When we got engaged (many years ago) we had no money and had just started renting a flat so, instead of an engagement ring, we got together and bought a second-hand fridge from a junk shop. We called it Tiddles as it looked after the milk. Tiddles lasted for 15 years - not bad for ?30...

W

I booked my hubby's birthday surprise on Friday and I'm so excited I NEARLY told him about it this morning and there are still TWO months to wait!!!

It's a 'special' birthday too and it's such a good surprise he'll NEVER guess

Baby you're a firework.

Bleh that's gonna be stuck in my head now.

Today is weird. For the last four weeks I have been trialling a new flexible working pattern, of four days a week at home, and one in the office (which is relocating to quite-near-Heathrow). It's been really good. I've established a lovely routine - get up at much the same time as I did anyway, but start work an hour earlier at 7am. At 12 noon, go out on the bike for 50-60 mins, then have until 1.30pm for lunch. Then work until 4pm. If feeling clever, at about 3.45pm pick up a recorder headjoint to warm in pocket. If not so clever, forget about this and do it at 4pm instead. Result - practising by 4.15pm. Really nice, get a good practice and a good bike ride in to four days of the week (well, three days of the week for practising, since one of those days at 4pm it's jump in the car and go to lesson instead of practising!)

And now the trial period is finished. So I am back in the temporary-local-ish office 5 days a week. No lunchtime bike ride. Get home at 4.30pm, well, more like 4.40pm. Can still get some practice in. Or, if I cycle to work, then I don't get home until much later, and by the time I've got my breath back there isn't much/enough time before dinner for tootling. Besides which, the snow and my general piggyness means that my cycling speed/ability is waaaaaay down, trying to lug more weight than ever up a hill while less fit than in aaaaaages.

So my boss is on holiday this week, back next week, then we can start the wheels in motion to change over to the new working pattern. I can't wait, it is odd that just driving half an hour each way has completely ruined everything (or that's how it feels), despite the fact I've been doing it for years!

I was out this morning and got home to find a post-it on my mirror saying "Rach called wanting to know if lunch is still on this week". For the life of me I couldn't figure out who Rach was; the only name that came to mind was Rachmaninov Only after I phoned my friend who had left the post-it did I find out Rach stands for Rachel, the only friend I've made lunching plans with over the weekend... I think I play too much piano

I really should do some work soon.

Cats can purr and eat noisily at the same time.

I think I broke facebook.
Wonder if it was anything to do with uploading photos of barry-clari?

Mine has been broken most of the day

I can only post as 'Market Harborough Orchestra' at the moment, on the page of the same name...

Just realised Barry-clari's signature now has the Glasgow forum event on it!!!!

Yep : it went up yesterday when the ELCC playday went out the top end of the signature

Mine was working fine yesterday

The photos are lovely btw

A certain friend of mine keeps hassling me about joining facebook and assures me it's the best way to stay in touch... Every time I get an email from her she asks if I've joined yet... LOL... Must... resist!

surely if she's emailing you to ask if you've joined yet, she's keeping in touch, so maybe NOT joining is the way to stay in touch?!

Stop resisting...your friend is right..it is a great tool to stay in touch!!!

She's out of the country at the moment so probably it *is* a bit more convenient her side at the moment but I prefer email rather than quick-fire messaging type stuff to be honest. I'm a fuddy-duddy. It seems like a bit of a cop-out where people just "thumbs up" stuff and "poke/prod" each other rather than actually having a proper conversation.

I'm with you. Let's resist together!

SB

...and me, let 'em phone if they want to talk to me.

As far as I am concerned, Facebook is only interested in making money by compromising the education of impressionable young people, who become so addicted that their school work suffers.

Moreover, text messaging, MSN and Facebook have collectively destroyed our children?s ability to communicate properly, whether by writing or by speaking to one another.

SB

Facebook like any other technology (and the entire internet in fact) can be used for good things or bad things or merely useless things... for every http://ocw.mit.edu (a rather good online course notes site) there are 100000 pictures-of-LOLcats sites / adult sites / etc

Mind you, this forum can get a bit like that

Me too, I don't see what the appeal is.

I have a lot of friends who live outside of the UK - as I grew up in Asia, I still have many friends there and Facebook is brilliant for letting me see what is up with them. When I go back to meet them I know who has had a second child, what that second child's name is, etc. Similarly for family; I can keep track of my sister's wedding preparations, see the photos of her civil ceremony, etc.

I have no Facebook friends who are not also my real-life friends. I do not poke people, buy or sell them, or farm virtual animals.

I also found my first ever piano teacher on Facebook as she taught a cousin-by-marriage of mine. I would not have found her otherwise, as I was just randomly browsing connections of people whom I knew. I am now in contact with her again, we have exchanged multiple messages and it's pretty satisfying to know that she is still teaching piano, and that she still has that really comforting aspect about her that i remembered all the way back from being 7 years old in piano lessons.

If I wanted to friend everybody in sight, post endless photoshopped pictures of me trying to look cute (I'm really getting too old for that) in too-tight clothing, I suppose I could, but that's not the point of Facebook for me.

If Facebook is abused, that isn't Facebook's fault any more than it is Tim Berners-Lee's fault for having invented the internet in the first place.

Edit: Having said all of the above, I can see why some people find it pointless. Just wanted to give my reasons why I think it isn't totally pointless...

I have a lot of family and friends who live abroad, plus friends scatterered around the country and it's lovely to be able to see photos and find out what is going on in their lives. I know that we could just ring each other or write emails/ letters...but the truth is that before Facebook we just didn't. I've found it has helped us to build up more of a relationship by allowing us to share more of our lives with each other. I still talk to friends and family over the phone and face to face too but certainly with one of my best friends- we need to book slots for phone calls at least 2 weeks in advance so it is nice to keep in touch via facebook in between.

Like all these things, it is what you make it, it can be a useful tool or not....

Facebook isn't totally pointless, and I know a lot of [more mature] people who make good use of it. My concern is that it is very addictive to school age children, and many seem to be totally hooked on it. In my view the addictive nature of this application is a deliberate policy on the part of Facebook, as they clearly rely on advertising revenues which are proportionate to the number of users.

As with any similar application (YouTube is another one), there is a danger that children will use it to look at something specific, (perhaps a friend has sent them a link), but before you know it they have spent an entire evening online, their homework hasn't been done, and parents have great difficulty getting their offspring away from the computer. Even then it doesn't end, as children can still send text messages to Facebook from under the sheets!

I also worry that these types of communication have destroyed our children?s ability to write cogent sentences, whilst spoken communication and face to face reasoning seems to be a completely lost art.

I wish I could believe that what I am saying was not true, but I know of several children who have dropped out of sixth form college simply becuase they couldn't find time t fit their college work in alongside Facebook, and there was no way that they would sacrifice their (I quote) 'social life' second to their school work.

That attitude, to my view, is a very sad reflection on the value that so many young people attach to this wretched programme, and that is before we consider the risks of attracting unwelcome attention from adults posing as children.

Facebook, like alcohol, has legitmate uses amongst mature adults, but like alcohol, I wouldn't want my children to be spending every evening consuming it, and then taking it to bed, and to school the next morning. That, to me, suggests a serously addictive habit which is encouraged purely for corporate gain.

SB

Putting my neck on the line here: I am not old enough to have children of sixth form age, so maybe I am talking out of my rear end.

If someone is dropping out of school because they can't fit in their school work amongst facebook, is there something else going on there? I ask this because as I think about it, I have colleagues and friends who do have children of this age who are doing fine in school, Facebook and all. I think that people with addictive personalities will find something to get addicted to- I have a friend who says that he knows he is an addict and has been addicted to different things at different times, but he knows he will always be addicted to something. I have known people who have not had that deal of insight, but have displayed similar addictive behaviour to one thing or another.

I'm not saying I have the answer... not sure what I would do if I had children. I have friends who have children not quite teenagers yet - and are dealing with this by having no internet at home, no games consoles, no TV even. They are hoping that the children will grow up having formed the habit of reading or occupying themselves in other ways than online.

In no way am I saying that if someone is addicted to Facebook it is the fault of their parents - but I'm not sure either that it is Facebook's fault. rather, I think that this problem is a symptom of perhaps greater ills in society- valuing the trivial and superficial, etc.

edit: blargh, I can't believe I wrote all of that. this is what I get for staying up late on a school night. My excuse is, I was playing the piano..

Hmm... I honestly believe that I was a more productive person before I acquired a Facebook account (I think I was just about 16 when I did) - my parents swear that it had a negative impact on my academics, though whatever effects it had were negligible in the overall scheme of things. I also used to spend more time reading for pleasure and less time on a computer. But it's also true that there are many friends I wouldn't be able to keep in touch with without it, particularly now that we've all gone off to different universities - and to an extent I think that maintaining friendships online isn't intrinsically worse than other forms of leisure, though it certainly can be taken too far. And now that I'm getting older and more mature, I think I'm gradually starting to use Facebook less obsessively - maybe in a year or two I'll be nearly normal .

I would say that valuing the trivial and superficial has a lot to do with it, and with the ills in society today as a whole.

However, I would return to my earlier point that programmes such as Facebook and YouTube are designed to be addictive to young people, because the program makers want to get people hooked, and because the numbers of people using the service = revenue! Let's be clear here; Facebook isn't providing a free social service to keep sad and lonely people in touch with one another; it is there to make big money. I have no doubt that once Facebook has enough registered members, and when market conditions are right, it will be sold to Google or whoever for $billions, in just the same way that YouTube was.

I would go as far as to draw parallels with the big tobacco companies, which added chocolate to some milder cigarettes to make the product more appealing to children, (including those who were legally under age), and which also raised nicotine levels to make cigarettes even more addictive. Using the Facebook analogy some might say the tobacco companies were supplying a social service by providing relaxation to its customers, and were keeping customers in touch with one-another as they huddled together in the cold and rain outside of office doorways! My views on this matter are rather different.

That is not to say that I blame Facebook, as they clearly have a commercial need, but I do wish that young people in particular would see that their free time is being used to make money for a big Amercan corporation, and they will never be thanked for that.

SB

I wonder if the trend for keeping people in education doesn't help.
I mean, once upon a time not many people stayed on at school post-16. Some of those undoubtedly could have done, and done well.
When I went to the sixth form, well over half of us stayed on. When someone was waffling on about grade inflation and pass rates going up, at the time I pointed out that actually I would expect that. People who could have stayed on and passed A-levels in the past, but didn't, were now staying on and passing. Those who were not going to pass A-levels, still weren't staying on...thus a higher proportion of passes. (In retrospect, probably a weak argument, but still enough to silence the even-worse-arguer-than-me I was arguing with )
But are some people, who perhaps would be better off leaving school at 16, now forced to stay on, and then drop out for various reasons?

Just random musings...

Added: Undoubtedly those who could do very well can be distracted. A friend of mine, at an all boys school, was all set for top A-levels based on his GCSEs and school predictions. But he left that school, and went to the (mixed) sixth form of the all girls school on the other side of town. Both schools had mixed sixth forms, but very few girls went to the boys school sixth form, and vice versa. So here was a stunningly clever lad, who happened to also be stunningly good looking from a stunningly rich family, now surrounded by girls who had very few other boys around most of the day.
He did go to university, but with far lower A-levels than he could have achieved, to end up on a course and career which wasn't the one he'd been aiming for all along.

Of course, in turn I now wonder if the original aim was in fact his parents' idea, and not his, so 'flunking' the A-levels to do something different was in fact a Cunning Plan

I used to think facebook distracted me from work... But no more than this forum used to. Then I actually got busy, and stopped using both to the same extent. Facebook is a site with fun things to do and fun people to talk to. This is a site with interesting things to talk about and interesting people to talk to. When I was a child I used to spend my playtimes inside in the library reading. I read under the desk in maths, I never had a book out of my hands. Parents stopped my mum and dad (and childminder) in the playground and told them that I was unhealthy for reading so much, perhaps I had an addiction or some sort of social disorder... They should get me help. (I spent more time reading, in those days, than I've ever spent on any social networking site.)

As it happened, when I had things I had to do, I put my book down. They got done. I think I turned out ok. (Although I am doing an English Lit degree...)

Fun things have always distracted people from work. Facebook is no different. We could outlaw fun? Or we could just accept that some people will always prioritise immediate pleasure over long term gain and some people will not. That is, some people will always forsake their work for any given distraction, and some people won't.

I do believe you can get addicted. I believe you can get addicted to anything enjoyable. It's sad, but I agree with Corenfa, if you have an addictive personality, unless you're very careful you're going to get addicted to something. Moderation is the key there. It won't help to just boycott whatever the new, popular 'social nuisance' scapegoat is.

That's it... I am definitely buying a grand. Just spent lunchtime on my teacher's piano and have discovered that because I have a Clavinova at home, I'm raising and pushing my hands forward too much sometimes to "cheat"...

Obviously when I sit at a grand, I can't do this due to the panel behind the keys, I wondered why I kept being completely derailed at certain points in lessons and it's clicked now...

I am sorry I have to disagree. I think that facebook can be a great tool. I first started using it to keep it touch with others that are studying with the Open University, fantastic support for eachother. Since then I have also been able to get in touch with my cousin in Australia and my cousins and Aunty up north. My son who is coming up for 14 uses facebook and I don't have a problem with this as I trust him. As for not doing
homework, he has never been late with this and each piece of work he does, is set up in presentation form which he then binds himself. (He actually bought the binding machine out of his own money.) He gets top marks for all his subjects, even the ones that aren't his best and as for his English and not being able to put a sentence together, his essays are fantastic. He came home yesterday with a certificate of excellence for one of his projects and has another piece that has to go to the head of department because the teacher wants to give it a really high mark that has to be authorised.

Yes, he is on facebook and msn but he still works very hard, which is why I don't think it hurts for him to chill out and chat to his friends when all homework has been done.

I don't think that you can tar everyone with the same brush. I have friends with children of the same age that don't go near a computer, wouldn't have a clue about facebook, yet is there homework on time, do they revise for exams? Something of them don't and some of them do.

Just my point looking at the other side of the argument.

Why did I ever think that making puff pastry from scratch was a good idea?

Is it just me or do other people think that watches don't last as long these days?

Go for it

ps. hope you're still feeling better from being ill.

Exactly; Facebook is a great tool, but it shouldn't take over your life, and shouldn't be part of everything that you do! Like most people I drive a car, which is also a great tool; but as much as I enjoy driving it I only use it when required to make journeys, and I certainly don't spend every waking hour in it exploring every road and alleyway that I come upon. If I did I would fully expect a visit from two doctors and a social worker!

Likewise I don't use the car for every journey that I make, as there are occasions when walking, cycling, a bus, train or aeroplane is more appropriate. However, some people seem to live their lives by Facebook; they cannot wake up, eat, go anywhere, do anything, or go to bed without telling Facebook,

I would agree that most normal, intelligent people who have a modicum of self control don't have a problem with Facebook; but that is just the same as alcohol, a flutter on the horses, or any other pleasure. My concern is for vulnerable young people, whose vulnerability is being exploited by Facebook, and whose futures are at risk in the name of corporate gain.

We could debate this all week, but it is not for nothing that Facebook and YouTube are blocked on most corporate networks. Why would that be if the programmes are so good for productivity?

SB

I just want to go home and play the piano... it's really dragging today...

Just to drag back up the facebook discussion...

I've spent the last half hour in a multi-way conversation with my dad and my old violin tutor from an orchestra I was in. It's been AMAZING. Without facebook, that situation would never have arise, other than at concerts, and I left the orchestra nearly 3 (gosh, that long?!) years ago. Just my tuppence worth...

Oh, remembered what I wanted to say about Facebook..

I don't think there is any conspiracy or insidious marketing ploy to "sell" facebook , youtube or other similarly "addictive" application to vulnerable people, young or otherwise - simply because if there was, it would have to have been between Facebook, Google (who own Youtube), Microsoft (who make XBox - which can also be addictive), Nintendo, etc... and I think that this is highly unlikely. All of these companies started for very different reasons and I think it is maybe a step too far to say that they are all in cahoots to exploit young people for their own commercial gain.

Which of the above is particularly addictive appears to depend on culture. I do not know why, but in Asia there seems to be a higher incidence of young people being addicted to computer games - dying of heart attacks after playing for 48 hours non stop, neglecting one's child because of online games, having to go to rehab to get un-addicted -- I remember reading about all of these in the news and all of these took place in Asia. I have not seen similar reports from Europe but it could be that it is just not reported. I visit Asia regularly and have many friends there and I don't think that computer game companies advertise any more there than they do here.

However, I have no doubt that all of these companies want to exploit *our personal data* for commercial gain, and that does make me a bit nervous about Facebook in particular. I don't keep a great deal of personal information on it, and most of my status updates are about silly things like my dinner, or what my cat is doing. I also hate how Google keeps shoving in "improvements" to its search like trying to predict what I'm searching for and having it appear as I'm typing. But that is another rant for another day.

Interestingly enough, Facebook is not blocked on my corporate network and despite free access to it, people do not take the p___ ; I will see people checking it at lunch or in the evening, but everyone seems to be adult enough to know that you work when you have to work. With large companies, Facebook access may be largely a liability issue - they may not want people to accidentally say things on Facebook that might originate from their company IP address. A lot of people have smartphones these days and would access it through there.

I have been intrigued by a piece of music called "Dance of the Mosquitoes" for sopranino recorder.

Then realised that as I already own and absolutely can not play "Flight of the Bumblebee" on descant recorder, I probably shouldn't go faster and higher.

I think I need a slow galumphng insect to work with (I do have an arrangement of Saint-Saens the Elephant, but that's a mammal, obviously)

This made me laugh

You could pretend that the mosquito has been caught in fly paper and is wading slowly through glue...

Why do some people think that "i don't like it therefore nobody in the world can or should like it and it should be banned/ changed etc", or " i can't do it therefore it can't possibly be worth doing by anyone" is a valid argument?

I hear it so many times, in many different forms and from different people and it really, really annoys me!

As if the whole world revolved around them and their preferences.




edit:missed question mark out...oops

Anyone for pancakes?........ I'm thinking along the lines of 'flat as...'

Yes please, with some maple syrup and Haagen Dazs Vanilla ice cream !

Would your rabbit like one?

Oh yes please. I would like mine with black cherries in syrup and vanilla ice cream if I may!

SB

Yes please, with bacon, cheese, mushrooms and stroop