Riddance

Hurrah! Hurrah! I am writing this just after midnight on the very day on which England finally bans smoking in all public and work places. Tonight Shirley and I went down to the local and three young people - in their twenties - sat next to us and lit up their evil little tobacco cylinders. But that's the last time! Next week they will have to breathe out their stinking smoke at home or stand out under the stars making smoke rings.

I loathe smoking. Everything about it but mostly the foul stink of it. I hate the stench of stale smoke on my clothes and I hate the way it catches the back of your throat and stings your eyes. And I hate the commercial thrust of it - the advertising, the profit hungry targeting of vulnerable people. Everything about smoking stinks.

Lungs. Guess which pair belonged to a smoker!

This is how the BBC have heralded July 1st - "Smokers across England are having their final puff at work and the pub before the ban on lighting up in enclosed public places begins at 0600 on Sunday. The move follows bans across the UK, and is intended to cut deaths from secondhand smoke. Many venues are planning farewell events for the final Saturday night, while local authorities are preparing to enforce the ban. Anyone lighting up illegally will face a fine of up to £200."

Since this ban was announced in Parliament we have had to wait a long, long time but finally the day of reckoning has arrived and at last we, the non-smoking majority have got the upperhand. I have not one iota of sympathy for hardened smokers but I hope that this ban will inspire hundreds more of them to say goodbye and good riddance to the dreaded weed.

Transience

Nothing lasts forever... Take this blogging lark. In my "Planet Blog" list of blogs I like to visit (see right of this post) there are now several blogs that used to be very active but have now either been forgotten, mothballed or deliberately neglected. Perhaps the bloggers just got fed up with it all and have moved on to other diversionary hobbies. Every time I click and find nothing new, it's like I am losing an old friend or a human connection that meant something to me but has now ceased to be.... "Hanging Hope on a Heads Up 1973 Penny", "Arthur Clewley's Diary", "Brad the Gorilla" ... just examples of blogs that have been put on ice. But as each old blog fades away, along comes a gang of new vivacious bloggers such as "Muddy Boots" from my homeland and "Mutterings and Meanderings". All is not lost. As in life, we must move on. Move on.

I have been a blogger for just over two years now. Mostly, I have enjoyed this hobby. It is an outlet for my everlasting dreams about publishing and sharing words with others and it has been a useful way into connecting with different bloggers around the globe. I enjoy the fact that it is free, uncensored, uncontrolled and almost anarchic. However, I don't like the sound of the word "blogger". It's like an informal term for someone who spends too long on the lavatory reading a newspaper, groaning with the muscular exertion of it all before depositing a bricklike "blog". Ah well...

Water

The schoolboy on the right is Ryan Parry. He died yesterday afternoon at the tender age of fourteen whilst investigating flood waters surging down the River Sheaf, just one of five normally tiny streams that run through Sheffield.

He wasn't the only one to die. An unnamed pensioner got out of his waterlogged car on The Wicker - close to Lady's Bridge over the River Don and got swept away by the flood waters. Regarding this man's death, a police spokesman said "The waters rose extremely quickly- the victim was with another man and the water level rose from ankle deep to chest deep. Soon both men were paddling and trying to pull themselves along the bridge wall. The victim got into difficulty and the other man tried to assist him but was not able to pull him from the flood. He got to the side and shouted for help. A member of the public managed to pull the by-then unconscious pensioner from the water a few minutes later. Members of the public then tried to resuscitate the man until paramedics arrived and took him to Northern General Hospital where he died. "

I have lived in Sheffield for thirty years and have never known a day like yesterday. The rain was torrential. Water was surging down our street like a river but we were safe because we live on a hillside, far above Endcliffe Park which is a mini-flood plain for the River Porter. Floods will never reach us even if both polar ice-caps melt entirely.

My school closed at lunchtime yesterday and today school was cancelled - no electricity and huge puddles around the entrances with so many staff living in badly flooded outlying areas. I put in some extra work at Ian's new house and all the time there were sirens outside and snarling traffic jams. It was like World War III had arrived. Puddles were forming in his cellar as rain trickled down the old coal chute.

Of course the floods of the last thirty six hours bring echoes back of another flood that happened in the city on March 11th 1864. This is often known as "The Forgotten Flood" - probably because it happened "Up North" where life was more dispensable. It is known that over 250 people were drowned in that flood when the Dale Dyke Dam on the edge of the city burst and sent water gushing down the Loxley Valley towards Malin Bridge and Hillsborough. Destruction included 415 dwelling houses, 106 factories/shops, 64 other buildings, 20 bridges and 4478 cottage/market gardens. Despite being one of the biggest man-made disasters in British history, and now being annually recorded in the Guinness Book of Records, few people today - even in Sheffield - know a deal, if anything at all, about the flood.

An artist's impression of what happened at Dale Dyke Dam on March 11th 1864.

This blog entry is dedicated to Ryan Parry, the unnamed pensioner and the forgotten victims of the Great Sheffield Flood of 1864. May they rest in peace.

House

Right - The Railway Hotel on Bramall Lane - literally

a stone's throw from Ian's house.

Something has been going on in the quiet background of my life. Our son, Ian is twenty three this summer. How long was he going to live with us? Till twenty five? Twenty eight? We had the wherewithal and the opportunity to say to him - look son, we will help you to buy a house - if you want it. You could buy a big rucksack and bobby off to Australia or you could begin your own business in men's fashions or you could have your own house courtesy of a bank or building society. He chose the house option.

Ian got the keys to his house on May 31st. Our bid of £130,000 was acceptable. The house is very close to Sheffield United's Bramall Lane football ground in a relatively deprived part of the city, just fifteen minutes walk from his workplace in town.

The house has three good-sized bedrooms and a little garden at the back. For the past three weeks we have been working on it, painting, repairing, furnishing, laying a laminate floor, sorting out the little garden and the outhouse that was once the only lavatory for early residents between 1905 when the house was built and the early nineteen fifties. My wallet has felt like a sieve. Today we bought him a fridge freezer and a washer and yesterday I was bombing around Sheffield in a hired Ford Transit picking up this and that and moving furniture. It was nice to look down on other road users and blast the ocean liner horn on the steering wheel - "Get out of my way you moron!"

It's all coming together now. He has one tenant already - Maso - who moved in today but Ian will also need another tenant for the attic bedroom if this home buying project is going to be viable or we will end up subbing him month by month and we want his position to be really settled before Frances, our daughter, goes to university in the autumn. What can you do eh? You never think of these things when you are in the delivery room cradling a helpless infant. We just thought - act now or it may never happen - and in spite of the worry, it feels good to express our love for Ian in this fundamental way. To get him on the housing ladder which for many British people is the stuff of wild imaginings.

Seek it: MASTERSEEK

Do you think that there arent any more search engines except the Google .
There are specialised ones too.
Specialised for Buisness
masterseek is one of them.
Masterseek’s global search engine provides quick and free access to company profiles, contact information, and descriptions of products and services from more than 45 million companies in 75 countries. You can also search in your own country or worldwide and find business partners, sales opportunities and new avenues to expand your business and increase your company’s profitability.

The Categories are:-

Categories
Accounting
Advertising and Marketing
Aerospace and Defense
Agriculture and Livestock
Art Materials and Hobbies
Auctions
Banking and Finance
Business Advice and other Services
Business Services and Opportunities
Business Travel
Chemicals and Pharmaceuticals
Communication Advertising and the Media
Computers and Software
Construction and Public Works
Countries Companies
Electrical and Electronic Equipment
Energy and Raw materials
Entertainment Industry
Exporters
Food and Related Products
Glass and Building Materials
Government and Trade
Health and Fitness
Human Resources
Importers
Information Technology
Internet and Online
Jewelry and Precious Stones
Jobs and Career
Leather and Shoes
Legal
Management
Mechanical Engineering - Machines
Metallurgy and Metalworking
Miscellaneous Products
Office Supplies and Equipment
Optical and Photographic
Paper and Cardboard
Precision Equipment
Printing and Publishing
Restaurant Supply
Retail and Consumer Services
Rubber and Plastics
Shipping
Small Business
Sports
Telecommunications Industry
Textiles and Clothing
Toys and Games
Transport Services
Vehicles and Transport Equipment
Wood and Furniture

If you are really serious to search some buisness shit.
Search it @ MASTERSEEK.

Check out my new blog

I was bored with this blog (not really)
So i decided lets expand my blogdom
by introducing you to my new blog
i.e. V.CoL (if you havent seen it from the last month at the top-left corner of this blog)
http://www.versatilecollection.blogspot.com is the blog's good link.

If you can read poems and 200 page plus pages of my so called e-novel
then try it out!!!

Cock

For your interest, here is a man with a particularly big cock.

I don't know what one would do with a cock as big as that. Average-sized cocks are much more useful. Easier to pluck as well before shoving in the pot.

Entry for June 20, 2007

The consultant has told mum she can come home today. Yea!

Teambuilding

Friday afternoon, I rushed home, grabbed some stuff and a clean shirt and headed off for the Marriott Hotel in Sheffield's leafy Nether Edge. It is about ten minutes walk from our house. When our Ian was a waiter at The Marriott, I would often taxi him there and back but I never though for one moment I would ever sleep there. After all bed and breakfast is £120 a night and as you may have gathered already, I am so tight-fisted there are padlocks on my wallet!

But I wasn't paying. This was a "teambuilding" or hyphenated team-building exercise paid for by my school. I am being promoted to the Leadership scale ( senior management) even though I never asked for this and still harbour some suspicion about it all.

Everyone had to take an object that would say something about who they are. This was an ice-breaking session. My object was a chunk of Flamborough Head - a fist-sized rock in which flint and chalk merge. I said it represented my Yorkshire heritage and it also stands for fundamental Yorkshire values such as decency, honesty, kindness and respect. I spoke of how in my East Yorkshire childhood, the rolling wolds were always there in the distance, culminating in the chalky promontory at Flamborough which looks out to sea and the world beyond. Rather poetic I thought. The rest of my "team" applauded me.

Painting of Flamborough Head

Later in small groups - rather bizarrely - we had to use tin foil to create a metaphorical model of our school. My group made "The Balloon of Hope" - a hot air balloon chained to the earth with a figure holding a telescope and looking out from the basket. Later, I drank beer until two in the morning and woke up at seven on Saturday to eat a big fried breakfast followed by a fruit salad dessert. I was building myself!

Following our OFSTED inspection with all the associated stress the past week brought, the last thing I needed was a weekend of team building but I got through it and you know, at times I quite enjoyed it all - standing back from my usual workplace and reflecting on how we operate and the way ahead.

MRI

Mum had an MRI yeststerday which thanfully indicates no physical problems, such as a stroke.

Entry for June 15, 2007

Found out last night the Consultant thinks mum may have had a stroke.

It just gets better and better.

Hi5 + Orkut = ?

Have you ever thought of Yahoo + Google=Yoogle

That's not happening i was just saying that if we add two sites we may get a new one.

This has happened in case of social networking sites instead and their sum is indeed great.

I'm talking about

+=

i.e. is if you add Hi5 and Orkut you get a cooler social networking site ie.Hikut.

Not one of these older players but still in the web to compete with the big daddies.

Its in the while from th late 2006 and the number is growing.

If you think it is a sort of crap, then it is not.

I think after MySpace, the most coolest profiles can be created on Hikut.

Including adding templates and colour.

You can import friends from yahoo,orkut,gmail,hotmail etc.

You can create blogs,quizzes and polls, add pictures and mp3s and post bulletins,play 100 of games.

In short its having more features than both Orkut and Hi5.

Its only the name and login screen that is similar,rest the interface is new.

"Original is Original but do respect the new one, because the new will rise "

-nobody said it

Site Review: BloggerWave

Have you heard of triple P, PPP or simply Pay Per Post.
If you havent heard of it then try this out.
New,better and fast here arrives the
new...
Bloggerwave
which will help you lift your incomes like a wave.
It simply gives you opportunities to earn.
You just require a blog. Sometimes a high ranked,high PRed and sometimes...
you dont even need to care of these terms.

Its advantages over PPP
1. Its new new and less bloggers have esatblished themseves here which means that you will get more recogonisition.
2. Less time taken to get approved
3.Better in case of rewards.

So what are you waiting for,dont lose this great opportunity
and begin surfing on the blogger wave

Google's Search Software gets American Patent

Wanna know any of your buddy having a cell phone?
Its easier now as The big G Google will soon release a new search engine for it.
You search a cell no. in it and within seconds you'll know where the hell the person is.
(Good for terrorists.They just need your number and KABO0OoM!!!)
Not only this, you can also know where the person has visited the whole day(and may be night)
(Now you cna destroy the person's friends and relatives)
You can catch the liers too.

We can still get the location of the person but this is still in the hands of mobile companies,
by searching the region of the nearby tower.(where you cna climb up and eat bananas)
But it has its draw backs you cant have a hundred towers after each damn' kilometer.
But this service(tower) may not be for all.

But with the help of the big G you'll be able to know this with your idiot box (com.)
and if you have GPRS and WAP then from the mobile even.

Recently it has got the so called American patent which means that this technique will be available on the basis of geographical locations.(because it has the geographical data already available.have you forgotten Google Earth?)


Now militants dont get over excited as your cell phone shal have this software loaded.
So if you want this software...
SEARCH IT YOURSELF!!!!

Poem

Endcliffe Park

Green lung
Where mothers come to push Silver Crossed toddlers
As dog walkers walk their hairy dogs.
See it on a summery Sunday afternoon
Frisbees and football
Amidst picnicking people.
It’s like a Lowry print
Except the figures move.
Glad to be alive
Casting shadows on the grass.

Once, long ago
I laid in a snowfall there
And left my shape
Spread-eagled
Like a murder victim
Waiting for
Summer to return.

by Yorkshire Pudding June 14th 2007

Queen Victoria guards the Hunters Bar entrance to Endcliffe Park, Sheffield.

BORREDD!!!!

BORREDD!!!

Stop yawning and try something else,something that officials of multinational companies do.Something that can awaken you from your deep sleep(ZZZZZ)

is throwing papers in a dustbin.(ECO ENEMY)

But not in reality, on a internet connected PC or an office one (ECO FRIENDLY)

O.K. its a so called game!

But its not as easy as it looks.

But its damn' eady and damn' difficult.

The objective of the game is basically NOTHING,

but still,you need guts to throw even a paper into a dustbin.At the right location,oscillation and wind speed.

Still think its easy.

I challenge you if you do 10 in a row.

Try it!!! and if you cant do that even, then you are bored by birth.

Mag Review:Digit

If i can review blog,sites,games,movies then is it a sin to review a magazine.

And a magazine that deals with technolgy, that calls itself as"your technology navigator"

.The mag's good name is DIGIT.

It has got it all that helps you to live in the world of technology.

The magazine gives out a CD and DVD free of cost.Also you have a hand held fastrack which is the most handy tech guide.

The mag is divided into four parts.

i.e. is Digital Passion,Digital Buisness,Digital Tools and Digital Leisure.

The latest interface of the CD/DVD being Vista-ish looks cool.

Regular contests are held in the mag including "Beat That"-the most coolest for me.

,Digi Pick and My Desktop.

Rest you can find reviews tech news etc my favourite being the game reviews.

Fast Track is the best part,black and white yet informative.

The CD's are flooded with the most essential softwares,games and 1-2 free full movies.

100+ pages for the mag itself and the fast track,2 discs and the magazine being for 125 INR(3$ approx.) is just what you wanted.

But still I get mine brows up after going through 10+ ad pages,

but they have to think of their selves their beevey- baccheys and all that.

Click the picture to get it.

Hospital

Has been a bit of a rubbish weekend.

Mum had to be taken into A&E Friday: her GP was concerned by the test results she had on Wednesday. Apparently the hospital shouldn't have let her go home in the first place.

Mum's blood count was at an all-time low and she had picked up an infection, along with some unpleasant side effects. Also an examination Sunday afternoon has reveiled an enlarged Spleen.

So she spent the weekend mostly wired up to a drip and starring at four boring walls. No doubt more tests, prodding and poking and boredom is in store for her these next few days. At least she is now in the right place to receive the best possible care and now has a bit more colour in her cheeks.

Oh and it's dad's birthday today. I guess it will be cards and pressies down on the ward tonight.

5 reasons why you are a BIG BAD FOOL!!!!!You became too

You are a BIG BAD FOOL
if...........................................
1) You have been using a top notch PC for 10yrs and you dont know the function of Alt+F4.
2)You did not used the trial version of limewire to download its pro version.
3)You became too friendly and started sharing passwords.
4)You didnt visit CrAzYbLoG and V.CoL
5.you didnt reviewed,blogrolled them above 2 sites

Words

In spite of myself, I find Channel 4's "Big Brother" both fascinating and addictive. It's like you are a fly on the wall in somebody else's house. There is no script. Watching it, you are adding to your knowledge of humanity. The concept is quite brilliant. Although the contestants are surrounded by technology, there is a sense in which their life in the house goes back years to times when people were pretty much trapped in their homes, without TV or reading material. You had to get along with others and make the most of things.

This last week nineteen year old drama student Emily Parr was officially booted out of the house for usinfg the offensive term "nigger" to Charley who is of mixed race. The word was not used in a heated row or angry outburst but in a playful dance session. Perhaps Emily thought she was somehow being cool or streetwise - using a taboo word in a rather daring but well-intentioned way.

Emily Parr (19)

This is how Channel 4 reported Emily's removal:-

"Contestant Emily Parr was removed from the Big Brother House in the early hours of this morning after using a racially offensive word to a fellow housemate. Emily was with Charley and Nicky in the garden of the Big Brother House at approximately 8.30pm last night when she was heard to say "Are you pushing it out you nigger?" to Charley.

Emily immediately made clear that she had not intended to offend and that the comment had been meant as a joke. In discussing what she had said, Charley and Nicky agreed that they were not personally offended, although both did express shock at the language she had used. In the ensuing discussion, Emily acknowledged that she should have been more careful with her words."

Charley could have said to Emily - or Emily to Charley - "You disgusting and worthless worm! I hope your reproductive organs shrivel up and that your mother gets run over by a bus while we are in this house! You whore! You bitch! You sub-human moron!" None of that would have caused removal but the word "nigger" - then the politically correct racism alarm bells start ringing like crazy and out goes Emily to live with her little mistake for the rest of her life. It will always be there.

The word "nigger" comes from the Latin word "niger" meaning "black" and its history is quite fascinating. It is a word that hasn't always had negative or insulting connotations. Personally I would never use this word mainly because I like to take people as I find them be they black, white, disabled, rich, poor, young, old or whatever. Labelling like this is usually irritating because it seeks to define and pigeonhole people before you really get to know them.

Emily's story makes us realise how much store others can place in the words that we use. Just one misplaced word can change your life... or perhaps two words if we include "I do"!

Crazy Q

Well nothing to write about Agloco has released its so called viewbar.
(Thanks to so called Gmail for letting me know it in my mail)
But the damn page has just 5 words for me!!!

"The Page Cannot Be Displayed"
so i couldnt write a whole post on Viewbar.
I decided to refresh you with some sort of crappy question or riddle
(Dont ask the answer, even i dont know it)
Dont go by the currency,but the value.
**************************************************************************************

Tomb, Dix and Hairey decided to buy 3 Pizzas for Rs.25 each.
Making the total Rs75.
The waiter delivers the pizza and gives the money to the manager.
As today's the manager's 50th birthday, he decides to give away 5 rupees off.
He takes the 70 rupees and asks the waiter to give them their 5 rupees back.
The waiter is engulfed by his greed and bad deeds, so he decides to keep 2 rupees with him...
and gives three rupees i.e 1 rupee to each customer i.e Tomb,Dix and Hairey
such that each pizza to them now costs 24 rupees.

But when the total was counted...it was found that
24+24+24=72 rupees were spent on pizzas and the waiter had stolen 2 rupees
i.e 72+2=74
But the total money was 75 rupees.
75-74=1

So where the hell is the 1 rupee.

You or your economy?

Would you like you to be rich or your country to be?
Wont you like your country's economy reach heights.
Well the thing is about adsense.
The lowest payout for adsense earnings is 100$ or clearly 100USD.
And whole of the world's population doesnt dwell in US.
So the money is converted to the other nations currency.
To convert your country's currency click on big dollar $.

Talking about India...
Once India's currency as compared to USD was 50 INR for 1USD
whichhas now droppend To 40.something(dancing between 40.xxx from past few weeks)
This clearly shows that the Indian rupee is getting powerful.

But it will reflect your adsense earnings(dont tell me about my adsense...it is a long story)
If you got 5000 you will get 4000 rupees.
Other country currency is also getting weaker/stronger.

I'll go with the country's economy.(PATRIOTISM)
But the country's economy is for its people.
And I am one of the people.
So i'll go with me.

What do you think???

Liverpool

Here is an extract from a very recent BBC news item:-
"Liverpool supporters have been branded the worst behaved in Europe by UEFA.
Football's European governing body is to hand a report to the British Government which has been compiled by undercover police agents from a neutral European force over the last four years.
The document reportedly catalogues 25 incidents involving Liverpool supporters attending away games since 2003.
It follows problems at the recent Champion league final in Athens where some fans with genuine tickets were locked out of the Olympic stadium and tear gassed - as those with forged or no tickets tried to force their way through barriers."

Now what I am about to say is the unspeakable in English football and it may cause Liverpool fans to hunt me down and beat me to a pulp but I don't care. Truth is precious. As regular readers will know, I live in the city of Sheffield where cup semi-finals used to be held almost on an annual basis at Sheffield Wednesday's Hillsborough stadium.

That all stopped on April 15th 1989 at the Notts Forest v Liverpool semi-final when there was a huge crush of spectators at the Liverpool end of the ground causing 96 poor Liverpool fans to die. South Yorkshire police service have been derided bitterly over their supervisory incompetence but who was really to blame?

I tell you it was Liverpool fans themselves! Not the people who got crushed but the ignorant, arrogant drunken men at the back - those who arrived late and pushed and pushed to get a good view of the game. They are the real culprits and I hope that there are still homes in Liverpool where there are sleepless nights filled with guilt for the tragedy that was Hillsborough. It wasn't the police that killed those fans it was their own supporters - the wide boys at the back - and if UEFA's verdict is anything to go by - they have still not learnt their lesson.

Entry for June 04, 2007

Have just uploaded few new images of recent work into My Ceramics photo album.

Enjoy. LOL

More

Our trip to Galicia. Let me share some more of my digital photos...

Beach mosaic... NOT by Damien Hirst!

Shirley and Moira on an unspoilt Galician beach...

Me with urban sculpture ladies in Santiago...

Shirley, Steve and Moira in front of the great cathedral in Santiago.

Light fitting inside the great cathedral...