Entries from September 2006 ↓

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I returned about an hour ago from the Berkshire County Show which is held at the Newbury Showgrounds each year. It is a magnificent event and one where the countryside ruralites can gather and let it all hang out!

I managed to buy a pair of hiking boots for 50% of the RRP. A good deal at £35.

I will upload my photos later, escpecially of the King’s Troop Royal Artillery display. Here is a press picture.

It is one of the most exciting and spectacular displays of horsemanship in the world and it is performed at the gallop. It includes the scissor movement when the teams cross at the centre of the arena with no visible gap between them

You have to be there to see it to appreciatye it. They race about the arena pulling their howitzer guns at full gallop in an intricate ballet. Should one horse falter, I dread to imagine the mayhem and carnage that would ensue. I was pleased to see a larger % of the soldiers riding the horses are female.

Earlier, the stagecoach display was spectacular too. The teams of horses were breathtakingly superb in the way they were turned out. I can’t say that I would have enjoyed the stagecoach ride from London to anywhere north of Watford back in the days when it was the only means of ‘mass’ transport. But today, the coaches are wonderfully restored and maintained. The horse teams are beautiful and obviously so well cared for.

I don’t suppose many of you will recognise Dolce’s name at this site. Dolce has a site called La Dolce Vita where she posts her articles.

I’d like you to go read her blog. In my opinion this is writing of a superior calibre. Read today’s blog called ‘Beyond’, or a previous one titled ‘On Death’ which is a superb piece about Dolce’s mother.

Dolce’s words resonate in me. That to me is a sign of quality penmanship and a fine brain at work. Go on, go read Dolce’s stuff. Shoo. Go!

So folks, I decided to start at the top of my blogroll (My A List) and go see what each and everyone of you last blogged about. It was quite a trip and an eyeopener into the wide disparity of subject matter. Hope you enjoy the summary and don’t take my comments (if any) too seriously. It is Friday afterall In fact it is 08:59am exactly!

1. Acidic Ice - Hasn’t been a regular blogger lately and doesn’t give a frig if she disappoints her newly aquired readers.

2. Guy Kawasaki - Pimps the new FilmLoop. Guy is a slut when it comes to new gadgets! Like me, he loves them. Unlike me, knows how to use them.

3. Cheap Tart - Falls in love with Red. I like red too and so will wear a red tie to office on Monday. I love rich vibrant colours and red is chief among them.

4. Cook Sister - Is still rustling up gastronomic orgasmic treats! This time it is Broccoli and Toasted Seed Salad. So that is where my budgie’s food ended up?!

5. Doc Searls - Hope Less?

6. CaZ - Accuses Port Elizabeth of stealing her Quizz team mates. Go on CaZ, go for it and don’t let those windy city farts nick your talent! Justice and CaZ will prevail in the Quizz.

7. Insanely Single - Is still Laid Back on The West Coast. Nice for some.

8. Kyk Noord - Says it is One-Nil. Sorry mate, it is Game, Set and Match to me!!

9. John Dodds - Calls me an asshole hoping I know what he means (I think I do) and says Self-Promotion Begins At Home. Very interesting piece. Read it.

10. Misty - Has been called to debate on Swedish TV all those things that are wrong with Swedes. Great opportunity to strike up a few conversations with some well muscled Vikings! Good luck Misty!! We’ll send an expeditionary force to find you in Lapland maybe? Or doing Polar Bear Survival 101 in the Arctic Circle?!

11. Robert Scoble - Poses the daftest question ,”Is Apple Copying Microsoft?” Would the king of PC design and software, Steve Jobs ever stoop so low?

12. Michelle - Michelle is falling in love with a plum tree, a fig and some curiously funky purple flowers! She is also being rained on. Nothing like nature to chill out one’s ardour!

13. Seth Godin - His site simply crashes my browser each time I try to navigate there. He needs to get his coding looked at.

14. David Tebbutt - Provides us with a warning. He overheard his son tell a mate that his PC was his ‘best friend’. We need to be concerned and worried that our kids don’t become so hooked on the virtual world.

15. Urban Trash - Cartoonist Jeremy Nell keeps up his daily humorous cartoon about life on the street in South Africa. He is also calling Dial-A-Nerd. Can’t be so bad yet can it Jeremy??!

16. Willie Baronet - Drawing time in the early hours

17. Aquila Online - Yes well this is one of the more obscure posts Aquila has done - Apprently, a Zonked Yak Rules. Can’t see a hirsute Tibetan cow ruling in S Africa!

18. Bad Language - Matthew is still battling spam and predicting next week’s catastrophe. Dr Who?

19. BigRic - Warning: 4G is coming!

20. Boer Seun - Microsoft launches Zune as competition to iPod. Methinks Bill missed the bus on this. I can’t see iPod being overtaken in terms of market sharre or even anything close to Apples unit sales numbers.

21. Escape Cubicle Nation - Back from meeting Gloria Steinem and Jane Fonda, Pamela Slim introduces us to Prof. Srikumar S Rao.

22. Gaping Void - Hugh takes the piss out of a recent post by Rick and reckons we will give marketers our money just because we think they are oh so important. Oh no I won’t!

23. Geeks Girl - Is still stuck with a day and a half of her life!

24. La Dolce Vita - Dolce is still Expecting Rain! Hell it has been raining cats ‘n dogs ‘n buzzrds here. Want some?

25. Real Marbro - On Medical Aids!

26. One Afrikan - Offering up a bounty

27. Rox In The City - Rox is still wondering what Wonder Woman would have done. I think WW would have ma…………..!

28. White African - Lists Techcrunch’s Michael Arrington’s opinion of the attributes that make up winners and losers. What sanctimonious arrogance and naive presumtion by Arrington. All he has assembled is a load of subjective crap. You all know full well that in my book, Failures and Losers do not exist.

29. Woza Friday - First it was Erik, now even David asks if he is allowed to be known as a White African. You can be known as a Orange Striped Mountain Goat if you like but in my opinion, you will always be a White African like Erik and Martin and Morne’ Du Plessis, and Naas and Barry Richards and Schalk Burger Jr etc etc. Cecil John Rhodes is not a White African. He was an Exploiter. As was Barney Banarto and Jameson and Haas Das!

There. Done it. I can kla out now and go enjoy the weekend! Hope you have fun.

For some time now I have been watching the Red Kites and Buzzards in this area and seeing them thrilled me because at one stage, the Red Kite was an endangered species in England. A few survived in Wales and it was from that stock that a few Red Kites were reintroduced into England ten years ago.

The project has been an incredible success and they are such an exquisitely beautiful bird.

It has been some time now, in fact since near mid-July, that I last saw a kite on my walks. In fact I’d last seen a buzzard in June. So I was delighted this evening (about 45 minutes ago) to see a buzzard sitting on a fence post along the path to the Ridgeway proper.

I tried to get close to him but at about 60 yards away he turned his head, saw me, took flight and flew toward a delipidated barn on the other side of an adjoining field. He settled in the field and then the big surpise occured. From behind me I heard the screeching of a an eagle. It was not an eagle. It was a fwemale buzzard flying home to her nest in the trees alongside the delipidated barn. It means then that saw Mr Buzzard waiting for her to return maybe with some dinner. She screeched her head off for a few minutes after settling in a tree.

But my camera had no go-go juice………!!

Buzzard
Buteo buteo
AKA: Common buzzard

The commonest UK bird of prey, it is quite large with broad, rounded wings, and a short neck and tail. When gliding and soaring it will often hold its wings in a shallow ‘V’. It is variable in colour from all dark brown to birds with pale heads and breasts, all have dark wingtips and an unbanded tail.

Where does it live?
Breeding
Likes trees and hilly crags for nesting with open farmland and moorland nearby to feed over.
Where to see it
Greatest numbers in Scotland, Wales, the Lake District and SW England. Found on farmland with wooded hills, moorland and in more arable areas to the east where it is spreading. Look for birds soaring over wooded hillsides in fine weather, or perched on fence posts and pylons.
What does it eat?
Small mammals, birds and carrion.
What does it sound like?
A loud ‘mewing’ call - ‘pee-uuu’
When to see it
All year round. Birds soar, display and call most in spring.

Red Kite
Milvus milvus
This magnificently graceful bird of prey is unmistakable with its reddish-brown body, angled wings and deeply forked tail. It was saved from national extinction by one of the world’s longest running protection programmes, and has now been successfully re-introduced to England and Scotland. It is an Amber List species because of its historical decline.

Where does it live?
Breeding
Likes deciduous woodland with farmland and grassland nearby.
Wintering
Similar to breeding habitats but winter communal roosts are often established in woods.
Where to see it

At one time confined to Wales, a reintroduction scheme has brought them back to many parts of England and Scotland. Central Wales, central England - especially the Chilterns, and the Black Isle, Scotland are the best areas to find them.
What does it eat?
Carrion, worms and small mammals.
What does it sound like?
Mewing and whistling calls
When to see it
All year round.

While we prefer to blog and shut out everything except what is happening in Blogoland, we inadvertantly or selectively choose to ignore space and what great things are happening there.

Apart from Atlantis docking and spacewalks yesterday, did you know that this week, NASA celebrated the 2nd birthday of it singlemost important achievement since Neil Armstrong placed his outsized rubber moonboot into the lunar dust in 1969? Yes indeed, two little golf-cart sized roving vehicles have just celebrated their 2nd anniversary on Mars.

They were only meant to last 3 months on the Martian surface.

But guess what - the winds that blow on Mars have kept the rovers solar panels free of debris and dust and thus allow the solar panels to generate more electricity and so extend the vehicles working life expectancy beyond what was originally anticipated.

This is absolutely fantastic for the scientists who have taken full advantage of this ‘windfall’ and have utilised the vehicles to increase their knowledge about Mars. In fact, as I type this post, one of the vehicles is en route to a crater which the labcoats think will be the richest payload area to explore and sample.

The two rovers, (Spirit and Opportunity) have already paid for their multi-million mile trip by firmly establishing that water flowed in liquid form on Mars. Now the expectancy is high that the rover called Opportunity currently travelling towards a huge, distant depression nicknamed “Victoria Crater” which is 800m (half a mile) in diameter and is supposedly a potential ‘time tunnel’ ato ancient martian material that otherwise would be buried deep beneath the surface and inaccessible, will find research treasures beyond what we know.

Point of this story - your keyboard is not the only thing worthy of your attention. Look up into the night sky and see what has amazed man and women since the dawn of time until at least blogging evolved only 4 years ago and brought other interests to a screeching halt.

Become cool again by taking an interest in space. Its where our kids will be going so we might as well begin to get to know what it is all about.

Axel
I promised you a look at The Dawg. Here he is in all his mutt glory!

Blewbury Hill

Over the hills and far away is a hill I named Blewbury Hill. It is in fact Blewburton Hill, an old Iron Age fort with stepped out defenses. The village of Blewbury is close by and so I thought it appropriate to name it Blewbury Hill after Fats Domino’s song! He did sing it didn’t he? Sorry if it was another artist.

Anyway - the hill is reputedly haunted by a headless warrior on his horse. I thought the myth was true. One night after a lot of beers and oozing the ladies at one of the pubs in Blewbury and so to speak, being in my cups, I loped home full of brew, lipstick all over my face from smooching my girlfriend and smelling of my lady’s perfume, through the fields and over the hill from Blewbury to Aston Upthorpe (where I used to live) at approx 11:30pm on a dark cloudy full moon night. At the lower reaches of the hill, the path has a tall hedge running alongside it and as I progressed with my zig-zag walk (thanks Foghat!), so did the rustling of the hedgerow! Step for drunken step the rustling followed me. I paused, it paused.

Oooooh dear mummy where are you? The naughty boogie man is tracking me!!

It turned out to be an inquisitive cow in the field the other side who was walking with me seperated by the hedge! My aching nerves were shot.

NOTE:The famous author Dick Francis lived in the village (Aston Upthorpe) as did Baroness Paulise de Bush. She used to throw open air Shakespear plays in her garden each summer. Great fun. I got involved. Yes I trod the hallowed lawn of Stockwells. So can I say I was a luvvie?? Emma, may I? Pretty please dahlink! The village also had horse racing stables and now the stud is owned by the Sultan of Brunei. He has done an excellent job in this regard. WHere I live now also has racehorse stables and the trainer is building up his reputation very assuredly among the Ascot goers. He had a winner at Queenies Ascot week a few weeks back and that is just what Hugh needs to get more horses stabled with him this winter for steeple-race training and for next summer’s flat racing season.

I apologise for the rough commentary on the video!

The Travellers Bus
My comenatry about the missing travellers sufficiently conveys my dismay at the fact that they may have been forced to move by the myopic and bloodymindedness of one of the parishoners. Talk about living in a box?!

I chatted to both Mr & Mrs Traveller and it was ovbvious to me that he takes his duties and responsibilities as a parent and husband seriously. Mrs Traveller (gorgeous blond with a magnificant tattoo on her arm) was a loving mother who also takes her responsibilities seriously.

What a shame

Can we hold a Barcamp in Reading? It is central to all from the North and Home Counties.

Any opinions about using Reading as a venue for a future Barcamp?

Today marks my 175th day as a blogger. It is 174 more than I originally thought I’d achieve. My first post was an appropriate quote by Mandela, “Change your thoughts, change your world” and it has certainly applied to me.

My world has changed because of blogging. This is how:

1. I have conversed with and am in touch with more people now than I was 176 days ago. Blogging for all it reputed to be bad about, has done me loadsa good.

2. I have finally, finally, finally accepted that I hate rankings. It just drives me nuts and causes me to stress myself out because I am clever enough, original enough, objective enough, sarcastic enough and lack the ability to articulate a point of view in an article that’ll catapult me onto the A list. I’ll fall off the “I don’t give a damn” wagon. I will. So in order to retain my sanity I have elected to:

3. Ignore what the A,B,C or any other alpha Lister do and just focus on my thing. Isn’t realisation or hearing the penny drop a wonderful thing?! It took 174 days for the sodding brain cell to accept what I’d been telling it since blogging day +2. I was being obstinate, pig headed and arrogant enough to think I could luck myself into a brand new concept that nobody had ever ever stumbled on or debated about before. Fool!

4. So, having given up on becoming #1 at Technorati I have set myself this goal:

” Always be a first-rate version of myself instead of a second-rate version of someone else.” by Judy Garland, actress

5. I have learnt how to appreciate looking forward to contact from you. To all intent and purpose I had become a social hermit. I was pushing away from human contact for a very long while. Then I started a forum but it was when I started blogging 175 days ago that I wondered why on earth I’d never blogged before. I began to hold conversations with you all and that is something worth cherishing and looking forward to each day.

6. I have learnt that swearing in posts does not necessarily make me a cool dude. In fact not swearing at all is cool. Very cool. and it proves that my expensive education has paid off albeit in one area alone!

7. I have learnt to link. Not completely all there is to know under the sun about linkng but I have learnt that getting links to the site is a very good thing. The more links there are to the site, the more conversations I can have.

8. You who challenge the content of what I post are doing me and everyone else a power of good. You are opening up the debate about stuff. It doesn’t have to be only vitally important matters that get debated in my blogs. Humdrum stuff too can provide a learning experience to someone who never knew before about whatever simple thing it is being debated. So keep challenging.

9. Putting aside political correctness in posts is easier than I thought. It makes life in blogoland so simple!

10. Creativity and motivation walk hand in hand. One needs the other. I need you.

Here is Sunday’s walk with the dawg. Much the same route but the view is spectacular. The filmed scenes of racehorse training here for the 1080’s series call The Trainer. Not a success. Some parts of the village were used as well.

Axel hates small dogs or rather he has a thing about them called “revenge”! When he was a puppy, a yappy terrier used to terrorise (pun?) and chase him while snapping/biting at his legs. This has obviously traunmatised him now, so whenever a dog appears on the horizon, I reel in the leash and get a good grip on him. He is a very powerful dog as I found out on Saturday.

A dimwitted local vet was strolling up the Ridgeway with 3 dogs. One was his old female labrador and the other two were wire haired terriers - just happened to be the dog breed that left Axel traumatised. One was a little puppy.

It was hard enough restraining Axel from charging the dogs BUT when the little puppy decided thios was premier adventure time and with little tail wagging he/she decided to run to Axel……….! Oh dear Lord I saw one mobile snack for Axel en route to oblivion.

The daft vet just stood there yacking to his wife and some other friends while Axel let loose fire and brimstone upon the lttle puppy. No leash in site for any of his dogs. No poop bags either!

Luckily I managed to get in front of Axel and scooped the puppy up from the jaws of death. The vet just stood there bemused and chortling. Fuckwit!

I will upload another video that has got Axel in it. I know you all want to see the brute!!

UPDATE: Here is a video showing Whittenham Clumps which had Time Team do a archaeological dig at some time ago. The TV programme was repeated two Sundays ago. Interesting site of an Iron Age fort thus supporting the Ridgeway as being an ancient Iron Age road across England.

Last night I went walking with Axel the Dawg on The Ridgeway. It is Britain’s oldest road, used since the Iron Age by drovers, merchants and anyone wanting to cross the breadth of England. Here is a video I took of a walk at sundown with Axel.

The Ridgeway is 75 yards from my front door. Wide open space at my beck and call!

[Inspired by the act of penitence carried out last month by former member of the apartheid Natianal Party government, the Minister of Defence and Minister for Law and Order, Mr Adriaan Vlok. Vlok was security minister in the late 1980s, a period when emergency laws granted police sweeping powers of arrest and detention against anti-apartheid activists. In an act of contrition he washed the feet of Rev Frank Chikane]

EXPLANATION: for those who do not understand Afrikaans:
Adriaan is advised that a Zulu army (impi) wants to have their feet washed. They’d heard what he had done and thought , Hell, while in government, he tried hard to kill us lot so what the heck - he can do a free sole wash!! [pun intended])

Adriaan replies, “They must wait! I am still busy washing Mandela’s feet.

Mandela pipes up, “Adriaan, use Dove soap not Lifeboy!”

[Reference to a carbolic soap brand in S Africa named Lifeboy and also reference to Vlok's former Ministerial role as Minister of Law & Order - ie A life sentence on Robben Island. So seperate them they can be heard as ...."life boy!" As in judgement.]

[Inspired by .....well.......some good PR is needed and a plan. Any ideas? Anyone?]

When it comes to ideas to make life better in Africa, there are tens of thousands of intelligent, creative, concerned and ever-caring Africans who struggle everyday on their own or with domestic organisations to get the plight of Africa improved.

It is an uphill struggle and if you are an African there is no global thank you or honour roll or red carpet with tickertape parade when you do make things happen. It seems that knighthoods only happen to non-Africans with access to TV produccers, rich promoters, huge budgets with slick marketing and PR plans. Mr and Mrs Everyday Africa, doctors, nurses, sanitation engineers, clerks, managers, teachers, electricians, farmers, herdsmen, businessmen and women, technology technicians and human rights activists and thousands of other people who daily do their best to bring about change, don’t get the recognition they richly deserve.

One such person is a white African. He goes by the name of Erik Hersman who has came up with an idea to develop a web or mobile based bill payment tool unique to Africa. It is believed that Africa has a unique requirement for a locally developed tool to cater for the multi-varied African requirements. We want a tool created that all Africans can use wherever they are.

The tool I speak about is AfriPay and you can read about it here.

Support AfriPay

[Inspired by a memory of what my late mother always told me when I was a kid.]

I loved swimming and would stay in the water for 4 hours at a stretch if I was allowed. I used to join the other kids at the local municipal pool after school to swim and play ‘bombs’ and other games. To play ‘bombs’ which I only now consider a maniac’s game considering the dangers involved, we’d line up on the top board and, like parachutists exiting a plane at altitude, jump off it within a split second of the other with legs tucked into the ‘bomb’ position to maintain a giant splash. Sounds a nutty thing to do but hey - we were fun-loving kids eager to push the envelope! We also played what I considered the most dangerous game of all - corner touch or tag. This involved running around the perimeter of the pool and jumping in and out of the water at the corners of the pool until you were unlucky enough to be tagged and so you’d have to chase the group to tag someone else. It was at the corners the pool that a tag occured. Considering the slippery concrete from all the water and the opportunity for one of us to slip and do some serious damage to ourselves, nobody got hurt. We played it until we all had to go to boarding school.

You could smell the chlorine in the pool from 3 miles away!! And this is why my mum always said I must not get chlorine in my eyes! “Like Duh ma, I will swim a length underwater with my eyes shut..?!!” She’d smack me for being cheeky but it was her way of caring. Inevitably, I’d arrive home and my eyes would be cherry red!! And so I’d be grounded for disobeying a parental command but I’d sneek out and go swimming again the next day anyway! What a rebel! I never made it to the Springbok squad - girls got in the way of that ambition but I did set some school and college records.

Swimming is good for you. Ooze the swimmers.

by Chris Johnston

“the greatest endurance feat ever to be attempted by someone with terminal cancer”, and it is difficult to dispute the claim”.

“Six years ago she was told that she had metastatic breast cancer and had six months to live. However, she was determined to prove that a diagnosis of cancer did not mean the end to an active life. Since then she has completed a full ironman event — a 4km (2.4m) swim, 180km bike ride and full marathon — in less than 17 hours and run the London Marathon three times. She has also completed the New York Marathon and three London triathlons.”

Not for the first time has Jane Tomlinson who is dying from terminal cancer, defied death and faced up to all those demons which all we mortals who are devoid of any ailment or physical disablement fear, and pushed her body beyond what we may know as the limit of human endurance to achieve her goal and accomplish the impossible.

How many of us healthy people will ever achieve what Jane has accomplished. The sad part about Jane’s latest achievement is in my opinion the incredible joy and sense of achievement Jane derived in spite of the the lacklustre way America responded to Jane’s appeal to donate toward cancer research.

John Dodds articulates the marketing angle better than I can in his article Remarkable Isn’t Enough which I invite you to read. It is evident that you need to market and PR the event and yourself to an inordinate level if you want to capture a nation’s interest.

Dying mother’s 4,200-mile cycle ride across America

“My Declaration of Independence” is a Flash movie made by Pamela Slim who wants you to escape your corporate cubicle.

Pam used to work as a business consultant to the corporate bosses. She now encourages their staff (you), to escape the cubicle, fulfill your dream of independence and strike out on your own into business for yourself.

If you are planning your escape like me, then you MUST go and read her blog.

Meanwhile you can click the quill (feather) to watch the movie.

Declare Your Independence