Still I cannot write...

Howdy readers, sorry it has been a few weeks since my last "weekly" blog post, I've been really busy.

As some of you may know I work for Stoke City Football Club and as you may also know we, or rather the team, have made it to the FA cup Final at Wembley!!! This is a great achievement for the club, it is the first time in our nearly 150 year history! However, because of this I have had to work very long hours on the build up, doing 50+ hours of work a week. Also as regular readers of mine will know, I am doing my PhD and recently started a new research project, so I'm putting in a lot of hours on that too!

And dear readers I have recently started a new relationship (Yes I have girlfriend!) and as we're "all loved up" (as a friend put it) I have been spending loads of hours with her.

As a consequence of all these wonderful things I haven't found much time for writing, I seem to spend my free time reading my Kindle, which is deeply relaxing. I have also recently remembered I used to be a musician and am trying to relearn those old skills.

So dear sweet reader please forgive my neglect of you, I am so deeply sorry. I think the world of you and wish to continue to entertain you with my musings and rambling rants.

Another problem has fallen upon me, I don't know what to write about. If you have any suggestions of something for me to write please feel free to let me know, if I like the idea/suggestion I will write about your topic. After all, the quote of the week was a suggestion by a friend and I do that on every blog now...

Quote of the Week:

"I don't want to go to Tesco, it is really, really weird. Lets go to the park instead!" Lizzy age 2 years and 10 months.

P.s. I didn't know if I should include any pictures this week so I didn't but I would like to show you this, I'm thinking of getting one for next winter... Presenting the Beardo!

http://www.beardowear.ca/

Prof read by Bernard Johnson

SORRY

Hi folks, sorry there has been no blog this week, I've had a really busy few weeks and I haven't had the time to write anything worth posting.

I'm really tired now because of all the work I've been doing so now I am going to sleep, I'll make sure I have something for next Friday. Once again sorry.

Write or wrong?

This week I wrote something with a pen for the first time in a long time, it really isn't as easy as I remember... I think when I type things using a qwerty (standard computer) keyboard the words come easy. When those words need to come from the end of a ball point pen they struggle to form in the correct order. I think this is a problem I touched on last week when I said that my brain works faster than I can type, well this is definitely true when it comes to hand writing.


Because I want to ensure my writing is going to be legible later my handwriting is quite slow. My short term memory is also affected by my dyslexia, so I forget what I've already written in the sentence because it has taken me so long to get where I am. My short term memory isn't great either (see what I did there?).


Short term memory is also a problem for me when writing a single word. An example of this was I was writing a word the other day (again handwriting) and I stopped half way through the word because someone spoke to me. When I had answered them I continued with the word. I had to start the word again from the beginning because I couldn't access the individual letters; I only knew the word as a whole word. I don't know the individual letters that make it up, as I've said before I can only write because I have memorised all the words I use in my lexicon, lucky for me I can remember most words after only one or two goes at them. However, in handwriting I cannot do the same, maybe because the words do not always look the same, ergo it is harder to remember the look of the word.


I have made the effort to learn to write, I suggest some of Facebook's users do the same before making their next post...

This week I also completed the 2011 UK census. What an intrusive load of old nonsense that was. It asks for your qualifications. Now, I have a Bachelor of Science degree, a Master of Arts degree and am doing a Doctor of Philosophy degree and I'd like to inform the government how well I've done over the last ten years but they have one 'tick' box which covers all three! So what does that tell the government statistics people? Nothing other than some people have a wide variety of higher level academic qualifications. Waste of time! It asks if I have 4 GCSEs (any level) which I do; then if I have 5+ GCSEs (grade A to C) which I also do and informs me that I must 'tick' all the boxes which apply, so do I 'tick' all the boxes or just the higher level one?


It asks my religious beliefs which I feel have absolutely nothing to do with the government. I know it is an optional question but why is it a question at all? Will it affect the service the government will offer or the funding my community will receive? I truly hope not, my beliefs are my business and my business only!


I promise that next week I will try to write about something other than writing. Which brings us to the Quote of the Week!


Quote of the Week:
"It must be over the yardarm somewhere or other..."


Proof red by Bernard Johnson.

The proof is in the reading.

  This week I have employed a proofreader because every Friday evening after I have eaten my dinner my father picks his way through my blog for that week and points out all my mistakes, typos and general f-ups after it has been unleashed on the wide world. Not that I'm not grateful, I really am but it is such a pain after it has been posted to have to re-edit the post.

Generally it seems I mix up two letter words, I often place an 'it' where it should be an 'in', 'as', 'at' or 'is'. I don't know why I do this but I do. So, to all my Friday readers, sorry about the errors you have had to put up with for the past few weeks. I have no problems with longer words like anthropomorphising or antidisestablishmentarianism which I can easily spell with minimum of fuss, it is the silly things like writing 'my' when I mean 'may' or 'think' when I mean 'thing'. Maybe it is because my mind works faster than I can type it in, ergo mistakes do happen.

The edited versions of all my posts appear here at about seven o'clock in the evening, on the day of the post, once my father has informed me of all of my mistakes. You would probably be best advised not bothering calling in to read until after you've had your dinner and watched Emmerdale. I trust you all watch Emmerdale, don't know why I felt the need to include a picture of the opening of the show but for those who don't know what Emmerdale is there you go, it is that --->


So, as I said, this week we shouldn't have those problems, you can read this one before Emmerdale if you like, although you won't know that until now. So if you are reading this before Emmerdale, the Woolpack burns down in tonight's episode and if you're reading this after you've watched Emmerdale, then was it good? Did you enjoy it? You do know that isn't even really Andy's Land Rover don't you.


It seems this blog has turned into me wittering on about a TV show that very few of you actually watch but here is the little secret, I watch it... and on that bombshell here it is Quote of the Week!


Quote of the Week:
"[ENTER YOUR QUOTE HERE]"

This weeks episode of my blog was proofread by Bernard Johnson

What to write?

I sat down with the intention of writing something witty, clever and original; but I cannot think of anything remotely witty, clever and original. Not right now anyway. To anyone who has had to write something, for whatever reason this is not an unusual happening.

Whether it is an academic paper, article for a newspaper or website or even a short text for a weekly blog, writer's block can strike. I'm sure that you realise that when I sit down to write my blog for every Friday I don't have a plan of what I'm going to talk about, I just sit down and write whatever I feel like writing about.

Usually I don't have any problems with finding a topic and just going for it. I do a little research, maybe read a few articles and off I go, writing ill informed rants about anything and everything. This week is somewhat different.

It isn't like I have things on my mind which are stopping me, after a number of weeks of poor time management where my PhD work has been neglected and ignored I now have the situation under control. Getting cracking with lots of work this week, I've written two introductions for research papers, started building a website for my research data collection and even updated my academic website for the first time in a long time. So surely I should be in a better position to write something than in previous weeks.

Wait, I'm blogging right now! Maybe I don't have writer's block after all but it won't stop me talking about it.

The problem I find is that sometimes I find it hard to decide on what to write about, there are almost limitless possibilities and topics to cover. I want to keep it quite general as I don't want to put people off by talking about my research every week or blogging about statistical analysis of data sets. I like to discuss topics which everyone will relate to and enjoy (with the exception of the week I wrote about golf, I enjoy it but I understand other people don't).

Another thing which you may not know is I write articles for this blog which never quite make it, I wrote about politics a few weeks back but it is still in the drafts folder, I don't think it will ever make it into the blog, although it is nice to have a backup. After the week I was going to Essex on a Friday I rushed to get something out, so now I write the blog about a week in advance, for example I'm about to go to get a haircut but by the time this is online the haircut will be a week old. I think I've kind of left my topic slightly now, I'll try to get back...

I have been experiencing musical writers block for over a year now, I simply can't write any music which I enjoy. I write something, play it, enjoy it for a minute or two then delete the lot and tell myself it was crap and I'd be better off leaving it for today. I don't know how to solve it, I think it started when I lost some classical compositions I'd been working on (folder deleted in a hard-drive clear out), I lost all interest in writing then. I didn't even try to write anything for months and now I can't get back into it. Thankfully I have been able to put my energy into writing words not music, the same thing happened with drawing and painting but I put that down to the fact that I draw best when I'm bored, ergo if I find myself in a boring job or waiting in the car for someone I'll happily draw but I shouldn't try to draw.

I also think I'm quite easily distracted which I sometimes interpret as writer's block when in actual fact it is just distraction. For example, whilst writing this I have the cricket on, England are 144 for 3 against Bangladesh. I keep stopping writing to watch.

I think I've done quite well considering I thought I had writer's block... Although the quality of what is written may be a little sketchy.

Quote of the week!
"Do you want to buy a battleship?"

Get lost...

I was reading an article on the BBC website this week about our over reliance on Global Positioning System (GPS) in the UK. It states that 6-7% of Europe's GDP is reliant on Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) that is approximately 800,000,000,000€. That is quite a large amount of money. This got me thinking, can people still navigate without their sat-nav systems?

I will admit that I do own a sat-nav system, I have used it on a few longer journeys and even one or two short ones. I do think it is a great tool to have, it makes it easy to find an address for the first time and navigate in unfamiliar towns and countries but should we rely on them?

My first drive across Europe was done without any kind of sat-nav or GPS, I found my way by looking at a map and knowing which towns, roads and countries I was heading for on my travels. I didn't get lost at any point during the journey, I always knew where I was and where I was heading. I miss judged the distance a couple of times, like when I said it'll take us about three more hours to get to Germany only to drive into Germany 20 minutes later but most of the time I knew within a few kilometre where we were. 

Driving in Sweden with my sat-nav in view.

On my second Euro-drive I used my sat-nav system to show me the way, I still knew approximately where I needed to be but followed where the annoying woman on my dashboard told me to go. Everything was planned out by her, she told me how long each stage would take, where the speed cameras were along the way and where I could get a coffee. Very nice. But there was no nice little surprises, like the mystery of what we'll find at the next rest stop, I liked that on the first drive and missed it on the second.


Using the sat-nav wasn't at all bad, I don't want to give the wrong impression, it was super useful. In Copenhagen my sat-nav found me some great free parking near the harbour, there is a travel guide which had some amazing things to see which was useful. Without it I think finding where we needed to be to meet my friend at the airport in Copenhagen would have been much, much harder.

I haven't had cause to use my sat-nav for quite some time but if I have to go to an unfamiliar town I might use it, although according to an article on geekswithlaptops.com one in fifty of sat-nav users in 2000 admitted that their device had either caused or nearly caused an accident. So maybe I'll leave it at home and look at a map before I set off.

Quote of the week:
"You chuckling moron! Is this person really sitting at home laughing out loud at the fact that it is sunny and but cold?" - anonymous upon reading yet another facebook update which needlessly ended with the author including "lol".

I swear I swear.

This week I wanted to rant about language again after reading some utterly abhorrent abuses of English recently. An example of this is a post I saw which stated "I shud of cum wiv u". After some time I deduced that the meaning the individual was trying to convey was "I should have come with you".

As I was saying I wanted to rant about language abuse this week but decided to ignore my instinct to abuse the abusers and instead stand up for a useful but often discouraged and frowned up on part language, profanity. At this point I'd also like to point out that there is some bad language coming up later, and I don't mean split infinitives, there will be some swearing.

Profanity, swearing, cursing, expletives, dirty words and my favourite sentence enhancers, call them what you like, and there are many other names, but the result is still the same. Some people find them shocking, inappropriate, insulting, rude, vulgar, desecrating and disrespectful, however they can also be humours, joyful, light-hearted and an important tool to add emphasis to a sentence.

Now I like to think I know when and how to use a good old swear but I thought I'd look at their prevalence in language, Patrick (1901) published a paper asking why do we swear and when do we swear. Since then there has be a great deal of psychological research into aspects of swearing. Jay (2006) suggests that past research states that 0.5% to 0.7% of all words spoken are swears. Which is a really fucking small amount when you consider that first-person plural pronouns (we, us, our) make up 1% of spoken words.

The good people at Keele University have published a paper which suggests that swearing is in fact beneficial to us. Stephens, Atkin and Andrew (2009) state that swearing increased pain tolerance, increased heart rate and decreased perceived pain compared with not swearing. So next time you stub your toe or slice off an arm just shout your favourite swear. However, overuse does seem to diminish their wonderful power.

I do believe there is a time and a place for profanity but sometimes "dropping the F-bomb", is both funny and therapeutic. So fuck what society thinks and do what makes you feel better, cut loose, tell 'em all to fuck off.

Although I still find it hard to say the C-word (the worst of all the English swears). I'm going to do it... here goes... Nick Clegg what a fucking cunt!

Quote of the week, as the article this week is on swearing I thought this weeks quote could be from Nofx's song "Perfect Government":

"Even if it's easy to be free what's your definition of freedom? And who the fuck are you, anyway? Who the fuck are they? Who the fuck am I to say? What the fuck is really going on?"

References:


Patrick, G.T.W. (1901). The psychology of profanity. Psychological Review, 8, 113–127.

Stephens, R., Atkins, J. and Kingston, A. (2009). Swearing as a response to pain. Neuroreport Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, Inc. 20(12), 1056-1060.