Norman Ralph

I am writing this from the WordPress app for my recently acquired iPhone.

I have been a Blackberry user for almost three years now (I still am) and have long been a fan of the full qwerty keyboard they offer, the enterprise trade security and the rioters’ tool of choice, Blackberry Messenger (BBM).

However, since I got an iPhone as a replacement for my iPod, I have been quite impressed. It feels fast and agile yet manages to accomplish most tasks I throw at it. I still feel that the touchscreen keyboard is less reliable and slower to use than the full tactile keyboard offered by the RIM rivals.having said that the corrective text algorithms on the Apple device are pretty good even when typing gibberish. The lack of flexibility in terms of apps and personalisation is something that Android users take issue with and rightly so, however with me coming from Blackberry there was less of an impact there. In my opinion the lack of freedom is probably almost balanced by security and peace of mind, although as a fan of freedom, the balance is on the right track but is definitely not there yet!

I currently am using a Blackberry Bold as my day to day communications device and primary hand held email platform and the iPhone 4 as my social media and media (including games) device. My Blackberry contract is up in March and I am torn as to whether to replace it with another one or contemplate a standard back up phone.

The site is now 4 years old! Well officially the anniversary of my first post is on the 26th March but today is the 4th anniversary of the launch of all the back end gubbins.

There have been plenty of ups and downs over the years but my relationship with you, the readers of this site, is now longer than any real life relationship I’ve had so far. Many would say that was a little sad, but I am quite proud. When I kicked off in 2007 I never envisaged I would still be writing stuff on here.

Here is to another 4 years of happy posting. One day I will work out exactly what sort of content fits the site best.

2010 started quietly for me on the blogging front, apart from my Twitter updates my first real blog post was about the 10:23 Homeopathy Overdose Project (which I was unfortunately unable to attend due to work commitments) and my strongly worded letter to David Cameron.

February was another quiet month on the blog front although I did spend a week in the Lakes and come hoem to find my house was flooded which left me without a PC for nearly a month.

March saw me foolishly making some long term plans about future living arrangements as well as celebrating Normanralph.com’s 3rd birthday. I also gave up my car to cut down on costs and get ready for city centre living.

A good friend of mine was deported in April and threatened with death on his return to his native Pakistan. Leeds Atheist Society ran Reason Week 2010 and I started following Major League Soccer.

In May I spent a lot of time preparing for my speaking engagement at CWF’s Enquiry conference in Birmingham. I also split up with my partner and moved in with Chris and George.

June was world cup month, so the less said about it the better, but I was hardly in a celebrating mood following the events of the previous month.

I spent most of July running around the country with work, really throwing myself in to my job.

Blackpool started their Premier League campaign during August and I started to really get ready for my trip of a lifetime. The month finished with a really great weekend with Sarann at Solfest.

Eurotrip 2010 took up September. In three weeks Chris, Kieran, George and I took in Amsterdam, Luxembourg, Munich, Salzburg, Venice, Verona, St Gallen, Montreux, Monte Carlo and Jard-Sur-Mer. I also turned 26.

October was a catching up month. I was working a lot to pay off Europe and to make sure that I got my best ever performance review to date.

I was off around the country again in November. Taking in an audience with Greg Epstein and a load of gigs.

December saw me celebrate the success story of Blackpool FC’s season in the Premier League so far as well as the contribution made by their manager. I also found time to go and see Tim Minchin thank god for Sam’s Mum’s Cateracts.

As you can see, it has been a mixed bag of a year. Some real highs in the form of Eurotrip and the number of gigs I’ve managed to catch, but also some real lows.

I think 2011 might be OK, there are some things that I am already really excited about seeing how they pan out as well as some concrete plans to go to Dublin, Malta and maybe even back to Verona over the summer. I also have some great work to do with some of the organisations I support i.e. the AHS and BHA as well as continuing to build up my own career and developing some projects of my own.

Here’s to you 2011.

I will dispense with the normal “sorry I haven’t posted in ages, I was busy” excuses because even though I have been busy, I have had free time enough to blog but I just have not done so. The main reason has been due to the fact that thinking up articles and getting them posted has not been top of my priority list for the last couple of months and with my Twitter feed syndicating up here every week, it hardly felt worth it to re-hash the mundane activities I partake in on a day to day basis.

Having said all that, I do have a couple of articles I want to put up as soon as I have finished them inspired by the Harvard University humanist chaplain, Greg Epstein (author of Good Without God) whom I got to go and see courtesy of the BHA last month. The focus of these articles are similar to a couple of articles I have published in the past on marketing the humanist brand and developing the non-religious “product”.

I also have the article series I promised back in January to post which was delayed for a number of reasons, not least some issues over the leaking of my blog’s existence to the powers that be as well as the break-up of my relationship.

So, well and truly biten by the travel bug since my return from Europe at the weekend, I have been looking with envy at all my friend’s travel plans. An old uni friend is heading off to West Africa for the best part of four months starting in October. She has started a blog to keep track of her progress so I recommend you all keep an eye on it and leave encouraging messages!

Enjoy!

For those of you interested in follwoing my progress on the roadtrip round Europe then Kieran has made a nifty little application for his website which will show all the checkpoints, pit stops and overnight stays we make whilst en route. The application also features a copy of the Twitter stream for our official hashtag #ertrip2010. You can check out the application here.

There is also an XML feed for the trip data if you think you can do soemthing exciting with it. If you do use it then please let one of us know so that we can see. You can let Kieran know by leaving soemthing on his forum or you can contact me here. You can also tweet about it as long as you remember to use the hashtag.

You can follow my personal updates on my homepage or via my Twitter feed.

Okay. So I have once again been guilty of not blogging on a regular basis as I have promised over and over again. I am afraid this is probably going to be a pattern that continues for as long as this blog exists.

In my defence, I have been busy working (I am currently working on a project that means I have to work long hours and travel a lot) and doing my best to spend time with Liz and my friends (something that I am equally as bad at).

I have about 15 articles/posts in draft format and I am probbaly going to start posting them unfinished/unedited because it seems I am incapable of finishing anything before starting something else and rather than have you sit here reading Twitter updates ad infinitum, you might as well get some unpolished work to read and maybe comment on!

When Chris posted his open letter to David Cameron on his blog earlier this week it got me thinking about whether any of the main political parties took humanism and the non-religious community seriously, or whether they just saw them as an unimportant fringe sectio of society that would basically not care about the religious aspects of their party’s policies.

I have tended to vote for a Conservative candidate in general eelctions, although how much this has to do with modern Conservative policies over my liking of the candidate and the fact I believed his promises to me more than his competitors is still under consideration, and for a variety of individuals in local elections. This means that although I am broadly conservative in my political leanings (I believe in a small government, privatisation, free market economy and the need for aspiration to be rewarded not punished) I have voted Lib Dem, Labour and independent a number of times. The basis of these decisions usually revolved around what the individual stance was in secularism and supporting local initiative and enterprise.

Whilst David Cameron may not feel that charitable action is something the non-religious excell at, I dn’t think this is the view amongst all Conservative MP’s. The Rt Hon Michael Jack MP has always shown a passion and understanding for local charitable initiatives regardless of their religious (or lack of) denomination.

The Labour party has similar divisions. Tony Blair founded the Tony Blair Faith Foundation yet there are many Labour MP’s that sit on the Parliamentary Humanist Group.

I have stolen Chris’s concept and written to my MP and a number of high profile members of the governemnt and the opposition to ask for a clarification on their party’s views on this subject. I will post their responses (If I get them) on this site.

I have been “out” as an atheist for about eight years now and have lived with the associated consequences through the cut throat environment of high school, the holier than thou (excuse the pun) world on university and the politically correct arena of real life employment. Out of all those experiences it was the time at university that I found the need to explain and defend my position almost inescapable. Maybe it was the inquisitive and argumentative nature of students, but at school and at work the topic of religious belief has never really been an issue.

It was this thought that has inspired a series of articles that I am going to be releasing over the next few weeks. There are five in all, but I think that the final two will probably get posted as a single piece as I feel that the flow is better suited that way. So, for those of you that have been ignoring my posts recently due to the lack of real or meaningful content should start refreshing those RSS feeds and rechecking those bookmarks!

The article series is called Living as an Atheist and will hopefully highlight some of the issues that are faced by atheists when trying to apply the principles and ideas that tend to be associated with an atheistic world view to real life situations.

The first piece will be on what it means to be a young atheist in sixth form/college and then university. The main thesis is that the 16-25 age bracket is the key defining period in how an atheist will develop their wolrdview and what features of that worldview persist into life beyond education.

The second article is about university atheist societies and it is aimed to coincide with the anniversary of the official press launch of the National Federation of Atheist, Humanist and Secular Student Societies. The focus of this article will be on sustainability and leadership within the student community of an atheist society. This is a subject which I have been invited to speak on at the AHS Conference in Oxford att he end of February.

The third part of the series is an essay on working in a multi-ethnic environment and the clash of British capitalism and religious imperatives. The key points under exploration will include the compatability of the market system with Islamic ideas on trade and finance as well as the human element of actually working alongside adherants to a number of religions and how “office banter” can lead to difficult situations and damaging misunderstandings.

The fourth and fifth articles will be a short history of my own journey to atheism and then an in depth analysis into the development of my world view and how that is implemented both in my student world and my professional world.

So, keep your eyes peeled as I am unsure yet as to which day will be ebst for publication but will probably depend on when I need to kill the msot time at work over the next week.

I am using this site less and less to update the blogosphere of my daily activities, so I think a change of direction is necessary to make sure that this site doesn’t become a ghost town.

I haven’t blogged in a while so i will just bring everyone up to date:

1) I have had to take some time out from my studies to address a few situations, namely my finances. This credit crunch is a real bitch. Sidetracking slightly, why is it a credit crunch exactly? What’s crunching?

2) As a result of my sabbatical from university, I have had to step down from my roles within both the AHS and Leeds Atheist Society. This was a massive disappointment for me as long term readers will be aware I have been involved with both organisation since their inception. I hope to contine playing a role in some sort of capacity, even if just as a regular old member. The main issue being my need to give the leadership room to develop their own style and direction.

3) I have gone full time with my job at O2. I am now a performance adviser and basically I do the same job, with more responsibility for no extra reward. Well I technically get increased job satisfaction and a job i enjoy most of the time, but not exactly going to make a dent in the old finances!

4) I have moved in with Liz, just the two of us, into a nice little cottage in the Seacroft area of Leeds. It is one of the original village buildings from before they added all the council estates that now mean that Seacroft is a suburb of Leeds rather than its own little village.

5) As a result of the above, I have less than I used to to write about on here, hence the need for a wholsesale change in direction.

I would like to start concentrating on developing a few ideas I have for essays and the like on my particular subjects of choice, i.e. management, secularism, atheism and humanism. Some of this blog is going to get dedicated to that and related stuff, like pics, tweets etc. I also think I am going to put some more syndications on here, sharing posts and ideas by other atheist writers, bloggers and speakers.

I have also started thinking recently about whether there is scope to get more involved in actually devleoping the atheist movement into one that makes a real difference. Chris has focussed in on Humanist Action Group and is working towards turning that into a real charity. Whilst I could piggy back on to that, I wonder whether I could ever really make a difference. My areas of interest is with young people, I think it with this group that real difference can be made. I used to do a lot of work with Lancashire County Council and their youth and community section. I was involved in a number of youth participation programmes too. I also wonder whether I could use some of my contacts in parliament to do soemthing with lobbying and maje a difference that way.

Well as you can see, there are a number of directions this blog could take. I don’t know yet which one I fancy, or which one will come to fruition. Maybe inspiration will hit me, or maybe I will try all of them until I get one that works!