Jonathon Wardman

The Possible Prizes

With the excitement building to find out what prizes I have won on the Purely Creative “Win A Million” scratch cards, I thought I’d do some research into what the prizes actually are.

I have two winning scratch cards; one with two matching symbols, and one with three. The scratch cards list all the possible prizes, so I should be guaranteed to win one prize from both of the following lists.

Two matching symbols:

• £8,000 – cash prizes are pretty straight forward. The T&Cs on the back of the cards say cash prizes are awarded as a cheques. 1 of these available.
• £5,000 – again a cheque, would cover the Canon 5D MkIII I want nicely. 2 available.
• Family break in Orlando – the back of the card says this prize “includes return flights from UK mainland + 14 nights hotel accomm. for 2 adults and 2 childen.” There is no information about what hotel it would be. [read more]

Million Pound Claim Number

If you read my post back in the middle of February about my attempt to win with one of the free scratch cards you get in magazines and newspapers, you might be interested to know that I received my claim number(s) today. I didn’t get them through the post but had to contact the company to ask about it, however.

The information on the cards said that I should allow 28 days to “receive claim number & info.” So I waited. Day 28 was the 16th March (allowing for delays in the post), and not having received a reply from Purely Creative’s Twitter account when I asked them if the 28 days was full days or working days I decided today to contact them via the form on the website. I was pleasantly surprised when I received a reply from Rubina at Purely Creative with a claim number. [read more]

Trying to “Win A Million”

I was on a train the other day on my way back from picking some things up in Guildford when I spotted on of those scratchcard you get in magazines and newspapers on the seat just opposite me. I’m aware of how these things work, what with their premium rate numbers and suchlike, but I also know they all have to offer a non-purchase route to winning. I’ve often wondered what would happen if someone actually tried the claim by post route, so I decided to give it a go.

The competition is run by Purely Create, a company with a registered address just down the road from where I went to University in Lancaster, and the company behind most of these scratchcard competitions. A brief search also turns up some quite negative reports in the papers, especially the Mirror. Despite that I figured, as long as I was careful, there was nothing to worry about. Their website, incidentally, is run on WordPress. [read more]

Those new toothpaste tubes

I’ve just started on a new tube of toothpaste. It’s the same kind of toothpaste as my old tube — Colgate Total Advanced Whitening — but they have changed the tube design in the most annoying way.

We are short of space on our sink, and Dana and I share a little plastic cup to keep our toothbrushes and toothpaste in. This used to work fine as there was plenty of space for two brushes and two tubes of toothpaste. Sometimes there was a problem with balance, especially when one of the tubes was nearing the end, but generally it was a perfectly satisfactory setup. But then, for some reason, Colgate came along and made the caps on their toothpaste tubes huge…

It seems they think that people want their toothpaste tubes to be self-supporting — that by giving the tubes a big cap they can stand on their own single big foot — but I really don’t see it as an improvement. [read more]

It's a passion

There are a few things I’ve done in my life which I hate while I’m doing it, but keep coming back for more.  One was the sporting results website I ran while at university — for one long weekend every year I’d work 24 hours a day on the site, collating results, piecing things together, and doing some statistical analysis to predict what might happen, as well as being involved with the radio station, and even doing some overnight broadcasts.  I’d finish the weekend and collapse into bed for a few days swearing I’d never do it again.  Yet come the next year there I’d be there to do it all over again.  In the last year or so I thought about it  and came to a conclusion: I must enjoy it, even if I didn’t realise it, because otherwise I wouldn’t keep going back.

And I think sometimes it’s the same with my photography.

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(Politics) A Labour plan for another 5 years (& 6 months)

Forgive me for a moment: for the first time I can think of in this blog I’m going to be political. I’ll try to be brief.

It’s not especially a secret that I’m a leftie.  I’ve not talked about it much here, but I suspect you could decode it from my posts, and especially via Twitter.  So it won’t come as much of a surprise that in the upcoming general election I’m backing Labour.

As the election looms it’s looking increasingly likely from the opinion polls that the UK will get a hung parliament on Thursday.  Accordingly the Queen would invite Gordon Brown, as the incumbent Prime Minister, to form the next government. It’s likely that Mr Brown would then approach the Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg in an attempt to form some kind of anti-Tory coalition government.  For a moment I’m going to assume this happens — that the Liberal Democrats would rather form a coalition with the Labour Party than the Conservative party.

It struck me the other day while listening to Andrew Pierce and Kevin Maguire talking about the Labour leadership on the radi0, that there’s still a way the Labour Party can come out of this election (for a definition of “this” see below) with a strong mandate to run the country for another 5 years.  Let me explain. [read more]

The Year of the Tiger

The following weekend saw the annual Chinese New Year celebrations in London and another day out with my camera.  This one proved to be much more successful and significantly less painful.

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Valentine's Day

I was trying to sneak this in before the end of February so as to have posted something in February, but I failed.  I’ll have to make do with having started it last month, even if I only managed to finish it this month.  I was going to blame my lack of updates on a quiet month, but in actual fact there have been a few things I’ve mean to post about and just never got around to. In fact I’m still a blog post missing from Christmas: I had started writing something about Chrismas in Windows Live Writer — the offline editor I sometimes use when writing on the train — but that seems to have gone missing so I’ll have to start again.  I think I’ll make an effort to write a load of stuff this week. But enough of excuses, let’s write something worthwhile!

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25

I turned 25 in November.  I’m getting old.  Just before my birthday Dana, Phil, Cecile and I went out for a meal.  It wasn’t related, just an evening out with friends, but we did talk about it a bit.  Last year I removed my birthday from Facebook to see who would remember, without being reminded, that it was my birthday.  Very few people did.  I think I sometimes go out of my way to make myself miserable – this seems to be a good example. [read more]

It’s been too long…

It seems every time I’ve written here recently I’ve started by saying “it’s been too long”.  But each time it has.  This time longer than the others I think. The problem is I leave it for a while and then each time I think about it I get intimidated by how much I’ve got to write about just because I’ve not written for so long.  Anyhow, I intend to catch up right now – I’m on the train home for Christmas and history shows I write well on the train.

So prepare yourself for the next few entries.  They will take you through October, November and December up to date.