Cameron's Site

My brother in law recently brought a new HTC smart phone.  Something I have been wanting for quite sometime.   I keep looking at the websites for what phones are out at the moment and although I really like my Samsung phone at the moment I also like the look of some of the HTC phones.  If I could I would like the HTC desire, it looks like it can do everything you can want from it including wi-fi which is what I have always wanted.

The only thing is that the only thing my brother in law ever uses is the weather app.  It gets information from local weather stations to tell him what the weather is like at the moment.  So really he is paying monthly so he doesn’t have to look out of a window.

I really can not justify getting a contract I don’t use my phone enough, it is just an extravagance.  To be able to use the phones full potential you really need a HSDPA connection which is a very fast internet connection, especially for a phone.  I have used a connection like that when I went on holiday.  I wanted to keep online while I was away so brought a USB dongle with the Three network.  I was impressed, I got a signal nearly everywhere and was downloading at 2mbps.  I was a bit concerned because my brother in laws old phone was on the three network and his reception was awful where ever he was.

If I do ever get a new phone I will make sure my old phone gets sold to a company that will recycle my mobile phone.  With all the dangerous chemical that are used in making mobile phones they really can not be thrown in the bin and allowed to get into the environment.

I have realised that despite being on a salary close to minimum wage I have an awful lot of responsibility.  A science technician job may not seem particularly difficult but I am rushed off my feet every day, ordered around by people, who half the time don’t even know what they want and I have to handle a wide range of dangerous chemicals and know how to dispose of them.

I also have to make sure that the important practicals (a level) are set up correctly as these actually affect the pupils’ final grades. I stay late quite a lot despite not getting paid to do so and I rarely take a lunch break because I am so busy.  Today as I was clearing up the mess left behind after the children had left (in the classrooms) I thought to hell with this. I would even consider getting a basic office cleaning job (which unbelievably would pay me the same) rather than have to put up with this any longer.

I think that job pay should correspond to responsibility and workload and this just isn’t true for science technician jobs. If I had known when I was leaving school fresh faced and ready to embrace the wide world that after getting a degree and doing post grad studies I would be considering being a cleaner I really wouldn’t have bothered with any of it. I would have trained to be a plumber or some other manual job and not have any student debt whatsoever.

On the bright side, I have a wonderful home and I’m happily married so I can’t complain. I just hope that job prospects become brighter soon before they affect my life further. My wife and I are waiting to both get good jobs before we have children, with my wife’s work being very unpredictable at the moment who knows when that will be?

I have been looking of ways to get some extra money, and lots of people have told me to look into what money I can get from the government.  My wife is unemployed and goes to sign on every fortnight, but unfortunately that refuse to give her any money.  She was a student doing her PGCE and the did her NQT year from September to September.  I means that for the past three years she has not qualified for a National Insurance stamp so cannot get contribution based job seekers allowance.  There is also income based job seekers allowance, but because I work more than 16 hours a week she cannot get that either.   I really do not understand this, why based the decision on how much your partner works, surly how much they earn would make sense.  But then it is the job centre, second only to the GTC for the biggest waste of space award.

I looked into getting tax credits.  At first we thought we would get the full amount from them, but apparently you have to be getting job seekers allowance to get the full amount.  So if the government is given money for job seekers allowance you get extra money from tax credits, if you don’t get job seekers you get nothing!  In the end I got my tax credits reduced by three quarters until it was not worth it (under £4 a week).

I should have booked an appointment to see an independent financial advisor to get everything sorted out, or the Citizens advice bureau to see what they had to say.

Even if I don’t get much it is nice to think that I do get a little bit of extra money paid directly into my current account every month.  I am quite good with my banking now, I think I have get everything sorted and any extra money I get goes straight into savings.  With financial news so bleak I like to have some savings to fall back on.

I’m in a love hate relationship with the current world cup. I have watched a fair amount of matches, mainly the ones after work. I am enjoying the matches between all of the countries that I’m not really bothered about, it’s great to see world class football without having the stress of caring who wins.

England games are something else entirely. The two that we have seen so far are two of the most stressful matches I have ever watched. The inability to score goals has been painful and the lack lustre of the England team is mind boggling. When your life if based around football, how can you be scared when you’re asked to play?

I know that I will not be able to watch the next game, since I will be working but I’m not actually that upset about that, what will be will be, as they say and just finding out the score seems like the pain free alternative to actually watching. Lots of schools are shutting early for the event, which as always has been criticised by some parents, but I personally wouldn’t want to be the teacher who has to control a tough class that really… really doesn’t want to be there.

I have to admit my favourite thing about the football this year has been the party spirit which we are encouraged to enjoy it with. The supermarkets have been flogging the mountains of beer and the snacks in anticipation for months now and there aren’t many people without a supporting flag. It’s great to make an event of it at home and it’s even better to find a good pub showing the game, there’s really nothing like that atmosphere.  England as a nation doesn’t stand together very often but when we do, we do it really well.

With money tight, we are very good at looking for ways to cut the amount we spend.  Now we are looking for ways to make more money.  I have been looking for a new job now for nearly a year and I am not getting anywhere fast.  It does not look like the job situation will get better any time soon but that wont stop me looking though Monster jobs website everyday.

My wife came up with a good idea, she loves drawing and painting and our house is covered in her various pieces of art.  We have run out of room for them all so why not sell them.  We have looked a bit on eBay but it does not seem the right place.  Instead I have decided to make a website for her to sell all the art through.  I had no idea about making a website so I borrowed a how to design a website book from my Mum.

If we are setting up a business I decided we need to do it properly and get a second BT phone line installed to handle any calls we get about the art.  I have been looking at the range of phones available to buy and I doubt we will need a phone system designed for a big business and have decided we want to buy a digital dect cordless phone.  I like the idea of being able to take the phones where ever you go in the house.

I hope this thing takes off.  My wife is a very good artist, especially when compared to some of the modern artists.  Just wandering around the Nottingham contemporary shows how bad some of the art can be.  There is a lot of money in art, in an art shop an original can cost a couple of hundred pounds.  I think we would only have to sell 1 piece every month to make it worth our while.

It has come around so fast, Fathers day yet again. My dad is notoriously difficult to buy for and I have been spending a great deal of time trawling gift idea websites for something that he will like and/or actually use. I have brought scores of gifts in the past that to this day remain in the gift bag that they were given in.

The task is made even harder, since he has just retired for which his workplace brought him a barbeque and all the bits and pieces that go with it and he has just had a birthday where he got pretty much everything else he wanted this year.

I though about getting something utterly gimmicky and naff, but after an extensive search for unusual gift ideas I decided that it really wasn’t my dad’s style and would be unused. At the weekend my wife and I hit the high street for ideas but again the majority of shops have opted for cliché and football themed gifts.

Although I’m swiftly running out of time, online shopping is obviously the way forward. The usual places I would shop, like amazon and play are really only good if you have something particular in mind, but don’t make good browsing.

Finally I cracked it with the book people, a relatively small online bookshop. It doesn’t have a very big collection, but the prices are fantastic. I ended up stocking up on pressies since its free delivery if you spend over £25 pounds, I got the classic crime collection (10 books), the true blood collection (8 books), and the reading group collection (10 books) for my mum. That came to 28 books for £29 a saving of over £177 off the RRP… bargain.  At least in my parent’s house books won’t go unread for long.

Everyone is social networking, even the year 7 in the school where I work are on Facebook.   Even I have a facebook account although I have had it for 2 years and only logged on 4 times.  I don’t like the idea of social networking; I think it is too intrusive.  Also I am not that social and I don’t really care what people I have never met are up to.  I logged on to face book and one of the comments was about needing to go to the toilet, why do I need to know that?

Tribal wars, the game I have mentioned I play before now wants me to get a skype account so that when ever I am online they can contact me.  It will end up like the IP office business phone system I use at work where you can talk to many people at once and by the end of it, no one knows what has been said.  The game has an in build mail system where you can send clickable links for people villages you want attacking and I think the system works fine and can be a lot clearer than actually taking to someone.  At least then you have a written record of what has been said and if you forget anything you just look back at the log.

Some people take the game even more seriously, there are the players on the tribe council that use Internet conferencing where they get audio and video feeds.  This is something I would never think about doing.  I don’t know these people and it all seems a bit weird.  Call me anti social, but that’s just me.

My wife loves sharks, she has done ever since visiting sea world in Florida when she was 5 years old. We have a bookshelf in our study groaning under the weight of the books on the subjects and I have to watch all of the programmes on discovery. Obviously where there are sea life centres in this country we always go and visit then and we usually find one to go to on her birthday.

I have never had much respect for Hull in the past, but a few years ago we went for a holiday to Withernsea and as it was so close we had to visit the city.  We both loved it, it has some nice shopping areas and museums to visits as well as the deep.  We were really there to visit the Deep, as they have a tank for sharks.  My wife has only seen a live shark once before but now she really wants to go see them in the wild.

We have had a bit of a look at places around the world where sharks can be easily seen in the wild.  There is Australia which has the big advantage of English as the major language but we also came across the Philippines which seems interesting.  Digging into it a bit it looks to be unspoilt at the moment but it will probably change, there is lots of people advertising overseas property investment in Philippines real estate.  There is obviously a lot of money to be made out there which people are now exploiting.

I would love to be able to visit the Philippines it looks gorgeous with all its pure white beaches and blue skys, I would burn to a crisp in seconds but I would enjoy it.  I have never been to a really hot country before and would like to go.

I want an Iphone, well any smartphone really.  I have wanted a Satnav for my car for quite some time as I am always getting lost.  I know that the cost vary a lot, Asda has been advertising one for £35 for some time now, but I wouldn’t trust it.  I would like a mid range one which is too expensive at the moment.  Now I also want a hand held GPS device for hiking.

I recently discovered something called Geocaching, a form of treasure hunting.  It needs a hand held GPS device as you down load maps from the internet that end in a specific where you have to find an item.  It can be anything as long as it follows certain rules set out about hiding it.  There is a geocaching point near where I live on the village green.

For sometime we have seen people walking around outside out house looking for something holding GPS devices.  It was from one of them that I discovered Geocaching there got talking to me while I was working in the garden.  They showed me their GPS device and the walk they were on which is why I want a new smartphone.

Smartphones now have GPS receivers built into them which means they can act as your Satnav and hand help GSP device by downloading maps to them.  I looked at the prices of SatNavs and the handheld devices and to buy both can be hundreds of pounds which is why I though about getting a new phone that could do both as well as be my phone.  I thought that if I spend more than £15 on my current phone then getting a contact phone would be a good idea because there are £15 contacts out there and I wouldn’t have to buy separate GPS and Satnav.  On top of that I could sell my mobile phone to make a bit of extra money.  I have heard that mobile phone xchange companies are a scam and they don’t get all the money they think they deserve.  I think this is mostly down to people sending in broken  phones and expecting the full price.

Well I worked it out and the most I ever spend on my phone is £7 a month, and it is normally about £3.  Really not worth it then, I am going to keep looking for a cheap GPS device from Ebay and stick to the normal map instead of the satnav.

I play a few games online, but I have never been interested in connecting my Xbox 360 to the internet and playing against other people.  The games I play online are very low tech web browser ones.

I used to play text based games like Kingdom of Heros and Carrion fields, where instead of a description the area you are in is described to you and you have to work out what to do by searching for secret entrances and hidden objects.  I used to spend lots of time drawing maps and finding all the secrets with the idea that I would publish them online for other people to see.  I got as far as drawing them on paint (the only drawing package I can use) but never learnt how to make a webpage.

I now play tribal wars a lot.  It’s a web browser game where you have a small village to look after and grow.  You are on a world with lots of other players and can attack each others villages and eventually take control of more villages.  The good thing about it is it’s a long term game, to upgrade building can take up to 30 hours some times.  I currently have a small group of 11 villages on one world and 1 village on another.  It is the only game my wife has really gotten into ever!!!  She logs on at least twice a day and has been playing it for about 3 months not.

The nice thing about tribal wars is that it is all based around people forming tribes (which anyone can do) and supporting each other by coordinating attacks and sending troops to defend villages.

Of course there are the smaller browser games like the ones you find on Miniclips which are good for wasting time but there life span is very limited.

I like these games because you do not need a fast internet connection.  I used to play Alien verses predator online when I was younger and only had a 54K modem.  It was ridiculously slow and the winner was who ever had the quickest connection at the time.  Nowadays I have a 2mbps connection which is only just quick enough to get on Xbox live.  There is also the fact the you have to pay a subscription to play which I really do not like.

It has been ages since I spent any time in a caravan, but once again my in laws invited us away for the bank holiday weekend and here we are. I am sitting at the window of our tiny static caravan looking out over the touring caravan site spoiling my view of the sea. I still wanted the internet so before we left we picked up a mobile broadband dongle and have had no problems getting going on it.

We are staying at a site near Newcastle which is ideally located for the beach. That is if it was warm enough to actually leave the caravan. The highlight of the morning is watching the people emerging from their tents in their dressing gowns and huddling together until they reach the toilet block.

Then they seem to spend the rest of the day walking backwards and forwards collecting water. One of the caravans near us even had a fire and they threw their pan outside really close to their car. Now I have seen the Top gear episode where they go caravanning and have a fire, but I thought it was all set up, but everything that happened on that episode has happened in the two days we have so far been here. A fire, caravan crashes and bored, unhappy looking people.

From my spacious static caravan with running water and a gas fire, I just cannot see the charm of the tourer, especially in the cold and wet spell we are currently experiencing.

Possibly worse than staying in these caravans, is being subjected to the sites entertainment. We went for the Friday night (our first night), stayed half an hour and left again never to return.  Not exactly an overview of the entertainment as a whole, but with the locality to Newcastle city and many other towns within easy reach there really was no draw for the on site amenities.

I’m guttered that I am still working as a technician after a whole year. I swore I would no longer be working there, as it is was a stop gap job that I knew I would get, between me leaving my last job and moving into the area of work I actually want to be in. But plans have to change, I still intend to move when I get a chance but for the meantime I’m lucky to be getting paid regularly.  

With the job situation being so appalling, I may have some time to wait and with a full time job it is hard to find the time to search and apply for new jobs. With this in mind I started to think about my future, financially and personally. My current employer has offered me their group health insurance which I have declined for the meantime, it is something to think about in a couple of years but with money being already tight, it is not a priority. I have however been wondering about getting some sort of pension set up. Ideally I would like to find a career to settle into so that I could pay into a company owned pension scheme for the rest of my working life.

The company that I work for is severely understaffed and I am always so busy that I rarely take a lunch break, I’m not complaining about the hard work but it regularly goes unappreciated and therefore I wish to work somewhere that recognises the work that people do. But rather that hop into any job I know I can do again, I want something stable that I can stay in and enjoy. With 5 years of university behind me I wouldn’t have thought that was too much to ask. Better check out jobsite...

Now it is starting to get nicer in the evening we are having problems with the local kids.  They like to spend their time productively destroying the bus stop outside my house.  At about 7 or 8 ish we hear the bangs start as the begin the ritual smashing of the plastic panels.  I don’t think it is likely to stop soon it will be years before they move away

It makes me nervous about my car and garden, if they are willing to make a lot of noise breaking a bus stop in front of all the houses, what would they do if they got around the back of my house where it is secluded.  I know that they have broken into my neighbours car twice in 2 years, but his car is kept in a car park down the road where no one ever goes.

It has made me think about my external security.  My garden is very open because we can not afford to put up a fence.  Eventually we would like to put trellis across the garden to block off the side and the back of the house from the front.  I plan to grow something spiky up the trellis to stop it from being climbed but I don’t know what plant to choose yet.  I like climbing roses but only when they are in flower, all through the winter they are bare.  I would like to have something evergreen there that grows berries for the bird and has pretty flowers.

My brother in law has suggested bear traps, but I think it is a little bit extreme.  I had thought about installing CCTV.  I like the idea of being able to record what is happening outside my house at night.  I was in Maplins yesterday and saw a high performance night time CCTV monitoring system that was on offer.

The main way we are improving security at the moment is by building a driveway to move the car off the road.  Then hopefully we will be able to put a gate across to keep the car safe at night.

How many times have you heard, ‘ring me when you get home safely’? Well we have just been on Holiday to the Lake District with a few other couples and as usual those were the parting words before the 130 mile journey back home.  We had decided to make the most of our last day and stop off at the Trafford centre on the outskirts of Manchester. It has all the shops you would expect from the high street, but under one roof and with an impressive food court, we always like to visit if we are in the area. 

One of the other couples were visiting family in the peak district and the final couple planned to head straight home to pick up their dog from the kennels. It was early evening by the time we got home and we expected to have a few messages from the others as we figured we would be the last ones home.  This was unfortunately not the case.

The people who were heading off first had not gone far before they ran into the back of another car on a country lane.  Apparently the car in front broke sharply but the brake lights didn’t come on.  Whether that happened or not I don’t know but I have seen programmes where people commit car insurance fraud by cutting their break lights and the claiming compensation when they have the inevitable car accident.

Luckily my friends weren’t hurt physically, but financially they could be very hurt.  Not only will they have to pay on their car issuance, face an increase rise on insurance cost but there is a possibility that they will also be sued for personal injury. 

Our reliance on the internet is made apparent when you are forced to live without it for a while. We were invited on holiday to Lancaster to stay in a place called Thurnam Hall, was impressive ...now owned by diamond resorts.

Upon arrival we see a wireless router plugged into the wall, but no information available about connection or pricing, at reception we found a price list, and at £26 per week we are not surprised they don’t shout about their connection. We decided to not bother for the week, but being disconnected from emails, facebook, general area information and even TV on demand was harder than I thought.

Of course I could just have got my phone out, but I find the inconvenience of looking at the small screen and what you can actually access too restricting.

On our second day we visited the headquarters of Lakeland limited in Windermere. The shop famed for selling an array of unusual and quirky cookware as well as more standard equipment.  This shop has a large cafe/restaurant on the second floor which has four computers available with free internet access, no log in necessary. It proved too hard to resist and we all checked in on home for a few minutes before enjoying a drink and cake in the impressive building. 

By the end of the holiday however, the internet was the last thing on our minds, the lovely weather allowing us to have picnics in the sun, the amazing views over the lakes and catching up with friends with no outside stresses. We all agreed that we would give up the internet for good if every week could be like that.

As I have mentioned before I work as a laboratory technician.  The school I work in is a inner city school and being brought up in the suburbs I did not really know what life was like for city children.  The things I have seen have been quite eye opening and nothing like I expected.

The work as a technician was sort of what I expected but a bit harder.  It feels like no matter how much you do teachers always expect you to have done more.  I think that this is mainly because as a teacher it is not just a job it is their life.  They teach all day and mark work in the evening, and they expect me to be as dedicated.  In truth I am not, I do my hours and then I leave they do not pay me nearly enough for me to do extra, and I think it is the same for all support staff.

My job is very varied (anything from fixing a leg on to a broken skeleton to photocopying 100 exam papers) but one thing I do not like is using the phones.  The school has a business phone system where everyone has a different extension to contact them on and no one know anyones number.  I must received 3 phone calls a day from angry staff members because they are trying to get though to some one in an emergency and they number they have is wrong.

The one thing I do really enjoy is being in charge of all the A level physics.  The school has not had a technician that is good with physics for many years so it has been a quite neglected subject and is in desperate need of new equipment.  This means that at least once a week I get to spend a couple of hours making new equipment or trying to fix something that is broken.  With out these times the jobs will be really boring.

In guess this is the same in every job, there will always be bits you like and boring bits, unless you have a really good job (zoo keeper, even clearing out all the poo would be good if you get to spend time with elephants).

It seems like buying property is in the air.  I mentioned that my brother in law has just moved into his new house after months of delay, well to follow suit my parents in law are also just about to buy a new house as well.

I say new house, it was my wife’s grandmas house that passes away last year.  They have decided to buy out everyone else with a share in it.  They were considering buying a new house anyway because with all their children moved out there house is far too big for them and costs a fortune to run.  The new house is a bungalow and although in need of updating we know it has been well looked after and with a bit of work would be a really good property.

When we moved into our house we got a lot of help from my parents in law doing up the rooms and clearing the house.  Now it is our turn to repay them.  I am kind of looking forward to being able to strip wall paper and decorate again.

After the disaster that happened with my brother in law buying a house and the months of delay, I was surprised when it went though quickly.  I guess it just shows that it all depends of the quality of the solicitor you use.  I think a smaller firm would be better than the “No win no fee solicitors” that seem to be everywhere at the moment and run as a National company.  I think my brother in law went for a big firm but I doubt he will go back.

My wife and I decided this year that we would have a go at growing our own vegetables after watching the new BBC series, the edible garden. We are total novices at growing anything because we have only had our garden for 2 years and the first year it was all patio slabs that needed digging out. Now we have replaced the slabs with 4 homemade raised beds (made from decking boards screwed in a rectangle). 

So far we have had variable success growing our seedlings, (indoors for the moment as we don’t have a greenhouse yet).  We have adapted our spare bedroom to house all our plants; the whole of the windowsill is covered as well as an open bookcase near to the window. A heated propagator has proven very successful to get the seedlings started off well.

The most successful seedlings have been beetroot and tomato, and I would recommend growing these to anyone, no experience necessary. The great thing about tomatoes is that they are very productive. Each healthy plant will give you multiple fruits. Lettuce, cucumber, beans and peas will also give you a bumper crop if cared for correctly.

Our less successful crops have been Brussels sprouts and cauliflower which started off promisingly, but shot up with very thin stems and could not hold their own weight after a few weeks. Our carrots have also been a bit of a failure, because the seeds are so tiny we planted far too many per pot, in a pot made for a couple of carrot plants (each plant only produces one carrot) we had planted about 25 plants.  We could have thinned them (meaning plucking out the weaker plants) but we never got around to it.

Money has become a hot topic, no longer something to keep quiet, people are now open about their spending and it’s starting to benefit everyone. Everyone likes to feel savvy and save a bit of money and it’s something to shout about when you find an irresistible deal. People share their best deals so that more people can benefit. 

I can’t stand the thought of being in debt. I never have been apart from my student loan and I don’t intend to ever be. We have been lucky but also extremely careful with our money when we have to be. We both would rather cut back on things that have to get into lending and borrowing any money.  When my wife finished her maternity cover job and we had a mortgage to pay, times were hard, but there is plenty of help out there you just have to know where to look.

The supermarkets are crammed full of good deals after every big event (Christmas, Valentine’s day and Easter), On the Tuesday after Easter we picked up a whole turkey originally priced £20 for just £3, I stuck it in the freezer and it will be great for when the family descends next.  

Whatever it is we are looking for I always have a scout around on the internet for the best deals.  Quite often there are people out there that have already done the hard work for you and found good prices for things.  We needed a new oven, so we did our research on hotukdeals.com, a website where people share their bargain buys a

I am just about finished doing up my house (with my restricted budget). Just the finishing touches to do.  But DIY is never far away.  My brother in law has only just brought his house and have just started stripping the wall paper.  To start with he was just planning to paint over the current wall paper and then move in.  Everyone has since convinced him that he will only want to redecorate sooner that way and then all the furniture will be in.  It has come of a bit of a shock how much work it all is.

I think it is going to look really good once he has done because it will be just how they want it, and with his wife working from home she can have her own telephone system to operate her business from in her own private office.

They were living in a flat which was far too small for some one to be working from home.  They were not allowed to get a permanent telephone line so was stuck using a mobile connection for their internet.  The internet connection was really unreliable and slow, not they have got the BT unlimited package so their broadband will be ready to use whenever it is needed.

One thing my Brother in Law likes is gadgets.  He has got a fancy alarm system, and now he is looking for a fancy new phone.  He has got his eye on a cordless digital phone like one from Panasonic.