The blog of life, opinion, movie reviews, fiction, biography, a technical journey and all manner other marginally interesting stuff http://www.johniebg.net The time has finally come. I have bitten the bullet and moved lock stock and two smoking style sheets over to http://www.johniebg.org It has been a while coming. The complaints about not being able to comment and of there not being enough posts finally wormed its way home. So I now have a fully operational WordPress site that will be the home for my blogs from August 2008. And from which I can post to the site itself, via email and even via my Blackberry. There are already a number of posts there from the beginning of this month so I hope to see you there. In the meantime this site will exist as it is - as an archive. I am two thirds of the way through the bestseller that will never be which is why there are no short stories, I am busy writing a big story. Eventually I hope to integrate it all into the one site and move johniebg.net to point to the same place as johniebg.org But for that to happen I have a lot to learn about WordPress and themes. Hope to see and hear from you soon. http://www.johniebg.org Giving up a well paid job is not an easy thing to do, it almost goes against every instinct for survival we have in the modern world. In making the decision there were no great reserves of cash on which to rely on, I had about six weeks of back pay from my agency to come and that was it. But I felt trapped working for this particular firm and needed to find some way out of the day to day routine of banal processes. Each afternoon in the warm still air of the office my eyes would get heavy and the remainder of my working life would flash before my eyes. I would picture myself at fifty five sat in the same chair crusty and grey and grumpy and wondering what might have been. Needless to say the whole experience was pretty depressing and I think in a small part explains why I jumped ship with little in the way of cash reserves and no prospect of future employment on the horizon. http://www.johniebg.net/index.html#unemployed It should also be noted that I do not ordinarily watch weeknight TV. But the good lady priddeesh has a love for all things trash, especially when she has a OU essay deadline looming. Which is partly how I came to be watching the Apprentice last night. There are a whole bunch of other complicated reasons which I will not bore you with ... http://www.johniebg.net/index.html#apprentice Time flies. I seem to remember doing something similar last year. It is amazing really. One minute it is New Years eve and you are making all sorts of wild lifestyle promises and before you have chance to do much of anything a quarter of the year has passed. Which reminds me, I must shave soon. http://www.johniebg.net/index.html#update2008 ... having had my fill of graphics excellence I pulled out the 8800GTX and put back in my old ATI, rebuilding the PC from an image I had created last year. This was done in the full expectation that without the powerful GPU, noise levels would return to their previous 'hush'. I was disappointed, they remained the same. Which eventually drew me to the conclusion the new PSU might be playing a part in all this noise. http://www.johniebg.net/index.html#geeksville2 When we look at the dynamics of a story presented in a book the whole can usually be broken down into several distinctive stages. There are commonly considered to be twelve stages in popular fiction, four of each place neatly into the first, then second and third act which roughly equate to the beginning, middle and end. The first stage, at least for the type of story I am writing, and the stage I discussed in the last journal is about presenting the characters in their normal world. The second stage and the one I have almost finished writing is more of the normal world with a hint of what is to come – having your protagonists walking along the cliff edge so to speak ... http://www.johniebg.net/index.html#chapterseven ... so what you might ask? Well that is precisely the point. I could blether on about questing for answers to better understand your place in society and life, finding yourself and purpose. But that would be contrived and boring. Working with Lionel equipped me with an outlook that changed my perception of information, allowed me to blink and see through the fog of constructs that keep us ignorant. I saw the world through different eyes and increasingly see thing for what they really are. Which has ultimately changed the course of this life and everything it subsequently accomplishes. So what? I just wanted to acknowledge that. http://www.johniebg.net/index.html#lionel ... which meant that by the time another English punter turned up at the bar fairly late in the evening and asked the barman which teams were playing football on the TV, the barman repeated the question to me across the length of the bar, because I had been there the longest and had exchanged a few pleasant words with him during the course of the evening. The only trouble was that his guttural northern Irish: 'Do you know who is playing on the TV' sounded remarkably like: 'Take him outside and shoot him'. Which was a little startling, but seeing the look of shock on my face he dumbed down the speed of his speech and all proceeded without further incident. http://www.johniebg.net/index.html#belfast During this process it occured to me that despite a good feeling for the characters in my head, including some visual elements, it would be real handy to actually have pictures of them. As our minds are largely image driven it was then not too difficult to cross reference the image of the character in my mind to a known movie star. The only problem being that a central character is an eleven year old girl which conjured some issues in specifying my child star criteria in google. http://www.johniebg.net/index.html#writingjournalone Unfortunately moving into a new house will also require selling and moving out of this one - which isn't even a house but a two bedroom apartment. In fact a two bedroom apartment that currently resembles a warehouse more than an ongoing domicile. This sorry state of affairs is a direct consequence of the paraphernalia the good lady Priddeesh and I seem to have accumulated in our lifetimes. Which mostly incorporates books, DVD's and for Prid a whole bunch of Open Uni study guides and clothes she seems to spend more time looking optimistically at than actually wearing. Which means we will need to box and pack and find storage for at least half the stuff we own if there is to be any chance of passing the current abode off as anything anyone might view as somewhere they might want to live. http://www.johniebg.net/index.html#newyear It is funny how these things start. First of all I was in 'Game' the other day allegedly researching gifts for this past Christmas, when I set eyes on the latest incarnation of Unreal Tournament (UT). If you do not know what that entirely means it is one of the premier first person shooter (FPS) games of the last decade. If you don't know what a first person shooter is, then I feel fairly certain you will understand very little of what follows. http://www.johniebg.net/index.html#nvidia Once reunited we formed a caravan to transport all her bags of food, chocolates and presents upto the flat and after a brief falling out along the lines of: 'where the hell are we going to put all this?' We cosied down on the sofa just in time for the 'Strictly Come Dancing - Champion of Champions Christmas Special'. At which point this brain decided it had enough and feeling suddenly utterly tired in a manner I have only experienced since taking 'Nytol', which I have not now taken for two weeks - I collapsed in bed as Bruce cha cha cha'd onto stage. and didn't roll out again until Boxing Day - not exactly rock and roll is it? http://www.johniebg.net/diary/2007.html#itischristmas Things didn't work out quite as I expected and spent the next two and half hours roaming the crisply cold streets of Bristol. The towering building of what I thought was the PremierInn was in fact the local housing estate. It seems universally accepted that I was fortunate not to have been relieved of my personal possessions and possibly my beating heart. But as it was I saw only one other person on foot and that was some big black geezer in a fluorescent jacket who told me I was walking in the wrong direction for Haymarket. But it made no difference. Eventually core logic set in and I decided to follow the signs for the M32/M4. This after I had fallen out with my last hope – Priddessh, having discovered our almost telepathic understanding of each other does not extend to giving directions via Google Earth at 5AM. I walked the last two miles on the hard shoulder of the M32 approach to Bristol and eventually fell into my hotel bed exhausted at 6AM. http://www.johniebg.net/diary/2007.html#whataweek ... Ricky Hatton was first groomed by the BBC, I think, back when it was about the only station regularly showing boxing. I could be wrong. As a young boxer Hatton was stunning. He would go to the body and hit these people so hard many of his knockouts were from blows to the ribs. Hatton for me personifies the heart of British. Forget right now about the divided UK, what makes Hatton really appealing is that we can see a bit of ourselves in him. Irrespective of Scots, Welsh, Irish or English he has heart, fights the fights we dreamed of as children and repress as adults. If he loses he will go down in a blaze of fightng glory I have no doubt, punching to the end. If he wins I will be punching the air, probably with tears streaming down my cheeks and fumbling for my collection of Rocky DVD's. Which I will probably still be watching during dawn chorus. I have butterflies thinking about the fight now – how weird is that! http://www.johniebg.net/diary/2007.html#hattonmayweather In those early days of this site, on those dark Harrogate nights of 2002 I would sit down with only a determination to write something in mind, and write whatever came to mind. This was usually with a nod towards humour which kind of worked: people do say this website used to make them laugh. But things changed of course. One of the original objectives for this site was to get used to writing so that one day I might write that book we all have inside of us. The thing is though, that the better I got at writing and the more I read, the writing became about getting things off my chest, more than simply writing – it suddenly had a therapeutic purpose. At about the same time I also came to the conclusion that I was really bored of the endless inanity that is the IT industry and started developing plans to spend the rest of my working days doing something other than IT. I think that happened about two years after I joined Novell – roughly 2005 ... http://www.johniebg.net/diary/2007.html#writingdream I would like to think this caucasian male mind is open and accommodating to the wide cultural differences of this worlds human populations. But did I really see a women jailed this week because she gave a classroom teddy bear the same name as the non divine religious figurehead of Islam. Because if this is the truth, and I am really struggling to comprehend that this can be the case, it really makes the hard line foreign policies of America towards Islamic nations seem sound and very just. Even worse it makes George Bush look like a sage and noble statesman. Islam in this modern world puts me in mind of the Catholic Church four hundred years ago. Which is considerable cause for concern. http://www.johniebg.net/diary/2007.html#paddington Set in and around New Orleans during the days prior to and the weeks after hurricane Katrina the story traces several characters through the city as they try to live their lives while also surviving one of the worst natural disasters America has experienced in the last 100 years. Of course this is Dave Robicheaux so these characters are a good mix of psychopaths, hoodlums, gangsters out of control, ordinary citizens making unwise choices and private investigators with no regard for establishment or law. http://www.johniebg.net/diary/2007.html#tinroofblowdown And then she moved onto the killer statement. Which was to declare that her faith dictated she believed everything happens for a reason and that this will somehow make these girls better people. I think given a choice these girls would probably have preferred to become better people by some route other than sexual abuse, and by the way this happening for a reason? Are we saying god sanctioned the sexual abuse so that they could achieve better grades and succeed in life? Because if that is the case there is something really wrong with whichever faith sits close to the Oprah heart and questionable moral barometer - considering that Oprah Winfrey is a hugely influential female media star watched by a nation with over 300 million natives, 270 million of which claim the same spiritual faith. http://www.johniebg.net/diary/2007.html#stateofthenation1 Warm, gentle, funny and beautifully observed this is by some margin the best fiction I have read in the last year. If you are looking for a book that can be read in just a day or a long evening but will stay with you for a lifetime, then you probably need look no further. But for that to happen you will need to come to this with an open mind - the premise of three West Indian toilet cleaners and their struggle to keep their jobs during a downturn in trade, does not on the surface seem that appealing. http://www.johniebg.net/diary/2007.html#gents ... so it came as a surprise when my boss rang me last Monday and told me he had thought about me at the weekend. His nine year old boy, while sat in the back of their car had casually asked the simplest question - that still today rages at the centre of modern scientific and theological debates. Who said modern schooling was innefective. http://www.johniebg.net/diary/2007.html#thequestion Before you ask, the sore fingers are from trying to stretch thumb to little finger across keyboard while clicking the mouse furiously with other hand while futilely attempting to redirect depleted space marine forces away from the flesh mincing dreadnoughts. Huge fun ... but I know! – What you are really keen to hear are the reviews of the three movies, having just read the review for Soul Catcher of course, so here you go. http://www.johniebg.net/diary/2007.html#peteweekend At first look a story set in the years leading to the American Civil war, about an ex farmer that makes a living out of catching runaway black slaves, might not appeal. But this is a brave and interesting book that avoids all the potential pitfalls of such a premise while serving up very vivid characters, a good helping of contextualised American history and a compelling story. http://www.johniebg.net/diary/2007.html#soulcatcher This one day in the life of Matt Nunn is precious to me for many reasons. It is a voice that is not my own but I think its unique character really does come through. You do get an idea for his obsession through the day but have no real idea just how much it has overtaken him until the end. I loved his stream of consciousness on the 'curve balls', his lunchtime in the bar and his spotlighting on the ways the media ramp up for the 'disaster' coverage. Looking back now I find it amazing how these details just appear on the page as you type, somehow conjured by the mind in the moment. In my mind, the barely remembered telephone call and the ringing phone of the night is Sam, the girl who whispers encouragement in the bar. I hope you will take the time to read this revised version and that you enjoy it. http://www.johniebg.net/diary/2007.html#dayinthelifeof A few weeks ago I got an email from Amazon, which I initially assumed was the usual promotion. In fact as a top rated reviewer I was being asked whether I would consider partaking in their Vines program. Which for the uninitiated allows you to pick from a raft of soon to be released products with the view to you reading/watching/listening to them on the condition you post a review, so that there is a review available when the product is released. The key point here is that these are products that have not been released and it is all for free – you pick they deliver. No cost. http://www.johniebg.net/diary/2007.html#workingthevine Now with an opportunity to pace the autumn streets between night time bouts of technology mayhem, I had a chance to form a more realistic opinion. This time though, my overiding impressons are of how I remember the 80's - a bit worn out, maybe a little drab but also maybe a little hopeful. I suppose the granite used to build most of everything doesn't help, very similar to that used in Edinburgh. But somehow the nations capital seems to look a little more cheerful in the process. http://www.johniebg.net/diary/2007.html#glasgie And that is the quality of this book. It doesn't seem that Gerrard is particularly emotional, at least from the text of this book, but he is phenomenally driven. Through the whole story it is his focus on football and the desire to succeed that fills the pages. It is his honest recounting of this that really does keep us wanting more. http://www.johniebg.net/diary/2007.html#gerrard Novell have always boasted that they have a massive reserve of cash and can buy back shares as required, preventing take overs. But I cannot help thinking, that when the dust is settled and people survey the damage. They might reflect that an earlier take-over of Novell might not have been a bad thing. http://www.johniebg.net/diary/2007.html#freedom