words

So here we are! Halfway through my thirty day challenge to write something every day. If you have been following I do appreciate your time reading my ramblings. Even if no one reads that’s fine as well. This challenge is for me and to help me fight the fear I have about writing.

Every day that I have been writing, I have been thinking about the structure, but I don’t want any of that to stop the progress. It’s all about getting words down.

As it’s the weekend this turns more into a diary. So today the youngest had to go to a birthday day. This has been one of the first times he has let us drop him off and not have to stay with him, what a joy! As this gave me some time to get a few chores done which was fantastic. Zoe was out and Jema was meeting a friend at McDonald’s. Zoe arrived back an hour before I had to fetch the kid and I looked at her and said: ‘you know we have an empty house’ now this hardly ever happens to us…

I saw a post on Facebook yesterday from my dearest friend Ian F. He posted about having started a gratitude diary. What a lovely thing to do, I wonder what has inspired him? Oprah? Funny how things happen, you just put your mind towards something and go for it! It’s what life is about, making those decisions and having the commitment to follow through. Much like my writing challenge.

ALL NEW – FRESH & CLEAN

I am so happy that my blog theme has been updated, a massive thanks to Owen. If you are looking for an expert IT Consultancy, Web/App dev or Cybersecurity then please get in touch with Owen at Future Tech Ltd. The idea is to keep it clean and minimal. The picture in this post is also the main picture on my blog; I took it on Saturday afternoon in a plantation here on the Isle of Man. We are truly blessed to be living on such an amazing island. It’s getting colder and colder every day, but we have central heating which is just awesome. There are still a few tweaks we need to make but I think it is a million times better than before. It looks great on mobile which is so important. I hope you like it!

This morning my beautiful wife had arranged a massage for me, my back is taking major strain at the moment, I think its stress related. We can get into that at another time. But it was cancelled as Theresa had sprained her ankle, ouch! Hope you feel better soon T.

If you have been following my blogs, you would have read about the Manxie SAM Black who is in the Xfactor this year. Well last night it was a double elimination and he didn’t make it through to the semi-finals. All I can say is, Sam we so chuffed for you getting this far. I’m sure he will be going on the X Factor tour. Congrats Sam you are the first Manxie to get through to the quarterfinals.

Thanks for reading!

Mr Cup / Fabien Barral

Day 13 – Pay Attention

I am starting to pay attention more to what I hear and read as I know it will spark off something for me to write about. Yesterday it was one article I read about the music industry and this morning, two things caught my ear, so these are worth sharing.

LET’S TALK ABOUT MUSIC

More specifically, let’s talk about the music industry. I was involved with them for a number of years back in South Africa when I release a whole bunch of mixed CD’s under the name of DEREK”TheBandit”. I had the pleasure of working with some amazing people, most notably. Karl, Mark, Nic & Kevin. CD’s were big in the 90s and we had some reasonable sales.

When Napster arrived, this was the start of the downward swing of the industry. Now hindsight is a wonderful thing. But I do believe if the industry bought the technology from them, they would be in a better place today. There has been an upswing which is mainly due to iTunes and streaming. It’s nowhere near back to its glory days; I don’t think it will with the traditional record labels.

Then this article on Techcrunch caught my eye.

With $70M from Alphabet, UnitedMasters replaces record labels

This is definitely something to watch and I hope they have fantastic success.

THE COST OF FOOTBALL

Now onto the biggest British sport; ‘Football’ here is a scary stat from a recent survey conducted by ComRes, showed young fans are more likely to engage with football by playing games on a console or PC (61%) than in a football team (37%).

As you can see console and PC games are huge, yes we know that. But if you would like to read the other stats, click on this article from the BBC, they cover it more in-depth with costs of tickets to games and the price of the kits.

THE INTERNAL FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH!

Scientists have found a generic mutation that appears to protect against aging in humans, it’s been discovered in a family of Old Order Amish living in Indiana, USA. An experimental “longevity” drug that recreates the effect of the mutation is now being tested in human trials to see if it provides protection against some aging-related illnesses. It’s suggested it may be possible to extend life by 10 years. I wouldn’t mind some of that mutant gene!

Thanks for reading.