This site alone has seen three rebuilds and no-one has helped me more on that than Sean(spoofscript.com) for the code and Andrew (stormkeeper.net) for consulting. Thank you both for helping me transform this site, and of course a big thank you to everyone that has visited my site and encouraged me, given me feedback, and more. You’re all valued. Thank you.

I hope that everyone has a very, very merry christmas and will keep following me into 2010 and beyond.

For now though, I’d like to again wish everyone, Happy Holidays, Seasons Greetings and a Happy New Year.

Mark Crowle-Groves

So naturally being a complete tech geek, I found this out whilst ‘Googling’ for the Out Of Hours information. Did I find it? well, no not really. The problem with technology these days, is that we become so reliant on it that we forget about the other simpler means of finding information out. Like picking up the telephone for example.

Here’s what I did to try and work out what was going on with my ear. It’s a long list but I need to illustrate something, just be patient.

1: Google for symptoms
2: Google for possible home remedies to said symptoms
3: Google for “out of hours doctor cardiff”
4: Panic because I can’t find anything other than medicare insurance plans
5: Resort to trying said home remedies and thus making the problem worse
6: Call my GP, get their out of hours number ring said number, be told I have to call a cardiff GP surgery because I was out of catchment area
7: Google for my mothers local Cardiff surgery
8: Panic because I can’t find it
9: Resort to calling any GP, getting the generic number, making emergency appointment and forgetting to tell them I am a visiting patient
10: Go to appointment, panic, complications, get some sort of prescription

This, is not really how it should have been. Here’s the process as it should have been.

1: Call my GP, be told I am out of catchment area and call Cardiff GP
2: Pull out phonebook
3: Call GP get out of hours number, call it and make appointment
4: Go

Of course, something as simple as pulling out a phonebook never occurred to me, because of course I’ve become so reliant on technology, I forgot such a thing exists. So I ended up spending hours trawling through the websites. I eventually found the page I needed which told me everything I needed to know far too late, the service I have called tonight.

And then of course there is the problem of self diagnosis. I was able to find out that my symptoms could be any number of things, from a simple ear infection, a perforated ear drum, to massive disfigurement, brain tumour or worse (although whats worse than a brain tumour I will leave to your imagination).

Now, I’m going to be hypocritical here and say “I do have enough common sense to know I shouldn’t self diagnose” and I had enough ‘common sense’ to only try the home remedy of getting sterile olive oil in case it was a wax buildup. But then, I didn’t have enough common sense to check the phonebook for local listings before trying the internet.

I’ve done this in the past as well, gone looking for so much information that I’ve ended up never finding what I need, looking for parts, looking for electronics stores, looking for stockists of various things. I’m often left wondering just how much time I’ve wasted, and indeed how much stuff I’ve missed out on just by not pulling out the phonebook. Indeed now I have I find a page in there entitled “NHS OUT OF HOURS SERVICE CALL THIS NUMBER”. That would have saved so much time.

This of course, is the problem of simply Googling things. Perhaps we all need to downgrade a little. So, next time I need something or, if you need something, check your phonebook first.

Update: Just to let you know I was fine, severe ear infection that’s going to be treated with a huge dose of antibiotics and an antibiotic ‘wick’ (Google said nothing about one of those! but most of the symptoms were right for some of Googles results)

But then, we also have the wonders of Cardiff Winter Wonderland which I missed out taking pictures of last year.
Alas that’s not what I’m talking about.

I’m talking about my traditional yearly Christmas digital art piece. Each year I try to find a theme or subject  and centre an art piece around it. Oh and there is the added challenge that I have not produced a piece of digital art all year! (minus the fact that 2008′s piece was late and got released in January) but pretty much a year.

So tomorrow I shall be building the art piece from scratch, (last years one appears to have been lost somehow from the galleries) but, since it will take four or five days to build, let alone it’s rendering time, you have an opportunity to make your own suggestions and push your own influence into the end result. Don’t worry, there are already bits of er… ‘you lot’ in the concept already.

So there are two, yes two promises I have for you here.

1: You will see pictures from Cardiff’s winter wonderland (though I am not promising when!)
2: You will see a Christmas digital art piece as per usual before the end of 2009

However there is another thing to come out of the woodwork, because of course December 31st marks the end of a decade, or at least the end of the 00′s. Yes indeed it has been ten years. Ten years of some of the most defining moments in our history, 9/11, The Iraq War.. you get the idea. However I intend doing a picture for this. Not sure if it’s going to be digital, photographic or a landscape. So I’m asking for your suggestions or ideas as to what I can do / photograph / make to mark this, so

3:You will see something created to mark the entry into a new decade

So three things, (more than my usual for december) and I am really looking forward to hear your ideas and suggestions. But for those of you that read this and then never respond, for once, say hi at least?