Dom Barnes’s Blog

Today is Women’s No Pay Day. Its a day to make people aware that (as you see above) on average 17% of women are paid £4000 less than their male counterparts, thats the same as working for free from October 30th till the end of the year.

So please join in Fawcett and Unison’s campaign to make people aware, and fight the blatent sexism that still happens in some workplaces. If you can, print of flyers from the website, tell people about the day or just be aware of it. And be sure to sign the online petition.

Via Fawcett Society

Just wanted to post my congratulations to Merlin and Madeline on the birth of Eleanor Flannery Mann, born October 27th, 2007.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/merlin/1784120995/

I’m not sure the Hipster PDA will work with children but you sure can try!

Barely a day old and already got her own URL

First item on take IT away is a Nokia DKU-2 USB connectivity cable.
This was previously used for some old phone that I traded in and now is useless to me. In perfect working order.

For your chance to get this for free, leave me a comment.
Thanks

I recently saw over at Philoking that Jason had a launched a website Take My Tech, where he was giving away some tech bits and pieces for free. Shipping was being subsidised by Google AdSense so there was no reason to charge.

In that light, I’ve decided to start my own mini-Take My Tech. I’ll be offering up some bits and pieces I have accumulated over the years and offering them to you, the reader for free.

If you want the item, then just leave a comment, and supply a valid email address and you could get it.

Jason was going to 100 comments then choosing a random winner. For the sake of the low readership, I’ll keep it to 10 for the start. If it gets popular, then I might increase it.

So stay tuned for some free stuff!

Via Daring Fireball (via John.C.Welch)

Date: 13/10/2007
Location: Dance Studio

Sorry! Its been too long since I’ve blogged the Douglas Furs action. We’ve been practicing! I promise. And we even recorded. It’s been 6 months since our last recording session and we were itching to get back in the saddle. Its just a shame it wasn’t as good as I hoped. Don’t get me wrong, the session went well (I haven’t listened to the results yet though) but it wasn’t as smooth as our previous session.

So I’ll be spending this weekend cutting up tracks to throw into iTunes and probably upload to Virb or somewhere. I’ll be sure to let you all know where to find them.
DF Out

I didn’t really mention this but it was my birthday a few weeks ago. I turned the big old age of 24. Nothing special right? So I decided to treat this birthday as a quiet one. I went to Norwich to see my folks, my sister and my cute nephew, and of course get presents. On the day, I met Katie for lunch, and then went out for dinner in the evening. It was a nice quiet affair. I had some presents and cards to open and look at (and many thanks to everyone for those).
But I got some grief at work. I’d mentioned occasionally at work when the day was, but didn’t say anything on the day because I didn’t wanna make a big deal. And then a week ago, someone asked me if it was that day, to which I said yes, and so people started to make a issue out of the fact that I didn’t say anything!

Why is it such a thing that you don’t wanna do anything about your birthday? Of course, working in an office, its customary to buy food (why am I spending money on my own birthday?) for the office, so some people implied that I was just trying to get out of that. Bollocks.
So all in all, the day swept by quietly. I had some nice stuff (cool socks, vouchers, cows, and a tricky puzzle block game. Thanks Sis), and the main spend was my laptop.
But its all over now. Another 350 odd days till the next. Woo-frigging-hoo(!)

So I’ve booked off the 9th November to go get my iPhone. Rumour has it that it will be available at 6pm, like the US release. And what I’m wondering is what to do during the day. I’ll have my laptop there (and power cable, very important) and I was wondering about live blogging my day waiting there.
I have thought about simply blogging during the day, while uploading photos to Flickr. I’ve also thought about something like Viddler or uStream.tv and just broadcasting some of my day there. Or is there another service I could use to report on my day in the Bullring.
Well I’d love to hear some ideas, so please, drop your thoughts in the comments.

I first heard of Confessions of an Economic Hitman from John C Dvorak on TWiT one week during the Audible Book Recommendation. In preparation of my holiday in sunny…nay rainy week in Scotland and I decided to pick up this to read while away.

The basic premise of this book is the true life story of John Perkins, who was recruited by MAIN, after dropping out of college and being asked to take a NSA analysis for a possible job there. His job was an an economist for MAIN, travelling to various countries around the world. His role was to provide evidence that if they borrowed billions of dollars from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) their economy would grow. In reality, they were being manipulated into taking these big loans, then using the money to employ large American Multinational Corporations (the “corporatocracy”) to build and develop the economy. In truth, as well as plunging them into huge debt, it also puts them at the will of the USA, often to allow them to take advantage of the county.

Its a really interesting story of the authors journey through life, coming to realise his true place in the world, and the results of his actions, and then his subsequent to redemption.

This book will really change the way you view the US government, and their actions over the timeframe of this book. It explains the reasons behind Iraq and many other big events in the US history.

If you believe in the conspiracy of the US, or want to learn about this possible view of the events othe last 35 years, then get this book. Its a really interesting read and I think you’ll love it, just like I did.