Blue Day

A touching stanza or two for an indulgent new father..

"When I was a little boy -- I wanted nothing else.
One day my Daddy took me to the Bridge to see the Chels'.
We stood there in the Shed that day, my father by my side,
When I called out "come on the Blues",
His heart was filled with pride.

Now I have a son myself,
At Stamford Bridge we'll be.
There to cheer the Chelsea, on to victory.
We'll wear the famous colours of the Chelsea royal blue,
And live to follow Chelsea unto victory anew"

Carefree, little GFHS

Too Old To Rock And Roll, Too Young To Die

It would seem that all this technology is bad for us after all.

D'dya -- tell me something I don't know..

As our first world economies have made us all into 'knowledge workers' over the last 20 years, we're a generation of RSI sufferers and sedentary borderline diabetics with decidedly gooey front-ends.

And as technology has followed us from the office to the home, and media has become social, we're indulging in new kinds of bad habits, equally as unhealthy as smoking cigarettes or conkering -- it would seem.

Dr Aric Sigman's report published in the journal of the Institute of Biology made headlines recently. In it he postulates that social media is leading to a lack of "real" social networking involving personal interaction, which could have biological effects by altering the way genes work, upsetting immune responses, hormone levels, the function of arteries, and mental performance.

Eeks, I could be in big trouble -- but maybe there's hope..

I can claim to have once been to technology what my old employer terms a fast forward -- or 'early adopter' to those of you better accustomed to more accepted marketing demographic speak.

I first got online in 1993 using Mosaic and doing limited navigation via Bigfoot, AltaVista and Excite and kept up-to-date with news through CompuServe. In 1995 I 'upgraded' to Netscape and even though it took 20 minutes to load a page -- many of which I recall were devoted to The X Files -- I was hooked by this new-fangled Information Super Highway thing.

Check all those extinct brands..

Practically everything I've bought over the last decade has been done online and I eschewed the limitations of a landline phone for mobile in 1999 -- just around the time that I had my first ISDN box installed.

My iPod adoption came at the introduction of Apple's first 40Gb model -- 3rd gen', I think -- back in 2001 and I've been Web 2.0 and blogging this pointlessness since 2006.

All of my physical media is in storage and the 6,000+ albums I own are digitized, backed-up and backed-up again. My TV is totally on-demand and I got my personal email early enough to have it whole name without any appended digits.

I love my iPhone and in equal measure hate my Blackberry. I bought an XBox at launch -- but only to play Halo. The upgrade to a 360 was necessary only to indulge in the last in the Master Chief trilogy. Previously, I was in a monogamous five-year relationship with GoldenEye on Nintendo.

However, in recent years I've fallen behind.

I don't have a Facebook or Bebo presence (well, I kinda-do, but didn't progress beyond initial sign-up), I don't RSS, FriendFeed, Twitter, Scrobble, Wibble or Jigger. (I made-up the latter two). I prefer the implied 'ownership' of iTunes over the free and legal lending libraries of Last.fm and Spotify. And my beautiful designer Danish telly ain't HD-ready and is nearly old enough to sit its GCSEs.

So, have I gone as far as I'm going to with technology?

Hell no, but I'm certainly no longer blazing the trail.

And looking at all this stuff -- music, movies, gaming, communication and information -- it occurs to me that none of it really knits together very well, exposing the long-held promise of the networked home as a sham.

..One day it may one day work together, maybe, but certainly no time soon.

As demonstration of my now confirmed status as technology laggard, I get very confused by Internet and texting shorthand.

I was recently a bit surprised, marginally embarrassed but vaguely complimented when I misread the acronym LOL in an email from a female colleague. I interpreted LOL to mean an inappropriately familiar 'Lots Of Love', instead of the correctly informal 'Laugh Out Loud'.

So, in the spirit of 'don't quit quitting' and for the good of my health, I'm off to dust off those long-forgotten LPs, write a letter -- with a pen and ink -- and pick-up the phone instead of pinging a tweet.

:-p

A Forest

I think I've blogged this before, but I keep forgetting how close we are to Epping Forest -- just a short hop through those jewels of the East End, Clapton, Leyton and Walthamstow and voila -- a wonderful ancient forest on the Essex boarders. On weekend mornings when the roads are quiet it only takes about 30 minutes.

It's doggie heaven too and Ems is very muddy, but now peacefully sleeping after a riotous run.

Counting Crows

...Or rather magpies.

A superstitious auld sod, I am. I blame the rural-born Irish strain for this reliance on an Old Moore's Almanac-stylee belief in tenuous portents.

A family of magpies have set-up home in the tree just outside this rear window. It means that I spy at least one every time I look garden-ward or indeed, when out in the yard.

But this single bird is by no means a sign of 'sorrow'. No siree. In the knowledge that maggies mate for life, there's always the other nearby -- so much 'joy' must be ours.

And in the coming months there'll be a nest full of nippers to boot..

We have little GFHS safely in belly, so we're covered on the foursome (i.e., we've got the 'boy' bit), and are really looking for a 'gold' six, or at the very least, a 'silver' five.

All we need now is to find tomorrow's lotto numbers in the froth of this evening's first pint in the Shakey or in the runic scatterings of discarded fried chicken bones on Allen Road.

Noise Annoys

My characterisation of this morning's fellow commuters would make a great name for a modern psychobilly band..

iPod Zombies and the Bucolic

A Message to You Rudie --

If you're really sick, stay at home. If you've got a cough, get some linctus. If you've got a runny nose, get some Kleenex. If you have to sneeze, please cover your face with an aforementioned hankie -- or at the very least, your hand.

And if you really want to listen to Ministry of Sound compilations (or whatever ting-ting, boom boom, bang-bang beat floats your proverbial) at full-blast at 07:30 on any given morning, please acknowledge the fact that most of the rest on the bus and tube carriage don't.

This city is overrun with snotty, cretinous and inconsiderate peasants.

And C -- Congratulations on being probably the only person this year to be hired by a multinational bank. I hope your commute is less toxic than mine.

The Wait

Where are we now? Into the 39th week of P's pregnancy and we've both had about enough of this waiting.

The boy's head is fully engaged and deep down in P's pelvis, while his arms are thumping her stomach and his feet are kicking her ribs like a Cantona. And all this mother abuse is internal.

And he's BIG -- an estimated 8.5lbs last week, so potentially over 9lbs now and still growing..

Poor P. She's the size of a small country and going spare having to pee about every two minutes -- which is no surprise given the pressure on her bladder. She's been having light contractions for over a week and is in a constant state of Sarbanes-Oxley (or rather Braxton-Hicks), sort-of 'practice' full-on contractions.

I know we're not quite at due date yet, but please little one, don't wait too much longer.

You're not yet born and already you're driving your parents nuts.

Dad.

Addendum 200209: The NHS can't scan accurately, count, add-up or properly test for simple conditions. Another scan yesterday and midwife consultation tells us that he's actually nearer 7.5lbs, progressing perfectly and P has a 'text book' pregnancy. At this stage, the wee chap could make an appearance today, tomorrow, anytime next week -- or indeed, the week after. The wait continues..

Supper's Ready.. Or SCB 2.5

The event of our small addition's imminent arrival has provided fodder for another entry to my infrequent series observing Stupid Corporate Branding (SCB).

P has been hangin' out with quite an undesirable crowd of late -- the earth mothers of the NCT (National Childbirth Trust). All relaxing massage techniques, water births, yoghurt knitting and primal screaming.

Delightful.

Last Sunday was the NCT's breast-feeding class -- which begs the question, why is boob school necessary? Surely, it's a basic human instinct. Child is hungry, pop nipple into mouth and 'Robert is indeed your father's brother.'

"There was this one time at Boobie Camp..."

I digress. To the SCB.

P was informed that if she ever encountered any problems with the feeding regimen, then she shouldn't hesitate to contact her...

wait for it...

Lactation Consultant.

What tit.

Snow Patrol

With London at a standstill due to a few inches of snow, everyone gets an extra day off. (No, I didn't bring my laptop home with me on Friday -- and even if I had, there's no IT support at work and the London VPN is broken to-boot).

So here are some shots of the park this morning -- which had a carnival-like atmosphere with everyone enjoying the surprise fall.









Memo to self -- must get a new camera as the iPhone is terrible..