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.