A week to ten days ago, Mick got a sore throat. He caught it from his flat mate. Now I’ve got it, and a chesty cough for dessert. Thanks, world. I hope you’re not expecting a tip.

In around fifteen minutes it continues with me (Mike was the 1st, Simon and Ray the 16th). Followed in a week by Mick, then shortly thereafter in early April it’s Dan, then Charlie.
Others follow of course, but this is the intense period and yet again I’m brassic and fed up.

I know there is supposed to be a male menopause, but every year?

So back to working on ‘Sleeper’ which is rather good, getting better, and in dire need of finishing before I get thrown out of Nur Ein for tardiness.

Happy Birthday to me! Gah…

Global Fusion Announcement

The Pestalozzi International Village Trust has announced the intention not to run Global Fusion, its annual festival of world music, crafts and storytelling, in 2006.

The Trust remains committed to promoting these ideals, as is evidenced by its new monthly events programme; on Sunday 19 March 2006 it will hold an afternoon Festival of Food and on Sunday 16 April 2006 an afternoon of Drumming, Music and Dance.”
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When the festival started it was tea and cakes on the lawn for locals. A small village fete re-named festival for the ethnicity factor, and not a lot more. Then Mandy Curtis became involved. Mandy worked at Pestalozzi in charge of PIDEC (Pestalozzi International Development Education Centre), and she had a dream.

The Global Fusion Festival ‘became’ something worthy; an event to be nurtured and grown. Year on year it was a huge amount of work, and initially was heavily supported by the Arts Council, but with Mandy’s efforts it grew and grew.

When Kamakura played the 2005 Festival Sly and Robbie were the headline. In 2004 it had been Bob Geldof. Both the acts and the crowds kept getting bigger, and the profit had started to roll.

So… Global Fusion has been killed off at Pestalozzi. Mandy Curtis left to start Thirty-Six Hours her own Festival management company, and presumably the responsibility of a major event proved just too much for the new management. Much better to bask in the safe warm glow of a village fete, and the chink of coin from the cake stall, rather than having months of hard work.

I find it sad, for charities need money and this years Festival would have started producing it in buckets. I’m hopeful Global Fusion will survive and be found a home elsewhere. After all, you’d have to be mad to kill a fledgling golden goose. Wouldn’t you?

I’ve just watched a truly terrifying channel five documentary ‘Nazi Hate Rock: A MacIntyre Investigation’. Here’s a link to The Guardian article on the subject.

Frankly it made me shudder for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the shattering of my belief that I live in a rational, logical and temperate society. These people seriously believe what they espouse. This way lies madness and mayhem. I Shudder.

Finally, an old friend called me a knucklehead. Which is marginally better than dunce, dunderhead, numskull, blockhead, bonehead, lunkhead, hammerhead, loggerhead, muttonhead, shithead or indeed fuckhead, though not by much.

It’s started to snow, and last night - or this morning, if you’re a pedant - I wrote a poem under my ‘pen name’ or ‘nom de plume’. C’est bon; at least I think so … then I would.

I have a printer. She (who wants to work with an it?) is an HP CP1700 oversized A3, and I love her dearly. Infact I love her so much I could wax lyrical for several paragraphs. The only teency problem is that a full set of four cartridges costs nearly £95. But then I rarely need to buy new ones.
A week ago, and with all cartridges at around 40% I switch her on and I get the message ‘Cartridges expired’ scrolling across the screen.
“No” I scream. “wtf!”
Several hours of research later and the truth dawns. It’s true. HP have built a chip into each cartridge and they damn well expire even if they are full. I was miffed. Very miffed, as you can well imagine, unless you happen to work for HP in which case you probably can’t.

Google provided the answer as Google often does. I found a really good thread explaining how to bypass the whole expiry date debacle, as well as an article entitled ‘HP and Corporate Plunder‘ which is well worth a read.

I find the whole built in obsolescence senario very worrying, especially as we (and by we I mean WE) are running out of resources faster than a very fast thing.
—–
The Dragon’s Den is rather an intriguing program on channel four. The basic premise is that a panel of five wealthy entrepreneurs sit (along with a pile of cash which is presumably from the props department) and listen to people pitch their ideas. If it’s a good idea, and they think they’ll make money, they invest.

On the last show they passed on a product called Interflush which saves 45% of the water on every flush of a toilet and instead decided to invest in a new version of the Rubriks cube. Admittedly the chap presenting the interflush was a bit of a dork, but I was just flabbergasted. On the one hand potentially save the planet a huge amount of water and make money, on the other make money with a plastic toy… If only Richard Branson had been there.

Picturing online gaming’s value
Earlier this year, a Shanghai online gamer was given a suspended death sentence for killing a fellow gamer when he found out the friend had sold his virtual sword, which he had lent him, for 7,200 yuan (£473).
When I first read about ‘Second Life’ I was intrigued, but my computer was too slow.
Now I’m gonna get me a better computer and a job as a leveller… I wonder what tax bracket I’ll slot into.
You have to read this article.

The Toy
I think I’ve seen it all now… A damnably wicked use of bluetooth!

BBC NEWS | World | Americas | Hurricane Beta hits the Caribbean
So many hurricanes this season that not only is Beta the 13th, a record, but they have had to start using the greek alphabet for naming them… And still people question the veracity of global warming.

As of ten minutes ago 2,222 have listened to my music at Tapegerm. I don’t know who most of them are, which is a makes me a tad peeved. If I knew I’d send them all a thank you, along with a huge and vastly expensive present (or not). But I don’t.