RON RETURNS

Stumbling at the first hurdle

2011-05-31T10:36:00.001+01:00

Hmm, not very good, not exactly engendering goodwill amongst my vast readership am I! In truth, since I started posting here again – that single post – there has been a mixture of events (who was it who said ‘Events dear boy, events..’), about which I don’t want to blog, for now, that have overtaken me, and perhaps still a smattering of ‘blog block’, ‘blog fear’ whatever you want to call it..

Either way, a couple of times I fired up Live Writer and sat there and there as just..nothing. Which is stupid, given all the topics so helpfully provided in the previous comments thread. Ok, so first post…

..and so I was sitting in the Depeche Mode bar in Tallinn..

2011-05-26T15:19:00.001+01:00

…which I actually did do, amongst a few other things that have been quite interesting since I last, er, ‘flaked’, on the blogging front. And I will get to it, and those other things, in the fullness of time, until then in an effort to find some kind of structured way to get my groove back, I thought maybe a few posts on standard headings with my current thoughts and opinions on the state of play. Ones that immediately come to mind are

Politics (natch)
Technology, and maybe split that between smartphones, tablets, and anything else
Film & TV, continues to be a passion of mine with a well-oiled content system in Ron Towers
Diet and Exercise (inclusive of injury unfortunately)
Internet (Blogging, Twitter, Social networking etc, very much in the news of late, super-injunctions et al)
Work, tentatively but the same old whinges apply
Holidays! I actually went on one, how about that, first one in 2 years..
A.O.B.
Suggestions welcome!

and then we will see. I’d really like to nuke the site design and start again but the underlying code is so tweaked (and my HTML skills are now so rusty), I’d be worried to ever get it back….

I can confirm

2011-02-04T20:31:00.001Z

That this blogger app works well, and that Jagermeister goes quite well with Cream Soda. Good night Vienna!

Good news everyone

2011-02-04T09:42:00.001Z

Well good for me, anyway. Google has finally released an official Blogger App for Android. So I can blog from my Galaxy Tab, which is great because it means I can blog from bed, which is great.

There are existing blogging apps for Android which work with Blogger, but this one looks much more polished and capable. You might also notice that there is an install button on the Android Market page, which is super duper clever as I can ‘remotely install’ apps to my Tab at home, from work.

Which is great.

I can honestly say that if I’ve had a busier week and a bit before in my working life, I can’t recall it. I consider that the migration was very successful over last weekend, but I’ve been run ragged this week fire fighting, comforting users who don’t like things being a teeny bit different and new, oh and they decided to start someone new at the same time.

I think I’ve broken the back of the post migration user issues now, mostly, but there’s still much I need to do to feel comfortable with the server side stuff (oh did I mention they are using new versions of SBS and Exchange and Backup Exec I’ve never used before? And I have had to put in some *epic* mail redirection rules in order for my boss to not have to change anything he does. And to quote Scotty, the network is bypassed like a Christmas tree..it goes on and on..). So so tired now…

Better than sitting around I suppose, and I continue to be thankful for having a job, even though it now feels a bit like I’ve acquired a job and a half…

Weekend working

2011-01-29T09:03:00.001Z

I’m sorry, dear blog readers, to have neglected you. It doesn’t feel like three days since my last post, which is not to suggest my life is so jam packed with exciting activities that time automatically passes in a flash (it really isn’t, what I am once again packing it with is exercise and now more specifically weight training, but that’s a post of its own). It just doesn’t feel like three days, quite often when I look at the last date I posted here I’m genuinely surprised by the gap. No explanation, no excuses, it just seems to be that way.

Sad to say I am writing this post whilst awaiting the arrival of a colleague at work to do a load of techie-domain-and-network migration type stuff, which you can only really do out of hours. Even though the user numbers are low (and in fairness, I’m happily taking more of a ‘supervisory role’ here), there are problems and issues with any such project (and the last one I was involved with was a few years ago and involved moving *thousands* of users). We will certainly be here most of the day (I suppose it qualifies for T.O.I.L. but really I won’t take it, IMO the odd weekend is implied in the nature of my job), but I’ll be annoyed if we have to be in tomorrow too.

The most intractable problem is going to be my boss. Without going into detail there are two issues, firstly as a user he is pernicious across the old and the new networks, and will expect still to be (even though this is a massive pain in the arse from my perspective), secondly he will still be on the ‘old’ network whilst expecting full usage and access to the new (even though it is all but physically impossible to manually connect him to the new one which is exclusively in a separately building). He will expect the change to happen painlessly, in the background, and he will expect all his various toys and devices to just carry on without skipping a beat.

When I put much of this to him, his response was, as expected, to politely request ‘I find a way to make it work’. There is a way to make it work, a mixture of usage of VPN’s with some fiendishly clever mail gateway rules, but I’m sure next week there will be numerous calls and complaints that x is slow, I can’t do y, I used to have a shortcut to z and now it doesn’t work etc Once this project is complete, I will then have to joy of managing *two* networks with the resources of one, so to speak. But I’m not complaining, well ok maybe a little complaint…

Rant over. Have an enjoyable weekend whatever you’re doing.

The least surprising finding ever found

2011-01-26T11:37:00.001Z

Which has reported that Currys and Comet staff, amongst other electrical retailers, are 'misleading' customers with poorly informed staff.

Well blow me down with a feather, you don’t bloody well say. I avoid these shops whenever possible, but sometimes it’s a necessary evil, if I need the item faster than it can be delivered, or more often these days if I’m going as a ‘technical advisor’ to a friend or family member. I would never request or pay attention to anything technical they may or may not have to say (and I’ve usually completed my research online for the exact item I want before I even set foot in the store), but I must admit I’m not as informed on ‘consumer law’ as I should be.

*makes a note*

It feels like the calm before the storm of the Tablet Wars at the moment. Two contenders to watch of the Android variety are the Motorola Xoom and the so-far un-named Toshiba Tablet (successor to the dismal Folio), the former may be released in the States as soon as February. Tablets are going to be *huge* this year, with anticipation of iPad 2 already growing. The downside is going to be cost. With rumours that the Xoom could cost as much as $800 in the US, I think that’s going to hold device adoption back significantly, it has certainly caused me to think again about purchasing a 10” device this year. Luckily, I’m still loving, and using, my Galaxy Tab.

This is not Leaving Las Vegas

2011-01-25T10:53:00.001Z

All I did was have a sneaky little Absinthe last night and I’m getting accusation of Leaving Las Vegas style overtures…[For those not in the know, Leaving Las Vegas is film in which Nicolas Cage plays and alcoholic who goes to Las Vegas to literally drink himself to death. Elisabeth Shue makes a lovely prostitute with a heart of gold..]

‘Twitter is the new madness’. Totally agree, seeing the way some people use it. I seem to have a bit of a love/hate relationship with ‘social networking’, I oscillate between disliking it intensely and feeling like I should make more of an effort with it all, in a sheep-like effort not to be left behind.

I’ve prattled on before about Twitter, and it not being *just* about learning what Denise Richards had for breakfast that day or whatever it might be. I think it’s starting to ‘mature’ as a platform a bit, if you are selective with who you follow and understand how the whole thing works then it can be a good, very relevant up to date form of web search, in effect. I find it especially useful for techie news (you can imagine it might be good for that kind of thing).

As far as the celebs go, you can quite quickly divine which ones ‘get it’ and which ones don’t, which ones are actually quite funny and personable (Carol Voderman, Caitlin Moran, Sue Perkins come to mind), and which ones aren’t, and for those ones, you just unfollow.

I’ve noticed recently more news stories seem to be incorporating a number of ‘twitter' quotes’ in their narrative, I’m thinking recently the controversy over Ricky Gervais’s jokes at the Golden Globes, you do increasingly tend to read it first on Twitter, it can have an immediacy that is hard to match in other media forms.

That said, for some it’s clearly a bit of an obsession, for me it’s a thing that’s there that I can dip into, have a poke around, then dip back out.

Booze Club Session 2: Jägermeister

2011-01-24T10:48:00.001Z

What’s the drink?

From Wikipedia ‘Jägermeister is a German 70-proof digestif made with herbs and spices. It is the flagship product of Mast-Jägermeister AG, headquartered in Wolfenbüttel, south of Braunschweig, Germany.’

How strong is it?

By volume it is 35%, so not as strong as Scotch and half as alcoholic as Absinthe.

How do you drink it?

You can drink it straight or with a range of mixers or in cocktails, for this session it was elected to drink it in so-called Jägerbombs, where it is drink mixed with the energy drink Red Bull.

What does it taste like?

I would describe the taste as medicinal, but not unpleasant. Quite drinkable, which is presumably why certain parts of Australia have banned the concoction for encouraging binge drinking. You could certainly stay on them all night and not hit the puke point early (but others experience may vary).

So, any good?

I had read on the Internet (good old Internet) that there were some potential health concerns surrounding Jagerbombs, notably the effects of massive amounts of caffeine in the Red Bull mixed in with the effects of the alcohol, and so I intended to keep the amounts imbibed low. In the end I had three Jagerbombs before meeting friends in the pub, after which I switched to the far safer Scotch and coke. Suffice to say, I was quite hammered by closing time, but not unmanageably so (but then that’s never been an issue to me, no matter how bad I get), and I would describe it as a pleasant evening in the pub.

I would describe it as something of a brain drug battle, early on the caffeine stimulating you and keeping the effects of the alcohol at bay, then later on the booze winning and traditional ‘inebriation’ taking hold.

It’s the type of drink you could imagine people drinking once they were already pissed and irresponsible, whereas to me it’s more like a ‘starter’ drink to give you an early lift (and to help with my now-institutionalised anti-social nature).

Will you drink it again?

I expect so. It will be especially useful for one friend who works a very long working week and tends to struggle by Saturday night, this will act as a useful bridging drink.

Next time, Stroh!

A bit of a Balls up?

2011-01-21T08:58:00.001Z

So, Alan Johnson resigns after 4 months of not being up to the job and one of the chief architects of the Grand Labour Economic Balls Up returns to front line politics, in a role Lispy Ed was determined he didn’t get.

The Lefty Media are saying the Tories should be concerned, but I think they will be quietly pleased. Ed Balls has proved during the election he is a capable political street fighter, but as far as the public is concerned, he is up to his ‘eyeballs’ in guilt for the economic position we are in. Even better, he continues to deny the deficit is a problem and will no doubt continue to press for tax rises and spending rises. Labour economic policy has just taken a massive swerve to the left, from whence it just ~~lost~~ didn’t quite win an election.

This is also a massive problem for Lisper (The Lisper? Lispy? whenever I hear him speak now it’s all I can hear. Nothing against those with speech impediments in general, I believe he is having coaching to try and get rid of it), who will be increasingly undermined by Balls, who went for the leadership and made no secret he still covets the job.

Osborne should not be complacent, Johnson was so incapable it was a bit embarrassing, but he should also be able to really skewer this new guy with his overactive thyroid time and again on his shameful economic record.

Will crunchy oats make me fat?

2011-01-19T21:04:00.001Z

I hope not, I'm a bit hooked on them. £1.50 for a big bag. No sugar, just a little milk. Fantastic. I also seem to have added cheese to my menu, and melon.

Found another neat blogging ap for my Galaxy Tab, still getting used to using the virtual keyboard.

Too many Irish presenters

2011-01-19T10:06:00.001Z

I’m actually a fan of Christine Bleakley and her accent, most of the time, but it seems Daybreak has gone Ireland-crazy (perhaps they just need the work and have more reasonable wage demands to get paid on pounds rather than Euros), with Bleakley, Gráinne Seoige (pronounced ‘Gran-ya Show-ga’ I think) and now a section from Zöe Salmon about a £30,000 prize which is really annoying me because she can’t say ‘pounds’ she says ‘poy-inds’.

Stop saying ‘poy-inds’ Zoe.

Dentists again

2011-01-17T17:20:00.001Z

Finally got my cracked tooth sorted. Well, I say cracked, it was one of the ‘corner bits’ (she used some fancy pants word but I can be bothered to Google it, I think it might have been ‘orbit’, like the chewing gum) that had come off.

The good news is she just patched it up with a supplemental filling and didn’t need to go nuclear on the whole tooth. She also managed to do it there and then so I don’t have to go back for 9 months.

The bad news was it was just outside (I think a month) of the ‘warranty period’ for the last work I had done (who knew there even was one? I believe it lasts for 2 months, so not really just outside?). So a further £46.50 sterling to get it boxed off. Oh well, it’s done and I can relax and wait for the anaesthetic to wear off and the ‘mouth ache’ to start..at one point I thought she was just gonna tear my cheek open to get a better look….

Booze Club Session 1: Absinthe

2011-01-16T18:40:00.001Z

What’s the drink?

From Wikipedia, ‘Absinthe is historically described as a distilled, highly alcoholic (45–74% ABV) beverage. It is an anise-flavoured spirit derived from herbs, including the flowers and leaves of the herb Artemisia absinthium, commonly referred to as "grande wormwood", together with green anise and sweet fennel. Absinthe traditionally has a natural green colour but can also be colourless. It is commonly referred to in historical literature as la fée verte (the Green Fairy).’

How strong is it?

The bottle I obtained, La Fee Parisienne, was 68% proof. So quite strong.

How do you drink it?

Stage 1: Pour the Absinthe into a glass, place the special spoon over the glass and place a couple of sugar cubes on it.

Stage 2: Pour ice cold water through the spoon over the sugar cubes. The cubes dissolve in the water and the drink develops the customary milky green colour known as the ‘louche’. The drink is ready.

What does it taste like?

Aniseed, but not quite as strongly as say Ouzo. Quite pleasant, but I think longer term it’s something of an acquired taste.

So, any good?

Within 5 minutes or so of the first drink, my face went very hot indeed and I was unmistakably inebriated, pleasantly so. By drink three we had hit the ‘aniseed barrier’ and it was getting tough to down.

Will you drink it again?

Yes, but I think it will do better as part of a cocktail rather than a straight drink. I notice you can also get a less alcoholic version that can be drunk with Red Bull. The traditional method of drinking it is ok, but you can’t really stick the stuff away (and that’s not a bad thing with stuff this potent).

Next time, Jaegermeister!

Hard Drive day

2011-01-11T16:36:00.001Z

Ok so the Absinthe has arrived, very quickly indeed. We’ll leave it there shall we, lest we upset the Puritan element (as it shall from now on be known in these parts :D).

Lots of fiddling with hard drives today, all of it successful. The main hard drive on my work pc had been flagging a critical error for about a month but only in the last week was it becoming clear the drive was having to do so much work error correcting that it was becoming unusable. Replacement drive arrived today, and thanks to a cracking bit of freeware Easus Disk Copy, I was able to simply boot from the CD and do a direct clone of the disc. Sorted.

If I get around to it, I feel a post about bankers bonuses coming on…

Welcome to Booze Club

2011-01-10T15:44:00.001Z

For quite some time I fell out of like with booze. There are/were various reasons for it, but over time being drunk changed from something to be enjoyed, something that oiled the wheels of socialisation as it has done for humans for hundreds of years, into something to be afraid of, something that would inevitably cause friction and arguments, something for which I was disapproved of. My alcoholic intake fell and fell until after the cataclysm of 2009, when it dropped effectively to zero. Pissed was not something I wanted to be.

Anyway, short version I have only very recently begun to be comfortable with having a drink again. Scotch remains my default preferred tipple (and I’m looking at adding some funky ones to the list below) , but I’m looking now to broaden my knowledge and experience with some of the more esoteric drinks out there. As I have just explained to the office, the driving factor is ‘to get off my thrup’y bits’. So far, the programme and status of various rums and spirits to acquire is as follows:-

La Fee Absinthe Parisienne [Ordered, due this week or early next]
Jagermeister [Apparently available from Tescos]
Stroh 80 [Available online but not widely, scheduled for February]

You may recall I had a shot of Stroh 80 (80 represents the percentage alcohol!) at a friends Stag Do in Berlin and I think it was the most ‘alcoholic’ experience I’ve ever had. The other two I’ve never tried before, I’m especially looking forward to finally trying Absinthe. I’m not expecting it to cause me to hallucinate but I am looking forward to being royally f**ked up, the package I have ordered (from Amazon, aren’t they excellent is there anything they *don’t* sell these days?) includes a spoon and intro booklet, there’s a bit of ‘ceremony’ to drinking Absinthe.

Other suggestions welcome!

If I don’t get a new phone or another tablet..

2011-01-07T13:19:00.001Z

..and I allocate that spending and the bonus on its way and I sort out the several hundred quids worth of small change I’ve amassed then maybe I can afford the £882.39 it would cost me to get a Drobo FS NAS with five 2TB discs (effective capacity then of 7.26TB), and I’d never need to worry about storage capacity or disc failure ever again. And I do worry about those things. Sad as that is.

Anyway here is a picture of it!

It’s snowing. Don’t panic though, it’s going.

2011-01-07T11:43:00.001Z

Here, for no special reason, is my Galaxy Tab, nice and snug in its new stand on my bedside table, pimped to hell by me as is inevitably the case with my kit, and in need of a bit of a clean, which goes to show it gets a decent amount of use. Loving the fact that for most purposes now, it’s a laptop replacement.

So Star Wars is finally coming to Blu-ray. In September. £69.99 is a decent price for the complete set though, given there are 2 discs of extras running to an additional 30 hours of footage (by and large I am not interested in extra’s normally, in fact it’s annoying that the studio’s use them as a justification for yet another box-set or special edition.).

I was just wondering this week about when the Indiana Jones films would be coming to Blu-ray. You can get the latest, and poorest, one, The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, in high definition, but not the original trilogy. It’s almost as if Spielberg and Lucas are holding it back as a retirement cash cow (as if either of them needed such a thing). Raiders of the Lost Ark was on BBC One HD this week, so they have a copy that’s at least 1080i, unless they have a standard copy and simply upscale, but probably they have a film print which is then actually downscaled to 1080 as film doesn’t have a ‘resolution' as such…welcome to the gripping world of my train of thought…

Snowed reasonably heavily here this morning, but is now as predicted turning to sleet and will be removed by heavy rain a bit later in the day. I took pleasure in telling a few excited people this morning that they would not be able to go home early (at least earlier than usual for a Friday) on account of it.

Here come the tablets

2011-01-06T08:47:00.001Z

Tired. Back to training twice a day, the knee has twinged a little, but as long as I don’t push it too hard I think it will hold, and should strengthen. In theory. I’ve given myself till the end of the month to show some real progress, but I’m already beating my plan. ‘nuff said.

On the technology front, as predicted a deluge of tablet devices have been announced at the Consumer Electronics Show over in Las Vegas. I knew, and indeed blogged, that I was jumping in a little early on the tablet front, and that many many more devices would be coming in 2011. It seems to be the usual mix of eclectic, cheap and horrendously expensive, most running a version of Android as an OS but also a few Windows 7 tablets (MS is due to announce some more today, as well as maybe the first details of Windows 8).

We may also see more of the next major version upgrade for Android, codenamed ‘Honeycomb’ which will be version 3.0 and is rumoured to be dedicated to tablet devices. There are some interesting hybrid devices in the pipeline, notably Samsungs new sliding PC 7 series, which offers both tablet and laptop functionality in one device, and also Lenovos LePad.

I was disappointed to hear that it’s likely Google will implement minimum hardware specs for devices to support Honeycomb that exceed the current Galaxy Tab (basically requiring a dual core processor and higher resolution screen). There was an expectation that we would be able to upgrade the OS on the Tab to a ‘proper’ tablet OS this year.

However, we will be getting 2.3, codenamed ‘Gingerbread’ (at some point), and it’s fair to say my Galaxy Tab now has a firm place in my technology ‘firmament’. It’s an excellent piece of kit that I’m finding more and more ‘useable’ as I come to know Android as an OS better. I have even pondered getting an Android phone as my next handset, for a while, but decided against it. I’m fairly settled that I’ll be getting another tablet this year, probably 10”, possibly a Windows variant unless 3.0 blows my socks off (which it metaphorically might), before I get a new Windows PC (that’s not on the roadmap until next year).

I also want to seriously look at app development this year, as a hobby you understand, I think for an (almost) novice with a tiny bit of programming experience, Windows Phone 7 is the ‘friendliest’ place to start.

UPDATE – Honeycomb looks superb *loses socks*. I wants it:-

Not fair

2011-01-04T11:57:00.001Z

So I’ve been getting up at the same time as normal for the whole Christmas break (around 6am), and did it rescue me from feeling like warmed over whatever this morning, the first day back at work? Did it hell!

And what brilliant timing for the Return of the Cold. That will teach me to only put on a single pair of socks, I’ve got too used to being warm enough at home, too used to just getting into bed. Still, good to catch up with the gang at the office, we have a couple of new starters keeping me on my toes (or catching me out with questions on things I should know the answers to if I could get my mind out of neutral). As I always say at this time of year, I fully expect that by about 3 this afternoon it will feel as if we’ve never been away anyway….

What a relief

2011-01-03T12:01:00.001Z

The bug that caused the iPhones alarm to fail on the 1st or 2nd of January 2011 has sorted itself out. Apple. Jeez…

In other news, I’ve changed my mind from getting the Omnia 7 to the HTC Trophy. It does everything I need it to, and it’s well over £100 cheaper.

In other other news, I’m quite bored and quote looking forward to going back to work, sad as that is.

Start as you mean to go on

2011-01-01T09:46:00.001Z

Well, I managed to sleep the new year in, just about, but was woken from my stupor by a load of bloody fireworks and the repeated sounding of the horn from a ship that is presumably moored over in Liverpool (when the QE2 arrives for a day it’s a matter of great local interest and TV coverage. Apparently.). Successfully avoided the fekking Hootenanny.

Hmm, it’s often the case that I have a little something to post first thing, but then that develops over the course of the day, my instinct is to append to the original post rather than do a new post, but are more little posts preferable to fewer longer ones. Pro’s and cons on both sides….

Goodbye 2010. I won’t miss you.

2010-12-31T09:25:00.001Z

It’s a tricky one. I want to say positive things, onwards and upwards, no more complaining etc. BUT it’s really all I have to blog about (and IMO forms the core of most remaining ‘blogs’). That and gadgets/technology. In lieu, shall we just say that in 2011 I will endeavour to achieve more '’balance’, and to use an undoubtedly American term, more ‘positivity’.

I don’t believe in New Years Resolutions, if you want to make changes you should make them *now*. I was horrified to discover on Tuesday that since the start of December (or quite possible a little before, I can’t remember), I have put back on nearly half a stone, and so my resolution started there and then to sort it out. I’m pleased to report that I’ve already made excellent progress and getting back exercising feels great. No problems with the knee so far.

Whatever you’re doing tonight, I would like to wish you a Happy New Year, I’m cautiously optimistic that it will be a much better year for me than the one about to end.

A brief reprieve

2010-12-27T09:04:00.001Z

I couldn’t work out what the noise was for a few seconds, then I realised it’s the sound of water dripping on the windowsill outside. Stuff is starting to melt. According to the forecasters it’s only a reprieve from the incredibly dull cold weather (and depending on whom you believe, this could just have been Round 1 of a very cold winter stretching into February next year), but I am half expecting people to emerge, bleary-eyed into the street just to feel the slightly warmer air, as if it were the end of a nuclear winter….

And for no discernable reason and despite an improved oral hygiene scheme I’ve cracked a tooth again at the worst possible moment. It doesn’t hurt, I’m not even going to be able to get an appointment to be scolded by my dentist until the 4th….

Observations on Christmas Day at my parents

2010-12-26T11:37:00.001Z

Food. There is still a deep-seated impulse in my mum to provide food, which I’d forgotten about. It’s been 10 years since me and my brother left home but she still stocks the kitchen as if a nuclear war was imminent. I find that strangely comforting. Food is just, ‘there’, when wanted. I just stood in front on the fridge for a few minutes, just looking at all the food. Brilliant.
We had a superb Christmas lunch, and then later on I was caught by surprise as she asked what I wanted for tea. Tea for goodness sake! I only eat one meal a day now, and I’d forgotten that most people actually have 3… They are not large people and they don’t eat a lot, I honestly think it’s just the outcome of my mums eye for a bargain in the supermarket and her need to stock up for doomsday/in case me and my bro both move back home for some reason at very short notice.
Heat. My parents don’t suffer cold. Oh no. Which is *brilliant*, as I’ve previously blogged about Ron Towers difficulties in the current cold, but jeez, I spent most of the evening fighting the urge to pass out from the heat. Lovely suffocating heat….
TV. I’d forgotten my dad, although a highly intelligent individual in many respects and my counsel on many things, has trouble following TV programmes that have any element of complexity in the plot. I’d agreed with my Mum that we’d watch Murder on the Orient Express at 9pm, so how do you break that down for your dad whilst not giving away the twist? Answers on a postcard…

Merry Christmas

2010-12-24T22:11:00.001Z

It is traditional at this time of year to extend seasons greetings to the three of you, so Happy Christmas!

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Winding down (was I ever wound up?)

2010-12-23T13:25:00.001Z

For work that is. I’m in tomorrow, traditionally we get told to go home at lunchtime but it’s almost certainly that all the big bosses are finishing today, leaving those of us in the office with the quandary of there being no-one in *authorised* to send us home. Which in my case means I’ll just take myself home at lunchtime. Advantage of having a fairly laissez-faire boss.

I’m back in work on January 4th, and judging by all the tasks with due dates I’m currently in Outlook pushing back to clear them off todays to-do list I’m going to have my work cut out. But that’s for then.

The standard refrain at this time of year from people making conversation is ‘are you looking forward to the break?’, followed by perplexion when I don’t immediately respond with the customary ‘hell yes!’. I’m *sort of* looking forward to it. It will be very quiet this year, very simple and easy and wonderfully lacking in anxiety. But inevitably Christmas is a time of year for remembering things and thinking about things that you might not necessarily want to, the silver lining being as much as I’m disinterested in ‘New Year’, I am looking forward to a new year, maybe 2011 will be the year I finally decide to re-join the human race.

Jeez that turned into a bit more of a maudlin blog post than I’d planned…

I wonder

2010-12-22T08:43:00.001Z

How many people who had previously wished for a white Christmas are now regretting it. We were forecast more heavy snow overnight here, what we ended up getting for the most part was just ‘snow’, which has settled nicely over the existing sludge and no doubt in the fullness of time will add to it.

I am interested in weather, it’s an intrinsically British topic of discussion. I’m fascinated to learn that the major driver for our current cold conditions is the weak and meandering condition of the Jet Stream allowing cold Arctic air to push down over us where more normally we would be subjected to low pressure fronts and milder air from the East.

But, now, with the media obsession with queues at Heathrow and Paddington station and every bloodywhere else, I’m just bored of it all. I’m bored of the weather and I’m bored of the news about the weather.

I have some sympathy for the elderly (even Les the old gipper downstairs, but I know he’s also being monitored by some other neighbours, I hope his piss-bag doesn’t freeze up) at this time of year, but for the most part, there seems to be a prevailing attitude amongst the travelling, and general, public, that any interruption to their travelling plans by (what is still) unusual weather *must* be the Governments fault and they should be compensated. Where is our national stoicism? (I also suspect that there’s plenty of that around, in the more rural regions, it just doesn’t get so much coverage). Here’s a thought, if the weathers bad, stay in and sit it out? Be prepared?

I was complaining to my mum that they had sent the North West Tonight weathergirl (can you still say that?), my former fave Diane, to Manchester Airport for a live OB just to report that ‘it was going to snow’. Why did I have to pay for that to happen? She couldn’t have as easily and cheaply said that from the studio? What does standing outside at what *might* be Manchester Airport actually add to the information?

She told me to stop being so miserable, which from my mum is an unusual remark.

Blogging from my Tab

2010-12-19T19:38:00.001Z

So I thought I'd have a go at posting directly from my Tab *about* my Tab. The app I'm using is a free one called Blogger-droid, its basic but does the job nicely. Typing on the virtual keyboard is ok and reasonably accurate, just a little slower.

Having spent more time with it now I've been able to pimp the interface substantially - kudos to Android for its flexibility. I've yet to find something it can't 'do', including useful stuff like remote desktoping. Outlook/Exchange integration isn't great (but still possible for a small fee), and as I've said before this is more like a big touchscreen phone than a real 'tablet', but that upgrade is on its way.

As an OS it seems stable, only freezing now and then. Battery life is good rather than amazing, and points lost for the proprietary Samsung connector rather than USB. Investing in some peripherals is going to push costs up farther still. However, right now it's clear this is the best Android tablet you can buy.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.5

Perfect timing

2010-12-19T18:05:00.001Z

*crosses fingers* I think it isn’t/wasn’t Norovirus, but if I’d been blogging at 3am this morning I’d have said otherwise, by way of actual and potential, er, ‘symptoms’. I won’t go into details. Suffice to say I’ve been resting and not eating for the rest of today and it seems to have done the trick. The Fish Fingers (I love fish fingers almost as much as chicken drumsticks) I had for tea have not caused a reaction, and I seem to be ok drinking coffee so, least said, soonest mended.

No further snow has fallen, but what there is has not melted and now entered the even more treacherous ‘compacted ice’ phase. I smugly watched a succession of vans trying, and failing, to get up my road yesterday and today but tomorrow it will need to be me, but I’m not worried, my vehicle has proved itself capable.

90% of my Christmas shopping has been completed, I aim to have it all sorted by the end of tomorrow, which is my best performance in years (even if most peoples presents are, shall we say, less than inspired.)

Incidentally, for weather information I like to keep track of Joe Bastardi’s European Blog. He’s usually on the money, and is often fairly robust in terms of what others are predicting. And his surname makes me and my dad laugh Sorry Joe.

Il Neige

2010-12-18T09:51:00.001Z

It’s even snowed here [Pic courtesy of my Galaxy Tab, which I am increasingly enjoying, but that’s for another post]. Rarely snows here, and when it does it’s rarely this heavy. Apart from last year .

The media is kicking up a fuss and of course many peoples travel plans have and will be disrupted, but for me, in a way it’s a blessed relief.

I was due to do perform a couple of jobs today, neither of which I was looking forward to, and the inclement weather and treacherous driving conditions have gifted me a valid reason to postpone both for better weather, and that might not arrive for a week or more. The forecast is for very cold weather all the way to February next year, but I don’t expect we’ll get more heavy snow here.

Secondly, an inspired suggestion from work (unless it was here, in which case apologies) led me to purchase a small oil-filled electric radiator on Thursday (which was a busy day, lots of driving) which has resolved the Ron Towers heating issues at a stroke. Fuck the electricity bill, as I write this I am toasty warm and comfortable in bed, with no urgent plans or obligations for the rest of the weekend (other than re-authoring a wedding DVD for a friend. Massive fan of weddings me.) and in any case no reasonable means or grounds for leaving my warmth.

Thank you for your suggestions and comments for the last post. BW I will almost certainly attempt one of the craft suggestions with my niece, however I fear her attention span is not quite there yet. Having said that, she does enjoy making things.

Unconstructed non-dream space

2010-12-15T07:57:00.001Z

This is why I don’t take more than a days leave off at a time. The schedule and structure that is crucial to my proper functioning (or at least ‘functioning’) breaks down and I just fall off, or out, of the world.

That’s not completely true, that is what has happened in-between having to do a mixture of family activities and chores which I have to say I haven’t really looked forward to. They are called ‘chores’ for a reason. And today is a brief respite back at work, the fun and games continue tomorrow and into the weekend. I’m not having any fun at the moment.

I’ve been getting up earlier than normal to take my niece to school for the last four school days (which is fine, I don’t mind getting up but funny how that sort of turns into a ball-ache when you don’t have the option, you *have* to get up), and again tomorrow when the bad weather is set to return. This is only a partial, familial whinge, in fairness she is the closest thing to a daughter I may ever have and I love her like a daughter, but I’m sure all parents find the school run a ball ache (certainly the robust parents I’ve encountered so far seem keen to drop little Tiffany or Kyle off and get the hell out of Dodge).

I also feel like I should be wearing a sandwich board that says something like ‘I might look like a house-breaker, I’m on leave I normally wear a shirt and tie and work in an office, but ’m not a paedo, she’s my niece.’

The reason I’m doing it is my brother has had surgery on his ankle and can’t move so well for a while. Again, I’m naturally moved to help my sibling, but I’m not so happy to be having to hang out his dirty washing. There are limits. Luckily such is my relationship with my brother that huge amounts of direct complaining is expected and accepted.

In other news the timing has happened that another family member, who lives in Shanghai and only returns to Blighty once a year or so, was visiting. Which was great, nice to see him, gave my usual speech about returning permanently. He likes to eat, and so naturally my low carb normal diet has gone out of the window in the last few days. Indian takeaway on Monday night followed by Fish and Chips yesterday.

I really enjoyed them, I calculated the last time I’d had bought-in Indian food was February and Fish and Chips were probably not even this year. Over the weekend we also went out as a clan to a restaurant and we will be having a pub lunch tomorrow. Not a complaint, no-one is holding a gun to my head or anything, but I’m in danger of falling completely off the wagon in terms of food and I really don’t want to.

Christmas shopping has gone better than last year, however yesterday I endured an agoraphobic trip with my relative show him the delights of Liverpool One, and now I’m also doing some present buying for my brother. Great. More of that tomorrow to look forward to, but at least this time I’ll be on my own and can shop ‘tactically’, I informed family member that he was doing far too much ‘bimbling’ yesterday as the anxiety stacked up.

Saturday morning I have an appointment with someone to close a bank account I used to have jointly with someone. Really looking forward to that.

Pretty harsh bout of onychophagia in the last week or so I seem to be pushing new boundaries with that. Looks horrendous and hurts like hell. Sleep cycle is all wrong, I can’t seem to normalise it outside of a work routine, get up early, get back to the flat mid morning, potter around a bit, tidy up a bit, watch tv a bit, feel tired so go to bed for a bit, get up, repeat, go back to bed, fall asleep, wake up at 4am again and repeat. So stress levels set to highish until mid-morning Saturday.

In summary then, at the moment I’m tired and not sleeping properly, poorly shaved, stressed, putting on weight and there’s more to come before the weekend, including starting tomorrow being fekking cold again. I’m living the dream.

As I have said before, blogging is based on whinging. To paraphrase. .

If it helps

2010-12-08T15:11:00.001Z

I also have a thing about Joanna Krupa?

In addition to the Happiness Index…

2010-12-08T08:43:00.001Z

..from the Coalition, I’m developing my own new blog measure (subject to be able to quickly learn how to write and post a custom widget to Blogger). It will measure, in the broad strokes, just how close I am on any given day to simply staying in bed, be it through apathy, lethargy, indolence, tiredness, illness, cold etc. If I can get something satisfactory I’ll post it today and see how it pans out for the Winter.

Suffice to say were I not on a tight schedule for the next 7 days (family visits, child minding due to other family members inconveniently having operations etc) I genuinely would have stayed in bed today. I’m just not liking the outside world at the moment.

I have a terrible guilty secret

2010-12-07T20:26:00.001Z

I’ve had it for a while, and wondered whether I should confess or not. I thought it might go away with time, but it hasn’t. I can’t really explain it.

I’ve got a thing for Sarah Palin. Worse, I’ve been enjoying Sarah Palins Alaska.

I’m sorry, nobody's perfect.

Can’t really do drinking anymore

2010-12-04T17:54:00.001Z

Or I can, but I hate the day after, I find it’s more than just a hangover, it’s a *complete dislocation from the world* that won’t fully leave me until we get into next week.

And that doesn’t include it being a *very strange* works Xmas do. Which I will blog about as soon as I can get my brain back into gear.

What's below apathy?

2010-12-02T09:58:00.001Z

Indolence? Woke up at 4am, fekking freezing. With all the TV that must be available now, how come ITV Nightscreen still exists? Just put a repeat of something crap on…

When I wake up that early, I can’t get back to sleep, but I then enter a sort of day-long semi-zombie state, which is bad enough when it’s warm but compounded by the cold. I could easily just lay my head on my desk and nod off for a couple of hours. I wonder what percentage of my blogging constitutes complaining, and furthermore I wonder what the ‘average’ percentage of blog posts are or contain complaints. I suspect 75% of all blogging is complaining about stuff. Blogging is predicated on dissatisfaction.

And that’s todays news for now. There’s probably some more but this post has been dangling for 30 minutes now, you’ve got to hit Publish at some point, come what may…

Much less itchy, thanksferaskin’

2010-12-01T15:03:00.001Z

As it went, my weekly tea last night with the folks led to my mum taking pity on me and giving me some eczema cream that has soothed my face nicely, but many thanks for your suggestions, I’ll certainly bear them in mind for the inevitable next time.

Fits and starts of snow, no more than ‘nuisance value’ as Dianne Oxberry used to say (but now I’m afraid for me Lucy is the new Dianne. Dianne you give excellent weather, and will always have a special place in my televisual affections, but all things change…). Some snow scheduled for later this evening but sadly my theory is we are sheltered from the worst of the weather from the East by the Pennines and the worst from the South West by the Welsh Mountains. It has to either be substantial and overcome these defences or come in from a very specific North Westerly or South Easterly direction over the Cheshire Plain to get us.

I’m doing the best Christmas shopping ever this year. Well in advance of normal, and some of the presents have even had some thought put into them…

And that’s todays news.

Snow arrives

2010-11-30T10:49:00.001Z

And so it begins. Generally speaking I’m the first person in the office each day, a mixture of wanting to get in and do my checks before users arrive and start complaining that stuff isn’t working and waking up at 5am (as a colleague says, ‘like old people do’). It’s not so bad most of the year, quiet roads and the peace before the rush hour, but from now until next Spring the darkness and the cold/snow can make it feel more arduous. It feels like the scene from Moonraker where the first astronaut in to Drax’s space station has to turn everything on.

Still enjoying my Tablet PC, despite its acknowledged shortcomings. It’s given me a window into Android applications, so far I’m liking what I’m seeing, and in my line of work the keyword is flexibility. The only platform I don’t positively support (but to a certain extent am obliged to) is Apple (I’m basically neutral on Linux, Ubuntu looks the most promising but it’s still not a slick enough user experience for the novice to get mass market traction).

I had considered that this purchase had knocked an investment in Windows Phone 7 into the long grass, but with the first update to the OS due in January now rumoured to be a big one, it’s still beckoning me on..

Face rash has returned. I was out and about in the cold quite a bit in the day yesterday but didn’t feel especially windswept, but it does look like a bit of ‘Winter Itch’ as it seems to be called. I’ve had this before and presumed it was stress-related (I think I also get that, remember I’m a neurotic hypochondriac). It certainly itches.

And that’s todays news.

O.C.D. replaced by Leth.R.G.

2010-11-27T17:17:00.001Z

No snow here, well perhaps a tiny bit, but it didn’t get above 1 degrees Celsius and as night falls a clear sky means it’s going to get C.O.L.D. I could write the same thing about Ron Towers I always write each year, though not usually this early, that it can’t handle extremes of temperature, and the built-in defences of ageing storage heaters are already overwhelmed.

It’s around this time of year I increasingly become ‘minimum-room-based’, especially now there’s just me. For those of you with nice working central heating, you probably take it for granted that wherever you go in your home, there’s warmth. Not so here, if I’m going to be in a room for any length of time I have to actively heat it, and when I turn that heat off it doesn’t take long to get cold again. I don’t have many rooms, but the net effect seems to be I’m *even more* bedroom based than usual (sadly not in a good way *sniggers*).

I’m once again in the grip of lethargy. Maybe the cold, maybe the short days and long dark evenings, maybe my innate laziness, all working together. I’ve gone from being OCD about housework to not giving a shit about it in the space of a week. Can you be OCD about not being OCD? OCOCD. Nice bit of neurosis there, if you’re neurotic about being neurotic, does that just *prove* you’re neurotic? I wonder if worrying about your neuroses feeds them. And then worrying about worrying about them….

Samsung Galaxy Tab first impressions

2010-11-26T13:33:00.001Z

It’s funny how all the umming and ahhing before a purchase like this is the worst part. My instincts told me I’d not regret spending a reasonable amount of cash on what is, undeniably, a luxury. Coming up to 24 hours after buying it I can now say quite happily that for the primary purpose it was purchased, it’s superb. I must learn to trust my instincts more.

They key thing, I think, is being clear what you want to do with it, and not being too bothered about the stuff that you either can’t do, or can’t do as easily as you can with a laptop. For me, it’s not, and never was intended to be, a full laptop replacement. It’s a device for easy and convenient content consumption, rather than content creation.

It looks like an oversized smartphone, and basically it is. You can insert a SIM and make calls with it using a headset if you wanted to, I haven’t yet but I can pick up a free SIM from T-Mobile, stick on a few pounds of credit and enable 6 months Internet Access for £20 and hey presto, 3G with no contract and low costs.

The screen is half the physical size of the iPads but only has 20% fewer pixels. It is bright and responsive. The software doesn’t quite have the polish of the iPads, but that’s not to say it isn’t responsive and pleasing to use. I’m on a steep learning curve when it comes to the Android 2.2 Operating System, but it’s all easy to use, it took me no time at all to plumb in the wireless access and plug in my email accounts, work and personal and sync up.

Android Market is substantial, and there is a good mix of free and paid-for software that should enable you to do just about anything you would want to do. I think in reality I’ve only just begun to get to grips with the functionality of the device.

Downsides – it’s true that there are some applications that don’t scale well to the extra screen estate, but I very much expect that will all come with time, and with the next version of Android. If Samsung are tardy releasing it for this device (as seems to be expected), then it’s very open and easily rooted (something I’d be happy to do on this device as it isn’t my ‘primary’ anything).

And, it’s about £200 too expensive, but there’s no use crying over spilt milk

I’m sure there will be more stuff over time as I become more familiar with the device, but overall my impressions are positive.

For more information, I found this article on Tech Republic entitled ‘10 reasons I’m dumping my iPad for a Galaxy Tab’ that is spot on (even though I only mentally dumped the iPad ).

Testing post from Tablet

2010-11-25T19:37:00.001Z

I like this. :)

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.5

Hedging my bets

2010-11-25T09:43:00.001Z

I promise to do some ‘normal’ posts soon and stop banging on about tablets, however I’m increasingly settled now that I will be pursuing a 2 pronged strategy on the tablet front for the next 12 months, which will include Android via the Galaxy Tab (which I will go off and purchase at lunchtime today) and Windows Phone 7 at some point next year, when I’ve decided that OS has worked out the early bugs.

The Tab is expensive, but I can afford it, and it will be my Xmas present to myself for this year. It also gives me a route into learning about Android, of which I currently know nothing, but short of having to use an Android phone.

Apple is evil, and I cannot sanction purchasing any of their products. It would be like going against my religion, if such a thing existed for me.

Now for more current affairs posts!

And there’s more

2010-11-24T09:06:00.001Z

So now Dell chip in with the clever but possibly underpowered Inspiron Duo and Acer has announced its entries into the tablet market, all of which probably won’t be available this year.

Bloody tablets.

I like tablets

2010-11-20T17:01:00.001Z

And this time I mean tablet pc’s. Or perhaps more correctly something like' ‘Internet tablets’ as you can’t really call them pc’s IMO. They all run non-pc operating systems (i.e. not Windows, a flavour of Linux or a full Mac OS). They have much, but not all, of the functionality of a pc in terms of ‘content consumption’ but are lacking when it comes to ‘content creation’.

I’ve blogged before about how such tablets were becoming more interesting, and I’ve followed the tech news with interest on the topic. 2011 continues to be the year in which the tablet will truly go mainstream, however a few things have become clearer to me in the world of tablets which have caused me to change my view somewhat.

The first thing is, Windows 7 won’t be any good on a tablet. Why? Because even with a few tweaks, it’s not designed for touchscreen i.e. stubby finger input, and as I understand it it is murderous on battery life. Windows 8 is set to address this, rumour has it, but it seems unlikely that as an alternative Microsoft would sanction to use of Windows Phone 7 on a tablet (Courier was the great hope for that and Microsoft cancelled it.). So outside the iPad, I’m looking for the first time, at a version of Android, although even the latest current version of that, 2.2. codename ‘Froyo’, is not strictly designed for larger screen devices (again, the next version 2.3 Codename Gingerbread is supposed to sort that out).

So, the candidates I have identified:: The iPad, The Dell Streak, The Samsung Galaxy Tab, the Advent Vega.

Size: The iPad has a 9.7” screen (measurements like TV’s are diagonal, just so you know), the Streak has a 5” screen, the Samsung Galaxy Tab has a 7” screen and the Advent Vega a 10” screen. 5” is too small, hardly larger than my HD2. There’s something of a debate going on at the moment on the virtues of 7” versus 10” screens. My view is 10” is more useful and useable, so on this round it’s the iPad or the Vega.

Capabilities: The iPad runs a variant of iOS, the other three all run versions of Android. The Streak runs an old version (1.6 I think), the Galaxy Tab 2.1 and the Vega the newest at 2.2. The newer the better in terms of what’s supported in software, also I think the Vega has the best spec’s for inputs and outputs. All but the Vega however have 3G capability, but as long as Wifi is there, this isn’t important to me. Otherwise they all do the standard things, web browsing, email, music video playback etc, with the iPad having access to the iTunes App store and all that that entails.

Cost: Tablets are *expensive*. The cheapest iPad is around £440 and that’s without 3G, the Dell Streak outside of a mobile contract is nearly £400 and the Galaxy Tab an amazing £460. All way too expensive, and here the Vega really wins retailing at about £250. Very competitive price. I could never justify to myself a device like this that cost more than £300, and the Samsung device in particular has really got it wrong on pricing IMO.

Availability: All apart from the Vega are available widely. Dixons has obviously underestimated the pent up demand for their device as it sold out online in a couple of hours yesterday on the first day of it’s release. Twitter is telling me that it won’t be available in the shops until December, but I think there will be substantial demand for this, the price is right, the spec is right for a tablet device for Christmas, and it’s my choice right now.

I’ll see how I get on trying to get hold of one.

The problem with schedules…

2010-11-18T09:48:00.001Z

…Is that they can lack flexibility. Like when you get up at your normal time, brush you teeth, have a wash etc, then somehow you get back into bed go back to sleep and wake up again 30 minutes later. Cue bloodshot eyes, a mild sense of panic as you run around trying to catch up and get to work on time. And your carefully crafted daily schedule is out of whack. Nightmare.

I hate it when this happens, it’s like the extra bit of sleep you had hangs over you for the rest of the day. I feel like my brain is all gummed up and slow, and more than usual today I’m relying on my technology, calendars, lists emails and so on, to get me through the day.

The good news is another day off tomorrow, so as a colleague keeps enviously telling me ‘today is like Friday for me’.

Now, I must keep on, this social media stuff doesn’t do itself you know

I’m just not that interested

2010-11-17T08:17:00.001Z

In the engagement of Prince William and Catherine (as we are now to call her) Middleton. I congratulate them as I would congratulate any couple embarking upon the path to marriage (as much as any couple might seek or accept my congratulations, delivered as they inevitably are still through somewhat gritted teeth). Actually that isn’t true, one of my best friends got engaged very recently and my congratulations to them were genuine. As were my commiserations to her..

I am Right Wing politically, but I am, unusually it seems, not interested in, or especially supportive of, our Royal Family, the Windsor's (or as they are more correctly known, the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha’s). Even though they are only constitutional Monarchs, I personally would support an elected President as Head of State and sweep away the anachronism that is The Royal Family. The only grounds I would accept that they add something to our Nation is simply tourism. I don’t believe in privilege by birth right, and I don’t believe given her own personal wealth that the State should in any way fund the Queen or her hangers-on.

I think Princes William and Harry deserve credit for being much closer to the ‘real world’ than their parents and grand parents (probably mostly thanks to Diana), and also credit to William for marrying for love to a ‘commoner’ rather than duty as seems to have been the case for Charles.

But I still don’t care that much, hopefully the media scrum and relentless over-coverage will die down soon. And I’ll be interested to see who ends up paying for the ‘most important wedding of the decade’, in my view it should be The Queen.

Sweet

2010-11-16T16:09:00.001Z

Look what I found on my never-ending quest to widen my pool of world news resources:-

Le Figaro in English

That must really burn them, beautiful…

Lists

2010-11-16T10:10:00.001Z

I love lists. Task lists, shopping lists, film lists, task lists, *all* lists are good. Increasingly I am incorporating lists into my daily life. This is especially the case when I can integrate them across home and work (Google and Outlook) and whatever device I’m using (Mobile phone or pc). I can sync my work Outlook calendar with my personal Google Calendar, which I can then sync OTA with my mobile phone. I can do the same for my Outlook Tasks (initially I tried to sync my work tasks with my Google Tasks, but I’ve given that one up and simply use categories to divide Outlook tasks into work and personal.)

I have been looking for something that will give me this accessibility and functionality specifically for lists. It started with an idea that I really needed a shopping list, and me being me, bits of paper weren’t doing it. There are lots of Windows Mobile applications that will do this, but I wanted something that would allow me to create and edit lists on my pc (work or home machines) and then have them available on my phone when I needed them. Since I purchased my six months Internet access on my phone I don’t have to worry about ‘local’ syncing over USB, the emphasis now is putting stuff ‘in the cloud’ (within limits, I still won’t for example put passwords or sensitive financial data up there, that stuff gets encrypted).

And so, years behind the curve, I have come to start using Evernote. And it’s perfect. There are free and paid for versions but the free one does everything I need to do .Make a list on your pc or mobile device, sync it to the cloud and it’s just there when you need it. And lists are just the tip of the iceberg, it seems that if you can cut and paste it you can put it in Evernote. A simpler, free version of Microsofts OneNote then(which I’ve also tried, but it’s just too complicated for what I need).

Silly post and a rude word

2010-11-14T18:38:00.001Z

I noticed that Gwyneth Paltrow has started singing and dancing as well as acting (I love Gwyneth. Not only is she lovely, with a pair of pins that ‘just won’t won’t quit’, but she’s just so…wholesome. And she was in Se7en.). Then I noticed she’s due to appear in a show I’ve heard of but never seen called Glee performing a song called ‘Forget you’ by someone called Cee Lo Green. It’s catchy enough as it is, but I then found out the original is identical but actually called ‘F*ck you’.¹ It’s brilliant, feels like a song I’d like to sing and every time I hear it it makes me chuckle. It’s going to get a lot of play in my car, I must try and catch the rest of the album. End of post.²

¹This might sound bad, but it’s probably better than what I’m listening to otherwise, which is the Resident Evil film soundtrack

²Rain, cold, laziness and a bad knee again have conspired to give me a dose of cabin fever, but it’s nearly Monday morning where I will once again have to speak to other humans face to face, as I’m slotted back into society for another 4 days.

Day off

2010-11-12T09:59:00.001Z

I’ve got every Friday in November off, all but one in December plus some other days to take, I’m essentially part-time for the rest of the year. That’s what happens when you don’t go on holiday, but don’t want to take full weeks leave. That wouldn’t be good for my sanity. The last time I did that, a few years ago now, was (by chance rather than plan) at the start of the last Gulf War, and having watch 24 hour news for 5 days, by the end I looked like Grizzly Adams and was a bit..mentally fried. Never again.

I’m not sure if being off will result in more or less blogging. It sometimes seems to be a little counter-intuitive in that respect. I was genuinely planning a day out today, but the weather forecast for the hills and peaks of North Wales is not great, so maybe have to reschedule.

Food for thought. and eating.

2010-11-10T09:42:00.001Z

Another week, another diet book. I’m not coming from the viewpoint that I’m going to ‘do this diet’ any more than I’ve followed any other. My food consumption has, as far as I’m concerned, normalised, with normal meals including vegetables and fruit. But knowledge is power, and I always make it my business to read as widely as possible, and this book seems to proffer and compromise between a hard-core low carb diet (which works, but which if I’m honest I’m finding increasingly hard to stick to) and something more sustainable. I’ve only just received it this morning, so I’ll give my view of it once I’ve read it.

What has stopped, I’m ashamed to admit, is the exercise. It needs to restart, I know that, but I’m feeling lazy and indolent and the motivation that I used to have so much of as to be able to train twice a day has simply left the building, and me. Which is not to say I’ve instantly set back on the path to tubbiness, that will not be allowed to happen again, but the dark mornings and dark afternoons and the cold are all conspiring against me, and right now it’s all just a bit…meh. I suspect what will now be the new benchmark will be my work pants. Whilst I can still comfortably get into them, no problem, the moment they get a bit tight, action stations..

Interesting article about a professor of Human Nutrition in the US who lost 27 pounds in weight eating a diet mostly of junk food. All he did was reduce his daily calorie intake, and not only did he lose fat, his cholesterol levels improved, a phenomenon which he himself can’t explain.

So, it’s cold now

2010-11-10T08:48:00.001Z

Yesterday, in the office we were discussing how it would be nice to spend Christmas and the New Year in somewhere like Miami. Specifically the rest of the office was saying this, whilst I was crazily saying I’d like Christmas for once to be really Christmassy i.e. tons of snow.

A single cold night later and I will vociferously recant this and ask to go with the Miami plan. All we seem to get now (in this part of the UK anyway) is the cold, the frost, and a piddly little bit of the snow. Apart from one time last year when it snowed like hell and snafu’d the traffic so badly it took me three and half hours to do a 25 minute commute. But other than that it was rubbish.

It won’t be long until I have to rock the pensioner in bed look and put a sleeping bag over the covers for an additional layer. Ron Towers just doesn’t cope with the cold very well.

I wish I’d have known about Movember earlier I would have taken part. (Wouldn’t have heard of it at all but for Twitter ). Next year then.

It doesn’t get much sadder

2010-11-09T08:06:00.001Z

[Subtitle – Thank goodness for the web!]

The major card writing occasion of the year approaches, but recently it seems I’ve had other cards to write, one for the birth of a baby, one for congratulations on an engagement.

I’m handicapped here for three reasons. Firstly, I’m a bloke, secondly I have the handwriting of a 12 year old boy which is actually getting worse as I write so little by hand these days, and thirdly, the writing of cards was formerly under the purview of someone else. I am, therefore, crap at procuring and, worst of all, writing cards.

If you’re sad enough to actually Google the question, you will get an answer:-

http://www.whattowriteinacard.com/

It doesn’t answer some of the finer points of etiquette, but it’s a start .

Dentist [updated]

2010-11-08T15:30:00.001Z

I have a dental appointment at 5pm today. Apparently I need a filing replacing. It’s been hanging over me like the Sword of Damocles all day.

I’m not anti-dentist, but there’s an entire long boring blog post that starts with the retirement of my last Dentist whom I had been a customer (patient?) for over 25 years, and ends with a new woman dentist who was patronising, rude, not to mention making me wait for 30 minutes and then proceeding to tell me to do all kinds of things the last guy never mentioned (but which I do already do). Either my last dentist was negligent (possible) or the new one is taking the opportunity for a little job creation, either way I just want it done and out of the way for 9 months.

Depending on how it goes today I might even consider going private, so annoyed was I with the initial check-up, but perhaps with the ‘budget’ cost of NHS treatment in these straightened times, I should just put up and shut up.

**UPDATE**
I’ve just been ‘orally’ assaulted, my god bedside manner doesn’t seem to translate to dentistry. I think a couple of times she drilled past a tooth socket and hit jawbone.

Anyway it’s done now, and her manner was 1) marginally less patronising 2) the appointment was started at the right time 3) she was quick and methodical. So all things being even, I’ll stick with her for another 9 months.

Interesting

2010-11-08T12:55:00.001Z

I can but admire the Governments stated desire to be more open about its workings, and having launched a new ‘Transparency’ website an increasing amount of data is there for all to see.

I can’t help thinking though that most people will, like me, have a poke around, check out some of the published salaries (there seem to be a fair few people on 100k+, but far be it from me, value for money, running UK plc etc), and then not bother with it again. We need the boffins and eggheads to start crunching the data for it to become truly useful…

Revisiting Twitter

2010-11-07T20:44:00.001Z

Twitter is, in my opinion, just like the blogosphere, the entire World Wide Web for that matter. It’s mostly full of absolute bollocks [and it goes without saying that Ron Returns substantially contributes to those bollocks. That doesn’t sound quite like I meant it to..]. The skill, the key, is to be able to filter through the bollocks and sift out the little nuggets and gems of interesting or useful information.

If you can do this, Twitter can be quite good, representing as it does, a sort of ‘live stream of consciousness’ which you can tailor and filter to your own interests. Yes, it is also an appalling channel for massaging the ego’s of celebrities and also the real-time posting of people talking about what they had for tea and what’s currently on TV (which used to be the premise of what was called ‘blogging’, and I confess, certainly for the latter some of the tweets yesterday about ‘You Only Live Twice’, which I was also watching made me laugh. A funny tweet is still funny, even if it’s called a tweet, which is a silly word even when describing the noise a bird makes).

Yes, you can use it to massage your own ego (judging ‘followers’ like Facebook friends, by either measure I’m something of a billy-no-mates, but that’s ok, and anyway I’m content to have committed Facebook suicide and this time I intend to stick to it). but you can also use it for good rather than evil.

I’ve looked into it before, got a bit bored and binned it. This time round I’m taking a different approach, and I think Twitter has gone ‘mainstream technology’ enough that I’m really obliged to know and understand it a bit more than I currently do.

A small example of it’s usefulness. I follow Simon Pegg on Twitter. You may not have heard of him, but he happens to be something of a personal hero of mine, appearing in most if not all of the greatest comedies of my generation, the pinnacle for me being Spaced. They never did make that third series…anyway I digest, in one of his tweets he mentioned a programme called ‘The Walking Dead’, a new US show about a post apocalyptic world when zombies walk the earth etc. He’s kind of well informed on the whole Zombie thing, being the lead in Shaun of the Dead.

I understand it’s being shown on the FX channel on Satellite here in the UK, which is no good to me but *nudge nudge* I got hold of a copy of the first episode and I have to say it’s excellent (before you dismiss it, it’s Executive produced by Frank Darabont who directed The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile). If the rest of the Season maintains this standard, this could do well.

My point is, but for Twitter, this would have passed me by, but I was able to get a recommendation from someone in the know because I’ve looked for people on Twitter who share my interests (or even just feeds from film studios etc).

And that’s why I ~~like~~ don’t mind Twitter.

Fight it

2010-11-06T18:31:00.001Z

Good post on Life Hacker about ‘winterising’ your body ready for what is likely to be another cold winter. I don’t think I suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder or anything like it per se, but if I take no action then there’s a good chance the darkness and the cold will layer themselves on top of my burgeoning neuroses (credit to Blue Witch for that one, if there’s one word that perfectly describes me it’s ‘neurotic’, to the point that I feel some relief that there *is* a word that accurately describes me, QED or what) to the point of inducing full societal retreat.

Finally got a quick go on an HTC HD7 running Windows Phone 7 yesterday. I hate mobile phone shops, I can’t think of a worse environment to try and get people to buy technology. Staff are either ignorant, or patronising, or both, just like in PC World. It’s probably just me. Anyway, the verdict is, it’s good, I think it will do well, it’s generating a decent bit of positive buzz, but it’s still new, and it doesn’t warrant the upgrade costs over my HD2. There are, for now, better things to spend my technology-allocated budget on. At least for the next 6 months or so

Partridge is back. Plus other Coogan

2010-11-05T17:57:00.001Z

Alan Partridge is back in a series of webisodes on the Fosters Funny site. Or, of course, on Youtube.

Coogan can do this stuff in his sleep but it’s still very funny, it makes me wish he actually did a radio show, I think Coogan would be able to ad lib Alan in real time.

Also, if you’ve missed it, you must catch him and Rob Brydon in The Trip. Hard to describe it, you just have to watch it, both Brydon and Coogan are ‘playing themselves’. Don’t miss their competition for doing the best Michael Caine impression (both are accomplished impressionists in addition to their other talents). Lovely stuff, as Partridge himself would say…

Strategic Review

2010-11-04T11:19:00.001Z

I had to step back for a bit. The political stuff is – was – getting a bit antsy, a bit personal, unintentionally, but nevertheless that’s what was happening, and if posts are upsetting people and consequentially upsetting me enough to consider packing in, then that serves no positive purpose.

As I’ve said believe, in political terms we are still in ‘the phoney war’, the real battles will be fought next year.

So politics will be consigned for now to the back burner, there should be enough other news to comment on, as usual with the emphasis on my interests, technology and films.

OCD

2010-10-24T12:44:00.001+01:00

I think it started with peoples computers. I’m always amazed at the state people allow their IT kit, personal or business, to get into. There’s perhaps some understandable recalcitrance to clean a screen or keyboard for fear of ‘breaking it’, but an occasional wipe won’t do any harm (one exception – if your screen is of the non-reflective type i.e. it doesn’t have a glass cover, then only wipe it when it’s cool, before you turn it on, otherwise you can mark the screen). So kit I’ve seen looks like stuff has purposely been thrown at it, coffee, lunch or whatever (sometimes I can’t tell) and rather than clean it up, it’s just left to dry on. On the screen. In the middle of the screen. It’s a well known fact that keyboards are often dirtier than toilets. You probably clean your toilet, but you probably don’t clean your keyboard. Ever.

So whenever I get a bit of kit in for any reason, the first thing I do (and also often the last thing I do before I issue or return it), is clean it. Mr Sheen wipes are good, but the Pledge ones are just as effective and a bit cheaper. I have a supply in my desk (I should probably charge them to the business, but I just buy them myself), and now I keep a pack in my kit bag so I can still clean ‘in the field’.

This then expanded to my desk. We have cleaners in twice a week at work, but they don’t clean the desks, at least not to my requirements. I am the only person I know who cleans his desk. Every week. It is now I’d say teetering between good hygiene and OCD, I now clean whether or not there is obvious dirt.I am compelled to clean it.

At home, there is even more scope for OCD. I have always wiped and cleaned (even if it never managed at the time to reach the exacting standards of my ex-wife. There, I said it.), but where I used to do it with a spray and some kitchen towel, now I have discovered wipes. Everything gets wiped, then wiped again. I don’t yet have a mop, but I have floor wipes, so the floor gets wiped. The carpet isn’t old, nor especially dirty, but I can already feel the pull of a carpet cleaning machine, which I would no doubt use frequently if I acquired one. I’m not yet moving the furniture every week, but I am now using the nozzle thing around and under it. I hoover the ceiling, I hoover everything I can reach with it. I have hoovered my pot plants.

It’s certainly feeling like it’s beginning to go beyond simply being clean, to stuff *never* being clean enough, and they key thing is for the most part you don’t notice you’re doing it, or if you do it seems reasonable. It’s also starting to manifest itself in the removal of ‘things’. ‘Things’ collect dust and get in the way of cleaning, so fewer ‘things’ i.e. pictures, books, the usual stuff people have on surfaces, means easier better cleaning. I am actively looking for ways to reduce the amount of ‘things’ all the time.

I think it’s a control thing. There’s probably loads of stuff behind it. Still, I suppose for now it’s not practically impinging on my life, and I am, without a doubt, very clean.

Buck Rogers in the 25th Century [1979]

2010-10-23T18:25:00.001+01:00

I noticed this had been released on DVD and added it to the rental queue. It’s probably always the case that there are programmes you watch as a kid or even a teenager that you think are great, and then you see them again as an adult and they just….aren’t. Never was this more so than Buck Rogers.

It’s crap. Cheap effects and sets, hammy dialogue, weak plots, and a DVD transfer that’s almost worse than what can be had on the internet..er maybe.

But, two words. Wilma Deering, as played by Erin Gray.

It’s *impossible* to overstate the importance of this actress in my ‘formative years’. She is ‘the one’, no question about it, to whom all others are compared, and my god revisiting her now the effect of her famous spandex body suits (into which she had to be sewn for each performance) has just got better. Apparently she was ‘aware of the sexiness of her uniform’. No shit! She’s 60 odd now, but back then, jeez..I should probably leave that there

In any case, this one is for fans only.

[Wikipedia entry]

Kill Bill Part 1 [2003]

2010-10-23T17:55:00.001+01:00

Second best film by Quentin Tarantino. Uma Thurman is awesome, Tarantino seems to be skilled at getting a particular type of performance from his muses, you can somehow tell that even so-called ‘A-Listers’ are pleased to be appearing in a Tarantino movie. Daryl Hannah still looks magnificent.

Usual snappy dialogue interspersed with extreme violence, they seemed to do the fighting in this part and the character development in the second, this one is the stronger of the two (it was originally one very long film, they should do a release with it as such)

[Wikipedia entry]

Valhalla Rising [2009]

2010-10-23T17:51:00.001+01:00

Violent, self important, nicely shot, mostly boring low budget indie affair. Avoid.

[Wikipedia entry]

Trivia

2010-10-23T17:44:00.001+01:00

Goldfinger is stupid. Everyone knows it’s not possible to deliver a knockout gas effectively via aerosol .It would never work. One of my least favourite Bond films, and that includes Never Say Never Again. Connery's bloody Scottish anyway.

I’m settled that the mobile handset I will eventually acquire is the Samsung Omnia 7. However, I’m not settled that Windows Phone 7 is quite ready for me just yet, I’m not ready to give up the tinker potential, and I’ve learned to live with the little crack on my current handset. It seems like there are the inevitable teething problems with some aspects of the software and hardware, I’ll let them work them out and patch them. Watching brief until nearer Christmas. Not long until Christmas now..

I have re-introduced vegetables and fruit into my life, you’ll all be relieved to hear, moving back to a ‘Business as usual’ diet, with particular attention on dietary fibre. Trying to stick to green ones (lower GI), I don’t mind Broccoli, but I’m trying to convert that into ‘like’, as it’s very good for you.

What the Government should do

2010-10-20T21:12:00.001+01:00

**This post was written first thing this morning but didn’t get posted, and it didn’t get finished but it’s better than nowt. I’ll do a better one tomorrow when DNS is working reliably.**

And so it begins, the leaks, the biased media ‘end of the world’ stories, all, the doom and gloom and the impossibility of it all.

In my opinion, the Government needs to fight back in the information war. The Government cannot rely on the mainstream media to present the facts in an honest straightforward way, the left wing are all doom and gloom, the right wing are portrayed as heartless profiteers who don’t care about ‘the little people’, and would see them starving in the streets as they count their filthy lucre. Neither position is the truth.

The structural deficit is that part of Government debt that will not be alleviated by the economic cycle, and if it is not ‘paid off’ it will accumulate growing interest charges and become an increasing drain on Government resources - meaning taxes. It must be addressed.

The reason it exists is because the previous Government spent far more than it received in taxation. All new Governments blame problems on the previous administration (The Labour Government was still doing this after 13 years in power), but in this case it is demonstrably true, and people need that message drilled in. ‘The pain you are now feeling was put in store for you by the last Government.’. Simple as that.

Labour doesn’t really know what to do here. They know the mess we are in is their fault, but they can’t admit it. So desperate are they to try and shore up their image (or perhaps so incapable of choosing better amongst their shadow cabinet) that they’ve appointed their ‘most decent steady pair of hands’ as shadow chancellor, who will be thoroughly personable but about as economically effective as a chocolate teapot. They have nothing real to say.

Test post from mobile

2010-10-20T19:47:00.002+01:00

Test post. this is quite do-able actually, even on a 4.3" screen. Roll on those Windows 7 tablet pc's.

Watching Series 2 of The Book Group, first series
was odd,second series is odd, rude and quite funny.

Just get on with it

2010-10-19T07:56:00.001+01:00

Perhaps it’s psychological (why not, it’s prevalent is so many other of my neuroses and anxieties). For the second time in a few days I drove home from work yesterday *absolutely convinced* that I was feeling ‘pre’ ill, and that within an hour or so I’d be running a fever, sore throat the works. It felt imminent, so I applied drugs (of course) and got into bed in an attempted counter-strike.

I did feel unwell, I did spend uncomfortable evening, one of those where you can’t sleep, too hot too cold can’t get comfy etc, convinced that I’d have to see how I was this morning as to whether I’d go to work. And then I woke up this morning at 6am, as normal, got out of bed , as normal, felt…normal. I’d like to believe my swift action and robust immune system kicked in overnight and defeated the viral invaders, but these things tend to be won by campaign rather than battle. My side is winning the war this morning, but the enemy is not defeated, I wouldn’t be surprised if by tea time today I’m feeling rough again.

Never stop starting again

2010-10-16T13:18:00.001+01:00

I’m pleased for Liverpool football club. I’m not a passionate follower of football, but as a Merseysider, and with some friends who are committed Reds fans, I know how the tenure of Gillett and Hicks has hung over the club, and the city, like a dark cloud for a long time. More than any other fans I know, for them supporting LFC is closer to a religion, a way of life, than ‘just a club’. Shankly once famously said, "Some people believe football is a matter of life and death, I am very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that."

It’s a huge source of regional pride in an area with more need for it than most (I believe they are still technically the most successful club in history, just). The legal drama of the week was totally unnecessary and gives a sense of just how out of touch, and downright greedy, the two Texans were, they thoroughly deserve to have been burnt to the tune of £140m.

I just hope the new guy in charge appreciates what he has taken on. Yes it’s a business, and yes it can and needs to make money, get it right on the pitch, and with the fans, and it will do that.

I’ve been discussing exercise with a colleague at work this week, whom is the gym fiend/food police. I’ve felt recently that on a measure where 0% is constantly eating Peanut M&M’s and 100% is eating nothing much and exercising 2 hours a day, I’m about 40-50%. Motivation seems to ebb and flow massively, and I feel like I’m stuck in a rut. I’ve got the time, I just don’t seem to have the inclination. I’m scared of getting injured again, but I can’t see the point of ‘gentle’ exercise. I’m no longer fat, but it seems to jump from ‘normal’ to whatever the next level up is always just beyond me. I’m also at an age where physically I’m not as capable as I was at eighteen but mentally I’m not ready to accept that. That’s probably why I keep doing my knee in.

Anyway, motivation has bubbled up again to a point where I’m feeling like trying new tactics. Roll on my weight loss book, with a daily resistance exercise routine that takes a massive *12* minutes, 6 minutes resistance and 6 minutes cardio. How hard can it be? It covers off things I’m already familiar with, press ups sit ups dumbbell curls, together with some new bits to work through all muscle groups in the body. I’m going to give it a go for a couple of weeks and see if it’s worth carrying on, always better to be doing something rather than nothing. I also think it’s time to move my diet and meals back into ‘normal’.

Good news everyone!

2010-10-14T17:57:00.001+01:00

That’s a Futurama joke by the way. Firstly, a letter from BT saying they are finally getting around to upgrading me from 8 Meg ADSL to 20Meg (ADSL2+, good job my router is compliant with that standard). Good stuff.

Secondly, I received today one of those dreaded letters from the Revenue. Sods Law, I’m the first person I know to get one, it being me it *must* be a demand for underpaid tax. But no, they’re repaying me about £400. They owe me money! Double good news.

Currently watching Human Remains. I’m finding myself attracted to the unrelentingly bleak humour of Julia Davis at the moment, having not long ago watched and enjoyed for the first time her critically acclaimed series Nighty Night. I even got a copy of the most recent work she did, the pilot called Lizzie and Sarah, sadly the BBC broadcast it at a rubbish time originally and haven’t gone on to commission a series. But by god it’s a dark humoured pilot episode. Shame the Beeb lost it’s bottle.

It’s finally feeling autumnal here, I’m feeling the urge to hibernate….

So about Yesterday

2010-10-13T14:37:00.001+01:00

Started good, i.e. I wasn’t ill, which was just as well as I had to collect a work colleague who was dropping his car off at the garage (and amusingly he doesn’t have a mobile phone, so I would have had no way to tell him if I was ill. I know, he really doesn’t have a mobile phone, can you imagine.).

Then it went downhill a bit as DNS fell over on our Internet connection at work (slow loading, incomplete pages etc), so naturally people were complaining Facebook was loading slowly etc. Turns out our ISP had changed the addresses of its DNS servers and not told us (to be fair, usually DNS is handled automatically by the routers DHCP server but we have our own DHCP so addresses need to be changed by me manually). That only got resolved this morning.

Then yesterday at tea time (for Southerners, read ‘dinner’), *disaster*. As I was leaning over to feed my folks next door neighbours cat with my niece, my phone slides out of my top pocket and hits the paved floor. There is a small, but noticeable area of cracking at the very bottom of the screen, but otherwise it all works as normal. luckily. Needless to say, I’m bloody annoyed. At least I was, all this really does is firm up and possibly slightly accelerate my plans to get a shiny new toy…

Ill (that’s ill with an uppercase i)

2010-10-11T21:03:00.001+01:00

Too hot, glands in my neck feel swollen, bit of a low level headache, notwithstanding being a bloke and therefore susceptible to the terrible scourge of Man flu, I’m probably due a dose of something ‘cold like’.

I will therefore keep my review of the Windows Phone 7 launch brief – slightly underwhelmed, but with faith that Microsoft is going to throw a lot of resource at this, and on the basis of my last handset, I’m likely to buy in sooner rather than later, probably an HTC handset such as the HD7 (I like my big slate smartphones), but the Samsung devices look interesting.

And that’ll do pig…now you must excuse me the enjoyable tripe that is Spooks has just started.

It has probably escaped your notice..

2010-10-11T11:31:00.001+01:00

But today at 2.30pm UK time Microsoft will officially launch Windows Phone 7.

I will be watching the Press conference, for professional reasons you understand. Unless something else crops up*.

*It will, it always does.

Lets have some politics again

2010-10-10T13:15:00.001+01:00

Child Benefit. I’m somewhat conflicted on this one. I support the idea that cuts should fall fairly, and that those on higher incomes who could be argued to have less need of the benefit should forego it. This doesn’t affect me directly as I have no children, but I do have a niece, and a brother who is a widowed single parent whom this will affect. It doesn’t seem fair that a couple on just less than £44k per year each will continue to receive this money whereas my brother will probably not. Cuts yes, but surely means testing is the fairest way, even if that costs a little more to implement. I suspect it was a bit of pre-emptive groundwork for when the real cuts are announced.

Alan Johnson as shadow Chancellor. Red Ed understandably avoided the potential landmines of selecting Ed Balls or Yvette Cooper, perhaps he selected Alan as much for his reputation for loyalty (and thus not creating his own version of Gordon Brown, undermining his powerbase) as for his affable and easy manner. He’s certainly not an economic genius, and will be significantly reliant on his advisors. Could be interesting, but I doubt George Osborne, who like Cameron I have found to be increasingly growing into his role, is overly worried.

Trident and Armed Forces cuts. Good sense has prevailed with Trident, so it seems, but I’m not sure what’s going on in relation to the rest of the Armed Forces cuts. You would hope there are older, wiser and better informed heads on hand at the MOD who will come up with a compromise plan that satisfies all parties, but media coverage suggests otherwise. The internecine conflicts between the three services seem as present as ever, and this can only be a bad thing. Specifically in relation to the 2 new aircraft carriers, it seems practical to me to finish the one that has been started, and perhaps defer the second or use that budget for building alternative ships for the navy. As it stands it seems the Navy are so hell bent of getting both they will cut the existing fleet in half and will have to borrow planes to put on the carriers. Madness, but I continue to have faith that Call me Dave will do the right thing in the end.

Postlet [Stupid]

2010-10-09T17:54:00.001+01:00

Why is the concept of network shared folders so difficult to understand?

How am I supposed to know that ironing board covers come in different sizes, and that mine is actually ‘large’?

Why are people so inconsiderate of others when it comes to parking in narrow-roaded residential areas?

Why can’t I get Petit Filous chocolate stains out of my sheets on a 40 degree wash? It looks like…something else..

I’ve never seen Camelot before. It’s odd, but not as odd as Jam which is the oddest television programme ever made.

This evening I will be cheering myself up by watching The Sixth Sense and then frying my mind with Mulholland Drive both on Blu-ray.

Storage [Boring]

2010-10-09T17:44:00.001+01:00

I might have blogged about this before, I must have blogged about it before. Sorry.

I like having storage (that is, of course, data storage), and I firmly believe you can never have too much. Across the various machines and devices I currently have I have access to upwards of 6 terabytes. But that’s part of the problem, the various shares and folders are across two devices now, a large desktop and a NAS box.

I had even more, but I must have whinged that one of the Western Digital NAS boxes I had failed, and it was only after a great deal of cocking about I was able to secure and recover my data. Had I not been a techie able to find a way to mount Linux partitions in Windows, I would not have been able to do this.

Every time something like this happens (and it’s a fact of life that it will happen from time to time), my faith in the hardware is dented. I whitter on about backing up data, and it is crucial, but what do you do when your backup itself is vulnerable? It’s just not practical to produce endless DVD’s or even Blu-ray disks when you’re talking about multiple Gigabytes of data. There are two aspects to consider, the failure of one or more disks, and the failure of the device hardware itself.

The NAS box I currently have is good but not user serviceable, cannot be expanded and they don’t support RAID options. In short, a RAID array is a method of using multiple hard disks in various ways to ‘cover’ for each other.One drive fails, the data is safe on one or more of the others, and all that is needed is to replace the dead drive and it will automatically ‘heal’ itself. This technology is expensive, and normally only in the realm of business usage. There are also other drawbacks, RAID arrays can usually only configure themselves to the capacity of the smallest disk in use, so you can’t mix and match drive sizes.

I did look at a few Windows Home Server options. Windows Home Server is what it says it is – a ‘home’ server solution, that offers NAS functionality but with a few extra bells and whistles, with an emphasis on being able to automatically backup connected PC’s. I’m not interested in this, I can sort my own backups out, and that level of automation comes at a cost.

In summary, currently on Rons radar then is the requirement for a NAS device, with large, expandable capacity, good reliability and performance, and with robust RAID options. A DNLA media server is a bonus, but I’d put up with a network share, my networked media player can handle either. I could just get a bog standard replacement, or buy a lower spec empty box and build my own, but as ever, it’s cost versus functionality.

So I’m giving serious consideration to the Drobo FS NAS. It’s getting good reviews, and whilst it’s not cheap (£500!), I’m impressed with the RAID options, especially the facility to hot swap and repair duff drives of different capacities and brands, a large 5 bay capacity that could see me expand it to 10 TB or more over time. This could be the last storage investment I need to make. Might get myself an early Christmas present

Work is busy anyway [Boring]

2010-10-09T16:52:00.001+01:00

If it’s any consolation, I don’t just withdraw from blogging, I withdraw from…most stuff. So be assured my anti-social instincts are applied in both the real and ‘virtual’ worlds.

Work is fine, work is actually very very busy. Without going into details that would be compromising, I’m having to devise, project manage and implement a network and user migration that sounds simple, but really isn’t. And of course this all has to be budgeted, by me, and presented, by me, and delivered and implemented, by me. On my own.

It’s a question of how you ‘unshare’ previously shared resources for the least cost outlay you see, and then how you manage the various tasks into a timeline which see the least disruption to the users. It’s not helpful that when I present various obstacles and solutions to my boss, he simply responds with ‘find a workaround’. I can usually find one, but it’s not going to be pretty.

If I pull it off, well it’ll be the best, most gratifying thing I’ve ever done professionally, if I cock it up, well I don’t want to think about that, I just can’t cock it up is all.

It also manages to blow a huge hole in the other projects I was developing, which to a large extent, sadly, will lose quite a bit of their justification. After ‘make do and mend’ for the last 12 months or so I’m determined to refine and develop our IT strategy (for which read ‘devise, create and implement *an* IT Strategy’).

I’ve set myself some targets for the next 12 months, get all users off Windows XP and onto Windows 7, and standardise on a single version of Office (not sure which one yet, but most likely Office 2010). I’d like to standardise hardware, but that really would be a considerable outlay for only marginal advantage, to me, so I’m being realistic.

Of course I could propose all this and be told it’s a great, but we still can’t spend the money yet (I’m hopeful with rough calculations to demonstrate that this method actually saves us money, but the devil is in the detail).

Professionally an exciting time, or one filled with worry stress and uncertainty, depending on your outlook.

Haiku post

2010-10-08T19:30:00.001+01:00

Milliband bottled it with shadow chancellor.
Osbourne must be pleased.

The Government needs to get on top
of all this Armed Forces speculation.

It’s not very good. Just like this Haiku,
as I never could get the hang of them really.

I support Windows Mobile. But only just…

2010-09-30T21:05:00.001+01:00

So after reading that exercise is largely ineffective for weight loss, I read a load of other stuff that talks about specific tactics for diet and exercise with regard to body type. Of the three types discussed, ectomorph (tall and thin), endomorph (short and fat) and mesomorph (in the middle), I’m closest to endomorph. Endomorphs are susceptible to carbohydrates, put on fat easily and have trouble losing it but also tend to be ‘stocky’, and can put on muscle easily too.

Sounds familiar.

The key drives for endomorphs then are low carb, higher protein and fat based diet, and as much cardio exercise as possible, sadly with the need to keep it going for life. There is no easy path for the endomorph, lapses inevitably mean the weight will return. I decided to give it a go, and in fact my knee, and my ankle felt ‘ready’ again.

Since Tuesday this week I’ve been doing 30 minutes on the bike at 6.30am and a further 30 minutes when I get home from work. I’m already doing the low carb thing. And early results are promising, I’ve got below 79 kilos for the first time and my body feels like it’s ready to respond again to exercise. The target remains as before 76 kilos or approximately 12 stone, at which point I believe I’ll fit 30” trousers. The blokes in the office have told me this is a lady's waist size, but they’re just jealous.

I’ve bored you before with tales of Windows Mobile, I’ve calmed down now, and fixed my handset, but suffice to say yesterday I was looking at iPhones. Current Windows Mobile devices can suffer a particular error known as the ‘Sleep of Death’, whereby the handset goes into standby, but then cannot be powered up. No single caused has been identified, and the forums are rife with users suffering, most opting for replacement handsets. Well eventually after much hassle, including trying to restore from backups I take of my phone every week, I got it back up and running, but my faith was sorely tested. I will be acuiring an HTC Mondrian on an accelerated schedule.

Red Ed

2010-09-27T18:32:00.001+01:00

I was disappointed to learn that my friend has developed a better OCD than me. He cannot put fuel in his car without using the plastic disposable gloves you usually find in garage forecourts. I’ve never seen anyone else use them. He’s not quite at the point of driving off if there aren’t any available, but he’s getting there. I was also amused that when at a cash point he used the card to press the buttons, not wanting to use his fingers on them directly. I thought I was doing well with my latest one, which relates to the bin in the bedroom.

Specifically, I cannot stand to actually leave any rubbish in it, I put the rubbish in, and then almost immediately I have to take the bin into the kitchen and empty it into the main bin there. It’s almost pointless having a bin in the bedroom. He’s supposed to be ‘normal’. I’m feeling a bit ‘OCD prone’ at the moment, it seems to come and go, not sure why, I think it makes it worse when I can’t attribute a reason to these things

So Ed Milliband is the new leader of the Labour Party. He’s the second best result, as far as I’m concerned, Ed Balls was always an outsider but he would have been perfect, guaranteed electoral oblivion for Labour. Ed is left wing, beholden to the Unions whatever he says, and as guilty as anyone else of the failings of the last Government.

But he is also affable, shrewd and has shown the required ruthlessness in destroying the plans of his elder brother. The Coalition should not underestimate him, but he is clearly ripe for demolition. He didn’t get the support from Labour MP’s and that might give him a real problem. At this point I’m going to trot out the standard line ‘we will see’.

This changeable weather is playing hell with Ron Towers, I turn on the storage heaters when it’s cold, by the time they’ve charged up it’s gone mild again and it’s too hot. Pain in the arse.

Confirmation

2010-09-25T12:19:00.001+01:00

I bought a couple of books last week, one on diet, specifically with a view to the elimination on my much-dwindled midriff, the second on training techniques, press ups, free weights that type of thing.

The diet book didn’t really tell me anything I didn’t already know. It did confirm once again my advancing understanding on diet and nutrition. Written by a doctor (so you can ascribe what validity you choose to it), I did like the fact that he backed up his assertions firstly with quotes from current research, and secondly illustrated them with some cold hard calculations.

I find I’m appreciating much more now the difference between ‘weight’ and ‘fat’, and how what you eat is used and processed by your body. He backed up my core belief, that is, the main driver of ‘fat’ weight gain is excessive consumption of carbohydrates, which trigger the body's insulin response and prompts us to extract fat from the bloodstream and store it. In evolutionary terms we have only very recently had access to the types of carbohydrates we now take from granted, and our body's have not adapted to this. Carbohydrates should therefore be avoided as far as possible.

Carbohydrates are, put simply, energy, but they don’t provide ‘building materials’, these come from proteins and fat (and various vitamins and minerals). The key is that protein and fat can also be converted by the body to fuel, and this process is the ‘evolutionary norm’ for humans.

Protein has many advantages, not only can we use it to make energy if needed, but it takes effort to do this, and importantly, provides a much higher level of satiety than any other foodstuff, allowing you to avoid the big threat to any change in diet, hunger. So for protein (specifically as far as possible ‘unprocessed cuts of meat), fill your boots.

He had some interesting things to say about measures such as Body Mass Index, and the efficacy of exercise as a means to weight loss. Guidelines state a BMI of 15 to 25 is ‘healthy weight’, however studies show that in terms of risk, the best BMI range to be in is actually 25-30, currently classified as ‘overweight;’. My BMI is 26.6, so clearly I’m happy to read this. To get to 25 I would have to lose another stone in weight, and based on past attempts this is clearly wrong, I would literally have to be starving to get there.

The news on exercise is both bad and good. There’s no doubt that exercise has many health benefits, however as a means of fat loss, it’s just too marginal, energy use just can’t provide the numbers, real ‘fat’ weight loss is primarily driven by diet. This again stacks up with my own experience insofar as when I was injured and unable to exercise, I still lost weight.

What I had hoped would be a ‘single project’, losing weight and getting ‘into shape’, are really two distinct exercises. I not sure where this leaves me personally. I suspect in the medium term I’m probably where I should be now, and the path to losing those last couple of kilos will be a long one, driven by diet. I need to decouple in my head exercise from weight loss, so not seeing changes on the scales stops being so demotivating. Exercise is a good thing, but it’s a health thing, not a weight loss thing.

The biggest single issue for me now is, wanting to completely eliminate pasta and rice from my diet (indifferent to pasta really, but a curry isn’t a curry without Basmati rice), what can I replace them with?

Lib Demmage

2010-09-23T12:59:00.001+01:00

Since Labour are nowhere to be seen, and depending on their next choice of leader are likely to stay there for some time, the more interesting political ‘story’ currently is surprisingly what’s happening with the Liberal Democrats. As I’ve said before, right now we’re in a bit of a ‘phoney war’, we won’t know which way everyone – the public, the coalition government, the Unions, the Liberal Democratic Party – are actually going to jump until Spring next year, when the real cuts arrive, when the real tests begin.

Politically speaking, I’ve largely ignored, and been ignorant of the Liberal Democrats. I’ve never quite worked out where they are, what they believe in, it seems to be the case that it’s more often what they disagree with. Trident is a good example, from the safety of permanent opposition they were able to oppose it, knowing they would never actually be called on the choose, now they that they are in government and will have to choose, wiser heads need to prevail. (although it’s looking likely in the interests of the coalition the decision will be delayed until after the next election, which is possibly a wise decision.)

I’ll admit Nick Clegg has quietly impressed me. He grew a pair and stepped up to Government on the basis of what parts of his and his parties agenda he could achieve rather than the parts he was against in the Conservative one. He seems level headed and prepared for what is likely to come next year. There will always be extremists in Political Parties who are unhappy with bargains, there are as many disgruntled Conservatives as there are Lib Dems, but a coalition government is what we have and so there must be proportionate compromise. Clegg seems to understand and accept this.

Vince Cable was lauded before the election as a canny economist who had predicted the financial crisis and was perhaps the man as Chancellor to rescue us from it. I don’t think so, I think he’s an able orator, but also an ageing politician with too much baggage, too many chips on his shoulder, one voice telling him that he’s in power and should act accordingly, another, at the conference, telling him to showboat about the evils of Capitalism and London Bankers to all the Conference attendee weirdo's, and invoke the confusion or ire of business leaders nationally and globally, precisely at a time when we need to sell Britain around the world to trade ourselves out of the mess. I suspect his appointment is viewed as a necessary evil by Cleggeron (love that name!) in the interests of coalition unity, someone to keep the Liberals happy but tacitly kept away from as many of the real levers of power as possible.

Update – From Daniel Hannan, Vince Cable even managed to misquote Adam Smith and get Capitalism wrong

I’m intrigued by the Lib Dems (not that I could in a million years ever consider aligning my politics with theirs you understand), but even now I’m not really sure what they’re about. Still gathering data on that one…

Screenage

2010-09-23T12:40:00.001+01:00

I suppose it’s one of the advantages of being the ‘IT guy’ , that when it comes to procurement, you can more or less please yourself. Not that I abuse this facility in any way, in fact you’ll find that in most businesses, the IT person usually has the crappiest personal kit, simply because you want the best stuff out with the users, making them happy and not needing the support attention.

As a neat example of this, my work desktop actually runs Windows Vista Home Premium, as it was bought for me by a well-meaning person who didn’t know that ‘Home’ versions of Windows can’t be added to a domain. Long story short, all the support work I do from this machine I effectively do as an ‘outsider’ to our domain. I’ve learned to live with it, and I could have downgraded to XP if I could have been bothered.

I have indulged myself in the last couple of days with my monitor. Again the one purchased for me on joining the company was a perfectly serviceable 22” LG Flatron, and although it didn’t quite get to the resolution I would have liked (1680 x 1050 is a strange size to get driver support for, for some reason) I was happy enough until the blue power light began to flash.

A quick Google later and this doesn’t have a resolution other than an LG repair, the screen is well out of warranty now, I have no spares (oh the number of times I get asked for a ‘spare’ this that or the other), I can’t be without a monitor, and so I have ‘procured’ a nice little 22” HD Iiyama Pro Lite.

Not that well known, Iiyama make good quality good value screens, I paid a little more for this than I would have an equivalent replacement LG but the picture is sharp and bright and already feels less straining on my poor eyes. Many moons ago when I purchased my first pc from a now-defunct company called Panrix I got an Iiyama CRT which was excellent, I’m sorry I ever left them now.

Which is better?

2010-09-21T15:16:00.001+01:00

I wonder is it better to do a ‘scheduled’ post, that might just say ‘nothing new to report’ but at least confirms there is a *will* to report something new, were it to have taken place, or is it better to remain somewhat mercurial, ephemeral, mysterious, as if you were so busy out there in the real world *doing* interesting things you didn’t have the time or the inclination to *blog* about them.

I must put more effort into capturing good post topics when I have them. I do still have them, I’m not moved to rant about everything that annoys me these days, because let’s face it if I did there would be a great deal of repetition. I also want to build a list of ‘bigger topics’.

The trouble isn’t so much the thinking, it’s the writing…

Splurge

2010-09-15T21:51:00.001+01:00

So suddenly I feel like blogging a bit! Funny how it goes, try as I might I just can’t quite make it the routine it needs to be. I think I’ve lost my nerve a bit, there are clearly plenty of items in the news worth commenting on, and yet I feel like somehow it’s all been said before, somewhere else, by someone better than me. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve fired up Windows Live Writer (cracking free blogging app by the way, I remember the days when you had to hand code, they are long gone) and just stared at the screen.

And yet I’ve never been a more voracious consumer of news and opinion, from all sides, as I now am. I hadn’t even noticed, but now courtesy of the web, I read almost *all* the newspapers every day, Left wing, Right wing, UK press, US press, a bit of Australian press for a change, even the occasional bit of English language German and Spanish press to get the European angle, every possible techie site I can find. Probably a result of having considerably more time on my hands.

I’m not sure if I’m reading news for confirmation bias, but under the guise of telling myself I’m being ‘inclusive’ and widely read, as I get older the black and white of youth is replaced with shades of grey. In the end, there is only grey, and one persons opinion versus another's.

I think I once blogged that I preferred Autumn and Winter to Spring and Summer. I don’t think I do anymore (grey, you see). Ron Towers has gone cold, as it does, the Winter Duvet has been deployed and no doubt I’ll have to turn on the ineffective storage heaters soon. Last Winter I don’t think I cared what the weather was, it probably seem appropriate if anything, but this year, well I’ve lost 2.5 stone of insulation, I think I’m going to have to work harder to stay warm.

Speaking of which, Project Ron has stalled. That’s not to say I’m now stuffing myself and undoing all the good work, but it’s a holding pattern at best. Really struggling with motivation, I know what I should be doing but I’m just not doing it, and not moving forwards is moving back. My knee is ok, mostly, but hurting it, together with the plateauing has brought me to a stop. I’ll give week or two, if it’s anything like the blogging then I’ll probably just wake up one day and suddenly be motivated to start again.

Technical trials

2010-09-15T21:21:00.001+01:00

Internet Explorer 9 has gone to a public beta. I like it already, minimalist, fast, it bodes well. Microsoft is making a comeback in a number of areas where it had become lazy and unresponsive to customer feedback. Windows 7 is a success, Internet Explorer 9 looks promising, and Windows Phone 7 is imminent and building quite a buzz in techie circles.

So I decided on Sunday that it was time to do a complete rebuild of my laptop with a fresh copy of Windows 7. When you abuse your kit as I do, constant installs uninstalls, registry tweaks, shifting data around, it’s inevitable that over time the operating system will suffer. I’d be putting it off for a while not only because it’s a ball ache in itself, but also because my copy was an upgrade copy, the laptop itself shipped with Vista, and whilst I was fairly sure I could do a clean install, well, I’d had issues doing the same thing with HP kit.

Anyway it all went smooth until I tried to eject the DVD. Long story short, the laptop has - had – a slot loading Blu-ray reader DVD writer. This means there is no physical eject button, it’s all handled in software or in this case touch buttons on the laptop itself. It also means that unlike tray drives there isn’t an emergency disc eject slot (you can usually unwind a paperclip and push it in to manually open the tray). So, I had a problem.

Spin on for the next few hours of taking my £1000 of laptop to bits, messing with the drive but trying not to make any mechanical fault worse, firstly so I could get my precious install disc out and secondly to see if the drive could be reset and recovered. Anything Blu-ray is de facto expensive, and my temper was starting to be tested. I recovered the disc in the end, but I had lost faith in the integrity of the drive, which would just swallow the next disc I fed it and I’d be stuck once again. So what could I do now?

Replacement drive, obviously, but matching the exact part was almost impossible (thanks Dell for using hard to source parts), and a direct replacement drive would have to be shipped from the States or China and would cost around £150. No thanks. I didn’t care for it to be Blu-ray, DVD burning would do, but now I had another issue, and a question. The drive itself had no fascia. This makes sense in the context of the design of the laptop, all it needed was to match a slot in the case, but there aren’t many slim DVD drives around and most have fascia's. So, do I take a chance on a drive and hope I can simply remove the fascia? Scan comes to the rescue with a £30 DVD burner, very fast delivery and with some relief my hunch paid off as the fascia simply unclipped and everything slotted into place. Job done, and a little something new learnt.

The upside is that, as usual, a fresh install has breathed new life into the machine, it feels slick again, I can avoid the mistakes of the first ‘era’ and just do the things I want to do. Not a very interesting post but hey, it’s not very interesting here at the moment.

Day off

2010-09-10T12:36:00.001+01:00

Day off, have to take them, otherwise I’d sell them back. Bored.

Hit Tesco’s at 8am, did the big shop, forgot washing powder.

Managed to avoid Jeremy Kyle, but now I find Loose Women on the telly. It’s sapping my will to live. Finished Mafia II. Tea with the folks, but in the meantime the sad truth is, I’ll probably do some work. Joys of remote connections.

Still can’t get used to unlimited internet, still don’t trust it.

Spiders

2010-09-09T10:09:00.001+01:00

Firstly, why are there so many spiders around at the moment? Ron Towers seems to be besieged by them, large and small, I wonder what causes an increase in spider population? I’d say an increase in fly population, but if anything there have been less flies apparent to me this summer? Strange.

6 months unlimited internet access on my phone for £20. Bonus. I’ve been on T-Mobile PAYG for quite a while now, pondering going to a contract, I still might if a particular Windows Phone 7 handset tickles my fancy, but that won’t be this year. T-Mobile have a decent deal regarding internet access, in that a days use will cost you no more than a pound, but they offer a number of ‘boosters’ one of which I discovered is 6 months access for £20. Done!

It’s going to take me a while to trust I’m not still getting charged, even though I keep texting the number to get my current balance to make sure it’s not going down. Which it isn’t. Through work and personal use I’ve built up this notion that ‘mobile data’ is really expensive which I’m going to have to get past somehow…

I seem to be increasingly entranced by Daybreak. I’m not doing any exercise at the moment (did my knee in *again*, it’s healing much quicker this time but probably only because I’m resting it properly), so the diet thing has all but stopped (other than I’m having a bit of a ‘starve’ week this week, get a bit of ketosis in, it’s already working as I’m now back at my lowest weight again). It seems to have shifted my sleeping pattern a little, I’m less tired but now I go to sleep a little earlier and wake up a little earlier, even as the mornings get darker.

On the one hand, I must admit to enjoying the female ‘presenters’, which is not to denigrate their presenting or journalistic talent, but I am a bloke, and by and large blokes enjoy attractive ladies (in fact, attractive ladies can actually mess up our brains). On the other hand, it could do with being a bit less lightweight for me. They are trying to tackle more serious news but it just doesn’t work when juxtaposed with Adrian and Christine's perma-sunny dispositions. They seem to be more proficient at it on the Beeb. Still, it’s early days.

Every so often they switch from the Daybreak studio to the local news, for me this is the Granada Region, and the first thing the presenter lady says, every time is ‘your local news and weather will be with you in less than a minute, but first the Daybreak headlines for the Granada Region’. What’s the point of saying the ‘less than a minute’ bit? I feel sorry for her every time she has to say that. It’s just odd…

Triumph of hope

2010-09-08T12:27:00.001+01:00

I notice that Daniel Hannan has joined the campaign for an EU referendum. Readers will not be surprised that I thoroughly support this initiative, even if my head tells me that we are fairly unlikely to get a referendum, given three Prime Ministers (including the current one) have committed to holding one and have subsequently reneged on it.

Daniel makes as ever a level-headed and informative case for it on The Telegraphs website.

The EU is now costing us £45m a day, with plans for ever tighter integration and ever growing demands for money (and the removal of our rebate that would vastly increase the inequity). Nobody under the age of 54 has ever been formally asked what they think our relationship with the EU should be, mostly I suspect because they know, and fear, what the answer would be.

We should be asked.

Now go and sign the Pledge!

Damn you Chiles and Bleakley!

2010-09-07T10:22:00.001+01:00

I managed to miss the first ever broadcast of ITV’s new breakfast programme Daybreak yesterday. No big deal, other than I wanted to see it, to see what all the fuss was about. In any case it was only this morning I managed to remember to turn the telly on.

Suffice to say, as ever, the hype clearly wasn’t justified, but I’m slightly embarrassed to say I found myself rather enjoying it. Here’s the thing. Bleakley is attractive, I’m nonplussed on the fake tan (and the Premiership boyfriend, how could she!) etc, but she’s pretty, shapely and has that intriguing Northern Irish lilt, but slightly softened, that I find pleasing to listen to. Chiles seems to polarise opinion massively but I’ve always found him to be affable and relatively ‘normal’, something of an everyman, up there on the telly. I think it helps that I like Brummies and/or people from the West Midlands (I think Brummies and Scousers have a very similar deadpan sense of humour). Together, when they’re relaxed, as I’m sure they will be as they get used to things, I find them annoyingly…affable. I love affable. The televisual equivalent of a nice cup of tea and a sit down.

I sometimes have BBC Breakfast on ‘in the background’ whilst I get ready for work, but where GMTV was waay too lightweight, BBC Breakfast can be a bit serious, my brain is usually fully booted up by the time I get to the car and I’m ready for the Today programme. So Daybreak, coming somewhere in the middle, maybe, but all sugar-coated with the sheer niceness of Chiles and Bleakley, has so far won me over. Too many ads and ad breaks, but ITV has got to earn a crust somewhere..

Good ol’ Tony…

2010-09-02T08:51:00.001+01:00

To use a cliché (or is it a rhetorical question?), where has the week gone? Too long between posts Ron, too long…

So Tony Blair has finally published his memoirs, timed exquisitely to throw the cat amongst the pigeons for the Labour leadership elections. Hell, *I* might even pick up a copy, anything that appears to tell the truth about Mad Gordon is worth a few quid and a read in my book. Not sure I know what ‘emotional intelligence’ means, which probably also means I don’t have any. Which is probably right. Still, I never believed I was born to be Prime Minister.

As far as I can muster any interest in the Labour implosion, I am enjoying it. I can hear the howls from the Labour centrists, as Tony has all but endorsed the current coalition Government. Now, if Labour can decide to veer even further to the Left politically, we will get to see them marginalised for many many years to come, and get on with the job of fixing our country.

I got under the 80 kilos early. Tuesday, in fact, but we must not be fooled by this, we know all too well that weight doesn’t come off in a straight-line-graph manner, it goes up and down diurnally, with a downwards trend, hopefully. And as I’ve said before, this last 4 kilos or so is going to be a hard hard slog, so hard that I’m going to give myself the whole of September to achieve it.

The negative effects of not achieving tougher targets now outweigh the benefits of aiming high. I know what I’ve got to do. (25 minutes on the rower starting at 6am this morning, I’m working my way back to managing 45 minutes with a goal of the full hour, this time on the machines maximum tension setting).

Ron Returns might be moving, at which point it won’t be Ron Returns anymore, it’ll be something entirely more, ‘amorphous’. There are various technical reasons for this which I may or may not go into, but work is on-going.

I’ve not blogged about mobile gadgets for a while, but the exciting news is that Microsoft has locked down the Windows Phone 7 code and shipped it to OEMs. We can expect the first raft of Windows Phone 7 handsets in Europe in October (November in the US, I like it when we get things before them). I’ll be keeping an eye out for HTC’s handsets, most particularly the successor to my current handset, the HD2, rumoured to be called the HD7 (so it matches Windows Phone 7 you see).

My heart says bollocks to the money, get one, but my head says there is nothing wrong with what you currently have (in fact I’m very happy with it now), and that money is destined for the new stocks and shares ISA you oh-so-wisely opened recently….

Rons Film Roundup #2 Blu-ray special!

2010-08-29T20:38:00.001+01:00

Avatar [2009] The first time I saw this film, it wasn’t a great copy, and I hold my hands up and say I wasn’t that impressed. At least I wasn’t as impressed as I thought I should have been. So unimpressed, that I didn’t even finish watching it. Having now seen it in full (2D) High Definition glory with the aid of my Home Cinema audio system, I have changed ‘unimpressed’ to ‘pretty good’. Early on I kept thinking how much it looked like a really good opening cut scene for a PS3 game, and the switches between the CGI and live action sections were really noticeable. It looks like Dead Space meets Far Cry (which probably doesn’t mean much to you guys, but they are PS3 games).

From a technical perspective (and clearly that’s of interest to me), it is awesome and a clear game-changer. The film is 60% CGI, rendered on a server farm covering 10,000 sq ft (930 m²) making use of 4,000 Hewlett-Packard servers with 35,000 processor cores. Total storage of the data needed to render Pandora was over a petabyte (1 million Gigabytes), and each minute of the final footage for Avatar occupies 17.28 gigabytes of storage.

As a film, it’s an hour too long and too ‘messagey’ for me. I understand that Cameron wanted to create an alien world, but does *everything* have to glow? Why do most animals have 6 legs but not the Na’vi themselves? You can imagine the production meeting ‘I got it! we’ll give them 6 legs, that’s alien..’ . The most difficult thing to render in CGI are facial expressions, and I have to say they’ve really nailed that in this film. Once you’ve mentally ‘bought in’ to it, human and CGI interact as well and as seamlessly as I’ve ever seen on any film. Also I was wondering how they were going to resolve the fact that the main protagonist Jake Sully can only interact with his Avatar by technological means, surely that’s a weakness? Well if you haven’t seen it I won’t give it away, suffice to say a neat twist and nicely set up for the sequel.

My final thought was ‘Imagine what Cameron could do if he applied Avatar to Aliens…’

Ron rates: 8/10

Green Zone [2010] Director Paul Greengrass and Matt Damon team up again after Bourne for an Iraqi WMD thriller. Usual Greengrass puke inducing camera work and grainy film stock (which seems slightly incongruous on Blu-ray but you just have to go with it).

At the risk of repeating myself, the overall impression really is ‘Bourne in Iraq’, the director is the same, the lead actor is the same, the style and music are the same.

It’s no worse for that, but it doesn’t really stand out, it’s good but not great.

Black Hawk Down does a better job on a different conflict.

Ron rates: 7/10

Inglorious Basterds [2010] So Tarantino does World War II. Hmm, I had my doubts but I parked them

And? Well it’s not classic Tarantino, but it follows the familiar pattern and style. The standout performance is by Christopher Waltz as SS Colonel Hans Landa and Diane Kruger is not only easy on the eye but also a capable actor (when did we stop saying actress?).

There’s a weird mix of authenticity and complete fabrication. Large stretches of the film are in French and German with subtitles, and yet then ending…well it didn’t actually happen that way. It’s also odd to watch a WWII film peppered with contemporary music. It sort of works, but I’m afraid I’m of the ‘Where Eagles Dare/Saving Private Ryan’ school, orchestral score every time.

And it’s too long.

Ron rates: 7/10

Still cunning

2010-08-29T09:46:00.001+01:00

Todays weather is perfect for flat owners, I don’t think all you garden owners are going to be sitting in them today are you!

Well the cunning plan is working, so far. Yesterdays weigh-in saw me at my lowest weight yet, within 100 grams of great 80 kilo barrier (I don’t think I’ve mentioned my actual weight before, but there you go, 80 odd kilos or 12.6 stone), which I expect to now crack within a week. Back on the rowing machine and the exercise bike, but taking it easy, going carefully, pushing my knees and ankles gently, giving them time to stabilise and strengthen. Emphasis is back on the calorie-burning cardio for now, with the caveat that anything pushing my knee joints must be done before 12am.

Not really sure now what my target weight should be, maybe 12 stone or 76 kilos, but it’s less about raw weight loss now, more about shape and waistline, and making exercise a part of my daily routine. If I build my body up as I plan to, since muscle weights quite a bit more than fat my weight might actually go up. I’m going to change tack slightly on the diet too, I think it’s time for fruit and veg to come back into play.

I have a cunning plan

2010-08-26T09:07:00.001+01:00

The truth is that exercise has fallen off a cliff for the last 2 or 3 weeks. There, I’ve said it. It started when I hurt my knee, then my ankle, both of which took so long to heal and thereafter my confidence in not doing them both in again took a knock. Press ups and sit ups plugged the gap for a while, and they are a habit I’ll now keep for life, but they weren’t enough.

Worse, I have been seduced by a ruthless, callous, uncaring bitch of a mistress, otherwise known as ‘Peanut M&M’s’. After so long avoiding sugary foods, I gave in to the pleasures of sugar combined with peanuts.

It was a sordid and torrid affair, but now it’s over.

The good news is that, despite all this, in weight – and waist - terms, I’m still roughly where I was before. I firmly believe, and have now tested, that once your body ‘stabilises’ at a certain weight (I think I read somewhere it usually tolerates roughly a 10% fall in weight before stabilising again, I achieved a 12.5% fall last time around), it will then vigorously stick at that weight no matter what you do i.e. starve and it will retain water and slow metabolism, overeat and, within limits, it will act to limit weight gain and expel un-needed food intake. So I’m not really the worse for it, and having ‘got it out of my system’ I can get cracking again.

The cunning plan is this. As best as I can establish it, I seem to pick up my injuries overnight, asleep. I am something of a restless sleeper and can actually well imagine twisting and turning in my sleep. This also suggests to me that there is insufficient time between my evening workouts and going to bed for my knees to warm down properly and not be prone to injury. So if I move my workouts to early in the morning, I have the whole day, awake, to give time for my joints to recover, and everyone's a winner. I have also read that an early morning workout, a shock to the system, is a good time if you’ve got the sand for it.

The downside is my days will now have to start at 6 a.m. to give sufficient time, but that’s not so bad, in previous jobs where I’ve had to commute some distance my days have started at 5 a.m.

Let’s do it!

Rons film roundup

2010-08-25T13:03:00.001+01:00

Salt [2010] Not a stinker by any means, the combo of Jolie and Director Philip Noyce (Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger) makes for a fast pace and decent action sequences. Some silliness (including a part where Jolie is disguised as a man, a very uncomfortable thing to see!), a nice plot twist that I actually didn’t see coming and an ending that clearly sets up the franchise. Jolie loves doing these kinds of physically demanding roles and it shows (maybe she just likes kicking the crap out of men?). She’s not quite in Bournes league, but turns in a decent body count with style, and even throws in a bit of ‘acting’. Not quite enough to pip Tomb Raider 2 as my secret Angelina Jolie fave, but close.

The A-Team [2010] Also not a complete stinker, but also somehow not ‘The A-Team’ from childhood memory. Some nice nods to the TV series if you’re looking (the A-Team van makes an early appearance, also for extra geek points they use the same carbine rifles and there’s definitely some ‘bullets neatly up the side of the road’ action going on), plus I read Dirk Benedict makes a cameo (I missed it). Cast is solid, Liam Neeson does ‘Liam Neeson does Hannibal Smith’, Bradley Cooper and Sharlto Copley are having a good time. Quinton Jackson tries as BA but he mumbles and speaks too fast and much of his dialogue is missed. They should have sorted that.

The Human Centipede: First Sequence [2010] One where I read about it being the sickest horror film ever, so *of course* I had to get hold of a copy. For what it is, one of those small scale, ‘independent’ films, it’s not bad, I’ve certainly seen worse (Martyrs).Dieter Laser is superb as the twisted and evil Doctor Heiter, who for reasons that aren’t really established (unless I missed them) other than not liking people and/or wanting to see if it would work, kidnaps two girls and a Japanese fella and stiches them together, ‘mouth to arse’ to make one long organism. In terms of horror/gore etc, there’s nothing even close to the likes of Hostel, it’s more psychological shocks, and in that direction it’s effective. It may be that I’m so massively desensitised by now that nothing much shocks me…

The question that kept popping into my head again and again was ‘why would an actor sign up for these roles? Why would you have this film in your portfolio?’

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time [2010] Huge amounts of money on-screen. Boring boring boring, not even Gemma Arterton could keep me interested. So I haven’t seen the rest of it.

Something political?

2010-08-24T14:04:00.001+01:00

It’s hard to do a political post at the moment. I feel, if there is such a word, ‘apolitical’. It feels like the calm before the storm that will inevitably arrive early next year, when the job cuts start kicking in and ‘austerity’ really arrives. There’s every chance that I will be in the same job centre queues as those who have lost their jobs in the public sector by then, so they get little sympathy from me. Welcome to the real world.

My impressions otherwise are that the coalition is working well, it might take a bit longer to see whether we really are into ‘the new politics’, but so far so good. Labour, is nowhere to be seen, and the elongated leadership election offers no prospect of them becoming an effective opposition for the foreseeable future.

I’m irked by the media’s seeming obsession with splits in the Government. I can understand they’re looking for something to report, to keep the 24 hour news agenda alive but I’m often left with the impression, especially by the Buggers Broadcasting Communism – sorry I mean the BBC – that they’re reporting differences of opinion which are normal and to be expected when two different political parties have to work together as indicators of ‘the great split’, that just hasn’t happened.

My only criticism of the Coalition so far actually applies to the Tories. We must not underfund our hard pressed Armed Services, and we should make an exception and find Treasury funding for Trident, which keeps us at the top table of World Politics where we should be because in the Grand Scheme of things, whatever others may say, we are ‘The Good Guys’.

Liam Fox wasn’t a great choice for the MOD. He’s a maverick, who has gaffed a couple of times and doesn’t seem to quite have the right temperament for the job (another Gordon Brownesque disgruntled failed leader?). Get rid of him in the next reshuffle.

Still rebooting..

2010-08-23T10:39:00.001+01:00

I’ve got ‘blog block’ something rotten. I’ve been sitting here looking at the screen for a good 15 minutes now, and there’s *nothing*. The more I try and force a post, the more elusive one seems.

Bollocks. Of course, all the great writers get writers block. I’ll try and get some inspiration.

One of those days

2010-08-10T21:37:00.001+01:00

I’ve almost certainly done this blog post before. More than once. But today was one of those days where there are so many problems that raise their head on the same day, where you just can’t catch a break, that you begin to get the feeling the techie gods are against you. And in my case, as solo technical support, you also feel very alone.

It’s different when they are self-induced issues. One of them today probably was (although in fairness, all I did was attempt an upgrade on the server that appeared to have been successful at the time but now has left me with a difficult decision and a nerve-wracking downgrade to consider, which I’ll probably have to do over the weekend).

But when they’re caused by users not doing what they’re supposed to (hello virus, oh and it happens to be on an essential CAD machine, of which we have no spares), then compounded by pressure (even if understandable, we’re all under pressure and I want to be as helpful as I can be) from managers who are asking me to do the impossible, with my own management telling me to do it for zero pounds and zero pence, well the rest of the office were just waiting for me to crack.

I didn’t, and I’ve managed to resolve 80% of the most immediate issues, with the remainder sorted by lunchtime tomorrow as long as our suppliers don’t screw me over.

After email, I hate supporting CAD. CAD hardware and software is specialist, expensive and demanding, it’s the nature of the beast, so what we have are pimped up desktop pc’s rather than what you would call proper workstations. Not my choice, nor really my recommendation, but they work well enough. But for political reasons I’m not 100% in the loop for the CAD setup until, that is, it breaks, then all of a sudden my phone starts ringing. I’ve stated before my amazement that CAD designers, who you would expect to have a decent general grasp of IT, just don’t seem to know much beyond their applications.

The key elements at times like these are to remain calm (or at least swear under your breath not in peoples faces), concentrate on the problems at hand and box them off in the most efficient manner possible. Which I did.

So you can imagine I was glad to get home, only to find that one of my own NAS devices had failed. Here I did catch a break, insofar as the drive itself was still good, only the NAS enclosure and controller hardware had croaked, the data was intact. Not-so-good-news is that the drive used Linux as the file system, so I can’t just mount the drives and see them in Windows. God bless freeware, and a lovely little app at least means I am able to recover the data. I just need to figure out where I’m supposed to put the 700 Gigs or so I have on that drive.

This definitely comes under unplanned expenditure.

Purchase approved

2010-08-07T09:50:00.001+01:00

I can honestly say that watching The Dark Knight on a big 46” TV in High Definition with a more than capable, muscular 400W 2.1 Home Cinema system was as near-as-damn-it enjoyable as watching it in the cinema, and I enjoyed that *immensely*.

The combined woofer/amp unit is a bit bigger than I would have liked, but setup via HDMI is simple and clever processing enables it to get very ‘surround soundy’ even with the 2.1 setup. Of course it is able to get much more bass response than the TVs built-in speakers could ever achieve, but Sony have cleverly created a ‘night mode’ setting that amps this right down so you still get high fidelity sound at the lower volumes less likely to piss off your neighbours.

I won’t harp on about it too much, I know people don’t always get the ‘film thing’, especially when it comes to spending money on it, but for me it’s one of life's pleasures, a hobby, an interest, a passion even. I don’t have many of them right now.

Interesting to read the controversy around the planned BBC move to Manchester, specifically the late decision to move BBC Breakfast. It’s one of the few BBC programmes I watch, and it’s certainly currently the best thing on the box first thing in the morning.

I’m torn, on the one hand I’ve always considered the Beeb to be massively London/The South-centric, so a move North whilst clearly a political decision, is a welcome one. There really is a whole country outside of the M25. On the other hand, the BBC is doing the move in typically profligate style, with very generous relocation allowances you would not find anywhere else, and valid concerns have been raised in terms of the increased difficulty in getting guests to make the trip outside the capital.The ‘talent’ is also in revolt, with threats of retirement and people not signing up for the move.

I think overall I would agree with a few people who are saying ‘bollocks to them’. If they won’t move, replace them with Manchester staff and Manchester presenters, who would undoubtedly cost far less. I suspect (and to be honest, I hope) the BBC will soon be facing more cuts and more painful changes. The Labour-spending binge party is over, and the BBC will have to pay up just like the rest of us.

Watch your bass bins

2010-08-01T17:09:00.001+01:00

Christopher Nolan doesn’t know it, but now that I think of it, he has driven much of my technology adoption recently. As The Dark Knight was the film that convinced me to go with Blu-ray, so now Inception is making me ponder upgrading my sound system. One of the aspects I like about seeing films in the cinema is that the gloves come off on the soundtrack. Living in a flat, even though my neighbours downstairs are fairly deaf, I’ve always been conscious of not making too much noise.

I’ve never been big on ‘surround sound’, it’s one of those areas where if you’re going to do it, you need to spend big for it to be worthwhile, and when it comes to buying hardware I’ve always been of the mind that you should aim to spend ‘upper middle’. Don’t buy crap, but also don’t buy high end, unless you’re a Lottery winner.

I don’t usually mind cabling or even complexity, but to get it right with audio takes time and effort and above all cost and even I can’t justify it. Wireless 5.1 or 7.1 setups are neater (for the uninitiated, 5.1 refers to 5 ‘tweeter’ speakers plus 1 subwoofer, same with 7.1 but another two tweeters), but also more expensive and you still have to provide power, who can be bothered keeping up with all the batteries.

Plenty of manufacturers offer Blu-ray players with built-in amps and speaker setups (I already have a player!), but the next step up is also the next price bracket up, the most I would notionally be prepared to pay is £300.

I toyed with the idea of a sound bar as a useful halfway house. It would also be easiest to situate, but again, homework so far shows a number of ‘budget’ offerings that would be a waste of time then a huge jump up the the higher quality kit.

I also have the self-imposed constraint that I would prefer to buy Sony. A strange manufacturer, they produce quality hardware which does attract a price premium but yet are still somehow perceived in some quarters as not-quite-audiophile. Anyway my TV, PVR and PR3 are all Sony and all work well with Bravia Sync, so why break up the party?

The answer to the problem seems to me to be the Sony HTFS3 Home Cinema System, retailing at £230. A subwoofer with just two front speakers, it ticks all the boxes, even sporting a HDMI repeater, so installation should be a breeze. The 46” LCD doesn’t really give me much room for positioning the hardware though.

I’m still pondering it. I also need to consider in the near future the possibility of a Freeview HD PVR, Humax is at last going to release a device in August but that’s another £330. I’m not sure how bothered I really am about HD Broadcast TV, and yes, I think I’m also hanging on now for Sony to release a new product.

Inception

2010-07-30T11:17:00.001+01:00

On Wednesday I was able to go and see Inception (exactly how I was able to go and see Inception is probably an amusing blog post by itself, but I’ve not quite worked out how to describe it).

Since I saw The Dark Knight last year the director Christopher Nolan has advanced rapidly in my estimations as amongst my favourites, perhaps even *the* favourite. Since then I’ve managed to see almost all his ‘back catalogue’, and I’ve enjoyed them all. I had high hopes for Inception, and it delivered.

I’ve been trying to think of the best way to describe it, and the best I can do is to say Nolan is the director who has come closer than any other I know to making films like they exist in my imagination. And let me tell you, that’s a pretty high bar, my imagination is *awesome*.

I won’t do any major plot spoilers, so I can’t really therefore talk about the plot, other than to say it is set in a world where it has become possible for people to enter other peoples dreams in order to steal their ideas and knowledge. This is known as ‘extraction’, but now Leonardo’s character Cobb has to try and *implant* an idea, known as an ‘inception’. Nice. The final half to two thirds of the film is the planning and implementation of this inception, which can only be achieved by ‘going 3 levels deep’. So a dream, within a dream, within a dream. Cool

There are many reviews saying the film is complicated and needs repeat viewings. It is complex, you do have to follow it and pay attention, however it’s done sufficiently well (in my view anyway) that you can ‘get it’ in one viewing. For me, Nolan's films are the complete package. They ooze quality and style, and yet those things are not there for the sake of it. There is invariably CGI involved in some parts of showing the ‘dream world’, but they are not excessive, and he has stated they are only used in pursuit of the story (Lucas, I’m looking at you!). I’d have tolerated a little *more* CGI, but then I’m a bit of a dork like that.

Cutting between the relevant stages and segments is complex but you never feel like you’re totally lost, there is sufficient hand holding and explanation of the necessary concepts that for the most part that you can work things out. But at the same time it doesn’t treat you like an idiot, and I can imagine Joe Public might struggle a little – I was pleased and surprised to see how full the cinema was.

The ensemble cast were all excellent, but Tom Hardy really stands out as Eames, looking here so different from his big screen break as the villain Shinzon in Star Trek Nemesis. What comic relief there is in the film, comes from him.

A good soundtrack is also a vital ingredient for me, and Nolan's established partnership with Hans Zimmer delivers once again (incidentally, the fact that Zimmer did the soundtrack to the computer game Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 shows how far that medium has advanced in this respect). Some of his 80’s and 90’s ‘synth’ soundtracks were a bit cheesy, but now a mature combination of electronic and orchestral elements establishes the mood, and the rhythm of the film perfectly. Also you can actually hear and appreciate the soundtrack, I hate it when a good score is knocked down in the dub when it should be contributing more to the film (not sure I mentioned but I’m also a *massive* film soundtrack geek? Well I’ve so many geek hats, what’s one more…)

I recall watching The Dark Knight and reflecting that Nolan has a style that once he’s got the ‘preliminaries’ out of the way, once you get the the ‘meat’ of the film, it just builds and builds and builds, and never lets you go, and so it was with Inception.

Nolan has described it as a ‘sci fi heist movie’, and that’s as good a description as any I’ve seen. Action scenes are well executed albeit a little derivative (we’ve seen strange gravity fights already in the Matrix films).

There are a few minor issues, I thought some of the plot devices were a bit flaky, some of the scenes were skipped over too quickly or somewhat unresolved. But overall, I was very pleased, roll on the third and final Batman film.