The embedded video post.

If there's a video I want to watch, without being plagued by adverts, I will post it here.

Where on Earth?

Looking back, I posted about Geoguessr about 12 years ago. It didn't say much. Just a link.

Back then it was free to use, but it was pretty basic, both in itself and because the dataset it was drawing from was more limited.

At some point, partly because google started charging them more to use the data, Geoguessr went from being free to something that you had to pay to subscribe to. So I stopped. A few months ago, I decided I wanted ro play it again, and bought a years subscription.

At some point, it stopped being just the player versus the map and they added a competitive element.

You start at the bottom, as you should. Each tournament lasts for a week, and if you score enough victories, you get promoted through several Bronze divisions through Silver then Gold, then Master. If there's anything above that, I haven't yet got good enough to encounter it.

Once you get to Gold, you are limited to 20 rated games. You can't just spam it until you've collected enough victories.

Once you get to Master, your rank is your rating. I got promoted with a rating in the 600's, and needed to be in the mid 700's to stay up. 

I failed and went back down to Gold I.

Rating seems to be just gaining or losing points regardless of the ranking of the opponent. I think that at the highest levels, it becomes like ELO in chess. Defeat a high rated opponent, and you gain more points than if you defeat someone less exalted.

At the highest levels people take Geoguessr very seriously, and devote many hours to diligent study and practice. They remember every soil type, every region's bollards, the difference between Kazakhstan's bus shelters and Kyrgyzstan's. When Google add a new country, as they have done recently with Vietnam and Nepal, they will dedicate themselves to studying the intricacies. 

Not me though. I'm happy to develop organically, picking stuff up as I go.

No through road signs in Belgium have an extra long tail.

Some roads in Argentina have both yellow and white centre lines.

Northern India and Bangladesh use a Brahmic script with a line across the top. Southern India and Sri Lanka have a different curlier, top line less variant. I struggle to distinguish it from Thai.

And so on. A million little things. Finding language is a big deal. I can only really speak English, along with a smattering of French and Welsh, but I'm learning to distinguish between Portuguese and Spanish, for example, although I can't always understand what is being written. 

Car number plates are a big deal too. These are usually blurred out, but you can distinguish a blue EU stripe or lack of. Italian Reg plates have a blue stripe on both edges not just on the left. Switzerland, not being part of the EU has none. A yellow front plate means Netherlands. Or Israel. Or Luxembourg. Or Columbia. Or UAE. Or Kenya. Or Japan.

The sun is in the south, when you're in the Northern hemisphere. It's less helpful at dawn and dusk. It can also be misleading at tropical latitudes since they oscillate between seasons.

Architecture can offer clues. So can vegetation. A pine forest is going to be found in a different part of Chile than palm trees. The ethnicity of any visible people can be a clue. Even when blurred out, a Brazilian looks different to a Thai, even if their skin is a similar hue.  Commercial brands can help. If you see a sign for Corona beer, you're probably in Mexico. A SafariCom sign probably means you're in Kenya. McDonalds means you could be anywhere.

Knowing the web domains is useful. But is .sl Slovakia? Or Slovenia? I can never remember.

To finish then, I am going to play a static round. 5 images, on NMPZ setting. This means I am unable to move my position, or Pan to look around, or Zoom to read a tiny detail more closely. I will screenshot the five locations. I will then try to explain where and why I think it is where it is. You can click on the pic to make it full size I think.

1...

 It's quite flat and a little more arid than lush. The red soil could mean this is Australia or Brazil or South Africa, but the yellow centre line rules out both of the commonwealth nations. Brazil then? But the yellow and white road marking combo suggests Argentina or Uruguay. The sun is brightest towards the North East making it likely to be Southern hemisphere. The language on the banner does not contain the diacritical marks of Portuguese. So my best guess is northern Argentina. On a road that runs dead straight from South West to North East.

My guess is on Route 89 in Chaco Province, Argentina, between the locations, Fortin Las Tunas and Campo Largo.

2...

With the help of a magnifying glass, I can make out what appears to say "Warning" on the red sign. The centre lines are yellow and the trees are bare. Except for one slightly confusing palm looking tree on the right. The sun appears to be low in the sky and the shadow of the brick pillar seems to point to the North East, meaning the sun is is the south west. So this I think is either Northern USA or Southern Canada. I'm tending towards Canada, because they don't seem to feel the same need to proclaim their identity and patriotic fervour with flags, and here are no flags to be seen in this image.

So I am guessing we are in a town called Peterborough, between Toronto and Montreal.

3...

Rural ones are hard. There really isn't a huge amount to work with here. the sun is in the East and very low in the sky. There are few road markings to work with, and no language. My initial thought was Turkey, but the vibe I'm getting is more South America again. Northern Brazil perhaps, or a flatter part of Columbia. Or once again, Argentina. The rolling arable landscape suggests this. A better player than I would take one look at the utility pole and immediately identify it as being unique to one specific area of North Eastern Patagonia but I'm going for northern Argentina again. 

4.

Europe. That much I'm sure of. The cop car doesn't say "Gendarmerie" or "Police" or "Policia". "Polizei" puts it in Germany or somewhere German speaking (What do Polish police cars look like?) The ornateness of the building on the right in the middle distance suggests Austria, and then looking more closely, also on the right, there is a pole with a red and white sign. The pole itself has red and white bands on it. So I'm going with Vienna.

5.

Diolch Geoguessr. With a bit of time, I should be able to get this pretty much to the metre. It is in Newbridge, Caerphilly, South Wales, UK.  It should be noted that the compass isn't always accurate when playing NMPZ, but if it is in this case, I need to be looking for a north easterly stretch of railway line. 

And after 10-15 minutes of sleuthing? Nothing. So my guess will have to be general rather than specific. 4900 something rather than 5000.

The results? 

1. Right continent, but wrong country. I should have gone with the Red Soil. It was a place in the State of Goias, Central Brazil. I was 951 miles away, and I scored 1793 points out of a possible 5000.

2. Again, correct continent but wrong country. The correct answer was on the outskirts of San Antonio in Texas. The 1513 mile discrepancy won me a meagre 978 points.

3. I couldn't have been much more wrong. I gained 1 point because my guess was 7754 miles away. It's a long way from Northern Argentina to Ballerat, near Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. I should have paid more attention to the vegetation. The eucalyptus was a clue.

4. Well that's more like it. Plonking my pin down on central Vienna, I was just 3 miles from the actual location. I went for Innere Stadt, when I should have been in Ottakring. A feast of 4984 points swells my score nicely.

5. The Caerphilly and railway line combo sent me on the wrong track and I ended up a whole 6.9 miles to the southwest of my target. 4963 points.

I don't usually play NMPZ. Sometimes I will play no move but can rotate and zoom in place to get more info. In the bronze and silver leagues, you are limited to moving only. Promotion to gold allows you to play no moving (can still pan and zoom). If you climb high enough, you can play ranked duels on the NMPZ setting.

The scoring system works as follows: Each guess is graded from 0 to 5000 points. Each game is 5 rounds. 

To get Platinum you need 25000 points - within yards for each location. I've got close on "World" and have achieved it once on the UK map. It took hours. In tournament play, when your time is limited to the time it takes for your opponent to make a guess plus 15 seconds, I've had one 5k score. That was in a small town in Greenland. There aren't that many to choose from, and they're pretty much all on the southern coast. 

22500 and above is Gold. 15000 and above is silver. 5000 and above is bronze. so an average of 1000 per round gets bronze, 3k gets silver 4.5k gets gold, and 5k gets the top award,

My total score was a solid bronze, pushing towards silver - 12719 points. One terrible guess, two mediocre guesses and two good guesses. For NMPZ, I'm happy with that.

Renegade

Fifteen months ago I started therapy.

It was hard. Confronting things that I had buried for many years was hard, and it took several sessions to even start to open up.

 

I came out of the other side of this knowing myself a whole lot better. I've spent the last 9 or 10 months processing.

 

The therapist diagnosed me with PTSD.

 

I'll go into the cause of the trauma some other time perhaps, but for now, let's just say that at some point, decades ago, I built a wall around myself. I walled myself off not just from everyone else but also from myself.

 

Therapy did not in itself seem to change anything, but what was I expecting? For the therapist to wave a magic wand? For things to happen overnight? What follows couldn't have occurred without it.

 

Two days ago, something happened. A music reaction video popped up on my youtube page. 

Not anyone I'd ever heard of, but I started watching it and was quickly drawn in by what I was seeing. 

I've spent a lot of the last 48 hours binge watching other reaction and analysis videos of the same song, and one other song that is three songs. A musical triptych. 

 

The reactors and analysers are musicians, cinematographers, youth justice advocates, psychoanalysts, therapists, composers and songwriters, voice and acting coaches... 

 

Each reviewer had their own take, and by looking at these two videos, each with its own applicability to my situation and history, multiple times through the eyes of such various people, I felt something that I'd sometimes glimpsed during therapy fall into place.

 

Here is the first video they were reacting to: 

 

 

 

What struck me so profoundly was the monologue at the end, where Ren described his struggles as a dance, rather than a war to be won. Somehow framing it in this way made things much simpler. 

Watch the videos. Take the time to learn the back story of the artist, and you will perhaps understand why. 

 

The detailed, introspective post I've been struggling to motivate myself to write for the last two months isn't needed, and would anyway be a depressing, turgid affair. 

 

 

This is the second video. 

 

 

 

This one made me realise I'm not as singular as I thought. Of the three characters in the story, the one I relate to is Violet. Someone once described me as "The man with no opinions" 

 

Unlike Violet, I was not sexually abused by my father. 

 

Because of the trauma, I have made many mistakes, and have carried a burden of guilt and self hatred for a long time, but it feels like there is a crack in the wall at last, and a big broad chink of sunlight is coming through.

 

I, like Ren, am finally starting to stand on my own two feet. 

  

Hearts and minds

I planned to start blogging again, but with a different format. One long form post on the first day of each month.

Yesterday though my Dad was rushed into hospital because his heart was only beating 32 times per minute.

I knew what my post today was going to be. I had the topic, the structure, many of the actual words, but my attention has been diverted.

I visited him this evening. He's ok. For now. He will be 86 in October if he makes it that far. He will be fitted with a pacemaker, and could live for a good few years yet perhaps. The old fucker seemed indestructible, and this is only the third time in 85 years that he has spent a night in a hospital.

We plan golf.

Anyway, today was going to be a big long mainly coherent post about... Well something important to me.

It's now tomorrow, and I have missed my self imposed deadline.

So here instead is a seemingly unconnected video that is sort of relevant. The issues I wanted to deal with aren't going away, and a month makes no difference. See you on the 1st of September.

Acronyms

DOB: 1967

CND: 1981

THC: 1982

NUM 1983

PTSD:  1984

LSD: 1995 

M: 2004

ADI:2005 

S: 2020

It's the end of The World as we know it

And I feel fine.

This is my last post here.

Because I've started to include mature content that sometimes pertains to people close to me, I've set up a new blog under a different account.

Thanks for reading.

Bye bye.

How long would it take Voyager 2 to stop?

According to the Highway Code, stopping distances are as follows.

Thinking Distance (feet)	Braking Distance (feet)	Overall Stopping Distance	Ratio
(Speed in MPH)	(speed x ratio)	(TD + BD)
10	5	15	0.5
20	20	40	1
30	45	75	1.5
40	80	120	2
50	125	175	2.5
60	180	240	3
70	245	315	3.5
80	320	400	4
90	405	495	4.5
100	500	600	5

These figures were arrived at through research carried out by the government in the 1930's. A car would be driven. A signal would be given and at that precise moment, a blob of paint was fired onto the road beneath the car. After a short interval, the driver would react, and start the process of stopping the car. As soon as the brake was pressed, another blob of paint was fired. Then finally, a third blob was fired at the point where the car finally stopped. Repeat at different speeds... It loosely fitted the pattern shown above, and was adopted as the accepted figures. Modern brakes, tyres and suspension, as well as such things as anti lock brakes mean that the braking distances are much shorter, but they've kept the original figures presumably so that it includes a safety margin. So when you hear the police say "It would have taken this vehicle the length of two football pitches to stop" they're using this formula. It's also velocity squared divided by 20 by the way.

Voyager two is travelling at around 34,000mph. This squared is 1,156,000,000. Divide that by 20 and you get 57,800,000. That's your braking distance in feet. Thinking distance, assuming the stopping would be carried out by a driver with normal capabilities would be a further 34,000 feet for a total overall stopping distance of 57,834,000 feet. That's 10,953 miles. I'm not sure what that is in football pitches.

This assumes a dry road, obviously. Braking distances can double in very wet conditions, and it can take up to ten times longer to stop when driving on ice.

driving lessons in North Wirral? learn to drive in Hoylake? driving instructor in Birkenhead?

The Wall

There was a big firework display this evening. It was quite impressive. What I noticed though was that it was creating a lightshow on the wall behind me. So while everyone else was watching the fireworks, I was staring at a wall.

I video'd it. My phone's camera doesn't perform well on low light settings, and I didn't have time to start looking for anything better, but you get something of the effect. The best bits start at 0 seconds (flickers), about 45 seconds (aurora), about 1m40 (schizoid strobing rectangles), and about 4m30 (ghostly pale stuff).

driving lessons in North Wirral? learn to drive in Hoylake? driving instructor in Birkenhead?

When "rear end" becomes a verb...

Yup. Rear-ended again. First one for a few years, so I suppose I was about due. This one was a at a T junction rather than a roundabout, for a change. The underlying cause is the same. Driver behind looking to see what's coming from the right before the person in front of them has gone.

Oh and this time, it looks like the woman that smacked into us was uninsured.

Marvellous.

driving lessons in North Wirral? learn to drive in Hoylake? driving instructor in Birkenhead?

Day One...

Got on the train at new Brighton. Just before we were due to go, all the lights went out. The train went nowhere. Eventually, a guard came through the train explaining that there were children on the line near grove road, and that the power had been turned off. It took around an hour for the service to be resumed. So I got to Liverpool crown court at about 10:30, about an hour late. No problem. I had phoned the court to explain my situation, and they said that was ok.

Finding the right entrance took a bit of exploring and several wrong doors. I was scanned and someone came down and took me up to the jurors bit of the court. A big concourse filed with chairs and tables. A small cafe charged too much for food and drink. Toilets, wifi that I can't get on, and games books and magazines all available . Expenses are complicated because I am self employed.

And now I wait. There is a rooftop outdoor area where you can't smoke. It does not explicitly prohibit vaping though, so I will go outside from time to time and vape away unless someone tells me not to. You can see Birkenhead through a gap in the glass walled blocks. There is quite a lot of construction going on in Liverpool. Cranes punctuate the skyline, their jibs maneuvering girders and buckets of concrete. Window cleaners clean windows, fearless in their cradles.

It's interesting to people watch. People are sat by themselves, plugged in to some mobile thing or other, or they read. Many wear headphones. Some people have formed into groups. They talk, laugh. Occasionally there is an announcement over the speakers. Everyone goes quiet. Sometimes it's an explanation of something. Occasionally, it's to call a list of people into court. Everyone listens carefully. My name has not been called yet.

Another list of names. Mine is not among them. And again.

And then it is. Twenty five of us are led up to an empty courtroom. 18 men and 7 women. We are given pens and notepads. There are bibles with oath cards before us. An usher gives each of us a questionnaire. This tells us a little about the case, and asks us if we know any of the people involved. It informs us that the trial is expected to last for about two weeks, but with an outside chance of a further, third week. It will involve reading a lot of financial documents.

A fraud case then. No murders or rapes or anything that will require us to see pictures of mutilated babies or hear distressing accounts of screams and sudden appalling silences.

The twenty five of us are led to another court room. A bewigged judge thanks us for our attendance. We look at the defendant and he looks at us. We do not know each other. A couple of us are excused as they have some connection with the plaintiff. Another because he might have struggled to understand the complexities of the documentation .

A court official shuffles the remaining names. I am the second person to be called. After the twelve seats are filled, a further three names are called. Reserves. One of us good people and true might break a leg. Everyone but me swears to be a good juror on the bible. I am the sole affirmer. By now it's about one o'clock . We adjourn for lunch with instructions to return by 2:15.

I am back in the jury concourse , with a belly full of crisps and sandwich from tesco. More people are talking now. They've had time to break down barriers. The boredom unites them. They have something in common to talk about. It is two o'clock . Almost time.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

And of the afternoons events, I can't say too much. It was taken up almost entirely by a monologue from the crown prosecutor setting out its side of the story. We had big ring binders with all sorts of documentary evidence in them, and we were directed to particular sections and pages from time to time. The prosecutor was finished by around twenty to four, and after the judge had gone through what had been said, we were free to go. 

On that basis, without hearing the defence, the bastard is guilty as hell.

driving lessons in North Wirral? learn to drive in Hoylake? driving instructor in Birkenhead?

The Five Two Diet

I found myself tipping the scales at around 15 stone. Before I became an instructor I was more like about 11.5 stone. That's what you get for eating crap and sitting on your arse all day. And when I got home from a long day's seat warming, I'd be too tired to do much.

But I said to myself, "When I hit 15 stone, I will do something about this."

There are other reasons too, but that's another story.

Anyway, I'm doing the five two diet. You eat normally (or better still,  sensibly) five days a week, then limit your calorific intake to around 500-600 calories two days a week. These days should not be consecutive.

So I started on Tuesday. My next "two" day is tomorrow, so I'm preparing this evening by gathering up the ingredients I will eat tomorrow.

When I try to look stuff up online, it seems mainly to tell me how many calories I would need to gain, maintain or lose weight, but doesn't really allow me to input a food and a weight and to find out how many calories that contains. I'm sure there are such sites and apps out there but I haven't come across one yet.

Instead, I am looking at what ingredients I have, asking the  internet about these specific foods, and collating the results on this post, so that I have an easy reference.

Per 100g                                            Calories

Carrot                                                     41.35
Onion                                                     40.00
Mushroom                                              22.00
Beetroot                                                  46.64
Celery                                                     16.01
Hot Chilli                                                40.00
Potato                                                      77.00
Capsicum                                                40.00

That's what I have at the moment, although I might get some more things this evening after I finish teaching. Weigh out stuff so that it adds up to 600 calories, chop it up and throw it in a pan with some water for half an hour then whizz it into soup with a whizzer. Then tomorrow whenever I feel like eating, I will have a bowl of the stuff, reheated. When it's gone it's gone.

I wonder if hot food contains more calories than cold food?

Answer: Yes, but only to a negligible degree.

driving lessons in North Wirral? learn to drive in Hoylake? driving instructor in Birkenhead?

Me Vs Youtube

A while back, youtube banned the use of adblockers. I've been watching the thumbnails instead. I was clearly not the only one because they then stopped the thumbnails from autoplaying. This must have led to a backlash so they reversed their policy, but now they've removed the ability to click on the time bar on the thumbnails. So you have to sit through the bits you dont want. Anything to worsten the experience so that we're more likely to watch the ads or buy the premium. 

But I dont want to do that. 

So I have repurposed this old post so that if there's a vid i want to watch, I can embed it here. Can't full screen it from here, but it is bigger than the thumnail version, and I can skip around the timeline.

A minor and possibly temporary victory against the ravages of late stage capitalism.

Jury Service

A letter came. I have been selected for jury service in August.

Should be interesting.

driving lessons in North Wirral? learn to drive in Hoylake? driving instructor in Birkenhead?

Backgammon and the world cup (and probably lots of other things as well)

There is something called the FIBS rating.

http://www.bkgm.com/articles/McCool/ratings.html

It's a weighted ratings system. A player with a low rating will see their rating rise higher if they beat a player with a high rating than they would if they won a match against a low rated player. There are other factors too. The main one being the match length. Winning a match played over a series of games, with the winner being the first to amass 21 points would yield a bigger ratings gain for the winner than a match against the same opponent that was played over 1 or 3 points.

Backgammon is more like poker than chess. It's not about pure skill. There is an element of luck too. A good player will beat a bad one most of the time, especially over a series of games. Yet perfect play will sometimes be confounded by mediocrity combined with luck. It's all about probabilities, and making the optimal play, so that you maximise your own chances of a useful throw of the dice, while doing your best to minimise your opponents options.

Meanwhile, of course, your opponent is trying to do the same thing to you.

Once you reach a certain level, and can play the best possible move every time (which no human ever does, although computers increasingly can) if you meet an opponent that is equally skilled, it becomes a matter of luck.

The human factor dictates style. For example, if an attacking option and a defensive option both present themselves, each offering some balancing factors of risk and/or reward, one player might choose the aggressive play, while another might make more conservative choices. Each may prevail. That's the game.

Watching England play against Tunisia last night, I couldn't help feel that against a better team, (and if it had been chess, rather than backgammon, England would prabably have won 4 or 5 - 1 )given the same luck, they would have struggled.

driving lessons in North Wirral? learn to drive in Hoylake? driving instructor in Birkenhead?

Song for me

driving lessons in North Wirral? learn to drive in Hoylake? driving instructor in Birkenhead?

3 letters

One of the things I have been thinking about is "What combination of three letters has the most permutations?"

For any group of three letters, there are six different combinations. For example...

ABC
ACB
BAC
BCA
CAB
CBA

That's just an example, and it yields just one legitimate English word, CAB, unless BAC is also a word.

I've not found a group that makes words in any order.

Or five.

I've found one that makes four:

SAP - ASP - SPA - PAS (the last word is a dance step closely derived from French but it's in the dictionary)

Here are some that make three:

APT - PAT - TAP
ART - TAR - RAT
TOP - POT - OPT
ERE - REE - ERE
ERA - EAR - ARE

It would be easier if I included acronyms.

driving lessons in North Wirral? learn to drive in Hoylake? driving instructor in Birkenhead?

Your money or your life

I call this the highwayman fallacy.

"Or" is a logical signifier.

To take the highwayman's words literally, you can either give him the money, or he will kill you, but leave you with the money.

So it should really be "Your money, or your money AND your life.

Just sayin'

driving lessons in North Wirral? learn to drive in Hoylake? driving instructor in Birkenhead?

Living on an island...

When you look at Wirral, it's basically a rectangle, and that's how people tend to think of it. But it's a bit more complicated than that. Wallasey, on the top right corner, is almost cut off from the rest of it by the system of docks that run from the River Mersey through Birkenhead and up towards the Irish Sea. There are only 5 roads in and out.

Road 1. Leasowe Road, takes traffic from the North Coast of Wirral, Moreton, Leasowe, Meols, Hoylake, West Kirby into Wallasey Village.

Road 2. This takes traffic from the North of Birkenhead, with a lot of the stuff carried by road 1, and any traffic from the M53 into Wallasey.

Roads 3,4 and 5 all take traffic across bridges over the docks. 3 takes some of the M53's traffic and North Birkenhead. 4 takes stuff from the middle of Birkenhead. 5 Takes central Birkenhead, and anything coming up the A41 from Eastern Wirral - Tranmere, Bromborough, Rock Ferry, Bebington, etc.

Between 3 and 5, the docklands are being prepared for redevelopment. They have big plans for this area, which has been pretty much unused for the last couple of decades.

So they've been replacing the bridge over road 5. What should have taken a few months has now taken well over a year, and they're still not done. So all the traffic that would normally go through road 5 is being funneled through the other routes, mainly road 4. At rush hour, all of these routes become gridlocked. I'd like to humbly suggest that putting some kind of temporary structure in place, like a pontoon or something, might have been useful. When this work is finished, they will be replacing the bridge over road 4.

Over the last couple of weeks, there have been roadworks causing long delays on road 2. (They're putting traffic lights in) For the last couple of days, a burst water main caused the closure of road 3.

I shall leave it to your imagination as to the effects. Road 3 has now reopened, but not everyone knows about this, so people are still avoiding it.

The bridges themselves, taking roads 4 and 5 across the docks, are quite interesting. They're single leaf bascule bridges with a curved rack intersecting a flat stretch of pinion on the side of the roadway. The leaf is balanced by a counterweight, which means the bridge needs relatively little energy to move.

Picture credit: Rept0n1x 

The bridges date from the 1930's, and both the Tower Road (Road 5) and Duke Street (Road 4) will be replaced by something that involves hydraulics and pistons and what have you. There will be one left, spanning two unused sections of dock. I'm glad about that. This type (known as a rolling bascule) is actually quite rare. They're a part of our industrial heritage, and have allowed ships and cars (and trains) to traverse the docks for close to a century.

driving lessons in North Wirral? learn to drive in Hoylake? driving instructor in Birkenhead?

Limerick.

There was an unfortunate painter

Who's work became fainter and fainter.

He started in black, but pigments he lacked

Until he had nothing but

driving lessons in North Wirral? learn to drive in Hoylake? driving instructor in Birkenhead?

"Selfish" and "Introvert" are not synonyms.

I'm thinking of asking my GP if I can be tested to see if I'm on the autistic spectrum. I think I probably am. But why bother? It's not like anything can be done about it.

Well, the thing is, I've done many stupid things over the years, and sometimes I've hurt other people around me. Not out of malice, but because I just didn't know how to do stuff, like relate to other people.

There is a psychic cost to such things. I feel a lot of guilt about some of the events that have occurred in my life. I don't know if being diagnosed as Aspergers would help, but it would certainly help explain.

In other news, My Dad is still waiting for a diagnosis/prognosis. It's probably Non Hodgkins Lymphoma by the looks of things. He's had that for a good few years now too. The medical opinion when he was first diagnosed was that he'd probably be dead before it killed him. For now we wait for more news.

Oh, and I've had a couple of people pass their tests. One particular sequence I'm pleased to see the end of.

driving lessons in North Wirral? learn to drive in Hoylake? driving instructor in Birkenhead?