I had hoped to have written up an entry sooner than this, but alas, I suffered a fracture on New Years Eve and I’ve only just been able to get the mindset to blog.  I was supposed to be heading back on the 29th of December, but had to wait a couple of days because the wind conditions for ferry crossings sucked.  Anyway, I was going to wait till the 1st of January to attempt to cross, but unfortunately I ended up having a nasty fall on my way to the pub, so had to stay in for 2 weeks, not helped by the fact I got caught while we had the “Big Freeze”!  At one point, it was thought I had a huge chip takenoff my elbow that had to be repaired by surgery, but thankfully, I now know that this isn’t the case, although I did find out I nearly dislocated my elbow, although I was lucky not to!  As it stands though, I do have little range of motion in my elbow, but I am recieving physio for it and trying to move it as much as I can.  Unfortunately though, I doubt I’ll  have the same range of motion in the arm again, which sucks given it’s my right arm.  I try to avoid using it to carry heavy weights as I don’t really want to make it painful, although it still occasionally hurts anyway!

I’ve been back in London now for about 2 weeks now, although I had my mum over for the first few days to help me, and while I did appriciate her help, being around her for a month was prolly starting to make things a bit strained!  Of course, i was rather frustrated at having very little motion in my arm compared to usual.  Anyway, it’s occurred to me between the X-Rays and CT I’ve had in Ireland, as well as the CT and X-Rays here, and also an X-Ray for my teeth, that I’ve been X-Rayed a lot over the past couple of months… more than I have been before!  I do hope I don’t need any more X-Rays though as I think I’ve had quite a lot now… any more and I will most likely start glowing in the dark!  Moving swiftly on though and I finally found a decent place that exceeds this one… it has a garden, is 15 quid a month cheaper, has a bus stop right outside it (one of the buses is a night bus route) and it retains the heat really well too!  The only problem though is that I don’t have enough space for my couch and 2 armchairs, so I’m going to sell them and invest in a sofa bed.  Anyway, the place pretty much exceeded my expectations, although I need to measure my stuff to make sure it all fits into it.  There’s very few disadvantages that I can see, though it is a mile or two away from where I used to live, but reduced costs more than make up for it, plus I know the area, so it’s all good!  I just need to do some more checks, then get things into motion.

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Yes, I know it’s been over a month since I last updated… those of you who watch my Twitter will know that I’ve been delayed somewhat by an elbow fracture and being stuck in Ireland a couple of weeks longer! Anyway, I’ll try to update by the weekend…

While compiling my 50 Things list, I’ve come across a few gold ones that either I’ve done and make me laugh, are just plain wrong or they’re plain funny in themselves… they’re not going  on my final list, but I figure I’d make a list of some of the ones I liked, with handy dandy categorising!  It’s kind of funny though that some of these got on a list of things to do before you’re a certain age.  At least I can say that I’ve lived somewhat compared to when I was a fair bit younger.  I have been thinking about how things changed over the past 8-9 years, although I think this is best saved for my LiveJournal.

Anyway, on with the show…

A warning before you continue… the content following is partly adult in nature.  If you’re easily offended I’d not click below.  You have been warned.

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I decided to start this post due to me starting to discuss about the above topic in this post on boards.ie.  Given that it was going to be off-topic if I went any further in the post, I decided that this subject deserved its own post on my blog.  Why on my blog?  Well, I am due for an update for starters and secondly, I get the feeling that it may be better off here because at least I know I won’t need to worry about how many characters or words in the thread I created.  The thread in question is located here if you’re reading this directly from the blog; gotta do some linkbacks after all as there’s going to be two sets of comments to read through I’m sure.  Anyway, as I stated in the boards.ie post, I would never charge for my services and nor would the majority of paranormal teams, though a few individuals and/or teams might do.  And while I wouldn’t necessarily charge for my services, I don’t think it’s unfair if the person/organisation who called out the investigator assisted with the travel costs of those who are attending.  I was a little unsure of this at first, but a discussion with Steve Parsons at the ParaCon on Saturday made me feel a little easier about stating this.  As for charging a rather large amount for performing an investigation of a private or commercial location, I do feel that it’s rather unethical to charge lots of money for the service.

Like I said before, travelling to somewhere does cost money and there’s nothing wrong with asking for reimbursement of travel costs; the percentage of which I’d leave to the team and the client to decide seeing as each case is different.  Anyway, while the previously stated method is fair, it’s when investigators start to charge what I’d consider large amounts of money for a service.  In a field that’s still in its relative infancy, I fail to see how a large callout fee can be justified for an investigation that may or may not bring results, and possibly do more harm than good.  At present, there’s no way of telling if a paranormal organisation is legit or not, which brings its own set of dangers.  Any Tom, Dick and Harry can setup what they call a paranormal investigation group and claim to be able to get rid of ghosts.

I’m sure a good few people (from boards.ie) will recognise some of what I’m saying now as being paraphrased from Ciaran O’Keeffe’s and Steve’s talk, which is a huge driving force behind what I’m saying. I do feel like talking about this more, both with people who saw the talk and also those that haven’t, especially as the topic of paying for investigations was brought up in the thread where my response was posted.  Anyway, back to my initial point… because anyone can go around claiming they’re a paranormal investigator (I’m not saying everyone who says they are is a charlatan) and that there’s no regulating body for this sort of thing as of yet, people who don’t know any better have the potential to be conned by unethical individuals which is not right.  Even worse is the issue that they charge for their services and can actually do nothing.

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Due to inaccuracies and important omissions within the review, I decided it’s best to withdraw it until I’ve fixed and/or rewritten it. This should serve two purposes; firstly it lets me get some stuff corrected within the review, so as to increase the quality and secondly, it also allows me for better preparation for the games blog.  In the meantime, I’ll update this blog with another entry before republishing the DSi review.

Apologies if this caused any inconveniences.

Feel free to discuss the DSi here as well, if you so wish, as I’m interested in others’ experiences with it.

I will not be able to update my blog over the next few days. However, what I do plan to do is have a First Play of the Monkey Island remake. Granted, many of you have played it before (I have played and completed it), but I feel like talking about it, as it was only released a few days ago, although it will be out a week by the time I get around to talking about it.

Until then, see you later.