JSrealtime Journal

22 September 2002
I'm watching Stargate SG1. Easily the best of the SF available on UK TV at the moment. Genuinely innovative plot lines.
Leaves are starting to fall. Hints of autumn in the air.

On Monday Pat and I went to Gainsborough in Lincolnshire to look at some houses. It was an exhausting journey - well over 3 hours each way from London, I found it a friendly and unassuming place and we wandered around peering in the front windows and back yards of various empty homes. We had a meal in the cafe section of the local Tesco at about 5 (where else is open at that time?). Gave me a lot to think about...

15 September 2002

"Man's greatest capacity is the capacity he has to fool himself" - that's probably an inexact quote from Gurdjieff but I know the truth of what he is saying anyway. I can see it happening in the way that my mind is coming up with, and enthusiastically embracing, plans for doing x, y and z and the next day is "seeing the pitfalls" and coming up with d, e and f as alternative (and wildly different) plans.

Sunday 8 September 2002

2:30pm A question of priorities...I feel at the moment (and recently) that I'm not in a good mental space to make good decisions. I notice that my mind is too ready to jump to extremes. It's no fun being a Libran at such times.

In reality I'm keeping up the day to day routines and subroutines of behaviour while my mind is screaming at me to jump in one direction or another and making plans accordingly - which are mostly coming to naught because I don't trust my decision making faculty right now on anything much bigger than the choice of red or white wine with dinner.

keyword=moody

Even on CIX I'm uncharacteristically nervous about saying the wrong thing.

Listening to :Eberhard Weber - No motion picture

3 September 2002

12:20 pm

Down to Old Street on the bicycle to keep an appointment with the dentist. Aaargh! - Dentists have been one of the banes of my life but for the last couple of years I've been registered with a woman who seems brisk and efficient and usually keeps the pain to a minimum. Much work to be done in the next few weeks unfortunately so fingers crossed. It's very difficult to regain faith in a profession when it was comprehensively blown at school age when we were required to see a dentist every 3 months who always managed to find a tooth to fill (without anaesthetic).

3 September 2002

2:30am

d/l nucleus 1.55 blog spotware
needs:A server that supports PHP4+ scripting (versions 4.0.6+)
Access to a mySQL database from that server (versions 3.23.x+)

Comparisons of Live Journal, Radio Userland, Blogger etc

Weblogs as content management systems - information repositories

blogging in general

6.00pm

On the internet everybody suspects you're a dog....

Listening to: Nick Drake - "Pink Moon"

2 September 2002 - 1am

I guess that this is a clunky way to blog. Update text and other content in Pagemill 3 then use WS_FTP to upload the content to the Blueyonder servers. I'd like to get away from the slightly standardized look of most blogs (and the unresizeable text) and use my ISP provided webspace to store associated images etc. I suppose in the end that I'll pay a bit of money and utilise the convenience of one of the readymade automated system but at the moment I'm learning quite a bit of useful stuff by trial and error refining this site. It would be good to get a form for comments to be left but I haven't worked out how to do that yet.

1 September 2002 - 3pm

OK - well at last I've got round to increasing the potential visibility of this log and site. Submitted the site to Google and Altavista, registered for the journal list and should soon be doing a manual update at weblogs.com Now I've also performed a basic redesign on this page which I've tested in IE6 and Opera. I hope I'm getting the hang of this blogthing - when I look around the web there seems to be so much expertise in the use of these systems and I still feel new to the whole thing. I'd be very interested in receiving comments but at the moment they'll have to go by the mail link which will be in place at the top of the page by the time I finish off this entry.....possibly

31 August 2002 - 02:30

Back in London after a trip through Norfolk and Lincolnshire looking for the elusive combination of an attractive area and cheap accomodation whilst also engaged in a not unreasonable amount of grooving peacefully in green and pleasant familial surroundings. Pat and I decided to try and get a look at "The Wash" - an area of coastline that has always had a slight fascination for me. However all the narrow roads we took seemed to lead into farms, private properties or obscure RAF bases so it remains an imaginary construction for me. We did get to Boston and had a good walk around the town on market day. Sunshine and a nice vibe as we licked our Thornton's ices whilst we walked around the outside of the "Stump" admiring the workmanship and the scale of the thing.

I haven't had any feedback or other response to anything I've done on this site since the first week it was up. Pathetic isn't it. I really must make some effort to submit this site to a few search engines. I can hardly complain that nobody reads anything here if no-one has a clue that the site exists. Let them have the chance to view it and then decide that they don't want to! (Er..not you....)

And for those who have just been waiting all their livesfor the chance to get their heads around the history of Popeye the sailor man.....

Listening to - Leonard Cohen - "I'm your man" -

10 August 2002 - 15:30

Unsettled August weather - showers, storms and sun. Last night I played Age of Empires 2 with Coryn via our telewest cable connections. No discernable slowdown at all. Whilst we were chatting about web sites I remembered this excellent free service for validating pages. Must have a few sessions feeding it parts of this site:-)

I've thrown myself into painting and decorating over the past couple of weeks in an attempt to make myself stronger and more fit as well as to take my mind off its long term preoccupations and to try to counteract the tiredness that I'm (often literally) prone to.

30 July 2002

It's been baking hot here in London for the past three days - today it's still hot but overcast and sultry too. My mind is wandering "like a wild beast in the West". Apart from winning a game of chess online for the first time ever, I don't feel much to be pleased about. I realise that I'm lacking in self confidence at present - a tendency towards morbid introspection overcome only temporarily by losing myself in gardening or other physical work.

Track of the moment: Captain Beefheart - "Trust Us"

I've lately redefined the "3B's" of classical music to be "Bach, Beethoven and Beefheart"

24 July 2002

I'm going to dump the messageboard connected with this page. Why? No-one's using it - maybe it doesn't work well enough. I'll try and get hold of something better in the future. Any recommendations?

Maybe as a substitute: any mail sent to me from this page using one of these these links will get sent to a special address and I'll consider printing the comments on this page to try and generate some communication.

Therapy today = painting a ceiling white.

Track of the moment - Julie Driscoll -Road to Cairo

14 July 2002

At last the sun blazes out today after a moody and grey July has done little to lift the spirits. Last night Pat and I got ever so slightly drunk to celebrate the end of her school term. I also turned up a link to the language project that she did for the Open University last year with which I had some involvement by way of contributing ideas and energy in the initial stages.

13 July 2002

Life is unpredictable and stressful lately. I'm finding it hard to keep a balance and keep veering off into panic mode when I look at all the choices I have to make in the next months. "Where to live" probably being number one among them. Mentally I seem to be a million miles from where I was earlier when I was making my CD and working on this website. Now I can't seem to concentrate on study at all and escape from it all by playing the nth million game of Age of Empires - which does provide a short term distraction.

2 July 2002

I've been feeling a bit more moody and irritable than usual. One reason I haven't been keeping up to date here because the tendency to have a rant against somebody or other would be too great - and (more importantly) they might not actually deserve it.

Last night I saw the fox put his nose through the window and look at Billy for a full 10 seconds before scarpering. The whole thing happened too quickly for me to grab my camera but I was pretty impressed that the fox had managed to get on to and across the glass roof.

Today I've been playing with Smartdraw and The Brain in attempt to get some of my hand crafted psychological models "on to the computer". Not totally satisfied with the results but I'll experiment more.

22 June 2002

Yesterday, with my eyes propped up by matchsticks, I watched England v Brazil. A strangely flat ending to the present World Cup venture by an England team who have a thing or two to learn about not giving possession away needlessly.

On Wednesday Chris G and I had a walk over the millennium bridge, took lots of photos and had a browse around the Tate Modern. Looking at all the cranes in the City and West End from the bridge I had an impression of a vast amount of building work going on in central London at present. For once this summer it was sunny all afternoon and London looked graceful, pleasant and civilised. In search of a drink afterwards we were turned away from The Globe in Bishopsgate for not being "smartly dressed". Hiss, boo...

19 June 2002

I was looking out of the window as night was falling and I saw Billy looking at the hedge with his hackles up. I thought a cat was probably hiding there and I tapped on the window - at which point a fox emerged and loped up the garden pursued by the cat! At the top of the garden the fox stopped and looked back at him and Billy had the good sense not to pursue his quarry further:-) It's probably this fox.

18 June 2002

Record reviews site - "We listen to the lousy records so you won't have to." Well it's always nice to have a second opinion.

Listening to: Vanilla fudge - Season of the Witch.

Today, as part of the re-organisation process, I took a look at a couple of files full of "letters". These are things which suddenly seem so part of a bygone age that I could classify them along with snuff and penny-farthings as the stuff of picture postcards (another relic?). Yet I find that as little as fifteen years ago it was quite usual for letters of a few pages (and filled with philosophical thoughts) to be exchanged. So what happened? Well first I fell out with a few of my correspondents and other exchanges just petered away to the quick scribbled note at Christmas. And of course the internet came along too...

Wonders - the sun came out all day.

16 June 2002

The one reader of this web site (a Mrs Trellis from Abercorn) has no doubt noticed a slackening in the number of recent entries. Sad to say I've had to suspend further development of this site for the moment as there is much uncertainty in my life at present. It now looks as though the house I'm living in will be put up for sale at some time soon so I've had my hands full looking at my own options when that comes about. Unless I can move to a suitable area I'll probably lose my Telewest broadband connection and my webspace with Blueyonder. Meanwhile the World Cup is providing an arena for the passing of considerable amounts of time watching humans kick a spherical object around with considerable skill.

28 May 2002

1pm - I've changed a couple of things on the site simplifying the structure a little. We're having a windy wet spell ATM - a perfect time to work on the website:-)

2am - OK so a bit of feedback convinces me that the message board was not accepting new posts - hopefully it's fixed now though back to the old undecorated format. All posts appreciated. These things will be improved soon:honest! The GP was pretty spectacular - a dogfight all the way with Coulthard keeping his lead to the end (for a change.) The annual Bigbrother fest seems to have started - I'm keeping an eye on it anyway wearing my unofficial psychologist's hat. Is it a sign of a serious social deficiency that I'm kept awake at 3am because these people are chattering in my room?

25 May - 2002

Is anyone ever going to leave a message on the messageboard? Just watched an exciting qualifying session for the Monaco GP. There's some inspired lunacy behind this event where hugely powerful F1 cars race round the back streets of Monte Carlo. My son Coryn's site at Sparks is going to be redeveloped by someone else soon. Personally I think he's made a terrific job of it especially as it's his first chance to build a web site. If anyone wants to offer him work then email me and I'll pass the message on.

21 May - 9.00pm

A trip to Norfolk with Pat at the weekend - dog sitting, river walking, photographing, spacing out with the moon and the stars. Back here in London extra work with the paintbrush and some intense threads on CIX* mean that this little journal has been somewhat neglected. I'm very pleased with some of the photographs.

*"Netiquette" is my favourite hate word of the day. "The Experiment" is my favourite hate programme at the moment. Oh how we love our favourites.

14 May -00:41

It always seems to be that the bits that are known to be OK are the bits that fail. They are the bits that get put to one side while the rest is carefully checked. Someone was getting 404 on a file here and I assumed it must be my faulty coding or user error. In fact I'd forgotten to upload the file. But because I continued with my basic assumption that I had uploaded the file I had to wait until it demonstrably failed in front of me for me to see the truth.

Some things about this site - it's incomplete, it's subject to change, it's a bit of fun, it's deadly serious, it represents me claiming space in cyberland as a delivery mechanism for thoughts, music, models and anything that seems to me to be worthwhile throwing into this particular pot. At this time it seems right for me to embrace this particular technological revolution and fly it to where it's going.

13 May

Busy online yesterday wrestling with CIX's telnet interface after getting well mixed up during topic creation. Today some of the Zisp tools have been pressed into action. Hence the new discussion board above where you will be able to pour scorn on the sillier aspects of this website if that's your inclination, or maybe just discuss whatever whatever your brain downloads to your fingers. I'm editing this in notepad at the moment to see how painless I can make uploading text.

11 May

Uploaded a new (different) piece of music yesterday- so busy assimilating webstuff - bits and pieces of this n'that, and getting things organised for this site that I've forgotten my sister's birthday - Ooops - sorry Lindy!

Not helped by me having the "bright idea/moment of madness" of creating a virtual archers conference where each of the the participants takes a role from the well known uk radio soap. It's hard work setting it all up!

Henry Kaiser rocks!

9 May - 6pm

Another blog type thing that I've been reading about - RadioUserland

This whole area is so new to me I'm staggered that there's so much of it and that I was scarcely aware of it even while being actively using the web >8 hours per day for the last 6 months. What on earth is SOAP and RSS ? Apparently they make RU better than some others. and then there are Greymatter, Movable Type , Live Journal , and Blogger itself to check out further.

How long am I able to type with meowing at the window...the more I resist the louder the noise gets and the more haphazard becomes my typing. He knows it won't take long for me to crack and let him in...

Anyway, as I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted, I'm still weighing up the choices in automated online diaries. Not sure on whether to give myself a deadline on this or not - after all I can continue on in this rather clunky way for a while using WS_FTP and Pagemill to get the job done. However, I don't suppose it'll be something I'll do every 5 minutes.

7 May

Giving some more thought to site layout - in particular whether I should integrate this page with hot and cold news

I had a KLEZ virus (caught by my virus checker) from the mailing list at Richer Sounds which then commenced to recirculate complaints about the said virus into my mailbox fro the next few hours causing me to get into some newsgroup activity in the BlueYonder newsgroups.

5 May

Ok so the site has been uploaded. Now the improvements have to start soon!

30 April

Do I upload the new site today? - I've been adding poems and graphics intensively for the last 2 days - much new scanning.

28 April

Working on the Links- it's slow going. Also finally arranging the graphics files and making corrections as I go. Weather murky so I don't have to feel guilty about sitting in front of this device all the time. TBH the poor old computer is creaking at the knees as it sits here chugging away at the MP3s, whilst photo processing, using Pagemill for this site and doing the odd blink to CIX.

24 April

Just about finshed a marathon 5 day session transcribing poems into the computer. The weather has been warm, so long typing sessions have been broken up by hedge clipping and the like.

14 April

Organising poems, photos. Considering blogger as a weblog facility.

13 April

More work on music links. Tidy up song lyrics. Checking out weblogs and the HOSTS file.

11 April

Started photogallery, transfer, wildlife, and furry animals sections. Blueyonder logos and ftppie for showing how much webspace I'm currently using.

7 April

Retro created this part of the site diary. "What's new" link created.

Content for billycat processed and added.

I've been doing some work to my music files and uploading occasionally to the music pages. After feeling a bit listless I've started working on the site again this week - mostly using Pagemill. Scanning in content from my archives - I had forgotten how long scanning can take and I'd also forgotten what a magical process it is. I've started a few more sections of the site and I hope to get it uploaded and live by the end of April.

The tenants upstairs have renewed their lease for another 3 months so it'll be at least that long before I have to consider moving. I've streamlined my music and computer setup so I'm hoping for an increase in productivity.

Tuesday 12 March, 2002.

More work on the upgraded website. I'm thinking of uploading it in its present state as an incentive for me to work on it more regularly.

Wednesday 27 February, 2002

So this house that I've been living in for the past 22 years is to be sold. The thought of moving around without somewhere stable to develop things is a bit daunting. Maybe I can keep trying stuff out on this website if it ever gets uploaded.

Sunday 3 February, 2002.

Wind and rain. My computer plays a random selection of MP3 files as I sit working out the initial plans for a revamped and more inclusive website. The electric fire and the cat who washes himself add to the ambience of this moment.

December 2001 to March 2002

Various tunes from the "Rare delight" CD posted for mp3 download at more or less monthly intervals.

November 2001

creation of jsrealtime music site and registration of domain

site map

Guest Book

Home

visitors