Winston Smith

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 ...