Man, it is hot, really hot. We’ve had several days of scorching sunshine and high temperatures that are definitely not the norm in this usually damp and miserable part of the world.

And I am suffering in this heat, like all overweight people tend to do in soaring temperatures. I’m sizzling like a large banger cooking under a grill. Every window and door in the house is wide open, and it’s still too freakin’ hot! I’m reminded of the old saying “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen” – well, I’m nowhere near the kitchen, and the temperature hasn’t gone down any. Short of climbing into the freezer for a few days, there’s no escaping it.

So I’m sitting at my computer, cooking in my own juices, and blasting rock music loudly on the hi-fi – “Shadow Play” by the group of the same name (with ex-Foreigner vocalist Lou Gramm and ex-Def Leppard guitarist Vivian Campbell). Not a bad album. It’s the weather for cold drinks, ice cream and music, with a computer thrown in for good luck. Whatta way to live!…

Might as well enjoy the sun while it lasts, which won’t be long. We’re lucky to get a couple of weeks of bright sunshine per year. Next time I post, it’ll probably be back to wet and miserable again… (moan, gripe, bitch…)

Hello there! Welcome to the GrumpyOldMan blog, where you’ll find me wibbling on about all and sundry.

Initially, my reason for setting up this blog was quite mercenary: get my API key and forget about it afterwards. I needed the key because I recently started up my first WordPress blog, a self-hosted one at SFreaders.com. But now that I’m here at WordPress.com I’m finding myself thinking “What the heck! I’ve got a blog, so I might as well use it!”

The reasons?

Well, number one, I feel that it’ll put me in closer contact with the great WordPress community, something that’s severely lacking at the moment with my self-hosted blog (have to give it time – it’s only been live about a month). Hopefully I’ll find out more about the community and learn a lot as I go along, and maybe down the line I’ll start making contributions of my own. I’m a “community” type of person, particularly of the free and “open” (unsullied by commercial greed and perversions) kind. I’ve long been (in spirit) a great fan of the Open Source philosophy – maybe some of these days I’ll gather up the courage to shift totally away from Windows XP to either Linux or FreeBSD.

Secondly, I’d really like to get into the nuts ‘n’ bolts of WordPress (what better way to become an artisan than know your tool well), and I reckon that the best way to learn something is to watch how others use it. Learn from more experienced users, and maybe help others out in turn as I become more experienced. As well as the general chit-chat, I’d like to use this blog to talk about the WordPress specific stuff, and maybe practice my (hopefully) growing skills.

Thirdly, I can rant on about any old thing. My self-hosted blog is a bit more specialized in nature, so I tend not to stray too far from the various subjects in the categories I’ve created. On here, I can be a bit less restrained and wibble on about any old thing that takes my fancy. Fire off a few rants – I love ranting when the blood gets up. Even when nobody’s listening. But I gotta watch the blood pressure.

Finally, and this is a purely selfish motive, I want to “put myself out there”. To use my blog on WordPress.com to let people know about me and my other blogs, maybe gaining a few visitors in the process. My main blog is a bit quiet as yet, and, although I’m not obsessed with stats and huge numbers of vistors, it would be nice to have a few.

None of my blogs are (or will ever be) money-making ventures, and SFreaders.com is aimed at fans of science fiction literature, sci-fi movies and TV series, comic books, music, general science, history and a few other things. It’s mostly the SF literature, sci-fi movie and comic book fans that I’m trying to attract. So if anyone reading this is of that particular grouping, please take note.

Well, enough from me for now. Hopefully some of you guys will take pity on me and leave a few comments.

Phil