Budgeting, buying things, earning enough, latest scan, caesarean dissapointment.
Download Episode 10
To hear The Daddy Diaries before they are put on this blog and to download them automatically you have 2 options. You can Subscribe to The Daddy Diaries in iTunes by clicking here, or you can subscribe to the podcast feed by clicking here.
I’m getting alot of people looking at the The Daddy Diaries category of this blog. Tommy’s, the baby charity, have linked through to my blog and www.askamum.co.uk have begun adding my podcast to their audio resources.
My wife, Mary-Lou started a blog a few months ago to talk about life after Amy died. I’m pretty sure alot of people coming here would be interested in her thoughts too, so click here to see her blog.
I recently realised that I was addicted to my emails. Checking my various email addresses every few minutes had turned into a work habit and I wasn’t enjoying my work anymore.
Once I realised that my misery was due to my work style I decided to simply take more time out, sit down away from my computer and think. Checking my emails so regularly completely distracted me from my tasks, which I usually held in my head so sitting down somewhere else to recollect my thoughts has helped.
I’ve also resorted to using a pen and paper! I make a list of things I need or want to do that day. It’s so simple that I don’t know why I wasn’t doing this before, afterall, my wife, Mary-Lou is the Queen of lists! Also I was quite arrogant and thought there was no point to pen and paper when I’m right infront of my computer and can make notes quickly on it. The problem was that I didn’t make notes because I got distracted too quickly.
I came across this article “How To Delete Email Addiction” which had some good suggestions. I think I’ve cracked my addiction but I reckon I’ll adopt some of the suggestions.
I like high-fives. I tried to bring about their comeback during my student days. You can even high-five me on FaceBook. So this video made me chuckle!
Third trimester yet?, caesarean or vaginal delivery, hopes & dreams for Toby Jacob, dad books, Toby skateboarding and imagining Amy.
Download Episode 9
You can Subscribe to The Daddy Diaries in iTunes by clicking here, or you can subscribe to the podcast feed by clicking here.
I got a sad email yesterday from the founder of Pandora.com, Tim Westergren. He was emailing to say that Pandora will have to stop streaming it’s free music to the UK from 15th January 2008, that’s next week.
Pandora is what I listen to music on. Full stop. So I don’t know what I’ll do to find good music now. I have an account with LastFM but I never felt it was as good as Pandora. I’ll probably just use HotSpot Shield to listen to Pandora after the 15th.
The email goes on to say:
Both the PPL (which represents the record labels) and the MCPS/PRS Alliance (which represents music publishers) have demanded per track performance minima rates which are far too high to allow ad supported radio to operate and so, hugely disappointing and depressing to us as it is, we have to block the last territory outside of the US.
I have been dealing with the PPL on a project to get PeaceFM to stream online this year. PeaceFM is a month long community radio station in south Manchester which supports PeaceWeek. I created the PeaceWeek website this year with the plan to stream PeaceFM live through the website.
We also wanted to store some of the shows as podcasts after the broadcast. To get a license to stream copyrighted material - ie. music - online is fine, but I found that there is no license in existence whereby we can host the copyrighted material afterwards for download as part of a show. The PPL explained that they simply manage the licenses which the government institute, but the record labels haven’t asked the government to create a license for things like podcasts or downloadable radio shows.
I can’t see why the record companies don’t see that they would gain much in creating a liscence, both in terms of money and also exposure of their artists who they are supposed to represent and promote.
I’ve just watched the documentary Hearts And Minds which is a look at the Vietnam War. I found it moving, shocking and profound and I highly recommend it, especially with us and America being in Iraq and the parallels with Vietnam.
Here is a good synopsis from www.critereon.com:
A courageous and startling film, Peter Davis’ landmark documentary Hearts and Minds unflinchingly confronts the United States’ involvement in Vietnam. Using a wealth of sources—from interviews to newsreels to documentary footage of the conflict at home and abroad—Davis constructs a powerfully affecting portrait of the disastrous effects of war. Explosive, persuasive, and shocking, Hearts and Minds is an overwhelming emotional experience and the controversial winner of the 1974 Academy Award™ for Best Documentary.
I hired Hearts And Minds on DVD because I saw it mentioned as one of the best documentaries on The Documentary Blog. It lists it’s top 25 documentaries as a response to the top 25 documentaries from the International Documentary Association. I want to watch all of the documentaries on both lists this year, and I may even blog my thoughts about each one. Here’s the lists:
International Documentary Association Top 25 Documentaries
1. Hoop Dreams
2. The Thin Blue Line
3. Bowling for Columbine
4. Spellbound
5. Harlan County USA
6. An Inconvenient Truth
7. Crumb
8. Gimme Shelter
9. The Fog of War
10. Roger and Me
11. Super Size Me
12. Don’t Look Back
13. Salesman
14. Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance
15. Sherman’s March
16. Grey Gardens
17. Capturing the Friedmans
18. Born into Brothels
19. Titticut Follies
20. Buena Vista Social Club
21. Fahrenheit 9/11
22. Winged Migration
23. Grizzly Man
24. Night and Fog
25. Woodstock
The Documentary Blog Top 25 Documentaries
1. Gates of Heaven (Morris, 1980)
2. Salesman (Maysles, 1968)
3. Vernon, Florida (Morris, 1982)
4. Paradise Lost 2: Revalations (Berlinger - Sinsofsky, 2000)
5. Land of Silence and Darkness (Herzog, 1971)
6. Burden of Dreams (Blank, 1982)
7. Thin Blue Line, The (Morris, 1988)
8. Grey Gardens (Maysles, 1975)
9. Hoop Dreams (S James, 1994)
10. American Movie (C. Smith, 1999)
11. Gimme Shelter (Maysles, 1970)
12. The Devil and Daniel Johnston (Feuerzeig, 2005)
13. The Staircase (Jean-Xavier de Lestrade, 2004)
14. The Up Series (Almond/Apted, 1964 – 2005)
15. Grizzly Man (Herzog, 2005)
16. Crumb (Zwigoff, 1994)
17. Harland County U.S.A. (Kopple, 1976)
18. For All Mankind (Reinert, 1989)
19. Hell House (Ratliff, 2001)
20. Project Grizzly (Lynch, 1996)
21. Trinity and Beyond: The Atomic Bomb Movie (Kuran, 1995)
22. Don’t Look Back (Pennebaker, 1967)
23. Hearts & Minds (Davis, 1974)
24. Capturing the Friedman’s (Jarecki, 2003)
25. Stevie (James, 2002)