Today we made cakes

See and download the full gallery on posterous

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Can I miss my imaginary children?

I was watching Waterloo Road on TV this evening (you have no idea how compelling it is to Sam who is 9) and there was a scene where a boy was suicidal, but saved by a teacher.

All well and good, except for some reason those kind of scenes really affect me. I get upset and tearful, for no real reason (that I can understand) and have to go off and calm myself down somewhere.

But that's not the reason for this post, although god knows it may be connected. No, the reason for the post is that it reminds me of my lost, imaginary children.

Yes, you heard me right, my lost imaginary children.

I had a serious illness a few years ago, blogged here if you are interested, and as part of my recovery I spent 10 days in Intensive Care on a ventilator under anaesthetic and when I woke up I had all these memories that were as real to me as the rest of my life. And they weren't even in the same ballpark in terms of possibility, some of them really out there (the Da Vinci house that was recreated for one party on New Years Eve and burnt to the ground that night, on purpose and that's the explicable bit). Some of those memories involved having significantly more children than I really had.

At that time, I have two children, Matt and Sam, they were 3 and 4 at the time. And in my mind I had four others This was a surprise to Elaine and everyone who knew me. Two, who I adopted after an ex girlfriend (imaginary of course, and what's wrong with imaginary girlfriends huh) committed suicide and asked me to adopt them, and two others who I adopted after rescuing them many years ago from a pretty strange set of circumstances in Scotland.

Whatever. What is strange is that I really, really miss them. They don't exist, they never existed, they only exist in my mind (and over time they dim and fade out), yet I miss them. I don't want other children, I'm so happy with the ones I have, but I bizarrely miss the one's I have in some sense lost. I don't do it all the time, but maybe when I am emotional I lose the sense of family and community that they kind of brought with them.

Anyway, at the end of the day I miss them and wish they were still here.

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Minor product review - I like this "thing"

I am a fan of Dect phones, we had some Phillips Omni's for a few years, then changed over to BT (can't for the life of me remember which) for the last 4 years. Reception works well, feature rich with built in answerphone, long battery life (AA Rechargeable with the BT ones) all I could ask for. Well mostly.

They were all pretty ugly. The BT ones had rechargers which gently buzzed and they suffered by being designed by engineers.

So, when we got down to a single BT phone working, it was time to replace them. It is really hard to find phones that are designed to look good and work well. Oh, there are lots of Japanese/Korean phones with more features than you can shake a stick at, which I am sure do a great job. There are a few "designer" phones, with all of the lack of good design that that entails - you know what I mean, they have to look "designed" so that we recognise the value in them. Yeah, right.

The best industrial design doesn't show, it reveals itself in use and in subtle, unobtrusive ways that just seem and feel right. And there are too many odd shaped, too glossy phone masquarading as quality. So having looked far and wide (well on the web at least) we plumped for some Magicbox Columbo phones http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/features/the-ten-bes... and I am not alone in liking them. I'd go more for 2001 than Barabarella/Austin Powers, but there is a retro feel, in the best way.

Clean lines, simple design, fully featured, without being at all showy - great design. I got three from Amazon for about £75, so not expensive at all.

The only niggle I have is the quality of the ring tones. Not up to scratch, but not a show stopper.

I'll leave the last word to Sam (age 9) who says they are great because they are "so easy to use, you know how to use them without being told." It doesn't get much better than that. Well done to Chauhan Studios for taking the time to redesign the home phone http://www.tejchauhan.com/ thank you.

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Interesting article on File Sharing

It's the commentary and edited highlights of a conversation between a
teenager and a composer, and how the composer is, ultimately, trying and
failing to defend an outmoded business model. Where music publishers used to have a monopoly on the means of
distribution, they were able to extract a high price for their goods,
but now the means of distribution are so widely available there is less
value in that monopoly. This is where the recorded music industries are getting it wrong. Whilst
there is some value in the composition, there is more value in the live
performance - as it was before the 20th century. This is starting to happen, live performance is a huge growth area,
£1.45 billion will be spent at Festivals this year in the UK alone, up
45% from last year - who wouldn't want that kind of growth in a
recession?

Technology changes business, it closes some doors and opens up others,
this is the natural order of things and record companies are just
clutching at straws on their way down sadly. http://techdirt.com/articles/20100701/10251210046.shtml

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