2010

Nothing like pointless tradition. This is only my tenth blog post of the year. That's the least I've ever written since I started doing it with any regularity.

Nonetheless, I do have a "what I'll do" post from the start of the year, so it couldn't hurt to give it a once over. It was, as I said at the time, the same list from the previous year with a few amendments and additions.

- Eat better
- Keep Exercising

These two always sit together of course, and this year has been no different. I eat fairly well a lot of the time, really quite badly the rest of the time. As a result my 5 times a fortnight for approx 33 minutes cross-trainer, which hasn't slipped at all, does more to maintain my physical shape and weight than it does to improve it.

I have pushed on to 500 calories per session now, and it feels harder than ever, but once you've done something a few hundred times you can easily tell yourself that there's just no way you won't be able to do it. With that not particularly inspiring but factual assessment, I find the willpower keep doing it.

- Improve my guitar skill level further.

A little, perhaps. I'm playing music with other people again, writing songs and recording a lot, which has been a key achievement of 2010 for me, and hopefully for the others involved.

- Figure out my next career step.

I can't write about this any more. Until I'm able to take the advice that I read rather than just like the ideas and do nothing about them, I won't have anything to say on the matter. I don't see myself doing what I do now forever, but now that's gradually morphing into a fear rather than a statement. I go from "anything's possible" to "i'm not that good at anything" almost daily. I wonder if it's the fluoride in the water.

- Make more of an effort to better understand important, but far away, happenings.

Minor progress here by way of coincidence. I went to India to work for a week. I certainly understand more about that place now. This really was quite an experience and I should have more to say about it, but I know how long these posts get if i'm not restrained.

- Cook more varied meals.

Added a new dish to my dish-belt. Maybe I should aim for one new dish a year?

- Isolate myself less at work at lunch time.

Done. I don't sit in my car any more. I sit at my desk four days a week, usually not working. Once a week I have lunch with a friend. That was a new year's resolution which we've kept to quite admirably.

- Try harder to meet people.

A little progress. I still find this type of thing only goes well for me when the moons align and something's in the air. I'm still shy as hell for a now 30 year old but i'll never stop trying to be less so. You hear so many people who have overcome this bullshit. My desire to meet more people is peaking right now. I can't say that's not a slight insult to the people I spend most of my time with, but if they don't feel similarly i'd be very surprised. Life is seasoned with variety. Y'know, cos variety is a spice?

- Try harder not to have that argumentative tone in friendly conversation.

Better. So much better. Self-awareness is up, talking down to people is down. I slip occasionally usually under stress, but with that identified it's not too hard to dial it back.

- Visit more of the UK. None of it is that far away.

Fucking hell. I learned some lessons trying to do this. I started the day in my car with the bare essentials (pretty much a coat) to go exploring the Welsh countryside. By 6pm I had been lost, wet, cold and alone on a misty mountain-top for 2 hours. That part of the story gets laughs no matter who I tell. What I tend to leave out is that I very nearly fell down a sheer face trying to find shelter whilst I was up there. I was literally clinging to a 20 degree mud slope with no bottom in sight after sliding about ten feet. After that I decided stopping for shelter wasn't an option - only getting down was, no matter how much it hurt. I found my way back to the path and briefly lost it again before being rescued. Definitely the learning experience of my year, and the most physically draining experience of my life.. Don't do this without the kit.

- Weigh less than eleven and a half stone.

I'm starting to think this isn't ever going to happen. I've been hovering above 12 for a while now. It may just be that I started to exercise at just around the right time to avoid the great male change of the mid-twenties. I could do more to weigh less though, and i'd still like to. I am fit now though, no question.

- Put away less alcohol.

Have I fuck. Nor do I want to. I've gradually weened myself away from this ridiculous body is a temple we're all gonna live forever philosophy. The level of drinking I do is only of caloric concern. I'm not worried about my brain. Week night drinkers are the ones that should be worried about their brain.

- Clean up more.

Sort of, but not really. I really hate cleaning. I'm genuinely considering paying someone when I need to clean for guests.

- Don't cave in to climate change propaganda beyond career supporting lip service.

I still have an environmental target which, no shit, tells me to reduce my carbon footprint, but thankfully i'm yet to lose any points over it. The existence of this so called performance indicator angers me greatly, and i've made this very clear. I suppose what i'm saying is that i'm barely managing the career supporting lip service. It's hard not to say what you think, always.

- Keep walking. Do some really long walks.

Not enough of this in 2010, apart from the Wales thing which must have been 10 miles in adverse weather.

- Code something outside of work. Looking like Android.

I got very sick of Android very quickly. The SDK isn't too bad but it's no pleasure. I'm still entirely convinced that Android will be enormous, but it's still too early. I'm currently coding some web apps using PHP (hey - it still works) and think i'd like to give iPhone development a crack if I can bring myself to buy a Mac (which I don't really want) and an iPad (which I do).

- Keep plants alive.

Looking around me at the plant life is very disappointing. I've always had a knack for keeping plants alive without really trying but over the past few months my plants have mostly turned for the worst. The big ones are fine, but all the little ones are looking almost bare. I've seen plants bounce back from seemingly dead, but a few of these, particularly the colourful candy like ones from Ikea are probably going to end up in the bin.

- Make a decision regarding buying vs renting longer term.

I don't want to buy a house in Leicester. I'm pretty sure with a bit of work I could get together a deposit and the few grand more that gets pissed away in the transaction, but I don't see it as a priority. Renting works for me and i'm way beyond the "dead money" thing - I don't even indulge idiots proposing this tired line with an argument any more.

- Get involved in some house refurb work and see if it's something i'd like to pursue further.

I didn't do this. I think I was just enjoying Homes Under the Hammer a bit too much. It didn't come back on after Christmas 2009, or at least not on channels in my package. Not something i'm bothered about.


This wasn't too long but it's all there, for what it is. It's 5pm on new years eve and I still have to buy a chinese snack box, iron a shirt and listen to the UC Radio new year show before going out for 7. No time for this, and that in general is why i've only posted ten times this year, not sixty. You could interpret it as a good thing!

Soaped up Tube

It's not often that I can be profoundly affected by a soap, but Hollyoaks somehow got to me tonight, and i'll shrug the embarrassment of admitting that I still watch this show to make my point.

Of course on another day the same thing might have had little to no affect on my brain. It depends in part what emotional state a person finds themselves in at the moment they see or hear something. I don't think I'm particularly fragile right now though.

A person being in hospital, not fine, but seemingly conscious and communicating one minute, then intubated and unlikely to ever wake up again the next is what hit me hard, and it did so in two ways.

First, it got me to thinking that a lot of the time this is probably more the way this situation plays out in real life, and it's quite rarely handled as such on TV. Normally the character is either comatose and on life support from the outset or they die without even being on a respirator. Just seeing somebody awake one minute and being kept alive by machines moments later, even an actor, for some reason got to me... I think, because in any meaningful way, that's more or less the point at which the person is lost. Not always of course, but often.

This led on to the more practical thinking. Like most lucky people I've never needed to be intubated. It's another thing I've seen on TV hundreds of times without even flinching, but in this soap, which incidentally is often poorly written, and very much so in the case of this particular storyline where the tubed individual's nurse was his girlfriend a week ago and now she barely looks upset - this soap, because it drew attention to the tube, gave it a jarring effect. The thought of it being inserted is bad enough, but waking up and being entirely unable to communicate amplifies the horrific nature of it a great deal, perhaps unfairly given that it's clearly a life saving piece of equipment.

Hollyoaks is entertaining for it's set pieces. It's like sketch drama. This was a strong dramatic sketch. Now please, absorb my real message and try to forget I was talking about Hollyoaks.

Getting Weird

Yesterday I had one of those moments that shifted my brain on to the topic of time travel. I don't recall what it was, or maybe I do. More on that in a moment.

I've thought about this many times before, and openly acknowledge that I'm stealing the idea I'm about to discuss from Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey, though it seems highly likely that the idea occurred to someone before that anyway.

The idea I write of is simple. You decide to set something up in the future to happen in the present once time travel becomes available.

I think my future self is fucking with me. Yesterday I decided that today a set of lottery numbers would reveal themselves to me, and then of course, I'd play them for the win!

I proceeded to forget about this and the numbers never showed up that I noticed. I decided to watch one of my Lovefilm movies tonight. It was to be either Let the Right One In or The Time Traveller's Wife. The mood for zombies only strikes me very occasionally, and not on this occasion.

So yes, I do acknowledge that it's possible that my mind shifted to the topic of time travel subconsciously having laid eyes on the DVD, which did arrive in the mail yesterday and sat on the dining table throughout the evening.

This film though, contains exactly the premise I decided to "set up for myself" yesterday, even though it's really just a side plot point to move them to a nicer house with their lottery winnings.

I wondered whether my future self had done something even more elaborate and actually convinced the writer of the film/book to use a certain set of numbers in the film. Anything's possible, right? There were only five numbers in the film's lottery, but that, I thought, meant the future me wanted me to win, but not win too big, so only gave me 5 of 6 winning numbers. I'd still have a 1 in 49 shot of guessing the other one, which is poor odds, but amazing odds for a lottery.

Anyway, not a single number matched. If myself from the future is fucking with me, then I say awesome. It's probably just a co-incidence though.

Realistically, I've always taken the view that if time travel were ever to be possible, we'd be seeing time travellers all over the place in the present, which you must admit, we don't, but I'd still like to believe it's possible, some how, some day. Reading about history tends to send me to sleep, but the idea of watching it live is a whole other game.

I know, months of nothing and this is how I come back?

Bad Idea

Very long time since I blogged.

The days are definitely shrinking. With more free time than most I still find it's 7:30pm already.

What have I been doing?

Sitting
Watching TV
Watching films
Playing my Piano
Trying to work out what type of freelance services I could offer.

I was trying to do that back in January too but it doesn't seem like such an imsurmountable task any more. Having said that, probably best not to pat myself on the back until I actually do something about it.

Improving my studio setup

Turns out I hadn't figured it all out last time. Now it does everything I want it to without any new kit. I really want to put some kind of audio podcast together, just haven't yet figured out what about. Sound familiar?

Went to India

That one was interesting. A work trip, but good to be asked and a good experience. Didn't avoid the almost inevitable stomach problems but certainly got to see a world very different to mine.

Bought more plants

Can you have too many plants in the living room? Maybe but to me this just looks good. Visitors say it's a lot, but they don't say they don't like it.

Ate
Slept
Drank

You ever try these Desperado bottles? Killer stuff. Tequila's not a good thing, despite what Vinnie Chase says. Guess that's ending next year. Probably about time. Better this year than last year though, albeit with tagalong porn star who seems okay with being painted in a bad light.

Bodyboarded

Not properly, just on a cheap board in fairly poor conditions, but I enjoy it so why not.

Yeah, so.. I remember why I stopped blogging now. See you at New Year probably.

Three Finales = TV Void

It's been a hell of a week for TV drama. The last ever episodes of all three shows i've been watching this "fall season" aired over the course of the last seven days.

First LOST, then 24, then Flash Forward. I think 24 actually aired first but I only got to it yesterday.

24 also did the best job at putting together a conclusive finale, but they had a probable movie to set up. This is why the only likely ending was Jack Bauer going underground ready to resurface when the time arrives. It's certainly the only reason Logan's suicide was only an attempted suicide. On that, it's a shame that there's no real consistency of character between his three stints. 1 and 3 were somewhat similar, but 2 could have been someone else entirely. If they do opt to utilise a brain damaged Logan in the movie, it'll be interesting to see if he reverts to the more bearded peaceful Logan we last saw pretending to die after being stabbed by his ex.

I've said my piece on LOST, and so have many others.

Flashforward had the misfortune to be canned having already filmed a season, but not series finale. The unexplained element of FF is similar in nature to LOST's, but FF has a better excuse for their inconclusive finale. FF hasn't been the best acted or scripted show, but i'd swap the last two seasons of Heroes for more of this any day. Of course, Heroes was also canned without a conclusion a few weeks ago, months after the finale which left plenty of room for a new season focussed on the world discovering the big secret as if somehow all that government and military stuff from the previous season wasn't clearly happening in full view of the public. Please, if i'm wrong about that, someone explain it to me. I'm not watching season 3 again, ever.

There's a lot of space for new shows later in the year. I remember starting to watch LOST around the time I decided that I watched too much TV and planned not to take on any new shows. Although I took on LOST, that was all. To read this you'd think I watch a lot of shows, but to date i've never seen a moment of The Sopranos, The Wire, Prison Break, The West Wing and quite a few other bigger names

So, here it is. A definite opportunity to not replace these finished shows with new shows. A chance to claw back some time. I have no knowledge of any new TV on the horizon. Will I stick to this? Maybe. Time will tell.

There are people that will tell you that all TV is crap at best and mind control at worst. Provided you're relatively enlightened, the mind control is very easy to spot and ignore/point out/laugh at. Some of it is definitely crap, but as far as what I as a human find entertaining goes, i'll take these long-form dramas every time over any reality TV, soap or the majority of new sitcoms from the UK or the US over the past few years.

Lost: The End

Okay. I'm going to try not to shit all over the last episode of LOST.

To some the question would be why not shit all over it? The answer is very simply that I thoroughly enjoyed watching it!

It's definitely a big "fuck you" for the hardcore fans, although I think the writers would prefer to phrase it as "you're missing the point". How well thought through the point was though, and whether it was the point until season 6, is debatable.

We're not allowed to care about what happened after the Candidates left 1977. We're not allowed to care about the maze of tunnels and carvings on the walls. Not supposed to think about why the Oceanic 6 really in fact had to return to the island to stop a lot of bad things that never seemed to materialise. Not allowed to care about the fact that there was a smoke monster, by what process he took on the appearence of Locke/Christian, or indeed what the hell he was doing the whole time. Nothing to gain from trying to understand why Christian appeared in so many places he couldn't be, even after it was supposedly explained. These are just some of the things that until tonight we weren't allowed to care about. Now there's more. What was the true aim of the Man in Black? How did Jack end up back outside the cave before he died? Are we sure a new Jack based smoke monster didn't also rise? Why didn't the plane rigged with Widmore's explosives explode? Jump back again - what was Widmore's motivation at any point ever? What was the sickness and the vaccine? Did it relate to being claimed? What did it mean to be claimed? Did it actually have anything to do with the Man in Black? How did circles of ash, sonar fences and japanese men repel a smoke monster? This was a long paragraph but I'm confident I could make it ten times this length, but however long I made it, the ending would always have to be, what was the island?

I'll be the first to admit that the ending confused me. After a bit of reading the best answer I can gel with is that everything that happened before and after the original plane crash was real, but of no consequence whatsoever to the viewer, or indeed the central characters. You know - the stuff we spent 6 years watching! We'll be told we were only supposed to care about how the characters related to each other, even though we spent just as much time being introduced to the inconsequential mysteries. They all died - Christian first, then Jack, then perhaps much later everyone else. Those that weren't in the church weren't ready, exemplified by Ana Lucia last week and Ben this week. Scott, Steve and all the other no names weren't there because they never made it into the in crowd on the Island. It wasn't important to them. They will need to make peace with the most important times and people in their own lives. Given that most of them died much earlier on, maybe they already did it before ths church gathering.

I like this as an explanation for the finale I can't change and did enjoy, but it's an explanation I would expect of a show informed of cancellation several episodes before it's 4th season finale (looking at you, Heroes - you should have wrapped things up a little), not from two head writers who spent the past three years repeating over and over again how lucky they were to have an end date.

I guess we'll just have to finish this story ourselves in our heads. Most of us have been doing it most of the way through anyway. What i'd like now is to hear Damon L and Carlton C's take on their finale and opinions such as mine, but they made it very clear some time ago that that wasn't going to happen. Had I been thinking, I would have realised this was a a red flag. They'll talk eventually, but by then we'll have moved on to whatever's next.

After all.., It only ends once.

Last Lost

Damn Sky One. In a good way.

What they've managed to organise for the LOST finale is unprecedented, but they've now given me a stupid choice I stupid didn't want.

The plan was quite simple - download it during Monday and watch it on Monday night. Find something outdoorsy and away from networks to do all day long then enjoy the last piece of my favourite TV show of all time come evening.

Now I have been handed the choice of watching it on TV at 5am that same morning, with adverts mind.

Thing is, I have watched most of the season in 720p mkv files, and i'm not a Sky HD subscriber, so technically i've been watching the higher quality version, but when I felt like a second look on Friday nights, I couldn't help noticing that something just seems to look better in the standard definition picture. It feels more vibrant, and the frame rate seems steadier. To make the decision based on that though, would surely be overthinking it.

Then there's the timing. Big dramatic pieces always work better at night. They actually work best when it's dark outside, but at this time of year that's near impossible if you have a job to get up for. Whether you stay up, wake up or temporarily shift your sleep pattern to be awake and in front of a TV at 5am on Monday morning, is it really going to feel like the "TV event of the decade"? I'll be scared i'm waking the neighbours and then have to face a full day post-LOST abyss in the aftermath. That seems like a slightly better reason to make the decision on.

There's also being a part of the synchronicity. Impossible to be spoilt. Reading what others thought in the immediate aftermath, but then again, I barely manage to avoid spoilers due to my cake and eat it nature. Still, it's something.

It's 10pm on Friday. I have things to do during Saturday and have already agreed to be out that night. If I stay up all night Saturday, it feels like the appropriate sleep in between just might land me in the right state of wake, but who knows. I've never tried it before.

Can't decide. I'm even somewhat swayed by the idea that casual fans getting off the night shift will be seeing it before me, and care so much less. That's a little annoying, but who really cares?

One thing's for almost certain. By the end of Monday, i'll be temporarily but genuinely depressed that a large portion of things I thought would eventually make sense never will. I resigned myself to that midway through the season when it became clear that the writers had no intention of upping the pace. This final season seems to have been written with a few milestone episodes and the final piece in mind. That at least does bode well for said final piece, but i'd never be able to state season 6 as preferable to any of the others. All that, and yet I'm still very impressed with it. It's a big contradiction sitting somewhere in my brain which will most likely rectify itself after the thing's over.

First thing I write in months is this? That's a little sad.

Computer Shopper

... is now a very thin magazine. That's not what this is about.

I made a couple of poor choices building my last desktop machine.

I do love the technology, but it does often seem to be trying to screw me through a seemingly endless stream of issues that stop me from achiving the fairly simple things I want to achieve.

Let me explain.

Today I received a £200 electricity bill for a three month period. For a family that might be acceptable but for a single person that's simply the highest bill i've ever seen.

I can almost certainly attribute this to having been running my desktop machine wide awake 24 hours a day for the last 2 months it's existed due to not being able to come up with a satisfactory way of being able to wake it up or shut it down from other machines on my simple home network.

The piece of shit I replaced it with did all of this. I could wake it up and I could shut it down from my damn phone.

How many problems could possibly be involved in this equation, you ask (my question mark key is missing, sorry).

- The fairly well featured Gigabyte motherboard I have seems to support waking but damned if I can tell if magic packet is one such way, and trying certainly hasn't revealed it to be.

- Windows Shutdown command requires group policy changes. Windows 7 Home Premium offers no policy changes. I can't obtain the admin rights required to execute a remote shutdown the correct way. Have to use VNC I guess.

- Real VNC is unstable on Windows 7 and freezes for seemingly no reason most of the time.

So, I can't shut the fucker down or wake it up without being the room. At least I can make it go green after 20 minutes of nothing going on, right (again, no question mark key)

- Course not. The M-Audio 2496 in truth fairly unstable on 7 soundcard that everybody fucking loves so much can't sleep, ever, and much like a screaming child, if 2496 is awake, everyone else is awake too. Therefore, even a basic low resource time-out is out of the question. I've tried a workaround, and with this setup at least, work they don't.

Why can't I just switch the machine off when I leave the room (question mark) Why do you think (question mark) It's obviously my fucking home server media machine. It needs to be somewhat on demand.

So, in summary:

DON'T buy an M-Audio Audophile 2496 sound card if you care about using sleep or indeed want a stable card. Somebody PLEASE show me how wrong I am to make this statement.
DON'T think Windows 7 Home Premium is enough if you want to do anything but use Windows Media Player and IE. Somebody PLEASE show me how wrong I am to make THIS statement.
DON'T buy Gigabyte motherboards. Their documentation is very unclear. That's just a fact.

And finally...

If you're the kind of person that puts off buying something for far too long because you really want to do all the necessary research and make the right choice, just fucking buy it, because honestly I read every last detail of all of the above and at no point did I think anything I was buying wouldn't do something the crap I was replacing did without any difficulty.

The crap, incidentally:
- An ABit AV8. Best motherboard I ever owned. Woke when I told it to.
- Creative SBLive! That's right, that old. Never had a problem with sleep.

Yeah i'm just pissed off with all this.

Analysing iPad Analysis - contains no references to female sanitary products, because let's face it, it wasn't funny the first time.

Some schools of thought witnessed so far in the tech blog world:

- Huge step backwards in computing terms.
- Revolutionary.
- Giant iPhone.
- People against it aren't the people it's aimed at.

Some facts are going to remain facts no matter how you dress them up. Just because the novice computer user wants a simple device doesn't mean they don't want to listen to the streaming music in their Spotify/Pandora app whilst they're browsing the web. Ignoring this is ignoring reality. These novice computer users *will* want to know why their iPod music is fair game whilst they do practically any of around 140,000 other things but all other audio entertainment sources are off-limits unless the device sits otherwise useless on the couch. The "it's meant to be a phone" excuse and whining about stressing batteries both become invalid for this new type of device and a more satisfactory explanation will be needed. The so called multitasking issue is the main thing now bugging me about my iPhone on an ongoing basis (sadly I have the one iPhone model that doesn't jailbreak in a very persistent way, for the moment at least)

The iPad s a unique product that will remain unique for a while as all other manufacturers churn out similar looking devices running Windows which, let's be very clear, aren't competiton for this device. They are personal computers. This isn't.

The iPad would only be a huge step backwards if it somehow restricted choice. The knowledgeable will buy it with eyes somewhat open and certainly won't be getting rid of their laptop, whilst the less knowledgeable will become both enamoured and frustrated in varying measures. Whilst so many are happy to relegate these less knowledgeable novices to idiots, I have more faith that they'll actually realise why they're frustrated with their $500 tablet. People are confusing lack of IT skill with lack of intelligence. People do that a lot, everywhere. You've done it, and so have I.

Is it revolutionary? I've been back and forth on this. The answer is no. How can it be? It's a new iteration of a previous revolution - iPhone OS. Evolution, clear and simple. The fact that it's only a 0.1 (ish) version up just cements this. The device itself means absolutely nothing, and is very clearly a giant iPhone.

It's going to be very popular. For some reason I also have faith that the "multitasking" issue mentioned earlier will be addressed. Best case scenario: iPhone OS 4 is the other shoe. That way perhaps those of us that clearly won't be buying this tablet still get to benefit from it's existence on our phones.

Of course by then i'll have probably switched to an Android phone. It's inevitable. I don't need in this Apple world. Not one bit.

2010 - What Now?

I liked the old list and there's still work to do. Carried forward (with a little rewording):

- Eat better
- Keep Exercising
- Improve my guitar skill level further.
- Figure out my next career step.
- Make more of an effort to better understand important, but far away, happenings.
- Cook more varied meals.
- Isolate myself less at work at lunch time.
- Try harder to meet people.
- Try harder not to have that argumentative tone in friendly conversation.
- Visit more of the UK. None of it is that far away.
- Weigh less than eleven and a half stone.
- Put away less alcohol.
- Clean up more.
- Don't cave in to climate change propaganda beyond career supporting lip service.
- Keep walking. Do some really long walks.
- Code something outside of work. Looking like Android.
- Keep plants alive.

New:

- Make a decision regarding buying vs renting longer term.
- Get involved in some house refurb work and see if it's something i'd like to pursue further.

This is the least thought i've put into this since I started doing it 2-3 years back, partly because you need to be in a certain frame of mind for this which today i'm not,
and mostly because i've come to understand the aspect of doing this that I find beneficial and enjoyable. This post isn't anything like as important as the one that comes in 364 days.
That's also why what I posted yesterday was extremely long whilst this is fairly short.

What about the accountability cop out? I'll reconcile it in my own mind as i'm sure I already do. If the 2008 weekly review didn't force me to act on things, it's hard to see what will.

What an unsatisfying end to a new years resolution post.