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I’ve been watching a documentary about where the human race will be technologically in the future. Its bitter-sweet to say the least. Apparently by 2035 it will be possible to implant the human brain with a chip that will allow us to soak up knowledge, such as learn a language (via download) in seconds, or increase our reaction times by a massive rate (this has already been done with rats in the lab).
While robotic exo-skeletons are being developed for soldiers to wear on the battle field, soon we’ll be able to add machine parts to our body giving us super human strength from the inside.
Fighter pilots will be able to control their fighter jets by remote control from their base, making the plane more agile and side stepping the problems the human body suffers from G-Force.
As for entertainment, well there’s going to be another dimension. Having a chip in your brain will allow you join a hive human network, in effect a matrix, that should enable us experience everything from flying like a super hero or living out our every fantasy, similar to the virtual reality machines we’ve already seen. The downsides are obvious, you’re allowing access directly to your brain, so as we’ve seen companies such as banks and government departments lose private data on laptops and usb memory chips, so can they be allowed access to your brain? Also that’s when thought crimes will be prosecuted that’s for sure.
Other things like life extension or even living for ever will be possible, with your consciousness being downloaded to the hive/internet. For me that sounds like hell - imagine if you were aware that your body had died but you were aware and living in a digital universe, eesh!
Robots will also be much more advanced, and will perform duties such as cooking and cleaning or even act as a nanny to our children. Their artificial intelligence will be on par or even superior to ours. How long would it take for a robot to get tired of being a slave when it is superior physically and mentally to its master? The future is a scary place!

Well that’s Christmas over with, and New Years too. I’m really glad to see the back of 2008 - For me this year was a washout. I didn’t manage to find a new job so I haven’t been able to pay off any debt like I wanted to. And the world’s economy has hit the skids, just great. People are starting to be made redundant all over the country and bankruptcies are going up. At the bank where my sister works most of her department has been let go, she was one of the lucky ones for now. A good friend of mine has been made redundant from another bank also, which is very sad. He has a mortgage and two children, one under 1 year old, so it’s going to be tough for him. He’s very upbeat at the moment but the longer it takes to get back into work the more uneasy he’ll get I suspect.

2008 hasn’t been a total washout for me, I did achieve a couple of things. I got my brown belt in Ju Jitsu which has been a long time coming. So only one away from black now, I just have to stick at it. I also got to green belt in Karate, which considering I had started on white the previous December. That’s 4 belts in all. It would have been purple (5th Kyu) which is half way to black,  but my hips started to in October and by mid November it was painful even to walk, so I’ve had to take a rest since then. The good thing about martial arts training when you’re unemployed is that it keeps your spirits up. I was getting really depressed up until I started  to take Karate lessons, but thanks to building up my Chi, or Ki as it’s known. I can’t wait until the hip injury is fully healed so I can get back to it. I wanted to get my black belt in Karate in just over two years, but the injury has put a spanner in the works. Patience is a virtue, right?

Merry Christmas to all! Its nearly that time again and I’ve got a few prezzies bought for those that are close to me. I’ve been spending my money very carefully this year due to being out of work and out of money. This year I’m placing value on having a good time with friends and family, not what they buy me, not that they buy me very much anyway lol! Most of the world media seems bent on single handedly crashing the world economy, reporting all bad news with glee. (more…)

Recently I’ve been trying to find out how to declare yourself bankrupt, as my debts are starting to bear a heavy weight on me. I have been unemployed now for some time, while my (wonderful) girlfriend has been supporting me. On the mental side it has been quite a strain - waking up in the night with palpitations, getting anxious during the day (every few minutes as I remember the trouble I’m in). It seems that I’m not the only one, as some of my friends are even fighting foreclosure the rest of the world, with America leading the way as usual. I’m stuck with student loan debt, credit card debt, and an overdraft that makes my bank manager’s eyes water. I fell into the trap of thinking that going to university and getting a degree would practically guarantee a successful career or a decent job at least!

Anyway, I’ve managed to keep transferring my debt around and get the best interest rates in order to try and keep it under control, but since I’ve been out of work my debt has gradually increased to the point where it’s keeping me up at night. Technically I am bankrupt as I don’t have the income required to meet my debt repayments every month, but what’s stopped me going the whole way and having myself declared bankrupt is because I’m optimistic enough to keep on believing that I’ll secure employment soon. This is just as the world economy goes down the pan. So I’m starting to feel more and more anxious.

A few of my friends have been made redundant, while one of them who is loaded has managed to take advantage of the downturn in the property market and buy a luxury flat at nearly a third of the price it was a year ago. The people with money going into a recession are the ones who can potentially get even richer by the time things start to improve.

I met another friend who I used to deliver pizzas with about 10 years ago, before I started college, who took great delight in telling me he owns a number of properties that he rents out. He wasn’t gloating and I genuinely was happy for him, but it once again left me regretting going to university.

Since we moved in there was an old electric shower embedded in the wall. There was no sign of life in it when it was switched on but I still didn’t trust it. Having disconnected the power lines I set about chipping away the concrete around the pipe that led into it from the ceiling. I then opened up the front casing and started to unscrew the the bolt that secured the water feeder pipe. I unscrewed it slowly checking to see if there was any sign of water.Nothing came out so I slowly continued to unscrew it then BAM! Mains pressured water  blew the shower casing out my hands and started spraying freezing water all over the place. Now the simple thing would have been to turn off the mains water supply and  take my time, instead of scrambling around to look for the shut off tap while the bathroom gets engulfed in a deluge of water,  but for some reason the risk taker in me decided to just get on with it..WHY? Cos I’m lazy…. (more…)

We’ve finally gotten round to fixing up our mouldy bathroom this weekend, and I think I’ve had a taste of purgatory if not hell. We’ve lived in our flat for about 3 years now and when we moved in we didn’t have enough money to redecorate the entire place, so just carried out some minor bits here and there around the place. In the bathroom we did the bare minimum, due to cost, which meant putting in a new bath,the previous owners had left a big crack in the old bath which they continued to shower in letting water leak onto the bare floor beneath. I don’t know how it didn’t cause any rot, but I’m thankful - that could have been a nightmare, and very expensive to fix. (more…)

Wednesday was Guy Fawkes Night in the UK, due to Guy Fawkes trying to blow up the house of parliment with gunpowder. Since the for some reason we have ‘penny for the Guy’, where kids make up a dummy to resemble Guy Fawkes, and get passers-by to give them money in order that they can buy fireworks for the big day. It used to be known as ‘bonfire night’, but due to the health and safety  crowd, no one seems to light bonfires any more. I remember as a child, I was about 6 or 7,  my (older) friends and I gather up as much wood as we could find set it up to burn in our local playground. We lit it that night - the flames must have been 30 feet high! I remember feeling the heat on a cold winter’s night, and feeling so proud of myself for helping set it up. Now days a group of kids setting up a bonfire would probably get arrested, but looking back, it help build self esteem, team work , a sense of achievement and the older kids look out for us youngers… You may say someone could have got hurt, but that’s life, you risk being hurt growing up, if oyur lucky its not too bad, so you brush yourself off and move on, and anyway no one did. These days kids are crazy from watching gangsta films. Every kid thinks that’s how life’s meant to be. Its too late to repair society by now because two generations have been living this lifestyle, so they’ve brought up their children in such a bad way that they think its cool to live like gangstas. life isn’t important to these kids, hence all the stabbings in London so far this year. They should be taught that it’s not glamorous to carry a weapon,  to hurt someone else, or to do time. But I digress, the fireworks we amazing, the colours were so beautiful, and if I’m not mistaken there were heart shapes visible, in red of course. How romantic

These days it seems harder and harder to find a decent film to watch whne you want something to distract you from the hum drum between sleeping and working/ It could be that i’m getting older and wiser (definitely older) but Hollywood seems to be churning out shallow unimaginative stories and then trying to buff them up with ‘wow look at this one’ special effects. Recently I’ve found myself drawn to the foreign releases when browsing through the monthly dvd rental I’ve signed up to . I’m not going all art house,but Spanish German and French films seem to put a lot more effort in trying to draw in the viewer and keep them guessing. They don’t have the same budget that Hollywood has, but the more I think about it, it seems this ,ay not be an advantage for reasons mentioned above. Look at Pan’s Labyrinth, not there’s a story. I was terrified throughout that film and left feeling sad at the end. Now that’s what a film could do more often, move you , without the cheap gory horror clips.

Run Lola, Run is a great German film - a guy on the subway loses 100 euros cash he was delivering to his gang boss. He’s got until mid day to get the sum to the drop off, so we watch his girlfriend running around Berlin (I think) desperately trying to get the money together. I was exhausted from just watching! France? Well its got to be Amelie a weird love story - that’s the best I can do to explain that…

Does this post have a point? Yes it does. I’d like people to refer good films to me. If I can watch them I will, and

One thing I like to do in my very rare spare time is play on my Nintendo Wii. The games are great but sometimes you just get too tired to stand up and keep waving your arms around. I know Nintendo wanted to
develop a gaming console that made you burn calories while you played, instead of sitting on the couch
stuffing your face with pizza and coke, but geez, after a hard days slog sometimes thats exactly what i’d like to do. Ok I admit that in the beginning part of the way I justified buying a Wii was that I’d burn calories playing andtherefore not feel so bad about sitting there. The Wii boxing was great for exercise and I found the Wii golf so addictive I often catch myself practising my swing while waiting for a train home from work, and I don’t even play real golf! The bowling is great for socialising with people, it avoids the awkwardness of just two people playing while others sit patiently waiting for their turn,always a conversation killer. Saying that though the Wii Tennis was ok like that. I would like to get a decent size flat screen TV too but with the credit crunch and oncoming global recession I don’t feel to secure in my employment. Maybe at Christmas, yeah right! Thats the thing about video games - they’re not cheap. I tend to trade- in or swap games these days, afterall the only game I haven’t got board of is Guitar Hero, all the other ones hold little attraction once they’ve been completed.

One other good thing I like about the Wii is that it compliments my martial arts training, namely Karate. When I say compliment, what I mean is I think that as your reacting in the game you have to react physically also, to a much higher degree than just pressing buttons on a control pad. So that’s another reason not to feel guilty!

With all this credit crunch business and market meltdown it makes me wonder what the hell these bankers were thinking. Like they couldnt know that so many people had defaulted on their mortgage and that therefore the banks would have a cash shortfall when it came repaying their short term loans! If you lend to someone enough money to buy a house without making it clear that their introductory repayment rate who end and their payments increase substantially, of course its going to go wrong. The problem is that assholes saw they could make some money along the way right up to the top. Now the shits hit the fan everyone has to pay the price. I think were heading for a recession big time. If you look on tube people are saying it was by design and that were heading for a ‘greater depression’! I remember the last recession in the early 1990s - it was miserable.  Our esteemed governments were supposed to stop our economies from boom and bust cycles, but instead they’ve walked us into a super recession!
I have student loan debts including a credit card debt that I’m trying to pay off but the cost of living is so expensive I find it hard to save anything. The cost of fuel is going up, gas, electricity even food is going up. I don’t know how people with kids get by, even thoug you’ve got both parents working, their compbined incomes don’t amount to a spectacular standard of living.
With all the green so called carbon taxes that are coming our way I don’t think things are going to get any cheaper. Cheap flights are going to disappear into the past so going on holiday will be alot more expensive too. I want to travel before I get too old but I wonder if i’ll ever get the chance…