bishbashbosh - IT contractor dude

back home for tea and The Prisoner

2005-12-23T11:36:00.000Z

off for lunch at Castle Deudraeth

2005-12-23T11:34:00.001Z

family in front of mock boat

2005-12-23T11:34:00.000Z

I'm a free man!

2005-12-23T11:33:00.000Z

Oh I do like to be beside the seaside!

2005-12-23T11:32:00.000Z

it's nearly Christmas!

2005-12-23T11:31:00.001Z

view of piazza

2005-12-23T11:31:00.000Z

In front of our cottage - lower winch

2005-12-23T11:30:00.000Z

Mum and daughter in front of house

2005-12-23T11:29:00.000Z

At the Williams Ellis house/garden near Portmeirion

2005-12-23T11:28:00.000Z

Gardens at Portmeirion

2005-12-23T11:27:00.000Z

Out for a walk in Portmeirion

2005-12-23T11:26:00.000Z

Sophie with bench in piazza of Portmeirion

2005-12-23T11:24:00.000Z

2005-07-18T19:00:00.000+01:00

Top end of the village - Les Arcs 1950

2005-07-18T18:59:00.000+01:00

one view from our balcony at Les Arcs

2005-07-18T18:57:00.001+01:00

chip off the old block - lunch at Casa Mia

2005-07-18T18:57:00.000+01:00

the weather can change like "that" on the mountains

2005-07-18T18:55:00.000+01:00

Over beer and peanuts on the way home at our first stop on the return journey

2005-07-18T18:54:00.000+01:00

sunset

2005-07-18T18:53:00.001+01:00

view from our bedroom window

2005-07-18T18:53:00.000+01:00

Another big night out was taking it's toll

2005-07-18T18:52:00.000+01:00

American war graves

2005-07-18T18:51:00.000+01:00

Chateau d'Etoges from front

2005-07-18T18:50:00.000+01:00

Fish pond at Chateau d'Etoges

2005-07-18T18:48:00.000+01:00

Sophie gets behind the wheel

bishbashbosh - IT contractor dude

2005-01-28T01:25:00.000Z

Another day another dollar!

So a good day. Daughter a little poorly, wife having a birthday! I made a nice photo card at much personal effort for wife's birthday which was appreciated. My wasted efforts whilst wasted to buy a unique present which turned out to be bushedo tattoos of japan not the best buy bucko!

we had a nice party with some good friends, all being very lovely and full on great company. Lots of snacks, nice wine fun music and good full-fat stories. Life is sweet, why be famous?

Tony Kilroy-Silk

2005-01-26T13:49:00.000Z

For some time now I have been wondering why an apparently intelligent person like Tony Blair would encourage faith-based schools... They appear to fly in the face of integration, deny a questioning attitude and do not promote greater understanding of others' faiths or non-belief.

And then it came to me to consider matters in the light of the eternal struggle of ideas and creeds. Tony is a committed Roman Catholic and wishes to keep the muslims as an underclass in this country. What better way to achieve this than to stop their children mixing freely with the indiginous population. They will not adopt mainstream attitudes which would help them towards prosperity in their career and they will mix primarily with other children whose first language is not English. Devout faith tends also to be a stumbling block to the pursuit of science which is a pre-requisite for many of the more affluent jobs.

Of course there are many problems inherent in this approach, a disenfranchised population of young muslims is not an attractive thought in these post 9/11 days even if one were not concerned for these children from a humanist point of view. Furthermore the values that we cherish in this country will be harder to maintain in the face of the radical conservative force that is characteristic of most entrenched religions.

Church and education just like church and state should be thoroughly decoupled. This is not a racist position and anyone is free to continue the religious education of their children outside the core educational system.

RAG

2005-01-26T13:02:00.000Z

Traffic lights. Ever noticed how when the light changes to green you start to move forwards immediately but then need to break because the car in front has yet to engage first gear. The whole line of cars has to judder to a halting start. How about changing the rules so that every car in a queue of less than say 20 cars have to leave at least 2 car lengths between each car. This would allow a much smoother start and the whole line could be up to cruising speed significantly faster. It would also reduce the number of minor bumps people have at the lights.

Shiver me timbers

2005-01-18T08:56:00.000Z

My 4.5 month old daughter had her final, for the moment, set of vaccinations yesterday. Is it only me or is the level of debate about these things pitched wrong as usual? One has a choice of badly informed and argued opinions or trying to research the source research materials oneself. A summary of the research and main conclusions argued from both sides aimed at the intelligent educated parent would be welcome. This of course is a general point which goes a long way to explaining why many people are disenchanted with politics, the arguments are dumbed down for mass consumption and only the party faithful are given anything approaching an honest opinion by the politicians. Her latest thing btw is standing up though she can't even crawl yet, this means that Mum and Dad (monkey girl and boy to her) are getting strong arms from supporting her.

Ouch, did you see "Tribe" yesterday on the magic box? Bruce Parry certainly goes above and beyond the call of duty. Eating maggots and having your nose pierced seem like a stroll in the park compared to having your willy pushed inside your body by self-confessed cannibals, nice chaps though they may otherwise be! I'm much looking forward to his 3 day hallucinogenic trip with the men of the Babongo tribe of Gabon next week. LSD can, apparently, I am told, seem like a very long trip at around 12 hours so it will be fascinating to see how he copes, particularly as the "set and setting" will be quite disturbing to start with... One thing that strikes one is how these people are at one with nature, they hunt and gather only what they need and their life is perfectly sustainable with no long term damage to the environment. Contrasted with our lives and it's easy to lose one's initial sense of superiority. I drove to work today as usual feeling tired and irritable through miles of polluted city roads past at least one accident for one hour to get to a place where I must stay all day doing abstract activities that I don't wish to do. The "primitives" yesterday went hunting in the forest for a few hours with their family and friends and then lazed about socialising for the rest of the time.

Well back to the coalface with me....

bishbashbosh - IT contractor dude

2005-01-14T16:53:00.000Z

It's Friday, It's 5 o'clock and it's time to bugger off home as fast as possible...

Another week of exceeding my customers' expectations draws to an end. My favourite bit of babble this week came from a website (I'll spare you the url) and starts: "In a nutshell, the Dynamic System Development Method (DSDM) is a game-changing, non-proprietary agile application development project model for developing business solutions within tight timeframes. It shortens the clock-speed (and time to market) for delivery of core business benefits. DSDM is the only approach that can guarantee delivery on an exact day under tight, Internet-time deadlines." That's nice isn't it!?

Today I had a play around with Wiki which is a kind of blog that everyone can contribute to in a willy-nilly way, quite nice actually and more to the point pretty easy.

Well I must now dash home for more of my rock and roll lifestyle. First the Simpsons and then a vintage episode of The Good Life, interspersed with a couple of nappy changes. I must be careful not to burn out!

Corporate life - no time off for good behaviour...

2005-01-13T13:22:00.000Z

Communication is key apparently. So is working synergistically. And efficiency, meeting our customers' needs, maximising enterprise value and apple pie. We just had a meeting for over 2 hours stating the bleeding obvious. We all felt suitably enlightened afterwards, I'd not heard the exact same stuff more than 4 or 5 thousand times before. I had sadly forgotten to print out buzzword bingo cards before the meeting. At least it's a couple of hours out of the working day and it's all ticking off the time before I win a million on the premium bonds (it should be my turn at some point over the next 2-3 months). Did you know that ERNIE (the nice computer chap who picks the bond numbers) lives in Blackpool? Blackpool is surely overdue for being European Capital of Culture don't you think? While it wins many points for having ERNIE as a resident and the new Dr Who exhibition apparently I feel it has recently suffered badly from the sell out of TreVoR to the Russkies, is nothing sacred!?

My current favourite blog is http://jonnybillericay.blogspot.com/ btw. He seems to be a jolly nice bloke who shares most of my many failings which means I don't need to feel as bad about my own, surely a prime motivation in reading the blogs of others... I never knew Norfolk could be so interesting, I particularly like the story about his illicit hiring of a cleaner without (for a while) his wife's knowledge... I have read the whole site and recommend it highly. Living in London Town is highly recommended too but there is no such thing as an honesty box in the newsagents here.

Dentists

2005-01-12T16:41:00.000Z

... and furthermore my mrs just emailed to say that she doesn't like her dentist and the the NHS is rubbish for dentistry so come on Mr Blair what are you going to do about that? Also we were not impressed by the cleanliness at the Chelsea and Westminster hospital when she gave birth there in September last, though the staff were great. Rubbish food too, thankfully there was a Carluccio's opposite so don't fret too much. Harumph!

captains log supplementary

2005-01-12T16:29:00.000Z

OK I'm not a real captain (INARC for the future) but I do have a log. I recommend lots of vegetables and make lots of butties using wholemeal bread.

Just shown Big X my secret web site. I hope he keeps it secret! I shall swear him to secrecy, thank god I have those pictures... He says he's too busy to make his own blog as he's currently researching which digital camera to get (Sony 150 thingy looks favourite), he has been doing this non-stop all week - thankfully he's being very well paid to do it and he's going to expense it too. Work can be hell.

Wednesday 12th Jan 2005

2005-01-12T16:09:00.000Z

Good afternoon world. Perhaps that would have been better than Hello World for the post foo-bar generations. Anyway this is by way of an initial post to test the water.

Allow myself to introduce myself: IT contractor working for a series of grim sweatshops primarily in financial services mostly out of the goodness of my heart and for the greater good of mankind. If I don't win a bloggie or whatever they're called then perhaps a Nobel prize or two would be nice. How much is the cash prize I wonder? Apparently it's the interest on the pile that Nobel left. Not sure I'd like to be in the same company as Henry Kissinger, Yasser Arafat and Mother Theresa though, they don't strike me as party animals so I'll probably aim for the Literature. Surely if I keep this up til the end of Jan I should be in the running. If not that then I'd have thought that I've already done enough to win the Man-Booker.

My co-worker Big-X has just shown me a link to a boot-camp for computer geeks up in the Himilayas; what gentle reader I pray tell is the matter with these people!? Can you imagine, best not to though.

Okely dokely, that's enough for an initial post or I'll be into overtime and they aren't paying for that at the moment. Hasta la basta!