For some strange reason, a couple of you suggested that I should.

Frankly, I can’t really see the point.  Instead of reading me droning on, you hear me droning on.

I suppose there are advantages to podcasts, in that you can listen to what I have to say while you are driving, or making mad passionate love with your significant other [or even your insignificant other?].  But you can do that anyway, because all my posts are converted to audio anyway by those people in Odiogo.

On the other hand, I would have to moderate my language somewhat, as you could be listening in the office, or with the children playing in the background.  Visual stuff is grand, because you can always pretend it is something else, but when the sound blares out of the speakers, it tends to travel and everyone around gets the benefit of my fucking and blinding.

I did get as far as putting the microphone on and switching on the recorder.  I said my cheerful “Hello all.  This is a podcast” and then I went blank.  What the hell was I supposed to say?  Feck all has happened between yesterday and today, apart from raiding a couple of tobacconists across the County Border and having a quiet game of poker with Sandy last night.  [Never play poker with a dog – you can’t tell what they are thinking.]

So there I was, staring at the recording program as it quietly recorded nothing, except me breathing.  I suppose I could do a half hour of heavy breathing, but my probation officer has warned me about that, so I can’t.

Anyway, when I do a solo spot into a microphone, I tend to drone.  I sound like a footballer being interviewed, or at worst, I can nearly sound as bad as Harney [the Queen of the Depressed Drones]. 

The microphone has been packed away again.

If you want me to podcast, you are going to have to do some of the work.  You are going to have to suggest what I do, or what I talk about. 

If I could find some way of recording Skype, I could have a phone in.  That would be interesting?  But you’d all have to be around at a prearranged time, and I know from experience trying to do a podcast with America and Australia that that can be a pain in the hole, as everyone is in a different time zone.

So it’s back to the old keyboard…….

For those of you who don’t know who John Waters is, he is the most intelligent man in Ireland and he writes for the Irish Times [when he's not writing songs], and he says that without exception, all blogs and bloggers are stupid.

I think it is only fair to come to his defence.

Twenty has a podcast of John. Darragh O’Brien had a fairly balanced article on the subject, while Damien goes head first on the offensive.

Now I can speak with absolute authority on John Waters, because I don’t know him.  I have never met the chap.

I am likely to get to know him even better, because everyone I come across, I ask them if they are John Waters.  If they say they are, then I ask them to leave my presence immediately.  I want to keep my intimate knowledge of John intact.

You see, I am stupid.  I am proud of the fact.  I would hate to be tainted by one so exalted and erudite as John.  I mean to say – he can write.  He can string three sentences together perfectly. I can say that with absolute authority too, because I have never read one of his articles, that I know of.

Of course he has condemned Jim Carroll, Shane Hegarty, Conor Pope, Sarah Carey and Stephen Fry as all being stupid too.  This is a bit harsh, but John is an extreme intellectual, so he must know what he is talking about.

There are some things that I don’t know about John, however.  I don’t know if he can write a song, because I had the misfortune to see the Eurovision Song Contest.  But then, he did win by coming last.

I am a bit confused, I admit, about his interest in pornography.  I work on the Interweb most days, and I see a lot of web sites.  I must have visited many thousands over the years.  I rarely come across pornography though.  Very rarely.  But John says  sixty to seventy percent of the Interweb is pornography?  I really must be searching in the wrong places.  I must write to him and find out how he is so successful at finding them.

Now he has his own blog.  This is going to cause him some confusion because he now cannot exist in his own presence.  But someone of John’s great intelligence can work that out, surely.  I notice it doesn’t contain any sex or Satanism, which is very disappointing.

But I digress.  I want this to be a positive post.  So I am going to say something nice about John.

He has a beard.

I could say it’s a pathetic attempt at one, but then I have never met it.

*Update* – I can now also confirm that he is a great actor. He is a much better actor than Tom Cruise [mind you, that's not much to boast about].

I like trying out bits of software, just to see what they do.

I like to try something out.  If I like it, I keep it.  If I don’t, then I delete it.

Herself is still under trial, though she doesn’t know it.

I have found a couple of little plugins for WordPress, and I installed them over the weekend.

One is a strange yoke called Community Cloud.  You create a page and it lists all the people who have posted comments on your blog in cloud form. I have created a page called Friends, where you can see it in action. I have set my lower limit to 2, so if you have only posted one comment, you won’t appear.  Sorry.  You have to try harder.

Unfortunately, there is no upper limit, so I can’t banish Grannymar.  She keeps commenting because she fancies her chances.

I found that plugin on KirkM’s site – Just Thinkin.  Not only is he a good blogger but he knows his WordPress too.

Another one I have installed, for the laugh, is the Talkr Plugin.  This allows people to listen to my posts as podcasts.  You’ll have to excuse my American accent, and the fact that I sound like a woman.  That’s due to a mixup in pills the other night, where I accidentally swapped tablets with herself.  She now has a fine beard too.

One plugin I would like to install is a yoke called “Enhanced Plugins Used Plugin”.  This is supposed to list all my plugins on a page, but I can’t get the f*cking thing to work.  Yet.

[* UPDATE - I have now got it working *]

Another program I found has nothing to do with blogging, but I like it.  It allows me to connect to other PCs and run them as if I were there.  Even better, there is no sign on the other PC that I have connected, so I can use it for monitoring what’s going on.

I can now watch Herself trying to sell my stuff on eBay.  I can then go in and sabotage the auction.  She hasn’t worked out yet why her sales are so poor.

That’s me with another PC’s screen on mine

Now I’m going to do a scan of all my neighbours’ PCs to see what they are up to.

When you are retired, days have less meaning because the week isn’t defined by work days and rest days.  I like that.  I don’t dread Mondays any more.

I like to have a routine, so I set my alarm for nine on a weekday, just so that the weekend can be different.  But I usually wake before the alarm goes off anyway.

But still Saturdays are different.

I seem to be brain-dead on that day. I have nothing to say.  All the fizz is gone out of the brain.  I just want to sleep.

And it is always the day that they want me to record the Kilos of Craic Podcast.  And Baino, Brianf, Dr. Don and JD don’t seem to suffer the same shut-down of the gray cells, so once again, I’ll just let them waffle away. 

And after the podcast is done, then I’ll probably just doze off.

I can’t even think of anything to write now.

I woke with a hangover, which is very unfair, as I wasn’t drinking last night. It’s like doing a sentence without the benefit of the crime. I have been unjustly convicted of drinking.

So my head is in a fuzz.

It’s one of those days when I wander into a room, and then wonder what the f*ck I went in for.

On top of that, I have just broken my lighter. I had only just filled it with gas, and it dropped on the floor and all those little bits of tinny things went skittering everywhere and I can’t get it back together again. A Humpty Dumpty Lighter.

And one of my prize young trees was leaning precariously in the gales we are having at the moment, so I had to go out in the lashing rain and re-stake it.

And I have just had to do a podcast with America and Australia, and I couldn’t think of anything to say. [Which reminds me - the last one we did has finally been edited and has been put on the Interweb - "Kilos of Craic"]

Being silent can work on television, but it doesn’t go down very well on radio, like miming or juggling.

And now I finally sit down to scribble on my blog, and I can’t think of a single thing to say. I’m not even sure what a blog is, just at the moment.

It’s what I call a Senior Moment. Except that it has lasted all morning and a bit of the afternoon.

I have just remembered why I went into the bathroom ten minutes ago.

I need a pee.

And, bless her little cotton socks, she has passed it on to me.

She wants me to write a post that uses every tag. It’s all very well for her – she only has a few. I have loads. The cow!

Now I may be getting old but I find these difficult. I had a hard days blogging yesterday, as I had a good rant on a podcast to America. That was after I did my post on Cully and Sully.

So today I went for a ramble around the garden, trying to think of a topic. No go. There was no inspiration around the house either, and I’m damned if I’m going around the village or around the town for something so trivial.

Back in the 70′s life was a lot simpler. There were no computers or Internet, or even television so there were no memes. I had no irritating daughter in the family either. We found our pleasures in simple things. I remember learning to drive so we could go on holidays touring in the West, with no worries about flying and Global Warming. We had such simple sports as children in times past, like watching spiders spin their webs, and the designs they’d make. We’d go for rambles through the woods and have picnics of tea and spam sandwiches. We were a lot healthier for it.

Nowadays, work is the new religion and people have lost the use of their imagination. People only get worked up over celebrities and smoking out corrupt politicians. They panic over property prices and have lost sight of the soul of life.

No.

I can’t think of anything.

I elect not to do it.

I’m going to file this under Uncatagorised.

Maybe Sixty should have a bash at this?

Or how about Kirk at Just Thinkin’? I haven’t tagged him before.

And it’s a while since I annoyed Grannymar!!

F*cking memes….

It was done as a joke. It was also done as an experiment, because I knew nothing about blogging.

If I had read other blogs before starting this, I might have adopted a completely different style. But I knew nothing, so just wrote whatever came into my head.

It has been a bit of a roller coaster of a ride. It has made me many friends; some real, some virtual. I have been introduced to the world of podcasting. I have been asked to write for the Irish Times. I have appeared on television. All because of the blog.

It hasn’t been hard work, because I enjoyed it. I probably got most pleasure out of the comments. Many’s the time Herself has told me to shut up, because I have laughed out loud at some comment or other.

The site has grown in popularity for some unknown reason. Last week alone, I was visited by 17,000 people who read 29,000 pages between them. That is a lot of people.

Anyway, when I set out, I decided I would do it for a year, and that I would try and do a post every day. In fact I wrote 524 posts and received over 6,200 comments. Wow!

And now the year is over.

Thank you all so much for reading.

Good Bye.

His category?

“The Original S.H.I.T. Blog”

I don’t know whether to take that as a compliment or not. But then that’s the point of the awards. I can’t complain, because I started it……

OK, so. My nominations:

Going Like Sixty – For his Devotion to M&Ms [and an unnatural fondness for Head Rambles]

Doc’s Place – For being the Best Site to adopt me.

Damien Mulley – For being The Man [and because he'd appreciate it?]

Grannymar – For being the Best Podcaster and also for Being Least Likely to Display the Award.

Michele – For Starting it All

If anyone wants to know more about the awards, they will find it all at http://www.headrambles.com/2007/09/10/golden-crab-awards/.

So, go on. Give someone else The Crabs…..

Am I in with a chance? Who else is in with a chance?

Of course the first batch to go down will be the politicians themselves.

Lord Bertie of the Cayman Islands [or wherever the cash is stashed]?

Lord Gormley of the Gormless?

Harney becomes Baroness McDonalds?

Then we have to wade through the sports crowd, who have done nothing for Ireland except play with their balls, or run around a bit.

And there are all the people who have “helped Bertie out” financially. There’s going to be a lot of them. But a lot will be afraid of future tribunals, so they may keep quiet.

Eventually, he will get down to The Plain People of Ireland. You and me.

There will be Sir Grandad MBE [Master of the Blogging Empire]

Lord Twenty VC [Vicious C*nt]

Baroness Grannymar MP [Master Podcaster]

Dame Granny LTP [Lost The Plot, of course...]

Dammit! I can’t go through everyone. You can nominate yourselves.

I wonder how much the honours will cost?

Then there were forums [fora?]. I got the hang of them.

Then along came the likes of iPod. I haven’t a clue about them. I don’t know what they are, have never seen one and don’t want one.

Then there were blogs. I’m slowly getting the hang of them.

Podcasting? I’m still experimenting with that.

But now there are all these ‘Social Networking’ sites. They have me baffled.

I’m in MyBlogLog, but haven’t a clue how to work it or what I’m supposed to do there. It gives me some nice information about who is visiting my blog, but I don’t know what else I’m supposed to do.

There are sites like Bebo and MySpace which I avoided like the plague because they seemed to be full of kids talking text-speak.

Then everyone started talking about Facebook. What the hell is that all about?

I joined yesterday. To my surprise, I found a couple of familiar faces in there. So I said hello.

It seems to be quite a complicated place. I haven’t explored it fully yet, but even at this stage I’m baffled. What am I supposed to do? Am I supposed to walk up to total strangers and Poke them? That’s the kind of thing a Puppychild would do, but not a Grandad.

I had a look around for my old school but it isn’t even listed [maybe they got some sense and demolished it?]. I don’t know how else to find people I know unless I type in their names individually. That seems tedious.

If any of you are members of Facebook, then find me and introduce yourself. There’s only one Grandad, and that’s Grandad Himself.  And then tell me what I’m supposed to do next.

I blame Kathy Foley.