That’s life on a planet in a binary star system.
Having pushed back my leaving do at Buzz Sports to accommodate the other four people who were leaving, it turned out it handed directly on top of the first social event of the new organisation I’m now consulting with.
I know what you’re thinking – the obvious thing to do would have been to constantly make excuses about going to the bathroom and then rapidly running between venues pretending I was simultaneously attending both events in some kind of sitcom setup.
Unfortunately, I eventually opted for something far more pedestrian. Having worked round Sandinista, The Lounge, Mojo’s, Fibre, Revolution and Call Lane Social with Gooroo, I headed over to Maven to find the Buzz crew. By this point (11pm) there were only two of them left standing – Simundo and Ian.
As it turns out, Maven is quite a find (and number two in the best kept secrets in the UK, according to Ian). They don’t seem to have cocktail menus – I just went up to the bar and told them what ingredients I liked and two minutes later I was sipping on a very nice raspberry based long drink. Delicious. Further investigation is definitely required.
I recently joined Toastmasters, a public speaking club which isn’t a cult (lets be clear about that from the start).
The most recent meeting of the club saw me take on a role for the first time. A role basically follows the definition of the word – each week the different roles be it chair (or Toastmaster if you will), Time Keep, Grammarian, Evaluators, etc are taken on by different people so you get experience doing lots of different things.
As Ah Counter, my job was to watch out for people using crutch words – these are words such as “well” that you might add to buy time in the middle of a sentence, or “ahs”, “umms” and “erms” – none of which are needed and can be replaced by a dramatic pause.
It was fun though sometimes I found myself so consumed in focusing on my specific part that I was almost missing what else was going on around me.
It’s not often that I get kicked out of a restaurant.
But when you’re taking advantage of the early bird special and you then proceed to sit there for several hours, eventually they start moaning about having other bookings. You could blame me for turning up 7 minutes late, but I could tell from the waiter’s eyes that they were really saying “your mother is getting a little too lairy after that half a bottle of wine, sir.”
We were out celebrating my dad’s birthday and enjoyed a night of great conversation about how you won’t be around forever, so it’s important to spend your life’s savings before you die, while having picked the restaurant specifically because it represented a good compromise between great food and not having to pay Blackhouse prices.
I was very interested to try the pigeon available on the starters menu, but was somewhat worried I wouldn’t like it. Therefore, I did the only sensible thing to do – I made Elina get the pigeon and tried some of hers. Turns out, a pigeon is pretty delicious.
Of course, normally in these situations you would offer to pay, but having recently left my job, and having had our conversation earlier about making the most of your savings before your time is up, I thought it only fair to let me dad pick up the bill.
You can tell Sous le Nez is an authenticate French restaurant because they say everything in perfect English, but then add the word “monsieur” onto the end. So it’s a great to enjoy French food, particularly as if you actually go to France, you just get Greek food.
I was somewhat disappointed when I first began reading History: A Very Short Introduction.
I was originally coping for a compact and concise list of everything that has happened in the past few thousand years. You know, Depression, Hitler, World War 2, Invention of Supermarkets, etc. You know, a way to know everything that has ever happened, in around a hundred pages.
However, History: A Very Short Introduction follows a different narrative, one more in line with the other books in the series, and common sense. It talks about “Historiography”, the study of history and methodologies used in such study.
While I found it just about interesting enough to continue reading all the way through, I must say that I didn’t feel I learnt a great deal. Having studied history for the first three years of high school, I felt that alone had given me a grounding in history to a greater level. You could of course argue this is obvious (three years of school vs a book that took me two days to read), but I would have expected the book to be pitched at a level that assumes the reader had in fact attended school.
Still, it isn’t entirely about the learning, but also about proving it on paper – and now that I can add having read said book to my CV, as I explained to Hugh, I’m now more than happy to fill in for him at his history lectures at any point.
Sorry, not sure who to credit, but someone posted this. It’s brilliant.
Awstats is updated by cPanel once per day, but if you want to force a manual update, you can do so with the following command.
/usr/bin/perl /usr/local/cpanel/3rdparty/bin/awstats.pl -config=example.com -update
Given that we saw Alan’s book, Bouncing Back, get pulped due to low sales, it would seem somewhat ironic that his recent book, “I, Partridge” doesn’t seem to be doing too well either – originally priced at £20, I picked my copy up for £3.99. Admittedly, that was on Kindle, but the book shop round the corner has the hardback for £6.
I don’t know why. This is one of the best books I have read recently. I couldn’t put it down – having purchased it one Sunday morning I had read from start to finish by the end of the day.
Presenting a vivid depiction of Alan’s life, often weaving in and out of the TV show, the book reads like you’re in conversation with him – and it works brilliantly. Not to mention his description of a fleeing Dave Clifton probably being the funniest simile you will ever read.
Ironically, as I only started reading it because Elina was keeping me awake by playing Scrabble on her laptop. But ten minutes after she had started playing the site went down for maintenance, so needless to say, I had the last laugh.
Sometimes, you must have to be bold and say “screw it, I’m going to Wendy House in a really outrageous outfit, no matter how much people stare.
That’s when I went in my Panic! At the Disco t-shirt.
I recently attended the Atheist Society‘s AGM. It was good to see a strong turnout and some real enthusiasm. Although perhaps not as high as in previous years and with only one contested position, it was never the less good to see that there are plenty of people in the society who want to make it a great year.
Congratulations to James Gupta who was elected President, Will, the new Vice President, Monique, the new Secretary, Amy, the new Treasurer and Hugh, the new Generic Committee Member.
At the rather delayed meeting of the Humanist Society of West Yorkshire which had to be moved back to accomodate term times at the Swarthmore Centre that took place recently, Gijsbert presented a talk on Pacifism and Humanism.
It’s a tricky subject and one which has been debated before in the group – notably when there was a suggestion that as a society we should lay a wreath on Remembrance Day.
It was a really interesting talk, and I agreed with Gijsbert that going to war simply doesn’t make sense in modern times. However, as I blogged about in December, the real question facing most of us today is are we willing to go along with the state’s brainwashing of the lower working class to convince them go die in Afghanistan on our behalf.
You would assume the answer would be no, but it becomes more tricky when, as a Humanist, I am also an interventionist when it comes to things like genocide. How do we work out whether someone really is going the military voluntarily, knowing what the reality of war is, or simply because of “it’s noble to die for your country” propaganda and economic conscription. Such issues cause me a great struggle in trying to reconcile both my Pacifism and my Interventionism, with my Humanism.
