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....

Today is a brand new day and I'm going to treat it as such. I plan to get my all of my stuff organised on an external encrypted hard drive. This will be my life. Ok so I'm typing here into the cloud, but I really am thinking about ditching it all together. I've also created a separate anonymous twitter account. I'm really hating having to have my real identity online. I really preferred the days when I had a user handle, not because I was up to no good. Quite the opposite more often. I now hate...

That is a pretty good question. I've been becoming more increasingly introvert and private in my digital life. I'm reigning back from social media almost entirely. Instagram has gone, facebook I don't use anymore and I'm seriously thinking of getting rid of Twitter. Although here I am publishing things to the web. I will do this in a more anonymous way in the future. It's nice to express myself in words and I love the feeling of just me and a keyboard, a blank white screen. It's a pleasure just ...

Up early today 0730 and I'm typing away. I updated my blogger profile: Born and live in England. I've always been a writer and photographer. In early 2019 I decided to put it all in blogspot. I hope they don't kill the platform. I write about everything that is on my mind. It's got to be better here than in my head or a bit of dross on Twitter. I'm not sure I'm even gonna use blogger anymore. I just may self host some text files. That always seems a bit easier. It's absolutely pissing it ...

0740 up with a coffee and writing. This is almost becoming a ritual. I'm sure it's one of my old buddies birthdays today, I can't remember who. I'm a bit rubbish like that. I changed the blog text font to Courier. I don't know why I like to write in this font so much, I just do. It's not a readable as other non-monospace fonts, but I just like it. Maslow's Heierarchy of Needs I've been thinking a bit this morning as I've woken up about Maslow's hierarchy of needs and where I am on the pyramid....

0740 up with a coffee and writing. This is almost becoming a ritual. I'm sure it's one of my old buddies birthdays today, I can't remember who. I'm a bit rubbish like that. I changed the blog text font to Courier. I don't know why I like to write in this font so much, I just do. It's not a readable as other non-monospace fonts, but I just like it. Maslow's Heierarchy of Needs I've been thinking a bit this morning as I've woken up about Maslow's hierarchy of needs and where I am on the pyramid....

0300 woke briefly and wondered where I was. Hot and flustered. Had slept deeply though. I'd had another weird dream but I don't recall it. I'm gonna try and note more of my dreams down. They have to be quite interesting to analyse. 0630 awake again for good. The sun is shinning and it looks like it will be a stunning day. I slept like a log. Refreshed and feeling ready to take on the day. I need to be ready, it's a full on day. Got an award submission to write for work, deadline tomorrow. I'm...

0515 the alarm goes off, but I've barely slept. Perhaps I managed to snatch one hour of solid sleep. Having an Irish coffee midnight was not a great idea. I had planned to just jump in the car and go, but was a bit sweaty overnight, showered and C packed the rest of the luggage. Out of there and into the hire car around 5.50am. A pretty easy drive in all, the roads were almost totally clear untill we got to Alicante. Then we had a quick circle of the airport to find fuel for the hire car. Filled...

Finished reading Unfu*k Yourself: Get Out of Your Head and into Your Life by Gary John Bishop Terrible book, that didn't provide anything insightful to my life. Full of random bit of advice that aren't at all meaningful. Poorly structured so it just feels like a series of random motivational quotes. Maybe this is what people are after these days in a book. It's easy to consume, felt like I was reading an instagram story. At least it was short and over pretty quickly. I should really have g...

0900 up and about. I had a weird dream that I was commuting in a ryanair flight to a small little island, with AJ and Danny, who had forgotten their laptop passwords, but I were going to be able to restore an image. Was a bit of a weird one. Quite vivid from what I recall. Anyway up and about getting some of those valuable sunshine rays. Really not good for the skin I know, but I'm on factor 30 and not really got burnt. Still gonna age me somewhat, sun, booze and too much food. That's what hol...

0915 up and about. Another slightly sore head, but nothing crazy. Heading to the supermarket at 10am shopping list: Beer Water Crisps Tonic Bread / Rolls Cold meat Milk Paella stuff for 10 people All came to 86 euros. Not bad. Wanna live out here for sure, cheap as and great weather. 1130 went to the beach. Rented some sun loungers for 6 euros each. Was pretty windy, noisy and hot, but nice beach. We kinda put our loungers away from the others. Paul an Alla turned up later, we then went fo...

0830 Up and about. A bit groggy, but not too mad. Must have called it a night at around midnight and got a decent night sleep. C cooked eggs for everyone for breakfast and a few coffees later and felt right as rain. The weather is truly beautiful. The villa is great, but there's work next door. Doing the pool area so drilling and cutting all week which puts a bit of a downer on things. Think we got about 300 Euros back as a gesture from the owner. Can't really make up for the place not being as ...

0800 Awake and typing this on my phone in bed. This room is bloody dark. Shutters on windows lead to a great night sleep. I don't know why we don't do this in the UK. Maybe because we just don't have as much sunshine as Spain, so the last thing we want to do is shit it out. We also dont have siestas the Spanish. I know C will want to sleep in, but I want to get up and face the day. I usually shower in the evenings when on holiday, (no point having a shower then hitting the beach to sit in the ...

0530 I'm in a good but not good mood as I wake up (at 0530am bloody hell that's early). I'm in a great mood as I fly to Spain. The weather looks amazing and I can't wait for some chill out time. I'm also a big pissed off as I times it so I'll miss the Europa League Final. That's a real shame as it would have been really nice way to start off the holiday. Instead I'll be negotiating Alicante airport, picking up a hire car and driving an hour north. Only to get to the villa as the match ends and ...

Logged back into Trello. Think I'm going to start using that again for my to-do list. I like todo.txt but I just can't seem to stick with it... I really need to get a bit better organised. There is shit loads going on right now. I've got a lot to get done today. I'm off on holiday tomorrow yesssss! Loads to do, I'm not packed and I'm still doing washing which I'm desperately trying to get dried and outside when it keeps raining. I'm trying to do this all through the backdrop of conference ca...

Today is bank holiday in the UK. This is a good thing, another day off. I damn well work hard enough as it is, I rekon every Monday should be a day off. What happened to the world getting more efficient and moving to a 4 day week. Actually we are all just working harder. On call 24hrs a day in a global economy. The idiots I work with even decided to start a whatsapp group and text me yesterday. What the fuck was that all about. It's a Sunday. The whole point of Sunday is to not have any contact ...

So it's been a pretty crazy week. I am proper glad it's Sunday. Ive just got back from a Sunday morning football kickabout and I'm well pleased the week is done. The exec visit was pretty full on and I'm surprised just how intense it was and how much it stressed me out. 8 Hours of presentations a day. 8am meetings to talk shit and the last day late into the night - home at 2.00am. I think I did ok. I also met a new connection ND and she could help secure a new future in this place. That's encour...

A really decent read which focuses on mental health. I only picked this book up as I'm a big fan of the Series - SAS who dares wins, but it was a good read. It details Jason's mental health challenges caused by PTSD and his road to recovery. There's not much action in this book with only a few details of his service in the forces. The book is well written and moves at a good pace, although some chapters feel a bit repetitive. I'd recommend though. ...

Up and about at 05.50 want an early start to get going and organised. Shaver out of battery so only half shaved. Made the 07.22 train which got me into waterloo at 08.05 waiting to meet A. I thought I'd explore a bit about how I feel heading into this meeting. I feel good and I look pretty good. It's a warm sunny day. That always lifts my spirits. This time of year is beautiful. I really need to get out of bed and go for a run on such a lovely morning. Maybe later in the week, for now I just n...

(aaaaand I'm back) I've lost my access to my listed blog. I uninstalled the extension, but when I re-installed realised I didn't have the unique key to login. Game over. What a shame for that account I was just getting going. Plus I can't go back and edit or delete any of that content. Here's a tip. Don't lose your credentials key you are stuffed if you do. I knew I'd somehow manage to screw something up I usually do. So it's been a pretty decent day so far. Managed to power through most of m...

2019-05-19 It's been one of those days. Our puppy "B" has decided to have her first season. Or at least we think that's what is about to happen. She managed to time it with the busiest week of our year. We had planned to put her into doggy day care. They won't accept here in that condition so it looks like a 3 hour drive to the in-laws to look after. What a right royal pain in the arse. Honestly, like we don't have enough going on, but bless her all the same it's not her fault and she brings so...

It's been one of those days. Our puppy "B" has decided to have her first season. Or at least we think that's what is about to happen. She managed to time it with the busiest week of our year. We had planned to put her into doggy day care. They won't accept her in that condition so it looks like a 3 hour drive to the in-laws to look after. What a right royal pain in the arse. Honestly, like we don't have enough going on, but bless her all the same it's not her fault and she brings so much joy to ...

Today I have no plans. I have a full on week next week. Some of the senior execs are over from the US. Plus a new boss. This is causing me some anxiety. I've been in this situation a many times before but the pressure is on like never before. I've got to finish my presentation for the meetings. I refuse to work today though. Not on a Sunday. I'll blast it out tomorrow and absolutely nail it. I'll write more on that situation tomorrow. Today is a new day, time is running away. I've got to get ...

Dear listed, I have no idea what the etiquette is for posting more than once a day here. This isn't twitter after all. So I don't really want to turn this into a microblog - tiny little tweets. But why would that matter even if I did? It seems to me that this is a place for sharing life texts. Life thoughts. If those happen to be twice a day then so be it. My own personal 100 days of writing doesn't mean that I only write once a day. (Frankly I skipped a day as work was so busy, I'm not countin...

On Sunday the vets footy team I'm part of won the league title. Currently unbeaten over 13 games with one game to go. I contributed a this season. Always coming off the bench. Sometimes for only for 10 mins, sometimes longer. Thoughts on Winning the league A league season is totally different to a one off game. I know that sounds obvious, but it galvanises a team, makes training more fun and provides a long term goal. The comradery in football is second to none. There simply is nothing lik...

So the footy season is over, both for me as a player and the English Premier League. There's still the champions league to go and the FA cup, but the league is done. I play in a vets football team. That is a team of players over 35. That means we are all falling apart physically, but we are all super competitive. We've already won the league, but we were playing Ash a team of physical and tough players. We wanted to finish on a high. We'd won every game of the season so far. We wanted to win ev...

Just finished reading Filth by Irvine Welsh (spoilers). This is a good book, and very dark. It lives up to the blurb of having themes of sexism, racism and other pretty offensive topics. The main protagonist is a disgusting human. The crude antics he gets up to involving drugs, sex and other immoral behaviour are pretty nasty. He's a scheming and devious arsehole that you wouldn't want to meet. Doesn't sound that positive for a role in a book and why read? Well, I like a dark book occasional...

Dear friends, This really feels like freedom. This platform. At least that's what I think right now as I'm kinda happy for a place that I can write and share. I've been reading a few of the other blogs hosted here. It's nice that I see many are in some ways anonymous. That's the draw for me. Not because I have some clandestine reason to be here. Just the home page rings a bell for me: You worry less about how others will perceive your words, and more about feeling fulfilled that you shar...

I had two very kind folks comment in my guestbook today. I've only just got started, on this platform so:- Wow - thank you :) It gave me an absolute positive lift and confirmed that this is a great place for me to put my writing online. I thank you for your considered kind words. Positive comments, thank you so much, you made my day. But also, it makes me ponder about what I am trying to achieve here... It isn't guestbook entries, just because i get a little tingle of love from the guestbo...

I've been struggling on with my old Kindle for ages. It's a beaten up old Kindle wifi. It works a treat though so why upgrade? I must have spent hundreds of hours with this device. Good and fulfilling hours too, not like my phone. I want to upgrade as I want a backlight so I can read a kindle in bed rather than using my phone (which I use now for either for the kindle app, or just pissing around on the web). I've seen some Kindle Paperwhites on ebay for around £40. That's pretty reasonable w...

One Hundred Days Of Writing Largely inspired by standard notes and this blog post: https://listed.standardnotes.org/@Listed/5202/100-day-writing-challenge I've also been inspired by a few others: 750 Words That dude that wrote 1000, 1000 word essays Morning pages Every other site on journaling I am starting a journey here today of writing every day for one hundred days. Today is day one, let's see how long it lasts. I think I will easily be able to write every day - the challenge will be 1...

I've been using standard notes for a nearly a month now and really love it. It's secure, encrypted, minimal and just works for me. I've only just discovered that it has a publishing option too. This is pretty neat. I'm going to give this a bash as a blog or more like a microblog as a way to publish stuff easily. This is my first post on Listed. It's a place where I can publish a load of text to the web from a note taking app. I wonder if markdown works? Yep Or Nope Yes it does. So t...