Today Ziggy had his trip to the vet for his x-ray. We took him in at 8:45 this morning, howling like a banshee in his cat box. Honestly, if Schrödinger had used Ziggy in his experiments, there would never have been any doubt as to  whether the cat were alive or dead, he would have been able to tell just by listening!
So we booked him in and were given instructions to phone in the late afternoon to see how he’d got on, then come in for another consultation at 6 to discuss the results. Unfortunately, cats have to be given a general anaesthetic for x-rays because there is no way that they’d stay still enough otherwise, that’s why Ziggy had to be there all day.
At 4 we phoned and were told that all went well and Ziggy was coming out of the anaesthetic now. So far so good!

At 6 we went back to the surgery and nervously met with the vet.
I’m going to tentatively say it was good news! It seems that Ziggy doesn’t have a tumour at all! It’s actually swelling around a nasty fracture to one of his wrist bones, and friction abrasion to the head of the radius. A fairly serious injury for a four-legged animal but one that should heal naturally with minimal intervention!
So we’ll be keeping him dosed up on analgesia and anti-inflammatories and regular check-ups at the vet for the next month or so and see what happens. All being well it will sort itself out and the swelling will go down. If not we may have to return to the vet again and perhaps think about some kind of intervention to help it heal.
So a huge and very heartfelt thank you to those wonderful people who left a little something in the tips jar, you made a big difference and lightened the load on the vet’s bill today. We still had some way to go to make up the shortfall and it has left us short on other bills this month, especially as our horrible car has started signs of dying died (a strong stench of sulphur, repeatedly blowing fuses, three new scraping and clunking noises and a gearbox that pops out of gear without warning!) but your donations lessened the pain considerably!
A million times thank you.

Usually I’m not too keen on asking for donations, but circumstances are forcing my hand so I’ve placed a tips jar on Odd-Fish.
As I’ve mentioned before,
several UK Internet Service Providers including the one I’m with, Virgin Media, are installing spyware called Phorm on their servers in order to track its customers we habits, read their email and generally look over our shoulders in order to give us ‘more relevant advertising’ so I’m moving ISP to a small company who have pledged that they will never implement Phorm or anything like it. Unfortunately, moving ISP involves the purchase of a new telephone line and new broadband modem and router, an expense I really don’t need right now because of my other, more important reason for the tips jar.
My cat, Ziggy, an eleven year old huge tabby tomcat has developed a lump on his ‘wrist’ and is now only using three legs. The Vet says it might be a tumor (hopefully benign) but he has to go for an x-ray and possibly other tests then surgery if it can be removed. The x-ray alone is going to cost between £100 and £300 ($190 to $580) so I am throwing myself on your mercy.
If you enjoy my little corner of the web, if Odd-Fish makes you smile, please leave a couple of pennies, whatever you can afford in the PayPal tips jar so that I can still eat once Ziggy’s vet bills are paid.
Thank you in advance.

It seems that currently, 3 major UK internet service providers (BT, Virgin & TalkTalk) and an ex- adware/spyware company called Phorm are joining forces to install highly invasive hardware on the ISP’s servers designed to intercept your browsing for the purposes of targeted advertising.

The technology seems iffy at best and wide open for abuse.

There’s a simple layman’s guide that explains why this is bad for internet users and what we can do to prevent it’s implementation right here and if you object to every page you visit on the ‘net being read over your shoulder and then reported to the highest bidder, you can sign the UK Government petition to protest against it here

People keep telling me that I should have a blog. Apparently it’s the done thing. I’ve resisted thus far, oh, how I’ve resisted. Because at the core of it I am fundamentally a lazy person.

I’ve had blogs before, in the deep mythical past before the inception of Biro-art in 2003, but I’ve always been terrible at maintaining them. Updating avidly several times a day for the first few days, then once a week for a couple of months, then one a month if I can be arsed then… oblivion.

When Biro-art started in 2003 I finally felt like I had on online presence that worth worth maintaining and indeed to this day five years later I still keep Biro-art updated whenever I create something new. Each image is accompanied with a small passage of text describing the image and in some cases the thought processes that when behind the idea. Not really a blog per se just a couple of notes.
Occasionally, just now and then I’ve felt like writing a little more and indeed for a short while I had a Blogger account where I did just that but like attempted blogs before it, it fell by the wayside.
Late last year I started a new project, a webcomic called Odd-Fish which again has a small passage of blurb posted with each comic strip and again is more like a few notes than anything else. Just something for Googlebot to get its teeth into.
Neither of those places, Biro-art or Odd-Fish seem the right place to talk about other things. About the stuff that goes on in my world and my life, about the creative processes involved in Biro-art and Odd-Fish, about my thoughts on stuff and about, well, stuff in general.

So I decided to produce this blog to fill in that space in my online presence. This page will tie together all the pies I have my finger in, all the sites I use to promote, network and entertain myself. All the things I do.

And so it begins.

The drawing for the magazine commission was accepted OK so I should be getting a copy of the magazine sometime in June to show all my friends (both of them) Here’s the drawing in question:
I’m now on a break from work for a few days so there’s not going to be much going on with the biros for a short while as I do nearly all of my stuff at work during breaks and quiet times.

Mum rang me yesterday. I haven’t spoken to Mum in about 18 months, I’m such a terrible Son (and brother, uncle, grandson, Cousin, nephew etc) because I never seem to get around to contacting any of my family. They know I love them I’m sure though.
Anyway, Mum phoned me because it’s Granny’s 90th birthday at the end of this month and there’s a doo arranged. I wish I’d had a little more notice because I can’t get the time off work and I have no transport at the moment either. On top of all this, the dinner is the day before payday so I couldn’t rent a car or get a train either. Bugger. On the subject of payday, this month is the month I’m expecting to finally, after 13 months of delays, get my backpay from the payscale restructuring called ‘Agenda for Change’ that’s plagued the NHS for years now. I’m not holding my breath though and I really cannot rely on it to help us with the car either because I have absolutely no idea how much it’s likely to be. Some people have had literally a couple of quid and others have had five or six thousand. Fingers crossed!