Has Amran booked his CBT yet?

Please feel free to post a note if you believe to know the answer to the above :)

Decline of interest

Ha, the title is more than suitable for toady's post I think, as the interest rates have been cut once more to "new fantastic low levels" or whatever other daftness the media want to call it. Though its not that kind of interest I am blogging about.

Checked the stats the other day and understandably I've noticed a decline in the number of regular visitors to the site - though I did notice that someone had stumbled across it after googling for chocolate tiffin and finding me which was very amusing (hope they liked the end result). A decline in the first kind of interest can possibly be seen as a good thing, but decline in this sort of interest should never be a good thing. I'd ask the few people who do read this to click on the comments link and provide some sort of feedback, but I've moaned about the comments link before and don't get much of a response.

I guess the reasons for lack of visitors is quite simple - the content is hardly updated on a regular basis. The blog isn't doing toooo bad I don't think, but I'm still to add Emily's gallery to the photo section, or the Christmas ones, or the many other albums. And I really should get my fingers out and do that, as now I have a nice shiny new camera I should be using it and updating the galleries regular too.

Its not that the galleries are hard to update - they are easy really, clever design and all that. No it's more down to the idea of deciding which pictures out of literally thousands might be of any interest to others - and that's a daunting idea sometimes.

I thought of a new rant that's been a favourite since Emily was born, but not going to reveal what it is until I do the official rant bit - which may be today, may be some other point who knows with my scheduling skills!

The recipes section is in some SERIOUS need of help, I do have several good cook books but will refrain from just copying Jamie's or Levi's hard work and putting that on. I would much prefer to put on recipes that are hard to find, or have been tried and tested by either myself or the other more avid cooking fiends amongst the readers. Again, its a fruitless (the recipes can have fruit in them though!) request but any content that you feel you could pass on would be helpful and appreciated.

Updates

Just a quick post to point out what other updates have happened to the site recently. I'm sure you all check it regularly anyway but Emily has a nice new update, there is an update to the rants page and some minor corrections elsewhere.

I am aiming to get some more photos up this weekend but we shall see. For now though its far to late and I'm off to bed!

Watch big brother... me?

Well I have to be honest and admit the fact that this very evening with nothing better to do (no xbox in this house!) I sat down and watched the whole entrance to the house along with the aftershow on E4.

Now as a reader don't pretend you don't have the faintest idea what I am on about, as unless you lived in a cave for the last 12 or so years it is more or less a given fact that you do understand the above. At least I have the gall to sit here and type the fact that I watched it, and whats more thoroughly enjoyed it too.

I don't usually care for the whole reality TV stuff as they do end up being mundane, but I have to hand it to C4 for the list of celebrities they have in this time. Terry Christian! What a legend! I mentioned his name in the office and was stunned that one of the younger lads had no idea who he was, but then I couldn't explain why he was a legend or what he was famous for, as, well, he's famous for being himself and nothing but that - there certainly will be more than a few arguments in the house with him there.

It was surprising to find Verne Mini-Me Troyer in there, but to have Coolio as a housemate, well that's something completely different. Yeah OK there are some people in there who I really wouldn't be that bothered about, and who are in there for obvious reasons (why else would you have a glamour model or a politician in there) and I think I could do without there being one of the many Jackson offspring in there, but all in all it seems to be an entertaining bunch - though I've been wrong before (8th May 1994 if my memory serves correct) and it could quite easily turn into the tripe it really is.

I promise though that the blog will not turn into a BB festation, but as the show amused me so much this evening I thought best to blog about that as opposed to anything else so :-p

Christmas Party

Ouch, or at least I think ouch... It was the office chrimbo party last night

MMIX

Well here it is, 2009 is officially well on its way now, and how shall I greet this glorious year? well with a rant that's how!

Mobile phones, the main method of communication for this generation has to be through the mobile phone, first it was SMS, then came MMS and now (well for a while now) you can even email from your phone. Except that is, if its new years eve/new years day. For then you can't text, email or even make a flipping call!

This year I was all ready, had my text all pre typed and saved in my drafts folder ready to send to all. Midnight came, I opened a bottle of bubbly, kissed and shook hands with people in the room and hit "send to all" on my phone. Its now 45 minutes past midnight and I STILL am unable to send this flipping message. At this rate it will be pointless it being sent at all.

OK so there isn't actually enough network capacity for everybody to make/receive a call at the same time and that's fair enough, I don't expect the network operators to ever have a 1:1 setup, but things do seem to be getting worse. I remember back in the days before Emily when we used to go out on NYE (I'm not complaining, prefer to stay in than pay through the tooth for a drink that you wanted 4 hours earlier) that you had a brief 10 mins max where you were lucky if you could make a call or not, but three quarters of an hour!

Now I will take this moment to point out that I have not been sat staring at my phone pressing resend every 10 seconds, my mobile device for those who don't know is rather sophisticated and is clever enough to just sit there and constantly try to resend the message as soon as it can, and it is still sat there in my outbox.

To make matters even worse, I have failed to receive a single text of phone call of new years blessings - that's nothing too special as I don't tend to get a lot of personal calls or texts anyway, but neither has my wife - and that IS something, I mean, Ruth will get at least 2 text messages if something 'big' goes down in Eastenders or the like. And because of that I think things definitely are getting worse each year.

I may, and probably will, rant on about this more in the rant section later - when I have had a little less to drink - for now I shall jump happily out of rant mode and into joyous mode once more.

So, 2009, thoughts... predictions?

Well, to start with thoughts as the penultimate year of the decade I think it has to be something special, the news would have you believe that it will all be doom and gloom but I refuse to believe that will be the case, and contrary to the above would prefer to start the year on a pleasant note.

Predictions... well I predict a proposal or two may happen this year, I would love to think that there will be some births that I am not already aware of (no there is nothing to read into that!) and that whilst the economy is currently on the down it will not be as bad as the news lead us to believe.

Peace love and happiness to you all.