Firetop

About two months ago I began researching environmentally friendly cars, looking at the CO2 outputs of hybrids and low emission diesel engines for something cost effective and ‘green’. Hybrids like the Toyota Prius are still quite pricey and some environmentalists actually believe their enormous batteries are in themselves a contradiction to the word ‘green’ - so I was interested in the VW Polo Blue Motion (low emission diesel). I went to the VW website, I read other independent reviews and was impressed with the reported fuel consumption, emissions and road tax free status… but then I tried to test drive one and guess what? I couldn’t. (more…)

It’s been quite hard to get away from the US election in the British media, hardly surprising in my opinion as this is about electing arguably the most powerful person in the world. With Super Tuesday occurring tomorrow (and you thought it was just Pancake Day) the main candidates for the Democrats and Republicans will be decided. Poor Suzie_Q has been forced to watch ‘The / A Daily Show‘ with John Stewart on More4 for the past two weeks - worth a watch even if we do get it with a 24 hour delay. Tonight after watching the global edition I thought I’d see which of the two Democrat candidates (Clinton and Obama) were leading the Google search race in the US - and it’s Barack Obama. (more…)

I was very sad to learn tonight that Jeremy Beadle MBE had passed away after suffering from pneumonia - that after a number of years of battling against cancer and leukaemia. As a child of the eighties I believe Beadle WAS Saturday night entertainment (well… there were only four TV channels back then so that may have helped!). Whether it was in ‘Game for a Laugh’ with Sarah Kennedy, Matthew & Henry Kelly, or later his own show ‘Beadle’s About’ in which he would play practical jokes on people by setting up fake scenarios, Saturday just wasn’t Saturday without him (or the A-Team). (more…)

Now that the trauma of birth is well behind us, and all the fellow NCT mums have had their babies, I think it’s safe to post a diary of events from the birth of Maria back in July. Prospective first-time parents across the country don’t really know what to expect so this might be a useful ‘difficult case’ guide. Of course I’m sure service levels vary dramatically from NHS Trust to Trust, and lots of births are plain sailing (apparently), I wish however that somebody had given me a detailed breakdown of a difficult birth so that I could have prepared myself for the eventuality. I also had no idea of how responsible I would need to be in a maternity culture where nobody takes charge. (more…)

On Saturday morning, with a baby to send off to sleep, I popped down to Dorking Museum to see the long awaited Dalek which is featuring as part of the Doctor Who exhibition. Not the most mind-blowing Dr Who exhibit I ever came across; a collection of old toys and memorabilia in a large glass cabinet, as well as costumes which had seen better days (from the old episodes of the 1980s). No cybermen - just lots of monsters I didn’t recognise - nothing that would pass for special effects these days! However - for an entry fee of just £1 you can’t really go wrong, especially taking into account what else is on exhibit at Dorking museum. (more…)

With the arrival of baby Maria in July we’ve had a lot of celebratory flowers in the house of late, some of which have been Lilies. A visitor tonight reminded me of something I read online last year about Lilies being fatally toxic to cats, having done some more research tonight I’m now even more concerned than ever… Lily pollen or leaves prove fatal to cats if ingested; eventually their kidneys pack up and any unfortunate animal goes on to die a very painful death within five days of consuming the pollen. It seems that there is a six-hour window within which to get your cat to a vet for treatment following a lily eating incident, after that it’s goodbye moggy. The main symptoms to watch out for are lethargy, a lack of appetite and vomiting. (more…)

About ten years ago I went through a transitional point in my life, one which stole away the future path I thought lay before me and put me into a bit of a depression. At twenty-one years of age and in good health ‘depression’ is probably too strong a word compared to those facing some uphill battle with a terminal illness, but it was a traumatic time for me; my life was turned upside down and left lacking purpose, I felt all alone in the world and I had quite a few debts to face on my own. It was during this period of depression and self pity that I had something of a religious experience which lifted me way above my gloom and helped guide me to where I am today. Maybe I’ll blog the religious experience one day, but what followed it were some unusual opportunities offered up by the universe and one of these was a book by Dan Millman called ‘Way of the Peaceful Warrior’. (more…)

This week I have unfortunately been rather ill - hence the lack of postings, it’s been quite inconvenient considering that I’m four weeks into a new job and have a new baby at home. Ironically both of these factors may well have influenced my illness as stress does play a big part in my own IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome), but it mainly all began with a food poisoning incident four weeks ago which upset the bodily balance. Not many people like to blog about digestive disorders as it’s a slightly embarrassing subject, but most web pages on the subject are not very helpful; everything seems to be a rip off of the same source for the purpose of generating a bit of contextual ad revenue - a theme I’ve noticed with a lot of medical sites. (more…)

I’ve been thanking my lucky stars that we don’t live beside a river in Gloucestershire of late. However, this morning the serious nature of the problem was brought home to me when the Firetop server was put offline for two hours because of the rising flood waters in Gloucester - home of our dedicated server. The flood waters themselves don’t threaten the server physically, even the potential outage of power in the area is covered by back-up generators, instead support staff were unable to get into the office quickly to reboot equipment after the generators kicked in. Thankfully they won’t be going home tonight (they couldn’t if they wanted to) so things should be ticking along as normal for the foreseeable future, but it makes you realise how much the physical world does still impact on the virtual one. (more…)

One of the problems with today’s multi-employer career path is that it’s easy to acquire multiple pension funds and lose track of them, recently I’ve been looking into consolidating my own pension investments into a personal stakeholder pension scheme. Pensions are of course still getting a bad write-up after years of over-estimated benefits forecasting and the problem of an ever-aging population. However, with many employers still offering to match employee contributions, plus the associated tax benefits, I still believe it’s worth investing in a pension as part of an overall investment portfolio. Ethical investing is important to me; from a karmic perspective I don’t want to be funding animal testing, worker exploitation or weapons development. However, finding an ethical pension fund wasn’t so easy, it took a fair bit of time to identify a good performer with suitable online tools for my needs. (more…)