Philip Norton

Matthew currently has chicken pox.  For those of you who don’t know what this is (and I assume that this is only a few) is a disease caused by a virus that causes little spots or blisters to appear all over your body, which then scab over and heal.  Once you have had the disease you don’t get again, accept in rare cases.

It only lasts a week, but he isn’t allowed back to nursery for two weeks until the last of the scabs are coming off.  Mandy and I have both had it as children so we won’t catch it again.  Although Mandy might go spare being stuck at home with a sick Matthew for two weeks.

I’m glad he has it now as it is the best time for him really.  If you have this disease as an adult it is called shingles and is very painful apparently.

I’m quite sure he will be fine in a few days, although it does explain why he has been a bit naughty recently.

Tags: Family // Add Comment »

Not many people need to remember Pi to more than 4-5 digits, but if you do here is a limerick I found that will help you.

First, the number:

3.14159265358979323846

Next, the limerick:

The ratio of C over D,
Where they’re parts of a circle, is three
Point one four one five
Nine two six five three five
Eight nine seven nine three two three.

Tags: Truth // Add Comment »

I saw this great site the other day called Proud To Be Apple Free. Naturally it is all about annoying Mac users are. Actually that should be iUser as they seem to have this fixation about putting the letter i in front of every product they produce.  Which is intensely irritating!

Personally I wouldn’t buy a Mac, not unless I won the lottery and wanted something pretty to play with. I have used a Mac at work and as a development platform it I can’t imagine a system that is more annoying to use than a Mac. Most of what you need to do with anything is hidden behind several layers of crap, the idea being that most people don’t want to use it. Well I do want to use it, but after messing about with the very strange file manager for a couple of hours I found out I had to use the command line to get more access to the system, but even then everything is hidden!

It just works huh? Only if you want to paint pictures all day long. I want to write code!

Tags: Computer // Add Comment »

Matthew started nursery today at a local school in Congleton, and it seemed to go very well. When Mandy dropped him off he got stuck into playing with the other kids there and acted like he was being interrupted when she left him 15 minutes later.

When Mandy picked him up again before lunchtime he was one of the last children to come out of the room. He had to be led out by the teacher as he was reluctant to go and he was almost in tears as Mandy led him away.  Apparently he wanted to play in the sandpit!

Tags: Family // 1 Comment »

This blog has been running a bespoke blogging package (written by me) for the past year.  However, I have been so impressed by Wordpress through my work in SEO and web design that I have decided to move.  Blogiph, which was what I called my blog software, had some good features, but it would have taken me years to get to the amount of features and shear blogging power of Wordpress.

I have been planning to move over to Wordpress for about a week now, but as version 2.5 came out over the weekend I made a concerted effort to migrate.

So here it is.  I have carried most of my older posts over, although I didn’t think all of the posts about Blogiph made much sense on the new platform so I have taken them out.  This also means that I will be able to post a lot more than I have been in the past.

Tags: Personal // Add Comment »

I was thinking the other day on what I could call a church without saying the word church. This might seem a bit odd, but I am trying to distance myself from the life of a theist and so I use terms like decemberween to describe religious things.

So what about church? Well it suddenly hit me yesterday. People who go there like the bible, so why don’t I call it The Bible Appreciation Society? I think its quite a good term, it belittles religion for being a weird collection of fools and makes it sound like the entire thing is a teeny-tiny operation run by Bob from Essex.

I know that isn’t true, but I would like it to be. Maybe one day the human race will be smart enough to do away with the fascist, dogmatic, stupid, hateful, ludicrous tissue of lies that is religion.

I don’t think it will happen overnight. Douglas Adams once said that “Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.” I think we have a long way to go yet…

Tags: Atheism // Add Comment »

I got my computer back today. I got a Asus EAX-1050 graphics card from a local shop in Congelton. It is quite low powered, but should do me for a few months. I can’t afford a brilliant card at the moment, but I was contemplating getting a good laptop to replace the desktop in a few months. I don’t trust the desktop as it has a habit of crashing and blowing up components.

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I answered a knock at the door the other day to be met by a pair of old women. The first thing the lead woman tried to give me was a copy of the Watchtower. As soon as I saw it I politely said that I wasn’t interested. When she asked my reasons we went into a 20 minute long discussion about evolution and the fallacy of stories in the bible.

Bearing in mind that this is the middle of winter and I was stood on my front door step with only a t-shirt and trousers on, my teeth started to chatter. After several attempts to say things like “well I’m getting cold” and “I’m busy now” Mandy had a go at them saying “My partner has been very reasonable and has asked you to leave no please go”. This was the break I needed and i simply said that I wasn’t going to close the door in their face, but that they should probably go now. so they left.

Their understanding of evolution was very poor, in fact their whole understanding of physics, including basic things like boyancy theory was totally skewed. They even started to state things like the human brain only uses 10% of its power, which I quickly deposed as the urban myth it is.

It is almost like they don’t want to listen. Like they are doing a sales pitch and they get comission for every person signed up.

Tags: Atheism // 1 Comment »

My old faithful graphics card has finally given up. I started playing X3 today and it just crashed. When I tried to restart I was met with a screen full of ASCII characters. Looks like a quick trip to a local shop might be in order. Pity as the XFX 6600 GT I was running was a good card.

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This years work Decemberween party was held at the Deanwater Hotel near Wilmslow in Cheshire, and it all seemed to go very well.

The party, for reasons unknown, was 70’s fancy dress so I decided to go with the theme I chose the last time I went to a 70’s fancy dress part and go as a punk. Mandy went as a punk as well as the last time she felt a bit stupid going in a cheap nylon dress. However, we were the only punks there! For some reason everyone there was dressed as either a pimp or was otherwise heavily influenced by American culture. Still, everyone looked good and had obviously made an effort.

Here is a little picture of Mandy and I dressed up and ready to go.

Oddly enough I was actually asked by someone if I had come as a goth. What a silly bunt! So I do have a black t-shirt on, but what you can’t see in the pictures is that I have more safety pins in that I care to mention. They go right from my neck to my heel.

So how was the food? Very good, I didn’t have a single complaint with the food or the service. Also, because its a long way from Wilmslow to Congleton we decided to stay the night in the hotel. The rooms were clean and well fitted, although a little on the small side. In the morning I had a lovely fried breakfast, apart from a nasty looking fried tomato, which was served very quickly. In fact the only complaint I have heard is that some of the other people staying over had a different experience with breakfast that morning. After sitting down it was more than an hour before anyone noticed they were there. And when they did manage to get their breakfast it had clearly been sat on a hot plate for the last 20-30 minutes as the bacon was very dry.

So although the rooms were nice, food was okay and the service was good, I don’t think it was worth almost £100 a night!

Tags: Restaurant Reviews // Add Comment »