Married At First Sight
Posted: Mon 19 February, 2018 Filed under: 1BEM, Cynicism, Domestic, I Don't Understand, People, Television, Thoughts, Valentine's Day Leave a comment »Following on from Valentine’s Day, Channel 4 has a documentary series going about people who have allowed themselves to be paired up by scientists and specialists, signing up to meet on their wedding day. (It turns out that this is actually the third series of it in the UK – and the results on the previous two series haven’t been all that promising!)
They’ve done it with some run-up in order to do all the stuff like declarations of intent to marry, telling family and friends, and make all the preparations. So they get told that they’ve been paired up (and are now ‘engaged’) and then six weeks later they’ll meet for the first time and get married.
Thursday’s episode was the first one, and basically all the set-up and preparations. From there I assume it’ll be about the aftermath, and how they work out once the wedding is done.
Marriage is something that, to be honest, leaves me cold – it really hasn’t ever appealed to me at all, and it’s never been on the list of Things To Do. And so far, there’s never been anyone I’ve been with who’s changed that opinion, or made me think differently about it at all.
But I do still find it an interesting concept, and the whole arranged-marriage type thing, of seeing how people handle that and so on. Whether I continue watching the programme or not is a different matter, but for now it’s at least vaguely interesting. We’ll see.
Post-Valentine
Posted: Fri 16 February, 2018 Filed under: Advertising, Cynicism, Domestic, Festering Season, Marketing, Thoughts Leave a comment »As usual, I did absolutely sod-all for Valentine’s Day. (A revelation that comes as no shock at all to anyone who knows me)
However, I am glad it’s over and done with. To me, it’s the end of the really useless marketing cobblers for a while, all the materialistic shite about presents, cards, gifts and the like. Sure, there’ll still be useless marketing cobblers about other stuff – Easter, Holidays, Hallowe’en and whatever, but at least that’s all at a greatly reduced level than the shite that goes around the Festering Season and Valentines.
Onwards and upwards, and all that piss.
Writing Tools
Posted: Mon 12 February, 2018 Filed under: Domestic, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Geeky, Getting Organised, Thoughts, Write More, Writing Leave a comment »At the moment, I’m waiting for some new tech stuff to arrive, that will (hopefully) enable me to do more writing while I’m out and about.
All my current easily-portable tech is either too big (laptop-sized) or has a shitty on-screen keyboard, which is OK for small amounts of typing (email etc.) but bloody hateful when it comes to writing larger amounts of text.
Weirdly, two are keyboard/typing alternatives, and the other is a new device that I’m pretty excited about, and hopeful for.
The first of the keyboards is the WayBlade – what looks like a really nice keyboard, and I’d like to finally get my hands on it. However, as I ordered it three fucking years ago, I’m not holding my breath for it to finally arrive.
The second one is a typing device, rather than a keyboard. It’s the Tap, a wearable device that appears to use chording as a typing method. It’ll take a bit of learning, but I had a device back in the 80s (the Microwriter AgendA) that also used a chording keyboard, so it shouldn’t be too unfamiliar.
Both of those will be useful to have (assuming they actually arrive) regardless – well, it’d be nice to have one or the other, but knowing my luck, both will turn up within a couple of days of each other. But whichever one works best will stay, and be useful with the phone at least.
The final device though is a bit different. Way back when I wrote about writing tools before, I waxed lyrical about the old Psion devices, the 3a/mx, the Revo and the Siena, that were tiny devices with brilliant keyboards – and how it was surprising that there weren’t any similar things around currently.
And now, there’s a new device coming, the Gemini. They’ve obviously worked from the same kind of viewpoint I had, including partnering with the people who designed the Psion devices. They look really promising, and I hope it’ll be as good as it appears to be.
So hopefully, going on the evidence of preview reviews and so on, the Gemini might just turn out to be a decent replacement for most of the stuff I currently use the phone for. It’ll be interesting to find out, anyway.
Booking Time Out
Posted: Mon 5 February, 2018 Filed under: 2017/18, Depression, Do More, Domestic, Driving, Five Year Plan (now Ten), SAD, Single Life, Thoughts, Travel 1 Comment »At the end of 2017 (and of 2016, and of 2015 – I know, I know) I said about needing to take more time out, take some breaks from work and so on.
I am rotten at taking time off – it’s never been high on my driving factors, and really it just ends up being expensive, and me just spending time on my own somewhere else. And with all that, I find it way too easy to put off booking holidays and time away, it’s such a low priority that it always falls off the bottom of the list of things to do.
So this year, I’ve booked stuff already. I’ve got three breaks locked in, booked and paid for. One in February, one in May, and one in November.
It’ll be interesting to see, come the end of 2018, whether I feel better for having those breaks or not. I’m not sure, but I’m going to give it all a go, and find out.
Friendship Gap
Posted: Wed 31 January, 2018 Filed under: Cynicism, Domestic, Getting Old(er), Single Life, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »Something odd occurred to me the other day, and it’s been bouncing round my skull a bit since.
Basically, it’s pretty simple – I realised that I don’t have any real friends or connections still in my life from the time I was with Herself, or her successor. Nothing. It’s like there’s this eight year hiatus, from 2004 through to 2012.
Plenty from before 2004, plenty from after 2012. Just a complete blind-spot over those years. In some ways it’s like they simply never happened.
I find I feel like that with a lot of the stuff that went on – a lot happened, a lot changed, and by the end of it, there were very few positive memories at all.
Of course, hindsight has shown that period proved to have some massive mistakes in it – but at the same time, it looks now like I sort of knew that even while they were going on, even while they were good (or at least OK) I wasn’t leaving any anchors or connections to it all.
What annoys me most is that I don’t quite know why or how that happened.
Reducing Caller Spam
Posted: Mon 29 January, 2018 Filed under: Advertising, BT, Customer Services, Domestic, Getting Organised, Marketing, Technology, Thoughts, Utilities 4 Comments »When I moved to the current place, I got a new phone number – not surprising, as I was in a new area, and a new (to me) house. As always, I registered that number with TPS and so on, and made sure it was ex-directory. I usually only use landline phones for broadband purposes – although it turns out I also use it here for some calls, as the mobile coverage inside the house is shockingly bad. So I have a phone landline, and a phone connected to it.
Unbeknownst to me, the number I got had obviously been owned by someone else before me, and that person was the type of fucking moron who’d sign up for all kinds of promotions, and ran up all kinds of debts. So right from Day One I was getting a couple of calls a week looking for the previous occupant. (Well, the previous owner of that phone number – it wasn’t a name connected to the house at all) And because they were for a previous person, it turns out that TPS doesn’t really apply. (Which is an interesting, and fucking annoying, loophole)
Even so, I re-registered with TPS, and put a spam-calls block on the line. (Which was absolutely useless, and so came off again) It was only a couple of calls a week, and usually while I was out at work. *shrug*
Over the last two years though, it got worse. The phone’s call log would get filled up in the course of a week, all with “Number Withheld” and “International” numbers, along with the ones who didn’t conceal their numbers, who left messages and blocked up everything else. I used a couple of other number-blocking services, none of which did much good. Hell, if I were cynical I’d say they were the ones who sold the number on and spread it ever further. Not that I’ll ever know for sure, one way or the other.
Late last year, the situation was ridiculous. We’d gone from a couple of calls a week right up to filling the phone’s call log every day. Nothing was working to prevent the calls, and it was just getting stupid.
So I bit the bullet, and changed my phone number. I explained to BT why I was doing it – in the hope that they now blacklist that number completely (although I doubt it, they’ll just have farmed it off on some other unsuspecting sap) – and got a new number allocated to me. Same set-up, it’s ex-d, and registered with TPS.
The big difference though, is that in the three months since I got it changed, I haven’t received a single solitary spam call. My phone call log stays blank (as I said, I don’t use it that often) and it’s lovely.
Sometimes these extreme measures are the ones we need to take. I wish I’d done this one two years ago…
Burns’ Night
Posted: Fri 26 January, 2018 Filed under: 2017/18, Do More, Domestic, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Food, London, Reviews(ish), Thoughts, Travel Leave a comment »Last night, as you may or may not know (or care) was Burns’ Night in the UK. For the first time, I went out for it, going to one of my favourite Scottish places in London, Mac and Wild, who had a special Burns’ Night menu for a fairly respectable price.
Being Scots themselves, the owners had made sure the entire thing was really good – the food was (as usual) great, and so was the atmosphere, with a live piper playing at the entrance (and for the toasting of the Haggis) as well as pipe-based music in the restaurant. In short, it couldn’t have been much more Scottish if they’d tried.
I’d never done a Burns’ Night properly before, and thoroughly enjoyed the entire thing. I’ve even got a copy of the whole “toasting of the Haggis” process and poem now, which makes for interesting reading…
Overall, I can see me booking myself in for another one next year – although it’s still undecided whether I’ll try somewhere else, or stick with the Mac and Wild I already know…