2008 End Thoughts

End of the year for 2008. Tomorrow is a new day, as they say. I was considering relationships recently. I attended a wedding on the 22nd December, it was by candlelight and I guess you could say it was romantic. It was a civil ceremony, the participants were gay, I don't know if they were disappointed by not having a church or not - I disagree with eclesiastical law here (even if I can't spell it!). In the speech there was quite a few mentions of compromise and sharing and the two were linked closely together. What makes love's bonds so strong? Common interests and companionship yes but I also think there needs to be a physical dimension for me; a feeling of pleasure through being close or intimate with the one you love. My wife and I were joking (at least I think she was joking) about a novelty gift she saw in a gift shop recently - it was a wife's bat for beating away her husband's morning advances. Where is this post going and what's the reason for it? I'm not sure. I guess I'm saying that each of us has a different set of needs and a loving relationship blossoms when we find a partner who both has needs we can satisfy happily and who in turn happily satisfies the majority of our own needs. The tricky thing is that needs are diverse in type and they change over time, that'll be where the compromise and sharing comes in. Boy, love is hard and complex.

I shall raise my glass to all my readers tonight and wish you a hopeful and peaceful New Year. God bless.

Post-Christmas Doldrums

Between Christmas and New Year I tend to feel a bit low. It's the knowledge that I'll be returning to work soon and that all of the Christmas celebrations will be over. There is such a chill in the air here outside that it feels much colder than it normally does and we don't even have the excitement of having snow on the ground. The shops are full of sales and people lapping up the items but we're kind of stuck between wanting to do stuff with the kids but not wanting to keep dragging them around the shops. I'd like them to remember more from their childhood than boring shopping trips. It's so cold though. Yesterday we sat in the car watching the kids in a local play park, it was freezing. In my low spirited mood I'm more inclined to stay at home and watch films or play videogames but that's not possible as a parent. At least, not until after bed time. Ughh! I wish there were more things to do as a family around here - or that I was in a better mood to find something more interesting for them.

My Christmas present this year was a box set ultimate collectors edition of James Bond films - all of the films with an extra disk per film of extras, excellent! I also got a scarf, some socks, some skin care smellies and a Game voucher. I haven't got anything in mind yet for a game so I will probably wait until something comes along that I think would be good.

I watched the film SAW this week, I thought it was good and obviously open for a sequel, I have SAW II so I'll probably watch that some time soon as well.

A couple of things borrowed from the public library recently: Fallout 3 (Xbox 360) and Hell Boy II The Golden Army. I'm a big fan of the first Hellboy movie so am looking forward to watching the sequel.

December Song

It has been a lively last few weeks, I've had to do quite a bit of travelling for work hence my lack of posts and lack of time in general. Work in general has been more than a little distracting lately anyway, there is big change on the way and I don't know if I want to stay to go through it all. I've lived through several big changes already and I'm starting to get "change fatigue" - I don't think it actually improves things either, so its all a big waste of time.

I'm set for Christmas, more or less, and I'm actually starting to feel a little bit excited for the children. I was at my children's school's Christmas carol concert in the church and almost welled up the children sang so lovely. My daughter played guitar and recorder in a group at the front of the church. I was very proud of her. Actually, the end of the longest school term on Friday was great for a number of reasons:

• I began my holiday (apart from Christmas Eve when I'm working)
• It was the last day of school term, so the holidays were starting
• My children were both in the church to sing carols and I was there to watch
• The church was a lot warmer because they had installed heaters this year
• My daughter was performing music
• My children were feeling better (they have had time off being sick from school this week - my son missed one of his chances to perform for parents in the school nativity - I had taken the day off, I was upset not to be able to see him but glad I could be at home to look after him)
• My daughter won the Citizenship Cup for the term by being a good citizen in her school (she's been longing to win it forever)
• My son won the Child of the Week certificate for his humorous and entertaining performance of the cockerel in the nativity play (shame I missed the second performance but lots of parents who saw him said he was brilliant)
• My daughter came home with a gold certificate for house points and my son came home with a silver certificate for house points he had earned

I was very pleasantly surprised by all of this good news from the school, it made me forget about my worries at work and focus in on my family, which is what life should be all about.

I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a peaceful New Year. I hope you spend some quality time with your loved ones this Christmas.

Saturday Night

We're well into the weekend now, it is early Saturday evening and I'm starting to think about getting ready to bath and put the kids to bed. I have snatched a few minutes from domesticity to write this.  You see, this weekend my wife is away with a large group of women who have descended to a large cottage in the forest to eat, drink, dance and have facials. Oh and taste champagne as well, did I mention that? Yeah, so while she's been living it up since Friday afternoon, I've been home with the kids. It's not so bad, there are times when I wished that they could be nicer to each other and times when they are just so moody - but outside of THOSE times we have fun. Today, I had to take my son for his swimming class, so we up relatively early and after swimming I had a bill to pay and we took a trip to the library. Then I had to take my daughter to a friend who was having a party, while she did that I took the boy to the supermarket to get some food. I bought us some root vegetables and hot dogs because for tea I made:

Vegetable and Hotdog Hash! Swede, parsnip, savoy cabbage, potato, sweet potato boiled mashed and fried with lovely hotdog sausages. I loved it, the kids weren't too fond, except for the sausages that my daughter picked out. That's the trouble with kids, you go to great lengths to try something different, buy fresh seasonal veg, chop it up, cook it up and deliver it right to where they sit and then they pick what you knew they would eat and disregard the stuff that would do them some good. At least I can say I tried. Its just a good thing I had a backup cooking in the oven (frozen pizza). That picture was from the recipe although I have to say mine looked almost exactly the same.

Since my wife is enjoying herself, this evening I have plans for my own fun. Last Christmas we got a gaming chair from my mother in-law. It was a very strange choice of gift but who am I to quarrel? I rarely get the chance to get it out but tonight is the night; oh yeah baby! I've bought some beer with a hint of lime that's chilling nicely in the fridge and I have a bag of nuts to consume while I play videogames until I fall asleep.

It may not be champagne tasting and a facial, but I'll be home, warm and cosy. Oh crap, it still doesn't sound as much fun as my wife's weekend! I should get some friends, I really should....

Fitness Freak

I'm generally not fit. I have been trying to spend some time these last couple of weeks on Wii Fit. I bought some running shoes at the weekend:

I found a new discount sports shop on my local trading estate and its great - I got these shoes for only 11 pounds. For the length of time I spend running each week they are just right, they probably wouldn't be any good for your marathon runner but for me they'll do.

My Wii Fit age is around about my real age on average - it was 37 this week, which is -3 years: so that isn't too shabby is it?

Award Time

Hey, I've been given an award by Mrs Hairy Woman! Thanks so much. I would nominate 10 other bloggers but I don't know that many!

Back To Monday

In some ways, the familiarity of a return to work after a weekend is a nice thing but mainly it just reinforces the sense of oppression I feel in having to perform a function from 9 to 5 to earn enough money to maintain a home and sustain a quality of life. When its cold, wet and grey outside it just doesn't make it any easier. Its one of those weeks when Monday could have got off to a better, cleaner start, rather than moody silence.

This weekend I had the chance to laze in bed on Sunday morning, great! I watched the Stallone version of Judge Dredd. I was watching it to really give it another chance; I've seen it before and it didn't spark my interest. However, this time I thought that while it could have been cast better and the storyline made too many concessions to Hollywood, overall I enjoyed it better than I thought I would. The motorbikes the judges ride were laughable though, they should be fearsome machines but in the film they come across as no more fearsome than a Shop-Mobility cart!

It was a bit of a film-frenzy for me this weekend actually, as I watched Hot Fuzz and Daredevil. Three films I enjoyed the second time around more than the first; that's what these all have in common. It's good to have films on DVD in your closet so that you can go back to them and re-watch. Tonight, I'll be recording the film Underworld off the TV, I have a VHS copy but since our videoplayer is under the bed now we don't bother watching videos anymore. It's a bit of a shame I know but over the last couple of years we have been downsizing - the TV has become an LCD flatscreen and we have got rid of the DTV receiver (incorporated into the TV) and the video player: so we are nice and light with only a DVD player attached (aside from the Wii and Xbox360 consoles - but they're hidden away almost out of sight). I have considered converting my VHS tapes into DVDs but the time it would involve makes it cheaper to just replace the tapes with DVDs when I see them on sale and to be fair, there are not that many I really and truly miss.

Halloween Breakdown

The Halloween party was very cool. It was held by a family I've only been out with once but they are very nice. They live out in the country and have the most amazing large garden - I think several generations of their family bought it together and now co-habit in different parts of the house: ideal, I'd love to do that - it would be great for baby-sitters! Our host had such a great authentic bullet shot in the centre of her brow, even the bruising and brain stuff around the entry hole looked awesome. The fire took a long while to get going and it was such a cold night, the kids went indoors to keep warm. After a lot of fanning and (eventually) a rag soaked in petrol, it kicked into life and was lovely and roaring. I love the radiant heat from a good outdoor blaze. The baked potatoes were eventually found after a bit of raking through the ashes and most were perfectly cooked, I had one half that was perfect and the other half a little underdone - but then cooking outdoors is not an exact science. All in all we had a great evening, I liked the part where us men stood around the fire grumbling about cars breaking down and how garages seem to apply charges quite arbitrarily.

The film I chase eventually was Freddy vs Jason. I was laughing at it because it was so NOT a scary movie. If you've seen the parody Scary Movie it wasn't dissimilar. Oh well, you live and learn.

I have been reading the book I bought recently, it is volume one of a collection of Judge Dredd stories. He's a character from a comic titled 2000 AD, I don't think it's around any more. It does have me reminisce about the comics I used to read as a kid in the 1970s. I started with Beano and moved on to Krazy Comic and then Cheeky. My dad used to buy me comics like Battle, Warlord and Victor (more for his own entertainment I think). For some time I have been trying to remember one title I used to enjoy and this morning I looked it up on the Internet - isn't the web great for recalling memories from childhood? The comic in my memory was called Bullet and it featured a special agent called Fireball, he was a guy with a moustache (like one I am currently growing incidentally, more about that another time). I remember it so vividly because I sent off to join the Fireball club, I received a red plastic wallet and special story card to put inside and I got the Fireball pendant of which I was very proud. It was a large black plastic thing with embossed gold flames and I think an F in the middle, although I might not have remembered that part exactly. I loved British comics back in the 1970s and wish they would make a return.

Happy Halloween!

I've been looking forward to today for a few weeks. I have the day off from work! Spending some time with my family this morning and then we're all going out to our friends house for a Halloween party this afternoon. I hope you all have a great time today whatever you're doing.

I have been recording a ton of scary films on our DVD Recorder so there is no shortage of horror flicks to choose from. Here are just a few ideas:

• Creep
• Descent
• Saw and Saw II
• 28 Days Later
• Blade Trinity
• Halloween
• The Fog
• Freddy v Jason
• Ju-On (original Japanese The Grudge)
• Blair Witch Project (but avoid the 2nd film)
• Reanimator
• Resident Evil (and Resident Evil Apocalypse)
• Scanners
• Evil Dead
• Hellraiser
• Constantine
• The Fly

Wet and cold

It's been a very wet and dim day today. It rained heavily whilst I was picking my kids up from school. Yuck, I hate getting into a car all wet: I hate it when the windows steam up - does anyone else have the same trouble that I do with de-misting windows? I never know how to adjust my temperature and fan speeds - is it better to blow cold or blow hot? The aircon sorts it out pretty quick but it can get too cold in winter to have that on. One of life's little conundrums...

Aside from the weather, several things at home have taken up my thoughts and some of my time. A shed clear out at the weekend required a couple of trips to the dump. I hate going to the dump. I hate filling up my boot with stuff, especially when spiders can run off and hide in my car. I'm not a huge fan of creepy crawlies, as you can tell. The washing machine has been spraying water on the floor behind the box it sits in. So our kitchen floor is very damp underneath the lino and we can't use the washing machine until the new tube is fitted - another little job for me.

I've been playing a lot of music on my iPod. Getting into tracks in my collection that I haven't heard for a long while. It's funny how your memory of certain tracks places them above others until you go back and listen again. My tastes have certainly changed quite a bit over the course of fifteen years. What's more noticeable for me now I have iTunes is how much easier it is to listen to a wider selection of songs by not having to select a CD each time, now I can just rely on iTunes to select tracks for me. I love the serendipity of hearing a John Lee Hooker track just before an In Flames track. I love loads of styles in music so I could never restrict myself socially to one interest group. Although I do like the baggy trousers and dark colours of the metal followers but those styles wouldn't suit me.

What's Happening?

I'm not a frequent watcher of the news, I confess. I don't watch it enough. I like to catch up in general but I don't really pay much attention to the details. Certain subjects turn me off - finance, business, politics and economy being the main offenders. As you can imagine I've been turned off a lot lately, the US and UK economies seem to be on the brink of collapse. It is very worrying for poor dumb folk like me who haven't got a clue when it comes to finance. I just struggle by and try to make the most of what I have without taking risks - what I really mean is that in the day-to-day I don't understand what risks actually exist: in short, I take a lot of that stuff for granted.

Better for me to stick my head up my arse and keep listening to the music I love. I'm experiencing a new level of musical happiness with iTunes and my iPod. It must be one of the finest inventions of the 20th century. I've set up a complicated arrangement of smart playlists which have had the desired effect: basically, I wanted to experience my music collection as though I were listening to it for the first time. The way iTunes has put the songs next to each other in ways I would never have thought of is just stunning. The way I have configured it as well means I have my favourite songs cropping up when I least expect them, which makes them all the more enjoyable - just like when you're driving and a favourite comes on the radio that you can sing along to.

Hope everyone is well. The autumn weather is cold and wet and we are considering putting the fake fir throw on the bed to keep us warm and snug.

LHC Switched On

In honour of the successful switch-on, I thought this was not bad and quite educational: The LHC Rap (which surpassed 2 million views today)

 

Chrome and Don't You Just Hate It When...

With this post, I have surpassed the total number of posts I made in August (2). Just felt like saying that.

I've downloaded the new Google browser Chrome and have to say I like it's minimalist functional take on a browser. It is sort of becoming my browser of choice already.

Last but not least a minor annoyance:

do you know the bags of pasta that you buy that provide you with a strip of tape to reseal the bag? Don't you just hate it when the tape loses its stickiness and the bag just unrolls open? The other thing I hate about those bags is that they make opening the bag so difficult that the force required to open them usually rips it down the side, thus rendering the strip of sticky tape useless because of the gap down the side.

Driving and Eating Skittles

I called at the garage on the way home tonight. It's not my usual but I was low on petrol and as I have a long journey tomorrow again I thought I would get what I needed this evening instead of tomorrow. This particular garage has some sweets that I like - called Black Jacks and Fruit Salad. I also picked up a travel pack of Skittles. Sweets help keep me alert because sometimes when I'm driving for a long time I need some stimulation to avoid getting sleepy and just to keep focused on driving situations. Skittles were a bad choice because I am so addicted. It is impossible for me to have a Skittle and forget the rest. I am even now munching on a multi-coloured handful. I think there is one colour of Skittles that contains a substance banned in the US. Even more reason not to throw them down my neck like I am doing now. And yet I still continue to eat! How much fool am I?

The Rise of iTunes

We've used iTunes for probably 2 or 3 years now but it's only in the last two weeks that I have started the big project of putting all my music into it. I haven't finished yet and have over 9,500 songs (26 days) in my library. I've gotten several boxes of old CDs from my loft and have ripped them onto our external hard disk. I was always worried about not having the capacity to store my music on our hard disk but the external hard disk eliminates that worry.

iTunes has some great features, coverflow for instance. It's funny how coverflow draws you in and just the act of browsing covers is pleasurable. iTunes sometimes doesn't associate any artwork to an album, so I have to look for the cover on the web - Google image search is the best thing for this I've found. The browse library feature is interesting because it shows you how the Gracenote database assigns a genre to your music, examining this I can see that many classifications are not what I would have chosen. It's good fun to see your music collection sliced up into someone else's categories. Just a shame that it is going to take such a long time to work through correcting incorrect categorisations. I do like the smart playlists feature that you can use to create rules that automatically selects songs for you, another way you can "find" songs you haven't listened to in ages.

Frightfest

I've been recording Film4's Frightfest films to watch at my leisure, a series of horror films to tie in with the festival in London. I'm looking forward to Re-Animator, Day Of The Dead, Dawn Of The Dead, 28 Days Later, The Blair Witch Project, The Descent, Vault of Horror and Ju-On 1 and 2 (The Japanese, and best, version of The Grudge). I haven't been to the film festival in London but some of the films look really good. This is one of the problems with having a full time job - not enough time off to enjoy life outside of work.

I don't have a all consuming dark nature to watch so many horror films - its just that the season is on and I'm taking advantage: it will take me a few weeks to watch them all and by then it will be Halloween: something else to look forward to! Let's face it, the English Summer is now over so there isn't much else to look forward to but Halloween and then Christmas.

A Roundup for August so far

We bought ourselves a DVD Recorder recently and for me its been like discovering video recorders again for the first time. I'm recording quite a few films and even though I thought our DVD collection was good, it's improving with the films I'm recording. I'm pleasantly surprised that so many great films are shown on TV: The Thomas Crown Affair (Steve McQueen version), Wargames, Unbreakable, Day of the Dead, Hellboy and The Mummy to name but a few in the last couple of weeks. This week I see that The Descent, X2, The Blair Witch Project, Terminator 2 and 28 Days Later are on. We did watch a strange horror film from the 1970s last week called Incense For The Damned, a vampire tale very heavily edited at the start - so much that it was quite comical. Not a film I could recommend unless you have some time to kill.

My wife bought me a nice surprise last week: Guitar Hero III for the Wii. My daughter and I have been flexing our fingers and rocking out in the sitting room. It's a great game and the controller works fantastically well. The music is great too.

I finished reading Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell and now I'm reading the 4th in the Op Centre series (Acts of War), it's a very exciting read. I've also begun the first volume of the complete Judge Dredd comic strips. I always remember seeing a drawing of Judge Dredd on his motorcycle and thinking that his bike was really cool. It had spikes on the wheels and it was the first time I had ever seen that.

Team GB are doing well in the Olympics considering we are such a small nation. I've enjoyed watching the coverage on the TV.

Wall-E

We took the children to watch this film today at the cinema. It was my wife's idea. There was a short animated film at the beginning about a magician and his rabbit. My 5 year old son absolutely loved it, laughed his head off he did! That was great. The main attraction was Wall-E. I've been aware of the hype recently, everywhere I go or every advert I watch seems to have the robot depicted somewhere. I had only read one brief review of the film before watching it but I think my wife was more exposed to it than I. The story is about man filling Earth up with junk and blasting off into space for a massive exodus vacation while the Wall-E robots clean the Earth up and make it habitable once more. However, as time goes by the vacation turns out to be much, much longer - like 700 years! By then, everyone's bones have gotten smaller since they just sit around on hover chairs constantly watching their personal screens infront of their noses. They get their daily nutrition from big drink cartons that robots are only to happy to supply after the slightest request. Meanwhile, Wall-E has been on Earth keeping it clean as the sole robot of his type. He has made a home for himself and a cockroach. His world is changed when he falls in love with another robot dropped off on Earth to check for signs of vegetation capable of sustaining human life. This other robot is super-sophisticated compared to Wall-E but somehow they fall in love and have to save humanity from the comfort and sloth of life on board the big pleasure cruiser. I thought the best part of the film was the scale of the worlds created by the animators. The detail was incredible, always is with Pixar, but on such a scale it was fascinated viewing. Particularly the first half hour on Earth which was mainly just Wall-E without talking. To keep the audience engaged for such a length of time without any dialogue in the script, was truly a magnificent feat in itself. My wife had read a review talking about it being the best film ever made (or words to that effect). It's certainly not that, but I thought it was a very enjoyable film and one for both adults and children to enjoy.

Work, Work and More Work!

I haven't mentioned this before but since the end of Spring I've been doing two jobs: trying to keep my own job going as well as looking after some of my managers stuff while he works on a new big project. Stepping up into a managers shoes is probably good experience for me, career-wise. However, the financial rewards aren't that great and in terms of what takes my time these days, you could say that I'm losing out on leisure time big style. This is the main reason I've not been here very often this year. Its a sad fact I'm afraid. I will try to be here more often because the work-life balance has to be in place, right? Next week, I have some time off, so I will be looking forward to relaxing.

A few months ago, I was browsing in a book shop and I saw a book that I knew a friend of mine would enjoy. I wasn't sure if he had it already but I bought it anyway - it called out to me. I put it on a shelf at home and forgot about it. Before I had thought about it more than a couple of times, my friend's birthday was upon me and I took it into town to post to him, luckily I had some free time on that day. It turns out that my friend enjoyed the book, he hadn't got it already and so it all turned out well. I like it when things like that happen, I rarely see something I know for a fact someone will like and buy it in advance of their birthday. I should do more of this, it would save worrying about what to get for someone near to their birthday.

Here comes the rain again

It absolutely heaved it down with rain this morning, I could even hear thunder. It has stopped now and the sun has come out. I wonder what this afternoon has in store?

Forgot to mention that yesterday we had a shopping trip and spent far too much. I got a couple of Wii games for the kids stockings this Christmas and I picked up a bargain DVD of John Carpenter's The Thing, a film I've always enjoyed when its been on the TV but never owned.

Bad Habits

On the food front, I've started to slip with my healthier eating - one too many burgers and chocolate thingies. I hope I can stop myself before going any further down this road because if I don't stop I'll just put back all the weight I lost.

I had a good idea today but I've completely forgotten what it was! It was a business idea or something like that, I was thinking of just changing the business model for it and reaping the rewards financially. I've forgotten what IT was though! Typical!

The good news is that we finally managed to see someone about getting a better savings plan this weekend. She was good, our fear was that she would be just trying to sell more of a particular financial product to make up sales figures for the month but instead she actually went on the web and looked at competitors rates and told us honestly what she thought. She accepted that some of our money was best left with a competitor. I hope we get her again when we need advice. She was also good with the kids, who decided to go a bit loopy.

On Saturday we watched the annual Roald Dahl street procession. There were the usual great models - this year the theme was The Twits.

Glasto Nearly Upon Us

According to the Glastonbury Festival countdown clock right now as I type there are 11 hours and 1 minute until the festival gates open. I've never been to Glastonbury Festival but I do have some fond memories of some of the performances I've seen from the TV coverage. It's good that they cover it on TV nowadays, when I was younger it was never broadcast on TV - it might have been on the radio I suppose, but I never heard it if it was.

I did attend a festival for a few years running in the early/mid 90s. The music lineup was really good and I saw some great acts. But the downside was that I didn't have any friends to go with and so I felt a bit lonely on my own, as everyone else seemed to be enjoying themselves with friends and generally having a big party, staying up into the early hours, sleeping most of the day etc. I have some good photographs I took of the people and one day I'll have to scan them in and post them up here. I was afraid of being in my tent alone at night, having the stuff in my tent stolen and all sorts of violent thoughts go through your mind. But there are some really nice things too: the people are generally very friendly, you see lots of people with weird and wonderful tattoos and piercings, strange looking hairstyles and clothes - and you get to see some strange behaviours too - whether drug induced or not. I would recommend at least trying one music festival out during your lifetime.

I hope the weather stays dry for the people this year.

A Sunday in June

I've found this month a difficult one to blog. Quite a lot of things are happening this month, my daughter's birthday for one. She received an early present from her grandma. A new bicycle, it's bigger than her old favourite and its quite heavy. The saddle is as low as it can get and she can't reach the floor properly when she sits on it, her tiptoes do but not the whole of her feet. Yesterday, we found a great place to cycle: it's a track between two villages that used to be a railway line but is now a special track for cyclists. Some traces of the railway still exist, like the platforms but they are all grassed over and you can barely tell. It was a great place to try the new bike out. My daughter has fits of tears when she has to learn something new, she fell into a patch of stinging nettles and stung the side of her hand. I didn't think she would get back on the bike after that but she eventually did. Her next challenge was to push off and get herself going without me holding the saddle. After several miles and lots of tears and coaching she eventually did it and instantly brightened up. We went from despair to triumph and almost over-confidence instantly!

I was woken up with some excitement in the house on Sunday. I had completely forgotten it was Father's Day. The family congregated around me as I groggily woke up and found their expectant faces eager for me to wake up and seize the day. I didn't feel like seizing anything except more sleep but I tried to hide my tiredness. I was given some really nice gifts and it was a lovely surprise, I love my family. I couldn't go back to sleep but by the evening I was good for nothing, all that running after my daughter on her bicycle.

Oh Sunny Day

Unusually for England in June, the weather hasn't been so bad so far. Sunday and Monday were absolutely lovely. Let's hope it continues a bit longer than forecast (Thursday and on to the weekend doesn't look so good). This week I finally converted my Club Nintendo stars into something useful - points to spend in the Wii shop. We don't make a lot of use of the Wii's online potential: sometimes looking at news and the weather channels, sometimes playing strangers at Wii Chess, sometimes entering Mii competitions and judging other entrants and sometimes playing multiplayer races on Mariokart Wii. This week though, I used the stars I've earned through buying games and converted them into Wii Points Cards and have accumulated the 500 points needed to download the Internet Channel. This is a web browser on the Wii. So I can watch You Tube on my TV and read blogs and so on. There are also games sites that allow you to play free online Flash games on the Wii. I don't think I'll be writing much on the Internet Channel though because typing on the Wii is a bit like trying to type with one finger on a keyboard your not used to: painful.

Eurovision 2008 Result

Well, it's over. It will be held in Moscow next year because Russia won last night. It wasn't the best song in the competition and a lot will be said elsewhere about the predictability of the voting so I'm not going to harp on about it here. I judged along with my daughter and I found it quite difficult, the scoring sheet I downloaded had columns for song, performance, dance routine and outfit. The hardest thing for any judge is consistency and the need to identify and correct any bias in your own mind. After a few beers I must admit that my powers to judge accurately were seriously affected, as you can see from my top 5 below. The only way I can defend Spain finishing second is to say that after watching 21 other Eurovision songs prior to hearing it, my mind was mixed up. On reflection this morning, the Russian song isn't as bad as I remember.

In general, although I'm disappointed with the position of the UK entry - countries can't vote for themselves - at the end of the day I'm not that upset with the show. I realise that's naive to an extent but if the show rules were changed then it wouldn't be the spectacle that it is.

1. Greece
2. Spain
3. Norway
4. Ukraine
5. Turkey, Azerbaijan

 

The actual results were:

1. Russia
2. Ukraine
3. Greece
4. Armenia
5. Norway

 

My winner (Greece) (official video, not performance on the night):

Actual winner Russia (official video, not performance on the night):

 

My second place Spain (official video, not performance on the night):

 

Actual second place (official video, not performance on the night):

Eurovision tomorrow!

I'm looking forward to the competition tomorrow. I've spoken before about this subject:

• When the UK finalist was chosen for this year
• My top 3 songs from the 2007 competition
• The 2006 competition results
• My first mention of the competition on this blog back in 2005

So in true time honoured fashion this post is dedicated to Eurovision 2008. I can't wait to buy some comfort food and just veg out on the sofa. A great way to spend a Saturday evening on a Bank Holiday weekend.

Great Wall

The awful events in Burma and China have brought home to me how vulnerable we all are really. My wife and I were discussing The Great Wall of China just before the weekend. Her grandma walked it as a pensioner (apparently), I thought it was too long to walk but didn't know anything about it: except that it is the only man made structure visible from space - I had somehow lodged that fact in my brain. The Wall has always fascinated me, the beauty of it, the brutality of the work (over a million people died in its construction) and the pointlessness of it to an extent. I hope that relief gets to the people who need it and fast.

Maybe Not!

After Friday's triumphant declaration it appears that problems with the PC rose their ugly head again on Saturday. It's been 3 years since I put the system together and its been in constant use, even so, its not ancient. My wife was seriously annoyed by the lack of stability of it and we both decided we couldn't do without a properly working home computer, so we did something that I've never done before. We visited PC World! We firstly wrote down all of the applications we regularly use and some things that we like doing like photo editing and storage, music storage and playback, shopping online, watching video online and so on - the list goes on but its pretty standard family stuff we probably all do. So we took the list with us and spoke to a person. To clarify what I have never done before, I have bought other stuff at PC World, but this time I actually trusted someone else to tell us what to buy. I haven't the time to keep on top of all the processors and issues anymore, so I allowed myself to be guided by someone who hadn't long left school. He seemed intelligent enough and was willing to offer us deals so that we could take away a machine that day - I wanted to capture video from my camcorder and the machine he was recommending didn't have a firewire card, so he offered to install one along with replacing the graphics card with a more beefed-up one. We ended up buying a machine with a dual core quad processor thingymajig, which apparently usually is something you'd expect to find in a 1000 pound plus machine. We had a max limit of half that so we did well and we didn't need a monitor either, so saved a few pounds there. It was ready really quickly and we had it home in less than 2 hours, which was great because we had a good morning in town at the library and weren't rushing around to cram everything in - we strolled around PC World just after lunch. The other amusing thing was that my wife recognised the salesman as the brother of a boy she teaches.

It took me all night to move files and settings and stuff from the old PC to the new, its not as smooth a process as it could be and Windows has some limitations in the way it operates. We have now to get used to a new version of Windows (Vista), which isn't proving to be too hard thankfully.

The funny thing is, I working now on the machine that wasn't working yesterday! So far it is behaving itself today, which is quite annoying on one level and on another level I'm quite grateful because we needed files and stuff and will probably need to keep it going for a few months until we're sure everything is on the new one.

Mr Fixit Strikes Again

I'm known in the family as the computer expert. I can qualify this comment by saying that I'm not an expert, I just know a bit more than other members of the family. The latest episode has been related to a speed issue with our family workhorse computer. This computer is where I do my blogging, video capturing, iTunes storing etc. and my wife does her research and watches TV programmes on it and so on. You name it, this is our general main computer in the house for it. So it's switched on most of the time. We're not known for compulsive cleaning in our house, dusting is not something we do generally and neither is ironing. So anyway, we've been experiencing 24 hours of snail pace computing - literally it taking five minutes after clicking on something for the computer to do anything. It was showing less signs of life than a Zombie. We were even at the stage where we were preparing to buy another computer. Reasoning dictated to me a course of action whereupon I disconnected all cables and opened up the computer box. The hot weather we have been experiencing lately has exacerbated the problem. My thinking was based on a pop-up notification from a processor temperature monitor program that said something to the  effect that the processor was getting too hot and the fan speed was raised while reducing the throughput of work that the processor did. All this mumbo jumbo told me was that the brain in our PC was getting overheated. I cleaned out the box not so long ago, as I experienced similar problems when processing 60 minutes of video from our camcorder over a period of about 7 hours! To cut to the nub, I took the PC shell outside and used my wife's hairdryer on cold air setting to blow all the dust from the motherboard and the fans on the power supply and GPU and what I could reach of the CPU fan. Funnily enough that seems to have cured the problem and we can once more use our workhorse. Thank goodness because all of our links, email, documents, music, photos and video are on this machine and getting it all back on to a new computer would have been a nightmare. I know we should backup frequently but who does?

An Air Of Summer

Things are looking up for England on the weather front this week. We have had some really lovely hot sunshine for the past three days now and it is set to continue until Friday. Its so nice for the kids to go outside and play in the garden after school, rather than be stuck in the house watching TV. We don't make enough of our garden, never have really. So this year I'd like to get outside a little bit more. On the outdoors theme, I'm not your typical outdoors kind of man. This may sound like a contradiction considering my previous statement but my natural environment is indoors - usually infront of a computer or videogame. Well, we visited a garden centre on Sunday on the way back from Collectormania and in addition to buying some soil for pot plants, some plants and various bits and pieces, I bought myself a new garden strimmer. It's a 2-stroke petrol job that has a starter cord you pull. It has a great tickover rumble to it, a bit like a chainsaw in Doom or something, and it is really loud when you full throttle it. Infact, I didn't quite realise exactly HOW LOUD it was until this morning when I woke up and couldn't hear a damn thing in my right ear. Seriously, I was deafened by silence. I don't know if that's possible but there definitely felt like I had something over my ear all morning. Next time I use the strimmer, I will either have earplugs or ear defenders on.

Last thing for tonight, is a link to a website where you can watch people from all over the world enjoying games on their Wii.

Collectormania 2008

My wife has an autograph collection, she writes off for them occasionally and we some good ones. Today we visited The Centre at Milton Keynes to go and see Collectormania. I've written about this event before and always enjoy visiting it. There is a marketplace (see photos below) and there is a whole section devoted to stars and their fans who queue up dressed in long black leather coats and other such attire, I love it. As a family with young children its quite frustrating when all you really want to do is go and queue and have your photo taken with Linda Blair but you can't because when you have children queueing is the last thing in the world that they understand and want to do. So on one hand it's a little disappointing but on the other, I just love seeing so much STUFF devoted to the TV shows and films I love. Its great to be with so many other people who share a love of horror and SF. It makes me want to go and watch some films now, bye bye film fans!

Sunshine Saturday

My wife had mentioned that it would be nice to get away to the seaside over this Bank Holiday weekend (we get Monday off from work as a public holiday). Traditionally, lots of people do and my fear was of traffic jams in the rush to get away. This may have been pessimistic of me as the traffic is usually most dense on the Friday evening as everyone leaves work a little earlier to then begin their journeys for the weekend. It was still up in the air exactly what we were going to do on Saturday morning but since we're usually up at 6am (or rather the children and my wife are usually up, I have the good sense to stay in bed until at least 6.30) there was still time time to get ready and leave. The coast is just under 2 hours away, so its not so bad if the traffic is light. Well, as you can see from the pictures, the weather was very good. We decided to go to Brighton, it has a pebbly beach and a pier which has a funfair on it. We had a go at the penny shove machines, spent about 10 pounds in two pence pieces - those machines always win in the end but you think you're going to get lucky because all the coins bunch up and look like they're going to drop, if just one more were to push them. BUT they never do! After our supply of coins dried up we moved on. Luckily for us, this weekend is the Brighton Festival and there was a great procession of children and drums and models in the theme of children's games and toys. The toy photos below were shot with my phone and there is a cat from the game Cats Cradle but I must admit I'm not sure which game the dragon could be from, I did manage to guess a few others though like Monopoly and the May Pole.

Holding up the mirror

I've spoken many times about TV shows I like, one of these is called The Apprentice and I'm enjoying it very much again this season. It's what you'd call a reality TV show, it's very well edited and put together. I was just thinking and reflecting about my performance at work today. I sometimes get feedback but I don't get it all the time. And although I might be a harsher self-critic than my colleagues, it would be good to be able to see myself and make some adjustments as I go along to make sure I'm hitting the right note or chord with people. I guess this is a luxury only people on the TV have as they work.

My main point is we sometimes get too close (or too into) to a subject to be able to pull back and see the effect we have on others - or see the knowing glances and smiles between others that give away what they think (rather than what they don't say). Picking up on these clues is very difficult when you're in the thick of the action.

My natural inclination is to observe and interject when I feel I can contribute, which sometimes makes me invisible in a room full of large personalities. At school and even now, when I feel the need to speak up in a room full of people I feel a certain nervousness or rush of adrenalin that makes my heart beat faster: I sometimes end up saying something different to what I was thinking because in the distance between my brain and my mouth the logic behind my point gets muddled as the words come out and I can hear what I'm saying rather than hearing what I'm thinking. Does any of this make sense?

April Nearly Done

My blogging performance has dropped quite dramatically this month I see. That's not good. Today though, the gloom was lifted by the installation of a new shower in our house. We have put up with our old shower for 8 years and that is enough by anyone's standards. The new shower runs straight off the boiler so it has better temperature and water pressure (we'll know in the morning rush hour tomorrow!). So, yeah I'm looking forward to returning to showering rather than bathing, which I have been doing everyday for the best part of a year. It's better on the environment than bathing, I do like a good soak (but not everyday). We just have to tidy up a few tiles which were left bare after the old shower was removed.

On Saturday I bought the family a Wii Fit balance board. It's really a very nice and pleasant way to tune up the body. The Yoga section is my favourite and the balance games are good fun too - especially the hula hoop, which had me laughing out loud watching my 5 yr old son trying it.

The sun has been making appearances recently, I'm so glad I bought myself a pair of sunglasses when I got my glasses. Driving is much easier when your not squinting with the light.

Creativity

I came to the conclusion this morning that I need to bring some creativity into my life. Everyone needs a balance of things in their life: love, friendship, fruit and veg, laughter and play, exercise, sense of purpose and productivity and also creativity. We get some creativity by enjoying the creative efforts of others, through entertainment of various sorts, and some of us can enjoy being creative in lots of different ways: cooking, while we're at work (if its possible) and what we wear or things we buy. In my case, the creative need goes a little bit more basic - its a need to create something - whether a piece of writing or a drawing. I want to train myself to produce a drawing or some writing everyday. That feels like it will be very hard but I think it is something I have to find time to do.

Where has all the time gone?

Wow, it's almost mid-April. Can you believe that? I've been working like a dog recently and its not going to change for the foreseeable future. My wife has also been working hard, using this computer, working late into the night so time for blogging has been severely restricted. I guess also because I've just been working there hasn't really been anything to post about.

I have been listening to a lot of classical music on the radio though. It seems to calm me down a lot actually, I never thought about music as a calming force before. Perhaps there is something about listening to classical music that forces you to listen in a different way than you would to pop or rock for instance. I can't really describe what I mean just that I feel different listening to classical than I do when I listen to pop or rock. The biggest difference is that I sing along loudly to pop or rock but usually I just enjoy thinking about what kind of creature or world classical music conjures up. A nice piece of music I like hearing is The Lark Ascending by Vaughan Williams, you can imagine a bird dancing from branch to branch in the early morning when you hear that violin, give it a try and you'll see what I mean. If you hear Mars from the Planet Suite by Holst, I can imagine an invasion fleet of spacecraft led by Ming The Merciless from Flash Gordon.

I took the children up to my parents yesterday and returned today. Its nice to visit my folks and take the day off. I did look at my work email though and made a call. Its really difficult to switch off completely from work, I feel somehow obligated beyond the call of duty. The weather on the roads started off being lovely and sunny (I wore my sunglasses) but later in the journey the heavens opened and I've never known it to rain so hard and fast in so short an amount of time. My wipers on their fastest setting didn't clear the rain as quickly as it was coming down. Everyone on the motorway had to slow down, I'm just glad that they were sensible and did slow down, it would have been awful to have been involved in an accident in such dreadful weather.

Gnawing Hunger

I have some food under the grill as I type and I'm SOOO hungry, the smell is driving me wild. Chicken tikka kebabs, my own variety: pretty good but I realise I risk sounding conceited, have no fear I'm no great cook. I cook a tuna pasta bake for my kids that comes out of a jar, tastes nice though and they like it. I wish I was one of those people who can make something remarkable out of seemingly nothing - a potato, an onion, a bit of bacon and a few spices but I'm not.

Why does food take longer to cook when your hungry or your in a hurry. Have you ever made a decision to cook something before you had to go out and found that the cooking took longer than you expected? I've done this a few times, annoying isn't it? You eventually turn the gas or electric off and serve it up only to realise you have left approximately a minute and a half to eat it. I'm a fast eater but I would prefer just a few extra minutes to ENJOY the food I just bothered to cook.

With some foods, like chicken, you have to be sure it is cooked. I like my chicken, actually all the meat I eat, to be well-cooked and I'm not talking about black just that I like it to have a good appetising colour. I fry chicken with cashew nuts, terriyaki sauce and a little drizzle of honey and I like to boil off the sauce so it leaves the chicken a rich golden brown colour. I dislike bland white chicken, it has no colour.

Right, now I'm REALLY hungry I just better stop myself here and attend to the grill - what's worse: hovering by the grill or writing about food? I've got to know, talk to you laters x

Giant Insects

What if? The human race might have had its time. There is worldwide panic over an insect as large as a house that attacked humans along the coast of Western Australia. 300 humans were killed by the bug that's been branded SuperBug. Experts are mystified about the predator but are warning that it might be a new species that has evolved and that it might not be the last we see or hear of this kind of attack. Some experts are arguing that if these super-sized insects breed as fast as other insects the entire world population of humans could be at risk. Military personnel on scene are trying to pinpoint the location of the SuperBug that appeared in Australia. People in the affected area have been warned to stay in their houses with their windows closed. Eye witness reports tell horrifying stories of people being sucked out of their cars and off the street by a pointed tube-like structure coming from the insect's mouth. One man said the insect came out of nowhere and attacked a group of children, seriously injuring three and leaving three in intensive care. Two more children are feared missing, unconfirmed reports say that they were in the area at the time. The world's entomological experts are in talks with military leaders at the UN Headquarters, we'll bring you more on this story as it comes in.

People of Substance

Do you think writers and artists either know or have some inkling that their body of work will survive after their death? On one level its a no brainer: of course a book or painting is not alive so it doesn't die when its creator dies but does it allow the creator to live on in other people? I mean, take Shakespeare or an artist like Monet: their work inspires new people in different generations to create art that draws upon the influence of their original work and so allow the originators to live on in an ethereal sense. Whatever it is that makes an artist or a writer (not necessarily just fiction) survive through generations must be some kind of substance, something substantial about them and their work. I think about this in the context of everyday life, these people must have led ordinary lives - had to complete daily functional tasks we all do like getting washed and dressed, shopping for food, eating etc. and yet they managed to surpass the ordinary somehow to produce great works (even if not recognised as such at the time). I worry sometimes about how I spend my time. I listen to the radio, watch the TV, read magazines, play videogames, plus all the necessary stuff as well as be a father, son and husband and frankly there is precious little time to create anything of substance. When I was in my youth I had lots of time to write - too much time and very little life experience. At times I was deeply lonely and unhappy but writing was something that I could always enjoy. My dilemma, if you want to call it that, is that I want to write but I have so little time to myself and there is so much entertainment out there to consume. I struggle with creative expression vs entertainment consumption.

Do you think that there are blogs that exist created by people who are now dead? I think there must be some out there. Some by people whose death was unexpected, some by people who knew they were dying. I just had a thought for the gap in the search engine market - a directory of blogs by dead people.

I wonder if anyone in the future will be remembered by their blog? Could a blog inspire other people creatively in the way a novel or a poem could? I don't see why not but I don't feel the Internet has any sense of permanence about it - we link to a lot of hosting sites and who knows how the Internet will change in future. Our content could get dissipated and deleted without warning at any time. The Internet will cease to exist as we know it now and it will become something else, I feel certain about this, the net at the moment is an embryo and I don't know what the adult will be.

Easter weekend

IEaster went by really quickly, the sleet and snow was a bit of a disappointment and stopped us going further afield on Sunday and Monday. But on Saturday, three of our families went into London to see the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra play a concert for families at the Royal Albert Hall. This was the programme:

Rossini - William Tell Overture: Galop

Prokofiev - March of the Capulets from Romeo and Juliet

Elfman arr. Bankey - The Simpsons Main Theme

Tchaikovsky - Trepak from The Nutcracker

Khachaturian - Sabre Dance

Wagner - Ride of the Valkyries from Die Walkure

Williams - Hedwig's Theme from Harry Potter

Williams - Superman Main Theme

It sounded like a CD, the performance was perfect. We sat one row back from the front in the stalls and although we didn't have a view of the whole orchestra like a balcony seat would have given us, it was nice to see the faces of the musicians at the front as they played. We would not have been able to see their faces so clearly from another seat. It was just the right length for the children too and the choice of music was great: I have a new appreciation of The Simpsons theme - it was a really complicated piece of music.

Last time I posted I mentioned my new spectacles, well here is the photo of me wearing them at last.

Easter weekend

At last, some time off from work and family time beckons. It's been a very busy time for me at work and I have need of a good rest.

I don't have very much to say, just that I hope everyone has a great weekend this Easter.

Weather and other stuff

It's been stormy for the last few days here in the UK. Not snowing but its very cold, windy and has been raining. Severe weather warnings have been posted threatening of stormy winds and flooding. It's all a bit depressing really - and I have a sore throat.

I have some new spectacles, one of the chains was advertising 2 for 1 on designer frames and as I needed my eyes tested anyway I took advantage. The optician was very nice but my prescription hadn't changed enough to need new spectacles. However, I decided I needed a new pair of frames and went ahead anyway; I got a nice pair of spectacles for wearing "out" and a pair of sunglasses for the summer (well, for anytime really: except night!). I just need to find occasions to wear my smart new FCUK designer frames!

I'm staying late for work today, which means an overnighter in a hotel. I don't like to be separated from my family even just for 1 night. Oh well, I checked the travel times and can't get back in time so I'll just have to make it up to them by giving them more love when I get back.

I do have some days off in the remainder of this month, I think I'll do some exploring in London on Friday - that's something to look forward to and will take my mind off being away!

Britain's Eurovision Song Entry

Well, the die has been cast now - on Saturday evening the public voted for the British Eurovision song entry for 2008. It was a choice of two songs:

• Woo Hoo Yeah (You Make Me) by Michelle Gayle (I'm not sure if this is the correct title but you get the idea)
• Even If by Andy Abraham

 

Last year's entry was chosen entirely by the public and it was bad, even by Eurovision standards. This year they did things slightly differently and had some studio judges choosing the shortlist of 2 for the public vote out of a total of 4 acts. Well, it was only ever a choice of 2 wasn't it? Love Shy and The Revelations had catchy enough tunes but performance-wise it helps, I think, if you can actually sing!

So we have Andy Abraham representing Britain. He's got a great voice and is a lovely man I'm sure. He's clearly the most able vocalist out of the bunch and he wrote the song himself. I hope he wins it - he deserves the success. I preferred the song out of all of them and I don't have any reservations about packing him off to Serbia or wherever the competition is this year. However, I must confess to a strong feeling I have that none of the shortlisted songs I heard this week are competition winners: we just don't make 'em like we used to.

Alexander Graham Bell

I see from the Google logo today that it is the anniversary of Alexander Graham Bell's birthday. Well, here's a short video in his honour by one of the best Glam Rock bands of the 1970s, The Sweet.

 

Alexander Graham Bell also invented the metal detector and had his finger in the pies of hydrofoils and aeronautics - see here for a more knowledgeable account of his life.

The Wii

I don't think I mentioned in this blog that we bought our kids a Wii at Christmas. We were lucky to get one I know. Having lived with it for a couple of months and having played it regularly but not fanatically (at least once a week) I thought I'd give you a few of my impressions as a game enthusiast but also as a father. One of the first things we did was play Wii Sports, this package actually comes with the Wii when you buy it and it's a lot of fun - especially the bowling game for young children. My 7 year old likes to play tennis with me and I've enjoyed the golf game a bit on my own. We don't play the boxing game very much though, that is the least liked one. The Mii creation aspect of the Wii is what my kids love - you create these living kind of avatars called Miis. Once your done you can save them and see them walking about on their own in the Mii Plaza where you can also pick them up and organise them according to your needs. There is a channel called the Mii Contest Channel where you can judge Miis that people have created according to a theme and you can make and submit your own Miis for others to judge. You then get to see where your creation ranked and how well it fit the theme. It's a very simple but elegant type of play. Take a look at the video at the kinds of variety you can discover in Miis.

 

My recommendation for expanding your Wii game library would be Super Mario Galaxy, here's a clip of the exciting gameplay: its one of those games that my kids enjoy watching as much as playing (which is very fortunate Mwhaha!)

Take the Work out of you work-day

Have a good Friday and be glad the weekend is almost here.

 

Night of the Living Dead

I don't think I've sat through all of this film before. It's always called a horror classic. I've seen lots of "zombie" films and they all unnerve me in some ways. However, with so many references to zombies in TV adverts, music videos, videogames and the like, my emotions are a bit dulled. However, I can still partially see through my preconceptions enough to understand that this film didn't explain the flesh eating living dead as zombies and at the time the film was made the idea was probably new and groundbreaking. A failed satellite probe from Venus has spread a new and powerful type of radiation that causes the recently deceased to get up and start craving for living flesh. There is no more real explanation in the film but the TV and radio footage shown is believable because even the authorities are unable to explain the phenomenon. Even when you hope events are over at the end of the film there is a shock, a bleak end to what is even now in today's world a bleak film. I don't care to analyse the film anymore and I'm sure others have put many interpretations on it. But the timing is perfect, the pace is wonderful and the acting is superb. How much better it would have been if it were shot in colour I can't say, maybe the black and white even adds to the films power. It's a horror classic and deserves a place high on the all time best list.

Run Fat Boy Run

I rented this DVD last week and enjoyed it. David Schwimmer directed it and did a good job at keeping the pacing right - it never feels laboured or slow and there are a good number of laughs evenly spaced throughout. Simon Pegg is his usual lovely self as the anti-romantic romantic lead and the whole cast was brilliantly recruited - each adding a little something of their own special quality to their parts. The story might not appeal if you were to read a synopsis and as a story you could read many levels of interpretation into it but the light-hearted interpretation the cast and director want you to understand shines through pulling this film up into the good category. Worthy of a watch if you feel like a light film that will make you chuckle.

Monday Grumps

I took the selfish and greedy decision to take Friday off last week and was even more selfish and hateful because I haven't looked at my work email for three days. Yet last night I was thinking so much about work that I couldn't get to sleep until after 2am. Now I'm tired and the only good thing so far is that it is sunny and bright this morning. It's horrible feeling guilty just because I had a day off.

Downstairs Analysis

During my ablutions this morning (I usually think a lot during my ablutions), I considered how nice it must be for those celebrities who can afford for a professional to individually advise them on their exercise/dietary/lifestyle plan. Imagine even going to the lengths of having a team of scientists evaluate the log I dropped this morning (sorry to be vulgar for just a sec there) and analyse it for weight, colour and dietary fibre. I've known about colonic irrigation for a few years ever since seeing a programme with various celebrities trying it out, Ian Wright (ex-footballer) I think was one of them. I don't know if this is true but apparently its possible to detect traces of beef that were eaten as a child - this hasn't put me off eating beef however I do eat a lot lot less beef these days. Anyway back to the point, how nice it must be as a celebrity to be able to pay someone to take an interest in ones rear and it's output.

**

While on the subject of downstairs, yesterday I went to the Marks and Spencer emporium to buy some new underwear. There was myself and two old men circling the underwear racks and I felt that I needed a change. So my hand was guided by an unseen force into a choice I wouldn't normally have made. I ended up buying what could be considered as a pack of male thongs or jockstraps - well sort of a pouch at the front supported by a belt of thick elastic but rather than just straps at the back there is a proper back to them - so really they are a combination of jockstrap and brief I suppose. I usually buy close fitting boxers so I'm not sure how I'll get on with these but a change is as good as a rest as they say (as long as there is no chaffing involved!). They were buy one pack, get one half price but I wasn't confident enough in my choice to get a second box. We'll see if I live to regret that choice. I might be a convert: underwear is a very personal and individual thing, only one thing is certain: it's important enough not to ignore it, so throw out underwear that's too old and any that might have holes through wearing out. Consider the style element of underwear but don't go overboard. I think I just had a Trinny and Susannah moment!

The Brits 2008

I watched The Brits 2008 with increasing disappointment on Wednesday night this week. I had been looking forward to settling down infront of the tele to watch it all day (for some reason - in previous years I've generally done my best to avoid it). There is usually a bit of excitement as to what's going to be the moment to remember at these such awards. This year for me it was Sharon Osbourne slagging off of Vic Reeves (a TV personality known for being a bit surreal and some hilarious moments in a TV quiz show called Shooting Stars: there is a blog post on why I like Vic Reeves somewhere in my head yet to be written) for being drunk. Only Vic knows if he was drunk or not (he denied it, saying it was the auto-cue going wrong) but Sharon was not very well behaved towards him - it seemed like she took it as a personal affront and how dare he turn up tipsy. The whole Osbourne family were presenting the awards and they did a reasonable job apart from that particular slip. Amy Winehouse sang well, but she can sing. Paul McCartney's set was disappointing for his lifetime achievement award and just generally I felt the whole evening was a bit of a let down. Certainly not something to look forward to next year.

The Nanny (1965)

I watched another of the films in my Hammer Horror films box collection on Saturday night. It was a film from 1965 called The Nanny. There is something terrifying about stern old ladies. I don't know quite what it is. Perhaps its that I expect old ladies to be kind hearted and good spirited. And at first in this film you start to associate the stern facade of Bette Davis' nanny with a strict and proper authoritarian. During the film you come to think of the family she lives with as completely dysfunctional but towards the end a different thread emerges. I think its riveting stuff. The film has a few twists without any great surprises. The acting between Bette Davis and William Dix (who plays 10 year old Joey) is a large part of what makes this film so great. The film leaves you feeling disturbed rather than terrified. That's just about right for the period in which this film was made. The black and white also adds something to the film, not that you can tell by this image I found.

Simple Food Restaurant

Sometimes when I'm in the kitchen and have gone in there to make a quick tasty snack I think to myself how easy it would be to open a cafe that only had simple food on the menu. Lets take baked beans on toast as an example: there must be loads of slightly different ways of preparing this, one of my favourites is to take some nice thick sliced (white) bread, toast one half and turn it over, lay a thin layer of sliced ham on the untoasted side followed by a layer of Heinz baked beans in tomato sauce and on top grate some cheese and pop under the grill. Lovely. You can do the same with Heinz spaghetti. Very quick, dirt cheap and simple. Great with coffee or tea. Actually as I write this post I'm reminded of the time I shared a house as a student and how invaluable a Breville sandwich toaster was. I used to love toasted sandwiches, cheese and tomato, ham and cheese, baked beans, chilli con carne, toasted sandwiches are so versatile! The only downside was that the toaster was a pain in the arse to clean, in the end we didn't bother and I think I threw it away when the course ended rather than clean the bloody thing. I did love my toasties though, I miss having a toasted sandwich occasionally.

Happy 50th, Lego

It's Lego's 50th birthday and here are some interesting facts about the little wonder brick:

• On January 28, 1958, Godtfred Kirk Christiansen submitted a patent for the interlocking and studded plastic brick
• The name Lego comes from the first two letters of the Danish words "Leg godt" or "play well" in English
• The company's iconic toy allows an infinite number of assembly combinations. With just two bricks there are 24 different combinations, and with six there are 915 million possibilities
• A half-century after its creation, more than 400 million children and adults play each year with the bricks, spending five billion hours a year putting them together and pulling them apart
• The bricks made today can still interlock with those made in the first batch in 1958
• South Korean adventurer Heo Young-Ho, who climbed Mount Everest in 1987, left a Lego toy behind in the snow after his ascent
• Lego was named "Toy of the Century" in 1999 by US business magazine Fortune
• Seven boxes of Lego are sold every second around the world
• 19 billion components are produced each year -- enough to wrap around the Earth's circumference five times

Lego was one of my favourite toys as a child, I used to spend hours and hours playing with it. I inherited a box of Lego bricks and over time I was bought some Lego of my own. Although I received other building blocks of various types, it was always Lego that did it for me. My kids play Lego too, although they have the Bionicle sets as well as the straightforward blocks. However, they probably play more with the simple blocks than the Bionicle sort.  [News source for the facts above]

One of those weeks

It's been a busy 7 days. I've a busy week next week too. Finding time for my leisure activity has been an issue lately. However, I'm here and I've had some wine and I'm ready. Ready for what? I ate some Oatibix today, a new(ish) breakfast cereal that comes in sachets you add milk to and microwave. I have to say that, although slightly sceptical at first, I actually enjoyed it and appreciated the warmth in my stomach and I also appreciated not feeling too hungry before having lunch. Isn't that just the worst part of being at work - when you get the mid-morning munchies so bad that you feel like you have to either eat or be sick. Life is so much better when you have the opportunity to snack mid morning. I've worked in some places with no canteen or snack shops that you can sneak off to, what dives! I did work somewhere once that had a Bun Wagon, a motorised cafe that opened for business anywhere and provided hot tea, cakes and even bacon sandwiches. The latest anti-obesity drive seems to have demonised bacon, which is a shame since it is probably my favourite meat. I also really like sausages, especially sausage rolls - another foodstuff that has been demonised. I did buy a sausage roll this week though. I'm so bad when I'm on the road! That's the trouble with combining diets with work - you have to have food to give you the fuel to carry on. What's the answer? Come on you new age chefs, tell us how we can eat healthy and have jobs where you travel so much!

Habits

It seems to me that habits have a way of slowly forming. Sometimes I don't even realise that something is a habit until I stop and think about it. Habits can occur when you are in a certain place or at a particular time of the day. Maybe a habit is related to mood or maybe even to circumstances outside of your control. Habits can include things like the food you buy and cook, where you put your keys when you get home, what type of subject matter you read, what you usually drink, where you put your shoes, the route you take to work and which hand you open a door with. If you subtracted from an average day the number of hours spent doing things habitually, roughly how much time would be left? Is that the time you actually get things done and make a difference with? That would be a good question for an employer to ask its employees.

We like habits in general, they are comfortable and familiar and we are usually in control of the situation. Stepping outside of that comfort zone takes courage and energy. It extends us in ways we don't perhaps understand at the time. Habits can be bad, there are obvious ones like smoking or drinking to excess and less obvious ones (to other people) that we are more inclined not to admit to, like buying shoes or clothes too often. Some habits are foisted upon us not through direct choice but by our own preference - like taking a route through a building to avoid a particular person.

Habits are interesting things aren't they? And I didn't have a clue what I would write about when I started this.

The Reading Box

Here's a fictional account of an idea I had this morning while slowly waking up and becoming aware of the morning. I love books, they surround me at home and I like dipping into my reading all the time. I wish I had the time to read more. There is something physical about turning the pages of a book and holding it while you read that I don't think will ever be captured by technology. I've used a few handheld electronic ebook readers and you just don't get the same feeling.

The Reading Box project began as a concept in 2008. The chain opened with one store inside the London North circular road on a trading estate. The large boxlike purple structure attracted attention through its use of bright neon lettering, strong vibrant colour scheme and homely interior spaces. Multi-functional, flexible spaces allowed for white-walled business use as meeting spaces during the day that were converted into softly lit colourful and homely interior spaces in the evenings. Poetry readings, book clubs for an assortment of tastes, fresh coffee on tap, easy internet access, alignment to its own social networking site brought adults together to physically meet in a safe environment. One of the secrets of its success was the alignment of social and commercial use. Reading groups used the bookshop, the staff were knowledgeable on books - being librarians or bookstore workers themselves. Some linked the growth of The Reading Box chain to the increase in printed book sales and in particular print on demand books. Other commentators cite the low entrance fees, library-like atmosphere and the generous "try before you buy" ethos. A person could use the website to discuss authors and arrange groups to meet face-to-face for ongoing discussion while reading the book at the same time. The introduction of author readings added to the appeal. Authors would hold cosy reading sessions for small groups of 15 people gathered around on sofas, beanbags and the floor. Authors preferred the reading sessions to cold, impersonal bookstore signings. Slogans like "The world will be a better place if we all just sit down and read together", "The Reading Box: the space to think", the self-mocking "The Reading Box: Join Us", "Think out of the Box", "The Reading Box: Books. People. Comfort" and designer T shirts created a mini craze for The Reading Box merchandise and some argue merchandise brought more revenue than the nominal entrance fees. Some commentators have criticised The Reading Box for its temple-like rule about leaving shoes in boxes by the door calling it "a soft play area for grown-ups". Others argue that leaving ones shoes by the door is disarming and makes for a friendlier atmosphere. The success of The Reading Box continues now into 2011 despite minor criticisms and the current trend away from doing everything online to a more hybrid approach fits well with the company ethos and the new counter culture where once it was cool to market yourself on the web now it seems cool not to have a web presence at all.

Do I want new glasses?

I got my hair cut in between Christmas and New Year. I forgot about it but several people commented on it today as soon as they saw me, saying it was nice and it sort of threw my concentration for a few seconds. I have lost a couple of stones in weight because of the diet and I feel good for it. I'd like to try getting some new glasses but I find the process of choosing them quite difficult, I don't know whether my prescription has changed - last two times I've had my eyes tested I've found that my short sightedness has actually improved so I've had to have less powerful prescriptions. I'm told that this happens getting older, which I'm less thrilled about. So if I did get new glasses I'm not really sure what sort to get, maybe I should create a "mood board" for the kind of image I want? A mood board apparently is a poster or board with photos cut from lifestyle magazines - usually used for representing what you like in terms of design, style and taste of anything from cars to household furnishings. I'm not sure what would be on my mood board for face furniture, though obviously I'd want to project an image like a studious Keanu Reeves!

Friday lunch

Just having my lunchbreak so I thought I'd blog at the same time.

I watched Sunshine last night, directed by Danny Boyle who directed Trainspotting and 28 Days Later. It was good, if you like suspense and sci-fi you'll probably like it. The DVD skipped a little at the climax, so I might have missed a few important seconds (rather annoyingly) but even so I enjoyed the experience of watching it.

Over the weekend I hope to play some videogames, I'm working my way slowly through the terrorists on Rainbow Six Las Vegas on Xbox360 and I'd like play some of the new Mario game on the Wii. I'll also probably watch a few Hammer films from the box set and Pirates and possibly Die Hard 4.0.

My guitar class starts again on Monday evening, I've moved into the Improvers class so that will be harder and I'll need to do some practicing for that.

I also started my novel this week and need to work on that too. So a full weekend in prospect! I hope you have a great weekend too!!

Movie Time

We have rented some titles to watch:

• 300
• Sunshine
• Hairspray
• Pirates of the Carribean At World's End
• Die Hard 4.0

I watched 300 last night, it was OK but not as good as I thought it would be. I didn't really know what to expect. I did enjoy it, don't get me wrong but I think it was pretty well hyped to be more than it actually was.

My wife reports that John Travolta played a good part in Hairspray, I don't know as I didn't watch it. It didn't appeal to me but I might have enjoyed it had I been in the mood.

I'm looking forward to watching Sunshine this evening. I saw 28 Days Later and I think it's the same director, name escapes me for the moment.

Also, we got a bargain yesterday: 21 disk boxset of Hammer Horror films for 40 instead of 150 pounds. There were a few vampire films with Christopher Lee and a few Peter Cushing films too. I can't wait, I love those old horror films. I'd love to get the Amicus collection on DVD too. Haven't seen that cheap enough yet though.

I'm probably not going to enjoy the pirates film and I have my doubts about Die Hard 4.0. I liked the previous Die Hard films, I bought the boxset but I'm just not sure a fourth is necessary. Oh well, only one way to find out...