Image London

I have started a new blog: http://imagelondon.blogspot.com. I have noticed various blogs showing photos of various cities around the world on a daily basis, and getting lots of visitors, so I thought why don't I do the same (although probably not daily, knowing me)? There are London blogs already but each has its own style. There is room for one more: the things I like will be the things some other people like, after all.

It is also a get-rich-quick scheme of sorts, since I am putting Google ads on it - just in case zillions of visitors click on them and pay me a penny each or something. Well, you never know.

Forms

Apart from making the occasional entry in this blog, I also make the occasional web site, such as http://www.britishunitedartists.com/ , http://www.cwfstudio.com/ , http://www.actingcourses.net/ (at which I also maintain the blog)... I mention this because web sites require e-mail links or forms of some sort, and this presents a problem: spammers. Spammers fill in the forms, usually automatically, or they harvest the e-mail addresses for later use by a zillion zombies.

I have tried various php solutions but they basically don't work because server administrators change their settings seemingly every week and whatever automated form-to-mail solution I try stops working within days unless I can host the site on my own server, which I cannot. I have better things to do than keep changing the code on numerous web sites.

I have tried obfuscating the e-mail address; this works to some extent, but as spammers' robots get more sophisticated, this solution will not work forever.

Then I found formsmarts.com. They provide a number of simple solutions from a challenge-response web page to a hosted html form which should be compatible with all systems. Fingers crossed, but it seems to be working smoothly enough at the moment!

The Meaning Of Life

Well, I suppose one can't talk about the meaning of life without thinking of Douglas Adams, for whom the answer appeared to have been "42" (in The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy"), and indeed, this web site does just that. But he also indirectly makes an important point about the alternative philosophy of nihilism, which states that life, and indeed everything, is meaningless: if everything is meaningless, then so is the idea that everything is meaningless... In other words, the idea that life is worthless is a worthless idea. To me, that means it is false, or might as well be. So nihilism is imploded by its own definition: if true, it must be false.

I expect that is arguable, but it seems close enough for practical purposes. And the purpose of life - its meaning? Altruism. So there.

Here is a recent photo of Douglas Adams, taken at Highgate Cemetry in London.


And here is a quote from him:

"There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened."

On another subject, I rather liked this rather well-travelled photographer's travel photos. And the latest Batman movie trailer.

Democracy and Stuff

Here is a nice 90-second overview of the progress of "democracy" (of sorts) down through the ages, assuming that no tribal systems were democratic, I suppose. And assuming that the modern system of "representative democracy" actually counts given that most such governments seem to claim to listen then do what they like anyway (and then claim to wonder why voter turnout is so low).

The above flash movie comes from Maps Of War and there are several others to enjoy there. If history isn't your bucket of cheese, maybe you need 32 Keys to Life instead. Or maybe watch a movie trailer (one of them mentions cheese, by the way)? Finally a great photo of a forest fire.

What About...

...the woman whose boyfriend thought she was too drunk to drive, so she called the police. While drunk. And driving. Or the desperado who broke into parking meters, but plugged his drill into the local police station ("Capitol guardhouse" in US English, AIUI).

On the plus side, if you like sculptures and statues, maybe you'll appreciate these unusual ones. Or a fancy planetarium. Next a useful reference guide to which foods are supposed to help with what diseases. Finally... the kind of house I might like to live in when I'm rich.

Christmas and All That

After many years of not being rich yet (in Western terms anyway), I have discovered the joys of cheap shopping on the Internet. Now, I have shopped online before, but this Christmas I specifically wanted to buy cheaply... and as I like to give books and movies, I was pleased to explore Amazon's second-hand options. And sure enough, the bulk of books and DVDs that I bought for people second-hand were just fine. In near perfect condition, indeed. One or two were a bit off, but overall, I managed to handle Christmas for about £70 instead of the usual £200. With a DVD movie costing about £2.37 including delivery instead of £10-£30, the savings can be immense. OK, the risk of a problem with the product is slightly higher, but at that kind of price I can just buy another one from another supplier.

Funny news stories... How about the latest pyramid selling scam in China? Over a million people have been persuaded to spend some £1300 on ant farms. Then there's the latest teenage-wild-party-while-the-parents-are-away event. I like the fact that the naughty fellow has his story well thought-out. His video chit-chat is a bit hard to follow but the article spells it out.

Now here is a photo showing the Moon over the 'top' of the Earth's atmosphere, taken from the Space Shuttle Discovery in July 2007. "Image ISS013-E-54329.JPG courtesy of the Image Science & Analysis Laboratory, NASA Johnson Space Center."

Back Again

Well, I know I've been off-air for a bit now, but I'm back today, as I slowly get over the flipping flu. My latest money-making scheme, i.e., the domain names thing, isn't producing any results, so it is suitably abandoned unless something comes of it before they expire. Probably I need to be more persistent with schemes, but they are boring when they don't work. My next plan is to try doing some paintings and selling them (online, ideally). The first one is here:



Those wavy Moire fringes you may see running from right to left in this rendering do not exist on the original. They are an artefact caused by the texture of the canvas mixing with the pixel system that computers use. Possibly I need to upload a lower-resolution photo or something; I'll have to experiment. You can click here to see a larger, relatively fringe-free version. The colours are reasonably accurate in the photo, except I would say that the blue is a noticeably darker shade on the actual painting. Anyway, the painting is acrylic on mounted canvas, 406x305mm (16x12 inches), 38mm deep. Looking around online and in shops, things like this go for around £150 which seems about right to me.

Now for something more serious. These people are letting themselves be beaten at Wii tennis... by their dog (video). The poor animal will never learn to respect them! I don't really 'get' tatoos and piercings. They just seem bizarre to me. So this blog has the top 10 of them. Prepare to be grossed out. Or bizarred out, I suppose. Well, I guess that's enough Western culture for the moment. Now for a bit of culture from the East: the Thousand Hands Goddess Dance. We may not know what it means, but we know quality when we see it, I think. Finally, for those people who are savvy enough to use 'hijack this' to clean the junk programs and spyware from their computers every now and then, a log auto-analyser to suggest to you which of your start-up items may be worth eliminating. Just paste the saved log into the box, press the button and hey presto! No guarantees or warranties, E&OE, yabba dabba doo.

Money-Making Scheme No. 3,612

One of these days I really am going to Get Rich Quick (TM). My latest scheme is to dream up three really good-sounding domain names, which I hope to eventually sell. I have added links to them in the side bar:

• www.yourstarsdaily.com
• www.howtochatupgirls.com
• www.worstchatuplines.com

Now aren't those great names? My plan originally was just to put them straight up for sale, maybe on Ebay or somewhere, but then I thought: perhaps I should monetize them first. That is, a) get some money from them somehow, and b) demonstrate to potential buyers how valuable they might be, before selling them. So I have put some content in them and will add them to various search engines...

Of course, if they make enough money I won't want to sell them, I suppose. But, at least for the last two, I doubt that they will make much for me directly as I have no plans to sell related products. I shall probably just put Google AdSense on them. I can do tarot readings for the first one though.

Arrandene, Mill Hill, London

I went for a long walk around the Arrandene nature reserve the other day. Originally I had a little slideshow going on in this blog entry, but I have decided to remove it as it uses up a lot of bandwidth - not a problem for those of us with unmetered broadband or better, but too slow or costly for some viewers. So, instead, if you would like to see the pictures, you can go to my Web Album.

How's the Writing Going?

Actually, quite well. The question is, though, how do I figure out how much is still to be done? Today I reached 30,000 words, i.e., 50% of my original estimate of 60,000 words.

However, I am certainly more than halfway through the story. Counting scenes in the script, I am up to scene 86 of 116. That's 74%. That seems more like it! I think I had better count it that way in future. So, I am almost three-quarters of the way through the first draft. Excellent!

Big Brother 8

This year's Big Brother 8 (UK) has begun so my annual addiction to this programme has begun too. I even auditioned for it last year! Sadly, I didn't make it through to the programme, but maybe I have been saved for something better. ;-) But... why do I like this detestable programme, you might ask? Isn't it voyeuristic, moronic, and salacious? Well, yes.

In fact, I think the series suffers from one rather strange paradox: the more detested the programme is, the more it is worth showing. My position on it is a bit like Oscar Wilde's when he said, "An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all." Big Brother certainly causes controversy, and flushes out the usual rent-a-quote MP's. But controversy is not a bad thing: it allows society to evolve peacefully, after all. It is one of the bases of our much-neglected democracy. And with the average viewer having between 30 and 400 channels to choose from on the TV, plus much more on the Internet, they really don't have to watch it if they don't want to.

There is another aspect to the series as well. Unlike other programmes, you actually get to know the characters of real people. What happens in the house is not scripted or limited by the imaginations of scriptwriters and producers. You have to use your social skills to get the best out of this programme, unlike any other (except perhaps some of its imitators). This is what is truly novel about it: it requires a different kind of intelligence to watch: social intelligence and emotional intelligence. With ordinary programmes, if you can stay awake long enough to watch them, there is little requirement for intelligence on the part of the viewer: we are spoon-fed the 'entertainment' or 'information' and that is all that is expected of us (other than to watch the spam - sorry, adverts). But if you watch Big Brother passively, you will miss out on exercising your brain. The housemates are constantly jockeying for position, changing tactics, lying, being friendly (genuinely and not so genuinely sometimes), and so on. Are you able, after years of watching passive TV, even capable of keeping track of their relationships? Can you figure out who will win?

Steven Johnson explains these ideas in more detail in his book, Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Popular Culture Is Making Us Smarter. I don't recommend betting if you're prone to addiction, but whether you bet or not, you can get a good idea of what the public thinks of the housemates by looking at their odds of winning at oddschecker.com. Betting odds are likely to be a better guide to what is really going to happen than what the pundits say: after all people are putting their money on it!

No Topic

I've called this entry 'No Topic' as I don't have any particular topic to write about: I'm in a non-write-about-it frame of mind lately - hence the lack of entries for the last few days. Nevertheless, some more writing has been accomplished.

And some surfing... Did you know some people are trying to build a time machine? And not using a black hole - that method is old hat:



On a totally different slant, have you ever tried hurling yourself down a 1:1 slope (that's 45 degrees - I don't know what it is in percentage units: 50% of vertical, I suppose)? Well, at Cooper's Hill in Brockworth, Gloucestershire, people do it every year in a stupid old festival that allows grazing rights on common land or some such. It is a race in which the contestants chase after... a piece of cheese. Yes. Cheese. Double Gloucester, to be exact. I was actually present one year. A woman was knocked unconscious by the aforementioned cheese as it bounced into the crowd. This video shows the 2007 event:


Coopers Hill Cheese Rolling - Watch more free videos

After all that excitement, how about a bit of cyberwar? It seems somebody is attacking the government of Estonia - they suspect the Kremlin. Alternatively, how about a bit of art? It takes a few moments to load (it is a flash drawing), but it is worth the wait. Click and drag up or down with your mouse to move in or out.

Katherine of Alexandria

Well, I wrote another 1% of the book today... things are moving on quite rapidly really, on those days when I get some writing done! I still rather feel, though, that things are moving rather more rapidly than I thought originally and I may well be finished a long way before the 60,000 word estimate I started with. Well, we will see.

I have of course been surfing the good old Internet the rest of the time. I was very interested in The Case Against Homework: How Homework Is Hurting Our Children and What We Can Do about It, which says what I have thought for many years (since my school days, indeed): homework is of little benefit, and of much harm to people's social lives. OK, yes, that is a link to Amazon, but I thought I'd try once again - we'll see how long it is before Amazon break the link like they usually do. Anyway, I haven't read that book, but it looks like a good idea to me. I see that there are others making the same point too. Meanwhile, have you wondered what those brighter than normal stars are in the sky? Well, at the moment, it could be the planets Mercury, Venus or Saturn, for example. See which one you're seeing at Planetfinder. For a bit of fun, here's how to deal with unwanted telesales calls... (video). Alternatively, see if you can spot the difference between a computer geek and a serial killer. I got 8/10. Ain't no-one going to serialize me! ;-)

Hotmail Problems

I have discovered that for the last few days, none of my e-mails are reaching any hotmail.com addresses (and I have tried a few). Something is wrong, but e-mail to elsewhere seems to be OK. I will reply if and when the problem is fixed. Although I can receive e-mail from hotmail addresses, if you want a reply, e-mail me from a non-hotmail address. Thanks.

Meanwhile, how about some links? Does biblical law apply today? If so, why can't I own a Canadian? Next: how annoying is it when someone answers their phone during a meeting? Darth Vader has the solution (video). Now I know you regret not paying attention in physics classes at school, but here's your chance to catch up: flash animations of a large number of physics experiments for your entertainment and edification. I don't need to watch them 'cos I already have a physics degree, but you should. ;-) Finally, something to try when you're locked out of your car (video).

New Look Blog

I felt like a change, so, since I like blue, I now have a blue blog. I have also got up to 42% of my projected 60,000 words in the Katherine of Alexandria book, and have added a couple of links to the new 'Links' bar to the right... Specifically, Calorie Connect, which gives you the calories in various food items on request with a simple but nifty form (with a few curious omissions, such as toast), and Diego Goldberg's Arrow of Time page - a look at his family down through the years: what a good idea. I've no idea who these people are, but it almost makes me want to find out...

Links of the day

...not that I have links here every day, but I plan to do so fairly often.

Whilst searching for historical info relating to the Katherine of Alexandria book I am busy writing, I found Eye Witness to History - a site that concentrates on reports from people who were actually present at historical events as they happened, so you get a personal view. This is much more engaging than a more dry and scholarly approach.

I take a few photographs myself from time-to-time, so I was interested to see the Young Gallery. Unfortunately, the pictures are mostly rather 'arty-farty' for my taste - you know the kind of thing: if it is in black-and-white and shows some silky-looking skin, or if it shows some abstract colour, somehow that makes it 'art'. I don't buy it: it is too intellectual for me. Surely 'art' is supposed to generate some reaction other than boredom? There doesn't seem to be anything new in that sort of stuff: it has been done over and over again for a good century now. There are some nice time-exposures of cities in one gallery though, and some nice wildlife pictures too. You might also be interested in Richard Gere's (black & white) photos taken in Mongolia.

Over 41%

Hmm... getting plenty of writing done. Good! More than 1% of my total done today, anyway - can't be bad!

I had kind of hoped to do more, but I got tired - in fact I got downright sleepy, and a "few minutes" of rest turned into a few hours. Ho hum. Still, if I need the rest, then it is best that I take it.

Later on I did a bit of web surfing. I've not been exercising enough lately - it has been slipping gradually for a long time, so I'm back to working on my motivation and thinking, and this time, ways of integrating the exercise into my normal daily routine: I think a "workout" is just rather dull, basically. I have tried a bit of self-hypnosis for it as well, with a free session from mindmedia.com, - Find Your Inner Athlete. There are also free sessions from the author of that session at mindchanginghypnosis.com. Hypnosis? Yes, and I know people have this impression that it is something weird and dangerous, but, basically, it isn't. It is simply a way of learning something more quickly than you might otherwise. Think of it as the same sort of thing as a guided visualization: it is not much different from using your imagination, basically, while your verbal mind is resting (ideally). Anyway, since trying the session a couple of weeks ago, I have indeed been doing a little more exercise - not full-on major sessions, but nevertheless, there has been some improvement.

I have also looked at a couple of web sites that talk about the thinking you need to get in place - similar to my own diet and exercise page actually! But it is good to see other people's way of putting it too - and I obviously need a bit of extra input from somewhere. The Hussman Fitness site was very interesting and talks about the mindset, and has a good section on what a fitness/weight-loss programme needs to involve (rather a lot of exercise - Hmm...).

The Secret Law of Attraction

Yes, it's get-rich-quick time again. I have been looking at the so-called "Secret Law of Attraction" as pushed on the Internet in books, programmes and videos, and thinking to myself... Hmm... it is a sales pitch. Here is an example (video).

You see, on the one hand, the authors have a point - the idea of it is true as far as it goes, I believe: that you attract to you what you think about, so think rich, think happy, etc., and you will become rich, happy, etc. But my problem with it is that they are mystifying the subject rather than clarifying it, in my opinion, to get you to purchase products from them - that is, to attract money from you to them.

I think it can be explained more clearly and will write a little about it today. But first... a word of warning. I am not rich yet. At least, not in Western terms. OK, I have a roof over my head, a nice bed, food in the 'fridge, clothes in the cupboard, and so on, so that makes me one of the richest 20% or so of the people in the world. But as a Westerner, seeing all those TV programmes and movies showing much better lifestyles than mine in material terms, I do not feel materially rich yet. Besides, I still have plenty of debts to pay off. If I measure my net worth the way accountants do, it is negative - so actually a person starving in the Third World somewhere with a net worth of about one penny is technically better off than me, financially - but that just shows what can be done with statistics! :-)

Anyway, in short, I am not rich in my terms: no country mansion, lots of travel, life of leisure, etc. So, who am I to suggest the so-called Secret Law of Attraction could be explained better if I haven't made it work for myself yet?

Well, I think I am making it work, but it is something that is taking time. The "Secret" is plain and simple. Implementing it is hard. It is hard because you have to work on yourself. But first, a little about this mystification of the idea that I mentioned earlier.

In a way, the problem is with the name. Firstly, it is no secret. These ideas have been around for literally centuries. There have always been successful people who have figured it out for themselves, or who have had fortunate upbringings, or who simply, naturally, think the right way, and who have the energy and courage to take action to get things done. If you want a non-sales version of the secret, try getting a book on Cognitive Behavioural Therapy from your local bookshop (for example, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy For Dummies is very good).

Secondly, by using a passive word like "attraction" these authors are making it look like you just have to sit there and riches will fall in your lap. This is a mouth-watering proposition to the get-rich-quickers like me who, in reality, don't really want to actually do anything much to make their fortunes. These hucksters make it look like they can explain how you can become some kind of natural magnet for wealth (or whatever it is you are after). But they don't explain it, as far as I can tell, anyway. They talk all around it, make it sound good, then sell you product after product (because the previous one hasn't worked yet, you buy another, then another - like diet plans: it is the same marketing idea to sell you plan after plan, tip after tip - this one really works! Except it doesn't because you have to do something).

All right. Let's get to the point. What is the "Secret"? It is this: the way you think about things, about life in general, affects how life turns out for you. There is nothing mysterious in this. If you think miserable thoughts, if you feel inferior, if you are afraid to put yourself out there and meet people, then how are you going to get anything much done? How can you make your life better when you cut yourself off from your own enthusiasm and energy (by thinking badly of yourself) and from other people who could help you? If someone speaks to you, maybe they say, "Hi, that's a nice pair of shoes!" you could take that as a compliment or as an implied insult. It is up to you. What they actually mean matters much less than what you think of it. So, the point is, getting your thinking in order is the difficult part. Your inner thoughts can very easily sabotage your plans in so many ways and at the same time you can be completely unaware that it is happening. Get a Cognitive Behavoural Therapy book and see how to sort your thinking out. Take control of your own verbal mind (you could also look at my enlightenment page for much more on this general idea and a selection of books that could help you). Only by sorting out your own thinking can you get anywhere. To see how not to think about life, well, just watch East Enders or any other soap opera. They are full of characters ruining their lives through bad thinking skills: people driven by greed, fear, and the convenience of the moment.

Then, having got your thinking straight... you need to do what Tony Robbins always advises: take action. Yes, you have to get out of your comfort zone and do something. You have to meet people. You have to start a business or whatever. You have to find something you like to do and do it. You also have to be realistic and start from where you are: little baby steps are best because trying to do too much before you are ready can undermine your confidence. But do get things moving, within the limits of how far you are capable at the time. And don't punish yourself for being less than perfect or for being incompetent. That is human nature. What is good is that we can achieve things despite our general uselessness. In fact, that is what is great about us. As the Buddhists say, we are perfect in our imperfection. That is, like a dog or a cat or a child, none of which can do anything particularly useful except be a perfect dog, cat or child respectively, we, as adults are also perfect adult humans. Accept that as applied to yourself, and you have understood Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and you are on your way.

Linking

Well, I haven't done any writing today... it is the weekend and I feel like a bit of a rest. For today, anyway. However, that doesn't mean I have been doing nothing. I have been thinking that maybe I might add more links to my blog... links to things of interest to me, and maybe to you too... After all, I surf the Internet a lot, and I read a lot, so why not do something with all that 'activity' (for want of a better word)?

So... First up... how observant are you? Try watching the colour-changing card trick... (video) - tip: watch it to the end!

Next, I have been thinking about economics and all that lately. Currently I am reading Hernando De Soto's "The Mystery of Capital" in which he reckons he may have hit upon the reason why capitalism works so well in the West and so badly for the other 80% of the world. His answer, in a nutshell, is property rights - people who can't obtain proper legal title to their home can't get loans or investment to start businesses. Plus, of course, bureaucracy in much of the world is ridiculously cumbersome, slow and expensive. He has set up the Institute of Liberty and Democracy to assist governments in implementing the political and legal reforms necessary to get things moving.

Finally for today - I have been thinking about how I might make my fitness regime a little more interesting. But I don't think I'm going to try this: free running or parkour (video).

Brain Enhancement

I am nearly up to 40% of the projected word total in my Katherine of Alexandria book now! It has crept up on me without my noticing. I have noticed, however, a slight change in my method of writing. On those days when my brain is a little less inclined to create new stuff, I instead revise the last section or so that I wrote. Revision is always necessary anyway, so the project moves forwards either way.

Maybe if I went to http://www.smart-kit.com/ more often, my enhanced brain would go even faster! The site has puzzles and potted summaries of interesting research such as that learning to play a musical instrument makes you more intelligent, and being obese makes you less intelligent - according to some studies anyway. It is always worth pointing out, though, I think, that 'studies' are never totally fool-proof. It is necessary always to use common-sense when evaluating the results quoted. Often, the quotes are simply wrong, or the study itself was misconceived or badly executed, or, commonly, involves far too few subjects for the results to be considered reliable. Still, the ideas cannot be simply dismissed either...

Harbin and Blogs

Well, nothing in particular to write about today, really... except whatever I've been thinking about over the last couple of days I suppose. Firstly, I saw some photos of fantastic snow and ice sculptures in china at the Harbin Snow & Ice Festival, taken by R Todd King (the link is to his web site).

Secondly - blogging... I suppose if anybody was actually reading this blog, I might be tempted to think about it more! Darned if I can find it anywhere on the Internet and I know it's here! But anyway, I have been looking at The Cluetrain Manifesto which you can read online for free or purchase in book form from you know where (I'm no longer going to link to books on Amazon since the links always break down before long - you can find it yourself I'm sure). It is about how companies should stop trying to huckster their customers and prospects and start having real life conversations with them - using blogs. It explains why it will work, too, of course. Basically, human beings expect to be spoken with as human beings - not with sterile corporate-speak. Well, it sounds sensible to me. Companies who feel that their staff are too stupid to speak freely for them, I suppose, must think those same staff are too stupid to hold a normal conversation in their non-working lives too... And I imagine they think that their customers are too stupid to notice the plastic tone of authorized statements (which are also one-way communications and which are therefore largely ignored). Think about it. The solution is to allow the staff to blog freely...

OK, OK...

I know I haven't made a blog entry for a while now... but the writing is continuing, albeit slowly. I am up to about 21,500 words now anyway. So that is about 4,000 words in the last month. I would prefer it to be more, but life has to be dealt with too, sometimes (nothing too bad concerning me directly, fortunately).


As well as that, I have been enjoying the early Spring weather and taking photos, some of which can be seen at my Picasaweb Gallery, particularly in the Hampstead Heath and Flora and Fauna galleries. I have also begun attempting to upload photos to some commercial photography web sites to see if I can make a bit of money from my hobby. I might as well get some free money if I can, I suppose!

Katherine of Alexandria

Well, I had been thinking that I haven't been getting much writing done, but in fact, it is progressing at a reasonable pace overall - about 17,500 words done now. Maybe I could have done more by now, but I doubt it. Creativity cannot be forced without becoming mediocre, I think. To do my best, I must a) keep at it; and at the same time, b) not over-do it.

Like much of life, the trick is finding the right balance... the middle way.

Have I done more than I think?

I have done some 16,000 words or so now - in other words, about a quarter of my projected (guessed at) 60,000 word total. However, when I look at the script, it looks more like I'm nearer halfway through the story... or at least a third of the way through. Maybe it will be a novella rather than a novel. Anyway, there could be more room than I thought available for the non-fiction parts (movie trivia, historical notes and so on).

On another subject (slightly), I often listen to music when I am writing, unless I feel that it is distracting me or messing up the mood. According to this article, some scientists think music makes you smarter!

Well, that explains a lot... ;-)

Update

Have I really not written a blog entry since the beginning of the month? It seems like only a week or two. Hmm... well, I suppose it is only two weeks and a few days anyway.

Nevertheless, the writing continues. I have found that I have had more fly swatting to do and less time for writing, but that in fact it has not slowed me down by much. I am managing to do at least one scene a week as before, but in less time. I think that my system of trying to imagine the scenes in my head first - as movie scenes - simplifies the writing process for me. I get to sort out many of the details before I sit at the computer. I can go to a cafe somewhere and stare into space, and imagine my way through the scene.

This is similar to the way computer programs are to be written, some say. You only sit at the computer when you have already planned what you are going to write. If you try to write as you plan, you are likely to end up with chaos, or at least less efficient programs.

Fly Swatting

Sometimes it is just not possible to get on with what you want to do because dealing with life's distractions gets in the way. For example, this week I have done no writing on the book so far because, among other things, I have been figuring out how to approach literary agents. It is important in one sense, but it gets in the way of my current goal of writing too.

I call this kind of thing 'fly swatting.' Survival has to be dealt with, but it is in a sense an unimportant side-issue. What counts is not what we do to survive so much as what we can do that 'adds value' to life: the real business of life. All animals survive for their allotted span if all is reasonably well. Humans have the chance to do a little bit more. That little bit more is what makes a difference in the world.

Sometimes, some of the 'flies' can be more like hornets, but still they need to be swatted or, at worst, endured. And, like buses, they are perfectly capable of coming in threes! C'est la vie!

Thinking about getting an agent again

OK. I have written more, now up to an estimated 19.9%, at just under 12,000 words written. Agents seem to want around 20,000 to look at, but we need to get moving - plus, if I can get an advance from a publisher that would help production of the book considerably. And, agents all claim to be really choosy, going by the web sites I have seen - but then, if most applicants are rubbish, they would claim that, wouldn't they? Here we have a decent product and commercial prospect for them.

I doubt that I can write the book any faster, but I could do with an income... this year (and thereafter)! :-)

Another new scene?

Well, I am up to 11,000 words. The question is, do I need to create another new scene? I don't know. And, having done over 18% of my estimated total, all of a sudden the rest looks daunting! Sigh. At least it is Friday. I can spend the next couple of days considering the next scene. Back to the script, or is there something else that could be said?

17.2% and Counting

Well, even though I haven't written anything for the last few days (I have been planning and... er... procrastinating (a little)), today, the plans having been made, I wrote a whole load and have now done 17.2% of my estimated 60,000 words.

We shall see what tomorrow brings. I still have to complete this planned scene. I am not sure what will follow. The current scene is one that doesn't appear in the current version of the script and I have not decided whether I need to add another, or maybe even more, at this point. Such extras are tougher to plan than the normal ones of course since the script has been worked on for years already, whereas my extra bits are completely new. But in the book I can include extra detail and characterization that there isn't necessarily time for in a movie.

Another Scene Bites The Dust

Well, I didn't procrastinate again... or whatever it was. I wrote another thousand words or so and completed another scene. So it was worth the wait.

The next scene or two, I have decided, are going to be added onto this scene, continuing it for a while longer though. I have not written anything for the last two days since then though. I have been... er, procrastinating I suppose, or 'resting' anyway, and also reading some of the philosophers that Katherine would have known about - Marcus Aurelius and Seneca in particular. Socrates I already know about.

Procrastination?

Well... no writing so far. It is not that I have not felt like writing: instead, it is that I have felt like not writing. Is that the same thing? Normally, not feeling like writing I see as a non-feeling, so I just sit down and write. Today, I positively did not want to write. So, I suppose it is different.

However, maybe it is not so simple. I am aware - or I believe - that sometimes things need to be left alone for a time to allow the subconscious mind to do a bit of long-term processing on the data, separate from the conscious mind. Well, maybe that is it.

However... I notice a feeling too. A slightly daunted feeling. Now that feeling has 'procrastination' written all over it.

You see, I have planned out the next scene, playing the people's actions and the main protagonist's thoughts out in my head like I'm there, but instead of wanting to write it out quickly like last time to see it working, this time there's a feeling of, "let's not bother," or "it seems like so much to do," or something along these lines: I already know it will work. So now the idea is that since I know how it goes, why go to all the effort of writing it? These ideas look to me like my verbal mind playing tricks on me. The old inner demon working against me instead of for me, as per Don Miguel Ruiz's book, The Voice Of Knowledge.

Old habits die hard, don't they? :-)

OK, I will allow it to pass today. But two days in a row would definitely be procrastination, and that is not going to happen. The inner voice will need to find another excuse for tomorrow. I know from experience that that feeling - being rather daunted, tired, not wanting to bother - has been behind much procrastination in the past; but I am more alert to it these days.

The answer? Don't think. Sit down and write.

However, today I will rest. I will procrastinate a little. All things have their place. A little leeway, a little sympathy with myself, a gentle pat on the head and a rest can go further than forcing myself against those impulses too strongly. To push too hard would be to invite a counter-reaction. I must enjoy what I am doing. Force is the opposite of that. So I will give myself a break today.

Planning

I think the reason I was able to write the last scene so quickly was because I had planned it out in my head beforehand.

Normally, I just sit down and begin writing, but I find that it can be slow going because I get stuck at various points where things don't work out so well. But with that scene, I had gone over it many times in my imagination, running the scene many times like a movie and imagining the action and the dialogue, and even the thoughts. In that way, I had ironed out many of the wrinkles before I started - things like, who was to be the main protagonist (whose point of view would it be told from), what things were worth showing and what could be skipped, and so on.

So... I have been doing the same thing with the next scene. I only wrote a few words today. I have spent a lot of time, on and off during the day, imagining the scene and the things that are to be said and done. And whose point of view is to be primary. One point of view does help things to hang together, I think. In terms of the action, much of it stays the same, but the one point of view allows me to explore the thoughts and the character of this individual. As well as describing the action, the scene suddenly becomes a scene about that character. The reader learns more about this person than they would otherwise.

Katherine of Alexandria

Well, I got a fair bit of writing done this week. I am estimating the length of the completed novelization to be around 60,000 words, so I have done about 13% of it so far at 7,800 words (first draft only).

I don't think I will get very far with finding an agent until I have written more. I get the impression they will need around 20,000 words to read and assess before considering me seriously as a client. I guess they are busy people and get a lot of time-wasters contacting them.

I have been thinking about Katherine's philosophy somewhat this week. In a film, it is hard to show, except in short sound-byte style, but in a book it ought to be possible to expand on that considerably. However, at this stage I am not clear about how exactly I am going to do that. Instead, I am just continuing to write. I am not making a plan as such (given that I have the script, after all). But I may need to take a little time out to plan that aspect more carefully.

Revision

Yesterday rather than writing more, I went back over some of what I had already written to see what might need a bit of clarification, and to decide on some names for certain hitherto unnamed characters. Nevertheless it ended up with a couple more hundred words somehow, taking it over the 6000 words mark. I imagine therefore that I may have written some 10% of the novelization by now in that case, as 60,000 words is OK for a novel, just about. My feeling is that working to a script will tend to make the novelization short, since the plot of a movie cannot be too complicated. I am pondering this in the background: how much can I add? How much will characters' thoughts change things? I don't know. For now, I am inclined to just plough ahead, and maybe I will have to do some heavy revision later. Getting something down is, I think, the most important thing for now.

Today, I did no writing or anything, really, except watch all four episodes of Terry Jones' Barbarians, which is relevant to certain parts of the story. A friend read my coffee grounds (like reading tea leaves, but using Greek coffee) and told me I would reach my goals with slow and steady steps, or something along those lines, and that I was admired and trusted by many people and I deserved to be too. So there. ;-)

Forgot to Blog

Well, how about that? I've been forgetting my poor little blog! Anyway, I have done a fair bit of writing, apart from today. Instead, today, I have been trying to plan ahead a bit more. Although I have the movie script as a kind of a 'plan' I don't really want the novelization to be identical with it. There are things that can be written in a book that cannot be shown on a film: that is, thoughts. What are my characters going to be thinking about? How do they think? OK, the actions are mostly predetermined by the script, but the thoughts are not...

Writing Today

I didn't get to do any writing yesterday as I was busy, out and about and all that. So, I did some today instead even though it is the weekend and even though I didn't feel like it. However, 'feeling like it' isn't what writing, or most any other task, is about. It is no use waiting until I am in some sort of 'writing frame of mind' to begin. Writing gets done by my sitting down at the keyboard and writing. The frame of mind is engendered by the habit of writing: it comes second, in other words. Begin, and the frame of mind will follow.

And indeed it did. Enough for me to manage about half a page today, anyway, which is quite good, in my opinion.

It is possible I can extend this 'just do it' kind of habit to other things too. Good habits are useful and worth cultivating as they make it easier to do what you want to do. Bad habits, such as procrastination, prevent you doing what you want to do. Don't think about it. Begin it. Do it.

Not So Many Words Today...

A new scene, so new research... meaning I only wrote about 20 words or so today. :-/ Plus, I am sleepy and lacking energy somewhat, it seems. The weather is blustery so maybe that has something to do with it too. Anyway, I did sit down and work, so why should I complain? The helpful habit is being maintained.

One agent has been contacted, another may be shortly. I have been examining their web sites to see what I think.

Another Good Day

4285 words now... Ready to start the third 'scene' tomorrow. Things are really starting to move in the story now, as well: with the next scene the story will begin to overlap with the movie directly so I will be less inclined to half-worry that I am wasting my time or something.

I had been a bit concerned that I might not get much done, as I started writing rather late in the afternoon, but in the end, I did quite a lot - more than a page, anyway. I think of that as quite a lot. I am just hoping it won't need too much revision when I glance over it tomorrow.

Normally I revise the text as I go along, then look at it again from time-to-time over the next few days as I continue adding more to the end. Finally, I go through the entire work, ideally quite a long time after I have finished my first pass through, so that ideas and preconceptions about it have been at least partially forgotten and I can see it with fresh eyes. I can't, really, but to a limited extent I can if I leave the revision for a while. I probably won't get the time to do that with this work, though, as it is needed rather quickly so I will just have to do a quick pass through as soon as I reach the end, then hand it in to the studio to get their opinions on it.

Then I will make some revisions, I am sure! But hopefully nothing more than minor ones. ;-)

Speed Writing

Well, I got a lot written today! I've had a bit of a headache today, so maybe that helped (dilated blood vessels may allow more oxygen to get to the brain or something - that's my theory anyway). I wrote about a page - some 800 words or so. I am in what I think of as the second scene, out in the jolly old desert. I am on page 6 (single spaced, 12 point). Before it is proofread, I will change it to double-spacing or at least 1.5 spacing, so people can mark it up physically more easily: I don't want them tinkering with the computer files without my supervision, thank you very much. I want the last word on what goes in and what does not. Some bits are kinda subtle... there for the nerds to enjoy, perhaps.

And... I will be needing a publisher. The studio would like me to sort one out. And... I might, therefore, be needing a literary agent, since the book is backed by a studio making a major movie (http://www.katherineofalexandria.com/) and since I don't want to be doing all the negotiating and what-have-you myself.

Anyway, it has to be more professional to have an agent. Alternatively, publishers may see agents as a nuisance, or as needless middle-men - but I doubt it, actually. They perform an important screening function. I have worked in publishing in the past and know roughly how it used to work and in any case have had about 11 non-fiction books published before (all sadly out of print and out of date now), so at least I have some sort of track record, plus plenty of editorial experience. Well, we shall see.

The Main Character

Over the last few days, I have been a bit confused about the current scene. There are lots of factors and influences to cover - it could really be at least two scenes, maybe more. In the end, I have settled for concentrating mainly on Katherine - Ekatherina - she is after all, the main character! Everybody else is basically peripheral. They will therefore go out of the picture and back in again as required, with just a brief explanation of their activities. That will do.

There will be some written from the point of view of her mother though, possibly. It is probably some forbidden practice to switch viewpoints from one character to another within a scene, but I plan to do it anyway. Sometimes, I think it is the right thing to do. Besides, there are certain points in the scene when it can happen quite naturally. I see it as the written equivalent of cutting from one camera to another in a movie. It may require a little bit of mental agility on the part of the reader, though, if I do it too precipitately. But I won't. ;-)

At the moment, as you may surmise, I am writing about Katherine as a child. How did it all begin?

Research Done...

Right! Research done, for the moment, conflicting information rationalized or explained away (but not really resolved), and back to the writing. I did a bit of revision of what I had already written and then added a new paragraph of the next scene.

A paragraph may not seem like much, but really to write anything of this story requires a lot of background information. I was busy checking facts all over the place as I went along (things like, what's the Latin form of this person's name (since I had only seen it in its more modern form)? Where exactly should this scene happen? And so on). At least in the 21st century one can check one's facts on the Internet. Fancy having to go to the library all the time or something! It would seem impossibly arduous. Or slow, anyway.

Shall I write over the weekend? Actually, I might. I was researching more during the week and writing less.

The problem with research...

...is when the facts don't add up! Various features of the story are not matching up with information that I am reading. That doesn't actually mean that the story is wrong necessarily: the materials I am reading may not be correct, after all. Much data about the period some 1700 years ago is in conflict or simply missing. All I can do in the end is to take a view, right or wrong, and write the book on that basis. Obviously I will keep as close as I can to what I think is best, bearing in mind that what I write has also to be reasonably consistent with the line taken in the movie. But, given that so little is known for definite, the label 'fiction' has to apply in some sense. Or, and perhaps this is better, that it is a 'fictionalized account of a true story'. Actually, I quite like that!

Anyway, I come back to the point I made a few days ago that Katherine's message of tolerance and understanding is what counts. The story is a means of explaining it. It is not a means of teaching history and it cannot be, since that history is simply not known. It is more of a 'what if' or 'what might have been' or a 'something like this happened.' The details will be wrong in many places, but still the general idea is correct and the message is certainly worth promoting.

Katherine's Diary

No writing today: instead I have been doing research, as I thought I would, and I have also been going through what we have of Katherine's diary - you can read about it on the movie web site: http://www.katherineofalexandria.com/ in the Synopsis/Discovering Katherine page. Basically the film is based in part on what may be her actual words, from the year 300-odd CE - that's AD to the old-fashioned out there. ;-)

Katherine of Alexandria

Well, I believe I have finished the first 'scene' of the book today: 1700 words or so written (altogether). However, now I have to figure out what comes next. I am not totally sure. I need to research the ancient Bedouin lifestyle a bit more too, before I put finger to keyboard. The next scene will be, partly, from the script of the movie (the web site for the movie is at http://www.katherineofalexandria.com/ ). Hmm... and the Roman army. And the bad guy...

I can see I am going to be doing a lot of reading over the next few days! Mind you, I do a lot of reading much of the time anyway. ;-)

Not Doing

Just because I'm not deliberately sitting down to write doesn't mean I won't... I didn't, in fact, but I could have. I did read though: research always needs doing, but it is not a chore. I read because the whole task is a matter of interest. At least, that is the ideal and in this case it is the reality.

However I probably definitely won't write tomorrow. I reserve Sundays for rest and spirituality, most of the time, and I actively avoid 'work'. I will do things like read self-improvement books, meditate, exercise, laze about, etc.

More Writing Stuff

No writing today... I have had too much other stuff to do. Besides, Celebrity Big Brother was on the TV this evening... Rubbish? Well... yes and no. I like the show because watching it is not a passive exercise, unlike most TV: once you get into it, you have to use your social brain to work out the relationships and who's going to back-stab who, who likes who (and who I like), and so on. And it isn't all fiction, limited by some writer's imagination. Not that the contestants usually have much imagination either, of course...

I am probably not going to write over the weekend either. I don't want the book to become a chore that I must buckle-down and do every time I have a moment. If it is to be the best it can be, I need to enjoy the process: it needs to be fun. I think. No guilt and fretting allowed. This will also speed it up, paradoxically. Human nature is such that if something seems unpleasant, or I make it seem so by worrying about it, then it naturally becomes more difficult to do as my emotions try and get me to avoid whatever it is that is worrying me. The result: procrastination. And, more worry and loss of self-esteem in a vicious spiral. So, I must nip such thinking in the bud, or at least, as soon as I notice it.

This first scene

When I imagined writing this first short scene, which isn't even in the film script, I thought I could type it out in an hour or two. But: oh, no. 1500 words and three days later it is still in progress. OK, so it takes a long time, even with what I like to call a 'first draft' (which is in fact somewhat polished in the process of writing it out).

Why write a scene that isn't in the script of the movie? Well, a book and a film are different media and so tell the story in different ways. In a movie you have to show things through vision and sound. In a book you can write people's thoughts directly. The reader, if they are visually orientated, will make their own movie in imagination as they read.

Anyway, the book is not to be just a slavish copy of the script. It is a separate entity. And it will have non-fiction parts too, I expect. I am treating the novelization of Katherine's story as 'fiction' as even though it is based on what we believe to be a true story, as the real historical truth of her story is heavily obscured by time so it is only possible now to tell a very approximate version of what might have happened. And again, things need to be simplified and streamlined to tell a story otherwise there would be far too many minor characters and the political situation of the world would be far too complex to explain properly, and so on. The important part is the message not the telling of it. I think.

Still Writing

Well, the writing continues... I'm on page 2 of the first draft now: 903 words. Funny how long it takes even when I know approximately what I am going to write. It is the next scene that I have no real idea of yet. Still, I understand that the average writer only manages about 3 lines a day, when deletions are taken into account, so by that measure I suppose I am ahead of schedule.

I've Written A Bit

Well, a bit of the book got written today... I'm planning to get home and, after brewing a cup of tea and checking for any urgent e-mails, just begin. There's no need to mope about thinking about it: delaying tactics are just a waste of time (of course). Better to create a habit of beginning ASAP each day and just get on with it. After a short time, I hope, the habit will drive me onwards and it will become more and more easy to just go along with it.

Getting things done long term can often be assisted by the cultivation of good habits, I think, and by the elimination or variation of bad or unhelpful ones.

Well, that's the plan, anyway. I've written a few paragraphs. Maybe 300 words. And that took three hours.

I'm not saying I won't cross any of it out or anything, but getting it written in the first place is where I would be most likely to come unstuck. The second most likely place would be for me to give up or get distracted by old, unhelpful habits reasserting themselves, part-way through the project as habits are prone to do - but I don't think that will happen as, after all, the studio would like a product!

New Year 2007

New year's resolution? I don't think so. Better to make them up as I go along, I think. Make my resolutions as and when I need them, and when the time is right. And when I'm ready to execute them.

I'm not using my blog enough, am I?

Well, maybe I could be using my blog some more... should anyone be interested enough to read it, that is. Otherwise I would just be writing it for myself! :-(

Well, the property project didn't really work - I approximately broke even but have no capital left to try again (I had none when I started either). Instead I am now helping out at a film studio: we are making a film about Saint Katherine of Alexandria and you can view the trailer at the offical web site, http://www.katherineofalexandria.com/ . I am also to write a book to go along with the film and am thinking of maybe using my blog to talk about that as I write it - you know, the things I think about when writing it, or something. But by the same token, I can't give away aspects of the plot before the film comes out... I imagine.

Meanwhile I've updated to the new blogger version, so maybe it will be a few days before all this begins to work properly anyway (computer stuff never seems to just work: you have to mess about with it for a while first).

Review: The Four Agreements

If you have read any of Carlos Castaneda's books and wondered what the heck he was on about, then maybe Don Miguel Ruiz's "The Four Agreements" is for you. Subtitled "A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom" it covers some of Castaneda's ground, but in plain English. While Castaneda's books are fascinating, he rambles a lot because he was learning at the time he wrote them. Ruiz instead gets right to the point and he clearly understands what he is talking about. In a nutshell, the book is about how to free your mind of negative, self-limiting thoughts and habits, using the ostensibly straightforward method of making four simple agreements with yourself. He says that what he is teaching is Toltec wisdom, that is, native American shamanism (Ruiz claims to be a nagual), but wherever it comes from, it makes a lot of sense to me. Indeed, I was gratified on reading it to discover that I already apply much of what he teaches: maybe I understood more of Castaneda's books than I realized! Of course, I'm not rich yet, but I am much happier than I used to be, most of the time.

The four agreements, in summary, are these:

1. Be impeccable with your word: i.e., be honest with yourself and others and do not talk yourself or other people down;
2. Don't take anything personally: when people 'insult' you or behave selfishly or foist their opinions on you, remember that it is not to do with you, it is to do with them: they have their own issues and viewpoints, which are not your problem. You do not need to worry about what they say or think;
3. Don't make assumptions: before jumping to conclusions about what people mean by what they do or say, ask them. Go to great lengths to avoid any misunderstanding.
   
4. Always do your best: you can avoid much self-criticism when you can reply to yourself, "I did my best," as long as you remember that your best will vary from time-to-time and you are prepared to forgive yourself for your weaknesses.

He also explains some of Casteneda's other terminology, such as the dream of the second attention. But whether you have read Castaneda or not, read this book. It is one of those books that everybody should read and I am quite sure that it can change lives - for the better.

EBay Scams

I have been experimenting with trying to sell one of my flats on EBay, and my car. Does it work? Er... not so far, anyway. What it does do, though, is attract deadbeats and fraudsters. You have to have your wits about you to avoid getting scammed!

For example, I advertised my car, and someone sent me an e-mail from within the EBay system asking me what my reserve price was. Well, being new to this, I couldn't really see anything wrong with telling him, so I did. He immediately bid that price... and the auction seemed to turn into a dead duck right there. My reserve was too high anyway, but nobody else bid after that. Well, he "won" the auction but, naturally enough, disappeared. Perhaps he thought I would be stuck paying EBay's fees, but I complained to them about him and got a free auction instead. Still, now when people ask, I don't tell them.

I have put the car back in. This time, the scams are different, and more sinister. I have been e-mailed by several different people all saying much the same. Here is an example:

Hello ,on behalf of my client i'll like to buy your (1994 FORD ESCORT)for £695.I'll also wish to tell you that i already have shipping agent that will come for the goods.If you're ready for that,then get in touch with me immediately.

Some ask about the condition of the car. Well, the ad describes its condition, so I guess that they are not reading the ad - possibly some robot or minion is scanning the ads for basic details and leaving the rest. Anyway, it is a clue that something is wrong.

Some offer a price for it - a previously advertised price of £695. Hmm...

Well, I followed up one, "milly". Her opening gambit was like this:

Hello,
I'm milly .I am interested in your[1994 FORD ESCORT 1.8TD LX 5dr Estate]and I'll like to know
your last offering price and to see the pics or to know the condition if it will be okay with me.I'll be
making my payment with a certified cashier's cheque .If you do I want you to get in touch with me
immediately for me to proceed with the Payment. As for the shipping I'll contact a shipper agent of
mine who will arranged for the Pick up as soon as the transaction is sealed and get back .I'll be
looking forward to your response.
Thanks and Have a Nice day.
Regards
milly.

Note in both e-mails the dodgy quoting of the car's details straight from the ad: [1994 FORD ESCORT 1.8TD LX 5dr Estate] in the latter one. Obviously pulled out by a robot, which probably also sent the e-mail to me. Anyway, "milly" had a Canadian Yahoo! e-mail address (although the mail headers, on analysis with Sam Spade, suggest the person is in Belgium), said (in garbled English) that her shipper owed her £4400 and would I accept a cheque for that amount and send her the difference? Er... right. On looking up that scam on the Internet, I discovered that what happens is they send you a false or altered cheque (i.e., a genuine one that has been stolen and altered, usually) that will usually pay in to your account successfully, but which on final checking, the bank will eventually discover is false and will reclaim the money - after you have sent £4400-£695 to the fraudster. Incidentally, she also asked for name and address details for me... a possible prelude to identity theft. I didn't tell her.

I had a phone call from one of these scammers today. Well, I assume it was a scammer - he asked about the condition of the car... I told him it was described in the ad (but it was a bit dented and drives well - he could be genuine after all)... and wanted to know the price. I didn't tell him. I said it was in the auction and he could bid for it there. He noted that it had an MOT (must have read the ad, then) and asked if it was taxed. Nope, it isn't. He could be genuine... difficult to tell with this one. If he comes to view it, I suppose I shall have to watch out for fake cheques or something. Or if he wants to test drive it, maybe he will try and separate me from the car for a minute so he can steal it (mind you, it isn't taxed... so no test drive then). Were I to allow a test drive, I would probably need a friend to sit in the car no matter what during the test drive so there are three people, not just me and him. Dunno. Dunno if I should give him my address so he can view it. I should make sure the official documents are not left in the car at this time, anyway - no point letting him steal those too. But I don't think he will call back, somehow. Mind you, he left is mobile number on my phone. Genuine? Hmm...

Whoa... hold the bus! I've just remembered that I am also advertising it in Auto Trader, where the condition isn't described (due to lack of space) and where the price is £695... Argh! Now what? Are they scammers, or not? Well, if they mention "shipping agent" I would reckon they are. The phone guy is probably genuine, though. Still, it doesn't hurt to take precautions. Just got to avoid the false positives - a bit like trying to filter spam! :-)

Why don't I just take cheques from all of these people and see if any really do clear? I could do that. On paying them in you specify that they are "for collection", apparently, which tells the bank not to pay you until it has been fully verified (I think).

Rental What If

Well, tenants have moved in to both of the flats in my converted house now, since it still hasn't sold. If I had known it was going to take this long and had put tenants in in the first place, I would have had an extra GBP12,000 in income so far this year!!!

Pun: two lots of tenants have moved in, so now I have twenty ants. Geddit??? LOL!

The Microeconomics of Minicabbing

Well, I've been trying to earn a living by driving a company minicab (MPV or people carrier) for a while now, but have stopped because it seem to me that it just isn't worth the effort (or, at least, I don't feel that desperate). I was working for a good company that kept me very busy most of the time. Here is how the finances stacked up:

Weekly Costs
Circuit Fees £135
Insurance £70
Car Rental £100 (this may be an underestimate, I never checked it exactly; using one's own car you would have to put maintenance and depreciation costs in here instead)
Insurance Excess £50 (assuming one minor prang every 10 weeks at 1000 miles per week driven)
Diesel £100 (i.e., £20 per day)
Parking £10 (at least, per day (it is necessary to park at airports when collecting customers))
TOTAL WEEKLY COSTS £505

Weekly Income
My minimum target was a gross income of £140 per day, which I didn't always make. Assuming it is the average, though (a good day could be £200, a bad day, £70), weekly income for 5 days is £700.

£700 Less Costs of £505 leaves £195 net income per week... before tax!

And for that, I would be working from 4am to 6pm, that is, 70 hours per week. What rubbish! As I feel that I can take home the same money for an office job working half the hours, I have quit the minicabbing forthwith.

The figures above are slightly distorted as they exclude account work, which pays for the car rental in theory - although in fact I ended up owing the company some of that from my cash takings too. On some of the days where the cash takings were low, that was because I had done a lot of account work. Nevertheless, if account work is excluded (i.e., the cost of the car rental), net takings are still only £295 per week for 70 hours worked (and more, sometimes). Still not worth the effort, except when desperate, I think. And, although I really, really need the money, I also need a life. The industry is structured so that it is only economic if you are prepared to work very long hours, and probably more than 5 days a week too. No thanks.

Being Someone

Actually, this desire to 'be someone' (referred to in my previous entry) is, I think, the common modern manifestation of the good old search for 'meaning' in one's life. Modern corporations try to elicit passionate commitment to their brand values in their employees by providing a community to which their staff can belong, with accessible bosses, help and training programmes, prizes and so on... and of course, low wages, since once commitment is there, money becomes just that little bit less important to the staff (but not to the company's shareholders or upper management). See this article about overwork, or Willing Slaves by Madeleine Bunting, a book about how people are encouraged to devote their lives to the company.

Me, I have experienced this kind of commitment to work in the past: I brainwashed myself into working hard for L'Arome, a multi-level perfume sales organization that was around a few years ago (now defunct) and worked really hard, moving up a couple of levels in the pyramid and more-or-less breaking even overall. Then, I went in to a computer venture with a couple of friends and worked hard for that too; we did all right for a while but the market became rather too difficult for us and we decided to quit before it got too late.

Right now, however, I am... minicabbing. Driving an MPV (Multi-Purpose Vehicle, or 'People Carrier'). Commitment? I don't think so. Where will I get any sense of belonging when I'm stuck in a car all day? The hours are long and the money isn't so great either: if I can bank a couple of hundred pounds after 50-60 hours' work, I'm doing OK, it seems. And for me, money has always been the key to my commitment: I worked hard in the past in the expectation of future financial rewards. I'm still waiting! :-)

The minicabbing feels to me like a sort of maintenance work: it will keep my finances ticking over while I think of something better, or until I can pay off my debts and then invest (there's little point in investing while debts need to be paid). The cab money won't pay the debts; that's why I'm selling my house; but it will cover day-to-day expenses. And, I guess, that is the position that most people are in who are doing basic jobs for what is really not much money. They and I need to budget carefully, so that income always exceeds expenditure, no matter how low the income actually is.

And wouldn't it be good one day if, finally, I could think of some job that I would actually like to do, and that would gain my commitment naturally and effortlessly, and which would in fact pay well?

It seems to me, thinking about this self-discipline thing some more, that although I am inclined to aspire to a life of leisure, in fact, such a life would not be good for me. What would be good for me would probably be a life of some leisure, with other time devoted to some big projects of some sort.

Otherwise, where would self-esteem come from, if all I'm doing with my life is loafing about? I may aspire to leisure, but I would also like to do something: to be someone as it is commonly known. This is the desire for fame that many people seem to have: the desire not to be an unknown nobody, but to be someone who makes a difference.

So effort is built-in to the human psyche.

Darn.

Socrates (or Xenophon, anyway) also talks about the property business in Xenophon's Estate Manager section 20 (that is, section XX). His character, Isomachus, describes to Socrates how it is advantageous to buy up undeveloped or unworked land, develop it, then sell it at a profit. That was written around 380BC. Property has obviously been good business for a long time!

Of course, it also requires luck, good market conditions, and, above all, application (i.e., effort or self-discipline: a common Socratic theme).

I think one problem I have is that I keep looking for work I can do that will allow me to remain lazy. Hmm... Might have to abandon that particular project. Until I'm rich.

I've been reading The Conversations of Socrates by Xenophon. In the Memoirs, Book 2 Chapter 1, he relates a story by Prodicus about how Heracles was deciding how to live his life: good or evil, basically, and Heracles met two women, Vice and Virtue. Vice described to him a life of ease and idleness, and Virtue a life of sweat and effort, but rewarded with great esteem and glory in the long run. You can read it here. The story starts about halfway through but the whole section is pertinent. This is similar to the Christian notion that the devil's path is wide and easy, but the road to heaven is steep and narrow (Matthew 7:13-14), or as I like to think of it, the devil's path is "Buy now, pay later," whilst God's path, i.e., the good path, is "Pay now, receive later" meaning make your effort or investment early to get the best results later. I mention all this because it is pertinent to the way I have lived my life so far. For various reasons I have been putting in not quite enough effort in most things for most of my life, and have as a result been gradually sliding down that slippery slope to eventual ruin; or so it seems to me. I haven't actually got there yet, as my eyes have been open to it for a long, long, long time, but on the other hand I haven't actually succeeded in solving the problem of how to act differently either.

Until recently.

I think! The key seems to me to be in my Diet & Fitness Page. For nearly two years now I have been gradually increasing my self-discipline and losing weight and exercising regularly. I have found myself a viable job with a minicab company that actually has enough work (at least in the Summer peak season - the rest of the time remains to be seen) and am further exercising my self-discipline by getting up at 3am to start by 4 each day, 5 days a week or more and indeed by going to bed by 7pm to maintain my fitness and alertness, and working around 12 hours each day (including meal breaks). My property is being sold and that should pay off the (stupendous) debts and leave me with some funds to invest (if it actually sells at some point... what an agonizingly slow process it is!). All this is raising my self-esteem, confidence, ability and indeed energy levels all round.

And all because I'm a type 2 diabetic and felt the need to do something about it: the slippery slope suddenly began to look rather too steep for comfort. Let that disease go too far and the physical consequences are truly terrible. So: a blessing in disguise? I guess so.

Well, there is an offer in progress for the downstairs flat, and a more shaky-seeming offer for the upstairs flat, so I could be in business soon!

Unfortunately, I am running out of money as of right now. Payments are teetering on the edge of bouncing. My minicabbing company doesn't pay enough, so I am going to seek out another company. If they pay a lot more (double at least), I may be able to stay ahead of the bills. Gotta start earning that money within days, too.

Going away this weekend, though.

This house not selling is quite a problem, really. I will probably have to remortgage it as two flats to ensure it values appropriately, then pay some stuff off with the proceeds, then finally sell it... Although I suppose that it *could* would out that I could end up being able to keep it... seems unlikely at the moment though.

Well, the property auction was today... but the house didn't sell. It reached £290,000 - not enough, but not far off either. I am hoping the auctioneers can stitch up a deal over the next couple of days. Nothing much else sold at the auction either: out of 18 lots, 4 sold prior, 2 sold at the auction, and the rest didn't make their reserves. I'm thinking the market is kind of toppy. So, I have got back to all the Estate agents and given them a new price: £315,000. They should be able to move it for that, or near offer. I think.

The car is out of order so I am not earning at present either. It broke down near the Baker Street end of Park Road, in the middle of the road. It began surging, then lost power and the engine just petered out. It wouldn't start again. A couple of policemen helped push it to the side of the road and the RAC attempted to fix it on the assumption that the throttle electrics were shorting out, but that didn't work. He suspected a problem with the fuel supply, so towed it to my local garage, MOT's Direct. I have asked them to do a full service on it. Might as well get it done while my loan lasts...

Well, the local estate agents weren't up to much, so the house is up for auction on Wednesday (5th May). I hope it sells then I can release all that dosh and pay some stuff off.

I got the loan, £25,000 from my bank, and I am working as a minicab driver in London to try and get some income. Not that cabbing is working very effectively so far, but I am hoping that as I gradually learn various "routes" around London cashflow will improve as I can do each job more readily. Business has been better the last couple of days, but maybe that was just because it was raining and people couldn't be bothered to hang around for the bus. The car is going OK, although I have scraped it a few times (not with passengers in it, and not against other cars). I will get used to driving it eventually, I suppose. Prior to this I have only driven on odd occasions; this is the first time I've been driving in earnest (that's the name of the car - hehe). I must be doing around 75-100 miles per day. I'm not working the cabbie's usual 12-hour shift: that seems too tiring and I would rather stop when my concentration begins to flag - after about 7-9 hours, typically.

So... what happened to my building blog? Couldn't be bothered, that's what! :-) Still, the house is nearly finished - a few days' work at most now. Planning permission is still pending, since the architect was so slow and incommunicative, in my opininion. Plus, the planning officer is kinda fussy... but presumably that's his job. The house is up for sale at £340,000, with a 3-bed at £175,000 plus a 2-bed at £165,000. Looks nice, too. Credit cards are going over £60,000 now, though. No more credit left. :-( I am looking for work as a cabbie to fend off the impending financial crash, and I might apply for a loan to push things a bit further, too. Got to sort all that out within about three weeks, I should think, or else... my credit rating will begin to suffer. Mind you, I could use my bank overdraft facility for a further month. But the main thing is to sell the house! Can't figure out what the profit might be. It is too difficult, but approximately, anything over £300,000 could well be net profit. We shall see... Soon, I hope.

Well, they knocked out a wall and a chimney breast, on Saturday, and today, Monday, there seems to be lots of hammering going on. I'll check out what it is all about this evening. I'm staying in the downstairs flat while they do the upstairs one, then I'll move upstairs and they can do the downstairs flat.

That's the plan so far, anyway. Meanwhile I can stress out about £40,000 or more being spent on my credit cards to pay for all this: more like £50,000, most probably, which may mean me applying for another card or two to cover it... Hope the property market doesn't crash just yet: it is looking decidedly toppy, what with interest rates bottomed out and most likely about to rise and the authorities finally discovering that people have been abusing self-certified mortages by lying about their incomes, thus over inflating property prices...

Where's my last entry? Anyway, plan E: 2 bed upstairs, 2 bed downstairs. Should be safe enough to pass, so the builders started yesterday. The architect e-mailed me a copy of the plan so I can print it out in miniature - he's blaming the postal strike for not snail-mailing the plans to me. The council has received them too, he says, although they haven't acknowledged that yet. I need to talk to them about where the new front door for the upstairs flat is going to go, as I would prefer it to go at the left of the front of the house and not next to the existing front door in the centre of the front of the house, as if it is at the centre, the downstairs living room loses a window as a corridor has to go in front of it: naff, if you ask me. However, the council planners don't like changing the frontage of houses, so I will have to ask them.

Meanwhile, the builders are in, upstairs, knocking out the kitchen/bathroom interface wall so it can be moved a bit, and generally doing initial demolition.

Hope those plans pass...

The architect came over a couple of days ago to look at my sketches of how I think plan... er, D should look (plan D: 3/4 bed downstairs, 2/3 bed upstairs flats). After a few 'refinements' he reckons it should pass. Why did he allow me to submit plan A? I don't know. Experts: if you don't know enough, you can't use them. Must remember that...

Planning permission!!! Er... has been refused. Looks like plan A is up the spout (2 x 2-bed and 1x1-bed flat). The council think that it is an over-intensive use of the site and it will lack open space amenities (garden space, I suppose that means). Actually, I rather agree... The architect says that the proposed flats do in fact conform to general standards though and that the council is incorrect in saying this. They also objected on the grounds of stacking - that is, bedrooms should be above bedrooms, living rooms above living rooms, and kitchens and bathrooms above the same, to avoid disturbance to residents of the adjacent flats. That puzzles me a bit, as the plans allowed for this: did the architect send an old version of the plan to the council?

Anyway, notwithstanding that, I must consider plans B and C. B: 2x3-bed flats. I don't see how that can be done, but I will ask the architect to see if it is feasible. Plan C: 2x2-bed flats: certainly feasible although the staircase is in a truly chronic location for this - well away from the front entrance of the house and past two downstairs rooms at least. How can the flats be separated? (It worked with 3 flats as the entrance could be moved to between the two downstairs flats.) In my area, a typical price for a 2-bed flat is £145,000, although they range from £130,000 to £162,000. So my expected return should be £290,000. My mortgage is £205,000. Costs, say £60,000, pessimistically. Profit, £30,000. Not much, but I suppose I could buy another place with it. Just about. And use the credit cards again to do it up... if the market stays OK.

Well, fine. I'm not rich yet, but there is at least a route through the maze, even with plan C.

Plan C with bad prices: final value £260,000, costs £265,000, would still have £55,000 available on credit cards to do something... maybe.

And the builders want to start in earnest on Monday. That doesn't look like it is on... and the architect is out of the office this morning so I will have to call him this afternoon.

Maybe I should just buy gold or something?

Or plan D: do it anyway, but just to rent out the flats for 4 years until planning permission becomes irrelevant. My rough calculations show that this may not be particularly viable, though, but I will have to check them again.

Well, to my surprise a planning officer turned up on Monday morning - no appointment or anything. He came in, measured the back garden, then left. Didn't want to see around the house at all. Hmm... I guess they are concerned to make sure that there will be enough parking space, and to see if it is practical for two of the flats to have their entrance via that garden. I think that there is space for two cars and there should be no problem with entrances. Should be OK. Maybe they will visit again to look at something else: it gives them a chance to get out of the office for a bit, especially if they don't make an appointment. Who knows? I might not be in and they will have to come out again.

A couple of the builders came in on Tuesday, from 10:30am to about 12ish. They had intended to swap two of the upstairs windows around so a small window could go in the proposed kitchen, and a large window in a proposed second bedroom, but they felt that the big window was too big and the small window was too small. OK, they are right. I shall have to buy two medium size windows. The builders finished ripping out the upstairs bathroom instead. My project manager came around yesterday to measure up, and to decide if a structural engineer is needed before we move a couple of walls about. We decided we should get a structural engineer in.

I still have one tenant upstairs, looking for a flat elsewhere, but he is going to have to move, at least to a room downstairs, as the builders want to rip out the chimney breast in his room. I must remember to tell him...

Well, findaflame.com can wait: I am now concentrating my get rich quick efforts in another direction: property (real estate) development. I am attempting to convert my house into three flats. It depends in part on my being able to get planning permission from the local authority, as planning permission is necessary should I wish to sell the house, and even raise further mortgages on the new flats. If I just want to rent them out, it isn't necessary, but I don't want to reduce my options at this stage, and anyway, I don't think renting them out would be profitable as I would have to live in one of the flats. Three flats would probably cover my expenses, but two probably won't.

So, what is the plan, and how does it stack up financially? That is, how exactly do I plan to get rich like this? I bought the house four or five years ago, with the idea of renting out 5 rooms and living in the rest. I have done that, and it has been just about profitable overall, but the tenants haven't kept the place nice and it needs refurbishing at the very least. I bought it using a credit card since although I had a good job, I had no savings. I have never been able to build up any capital, but my credit has usually been good - not always, but usually. :-) In this country, if your credit goes bad, it stays bad for six years, so you can recover from problems eventually. Anyway, I paid £6,000 deposit, but secured a 'cashback' mortgage, so once I moved in, I got £5,000 back, so my net capital input was £1,000. The house was worth about £130,000 but because the market was slumping a bit and the developer-owner wanted out, I got it for £106,000. It has 4 rooms and a bathroom upstairs, an L-shaped living-room and another room downstairs, a downstairs shower room and a large kitchen-diner, also downstairs. In fact, it behaves like Dr Who's Tardis: it looks small on the outside, but just seems to go on and on inside.

Due to my usual money-handling incompetence (or whatever it is), I have remortgaged it twice to extract cash to cover my debts, and currently have a mortgage of £205,000. I have recently had it valued at £240,000 and was going to sell it for £230,000, but have decided against that as, basically, there was hardly any profit in it: I would not get enough money out to be able to do anything other than get a job. And I don't want a job. I have pretty much had enough of the rat race, thank you very much. Instead, the plan is to try and add value to the property, and then (probably) sell it.

Upstairs will be converted into a two-bedroom self-contained flat. Downstairs will be converted into a two-bedroom self-contained flat as well, and (using the kitchen-diner) an additional one-bedroom flat. In this area, at current prices, the new value should stack up to a minimum of £130,000 for the upstairs flat, £140,000 for the downstairs 2-bed flat, and £95,000 for the studio: at least £365,000 in total, and possibly more, if I can get good valuations and prices don't collapse too quickly (the market is weak once more). I plan to get good valuations by making sure the work done is top quality, with no cheapskate corner-cutting anywhere. I plan to pay for it... with credit cards. I have been using them for years, paying them off, getting credit limit increases every time I do, and asking for increases every now and then just for luck and now I have a truly ridiculous total credit limit of £60,000 or more, split over half a dozen cards or so. With interest-free balance-transfer offers and some careful juggling, I can borrow much of this money at quite low interest. I only need it for a few months, anyway (I hope). The conversion should cost around £50,000 to £60,000, although I also have my living expenses to add to that: it is going to be close, but I will manage somehow (one of my favourite quotes is from Dickens, "I have every confidence that something will turn up.").

Planning permission is the most likely obstacle to this plan, as they might not allow it, although according to my architect it should be allowable. Plan B is for two three-bedroom flats, but I don't know quite how that would be possible given the building's layout. Values would be about £155,000 + £175,000 = £340,000, if it is possible at all. Plan C is Plan A but renting the flats out and the heck with selling it, but as I mentioned above, that is a dodgy option, profit-wise (after four years I would be able to sell it even without planning permission as I can then claim 'established use' but with the market weak I might not want to wait four years before bailing out and converting a declining asset into cash). Most likely, Plan A with some minor changes will be allowed, but the planning authority have been on strike and haven't even seen the place yet. The strike is now over, but a month has been wasted - another mortgage payment and more down the drain. Plus, all but one of the tenants has moved out now, so there is no more free money from them to supplement my non-income.

The builders arrived for the first time last Monday, 25th August and ripped out skirting boards in three of the rooms upstairs, and removed furniture to a room downstairs. I was unable to sell much of this old stuff with classified ads, so in the end I sold the lot to a second-hand shop for £50. It is all going to have to be replaced anyway, but it seems a shame to me that three perfectly good beds, wardrobes, etc., etc., become practically worthless in such a short time. But then again, you can buy new beds for £50-£100 each so why furnish a new place with old stuff? First impressions will count for a lot when the valuer comes to call. The builders also began work in the upstairs bathroom: it needs ripping out and re-doing from scratch as it had got extremely manky (young male tenants live like bears).

A plumber was shown around the other day, to see what he had to do to provide new heating and water supplies for the new flats, and the builders are back today, ripping out more stuff upstairs.

Strategy: builders? Why not DIY? Well, I am lazy and know nothing about DIY anyway. Best left to the experts, I think. They are quick and professional (they come highly recommended and I have seen their work, which is good). I am using a friend of mine with experience of all this as a project manager at £2,000 per flat. Delegation. That's the strategy. Maybe I will learn something in the process too, but I can't count on that if I'm not supervising it myself, can I? What about the next project? Well, I will deal with that when I have to. Something will turn up...