Joe's Jottings

Category: Personal Stuff

  • Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-10-31

    • RT @nigelfletcher: PM says he "hit the phones" at EU summit yesterday. A nice change from the last PM, who used to hit people with phones. #
    • And I'm back! A Twitter and Blog free period whilst I got life (almost) sorted! #

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  • Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-10-10

    • The VMWare installer is the greediest installer I've ever seen…EVERYTHING stalls for it! #
    • Heisenbugs – bugs that only manifest when a client is using the system…. #
    • Woohoo! Flying Pigs! RT @SupplyGov: Banks set up venture capital fund for small businesses http://bit.ly/9tEVfr #
    • RT @Iconic88: “To a brave man, good and bad luck are like his left and right hand. He uses both.” – St Catherine of Siena #
    • Damn Avenue-Q – can't stop humming 'The Internet is for Porn' this morning…I need to get out more! #
    • I's Monday – BIG few weeks ahead for me, personally and professionally – I may not be around as much online! #fb #

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  • Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-10-03

    • Excellent news – teachers given protection from false allegations, change in 'no touch' rules. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-11458137 #
    • #basecamp – is basecamp broken or is it just me? Can't add items. #
    • A busy but successful day – now School Governors meeting and then more work later…busy, busy, busy! #
    • RT @CSLewisDaily: Don't think of God in terms of forms, because forms are limited and God is unlimited-C.S.Lewis #
    • Apart from @davidallengreen is anyone else commenting on Labour's civil liberties policies? Does anyone think they've changed? #lab10 #
    • 'Monsters' – interesting looking film… http://is.gd/fzeJG #
    • I tell you this…EM uses…. I tell you this…quite frequently! 🙂 #lab10 #
    • Miliband speech – not bad, ticked the boxes, woolly on some areas, but promising. 7/10. #lab10 #
    • Miliband talking about liberty – has he turned his back on ID cards? #lab10 #
    • Hmmmm…when was Labour EVER the part of small business and entrpreneurship? #lab10 #
    • Miniband making the right noises to each section of the party – sort of 'Labour Conference Bingo' #lab10 #
    • A remake of one of my favourites, 'True Grit', from teh Cohen Brothers – looks good. http://is.gd/fx1gr #
    • Man finds mouse in loaf – http://bbc.in/a6c6ZN – and was most upset when it was pointed out that mouse had no tail…. #
    • Ah well, better hit the keyboard typing and get some work done! #
    • Reginald D Hunter on HIGNFY repeat on Gold – an American who gets irony. 🙂 #
    • Too true. RT @KeithWildman: Very sad to hear about Terry Newton. Too many young blokes taking that option. Really needs to be addressed. #
    • RT @twitterapi: Malicious Links on Twitter – A malicious link is making the rounds that will post to your account… http://t.co/R6O9y0e #

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  • Last tango in Sheffield…

    It’s safe to say that I do not have a body built for dance – well, unless you count the thing they do in Lederhosen that involves bumping bottoms and slapping thighs and faces as dancing. 

    I have slightly flat feet, dodgy knees and no sense of coordination.  I don’t dance like my dad – it’s way worse than that!  If I were a horse I’d have been led out behind the barn and turned into ‘Fido’s Juicy Morsels’ years ago.

    But….I like tango music!  I think that if I were ever granted a wish to be able to dance ONE formal dance well, it would be the Tango. 

    I suppose I should blame Tom Lehrer….I think my interest started from hearing Mr Lehrer’s excellent Masochism Tango.   I mean – how can one resist a song with lyrics like:

    At your command before you here I stand
    My heart is in my hand – yecch 

    that was written in the 1950s, pre-dating the Goth kids by four decades…. 

    I think the next time I came across the Tango was performed by Gomez and Morticia Addams in ‘Addams Family Values’.  Again – excellent!

    There’s a line in ‘Scent of a Woman’ (see below) where Gabrielle Anwar’s character says that she wanted to learn the dance but that her boyfriend thought that the Tango was ‘hysterical’.  I think I see where he was coming from – it is so mannered and passionate that to some people it may appear as overly emotional – hysterical – or quite amusing. 

    Which brings me to my next exhibit…

    I think the thing that finally got me ‘hooked’ on the music was the scene in the movie ‘Scent of a Woman’ where Al Pacino, playing a blind, retired military officer dances a tango with Gabrielle Anwar.  It’s a great scene for all sorts of reasons – take a look at it here and enjoy – and there’s a couple of good quotes in there, especially ‘Some people live a lifetime in a minute’.

    The dance is a great affirmation of life and passion; a few minutes searching on YouTube will reveal quite a few videos of excellent dancing, and a similar period of time searching Spotify or any other online music resource will reveal a large amount of music, both traditional Tango and modern combinations of Tango and Electronica, like that produced by ‘The Gotan Project’.

    For the purists, the Tango referred to above is the ‘Argentine Tango’ which is less formalised and structured than the ‘Ballroom Tango’.  I may not be able to dance it, but I can enjoy it!  Funnily enough, within a few days of me starting to write this piece I came across two of my friends who were expressing an interest in learning the Tango, and heard that a bar in Sheffield might be running lessons. 

    Maybe I should go along to watch…

  • Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-09-26

    • On a less serious note…why do I keep thinking of 'Pitt the Younger' in Blackadder when I see Ed Miliband? #lab10 #
    • Sky news yet again showing bias – trying to say EM hasn't a mandate. Bollocks. He got more votes. Simples. #lab10 #
    • Congrats to Ed Miliband…but calling him 'red' or 'left wing'???? Huh??? #lab10 #
    • RT @AskAaronLee: REMINDER: Don't start a tweet with @username if u want all your followers to see it. by @sharonhayes #
    • Rupert Sheldrake's site – online experiments to take part in – http://www.sheldrake.org/Onlineexp/portal/ #
    • Sad news – hope they sort it! RT @radar: Lessons learned from Diaspora's security holes. http://bit.ly/9PAsz0 #
    • via @leashless: Bono’s anti-poverty ONE foundation received $14,993,873 – more than $8 million was spent on salaries http://bit.ly/bAr3ei #
    • RT @emptyhomes: Mothballed regeneration projects could provide shelter for homeless. It's criminal to leave them empty http://bit.ly/aN5toH #
    • How ridiculous. Dot-con again? RT @mashable: Facebook Now Worth More Than Dell, eBay, Yahoo or Starbucks… on Paper – http://ow.ly/2JaHW #
    • Back in Sheffield and looking forward to working normality! #
    • Dawkins just doesn't know when he's losing supporters, does he? He comes over like a caricature of Ian Paisley. http://is.gd/fp26H #
    • Re. Games village. In India, only 89% of population have water supply; only 28% have sanitation. Fucked up priorities to spend on games? #
    • RT @M_Fkill: Surely this http://bit.ly/bbc.in/bDJp1h describes HTML5, it aready exists can't see why it needs 10mEuros of funding #
    • RT @dontgetfooled: New estimates suggest that Mao's "Great Leap Forward" led to 45 million deaths in 4 years: http://bit.ly/a3yR2r #
    • The chap in the BBC who forgot to pay #moyles is a true public servant and benefactor! #
    • Did anyone here in the UK get hit by the Twitter Worm, or are people just having a panic? #
    • Hardly – poor headline. I didn't even notice attack. RT @socialmediamind: Worm attack turns Twitter to gibberish: http://bit.ly/d6sZ9C #
    • RT @CSLewisDaily: The devil loves 'curing' a small fault by giving you a great one. – C.S. Lewis #

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  • Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-09-19

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  • All things

    A Facebook friend of mine (and an author whose work I’ve admired for over years) Jessica Lipnack shared this article – http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ron-currie-jr/things-i-learned-while-wr_b_659568.html?ref=fb&src=sp – it’s a good read. I particularly liked the bit about finding ‘Maggie May’ on the car radio – that sort of thing happens a lot in my life and over the years I’ve made lots of jokes about the role of coincidence (and later on synchronicity) in my life. It’s no accident, therefore, that one of my favourite episodes of ‘The X-Files’ didn’t involve Smoking Man, alien abduction or other nasties; it was a nicely done, low key story called ‘all things’ in which Scully had a set of experiences based around coincidence and synchronicity that explored the issues of letting go and moving on. It’s a great episode – also features Moby on the soundtrack, so check it out.

    I came across the concept of synchronicity when I started studying Jung. Whereas no one has any problem with coincidence, I find that checking out someone’s thoughts on synchronicity are a good indication as to the open-mindedness of that person. Coincidence is literally that unrelated events that whilst they may appear to be in some way linked to an observer are actually happening in a way that is perfectly explicable with the laws of probability and chance and lack ‘connectedness’. Synchronicity is the experience of two or more events that are apparently causally unrelated occurring together in a meaningful manner. To count as synchronicity, the events should be unlikely to occur together by chance – Jung referred to the phenomenon as an ‘acausal connecting principle’ – doesn’t exactly run off the tongue….

    My favourite example of Synchronicity was reported by Jung himself – during a rather heated debate with Freud about whether the phenomenon actually existed or not :

    “I had a curious sensation. It was as if my diaphragm were made of iron and were becoming red-hot — a glowing vault. And at that moment there was such a loud report in the bookcase, which stood right next to us, that we both started up in alarm, fearing the thing was going to topple over on us. I said to Freud: ‘There, that is an example of a so-called catalytic exteriorization phenomenon.’ ‘Oh come,’ he exclaimed. ‘That is sheer bosh.’ ‘It is not,’ I replied. ‘You are mistaken, Herr Professor. And to prove my point I now predict that in a moment there will be another such loud report! ‘Sure enough, no sooner had I said the words that the same detonation went off in the bookcase. To this day I do not know what gave me this certainty. But I knew beyond all doubt that the report would come again. Freud only stared aghast at me. I do not know what was in his mind, or what his look meant. “

    I’ve experienced quite a lot of coincidence and whilst few of my personal experiences have matched some of the more ‘out there’ ones featured in Martin Plimmer’s Beyond Coincidence – – I have had a few good ones over the years. Episodes of Synchronicity I’m not sure of – the one that immediately springs to mind was around the death of my Mother, although I’m aware of the sceptic’s viewpoint that at such times one seeks meaning in all sorts of things. My mother had been ill in hospital, in a coma, and it was purely a matter of time before she passed on. It was approaching Easter, and she died in the early hours of Good Friday, during a Lunar Eclipse, which I’ve always considered as being some how appropriate.

    I’ve had many others over the years – I sometimes tell people some of the stories about me and coincidence / synchronicity and I start thinking that people reckon I’m making up tall stories! Another goodie involves our first cat – when we moved to Sheffield we were regularly visited by a black and white cat who used to sit and watch me work in our kitchen. At the time, I was negotiating for work with a magazine company based in Stockport and they suggested that an editor of theirs, who lived in Sheffield, should come and visit me. After a brief phone call, it transpired that the editor lived around the corner from me and we could see the backs of each others houses. When he visited, which coincided with one of the many visits of the ‘stray’ cat, we found that the cat belonged to him.

    I keep an open mind on things like this; as a Christian I’m happy to see the presence God in all things, and I’m also happy to experience coincidence and synchronicity as well – maybe the latter is just well hidden Divine Intervention…

  • Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-09-12

    • RT @Lisaansell: RT @fightoppression: On night before 9/11, New Yorkers voice strong support for Muslim community center http://bit.ly/d1KUZC #
    • RT @TweetSmarter: Chock full of good advice…& free: The 94-page Twitter Mania Manual [Word Doc] http://bit.ly/cGMm1t #
    • Bruce Springsteen, Bonny Rait, Richard Hawley, Anna Nalick….more Randomness! Spotify playlist: Random Jottings 2 http://is.gd/f4Oed #
    • LOL! Excellent! RT @tonycarroll: Pastor Terry Jones isn't the Messiah, he's a very naughty boy. #
    • RT @realchrisdowson: RT @thedailymash: WORLD BREATHES EASY AS SAD LITTLE MAN DECIDES HE'S HAD ENOUGH ATTENTION http://tinyurl.com/3yr9qpj #
    • In summer 2009 Twitter tried and failed to trademark 'Tweet' – that's probably why they have 'usage rules'… http://read.bi/bPoWw5 #
    • RT @Hills_Forum: Empty shops report reveals north/south divide in retail (via @NewStartMag) http://is.gd/f2j5z over 21% vacant in Sheffield #
    • RT @Donal_Blaney: via @iaindale Morons burning the Koran should read it and then argue their case with muslims. Crass act will backfire. #
    • Must so piss people off to see how generous we evil 'westerners' are…. (via Guardian) http://bit.ly/99m0Zo #
    • Onsite day today – hoping for a very focused day finishing a piece of work. #
    • Whoops! Up there with guy who didn't sign the Beatles! RT @TweetSmarter: Newsweek in 1995: Why the Internet will Fail. http://j.mp/cJ306H #
    • Bobby Diamond and Rich Ricci are the real names of Barclays Senior Managers…I kid you not. #
    • Ahhh…one of my less favourite jobs completed – cat litter tray emptying! #
    • RT @theintelligiser: Tip of the day – be strong people resist the urge to spend 5 minutes playing with today's Google logo b4 each search #
    • Intending a day of very focused development work…whether I'll manage it is another matter! #
    • Absolutely stunned that there are still some folks who think you can't be involved in regeneration work if you're 'middle class'….. #
    • New Blog Post – The Death of Google Wave – why I couldn't get my head around it… http://is.gd/eW3T8 #
    • RT @JaneAstra: RT @tehgroon: the most shocking thing about these tabloid stories on Wayne Rooney is that he's figured out how to use skype #
    • In to Church and off the Net for now! #
    • Ahhhh….good to see that with stories of naughtiness in high places the UK press focuses on Wayne Rooney…. #
    • RT @dontgetfooled: RT @shadowsans: Full story of #metgate in today's New York Times. http://j.mp/as4iRV #
    • Good morning! Enjoying the relative quiet of the Bole Hills. #
    • I like it! RT @tonycarroll: RT @dancowling: Building A Community Development Program That Creates Real Change http://bit.ly/9BS58J #
    • #Coulson apparently asked Guardian Journalist to try and keep telephone-tapping stories out of paper – http://bit.ly/aLfvGd #
    • RT @juliandobson: A sign of the times: the 'Regeneration in hard times' conference I was due to speak at this month has been cancelled. .. #
    • RT @johncusack: and for good measure–http://bit.ly/bRANaW #
    • #sheffield #php #net – seeking some short, quick turnover development work to bolster cashflow over next month…. #
    • Replace cheap and effective tech with expensive tech…hmmmm…RT @guardiantech: iPhone set to replace the stethoscope http://bit.ly/9QqA9w #
    • Very sad – young and cheap wins out in Silicon Valley – http://www.codeproject.com/News.aspx?ntag=54160817354263941 #
    • Making fine progress on site mods – amazing how a combination of imminent bills and clients willing to pay quickly motivates you!! #
    • No bigot like an old bigot…http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-11127409 #

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  • Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-08-29

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  • Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-08-22

    • IMF to review Pakistan's budget and economic prospects after flooding – #shock #doctrine, anyone? http://is.gd/ewhTI #fb #
    • Morning from the House of Pritchard..where plumbers are expected with big cylinders! #
    • RT @TheSpiderplant If Labour had a leader and a decent argument they would be worth talking to. All I hear right now is whining #
    • What a surprise…train home 15 minutes late…again…:-( #

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