I participate in certain leisure activities and have a laminated business card with emergency contact details and coping strategies on it. What has this got to do with schizophrenia? Well, imagine being schizophrenic as being something like living in Japan. There are problems with flooding rivers and buildings falling down in earthquakes. In effect the activities and strategies are similar to Japan's efforts to avert natural disasters. Instead of coping strategies etc, river banks have large concrete walls added (to reduce erosion and minimise the possibility of landslides). The houses are built on "land rafts" so that when there is an earthquake the whole house moves, reducing the risk of collapse.

We've been busy at Contact. Various friends and associates have donated obsolete or unwanted hardware. I am split between teaching people how to use computers and working on the computers to get them going. Fortunately, I can delegate to 1) Joe Miller of Applications Unlimited and 2) J Mee, a new Contact volunteer who is a systems administration and networking expert.

We're also putting free software on the computers (Open Office 1.x - its more stable than 2.x, Java 5, Free Zip, Cygwin, Python, Spectrum emulators and games).

BT donated some PCs and a broadband connection. Hopefully we'll be able to link more computers to the LAN and have internet access throughout Contact.

This year I am concentrating on hardware. And book reviews for the ACCU and polishing my writing skills for the reviews. Then I'll start running historicals roleplaying games. Next year I'll start learning emacs, LISP and polishing existing skills.

I tried updating this blog at the Lynemouth Resource Centre but the centre's internet "net nanny" program blocked it.

I've been doing some Learn Direct courses at the Lynemouth Resource Centre. At the moment I am studying Dorling Kindersley's "Essential Computers - Multimedia - Creating Presentations", a book about Microsoft PowerPoint that I picked up in Oxfam for 99p.