Category Archives: General

The lazy hazy days of Winter

A Pipe and a Keyboard Posted on by

Today must be unique.

For the first time since I started working back in the ‘60s, I have no work as such to do.

I have a couple of projects still floating around, but they are more or less complete.  I still have some business bookwork to do, but that can take its time.

I have had periods before when I had no work on hand, where I managed to grab myself a week or two [or more] of relaxation before the next project arrived, but this time I have made the ultimate decision.

I am not taking on any more.

I have had enough of web design and web development.  At my stage in life, it is a hassle I can do without.  I will keep up the web hosting for the time being, as it only causes occasional trouble, and anyway I need somewhere to park my sites.  If an existing client wants work done, I will consider it.

So the week stretches ahead and I can relax.  If I take a good mood, I might do some writing.  If I take a bad mood, I’ll send out some invoices.

Life ain’t all that bad!

Hectic

A Pipe and a Keyboard Posted on by

Bless me, Blogworld, for I have sinned.
It is a week since my last posting…..

Life has been a bit on the hectic side for the last week or so.

First of all, I was coerced into redoing all the graphics on Head Rambles.  He seems to be happy enough with it for the moment, so that should give me some peace.

Then there was a rush to finish off a couple of sites.  They are nearly ready for launch at this stage which is a major relief as neither was an easy job.  This was made all the more difficult by the health, which has not been good.

I have been pretty much laid up for the week, alternating between bursts of work and naps in the armchair.  To make matters worse, Grandad has been driving us mad with that flaming book.  He had a newspaper interview and his radio interview and he won’t shut up about them.  He is really doing my head in.  God help us if the national press get involved!

To cap it all, he insisted that I stay up late the other night to record his fecking interview which was a classic example of pouring salt in the wound.

In fairness to Declan Mehan who did the radio interview, he did mention my name as the author of the book, but even then that bastard Grandad dismissed me, on air, as just being a nobody who does the typing.

Quite frankly I am sick of this.

I think it’s time to kill Grandad.

The start of spring

A Pipe and a Keyboard Posted on by

So Christmas is finally over.

Technically we should have removed the decorations a few days ago, but we sort of forgot.  It’s amazing how even after a few days, things become part of the scenery and you don’t notice them any more.  That’s the way it was with the decorations.  It wasn’t until one of the ceiling streamers fell onto the guinea pig that we realised they were still up.

I don’t know if it’s a coincidence or not, but now that everything is packed away and the house is back to its usual scruffy self, the weather seems to have become warmer.  Is there a correlation between mean daily temperatures and the decor in this house?  It wouldn’t surprise me.

I’m not a winter person.  I hate it, to be honest.  Its only redeeming feature is that it is followed immediately by spring, which is my favourite time of year.

Spring seems to be showing its face particularly early this year.  Already the snowdrops and the daffodils are showing, and the sap is rising in the trees.  Even the birds seem to be friskier than usual.

One of the few things I do like about the winter is our weeping birch.  This is a magnificent specimen tree at the best of times, but in winter it takes on a different aura.

We floodlit it.

floodlit

Not a very good photograph, but it was freezing at the time, and I wasn’t going to hang around.

You must admit – it looks nice and mysterious.  The little statue fountain adds to the mystique.  Looking out on that scene is one of the little pleasures of winter.

It is out

A Pipe and a Keyboard Posted on by

Today is a huge day in my life.

It isn’t different from any other day.  I’m doing more or less the same things.  It isn’t my birthday or any anniversary.  Nothing has significantly changed about me or my home.

In some ways this is a day I have been dreaming of for a significant part of my life.  It is a day I never thought would ever happen, and that it only existed in my idle fantasies.

But it has happened.

I haven’t had official confirmation yet, because we are caught up in holidays and weekends when people are careless about going into the office, so I am assuming that everything has gone to plan.

Today is the day “Headrambles” leaves the printers and should shortly be appearing on the bookshelves.

I always dreamed of being an author.  About thirty five years ago, I even went on a night course (‘Creative writing for beginners’) but of course nothing ever came of it.  Since then. I have had my idle dreams, but never thought anything would happen.

I don’t expect the book to be a best seller.  If sales run to more than three figures, I’ll be delighted.  That isn’t important.

What is important to me is to walk into my local bookshop and browse the shelves,

and to see my name on a book there.

Pumping oil

A Pipe and a Keyboard Posted on by

The saga of the PC continues.

To those of you who aren’t technically minded, think of my old PC as being an oil tanker.

My tanker went on the rocks, the hull was damaged and the engines were completely smashed.

Is it now a useless tanker?

No.  Because the oil is still on board.  But the engines are smashed so there is no power to pump the oil off.

What I needed was another ship that could sail up to the taker and using its power, pump the oil off.   So I spent the last few days scouring the Internet for software that I could mount onto a CD or DVD that could access my one remaining hard disk.

I found the software/ship that I needed, and my files/oil is at this moment being pumped into a USB hard disk/storage tank.

70,000,000,000 gallons of oil!  [or as we say in the ‘puter business – 70Gb of data]

Once the oil is off, I can go about repairing the holes in the hull [repartitioning the faulty hard drive] and installing new engines [new Windows].

Hopefully I’ll end up with an oil tanker in pristine condition.

I didn’t like to admit it before, even to myself, but some of the information on that computer was critical.  For some reason, the latest backup had failed, and I hadn’t been aware of the fact until this week.  There were a load of personal files [like our French holiday photographs] but there were also critical business files, such as the originals of all my graphics work.

I haven’t been able to do a tap of work since the failure, and am having a difficult time with a couple of demanding clients.  Hopefully, by tomorrow I’ll be able to get back in the saddle and do some of the backlog.

Life would be so much simpler if I could only retire.