Norman Ralph

I am a Blackberry fan boy at heart. I love the full qwerty keyboard, the enterprise level security, Blackberry Internet Service, BBM and the Bold II is still my phone of choice. However, I needed to replace my iPod and when I started shopping around I found it cheaper to buy a new iPhone 4 (price matched and staff discount applied) than to buy a new iPod. So I am not the owner (not so proud I have to admit) of a brand new iPhone 4. I haven’t used it much yet as it is currently sat at home charging whilst I deal with my hangover at work, but the UI is shiny and smooth; although is no where near as user friendly as the marketing bods at Apple would have me believe.

I won’t be using it much as a phone, but I will probably make good use of the fact I essentially have an iPod touch with 3g!

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.

Over the last two months I have travelled over 1000 miles for work, from Glasgow to Slough to Leeds and London several times. I have started staying in Marriott hotels enough to warrant a loyalty card and already have nearly enough points for free night!

Travelling for work is hard, it means early mornings, late nights and a lot of eating alone. I don’t think I will ever really get used to booking a table for one. Although it’s a tough life and I am glad I only have to spend a day or so a week on average away from Leeds I am starting to enjoy certain aspects of it. The variety of the work is something I really love, along with meeting all sorts of characters. It is amazing to think that I spend a lot of time chatting to strangers in the hotel bar or at service stations whilst I am refuelling on relentless.

I am starting to look at moving on from my current job as I want to progress my career, but I am starting to think that I don’t want to move somewhere where I lose the opportunity to travel and experience the things I have experienced over the last few months.

I mean, as I write this I am chatting to a really interesting guy that works in real estate. he is currently setting up a deal to buy a warehouse and turn it into a contemporary opera space in East London.

Following on from my recent post about what I want to do for a house next year I have come to a few decisions.

Firstly, I think it is almost certain that Liz and I will be moving into a flat in the city centre. After all I am 25, so not that many chances left to squeeze in some hard core party time before I have to start thinking about responsibility and the cost of my mortgage. There seem to be some nice looking places in Leeds that meet most of my criteria – i.e. large(ish) living area, at least 2 big double bedrooms and a kitchen that you can actually use, but they do come at a price premium. This means my budget for nect year is going to be pretty tight, even with my pay rises and bonus.

This leads on to my second decision. I am going to ditch my car. I worked out that it costs me between two and three thousand pounds a year to run in insurance, maintenance, tax, petrol etc which I just can’t afford if I live in the city centre.

The money would be better spent on bus tickets and car hire when using a car is unavoidable (holidays etc).

So it is going to be the end of an era. I have owned a car since before I could drive and have always loved the independence and freedom that owning a car brings. It is going to take some adjustment, but it actually isn’t that bad. My car has eben in the agarge this week getting the handbrake fixed so have had to catch the bus to work and back everyday. Whilst it adds over an hour a day on to my commute time, it doesn’t feel that much. In fact, the time I spend on the bus is time I loo forward to. It gives me time to listen to music, read books and write notes etc for artcles and blog posts. All stuff that I never had time for before.

I hope my weekly Twitter updates have been keeping you up to date on what I have been up to over the past few months whilst I have been up to my ears in overtime at work? If not, then you will be please to know that there will be plenty of substantial posts hitting the site over the next few weeks!

I have managed to squeeze in over 100 hours of overtime over the last 2 months. The proceeds from which were supposed to be funding my holidays, both here and abroad, seeing as I havnt been on holiday since going to Prague several years ago! The problem is that overtime never seems to work out that profitable! By the time the tax man and student loan company have had their share I’m rarely left with anything at all. Annoying.

So I’m blogging from work, always a good sign of productivity! Working through in 2nd line today, really wish we worked through here permanently. They have big desks and no barriers between desks which makes for a far better working environment. Will try and a pic later via Twitter so keep an eye out for a twitpic tweet on the sidebar.

Just got back from celebrating Sophie’s 21st birthday at D-Fusion in Leeds. D-Fusion is a karaoke bar/restaurant/night club and is well worth a punt if you are bored or just love singing in public! Drinks are reasonably priced for this kind of place and the staff seem really friendly. Their song collection appeared to be particularly weak to start with, the book of songs being very thin. However, the manager informed me that they had over 20,000 songs on their karaoke control machine and that they could find any song we requested.

With this being a Tuesday night, many of the faces were from A-Soc and a few of the committee got the ball rolling in terms of singing, Zoltan biting the bullet and getting up first.

The night was good, although I left relatively early as had just compelted a 12 hour shift at work and I am due back at work in less that 8 hours! Luckily I have a half day, finishing around lunchtime but back for 12 hours on Thursday to try and make an imapct on the backlog we have built up.

It seems that my hard work at O2 over the last year and a bit is about to pay off. I mean this in the purely literal sense as it is bonus time at work. I managed to get an excellent apraisal and I am in line to receive a pretty sizable lump sum! I have decided that this shall be put towards building a relatively starter style home entertainment system. I am new to the whole thing and I have a really small house so I have not gone for anything too flash and a couple of items are still up for discussion – namely whether I sghould get separate games console and Blu-Ray player or plump for the PS3. A lot of articles and pundits have repeatedly opted for the PS3 as the idea source for a low-end system but I still have my reservations about its ability as a console. I will be looking to upgrade they system with a larger TV (ideally full HD) when I have a bigger living room. I fancy adding a full HD projector at some point for those move and sports nights I envisage

Layout

The full list is as follows:

TV: Samsung LE32B450C4
AV Receiver: Onkyo TX-SR507
Sources: Samsung BD-P1600, Sky+HD, Xbox 360 Elite, Custom built Media PC
Speakers: Tannoy SFX5.1

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!

That’s right folks, normanralph.com is two years old today!

I am actually a little shocked about that fact to be honest. I really didn’t think when I posted that very first time that I would still be blogging two years later!

A lot has happened in thos two years, although not as much as maybe I had hoped for really. I am still studying, working for not a huge amount of money, living like a student, still rather hefty in shape but then I have developed a long term relationship, learned so much about so many things through uni and work, formed and run a national representational organisation, set the ground work for a charitable venture (more on that in the future, it’s all a bit hush hush at the moment) and made some great new friends.

Anyway, it’s cake time now!