Yep, looks like I’ve succumbed to Facebook. (Thanks Tom!) I should be in bed, very busy few days ahead, but here I am trying to find some friends to add to my very short list.

Amazing to find some old school/college friends. Wonder what they’re all doing now…

Anyway, any one out there feel like adding me to their list of friends then feel free. Search for “facebook-at-pafoster.com” as an email and you’ll find me. I think there’s a widget thing-a-me-bob-do-dah-whotsit that will post my blog entries there too!

Oh and there’s bound to be a Mac dashboard widget thingy too.

Oh dear…

And Rich is already complaining of being a Mac widow - I daren’t mention Facebook!

Sunday, and after a Saturday of not much at all, I went to Sunbury for the Riverside Youth Theatre’s AGM.

I was elected onto the committee as the publicity officer and after an hour’s meeting it was time for the post AGM entertainment: A live Who’s Line Is It Anyway? style show.

I’ve spent the last six Sundays running an Improvisation Workshop where the young RYT members have been learning a variety of improv’ techniques.

It was brilliant. We were in the studio at the Riverside Arts Centre and had set up some staging and even had a some proper lighting too. (Thanks Aaron!)

I hosted and about a dozen or so members performed a variety of games from the show: Foreign Film Dubbing, Dating Show, Press Conference and some hilarious Alphabet Scenes.

The members were all brilliant and audience was great too; All willingly chipping in various locations and character styles for the actors to improvise with on cue.

It lasted forty five minutes - too short as we could easily have gone on, but we had too stop for some lunch.

A good time was had by all, with some really pleasant comments from various parents afterwards too.

We were supposed to have had a picnic afterwards, but with our great British weather as it is we ended clearing the studio and having our lunch inside, during which it was announced that Lewis Hamilton had one the Grand Prix.

Another good day for me in Sunbury. I do love spending my Sunday afternoons over there. There such a great bunch of people; adults and young people alike.

Next week it will be our last Sunday before we break up for the summer. I’ll be having my first committee meeting and the members will be rehearsing for a show they are putting on for the Shepperton and Sunbury Arts Association - a week of various arts related workshops and shows put on every summer in the centre. RYT will be performing an evening of drama and songs on Friday the 18th.

And when they return in September? Well it’ll be straight into auditions and rehearsing for the next show, a production of three one act plays to be performed in December.

Oh, and yours truly will be directing one of them: Lunch in Venice by Nick Dear. More on that later.

Right, now I’ve done my blogging and indeed a whole host of other things on my MacBook today (including my Nuffield homework), I’m off to bed; some of us have to be up early in the morning - like five o’clock! I’m off to Warwick Racecourse for a couple of days; more corporate hospitality supervising. (Think I may just take my MacBook.)

Just thought I’d do a quick blog post about last Friday; My day at Silverstone and practice day for the British Grand Prix.

Well it was brilliant.

I arrived at the clubhouse of British Racing Drivers’ Club (BRDC) half way through the first sitting of lunch. Diners included BRDC President, Damon Hill OBE and Vice President, Sir Jackie Stewart OBE. After a couple of hours there supervising the waiters I went on over to the BRDC marquee next door.

But not before I’d had a quick five minute visit to the first floor club lounge and then the roof terrace with a fantastic view of the whole circuit. One thing I hadn’t appreciated was the noise. The word ‘deafening’ doesn’t quite do it justice.

In the marquee I helped supervise the setting up of the BRDC Grand Prix Ball. 450 guests were due at about 7.30pm after a champagne reception on the lawn, including the board and their guests and other patrons.

After various management and staff briefings, we were ready for the off. A three course meal, with speeches from Damon Hill (not happy with Bernies decision to pack the British Grand Prix of to Donnington in 2010) and a visit from David Coultard (oh, and another driver whose name I can’t remember, but I do know he was foreign and had just turned 21.)

It all went rather well. Though to be honest I didn’t think much of Bjorn Again; the band hired for the after dinner entertainment. They were okay, I suppose. It’s just that I’d heard them doing all their sound checks and stuff while we were setting up in the afternoon. They were, of course, english, but when the evening came, they actually pretended to be the band members of ABBA, took their names and even put on fake Swedish accents. Oh and I’m not sure why they performed a couple of Status Quo numbers half way through, though there was a Rick Parfitt Jr on the guest list.

The patrons started leaving (along with half the staff) at about midnight, leaving us managers and the other half of the staff to set up for breakfast. Amazing to watch the whole stage set up and lighting rig in the marquee all come to pieces and disappear out the side exit as we were laying up tables.

At three am, the rest of the staff went too, leaving three managers and myself (oh, and a security guard who spent most of the time asleep) to finish off. We finished at 6:30 am as the next shift of managers and waiting staff who were doing breakfast arrived. The marquee had been transformed and it looked great.

Luckily for me, I wasn’t needed for Saturday, so after my marathon 18 hour shift, I drove the hour and half home, told Rich all about it, and climbed into bed for a well earned sleep.

Well here I am, bloging for real!

I’m sat in the Goldsworth Park Surgery as Rich visits his GP. There is a little three year old boy sat next to me reading his Richard Scarry book and I’m typing away in my WordPressDash Widget.

I should be working since I was in the middle of my Nuffield homework, but as soon as I sat down here and woke up my Mac it asked if I wanted to join a local wireless network called SpeedtouchC68C80.

Assuming it would ask for a password, I clicked ‘join’ just for the fun of it. And now I’m online wirelessly in my Doctors Surgery. No password needed!

So there you go. My MacBook’s first outing and my first blog post from the Doctor’s!

Oh well, back to the homework!

Well, Ive just installed a new widget on my dashboard. No, not in my car - on my MacBook!

This little widget called WordPressDash allows me to post to my blog direct from my dashboard.

Bloody brilliant!

Just a quicky!

I’m off to Silverstone for theBritish Grand Prix.

Well, practice and qualifying anyway. Cant see the race as I need to be back for the Riverside Youth Theatre AGM!

Bye for now…

Yippeeee!! I have a MacBook! Ordered it online and UPS delivered it at lunch time.

Now with my 10Mb broadband (well about 9.5 actually but what’s half a meg between friends!) I can do things like watch Erasure videos on YouTube!

Finally, at long last, having saved up my pennies for well over a year, if not more, I’ve caught up with the real world! So Steve, if your reading this out in Amsterdam, thanks mate! Should have bought one years ago! (Fancy an iChat then?)

I knew my Mac would be good, but had no idea how good! It’s just brilliant! I’ve only been playing for a couple of hours, and it’s great. I’m sat on the roof terrace in the sunshine wirelessly blogging and I’m doing just fine. I’ve even worked out how to get my searches in Safari using Google.co.uk and not the default .com (For anyone interested, download and install Inquistor, select Safari>Preferences>Search and then set your preferred search engine from the rather extensive list - Google UK is right at the bottom.)

Sorry to sound so excited, but I really am! My 10 year old Dell Laptop (no battery) was only being used to print with, and my RISC OS desktop is not up to much anymore though I’m sure I’ll still use it - if only occasionally.

Well, I can’t sit here blogging, I’m half way through my Nuffield homework (we’ve been doing the senses) and it’s due tomorrow!

Having just spent the last hour and a half shredding my 00/01 and 01/02 annual business and personal accounts and checking every reciept for my credit card number (printed, I might add, in full on the vast majority of them), I’ve discovered a surprisingly interesting fact…

In January 2001 I was paying about 80 pence per litre for unleaded petrol.

Checking back over my reciepts for the last tax year 07/08, I see I was paying back in the beginning of January this year about 100 pence per litre . Yes, less than six months ago.

And now, with oil prices reaching record highs and our fuel going up almost weekly, I’m paying here in Woking, Surrey, very nearly 120 pence per litre.

So, (and this is in no way a scientific study, just my personal observations) it took about seven years (Jan 01 - Jan 08) for unleaded petrol at the forecourt to rise in cost by 20 pence and then less than six months to rise by another 20 pence!

Okay, a bit of calculation on my part here: Using the figures quoted, a bit of prediction, and extrapolating from them using percentages, the price of unleaded petrol at my pump has been rising by 25% in 8.4% of the time span.

Here’s the maths:

• 80p (01 Jan 01) to 100p (01 Jan 08) is a 25% increase in 7 years. (2556 days)
• 100p (01 Jan 08) to 125p (01 Aug 08 - by extrapolating the increases so far this year) is a 25% increase in just 7 months. (214 days)
• ie: the same percentage increase (25%) occurs in 8.4% of the time. (214/2556)*100 = 8.4%

Therefore my petrol increased by the same percentage (25%) in 8.4% of the previous time span.

So here’s the scary bit…

If this is, in any way, some sort of perverse exponential trend and the maths can hold true for a third time, ie: unleaded petrol rises by another 25% in another 8.4% of the previous time span, then assuming 125p on August 1st (it has been rising at an average rate of 0.117 pence per day since 1st Jan 08), following the model I’ve explained above, unleaded petrol will have risen in price again by 25% in 8.4% of 7 months (ie: 214 days), which will be just 18 days after August 1st.

So, using what I will now christen the “Paul’s Law” of Petrol Prices ie a 25% increase in 8.4% of the previous measured time span, here’s my wacky prediction…

I predict that on Tuesday 19th August, 2008 the price of unleaded petrol at the BP service station in Goldsworth Park (Woking) will be at or above 155.9 pence per litre.

A bit of a laugh, I know, (and boy, I’ll be famous if my prediction does come true!) but there is mention of prices reaching £1.50 per litre by September, so I’m not that far off really if those predictions are anything to go by!

And if I’m anywhere near right, and “Paul’s Law” does hold true for 3 times in succession, you’d better hope and pray it fails on the fourth!

It will of course have to fail, else it would mean a 25% rise to 195p in 8.4% of the time span of 18 days; ie: about one and half days later!

Silly, yes, but maybe now you can see the stupidity of exponentials; you simply can not keep increasing your rate of increase.

Sooner or later, and in terms of house prices, oil prices, food prices, petrol prices, in fact production of anything, hell, the whole bloody world economy for that matter, something somewhere has to give, and give in a big way, ie: crash!

- Houston, we have a problem.

I’m on holiday!

Actually Rich and I are staying in a little two bed cottage at the end of the M4 - my dad’s place. We’re at the end of a long farm track on the side of a hill in the middle of nowhere.

Lovely views (start welsh accent) down in the valleys (end welsh accent) and if the weather stays as nice as it was today then I’ll be very pleased. (Usually rains as soon as I get across the bridge!)

I’m sat wirelessly in the garden looking at the cows and Rich and my dad are exchanging DIY/Interior Design tips in the kitchen.

I hope your day has been just as relaxing and enjoyable as mine!

June 1st, and officially the first birthday of my blog.

Mind you, if you go back far enough you’ll see that the first post (titled Four) was actually posted on 19th July 2007.

The whole month of June 2007 was spent going up and down on pretty much a four or five day cycle. My ups were very hypomanic, my downs pretty bad too.

The reason for setting up the blog was (during a very hypo up) to write about my exploits of raising £4,000,000 for charity in 18 months so I could give it all away on my 40th birthday at some massive event at the Palladium with a whole host of celebrities handing out the cheques. (You can laugh, and I do now, but I was deadly serious at the time.)

Of course it was flawed, although I did have some brilliant ideas and I still have the notebook with all of them written in. I wrote a variety of posts about how I was doing and did get some way down the road setting up various projects - including writing to Channel 4 suggesting they make a documentary about me!

After a spell in the ACU at the beginning of July due to a ‘mixed episode’ (up and down at the same time - not nice) and being totally worn out physically and very ‘ill’ mentally, I spent a few weeks recuperating then changed all of Junes’ posts to ‘Private’ so the rest of the world couldn’t read them.

I decided I would continue with the blog, but just use it as a record of my life, and I am pleased I have. It’s been an education for me. Hope you’re enjoying it too.

So there you have it. Happy 1st Birthday Blog. May there be many more to come!