Du Coq à l'Ane

It is spring, at last, and I'm feeling light-hearted.

What colour is your mind?

Click here to find out. Don't forget to let us know.

Mine is purple! And so is T's, though we didn't come up with the same answers.

Your Mind is Purple

Of all the mind types, yours is the most idealistic. You tend to think wild, amazing thoughts. Your dreams and fantasies are intense. Your thoughts are creative, inventive, and without boundaries. You tend to spend a lot of time thinking of fictional people and places - or a very different life for yourself.

OK, so we purple-minded people don't have a strong hold on reality, or in my case any hold on reality at all, but at least we can count on beautiful dreams.

What about you?

Happiness in life

There is only one happiness in life, to love and be loved. (George Sand)

In the pursuit of happiness?

A Harvard professor defines happiness as doing something that has meaning and gives you pleasure.

He claims that it can be achieved by five easy steps:

• Simplifying your life by doing less rather than more.
• Exercising three times a week for thirty minutes which has the same powerful effect as the strongest psychiatric drugs
• Accepting your painful emotions and sadness as only psychopaths and dead people can’t feel
• Appreciating what you have
• and watching as the good in your life grows (or appreciates) and being grateful

(Five Easy Steps from 60 Minutes, the American documentary programme. Watch these videos for a fuller explanation.)

Now, that's lucky because I have recently joined a gym where you are expected to work out intensively for 30 minutes three times a week (coincidence?).  I'm looking forward to that powerful effect. I could even get hooked.

I might have better luck with photography though, as it helps me appreciate and be grateful for what I have. By the way, I'm looking forward to posting some of the photos I've taken recently. Thank you, Tone, for encouraging me.

It would really help if I could simplify my life too, but that is not going to be so easy if the messy heap of unfinished projects in my study is anything to go by. The important thing is to do and appreciate one thing at a time, apparently. For now, I'm planning to box all the various projects so they don't remind me of all I've failed to achieve, but I keep forgetting to buy the boxes.

I think I  know why I have trouble getting anything done: I'm almost certainly suffering from Age Activated Attention Deficit Disorder : AAADD.

Quoting Dr John Crippen of NHS Blog Doctor fame:

I am grateful to a “Mature Age Person" (Bugs Man") who has summoned up the courage to go public with his own mental problems.

"I was recently diagnosed with AAADD - Age Activated Attention Deficit Disorder. This is how it manifests itself:

I decide to water my plants in the front garden. As I go to turn on the hose I look over at my car and decide it needs washing. I go to get the car keys from the entrance and then notice the delivered mail on the entrance table. I decide to go through the mail before I wash the car. I put my car keys on the table, put the junk mail in the bin under the table, and notice that the bin is full. So, I decide to put the bills back on the table and take out the rubbish first. But then I think, I can run down to the post-box when I take out the rubbish, I may as well pay the bills first. I take my cheque book off the table, and see that there is only 1 cheque left. My other cheque book is in the computer desk, so I go inside the house to my desk where I find the can of Coke I'd been drinking. I'm going to look for my other cheque book, but first I need to push the Coke aside so that I don't accidentally knock it over. The Coke is getting warm so I decide to put it in the fridge to keep it cold. As I head toward the kitchen with the Coke, a vase of flowers on the window ledge catches my eye--they need water. I put the Coke on the window ledge and discover my reading glasses that I've been searching for all morning. I decide I’d better put them back on my computer desk, but first I'm going to water the flowers. I put the glasses back down on the window ledge, fill a container with water and suddenly spot the TV remote. I must have left it on the kitchen table. I realize that tonight when I go to watch TV, I'll be looking for the remote, but I won't remember that it's on the kitchen table, so I decide to put it back in the living room where it belongs, but first I'll water the flowers. I pour some water in the flowers, but some spills on the floor. So, I set the remote back on the table, get a towel and wipe up the spill. Then I head down the hall trying to remember what I was planning to do. At the end of the day: The flower tubs aren't watered; The car isn't washed; The bills aren't paid; There is a warm can of Coke sitting on the window ledge; The flowers in the vase don't have enough water; There is still only 1 cheque in my cheque book; I can't find the remote; I can't find my glasses; I have absolutely NO idea what I did with the car keys. Then, when I try to work out why nothing got done today, I'm really baffled because I know I was busy all damn day, and I'm really tired. I realise this is a serious problem and I'll try to get some help for it, but first I'll check my e-mail. Do me a favour. Forward this message to everyone I know, because I don't remember who the hell I've sent it to."

Dr Crippen also suffers from this condition. Is there anyone out there who can help?

Me too! Can you help?
In the mean time, I'd better go to the gym before I forget.

It's comforting to know that happiness can be achieved if you are willing to exercise, lower your sights,  let go of your regrets, accept your sadness and appreciate what you have.

December to January

December was a month of almost too perfect blue skies

En décembre le ciel était d'un bleu presque trop parfait

January, on the other hand,  is swathed in clouds

Janvier, par contre, est enveloppé dans des nuages

It's a dog's life ...

Can we go for a walk, now, before I grow any more grey hairs on my chin?

Une vie de chien ... Allons nous promener avant que ne me poussent davantage de poils gris.

Philomène's Questionnaire (1)

PHILOMENE WOULD LIKE TO KNOW...

What is your favourite word?

What is your least favourite word?

Version française

PHILOMENE AIMERAIT SAVOIR...

Quel est votre mot préferé?

Quel est le mot que vous détestez?

Well, Christmas is over ...

And it is time to put the decorations away...

The kind of thing that makes my day

Try this...
Make your own snowflake

The end of life on Mars?

According to NASA: Mars Impact Probability Increases to 4 Percent

The impact probability for a collision of asteroid 2007 WD5 with Mars on January 30 has increased from 1.3% to 3.9%.

That is a 1 in 25 chance.

Perhaps it will wake up the Open University's underfunded and unresponsive Mars probe? (Beagle 2  wasn't really the University's project, but OU was involved).

Is it possible to listen to BBC Radio 4 in the South of France?

This is about certain new technologies that might interest my readers, my friends my technophobic and partially expatriated family and others who have found their way here by mistake.

There are few things from England I really miss. Although flapjacks and gumboots figure high on the list, listening to BBC Radio 4, which aspires to "intelligent speech" these days, ranks higher. The BBC World Service kept me in touch with the world when I was living in the Czech Republic, but nothing replaces the curious mixture of the obscure and familiar, the profound and the trivial that listeners to Radio 4 in Britain take for granted.

It's not that French radio doesn't provide the above, but France Inter only does the familiar but it is just too trivial for my taste, while France Culture only does the obscure and can be profoundly boring for hours on end. My favourite broadcast on Europe 1 - Laurent Ruquier's On va se gêner - is very entertaining. It mixes current affairs with humour but it is better downloaded as a podcast without commercial breaks to be listened to at leisure on an iPod. I usually giggle myself to sleep listening to it.

The BBC also offers podcasts of selected Radio 4 programmes. I subscribe to several of these, including In Our Time, the history of ideas discussed by Melvyn Bragg and his erudite guests. However, many Radio 4 programmes are not available as podcasts and there is something rather too deliberate about programming your listening in advance.

You can listen to Radio 4 on Internet using the iPlayer the BBC provides, but if I'm anywhere near my computer, I should really be doing some work, or at least blogging. What I really miss is the background radio which allows you to get on with your chores until something unexpectedly catches your attention, a book review, an interview with a British feminist art historian or the problems new moral values pose established religions, for example. How on earth is the Church of England going to cope with its homosexual bishops, I wonder?

Well, at last I've found a way to listen to Radio 4 live: on WiFi radio. I have acquired a wifi radio at great expense from Orange that connects through ADSL to radio stations from all over the world including not only BBC mainstream channels, but also all its international and local stations, a total of 59 stations in all!

There are only 24 hours in a day, so Philomène and I plan to stick to BBC Radio 4.

Here Philomène can be seen enjoying the Archers. She looks somewhat alarmed. It has certainly widened her horizons...

Earlier today we listened to New Kids on the Blog  which looks at how the digital revolution is changing the face of American media. Of course, it is not only American media that is facing change, as I'm sure the BBC is aware. If you don't have the time to listen, here are some facts gleaned from the programme that might interest you:

- there are an estimated 112 million blogs
- the most popular YouTube video, The Evolution of Dance, has been viewed over 64,000,000 times
- a YouTube user is know as an eyeball
- eyeballs upload 7 hours of video per minute
- YouTube records 100,000,000 views per day
- American politicians have caught on: 7 out of the 16 presidential candidates announced their candidature on YouTube
- Hillary Clinton alone has 92 videos on YouTube

By the way, certain members of my expatriated family also star on YouTube.

You can hardly ignore the digital revolution, especially when it brings you BBC Radio 4, blogs and YouTube entertainment wherever you are in the world.