FOSTON.net

Posted By Mike Foston on May 24, 2009

Went on a little wander in the wonderful sunshine

Valley Gardens

Widget powered by EveryTrail: GPS Geotagging

Category: General Site News | Comments
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Posted By Mike Foston on May 20, 2009

White Oak made the Cup Final again this year, and won again

You can see the photos at http://foston.net/WhiteOak2009/

Category: Football | Comments
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Posted By Mike Foston on April 22, 2009

How are these things legal?

I found this in my junk mail today, it really shouldn’t be allowed! I realise people have problem with credit, but this really isn’t going to help.

Category: General Site News, London | Comments
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Posted By Mike Foston on April 21, 2009

Well these guys seem pretty comfy in the garden but the frogs not happy that his pond had been replaced!

Category: Home | Comments
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Posted By Mike Foston on March 12, 2009

I shall be dressed as a clown for the day, travelling to and from work on the train and bus. Please spare me a thought! and of course, feel free to donate!

Category: General Site News | Comments
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Posted By Mike Foston on February 6, 2009

I’ve never really had any advertising as a part of my site, but I am starting find find services/suppliers that I trust, and use myself that deserve to be brought into the spotlight.

I don’t plan to have masses of adverts, just one or two around the site for those people I really think are worthwhile advertising for. They may or may not have an affiliate scheme, I’d join it if they did, but for my part at least, I’d only advertise them because of the service they provide not just because they pay people a small percentage to advertise for them.

Anyway after all that waffle, here’s the first company. BIGTEESHIRT.co.uk I have deal with them a few times now, a small initial order but a couple of large orders after that after I found their advice great and haven’t been able to fault the quality of their products. I’m a big lad and finding work shirts, polo shirts and t-shirts to fit me comfortably is an effort, and often really expensive.

BIGTEESHIRT.co.uk have a great selection of clothes, not just t-shirts, good prices and even sales. They deliver quickly using special delivery, and most importantly to me the clothes are the sizes they show, they don’t appear to shink and fit me. I’m a fan and hope if you use them, you will be too.

Give them a try!

Category: General Site News | Comments
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Posted By Mike Foston on February 3, 2009

Well today I am able to get to work, something that would have taken a 6 mile walk each way to have done yesterday.

The trains are still a disaster. On arriving at the station this morning the arrival board showed most trains “on time”, however when I asked a member of staff I was told that the boards were wrong and that they were expecting a train at “sometime but don’t know when or where it will be going to”.

As there were already hundreds of people on the platform I decided the bus was a better option.

So here I am on the 490 heading towards Richmond on a nearly empty bus. I wonder how many people have decided to take an extra day off.

Category: Feltham, London, Travel, Work | Comments
Tags: Snow

Posted By Mike Foston on January 28, 2009

I could just be my perception but over the last few months I am concious that there is a large increase in the amount of dogs “mess” on the pavements around Lower Feltham.

I guess this could be just lazy dog owners pushing their dogs out of the door in the cold weather rather than taking them outside, or perhaps the local council were cleaning it up and now aren’t. Maybe a cost cutting exercise?

There are sections of my journey to work now where it’s easier and safer to walk in the road. This can’t be right, surely?

Category: Feltham | Comments
Tags: Dogs, Feltham

Posted By Mike Foston on January 13, 2009

Sam and I have joined HubDub. Its a simple site where you “bet” pretend money on the outcome of a whole range of different events. The idea being of course to predict correctly.

You can choose Sporting, Politicial, Weather, Financial or just plain silly predictions, and you can even start your own.

Why not come along and join us there and see how much you can “make”.

If you want an invite, leave a comment and I’ll send you one from the site.

Its fun….. honest!

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Posted By Mike Foston on December 17, 2008

Well, we went along to the Three Horseshoes in Feltham to their Tuesday Night Quiz Night, and came second last with 34 points.

So that was not as good as we usually do, but we avoided last place, just!

Too many questions in areas I know nothing about, and the guy running it said this was an easy quiz. Not that easy!

Oh well, maybe if we go next week it’ll be easier.

Category: Feltham | Comments
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Posted By Mike Foston on December 15, 2008

Today I found a new program for my iMac, MAC-Journal. What I like about it most from a first look, is that I can write Journal entries and then post them to several different blogs if they apply.

Them by simply adding tags, I can show which entries apply to which blogs or web sites, looks really neat and simple, rather than having to maintain all the lists separately.

Of course, I am sure it will have short-comings, most things seem to, but for now it looks worth trying out, and putting back some blogs I had removed.

Watch this space…….

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Posted By Mike Foston on November 17, 2008

OK, I promised that we would get some ideas for Xmas Presents online, and so I took the chance to turn this into a little project. Its taken me all day, but I am very happy with what I have produced.

http://foston.net/giftlist/ is the site I have created. It has a list for all three of us, and we will no doubt add some more to it now its working. If you want to purchase a gift, just mark that you are going to buy it, and its updated immediately, so we won’t get duplicates hopefully. If you aren’t able to get it or change your mind, you can click the reset button and it’s available for other people again.

As it works so well I will leave this up, and develop it some more so that it can just act as a general wish list for all of us all year around. If you’d ike to use it, just let me know and I am sure I can add you to the system. (although it needs a little more work first)

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Posted By Mike Foston on November 9, 2008

If you haven’t looked already, have a peek at TEDDYSPHOTOS.co.uk where I  have started to upload some of the many photos I’ve taken over the years. Here are some examples…..

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Posted By Mike Foston on October 13, 2008

We took our friend Claire to Heathrow on Sunday as she headed out for 6 weeks volunteer work with babies who are HIV positive. Along with her own luggage she took much needed medical supplies and a few childrens toys and books.

We were dismayed when she called us to return to the airport because SAA had refused to allow her to be 10kilos over her weigth limit despite the extra being the items to help the kids.

Edit: Had a polite reply from SAA saying that due to their current situation they are unable to allow excess baggage.

Category: Travel | Comments
Tags: Charity

Posted By Mike Foston on September 26, 2008

Rated by who I hear you ask, ME THAT’S WHO!

I have today sat indoors waiting for my engineer to arrive, to fix an intermittant fault that affects only my broadband (apparently). Now when I say if affects me, I’m certain its not just me because they have cancelled yet another appointment without telling me because it was an “area” fault.

It seems that they feel the need to tell you that if you are not home when the engineer calls, that they will charge you £50. However when you call them at 8:15 to check the engineer IS coming out and its confirmed and then you call them at 12:05 to claim YOUR £50 for them not arriving, thaey aren’t able to provide it.

They have offered me some money for loss of service, but nothing so far for appauling lack of respect and incompetence in cancelling my call without informing me, for a second time! As you can probably tell I’m quite frustrated at this point, and I’m hoping venting here (and every other site I can find to paste this onto) will make me feel a little happier.

I have been given an address to write to in order that I may claim further compensation for my inconvenience, so we will see what comes of that, I’ll post the results here. My feeling currently is that although generally the service that they offer me is good, should they not be willing to provide compensation (and lets face it I’m not asking for a lot) my principles will force me to get a BT phone and sign up with Sky.

Category: General Site News | Comments
Tags: Appauling, Customer Service, Rubbish, Virgin Media

Posted By Mike Foston on August 28, 2008

I don’t make that many bus journeys in a week but do make at least 2 a day normally. Typically on the 235 between Home and Feltham station during the morning and evening rush hours.

On at least 3 of these journeys you can expect to get thrown forwards and backwards as the bus stops and starts away from each stop. On 3 more you can expect the bus to sit at each stop for a couple of minutes whilst presumably the bus matches it’s timetable. I say presumably because we aren’t given a timetable just a sign saying roughly every 8-15 minutes, although I have waited 45 on a rare ocassion.

I have wondered if this speed/brake situation is caused by a problem with the buses but have no way of knowing. It seems more likely that a proportion of the drivers simply don’t care nor consider their passengers no matter what their age, they simply indulge their desire to get finished on that route.

Category: Driving | Comments
Tags: buses, drivers, London

Posted By Mike Foston on August 26, 2008

I spent the afternoon and early evening umpiring a cricket match, two 15 over innings each side, between our Richmond and Banbury offices and despite it being just 8 a side it came down to Richmond needing a single off the last ball to win.

And win they did. Much better than sitting in an office for the afternoon!

Category: Work | Comments
Tags: Cricket, Umpiring

Posted By Mike Foston on July 22, 2008

I can’t claim to have been an Apple fan and even with the touch I feel some of their business practices are less than customer friendly. But the ipod touch is one of the best purchases I have ever made now that v2 of the software has been released.

There are third party, cheap but quality applications available including the free app I am using to wrie this. You can listen to your music as you do other things and if iTunes was just a bit more flexible I’d be even happier.

32mb of solid state music power, with Internet and applications on top, what more could you want?

Category: Technology | Comments
Tags: apple, ipod, recommended

Posted By Mike Foston on July 22, 2008

Amazingly it’s now possible to write blog posts directly from an iPod touch thanks to the latest software upgrade.

Category: Technology | Comments
Tags: ipod

Posted By Mike Foston on June 10, 2008

Perhaps its just me, but recently I have noticed how rude we are (or appear to be) as a society. It would be easy to say this was simply the youth of today, or to put it down to the general lack of respect one person seems to have for another. But I’ve wondered about it a little and wanted to air my views here, perhaps just to clear my own head but maybe also to get the views of any of you that happen upon this post.

Just during my short trip to work this week I’ve encountered

• Young girls who ran for a bus, which waited for them but declined to say thank you, despite being able to shout “WAIT” at the top of their lungs
• Old people who when someone younger offers them their seat, they walk straight past saying nothing
• People who push past you to get off the bus without asking, or even hinting that they might want to get past, instead leaping from their seat like leaving is a matter of live and death
• People who sit blocking seats whilst others stand around them rather than moving their bags or themselves to make the seats available

But these are just a few examples, and some of them got me thinking. As someone who is quite comfy, and somewhat adept, at talking to relative strangers on the train or perhaps the bus to discuss an event that just happened or to lighten a journey, that after you have done this a number of times and the person you have spoken to clearly doesn’t understand even basic English that the next time you hesitate to do so.

If someone treats you rudely, and you comment on it and they don’t understand you, perhaps next time you don’t bother to comment but instead you act rudely yourself and so it slowly escalates. Perhaps next time you do this, the person you treated rudely was expecting an apology and they too act rudely the next time.

Am I blaming lack of language skills for all society’s rudeness, no, however I do wonder how much it is to blame. If young children take their examples from the people they see not talking to each other, or respecting each other either due to lack of skills or effort, they how can we expect them to act any differently. How can we correct them, if we do not correct each other?

I’d love to have a solution. I’d love to think that everyone has a basic understanding of English (as that is the UK language) so that they can say “Please”, “Thank you” and “Sorry” and I believe most people do, but they let themselves down by not using those skills. I hate some of the rudeness I see, and won’t allow my son to grow up acting that way, but if the adults around him do not act correctly its so much harder to teach him by example. Unless as a group we pay attention and give respect to the people around us that deserve our respect then we will all grow up into a country where no one has manners, no one cares about anyone else, and everyone ends up focussed on themselves and their needs and that won’t be a nice world to live in.

Here ends my thoughts, but I’d welcome some comments, maybe my little world here in Feltham isn’t like that which you live in…..

Category: Feltham, London | Comments
Tags: Feltham, Language, Rudeness, Society, Thoughts