just two months

Meant to post this Friday, but I forgot:

So I appear to have only managed two months of (fairly) constant blogging, before going silent again.

Unfortunately, not blogging seems to have a bit of a momentum to it.  That's why I often try to pre-write entries, so that if I don't have the time / can't be arsed to do a blog on a day I have something to fall back on.

However, as my last post attests I got pretty busy with work for a while.  That actually ended a while back, but unfortunately then I was into the post-overwork phase where I just can't be arsed to do stuff.

I'm actually on holiday three days of next week, so I'm guessing normal service won't resume until April.  I'll try and use some of the time I have to write a few blog posts.  I've certainly got a lot to post about; it's just finding the time and summoning the energy to do it that's the problem, as always.

why the fuck do i still work here?

See, this is part of why I gave up blogging: it just becomes the same thing over and over again.

I hate working here.

It's so fucking frustrating.

I even stayed very late last night and came in early to get some of the stuff done, yet one of the bosses seems determined to a) fuck it up & b) piss me off.

Deep breaths are the order of the day... and we're supposed to go to the pub this lunchtime to celebrate two people at work's birthdays.  I think I'd rather stick a needle in my leg.

What makes it worse is this whole thing is an utter waste of time.  We cannot possibly make money on it, yet we're throwing effort at it like it's the answer to all our problems.

Fucking idiocy.

Anyway, the A31 was flooded this morning, which was quite a shocking experience.  The time I was driving through it it was quiet in terms of traffic, but it also meant it was proper dark.  That meant it came up on me completely unawares as I couldn't see it, but also, because there weren't many other cars, I didn't get clued in that it was bad.  On the upside it also meant when I swerved into the middle of the two lanes to avoid it (it's a dual carriageway) there was no-one else in the way.

happy new year... i guess

I'm finally back to work.

Big inhale... huge sigh.

I think I lulled myself into a bit of a false perception over the holiday period, which is to say the crappy bits seemed to dull and become less "urgent".  Of course as soon as I got back it all swam back into focus, which is to say that there's basically nothing but crappy bits.

This is partly why I stopped blogging towards the end of last year - I'm a bit stuck for anything to really say apart from how I'm really not enjoying work, and that's such a big part of any given day/week/month, it doesn't leave me with a lot else to talk about.  I was also getting a bit fatigued, so the idea of writing anything became a bit of a chore.

Actually, there was one specific thing with the work blog posts that gave me a bit of a scare (shock might be a better word) and was probably the main catalyst for stopping.  I posted a blog entry that let a few of the "cat's" out of the "bags" - in other words I gave a few specific details about things that previously I had only really skirted around or touched on.

You could possibly have worked some stuff out and certainly got the general feel from what I said, but this post was quite specific.  Now usually my posts get around 5-10 hits.  I take this to be one or two people who read the odd post or click on it via a google search and the rest to be bots crawling the blog for indexing.

I've had a couple of posts that got significant numbers of hits (there's one I've actually blogged about to do with BMI that's obviously ranked highly in a particular search as it has hundreds of hits), but this one posts had well over 100 hits in the space of two days.  This worried and puzzled me so much that I moved it into drafts - particularly as I can't see what about it might have caused it to get so many hits, but the content is a bit sensitive.  If/when I move on from here I'll take it back into normal circulation, but it was also a big part of why I cooled off with blogging.

Note, I'm not sure I'm going to start properly again, but I figured I should at least post a "happy new year" type post.

a month ago

So it's been a month since I last posted on the log.

Exactly a month, in fact - my pre-holiday post was on the 4th of October and today is the 4th of November.

The reasons for the long delay in posting are somewhat complicated.  The main issue was that I had planned to spend some time over my holiday writing some blog posts and that didn't happen.  I'd also particularly planned to write a bunch of the back-log of films reviews I've build up and was going to fill the weeks after the holiday with many of these.  Obviously this didn't happen either.

The reason this didn't happen was because the holiday was a lot messier than I'd intended.

Firstly, my plan wasn't a good one. My landlord needed the time I was away to install a new shower (not the actual shower, but the unit around it), so I couldn't be home at all.  However, I also couldn't stay with my dad for that entire period.

I therefore decided (badly, it turned out) to spend the Saturday night at a Travelodge, then go to my Dad's on Sunday, then stay at another Travelodge from Wednesday to the following Saturday, when I'd return home.  The following Monday was a recovery day.

However, this didn't work at all well - the Saturday at the Travelodge was okay, but it wasn't a "productive" thing to do - I spent a lot of time farting about and couldn't see the time productively.  The time at my dad's was okay, but then I had to change plan.

Basically, rather late before the holiday I was asked to attend an interview (I'm still job hunting).  I said I could do the Thursday, so it was booked in, but the place was in Essex.  Now that would be far away even if I was at home, but obviously I wasn't - I was in Devon, so it was a huge drive.

Having already booked the Travelodge for Wednesday to Saturday and gone with the "non-cancel" option to save money, I then had to also book a Travelodge near the interview.  That meant I ended up spending one night and a morning at one place, then driving all day, getting lost (the town had two exits off the main road, and I took the first where I should have taken the second), going to bed very late, not sleeping well, getting up very early (I wanted the interview in the afternoon, but they then had to change it last minute), going to the interview, then spending all day driving back to Devon again!

In other words, I spend half my holiday driving places, killing time while I waited for things or recovering.  So all my grand plans basically gone knackered.  Here's the things I was going to do and the progress I made:

•    Write some blog posts - didn't do any.
•    Write some film review blog posts - didn't do any.
•    Watch some stuff on crunchyroll - didn't watch any.
•    Watch some fansubs - watched some, but my plan was to clear out the past years shows, and I only watched about a quarter of them.
•    Lots of walking - there were only two days where I went for a walk.
•    Clear backlog of e-mails - didn't read any.

Of course I also spent a fortune in petrol and a room booking which was relatively late so was more expensive, as well as having to buy food at services, which is always more expensive.  None of which I could claim back, as I was told (I'm not 100% sure I believe the agent - more on that later) the company wouldn't refund travel expenses.

And of course I didn't get the job - more on that later as well.

The other factor in my not blogging is that I returned to a shit-load of work: I actually worked a bit of one of the weekends.

As "holidays" go, it's been pretty non-fun.

a month away

I’ve obviously not been blogging for the month of August.

This wasn’t deliberate.  Well, it became deliberate, but it didn’t start that way.  It started as just the usual lack of blogging, but then some stuff happened that meant I haven’t really been having much fun, so writing a blog didn’t really seem like something I wanted to do.

I’m feeling pretty miserable, actually.  I definitely wouldn’t go so far or as dramatic) to say I was depressed, but I would rate my mood just recently as being below average and I’m one of life’s less cheery people, so you can see I’ve not been happy.

I’ll make some posts in the future about some of the stuff that’s been happening.  These won’t be immediate, and I’m not sure this blog will be particularly regularly updated for a while, but I’m definitely going to do my best not to be totally silent for a whole month again.

I thought though for this return post I’d mention something a little bit positive.

I’ve been struggling with the diet/weight for quite a while now.  I’d basically reached a point where my weight has stabilised, but it was some way above where I wanted it to be.

Now part of the problem was that I‘ve been eating bad things - high calories, stuff. However, it wasn’t like it used to be and I was a bit puzzled how my weight wasn’t really changing either way.

However, I've now figured out that exercise is also a big part of the problem.  It’s not that I’ve stopped doing my walking - indeed, I’ve been doing the same amount that I’d built up to before.  And that is the problem.  I think my body/metabolism has built up to cope with this level of exercise.

It’s difficult to explain, but basically the last couple of weeks I’ve been testing out doing more exercise and it’s led to some more significant reductions, despite still doing badly with sticking to the diet.  So the key is for me to increase the exercise.  It’s going to be difficult as it means more time spent doing it, but I’m some way below the recommended 10,000 steps per day so it’s not like I’m going nuts.

why you no bloggy?

So I didn't really explain yesterday why I have been so long without blogging.

The basic reason was a bunch of things... :)

So first off I've been somewhat busy at work.  I mean, I'm not mega busy; I get bits of time where I'm not maxed.  However, I've been tending to use that time to sneakily watch anime on crunchyroll.

I did blog about how I'd watched a few of this season's shows and I've done some of that in the quieter bits at work.  Well they're not paying me very well, so there you go.

I have also watched some of this crunchyroll anime at home, so that's obviously eaten up some time I would usually use for writing the blogs.  However I've also been watching quite a lot of anime on Blu Ray and that takes up a whole lot more time.

And I mean a lot of time - I've watched several whole series (half and full seasons) and a half-season is about 4 hours or so.  The harsh reality is I've had to watch these shows because I needed the money from selling them on e-bay.  Previously I'd "gotten away" with this by ripping them, but I have no means of ripping Blu Ray.  Also while I do have some DVDs I could theoretically do this for Blu Ray you can get a bit more for and the DVDs I have left are ones I suspect I will want to add to my "permanent keepers" pile.

I've also been trying to keep up with the TV, rather than let it slide while I watched all this anime.  My PVR is still very full, but I've been actively keeping it below 60% by watching stuff at the weekends.

And then of course there's the fact I've been playing SimCity quite a bit.

The final big issue was this - http://www.animepaper.net/ .  In case the link doesn't work or dies, one of the sites I frequented posted up a message that, well, I'm not 100% sure quite what it meant.  It seems to be saying that the site is being put on hiatus, but could mean it's going to be switched off.

I won't go into the detail, but basically I had a lot of stuff I wanted to download from it, but if it was going to close that meant I had to do it sooner, rather than later.  I must have spent about 4 whole evenings and 1 weekend sorting through what I could actually download and then downloading it - I still ended up with about 60 images I couldn't get.

I mean, hopefully it's temporary and it will come back in some form, but if not I had to act.

So in summary the main issue has mainly been that I've spent my spare time doing other things, rather than writing blog posts.

There was also a bit of a side issue - Ian Banks died and I'm afraid this made me a bit depressed so I therefore wasn't really in the mood to blog for some of it either.

week of whinging (or not)

So I've basically not blogged in about 3 weeks.

There are a number of reasons for this and I thought I'd come back with a week of whinging about some or all of these, but I'd also thought I'd write them over the weekend and I didn't do that.  Instead I basically spent all weekend playing SimCity, so I'm not sure I'm quite going to be doing the whinge week.

I discovered some people on YouTube who have been posting some hints and tips that are actually helpful and I've started to understand the mechanics of the game a bit better.  This means it's much more playable, but it also starts to make me think that it's misnamed.  It doesn't simulate any sort of city I've ever seen.

I'll give you a very basic example - education and jobs.  So you can place a grade school when the game starts and later unlock a high school.  Now the names are obviously American, but given those names would you not expect that a grade school educates your Sims to one level and then a high school to another.  And the grade school is for young Sims and the high school for older Sims.  There's also a university and a community college - these must be for even older / working age Sims, right?

That's not how it works.

The grade school and high school are identical in their function - they take in uneducated "kid" agents and turn them into educated agents.  They then take this education back to their homes and cause the homes to become educated, which eventually causes them to have less garbage and more recycling and have solar panels for less power use, etc.  So the high school is basically just an upgraded grade school and having both in your city is counter-productive.

Every day at 6AM the kids flop from being educated to uneducated.  Throughout the day they will leave their houses and be transported to the school by buses (this is for schools) - there's no need for them to all arrive at the start of the day.  This can perpetuate for eternity - there's no sense in them growing up or becoming workers.

The community college and university do the same job with a slight tweak - the kids (now called students) have to make their own way there.  This may be via car or whatever public transport.  But again, having education facilities of different types is actually counter-productive - your schools rob students from the college/uni.

This has a particular danger in that colleges and unis also have an additional function.  As your students attend they generate "tech level".  This is a sort of weird fluid that flows out from your college/uni (like water or power) and feeds the buildings that use it.  A college gives you tech level 2 and uni tech level 3.

The problem therefore is that fi your students aren't getting to uni/college then your buildings that need tech level will be starved.  This may make them, for example, stop working (high tech industry), become inefficient (electronics buildings) or cause a meltdown (nuclear power) - hence the danger.

And of course this isn't how you would expect it all to work; but what makes it confusing and annoying in the game is that the messaging reflects how you might expect it to work (your universities turn your kids into workers or your workers into educated workers, perhaps?).  So you'll get a message to the effect of "not enough educated workers", but what it actually means is that not enough students are going to uni and your tech level "fluence" is not enough to fill up all the buildings, like your water might not be enough to fill up all the buildings.

long time no see

Feels like months since I last blogged.

It’s been a hell of a couple of weeks.

So the first thing that happened was the stag do.  I enjoyed this more than I thought I would.  I was a little worried that there would be some uncomfortable stuff - you hear all sorts about stag dos, but there wasn't anything like that.

I mean, they gave the stag something of a hard time - they stole his clothes and he had to wear a skirt they bought him, for example - but nothings spectacularly bad or that made me feel uncomfortable.  The planned events were also good.

The stag was in Bristol and on the Friday we played golf.  This harked back to when we were kids (I’ve known him since school) and was a good idea, except for one thing - the Great British weather.  As I arrived at the course it started raining and got steadily worse.  Not only was it raining hard but it was windy and cold too so it was truly horrible to be out playing golf.

We ended up only actually playing 9 holes and calling it a day. We then ate at the clubhouse and found the house.  This was a mess - no-one knew where the house was and only some people had directions/sat nav.  I tried to follow someone and it worked okay for a while, but he was rubbish at it - he dashed through a red light and that was t, I was lost.

However, after a dozen phone calls for directions I eventually found the place.  And it was a weird place.

I mean, the building was a bit unusual - a huge mansion - but also it was oddly furnished in that it looked like some students lived there.  As in still lived there and they’d been murdered and buried in the back garden.  It was weird.

So we then got drunk - and I drank much more than was probably sensible for the first day.  On the second day we went clay pigeon shooting.  This in particular I was rather unsure about, but as I said, I enjoyed it more than I thought I would.

I dunno - it’s difficult to explain, but I was rather nervous around the gun. I mean, that’s understandable - it’s a 12-guage shotgun, after all - but I dunno, I was really worried about doing something stupid.  And it didn’t help I was tired and it was cold and drizzling again.  But as I say, it was more enjoyable than I expected.

We then went out on the town.  As it happened it was the last game of the six nations (he decider between Wales and England - England deserved to loose) so we watched that and then went for a curry.  Then it was back to the house for more beers.

This second evening was a bit weird.  We got back fairly late and I started drinking, but suddenly it was 1AM and we had to be out of the house by 10AM so I went to bed.  I think quite a few sloped off to bed early - certainly I didn’t see as many people about as in the first night.

I drove back on the Sunday and it was the journey from hell.  I wouldn’t say I was hung over particularly, but I was extremely tired.  So I was shattered and when the weather played up - driving snow and all sorts.

I'd taken the Monday off to recover and should have used that stuff to do stuff like watch the Grand Prix and tidy the flat.  Unfortunately I basically just played SimCity solid.

I’ll continue with more about the intervening time tomorrow.

everywhere words, but not a blog to post

So I worked over the weekend as I'd said I would.

It wasn't as bad as I'd feared, though - I did about 6 hours on Saturday and 3 or 4 on Sunday.  When I was driving home on Sunday I was reflecting on how screwed my thought process was: I'd gotten the Sunday afternoon off: bonus!  Oh no, wait, I'm not being paid for working Saturday and Sunday at all, so I shouldn't be doing any work at all, let alone celebrating getting an afternoon off that I'm already entitled too.

However, I didn't pre-write any posts.  Obviously I could have done it on the Sunday afternoon but while I did spend most of that time on the computer I had lots of other stuff to do so didn't write any posts.

This is actually particularly annoying as I've run out of pre-written review posts as well, so expect the blogging to be pretty thin on the ground this week.

failed

So I failed to pre-write any blog posts over my weekend off.

I got in on Monday and there were more than 50 e-mails for me to deal with as well as a stack of other things to do so I didn't get time to write post.  Heck, I didn't even check my e-mail all day.

To be honest I'm getting a bit sick of this at the moment.  The real problem is that I am essentially on my own with covering the elements I do and while that's okay on one level the trouble is I don't have full control - there is pressure for me to do more than is physically possible.

And that's how come I ended up doing 49 hours a couple of weeks ago.  See, when I look at my timesheet I spent my expected working hours (37.5ish) on the thing I'm supposed to be working on, and then the other 12 hours were on all sorts of crap that I should have been able/allowed to dump but just couldn't.

And that really comes back to me being on my own - if I don't do it then it doesn't happen.  And of course other people are expecting me to pick to do stuff, and we're back to my first point - I end up doing a 49 hour week.

Now if we worked flexi I wouldn't mind so much, but we don't - that's a12 extra hours that I will not see again and won't get overtime for or anything like that.

I have to confess I've started to wonder why I'm still here.  I think I know deep down that the job offer I got before wouldn't have been the right move, but I could have kept on with the job hunting and I'm sure I'd have eventually gotten another offer.

The prime reason for staying and stopping looking altogether were my slightly cryptic posts about "cake later" but there's no evidence that this cake is any further baked than when it was first mentioned.  Indeed, I've a horrible suspicion that oven is being used to bake another cake that I'm not going to get a slice of.

I know that's even more cryptic, but I don't like to be specific in these blog posts as it's not really stuff I should be putting out into the aether.

no blogging

No blog posts this week as it's been absolutely manic.

Well, actually it was super manic last week (I did 49 hours: standard hours are 37.5) and just plain busy this week.  Trouble was last week left me shattered and then I've had virtually no sleep Sunday and Monday night, so blogging wasn't really in the forefront of my mind.

Also I'm on leave tomorrow so this is it for the week.  I'll try to write a bunch of stuff while I'm off - particularly on the F1 and stuff I've watched and should review.

all quiet on the blogging front

Well now, I've been rather silent for the last couple of days.

This wasn't intentional, as such.  And it wasn't because I was manically busy - in many senses the opposite.  I have been oddly tired, but nothing that would really have stopped me blogging.

It was more a sort of coming together of circumstances.

Firstly, last weekend was the Bank Holiday weekend and I'd initially thought I would have a go at pre-writing a few blog entries over the weekend, as it was going to be quite quiet.  That didn't really happen, due to a combination of tiredness (from the long day on Friday) and laziness.

The other thing was that I'd intended for these last few weeks to post a bunch of reviews I'd written but gotten behind with posting.  Well, I posted all of those... and then ran out... and didn't write any more.

So writing a few of those reviews would have been ideal for this last couple of days, except as I say I couldn't be bothered over the weekend and then, well, couldn't be bothered during the week either.

During this week, as mentioned, I wasn't busy in the sense that I usually am, with loads of stuff that I have to do with deadlines, etc.  However, I was busy with other stuff.  I've been tasked with coming up with some bits for work and this was really the first week I've had time to work on them properly, so I took the opportunity.

Now I've been quite enjoying putting them together and that's meant that they've absorbed my time, but as I say, not because I've had to, but more because I've wanted to.

So there you go - a bunch of excuses, basically.

This weekend the Formula 1 season gets back in gear with the Belgium Grand Prix from the iconic Spa Francorchamps.  It's usually a good race and the weather often makes its presence felt.

review back-log

Last week I missed a post on Wednesday and I forgot why until I came to post today and realised I had a similar issue.

Essentially, on Wednesday every week I was posting up mini reviews for the DVDs and Blu-Rays I rented.  However, while I was on contract I was only posting once a week (if that) so I didn't even bother to write the reviews, let alone post them.

So last week when it came to the mid-week point and I was in my usual "I've run out of stuff to talk about again / I've not got the time to do a whole post" I didn't have the pre-written reviews to fall back on.  I also had the slightly tricky issue of not actually fully remembering what I felt about the earliest titles back from around Christmas time.

As mentioned I've sort of hit the same problem today - I've not a lot to really write off the top of my head today and I've not really got the time spare to generate a more in-depth post.

I should be able to spend some time to sit down and write a few reviews this weekend, and maybe pre-write a few entries, so hopefully the blog will start to really get back to normal soon.

It's weird - I've actually been struggling to find the time to do all the stuff I used to.  I think the whole contracting thing has spoiled me for time a bit (even with the huge commute).

the blog that never blogged

So there's clearly been no blog for a couple of weeks.

There's not any particularly good reason for that - I've not been ill and the contracting position technically demands less hours from me per week that my normal position.  There is a reason for the non-bloggage, though... sort of.

Basically the difficulty I'm having is that my "interweb life" (if you will) was so well integrated into my normal day job that this move to the contracting position has almost expunged it.  What do I mean by that?  well, my normal job we have internet at desk and my desk isn't particularly overlooked, so I can basically surf the web at work.

That means that all my daily blog posts were pretty much written at work, I surfed the forums I visit at work, I did internet shopping at work, etc, etc.  Now don't get me wrong - we all did that, and part of the whole inflexibility of work hours where I usually work is made up for by this relatively relaxed attitude.

When you're on contract that's not really the case.  Even if it was possible to do all the surfing I used to (it isn't for a variety of reasons) it would hardly look appropriate to the customer if he watched me spend half an hour buying manga on amazon, even if in reality I was still doing the allotted number of hours of work I'm supposed to.

See, were I'm contracting they work flex and they're only paying for 37 hours of my time per week.  Well in my usual job it was more about being sat at your desk from 9 to 5:30 and in reality I would actually do more like 8:15 to 6:45.  However, as mentioned in my regular job I could spend time surfing the interweb, but can't in my contracting work.

Which is where the problem comes - if I'm doing 37 hours a week then that's a lot less time than 8:15 to 5:45.  Okay, it's a lot longer commute (it takes about 3 times as much time) but still, I should be time rich.  and I am.  Trouble is it's always been the case that, having spent all day working on a computer, when I come home I'm often rather loathe to spend time on it in the evening as well.

And even when I do, the tendency is to want to spend time doing fun stuff like gaming than going through all the e-mails and stuff that I would have ploughed through during my day at my usual work.

That tendency has also always extended to the weekend, where I tend to not spend a huge amount of time on the computer doing things like writing blog posts.  I'm generally doing other stuff or I'm wanting to do other stuff.

I mean, that's why I spent all morning today going through pages of e-mails and newsletters and articles I follow.  I literally spent about 5 hours doing it and still have half of them left.  It's actually quite an eye opener for how much time I must normally spend at work doing all this stuff!

And I've just heard that they might want to extend my contract for a bit.

To be totally frank I'm not massively enjoying what I'm doing.  I mean it's okay and it's something a bit different, but it's really not playing to my strengths and I kinda thought that it would do when I started.

merry wishmsases

I hope you have a good Christmas and New Year period :)

I am away on holiday now until the 10th of January, so I thought I'd post my usual Chrimbalo message for over the festive season.

As I mentioned earlier this week I will actually be going on contract next year, so the blog will almost certainly switch to being a weekly one next year.  The contract doesn't actually start until a little after I'm back, so initially I'll be blogging as usual, so see you then.

ringing in the changes

Right then, a bit of an announcement.

The intention of this blog was always that I would post every weekday about things happening in my life or giving my opinions on things that were happening and to post up reviews of stuff.  Fairly mundane stuff, but at the least it kept me writing and it makes it more like a diary, which was kinda the idea.

Anyway, this was all pretty much based on my work situation, where I was based at the main offices of my company and would only be out of the office due to the occasional meeting or through holiday or illness.

Well that situation will be changing at the start of next year.

I don't tend to talk too much about what my company actually does, but one of the things we do is provide contractors.  Another, more precise name for this is "Manpower Substitution" and as this suggest we provide people to fill roles.

And that's what I'm going to be doing from next year.

It's initially a three month contract, running until the end of the financial year, but there's the possibility of an extension.  Financial year is obviously when budgets get re-worked out so they will see if there's money for me to continue.

Also it's obviously dependent on whether it goes well.  They may hate me or I may prove to be incompetent or the work may dry up - anything could happen - but what is certain is I will be there until March.

Now the weird thing is that actually while on contract I will be doing less hours than I do at my normal work.  The reason is that the contract is paid per hour and they effectively by a set number of hours a week, but at my work, although we have a working day, I actually work loads of (unpaid!) overtime in the sense that I get to work at least an hour early and often go home half an hour later.

However, the place I will be working at will be an extra hours drive on my commute (which may actually act as a bit more of an incentive for me to move) there and back, so although I'll be doing less working hours it'll still be about the same length of day.

Of course I get to claim expenses on the extra miles, so that'll be a nice little cash bonus (except of course the increased wear and tear on the vehicle does add up), but it does mean that I won't be able to post blogs on weekdays.

The reason is that where I'll be working I won't have any internet access, and I'm very unlikely to be bothered to do anything like write a blog post every evening when I get back.

I will keep the blog though, with the intention that it will become a weekend blog.  Whether that means I post on both Saturday and Sunday, I don't yet know, but it'll be some sort of weekend thing.

The reason I'm going on contract is that it's not been the best year for the company - expenditure has increased while revenue has decreased, so we need as much cash coming in as we can get.

first spam

I received my first spam post on this blog recently.

I made a post about the new heating my landlord has installed and the spam post was basically vaguely aimed at trying to look like a post but then giving a link to some random plumbing company.

I always wonder about things like that - has the company set up its own spambot?  Or have they hired someone to do it?  Perhaps they've paid some company to get them a higher ranking in Google or other search engines and it's therefore crawling around spamming links in order to achieve that for them (page rankers tend to include numbers of links in their algorithms).

Certainly the fact it was a link to a plumbing company and my post was about something to plumbing (central heating is plumbed in) suggests it was a bot crawling around fro relevant content to spam on.

I have comment moderation turned on of course.  I can't say I was expecting vast quantities of spam or loads of nasty comments or anything, but I figured it was better safe than sorry.

As for the plumbing in question, it continues to be a mixed bag.

It comes on slightly too late in the morning and probably goes off slightly to early at night for it to suit me perfectly.  And it's still a bit random whether it comes on and how hot it comes on when it does.

The radiator seems to be very effective at heating the room and bedsit generally, although it doesn't actually get very hot to the touch.  It is quite a big radiator with a lot of surface area, so I would guess it relates to that - it transfers the heat to the room very well, rather than getting hot itself.

However it has definitely saved me money - there have been quite a few days I'm sure I would have turned my own heating on but the radiator took care of that.

As I say, it doesn't quite come on during when I need it, so I have turned it on a couple of times and on the couple of occasions it's been super cold as well, but even then I've only tended to have it on for a little while and not at full blast.

So yeah, it's save me a bit of money.  Indeed, I think it will probably pay for itself, especially if we get a proper cold spell.  There were predictions of a cold snap for pre-Christmas, but that doesn't really seem to have happened as it's been very mild for the time of year.

I'm still hearing predictions of super cold temperatures for the post-Chrimbo period, though, and given the last two years have been horribly cold I'm still expecting the worst.

pre-blogging

I've been pre-writting most of my entries for the last few weeks.

I've mentioned this before on here - it's basically where I try to pre-write a bunch of posts at the weekend so that they're ready to just slap on the blog when the days roll around.  The big advantage of this is that, if the week is very busy, I don't end up missing days simply because I didn't have the time to write an entry.

The disadvantage is of course that the blogs tend to be about roughly relevant stuff, but aren't 100% current.  This is especially true of the later posts in the week, where something important may have happened early in the week, but I don't mention it until the week after.  Or I forget and don't mention it at all.

To be fair, I don't think it's such a problem because my blog has kinda always had elements of that anyway.  I mean, for ages now I've been posting mini reviews on Wednesday and Tuesday or Thursday are generally a reflection on the previous Sunday's weigh in and the previous week's dieting and walking progress.  Then of course during GP season, many Friday's and Mondays have at least some content relevant to the weekend's race.

So in other words, the blog is often not really about 100% current stuff.  I mean, fundamentally I try to do the blog as a Monday to Friday one post a day thing, but of course life is often not like that - loads of important (or bloggable anyway) stuff may happen during one week, but then nothing happens for the next couple of weeks.

But one thing I have found with all this pre-blogging is it's given me an opportunity to use my laptop more.  I've been sitting on my bed tapping away at the laptop most Sunday afternoons, post race, and it's been quite a good way to do it.

The only real problem I've been having is that my laptop space bar seems to be really unresponsive.  I don't really know if it's a reflection of my technique, or some problem with the laptop design or something that's not working properly, though.

I can't touch type.  I wish I could and I did have the opportunity to teach myself when I was younger, but never really put the effort in.  However, one small thing that was part of touch typing (well, I think it is) did seem to become a habit, which was using my thumb to hit the space bar.

I therefore don't really single-finger type either.  My technique s an odd sort of both index fingers (one on each half of the keyboard) combined with the occasional use of the middle and ring fingers on my right hand and my right thumb for the space bar and then random occasional use of both my pinkie fingers for shift keys.

I'm very right handed, which is part of why I use some of the other fingers on my right hand, but also, most of the more occasionally used stuff, like delete keys and semi-colons is on the right had side of a standard qwerty keyboard.

But also, one of the other main features is I have a map of where the keys are in my head.  So although it's not proper touch typing, I can type for long segments looking at the screen like a touch typist would.

Anyway, the point is I use my thumb to hit the space bar and a lot of the time the keyboard on my laptop doesn't seem to pick it up, so I end up with three or even four words stuck together.  It's quite annoying when you're reviewing or spell checking to unpick the words.

And I'm pretty sure it is my laptop, as it's never happened with other keyboards, and I recall always having this problem.  In particular when I was fooling myself into thinking I might try to become a writer I used my laptop a lot (indeed, that's kinda why I'd bought it) and had the same issue with missed spaces.

tweaks to blogger & drafts

They appear to have tweaked the layout and structure of blogger.

Generally speaking I often find myself having quite conservative reactions to changes like this.  I try to be open minded, but it’s difficult sometimes, especially if you’re talking about something that works perfectly well (or suits your needs perfectly).  Change for change’s sake is rubbish - if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Of course, sometimes you only realise it was broke after they fix it, but this isn’t one of those cases.  However, I have to say I actually quite like these changes they’ve made.  They’ve added some stuff that, while not necessary, is quite nice/useful, and they’ve not broken anything.

It also looks prettier and feels more involved and a smidge more professional.  As I say, I don’t think it is actually changed much, but it has a nicer, cleaner feel to it.

I’ve not played with everything yet, but certainly the stats are nice.  Being a numbers nerd, stats are always nice, of course.

The new layout also showed me that something odd had happened to some of my posts.  Whether in fact they were fine before and got broken by the change I can’t know for sure, but I actually think it was some problem that I hadn’t realised.

Basically, quite a few (around a dozen over the years) of my posts had not been published.  Instead, they’ve been saved as drafts.  Quite why these particular posts never got published, I don’t know, but it was fairly clear from the page view counter they hadn’t been.

As I say, it was a bit of a random selection and I thought I was in the habit of always checking the blog once I’d published a new entry, but clearly something had gone wrong somewhere.

It would also explain a discrepancy I noticed a few times before, where two of the numbers that showed the number of blog posts didn’t quite seem to add up.  I can’t remember the exact phrasing, but it was something along the lines of the number of posts and the number of entries were different, because one must have been including all these drafts where the other wasn't.

yesterday

all my troubles seemed so far away. Now it seems as though they're here to stay.

I didn't post yesterday mainly through forgetting, but it was forgetting that was almost entirely due to the fact I've been really busy with work.

I actually came in on Saturday and was here for the best part of 4 hours. It was pretty much unavoidable, but not very much fun.

To be frank, I'm also not really going to have the time to post much this week at all. What I'll probably do is post some of the small reviews I've written but have been 'saving up' for just such an occasion as this.