Relationships are hard. You’ve got to work at them to keep them fresh and alive and I have to admit, over the past few years I haven’t been keeping up my end of the bargain.

We’ve been together years now – in some ways it feels like days, in some it feels like decades. We got off to a great start – we were at it several times a week, there was always a smile on my face. I’d spend my days thinking about what we’d do together and my evenings and weekends doing it. The best part was the way we shared our passion with my friends, having them along and joining in made for even more fun – we’d all sit in the pub afterwards enthusiastically discussing what we’d just done and how we could go at it harder and faster next time. We went all over the country, exploring every nook and cranny together and it always felt so natural, so free, so perfect. We soared to such heights that I never thought the happy times could end.

But over the last couple of years we’ve barely spent any time together. I can’t remember the last time I got my leg over, can’t even remember what it feels like. I’ve said I’m too tired, I’m too busy, I’ve got a headache, the weather’s too miserable, my friends are away and it won’t be the same with just the two of us, it’s not you, it’s me – but they’ve just been excuses and deep down I feel I’ve let us both down. All through this you’ve composed yourself with dignity and never once complained. You’ve just sat there impassively with eternal patience, waiting for me to make the first move. For me to re-ignite the passion and fire. To pick up where we left off. To get all dirty and sweaty together just like we used to. To roll back the clock and the years.

Every time I look at you I feel pangs of guilt and regret. I know I’ve not treated you right and you deserve better than me. But we’re together for life and I’m going to make it right – you can’t just break the commitment we made. I promise this Summer will be a new era for us. The sun will be shining and we’ll be at it like we used to. I’m a bit older now so probably won’t be able to keep up the pace and frequency I did in my 20s but damnit I’ll do my best to bring back the magic! We’ll take risks together, feel the rush of adrenaline, we’ll meet others with the same obsession as us and it’ll be like this barren spell never happened. We’ll move on and it’ll be better than it ever was before. Like I said, you have to work at relationships and that’s exactly what I’m going to do.

I’m going to dust you down, clean you up, give you a good servicing, get my shorts on and take you for a ride. I’m going to treat you like you should be treated – and this time it’s going to last, I’m not going to quit on you.

And here she is, my beloved Marin Wolf Ridge mountain bike as shown by my lovely wife Rachael. I can’t believe I’ve left her gathering dust in the garage for so long (the bike, Rachael gets to live in the house). Roll on Summer!

Just a few short years ago I never thought I’d be saying things like these:

1. I was on a night out talking to a couple of girls, one 18 and the other 21. Instead of chatting them up and trying to get them into bed I found myself lecturing them about consumerism in society and involuntarily start giving them advice about life in a horribly father-like way.
2. I don’t even bother pulling out my grey hairs any more. There’s no point, if I did I’d just leave bald patches on my head and besides, there are far too many of them to get the lot.
3. Some of my friends children are old enough to drive, get married and buy their own houses. It seems like only yesterday they were little kids running around and now – at half my age – they’re fully featured adults.
4. Of the last dozen or so CDs I bought more than half of them were recorded over ten years ago. I’ve already started saying how everything sounds the same, there’s very little innovation in modern music and you just don’t get music like you used to.
5. My dad used to use the phrase “20 odd years ago” to describe when he’d last seen someone or been somewhere on holiday. 20 years felt like an eternity to me then but now I use the phrase all the time myself and 20 years feels like only yesterday.
6. I can still remember life before The Simpsons. That was 20 odd years ago.
7. I recently found out how old the “old man” in my football team is. He’s 5 years younger than me!
8. I still just don’t “get” twitter or Facebook. I’m not famous so nobody follows my twitter account and as I can’t even keep track of the tweets of the handful of people I follow I just don’t see the point. I stay in contact with my friends in the real world rather than the virtual one so I don’t really know why I’d want to keeping checking their statuses or how many zombies they’ve converted. Since all the kids are doing it and a classic old person trait is to not “get” new technology I guess that makes me old.
9. My t-shirt to shirt ratio (the number of t-shirts in my wardrobe compared to the number of shirts) ran at about 15:1 throughout my 20′s. Now that ratio is closer to 3:1. As I’ve never had to wear a shirt to work (since I work in IT) the fact that when buying clothes I look at shirts before t-shirts speaks volumes.
10. I’m always banging on about how I’m not a youth any more and wondering where all the time went. See the 9 points above.

Now if I start wearing tank tops over a shirt you have my permission to grab me by the collar and shake me until I see sense and stop acting like I’m 75 when I’m not even 35 yet!

Let this serve as a reminder to myself to do things the right way round. In retrospect booking the hotel (non-refundable) in Edinburgh for the duration of the Scotland On Rails conference in March I was attending with John Topley before actually buying the ticket for the conference itself doesn’t seem to have been a good call. In the previous year it took months to sell out but it turns out that it sold out on the day I was going to buy my ticket, which was yesterday. So much for being sensible and waiting until I got paid to buy the ticket! I guess the wonders of the Ruby on Rails platform John’s been telling me about will have to wait for another time.

I wonder what I can do for 3 days alone (during the days) in Edinburgh at the end of March. Some photography maybe? I guess every problem is an opportunity in disguise!

Update: I managed to score a ticket from the organisers after all, thanks guys!

Maybe I’m a fatalist. Or maybe I’m a realist. Either way, a thought occurred to me the other day. What if I’m crossing the road, run down and killed? Or I’m running across a field and struck by lightning – death being instantaneous. Or maybe I’m going to put a cheque in the bank to find it’s being robbed by a masked gang, overpower them, call the police, deliver the baby of the pregnant woman there and then (there’s always one), generally save the day, but trip on the kerb outside, fall down and break my neck, dead as I hit the ground.

The point is, accidents can happen, I could shuffle off the mortal coil at any point. For me that’s the end of it, but what about my good lady? Sure, she’ll have to deal with the loss, sell the house, cash in the insurance policies and buy a nice beach house somewhere warm. But without knowing the login details to this site she won’t be able to write a post informing the world wide web that I’m dead. She won’t be able to look at all my old emails and realise I’d been living a double life as a bigamist / spy / special forces operative / singer in a church choir / take your pick. She won’t be able to log onto my Windows 2003 server and apply the latest patches, or update Apache on the box John’s Adventures runs on. She won’t even be able to log on to see my credit card statements and wonder why I’d made so many payments to Interflora when I never used to buy her flowers.

In short, my untimely death would leave a lot of loose ends that I doubt I could solve from beyond the grave. Then I came up with a solution – it’s called John’s Dead Man Switch.

The idea is simple. If I don’t browse to a particular web page or click a particular button on my computer every 3 weeks, then an email will magically send itself to my good lady. That email will contain not only all the login details to every site and computer I use, but an explanation of how to use any of these systems that she’ll understand. It’ll have things like a step by step guide to creating a new article here announcing my death, approving comments and so forth. Knowing me the email will start with something like this:

“Hello good wife, you have received this email for one of the following reasons. Either I’m dead, in which case I’m sorry for your loss, and I’m even more sorry to inform you that you’re not allowed to marry someone younger and hunkier than me (unless it’s my brother). Or alternatively I’ve forgotten to press my dead man’s switch and you can delete this email now. Hmmm, now I think about it, if the latter is the case then maybe I should have put that first to spare you the trauma…”

Now the way I see it John’s Dead Man Switch (or JDMS) will consist of a couple of components. First there’ll be a web site that lets me manage my dead man’s switch so I can:

• Click a link to reset my dead man’s switch and prove I’m alive.
• Determine the minimum timeout – if I go on holiday for a month I’d want to make the time-before-assumed-death or TBAD a bit longer.
• Decide on how often an “are you still alive?” email should be sent (if I’m dead I won’t receive it but if I’m alive but forgetful it’ll remind me to click the dead man’s switch).
• Upload and edit my “Used to be-mail” – strong encryption would be a requirement to ensure nobody else can read the contents even if they break into the site and that the JDMS platform is secure.
• Download one of the JDMS client applications.

Which brings me onto the JDMS client applications themselves. The client applications will need to support all major operating systems (including the iPhone) and the user interface will consist of a large button that looks something like this:

I’m thinking I can either have it scheduled to appear at the intervals I’ve set on the website, run manually as-and-when, or appearing every 2 minutes in case I’m so strung out on coffee that I need reminding that I’m still alive!

Clearly John’s Dead Man Switch needs some further investigation and a full specification fleshing out. At the moment it’s just an idea but, unless someone else has only gone and come up with the idea already, I think I’ll make it my next side project. So what do you think of John’s Dead Man Switch? The next great thing or dead before it begins?!

You may recall last year that I had the pleasure of seeing Mamma Mia – The Musical and despite wondering beforehand how on earth they were going to make a decent musical out of ABBA I loved it. So with the recent release of the cinematic version I thought it only fair that I take one for the team, go and see it, and let you – my long suffering reader – know what it’s like. So that’s exactly what I’ve done.

It had all the makings of a truly terrible film. First of all, it’s a musical – a genre I’ve never really understood on the big screen. It has Pierce Brosnan in it singing – something the former James Bond actor has never looked likely to do – plus I’d read reviews of people saying you can see the pain etched on his face when he’s banging out the songs. My brother – who would make a good film critic as he sees more films than Mark Kermode – said he “hated it with a passion”. I’d heard it described like a massive amateur dramatics production with movie stars. By all accounts I was expecting to go and see Mamma Mia and loath every minute of it. But you know what?

I ABSOLUTELY LOVED IT!!

I think when watching it you have to give yourself over to the complete madness of it, the absurdity, the fact that tongues were firmly in cheeks all the way through filming. It does feel like it was shot in quite a rush with minimal rehearsals but the effort everybody puts into their performances and the mad semi-choreographed dancing just adds to the magic. It was pure comedy all the way through but to be honest I was sitting there waiting to hear Brosnan sing and I wasn’t disappointed. I rate the cinematic experience of Brosnan singing his first solo right up there with realising who Keyser Söze was in The Usual Suspects or that Bruce Willis was dead all along in The Sixth Sense! It was immediately clear that he’s not a natural singer but to be fair he gave it his best shot and his voice wasn’t bad at all – it’s worth seeing the film just for his version of S.O.S. Reruns of Brosnan’s 007 films will never be the same again…

Meryl Streep, however, really steals the show with not only some excellent singing but a really good all-round performance. Her best scene is definitely the one before the wedding singing ‘The Winner Takes It All’ – pure class (when you see it you’ll know why). I think without her strong performance Mamma Mia wouldn’t be half the film it is. I suspect it’s the sort of film that polarises people’s opinions but the big surprise for me is that mine has fallen on the side of thinking it’s great.

So the John Conners film recommendation of the week is to see Mamma Mia at your local cinema. Just don’t take it seriously and I’m sure you’ll love it! Either that or I’ve finally gone crazy… Quite possible I suppose after all these years… No, it’s not me, it’s just a great film for all the wrong reasons!

I’ve never been much of a fan of karaoke. Whenever I’ve been dragged to a karaoke bar on a night out it tends to be exactly the same. A string of drunk guys reading out the words in monotone, doing a great job of killing songs I previously liked or half a dozen women at a time wailing out “It’s Raining Men” about as tunelessly as can be, albeit at a very high pitch. Then there’s invariably the bit when your friends demand that you go up and perform, despite having been shouting over the noise all evening and my voice having gone completely. In short, I’ve never had a good time at a karaoke night. Until now.

Some friends and I meet up every year to camp in a field near my mate Ade’s home town, have a barbecue, play some frisbee, then hit the town of Clitheroe for a drunken night out. So that’s what we did on Saturday night. Now you can probably guess the next bit – while trailing around the pubs of Clitheroe someone found out that there was a karaoke night nearby and suggested with the typical enthusiasm of a karaoke lover that we should GO THERE RIGHT NOW!!! Which we did.

So we turn up and as usual there are a few people singing off key and normal service is resumed. Or so I thought. Then a couple of the guys I was out with sang a couple of songs, one was OK, the other was actually pretty good. The night wore on and a few people did some reasonable renditions of classic sing-a-long tunes before some shy looking guy came up to the microphone and blew everybody away! This guy had an amazing voice and could really sing – certainly good enough to get through the rounds of X Factor. He was so good that I pitied the fool who went up next. It’s one thing to have a bunch of dunk guys and gals singing off key but it’s quite another when someone comes along who can actually sing and raises the bar unrealistically high! (Turns out he’s actually in a band with an album coming out soon which explains a thing or two!).

But what really surprised me was that he wasn’t the only good singer in the house. Another guy came along and he also had a great voice, hit all the right notes and was just superb. Then a girl after him was just as good! It was as though this karaoke night had decided to bring in some ringers and make the rest of us feel inadequate – if that was the case then mission accomplished!

I’ve been to quite a lot of karaoke nights over the years but never have I encountered so many people with great singing voices. Clitheroe may be famous for having the smallest Norman keep in England but it also seems to have an unnaturally high concentration of good singers per head of population as far as I’m concerned too. And it’s a fun place for a night out!

Right, I’m off to practise singing “Angels” by Robbie Williams for next time…

They say you don’t really know a person until you walk in their shoes but I think one way to get a feel for a person is to see what they keep in their wallet. I’m not exactly sure what it reveals about you but I thought I’d document the contents of my wallet so you can see what’s in there and what it says about me.

So taking them from the top, here’s what you can see:

1. £11.33 including a £10 note with ’968′ written on it (no idea why).
2. $11 US, $20 Australian and one Scottish pound note. The first two from when I’ve visited those countries and the latter is to prove that Scottish pound notes (which have been phased out now) actually existed!
3. West Yorkshire metro card (expired) complete with dodgy photo of me looking like I’ve just escaped from a lunatic asylum (I’ve tried to recreate the crazed look but never managed it).
4. Picture of my good lady and me taken a few Christmases ago (can be seen in the clear view section of my wallet).
5. The wallet itself – container of all else in the photo. Made by Animal.
6. Various receipts. I keep them after I buy things until I get too many then just throw them out. I should probably have a system and keep the ones from larger cost items but I don’t. Bad John!
7. Some Moo cards. If only I had someone to give them to…
8. Some dodgy photo booth photos – everybody should have some!
9. An AA card, credit card, Morrisons miles card (even though I never shop there), nectar card, debit card and (essential) starbucks card.
10. Some first class stamps (only one left) and a note from my good lady reminding me that she loves me!
11. A security card to get into my office (which I’ve never used).
12. Airline tickets from my 2003 trip to New Zealand – the first time I ever flew business class – which was a wonderful holiday.
13. Tickets from a trip my good lady and I took to Warwick Castle in 2000. It was early days for us and we had a fantastic time!
14. Global Video card (everybody has one but I’ve not used it in years) and a membership from some sports bar in Leeds I’ve not been to in years.

I guess my first thought is that I’m quite sentimental considering how many things are in there that are there purely to evoke memories! So what do you think it says about me? And what’s in your wallet?!

Even though I love my car and would never change it, I sometimes like to look on car sites – like Auto Trader – at what other cars are out there that I’d be tempted to buy were I looking for a new one. I do this knowing I’m not in the market for a new car.

In a similar vein, I sometimes like to look on dating sites – like match.com – to see what single women are in my area that I might be interested in were I in the market for a new woman. I do this knowing I’m not in the market for a new woman.

When I look at different cars I realise that I’m quite happy with the car I have and forget about it. But when I look at different single women I find myself getting a bit depressed – but not for the reasons you might think. I don’t look at all these attractive women thinking “oh no, I’m stuck in a relationship and wish I could try a few of these lovely ladies out for a while – play the field as it were”. Instead I feel sad that so many women are alone, looking for love, pouring their hearts out in their profiles, trying to find a decent man to share their lives with. Frankly, I can see why some of them are single from reading what they’ve written and some of the scary pictures of themselves. But the vast majority, through bad luck or some as-yet unspecified personality defect (like the common “attracted to bad boys but are surprised when they treat them badly” effect), find themselves alone and rather than relying on chance (which is like playing the lottery – only less fun), try to find the man of their dreams through dating sites.

I would often wonder why these women can’t find decent men. Take me as an example. I like to think of myself as a decent guy and nothing special (the bravado and ego on this site is just for my own amusement you know). A lot of these girls are into the outdoors, hiking, travelling, talking, laughing, that sort of thing. Well hey, I’m into all of those things! Someone with a winning personality and a sensitive side to them? C’est moi! A guy who likes romantic nights in, cooking, is laid back and easy going? That’s me! Someone who likes nights out on the town, eating in romantic restaurants and is a highly motivated go-getter who loves life? That’s me too! So if I can fit the bill and am reasonably good looking (well, according to my mother – God rest her soul), then surely there must be loads of guys out there that qualify too and these girls will have no problem.

Well, it turns out that the old saying is true: a good man is hard to find.

I decided to enlist my good lady’s help in researching this one so that it was fair and balanced. You see while I’m attracted to women, I’m not at all attracted to men – so I needed assistance from someone who is. First I showed her all the women that match my criteria – i.e. they live within 25 miles of my house, are single and aged 25-35. We found loads of girls that both my lass and I agreed were attractive (she knows the sort of girls I like), who from their profiles seemed really nice and we agreed I’d get on really well with. Easy. Loads of choice.

We then swapped the criteria over and searched for men within 25 miles of my house who are single and aged 25-40 (since women like older men I thought we’d widen the net slightly). There were pages and pages of them alright and you know what? My good lady spotted one that looked “OK”. The rest were either terrifying to look at (both eyes pointing in different directions for example), sounded terrible on their profiles and quickly convinced you you’d never want to meet them or both! We concluded that there are loads of eligible women out there, but just a handful of decent guys (if that).

The nice thing about not being in the dating game is that you can play it out in your head and imagine how easy it would be. Here I am, a decent guy who’d stand out a mile on a dating site. I’d have attractive women fighting each other to take me out. I could be really picky and choose the absolute perfect woman for me. We’d get together, be happy and live happily ever after! Of course I can remember from my own barren days of being single that it doesn’t work that way at all. But it’s nice to not have to find out!

‘Still Wearing A Hat Syndrome’ or SWAHS (pronounced sw-a-z) is a physiological and psychological reaction to a continuous stimulus that is abruptly removed after a period of time resulting in the sufferer believing themselves to still be subject to that stimulus. The classic example of this affliction is when you’ve been wearing a hat all day – perhaps a beanie hat or a top hat – and you remove it. For a considerable period of time you will still feel like you’re wearing your fashionable headgear and will be surprised to find that when you go to straighten your hat that it is no longer there. The short period of confusion that inevitably follows is termed ‘Still Wearing A Hat Syndrome’.

The following pictures of a person afflicted with SWAHS show the devastating confusion that can result from Sudden Hat Removal (SHR) – one of the main causes of SWAHS. To the left they are wearing a hat and are content, but with the hat removed in the second picture the subject is confused and disoriented. These pictures were taken under laboratory conditions with a team of medical staff on standby to deal with any complications. No Scotsmen were harmed during the making of this illustration:

For many years mainstream scientists didn’t accept that SWAHS really existed preferring to blame other factors on those who claimed to be suffering from it – such as them being stupid. However in recent times the very real problems that SWAHS has caused people has pushed it into the forefront of medical research and is now widely recognised by the scientific community as fact.

However there are many people who suffer from acute SWAHS – often brought on by SHR – but have never heard of the condition and remain undiagnosed. If you believe you may be suffering from this condition and would like some help and support in coping with it then don’t panic – you are not alone! Leave a comment at the end of this post and one of the expert staff from the “John Conners Still Wearing A Hat Syndrome Foundation” will contact you and ensure that you get the help you need.

Remember, SWAHS is real and understanding the condition is the first step to conquering it!

I was having a look through some old photos and came across something that made me laugh. But first some background.

My previous job (the one before my current one) was the first place I’d ever worked that had an internet restriction policy in place. Since I’d been used to working in small companies with professional (and that doesn’t just mean “dresses smartly”, that means does their job very well), highly motivated, intelligent people who wouldn’t waste their day surfing the net and could be trusted to not need supervision – so there was no need to restrict them from any sites. I guess the culture at my previous company was different as all sorts of people worked there of varying levels of trustworthiness but it meant that we were all tarred by the same brush. This is a particular pet peeve of mine but I’ll save that for another day…

Anyway, one time I went to a perfectly legitimate site that just happened to be on their exclusion list and was presented with a web page telling me I’d breached the internet usage policy and to STOP! what I was doing. I’m fairly sure I rolled my eyes in disgust, but then decided to spice up the denial page somewhat and came up with the following:

As is almost always the case with my self-portait photography I ended up with something completely different to my intention. I wanted to portray a disapproving look with a stern expression but instead managed to create a camp picture of me looking like I’m about to start dancing! Tsk.

To make matters worse I failed to get the company to replace the boring corporate page with this one – for shame. However if you’re in control of a draconian internet policy at your company that you disapprove of then feel free to use the graphic above royalty free by means of a silent protest. Or better still, make your own so that long after you’re sacked your likeness will live on whenever someone tries to browse to a porn site (until they work out how to change it)!