Fuck Me

Well, fuck me. Is it really a month since I wrote here? Is it really before Christmas? Well, shit loads has happened since then, and I've been on holiday from work for most of that time, so I certainly don't have the excuse that I didn't have time, busy as all hell as I have been. OK, so maybe I do have that excuse....
Christmas seems like a long time ago. So, I shall try to use this space to catch up on a few thoughts and things...
Christmas was great. The meal was good, although it turned out I forgot to put out the cranberry sauce. Too many people though - next time, a few less would be better.
A shame also that I only got the week off then, when I really needed two weeks - hence my current holiday. Which is why I'm sat here writing, a few beers to the good, after 1:30 at night.
The one thing that I'm finding difficult to write is the book. I'd taken a couple of weeks and really hope that I might have time to finish the initial draft. After all, it's probably only 10-20 thousand words to go. But that's difficult to get the time and concentration for. Still, getting there at last - it's been a few years in the writing, and now I have to start again with the polishing. I'll start letting other folks read the revised version too.

Over in the US, I'm getting more and more fascinated with Barack Obama. I first heard about the guy before his keynote convention speech, in this article. And I watched his announcement of running live. And I've seen a few of his speeches, and they're damned good. I'd like to hear him speak live, because he seems better than Jesse Jackson, who up to now was my high water mark in oratory. I've listened to Jesse live, and that's a hell of an experience, whether with 250 people or 250 thousand. But I was always very conscious that Jesse is a politico. Barack Obama genuinely strikes me as an extraordinarily intelligent guy who seems to be seeing through the game. The only bit tat bothers me is his Christianity, but even here, I'm impressed because he never raises his god-bothering in his speeches. Doesn't even give the near-compulsory "God bless America" type of bullshit. He's an activist from a working class part of Chicago, who went back there even after his Harvard Law School degree, who never did the corporate lawyer schtick. He was earning about the same as me before he got elected to the senate four years ago - which isn't average income, but ain't the usual big lawyer money either.
So, much as I despise politicians, there seems to be something genuine with this guy. He's doing something too that is on a bigger scale than British or Dutch politicians can manage. When he talks about "changing the world" as President - well, that means something, because, theoretically, he can.
Now we wait and see if the multinational world will allow change. And even here, i suspect, he may be lucky, because the multinational CEOs know things have to change. They're way more conscious of Hubbert' s Peak than the average bod, but they don't know what to do. When Obama speaks of the race for Renewable Energy being analogous of the Race for the Moon - this may represent our last, best hope.

Meanwhile, in other news...;-)
Suharto died a couple of days ago, and good riddance to the vicious old fuck. Now if only Thatcher would have the good taste to pop her clogs while I'm on holiday.
Which reminds me of an old blog - even Sharon's still alive, if I remember correctly. Hope the nasty old cunt is really suffering - he deserves it.

Elsewhere - well, the children continue to grow, and I continue to talk with people about a new job. We'll see what pans out on the latter, and on the former - well, they continue to be awesome, so i won't use the blog to rant about how great my kids are. It is nice though, to have some time with them where I'm not stressed from work, where I can really make time for them. To be reading 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe' to Willow is one of the true high points in my life so far.
I even do lots of silly voices....

Just listening now to Pet Shop Boys' 'Rent'. A fantastic song, that was a big hit, and most of the people buying it had no clue what it was about. Even dancing to it, down in Heaven, most of the boys didn't have a clue about the feelings behind it. Still, it reminds me of the nights down there, and down Bang, Henry Africa, and all the clubs I can't remember the name of. Names and impressions of that party: Marc Almond speeding, the barman playing with my nipples, chatting myself up in a mirror, falling asleep on the Circle Line. Looking back now, nearly twenty years on, it's difficult to believe that that was me. There's only Bri still around, and he's only just back around, who knows what Iwas like back then, to my embarrassment probably. And even he didn't know me down the gay clubs - even then it was a private party that i enjoyed from time to time. East End Boys and West End - well, whatever...
Huge quantities of drugs helped of course. My favourite on that was in Amsterdam, at Exit, when I was stood in the line to get in, absolutely fucked up out of my face. I forget where I'd got money from, but I know I'd come from Dave's, which meant huge amounts of speed and whiskey. Stood there in a barely moving line, I suddenly noticed a small line of guys about my age stood at another entrance. Somebody came to that side door and let them in, and I jumped queues and tagged along behind. We went up some small backstairs, until we were in the VIP area. I never did find out who or why these guys were al there - I assumed rent boys, but nobody was waiting to receive us. And nobody stopped me going down onto the main floor and leaving the VIP world behind.

I suppose I could volunteer and help the Obama campaign. I could imagine them even using a bright guy like me.
So what do you reckon - do you think I'd be a liability? ;-)

Fuck it. Obama smoked crack too.

And fuck - get those troops out of Iraq. Fuck the oil - get shit sorted...And don't fuck with Iran.

Another month gone by. Sint is back to Spain and Christmas is upon us. Getting the tree in today and needing no excuse to drink port of an afternoon. Outside the grachts and sloten are frozen over after our first decent night's freeze in a year. Cautious mumblings of White Christmases and Elfstedentocht are being kept under wraps.
I'm even reasonably optimistic that we'll manage to score that Wii for the kids for Christmas...

In the world outside there has been a Climate Change agreement to act. It was vague and wishy washy of course, but there was at least an agreement, even from the US. Mind you, if all the delegates had agreed not to travel all the way round the world to Bali, that might have saved some exhaust gases. Cheeky buggers - ever since Kyoto they seem to have been determined not to go to some poxy little industrial city again. "We did Rio last time, how about Bali this year?"
Surprisingly, the Northern hemisphere is pretty wintry right now. After last year's non-winter, everyone got scared, and there's the worry now that the North Pole will be ice free in summer in just 5 years. I think that's probably overly scaremongering, and came as a result of the very hot year we had between October 06 and September 07. If anything, feedback loops and chaos theory would tend to suggest we may well go the other way for a period - and it wouldn't surprise me to see a very cold event. Certainly the US is getting hammered with ice storms and blizzards, the Alps have had very early snow and the Mediterranean is getting alot of snow too.
I just hope that doesn't breed complacency.

Right. Gonna read the papers...

Iceberg boat

MV Explorer hits iceberg and sinks. Good pictures. Luckily everyone out OK.

Can we have dichotomies again?

Hell, it's been a long time. Just been busy with life I guess.
A couple of main themes. I got back in touch with my best mate from long back, the only person who knows me back from my real drongo days, even before I got to Amsterdam. He knows that side of me better than anybody I'd reckon. And then, at the same time, I'm out interviewing for work as the "young" executive dressed in my Hugo Boss suit and talking with the arrogance of the rich.
Now, this isn't the obvious split personality shit. Work tends to be putting on a front no matter what. If you're in charge of stuff, there's more expectations on you fulfilling a certain behaviour. I'm actually quite good at going against that, but they won't know till they've hired me ;-)
Still, doesn't mean I wouldn't prefer to be monged out at a Subs gig. Fact is though that I'm wanting to play with the big boys, cos I still want to change the world. I don't want to gather power to myself, but I do want to be familiar with power, know how it works and see how to bring it down.
Of course, real power is the sort my old mate has. But that's a whole different ball game: when the magic and real meaning takes over, the superficial bullshit of culture fades and we know that it's all just a ride.
So, Sint arrived today. And Sven Kramer rode the most amazing world record.
Balance.

Deep breath

SO, a month since the last blog, and an awful lot happened since then. Normally would have been reason enough to jot down a few thoughts, but I guess this is one of the consequences of daily life being a grind: it demotivates beyond the scope of working life.
Big thing at work has been the destruction of the project we've been working on, sacking of Robert, etc... So I'm not sure still whether they'll sack me or promote me, though it now looks like the latter. Either way, I don't see a future there and it looks like time to move on...
In the world at large there have been a couple of headlines that have grabbed attention; both important and both illustrative of the nature of the media and the world's politicos. The uprising in Burma was of course impressive, even if the crushing was as sadly inevitable as I hoped it wouldn't be. The scum that fell on board, like Bush, supporting "democracy", and the scrabbling of the media to promote this as the next democratic revolution, was angering to those of us who fought for disinvestment over years. Time to dig out the Beer is Murder attitude here I guess. The horror stories coming out of Burma now are sick as we could expect. And the trumpetting of modern technology, which ensured that the world's eyes were on Burma, has turned on itself as the military intelligence in Rangoon scours the YouTube videos and sends out its death squads in the night. The online support needs to learn a lesson about the nature of resistance and oppression: their publicity has cost blood and tears. The people of Burma need to learn, like the rest of us old farts, about the value of masks and a well-placed petrol bomb in place of a prayer wheel.
And then today, AL Gore and the IPCC won the Nobel Prize for Peace. This in the year that the Arctic Ice Cap shrank to such an extent that the North-West Passage opened for the first time in perhaps 120,000 years. And still I read comments from well-informed amateur meteorologists such as "why wasnt all this brought to our attention 10 years ago, 20 years ago when the issue was first starting?". Damn, if peoples' ability to block out their ears isn't even more impressive than their ability to place their self-interest above the interests of the community and the species as a whole. Ten or twenty years ago? Fucking moron.
I'm still really hoping for a freezing cold winter to maybe flip the feedback the other way: frankly I'd rather snowball earth than Venus at this point. But the talk even in the news now is of the feedback loop, of ice-albedo loops, and it's urgent and terrifying what might be upon us.
I'm getting older, and it seems that I've finally become negative about my species, and I would like to get out of that particular feedback loop. I was singing 'Anna' to Ayla the other day. "Ayla, de wereld is niet mooi" I sang. "Papa" she said, "de wereld is wel mooi".
"Papa, the world is beautiful".

Still what I said years ago: the great sadness is not that we can achieve so little, it's that we can achieve so much.

Oh, and Hurricane Jerry turned into the most pathetic wanky little subtropical fish storm seen in many a long year, so so much for predictions and I guess he'll be back round in a few years...

Too much

So, a lot going on since the last blog post, and really no excuse since I've had quite a lot of time off. Guess I wasn't in the mood or something.
An event driven quick post this time. Two things: seems the NorthWest passage is now navigable. This should have been the lead news on every bulletin and every newspaper in the world. It seems to be incontrevertible proof that the feedback loop hs kicked in. The Arctic will now be free of ice within 30, probably within 20 years. If the feedback escalates, it could be a mere handful of years. Put it this way - there are 3 million square kilometres of ice coverage left. That is fully 1 million less than last year's minimum (which was a record). We know how feedback escalates such an event - it is not unrealistic to expect that the Arctic might - and I say might - be ice free within 2-3 years.
Looking back, I'm pleased we had such a lousy summer, and desperately hoping for a really cold winter!

The other thing that's driving a midweek blog, is that it looks like Hurricane Jerry is going to form on Thursday. At the moment the models give it a good chance of blowing into Nola. I guess that would be pretty much the death knell for that city. I gather it's already not really recovering - got a lot of problems with crime and people leaving - so another direct hit and levee failure would probably finish the place off.

Within 5 years - no Arctic and no New Orleans. Almost as surprising as the Berlin Wall coming down I guess. But that happened too, real sudden.

Reasons to be...

Just a few quick comments then.
So, our new dog came to live with us last Sunday. She's a sweet 10 week old puppy called Ziggy (which could be Stardust or could be Marley, but I prefer to think of her as 'Ziggy Pup'). I'll doubtless up fotos here or on the family blog in the coming years. It's nice to have a dog again, even though she reminds me of Luna, because she also reminds me of Luna when she was a puppy and not as the old lady of more recent years.
Another one of my obsessions - Dean is about to turn hurricane, and will likely hit the Caribbean this weekend and the US in about a week's time. He looks like he'll get big and nasty. It's fascinating to watch the satellite and the tracking as a storm moves off the West African coast and tracks across the Atlantic, watched by thousands; we see it grow and at times like now as the storm grows intensely but no land is threatened, it's even fun. But I imagine being in the projected path of this thing is scary - if I ws in Jamaica right now, I'd want to get off the island as soon as possible.
Last thing - I'm 40 soon, and trying to get a party together for a week or so's time. Of course - will anyone show up? Now that I'm working for the corporate yoke and living the family life in the suburbs, do I still have any friends left?

Old friends

I'm preparing the invites for my 40th birthday party this weekend. (The party's not this weekend, just the preparation).
So I've got this idea to gather a few old mates around. It's a sort of nice taking stock and celebration moment in one. There's a few mates from the last few years that I've lost track of more or less. Even more unusually, I was googling a couple of my very best old mates from the way off past, and have come across them too. (As not many people read this blog, it being a sort of personal ramble, you may well be one of those reading this now ;-)
It's an unusual thing to be able to go back and make contact with your history. I've always been a one for burning bridges quite freely and brightly throughout my life, and suddenly here I find myself middle-aged and mortgaged, breadwinner for a wife and kids, yuppie job and accidental career, and I'm able to bump back into my past. For better or worse, I figure I at least should have the balls to face it. I don't really feel ashamed or overly guilty about anything, though that might just be my psychopathic tendencies ;-)
Je ne regrette rien, in ieder geval...
And if those folks who were such good friends would still like to come over and meet me now and share a beer or ten, then it should also be a fascinating time, to see my present and past collide. I know where my heart is, being not a rich hippie but a punk yuppie these days, and I wonder what may come...

Twister over Amsterdam

One more then. Here: http://www.at5.nl/speler_at5nieuws.asp?newsid=28189
and here http://tip.at5.nl/2007/07/19/windhoos/ for amusing - I left work at this time and thought the cloud looked supercell, but we've had a few supercells the last few weeks.

Funny Guy

So it's getting late on a Friday night and I've drank a few beers so it seems like old times again.
One thing that I've been puzzling a bit over is Barack Obama. He actually seems interesting. Seems like a genuine idealist, give or take. And this is the weird thing about the American political system, it means someone who has essentially no "political" experience like this guy - and is therefore less exposed to the pollution of compromise - has a shot at the White House. To the best of my memory, he's even ended up in the Senate by accident. Sure he was spotted by the watchers even before that convention speech. But from his books there's no doubt he's both intelligent and idealistic - even passably honest for a politician.
So the Democratic race is interesting. A woman and a Black man facing off. Against a party that has caused a war to make Viet Nam look sensible - you'd think one of them has to make history.
And I don't like Hilary Clinton. She's part of the political class, part of those who subsume power. Obama seems much more interesting. I watched his announcement speech, and there was a something to the guy. All those West Wing viewers who yearned during the first Bush administration for the sort of president who was intelligent and thoughtful and leaned left should be flocking to help this guy: he's an even more photogenic version of Jed Bartlett, only without the New England WASC history.
So despite my well-earned attitude to politicians, I do accept that there's something still sincere about this guy. he has actually got into politics from an idealistic position. That's common enough - the new UK PM Brown is also an idealist, or at least a moralist. But Brown is terminally compromised by the dirty little deals he's made to get to where he is. Obama is busy making huge amounts of money, but he doesn't seem so far to have made any huge sales.
Can he win? I don't know enough. It's probably as likely as him getting assassinated, so either way I'd say that's a fairly high odds. America with an intelligent Black internationalist left president would be very interesting. Perhaps thoug, all it would teach us, is how little a president really has when positioned against the stranglehold of the multinationals.
So unless the US of A is going to finally address its system of business, then the figurehead is probably irrelevant.

Notes from the maelstrom

So, here I am a few weeks later. River's coming up to her third week and has successfully been assimilated into the chaos that is this family. I seem to be successfully maintaining balance on the catastrophe curve wave at the right equilibrium that's supposed to ensure creativty, stave off entropy and veer away from collapse. Not that that's easy - I feel like a surfer going into a tunnel wave and it merely continues forever.
Having a little baby around for the last time is intense and rewarding, wonderful and also of course hard work.
The work that I'm paid money for has entered the build phase, this is where I need to juggle nine chainsaws at once to ensure that it comes out right.
The book needs one last heave and push to finish the first draft and leave me in the position to start selling it.
So as summer approaches and everyone's readying for their holidays, I think it's fair to say that I'm not exactly ready to kick back and relax right now.

Storming

Bloody awful weather. Took the kids to school this morning before going into work, and got pretty much soaked. Which i could live with, but expecting summer storm, I wasn't really prepared for the cold on top of the torrential rain and high winds.
I'm a geek for this stuff, and someday want to do a bit of storm chasing. The only twister I've seen so far was here in Holland, and was a minor one. But there are, occasionally, very serious twisters that hit.
40 years ago, on 25th June 1967, 7 died in the tornado that went through Tricht and Chaam. (Both these photos are from that tornado, approaching a roundabout near Deil).

On 23 August 1950, an F4 was on the ground for 46km in the Veluwe forest. 25th August, 1925, three died in the Borculo "Cyclone". And the worst death toll came in the Neede tornado, on 1st June 1925, when ten died in the destruction.

And extreme events will become more common. The flooding in the UK now is extreme: both my old schools, in Alkborough and Winterton, were closed today due to flooding. But they're both on hills- they shouldn't be flooded! I haven't heard enough from there to figure out how that's possible.
Over here, we haven't had a heavy tornado for a while, but Esther's hometown of Hoogeveen was mashed up badly by what at first was thought to be a twister, but is now thought to be a downburst just a few days ago.

Mind you, my mum was telling me about when I was 6 we had a week in June that began hot, became wet, cold, foggy and ended up snowing! So the climate will always mess with our heads - I still think it's advisable that we mess with it as little as possible in return...

Birth

The girls are all to bed.
It's nearly 9:30 in the evening here and the girls are all to bed. All four of them now, after River has joined us.
I'm drinking a glass of wine and recovering, letting the last of the adrenaline seep away and allowing me to sleep too. No doubt I'll be awoken several times in the night, and will be up and about early again tomorrow.
SO, we've been through a birth again, for the last time. This was different than the other two. The adrenaline rush was very intense because the baby decided to come so suddenly. It was touch and go whether the midwife would make it in time for the delivery. As it happened, she walked through the door about 30 seconds before the head appeared.
It's a visceral, overwhelming experience no matter how you approach a birth. I can only imagine what it must be like for a woman: something so animal, so real, in our world that is so distanced from the animal and the real. No wonder so many women these days give birth doped up and by caesarian. The reality is hard to deal with. For men too - I think most of us have times when we wouldn't mind the old days of "show up with cigars" when all the blood and screaming have been washed away.
She's a beautiful child. I'm lucky - I am abu el banat - "father of daughters". And I know it's a sort of insult in Arabic - comparable to being called impotent - but I wouldn't have it any other way.
I'm kind of dreading in a dozen years time having three teeenage daughters and a menopausal wife mind ;-)

June 1st

Arseing internet connection is down. At least, ASDL from useless Tele2 arseholes is down. I'm pretty pissed off about it, but you can't slag the poor sods at the Customer Service call centre, so at least they're nice, even if there's bog all they can do.
Luckily, i do have wifi connection, lifting on a free one, but unfortunately it's only available in the office, and my mother-in-law is sleeping here soon, so I shall have to move. She's buying us a dishwasher: something I always swore I wouldn't get. But my brother-in-law Richard and Esther's studying and a blocked sink persuaded me that it wasn't the work of the devil after all :-0
It's the first day of the North Atlantic Hurricane Season today, and I'm being impressively geeky already, as the NHC is about to announce Tropical Storm Barry in an hour or so's time, and blog contacts inform me that the name will be given before it's officially made known. That's geekdom for you.
But if I have to leave my connection before 11, I won't \see it officially till tomorrow probably.
Looks like it may be another cracker season. Interestingly, Jerry is in the list of names this year. And falling where it does in the alphabet (alongside Jeanne, and next to Katrina, for example) - well, I met get a few comments at work if Hurricane Jerry destroys Tampa.

List your obsessions

Look back at this over the last 18 months, and it's pretty obvious that the things I think most important are Climate Change, Iraq and my family. As my family's mostly private, that tends sometimes to lead to a bit of a two-toned theme to this blog.
I'm not bothered with that. If I look back on this in 10 years time, that shouldn't surprise me. If I and the net were around to look back on it in 50 years time, the perspective would be somewhat different.
Probably one of the most important things happening in the world now is the deaths of tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands of people every year trying to get to the West, or being deported back to another country and murdered there. That this is not a "story" is because of the reasons that drive people to try and migrate here: the devastating consequences of neo-colonialisation. Thousands more die every day as a conseqquence of the starvation and warfare that are a result of this neo-colonialisation.
And it's not in the news. It's not discussed. Conservatives or liberals or revolutionaries - nobody in the West is discussing it. Because we are collaborators in an act of genocide. Like the Polish peasant in 'The Sorrow and the Pity' who would claim that he didn't know what was going on at Auschwitz, we'll tell the future that we didn't know.
Not that this should come as any surprise to an Englishman. After all, we've had an empire intent on genocidal acts for the best part of a millenium.
So I thought I'd write this quick note on the net. And then at least it's out there. We did know. We do know.
And we're doing nothing.

Gorilla on the loose

So, strange story today. A silverback gorilla escaped from his enclosure at the Rotterdam Zoo today. He seems to have jumped over a ditch, which is unexpected because he's supposed to be scared of water, then sat next to a woman who began to scream. So he smacked and bit her and dragged her around, then let go of her and went to the full restaurant where everyone had tried to hide. He smashed through the glass door and scared the shit out of everyone in there, injuring a couple more.
Eventually he was shot with a trank dart.
He was born and raised in Berlin, where he also escaped in 2004 (without anyone being hurt), before being moved to Rotterdam the following year.
Apparently this picture is of him (Bokito) yesterday. Doesn't look too happy.

Once again then, zoos aren't good for animals. The primary argument here would be that in the wild his chances of survival are minimal, but let's be honest. As long as you're charging people by the thousand money to come and gawk at him, caged together with his woman and child, then it's pretty clear where the primary motive lies. If zoos want to reinvent themselves as conservationary institutions, then a radical rethink is required.
Apparently Bokito tends to agree.

New pictures here underneath from The Guardian.

Subtropical Storm Andrea

Throw away the calendar, hurricane season is here!

Well, that didn't take long. The first named storm of the Atlantic season got called Andrea 3 hours ago. Nothing spectacular is forecast for it - nothing more spectacular than its mere presence that is, but as the chance of it being named was put at 10% just three days ago, that means little.

Radishes and Polar Bears

So a few days ago I ate the first thing out of the little vegetable plot I've made in the garden. A quarter of a radish. (Of course, I picked a whole radish, but shared it between 4 of us. I'm not sure how it works when there's five).
April's just finished with Koninginnedag and a four day weekend for me. It's been the hottest April on record by a country mile. Over here, almost 5 degrees above normal for the month. It was the climate of the South of France (according to the KNMI, normal for Nice). Rather pleasantly, the Med & the northern Sahara have been having heavy rain and cooler weather, which emphasises how unpredictable Climate Change will be. In many respects, it wouldn't surprise me to see some greening of the Sahara - at least at the fringes - and with the recent rain and the earlier reports from Mali & the Western Sahara, that optimism might yet be borne out.
Another piece of positive climate news was that the Kilimanjaro glacier appears to be disappearing more slowly than was thought, and its receding has more to do with the lack of moisture in the air blowing in from the Indian Ocean rather than the rise in temperatue - it seems that the temperature at the top of the mountain continues to remain below zero.
Ice in the Arctic has been in the news again - the National Snow and Ice Data Center has issued a press release suggesting that the ice loss in the Arctic might be faster than previously thought. However, I'm rather suspicious of this one, as it's extrapolating on part of a winter, and not taking full account of the very cold March and April that hs been there so far. It's looking at September ice loss, rather than an annual mean as well. Just smells of dodgy science.
More positively too, the Anatarctic ice sheet is currently thicker and larger than usual going into winter.
All of this is making me refine my own ideas about Climate Change - I continue to be very suspicious of the Black/White scare story that is being put about. I still suspect that the current political climate has more to do with the dwindling oil supply than the real climate change; and as usual we're seeing scare stories and media hype in place of science and strategy.

The kids have been away again last night, staying with friends, and Es & myself managed to go out and see a movie which was pleasant to be able to do. We've been giving ourselves a bit more time together lately: it's something that you really need as a preganant couple, so to speak, and something we usually tend to underestimate how much we need.
One last thought that crops up since the last mail, is how disapponting the whole cricket winter has been, and how much of a gutter it was with the final day of the Eredivisie last Sunday.
But at least - Scunny are Champions! Bring on the Premiership!

Happy

So I'm sat outside in the hot sun, drinking a beer, listening to Black Uhuru, reading a comic, following the cricket, and following Scunthorpe's push for promotion to the Championship.
It's too hot for the time of year, but the hottest April day ever in the Netherlands was 1904. We're the hottest area in Europe this weekend. Alaska had the 3rd coldest March on record last month, so the ice pack is in better state than I'd expected. My bronchitis is fading again (and the Independent reports on the front page what I know - I need the sun to be really healthy!) Work's finished for the day, and with my laptop I could do it from home. Es & the kids are at the playground/shopping, so it's quiet.
This could, with a little luck, be a TRULY GLORIOUS SUMMER! (Caplocks hit by accident, but seemed serendipitous, so I'll leave it at that :-)

Oh, and as a belated afterthought - this happy moment has only cost me about 200K and up to 40 years of my life :-)

All quiet out there

I was just rereading some old posts. Mine's a classic blog really, in that it's purely written for myself. I don't know if anyone else ever reads it - occasionally there seems to be a visitor from somewhere else, probably the MT List crew, who hangs around the site to read a few pages.
Funny really that keeping a diary that's theoretically accessible to half the world's population is probably less read than if you wrote in a book and put "Keep Off" on the front.
I like what I've put down on here over the last 18 months. It reminds me of things, it makes me think of things, it's coherent to me at least. There's a regularity here - no more than 2 or 3 weeks absence at most, that I don't achieve with any more serious writing. And it's written to be read, which is different - most of what I write currently is in such an early draft that it's not for reading - unless, of course, it's for my work. Alot of my work these days seems to be writing too, sometimes proposals, sometimes just carefully political emails.
Curious what the future will bring.
Well, being curious, what do I stumble across but this:

The Future Ground Based Air Defence System (FGBADS) is an integrated mixed and layered air defence system consisting of a Command and Control part (BMC4I) and a weapon system part (VSHORAD and SHORAD) for low and very low-level air defence. It is a “system of systems” with “plug and fight” quality. FGBADS has the capability for creating a Local Air Picture (LAP) and exchanging it with other air defence systems. Furthermore FGBADS handles Air Space Control and integrates the external Recognised Air Picture (RAP) into its own air picture. The sum of these capabilities means complete situational awareness in the most optimal form. FGBADS completely controls the usage of the VSHORAD and SHORAD weapon systems.

So WTF is this shit? Some mad fucking Command and Conquer geeks, or is this some real shit? I can clearly see this is something to look at when I'm in a more sober condition. First response ( and if you use the words "first response" they probably launch something or other) is that it's some sad wannabe Dutch action.

The net's a damn weird place. Wish we'd never let these looney's out to play.....