Chris Thompson   Chris Thompson on the internet

Time always goes quickly when you don’t want it to. Today is my last day at home, having taken time off work before and after the weekend. And time is going very quickly indeed. It was nice to have an even longer than long weekend though.

Thinking about going back to work is not a good feeling at all. But no complaints about today; it has been very nice, and the perfect way to end this lovely (if small) holiday.

Lunch at the pub was the order of the day. It’s under new ownership, and has some good looking deals on at the moment. Chief amongst them, a Lunch for a Fiver deal. We took them up on it, fully expecting small portions of not-very-high-quality food for £5 a head. But, actually, it was very nice, and extremely good value for money.

Which is good, especially considering the pub is almost opposite the house. I’m fairly certain we’ll be heading that way a bit more often now.

I took the dog for a walk after getting back, and am now just enjoying a coffee, and browsing the Fortean Times website. There is an incredible, miraculous story here, which is almost enough to make you believe in fate, or some sense of destiny. That the bullet hit precisely where she was hiding the money is remarkable, and I wish her a speedy recovery.

Currently, I’m sitting down, and seem to have been doing a little bit of writing, as well as half-paying attention to Raising Helen. Kate Hudson seems to be a master of acting without actually using her voice. The volume is turned very low, and I have to really listen to hear anything, but her eyes can say so many different things – it’s quite brilliant, really.

And all of this seems to help when I work. I don’t know what it is about the sort of faint noise in the background, but I can just type a few paragraphs, or a page, and look up and enjoy a bit of whatever might be on – in this case, a movie – and it seems to spur me on, in a way.

Now, I’m the sort of person that can’t concentrate on writing or working when there’s music playing in the background, even if it’s only very quiet music, which makes it all the weirder that this seems to work for me.

Anyway, I suppose the fact that I’m writing this means that my flow has stopped. Or maybe it’s going so well that I thought I’d be able to take a break and write about writing for a while. Either way, I should get back to work…

The family and I had a lot of fun today. We visited relatives, and got the trip out of the way early which left time to visit more relatives. Then we proceeded to lounge around watching movies for the best part of the afternoon. And eat a bit of chocolate. When, really, I should have been working .

Here’s a little news piece that made me chuckle. Animals also enjoy a treat at Easter, it seems. Apparently at Marwell Wildlife, they were able to enjoy their very own Easter egg hunt – and there is even a picture of a Golden Lion Tamarin, hot-footing it up a tree with its brightly coloured prize in hand, and offering a stern look to warn off any would-be food thieves.

After today, though, I didn’t need reminding of the fondness for treats in animals. My dog did her ninja impression, wrapping herself in darkness and shadow, and sneaking up the stairs to give my brother a helping hand with a sweet or two. It must have touched just the right spot as well, because she was groaning contentedly for the rest of the afternoon, looking up every now and then and grinning.

Ah well. Here’s wishing you a brilliant weekend.

Presently, I’ve just got off the phone to my parents, who, apparently, are in the market for new bathrooms after coming back from holiday to find theirs broken. Whilst they were away, they had relatives staying, who apparently do a very good tornado impression on the way to the toilet.

How do you break a bathroom? Well, I don’t suppose it’s broken per se, but much of it is; there is a split in the toilet seat, and it can’t really be used anymore. On top of this, the hot tap doesn’t work in either the sink or the bath. It’s a fairly old bathroom anyway, and since it doesn’t really fit in with the decoration around the rest of the house, they’re opting for a full upgrade.

It’s been in the pipeline for a while, I suppose. (The new bathroom, not the breaking of the old one). I’m still reeling from hearing about the toilet seat. Quite how you do that to it, I’m not sure.

Elsewhere, I’ve been looking for a starting point for a short story I need to write. A particularly nice bathroom might be a good beginning. This story, for example, shows that it a bathroom could potentially be something to spark a toddler’s adventure. And toddler’s can have some pretty big adventures (see Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book, if you don’t believe me). Thankfully back in the world of reality, the toddler in question here was okay.

All that’s left for me to do is to sit down, and start putting one word after another.

I talked about spy gadgets and super-fancy technology in my last blog, and although I didn’t plan it as such, this follows on nicely from it. It so happens that today, I picked up my copy of New Scientist, and inside it I discovered a fascinating article on how geologists are attempting to view Earth in a new and brilliant way.

It suggests that we know more about space than we do our own planet, and in a sense, I suppose it’s true. Certainly, much of nature’s magic is a mystery to us: earthquakes and hurricanes can be predicted, but not very accurately, and not really more than a week in advance – if that.

The project is known as USArray, and every aspect of it is thoroughly compelling. Eventually it will map the world beneath our feet, enabling the entirety of North America to be pictured in 3D. We might well be able to understand the intricacies of the tectonic plates, and what happens to the rock as it moves around below us, and how that relates to the things we can see on the surface.

Technology never ceases to amaze me.

My brother showed me something today, which, presumably, is a development of Google Earth. It’s called Street View, and until today I was completely unaware of its existence. But it’s an incredible thing – and, using it, I feel something like a spy, as if I’ve been plucked right out of a James Bond movie. It’s incredible stuff, to be able to pick up a handheld device like a cell phone and find anywhere in the world, and zoom in to a street level to see shops, and cars, and even people (frozen, like a photograph.) Technology has come a long way.

You can rotate the view, and it spins with you as if you were actually there – it really is James Bond stuff.

It’s wonderful. But, at the same time, it’s somewhat worrying. Because if a pedestrian can buy a phone like this, or use their computer like this, to find places and see places with what is now everyday software … what could the government do, if they wanted to? My knowledge of military equipment is not very extensive, but I do know that they have access to cameras that can zoom over kilometres and produce perfect, crisp images; a little bit better than my 5.0 megapixel camera.

Following the same logic, could they have secret equipment that is to Google Earth like these super cameras are to my digital camera? And if they did, how would they use it?

It’s quite a scary thought, and an interesting reflection on our Big Brother-like society, where vehicle tracking is possible, and you can be recorded on a cctv system, that can then allow the police to find you if they need to.

Street View makes me feel like a spy … but what kind of toys does a real spy have to play with? More than spy software like this, I’d imagine.
I’m not altogether sure where I’m going with this … just thinking aloud, I guess. But I do find it interesting. And I wonder how far-fetched scenes in movies like The Dark Knight really are…

Before I settle down for a movie with the family, when I should really be finishing up a bit of work, I decided to kill a bit of time online. And, it seems, there are plenty of websites out there that allow you to waste a bit of time.

Here is one I found that offers all sorts of joys. Surreal game shows, surreal rhymes … all manner of surreal things. It is called the surrealist, funnily enough – and it is home to these two slices of fun:

First of all, Mutant Song Lyrics. When I typed “dream”, I got: Like a dream out of hell, I’ll be gone when the morning comes.

And here, if you enter your name, you can find all sorts of weird and wonderful things about yourself. Curiously, I was not allowed to enter Disneyland until the 1960’s. Most likely this is because I am the world’s smallest mammal, or simply because I missed Disneyland by always turning right after exiting my cave.

All in the name of the procrastination gods.

Today I feel the need to talk about phones. Partly because after reading about the CTIA 2009, I have phones on the mind; but mostly, I must say, because my home phone has become rather infuriating recently.

It has decided to beep constantly, and utterly refuses to stop, no matter what I do or try – and it’s becoming more annoying by the day. Thankfully, it’s been quiet for the last twenty minutes, which has given me a chance to think – Ah – as I write this, it has just started again.

Quite fitting, I suppose.

I’m not sure what started it … it’s one of those weird things. Probably, it’s something to do with the fact that some people in my household deign to leave the phone off the hook (it’s a walkabout style thing, like the one you can win here, but worse), and it runs the battery down. And because of this, the battery is in such bad condition that it cuts out halfway through conversations, no matter if it’s a full charge or not. And even with a full battery, it beeps. And beeps.

I’ve decided to get rid of the thing in order to get an entirely new and proper system. Here’s hoping that, with a phone system of multiple cordless phones around the house, there will be less chance of people leaving phones off the hook (as opposed to having more phones left off the hook, which could also happen.)

At this stage, I would even consider an old, wired phone at the moment – any phone at all, so long as it got rid of the beeping. But the practicalities of wireless phones far outweigh the drawbacks of having lazy family using them.

Certainly, I need to make the purchase quickly, or before long I’ll be driven mad.

Here’s an interesting question: what does music do to you?

Interesting, and a simple – but the answer is not.

It’s a powerful thing, music. It can do a lot of different things. Yesterday I linked to a song from Slumdog Millionaire – Latika’s Theme – which is calming and beautiful. I can sit back, and calm down as it takes me on its ghostly journey.

Music can also do the reverse, of course; make you angry, and fill you with adrenaline. It doesn’t even have to be a particularly loud song, or rude, or even angry itself to this either.

There is a discussion here on What Music Does to You. And, for me, I find that music can be inspirational. I can close my eyes, and listen to a song like Good Love by Bat for Lashes, and be taken to a place filled with wonder. I can listen to a piece composed by Hans Zimmer, or Harry Gregson-Williams and immediately ideas and images come to life in my mind.

Music does a lot of things, depending on mood and place, and a lot of other things. It’s a magical, multi-faceted tool.

I think that part of what made Slumdog Millionaire so great was the soundtrack, which managed to switch between fun and uplifting as the two brothers journeyed on the roof of a train, to deeply moving, to tense and dramatic (and all this with a sort of seamless beauty.)

Here is a sample; an almost Enya-ish, smooth and dream-like song.

I’ve also stumbled across an article on a dog’s survival after it fell off a boat near Australia. The owners thought it lost, but somehow it managed to not only swim to a nearby island, but survive in the wild for four months on a diet of wild goats!

Dogs are incredible things.

Furthermore, it seems there is even a top-10 countdown of such animal survivals. And there are some lovely ones in there – I particularly like the crocodile journeying home after being moved to a less populated area.