The Adventures of Dysfunctional Dan

On one day last week I accidentally left my phone at home. I sat at lunch time feeling a bit twitchy about not having it with me and not knowing what to do with myself. Then I thought this is silly, humans have lived without smartphones for the vast majority of their existence. Why am I addicted to my device? This gave me an idea. This week, I limited my screen time to just thirty minutes a day. For the rest of the day my phone would be switched off. I know I spend far more time on my phone than is healthy. I'm endlessly scrolling through social media and news sites as well as filling time by playing inane games rather than doing something productive. I also find that my phone serves as a convenient barrier from having to actually talk to people, which perhaps doesn't serve my best interests. According to an Ofcom survey, people in the UK check their smartphones on average every 12 minutes of the waking day. 40% of under 35s look at their phone within five minutes of wak...

Tomorrow is the first day of Autumn, probably my favourite season. The world becomes alive with colours as the leaves change from green to a rainbow of yellows, oranges, reds and browns. It gives you a range of smells and sights you only get as this time of year. These sights and smells evoke memories of the season in previous years, ghosts of Autumns past... September 2000, 8AM "Dad, I need something to take in for the harvest assembly!" I chirp. I'm dressed in the bright blue jumper that signifies I go to the local junior school rather than the dark green of the rival school on the other side of town. "Why have you left it to now?" my Dad grumbles and heads into the kitchen to fish around in the tin cupboard. I think most kitchens have a similar cupboard where inexplicably purchased tinned goods are stored until the time someone finally sorts through them or an event such as a harvest assembly calls upon the services of the cupboard. Eventually Dad p...

I regularly spend time thinking about who I am. Part of that is being dyspraxic, something I've discussed from time to time here. Dyspraxia, or "developmental coordination disorder" is a mild learning difficulty, historically referred to as 'clumsy child syndrome', though it continues into adulthood. It essentially means I'm incredibly clumsy, have terrible balance and am terrible at sport or anything that requires dexterity. I sometimes wonder how much it affects other areas of my life. There are plenty of other traits beyond the physical ones and I question how much the direction of my life has been unknowingly shaped by this disorder. I should point out that I only discovered I have dyspraxia in my early twenties when I was studying special needs for a module at university and suddenly discovered a perfect description of my childhood. Even now I know relatively little about it so today I'm looking into some of the non-physical traits. "Some ...

Today I'm going to discuss my frankly ridiculous hobby, geocaching. Geocaching is most poetically described as using multi-million pound satellites to find tupperware in the woods. Here's how it works: someone hides a container, often but not limited to tupperware, in a location worth visiting, again not limited to woods. As they do so they take get the GPS co-ordinates of the location of the container, or "geocache", and these are listed online. Using a GPS device or just an app on a phone you can find the exact location of the container. When you get there you sign your name in the log book within the container and then write up your adventure online. It's all very silly but also a lot of fun. What I really love about geocaching is the way it takes me to all sorts of places I wouldn't otherwise visit. Often there's lots of information about the place within the online listing. I like looking at the local map and then heading to an are where there...

Earlier in the year I shared my favorite books that I'd read during the first four months of 2018. Well we are now approaching the end of August so it's time to share my favourite books from May to August! Brave New World by Aldous Huxley Brave New World is usually described as a dystopian novel but for me that's simplistic.Huxley gives us a near future world where through the use of genetic conditioning and what is essentially brainwashing, everyone is bred for their place in society and is perfectly happy to inhabit it. When they do occasionally start having emotions they take the side-effect free drug soma to stop them. Everyone compares this to George Orwell's 1984 though they are very different books. 1984 is about a government using technology to control its citizens for their own purposes. Whilst there's a similar idea here, the world controllers of Brave New World aren't really controlling the people to suppress them- they are doing it to make t...

I returned from Rome feeling like a romantic poet having returned from the Grand Tour. Before it was an Amazon show featuring former Top Gear presenters, the "Grand Tour" was where 17th,18th and 19th century elites took trips around the continent to immerse themselves in foreign culture, visit ancient ruins and admire renaissance art. This was largely the purpose of my visit, albeit on a lower budget. Frankly, 21st century Rome doesn't have a lot going for it. It's a city which seems to take no pride in itself, full of litter and graffiti with a disorganised road system which leads to crossing the street leaving you fearful for your life and with a constant sound of car horns blaring in the background. It's also become such a tourist site and I know that I was part of the problem but a place loses something when it's main purpose for existence is tourism. The artist AJC Hare summed it up well back in 1871: "Nothing can be more depressing to those wh...

I've had a great first week of the summer holidays with the whole family off work at the same time, a rare occurrence indeed. On Tuesday we headed up to London and the British Museum. The museum houses incredible historical artefacts stolen from countries across the world. The museum was full of people, especially Japanese tourists stereotypically taking photos of everything in sight. The crowds meant it was difficult to see everything clearly but the museum is so vast you could visit every day for a year and probably still not see everything. That's fine though because you can focus on certain things. I love history. I think many people see it as dull, thinking it's all about kings and queens, battles and endless dates. For me though history is all about people. It's the story of people who lived before we did and there's so much to learn about what being human means. I enjoyed the Egyptian section, largely looking at mummies and the fascinating Egyptian beli...