What are you doing right now?

[Minty]

Wasting my morning watching this channel!





BACON? AH BACON!

[Caspin]

About to start watching telly again. Last night I watched Dr Who Christmas Special (2012), now am going to watch a huge backlog of ..... I can hardly bring myself to admit ..... CSI. The shame!

[Ollie]

About to head off to school.

[Minty]

Have a nice day Ollie,

Waiting for it to get cool enough to go to bed, & reading some more "A Song Of Fire & Ice".

[Caspin]

Trying to keep my patience while on the EA forums. It makes washing the wok seem really appealing (and you should see the state of the wok!).

[Ollie]

Testing out my new signature, the proportions aren't great, so I guess I'll go back in to GIMP (I'm still learning my way around it) tomorrow and make some kind of awesomeness. I am also anxiously waiting for E3.

[Caspin]

GIMP?!

I am laughing at EA's plea to be loved.

Later ...
And now I am eating some nuts. I really like nuts. I've got pecans and hazelnuts and cashews. There are meant to be almonds here too, but somebody has gone through the box and eaten them all!

[Ollie]

Yes, GIMP (GNU Image manipulation program).
It's free!

[Minty]

EA really have got some cheek!

GIMP is good especially for resizing pictures, far better than commercial software. But it does take some getting used to.

I've been playing some Skyrim again on a whim (I've a load of Mayhem Hall updates to post up as well with everyone having taken their first exams as well - shame on me!) & amazed there's still parts I'd never touched before. Completely cleared out Labyrinthian (all three sections of the abandoned city), which was good fun. I'm blaming this phase on watching all those Game Of Thrones of late!

In Scotland, the big news is that a pyramid system in football has finally been agreed upon, with a new Lowland League starting in only a couple of weeks! Come the summer of 2015, the winners of the long running Highland League and Lowland League will play off for the right to play whoever finished bottom of the Scottish League in a one off match, with a place in the national league at stake. I'm hoping Gretna can get back in this way - I always felt sorry for what happened to them.

I came close to putting my fist through the monitor at the following on the BBC website tonight -

In 2009, the average public-sector worker earned about £16.60 per hour, which dropped to about £15.80 in 2011, the IFS said. Meanwhile, hourly pay for private-sector workers in 2009 was just over £15.10 and dropped to about £13.60 in 2011.

Where do they know in the country that was paying out averages of £13.60 an hour, never mind the £16.60! I don't even think Buckinghamshire manages that!

They've also said they expect a third of the British harvest to fail due to the weather, so more price rises. Network Rail have also said they're looking to cut costs, but raise fares.

If they want Tottenham Part 2, they're going the right way about it!

[Caspin]

I have not fully understood the Scottish football pyramid. I'll have to study a diagram of before and after the change.

The average earnings being quoted do seem rather high. They have probably included the wage of all employed people, with the average therefore being grossly distorted by the few very high earners right at the top. If they averaged the pay of 95% of people and omitted those outliers, it would no doubt turn out much lower and more recognisable as a reasonable figure. The people at the top really do skew things. For example if you had a company with one person earning 300K, then 5 people earning 25K and then ten people earning 15K, and took an average of everyone, it would be about 36K. But if you take out the boss with his massive salary and average just the 15 actual workers, it plummets to 18K.

Anyway, I suppose the actual figures don't matter so much as the simple fact that salaries are going down while the price of everything else is going up. I hope we don't see Tottenham Part 2, because Tottenham Part 1 was horrible, but you might be right.

Not only have the harvests here been poor but they are poor globally. The US lost loads of crops first because of fire and then because of flood. Also the wet Spring/Summer is causing problems for the bees and they already had enough woes. It has been hard to find British-grown veg sometimes and I do try to buy it in order to support the farmers. It was even difficult to get potatoes at one point.

Anyway, happier news is that not only are you enjoying Skyrim, which is truly a wonderful game, but you are harbouring Mayhem updates! I hope you can find a bit of time to post those up and I hope we all passed our exams!