards I visit.

Personally, I don't really care. I never got to see them live. I could never have afforded to buy a ticket for their famous Spike Island gig, and although I've seen that gig billed as "The woodstock for the baggie generation", the people I know that went to it weren't all that impressed with it at the time. So nothing has changed. I still can't really afford a ticket, although Manchester is not too hard to get to from Wirral.

But wow! It's 20 odd years since I sat on that couch, all blissed out, while John Squire's chords rolled over me, under me, and through me. Half my lifetime.

A generation earlier, the young adults were being wow'ed by Sgt Pepper's lonely hearts club. I wonder how they felt in 1987, when the lyric, "It was 20 years ago today" caused a resurgence in interest.

driving lessons in Wallasey?

A "Nelson" moment...

2011-10-17T03:51:00.000+01:00

Friends, I flew my kite again today. It has sat in the boot of my car, unused, ever since I broke the video camera.

I added the kite string to the string from another kite to make an extra long kitestring. the conditions were perfect. The kite flew beautifully, and far higher than it had with it's original string.

The low sun and dark clouds formed a dramatic backdrop, so after flying it for a while, with no problems at all, I decided to risk nipping home and getting my "proper" compact camera.

However, when I returned to the dips, it was as exasperating as the previous bit had been rewarding. The camear is much heavier than the little video camera, and this affected the centre of gravity of the kite. Strings got tangled repeatedly, and I spent most of my time trying to unsnarl a rats nest. The perfect wind had dropped, and I just couldn't get the kite to fly, no matter how fast I ran.

I must have persevered for about an hour. Just as I was giving up, frustrated and demoralised, some guy in his car slowed right down nearby and shouted "Get a fucking life!"

The timing of this pointless and unprovoked insult couldn't have been bettered.

Think big I guess. These guys took a video camera upto the edge of space. They even plotted it's course using GPS and Google Earth.

Don't worry Bren, I'm not planning on buying a weather balloon, or a gps any time soon.

driving lessons in Wallasey?

The smell of wet salty rat...

2011-10-11T23:12:00.002+01:00

There's this thing in the news...

Our brave lads have rescued some sailors that had been hijacked by evil Somali pirates. The victims of these foul and dastardly ruffians managed to raise the alarm by the time honoured method of stuffing a note into a bottle, and chucking it from a porthole.

Boys own adventure stuff, ain't it?

That bottle, having been thrown, was then picked up, and it's contents acted upon within a useful timescale.

The ship was captured by the pirates 620 miles offshore by the way.

So, did the bottle somehow reach the shore? Where no doubt some random beachcomber saw it, recognised it, and acted upon it? Or was it spotted bobbing in the oggin by some passing tramp steamer?

You lucky, lucky, lucky bastards. The US Meanwhile have thwarted a terrorist plot.

I wonder what the government have been pushing through today.

Anyway, I actually did once find a message in a bottle. It was after a spring tide. The bottle had been washed up on the Dee estuary. I found it while out walking. It contained a brief letter explaining that it had been chucked into the Sea by a girl called Sarah Charnley, of Blackburn, Lancashire, while on holiday in Anglesey. I found it about 18 months after I she launched it.

driving lessons in Wallasey?

Um... A couple of things...

2011-10-09T21:09:00.000+01:00

One thing I've observed as a teacher is that there are gender differences between how Men and Women deal with errors. I offer no opinion as to whether this is due to nature or nurture, and what I have to say is said using a big broad brush.

When Men make an error, they tend to blame something external. It was the other guy's fault. It was the traffic lights. It was the shoes they're wearing today. I've done it myself.

Women, on the other hand, tend to blame themselves, even if it's not their fault. I can even give you an example using google earth...

My pupil, Helen, came down the road centre top and turned right, following the curve of the building at the bottom of the picture. She then encountered a red light, and stopped. Meanwhile, at the junction behind her, someone misread the filter light, and went straight ahead when they shouldn't have done, and smashed into another vehicle. Big loud bang. Airbags out. Helen turned to me, wide eyed, and asked, "Was that my fault?"

That's pretty typical. It's by no means universal. There are men who will do this, and there are women that will point the finger elsewhere when they make mistakes.

My job, in a sense, is to make people make mistakes. This might sound odd, but while the repetition of stuff people can do is useful for reinforcing the techniques people have learned, once they can do it without thought, it no longer really needs reinforcement. So my job is to challenge my pupils - to put them into situations that they are not totally comfortable with, and which they are sometimes going to get wrong.
Mistakes also lead to a fuller understanding of what you're doing. Instead of just knowing what to do, you also learn how to get back on track when things go wrong. This is vital, because nobody gets it right all the time.
So it's far more important to learn how to get going again after you've stalled, than to try to pretend that you're never, ever going to stall.

What else? Well some thoughts about left wing reactionaries.

Over at Head Heritage, someone posted a post about a Spanish Duchess, who, now in her 80's, has married someone 20 years younger than her. The article linked to was accompanied by a less than flattering picture, and the post generated a whole lot of comments along the lines of "Don't think much of yours, Mate."

It was left to the board's residant tory troll to point out the ugliness of this behaviour.

As you might expect, rather than fess up, some perfectly reasonable people went on the defensive instead. "It's OK to take the piss out of an old woman because she's rich", said one class warrior. "If someone had "I love hitler" tattooed on his face, I shouldn't comment on it then" said another, beautifully proving Godwin's Law. in a lame and incorrect attempt to use reductio ad absurdum to justify his behaviour.

Ultimately, we on the left are trying to make the world a better place. I like many of the people making those comments, and I understand how difficult it can be to say "I was wrong, and I'm sorry", but a better world doesn't mean just redirecting the shit to a different section of society.
driving lessons in Wallasey?

Back to basics...

2011-10-07T12:21:00.000+01:00

I was trying to work out a system of gambling by running a simulation on a computer, rather than spending money in a bookies, but doing it manually was tedious. It was just the sort of thing that a computer could do easily, if only I could find the right program.

But I couldn't, so I wanted to write my own.

But modern computers do everything for you. You can't just dash off an ad hoc program like in days of yore.

Actually I suppose you can, but as ever, I had to be a bit perverse and go about things in an arse over tit manner.

Hence I downloaded first a ZX Spectrum emulator. This was extremely unwieldy. It had to emulate the spectrum's method of assigning commands to individual keys. - Press L to get the command, "LIST" for example.

So I tried a BBC emulator instead. This was much better. It assumed that when you typed "x=1:y=5" that you meant "LET x=1: LET y=5" instead of having to type in the command. It allowed me to just type in what I wanted, rather than constantly have to refer to a table of commands and their PC keyboard equivalents.

It's not perfect. Once a line of code is in place, I can only edit it by typing "EDIT line number" for example, but it's simple enough.

Funny what you remember. It must be 25 years since I used a BBC micro, yet I know what I'm doing (mainly)

Not got the program I want yet, but it's coming.

As you can see, I'm trying different methods, like calling procedures and jumping to different line numbers. Very much a work in progress...

driving lessons in Wallasey?

black looks

2011-10-05T23:26:00.000+01:00

The new look is inadvertant. Blogger now offers some shiny clean new ways of displaying whatever it is you want to share with the world, and I gave it a brief try. Unfortunately, after deciding that shiny and clean don't go with what I have to say, I found I'd lost all my customisations.

No big deal, but I've been busy today. I've not been able to access the internet from my desktop computer, although I have still had my laptop.

When I got home from work, I got the new dongle that arrived today and after a lot of messing about, got back online.

That though, is just the start. I now have to install a load of XP service packs, before any of the applications I want on my computer (anti virus, google earth, etc) can be installed.

driving lessons in Wallasey?

That was just a dream...

2011-10-02T12:30:00.000+01:00

Flying dreams are rare, at least to me. But now and again, I do get them. Generally they are enjoyable, but there always seems to be an element of uncertainity/fear/menace/doubt attached. Flying dreams can easily turn into falling dreams.

There are different types of flying to be done in a dream. One sort is fast. You swoop. You soar.

One sort is slow. You float, just out of reach, of those below. Movement through the air is made by twisting and angling your body.

And sometimes you're not in control at all.

Once upon a time, I was riding my bicycle down Heath Lane in Willaston. As I came to the hump-backed bridge,

a car came the other way. That it was a Ford Cortina has no obvious meaning.

In desperation, I pulled hard on the handlebars, just as I reached the crest of the bridge, and suddenly...

I was perhaps 50 feet up in the air. There must have been some strength in my dream arms. I bet even Lance Armstrong (must have strong arms with a name like that) couldn't make a bike go 50 foot high off the crest of a bridge.

This was not really a flying dream though. I had no means of remaining aloft. I'd become seperated from my bike, and now I came back down again.

Fortunately, I landed in a bush, so I was OK.

driving lessons in Wallasey?

strike

2011-10-01T09:44:00.001+01:00

just wondering if I can ~~go back to bed~~ use strikethrough...

Yay! SMS a go-go!

2011-09-27T16:57:00.000+01:00

I spent hours trying to get gmail to forward driving school enquiries to my phone without success, but eventually, by using a proxy service, I got it sorted out. Enquiries from my contact form cause my phone to alert me about a minute after they've been sent.

Good times (inserts a big smilie)

driving lessons in Wallasey?

On the Beach

2011-09-27T05:14:00.001+01:00

Ever read "On the Beach" by Neville Chute?

It's a scary and dark story alright.

The premise of the book is that a major war has taken place in the Northern Hemisphere, and lethal amounts of radiation are gradually moving southwards. It follows the lives of a group of people living in Southern Australia as they move towards their inevitable fate. I cried buckets when I first read it.

There are few glimmers of hope in the tale. Part of the plot involves a nuclear submarine, which has been sent as far north as it can go, to find out if the radiation is clearing at very high latitudes. Pardon the spoiler, but that hope is snuffed out.

The characters are in denial. On one level they know the end is coming, and that they can do nothing to prevent it, so they act as if the threat doesn't exist. The American submarine commander buys presents for his dead family. A woman plants flowers in her garden that she will never see bloom.

There's a huge difference between waiting for the end of life on earth,, and waiting for a bloody huge financial car crash of course, but still,

driving lessons in Wallasey anyone?

up and away in my beautiful balloon....

2011-09-26T23:49:00.000+01:00

Having established the basic mechanisms for a flight simulator, it's something of a mystery why Google Earth haven't extended the concept to far more than the two aircraft it features.

Imagine being able to pilot a helicopter! Or a space shuttle! Or for that matter, a submarine, or car, or boat...

Well, what google earth don't do can always be done by someone else of course.

http://www.planetinaction.com/ships15/#

You can pilot an airship, or sail a boat.

that's about all. You have to use your imagination, and pretend that if you smack into something that isn't water, bad things will happen, as the ships will sail merrily on through parks, gardens, fields, mountains and buildings, almost as if they weren't there, but it's an interesting way of looking at the scenery for a while.

They promise improvements in version 2...

http://ships.planetinaction.com/

e-mail to sms...

2011-09-26T00:28:00.000+01:00

driving lessons in Wallasey?

I got a couple of enquiries today via the contact form. Unfortunately, I didn't get to read them until several hours after they were sent, so I'm currently trying to find out if it's possible to either make the contact form generate a text message to my phone, instead of an email to my gmail account, or to forward those emails (and only those emails) to my phone as a text message.

Prick sues twats

2011-09-24T01:26:00.000+01:00

You don't even need me to post a link, do you?

Easter Island

2011-09-22T11:42:00.000+01:00

I'm currently (re)reading Jared Diamond's book, "Collapse".

The two main chapters in the book go into considerable detail about modern Montana, and the Norse settlement of Greenland a millenia ago.

Diamond also devotes a considerable portion of the book to Easter Island - One of the most isolated societies in the world, and one that collapsed because of a number of reasons. Jared Diamond lists it's isolation, the people's destruction of their resource base, the relative fragility of Easter's ecosystem because of it's geographical location, and the guns, germs, and steel of visiting Europeans.

And that isolation is profound. This is what Easter looks like from 20 miles up.

You need to zoom out to over 2,000 miles above the earth before you see another inhabited bit of land - Pitcairn, 1,200 miles to the west.

Mark Lynas, a journalist with a keen interest in climate, ecology, environment etc, posted a summary of a book that claimed to debunk Diamond's work on his blog.

http://www.marklynas.org/2011/09/the-myth-of-easter-islands-ecocide/

Now, a few days later, Jared Diamond has taken the time to respond, and Lynas has published his response in full, here:

http://www.marklynas.org/2011/09/the-myths-of-easter-island-jared-diamond-responds/

Lynas is critical of bad science, regardless of source. He's been critical of groups like Greenpeace in the past, rather than trying to force the facts to fit an agenda. He tends to act as a collator of research. His book, Six Degrees is a drawing together of thousands of research documents, and this mini "debate" about the work of two different researchers, Diamond on one side, Hunt and Lipo on the other, comes as no surprise.

Interesting stuff for sure.

It's the end of the world as we know it

2011-09-22T03:39:00.000+01:00

I first heard REM way back in the mid 1980's. My mate Dave would get me stoned when he was up from Portsmouth Poly, and I'd listen, spellbound to Murmur, Document, Reckoning, Life's Rich Pageant. Even Fables of the Reconstruction and Dead Letter Office had their moments.

I have to admit, when Green was released, I found that I was losing my affinity for what they were doing. At the time, I blamed myself for kneejerking against them signing up with Warner Brothers, but listening back, Green really doesn't stand up there with their best releases.

Since then, I've only really listened to their new output sporadically. I retain a certain soft spot for New Adventures in Hi fi, but I couldn't name most of their 21st century stuff.

Michael Stipe is, of course, a much broader artist than just REM. He's also very much visually creative. I think he has much in common with David Byrne, although Byrne tends towards static works, while Stipe is associated with TV and film.

They've split, without acrimony, at a time of their own choosing. I wonder what they will do next?

So many memories of blissed out times. Thank you REM.

Incomprehensible...

2011-09-21T16:30:00.002+01:00

I'm trying to put links to various social media websites on my website.

I want people to "Like" my website, so I became an approved developer, and generated the code for a facebook "Like" button.

I put the code into my website, and upload the updated page to my ftp server. Then I take a look at my page.

And there at the bottom, exactly where I want it is a lovely Google+1 button.

Huh?

I do want a google+1 button on my page, but I don't want two google buttons and no facebook button.

This one has me scratching my head.

Just as a matter of interest, I shall put the same code here. The next line should be a facebook like button...

Never mind. Just a cache problem. It shows up properly on Bren's PC, and now shows up properly after I closed the window and opened the page in a new window.

driving lessons in Wallasey?

Donkeys Vs Penguins

2011-09-17T14:35:00.000+01:00

It all started here, on a whim.

But then I revisited the idea on Google Insights. Penguins are more popular than Donkeys, although their popularity is more sporadic. Donkeys just plod on, while penguins alternate between manic surges and bouts of ennui.

So I decided to run with this a bit.

What would win in a fight between a penguin and a donkey?

What has the larger population?

If you had to kiss/shag/marry/eat one or the other, which would you choose?

And so on.

Who would win in a fight between a penguin and a donkey?

My wife reckons the donkey would win. I think it depends on the arena. If they were to fight in a field, the donkey would easily win. the penguin's waddling gait and soft flippers would be a disadvantage compared to the donkeys' quadrupedal stance and vicious hooves and teeth. On an ice floe, or in the cold waters of the Antarctic ocean, I reckon the penguin's streamlined form, and thick layers of fat would balance out the donkey's weight advantage. In addition, in water, the penguin would be able to swim underneath the donkey, and stab it in the belly with it's sharp beak. The donkey, with it's bouyant body would be at it's mercy.

What has the larger population?

According to This Document, the world's donkey population stands at around 44 million.

This Link breaks down the number of penguins into their various species. The cumulative total comes to about 64.5 million.

Go penguins!

If you had to kiss/shag/marry/eat one or the other, which would you choose?

I'd kiss the donkey. I'd shag the penguin. I'd marry the donkey. I'd eat the penguin.

There. I said it.

more insights

2011-09-17T04:15:00.000+01:00

Google Insights is coming up with some odd graphs.

Regular reader, John, pointed out that Llamas are more popular than Elvis (actually Llamas aren't, but Llama is)

the search patterns for "Dracula" and "Frankenstein" are almost identical.

As are the patterns for "Cheese" and "Ham".

Cheese is not worthy of mention in Vietnam. Ham, however is huge. Perhaps it's vietnamese for Llama.

Monday is International Talk like a Pirate day.

Arrrr!

There has been a long standing debate about what it's better to be - A pirate? or a Ninja?

Pirate wins the battle on Google Insights.

There you go. More soon, I suspect.

Where's Wally?

2011-09-17T03:47:00.001+01:00

If finding the guy in the stripey jumper wasn't enough, the where's Wally pictures also had other things to find, like a rolling pin or a crocodile or what-have-you.

So anyway, here's the deal.

I want some interaction here, dammit! I type away, and the site stats say people are reading what I write, but rarely do they have anything to say about what I write.

This is fine. I'm writing for me more than for anyone else. I'm glad it's getting read, and I'm not seriously craving or courting attention.

But I want you, the reader of this blog to set me a challenge.

Things that I must find on either google earth or google street view.

Now, it's not enough for you to just say "OK. Find a guy in a stripey jumper". It must be something you have seen yourself, so that if I fail to find my own example, you can post to say "Well here's the one I found..."

Apart from that, anything goes really.

This post was prompted by finding a dead person on Google Street View.

Update: Well, why not take the idea further?

If I find a whole load of stuff (which is what I spend time doing anyway) and award points for finding it, there's a sort of online game that people can play. Why should I have all the fun?

Easy stuff like "A purple car" earns just a few points, while hard stuff like "A man with a bucket on his head" would score loads of points.

Hmmm. I feel a website coming on.

car stuff...

2011-09-17T01:54:00.000+01:00

Diesels emit less CO2 than petrols, but there is still only a certain amount of either type of fuel that can be extracted from a barrel of crude. So if everyone suddenly changed to diesel, they'd need to supply more crude than they do for the current petrol/diesel mix)

Still, as someone that covers a lot more than the average number of miles each year, it makes sense to use a diesel rather than a petrol. The diesel engine takes me between 40 and 50 miles on a gallon of fuel, depending on the type of driving I or my pupil are doing. When I taught in a petrol engined Ford Focus, I was getting between 22 and 30 miles to the gallon.

If you pass your test in a car with automatic transmission in the UK, you can only drive cars with automatic transmission. If you pass in a manual car, you can drive either sort. So automatic tuition is something of a niche market. I've driven automatics before, but not much, and I much prefer the control and familiarity of a manual car.

Finally, hybrid or electric engined cars are obviously going to be much more to the fore in the fairly near future.

So I've been looking for a hybrid diesel with manual transmission, and until now there has been no such thing. Hybrid cars, like thr Prius, are almost always automatics. Honda's CRZ is a manual hybrid, but that was about the only one available, and it's an odd looking beast.

It's also petrol engined. So only two of my three requirements are met. From what I've read, it's not as fuel efficient as my current diesel Ford fiesta.

It's easy of course to find a diesel with manual transmission. Two out of three boxes ticked again. But what of that holy grail vehicle? The Diesel Hybrid with manual transmission?

Well diesel hybrids are starting to happen. Volvo do one. Mercedes Benz do one. And Peugeot do one.

the volvo promises just 49g/km of CO2 - Less than half of what my little fiesta emits, and that's in a car that produces enough power to drag it's heavy carcass from 0-60 in under 7 seconds. And it's claimed to do an average of 150 miles per gallon. A huge leap forwards compared to what most cars offer. Unfortunately, it's far too big to teach in. And it has an automatic gearbox. And it's going to cost about £40,000. That's far more than I can afford to pay.

The Merc does about 70 miles to the gallon and produces about 109g/km of co2. No improvement on what I have already then really, since that 70mpg, like all manufacturers figures, is almost certainly utter bollocks. It's also automatic only, and although the cost has not been announced yet, it's a luxury vehicle and is in no way suitable for people who like to smack into kerbs and stall at the drop of a hat.

Finally, there's the Peugeot 3008.

Now this is a diesel. It's also a hybrid. And it has a manual gearbox!

It chugs out 99g/km of co2 - not much less than my fiesta, which produces about 110. What you get is not more efficiency but more power - around 200bhp when you use both electric motor and diesel engine. So still not quite what I'm after. Also it's selling for about 27,000 quid. Still far above my budget. One for the early adopters.

Things are heading in the right direction though, albeit far too slowly. In terms of the bigger picture of course, this does seem like shutting the stable door after you've rearranged the deckchairs. But perhaps two years from now, I will be teaching my pupils in a manual diesel hybrid.

Googlicious!

2011-09-16T18:56:00.001+01:00

Google are trying to promote internet based business growth in Liverpool and it's environs. I got invited to the launch event. Along with the beer and circuses you'd expect (jellybeans, stress putty and dancing girls, all in Google's corporate colours, and the hyping up of what the internet can do for local businesses, there was some genuinely useful stuff to be had.

The speakers told us about Google Analytics. This gives data on who is visiting my site, and why. Currently, hardly anyone is, except me, and I don't count.

Also there's Google Insights. This tells you how popular certain search phrases are.

Here, for example, is how popular various driving instructor relevent search enquiries are.

There's an obvious correllation between the terms, and there is an equally striking seasonal variation in when people look for lessons.

Then there's a thing called the Google Juice bar. This is basically a free 40 minute session that includes an audit of my website, and advice on how to maximise it's potential. I'm booked in for this on Tuesday.

Here are the dancing girls by the way. The sound quality is bloody awful.

The terrible state of the roads in Aylesbury.

2011-09-16T00:15:00.001+01:00

I wrote a letter to the council about this.They're looking into it.

driving lessons in Wallasey? Anyone?

Solar power and space elevators revisited...

2011-09-15T23:11:00.002+01:00

About 18 months ago, I posted about how we could use space elevators to harness solar energy. (Jim Bliss added some ideas and suggested a book for me to read - more about that later)

Now there's a company with a similar but much more practical idea.

You see, to get into space needs a lot of technical stuff. Some really heavy duty engineering. And what you're getting is subject to the law of diminishing returns.

What I mean by this is that if you collect solar energy from 12 miles above the Earth's surface, you're above 95% of the atmosphere. Going another hundred miles up doesn't gain you much, but adds enormously to the cost and complexity of your operation.

What is being proposed is that optics are attached to a sort of hydrogen balloon, which is connected to the ground using a pipe that conducts the collected light down to the ground, where it is used to heat stuff up, rather like using a magnifying glass to burn holes in black trousers.

Personally, I think this is a great idea. The science is straightforward and well understood. The power plants have a very small footprint compared to more conventional solar power generation, and can easily be placed close to where they are needed. the hydrogen required to make the things float can be obtained using some of the power they generate.

There are risks too of course. The pipes that conduct the light to ground have to be large. Weather, Ice, high winds, Aircraft, terrorists. All would pose a threat.

A variation on the theme is to put photovoltaic panels 12 miles up and send the energy down a much smaller pipe as electicity instead. This would potentially be a much better way of using PV in high latitudes.

Thank you to The Oil Drum for the article.

It even contains some rather fetching google earth representations of how such a power plant might look. Clearly company after my own heart.

Falkland Oil...

2011-09-15T03:29:00.000+01:00

They've found oil off the Falkland Islands!

It really was worth sending the navy in all those years ago!

Here's the link...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-14925620

The recoverable reserves are estimated at around 350 million barrels.

That's a lot of oil. Even one barrel of the stuff is big enough that you have to be quite a skilled hurdler, or be in possession of a big mallet if it comes rolling down a ramp towards you.

But if it had to fulfill the world's demand for oil, how long would it last?

Well, accoding to 2009 figures, the world consumes a little over 82 million barrels per day.

This marvelous discovery is sufficient to meet the world's needs for...

just over 4 days.

Alas!

2011-09-11T12:11:00.001+01:00

My skybound adventures are currently on hold following a rather nasty interaction between little video camera and some rather uncompromising damp sand.

I may possibly be able to rescue footage of it's final flight by putting its micro sd card into my phone and transferring it to my computer that way, but my computer too is buggered up.

A green (not blue) screen of death.

I can get it running but only in safe mode.

Currently trying to transfer about 140Gb of files from my C drive to my other hard drive. It's bloody hard going.

High as a kite

2011-09-09T13:07:00.006+01:00

I tried to fly my kite a couple of days ago down on New Brighton Prom. The wind was pretty strong, and the kite was flapping around all over the place.

After repairing the damage caused (spreader bar penetrated ripstop nylon) with some insulating tape, I tried again from a different more sheltered location. The wind was a bit weaker, but very turbulent. It was impossible to get the kite high enough to find steady winds.

Today though, the winds are much lighter, so I went down to the Prom again, and risked sellotaping my little camera to the kitestring.

And I actually ended up with some footage!

As you can see, the results leave a little to be desired! I may need to attach a weight to the bottom of the camera to make it less affected by the buffetting. Also, attaching the camera to the string a little below the kite might help too.

Still, early days. If you click pause during the video, you can occasionally get some reasonably interesting still images.

The little camera itself seems pretty shock resistant. It took some fairly hard landings, although no direct high speed nosedives, and still works just fine. I really wouldn't want to try sending anything expensive up there at the moment.

Take two...

I added a pound coin and some blu-tak to the bottom of the camera. I also attached the camera to the string about a foot or so below the kite, instead of much closer to the kite. Finally, I attached the camera to the string with two pieces of sellotape, instead of one. I also used my Bren attachment, to facilitate launch and recovery. This time, the kite didn't crash to earth even once.

Here's the result:

Although still far from perfect, there are moments of lucidity here.

Bren has an idea for a housing. I've suggested adding a tail to the housing to make it point into the wind.

And then I found...

A bottle cage that I never got around to putting on my bike...

Attach camera to cage. Tie cage to kite...

And...

I tied the cage to the kite using only one piece of string. Hence the assembly was free to rotate. But tie it on at two points, and I think it's going to finally be pretty stable. You can see for yourself how much better this third try is.

Next next bit...

2011-09-09T11:18:00.000+01:00

Another day, another phone call from someone wanting to sell me their services. From a mobile phone this time, and it didn't help that the line was bad, but some bloke was shouting aggressively into my lughole about how his company could optimise my website for use with mobile phones. He was very insistent, and when I told him I wasn't planning to spend any money this year, he told me that he was offering this for free.

I asked him what his company got from it, and he explained that they make their money in the second year.

It dawned on me that the optimisation is therefore temporary. They remove it after twelve months. At that point I told him I'd do it myself.

He was incredulous. Do it myself? But it's difficult and complicated and his company is the biggest and best mobile optimisation company in the whole damn world.

Bye then.

But there you go. He's identified a potential source of business that I might not be exploiting as well as I could.

So that's my next task - to find out about mobile internet, then to work out what changes if any I need to make to make my website more mobile friendly.

First of all, what does my site look like on a moby?

Well here's a handy emulator that will show me...

It's not actually too bad. Initially the text is compressed into a block of tiny writing on the left of the screen, but when I click on it, it's all perfectly legible.

Will keep looking into this. Right now, I have a kite to fly.

Next bit...

2011-09-05T00:09:00.000+01:00

I got a call on my mobile phone about a week ago.

Some guy from Manchester was offering his services as a search engine optimiser. I felt for him, as he was clearly working hard to get his business off the ground. But I'm trying to do as much as I can for myself, to keep the costs down, to expand my knowlegde and experience into new areas, and because I'm a stubborn bugger. So I politely declined his offer.

However, now that I have a site I'm happy with, I need to get my ratings up, and as ever, I want to do it without spending money.

I asked for advice on some discussion boards, and was pointed in the direction of certain software, that I then "acquired". Normally this software costs a couple of hundred quid. A few years ago, I wouldn't have felt the slightest twinge of guilt about such acquisitions. These days I'm more aware that somebody somewhere is not getting what they should be entitled to.

I'm also aware that in saying "Come and have driving lessons with Paul Sharp", I'm also saying "Don't give your money to Joe Bloggs" despite Joe Bloggs also needing to make a living. Nature of the beast of course. Everybody has to compete for everything. Ah well. Come the glorious day...

Anyway, this SEO stuff is stretching me. I understand the basic idea: Put the right keywords into your site and get other sites to link to it. There's other stuff too.

Then submit site to search engines. Said search engines then say "OK. Lots of lovely relevent stuff here. Put it up near the top..."

There are things that don't work properly with the software I got but I've used it to look at the html of other local driving school websites, the ones that show up at the top of the listings, and put a lot of the same meta tags into my headers.

I've also used it to look at the code of my site and check it for errors. It found quite a few. It also told me exactly where and what they are, so I should be able to fix most of them.

The text contained within my webpages is also important. I ran a sort of scan that simulates what a google spider does. It told me this:

Total web page size:    10,632 bytes
Visible text size:    612 bytes
Total HTML size:    10,020 bytes
Visible text to web page size ratio:    5.76% (the more the better)
Number of images:    6

Context is important of course. It's saying the more the better, but this is a little worrying. I wanted to keep it all simple and clear, not windy and verbose. A hangover from the days of dial up perhaps, but to me it makes sense to optimise and minimalise.

The same spider simulator can also be used on other sites. Generally the ratio seems to be about 15-20%. All the pages I've looked at contain far more links than mine does.

I've spotted some interesting techniques. For example, one highly ranked page had a list of almost every town on Wirral. Each link had it's own seperate page. Karen Jones does lessons in Wallasey, and the rest of Wirral. Are you looking for driving lessons in Wallasey? Call her on 012345678. Karen Jones does lessons in Greasby and the rest of Wirral. Are you looking for driving lessons in Greasby? Call her on 012345678. Etc.

I think that's a really good idea. I only need to do one page, then use it as a template, and from there, fill my index page with intra-site links.

So... Work to be done still. Some of this is interesting. Some of it is just really boring and repetitive, and some of it is frustrating and mentally taxing.

First Contact!

2011-09-03T21:39:00.003+01:00

I've wanted to be able to do a contact form for yonks. Somehow I was never able to get my head around it.

Today, I have spent a long time reading up on it, and with a lot of trial and error, I finally managed to get a proper contact form on my website. One that forwards queries and comments directly to my email account. I was able to make use of some free code downloads from this site.

A contact form effectively comes in two parts. The first part is html code that allows people to make comments. The second part is something called php code, which then sends the comments to a specified place, in this case, my e-mail address.

What I couldn't work out was the way it all fits together in a website. So I spent ages copying the php code into my webpage, and wondering why it was not working properly. Eventually it dawned on me that the php code is a seperate file that you ftp up onto your host server. The html code then goes looking for it.

But this wasn't just a matter of copying and pasting. I added a new field for phone numbers, and altered the php file so that it correctly went through. I have some idea of what I'm doing with this stuff now.

I've also tidied up, made a few stylistic changes, and spent a long and annoying time debugging things that should on the face of it have worked. Tables are wonderful things, but they do sometimes do some frustrating things.

So now I have a website that I'm happy with, at least for now. Now I need to get people to see it.

I keep wanting to send myself messages!

driving lessons wallasey

you want 'em! I got 'em!

Kites

2011-09-02T21:57:00.002+01:00

I've shelled out about seventeen quid for a kite. I want to attach a video camera to it, and shoot movies from up in the sky.

This particular sort of kite is supposed to be amongst the most stable available. I'd actually like to be able to take pictures, but that requires either a lot of money or considerable ingenuity. I've heard of people rigging up timers based on the melting of ice cubes.

I do however have this little video camera.

It's the same one I used to video the bike rides a few months back. It's a bit temperamental, but if I use a certain sequence of events, I can get it to work properly.

Apart from starting it recording, I have no control about how long it records for. I suppose with practice, I could get degree of control over which way it points.

Anyway, I shall post the resulting videos. I doubt if they'll be as good as this...

about 6 weeks...

2011-09-01T01:11:00.000+01:00

since I had a cigarette. I've not been counting but I looked back at my blog posts and it appears that I stopped on 16th July.

Big deal. So what!

It's been nothing. Not even worthy of a "meh". I've achieved nothing. Achieving nothing is easy. I shall continue to achieve nothing for the forseeable future.

New boots and panties.

2011-08-31T19:16:00.001+01:00

Same body, different clothes. The font is the same, but the white on black is slightly less visually intrusive than the black on white, so I didn't need to make it smaller or finer.

I've stripped things down too. Some of my good ideas seemed like gimmicks in retrospect. So simpler, cleaner, neater. Nicer buttons to press, with rollover effects. Fewer distractions, which gives greater prominence to the stuff that is there. Important stuff like contact details and price list.

I've been reading about how to climb the rankings, and asking around, and it seems like
what I mainly need to do is give things time to happen. Weeks and months rather than days, and the site has only been up for maybe 2 months? And as Mr Bliss pointed out to me in an earlier post, the likes of google have standards they like to be adhered to. Therefore I will be blatently putting a line of linky texty stuff at the bottom of this post, and other posts too rather than sneakily trying to do background colour text.

Ad free site? Hmmm...

Incidentally, guess how much I've made from the adverts on the failyourtest site?

That's right. Nothing whatsoever.

driving lessons wirral driving lessons birkenhead driving lessons wallasey learn to drive driving instructor driving test

Odds and ends

2011-08-31T04:45:00.000+01:00

It's very late.

Yesterday I went for my appointment with the alcohol service triage people. Was happy to tell them I was doing OK by myself, and they were happy to not intervene further. Good to know they're there, just in case it all goes tits up, as it might easily do.

My website is now properly registered with google. I've cancelled paid ads with them for now. Will work hard on trying to optimise it. I suppose there are a couple of hundred instructors working on Wirral. I'm probably one of the more net savvy ones, so there's no reason why I shouldn't be able to get up near the top of the listings. Anyway, it should be interesting to see if it makes any difference, having now correctly registered it.

Working on a few organisational ideas to keep track of what has the potential to be a confusing pricing structure. Basically, instead of giving discounts for paying for blocks of lessons in advance, I'm giving each 11th lesson free provided the pupil has at least one lesson per week, so I need something that allows me to tell at a glance where each pupil is up to, and the solution I'm hoping to use is little sticky dots in different colours that can be stuck into my diary. It should work, but it will take a few days or weeks for my eyes to see the orange sticker and for my brain to say "That's 2 lessons" without having to look it up.

I want to spend some time redesigning the site a bit. The big bold ariel text might look more sober and professional if I change it to something smaller and lighter. I have css templates you know!

Holiday in HMHBodia

2011-08-31T00:32:00.000+01:00

Ah, you're drunk, you're drunk, you silly old fool...

2011-08-29T00:16:00.002+01:00

I'm not drunk, but I am drinking. I have 3 bottles of lager with a total volume of about 2 litres, and an alcohol content of about 5%. A total of 10 units. I'm just finishing the first bottle now.

As to why I'm doing this, I'm not sure I can say.

Please note, "I'm not sure I can say" is not the same as "I don't know".

This isn't about dishonesty or being deliberately obtuse. It's something more complicated.

Take the recent post I did about story arcs on television. It contains the following statement:

I really struggle with stories on the telly, from soaps to sitcoms. I can't switch off the analysing part of me and simply enjoy it for what it is.

Presumably you took this at face value. I certainly wrote it at face value. Yet it begs the question, "Why?" And while I was pedalling away earlier, I did some thinking about this question.

I'd spent some time prior to my ride watching the telly - A film called The Runaway Bride, starring Richard Gere and Julia Roberts. It was a perfectly watchable tale, and it was obvious right from the start that Gere was the hero, Roberts was the heroine, and the climax of the film would be that they finally got together and lived happily ever after. Plotting a graph for it on Vonnegut's G-I axis would be simple enough. It's actually the emotional side of things that I'm not comfortable with.

Stories manipulate emotions. They make you laugh and cry and love and hate. The good ones do anyway.

So when I say, "I don't do television" what I'm really saying is "I don't do emotion".

The most insightful of the counsellors and mental health experts I've encountered have been aware of this. Only once, and then only briefly, one of them broke throught the walls I've built and made me cry. I love and respect her for doing it. Another explained to me that "You've lost touch with your emotions".

Why the walls exist, I can't say (see earlier statement)

It was hard to write what I wrote above. Part of the reason I'm drinking tonight is because I wanted to be able to write it.

bird brain of britain

2011-08-28T21:39:00.000+01:00

This afternoon, I cycled 21.7 miles, from home to West Kirby, into the teeth of a gale. Then I cycled back again with the same wind at my back.

Google Earth reckons I did 21.7 miles. the trip outwards was about 15 miles. The same journey back was the other 6.7.

Notable stuff? Well the wind sent thick heavy rain laden clouds in from the Irish Sea, but I managed to miss almost all the nasty stuff. A couple of brief light showers cooled me down while other places nearby got drenched.

The other notable thing was what the seagulls and pigeons did. We think of birds as being stupid, yet they sometimes prove to be a lot smarter than we expect. Some birds, such as parrots and corvids are famous for being clever, but we'd seldom put seagulls or pigeons into that category.

Somewhere along the line, the seagulls sussed out that repeatedly stomping on the grass causes worms to surface and provides them with an easy meal. Today I saw them repeatedly pick up shellfish, and drop them from a height to smash the shells, eagle and tortoise style. No doubt about the deliberateness of the act, since it happened not once but repeatedly. These gulls knew what they were doing. They also have a pretty good intuitive knowledge of aerodynamics. They handled the gale with skill and grace that the best human pilots could only dream of.

So what about pigeons? Ubiquitous and unloved. Who'd have thought they'd be able to put two and two together? Yet as I rode into the headwind, I passed a group of pigeons, and one of them took off and flew low, directly behind me, keeping station about 5 or 6 feet back, and veering from side to side to see where it was. I kept looking over my shoulder in amazement. this pigeon had understood that I would create a volume where the headwind was diminished, and took advantage of the fact.

Mr Pigeon, I tip my probverbial hat to you. You have taught me something new today.

suspension of disbelief

2011-08-28T00:07:00.002+01:00

I don't really do telly or films. I've also been finding fiction more difficult to read, although I'm better able to immerse myself in a good book (or audiobook). Trouble is, I can't switch off the knowledge that what I'm watching *is* just made up.

Only certain sequences of chords or notes make coherent songs. Take a 1-4-5 chord sequence, like A major to D major to E major, and you've got Hot Love by T Rex, Silver Machine, by Hawkwind, Any song ever written by Status Quo, and a zillion others.

This is not a bad thing. Without the coherent structure, you're in Stockhausen and freeform jazz territory. This too is not a bad thing. The point here is not a value judgement about the merits of structured and unstructured music, but that a series of culturally developed rules have evolved that mean that certain things fit our expectations of what music actually is.

I think a similar thing applies to fiction. Substitute "story arc" for "melody line" and you'll see what I mean.

Kurt Vonnegut wrote about these. You can read his entire essay, HERE

I've tried to duplicate the graphs.

This graph represents primitive stories. Simple linear tales of battles and hunts. Vonnegut tries to show that Hamlet also follows the same pattern.

This is your basic story. Someone who was doing OK got into some trouble, and somehow got back out of it. Everyone loves a happy ending!

This is the boy meets girl storyline. Boy meets girl. They fall in love. All is good. Then boy loses girl. Things aren't good. Then somehow, after many trials and tribulations, boy and girl finally get together. Hooray!

This one is Cinderella. At the beginning of the tale, her life is pretty grim, then along comes fairy godmother and makes things good, but then the clock strikes twelve and the shit hits the fan, big time, but finally, she finds her prince and they live happily ever after.

This one is Kafka. Or put the downslope at the end, and you have noir.

Anyway, I really struggle with stories on the telly, from soaps to sitcoms. I can't switch off the analysing part of me and simply enjoy it for what it is.

And it's not just fictions either. I see the same arcs everywhere. For example, every week, Sarah Beeny meets a couple who's house is about to collapse around them. Each week it follows exactly the same formula:

Couple have house that has XYZ wrong with it.

Along comes Sarah and has a good poke around to see the extent of the problem. The outlook is pretty bleak, frankly. Not only do they have woodworm, but there's an unexploded bomb in the basement, and there's raw sewage seeping into the kitchen. It will cost at least two hundred thousand pounds to make good the damage, if it's possible at all. The couple shake the piggy bank out onto the table. They have just 86 pee and some fingernail clippings..

But then, local builder and part time explosives expert, Barry "the bomb" Bloggs steps in and does most of the work for next to nothing, and what they thought was a broken sewer pipe turns out to be a slightly leaky joint that is fixed by simply banging it with a hammer. A quick plastering job, and a visit from the house makover team later and the couple's slum is transformed into a bright and airy palace.

Smiles all round. It's the basic story, witha slightly modified lower start point, every single episode.

The factory...

2011-08-26T02:48:00.000+01:00

These are some of the photographs from when we found a gap in the fence and went into the compound of derelict warehouses, some of which are now being demolished. Most, if not all of these were taken by and are copyrighted to Brenda Sharp.

Some of the proletariat are lumpen. Some of the proletariat have always been lumpen. Some of the proletariat will always be lumpen.

2011-08-25T04:19:00.000+01:00

Just a thought.

Years back, I was riding home from a friend's house. I was in my early twenties. It was quite late. Midnight or so, and I was riding through a housing estate. Nothing particularly scuzzy or deprived. Just a typical dormitary estate in a dormitary town.

Anyway, I rode past a group of young guys. Some on foot. A couple with scooters. I scarecely made eye contact. I certainly did nothing to provoke them. I just rode on.

30 seconds later, I heard the scooters start up.

Instantly, I knew what it meant, and I pedalled like fuck. This particular part of town was whereI went every day, delivering the mail, so I knew the roads well.

Instead of trying to make it home, I made for a cul-de-sac, and hid in the dark space in the driveway between two houses. The scooters went the way I would have took if I'd headed for home. Then they came back. Then they went up the other way. Then they came back. Then they went down the cul de sac and back, but they didn't see me lurking in the shadows. They kept looking for me for perhaps 20 minutes before they gave up though.

These guys meant me harm. Whether they intended to steal from me or to beat the shit out of me, or both, I can never know, but for little more than kicks, they would do this.

It's something that I understand is just part of some people. At the same time, I find it utterly baffling. It's not a character facet I've ever found easy to access.

Petty damage is another matter. When I was in my teens, I did stuff like setting fire to the bins in the park, and graffiti-ing bus shelters. There was no malicious intent. I didn't do it to hurt anyone. Probably the worst bit of damage I caused was at the local scout hut. There was an overflow pipe sticking out of the wall of the hut. I pushed it through, and you could hear the whole thing topple and smash inside. Presumably water then pissed out of it all over the floor until the next scout meeting. I didn't stay to find out. I and my mates either ran or sauntered nonchalantly away. I suspect the scoutmaster gave a sermon about vandals and hooligans to the scouts next time they convened.

My uncle (the now dead one that was a magistrate) told stories of his childhood during world war two. He would go out with his mates smashing up anything that wasn't already smashed. People were too busy doing other stuff like digging for victory and putting out fires. He once found a corrugated tube in the garden of a bombed out house. When he swung it around, it made a whooping, whistling noise. I had a plastic tube that did this when I was a kid. But what he had wasn't plastic. It was someone's trachea. An ARP warden caught him doing this and sent him home with a thick ear.

Anyway, I guess what I'm saying is, the riots, and the unfocussed and vicious urges that they were a manifest symptom of are nothing new.

Why this happens, and if in a differnet society such things wouldn't happen, I don't know.

Steven Pinker points to the Montreal Police Strike (opportunist crime flourished, scores were settled, power struggles erupted) as evidence that we are naturally nasty to our neighbours, given the opportunity.

Robert Tressell, in the Ragged Trousered Philanthropists takes a different view.

`Do you mean to say as the time will ever come when the gentry will

mix up on equal terms with the likes of us?' demanded the man behind

the moat, scornfully.



`Oh, no,' replied the lecturer.  When we get Socialism there won't be

any people like us.  Everybody will be civilized.'

Wouldn't that be nice?

I wonder if societies where co-operation is the norm (if there are any left in this global age) can continue to live in harmony when faced with increased competition for resources? I'm re-reading Jared Diamond's "Collapse" at the moment. The societies he cites seem to have done OK while they were able to grow, but conflict seems ro have been inevitable when too many people were trying to get a share of too little of life's essentials.

Today in numbers

2011-08-24T22:58:00.002+01:00

Hangover rating: 0

Distance cycled: 9.97 miles. Let's call it 10.

Distance walked: About 4.5 miles around Brackenwood with my Dad.

Shitness at golf rating: 8957987593847589345739485093485093.7

I got wet in the rain. It felt good. It's been a while since it happened.

My bike rides are getting a bit repetitive. It's fantastic that I can travel mile after mile on dedicated car free routes, but there are only a limited number of them. Being in the top north east corner of a peninsula, I can go West, or I can go South. I can also go South West, but there are few cycle paths thatawy. Mostly they follow the coast.

Tomorrow, I finish working sometime early afternoon. I want to go to Neston to see my mum and dad, and sort out their computer (They ain't got no internet access right now and they're getting bored with freecell) so it would be quite a good challenge to do the entire Wirral circular trail.

Here's ther relevent bit:

The Wirral Circular Trail:

This much discussed project is now well underway, following joint funding by
the European Regional Development Fund via the North West Developments
Agency and the Local Transport plan.

The 34 mile route will have four main sections:

The Mersey / East Coast,
The Liverpool Bay / Irish Sea / North Coast,
The Dee / West Coast and
The Wirral Borderlands.

The route will primarily be a signed route around Wirral, linking the facilities
we already have. The Wirral Way will take you from West Kirby to Hooton and
new signs will then take you to Eastham Country Park. The route along the
Mersey Coast will eventually go over Bromborough Landfill site, across to
Shorefields and via Rock Park, Cammell Lairds and Birkenhead Priory along
to Woodside Ferry and up to Seacombe Ferry. By following the promenade to
New Brighton, the route cuts inland to the River Birket Cycle track to Leasowe
Lighthouse, and then along the North Shore to Hoylake, West Kirby and the
start of The Wirral Way. In certain locations it has been necessary to separate
the walking and the cycling route. 500 signs will be put up gradually over the
coming months. The project is currently on target for April 2011 completion,
with booklets and maps being produced to promote the Trail.

34 arse chafing miles of almost traffic free biking, with a computer fixing tea drinking bit in the middle. Sounds like a plan.

busy biking byebye building

2011-08-24T00:55:00.001+01:00

Today I cycled 15 miles. I've cycled every day this week, but this is my longest to date.

I followed the Wirral Circular trail, which mainly kept me off the main roads. My route took me along the banks of the Mersey mainly, with a few bits where I had to travel alongside or on main roads. I didn't start until quite late, and it became obvious that I wouldn't be home before dark.

Not a problem. I'm an experienced cyclist. More than that, I'm an experienced cyclist with bright LED flashy lights to fron and rear. Still, I ended up in Bromborough, perhaps 12 miles from home, so I jumped on a train to Birkenhead and cycled back from there.

One part of my journey took me to the Croft Industrial Estate, where, a couple of years ago, I found a gap in the fence that allowed me close access to the derelict buildings you see below.

I went down there with Bren and some camera equipment, just as the sun was turning everythng golden, and we had a fantastic shoot. I'll try to ad some of the pics to this post shortly. Some of the warehouses to the left contained some fantastic vibrant grafitti. I like old abandoned places anyway. There's a sort of melancholy romance about them.

I've always enjoyed looking at the main building. But tonight, it was half demolished. I suppose it will be flattened by the end of the week.

I know we can't preserve everything in aspic, but I'll be sad to see it go. I'm glad I went there tonight and took a few pictures.

Second string

2011-08-22T01:41:00.000+01:00

It seems to me that developing a better understanding of psychotherapeutic techniques could be a useful thing to do. Specifically, Neuro-Linguistic Programming and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy.

So many people struggle to learn to drive or to get through the driving test because of nerves. In a sense I'm using some forms of NLP intuitively, I think. I will have a better idea about this fairly soon, as I've ordered a book about it called Trance Formations, which was written by the founders of the theory.

Imagine the work I could get if I could sell myself as an instructor/hypnotherapist!

Incidentally, I got a phone call a few weeks back from a woman calling herself a life coach. She will give me money for any nervous pupil that I successfully refer to her. Reading the stuff she sent me, she's - guess what...- a NLP based hypnotherapist. I have a couple of pupils that might well benefit from her services. Perhaps a year or so from now, I could be doing the whole shebang myself.

Beyond that, I don't think it's a bad idea to get a different skill to teaching people how to drive.I could bale out of teaching and into hypnotherapy if I had the qualifications.

More immediately, throwing myself into learning a new skill would be handy right now.

PAS school of Motoring rides again!

2011-08-20T22:45:00.000+01:00

I've re-bought my domain name from my old school, and linked it to paulsharpdriving.

Reason being, my old driving school, PAS school of Motoring, is still showing up in searches for driving lessons in my area.

Also, the dot com name also links properly to my site.

The new name cost me about six quid. If I get even one pupil from it, it will be well worth it.

First hitch...

2011-08-19T23:48:00.000+01:00

Today I got up at about 10.30.

Had a fairly busy day with work, and filled the gaps generally with something useful and productive, like getting stuff from the allottment, and radishes from the metal tank full of soil in the back garden. Like going for a bike ride.

I even rode my bike to the chippy instead of doing my usual trick of jumping in the car.

Bren didn't get in until much later than either of us expected, so after she'd eat her fried rice, we went to bed. About 10.30pm, and of course, having only been awake for 12 hours, I can't sleep.

So I got up, and turned on the PC, and blogged about it.

This is the room with the computer in it. I've hardly been in it for the last couple of days, but as you've read, I used to spend most of my time in here. My old chair was much bigger. The blinds would be closed during the day, because it made it easier to see the screen. Oh yeah, and even when I've had more space at my disposal, such as when I had flats in Birkenhead and Moreton, I'd tend to only really physically occupy a tiny part of them. To give you a sense of scale, if I were to stand in the middle of the picture, I could almost touch the walls on the left and the right at the same time. If my arms were a few inches longer, I could do it. That makes it about 6 foot wide. It's slightly longer. 8 foot? maybe 9?

A week ago, I'd have got into the car now, and driven to Tescos for some booze. Strangely, I just don't feel the urge at all.

And on...

2011-08-19T19:00:00.001+01:00

6 hours work turned into 5.

Rather than blog every day to say "I drank nothing yesterday" I shall only blog about alcohol if I have in fact drank any, or if I have some insight to share.

Today I brought home £140. Bren is out working her socks off photographing a wedding. I shall treat her to a chippy tea.

Meanwhile, I took a brisk dusk rush along the prom on the pushbike. And back. Breathless and sweating. It was good to connect with the physical.

strength through negativity?

2011-08-19T12:33:00.000+01:00

Yesterday's alcohol intake: zero.
Started drinking: N/A
Finished drinking: n/a
etc.

Bren came home. We read gardening books together and I sat and listened to her talk about her holiday. She had a big smile on her face. She looked lovely. She liked the flowers.

Just a thought about stopping doing things...

Stopping is negative. Slowing down is negative accelleration. Stopping means no. Not. Don't.

Stopping is a real fucking downer, and I've seen, both in my self and in certain significant others that trying to stop, rather than trying to change, is expressed only as "I will not do X".

I'm not trying to stop using the internet, or to quit drinking. Well, I am trying to quit drinking, but I'm not thinking of it in those terms.

Instead, I have many things I can do instead. I know this sounds like a load of little mr sunshine pollyanna self help bollocks, but instead of the thought process being, "today I will not X", I'm waking up and trying to say to myself, "Today I can/will/have this to do/etc".

And it works. So far. I know it's only been a couple of days.

What time I have spent on the internet has been mainly a) doing these blog posts, b) trying to promote my driving school website, c) a tiny amount of time on places like head heritage and dailygammon. And I've been doing it on my laptop, in a light bright spacious living room, not in a pokey gloomy cell.

Today I have six driving lessons, from 12 until 8. This evening I shall have a long luxurious soak in a deep hot bath. As far as the rest of the time between then and sleeping goes, I don't yet know.

An unexpected pleasure.

2011-08-18T19:30:00.001+01:00

The day before yesterday, I got an email out of the blue. It came from a German woman who is working in Wallasey. She's going back to Germany shortly, but before she goes, she wanted to drive on English roads, so that if in the future she had to do so, she would have the knowledge and the confidence to do so.

So that's what I did for two hours yesterday morning. Something different to the run-of-the-mill stuff. Her English was good enough to get by mainly, and I was careful in both choice and delivery of my words.

She called roundabouts "circles" and roadsigns, "Shields". Whether these are the german words, or the english translations I'm not sure.

What she found hardest to get to grips with (literally) was using her left hand to change gear. The pedals are in the same order regardless of which side of the road you drive on, but when you drive on the right, the gearstick is on your right. She quickly got the hang of this, and what initially promised to be a difficult session turned into a free-flowing drive that covered everything from tight residential streets, via twisty country lanes, to motorway driving. She finished the lesson with a big smile on her face.

One challenge for me was to concentrate on stuff that mattered (making sure she could work out where to put herself, making sure she knew where to look, giving her time space and practice in the physical act of driving from an unfamiliar position) and ignoring things that didn't really matter too much, such as whether she used push pull steering, or was occasionally coasting.

driving lessons wallasey driving lessons wirral driving lessons birkenhead driving instructor driving school

Woke up... Fell out of bed...

2011-08-18T10:19:00.002+01:00

This is my pupil, Laura's friend's house.

As we drove past Laura's friend's house yesterday, Laura pointed it out to me. In doing so, she veered over towards the wrong side of the road, straight into the path of an oncoming Vauxhall Astra. I had to instantly grab the wheel. Holy fuck. That was a close one. In my previous accidents, I've always been hit from behind. A head on collision is not something I want to happen any time soon. Combined closing speeds would have been somewhere around 60-70 miles per hour and it would have been a bad 'un, airbags or not. Honestly, you can't switch off for a second in this job.

Anyway, day two of the rest of my life, and all that. Yesterday's alcohol intake = 0.

Woke up at 6.30 with a mouth like... well something other than a budgie cage. Didn't get up and turn on PC. Hit snooze twice and grabbed an extra 16 minutes in bed instead.

Got up, got dressed. Had coffee. Opened mail - We're going to be getting a lot more tax credits, due to my earnings being so much less than predicted.

Went to pick up Scott, who had an early test.

He failed, on the same roundabout that he failed on last time, for pretty much the same reasons - nerves causing him to approach too quickly.

Took him home dejected and disgruntled. Got in about 9.30 and phoned parent of potential pupil that I didn't get the chance to call back yesterday due to my phone being a bit buggered.

New pupils starting monday. Hooray!

Made coffee.

Turned on PC so that I could blog this and catch the responses to a couple of things I posted yesterday. Not going on facebook or anything. Will be switching off computer and going to allottment when I finish this post.

Next lesson is at 12. Another test. Then straight to Bromborough for a lesson from 3 to 5.

Then done for the day. I want to take some photos of my little hideyhole so I'm not going to clean it up today although I plan to soon, despite intending to spend less time in here.

It's actually quite hard all this. Where I'd normally and automatically head to my room and the familiarity it represents, I have to do something jarringly other, whatever it may be.

Well, I picked a big bouquet of sweet peas, and filled a polystyrene container with raspberries, then took them home and left for my next appointment.

Another fail. Great driver, but one mistake cost him a pass. On another day, the lights would have stayed green, and he'd now be a fully qualified driver. Possibly just as well, since his dad had promised me a bottle of whiskey if he'd passed today.

The 3-5 lesson turned into 3-4. Got home about 4.20. Went online to order a load of business cards, and had a very brief surf, then spent more time down at the allottment, via the chippy.

It's now 7 O clock. I'm writing up the test fails for the bloggy part of my website, and will be trying to put a load of links to my website from other places.

So I'm not knocking the internet completely on the head. Just trying to make it more normal. So the sticky game sites that require daily participation are gone.

Bren is due back this evening. Don't know what time. Quite late I think. I hope she likes the flowers.

When I have finished doing the blog stuff, I shall go do some tidying up.

Then what? Telly? A good book? Maybe I should let the dice decide.

driving lessons wallasey driving lessons wirral driving lessons birkenhead driving instructor driving school

The mouse will...

2011-08-18T00:49:00.004+01:00

Get rat-arsed.

Big time.

On purpose.

I didn't particularly want to, and I didn't really enjoy doing so, but I did.

I screwed myself right into the fucking ground.

Things have not been good for a while now. Regular readers and old friends will already be aware that most of my adult life has been a struggle against substance misuse, and I've slid quite a long way down the slippery slope over the last few weeks and months.

Yesterday (tuesday) I referred myself to Wirral Alcohol Service. It's a step in a better direction.

Saying "No more drinking" is not in itself going to work. My whole damn life needs to change.

Here is my day today, 17th August 2011 (now yesterday) for example.

Go to bed at maybe 1.00 am. Drunk.

Wake up at perhaps 6.00 with a mouth like the bottom of a budgie cage.

Get up and go downstairs and drink about a pint of orange drink. (That's what we call it in England. Just ask Bill Hicks)

Go back to bed and try to get to sleep for a bit but fail.

Read in bed for half an hour and try to sleep again. And fail.

Get up. Go to my tiny boxy computer room and switch PC on. It's now maybe 7.30.

Surf the net for about 2 and a half hours until just turned 10.

Get dressed. Go out and wash car because I have new pupil today. Teach her from 11 until 1.

Get home at about 1.15. Switch on PC and surf until 1.45 then leave house for next lesson.

This lasts until about 3.50, and dovetails with another lesson that runs from 4 until 5.

Get home about 5.20.

Switch on PC and surf until about 6.40. Leave house for lesson at 7.

Back home at about 7.15.

Switch computer on. Surf until 1 in the morning, with a brief and unusual gap of about half an hour where I wash the dishes.

So what's that? 5 hours sleeping. 6 hours working. Perhaps an hour travelling between clients.

And 12 hours surfing the net.

OK. Bren's away, and things are a bit out of the ordinary, but it's not that out of the ordinary. It's pretty typical. Day in, day out. 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year. All spent in a tiny, cluttered, chaotic and messy box room. Convicted criminals get more space and exercise.

No wonder I'm hitting the bottle. I'm bored shitless. That's part of it anyway. But only part.

Bren, by the way, sits downstairs watching telly. She's so lonely. I feel deeply ashamed of the way I've been treating her.

I also feel ashamed of drinking. This doesn't stop me doing it. It makes me sneaky about it. I try to kid myself that I'm getting away with it. I don't want to get shouted at. I don't want Bren to know how much or how often I do it. I try to kid myself that I'm pulling the wool over her eyes.

Yeah right.

Self respect is an important part of being mentally healthy. Without it, things go horribly out of key.

Shame, guilt. Deception. Self deception. Self loathing.

I've posted this because I want the furtive, underhand shit to stop. Now.

Tonight, I have not had a drink. I have an assessment appointment with the alcohol service on 30th August. This blog will serve as a drinks diary for the next few weeks, and I shall take my laptop along to the assessment. Apart from blogging, I want to drastically reduce the amount of time I spend online.

Life is too short.
driving lessons wallasey driving lessons wirral driving lessons birkenhead driving instructor driving school

While the cat's away...

2011-08-17T10:05:00.000+01:00

Bren is on her annual walking holiday with her mum.

A place called Waddow Hall, near Clitheroe, in Lancashire.

Right now, at ten O'clock on a Wednesday morning, I find that I miss her really badly.

Bren I love you and want you and need you, and I can't wait til you get back.

What's the richest country in the world?

2011-08-17T08:32:00.000+01:00

Ireland, because it's capital is always Dublin.

Aye thang yewe. Take my wife... please.

etc.

What prompted this was a post on a discussion board about tax. This included a table showing what proportion of each nation's GDP was provided by taxation. I wondered if there was a connection between this and quality of life. Loosely there is, albeit with exceptions.

And there, at least in 2005, was the Irish republic, sitting proudly at the top of the pile. I wonder if it still does?

Rank	Country or territory	Quality of Life Score (out of 10)
1	Ireland	8.333
2	Switzerland	8.068
3	Norway	8.051
4	Luxembourg	8.015
5	Sweden	7.937
6	Australia	7.925
7	Iceland	7.911
8	Italy	7.810
9	Denmark	7.797
10	Spain	7.727
11	Singapore	7.719
12	Finland	7.618
13	United States	7.615
14	Canada	7.599
15	New Zealand	7.436
16	Netherlands	7.433
17	Japan	7.392
18	Hong Kong	7.347
19	Portugal	7.307
20	Austria	7.268
21	Taiwan	7.259
22	Greece	7.163
23	Cyprus	7.097
24	Belgium	7.095
25	France	7.084
26	Germany	7.048
27	Slovenia	6.986
28	Malta	6.934
29	United Kingdom	6.917
30	South Korea	6.877
31	Chile	6.789
32	Mexico	6.766
33	Barbados	6.702
34	Czech Republic	6.629
35	Costa Rica	6.624
36	Malaysia	6.608
37	Hungary	6.534
38	Israel	6.488
39	Brazil	6.470
40	Argentina	6.469
41	Qatar	6.462
42	Thailand	6.436
43	Sri Lanka	6.417
44	Philippines	6.403
45	Slovakia	6.381
46	Uruguay	6.368
47	Panama	6.361
48	Poland	6.309
49	Croatia	6.301
50	Turkey	6.286
51	Trinidad and Tobago	6.278
52	Ecuador	6.272
53	Peru	6.216
54	Colombia	6.176
55	Kuwait	6.171
56	El Salvador	6.164
57	Bulgaria	6.162
58	Romania	6.105
59	Venezuela	6.089
60	China	6.083
61	Vietnam	6.080
62	Bahrain	6.035
63	Lithuania	6.033
64	Jamaica	6.022
65	Morocco	6.018
66	Latvia	6.008
67	Oman	5.916
68	Estonia	5.905
69	United Arab Emirates	5.899
70	Libya	5.849
71	Indonesia	5.814
72	Saudi Arabia	5.767
73	India	5.759
74	Paraguay	5.756
75	Jordan	5.675
76	Nicaragua	5.663
77	Bangladesh	5.646
78	Albania	5.634
79	Dominican Republic	5.630
80	Egypt	5.605
81	Algeria	5.571
82	Bolivia	5.492
83	Tunisia	5.472
84	Serbia	5.428
85	Armenia	5.422
86	Azerbaijan	5.377
87	Georgia	5.365
88	Iran	5.343
89	Macedonia	5.337
90	Guatemala	5.321
91	Honduras	5.250
92	South Africa	5.245
93	Pakistan	5.229
94	Bosnia and Herzegovina	5.218
95	Ghana	5.174
96	Kazakhstan	5.082
97	Syria	5.052
98	Ukraine	5.032
99	Moldova	5.009
100	Belarus	4.978
101	Uganda	4.879
102	Turkmenistan	4.870
103	Kyrgyzstan	4.846
104	Botswana	4.810
105	Russia	4.796
106	Uzbekistan	4.767
107	Tajikistan	4.754
108	Nigeria	4.505
109	Tanzania	4.495
110	Haiti	4.090
111	Zimbabwe	3.892

"It's just bigger, that's all..."

2011-08-17T01:12:00.000+01:00

Well here's me, whileing away some time (judicious pausing while I did other stuff)

I took off from Belfast, intending to fly to Liverpool. I actually flew to Blackpool, and followe the coast down. Made a scary but safe landing. Just.

More later. I have to sleep.

choon

2011-08-13T22:05:00.001+01:00

There's only one tune.

The riots.

2011-08-10T22:28:00.006+01:00

Well here goes. An attempt to put something I find complex and baffling into some kind of structured post.

Here are the points I want to make:

The rioters are not in the main fighting for progressive social change.
It's a mix of anger and opportunistic crime
I got bullied regularly by my generation's equivalents of the people that are doing this, and it's hard not to say "Fuck them. Let the police beat them to a pulp"
The liberal, the leftist in me, while condemning them, seeks to understand.Result: I'm confused.
While the rightist response has been depressingly predictable (send in the army, summary executions for looters, any assylum seekers who rioted to be deported, etc) the Left have been trying to justify and condemn it at the same time and occasionally end up looking bloody silly.
The community action against the rioting is generally good, but it's also become a beacon for racists and vigilantes.
Many people want to see this, as everything else as a black and white issue. It isn't.
"Reactionary" means something. It's not always a term of abuse. I understand the emotional footings behind the stated desire to use extreme forms of punishment, but am spending a lot of time attempting to call for more reasoned reactions.
The bigoted and far right elements of the reaction to these events is annoying me more than the events themselves.
The riots could be argued to have been caused by a failure of the left.
That failure was inevitable not because the left is bad, but because the right have won.
Anarchism required an educated populace and a culture of social interaction
Getting to the current atomised and individualistic state took at least a generation. Changing to something different seems likely to need a similar timescale.
The whole thing is utterly fucking depressing.

Well there you go. A structured post. Who'd have thought it?

Unrest in Birkenhead

2011-08-10T04:20:00.001+01:00

So it says on the BBC's online website.

Big deal. There's nothing that unusual about the odd car getting torched or an occasional shop window being smashed.

I suppose there's a half arsed copycat element going on, but it's like the last tinkle of a giant bell falling from its campanile.

The bigger picture is worrying though. What will happen when the energy crisis really kicks in? All these people who feel entitled to do what the fuck they like. Fortunately there have been opposite forces at work too, like the Turkish shopkeepers who ganged together and chased away a band of looters, or the social network coordinated cleanup squads that have been making good at least some of the damage.

If we're going to get through this it can only be by working for and with each other.

Lost and found

2011-08-09T23:16:00.001+01:00

There once was a song on my ipod. I loved it to bits. Then I changed my computer, and in transferring my songs over, somehow the names all got scrambled into 4 letter codes like XXFT and WOYL and QIOR and HIOG and GFIO and UYOI and DFIO and IGOU and YOTX. You get the picture.

All I could remember was the chord structure and snatches of lyrics. Because it was a download, I had no original to refer to. No packaging or anything.

But finally tonight, a google search for a lyric fragment yielded "Gary Higgins" and from there it was a simple matter to find the song.

It's called "I pluck notes from the sky" and it's from a 1973 album called "Red Hash".

Apparently he got busted just as the album was released, which didn't help it's promotion.

The sound quality isn't brilliant. I'm sure the vocals were clearer last time I heard it.

What kind of car do the Kaiser Chiefs drive?

2011-08-08T23:29:00.001+01:00

I predict a fiat.

A more politicised proletariat would have been setting fire to Mayfair. And the police would be using live rounds.

100,000 peaceful but political demonstrators can be controlled. A few hundred opportunist looters are allowed to destroy their communities.

Go figure.

Corporal Clegg

2011-08-08T19:12:00.000+01:00

Has a wooden head.

See earlier article about the maths of growth.

This is a modified screengrab of this page by the way.

It also contains the following quote from George Osborne:

This crisis provides an opportunity to make some difficult trade-offs in favour of growth that might get parked in the 'too difficult' box in calmer times

Now there's a euphemism for "We're going to shaft the poor so that the rich can stay rich if I ever saw one.

Mock the wife

2011-08-02T00:07:00.000+01:00

I don't remember exactly how it came about. I was talking about a lesson I did, and Bren reckoned she'd be good at bay parking, but possibly not as good at parallel parking.

Next thing you know, we're on out way to the test centre. She's driving the car I teach in, and I'm doing a full blown mock test on her.

Now some people you can't teach. I can't teach Bren to drive the way I'd teach my pupils. She already has her own ideas, and the interpersonal dynamic makes it impossible. But the mock is a different ballgame. I'm not trying to teach her anything. I'm just putting her through a set-piece course, playing the role of examiner the best I can, and marking her driving according to the same criteria I'd use on anyone else.

I tend to use the same route (more or less) for each pupil, and I've been doing this job long enough now to know what criteria the examiners use.

Bren was surprised to find she had butterflies in her stomach as we prepared to set off. Nerves did cause her to do certain things differently to how she'd normally do them to some extent, although she never made any directly serious errors.

She did fail the mock test though, because she wasn't checking her blind spot before moving off. She moved off safely each time, but the examiners, at least as far as I'm aware would mark each missed check as a minor fault, and because the same minor fault kept occurring, it became a serious fault.

She also found that the parallel park she thought she'd be OK with was a little more tricky than she anticipated.

This was the cause of much hilarity!

Because she was able to get herself close to and parallel to the kerb with a bit of to-ing and fro-ing, she only got minor faults for this bit, and to be fair, it was a tricky manoevre, because of a parked car on the opposite side of the road limiting the space available, and because a car came, and she felt rushed.

She's not a bad driver by any means. I think the vast majority of drivers, if forced to retake their tests, would fail unless they took a couple of lessons first to get rid of their bad habits.