All Entires In General Category

I've gotten very little done today. I bumped into Chrissy at RPG last night and she suggested that I pop round and keep her company today. I said that I would give her a ring this morning. Unfortunately, after staying up late last night to watch the Home Run Derby I was still in bed when she phoned me at 10am.

After the normal morning routine I popped over to Chrissy's just as she was showing a guy around the house who was quoting for the insulation. Not long after we had to pop into Egremont to pick up her son and ended up having lunch in a cafe in town. Whilst her son slept most of the afternoon we nattered and caught up. We haven't really had a good chance to sit down and natter for well over a year, and probably closer to two.

Anyway, after she picked up her daughter, she invited me to stay for tea with herself, the kids and her husband. I kept the kids entertained whilst she did most of the prep-work for the meal. We had Moussaka with blanched potatoes, courgette, broccoli and salad. For a first ever attempt at Moussaka it was a very nice meal; so nice in fact that I had a second helping of everything.

It's nice to catch up with friends every now and again; even if you do get to see them on a more or less weekly basis at someting like the roleplaying club. It's refreshing to just sit down one-to-one and just see where the conversation leads.

I decided to have an early night last night; especially having had 2 late nights working away either on websites or reinstalling Dad's PC. Anyway, I woke up at about 6am this morning and felt pretty good; although I decided that was too early to get up. Went back to bed and woke up again just after 9am. I've ended up doing very little today a[art from popping to the Job Centre this morning and into town to do a wee bit of shopping this afternoon. No pressures or hassle!

After spending most of last night doing some work on a couple of websites that I am involved with, it was after 4:30am when I finally went to bed. Fully intending to stay in bed for as long as I could, I was rudely awakened at about 10am this morning by a couple of fighter jets screaming overhead.

The Lake District is an ideal location for the RAF to practice low-level flying and they normally take place in the valleys further to the east and south. We rarely hear them, except maybe in the distance if they get a bit closer. It must be well over a year since I can last remember any low-level drills taking place this far west of the mountains.

Anyway, I've spent most of my time this morning doing a bit more website work and am now going to take a break and watch some tv.

It's been another rather close day here and I decided that after the amount of running around, seemingly chasing after nothing, that I have been doing lately I was going to take the opportunity and have a chill out. I've gotten myself eight bottles of Grolsch and will be taking things easy for the rest of the evening and enjoying most of them. I may even watch a movie or perhaps just sit in the fading light and enjoy some loud heavy metal music.

As Pewari mentioned in her podcast the other day we rarely get an extended period of good weather here in the UK. And where I live in Cumbria it's even rarer. The closeness of the local lakes and mountains to the sea tends to result in a lot of rainy weather.

However, having said that, the weather here has been really good since last Monday and looking at the forecast for the coming week it's not going to get significantly worse. There's a few cooler, cloudy days forecast for the week ahead but no rain ahead.

Now that my toes are healed I may take the opportunity one day this week to pop into the hills and take a few photographs. I'm tempted to pop down the coast to the Eskdale valley and take a visit to the Roman Fort up on Hard Knot Pass.

I went out for a drink last night. I've only just got home. I had fun!

I installed Ubuntu on my laptop about a month or so ago and have been dual booting it with XP ever since to see how things worked out. After a month of using Ubuntu I haven't once had to drop into XP on the laptop and am considering the test successful. There's been nothing I've wanted to do on the laptop that I haven't been able to do in Ubuntu and the next step is to upgrade to Hardy Heron, the next version of Ubuntu, when it's released in a couple of weeks.

However, having said all that, I'm still not going to install it on my main PC; for a number of reasons:

• I still have a lot of Windows based applications and games and really don't want to have to mess about with Wine or other software to get them running under Linux.


• If somebody phones, emails or IMs me looking for some PC advice it makes life much easier having XP in front of me so that I can walk them through the problem.


• The desktop is left switched on virtually constantly; it's only ever switched off if there's a need to reboot, so dual booting would be a waste of hard drive space.


• And, the main reason I'm not installing it on my desktop is that I like the way my PC is currently set up and am very comfortable with it. Even with having to reinstall XP once or twice in the last 3 or 4 years I've still ended up using the same sort of settings and the same little utilities I've always used.

However, I can happily say that if you don't like or just don't want to use XP or Vista I can recommend Ubuntu as a very good alternative. Just be aware that although support for Ubuntu is very good, it's nowhere near as widespread or accessible as it is for the Windows platforms, and gaming suffers similarly. There is a vibrant community out there and members are more than happy to help others out.

In summary, Ubuntu is brilliant and I've no intentions of removing it from the laptop. I might even go the whole hog yet and remove XP from it totally. But, I like XP on my desktop and am not going to give it up.

An article on last night's Gadget Show caught my attention. With the abundance of digital downloads nowadays it's rather a minefield as to whether or not they are covered by your contents insurance. I've never actually bought any digital downloads and would much rather have the physical media in my hand. But, the article got me thinking "What if I did own some?"

I've checked my policy document and I'm still not certain whether I would be covered or not. The policy document doesn't specifically define digital downloads but in the section on General Exclusions it lists 'Date change and computer viruses' and has the following definition: 'Computers include hardware, software, data, electronic data processing equipment and other computing and electronic equipment linked to a computer.' That means that I'm not covered for data loss by date changes or computer viruses. Now, because it says that these exclusions apply to all sections of the policy I would think that it's probably fair to assume that the definitions also apply to the whole policy. If that's the case, then digital downloads; as part of the data, would be covered for loss by theft or accidental damage.

I've just created a Twitter profile for myself. Anybody interested can follow me. Shockingly, 'Bowch' was already taken so I'm signed up as 'BowchUK'. In fact, further delving reveals that the 'Bowch' username is actually me when I signed up for Liberal Democrat updates back in January. Unfortunately, I don't know what email address or password was used and can't seem to recover it. So, I'm 'BowchUK' on Twitter.

My internet connection is currently busted. BT are sending out an engineer tomorrow morning.

Today, I have been mostly troubleshooting PCs.

First off this morning my sister phoned me with some problems so I ended up talking her through installation and running of some Anti-Spyware software. Dad's PC had a similar issue just after lunch and I spent a good hour or so sorting that too.

Scoot phoned mid-afternoon to say he was having problems with his PC. The screen resolution had downgraded to 800x600 and anytime he tried to change it back to 1024x768 it came up with an error. Ended up popping down and finally decided that a reinstall of Windows was in order. He's been running Win98 and had only done 1 reinstall in the last 10 years. Anyway, I had a spare copy of XP which I gave him and installed that for him. Installed a few other bits and pieces and set the hard drives off defragging to help out as much as possible. Couldn't do any software updates for him since he isn't connected to the net.

I got home and my sister asked me to help her out on The Spiderwick Chronicles. I spent a good hour or so trying to help her out and ended up giving up.

I came back upstairs, plugged the laptop's lead in and got a nice white flash from the extension. Quickly unplugged and took the lead downstairs to change fuses. The fuse that I took out happened to still be fine and powered up a CD player. I put a new fuse in anyway and took the lead back upstairs. Moved a couple of plugs about and everything, including the extension that had flashed and my laptop, is still fine.

We've got an unwanted and uninvited visitor; a mouse. I went to get the cereal out of the cupboard this morning to discover one of the cornflakes bags have been split open and one of the boxes of weetabix have been chewed through. We've disposed of anything that even had the slightest chance of contamination and spent the rest of the day going through all the cupboards in the kitchen, emptying them, disinfecting them and ensuring that any possible route of ingress has been blocked. We've also moved any boxes or bags of foodstuffs at risk out of the bottom cupboards and put them up into the higher cupboards, We haven't put any poison or traps down but we may yet end up doing so.

I ordered some blanks dvds over the weekend for myself, my Dad and a friend. I ordered them from BigPockets and they arrived this morning.

Along with the DVDs I also ordered a Bag O' Crap. For £2.99 they sent me a box with 'three crappy items' in it. The only guarantee they made was that the contents would be worth a lot more then a measly £3.

I received a Masterplug Weather Resistant Plug Shelter which isn't on their website, but sells for about £1.30 from SVP, a pair of in-ear earphones which also aren't on their site but probably retail for about £1, a pack of 4 Memorex Energy Super Heavy Duty 'C' Batteries, which they sell for £1.80 and the pièce de résistance; a 240 disc AMPS DJ Style Aluminium Carry Case, which they retail for just over £11. So, £15 of product for £3. I can't complain and am actually quite happy with what I received.

Since 1991, Regulation (EEC) No 918/83 has limited the maximum value of goods imported into the EU before incurring customs charges at €22 [£17.50]. From 1st December 2008 this limit will rise to €150 [£119.50] as a result of EU Council Directive 2007/74/EC. The text of the proposal can be found here.

We had a power cut this afternoon. The weather has been okay for the last couple of days and it would appear that the local sub station failed rather than the weather being responsible. Big plumes of white smoke and the replacement of the biggest fuse you could imagine later and all is good again. The power was down for about 3 hours or so and thankfully we went out shopping so didn't have to find alternate forms of entertainment in the interim.

After being afflicted by a serious case of wanderlust in the past it would appear that my good friend, Mondrak, has finally settled upon a home on the web. His email address hasn't changed in at least six months; okay, it's more than a year, but people who know him will know how often we used to receive emails saying he'd changed his email address. He's also moved his blog over to WordPress.

There's an updated link on the left if you're interested.

I've been receiving a rather large amount of spam on a daily basis for at least the last couple of years. It started off with about 150-200 a day but has recently peaked at a regular figure closer to 1000. In fact, once or twice it's been closer to 1500. Anyway, with broadband I never really concerned myself too much about it and let my email client and the filters I had set up within it sort them out. However, it still wasn't sorting them all and I'd still have to trawl through at least 100 a day to make sure there wasn't any genuine emails getting caught.

Anyway, I finally decided to try and sort it out a bit better; with the intention of stopping the spam even getting as far as my inbox. I had a poke about in my domain control panel and thought I'd figured it out. Rather than redirecting all unqualified domain addresses to the main account I told it to filter them first; searching for certain prefixes. Anything that didn't match the prefixes would be bounced. Testing seemed to back me up.

However, thanks to Mondrak, I managed to discover that it was blocking all emails except the ones I had originated from my own PC, either via the email client or via any of the web mail services I have access to. After further tweaking I managed to eventually solve that problem only to run into a different one. The way the filters have been designed means that as well as allowing bowch@ as a valid prefix it would also allow notbowch@ or fakebowch@ or any other prefix ending with bowch@. Setting filter options that would solve this wasn't working. Everytime I set it to read "Does Not Equal" it would change to "Equal" for no apparent reason.

I have ended up setting up extra email accounts and telling the server to forward them to my main account. Any unqualified emails will now get bounced back with a failure message. Valid email addresses now only include bowch (at), blog (at), useful (at), webmaster (at) and yahoogroups (at) with everything else bouncing. I've set them up with relatively low disk quotas and will hopefully not need to change much. I'm going to keep an eye on it over the next couple of weeks and make sure that it forwards okay and isn't eating up valuable space on my domain server.

I've been doing some research on the Middle East during the 12th century for my Saturday game and got sidetracked into the world in general in the 12th century and then England in particular. After reading a few articles, now well off topic, I came across an article about Cumbrian Dialect and realised how much of the local dialect I actually use/have used without realising that it's specifically local. Just a few examples include:

• la'al - meaning little
• yam - meaning home (as garn yam) [I'm going home]
• skit - meaning make fun of
• twat - meaning hit someone
• marra - meaning friend (ahreet, marra) [Hi, Mate]
• hossing - meaning raining heavily (it's hossing it duwn) [Regular occurrence]

And then there's the old sheep counting system:

1. yan
2. tyan
3. tethera
4. methera
5. pimp
6. sethera
7. lethera
8. hovera
9. dovera
10. dick
11. yandick
12. tyandick
13. tetheradick
14. metheradick
15. bumfit
16. yan-bumfit
17. tyan-bumfit
18. tethera-bumfit
19. methera-bumfit
20. giggot

I could always remember 1-4 but that was about it. In fact I always have a tendency to say 'yan' rather than 'one' anyway; even when speaking with non-locals.

Makes you wonder how much other people use local dialect/phrases without realising.

After looking through the changes announced in this week's budget it would appear that very little will change with my day-to-day, week-on-week spending ability.

Income Tax & National Insurance
Due to the fact that I'm currently not working, the raising of the personal allowance to £5,345, reduction from 22% down to 20% and abolition of the 10% starting band won't affect me. The change in National insurance Contribution rates and thresholds also won't affect me directly. Of course, when I start working again these will become relevant.

Tax Credit & Child Benefit
These changes also don't affect me and to be honest, although there are rises in these, it would appear that they aren't t likely to be of any significant benefit to parents anyway; especially when inflation and rises in the price of commodities such as wheat are taken into consideration. Look for significant rises in the cost of flour and bread as the worldwide wheat shortage starts kicking in.

Winter Fuel Payment
I don't qualify; I'm under 60. But, this will help my Dad somewhat.

Individual Savings Accounts (ISAs)
I don't have any ISAs so the increase in the overall annual investment limit and the change from the starting 10% rate on the non savings income to a starting 10% rate on the savings income doesn't affect me.

Alcohol & Tobacco
Although I do drink it isn't particularly often; even when I was in full time employment. I rarely drink pints so the 4p rise in the price of a pint has no bearing. The 55p rise in the price of a bottle of spirits is what is likely to affect me most. I tend to drink Jack Daniels and Coke whilst out and once in a blue moon I'll treat myself to a decent bottle of malt whisky. On the Tobacco side, I don't smoke, so the increases there won't affect me.

Motoring Taxes
The changes in Vehicle Excise Duty won't directly affect me. My Dad is disabled and he is therefore exempt from paying the duty; this is paid directly via his DLA. The freeze on the planned fuel duty increase of 2 pence per litre in April 2008 until October 2008 is quite welcome; although I'm wondering how long companies like Tesco and Morrison can maintain their local prices at about 105p per litre when some forecourts in London are charging up to 130p per litre.

Other Measures
A lot of the other measures announced in the budget lean towards protecting the environment.

The government has called on retailers to encourage the shift away from single-use carrier bags and have announced that if there is not sufficient progress by the end of the year they will look to impose a charge on these bags from early next year.

All new non-domestic buildings to be zero carbon from 2019. This is in addition to the ambition for all new homes to be zero carbon from 2016.

Air Passenger Duty will be replaced with a duty payable per plane rather than per passenger from November 2009.

Finally, the UK is currently working towards a long-term goal of reducing CO2 emissions by at least 60 per cent by 2050. The Climate Change Bill will commit the government to fixed and binding 5-year carbon budgets

I got up this morning with the intentions of getting some serious prep-work done for this session's Ratkin game. Unfortunately, my Dad's PC had other ideas. When he booted it up it had a whole raft of virii and trojans listed. Upon further delving not only had he been infected with Vundo but also with various fake AV software that had disabled his existing AV protection and also a lot of administrator functions such as the ability to run the Task Manager. After spending an hour at it I decided that a complete clean install would be for the best. Suffice to say I got very little done today other than that. It's up and running and clean at least...

I was at the hospital this afternoon for an interview in the Pharmacy department; who are looking for a Clerical Officer. I think the interview went okay and it's now just a matter of waiting to hear.

I got home and my sister's dog pounced on me when I walked in the door and landed on my toe. Boy, did it hurt! I'd managed to go the best part of a week without knocking them and it's now throbbing away quite nicely.

Today marks the 10th anniversary of the erection of the Angel Of The North next to the A1 near Newcastle/Gateshead; although Wikipedia actually lists 16th February 1998 as the completion date. I didn't realise it had actually been that long; where do the years go?

Anyway, it's estimated that it's probably seen well over 30 million times a year by people either passing or visiting it could very well end up being seen over 3 billion times during it's expected 100 year life.

I didn't realise that there is also a companion Angel Of The South planned for erection at Ebbsfleet in 2009 next to the high speed Channel Tunnel Rail Link.

I had a job interview this morning with Allerdale Borough Council; for the position of Benefits Clerk, based at Allerdale House in Workington. Allerdale is the borough north of Copeland; where I live, and has a population of approximately 95,000. It includes the towns and surrounding villages of Workington, Maryport, Cockermouth, Keswick and Wigton. I think the interview went okay and hopefully I managed to answer all their questions to a satisfactory standard. My only concern is that I don't know a lot about Council Tax or Housing Benefits but I'm hoping that a lot of the people interviewed are going to be in a similar position. There's actually 2 positions up for grabs so I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

I must admit my feet were really sore first thing this morning when I put my shoes on and I was hobbling around the house grimacing and thinking "This isn't going to work." After all, it's the first time I've worn socks and shoes since getting my toes done. However, by the time I'd reached Workington my feet weren't anywhere near as sore as they had been and although there was a fair bit of discomfort, it wasn't enough to cause me great hardship. I managed to limp through the morning okay.

Stolen/Borrowed from Casp's website.

Just over a week after Christmas and it's started snowing here. Unfortunately the forecast is for rain on Friday and Saturday; but we can hope...

All the best for 2008 to one and all.

Best wishes for the season to one and all.

Have yourself a merry little Christmas,
Let your heart be light
From now on,
Our troubles will be out of sight

Through the years
We all will be together,
If the Fates allow
Hang a shining star upon the highest bough.
And have yourself a merry little Christmas now.

As usual, March has been a very busy month.

Well, 2005 has been consigned to the history books and 2006 is now upon us.

The Stupidest Things!

Taking a leaf out of Mark's book I've completed my own version of his meme. Going through the list there wasn't much that really sucked in 1988 and there was at least 3 or 4 I could've picked as my favourite.

Taking a leaf from mcphee. I made a quiz too.

Take my Quiz! and then Check out the Scoreboard!

Yesterday was my first day back at work.

He who has gone, so we but cherish his memory, abides with us, more potent, nay, more present than the living man.
- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, 1900 - 1944

With the General Election just around the corner I thought people might be interested in a Political Survey.

Well, 2004 has been consigned to the history books and 2005 is now upon us.

I am your friend and my love for you goes deep. There is nothing I can give you which you have not got, but there is much, very much that, while I cannot give it, you can take.

No heaven can come to us unless our hearts find rest in today. Take heaven!
No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in this present little instant. Take peace!

The gloom of the world is but a shadow. Behind it, yet within our reach is joy. There is radiance and glory in the darkness could we but see - and to see we have only to look. I beseech you to look!

Life is so generous a giver, but we, judging its gifts by the covering, cast them away as ugly or heavy or hard. Remove the covering and you will find beneath it a living splendor, woven of love, by wisdom, with power.

Welcome it, grasp it, touch the angel's hand that brings it to you. Everything we call a trial, a sorrow or a duty, believe me, that angel's hand is there, the gift is there, and the wonder of an overshadowing presence. Our joys, too, be not content with them as joys. They, too, conceal diviner gifts.

Life is so full of meaning and purpose, so full of beauty - beneath its covering - that you will find earth but cloaks your heaven.

Courage, then, to claim it, that is all. But courage you have, and the knowledge that we are all pilgrims together, wending through unknown country, home.

And so, at this time, I greet you. Not quite as the world sends greetings, but with profound esteem and with the prayer that for you now and forever, the day breaks, and the shadows flee away.

Fra Giovanni, Christmas Eve, 1513

A little over a week to go until Christmas, and I've already got everybody's presents bought, did it all online, but still haven't sent out any cards. I'm not yet into the festive spirit and the ways things are I probably won't be up until the 23rd when I'm going out for the office celebration.

Well, I'm home from my Blackpool trip and had a good time whilst away. Watched some Smallville, some D&D cartoons, Aladdin, Tomb Raider 2, Kung Pow, Indiana Jones and a couple of episodes of Lost.

It's Blackpool time again, and a chance to meet up with all the old Quest gang... I'll be back on Monday; although I doubt anybody would really notice that I've gone anyway...

Virtually a whole month goes by without any posts here.

Well, today had been extremely hectic so far, and it's only 2:30pm.

Today was a Bank Holiday in the UK.

Blackpool was good.

Well, 2003 has disappeared in to the ether and 2004 is upon us.

Seasons greetings to one and all..

I think I've just about recovered enough to bring you all a tale to strike terror in to most hearts. Well, ok, I'm lying. Most of you will probably end up pissing your pants with laughter...

I enjoy every minute of it...

Wrestling lost a legend today; Stu Hart, 88, died from complications of diabetes and pneumonia. He is survived by 10 of his 12 children. Respected by everybody in the business he was involved in wrestling for well over 50 years and was responsible for training many of wrestling's greats. He will be sorely missed by all...

You know what?

I've recently come across a couple of things that in theory should be quite nice, but aren't; in fact, they bloody ming...

Is it too much to ask for a full night of decent sleep?

I've got a friend in the Navy; his name is Mark, and this weekend he had some time at home.

Ok, I admit that I had an inkling all along of what Mark was asking, and here, after much brain-wracking, are my 5:

Okay, Mark, here's my 5 and kinda reasons...

Well, we've had lots of discussion on IRC over the last couple of days concerning, amongst other things, the Power Rangers and a couple of milkshake drinks, Crusha & Fridj, although NesQuick only got mentioned in passing.

Went to Jo's 40th birthday party last night.

Well, I've done over 70 hours this week at week, and needless to say I'm absolutely cream-crackered.

Just read mcphee's blog and discovered that Averil has sold the Sutton Park.

Over the last year or so I have gradually become more and more disillusioned with Quest.

Well, it's almost the middle of the week and it's been well over a week since my last entry; which, to be honest, is probably not that surprising.

Had a driving lesson on Friday afternoon, the wonders of reversing around a corner were revealed to me, along with instruction to book my Theory Test. Well, I have done so and Saturday June 7th is the first big date in my efforts to learn to drive.

Well, yesterday was polling day in Copeland, although truth be told due to the fact that Copeland ran an all postal elections ballot papers were being returned from mid-April onwards.