Ginseng And Tonic

Before I start, just a quick word of thanks for certain people who said nice things about me and my blog after the last entry. No names, no pack drill - but it's nice to know you care :)

Anyway, I spent Sunday with GroupieGirl in the city core having fun. We enjoyed a frappucino from Starbucks which are rapidly becoming a favourite of ours - this time we went for the raspberry one, which is actually tea-based. What am I doing drinking tea-based drinks? My fan club in New Zealand won't be happy... We had this discussion which degenerated into a massive laugh-in, which would take far too long to describe to you - we do tend to have these conversations which go off on the most obscure tangents, but you really need to share our sense of humour to appreciate them, and not many do. Plus, they tend to be of a "you had to be there" nature. Still, let me just say "a Star Wars version of Wimbledon" and you can imagine the rest...

We also went round the shops to see what was on offer, and having looked through the womenswear section of New Look and found nothing special, Groupie said "let's go to the men's section, you might find something you like". Well, there were some really cool threads there, but I wasn't in the mood for buying anything at the moment. Groupie however saw this shirt with a fly pattern on it and thought "now then..." and asked "if I were a guy, what size would I be?" Next thing I knew she was removing her jumper and trying on the shirt! And after a minor difficulty with the buttons fastening the opposite way to what she was used to, she was admiring herself in the mirror. She looked pretty good in it...although the fit wasn't quite right, but that's because it was designed to be worn by people with a little less padding in the chest area :)

So now she's looking at men's apparel and I'm buying nail varnish. I'm sure there's a sitcom script in there somewhere...

One thing I did buy though was some ginseng tablets in a bid to do something about my continual tiredness. I've been taking them for a couple of days now and I actually feel a lot less tired than before. Whether this is due to the tablets or not remains to be seen, but I'll work my way through the packet and see what happens. At least I'm not wanting to sleep all day anymore, although the real test will come on my next day off (Thursday)

Mind you, it could just be my age. I had a little conversation with one of my online friends who informed me that nightdresses were well and truly "out", and the fashionable girl-about-town now uses pyjamas to cover her blushes at night, even in high summer. To be honest, I have no real preference to what a lady wears in bed, but I still think there's room in a wardrobe for both options :)

Funnily enough, Groupie thinks of herself as an "old fashioned gal" but she's always worn pyjamas (usually with things like astrological symbols on them) She does look nice in them though. Very nice.....mmm.....where did I put those tablets??

MOODY BLUES - NIGHTS IN WHITE SATIN
(from the album "Days Of Future Passed", 1967)

To Whom It May Concern...

..and you know who you are.

Stop contacting me. I mean it. It's not fun any more. It hasn't been for a while. You are freaking me out and more importantly you are freaking GroupieGirl out as well.

It is NOT ok, for example, to continually send me tweets demanding my phone number, as you did a couple of months ago. Nor is it OK to bombard me with "can we still be friends" messages. We can't. End of. Just accept it. There are another six billion people on the planet you can contact, yeah? Leave me alone.

It doesn't matter how many identities you create - you've already got three on the go, and I'm not going to name any here, because I don't believe in naming and shaming - I'm not interested.

And incidentally, what you described at the time as "just mild flirting" was nothing of the sort.

Kindly stop messaging me on Twitter and last.fm as well, especially when you're drunk. You may not realize this but I am six hours ahead of you, so it's early morning when your missives arrive here. Which is why I didn't want to give you my phone number.

You are annoying me, and scaring me, and you are making me seriously consider not posting any more material to any more social networking sites, or this blog. I rather doubt I have many readers who would care if I disappeared, but I will if this continues.

Please. Stop. Now.

It's Hard To Tell The Nighttime From The Day

I'm sitting here on my sofa, in my bathrobe, feeling pretty grotty and this is probably going to be a tough entry to write, but I feel I need to write it for my own sake if nothing else. Apologies if this makes less than perfect sense...I know I can do better - at least I hope I still can.

Basically, I have been feeling rather tired a lot recently, not really wanting to do much during my free time other than sit on my sofa and stare into my screen (although usually I've been on the internet rather than watching TV, so at least my brain is keeping active) In recent days, though, this feeling of tiredness has got worse, to the extent that I'm doing little else than working and sleeping at the moment. Funnily enough, I seem to be getting on OK at work, but once I get home it's nice to just crash out into bed for a few hours, and then it's hard to concentrate enough to want to do anything else but sit there. Not to mention my last couple of days off, where I just basically slept all day.

This has been accompanied by some really vivid and hateful dreams. Here's a couple from the week gone past...

Firstly, I found myself in a tower block needing to go to the top floor for something, so I got in the lift and pushed the button. The lift was old, cramped, and the light on the roof was really bright and felt hot on my head. The lift shuddered and shook as it got to the top floor, and then when it reached there, the doors began to open. Then suddenly the light went out and the lift started falling down.... and that's when I woke up in a rather emotional state. Given that I have to visit a run-down tower block every day as part of my job, that was an interesting morning at work...

In last night's dream, I found myself in a particular street in my town - and it was a vivid recreation, I knew exactly where I was! I was approached by a gang of punks and chavs trying to sell me cocaine, and when I refused, they got quite menacing. I was really scared they would do something to me. Thankfully I was saved by Philip Glenister and Dennis Waterman, apparently playing their roles of Gene Hunt in Life On Mars and George Carter in The Sweeney respectively, who bundled me in the back of a Ford Granada, or some such period car, and drove off...

Waking up after that left me feeling really shook up, and I was actually wandering around in a daze for a bit. Unfortunately I don't have much "lead time" between waking up in the morning and having to leave for work, so I was a little fragile for a while today. Actually, I'm feeling a bit fragile almost all the time now. And aren't showers supposed to reinvigorate you and wake you up? Why do I feel like my energy's just gone down the drain with the water then?? Honestly, it's an effort even to think at the moment. And I've been feeling quite emotional recently, even for me.

Groupie was round earlier in the week and practically begged me to go see a doctor about this, and I'm beginning to think I'm not going to get out of this one. It just seems, well, a bit of a hassle turning up to the surgery. Maybe I feel too tired even to do that :) Or maybe I'm a little scared that there's something serious behind this. And I really don't want my family finding out that I'm unwell. Trust me, you really don't want to tell them anything like that.

Anyway, I should go make an appointment. Whether I will is a different matter - it seems like admitting defeat, but I suppose sometimes you just have to know when to fold 'em.

THE EAGLES - DESPERADO
(from the album "Desperado", 1973)

I've Never Been Good With Goodbyes

Once again, I find myself thinking about a blog entry to make only to be overtaken by events...

When I got home from work I found I had an email from one of my online friends. I am certainly not going into any details on these pages, but basically, it said that we couldn't be online friends anymore. It's for the best of reasons, it really is - and while I will miss the person involved, all I want is for them to be happy. Zog knows they've had some rather unhappy times in their life and it's about time the cards came out with a good hand!!

On top of this, there's someone at my work who will be leaving tomorrow, and I will miss her as well in a way. We've only ever talked to each other on the shop floor, but she's quite nice to talk to, and she told me something today which again I'm not going to go into details about (even though she doesn't, to the best of my knowledge, read this) but it explains a lot about things. She will be a lot happier working where she'll be on Monday than she is at the moment in our organization, and I wish her all the best as well.

In both cases, I would like to think I will hear from these people again someday - the jury is still out on the former, but I would lay odds heavily against in the latter case. I have never been particularly good with saying goodbye, as anyone who has read this blog and remembers the situation with GroupieGirl a few months back will testify to. But sometimes this happens, sometimes it's for the best of reasons, and you just have to accept it. And say thanks for the good memories, which of course will still be around.

It has become customary here to end each entry with a particular track, and despite the date mentioned, today's choice was a big hit here in the summer of 1981. Coincidentally, that's about the time that I lost two of my best schoolfriends (one died in a tragic accident and the other suffered brain damage and was moved to a "special school") I may well blog about those two in more detail here someday.

As pretty much everyone on this planet (and no doubt several others) know by now, Michael Jackson died of a heart attack last night, and in tribute I decided to play a Genius playlist on my iPhone today using one of his songs as a starter track. This is the one I chose - and while the lyrics are probably not the most appropriate ones in my situation, the sentiment is there nonetheless.

MICHAEL JACKSON - ONE DAY IN YOUR LIFE
(from the album "Forever", 1975)

Rest In Peace, Michael

Just as I was going to type out a standard blog entry about being a bit down because I was sleeping all the time, I got a text message from my mate which said "unconfirmed at present but Michael Jackson has died of a heart attack". I'm currently monitoring the developing story on the radio and TV networks, and it appears, at this moment (22.45 Universal Time), he has in fact died.

Despite everything which has been written and said about him in the 1990s and 2000s, Michael Jackson was one of the greatest entertainers of my generation - I never got the chance to see him live, but I was a fan of his music and remained so even during the years when he was being described as "Wacko Jacko". The Thriller album, if I remember correctly, is still the worldwide biggest selling album of all time, and I have fond memories of staying up late and watching the full version of the Thriller video, and talking about it at school the next day. I remember the story about when his hair was set on fire while he was making a Pepsi commercial, and when I was growing up I wanted to be able to dance like him at the school discos.

Sure, there was the plastic surgery and the child abuse allegations and the hanging a baby over a hotel balcony and all that stuff. But underneath it all, the man was an incredible performer and showman and one of the archetypal 1980s celebrities. And of course, he was about to play a set of 50 concerts at the O2 in London as a sort of "comeback".

I can just about remember when Elvis died (I was four) and I'm feeling now the way I think people must have felt on that summer day in 1977 - one of the greatest entertainers of my time, perhaps of all time, won't be around any more. And while in recent years he was making headlines for all the wrong reasons, we will remember him at his peak.

Thank you for the good times Michael, your music will live on in our hearts.

MICHAEL JACKSON - BILLIE JEAN
(from the album "Thriller", 1982)

Have You Ever Actually BEEN To Stonehenge?!?

Today, June 21, was the summer solstice in this part of the world (and of course, the winter solstice in the southern hemisphere) and I hope it was a good one for you all!! I spent it mainly recharging and resting - I really needed it - although I was awake around sunrise in the event.

Today's the day associated with gatherings at Stonehenge, both of the druids, and with the "hippie" community - here's a great site about the free rock festivals that used to take place at Stonehenge in the 70s and 80s - feel free to check it out sometime.

So, I couldn't resist posting this to the blog today - the legendary Spinal Tap!


Actually, it's not just Stonehenge with an association with the longest day of the year. Milton Keynes has a street in the centre of the city called Midsummer Boulevard, and it got it's name because at sunrise on the longest day of the year - ie, this morning - the sun rises and shines directly down the street. Must be a nice sight, and would have been even better before they built the shopping mall in the middle of it. Still, you can still go to the other side of the mall and look up towards Campbell Park to experience it (there's some rather interestingly shaped paths in the park which would be in line with the sun as well - check it out on Google Maps)

A happy solstice to you all!

Lock It!

Regretfully, and after giving it a lot of thought, I've protected my Twitter updates. I didn't want to, but the unholy trinity of spammers, salesdroids and lamers have finally driven me to do it. The original plan was to do this at the dark moon, but bitter experience has shown the weekends are when they really come out of the woodwork, so I did it late last night instead.

I've already mentioned that Twitter is being overrun with spammers and the like - I've seen that picture of Britney Spears about a couple of dozen times now, and if you're on Twitter, you know what I'm talking about - and if anything it's just getting worse. I've blocked nearly everyone who followed me in the last half-moon, because they were all spammers or so-called internet business consultants, and I did not join Twitter to socialize with these scumbags. I want to talk to genuine, real people, like the few dozen I'm lucky enough to have in my followers list already.

What's really put me over the edge though is the phenomenon of Twitter accounts who are searching for tweets in the public timeline containing a key word, and then autofollowing everyone who says that key word - regardless of the context. So it was, for example, that I found some blogger who writes about the Los Angeles Clippers basketball team trying to add me after I'd mentioned that I couldn't find my nail clippers. That word "clippers" was enough for this bozo. That was all he was searching for. If you do this a few thousand times, you're bound to get a few hits, yeah? Well, that's true - but you're gonna piss off a lot more if you do it that way. And that's just the latest example of this sort of thing. I've noticed my followers mentioning things like this, so it can't just be happening to me. And I'd like it to stop, please. Anyone who's mass autofollowing people like this is no better than a spammer in my book and deserves to die a slow and painful death.

Of course, as has been said to me, I don't have to follow these people. And I wouldn't. But it's the principal of the thing for me. I don't want these people even showing up in my followers list. They're ruining the whole Twitter experience for me. I'm getting tired continually blocking them, and I just want it to stop.

So it's going to stop. Right here. I'm off the public timeline. At least for now. I'm considering changing my one-line bio on Twitter to point to this blog entry to explain to would be followers why I protected my updates, and also add a link to my profile page on Blogger so they can see that I'm genuine. (Not sure if I will do this though, because I like my one-line bio) I intend to carry on following new people I find interesting as before - whether they'll follow me back with protected updates are another story, of course. Perhaps I could un-protect the account just on Fridays so I could still participate fully in the Follow Friday meme on Twitter - something I think is fabulous by the way - I've both found and been found by some great Twitter people due to Follow Friday in the past.

The #zaph80 project will also continue as normal (although there may not be any entries today) and that'll be posted to blip.fm as it has been since the beginning, so it'll still be available to more than just my current Twitter followers. And obviously the Twitter links have been removed from the sidebar of the blog, as you won't be able to see them if you're not already following me.

I didn't want to do this, but I feel I have no choice. I've noticed, though, that now I'm protected I get emails from Twitter saying so-and-so is asking permission to add me as a follower, and I can confirm or deny that on the website. I'm thinking, why isn't this the default action on Twitter? It's how last.fm works, it's how YouTube works and if I was constructing a social networking site which allowed users to be "friends" with other users, that's how I would do it. It makes much more sense - and would make it a lot harder to spam. And for those who aren't bothered about who's following them - well, they could just approve everyone and carry on as before. Or even make it switchable. Give people who are a little more concerned about who's following them a better option than just making their Twitter feed private.

OK - maybe I'm overreacting a little with this. But I just feel I need to do this. Like I said, Twitter's not as much fun as it was anymore for me - and having just got rid of what I could describe as my first social networking "stalker", you'll maybe understand why I'm feeling the way I am at the moment. We'll give it till the next dark moon anyway, and see how I feel about things then. Until then, though, I guess I'm ex-directory...

HANNA PAKARINEN - LEAVE ME ALONE
(from the album "Lovers", 2007)

Going For Silver

As far as metallic materials go, I've always been much more attracted to silver than gold. Oh sure, gold has the connotations of wealth and prestige - we're always told we should "go for gold" - but as far as jewellery and the like go, I've always preferred the look of silver.

In my early teens I noticed some of my classmates - like the sportsmen and pop stars I naturally looked up to - were wearing gold chains around their necks, and I decided I'd rather like one too. Of course, the chains we were wearing weren't real gold - just plated - and of course it quickly tarnished and I got a nice green ring around my neck, which was the end of that. But for my fifteenth birthday, my sister bought me a silver chain, with a crucifix, a heart and an anchor on it (representing faith, hope and charity) and I loved it - in fact I wore it for over a decade. The silver just looked better on me than the gold, and it was real!!

Ever since then I've always graduated to silvery things rather than gold. To be honest, gold has been ruined for me in recent years by the "chavs" dripping in their "bling" - these are people I don't really want to be associated with in any way. Gold just seems a bit tacky to me now. And let's face it, you're a lot less likely to get mugged for your silver jewellery than your gold, aren't you?

I've even used silver in a monetary sense in the past - when writing on social media websites about a particular sum of money I have sometimes said that something cost so-and-so many ounces of silver. As well as having the "offbeat" ring to it which is my trademark in a way (as my friends will tell you) I was conscious of the fact that I was writing for an international audience and wanted to reference an international currency - and yeah, I could have used US dollars or euros, but that's not neutral enough for me. I wanted something not used by any country. Precious metal was used as money in the past, and it's fairly easy to look up the silver price and do your own calculations. Again, I could have used gold (there's a nice story about the gold price - no matter which period of history you pick, an ounce of gold has always roughly equalled the price of a tailored man's suit, a belt and a good pair of shoes, or the historical equivalent) but my natural affinity to silver shone through here too.

Recently I bought some deodorant which had real silver particles in it - it's even listed in the ingredients and everything - and cost me, for the record, about 0.35 silver ounces :) I felt really decadent and special when I sprayed the stuff on for the first time (yeah, I know, doesn't take much, does it?) And to go with this, GroupieGirl bought me some silvery nail varnish which she'd seen me eyeing at the goth shops in Glasgow. Technically speaking it's called "chrome" but it looks silvery enough for me. I've just put it on for the first time and while my brushwork could have been better, I like it!!

As far as I'm concerned, Mr.Goldfinger can keep his yellow stuff - I'm happy to settle for silver. And didn't James Bond beat him in the end anyway?

DAVID ESSEX - SILVER DREAM MACHINE
(from the film soundtrack "Silver Dream Racer", 1980)

3.0 Is The Magic Number

So, as I type this, and drink some more nice wine (I'm such a lush...) I'm downloading the software update for my iPhone (it's about an hour's download, and that's on a 2Mbps broadband line). The new iPhone has been all over the newspapers recently, but thankfully the operating system can be downloaded on what I'm going to have to get used to calling the "old" iPhones - just as well, as I've been told that for me to get a new 3GS model, I'd have to buy it at full price, and buy out the remainder of my contract, and sign up to another 18 month contract for the new phone. Is that worth it for the addition of a video camera and a digital compass? Probably not...so I'll stick with my current phone and enjoy 95% of the features of the new iPhone without paying a thing... and we'll think about upgrading the handset when the fourth version comes out in 2010 and I'm a free man!

It took a while, but copy and paste has finally made it to the iPhone, as has picture messaging, which I must admit I've missed over the last year (GroupieGirl and I often sent picture messages to each other as we don't see each other every day, and sometimes a picture paints a thousand words) and I'm looking forward to checking out some of the other features of the updated OS as well.

I love my iPhone - just as I love my MacMini. OK, it's not the cheapest phone you can get, and there are some people who will never buy one just because it's made by Apple (why so defensive, eh?) but it works well for me and the seamless integration with the MacMini is a great plus as well - it just works, end of story!!

Interestingly enough, I don't make all that many calls with it - the four applications I have in the dock at the bottom of the screen (which are available without scrolling, so they should be your four most important) are text messaging, Twitterific, my calendar and my iPod. No phone - which seems rather counter-intuitive when you consider the device IS a phone - but it suits the way I use it more. I'm much more likely to text someone than call, and of course, it's nice to have access to Twitter wherever I go (as long as I'm in 3G coverage within the UK, of course)

I'm also a great fan of the apps you can download for the iPhone, and I've got a few ranging from a lunar calendar to the classic game of Space Invaders, and I can see me downloading a lot more as time goes on. The Tube status app may seem a bit of an odd choice, but it helped me out tremendously when I was in London during the "snow day" which affected public transport so much, and the Poker Superstars game comes in handy on a long boring journey...

Anyway, the download is almost complete, so I guess I should get this posted to the blog and see if 3.0 lives up to all the hype...

BLONDIE - HANGING ON THE TELEPHONE
(from the album "Parallel Lines", 1978)

Looking For The Bright Side

In light of the fact it's been a few days since I updated here, I thought I'd dash off a quick blog entry to keep my readers happy :) I did say I'd try and write something here at least once a moonphase and it's around that time again.

I did plan to write about the great day I spent with the GroupieGirl on Sunday, but right now, I'm basically looking forward to the next moon and hoping things will improve for me then. I'm sitting on the sofa drinking red wine and thinking I could have done a lot more with today than I did.

But then, maybe I'm being a little too hard on myself. It was a really tough day at work, physically and mentally exhausting, and it was a rather wet day as well - had that achy feeling in my head which I can't really describe, but we could have done with some thunder today which would have cleared it. I had plans for the rest of the day, but I just felt too tired to do much else than snooze and websurf. I did manage to get some more tracks lined up for the #zaph80 project - I've reached August 1980 in my ramble through the decade's pop charts and have my selections mapped out as far as the beginning of 1981...

And things in some respects are going well - spurred on by how well the sandwiches I made for the trip to Glasgow went, I've started to take sandwiches to work with me, scoffing them during my break while using my lovely iPhone to keep in touch with the wider world. I've also been eating a lot more fruit recently, picking up half-price bargains at Twiggy's place (or Marks & Spencer, as it's officially called - and apologies to my non-UK readers who won't get that reference - go google it)

So maybe things aren't going so badly as I sometimes think. It's certainly a lot nicer being me now than it was, say, a few months ago. So no reason to feel sad then!!

Anyway, I'm sleepy and there's some Cabarnet Sauvignon to be enjoyed before bedtime. So I'll leave you with this track - during my 1960s obsessed late teens I had this on cassette, and there's no particular reason it's here other than I like it (even better than the Dionne Warwick version!!)

SWINGING BLUE JEANS - DON'T MAKE ME OVER
(single released 1966)

Twitter's Eternal September??

My last entry here covered the long weekend GroupieGirl and me had in Glasgow, which was at the full moon. Well, if you've been looking at my moondial, you'll know we've now moved on to the disseminating moon, which was a lot less fun mainly as I had to work through all of it :) I'll try and get an entry done here at least once every phase - which would be about once every four days or so for the non-aliens - as there's obviously no point in keeping a blog if you never update it!!

Mind you, I'm not feeling as social as I usually am online at the moment, due to the bloody spam-squelching I've had to deal with on Twitter over the last moonphase. Twitter has gone mainstream recently of course, you've got the likes of Oprah to thank for that, and everyone seems to be talking about it and using it. Sadly, that includes the spammers, salesdroids and lamers currently making it a much less fun place than it originally was. The reference to the "Eternal September" in the blog title is from 1993 when AOL began offering Usenet access which pretty much wrecked the experience for the people already using the service - and as an aside, was that really sixteen years ago?

I went through a clearing out process with my followers where I went through the whole list of 140 or so and blocked anyone who I felt was just a time-waster. Some of these accounts had already been suspended by Twitter in the interim, so there was obviously no point in keeping them on the list. Some of them were just using Twitter as advertising for their own business which I wasn't interested in, so they went as well. Obviously the out-and-out spammers were blocked in very short order. As for people who seemed genuine but who didn't interest me, I didn't follow any back but left them alone. That took my follower count to somewhere around 90, but as I posted on Twitter after the cull, I'd rather have 90 genuine followers than have thousands who weren't interested in me beyond a possible sale or swindle victim.

I never really cared about these things before - anyone who I didn't want to follow I simply left alone, and I must admit it looked good to have a three-digit follower count. However, having heard about someone who mentioned he was on holiday on his Twitter account and was burgled while he was away, I've began to think about just who is reading my online scribblings, and what the consequences of that could be.

As well as that, the signal-to-noise ratio has just dropped through the floor in recent weeks. Today alone I've had to block no less that ten would-be followers which I simply do not want to be associated with - and there's still about an hour to go before midnight! There's been an influx of people offering fake Britney Spears porno - one of the people I follow, who is gay, made me laugh when he wrote "Have you read my profile? Wouldn't that give you a clue I'm not interested?" There's also been what looks like a Twitter version of the old "make money fast" spam that we've all seen in our email inboxes (or at least, in the "junk" folders if we've got halfway decent filters)

What's really taken off is the people who are obviously searching for a key word or phrase and autofollowing people who use that particular word/phrase in their tweets. I've had several of those and to be honest they are annoying me even more than the porno/scam merchants. I'm all for businesses using innovative ways to market their stuff, but the way these people are doing it is just not working at all. Firstly, to take an example from today, just because I mention the phrase "golf course" it does NOT mean I am interested in golf - quite the reverse, in fact, I was merely remarking that my town has a 6-hole golf course which I'd never heard of before. Also, even if I am interested in your product, it may be of no use to me in my location. The salesdroids all seem to be based in the USA, or are offering USA-based products that are of no use to someone living here on the northern fringe of Europe. Surely it would be easier to check my location before following me? Or add a location query to your "trawler" search? It's not rocket science guys - do a little research and you may get more "hits", yeah?

I spent a short period as a salesman myself for a telephone service provider, so I've been on both sides of the equation here - and it was my hatred of the "hard-sell" which made me give it up in the end. But although I lived by the maxim "every refusal moves you one closer to a sale" I was at least intellegent enough not to go after people who were clearly not interested - this would be the equivalent of me cold calling people at random all over the world and I'd have just been wasting my time and resources if I'd tried to do that.

Although I'm trying not to let it get to me - and it's a lot of fun blocking these losers and sometimes adding a reply to show just how stupid they are offering me stuff I couldn't get even if I wanted it - we only have a certain amount of patience, and while I've been told I have an incredible amount, it is finite. In fact, I've noticed some of my followers taking their accounts private, and I have thought of that myself, but the #zaph80 project stopped me from doing that. I would like to share my musical ramble through the decade with people - not just my current contacts, but anyone else who want to come for the ride - and while it would still be public on blip.fm, I'd still like the Twitterverse to see.

So, for now, I remain public on Twitter. But rest assured I will be lethal and ruthless with the block facility in future. And a little saddened, because Twitter's lost it's childhood innocence - but that's something everyone and everything has to face at some point.

EMINEM - CLEANING OUT MY CLOSET
(from the album "The Eminem Show", 2002)

Zaph And Groupie Get A Room...

Here's the tree that never grew,
Here's the bird that never flew,
Here's the fish that never swam,
Here's the bell that never rang.

The above poem describes the symbols featured on Glasgow's coat of arms - and should you be interested, here's the story behind them all. I'm originally from the area (was born in a nearby town about 50km away) and it's always nice to visit the place - although I'd probably rather be in London, Glasgow has the advantage of being nearer, and cheaper. And like London, it's a big city and there's always a lot going on.

So it was that GroupieGirl and I "got a room" as it were - at the EuroHostel in the city. We've stayed there before when we've gone to rock concerts in the city, and while it's not exactly the Hilton, it's not as bad as some of the dives I've stayed in - it's actually a really good deal for the price.

The highlight of the stay would have to be visiting the Doctor Who exhibition at the Kelvingrove Art Gallery. I was quite a fan of the show back in the 80s during it's original run, when Peter Davidson was playing the lead role, and while the new version isn't exactly a must-see for me any more, I did enjoy the series with Christopher Eccleston as the Doctor - mainly because I saw so much of myself in his portrayal, even down to the leather jacket :)

So it was that we found ourselves in the basement of the gallery looking at various props and costumes from the series (all from the "modern" run, though there was a few mentions of the older series) and I got to fulfill an ambition I've held for a while - being a Dalek!! They had a prop from the series you could crawl into and operate, and let me tell you, it's very cramped in there, so this was a much bigger hit with the kids. I'm told by Groupie that passers-by seemed very impressed with my performance! They had also rigged up some displays of Daleks, Cybermen etc. that moved about, with lighting and sound effects, and it was just like being on the film set at times - really enjoyable. I took a few pics which will no doubt appear on Flickr at some point, so look out for them. (sharp-eyed readers may have noticed the Flickr badge in the sidebar)

That evening we went for tapas in the city centre and then to a stand-up comedy place called The Stand which we'd visited before, and while the first act on stage that night basically just died in front of us, the rest of the bill was much better and by the time we got to the headline act we were all in stitches. We were all having a good laugh at the two young ladies in front of us who had got through a bottle of red wine each in the two hours we'd been in and were, shall we say, getting rather giggly!

My iPhone proved a real lifesaver that evening, as the Glasgow underground stops running at about 18.00 on Sundays, and like in London the little trains are my preferred way of getting around the city - mainly because there's no worries about "where do I get off?" However, it was reasonably easy to get bus routes and timetables using the iPhone web browser, and Google Maps with GPS tracking were a real help too - the bus stops were all listed on the map. It helps that buses in Glasgow have LED displays giving you the name of the next stop - something which should be introduced on public transport up here immediately as far as I'm concerned.

Mentioning Apple reminds me of the day spent shopping and browsing - the only Apple store in Scotland is located in central Glasgow, and like it's London counterpart, it's become a tradition to visit it when I'm in town, if only to see what's on offer. I picked up a nice new case for my iPhone, and was blown away when the staff offered to email me my receipt - what an excellent idea!! Saves on paper, and you don't need to shred and recycle the thing when you're finished with it! Again, something all stores should do. Groupie was in her element looking through the stuff available at the "goth shops" - Glasgow has quite a sizeable goth and alternative lifestyle community, and there's a couple of stores which do some great gear.

We also spent some time looking round stuffed animals on display in a museum, and looking at an exhibition of gay/lesbian/bi-themed art, so a little bit of culture (Glasgow was the 1990 European culture capital, a fact they're still very proud of) And although not everything went to plan (the 80s club we wanted to visit on the Saturday night was closed, which rather deflated us a bit) we had a great time. And seeing Groupie in a dress is a rare and welcome sight :)

LLOYD COLE & THE COMMOTIONS - LOST WEEKEND
(from the album "Easy Pieces", 1985)

Horizontal Blogging

I'm typing this on my iPhone, lying on my bed, basically as a test to see if the free app I downloaded works :) If it does, I'll be able to blog from anywhere, just as easily as sending a text message. That's not to say I will actually be composing blog posts on holiday or anything - but the opportunity will be there at least.

Right now I'm feeling rather tired, and in a less than happy mood. Things have been getting on top of me today and my printer is currently not working properly. Which is unfortunate when you have to print out hostel reservations and the like. Fortunately I have the reservation numbers, which are all you really need, and have access to the documents in question as PDF files if they demand printouts - all I need to find is a cybercafe, and there's a few of those in Glasgow...

Anyway, I'm just going to snuggle up and rest for a few hours before it'll be time to fill an overnight bag with some gear and head south for a relaxing weekend with GroupieGirl. I think we both could do with a break, to be honest.

Whatever you're doing this weekend, hope it's fun!

My Democratic Duty

Around the European Union this week, people are going to the polls to elect their representatives in the European Parliament for the next five years, and in the United Kingdom voting day will be on Thursday (as elections always are in the UK) Much has been made of the fact that turnout at these elections are usually pretty poor - something like 30% of the electorate - probably because people don't really care all that much about the European Parliament and what it does.

Now, I don't usually get into politics on my blog, mainly because I don't want to start arguments - like religion, I believe this is something you have to work out for yourself. I'm probably more interested in politics than the average person, mainly due to an excellent Modern Studies teacher I had at school (and Mr.Patterson, if you're reading this - thanks for some really entertaining classes in the 80s) and with the Westminster MP expenses scandal, and the growing realization that the political landscape is shifting again, I've reawakened that interest recently.

I'm not going to tell you who to vote for. But I am going to tell you to vote, if you're registered. (and if you're not, make sure you fill the form in this autumn, yeah?)

Why is this election important? Because what goes on at the European Parliament matters. A lot of the laws in the member states of the EU are actually formulated at a European level and have been for some time now - so it matters who is representing you there. Maybe you don't agree with the EU "meddling in your country's affairs", or maybe you think there should be more done at the EU level. Well, this is your chance to make your voice heard, isn't it?

I've heard many people on the internet going on about the far-right BNP in recent days, and how "it's important to vote to keep them out", which is a pretty valid argument - the more extremist a party, the more likely their core support will turn out, and if just 30% of people vote, that would mean you'd need just 15% of the electorate to get a majority. But to be honest, I actually have more respect for someone who's going to vote BNP than someone who isn't going to vote at all. I'm about as far away politically from the BNP as it's possible to be, but I have great respect for someone who's willing to stand by their principles, even if I find those principles personally abhorrent. I believe the quote is "I may not agree with your opinion, but I will fight to the death to ensure you have the right to voice your opinion"

Or maybe you think all the politicians are the same and it doesn't matter who you vote for. Well, consider this option - why not deliberately spoil your ballot paper? When the voting system was changed in Scotland for the 2007 election there was a huge amount of coverage given to the amount of invalid ballot papers - possibly caused by people getting confused by the new system (where instead of putting a single X in a box, voters ranked their preferences 1st, 2nd, 3rd etc) They have to announce how many spoiled ballot papers were cast, and if the number is unusually high that's picked up by the media and questions are asked as to why that is. Whereas if you don't bother to turn up to vote, nobody cares about you.

Countries like Australia have compulsory voting, and while that's maybe a bit extreme, I can see that point of view. People have fought and died for the right to vote through the ages. It's only about a century since women had the right to vote at all. Even in the "land of the free", if you were black, you could have been refused a vote in the past. At one time, you were considered old enough to fight in a war for your country - but not considered old enough to have a say in who runs your country. And even today, there are some countries in the world where the citizens would love to have the chance to put an X in a box and freely choose their representatives.

The right to vote is something that maybe we take for granted these days, and we shouldn't really. I remember watching the huge lines of people queueing up to vote in the first election in South Africa after Nelson Mandela was released from jail. I can also remember getting on a bus and travelling 50km to cast my vote in the 1992 UK election - I'd moved since the register was drawn up, but there was no way I was going to miss the chance to legally vote for the first time. (I even considered standing as a Monster Raving Loony party candidate at the 2003 Scottish election - a story which probably deserves a blog entry in itself)

So, if you have a vote on Thursday, or later this weekend - please, please use it. It may not be much, but as Mahatma Gandhi once said, "Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it."

And now, on a lighter note...

A Kick Up The Eighties

Woowoo! Two consecutive days with an entry!! Am I back, or am I back :) Actually, I'm feeling a little sleepy right now having been awake all day (without my customary siesta in mid-afternoon) in a bid to try and fix my sleeping pattern once and for all. And I actually did something productive this afternoon as well (a recycle run) so things are going all right.

Right now, I'm awaiting a response from the GroupieGirl about our trip this weekend, as I've got some tickets to book for a certain exhibition taking place in Glasgow...more about that later... so to fill in the time and stop me from falling asleep, I thought I'd write an entry on my current internet project...

I've always been, shall we say, a little obsessed with the music charts - even during the periods in my life when I've not really found anything worthwhile to listen to in them. I remember as a child being fascinated about the charts, and how they were compiled (I saw something about it on TV which was really interesting) and of course, like most kids of my generation, I would listen to the chart rundown on the radio every week. I used to get massive brownie points for taking in a transistor radio to school on Tuesdays, because then me and my friends could hear the new charts as they were announced that lunchtime, and in my teenage years, I'd cut out the listings from the music papers and stick them up on my wall along with the rest of my posters.

For a while in the early 1990s I ran a postal wargaming fanzine, and as well as the latest happenings in the games I was running I'd write a music article for each issue, where I'd look at the chart of that week in a particular year. This was pre-internet of course, so my info was based on my big book containing all the charts up to 1990 and my NME anthology - sometimes I'd get the info wrong, and was put right by my readers, but it was easily the most popular part of the 'zine and at Christmas I'd ask my readers for their favourite tracks and compiled our own top 30.

Up until fairly recently I had a playlist on Youtube called "25 From TwentyFive" where I'd post the hits from exactly 25 years ago that month, and that got a few good comments from people, but I missed a month, and then I missed another, so that's rather ground to a halt unfortunately. Hence my new project, which I'm calling #zaph80 after the hashtag I'm using for it on Twitter - I mentioned it in passing on yesterday's entry, and there's a link to Twitter's search engine in the sidebar.

The basic premise of #zaph80 is this - starting with the chart week ending January 5, 1980 (the first one of the decade) I'm going to pick one track from each chart, and post it on blip.fm, which for the uninitiated is a sort of musical version of Twitter. All my posts there are echoed to Twitter, rather like all my blog posts, so you don't have to follow me at blip.fm to hear them (in fact, you don't even have to be registered with blip.fm to hear them, just click on the links) I'll try and post between one and three tracks each day, and hopefully, I'll make it all the way to the last week of December 1989...which will be over five hundred tracks later!

My method of selection for each chart week is simple. I think to myself, "If this was this week's chart, and I was in a record shop with enough money to buy one single...which one would I pick?" The 1980s pretty much coincide with my teenage years, so there'll be a lot of personal memories flooding back while I do this, and I can see myself spending some cash over at the iTunes store to "fill the gaps" in my own music collection.

Anyway, do feel free to check it out and follow #zaph80 over the next few months - assuming I can keep it up, of course! Hopefully you'll like my selections as much as I do... and if not? Well, why not do something similar yourself with your musical favourites? Blog about it too, and maybe we can swap links :)

CALVIN HARRIS - ACCEPTABLE IN THE 80S
(from the album "I Created Disco", 2007)

The Return Of The Space Cowboy

Hello again! The alien amongst you is, well, back amongst you, after a bit of an absence...it's been a while, hasn't it? About a moon or so since I last posted. To be honest, I've not been feeling much like posting anything here - maybe it's the strange lack of energy I've been experiencing over the last few weeks. Haven't felt like doing anything much to be honest. I really should get myself checked out...

Anyway, I was on Twitter at the weekend swapping messages with my online friends, and one fellow blogger (who's well and truly on my A-list) happened to mention "so, when are you going to start updating your blog again?" She pointed out that a long period without posts would mean I'd lose readers, and it would be hard to get them back - which makes a lot of sense. I mean, I'm not a publicity whore, but I'd like to think someone is out there reading this...

As well as this, someone at my work happened to mention my blog today. Now, normally I don't like my web presence filtering out to my work colleagues, but there is one person who's also following me on Twitter and so has seen my blog updates from the links posted there. He told me he thought my blog was "very well written", and I'm not sure if he's being altogether serious or not, but it sounded like it.

Plus of course, I have had quite a few new followers on Twitter since my last post here, some of whom blog themselves, so hopefully they'll read this too (and maybe browse the archive to get them up to speed with things). If this is you - welcome, and if you were already a regular, welcome back. I will try to keep things updated here - I've got a few stories "in the can" and there are a couple of events coming up which could merit an entry here. We'll see how things go.

So what's been happening? Well, not all that much to be honest - it was my birthday on May 23rd, so that's thirty six times around the sun now! A fairly quiet occasion (like my father, I don't really bother with massive celebrations) but Groupie came round and bought me this fantastic shirt with a scene from London on it, which I must get photographed in at some point!! Eurovision also took place in May, which was a lot of fun and I even managed to predict the winner for only the second time in ten years (although my exact words were - "I can't stand this song, so it'll probably win" which it did by an absolute landslide) And - whisper it - but I'm seriously thinking about going to the 2010 contest in person...

Things with GroupieGirl are thankfully a lot happier than they have been earlier in 2009 - she's certainly a lot more fun to be around, and seems to be a lot happier about herself than she was, which means she isn't taking things out on whoever happens to be nearest her anymore. Obviously I'm not going to go into too much detail about someone else's private life here, but let's just say she's working on slaying her own personal demons (and Zog knows, we've all got some of them to some extent) and it's reflecting in her outlook on life and her attitude towards the people she cares about (including me *blush*) In fact, she's been told she was "a really strong and determined woman" and it seems finally she's beginning to realize this.

We've even got a couple of weekends away planned - this weekend we're off to Glasgow, and six weeks later she's taking me to a classy hotel in Perthshire for the weekend (she won the trip in a competition).

And finally, I've just started a little project on blip.fm where I'm slowly going through the entire decade of the 1980s week-by-week and posting links to my favourite songs. I'm calling it the #zaph80 project (and that's the hashtag to search for on Twitter) and hopefully a few people will follow that too over the next few months - we're still only in February 1980, so you've not missed much. Thinking about it, that's probably a blog entry in itself!

Anyway, I will try not to leave it so long next time, yeah? Truth be told, I have missed this. It's good to be back :)

JAMIROQUAI - THE RETURN OF THE SPACE COWBOY
(from the album "The Return Of The Space Cowboy", 1994)