Nick Seeber's blog

Back to it...

In the last couple of month my blogging has gone off the boil a bit (evidenced by the last post being 18 Dec). This is mainly because I've been pretty busy with other stuff, amongst which:

- got a new job

- had a break over Christmas and spent time with Liz's and my families

- started new job

- got burgled

- had to deal with insurance and other burglary-related admin

- financial shenanigans related to holidays, Christmas, and gardening leave all falling in the same credit card statement

Now, however, I am BACK.

I have a few things I want to write about... an incomplete list is:

- An update on the mighty struggle to finally get out of debt once and for all

- The Apple iPad

- General fitness and health ambitions - I think that this might be the next Big Goal?

- Photography stuff - like how to go about managing photos online without using Facebook

- Some great new sites I've found

- Papillon

I'll try and get by with iPhone updates as having to log into TypePad (the service I use to host the blog) is a pain. 

~ ~ ~

Cool beans. Well that's enough for now; I'm off to bed.

'Ferly': a wonderfully strange word

I've been loving Word Idol, being run by Raynor Ganan. It's a series of blog posts written by different people, each one taking as its inspiration an "archaic or provincial word beginning with 'f' that entered the English language sometime after 1300 and left it sometime before 1850". 

The most recent addition to this excellent competition is a definition of the Middle English word 'ferly', meaning 'wonderfully strange':

Let’s talk bear. Pandas are wonderful (durr) but even my nephew knows about them and he is a nitwit. Ursus thibetanus gedrosianus exists only as fossilized crud in a dusty vault—it’s strange for sure, but about as interesting as as the skin on my butterscotch pudding. Garden variety brown bears? They are neither wonderful nor strange; they are ordinary. But what of the missing fourth quadrant: bears that are both strange AND wonderful? Bears like werebears and carebears and ursa major—how could they be described? Fabulous and marvelous don’t convey unfamiliarity. Uncanny, peculiar, and curious don’t quite convey wonder. If only there was a single word that could fill this void. [SPOLIER ALERT: it’s ferly]

The post is even accompanied by a diagram illustrating the 'ferly quadrant':

Thailand photos on Flickr

UPDATE: I managed to figure out how to embed a Flickr slideshow within the blog post...

I've finally added our Thailand photos to Flickr:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nickseeber/sets/ 

If you haven't seen them, you can also find all of the holiday blog posts here:

http://www.nickseeber.com/thailand-09/ 

Enjoy! It feels like a long time ago...

Patrick Stewart on his experience as a victim of domestic violence

Patrick Stewart has written an affecting and personal account in the Guardian of his experience of domestic violence. During his childhood, his father, a retired Regimental Sargeant Major and "an angry, unhappy and frustrated man who was not able to control his emotions or his hands" would often violently assault his mother. Patrick - faced with adults and police condoning the abuse - dealt with this trauma later through his acting career.

No one came to help. No adult stepped in and took charge. I needed someone else to take over and tell me everything was going to be all right and that it wasn't my fault. I wanted the anger to go away and, while it stayed, I felt responsible. The sense of guilt and loneliness provoked by domestic violence is tainting – and lasting. No one came, but everyone knew. Our small houses were close together. Every Monday morning I walked to school with my head down, praying that I would not encounter a neighbour or school friend who had heard the weekend's rows. I felt ashamed.

...

I managed to find my own refuge in acting. The stage was a far safer place for me than anything I had to live through at home – it offered escape. I could be someone else, in another place, in another time. However, whenever the role called for anger, fury, or the expression of murderous impulses, I was always afraid of what I might unleash if I surrendered myself to those feelings. It was not until 1981, when the director Ronald Eyre asked me to play the psychotic Leontes in The Winter's Tale, that the breakthrough came.

via www.guardian.co.uk

He's now a patron of Refuge, the national domestic violence charity and has done a lot of work to raise awareness in this area. The latest campaign is Four Ways To Speak Out.

Follow the link for the full text of the article, it's well worth reading.

Acrobatic craziness

This is flippin' ridiculous.

Going to see Cirque du Soleil live in Las Vegas is now on my list of things to do...