Jonathon Wardman

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.

Left past the Christmas tree

Has anyone else noticed how, in the Rowntree’s Randoms directions advert, the man giving directions says “…go right past the Christmas tree…” while pointing left?

I do wish advertising agencies would get these things right!

A quick catch up

I’ve been useless at writing recently.  I’ve got lots to write about, and I’ve failed.  I think generally I’ve had a few things to do in the evening when I would normally write this which have taken precedence (although I’ve been a bit useless doing most of those things, too).  I’m going to try to catch up with a few things in one go here, but I’ll try to write in more detail about a couple of other things soon.

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The daily photo plan: update

I feel bad.  This month I’ve let myself down.  There was a run of 4 days and have been quite a few separate days when I didn’t get a picture for my daily photo gallery, and at least one where I took a picture on a different day to the day I filed it under (although in this case the image was related to the day I labelled it as…).  I must try harder.

Catch up with the gallery here: http://www.flutt.co.uk/daily-photo/