Musings of Old Man Joe

There and back again!

Personal comment

Doctor Who

By 1 Comment

Doctors from the past

On Saturday 23rd November 1963, one year after my birth doctor who began his journey. I have seen these episodes and even today I find the story (not the special affects), to still have meaning, it has not withered with age. Yes the special effects were clunky, but this was 1963 and I don’t think there was any need for special effects before doctor who.

I started watching Doctor Who properly in the 1970’s John Pertwee was my first doctor 1970-1974. I loved the fact it was on every week and was always exciting ( a half hour children’s show). Now I am a bit older I appreciate the fact it was done on a small budget but the effects though tame in todays standards were always adequate, and I watch them still, it’s like a time capsule (pun intended) back to my youth.

Next doctor was Tom Baker 1974-1981, he had a good stint as the doctor. This was probably my best time watching as I was young enough to appreciate it. After his time I was old enough to have to work and life took over. I didn’t watch in the intervening years as I was travelling around and didn’t have access to a television. The classic series as it’s known ended in 1989.

Modern era doctor who

So my joys of Doctor were reinvigorated in 2005 when it started again with Christopher Eccleston in the role as the doctor. I loved him as the doctor, this maybe age speaking but I felt the age was good, a TimeLord shouldn’t look twelve years old, but not too old to make it look like he couldn’t fight the good fight. Christopher Eccleston was the right man for the job and the writing was brilliant. Special effects were obviously better in 2005. And there was enough villains in the doctor who history to provide story lines.

Roll on 2022 & although I really liked Jodie Whittaker as the doctor, I have been finding the year and a half gap between seasons a bit much to deal with. I know they say it’s a massive production which is why it takes so long. I looked it up on IMDB today and the next season is in November 2023. In comparison Murdoch Mysteries pumps out a season every six months I feel, and it’s a great show!

It’s like writing a blog post and then not writing another one for a year and a half, is anybody left going to read it? Again pun intended!

Wish, from the upcoming poetry book Tiger Lily

By 2 Comments

An Ekphrastic Collaboration between Susan Richardson & Jane Cornwell.

“Tiger Lily” (published by JC Studio Press), is my voice, but not mine alone. It was a very different journey from the one I embarked on with “Things My Mother Left Behind”. “Tiger Lily” is an expression of the relationship between visual art and words; a relationship that inspired me to not only dig deep into my own experiences, but also get out of my head to find magical and unexpected stories.

I am so proud of My wife’s upcoming release of her second book Tiger Lily, the words and pictures allow you to almost look into the mind of the Poet and see where the inspiration came from.

Tiger Lily

By 1 Comment

My wife Susan Richardson has a second book of poetry being published on August 19th. It’s called Tiger Lily and is a collaboration between my wife and artist Jane Cornwell.

Every Friday prior to the publication Susan will be sharing a reading of a poem from the book.

Check out the video below and also for more information please check out Susan and Jane’s websites.

Change

By 5 Comments

Change is needed

The world is not happy today, many countries are seeing right wingers come out of their hiding places and become political powers. America is having to deal with people being voted into power who are fascist’s and don’t believe in democracy. Of course if you think about it, America hasn’t been a democratic country for many years. It’s been kidding itself that it’s a democracy, when in reality it’s corporations and money that have been running the United States for years.

The electoral college is a joke in this day and age; to think that you can get the majority vote and still lose in an election is absurd. The political system was designed to replace a monarchy in the 1700’s.

So many Americans today realise the American dream is not a reality and in fact the American experiment has failed. I say this because it’s the only western country that doesn’t provide free healthcare and there is no safety net. The tent cities that can be found on the sidewalk in Los Angeles are proof of the failure. What do the politicians do?
They blame, immigrants, gay, trans, people of color, anybody who is part of a minority group, to deflect from the truth that the systems of society are broken.

The income inequality has also grown, and what are the people in charge doing? Nothing! The media don’t cover this because they are too busy making money from advertising. MAGA people are hurting and feel they should get back to a better time that only ever existed on tv shows. They are not aware the party they support wants them to stay ignorant so they can continue to make money off their backs, and the politicians make sure to blame them, the other people, it’s their fault you have it hard.

At this moment in the United States you have one choice if you believe in democracy, and that is to vote democrat. If not , you are voting for a theocracy which will take away your rights in front of you, in the name of freedom. The system is against you and needs to change. The future cannot be dealt with if we are still thinking like a society that was created in the late 1700’s.

The future of work is changing, kickstarted due to the pandemic. It took that to make companies realise that some employees can work from home. Now we need to deal with the political system, the financial system, the welfare system, universal basic income, and climate crisis.
In order to make the changes to attack these things, the current way isn’t going to cut it. People see it getting worse and so they get angry. I don’t blame them but how angry are they going to get before we see change, if ever.

With most of this, I have been referring to the United States, but it’s a global issue. The world supply chain was impacted by the pandemic, and now food security is being impacted by the war in Ukraine. It’s been great to have a global system making us feel like the world is connected, but who is in charge of that connection?
We the people are told where to shop, what to buy, what’s trendy; are we really free and in charge of anything?

At least in China the people know they are not free and understand the limits. In the United States I think people still believe they are free. At least for now they can still vote, although that may change very soon.

Thoughts

By 2 Comments

Photo by Markus Winkler on Pexels.com

I made my first website in the 1990’s, it was absolutely terrible as I really had nothing to say, yes that may still be the case but I ask you to be kind!
I was living in Korea town in Los Angeles, great noodle shops $8 dollar bowl with all you can eat Kimchi. Life in some ways was good. I worked in security for fifteen years until 2020 and pandemic.
I did enjoy my job and I do miss the people I worked with, I intended the website business to be something I could do when I retired as it would be a working from home thing.

2020 brought many changes, personally they brought frozen shoulder, loss of home of fifteen years, early retirement from security job, move to Ireland from Los Angeles.
I hear you say that’s not bad, and moving to Ireland has been great. But with the lockdown and having to leave our home in Los Angeles it took well over a year to figure out we were suffering a withdrawal of some kind.

Our life here in Ireland is better and there is no denying that. But that’s not what I am mean when I say withdrawal. 99% of my family are from this town I am now living in. If I throw a stone in the centre of town I will likely as not hit a family member.

But we have friends in Los Angeles that we have known for twenty or Thirty years who if I met I can give them a big hug and catch up.
I don’t think we realised for a long time we missed that.
It was better for both of us once we realised what the problem was. We are better now and looking forward to visiting California in November.

So what I do now is make websites, I am self taught and my skill set is improving all the time. The funny thing I have discovered is as a freelancer I have to do everything involved in the design aspects of the website. It’s not just the case of putting stuff on a page, there is the Brand, logo and having to manipulate images. It’s moved me in the design direction which is interesting.

The other aspect of the learning website design is that allot of people pay allot of money for websites and they were robbed. On the other hand there are instances where a business decides to try and save money on a website, maybe they decide to manage it themselves and not pay a person to manage it for them. If it’s a business that takes money through the website as a store or subscriptions beware on trying to save as that can come back to bite.

Every week people try to hack into my websites, I have security in place and multiple backups. My wife has learned over the years the term backup, she didn’t do that much before she met me.
I have two solid state drives and cloud backups. Some stuff is too important to be lost. I recently updated my wife’s website as she has her second book of poetry coming out in August. I also have another website coming soon for a client in Town. It’s a groomers and I hope maybe next week to pop it up.

Lot’s of businesses here use Facebook as a online presence. I understand this as it’s free, but the reason it’s free isn’t because Facebook is benevolent, they make money advertising on your business page. Maybe they show the other business in town that do the same thing as you. If you have a brick and mortar store would you let a stranger design your shop window. Search engines will in the end pick up your facebook page but they won’t unless you are searching for the name. If you sell burgers and search for burgers in an area it won’t bring up your facebook page, but it will bring up a website. A website is the store front the whole world can see (except china and Russia, North Korea and a few Arab speaking countries), but it still leaves quite allot.

When it comes to business and anything where money is involved I suppose it comes down to trust. And that’s a hard one to create unless you can give it time and have some people who can speak up for you.
Over a year ago I was talking to an Author who wanted to update his website, there were many pages and I think he thought I was going to charge him a fortune to retype the pages again. It was after we parted ways I figured that was his issue, Of course now I could tell him there is such a thing as copy and paste. But it just goes to show you have to trust the person you’re dealing with isn’t going to screw you over or at least be honest with you.

The world is a crazy place at the moment, the war in Ukraine, and the rise of Fascism in the United States. It makes me worried for the future, I hope my friends in the United States are safe and getting ready to vote

I thought I would finish with pet pictures!

Left to right Jade & Blossom
Left to right, Daisy 20 years old, & Poppy 15 years old.