short week

Well, it's the end of the week already.

I've actually got a strong of short weeks at the moment, as I'm taking Thursday and Friday off next week for my birthday.  So my weeks will go:

• 4 day week (last week)
• 4 day week (this week)
• 3 day week (next week)
• 4 day week (week after)

Which is nice.

I'm going to clean the flat this weekend, though I'm intending to do a spring clean over the 5 day weekend I've got next week.  I always do a big clean at Christmas, but I like to do a spring clean as well.  In particular, I need to clean and defrost the fridge freezer.  I didn't do this at Christmas as I knackered myself doing the other cleaning and it's pretty thick with ice.  The fridge is also rather dirty.

It's a big pain defrosting the freezer, as it's a really old, knackered unit, so it gets really thick ice.  Ice also often forms in the door as it has a hole in it, so it takes ages to all melt and is pretty messy, dripping everywhere.

The other reason I didn't defrost it at Christmas was I ended up with quite a bit of food in the freezer.  I've got a small "beer can" fridge thing I use to keep some stuff cold, but it is obviously a lot smaller than the freezer compartment, so I have to be sure to empty it before defrosting it.  I've done well here, as I've literally only some frozen peas, a few pints of milk and some random slices of bread, which I'll probably either finish off for the weekend or will easily fit in the small fridge.

Anyway, I'll give the flat a bit of clean this weekend - I may try to do a few things I would normally leave to the spring clean so that it's less of a chore, but odds are I'll probably spend time playing Civ 5 that I shouldn't :/.

Easter was a bit of a let down if I'm honest - or rather, I let myself down.  I did the full back up, whcih took bloody ages, as usual, but other than that, I kinda failed to do much of anything.  as I say, I did go out drinking, so it was kinda nice to let off steam in that regard, but then that completely destroyed Sunday, when I was hung over, and Monday when I still felt knackered.

Indeed, I did so little across Sunday and Monday that I actually struggled to sleep on Monday night, as I just wasn't tired at all.  I've noticed this problem before - I seem to do enough regular walking nowadays that if I then don't walk for any reason I don't feel tired at night.

rest of christmas

So what did I do over the rest of christmas, then?

Not much.

I had quite a short to do list:

• Couple of friends to see.
• Do my file back-ups.
• Sort my gaming machine - it had developed some problem where it crashed constantly.
• Try to make a dent in all the recorded stuff on my PVR.
• Watch some anime - preferably downloaded fansubs in order to clear the hard-drive I use, which is full.
• My traditional New Year's "full clean" of the bedsit.
• Do plenty of walking.
• Work out plans for next year.

I did most of these, though not fully in most cases.

I saw most of the friends, but unfortunately the weather poxed up some of my plans, with cancelled trains and blocked roads.  The weather also poxed up the walking plans, obviously.  I've put on 4 pounds across Christmas - obviously this was mainly due to the over-eating, rather than not being able to walk, but this won't have helped things.

I did an "update" file back-up, rather than a full one.  this was mainly because I decided that the gaming machine problem was software based and the cleanest solution was to wipe and re-install.  This was fine and appears to have worked perfectly, but of course it took well over a day with all the updates and putting the games back.

I did make a significant dent in the PVR, though it still groaning with stuff.  I now have about 35% of the drive clear, with about 65 programmes to watch.  I know this is a lot still on there, but you have to remember that over Christmas there was a lot of stuff to watch and none of this was left.  Also, I focused on things that didn't have ad breaks, so although the programmes are mostly 1 hour, there are a lot of adverts that will reduce the actual watching time.

I also watched a chunk of anime fansubs.  If I'm honest this was one of the least successful areas, though, as it wasn't a big proportion of all that I've got.  However, I also had a sort out and there's stuff I could take off for other reasons (OAVs of series I didn't like, have been licensed so I only need a 2 episode sample, rather than the full series, sequels so might as well burn them to disk for later, etc, etc).  I still need to attack them, but I've certainly created a bit of breathing space.

I also did the full clean, though this seemed more hard work than I remember from last year.  It took me 2 full days (one for the Kitchen & Bathroom and one for the living room / bedroom) to do the actual cleaning, but the impact was more extensive - they weren't consecutive days, as I was shattered after doing the kitchen.  After the bedroom I was basically crippled - I'd put my hamstrings through so much that I could hardly walk the next day.  This was due to the hoovering, mainly - I go at it with a special attachment and it's really effective, but also inconvenient to use and so I end up bent over in a bad way.

The "plans for next year" was the really big failure.  I've not really got a plan, and will have to give it some thought - there's a big event that I'm not really sure how I'm going to work around.

So the holiday was pretty mundane - nice to not be at work for an extended period, but not exactly exciting, and mostly poxed up by the awful weather where it might have been.

There was also some unpleasant stuff.  My landlord has decided to put up my rent by 5%.  This is particularly annoying as it now means the bedsit is uneconomical, but I'm left in a quandary as to moving, owing to the aforementioned unclear plans for the year.  I also scratched one of my alloy wheels on my car - some penis pulled up in the station in front of me at the petrol station rather than wait the 10 seconds it took for me to pull away and in going around him I caught the curb.  There was also a break-in where I live: they only got into the garden, rather than the house or shed and didn't take anything, but another reason for me not to stay.

box sorting

No blog yesterday as at the point I was going to start writing it I was handed something to do.

That something was a bit of a mess and took all afternoon to get even vaguely on the right track.  It actually poxed up all my afternoon, to be honest, but there you go.

This last weekend was incredibly busy.  As well as the Korean Grand Prix and all the recorded telly I had to watch I also had to do deal with a huge pile of washing (all my holiday stuff plus the work week), sort out the boxes / shed situation and clean my car.

Well, cleaning my car was not something I had to do, but I wanted to do it to take advantage of my landlord being on holiday.  Three days later it's unfortunately now dirtier than it was.  There's some house building going on near the industrial estate where I work and they've been digging out a huge amount of earth and leaving trails of muck all over the roads, so with it being rainy it's made a right mess of everyone's car - it's like everyone in the estate goes rallying to get home!

I did also need to sort my boot contents out after the holiday, so I did that too.

The boxes was a bit unfortunate - I'd actually planned to do it anyway as I usually do when my landlord goes away at this time of year, but he also left me a note basically asking me to do it, which made it a priority task.  However, the weather was crappy across the week and it been my intention to spread it out a bit.

What I'd been hopping to do was most of the box moving and some of the more basic sorting in the evenings during the week.  However, rain and dark is not really the best combination for doing it.

As such that meant I had to do the whole thing at the weekend - a weekend when I had a big long list of other stuff to do as well.

Now I did basically do it, but it was pretty poor in terms of really sorting out, tidying up and identifying things to e-bay.  Really I've just moved a load of crap from my bedsit out to the shed and ensured what's in the shed is properly boxed and stacked.

It's a little frustrating from several perspectives, but it is what it is.

It does emphasise to me that I need to move now that I've decided to stay working where I am.  Indeed, I've decided I really need to move to Alton, though first I need to not spend my pay rise for a few months so I can build up a deposit!

mini heat wave

So we seemed to have a mini heat wave while I was taking my long weekend.

It was nice that it didn't rain on me, but the heat made it a bit unpleasant.  It was actually another case of my classic comment on British weather that it comes with exclamation points.  I mean the change was so sudden that it was quite a shock.

I have to say I found the whole weather extremely nostalgic.

It was, to coin a phrase, just like the weather we seemed to have when I was a kid.  Well, no, actually, not when I was a kid proper, but when I was a teenager.  My recollection of my teenage years (around the GCSE and A-level kind of time) was that the weather during the summer was constantly like how it was this last weekend - hot and cloudless during the day and not really properly easing off during the night.

I don't know if that's really an accurate reflection of how the weather actually was, but it's how I remember it.  I remember days of going around friends' houses and having barbecues and lazing about and then smoking pot and getting drunk in the evening.

This weather was so reminiscent of that period, particularly as the smell of barbecue was filling the air when I went out for my walks around the estate.

As for other stuff I did it was all pretty unexciting.

I gave the car a thorough clean, including giving it a polish.  Usually when I do these mega cleans I find them quite tiring because I do everything and so it take hours, but I also end up using muscles I don't normally use much so I then have several days of aches and pains.

This time I didn't find the doing as tiring, but the after-ache was really bad.

I also decided to do a load of backing up.  In the end I did my hard-drive based back-up routine, but didn't get the time to also burn the DVDs I usually do as well.  I like to be thoroughly backed-up having had several bad experiences of drives crapping out and taking everything with them.

I'll probably look at burning the DVDs this next bank holiday weekend, though I am currently anticipating I will actually have to work part of the weekend.  This isn't so much because I have too much to do it's more because the timing of things other people are doing mean it just won't be finished in time for me to do anything prior to the weekend.

I decided to do the back-up because I actually had a bit of a worrying moment the other week when I plug one of my drives in and it came up as if it was a new disk and asked me to format it.  In the end I got around it, though the drive ran incredibly slowly.  However, I think looking back on it it was because I used a USB3.0 slot that the motherboard has and I never installed the proper drivers for those slots because I don't have any USB 3.0 peripherals, so it ran at the default USB 1.0 speed.

At least I hope it was that - if not, I've backed it up anyway.

korean double header

It's the Korean Grand Prix this weekend.

As I mentioned last week I have absolutely no idea whether it's a good one or not.  In fact, I don't actually have any memories of it at all.

Well, I say that.  I'm pretty convinced it was only held for the first time last year and that it was the one where it was delayed because of the weather, Webber spun out because it was so wet  and it ended up finishing as the sun was setting.

However, I would happily cop to having merged several races together or having gotten mixed up with another race.  I certainly don't have Korea flagged in my memory banks as a classic.

One thing I will say is I don't think my scheduling plans are really going to survive contact with the enemy, which is to say that there are some things I going to have to do because 3 weeks is too long to leave them - for example, I'm going to run out of clothes if I don't do some washing.

However, I think I can do a sort of small version of most of these (just the one bag of essential washing) and then make up for it next week.

It's on at a similar sort of time to the Japanese Grand Prix, but I think I'll record it and watch it at my leisure.  I was happy to get up for Japan (even though I screwed myself over), but I'm not sure I am for the Korean.

Otherwise I don't have many plans.  I need to get some more bits on e-bay so that they'll finish in time for me sort them before my holiday.  I also haven't done anything with the CDs I need to get rid of.  I looked at a few of the "we buy CDs" sites, and, as expected, prices weren't great, but then they looked pretty crap on e-bay too.

As per usual, I'm a long way behind the curve on the medium transitions (CD to digital).  In this case, I'm at a bit unsure I like the particular transition.  I mean, you can't really sell MP3 files second hand at all, can you, irrespective of the other advantages they have.

triple bagger

Last Friday I briefly mentioned what I would get up to on Saturday morning.

Well, actually I mainly talked about how it had been a hell of a week.  Friday was by far and away the worst day.  I actually did what was basically a 12 hour day at work, and that was before having to go shopping and do a bunch of other bits so that the weekend would be easier.

I ended up basically passing out at about 10:30 (very late for me) and of course I get up earlier when it’s a cleaning weekend so tat I can get into the laundrette when it opens, so I was then up at 6:00.

Actually, I got up at about 5:30AM as when I got up for a pee in the early morning I was wide awake and I filled in the time by watching a bit of telly.

The actually washing was a triple bagger - I had two black bags full of clothes and then another bag with bed sheets and towels.  I used one of the big machines and one of the medium machines and then three tumble dryers.  It actually cost a fortune, but it means I’d caught up with the overspill that was left when I switched to ding my own washing.

Best thing was that there was literally nobody in there, so I wasn’t using up machines other people wanted access too.  I also noticed on Sunday morning that the place was completely empty when I walked past it on my (slightly delayed) morning walk, so I may put that knowledge to use later on.

Particularly when the winter proper rolls around.  I’m worried that when I fully break out the warmer clothes I may have trouble with the amount of washing I need to do.  I mean, obviously the warmer clothes tend to be bigger, but of course I wear multiple layers, so that means loads more clothes.

Part of the saving grace might be that I won’t be quite so tied into doing it every other week - the F1 season will obviously be over, so timing's not so critical.  If I can also use Sunday mornings, that may help too.

I actually took the first step with winter as I broke out the winter duvet.  Eventually I’ll end up with both duvets and only wearing jeans and tracky bottoms, but for now it’s just the warmer duvet.  Of course that does mean I’ll have to actually buy some new winter clothes...

I threw away quite a few clothes hen I switched to summer clothes.  Partly that was due to the diet (and certainly most of them would now be too big) but also most of them were rather knackered and replacing anyway.

Where the heck I’m going to get the cash for that from I’m not sure.

I actually had to get a bunch of stuff on e-bay this weekend as my finances were looking a bit tight.  I got a letter a few weeks back that they were increasing the cost of my electricity, so I took the calculated gamble of buying advance buying a load of electricity this month so that I wouldn’t be so badly impacted when properly cold weather comes around.

Of course that put a really big hole in my finances, because I can’t use credit cards to buy the electricity.  I therefore did some e-baying of a bunch of stuff, especially as it was a no-insertion fee weekend.

i need this

The weekend is rapidly approaching, and boy do I need it.

It's been a tough week at work, not least of all because several people seem to have gone on holiday at the same time.  That's meant that I've had to pick up a lot of stuff from them on top of my regular stuff.

There have been several things that have therefore gone un-loved if I'm honest.  And if I hadn't managed to clear off some of my own stuff before this week I wouldn't have managed to done most of them.

So it's been hectic.

The real problem recently is that we've had lots of requirements come in.  Usually we see a handful a month, but just recently it's been more like a handful every day.  And while most are pretty small things, they all need several days of effort.  And when you're a relatively small company everyone quickly gets maxed out with stuff to do.

But the real headache comes when you try to rationalise them - we won't do that one, but we will do those two, that sort of thing.  The problem for us is, because of how we work, it's difficult to really make those decisions straight away.

I mean, you can make them, but often you're simply chopping things off without really investigating.  And the investigation is the bit that takes time.  So it's a bit of a no win situation - if you do the exploration, you expend quite a bit of effort and may either end up with nothing or generate a lot of work for yourself.  If you don't do the exploration, you could be consigning the best opportunity you've ever seen to the dustbin and never know it.

Anyway, enough moaning.  And not that the weekend will be much of a rest.

It's a cleaning weekend, and that means starting off with a load of washing up at the laundrette.  I'm actually going to have to do three bags worth this weekend, so I hope it's not busy, as I'll need multiple machine and even more tumble dryers to get through it all.

Then I'll actually clean the flat and I'll probably give it a bit more of a thorough clean than normal, as it's a while since I did a thorough clean.  Then I'll go for a walk and all that before lunch.  It's no wonder I end up knackered on the Sunday.  Ideally I'd spread things out a bit more, but I couldn't work out how to do that and not simply end up impacting on other stuff instead.

new regimen

My new regimen seems to be working okay.  Well, ish.

An unfortunate downside seems to be that the Sunday after the cleaning weekend I end up shattered.  It’s difficult to say for sure that it’s entirely down to the new regimen, but it seems very likely.

The problem with being sure is I’ve not been doing it very long and of course this last weekend I was coming off the back of a very tiring week (hard work and lack of sleep).  But certainly as Sunday dawned it was real struggle to get out of bed and the morning was pretty rubbish.  I perked up a bit in the afternoon following a particularly strong coffee, but it didn’t seem to last very long.

Certainly I didn't do any scanning, though I sat down and thought about starting, but in the end I slobbed out in front of a film.

Hopefully that's compensate for a bit by the fact that the other weekend is basically free of stuff to do apart from watch the grand prix.

Total Wipeout is back.  Well, ish.  It seems to have started with two celebrity specials, which the telly listing clearly indicated were episodes 11 & 12 of 12, so they were meant to come last.  I thought maybe I’d missed  the series, but a quick it of googling suggested that no, they’d simply shown the la two episode first.

The seem to have added some good new stuff for the earlier rounds, but the final section - the wipeout zone - is still far too easy.  Indeed, they may have made the one bit of it that was tricky (a long roe swing) easier, y replacing it with some not very fast moving turntables.

The gadget show is also back. Well, ish.  It’s now on Friday evenings instead of Monday.  I can't say that so far I’m impressed with the new slot.  I can't really fit watching it live into my schedule, which means it’s become just another program I watch at the weekend.

Leaving it until Monday might be an idea, but I dunno, if there's a problem with the recording (it’s on 5) the repeat is at the weekend, so I’d have missed it.  I guess I could record both, just in case.  Roll on proper digital switchover next year (only two years after when it was meant to happen!).

They’ve tweaked the competition, which now involves a celeb naming stuff, which works okay, but takes up quite a lot of time.  Otherwise it’s the same basic stuff, so I’m pleased it’s back.

Bit of a random one today.  Well, ish.

Hopefully the return of regular schedule fixtures like these with the drawing in nights and my new regimen will help to get me back to my dieting ways and also kick me back into doing things like scanning during the week.  I figured out that a big part of my problem recently has been that I've been pissing about in the evenings with complicated (and regrettably high calorie) foodstuff so I’ve lost all the time I seemed to gain last year.

another day missed

So obviously there was no bloggage post yesterday.

Hopefully the reasons are pretty obvious.  Having had very little sleep on the Tuesday night, Wednesday was a bit of a right off, so stuff got pushed forward to Thursday.  I also had two meetings on Thursday, so they sucked up loads of time too.

And of course I was still pretty tired on Thursday, so I pretty much went straight to bed when I got home.  I certainly wasn't up for writing my blog post in the evening.

So work has been horrible just recently.  It feels a lot like I'm just managing to keep my nose bobbing above the water as the flood comes pouring in.  Luckily I've not had to sacrifice any other weekends, but if any more stuff comes in for me to do I'm really going to struggle.  And it's pretty fortunate that one of my colleagues is now back in the office and she's super competent and has helped by picking a load of stuff up that I might have had to be more involved in.

But what else has happened?

Well, I lost another pound at the last weekend, which was a very nice surprise.  However, my guess is I'll have put it back on, as I've really been eating badly this week.  I'm not beating myself up too much, though, because with work being really heavy and the whole lack of sleep it's probably a natural (but obviously not desirable) knock-on effect.

Also there was the Spa Grand Prix last weekend, which I've not really talked about.

It was okay.  I have to confess I was a bit disappointed with the outcome, and for some reason the latter half of the race was a bit dull.  If I'm honest, though, I was a bit distracted when I watched it.  As I mentioned before I'd watched loads of telly and I think I was reaching overload by the time I sat down to watch the race itself.

The biggest disappointment, though, was Lewis, who managed to crash into Kamui Kobayashi.  IT looked like he basically wasn't paying enough attention and thought he was fully past Kobayashi.  However, he wasn't so he essentially drove into him.  It happened right at the end of one of the fastest straights, so was a big accident and took him out of the race.

It's a cleaning weekend coming up.  I'm not entirely sure if do the cleaning myself is really saving me money.  The problem is that I'm pretty sure the machines in the local laundrette are more expensive than those where I used to go, so where I save in some ways, I loose out in others.

I think long term there'll be a saving, but it's not going to represent a massive windfall of cash.

And I could do with one of those - I got a letter the other day that my electricity is going up by 11%, which is an enormous price hike.  Yay for capitalism, right?

mad panic special

(My Thursday post about the websites and interweb seems to have reappeared - all very odd. My guess is they resorted to a back up or something.)

Wowser, what a horrible morning.

A bid needed to go away by 12 this morning and those can be a panic at the best of times, but this one was bonkers, as they'd given us a grand total of 3 working days to put together an entire ITT! That's totally insane - stuff that's marked urgent usually has at least a week turn-around time; 3 days for a full ITT is just plain unfair.

Of course everyone's in the same boat, but we're a small company. Big companies can obviously all on big numbers of people to veer and haul and do stuff, but that's obviously not a possibility for us. Luckily for me I was only peripherally involved, so I didn't loose my weekend.

Not that I was uninvolved, but my mad panic was this morning. The bid was via an electronic portal (uploading files, basically) and these are always horrible. I was responsible for putting together the final versions for upload and doing the actual upload.

It was a little nerve-wracking as the 12 'o'clock deadline rolled closer and closer and bits and pieces were still not quite finished. But we got it all uploaded and done in time.

My weekend itself was okay - nothing particularly exciting. One thing I did do was clean my car. I've not had much opportunity to clean it recently and what I though it was about time. I did it on the Saturday and the weather kept looking like it was about to piss down, but it held off while I was actually cleaning it.

The main thing I focused on was cleaning the inside (giving it a real good hoover out and wiping down the surfaces), the glass and the wheels. Obviously I also generally washed the car and the inside and alloy wheels are fairly obvious areas of attention, but the glass is also something I really needed to sort.

For some reason I find that most glass cleaners give very streaky results after a few weeks. Basically, dirt seems to slowly build up on the glass in the pattern of how the cleaner has dried. What I therefore do when I give the glass a proper clean is use a 'polish'. It smells quite a lot of turpentine and what you do is apply it and leave it to dry. Much like the polish you put on a car's metalwork it dries to leave a white chalk like substance that you then wipe off.

Although this is quite a lot of extra effort, the results are excellent - it gives a surface that remains streak free and completely "even" because the drying thing doesn't happen in the same way. It does also have the disadvantage of being quite expensive. In fact, actually all the stuff I use to clean my car is quite expensive, as I buy the Autoglym stuff.

It isn't cheap, but it really is good stuff.

post holiday round up

Got a bit better sleep last night, though I'm still tired as I'm effectively running at a deficit, but I thought I should post about what I got up to over the last few weeks and during my holiday and that.

As is my usual way, I put together a gigantic to do list / schedule thing. And as is my usual way there was way too much on it.

Usually with these lists I make two errors. Firstly, I underestimate the time things will take, and so think I can cram in more on any given day than I can, but also I'll usually make some fundamental error that then scuppers everything. That big error in this case was not allowing enough time for 'fun'.

By that I mean generic entertainment of any kind, be it watching telly or going out with friends. For some reason I put enough stuff in the schedule to (more than) fill all the available time so when it came to it I didn't have that time available because I was busy enjoying myself, if you see what I mean.

One thing that did surprise me, though, was that over the Easter weekend I'd assigned to giving my bedsit a spring clean and I managed to do this in the time. Usually with these sorts of cleans they're a classic example of my underestimating the time, winding up taking way longer than I think. But no, actually I managed to fit it all in, no problems.

The same can't be said about my main objective for the holiday, which was to get all my 2010 anime magazines scanned. To be fair, this did start well, as I scanned a load of mags in the first couple of days. However, I basically filled up my hard drive as a result and that meant I had to spend quite a lot of time processing the scans (using photostitch to stick them together).

This did give me an opportunity to play with photostitch and I've worked out how to make it give good results when it runs up against a scan it makes an arse of. I also think I've managed to tweak my technique such that it makes an arse of far less to start with. The root cause seems to be that at the edges of the scanner the bending of the page causes a brightening and a distortion of the image. So, by trimming that away, it does a better job. However, you still have to maintain enough overlap for it to work, so it's a bit of a black art.

I also established that it will work perfectly well with jpgs and that I can save the initial scans as maximum quality jpgs, stick them together then save the result as high quality jpgs and the end result is indistinguishable from my purer original method.

Of course all these took time and with my other errors over time allocation I'm still a fair way short of scanning all the 2010 magazines. I've basically got 3 new types (which always has the most things to scan) and 4 animages (which is always the easiest to scan) and then 2010 is done.

Of course that then means I have to move onto 2011, but assuming I get the above done by the middle of the year that will mean I'm effectively two thirds of the way through my backlog. Which gives you an idea of just how big the backlog was.

easter

It's the first of the long bank holiday weekends from tomorrow.

Unlike half the country, I'm not taking next week off, so I'll be in work on the Tuesday to Thursday. I'm kinda hoping that they're really quiet as we've been so busy at work it's been stupid.

My plans for the Easter weekend are pretty boring.

My main intention is to do the whole swapping over of spring and winter clothes from the shed and also to give my bedsit a bit of a spring clean.

Actually that's not fully true. As per usual, I've put together a big old to do list/schedule thing and I've been way too ambitious about what's actually achievable in this one weekend. So I've also got it down to do all the backup stuff and to sort through my scans and other images (these make sense since I keep the backup drives in the shed) and to sort through the audio books and animes I need to burn. Plus I've also tentatively got giving the car a clean in there too.

But then I've also decided to do a roast to use up the hunk of meat that's been in my freezers since Christmas (part of the spring clean will involve defrosting the freezer, so a perfect time to use it) and getting my haircut and...

This is clearly way too much, but then it wouldn't be one of my holidays if I didn't have unrealistic expectations as to how much I can do in a day.

I was actually thinking that I might use the next few weeks to catch up on my reviews. I've written quite a few reviews that I should really post on the blog, so I may use the next few weeks to get them up.

I've actually been thinking I might get rid of all of my websites and just keep various blogs going. It seems daft having some of the websites and I'm perfectly happy with how this blog operates. It's a hell of a lot simpler to update, for example.

I'll probably hold onto my trismugistus.com domain, but just not have an actual website.

furniture remover

This weekend I need to further the thing with sorting out and boxes and stuff.

I'd have done it last weekend if I wasn't so tired, but the next phase is re-arranging the furniture to take advantage of the space I've gained through moving the boxes into the shed. This weekend is an ideal time to do it, because it's a scheduled cleaning weekend anyway, so when I move the furniture I can have a bit of a clean and it's just a more complex routine, if you will.

I've been wearing short-sleeved shirts for most of this week, even though the weather doesn't really justify it. I think it's something of a last hurrah to summer before I pack the shirts away again and get out the long sleeve shirts. And who knows, this time next year, I may have lost so much weight that the shirts look silly on me and I have to get some more.

I'm getting way ahead of myself, obviously, but I'm slightly worried about that aspect. It's not going to stop me, but because I am so big I am worried I'm going to have to buy a lot of clothes to match the slimming process.

There's also a Grand Prix this weekend, although I believe it's the Italian, which is Monza. Monza's often a bit of a dull. It's a very high speed circuit and doesn't have very many corners, which makes it difficult to overtake. In order to control the speed a bit they've also put chicanes in over the years and chicanes also kill overtaking.

Still, this year has been so good that even some of the usually dull races have been interesting, so you never know.

sunday, bleedin sunday

So this last weekend gone was the bank holiday.

I didn't really have a concrete plan of action, but it was my intention to do a bunch of prep work for putting a load of stuff on e-bay. On the Saturday this mainly involved going through boxes and photographing and weighing stuff.

I spent most of the afternoon doing it and was pleased with the progress. Sunday I'd pretty much earmarked for computer cleaning and sorting. My landlord wants to redecorate my room, so I wanted to start the ball rolling of tidying up the computer area, which needs sorting for several reasons.

My dad is also wanting to buy a new monitor, so I've been spending a lot of time looking through computer specialist websites and I kinda ended up getting the old system building bug. See, I'm also keeping track o the progress of the latest version of the Civ franchise - number 5 - and a while back they posted some system requirements stuff.

And, to be frank, the recommended system is a bit of a monster. Also, I'd started playing Anno 1404 again and was getting a motherload of Crashes-to-Desktop while it was saving (which is just about the worst time for it to crash). Although there's no patch to fix the CTD, some of the stuff out there suggests that more videocard RAM had cured the problem for some people.

In other words, there was a sudden impetus for me to update my machine. I mean, I also spent ages designing a dream system, but that would cost about £1,600 - £1,600 I don't have let me hasten to emphasise - so I also looked at tweaking my existing computers to boost performance.

However, an important part of this would be to finally update to Windows 7 and that means I'd need to spend ages doing "system sorting out" stuff, which is what I had planned for the Sunday. Also, it's good to occasionally clean out your PC case as the build up of dust that tends to occur is not good, so I was hoping to do that.

Instead, my landlord dropped a bit of a bombshell.

My landlord actually has a bit of a knack for managing to want to talk to me at the most inconvenient times - just as I'm sitting down to watch the Belgium Grand Prix, there's a knock at the door and they want 'a chat'.

Anyway, to cut a long story, there were 2 issues.

First off, my collection of boxes is now considered a fire hazard (given the damp problems I'd struggle to see a roaring log fire as a fire hazard in my flat, but never mind) so I need to move them all into the shed out the back.

And secondly, their decorator has booked a holiday right when I'm off at the beginning of October, even though they've known the dates for weeks.

This second point was where it got really confusing, because their solution seemed to be that they want to go into my room and start stripping the wallpaper in advance. I realised later that I don't actually understand how this solves the problem, unless they're saying they're going to decorate it themselves.

Even if they are, I'm kinda stunned that they're suggesting the small room I live in will take more than... ooh, two days to decorate (I'm going to be away for a week).

I dunno, but the basic upshot is that I had to spend the rest of Sunday and Monday sorting through all of the boxes - not just the ones that had stuff in I want to sell now. Of course, ultimately, I want to sell, recycle or throw away 90% of what's in the boxes, but I was thinking I'd have a month to do this and even then that I'd have time after the decoration as well.

However, if the boxes now have to go out in the shed that adds all sorts of complications, meaning it all needs doing as soon as is humanely possible.

sort it out

So I spent a good chunk of my weekend engaged in yet more sorting out and I can thankfully report that I have finished... sort of.

The entire bottom left corner of my room is now given over to boxes. To give you some idea of how much stuff we're talking out, combined with what's in the attic at the moment there are a total of 15 of the 50litre boxes and 30 of the 30 litre ones.

Now to be fair, quite a fee of the 50 litre ones are full of stuff that they shouldn't be. Basically, there are all the things I should have scanned and there's all the stuff I need to get onto e-bay. There's even a box with things like a keyboard and mouse in for when I set up my TV PC (my new TV is sort of also like a monitor and so I can connect up one of my old machines - I've been meaning to do this for ages and should allow me to watch stuff like fan subs in a more comfortable way).

Anyway, those are only the boxes that are full. While I was sorting out, I got some spare boxes, so that things like the DVDs on my bookshelf can be easily stuck in boxes and put in the attic for when my landlord wants to decorate. The problem with that is I only considered things like my DVDs and forgot about other stuff like my clothes. I'm guessing I may therefore need to buy even more boxes to put those in when the time comes.

One thing this whole exercise has brought home to me is just how much stuff I still own. When I moved out of my family home I remember there being a lot of stuff, and what's slightly dispiriting about all this is realising that I've still got loads of that stuff.

The point being that it's essentially of no use to me and I doubt very much it will sell on e-bay. So why have I been lugging it around in boxes and tripping over it all these years?

Two reasons - firstly is my hoarder mentality, where I struggle to throw things away, but second, the other thing this whole sorting exercise has brought home to me is just how much physical effort is involved. This shit is heavy and it's tiring moving boxes around, especially in my tiny bed-sit where emptying one box becomes this logistical nightmare of having to fill others or take stuff back-and-forth from the kitchen.

Which is why the 'fun' really starts now - I seriously need to get rid of all this crap. Whether it be in the bin, down the tip or on e-bay.

yet more boxes

Well I acquired more boxes, which pretty much sets what I'm going to be doing this weekend. I'm kinda just hoping that I've finally got enough now - it'll be tedious if I get half way through and realise I need yet more!

Apart from that I've got a weird list of stuff I need to do. My Dad gets back from Canada this weekend and he's buying my old monitor off me. That means that at some point I'll have to drop what I'm doing and take the monitor to him. Because he's flying from Heathrow, it means he won't be that far away, so he's decided to go the long way round and we can meet up and I can give him the monitor.

I've given him some basic instructions and they should put him on roads he knows from when we used to go to Devon on holiday, but I wouldn't be surprised if he gets lost. My basic idea was to take him slightly off route and meet up with him at the large Sainsbury's that's down the road from me. Trouble is Dad's never the best with directions and it can be a bit confusing round there with all the roundabouts.

But adding on to that is the fact that he's not computer literate, so I'll need to sit down and write him some instructions as to how to connect up the monitor and, more importantly, set up his desktop so it does the new resolution. That should be interesting.

Most of the rest of the weekend will be spent being domestic, I think. With all this time spent sorting out I've not done any cleaning or ironing in ages. Well, I'm assuming there that I get the sorting down fairly quickly - if it drags I won't have any room to set the iron up, which means I could be wearing a lot of scruffy shirts at work next week!

Hopefully I'll be able to do the ironing while the MotoGP is on this Sunday. It's the British MotoGP, I think, which means it'll be my first proper look at the new Silverstone circuit.

already?

It's Friday already? How the heck did that happen?

Feels like only yesterday it was Thursday. Oh no, wait, yesterday was Thursday.

Looks like it's going to be a sunny weekend. I've not got any special plans, though I do need to do some cleaning. There's a MotoGP race on Sunday I believe, and I want to go for another one of my walks.

Unfortunately, the walks have become a bit fortnightly, mainly because when there's a F1 GP on that means there's loads of stuff - 3 practices, qualifying and the race itself, all of which I have to watch across the weekend. I mean, I could leave it, but the problem then would be people spoilering it.

Next week is going to be a short one - I've got the Thursday and Friday off, so just a 3 day week, which will be nice.

Oh, one thing I realised I hadn't mentioned - Eurovision.

We finished stone dead last, and to be perfectly frank I'm not hugely surprised. Well, surprised we were last as there were some real duffers in there that got way more points than they deserved, but not surprised that we didn't do well.

Our song was very poor. I generally don't pay attention to Eurovision until the night itself, so I hadn't heard the song beforehand. Supposedly it was written by Stock & Waterman, of 1980s Stock, Aitken & Waterman, who produced all those cheesy pop songs of the 80s.

The problem there was it just wasn't up to those standards - if it had been an 80s cheesefest, maybe it would have at least been distinctive, but it was just totally non-descript. And it didn't help that they seemed to have got a small boy to sing it, who seemed nice enough, but really lacked any impact.

I suppose at least this year's song wasn't one of those "this is what we think Europop sounds like" jobs.

monaco

So last weekend it was the Monaco Grand Prix.

It was a reasonable race by Monaco standards that was probably helped out by Fernando Alonso crashing in Saturday practice. This meant he had no car for the Qualifying, so had to start from the pits, putting him stone-dead last.

This therefore meant he could take his mandatory pit stop very early and then blast his way up the pack. In Monaco tyre wear is normally quite slight and so this didn't hamper him, but also meant when others eventually took their stops they would have ended up behind him. although many of the teams realised and so brought their guys in early.

It also meant Alonso had to do lots of overtaking (very difficult in Monaco's narrow streets), giving the cameras something to watch.

Anyway, the main thing I wanted to mention about it was that last year I was at the Monaco GP. This gave the viewing experience a little extra something I think - seeing on telly the bits I actually saw myself a year ago.

One of the things you really don't grasp on telly is the elevation changes of the circuit. At one part of the race they're driving past the harbour so are literally at sea level, but the famous Casino Square is actually at the top of a small mountain. There's therefore a long section where they drive up this steep incline that you just can't appreciate on telly - it has to be a 45% angle they go up.

Something that also occurred to me is that the Monaco GP is probably best watched from the in car shots. I mean, there's still no more overtaking, but you get a better appreciation of what it's like driving through the narrow streets with solid barriers just inches away.

I think this year the temperatures were a lot milder than when we were there. If I'm honest the stifling heat and humidity was the only real dampener to last year's trip.

My dad is actually going to the Canadian Grand Prix this year. Well, he's booked the trip, but it coincides with one of the BA strikes (I don't know if it's a BA flight, but I would imagine so) and there's the ever-looming threat of the volcanic ash.

Apparently the last time that volcano went up it was erupting continuously for 2 solid years or something, so it could become a permanent feature of air travel for quite a while.

And speaking of cars and... dust (yeah, okay, world's most tenuous segue ever) I cleaned my car this last weekend.

Well, I say cleaned, it was more like a very quick wipe down. It's been ages since I cleaned my car and it was getting to the stage where you couldn't tell if it was grey or brown. Also there were quite a few bird droppings on it and it's not good to leave those on for long as they damage the paint.

It still really needs a good, thorough clean, though.

My landlord was actually supposed to have gone on holiday this week and last and it was my original plan to give it a good clean during that time. However, in the end he wasn't well so has postponed it and I think this is good as in reality I don't think I'd have had the time - as I say, I only really found time to give it a quick wipe down on Sunday, so Id' never have fit in a full clean.

wherever i may roam

So I went for another walk yesterday.

The weather was a bit weird, as it kept looking like it was going to rain, so I put my coat on, but then when the sun popped out it was really warm. It was also weirdly muggy, even though there seemed to be quite a strong breeze blowing at times.

I've come up with a nice little route for my walks where I basically head off down the hill I'm on, then cut through a minor road past some fields that takes me onto the back route in past all the schools. That bit is the longest part of the walk, but it's on the flat. I then have to come up through the 'back way' that goes through the estate.

Obviously, since I came down the hill, that last bit involves climbing back up, but where downhill was fairly gentle, the uphill is very steep. The advantage of that route is that the only other way back is the long way back (which, of course, involves going uphill anyway). Therefore, it forces me to do a good stretch uphill and really get my heart pumping.

All told it's about one and a half miles. I know that for normal people 1.5 miles isn't exactly a long walk, but for me at the moment it's a huge distance. Well, actually, I could easily walk further, what I mean is that with the hill bit it's a good compromise between a long distance, which would take a long time, and good exercise.

It currently takes me about 30 minutes to do the whole walk and I normally have to stop a couple of times. I don't stop for long, but the walk up the hill is pretty steep, so I usually stop to catch my breath and on Sunday with the sun out, take my coat off and wipe my brow.

I've no real ambition regarding doing longer distances or walking it quicker. I'd like to get to a position where I can walk it twice a week - maybe Sunday and Wednesday - and also not feel quite so knackered afterwards.

Otherwise the weekend was a pretty normal one. I cleaned the flat and thought about cleaning the car. My car's been caked in dust this last week or so, which I dunno if it has anything to do with the volcano, but it could have done with a clean.

Trouble was with Sunday being the best opportunity and with it constantly looking like it was going to rain but then not actually raining, I ended up not bothering. Besides I'm on holiday next week and my landlord goes on holiday the week after, so I should get ample opportunity to give the old girl a good clean in the next couple of weeks.

toe-tal agony

I've done something to the big toe on my right foot.

I don't know what it is that I've done - I don't remember stubbing it or bending it weirdly, but it's causing me quite a lot of discomfort. Basically, you know when you walk your toes bend as you move your foot? Well all of that movement of my big toe is painful.

It doesn't hurt as I just sit here typing and it's okay if I'm just standing up, but any kind of upward or downward movement (especially if it's taking any weight) is painful.

It actually started some time last week, but was a lot less painful. What I think caused it to become as bad as it is was driving down to Bristol. I tend to hold my foot a little weird on the accelerator - it's kinda difficult to explain, but let's just say I think that doing that for the best part of five hours caused it to get worse.

I think also all the walking about cleaning the car at the weekend didn't really help.

I'm trying to rest it as much as I can, but it's pretty difficult to avoid walking. I think I'll just crawl up in the evenings and avoid going out or anything - that's about as good as it's probably going to get as far as staying off it is concerned.

I forgot to mention yesterday that I had a bit of a problem with the old car washing. One of the reasons I was doing it was that my windscreen was horribly filthy. It was getting so bad it was difficult to see out of.

Unfortunately, however, when I was cleaning my car I discovered I'd run out of the real good glass polish I use. It's expensive, but it's good because it cuts through all the grease and road-grime that's difficult for normal cleaners to deal with. But also it doesn't leave any streaks, which can be a real pain when you're driving.

I'll obviously buy some more of the good stuff, but the problem of course is will there be an opportunity to use it? I did clean the screen with more normal stuff, so it's way better than it was, but the streaks where already obvious yesterday as I was driving in to work.