State of the cranium address

Good day to you fellow web surfers. Today I bring you my State of the Cranium address ... From my bed, wirelessly, listening to Radio 5 Live.

This address aims to give you, well me really, a full list of what's going round in my head at the moment. You know how songs stay on your mind? And how you get little obsessions about things? Well that's what this is about.

My head has been cluttered with the following lately

* WORK -- this is a given. Isn't it? Many very interesting things going on at work at the moment, new directions for me and my team. Oh and some interesting Xmassy things.

* JAPAN -- I keep reading lots of stuff about the country, its people, its trends, its culture. I'm fascinated by it and am looking at how it might be possible to visit next year. Just how accessible is it for a visually impaired person to turn up in a radically different non-european culture with a totally different language and expect to get by?

* CHINA -- As above. But I'm more interested in the politics and the way of life. I'm not currently considering a trip there. Have been reading a lot about the politics and growing situation between mainland China and the 'rogue state' (a perspective thing) of Taiwan. There are thoughts that it might declare its independence in 2008 during the Olympics in Beijing while the rest of the world are looking on. China has said that if Taiwan goes independent, it may well be moved to take some kind of military action.

* IPTV -- Linked to work, a little, but fascinated by the current trends towards this new way of delivering / receiving television. Essentially anything with a URL could be considered a channel in this system. Murdoch's expensive satellite dish infrastructure could become a huge white elephant hence his sudden interest in acquiring online companies. A TV ether is on the horizon and, when BT's <I>Freeview +</I> is launched next summer, there will be set-top boxes available to pick up this new television revolution. Soon we won't be able to appreciate where the internet starts and TV ends. Or something. Multicasting not broadcasting. There is so much more to this.

* FOOD -- Getting more and more fascinated by different foods out there, different cultures, ways of putting food together, different cuisines. Mostly though am interested in wholesome food and what food means to me and to people. IIs it not the Chinese who say: "treat your kitchen as if it were your pharmacy". Jamie Oliver highlighted how well-fed children behave better in the classroom ... Amazing stats to back this up. Food is an amazing thing. And where does food begin and medicine end? Or something?

* FAMILY -- God family are important aren't they? Networks around you, family, friends, relationships. I'm 35 now and am starting to think about all this very differently.

* BUSH AND BLAIR -- For Christ's sake kick these men out of their offices. Expose the dirtyness of the Iraq war. Appreciate that aggression can never be the solution on so many levels.

* TIME -- I must do more with my time: write, read, go out and eexperience new things.
This is the State of the Cranium address for late November 2005 and I commit it to you. (I won't bore you with how excited I am about my new idea to put my whole CD collection on my hard disk)

State of the cranium

You know how yearly the President of the USA does a 'state of the nation' speech? Well this is my version, the theme not being the American political economics but rather what my head is finding itself concentrating on a lot lately.

While we're on the subject of George W Bush though, two stories today have grabbed my attention.

1: According to some Downing Street notes that have suddenly come to light, it seems that Bush was keen to bomb the al-Jazeera television channel during the Iraq war (which never stopped really but ya know). The story goes that Tony Blair had to persuade him out of it!?! He didn't like how it seemed to be anti American, thought it was propaganda. Jesus he scares me.

2: On Radio 5 Live a few minutes ago I just heard a story about how the EU have been encouraging Britain to write an official letter to the US government about a few minor concerns they have. It is alleged that the US have some prison camps in one (or some) east European country. They are holding al-Qaeda suspects there and doing goodness knows what in former Russian military camps. The story was pretty unclear but presumably this will appear on the news later else it deserves a darn good Googling.

Actually I've been writing such a lot about this that I'm going to save my 'state of the cranium' blog entry til a bit later.

Blog by email

Yay, this is cool. I've just realised you can blog via email. You setup an email address with blogger and then just email it and it publishes on your blog, here.
To double the cool, if that's possible, I'm blogging from my new wireless gizmo PDA thing. How liberating! Does this mean I'll be blogging more often about more things? Naw, doubt it.

ate more

Ate more yesterday, makes you feel good! Fire in yer belly.

Badly had a chinese take away last night. Now, can someone explain to me wy I lost a couple of pounds this morning after having had a take away last night? How does that work? This happens often to me. Eat a massive loads of fat and the next day you've shed a significantly higher than usual amount of weight.

Cab has arrived, off to work now

weight loss blues

Haven't done so well at losing weight for some reason. So, in the last few days, I've intensified my efforts and trying my hardest to shun proteins too - a gout contributor.

As a consequence, I'm definitely going a bit nuts. Seriously. Woke up early this morning believing that there isn't much point to living ... but, course, knew it was the lack of food situation talking so didn't worry me too much. Am gonna have to investigate some decent vitamins / supplements to keep the mental wellbeing ticking over as I attempt to lose a bit of weight.

As I say, it's not as if I'm hugely overweight or anything ... so here's hoping that the further one stone I need to lose will help matters arthritis-wise. I'm not convinced it will unfortunately.

And here, ladies and gentleman, Damon displays on his blog the classic disability dilemma / internal angst. What's disability ... oh more later, cab has just arrived

Home

Got home at 5pm. Realised had left keys at work. Went back to work. Got home at 6:35pm. Pissed off? Me?

More4 were speaking to me today about going on their news programme and talking about Blunkett and how the blindness thing fits in to the story. I spoke with the researcher, they got back and said they may well do it and could I come in to the studio. I got so unbelievably stupidly nervous though. Honestly. I've done so many interviews to camera, I've done so much live radio work ... but live tv is soemthing I've never done before and it really really stressed me! Whetehr they thought I was the perfect contributor or not got rather lost to the fact that the story moved on and Hillary Benn was quickly appointed to replaced the second coming of David Blunkett.

One more disability role model toppled today. There's so few around.

[update] Oh events overtook me too. rumours earlier said Hillary Benn would be taking over from Blunkett, it seems some other geezer has got it instead. Disabled peple are probably a little safer in their beds tonight I'd venture to suggest. Oh that refers to Blunkett having gone, not Hilary Benn who I rather like.