Head Rambles

Grandad January 25th, 2007

There has been a lot of talk recently over “Gayness”, or whatever you want to call it.

There was the news that one of the Anglican Churches in America has split down the middle, because they have a gay bishop.

And of course, Matt Lucas got married.

Now the Catholic Church and the Anglicans [or someone] are arguing over the subject.

Now I gave nothing against homosexuals [and I mean that in all senses of the word]. I am not homophobic. I don’t care what people get up to in the privacy of their own homes provided it is consensual and doesn’t involve children.

It doesn’t bother me if I see two men, or two women walking hand in hand down the road.

No. What REALLY gets up my nose is the word “Gay”. They have hi-jacked an innocent word meaning happy, or carefree and have turned it into something else.

I’m sure there are a lot of happy, carefree homosexuals out there. Fair play to them. But there are a lot of happy, carefree heterosexuals out there too. But they can’t call themselves gay any more.

What about miserable homosexuals? We all have bad days. What do they call themselves when they are feeling down? “I’m gay and morbidly depressed”??

A lot of older literature uses the word ‘gay’ in its original meaning. But you can’t use that literature in the classroom any more without ripples of sniggering and smirking.

Go find another word. No. On second thoughts, invent a new word. We can have world-wide competitions to find an appropriate one.

When I was a lad, life was a lot simpler.

There were three genders – male, female and Quentin Crisp.

You could tell the females from the males, because they had bumps on their chests, long hair and they wore skirts.

Men chased women and women ran from men.

I’m sure there were homosexuals around then too. In fact I know there were. But they didn’t have parades and get married on the front pages of newspapers.

Now it’s all confusing.

We have males, females, shemales, transvestites, transexuals, homosexuals, heterosexuals, and God knows what else.

I wish life was simple again.

I’m gay myself. But I’m not homosexual. I’m just happy.

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Grandad January 25th, 2007

Well, my web design company seems to be going from strength to strength.

I have already had a lot of interest, and one firm contract.

Now Blacknight seem to be showing an interest. They want to buy me a domain name. That seems fair enough. I’ll need one.

I’m in with the Big Boys! And I’m only in business two days.

To Michele: Thank you for your interest. I would like a domain name please. If you could let me know how much it is I will post a cheque. You can post me back the domain name and I’ll stick it on my laptop, so people know where to find my site.

It’s only fair that I do business with Michele, because I know Ron who works for Dick who knows Michele. Conversely, I know the prospective-mother-in-law of one of his employees. So either way, that should be a good enough reference.

In the meantime, I have been pursuing my quest to learn Java or Javascript or whatever it’s called. I pestered Ron all yesterday to give me a lesson. He was a bit frazzled because he was trying to write out a tender for a big contract [I'll be doing that a lot soon..!!].

In the end I think he got a bit annoyed, but he gave me some code to try.

I put it on a page but it does strange things.

Maybe there is someone out there who can help me. Ron says that web designers are great for helping each other out. Maybe there is a forum I could join?

• Web design
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Grandad January 24th, 2007

It has occurred to me that there is a game I used to play in my youth that was perfectly legal.

It is now illegal.

This game was called Battleships.

To play it, all you needed was a pub with a gents that had a trough urinal, and a few mates.

The idea was to get a skin full of pints, which of course we found very difficult and not enjoyable.

?

You then go into the gents, two or more at a time. If the women can go in pairs, why not the lads?

You then flick a few cigarette ends into the trough and let rip.

Points were awarded for various achievements.

You would get one point for separating the cigarette from the butt, and an extra point if you could split the cigarette so that the tobacco flowed out. Extra points could be gained for the distance the carnage travelled towards the plughole and of naturally there was a bonus if you could sink it altogether.

Of course the pubs tried to thwart us by putting up signs – “Please do not throw cigarette butts in the urinals”, to which we would add [in indelible pen] “OK. If you stop pissing in our ashtrays”.

The joys of youth!

They’ve finally stopped it by banning smoking in pubs. Maybe Battleships is why they brought in the law? Spoilsports.

My theory is that it was nothing to do with health. It was pressure from the Plumber’s Union of Ireland and the National U-bend Unblocker’s Association

I am thinking of bringing a constitutional challenge to the smoking law. The youth of this country are being prevented from playing a harmless game, which has been handed down from generation to generation.

This law contravenes the traditional rights of the individual. It is interfering in our heritage. Our historical culture is being destroyed.

It can’t be right?

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Grandad January 23rd, 2007

This world is a lot smaller than I thought.

Now you all know about my pals Ron and Dick who are into the Internet thing.

Now they have some dealings with a bloke called Michele [Yes. A bloke. Apparently he's touchy about that]. He has a blog.

Now Michele employs George who doesn’t have a blog that I know about, but they all work in a place called Blacknight.

Now, George is engaged to Elly who has a blog.

We all have mothers [except George W. He came out from under a stone somewhere in Texas].

Now Elly, of course has a mother called Grannymar who has a blog.

And Grannymar fancies me because she wants me to wear makeup.

And so the circle is complete.

Me – Dick – Michele – George – Elly – Grannymar – back to me again.

And it is all coincidence. I never asked Elly to get engaged to George [and the very best of luck to them, by the way] and have met neither. I have never met Grannymar except through my blogging. I think I saw Michele once, but that might have been someone else.

I think that is weird.

A note here to Grannymar: I’m very sorry, but I’m spoken for. Herself might complain. But there again………. if you are a blogger, you are unlikely to complain about the amount of time I spend at the keyboard, so maybe I can arrange something?

• Internet , Rambles
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Grandad January 23rd, 2007

I have mentioned Ron and Dick quite a few times in the past.

Ron works for Dick who owns his own web design company.

They make pots of money, and I decided it was time I got in on the action.

I annoyed them for a while and eventually they gave me a loan of a book on web design. It’s easy. I have already made my own web page. It needs a little tidying here and there and for some reason the photograph I put up doesn’t work, but it’s a start. You can see it HERE.

So what do you think? Not bad!

If I had known it was this easy, I would have started a long time ago.

I asked Dick what I should learn about next, and he suggested Javascript, so I rang the library but they don’t have any books on Java. Only Thailand. So maybe I’ll teach myself all about databases tomorrow. I’m not sure what they are but Dick says they are handy.

I am going to join up on a few fora and throw modern buzzwords around like HTML and FONT and TAG, just to show them I know all about it. And I am goint to learn Microsoft Paint so that I can put lovely graphics in. Unfortunately I have to learn to spell colour as ‘color’ [bloody Americans], but I’ll get there.

I will need my own domain name. I’ve decided to call my new company Silver Hair Internet Technology, but silverhairinternettechnology.ie is a little long to type in, so Ron suggested I use just the initials, which seems a good idea.

Now I have to decide how much to charge for a website. I have heard that companies pay hundreds of thousands for websites, but I will start small, so I don’t think I’ll charge more than €10,000 for my first few sites, until I really get the hang of it.

So I want you all to look at my page and tell me what you think. Would you pay me €10,000 for a really good site? I think it would be good value compared to what some companies are charging.

Give me a call. My books are open for appointments.

• Web design
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