January 2009 started off with the BBC announcing Matt Smith as the newest incarnation of Doctor Who. I finished the final book of Terry Goodkind's Sword Of Truth series. It had an interesting twist at the end but I've read very little since and am now starting to miss reading. I also did a wee bit of baking with Chrissy and spent a fair bit of January feeling various levels of under the weather. I also spent the best part of a full day looking at a friend's PC. January saw the deaths of Ron Asheton, Patrick McGoohan and Tony Hart. January also saw me preparing to start the 2 Open University courses that I had decided to study.
February was rather a quiet month and about the only thing I did of note was attend a tutorial in Carlisle for one of my two OU courses.
March started off with the death of Paul Harvey, a voice from my youth... To be honest, little else of note occurred in March; other than receiving my first TMA (tutor-marked assignment) back.
I spent a couple of days in Folkestone at the start of April. I had taken a couple of friends down to Norfolk for a boating holiday and since I was already down country took the opportunity to visit Alastair. I sold my old laptop to Tricia as a result of getting a new one myself. April saw the death of one of the fathers of D&D; Dave Arneson.
May started off with a potential health scare for myself; although it ended up just being a muscle strain. My studies continued and I went to the cinema to watch 'Star Trek'; definitely one of the stand-out movies of the year. May ended with Manchester United coming up short against FC Barcelona in the UEFA Champiopns League final.
June started off with the sad news of the death of one of my favourite authors; David Eddings. I attended the count for the European Elections and June ended with the shock news that Cristiano Ronaldo would be moving to Real Madrid.
Mid-July saw me take my old faithful system out of service and replace it with a brand new, self-built, system.
August and September were rather quiet months and saw the start of the new football season. I also revisited the problem of spam email and managed to come up with a valid and workable solution.
October saw me start a work placement with Northside Community Centre. It's a position I have enjoyed and there is a hope that something more permanent can be arranged. The end of october saw me in Glasgow for a Paradise Lost gig. It was a very enjoyable evening.
November started off with Saxon/Anvil and Biffy Clyro gigs. I also upgraded my PC from Windows Vista Ultimate x64 to Windows 7 Ultimate x64 and upgraded Dad's PC from Windows XP Professional to Windows 7 Professional x64. However, the really big news from November was the extremely heavy rainfall that fell in Cumbria and resulted in the Cocker and Derwent bursting their banks and severely flooding Cockermouth. Workington Bridge, referred to as Calva Bridge by the media was badly damaged and closed as a result. Navvies footbridge was swept away. New Bridge, referred to as Northside Bridge by the media, was destroyed with the death of PC Bill Barker. A temporary footbridge, named in honour of PC Barker, has since opened and the local council have announced that they hope to have a temporary 2-way road bridge up by late spring. Work can then start on replacing New Bridge. Workington Bridge is a listed structure so discussions will need to take place to decide what happens next.
December was a very busy month at work. The community centre became a crisis centre for the local community and a number of vital services were hosted from there. We had a decent amount of snowfall the week before Christmas; which stuck around on the ground until Boxing Day. Christmas itself seemed rather quiet. Finally, I received confirmation of my 2009 course results. I passed both M150 and T175 and will start MST121 and S197 in the New Year.
Music and TV has been a fairly decent year and if I had to give a list of my top 5 films I've watched in 2009, they would be: Star Trek, District 9, Red Cliff, Zombieland and Lesbian Vampire Killers. Other films that I have watched and enjoyed this year; in no partcular order and including cinema, DVD and TV showings include: Transporter 3, Twilight, Watchmen, The Spirit, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Paul Blart: Mall Cop, Downloading Nancy, Push, Terminator Salvation, Angels & Demons, Transformers Revenge Of The Fallen, Ice Age 3, The Taking Of Pelham 123, Surrogates, The Wrestler and Megashark vs Giant Octopus; absolutely awful but brilliant because of it.
It's been a little under 3 weeks since my last post and things seem to be progressing okay in the aftermath of the floods. There are still a number of bridges closed, awaiting inspection, and diversions continue to be in place. The army have built a temporary footbridge in Workington upstream of the one that was destroyed in the floods. This has gone someway towards helping to reconnect the two halves of Workington. Workington Bridge remains closed and will eventually have to be demolished. Rumours suggest that a temporary road bridge linking the northern reaches of Workington back to the southern half of town won't occur until the summer and a permanent solution could be a couple of years away.
A temporary railway station has been built about a mile or so north of the river and currently travel by train between Workington, Workington North, Flimby and Maryport is free; although this will change in the New Year. Tesco are building a temporary Metro store not far from the temporary Workington North railway station. This should be open by Tuesday and may end up being in situ for about 3 years. Natwest have set up a mobile bank that visits Seaton and Northside twice a week. Emergency GP clinics are currently running out of Northside Community Centre and Firth House, Seaton. Ford UK have loaned a minibus to the Community Centre and Malcom Wilson's M-Sport have been kind enough to pay the insurance for it. The Community Centre are running a Tuesday service into Workington for residents north of the river and are also running a service to Asda in Carlisle on Thursdays.
Finally, on a personal note I turned 40 on 24th November and celebrated by visiting Old Trafford with my brother-in-law, nephew and friend. We went to see Manchester United vs Besiktas; although, a much changed United side lost on the night. I have also recently been made aware of my Open University course results. I got an 89 for my T175 TMA/CMAs and a 74 for the ECA; that's a Pass. I also got a 92 for my M150 OCAS/OAS which is also a Pass. That means I can add a Certificate in Information Technology and Computing to my CV and am 1/6 of the way through my degree...
My family and I have managed to escape the recent Cumbrian floods unscathed. We've had some bad weather locally but my two sisters, my brother, my Dad and I all live in locations where flooding is extremely unlikely. About the only disruption we've had at home is a loss of telephone and internet service on Friday as a result of Northside Bridge collapsing.
I was due to attend BTCV in Workington on Friday morning and then pop into Northside Community Centre in the afternoon. It took well over an hour to get from Lillyhall into Workington town centre; a distance of less than 3 miles. This was due to the police stopping all motorists entering Workington to ascertain where they were going. I was told that getting to BTCV would be no problem but that to get to Northside I would need to go out via Cockermouth and Maryport.
Anyway, I reached BTCV only to discover that they were closed and rather than attempt to get to Northside I returned home. I texted my boss to say as much and he advised me not to bother coming in on Monday either until he knew for definite how things were going to pan out.
I've been keeping close tabs on the road and bridge closures and whilst getting in and out of West Cumbria via the A66 is still possible. The A595 is closed at Papcastle which is just north of Cockermouth. It's looking likely that to get to work at the moment I will need to head along the A5086 toward Cokermouth and then head east; away from Workington, towards Keswick. Then it depends whether the B5291 is open or not. If it is I could then go along that, to the north of Bassenthwaite Lake and then north on the A591 to Bothel. If the B5291 is closed then I would need to go south to Keswick before then heading north on the A591 towards Bothel. I could then head south on the A595 to the Papcastle roundabout. West on the A594 to Maryport and then finally south on the A596 to Northside. Thus turning a 13 mile journey into somewhere betwwen a 43 to 55 mile journey. Hopefully, inspections will go well and the road up to Papcastle can be reopened. This will mean the route to work becomes only 27 miles.
I was in Manchester last night with a couple of friends; Andrew and Tricia, to watch Biffy Clyro at the Manchester Apollo. Left home at about 3pm and got to Manchester a little after 6pm. Doors opened at 7pm and the first act; Pulled Aprt By Horses, came on stage at about 7:30pm. They were overly loud and the singing left a heck of a lot to be desired. To be honest Iv'e listened to some poor bands in my time but they were truly awful
Second on stage; at about 8:30pm were Manchester Orchestra, an indie rock band from Atlanta. They were absiolutely brilliant and a nice change of pace from the first act. They went down very well and fully deserved the applause they received at the end of their set.
Biffy Clyro came on stage at about 9:30pm. The crowd had started to get a bit antsy. Some people just have no patience. Their light show was painfully bright in places and they sounded very loud. They played an absolutely brilliant set; although I think they still need to work on their crowd interaction. They left the stage at about 10:45pm before coming back on for a few encore songs. Left Manchester about 11:30pm and was home by about 3am.
It was a very enjoyable evening; only spoiled by the dimwits who decided that they wanted to stand even though they had paid for seats. Really annoys the hell outta me. I wasn't a huge Biffy Clyro fan before last night. I had heard some of their songs and even seen them play at Download. Anyway, came away a confirmed fan. If you only go and see one gig this winter, make sure it's Biffy Clyro...
When I built my new PC in the summer I took the opportunity to buy an upgrade from Windows XP Professional to Windows Vista Ultimate 64 Bit. I left XP Pro on the old PC when I transferred ownership to my Dad and installed Vista from the start on the new PC. Anyway, when I bought Vista I paid about £5 or so extra to get the version that was eligible for an upgrade to Windows 7; which arrived yesterday.
I was out all last night and didn't get a chance to do the upgrade; so, instead, I started the upgrade when I got home from work this evening. It started at 5:45pm and finished after about 2 hours. Everything went relatively smoothly. I had to reinstall MagicISO to get the DVD Image drive working and had to uninstall and reinstall VueScan to re-enable my scanner. One thing that seems to have been totally broken is Comodo Anit-Spam. I've ended up uninstalling it and am now trying BullGuard SpamFilter. Will see how it goes but I could always end up filtering all of my domain email through Googlemail.
I was in Glasgow on Friday night for a Paradise Lost gig. Hard to imagine but they've been on the go for 21 years now. Anyway, left home at 4:30pm and spent a good 10 minutes in Rheda trying to find Adam's house only to give up and go collect Scoot. Turns out I'd misread both of Scoot's text messages as 38 rather than 35, and then, no sorry 33... Would've been easier if I'd looked at the text message again whilst still in Rheda. Anyway, the journey up to Glasgow was uneventful and we pulled up opposite the venue; King Tut's Wah Wah Hut, at about 7:45pm.
Doors to the venue proper opened a little bit after 8:30pm and by the time we got upstairs the first band; Engel, were already on stage. They've only been around for a couple of years and have so far only released 2 studio albums. Don't let that fool you. All the band members have been in other bands in their native Sweden beforehand. They played a very good 30 minute set and I will be hunting out their two albums.
The second support act, Katatonia, also Swedish, have been around since 1991 and have released 8 studio albums and a couple of compilation albums. They came on stage about 9:30pm and performed for about 30 minutes also. Apart from their first track; which I thought was abysmal, they played a very good set.
Paradise Lost were due on stage at about 10:15pm but didn't arrive until 10:30pm. They played a collection of songs covering a good spectrum of their 12 studio albums. Lead singer Nick Homes struck up a good banter with the audience and even suggested that one of the songs the audience shouted out a request for would sound awful because they hadn't rehearsed it. They finished up their set at 11:45pm but then threw in an encore and the show finished just after midnight.
We had a fairly uneventful return journey home apart from some seriously heavy rain and standing water in places on the M74. With a brief stop for coffee to keep awake I dropped Scoot off about 3:00am, then dropped Adam off about 3:15am and got home myself just before 3:30am.
Going to see Saxon and Anvil in Whitehaven on Wednesday and then going to see Biffy Clyro in Manchester next Saturday. I'm also going to see Lacuna Coil in Manchester at the end of January and Rammstein, 2 days later, also in Manchester.
Really cool cover version of System Of A Down's Toxicity...
I've been unemployed for almost 2 years now and the Job Centre have sent me on a course with BTCV Enterprises; the enterprise arm of the British Trust for Conservation Volunteers. For the next 13 weeks; well 12 now, I will spend 4 days a week in a work placement and 1 day a week doing Jobsearch with BTCV. I have been placed with Northside Community Centre Ltd and am doing a lot of their administrative work. The centre serves 360 properties on a fairly large council estate to the north of Workington and runs various programmes, including a youth club. They also have a number of halls and rooms that they hire out. I've enjoyed my first week and am looking forward to the rest of my time there. The only shame is that even though a fair percentage of the people that come through BTCV get full-time jobs with their placements I probably won't; mainly because of the fact that I'm working with a charity that will only have limited funds in place. However, I'm enjoying it and my CV will be updated with some current work experience.
I had a diabetic check earlier this week and my blood test results were a bit higher than was hoped. As a result I have been prescribed Gliclazide along with the Metformin that I am already taking. Gliclazide stimulates the Pancreas to produce extra Insulin; which will hopefully get my sugar levels back down to recommended levels.
My blood pressure is also a bit higher than they would like. Rather than make any changes to the medication I'm taking for that they have given me 3 follow up appointments to keep an eye on it.
Back in March 2008 I decided that I had had enough of getting Spam emails and ended up setting up extra email accounts on my domain account to help filter spam out. Anyway, when I built the new PC I moved from 32bit Windows XP SP3 to 64bit Windows Vista Ultimate SP2 and will eventually move to 64bit Windows 7 Ultimate when it's finally released. As a result of the move to Vista I dropped McAfee Total Protection and started using the beta of Microsoft Security Essentials; even though I'm not actually in a qualifying country.
I've been really happy using MSE except for one little problem; Spam. There is no Antispam capabiltity built into MSE. To combat spam I have downloaded and installed Comodo Anti-Spam; mainly because it's free. However, this has resulted in my email package no longer filtering spam correctly because CAS runs separately from my email client; unlike McAfee which integrated seamlessly into my email client. Anyway, as a fix I have deleted the sub-accounts from my domain email and have set up an email forwarder to send all unqualified email to my Googlermail account. This appears to have done the trick and I'm really well pleased with the way googlemail handles spam.
I've been playing with Speech Recognition in Windows Vista today. And very nice it is too. It's very easy to get setup and works well with the normal Windows environment and programs such as Microsoft Office. Where it falls down is it's usability in other packages. It will recognise most of the normal menu commands in virtually any package and will happily minimize, maximize and close windows. It will even accept URLs in Firefox for example but you need to click in the address bar and then spell the URL out one character at a time. I tried to use it to enter text into a text box in Firefox without success. It also seemed to struggle with my pronunctiation of certain words. I had to eventually spell pain for it because it wrongly made about 7 or 8 differeent stabs at guessing what I was saying. For what it does it's very good; however, it still has a long way to go before it's going to replace the leyboard and mouse.
Convicted Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, has been freed to return home to Libya.
The government said it had consulted widely before Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill made his decision on applications for Megrahi's compassionate release or his transfer to a Libyan jail. He told a media conference on Thursday that he had rejected the application for a prisoner transfer.
However, after taking medical advice it was expected that three months was a "reasonable estimate" of the time Megrahi had left to live.
I agree with US Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton, that Megrahi should not have been released on compassionate grounds; after all how much compassion was shown to the victims of the bombing of Pan Am flight 103? However, I have to say that I applaud Mr MacAskill, for not bowing to overwhelming pressure and instead dealing with the case just as he would any other case. I think he made the wrong decision, but he stood firm and after considering all pertinent information he made the decision he did. He even gave the UK government an opportunity to make representations but they declined; "They saw no legal barrier to transfer and that they gave no assurances to the US government at the time."
I find it extremely distasteful that a man convicted of killing 270 innocent people is shown compassion and released so that he may go home and die a free man. Especially, considering the almost heroic welcome he was afforded upon his arrival in Tripoli.
I have no problem with the idea of showing compassion to convicted criminals but I think that somebody who has been convicted of maliciously setting out, and succeeding, to kill others should not be afforded compassion.
A government that is supposedly tough on crime allows a man sentenced to life imprisonment; with a recommended minimum term of 27 years, to go free after only 8 years because he is dying. A number of countries around the world consider the term 'life' to mean just that.
Watch and see... Oh, and don't worry; it's child safe.
