If you have even the slightest shred of emotion within you, you can’t fail to be moved by this song from Eva Cassidy.

The correct and accurate lyrics…

Early Morning Rain

In the early morning rain with a dollar in my hand
And an aching in my heart and my pockets full of sand
I’m a long way from home and I miss my loved ones so
In the early morning rain with no place to go

Out on runway number nine, big seven-o-seven set to go
But I’m stuck here on the ground where the cold winds blow
You can’t jump a jet plane like you can a freight train
So I’d best be on my way in the early morning rain

Hear her mighty engines roar, see the silver bird on high
She’s away and westward bound, far above my home she’ll fly
Where the morning rain don’t fall and the sun always shines
She’ll be flying past my home in about three hours time

In the early morning rain with a dollar in my hand
And an aching in my heart and my pockets full of sand
I’m a long way from home and I miss my loved ones so
In the early morning rain with no place to go
In the early morning rain with no place to go

I mentioned on Twitter that I’d been to the doc because I’ve got a dodgy knee. If you kneed ( <— see what I did there?) to know what’s wrong with my knee… it started clicking and locking up. It’s quite funny if you’re not me. and if you are me, which I am, then it’s a right royal pain in the… er… knee! Obviously.

Anyway after Debs (no longer on twitter) asked me what caused the dodgyness, and I replied judo, rugby, running and old age (which was Debs’ original suggestion to me. Tsk!) I asked her whether she had any dodgy body parts (which out of context sounds a bit stalkerish).

So after comparing ailments I thought it might be fun to give you a full list and then ask you for your list.

I did think of turning this into a meme, but I don’t like being hated, so if you want to memefy it, please go ahead.

OK. Here goes…

• short sighted
• starting to get near sighted
• dodgy knee
• dodgy left shoulder
• slight hearing loss in left ear
• stiff back
• a verruca
• never ending sore throat
• hammer toes
• too many filled molars
• I chipped a bone in my thumb when I punched someone
• cat allergy (not all cats)

I think that’s it. There might be more. When you live with these things you tend to forget about them.

So what’s wrong with you?

Dave

What is the secret to my weight loss?

Crash dieting!

Oh yes you read that right. Crash dieting.

Funnily enough it was being sick for a whole month earlier in the year that got me thinking along these lines.

I reasoned that if I could be ill enough causing me not to be able to eat, and still find the strength to recover, I could survive a series of crash diets.

A few things have come together to lead me to this conclusion, it wasn’t just the illness.

I read about an American General who ate just once a day. His name is McChrystal, and whilst I haven’t seen his approach in any great detail, I take it at face value that he eats one meal and nothing else.

And don’t laugh, but my dogs eat once a day in the evening and they are  happy and fit and healthy.

There are also plenty of stories of people surviving without food for long periods of time.

Anyway, detail isn’t necessary. It’s possible to survive and thrive on one meal a day – even if that isn’t desirable in the long term.

I got severely bored with the steady dance of losing a pound and putting a pound back on, losing a pound and putting a pound back on. Dull. Dull. Dull. And very discouraging when you’re trying to lose a substantial amount of weight. It’s basically purgatory, because the end is always so far away.

The pound dance is something I’m happy to live with once I’ve reached my goal. But it’s a killer when trying to reach it from a distance.

What I discovered is that by throwing all my energy and will power into short bursts of massive action, I’ve been able to lose the fat in a way that keeps me interested and motivated to do it.

I’m closer to my goal than I ever have been and I don’t doubt that I’ll make it.

As far as weight loss is concerned, I’ve stopped believing what everyone else tells me and started doing what works for me. Only time will tell of course but it’s looking like a winner to me.

There’s plenty more to say about this but I’ll keep it for another time.

Dave

Just in case you’re a man looking to buy the woman in your life a nice thoughtful gift like a steam iron, a washing machine, or a rolling pin so she can bash you round the head with it for being such a sexist pig – Don’t! Buy her something she’ll really treasure… A Dyson Ball Vacuum Cleaner! More specifically a:

Dyson DC25 Animal Lightweight Dyson Ball Upright Vacuum Cleaner for Pet Owners

Of course I’m joking about the sexist pig thing. Men just aren’t like that anymore. Misogyny belongs to another era. Besides men are too frightened to be overtly sexist these days in case the PC brigade come smashing the door down and threatening to tweak their nipples.

The solution? Buy the vacuum cleaner for yourself!

I’m serious, it’s brilliant. And here’s my first ever vacuum cleaner review.

Owing to my stay at home dad status I get to do the vast majority of everything, and quite right too – my wife goes out and works hard to bring home the bacon while I have it easy at home. I wish.

Fortunately my role reversal has given me a new perspective on how the other half live and opened my eyes to the delights of such things as quality vacuum cleaners.

Prior to the Dyson Ball Vacuum we had the DC04 and lovely as it was – this one is even better.

I’m 41 years old so I hail from a time when the phrase, “It beats as it sweeps as it cleans” was in common use, and ever since then that’s been my expectation of vacuum cleaners. Obviously some do it better than others, but my feeling of the 04 is it didn’t do it as well as it should. It’s not that I want to see a heavy groove mown into my carpet but I do want to see that it’s been touched by the brush. The 04 was disappointing in that respect. On the other hand the Dyson Ball fulfils that expectation nicely. As I run it across the carpet I can see where it’s been, and where it’s been is clean. (They should use that as a slogan!)

The absolute best thing about this machine compared to the 04 is that it gets further under the furniture. I’m especially thinking about under the beds. The 04 didn’t make it far under before you’d and up smashing the dirt collection cylinder thing into the bed frame. But the slimline cylinder on the DC25 combined with design allowing for a better angle, allows you get much further under.

And. The slimline ‘nose’, for want of a better term – you know, the bit at the front where the brush is housed and all the sucking takes place – is much more slimline and so it gets under sideboards and Shackleton’s high seat chairs (lovely) much better than the 04.

I like the ball. It makes for speedier manoeuvring and it makes it much, much easier to get in to the corners. It’s a bit heavier than I was expecting but actually that gives it a better feel in my opinion. My wife says it feels light but then she’s of Amazonian proportions. Even so, the ball makes the weight almost an irrelevance.

The waste collection tank, or whatever it’s called is slimmer and doesn’t have the capacity of the old cleaner but actually it doesn’t matter. One trip around the house won’t fill it (unless you’re total slobs and living like absolute savages), and emptying it on a regular basis somehow makes it more reassuring what with not having a ton of dirt stored in it.

Doing the stairs is easier with this model because new smaller dimensions of the hand held brush. The 04 had a lumbering great brush the size and weight of a house brick but the DC25 has a daintier version. It’s a big improvement.

We’ve got two stinky dogs in our house both of which moult. My wife loves the dogs but I think they’d be nicer as rugs. That would be a fabulous irony, don’t you think? Anyway, we have a two storey semi with a mixture of hard floors (wood/vinyl/tile), carpets and rugs. The Dyson DC25 works well on all surfaces. And even with the brush turned off (which is a really nice feature), this thing has a great pick up. The suction is much better than the 04.

I’ve got two problems with it.
1. The power cord isn’t long enough, but then the power cords on Dysons have never been long enough. It’ll do a room of average proportions quite nicely but if you want to move to another room you’ll have to unplug it. My wife tells me not to worry about the length of the cord. She’s says that length doesn’t matter and assures me I’ll learn to live with it, just like she has.
2. It’s a bit noisy. More than I was expecting and more than I’d like, to he honest. That is until you turn the brush off when you’re doing the hard floors and then it’s much quieter.

…As for looks, it’s butt ugly in my opinion. It’s a cross between a football (soccer) and a Cyberman but frankly who cares? It’s a bloody vacuum cleaner, not a work of art. It’s there to do a job of work, and a good job it does too.

Does the DC25 Dyson Ball Vacuum suck? Oh yeah baby! But in a good way.

The price tag is a little hefty but you really do get a lot of suck for your buck!

We’ve had the Dyson Ball for two months and we’re really happy with it. You could do a lot worse than this, but I doubt you could do any better. Highly recommended.

Selfish Blogger

Updated Nov 22 2011:

I’ve been on Twitter for a few years (@DaveFowler) and I’ve always found it a pain to delete all of my DM’s in one go.

For a while the only free option to delete all direct messages on Twitter all at once was a program called Twitter Whacker but it’s no longer an option since Twitter changed its API.

This meant the easiest way to get rid of DMs was to log in to either HootSuite or TweetDeck and delete the direct messages one at a time.

It’s a pain doing it that way but it’s still better than deleting them directly from the Twitter interface which takes 3 clicks! Not fun if you’ve got 100′s of messages!

There are plenty of paid services that will do mass deleting for you, but that’s not an attractive option for most people.

So, I’ve been keeping my eyes open for another free solution and I’ve finally found it.

The Solution:

Social Oomph has a free to use tool to delete all Twitter Direct messages from your DM inbox.

All you have to do is sign up for a free account (it’s painless, I promise) and then you can delete all your messages in one go.

Here’s a screenshot of the DM delete page and you’ll notice my Twitter account name shown there.

Screenshot

You have the option to delete all received DMs, DM older than 7 days or DMs older than 30 days.

What it won’t do though is delete sent DMs, you still have to do those yourself.

The program schedules deletions, I have no idea what a typical turnaround time would be but all my 50 or so messages were deleted within 10 minutes.

DM Purge - You're notified via email when it's done

It’s a good tool, but I confess I didn’t find the user experience particularly intuitive so here’s a quick guide…

Guide to using SocialOomph to delete DM’s

Once you’ve signed up for the account and logged in, you’ll need to link your Twitter account. You do this from the ‘Main Landing Page’

Select ‘Add A New Twitter Account’

Add Your Twitter Account

Click the ‘Authorize Access’ button and enter your Twitter account details as requested.

Authorize DM Deleter

You can then click ‘Direct Messages’ in the left sidebar and from the submenu click ‘Purge DM Inbox’. The rest is self explanatory.

Clear Your DM Inbox

Give it a try

Enjoy! And if you found this helpful, please Tweet it below. Thanks.