Warning: This is one of the posts which I wrote after my last backup. Therefore this is not the original post, but is as much as I can retrieve with and blanks filled in.
The above map shows the distribution of us Fry’s according to data taken from the national survey in 1998. I’ve removed the top of the map because frankly there’s nothing there. This proves (I feel) once and for all that I really am that southern (despite just a few generations back, my family came from Preston).
The map was produced by a website created by a joint initiative of the University of Leicester, University College London and the University of Nottingham, www.surnameprofiler.org which uses national survey data to show where people that share a common surname lived in 1998 and 1881. It’s well worth taking a look, if only to stock up on interesting trivia to amuse your family with.
One of the things I try and make sure I do every (week)day is listen to Pause for thought during Terry Wogan’s Radio 2 breakfast show, it means I get to hear words of wisdom like this from Revd Chris Morley, Minister of Haywards Heath Methodist Church (from yesterday)
..there’s a bit of me that wonders why I think twice before walking under a ladder. It may be because the feeling that I need to watch out, chimes in with a deeper sense that there are destructive forces loose in the world, forces I daren’t risk alienating in case they wreak their revenge on me.
The trouble is that if we believe that life is basically hostile, we can concentrate so much on watching out for danger, from other people and from what circumstances throw at us, that we can get closed in and shut down. If only we could relax and trust in life, even when it feels a struggle, we’d be much less tense and more open to the opportunities life offers.
I think, Terry, that life is on our side.
Now BBC, is an rss feed of this too much to ask for?
Something strange happened the other day, someone told me that I should get a new phone as mine was looking quite old. Not surprising you might be thinking, but it got me thinking, I can’t remember anyone telling me that any of my ‘kit’/gadgets/’items of a digital lifestyle’ were old. Time was that I had a habit of impulse buying gadgets so that they were always shiny and new, especially when I didn’t have the money to afford them…
Exhibit #1, my first minidisc player, bought in the spring of 2000 (i think) literally half an hour after I first saw it in the shop, that being only the afternoon after I came across it on sharp’s website.
Exhibit #2, my second minidisc player, bought summer 2002, again after seeing it online and deciding that I needed to replace the first one, even though it’s only fault was a cracked screen.
Exhibit #3 that was then replaced by my iPod in November 2003 (as it was as 21st birthday present to myself so possibly shouldn’t count).
Since then, nothing…
Read the rest of this entry »
Dear BBC, I’ve been perusing your ”Sound of 2006” survey results and I”ve selected the following bands to keep my eye on:
Clap your hands say yeah http://clapyourhandssayyeah.com, the number 2 on your list, a five-piece from New York who started mailing copies of their debut album from a band member’s flat because they didn”t have a record deal. I was tapping my feet happily to their single ”In this home on ice” as it was being played on the radio this week before it was revealed who the track was by and I recognised the name (that’s a good start then), I’m at a loss to describe the sound right now.
The Feeling http://www.thefeeling.com, your number 3, a British five-piece who started by playing as a ski resort’s house band. It’s pop, but it’’s good. Listen to the single ”Fill my little world” and then try and stop singing it, really, try it. Plus any band who describe themselves as:
“We’re soft rock archaeologists”
have to be good.
Read the rest of this entry »
I’ve added some more photos to the dorset coast album which were taken over the Christmas holiday. Yes, this is just me trying to move the ‘happy christmas’ post off the frontpage!
Happy new year gentle reader, be you a friend or just as casual passer by.
I’m sure may of you will have struggled with ideas or projects that you just can’t get finished to the level you really want. For the past year (almost) I’ve been struggling with a bit of web design for the band the fifteenth floor (www.thefifteenthfloor.co.uk). In that year the pages have gone through 3 or 4 different designs and variations, and many more ideas which never made it off my pc, none of which I have been truly happy with. So I decided to use my week off between Christmas and New Year to blitz out a site design which I felt did both parties justice. As of this morning I think I’ve done it:
Read the rest of this entry »