Winston Smith

Wake up and smell the coffee. As I sit here at 07.54 drinking my morning coffee it is apparent that this is the new normal. There is no going back. Furlough until October Country bankrupted Empty office buildings No return to travel Resistance is futile. People really don't give a shit that this is happening. Rather the fear has made them embrace it. I've given up worrying about it now. I've come to realise most people in this country wont bother reading documents, or doing any research...

Just a random write today. It's been a while since I've composed anything. Today is a new day and I'm just going to write. I don't know what I 'm going to write about, but here are some words: Gratitude Don't be afraid, everything is going to be alright. The world is turning to shit. I am one of the people who thinks the government is out to screw us all. But so what I guess. Does it really matter in time? Will I really care? I maybe need to start a gratitude diary. You know what I will. Rig...

I bought a 2010 11 inch MacBook Air. It's old and it's slow, but I love it. Here's why: It's tiny The 11 inch MacBook is perfect for my needs. It's totally portable. Not much bigger than a large tablet. I can take it pretty much anywhere. I can travel. I'm a nomad and this form factor is perfect for me. I thought I'd struggle with the smaller screen compared to my 13inch work MacBook. Not so. I love the tiny screen, which forces me to run apps in full screen and focus on the task at hand. ...

I am a futurist. Here's the definition of from wikipedia: Futurists are people whose specialty or interest is futurology or the attempt to systematically explore predictions and possibilities about the future and how they can emerge from the present, whether that of human society in particular or of life on Earth in general. I had the moment of enlightenment that I'm a futurist over the past few weeks. I noticed a few of my friends and family have been calling me a conspiracy theorist. Yep...

Part one is a opinion piece. Part two is the start of a dystopian novel. Part One An opinion piece on the situation today. Questions are powerful. We are being told not question anything (more on that for another day - misinformation is a crime). Here are some questions I had recently, the futurist that I am: Is there a economic shift from the old inefficient closed loop economies of consumption to digital? Is second life the new normal as we transition to a new virtual reality? Are our eco...

Talk about moving the goal posts. This is how the narrative went: This is no threat carry on We need herd immunity Protect the NHS by flattening the curve R0 value needs to be ? ""Keeping the R down is going to be absolutely vital to our recovery. And we can only do it by our collective discipline and working together." - Boris What a load of tosh. They are literally just throwing new excuses to keep us locked in our homes. People are waking up to the fact that the mortality rate is jus...

I'm calling it now. We will see controlled opposition. Cue centre stage - extinction rebellion. These guys have been very quiet for nearly a year now. I always thought there was something inherently odd about this group. For many reasons. Firstly their founders - Roger Hallam - researching a PHD on ways for campaigns to maximize political participation and mobilization. Gail Bradbrook - A molecular biophysicist by training, working for Citizen Online in 2003 she deals with the charity’s ind...

Talk about moving the goal posts. This is how the narrative went: This is no threat carry on We need herd immunity Protect the NHS by flattening the curve R0 value needs to be ? ""Keeping the R down is going to be absolutely vital to our recovery. And we can only do it by our collective discipline and working together." - Boris What a load of tosh. They are literally just throwing new excuses to keep us locked in our homes. People are waking up to the fact that the mortality rate is jus...

If you feel like a minority and your voice is not being heard. If you are passionate about something you believe is wrong that is unfolding before your eyes, is that no the time to shout about it. If your views are being ridiculed and labeled conspiracies and you If now is not the time then when? There is a time when this blog may be subject to a fine Think about that for a second. Here is a small piece of cyberspace with nothing but words. Words typed into a computer by a human with severa...

Right vs Left - Divide and Conquer Politics is the new religion of the west. It's so divisive it blows my mind. Left Vs Right. It's how many people identify their entire existence. It's how they define the enemy. It's how they call out people they hate. It's absolutely bonkers. I'm sure if someone interviewed my philosophy they would uncover many right wing views of less government control and deregulation, but paradoxically believe access to good healthcare is a fundamental right of all citiz...

Dreaming of drones I have fairly vivid dreams, but don't always remember them. I had a dream last night and it scared the shit out of me. The dream wasn't that scary as such, I've probably had worse nightmares. The reason the dream scared the shit out of me was because it shows how the situation is permeating into my very psyche. A dream is a succession of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations that usually occur involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep. I was in a garden...

Dear citizen of the world this is your government speaking. Here is the new lexicon on words that shall be forever ingrained in your brain. Please pay attention! Social distancing Contact tracing Misinformation Died of Furloughed Lockdown Community Guidelines Unprecedented times Non essential worker National effort NHS Overwhelmed Flatten the curve Coronavirus We are all in this together   These are unprecedented times and only through Social Distancing can we Flatten the Curve and prevent t...

There is no other news in the world right now. What was in the news before Coronavirus? What was life like before Coronavirus? Did it all matter? When all this is over I plan to watch a lot less news. I'm currently glued to my screen, searching for bits of news, little hints of what's to come. This guessing game is not healthy. It makes you realise how unimportant the news is in "normal times". Why are people so obsessed? When you look around you at your little patch of land and you small circle...

That is a pretty deep question. I think that of course humanity has changed over the millennia. We are a very different species to what we were when we were in caves, or building the pyramids, or going to war in Europe. But there are still some fundamentals that have prevailed over that time. Two that I think are essential to being human: Privacy Freedom of speech Both of these are being eroded massively. On privacy, I have no doubt we will see some measure being brought in for contract tr...

Yesterday I installed Signal Messenger on my phone and I have to say I'm pretty impressed. I would really love to get WhatsApp out of my life. I don't trust facebook at all and I'm convinced there is a backdoor to it. I've never understood how it can play youtube videos and show little previews of websites and still be encrypted. But then I just don't get the tech, there are plenty of documents that show that WhatsApp is. There are two things that are holding me back from moving. The obvious on...

Is it wrong of me to find this pretty distasteful? Maybe I'm a heartless bastard, but I think when people are dying in hospital or patients being deprived of operations or cancer treatments, it's at best a bit insensitive to be dancing in wards in hospital. There was one of the nurses and doctors spinning around on a MRI scanner that's been dormant. Bad taste - do that at home, not it your protective gear just to get in on the TIkTok challenge. Pretty sad that the NHS are actually promoting this...

Last night I watched the Starlink rocket pass overhead. What a sight that was. It took 22 minutes to pass from Florida to the UK. That's pretty astounding and it was awe inspiring to watch. By the time it got to the UK it was pretty small, it looked a bit like a plane, but it was pretty obvious it wasn't. We were lucky that it was a beautiful and clear night. It was dusk and blue hour, which made it a really perfect sight. It passed by in around 30 seconds, carved a perfect line through the sky...

I have truly had it with cloud storage services after me last experience of PCloud. This on the surface seemed like a good service. However it's just been a nightmare. Everything from ba syncs to data loss. Honestly I've been thinking this for some time, but I'm just gonna buy a couple of portable hard drives and have that as my back-up service. On the face of it PCloud was decent. Good value for the year, a fairly decent app and the desktop virtual drive seemed to work ok. In fact that was ...

I decided to bail out of the gig. I'd rather have stayed at home than have a two hour round trip to London. A shame as it would have been a nice evening out. I lied and made the excuse that the trains were messed up. I also went to buy a ticket so I could claim my £45 per diem. That is a bit naughty but I don't really care. This company screws people over and I haven't had a pay rise in nearly two years. Well that's unless you count the £400 a year rise I got. So we stayed in and had a had a c...

I really feel totally unmotivated by things at the moment. Especially work.. Life just feels terribly unfulfilling. I don't even feel like I want a career any more. Technology is pissing me off - it's too complicated Social media is pissing me off - it's so unauthentic Egos at work are pissing me off - they are total wankers I'm fatter and unfitted than I've ever been The weather is shit and it's dark all the time I don't really have any significant friends I've just returned from Dubai whi...

So the conservatives have smashed the general election. Boris defeated Jeremy and gets to gloat in his victory. I was totally divided on this one, and have become pretty disillusioned with the whole thing. I voted, I decided that I should event though I didn't really want to. I would have voted for the Tories as no way was I voting for Labour. But.... Brexit. I voted to stay in the EU so how could I then vote for a party that was going to smash us out of the EU (although I sort of respect democr...

Yesterday I spent the day shooting in mono. I usually always prefer colour photography, but for some reason yesterday was a black and white day. I think that reflects my mood. I'm not feeling much colour in my life. Infact, as I said yesterday I'm really in a bit of a funk. I know everyone gets like that, but that is unusual for me. That said, I love the mono shots there is something quite nice about stripping back photography to a raw date of commotion, light and form. Sometimes colour just ...

I have no idea why (that's a lie) but I feel like shit today. I'm not sure why I do it to myself. It's been a bad day overall. My car is totally buggered it is now completely covered in mould. I'm probably going to have to get it scrapped. This is pretty depressing. It's a great car, but water leak damage has been a nightmare. I think I'll just make do without a car. We did with only one car for ages. Still pissed me off the garage couldn't find the fault. I'm just so tired today. I skipped fo...

Dubai is a shit hole of a country in my opinion. There is nothing but steel, glass, sand and a load of either A. Pretentious arseholes or B. Modern day slaves. I find the whole place pretty disgusting. Sure the weather is nice in the winter compared to Europe but that is it. Honestly I feel like it could be one of the most overrated places on earth. For me it is also describes everything that is wrong with humanity. A land of building more stuff, spend more money, consume more things. The hypocr...

2019-10-06 Netbook thoughts, plus a family out on their tablets So I'm typing this on my little netbook toy laptop again. Just using a simple notepad text editor. I'll then paste into standard notes. I still like standard notes, but I still prefer plain text files for longevity. They really will be fully functioning in years to come. I also love that I can use any text editor of my choice to edit these files. This works the best for me. I do love standard notes and the encryption it offers, but...

Today I created a encrypted hard drive using Veracrypt. This will be my offline non cloud digital life. Of course, I will need a decent backup plan too. I have decided to do this as I'm fed up with all of my personal data, especially photos being sprayed across the internet into various data servers. Sure here i am blogging in the wild and writing this onto a data centre somewhere out there. But these words are public, I intended them to be that way. I no longer want my personal writing or photo...

Just go offline. There is no need for the cloud for anything. Why the need to share across platforms? This is the safest way to type. Store everything on a single text file happy days. It's more about the process than the actual storage of what you write. Write, just write, worry bout what you are writing about. Except you won't. But maybe you will. Only on your deathbed. Did I write too much, no enough. But did I live? Ain't that the truth? Did I actually live? Or spend my whole life thinking,...

It's a weird one today. I don't feel motivated like I should. I have no idea what is going on with me. I am 100pc going through a midlife crisis I rekon. I'm still writing so that's all good. I'm not reading as much though and that is all bad. I should be reading at least a bit every day. I love it so much, so don't know why I've stopped. I really need to clean up my act a bit. Stop the boozing and bad eating and get healthy. I'm 40 next week for goodness sake. That as far as I'm concerned is b...

I signed-up for Reddit. I had a question on privacy so I decided to sign-up with an anonymous username generated by a random username generator. I've always lurked on reddit, but never posted. My question was answered in seconds which is amazing really. What a great resource it is. I used to love internet forums back in the day, especially before facebook. I was in an online minidisc forum way before most of my friends were online. I had 2000+ posts on that forum and eventually became a mod. I l...

Time is absolutely racing away. It's ridiculous, it really is. I wake an start to type or grab a coffee and half the day has already drifted by. I want to absolutely maximise each day. Each moment is fleeting and it's gone before you know it. That's the thing - maybe I'm trying to fit in too much but cataloging every aspect of my life. What's the point in spending forever cataloging, I never really look back. I only ever look forwards. I should simply shoot photos write text, publish and forget....