27 March 2011 (Sunday) - Fishing

Last night I was asked to a friend’s belated St Patrick’s Day party. There was also a works do I could have gone to, and every Saturday I have a standing invitation to a regular film night at a friend’s house. I went to none of these. I was boring and I stayed in and had an early night – even though I’d spent a large part of the afternoon asleep on the sofa, I was worn out. But was still wide awake at 9am this morning.

I have a theory that I would do far better actually having two sleeps a day, each of about four hours, rather than trying to have one big sleep of eight hours like everyone else.

I looked at the lawn this morning and thought about mowing it. Mind you, I only thought about it. Had I not wasted an hour or so earlier by mucking about on my work-related web projects I would have had time to do the lawn. I decided it would still be there late and left it to carry on growing.

And then the door bell rang. Next door (the ones we get on with) were having a dilemma: they’d had a parcel delivered, but it wasn’t for them. Did we know anyone locally named “Mannning”? ‘er indoors ^TM  did, and directed the nice lady from next door to a house down the road, with the advice that the house she wanted used to be painted green. That was helpful, and after a minute or so, ‘er indoors ^TM  realised what she’d said. I did laugh.

I could have gone to the arky-ologee club’s dig today. ‘er indoors ^TM did. I left her to it, and once “Daddies Little Angel ^TM ” and the Rear Admiral arrived, we went fishing. The plan was to go to the pond at Coldblow, but “Daddies Little Angel ^TM ” wanted to see Pork Chop and the other lambs, so we went to the Batfarm instead. Whilst Batty and “Daddies Little Angel ^TM ” did ovine activities (look it up!), me and the Rear Admiral set up fishing. There are those who say that fishing is a dull pursuit. At 2.30pm this afternoon I would have agreed with them. After an hour and a half without a single bite, we gave up, packed up, and set off home. Seeing it would be on our way home (if we went home by a very stupid route) we thought we’d have half an hour’s fishing at Coldblow.

We should have gone there first. “Daddies Little Angel ^TM ” had a fish within thirty seconds of casting out. I had two in the next minute. And so it went on – loads of fish. “Daddies Little Angel ^TM ” ended up with twenty, I had thirty-five. And even the Rear Admiral caught something. Whilst at Coldblow we were joined by a fellow blogger who had never been fishing before in her life. We kitted her out with a rod, and she hooked the biggest fish I’ve ever seen at Coldblow. The carp she had on was enormous – certainly bigger than any Koi I’ve got in my pond. Unfortunately it got away, but this wasn’t a bad fish to have as the first fish she’d ever hooked.

Another piscatorial first happened today. Both the Rear Admiral and I caught the same fish. At the same time! The one fish had both our hooks in its gob when go collectively caught it. I’ve never heard of this before, and certainly never seen it.

We’d arrived at Coldblow at 3pm and had planned to be there for half an hour. Eventually falling temperatures and fading light forced us to pack up at 7pm. It was surprising just how cold it got in a very short space of time. But it was a very good first fishing expedition of the year. Mind you, there is a minor hiccup we discovered today. Over the winter a farmer has fenced off half the pond. The entire southern half is now utterly inaccessible. I shall have words with those to whom I pay money so’s I can fish that pond….

26 March 2011 (Saturday) - Gardening, Cheating

Up before 7am this morning, and over brekkie I checked out my blog list. As well as writing this drivel every day, I read over thirty other blogs written by family and friends. Not everyone blogs daily, but most people write something twice a week, and I find it a good way to keep in touch. I was amazed to find from one of these blogs that one of my mates is a budding gardener. I can’t see the attraction myself. I detest gardening. In all honesty, unless you are prepared to spend a lot of time in the garden on a very regular basis, gardening is a *total* waste of time. I've blogged in the past when I’ve helped people reclaim their jungle-like gardens before. We'd spend all day hacking back the overgrowth, only to find that a month later the garden looked as bad as it ever was.

A garden looks OK *if* you've time to spend on it. And that's some time every single day, without fail. Otherwise it reverts to jungle. If anyone has a garden, I have two suggestions as to what might be done with it. Either one can remove all the flower beds and replace them with shingled areas (like my garden), then all it needs is the lawn mowing once a week, and raking the rubbish out of the shingle every so often.

Or one can spend an hour (at least) every day fighting the second law of thermodynamics. Which is fine if you like that sort of thing.

Science tells us that gardening is an ultimately futile pastime.....

To work this morning. Having done weekend and night work on a regular basis for twenty-odd years I gave up the night work a few years ago, and am trying to cut back on the weekend overtime too. I detest working at the weekends. However it was payday two days ago, and whilst there is still some money left, there’s not as much as I’d like. I have two alternatives: spend less or earn more. So overtime it is.

Another way of improving my finances is to do other people’s homework for them. It may come as a surprise to many of my loyal readers, but in my more lucid moments I’m a genius. I have degrees in mathematics and haematology, and post-graduate qualifications in teaching. It turns out that I can use my expertise in my free time. I’ve found a website which caters for people who urgently need an original piece of academic work to be produced in a hurry. I could do that.

This website stresses that they are not in the business of helping students cheat, but rather they provide model answers to essay questions. Their specialty is providing model answers in a hurry.  And they offer a premium service whereby they try to provide these “model answers” within a day or so, so that the cheating student has the essay in time for when it’s due to be handed in.

I’ve produced proper “model answers” before, but in the past I’ve had weeks and months to provide them, because that’s how universities operate. It’s been my experience over the years that the only people who have such short deadlines to produce essay answers are the students. But the website stresses that they aren’t in the business of allowing students to cheat on their homework by charging them over one hundred quid to have an expert write the essay for them. So, with a clear conscience I might just sign up with homework-blagger.com.

If I catch any of my students using this website I might just be able to have them sacked. Or am I being hopelessly naive …?

25 March 2011 (Friday) - Astro Club

Before work I had a look at the pond – it’s now clearing rather impressively. It’s got a little way to go, but it must be clear as the fish can see me and are asking for food. But I think it’s still a little bit too cold for them to be eating yet. Even if “My Boy ^TM ” has been feeding them dog biscuits. He thinks I don’t know – but leaving the packet of dog biscuits by the pond was rather a giveaway.

Work was better than usual. Yesterday I had a student assessed: today I had another done. And again he was successful. We were both pleased. That’s now twenty students I’ve taken from starting as a trainee to becoming state registered.

And so to the astro club. As always I was early at astro club and got the chairs set out. I put out enough seating for seventy people, and it wasn’t enough. I think we had about eighty to ninety people along tonight. Hopefully I didn’t put anyone off this evening, but I’ve taken a more grasping approach to the money as I greet people when they first arrive at the hall. It would seem that there’s been some abuse of my good-naturedly allowing people to come to a couple of meetings for free.

From now on everyone pays up: either the annual membership fee or a couple of quid for the evening. And from next month I’ll be asking to see membership cards too (!) I told everyone this as they came in: no one commented adversely and a dozen people joined or renewed their membership, so I can’t have upset too many people.

Talking of money, the club has spent money on a sexy webcam. Personally  I have reservations about the thing as I’m not sure that it runs on any Windows system more recent than XP, but I’m probably still sulking over my own recent webcam-related problems.

We’ll also (hopefully) be taking part in International Observe the Moon Night in October. I was instructed to come up with the details, and I failed miserably: I’ll present something next month, once we’ve got a definite hall booking confirmed.

I’ve been pushing for the club to have T-shirts, hoodies and fleeces bearing the club logo. The only problem is that the current logo doesn’t lend itself to sewn designs, so tonight we launched a logo competition. Needless to say, I’ve got one in mind, but seeing how I came up with it, I might be biased. But once we have our design I know of a kiting friend who can produce clothing at a reasonable rate.

Tonight’s talk was “killer asteroids” – one such wiped out the dinosaurs sixty five million years ago. What would happen if something similar were to happen again? Tonight’s talk was brilliant: the kids were all involved in making craters with plasticine and Martian cocoa, the video clips and special effects were mild-blowing, and the whole thing was informative and fun. I did my usual thing with the raffle, raking in a respectable profit for the club.

Tonight marked the club’s fourth anniversary, and saw our one hundredth member. We must be doing something right…

24 March 2011 (Thursday) - Reflections, Tattoos

Yesterday I received a comment about a blog entry from last year in which I was rather critical of the arky-ologee club. This made me think. For all that I come over as an ignorant ranting old git, I’m a reflective ignorant ranting old git. Having been the boss for nine years at work, when I asked for a voluntary grade reduction, I vowed that I would not undermine my successor. If I’m not happy with the arky-ologee club, then I’ve got the option to stand for committee membership and do something practical (rather than whinging). I wondered if maybe I should go back and amend what I’d written.

But then I thought again. Sometimes I often ridicule people at the arky-ologee club when they are scrubbling in the dirt for broken bits of manky pots. I flippantly remark that if those broken bits of manky pots were worth keeping, they wouldn’t have been thrown away (or have been broken) in the first place. And to counter the argument that by investigating these broken bits of manky pots we can form a picture of what people were doing all those years ago, I’d reply that if our ancestors were doing anything worthwhile, they would have written a diary (like I do).

But am I being *that* flippant? My blog is history as *I* record it. In the future I will look back and see that on 23 March 2011 I had a bad day at work. And that last September I went to an archaeological dig and got bored.

Astute readers will get more insight on me than on what I’ve written about. And so after careful thought, I’m not editing it after the event. Heaven forbid I should appear to be anything other than an ignorant ranting old git.

And so to work where my colleague had a phone call: a family disaster. Her son had left his best school shoes on the bus. Exactly how one leaves one’s shoes on the bus is anyone’s guess, but this lad managed it. There was major consternation as these shoes were relatively new and cost nearly fifty quid. I decided I had enough worries of my own without needing the troubles of other people’s barefoot children, so I left them both to it.

We had an inspector in at work today. Over the years I’ve had lots of inspectors to check that my trainees are of sufficient standard to become state registered. Today was a first – we had a specialist portfolio registration inspection. Today was the culmination of four years hard work on the part of my student, and was probably as nerve wracking for me as it was for her. After a three hour assessment we were told she’d passed. Realistically I knew she’d pass (with flying colours), but I always worry when my people are assessed.

To celebrate we went to McDonalds for some scoff. After all, it’s only down the road from work. And as “My Boy ^TM ” once commented, I’m surprised we don’t go there more often.

Talking of “My Boy ^TM ”, I came home this evening to find him at a loose end. Did I want him to do that touch-up job I’d mentioned a while ago? On my right arm is a tattoo of a little gnome sitting on a mushroom smoking a fag. I can’t remember when I had the tattoo done: it must have been some time in the very early 1990s. “My Boy ^TM ” can’t remember it not being there, and as a small boy he always liked the gnome. Over the years the tattoo had faded: so much so that the thing was pretty much unrecognisable. Not any more – it’s had a refurbishment.

It looks much better now. But it did hurt. I think that as time goes by, so my tolerance of the pain of tattooing is going down and down. Realistically I can’t really cope with more than three quarters of an hour’s tattooing before I need to stop. Which is a problem as professional tattooists charge by the hour.

Having a tattoo artist for a son makes tattoos an affordable option.

23 March 2011 (Wednesday) - Stuff

On Monday night a gaggle of us went out telescoping and following on from my success with the telescope two weeks ago I thought I’d try some astro-photography. In theory it’s quite simple – stick a webcam in the telescope eyepiece, video something astronomical for a few minutes, use the software to sort the video into a picture. Bish-Bosh-Sorted!

In practice it’s not so simple. Getting the telescope’s tripod to be level takes some doing. Getting the spotter scope lined up isn’t easy. Puzzling out the “Go-To” computer is a mission in itself, and then finding a suitable target which is relatively high in the sky and not subject to light pollution takes a knowledge of stellar cartography which (frankly) I don’t have (yet). And it’s only after you’ve mastered all of these not inconsiderable problems that you can actually stick your webcam in place and start videoing.

And then you’ll find a myriad of other obstacles. What gain settings should you use for the camera? What light intensity should you use? And bear in mind that all of this is being done in a field in the dark with limited battery power.

After a couple of hours of what I can only describe as “farting about in the dark” on Monday night I eventually got an image of the moon on the laptop screen. And in retrospect, that’s where I went wrong. Having got an image I started the videoing program going, then I messed about to improve the focus and then I fiddled about centring the image. Flushed with success I saved the file, then put all the imaging technology away and just enjoyed looking down the telescope for the rest of the evening with the plan to do something with the video image later. “Later” being this morning.

But this morning when I tried to make something from my video stream of the moon, the poor software had a hissy fit. Because during the video stream I’d been messing about with the focus and moving the camera, the software didn’t have a decent stable image to have a go at.

But it’s all a learning experience. Next time I’ll get all the fiddling about done first and then do the videoing afterwards. To be fair, I’ve been warned that I won’t get immediate success and that it’s going to take some time to develop some expertise at astro-photography. Patience, patience….

Another task requiring patience is getting my pond water to clear. On Saturday I said that if the pond wasn’t clear by mid-week I’d again muck out the filter. I had no choice about the mucking out – the filter has cleared so much gunge from the pond that this morning the poor thing was blocked and was leaking. Whilst I was mucking it out I saw the bag containing all the old filter gubbins I’d replaced last Saturday. I’d forgotten about that lot – the plan was that I would have taken them to the tip last Sunday. I took them this morning instead: I’ve never seen the tip so busy. It was heaving and people were queuing to get in.

It was also heaving with people in Sainsburys. Loads of people, none of whom seemed to have any urgency with getting a move on, quite content to be bumbling about. I could do that, and will do in years to come. When I am retired I will make a point of getting in the way of everyone and anyone who seems to be in a hurry. It will be good for their blood pressure.

22 March 2011 (Tuesday) - Human Rights

I had an interesting discussion on Facebook Squabble (otherwise know as “chat”). A young lad of my acquaintance decided that the world would be a better place if “we” (presumably the United Kingdom’s armed forces) didn’t get involved with the ongoing civil war in Libya: his reasoning being that our lifestyles are fine and dandy, why should we get involved in somebody else’s problems. I suggested that he might like to pull up his drawbridge, shout "screw you, I'm all right" out of his window, close his eyes, put his fingers in your ears and hum loudly until it all went away.

Someone I’ve never actually met who was involved in the “discussion” gave a rather ill-informed rant about how “we” only ever get involved with wars in which oil is involved. After several comments, each more bigoted than the last, he utterly failed to understand the geopolitical consequences of the Falklands War of 1982. Instead he dismissed the matter with the comment “I don't really know..” 

A young friend of mine came on-line and gave a very good defence of western (UK and US) foreign policy citing the need to defend the human rights of the oppressed. Which is a good and laudable idea. Or is it? This got me thinking. What exactly are my “human rights”?

There’s no easy and concise definition (that I can find) of what my “rights” are, but Wikipedia has lots of woolly-minded blather on the subject. It didn’t take long for me to find out that I’m not sure that I agree with the internationally accepted concepts of human rights.

It seems that I, together with all of humanity, do have the right to believe in whatever crackpot superstition I choose. Surely that’s nonsense. Surely people have the right to an education to develop the intelligence to allow them freedom from ill-informed religious brainwashing? (Didn’t I do that rant yesterday?)

It turns out that people do have a right to an education to develop the intelligence to allow them freedom from ill-informed religious brainwashing. But having that education forced upon someone ipso facto contravenes that person’s inalienable human right of a person to peacefully follow their own interests (article 26).

Also taxing people in order for a country to have an infrastructure (such as schools and hospitals) also contravenes the inalienable human right of a person to do whatever they please with no thought for anyone else.

At this point I felt myself getting angry. I didn’t bother reading up any more about “Human Rights”. I’ve read enough. What is wrong with the concept of “human rights” (and society in general) is that everyone has “human rights” and no one has “human responsibilities”…

Meanwhile last night I went out telescoping. Not so much a successful night as a fun night. I got today’s photo by sticking my camera-phone over the eyepiece of the telescope and hoping for the best. I did have a go with the web-cam, but that will require image processing. I’ll do that over the next few days….

21 March 2011 (Monday) - "A" Week

The "A" might stand for "atheist" or  "Apathetic Agnostic". Either would fit the bill. 'A' Week is not about being disrespectful to religion or people who have religious views, it's about quietly showing that there are more people than may be realised who are 'Good without God' and who don't need religion to influence their lives. Personally I feel it’s a wonderful idea, with the reservation that (in my opinion) it doesn’t go far enough and it shouldn’t be afraid to rattle one or two cages.

Over the last few years quite a few of my blog entries have had something of an anti-religion theme about them. And seeing how it’s now “A” week, this is probably the best time of all for me to have a really good rant about religion and get it all out of my system….

Let me start off by explaining why I seem to have a personal visceral dislike to organised religion.

Once upon a time I was a very religious person - I was actually a Steward in the Methodist Church until I saw the darkness (!). But did I believe in all the church taught? I can remember at the time telling a friend that I “wanted to believe”. The fact of the matter is that I was in the Boys Brigade as a child and as a young man. For over ten years I was in an environment where organised religion was a very big part of my daily life. Constantly being exposed to the religious teachings meant that I rather accepted them as one accepts most things in life to which one is constantly exposed.

When I left home I sought out another Methodist church, because I was a Methodist, and that’s what we did. And I was a member of St Andrews Methodist Church in Folkestone for nearly two years. During this time I wasn’t anywhere near as wrapped up with religion as I had been; in Hastings there was something church-related at least four days every week. In Folkestone there was just the Sunday service, and occasionally something mid week. In retrospect my faith was failing, but we kept going to St Andrews because the congregation there were welcoming and friendly to people who were strangers in a strange town.

We moved to Ashford in 1986, where there aren’t (traditional) Methodist churches. Instead we went to the local Baptist church. After all, we knew people there from our old Boys Brigade contacts. After four months at the South Ashford Baptist Church I realised that only two people at that church had actually spoken to us. And it was about that time when I actually had a religious revelation.

I finally realised that for many years I’d been going to church for social reasons: because all my friends went to church, and my entire social life was church-based. Now I was at a church which wasn’t so friendly I realised that I didn’t really believe anything that the Church was preaching. I actually thought it was a well-meaning but utterly inconsistent and contradictory load of hot air. But I was scared by the fact that I thought that way. It was quite a while before I admitted to myself that instead of believing what my church said, I was desperately hoping that it was all true, because the alternative was rather frightening. Terrifying in fact.

Having had my “Road to Damascus” moment I packed up going to church, and I rather left the whole concept of religion alone for many years I eventually stumbled upon a bunch of people (on-line) who rather shared the views of religion that I had formed after years of reflection. I am now an ordained minister in the Church of the Apathetic Agnostic. “We don’t know and we don’t care”. And I’ve grown stronger in that (lack of) faith ever since – it is my belief that there may be a God who created the world, or there may not be: I don’t know. But I do believe that *if* there is such a God, then it is pretty obvious that said God is rather apathetic to his creations. And consequently is not worthy of the praise that conventional religions would heap on that deity (given half a chance.) And it’s no secret that I am now at the point where I find myself appearing to be very vocally anti-religion.

But on reflection I *really* I don’t think I am anti-religion. I’m anti “people who consider themselves to be religious but don’t actually know what they are talking about”.

If people want to believe in something then that’s fine with me…  Let me qualify that. If people want to believe in something then they need to actually read up on their belief, research it and understand it. What boils my piss (to coin a phrase) is people who announce that they are a member of any religion (including my own), but do not actually have any idea whatsoever about what that religion teaches. For example as a scout leader I was once harangued for religious intolerance. I wouldn’t let a young Muslim lad have bacon for breakfast. His father was furious with me, only to apologise a week later once he’d actually found out that he wasn’t supposed to eat bacon.

Or take Catholic people. Before I run down the entire concept of Catholicism, to be fair I feel I should point out that I have met a lot of Catholics who have studied the tenets of their faith in detail, and do understand what they are talking about. However, I have also met many other people whose church attendance is minimal to zero, but they proudly and vocally announce they are Catholic. Amongst their number are people who are variously disapprove of abortion, Harry Potter, eating fish, television in general, the British Monarchy, co-educational schools… the list of things they’d like banned is endless.

And these people are against these things because they “are Catholic”. In some cases their personal beliefs are in line with official Catholic doctrine, in others they are not. Rarely are their opinions reasonably thought out. But so often I have seen people aggressively defend their standpoint by shouting “because I’m Catholic” (as if that proves anything.)

Or take the British population – according to Wikipedia, over seventy per cent of the British population claim to be Christian. According to the BBC only about fourteen per cent of the British population actually go to church with any regularity (more than once a month). Now it says in the Bible that Christians need to go to Church regularly (look it up!). So we have some fifty six per cent of the UK population (that’s over twenty five million people!) who are purporting to be a member of a religion but not following what it teaches.

And what *really* boils my piss is the role that religion plays in public life. When my children were younger I can remember much of the social life of the primary school being run by the local vicar. And everyone was happy with that state of affairs. I can remember my children coming home brainwashed by the church youth groups they’d been to.

Or take BBC Radio Four. Whenever there is a moral debate (and they often have those), one of the speakers is usually a Christian minister. Why? - For no other reason than that morality is seen to be the property of the Christian church. How did we as a nation manage to confuse morality with religion?

So… (having taken a deep breath and calmed down somewhat) to summarise this rant:

I feel justified in speaking knowledgeably about a range of subjects (human physiology, snake keeping, mathematics, malaria, astronomy, warp drive theory, home brewing… to name but a few) because I’ve spent years studying these subjects. Conversely I don’t know the first thing about a far wider range of subjects (fine art, geology, high finance, banking, law, poetry, cookery, football, electronics…..) because I haven’t studied them at all, and so wouldn’t want to offer an opinion on them.

So there you go – if I seem to be anti-religion in my rantings, actually I’m not. It’s just that I actually know a thing or two about the subject matter. I’m anti- the people who vociferously offer opinions on a subject, but don’t actually have the first clue what they are talking about.

And on that note I’d like to wish all my loyal readers all the best over the forthcoming “A” week… And remember that you can be 'Good without God' and you don't need religion to make you a better person. A garden can be pretty without having fairies at the bottom of it. And certainly tonight’s night sky which I admired at an impromptu star party wasn’t “God’s Heaven”.

I suspect that those who do need invisible friends from which to gain an outdated morality might feel obliged to disagree though. I wonder if they could conduct a coherent discussion on the matter …