Monday May 26th. 23:43.

Ever since I did my back  in, way back in March, I've slept in Chloe's room, knowing the bed is higher and has a softer mattress.

Because I'm off work most of this week, I have decided to try and move back into my own bedroom.

I want to move things around in my room, but I'll do that tomorrow. Gone are the days where I get the sudden impulse at half past eleven at night to redesign the layout in my room.

Moving on.

There's two different things that are building to climactic release, in public media. With seductive teasing taking part, there is much speculation going on.

Not making sense ?

Well, okay. The two highly anticipated events that I refer to are, the release of Apple's next generation iPhone (supposedly the iPhone 6) and the arrival of the new season of Dr Who.

Now there's two differing, or perhaps converging timescales in evidence here. The BBC released a teaser for the new season of Dr Who (Season 8) this week, in which they reveal that the series, complete with new Doctor, Peter Capaldi, will return in August.

The trailer is really the height of disappointment I think. It's fifteen seconds long, and a lot of that is the introduction and fade out sequence. There are no words. Just and image of the Doctor standing, silhouetted against and image of the Tardis' control room. To be honest, it's more of a teaser, of a proper teaser we're bound to see later on. It could quite easily have been knocked together from existing footage by a skilled and talented fan.

I can't help feeling that this is just the opening salvo in a campaign  increasingly wetting the appetite. It's only just begun.

Another campaign of appetite wetting, is the recent upsurge in TV advertising for Apple's current generation of iPhone (the 5c or 5s). They normally hit us with loads of advertising about how great their existing products are, encouraging those few people that haven't already, to go out and buy this technological marvel. This marvel that's so good, you just want it, need it. Crave it.

This encouragement, and reminding how amazing the current product is, normally precedes the release of a new product. New shiny amazing, magical technological marvel.

There are all sorts of rumours as to when it will be that Apple make the 'Iphone 6' announcement. It appears from the many websites on the subject, that the big day could be sometime between June 2nd and September.

There are lots of ideas, and even mocked up photos of what differing people THINK this new little wonder will incorporate. As ever, the nerds and the technowhores are getting rather wet over the idea. Me, I'm thinking that if the iPhone 6 comes out, then the iPhone 5s will get cheaper.

Right now, they're all just guessing. Will it have a curved screen ? Will it have a larger screen, or possibly come in two sizes ? Will it wash your dishes, tie your shoelaces and pick a girl or boyfriend for you ?

Here's a selection of some of the mockup pictures that have been uploaded.  The curved screen is an interesting suggestion,  a design style adopted by two other manufacturers of late. Personally I really like the rather retro looking iMac G3 look.

I have tempted by the adverts being shown lately, and have even popped into a Three store to have a try on one.

If I was going to weak enough, I would have to upgrade early. This would cost me £400 to buy out of my contract early. The alternatives to this are that I either buy a second hand phone on ebay, or that I just take out a new contract, and allow my existing one to run out.

My beloved teenage daughter has her fifteenth birthday in a couple of months. Fifteen !!! Eeeeek !! This means that her phone is due to upgrade soon. In fact this is due at the end of this month. She seems to think that I should get her an iPhone.

Yeah, right, like that's going to happen. Bearing in mind what happened to her last phone, as she's currently using my old phone (HTC Wildfire S). This was after I had already repaired the screen on her phone once, she broke it again. Teenagers eh ?

Alarming Teenage moment

Sunday September 1st. 2013. 23:07

There was a plan this weekend for me to have Chloe to stay overnight an extra weekend. This was so that her Mother could go out for the evening. Always keen to spend more time with her, I agreed to cancel my plans for the evening and have her to stay. It's hardly a chore, and Chloe's mum deserves a night out.

The other week Chloe'd also mentioned that she'd like to have some curry, my Mum and Dad had suggested that we order some take-away and let Chloe try different types of curry. Chloe seemed really up for this.

I left work on Saturday, did some shopping. Aware that Chloe had already had a disagreement with her Mum because she had wanted to cycle all the way up to mine on her own. We'd reasoned that this wasn't particularly a good idea. She's never cycled that far on her own, and actually hasn't cycled from home to my flat at any point. It's also been a couple of years since the last time she cycled the route to my old flat (which is just down the road) - and we did that together.

After finishing work, I'd considered that one option was for her to take the bike to the train station, and meet up with me as normal. This seemed to get lost as a viable option. I'd also gone to Halfords and had a look at bikes. I've really missed having a bike this year, and although I don't need to cycle to work any more, I would really like to have one to make getting about easier, and just for the joy of it. I went into Halfords, having a look at what bikes they had. I thought that perhaps I could kill two birds with one stone. A solution being that I bought a bike, and met Chloe at some point and we cycled together back to my flat.

All of this consideration, and arrangement, the pleasant prospect of a nice family curry went for nought when I received a rather terse and dismissive text from her saying that she wasn't coming to mine and that she was staying at home. She'd decided that with it being the last weekend of the summer holidays she wanted to spend Saturday evening at home. Personally I think it had more to do with her being pissed that her Mother and I had organised between ourselves for her to stay over an extra night at mine, and that she couldn't come here in the method that she wanted to. The other possibility being that she wanted to 'punish' her mother some how for wanting to go out and have a nice evening out for a change.

As I'd gone shopping after work, I had caught a train straight from Havant, near where I work to Fratton, instead of coming home I'd gone straight into town to meet Chloe for the journey back to mine. Hanging around the train station in the last of the glorious summer sun, reading a book whilst the drama and tantrum played itself out.

Having been stood up by my daughter, I came back home, and went round my Mum and Dad's as arranged. When they didn't answer their front door bell, I assumed that they were perhaps in the garden or something. Having a key I decided to let myself in. This of course meant that I rapidly discovered they had gone out, actually to walk to the train station to meet up with me, and by entering the house had set off their burglar alarm. I was able to call them amongst the screeching of their alarm and find out what I needed to do to shut the bloody thing off.

We decided the abandon the curry idea until another time.

I decided not to heed my own advise to Chloe's mum, which was to not let Chloe's tantrum or 'teenage moment' prevent her from going out. I kept my evening free, in case she changed her mind.

She did not.

In the morning, having been burned by the unnecessary purchase of train tickets for both her and myself, I texted her to make sure which train she was getting. I got no response initially. Eventually I was informed that she would not be coming up to mine today either.

Chloe's fourteen, and old enough to decide if she does or does not want to come and see me. I was however a bit annoyed, to say the least for being mucked around in this way, and being dismissed so rudely.

Not a situation I am going to be able to convey to her by text or telephone. It would just provoke another argument, this time with me. I sent her a message saying I was here if she needed to speak to me. It's not what part of me wanted to say, but I managed to get my head to be the bit of me in charge of the typing.

This left me with a Sunday free. Which I then spent sitting around watching television, going on the internet, doing two lots of washing, watching the Stephen Brown videos we were meant to review and vacuuming the flat. I had food that I'd purchased to make roast dinner for Chloe and I, which otherwise was going to go to waste, so I cooked it anyway, and saved the rest for tomorrow.

Rock and roll eh ?

To Vlog, or not, to Vlog. That is the question.

I've been playing around today with the camera and Final Cut Express to see how easy it would be to put the same person in one scene three times. It turns out that it's actually very easy, when you've spent half the day figuring out how the hell to do it.

After messing about with the technology vs my lack of skill and finally getting to a workable solution. Which I have uploaded onto the M27's facebook page for all the world to see.

I've also decided to have a little play with some of the footage that I've taken on my Blackberry of the cats, and edited that quickly in iMovie. Example of this  :-

Flip camcorder

I have been a little inspired lately by the vlogging style of Nerdzrl who seems to pretty much just take her  flip camcorder with her wherever she goes, and record her conversation to camera, and with real people too. I don't know if the good folks of Cosham would react in the passive way that the public in Canada seem to be happy with being filmed, which is funny really given our propensity to shove a CCTV camera in every conceivable location. (by conceivable location, I don't actually mean the ones people conceive in, although you never know....).

When I was a teenager, like most teenagers, I was pretty convinced that I had a unique and special way of looking at the world, and no one else really understood. It wasn't just me they didn't get, THEY also didn't understand how the world REALLY was. THEY just couldn't see it.

Well now that I am (ahem) older. My opinion is pretty much the same. Except maybe just a little (a little I said) arrogant. I do think I look at the world in a slightly different way to most other people. Does that make me some sort of undiscovered genius ? Hell no. It probably means that I am more socially backward than normal people and have far too much thinking time on my hands.

Anyway, I have digressed. When I was a teenager, I kept a diary. That's not that uncommon. A lot of teenagers do. Inspired as I was by 'The Secret Diary Of Adrian Mole' (By Sue Townsend) in all it's generations, I picked up whatever writing implement was to hand at the time and committed to paper the workings of my demented, self absorbed teenage mind. There are volumes of my diary, pages upon pages of it. I told my impressionable, naive, and intellectually reckless young self that 'one day you can publish this, and it will be of comfort to anyone that reads it... ' not so sure about that one now or that 'your children can read it when they are teenagers and will be happy to know that the sort of things they are going through are the same things that their dear old dad was going through when he was their age'. hmmm. If there is one thing that is certain in the universe it is that teenagers most definitely do NOT want to be reminded of any similarities with their parents. As my daughter rapidly approaches her teenage years, one thing comes to mind. There's no way she would ever be interested in reading it.

For one thing, it's pages and pages of self opinionated drivel (see nothing changes). Deluded is the word that comes to mind.

So in the face of my daughter reading my diary, and suddenly having a tearful revelation that I too, suffered as I was a teenager, that I too did awkward uncool things. (still am doing - how's the hat going ?) That I too was a jumbling mess around the opposite sex. A mess around the same sex for that matter.

My point, my point ? Oh yes, there WAS a point. Is the written word more suited to this kind of outpouring or is the video blog (vlog) better ?