Sometimes we don’t truly recognise our own ability, especially if it’s something which comes instinctively and we only use it for fun.

There was a parent at my daughter’s junior school who always used to paint Christmas scenes on the windows every year.  I had no idea she was a proper working artist. One year she was working away and I just stood there, muck-struck, as she deftly painted loops and swirls which suddenly came to life. Realising someone was watching she turned around and asked what I wanted…

I made some comment about being fascinated how someone could make flat paint on flat glass look so three dimensional.

“This is just for fun, and because the kids like it. I use oils for real painting.”

“I never knew.”

“A bit like you then. Most people don’t know what you can do with words. I could never stand up in front of two hundred kids and have them spellbound with a story.”

I suddenly remembered her being at the back of the hall, casually pinning up the kids pictures and not seeming at all interested. Another quiet ‘people watcher’.

“It’s better that way…” we both said together, “Saves having to explain to everyone.”

I suspect many of us have hidden talents, hidden from ourselves as well as others

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I came away with a couple of article ideas and a new insight into the minds of those who fly these ungainly looking machines.

It bounced!

I wrote a very simple note, in case something in the original had triggered a hypersensitive ’spam filter’, and tried again.

That bounced too.

This isn’t the first time I’ve had problems sending mail to people with a ‘comcast’ e-dress, but it’s damned infuriating when you can’t even send them a short note to say there’s a problem.  Others sometimes bounce my mail, but comcast quite regularly - but, as far as I can tell, quite inconsistently - treat my mail the way The Harlem Globetrotters would treat any unattended basketball.  They bounce the crap out of it just to show off.  I know filters are robotic, but after a few years of being permitted and then blocked according to some electronic whim it begins to feel personal.

Also, once upon a time - in the honeymoon period of the internet - ISPs routinely let the would-be recipient know that incoming mail had been blocked, but, ‘in the interest of efficiency’ this seems to have been abandoned over the last few years.

It fascinates me though how even the most obvious and universally reviled spam, aimed at millions of unwilling recipients, still gets through, whilst my simple little notes to people obviously present a far greater threat.  Unless…  No, how could I be so cynical?  Unless I’m just an easier target.  But that would suggest some human intervention rather than a mindless robot, so I can’t really believe that.

I do appreciate that huge swathes of bandwidth are gobbled up every hour of every day by pro-spammers.  I do realise that there are problems dealing with international spamming.  But I am not one of that shadowy crew.  I’m just a poor bewildered author who would rather be teaching and sharing my love of the written and spoken word instead of having to wrestle with mindless robots in other countries.

I don’t think for one minute I’m the only writer with a website - and a small related business - who doesn’t really understand what goes on ‘under the bonnet/hood.  I only drive the thing, I’m not a mechanic.

Hopefully my ‘Tame Geek’ will be in touch soon and sort things out for me so I can get back to doing what I do best.  I’d much rather help than rant.

Computers and the Internet are amazing beasts, but there are times when typewriters, envelopes and stamps would be far more convenient and reliable.

You may wonder if I get any spam myself.  Very little is the answer.  Some of this is because I don’t blindly click everything in sight, because I don’t jump at every (or indeed any) damned pop-up telling me I’ve won the ‘hourly prize of umpteeen million dollars plus a set of matching Samsonite cases to carry it away, and probably a set of damned diamond earrings as well if I send only $3-99 as a handling fee, nor do I hang out at many ‘dubious sites’.

Also I have ‘Mailwasher’ fighting my corner for me.  That’s how filltering should be done, at the user’s end.  It’s easy enough to train it to pick out the obvious junk and delete it from the server, still giving you the option of picking up mail from any friends who are daft enough to put “You have won a million dollars’, or similar, in the Subject line.

You know something - and this is absolutely true - I still had dark hair when I started on the web, not a trace of grey, and it wasn’t that long ago, even if it was in the last century.  My photograph now tells a very different story…

John

I shall be taking my camera, but also shamelessly begging any chance to get my hands onto some of the weapons.  For a writer opportunities to feel, smell, taste, and hear, are as as important as seeing.

Ten years from now any pictures I take today will be just pictures, unless I’ve also personally absorbed the memories of the sounds, smells, etc.  If so then a look at the pictures will bring it all back if I need to write an appropriate scene.

Apart from which I intend to enjoy myself anyway.  ”Man cannot live by work alone.”

Over the years I’ve seen new writers make some terrible mistakes about firearms in their stories, purely because they have no personal experience of using them.  The kind of mistakes which can jerk the semi-knowledgable right out of the story-web you are trying to weave and destroy all your credibility.

I’ve put together a new page which will - hopefully - give you some basic information without overloading you in details.  Unless you are a firearms enthusiast, and your tale needs lots of details, you can get away with some pretty well generic terms.  So check it out.  Some of the things you’ve only ever seen in films may make a little more sense afterwards.

This page may be removed later if it gets turned into a print magazine article, so grab it now, just in case.

John

Several enquiries and some encouraging feedback.

But for now, it’s been a long day, so I’m about to log off and go to sleep.

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23rd April.

I’m writing blog stuff before I have my blog, but it makes sense to chronicle the whole event.

Today I took my first steps on the road to self employment as an online writing tutor and writer. Okay, there were a few weeks of paperwork and business planning, setting up a proper business account, and stuff like that which seemed to take a ludicrous amount of time. But it’s part of the New Deal scheme for old folks (over fifty) and there are certain advantages to doing it this way.

One of which is ‘protected trading’. Any money I make in the first six months, or less if things go really well and I want to leave the scheme, stays in the business account and doesn’t change my entitlement to benefits. In fact this goes up a little because it is now a training allowance rather than mere income support

During the scheme I can draw from my account for business needs, with the approval of the co-signatory on my account, my business adviser.

This is much better than the last time I tried self employment, about thirty years ago. I traded for a year, survived by spending my savings from previous work, made £139 pounds, and went back to being a wage slave on the day there was only £1-69 in my building society account.

This time, I have a safety net and some pretty strict targets to meet. I have a much better idea of what I need to do to make money.

There is still an element of death or glory about my plan, but it’s definitely not a suicide mission this time.

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24 April.

Had to wait for the BT engineer to come and install my new phone line, so I can have broadband. I’d fondly believed Virgin Media would be able to upgrade my existing 56k service to BB, but it was not to be. I was outside their broadband service area.

So a BT line and service were ordered. At £124-99 (don’t forget the ninety nine pence it) seemed a bit steep bit there was no other option in my area.

The engineer arrived when he said he would, was cheerful soul, and spent about an hour and a quarter installing a brand new line. the socket sits neatly above my VM one, and I may just keep up the line rental on the old one. I may keep it as a personal calls only phone. But if not I’ll let it lapse.

BT are providing a free router but it could take up to five working days, and probably will. Why do these things seem so slow when you want to get on and press ahead with things.

In the evening the computer died, but after a few minutes of cursing I discovered one of the drives had disconnected itself, probably whilst I was installing a card to provide two more of the those wonderfully versatile USB ports. With the aid of a four way hub - costing one pound from a cheapjack shop - I now have nine ports to play with. All I had to do to restore the drive was reseat the connector.
==============================

25 April

One of my targets for today was to phone the taxman and tell him I was trading under the New Deal scheme. My adviser had warned there might be’ a language problem’, but the charming young lady who answered after about ten minutes in a holding queue had a proper Geordie accent and I understood every word she said.

The appropriate Inland Revenue ‘Welcome Pack’ is being sent to me and that part of things is underway.

Because I can’t do some of the other things on my list until the broadband connection is up and running, scheduled for May 2nd, I decided to write an article or two to make a start on filling the coffers and re-introducing myself to various editors.

I set the timer - and putting myself under self imposed deadlines - write three short articles averaging around 750 words in three hours. One of them an article about the benefits of setting yourself short deadlines.

Also spent some time sorting out a bit of complicated academic english for my youngest daughter with the help of people on the Writer’s Circle. I will bundle up their responses and send them to her just after midnight.

I am averaging about ten minutes each for these blog posts, which seems pretty reasonable to me.

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26th April

A pretty pointless day up until 4 pm. I got up around eight, worked for an hour or so, had breakfast and then fell asleep on the sofa until 3pm. One of those unbelievably low energy days when there is just nothing left to give, short of an emergency in which case the adrenaline can always be relied upon to kick in for a turbo-boost..

Maybe more later, if things actually happen.

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27th April

Spent a large part of the day doing a long overdue tidy of my ‘office’. Not just because it needed it, but because I was looking for one specific old magazine. I needed to copy an old story of mine, scan it, tidy the few scanning errors, and turn it onto a computer file to send off to an online magazine.

It turned into a pretty strenuous workout, heaving around crates full of magazines and computer parts/accessories, and kicking up a lot of dust which didn’t do my asthma any good. Even with both windows open - I wouldn’t have tackled it on a rainy day - I still had to go out for a while a couple of times.

I know some people would tackle the dust/asthma problem by chasing the dust every day, but seeing as even a little dust can be as bad as a lot it actually makes sense to let it build up to a certain level before dedicating a day to moving stuff, hoovering until the pattern nearly comes off the carpet, and so on.

But the story was found, processed, and sent off. An article from 1989, originally written on a manual typewriter, now being given a new lease of life thanks to OCR.

Plus the office is a bit more organised and will be okay for a couple of weeks now.

Also found time to tackle someone who wants a ridiculous amount of money from Mum in late payment charges. Sent them a pretty blunt letter, offering to pay all the money we legitimately owe but not their damned ‘punitive’ charges.

As a bonus I found a couple of other long-forgotten writings which will probably be re-written for a slightly more modern market. All in all not a bad result for just ‘messing around’ on a Sunday

28th April

Woke up and found I hadn’t taken my cocktail of pills yesterday. Not the end of the world, but quite disconcerting to realise how easily a few years of routine can be forgotten. Am I going Gaga in my ‘old age’?

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14 May

Feeling ‘a bit miffed’ because my ever faithful and so plain flipping useful AceText multi- clipboard programme has thrown a wobbler. I originally thought it was another problem, but eventually realised AceText was jumping in and out, doing things on its own account without any instructions from me. Once I turned it off all the other glitches stopped happening. I may have to download a fresh copy and re-install it completely, which will be far quicker than messing around trying to find out - possibly in vain - what is wrong. But I’ll see if I can save the clips file first.

If none of the above makes any sense don’t worry, I’ll tell your more about EditPad and its companion programe AceText lanother time.

For now I’m off to sort out more stuff for the website and unleash my business on the world.

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**** Helps if I add the link - Sorry Gyppo ****
http://stores.lulu.com/gyppo1