Sunday 29 May 2011

Mortality

See the guy at the back of this picture ? Dean Partridge a bloke I served with in the Royal Signals at 11th Signal Regiment, sadly died in April, he shared the same birthday as me and he was born the same year as me, from what I can tell he died of cancer @ 48 years old !!! I have some excellent memories of Dean, we laughed and grafted together and got through basic training together....

A sad day... I only found him a few months ago when I started a Facebook group about Ouston and 11th Signal Regiment where we did our basic training and he popped up out of the woodwork, I had no idea he was terminally ill, but that's Dean for you.... I'm glad I got back in touch before he  passed away..... RIP Dean Partridge 9th March 1963 - 28th March 2011...


We're not on this Earth for long .... so make the most of it while you can because it's gone in the blink of an eye...... My basic training with Dean is still fresh in my mind it only seems like yesterday...those 10 mile runs around the airfield, the change parades, the immaculate bulled boots the sleeping in freezing trenches..... S/Sgt Mold beasting us.......it's 32 years ago now .....WOW ....(I'd do it all over again if I could)

Gone in a flash

(And yes... that's me flicking the V's)


Certa Cito Dean.....QBG.....QEF 

Tuesday 24 May 2011

Bonny Scotland

Well Andrea made it back in one piece and her time for the marathon was 4 hours 34 minutes, which is pretty astounding considering she had a lot of time off training because of her leg injury... She had a lovely time up in Scotland and came back positively buzzing.... however her buzz has left her now and the early start she had this morning to catch her flight has hit her on the back of the head and she's wimped out and gone to bed.....

I'm immensely proud of her :)

I'd also like to welcome a reader of my blog called Claire, knowledge is power even if it does leak out..... ;¬) What I have learnt about Claire is that don't ever going shopping with her she is a walking security tag apparently ....(private joke  probably only appreciated by Claire and Andrea).... I'll get my coat....

Andrea escaped the big blow over Scotland by an hour as all flights were cancelled an hour after she left for Cardiff, by the looks of the news they got hit pretty bad, with large trees uprooted and at least two people killed which is awful, we on the other hand had a bit of a breeze and a light spotting of rain in sunny Wales.

The car is playing silly buggers again with its ABS whereby it activates at slow speed usually when rolling up to junctions at under 10mph... I'm determined to crack it, mainly because it's so bloody annoying .....I suspect it's the rear ABS sensors thinking that one of the wheels has locked up, considering the front ones were replaced recently AND have new reluctor rings on its hubs when I replaced the bearings. Although I think I will have to remove the drive shafts from the back to have a look see..... I also have to refurbish the front drivers side disc brake because it's starting to show signs of grabbing the disc, which means it isn't retracting properly, but that won't be expensive (£20+time+swearing+spanner rash)

A man has to have a hobby ;¬)

I don't mind repairing the car as it saves massive amounts on the garage bills which is always good.... plus I'm not going to add anything to the bill I didn't do or in fact fit. Not that I don't trust garages....

Anyway onward and upward

Tuesday 17 May 2011

Dean Mead from Carmarthen



I never met Dean Mead, but both Stewart and Lauren have and counted him as a good friend, they were both deeply shocked when they heard of his untimely death in Afghanistan by an IED.... I was very moved by how well he was thought of by his fellow Marines.


I won't replicate the comments out of respect, but I suggest you go and read them.....here


A fine young man cut down in his prime doing something he loved.


"They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them."


RIP Dean Mead 1991 - 2011

Saturday 14 May 2011

Imagine


Andromeda Galaxy our nearest neighbour
Fitting our Earth inside our Sun, how many Earth's could you fit into it ? Well you could fit 1 million (1,000,000) Earth sized objects inside of our Sun.

Now let’s take that a stage further. Imagine that our Sun was the size of a grain of ordinary sand that you would find on a beach.... Then imagine that all the stars in the universe were that size as well.... There would not be enough sand on our earth to equal the amount of stars in the Universe.

That gives you an idea of how many stars there are out there which is one of the reasons why I have great difficulty believing in any God, Why would a God create such a massive and vast expanse of basically nothing, then fill it with trillions upon trillions of stars... and then on one spiral arm of our Milky Way a pretty insignificant galaxy by all accounts, would he create an unremarkable star (our Sun) and several planets and on one of those orbiting rocks create the Earth.

It seems a little too far fetched for my liking. With all of those trillions of stars and all of those orbiting planets formed from the remnants of enormous exploding supernova over billions of years. It's more likely that we came about by pure chance. After all the numbers are pretty high, we just happen to be the lucky planet where it happened a place where all things fell into place to allow life to thrive......I’m sure there are many trillions of other planets where it didn’t and all of this over a massive time scale to humans, but to the time-scale of the Universe would be a minuscule amount of time.

Religion in my opinion is an easy way out, it's the lazy man's blind acceptance of what must be for people who don’t want to think too hard about it. An all encompassing explanation of everything in one easily digestible book, it's the comfort blanket where no real comfort exists, it's all in the mind. It's the world as man thought it existed thousands of years ago... We are a bit more up to date these days.... it's akin to opening a book about medical cures in the Middle Ages compared to the latest MRI scans of today...There is no mystery only an elusive deity backed up by blind "Faith" Of course "some" religions have valuable lessons to teach such as morality, love etc... but I think we are all born with these things or at least we have the ability to take on board these ideals and make them our own, without the need of religion....

You could believe that the Sun won't rise tomorrow. The probability would be that you'd be wrong, but that is something tangible that you can prove. You cannot use rational arguments about faith or religion with a believer, faith  isn't  rational or logical. Although a believer would argue that point...

I have some very good friends who believe in God and I respect them for their belief, and would defend their right to believe in what they wish.... but I can't help thinking they severely restrict the way they see the world (meaning all things relating to our existence) mainly because of their belief which hobbles their thought processes at the starting gate. Anything that questions the existence of God is dismissed or given a very simplistic explanation, and if the question fits neither of those explanations, then "Faith" is rolled out.

But if they are happy about that then who am I to question it? I would no more expect to pummel them with facts to disprove their faith than I would expect them to try and convert me. (But it’s fun sparring with believers, because I do like a lively debate ;¬) )…. 

Man in the human sense of the word, has an enormous capacity to think, we have massive brains and it's only really since the 1920's that we've discovered that galaxies existed outside of ours, when the Andromeda Galaxy was proven to exist at vast distances outside of our Galaxy. So it is only relatively recently that we  started to realise how vast the Universe is...

Furthermore the light from the Andromeda Galaxy hitting Earth now left the Andromeda Galaxy before man existed on Earth...(and no that wasn’t 6000 years ago biblically speaking) we are but a mere speck in a vast expanse of space.... and the more man knows about the Universe the less places there are left to hide a God.

They have recently proven one of Einstein’s theories in that a massive object  (Earth in this case) would bend space and time, they have measured it's effect on the  Gravity B probe

And that is what has prompted this blog entry... the more we know the less humanity will need a God

Wednesday 11 May 2011

A Palindrome

Or something which is the same backwards or forwards for those who don't know or possibly even care what the date is it's 11/5/11 .... of course it's not a "proper" palindrome because the date is 11/05/2011 but in its shortened form it is...

Anyway I've decided to add a bit of useless knowledge to each of my ramblings the palindrome wasn't it but I suppose it could be included.

No.... my useless bit of knowledge for today is quite stunning really in that the fissionable material in the Atomic bomb which destroyed Hiroshima amounted to just over the size of a UK 10p piece, and although the bomb contained 60 kilograms of U-235 only 1.38% of it was actually fissionable.... So something the size of a 10 pence piece destroyed Hiroshima which is quite astounding really, that something so small could cause the loss of so many lives. Of course the argument still stands did it shorten the war ? I think it probably did, but at what cost?

I think the years that followed during the cold war pretty much cemented the idea that the use of atomic weapons wasn't something to be taken lightly considering the more modern weapons were many times more powerful and many times more efficient than the first two dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. So if any leader considered the use of them the mutually assured destruction of their own country pretty much put an end to their use, and they remained simply a deterrent that could never be used.

Anyway changing the subject slightly I'm now going to rant on the subject of TV.....or the lack of good TV.....I see the rights to "Big Brother" have been bought up and that they will be reviving the tired old horse this year.... it's something I won't be watching, I knew it was too good to be true for it to have gone forever, obviously some TV executives think it still has legs... hopefully it will fall at the first fence and break all four of them...

I'm also not too happy with the offerings on TV of late, what with "The Great British Hairdresser" (YAWN), "The Apprentice" (DOUBLE YAWN) and the whole slew of other utterly mindless drivel they pump out these days for consumption by the morons of our society... chewing gum for the masses. Whatever happened to informative, educational TV ???? TV seems to have turned into some entertainment box in the corner, which I'm not against but ALL of the time ? Surely it would be nice to ACTUALLY learn something new every now and again ???

There are a few programmes which stand out but they are few and far between.... I don't know maybe I just don't fit into the demographic of the typical TV viewer these days. I don't watch soap's they are borderline fodder for idiots and completely unrealistic (even the writer of Eastenders admitted that only today), if my own life was half as miserable as most in Eastenders or Hollyoakes for instance I would have booked myself into Diginitas years ago and popped the barbiturate smoothie... gladly.

Thankfully it isn't.... Anyway I've rambled on long enough I'm sure you've got something better to do like watch Eastenders or something ? ..... ;¬)

Tuesday 10 May 2011

Skype

Has finally sold out for a substantial amount to none other than the evil empire itself ....Microsoft

I can see people leaving in droves myself included, which is a shame because it "was" a damn good VoIP application with excellent security, once Microsoft get their hands on it, it will be turned into some pay to speak bloatware application, or worse still the call quality will be reduced on the free side and if you want better call quality or video then you have to subscribe to a "premium" rate version.

I think there will be a hole in the market for another "Skype" soon.... it is a sad day indeed.

Not a lot news wise, except the Sullen one has been banned from having more than one friend over unless it's a special occasion such as a birthday or similar mainly because her bedroom is directly below ours and this weekend just gone she had about 4 or 5 friends over and the racket into the early hours was completely unacceptable and I didn't get to sleep until gone 4am being the light sleeper that I am.... mainly it was loud laughing but some of them could be heard quite clearly just with them talking and then there were the doors being banged shut every 10 minutes.... on a few occasions I very nearly got out of bed and threw the bloody lot of them out....But thought better of it because Andrea had said they could stay.... but it's simply not happening again, if she wants to have a random party she can go somewhere else to do it....I won't lose any sleep over it.....literally....

Xbox boy is still waiting for the green light from the Army after they told him he was a nervous wreck on anti depressants after getting his medical records mixed up with somebody else.... To be honest it's dragging on a bit now, but he knows if he doesn't get in the Army then he has to find another place to live, He's nearly 20 years old he should have fled the nest years ago. When I was 16 I wanted to get out in the world and explore it and find my own feet....despite having a very comfortable life with my parents at the time.....It seems this generation aren't quite so keen to do that, I don't know why....

Freya still has an ear infection although it's not as ragingly bad as it used to be, but she's on antibiotics again.... poor thing.

FOMO boy still hasn't learnt his lesson regarding answering back, but we are keeping up the pressure...he seems to have taken up one handed juggling with anything he can pick up, be that a phone, a bottle or anything in fact....highly annoying (and he knows it)….He’s also got the habit of picking up other peoples phones and using them…. A habit we are trying to get him out of, considering other peoples phones are private….something he doesn’t seem to grasp yet.

Having said that  he did learn a valuable lesson yesterday after he took a teddy bear off Freya in the car insisting it was his and he wanted to play with it....I tried to remind him that he was 11 years old and that Freya was only 3 but his bloody mindedness kicked in and he refused to give it back to Freya who was in floods of tears in the car, and because I was driving there wasn't a lot I could do about it....so I waited until we got home and I turned off his internet access on his computer.... it took him about 10 minutes to realise it didn't work and when he shouted down that "his" computer didn't work I corrected him and said "it's my computer and I'm playing with it" .... I think he got the point rather quickly... I'm a firm believer in punishments that can be understood easily... :) I did turn it back on again but only after he gave up and fired up Xboxboys Xbox 360.

We WILL win, he just doesn’t know it yet……

Friday 6 May 2011

How Ludicrous

The United States Government have said they will not release photographic evidence of Osama Bin Ladens date with death...

Personally I don't particularly want to see Bin Laden's corpse, I shouldn't think there would be much to see with a bullet wound to the head. All this will do is fan the flames of the conspiracy theorists who will see this as proof that he isn't dead or that he died in 2001, and it seems that not even the US administration can get the story straight as to whether he was armed or unarmed....Either way I don't see how not releasing photographs will not inflame anti American feelings... EVERYBODY knows the Americans did it....

You also have to wonder why when they had 40 minutes on the ground and probably a lot more travelling to and from Bin Laden's compound the Pakistani air force failed to scramble to intercept the encroachers in Pakistani air space. Regardless of the anti radar coatings and stealth helicopters used......they wouldn't have been totally invisible....

It smells of fish to me, there is something that isn't quite right with the story, I'm not sure what and we'll probably never know why there are differences in what is being told to us...Ah well

Of course the sick jokes have started flowing the funniest one I've heard thus far is that Osama bin Laden's name if you turn it into a pseudo anagram is .... wait for it ......

Lob man in da sea

quite a creative one I think 

Xbox boy isn't flavour of the month with me at the moment, mainly because the Army sent him a letter saying he had been rejected/deferred due to being prescribed anti depressants and his history of anxiety attacks...


WHAT ????


The letter had spelt his first name wrong so we assumed they had got his records mixed up, so he was told to get a letter off his doctor to prove he had never been on anti depressants or suffered from anxiety attacks......

but he didn't have the money to pay for the letter (£20) so we paid for it, he came back with the letter and it had our old address on it, but he said that it didn't matter because that’s the address the army had anyway (rolls eyes in disbelief)....

Fair enough (or not).... anyway fast forward to last night and low and behold he has had a picture taken of his latest tattoo on Facebook, which quite frankly looks like its design was chosen whilst eating a kebab and tanked up on beer. Now I'm no fan of tattoo's at the best of times, but he had a rather good one on the same shoulder which (in my opinion) has been totally ruined by this random scorpion... I guess it's his skin to do as he pleases with ..... it's him who has to live with it for the rest of his life... but that isn't the point.

He didn't have £20 spare to sort out his Army medical records cock up.... it seems his tattoo was more important than his future career....

So I'm less than impressed with him at the moment....on his lack of priorities 

Sullen one is still limping around with a leg brace on after her rugby accident, but seems to be coping....In fact it's not really fair to call her Sullen one anymore because she's not quite as sullen as she used to be these days.....

On the other hand unfortunately FOMO boy is still wearing boots which are too small for him, and he is seriously going to have to watch his attitude, and curb the desire to answer back..... Andrea is dealing with him at the moment quite successfully, she isn't quite in need of a full on air strike and artillery barrage just yet.... but he's within range and target is acquired.....

Freya is well just Freya, she is getting over a rather nasty ear infection which treatment was delayed because of the bank holidays but she is responding well to her antibiotic banana medicine which she hates.... You can usually tell when Freya is ill the volume control gets muted for the duration of the illness....

Not much else to report really except Andrea is preparing for the impending Edinburgh marathon, which she is excited about, but by her own admission isn't at her fittest because of her Quad injury, but she seems confident she'll get around it... it will be a nice break for her and she'll get a chance to see her brother and his wife up there...

As for me... I'm plodding along as usual....

Tuesday 3 May 2011

Laden, Cooper and Windsor

Well it's been a rather eventful few weeks,
A Royal wedding, Osama Bin Laden and Henry Cooper.

The first one I really couldn't care less about and I don't honestly see what all the fuss is about with two people getting married.....Royal or not.

Osama Bin Laden's demise however is a bit of a multifaceted nightmare on stilts. I cannot see how taking out one man who albeit is the head of the terrorist organisation will somehow quell the zeal of the religious nut jobs who think nothing of blowing themselves and anybody within the blast radius to bits. I think it is a bit early to say Al Qaeda is dead in the water much like it's leader. I am pretty sure they will have a back up plan should their leader be killed, and it will only be a matter of time before somebody steps in to replace Osama Bin Laden and some other atrocity is executed.

Then of course if you're a cynic like I am there is always the possibility that Bin Laden was already dead (circa 2001 in Tora Bora) and this has just been staged as a political vote winner for the next presidential election, and of course slotting Bin Laden is worth millions of votes....In much the same way the Falklands War won Margaret Thatcher another term in office here in the UK......but of course there is always oil in the background......

It is strange how quickly he was executed, removed from his compound taken to a ship then buried at sea to follow Islamic burial rites....however Muslims are only buried at sea in the most extreme of circumstances and only then if they are encased in a clay burial coffin it is preferred they are buried under ground with their faces pointing towards Mecca....You could argue that they didn't want his burial place to become a martyrs grave, but wherever you bury somebody if they are a martyr in their followers eyes it doesn't really matter if they have a grave to visit or not.

You could of course argue that they did a DNA analysis with his sister's brain who died.... but then that only works if you believe everything a government tells you.

It could well be true that it was him but in light of recent governmental skull duggery I tend to not believe everything I read or see on the news.

Oil prices escalating out of control, Libyans still very much are killing each other, general unrest in the Arab countries further hiking up oil prices.... and ohhhh now look Osama Bin Laden slotted... The dollar rises, oil prices drop and the added bonus Obama gets another term as president.....

Some of us weren't born yesterday.

But now onto more important things like Henry Cooper's death, A truly magnificent boxer in his day with "Enry's Hammer" that iconic left hook which completely floored Mohammed Ali (Cassius Clay at the time) and left him hanging on the ropes, or the fight he was wrongly defeated in with Joe Bugner....A wrong decision if ever there was one.... A true gent and a boxing legend gone at the age of 76... It seems you get to a certain age in this life and all of the people you were aware of growing up start pegging out for want of a better word.... I guess that's just the way the cookie crumbles, the older you get the more aware you are of how little time you have here on earth to make the most of it.