an interesting valencia?

Well Valencia turned out to be an interesting watch, for a change.

There was plenty that happened, including a good deal of overtaking.  I think they got the DRS right - it put people in a position to try to overtake, but didn't make it too easy as it does at some races.

The tyres also seemed to play a reasonable part this time, rather than being the total dominating factor as they have in some of the prior races.

The only real shame to it from my point of view was that Lewis had a coming together with Maldonado which saw Lewis into a barrier and Maldonado only losing his nose.  It was a real shame, as Lewis had had a really good race.

Now obviously I'm biased as I am a Lewis fan, but Maldonado was clearly the main cause of the accident.  This has also been backed by the stewards, who punished him.  They have a bit of a history, Lewis and Maldonado and I have to say I think Maldonado is a bit of a prat.

He's clearly not averse to going for other drivers, having deliberately crashed into Lewis at Spa last year and stopped his car in the middle of the track at Monaco this year, in order to try to crash into someone else.  That's clearly not sporting behaviour, but it's also outright dangerous.

Crashing into someone in the heat of the moment while trying to pass them is one thing - pre-meditated crashes are another.  It's also pretty expensive for the team, to say the least.

In this case there is a bit of a case for Lewis having been quite aggressive with him.  He didn't give an inch and, in essence, pushed Maldonado off the circuit, but then that is part of racing.  In particular we saw Nico shoving Lewis and Alonso off the track at Bahrain and not getting in trouble.  In all of the cases there were clear run-off areas, so it's again been rubber-stamped by the stewards.

To be totally fair to Maldonado I think he was genuinely trying to avoid some speed bumps that there are in that area.  It's one of those run-off areas where you could gain quite a bit of advantage by going wide so they've put in some speed humps that mean you need to slow right down to drive around them or face the risk of damaging the car.

In other words, I'm not sure he deliberately slammed into Lewis so much as tried to avoid the bumps, which then slewed him into Lewis.

However, really, as I say, he should have slowed down and gone around them - Lewis was always going to be on that bit of the track, so by doing what he did a collision was inevitable.

Lewis was clearly not happy, but he'd also clearly been strongly briefed not to say anything.  I'm not sure about that - one of the things I like about Lewis is he speaks his mind and, especially here where the other guy is in the wrong, in some ways it's a shame he was suppressed.  Still, the Monaco thing where he said some silly stuff was probably going a bit far.

wakey, wakey

I was up at a stupid time again this morning.

3AM this time.

I've discussed it before, but this time of year is terrible for me because it doesn't get dark until really late and I find brightness the most difficult thing to overcome when trying to get to sleep.  But then, as a double whammy, it gets light super early as well, so a bit of my body clock kicks in when it sees the brightness and goes "it's morning, wake up."

The real problem when waking up at 3AM is that for the first few hours while I lay there I feel totally wide awake and alert.  This makes it impossible to get back to sleep.  I therefore try doing something else, like watch recorded TV or read.

However, after a few hours this initial wide awake feeling wears off, but by then it's generally too late to try to get back to sleep.  I therefore end up getting up and going to work.

I got to work at 7AM this morning.  But what makes this horrible is that we don't work flexi, so I can't then go home at 4PM or anything - No, I'm here for the best part of 12 hours.

The other problem I have this summer is I'm trying to find a new job so that's throwing into the mix two things - nervousness and excitement.  Naturally I'm nervous when doing interviews and nervous about my current employer finding out I'm looking for a job.  But I'm also finding it all quite exciting - new possibilities are opening up for me and I'm actually quite enjoying it (as well as also, obviously being nervous about that too - what if I make the wrong decision?).

On that front I've gotten another interview arranged for next Friday.  This one actually seems like a bit of an off the wall choice, but it seems all the more interesting for it.

It's the Valencia Grand Pr... *snore* - Oh, sorry, drifted off then.  Could be the lack of sleep, but I'm guessing it's more likely to be an attempt at a humorous reference to how terribly boring the Valencia Grand Prix usually is.

You never know, the tyres may liven it up, or we may get yet another winner.  Who knows, maybe there's been some secret cabalistic agreement that all the drivers get to win this year?  If so they've made a bit of an error of judgment as there are only 24 drivers and only 20 races!

2 fast 2 furious

So this was the first sequel to the fast and the furious.

It's also actually pretty difficult to review, since almost anything I could say I've said about the other two fast and furious films I've watched, since it is very similar to the other films.  It is, in a word, formulaic.

I guess the real highlight of the film is the cars and the driving about and racing.  Generally in this film the cars feel a bit more realistic, I guess.  They don't do quite as many stupid things with them, although there is still plenty of stupid.

The other highlight here is the buddy-buddy relationship between the two leads.  This works surprisingly well, though it's riddled with cliché and is a long way from original.  However it is quite entertaining.

Let's see, what else?

I guess there's the plot.  It's just as daft as in previous films and makes little to no real sense.  But then it would be shocking if it did.

There seemed to be slightly less in the way of cheesecake and hot babes.  I'm not sure if this was a real shift or intentional in any way.  I know these films have quite a large female fanbase as well, so perhaps there was a conscious decision to tone that element down, although it's not gone altogether.

One thing that is clear is that the budget was obviously higher.  The stunts are more spectacular and clearly a lot more money has been spent on the production as a whole.  Given the type of film this is that means it does tick the boxes in a better way.

The only real problem with the film is a lack of Vin Diesel.  I mean, the stuff that's here is fine, but without the Vin Diesel aspect it didn't quite feel like a Fast and Furious film.

So yeah, I'd say if you were into cars it's a good film to check out.  If you like brain dead action films then it's okay too.  Otherwise it's probably one to steer clear of.

shattered

Well, I'm back at work after my whirlwind tour of interviews.

Okay, there were only 2 interviews, but it's left me drained.  I say that, but the drained feeling may be something to do with waking up at 4AM this morning and being unable to get back to sleep (to the extent I go bored and watched some recorded TV instead).

I mean I blame the interviews for the lack of sleep anyway - it's all been quite disruptive to my routines, to say the least.

Anyway, point is I had two interviews.  One was in Sutton, which is in London... or Surrey.  It was a bit confusing, to be honest, as their address said Surrey, but maps say it's Greater London and there were all these London 2012 banners up like in the rest of London.

I mention this mainly because it would have to be a serious consideration for taking the job.  I've always tried to avoid big cities and London in particular.  I'm just not a fan of places without lots of green and gaps between the houses.  However, Sutton actually seemed quite green - there were a couple of parks close by and there were a surprising number of trees.

It was quite... multi-culturally.  I'm not saying that in a racist way, it's just it's quite a shift from where I am currently and again backs up the idea of it being London, rather than Surrey.

Anyway, the interview went well, I felt.  Indeed it went better than I was expecting.  I'd been a bit put off with how they'd treated me in arranging the interview.  There does appear to be a reason for that to some degree in that this job is to replace someone who leaves very soon.  Most of the other jobs appear to be newly created.

It was also a bit more senior than I was expecting - I would have an assistant (blimey!).  To be honest it became clear to me I'd gotten a bit confused as to which job it was.  The problem is most of these jobs have identical descriptions and I had forgotten this was for one of the few that was slightly different.

The focus of the role wouldn't be writing the reviews as such, but more doing Quality Control of them and helping to maintain a bid library - that sort of thing.

As I say, the interview went well, but I'd have to think long and hard about whether I want to move to London (or closer to London, anyway).

The second interview was almost the flip-side of that.  Where the first one I went in thinking it wouldn't be for me but then coming out thinking maybe it would, this second one I went in thinking this is where I want to go and came out thinking perhaps not.

Part of the issue in both cases were the people.  In the first the person who'd got my back up was actually HR and wasn't anything to do with the interview itself.  In the second the issue was more like the top boss was on my side, but the top colleague was not keen.

The second interview was in Cambridge, which I have a little familiarity with.  It's obviously a lot more pleasant a place than London, but I understand it's about as expensive; housing wise in particular.

The real problem with it is that it's quite technical and this guy pounced on the fact I didn't know anything about that technical area.  He also seemed to not quite get the fact that I want to go in that direction - my point that I wanted to go in that direction, but appreciated I'd be coming in cold / from scratch and would need to learn everything seemed to be a real stumbling block.

Now as I say I always thought it would be, but I dunno, it was like he didn't believe me.  It was also a little annoying in that they both asked the same questions one after the other - like the second guy hadn't listened to what I'd said.

However I've just heard they want to do a second interview.  Well, I say interview - it sounds more like they want to give me a test about the technical area, so I need to learn about it.

I have to say I'm not that impressed by this - okay, it's a weakness, but I'm left a little puzzled as to what they're trying to achieve by doing it.  I'm hardly going to become an expert in a short amount of time.

I mean, the first interview wants me to take some online test things, but that's okay, because they're of a more general nature.

double dip

I have Monday and Tuesday off next week, as I will be having a couple of job interviews.

I've already discussed the other interviews I've had.  The first went well, but me deciding that it was probably too similar to my current job and that I wanted to go in a different direction.  The second went okay - it was nothing special but also it didn't feel like an area I wanted to move into.

At the time of writing I have two interviews - one on each day.  I'd actually been hoping with all the interest people seem to have been expressing in me that I'd be able to arrange a couple of other interviews for the same days.  That's not quite worked out, unfortunately.

There seems to be a bit of an odd split in that some companies as soon as they've seen your CV and decided you'd be worth talking to they want you there within the week (stupidly impractical) and others the agent or whoever "chats you up" and then it's weeks before you here if they want to interview.

So I've been fielding all sorts of calls from agent's last couple of weeks asking me the same questions and they saying they'll put my CV in but unfortunately the company's seem to have mostly fallen into the latter camp.  By which I mean I've not heard anything.

Now obviously that could be because they're not interested and the agents haven't been bothered to tell me, but it does mean the two days I'd taken off are kinda a bit empty.

The Monday is particularly annoying.  The company is not that far away from me but they wanted the interview in the middle of the day.  And I really do mean the middle of the day - it's at what I would normally consider to be lunch.

But it does definitely mean I couldn't just take a half day but most of it I'm not really going to have anything to do.

Tuesday is more sensible, as the company is based in Cambridge, which is a good 2 to 3 hour drive away.  The interview is at 2PM so that gives me plenty of time to get up there and, assuming it lasts an hour or so, I shouldn't fair too badly traffic wise (famous last words).

Weirdly it's this Cambridge day that I may wangle another interview on for somewhere in Loughborough.  Loughborough is a fair distance from Cambridge so it may not work out with time slots they have, but it's a lot further from me that it is Cambridge, if you see what I mean.

Anyway, upshot is I won't be blogging until Wednesday but when I return I'll post about how the interviews went.

simcity

There's a new simcity game in the works.

The website is http://www.simcity.com/en_US

The last simcity game was simcity societies, which was a staggering 5 years ago (and will be more like 6 by the time this new game hits, which is due in February of next year).  It was also awful.  In fact I'm not sure it doesn't rank as one of the worst games I've ever played.

The problem with it was that they seemed to be trying to bend a game that's about simulating a city (i.e. a real thing) into some sort of weird levelling up thing.  So the big sell for it was that there were these particular factors that affected the look of your city, like happiness or industry and when they hit certain levels the look of your city changed to reflect these.

The problem was that none of the levels made much sense and, since this new levelling was what the game was about it basically encouraged you to slap down a load of random stuff that would boost the particular level you were going for.  And none of it really mattered - you didn't gain anything my taking the city in that direction.

In order to achieve this focus they had hacked out a lot of what simcity was supposed to be about.  So the more complex stuff where you had to balance all sorts of numbers and statistics to ensure a properly functioning city was basically chopped out and everything became simpler.

It's a bit like deciding to improve football by taking away that pesky round thing everyone kicks about and instead replacing it with a hair salon and now the point of the game is to get all of your players to have identical haircuts.

Anyway, the point is that this new simcity looks to be going back to what simcity is all about.  Looking at some of the preview stuff there does appear to be an element of what the societies had in that a greater focus on industry will affect certain things in the game, but I get the impression those aren't just confined to the graphics that are being used.

But certainly from what's there it looks much more like it's about simulating a city again.

Before societies the last simcity game was simcity 4 which was a staggering 10 years ago.  I have to confess I didn't really enjoy 4.  The simcity I loved was simcity 2000 on the PlayStation.

Now one issue I had with 4 was at the time I had a fairly basic PC and it was a monster hog for resources, so it never really worked very well even on small towns.  However, I seem to recall that my main issue with 4 was the degree of micromanagement that everything required.  Or, more specifically, that the micromanagement was tedious and boring.  I don't mind micromanagement, so long as it's fun (or at least simple or pretty) to do.  But in 4 I seem to recall loads of sliders and tweakers that affected tiny little things.

I'll use two specific examples.

So in 2000 I recall you had a single slider that allowed you to adjust the funding you gave to each police station and this affected the area where they could cover.  It had a nice simple display that showed the spheres of influence expanding and contracting.

In 4 you had a slider for each station which you could adjust tiny amounts to affect the coverage (I have a vague feeling there was actually more to it than that as well) and I think you had an overall slider as well, so it was much more complicated, but not in a fun way because you could only adjust the individual slider at the individual station.

The other example is to do with water pumps.  In 2000 you put down a water pump and that was basically it - it cost you an amount of money to run, but once it was there that was basically it.  In 4 the pumps (I've a feeling they had water towers instead, but same difference) had a lifetime, so after that period they would basically blow up or stop, so you had to replace them.

Now imagine you went on a water pump building spree one year.  In x year's time you're going to have to replace all of those pumps.  Except it's not that simple because the pump's lifetime is affected by its level of usage, so pumps that are used heavily blow up quicker, so now you've got pumps randomly blowing up and needing replacing across several years.  And you could only find that out by keeping an eye on every pump or waiting until there's a big area of your map with no water and that's therefore going desolate and hunting for the one pump that's stopped working.

It was all way too tedious.

My hope is that they manage to get the balance right or at the least make the micromanagement a lot easier and more fun.

avatar

Oh, and my back hurts as well and has done for the last week - that was another reason for my bad mood.

This is avatar the James Cameron film, rather than the air bender one.

It was also in regular old 2D.  I still haven't seen any of these new wave of 3D films that was kicked off by avatar.  I can't honestly say I really fancy them, but also I don't really go to the cinema very often and getting 3D at home seems both expensive and like a massive faff.

Anyway, the USP (unique selling point dont'cha know) for avatar was therefore not available to me so I could only judge it on the effects and story, etc, though I did watch it on Blu-Ray.

I actually enjoyed it more than I thought I would.  I'd heard how it was basically Pocahontas in space, but I've never seen Pocahontas.  One thing I would say is the plot did seem relatively predictable, but even with that it's actually really well executed and throws in some nice little bits that keep you interested in what's going on.

The effects are, quite frankly, amazing.

The choice to do aliens was a very appropriate one as one of the difficulties with previous CGI movies is that the human characters have felt slightly creepy.  By using humanoid aliens it allows you to suspend disbelief and they don't feel creepy because they're different.  Of course I'm sure there will have been plenty of CGI humans in there too, but when you're being presented with aliens I think your brain is less able to notice them.  Plus things have come a long way.

It's also quite clear Cameron and the whole design time has had a blast with designing their own world.  It's quite a testament that it feels really believable on the whole - you don't feel like they've just stuck things in for ease but they've really tried to think about what an alien ecosystem might look like.

It wasn't all tea and cake, though as there were a few things that didn't quite work for me.

Firstly it was very long.  I'd say it just about stayed inside an envelope of acceptability, especially given the visual spectacle, but it was rather on the cusp of acceptability.

Another thing was the half-alien (where the avatar part comes from) Sigourney Weaver looked weird.  The problem was that she has such a distinctive look that it was the wrong side of looking like her such that it felt like they'd taken a photo of her, stretched it and dyed it blue.  The other characters weren't so bad, since the original actors either weren't hugely distinctive or the half-aliens looked more like caricatures.

But my biggest bug-bare was the use of "unobtanium" for the McGuffin - the thing that drives the plot but that actually doesn't really matter.  The problem was every time someone said it I felt jarred out of the narrative in that it was like a big spike to the brain going "clearly it's made this up but we're trying to be a little post-modern about it".

It's like a while back I put something into a story where there was a plane giving their code number reference name to the air traffic controller and I thought it would be a sort of a clever not to use "Whisky-Tango-Foxtrot" - so "WTF" in other words.  The problem was that as soon as I'd done that it had the effect of totally undermining the whole thing.  It was like I'd burst the balloon of the story's reality and it had just become a mess of self-aware nods and winks.

bad mood

I've been a seriously bad mood just recently.

Yesterday and today it's been particularly bad, for some reason.  The real problem is I'm not entirely sure why I'm in a bad mood.

I think a big part of it may be difficulty with sleeping.

My difficulty sleeping is mainly a reflection of the time of year.  You wouldn't really know it from what's been happening with the weather, but it's very close to the summer solstice, which is the longest day of the year.

This causes me problems because I've always found it difficult to get to sleep when there are bright sources of light shining on me.  This isn't helped by the fact that bright light in the morning is a well-known cue to wake up and of course at this time of year it doesn't get late until very light and then it's bright early in the morning.

As such I've been struggling to get enough sleep recently and this is something I know makes me cranky.

The other thing is I've been really frustrated at work.

I've obviously discussed how I'm searching for a new job and this last few weeks have really underlined some of the problems with where I currently work.  A lot of the systems and processes we use are either massively inefficient or, to be frank, non-existent.

What makes this worse is that I know if I tried to change them then I'd hit the barriers I always do.  It makes things very frustrating.  It's particularly annoying at the moment because of all the activity there is at the moment and the lack of control I have.

I'm also a little frustrated with the job hunting.  I mean, it's going okay but I get a bit annoyed with the agents and sometimes with the companies and what they expect you to be able to do.  It's blatantly obvious that I have a job currently and I'm quite key to it, but they keep phoning me up at stupid times when I clearly can't talk.

And in particular, why not just send me an e-mail?  Almost none of the conversations I've had on the phone couldn't simply have been quickly dealt with via e-mail.

I also find it frustrating that they don't get back to you.  I mean, they must look at all the CVs for the jobs - a quick "thanks but no thanks" only takes a few seconds.  And it is their basic point after all.

But more frustrating is when the agents do get back to you and ask you all these questions and then weeks go by with nothing but silence.  If the company aren't interested then tell me.  If it was always going to take weeks because of their timetable then set that expectation up front.

It's also annoying that many companies engage multiple agents, but because the agents don't then reveal who their client is in their adverts you have to work out that it's the same job or you end up submitting yourself multiple times, which is just a gigantic waste of everybody's time and effort.

It's also annoying that they clearly just chance their arms a lot of the time.  I've had a few contact me with opportunities that actually I've already seen and rejected because they don't match (usually because they're looking for someone a bit more senior) and then of course the company reject me because I'm not a match - wow, what a surprise.  Which goes back to one of the problems of using the agents - they don't really understand what the job is most of the time, they're just regurgitating a spec that they've been given.

My bad mood is pretty obvious isn't it?

canadian grand prix

No post on Friday as it was absolutely bonkers at work.

To be honest it's totally bonkers at work today as well.  Today's bonkers-ness has been caused by two people going on holiday at the same time and two more going to a conference.  When you're a tiny company that sort of thing is a nightmare and shouldn't have happened, to be frank.

Canadian Grand Prix this last week and Lewis finally got his first win of the season.  It was a cracking race, which Canada almost invariably is.

This shines another highlight on some of the bizarre selections for races that the BBC shows in full and those they only show highlights for.  They showed the last race, Monaco, in full and while that can be good, usually it's boring (as a race) and that was the case this year.

And they're going to show the next race, Valencia, in full and, to paraphrase Mark Webber, it's about as thrilling as watching people negotiate a Tesco's Car Park.

What makes this last weekend particularly galling is that, despite the clear promise made by the BBC that 5live would continue to air full coverage of the F1 races throughout the year, they didn't.

Now they were scheduled to - it clearly showed coverage for the race itself on 5Live Extra on my PVR, but in the event they aired coverage of the Test Match instead on 5Live Extra and the 5Live had some "build up" programme for the shitball-excuse-me-football.  In order to listen to the race I had to go online (onto the BBC F1 pages, rather than 5Live web pages as the announcer said).

They also didn't air coverage of the qualifying properly - it was bits and piece during another programme and only aired 1 of the practice sessions.

However, what all this perhaps did highlight was one of the reasons the BBC weren't entirely bothered about renewing the full F1 package - the summer there's an embarrassment of riches for sport that the BBC can air without having to pay fees, etc.

In particular there's the Euro 2012 competition and the Olympics which will each saturate the airwaves for a good couple of weeks.  And these generally coincide with F1 race weekends at some point.

I guess from my point of view one of the advantages of all this sport I don't give a toss about is that I will gain lots of free time in the summer.  Especially since the sport I do like is going to get short shrift while these other things are going on.

I have to say that if my job search results in a significant uplift in pay I'm beginning to be very tempted to get Sky.  They fact you get it free with the HD package, which I'd want anyway and so you don't need to get the full sports package is beginning to look like an attractive (expense aside) option.

jubilant lee

No post yesterday as it was bonkers at work.

It was a pretty pointless long weekend, if I'm honest.

I have somewhat mixed feelings over the Royal Family.  A part of me isn't a fan of the fact we spend a hell of a lot of money on a family that happens to be royal simply through the luck of birth.

Another part of me thinks that if it was replaced by a president they'd end up having the money spent on them or the politicians would find some other way to waste it.  And besides, the royals bring in a huge amount of tourist money and they do go around doing stuff that their royal status gives them special benefits to achieve.

I think my only real issue with them is the way in which we still treat them.  There are a lot of people in the UK who still regard them as being special in some way or that they count for something.  The deferential attitude is the only thing that really annoys me about them.

In terms of the actual jubilee it seemed to be a bit of a wash out locally.  It pretty much rained or drizzled all the weekend and the temperature took a severe nosedive which seemed to mean nothing much happened.

The planned events were not really my cup of tea on the whole.  There was a pageant where 1,000 boats went down the Thames, a concert and then a ceremony of thanksgiving.

I tried to watch the pageant, but the coverage was terrible.  It was like watching a hugely extended version of the one show and I hate the one show.  I only managed about an hour and then had to switch it off.

The concert I learned my lesson and recorded ait and then watched it on a massive delay.  This allowed me to skip the bits where people introduced the acts (they were cringe worthy) and also skip some of the songs that just weren't my cup of tea.

It seemed like they'd had a fair old go at representing all sorts of different types of music, which was fair enough, but meant good chunks of it weren't my cup of tea.  But overall it sort of worked.

I didn't even go near the ceremony thing.

Otherwise I did very little.  I watched a whole bunch of TV shows, many of which I'd recorded - the fourth series of Being Human in particular.

I wasn't a big fan of the third series of Being Human.  It got quite introspective and naval gazing and it seemed to lose its sense of humour, which was the thing that always really appealed to me.

The fourth series was a real return to form.  In particular the plot which was spread across all the episodes really worked well, which it kinda didn't in season 3.  In 3 it didn't feel like there was a proper overall plan where there clearly was in 4.

I have to say though that it seemed to wrap up really well but then they said at the end there was going to be a series 5, so I'm a little trepidatious about how good 5 will be.

super bank holiday

Well, apparently the Queen has failed to die.

I mean, that's basically what we're celebrating.  Now that the monarchy has no actual power and is essentially just a figurehead she can't really achieve anything as such.  She hasn't invaded France and claimed its throne, for example, which seemed to be one of the main defining characteristics of past monarchs.

And I'm pretty sure she's never crushed the Scots, as the National Anthem claims, if I recall correctly.

So yeah, we have a super bumper double bank holiday weekend.  Only one is a genuine addition to the calendar - the other has been achieved by shifting the usual end of May holiday.

I don't really have any plans for this extra time off.

I do have a couple of things on my PVR that I've stacked up, these being the most recent series of Being Human and the second series of the Walking Dead.

The first I'd originally planned to watch in my most recent holiday, but the sudden shift to having loads to do meant I never really even started on them.  The second is just a reflection of the fact that several other things I've been doing have been eating up all of my free time.

In particular I've been shedding anime DVDs, which has meant I've been ripping them and scanning the covers and extras.  Neither of these is difficult though both take time.  It's also pretty time consuming doing all the e-baying, as I've discussed on previous occasions.

The other thing of course is the whole job hunting, which has proven really quite time hungry.  I mean, I knew it would absorb some time, but I've been taken aback by just how much time it's absorbed.

As such I'll probably use the bank holidays to watch stuff, although I also really want to give my car a good clean.  I'd actually been hoping that my landlord would go on the holiday that he postponed from earlier in the year; however that seems to have been almost permanently abandoned.

interview too

Had my second interview yesterday.

Well, actually I had my 2.5'th interview, but that doesn't entirely make sense.  What I mean is I had my second face-to-face interview having also had 1 telephone "interview" (it was more like a quick chat).

The telephone interview was Monday lunchtime and it went surprisingly well.  The company is quite technical and has a particular product market they're in.  Obviously I won't give too many details, but it's a particular market niche and they're very strong in it.

My only fear on it is that that's all they do although there was a hint they are moving into a slightly different, but very related sector.

I'm not sure I really discussed the first face-to-face interview.  It went well, but I had a long conversation with my dad about it (mainly for him to act as a soundboard) and it kinda confirmed that I want to move out of the market sector I'm currently in.

The company I work for is very much focused in that sector and while I don't have any problem if the company I move to works in that area too, I'd at least like it to be one of many feathers in their bow, as opposed to all they do.  And this other company are entirely focused on that sector too.

The difficult thing about it is that they almost head-hunted me and I think I would have been perfect for the role.  Indeed, in a way that was the other problem - it sounded like it would have been really similar to my current job.  The upside is it sounded like it wouldn't have had some of the issues I have with current job, but overall it just didn't feel right.

The other face-to-face interview didn't go so well.

It was with a much larger organisation, which is another element I'm considering (size of company), and they too are technology and product based, which is what I want to move towards, rather than the consultancy my current company is focused on.

I say it didn't go well - it wasn't a disaster, it was more like I didn't really gel with the guy who would be my boss.  I was quite good at answering the questions, though I did struggle on some of them.

It also seemed to take ages (suggesting I perhaps wasn't enjoying it?) and by the time it got around to the bit where I asked questions I was rather drained and my mind had gone a bit blank.  I had some pre-prepared questions, but they didn't really seem appropriate on the whole, given the nature and size of that business (t's a very different world).

They also gave me some tests to do and, to be frank; I think I basically failed at the first one.  The problem was they said was to review a proposal but you only had 20 minutes to do it and they said not to worry about content.

If I was doing a last minute quick review content is all I would worry about, not format, which is what they seemed to imply it was about.

The other test I felt I did better on, but it's more like I enjoyed it more.  The second test was about doing content review - were they answering the questions that were being asked, essentially.  This is much more up my street and I almost rewrote the entire document.  They'd turned track changes on and it was just a sea of changed stuff when I'd finished.

Whether I'd done it right or not I haven't a clue, but I certainly enjoyed doing it more.

However, overall I don't think I want to pursue the job and to be honest I'm not sure they'll offer it.

I have a few more irons in the fire.  The telephone interview wants to see me in person and a couple of recruiters have actually tried contacting me, which is nice.

gadget show... ish

They broke the gadget show.

Or should I say they made the Gadget Show "World Tour" instead and it's not quite as good.

I thought I'd give it a few weeks for it to bed in.  I didn't want to be all knee-jerk reaction or pre-judging it.  But it's been a few weeks and I'm afraid it's just not quite working for me.

I have a couple of big issues with the new format.  The first is the dumping of three of the presenters in favour of keeping just two of them.

One of the things that worked with the 5-person team was that you had a mix of personalities.  There was crazy and shouty and considered and gently spoken.  It meant they could tailor the presenters to the situation.

But the two that are there now - Polly and Jason - are very similar on screen and they're both "up" and not a little bit shouty.  It makes the whole thing very samey and when they get them to do something that would have suited some of the other presenters (Jon in particular) it just ends up feeling... awkward.

Another issue is that the whole point of this is that it's the Gadget Show World Tour, but what does that actually mean?

So they've basically been to:

• Japan
• Monaco (& the med)
• California
• New York
• The UAE (& other bits of the Middle East)

And this week they're going to be in Britain.  (I'm writing this the week before so the last episode will have aired by the time I post it - and apparently that is it - a 6 week show where the Gadget Show of old used to bring a ray of sunshine into my week for half a year at a stretch).

As a world tour that's pretty main stream and, tbh, reads a bit more like a set of possible holiday destinations.  And that's what each episode has felt like - like travel programs showing whacky things for you to do and with a few random gadget tests thrown in for good measure.

The basic reasons for going on a "world tour" just aren't at all clear.  Now the first episode actually held some promise that it might work.  When they went to Japan they went to see the latest version of Asimo and also in each episode there are little bits of possible future tech.

And if that was the purpose of the program - going to see future ideas and the very latest gadgets before they hit the streets, expanding up on the little segments they used to have where they'd go see some weird robots or similar, then it would be okay.  The trouble is those are still only small segments.

Instead it's like they've tried to keep the same format for the old show, it's just now they're doing it in another country instead of in a studio.  Why exactly?

However, the challenges, which came to form a big part of the show, have basically collapsed.  Oh they still present some stuff as challenges, but the competitive element has had to die and they generally feel small, rushed and simple.  In most cases we basically just get Jase trying out some whacky thing you could do on holiday with Polly acting as a cheerleading squad from the side-lines.

It all feels like a wasted opportunity.

And don't get me started on the weird bits where they seem to be interviewing Polly & Jase about what they're showing us.  Those are totally daft - they break the flow, are often tonally the opposite of what you're watching and seem like a sticking plaster because they later realised Polly & Jase running about and shouting doesn't actually tell you anything about how good / bad the watch / 3D TV / Coffee Maker is.

monaco gp & eurovision

It was the Monaco Grand Prix this last weekend.

As I was saying on Friday the Monaco Grand Prix can be terribly dull and I'm afraid to say this weekend's race didn't really thrill me.  The problem really came down to the issue that overtaking at Monaco is incredibly difficult.

At the end of the race there were 5 of the top drivers all lined up behind Webber and none of them really had a go at overtaking.  It was also very long.  Street circuits tend to produce long races because, although the tracks are often short so they do lots of laps but the speeds are low and so they take ages.

I actually nearly fell asleep at one point, though I have to admit that was also partly due to the fact I was up late and had a few frothy bevvies the night before.

The race did produce a new record, though; in that we've had six different drivers win all six of the races so far.  There is a good side to this in that it means the championship is all really close, but I have to say it's a bit too random for my liking.

While it's not good when you have 1 driver and team that utterly dominates, I'm also not really enjoying this situation where 1 race one team is dominant and then the next race they're crap and someone else is utterly dominant.  I'm hoping when they work the tyres out a bit more then things will settle down a bit.

The reason for the late night drinking was Eurovision.  It snuck up a bit on me this year, actually.  I don't ever remember it clashing with Monaco before - perhaps they've moved it because of the Jubilee and Olympics (the BBC is one of the core organisations of the European Broadcasting thing that puts it together)?

Anyway, because of it sneaking up I actually recorded it and watched it on delay.  This proved advantageous as the show was incredibly long.  The worst part of it now is the voting, which takes an hour and a half because there are forty-odd countries involved (they also have semi-finals nowadays so that only 26 songs appear on the final night) and once it became clear that the UK wasn't in contention I really skimmed through the voting at high speed.

Our result wasn't surprising - the song was a ballad and okay but quite lumpy.  It was also sung by Engelbert Humperdinck and while he gave it his all it was clearly just an old man singing an okay song.  I'm not sure fit eh plan was to pick up the grey vote, but if so it was a bit flawed as I think it's mainly young people that actually vote.

This is evidenced by the fact that the winner was an unashamed piece of Europop.  If it had been on Radio 1 and the DJ had said it had been written by David Gueta you wouldn't have been surprised.

The thing I was mainly thankful for was that the Russian Grannies didn't win.  It was a truly awful and quite cynical on some levels attempt to garner votes and it did well, but thankfully some people saw sense.  I think it probably helps on that front that each country has a team of judges as well as the telephone vote.

interview

I have my first job interview tomorrow.

Well, it' snot my first ever job interviewer, but it is my first job interview since I decided to look for a new job.

It feels kinda weird to be honest.  Indeed, the whole thing feels a bit weird.  There's definitely an element in there somewhere of it feeling like I'm betraying my current company.

I dunno - I guess fundamentally it's a reflection of my character in that I'm quite a loyal person.  But there's also a feeling there that it's not like I'm about to lose my job and they've not necessarily specifically done anything wrong or bad to me so many of the traditional reasons for seeking a new job aren't present.

I'm not actually sure if I'm nervous about the interview or excited.

One thing I do remember is that the job I got when I was doing interviews at Uni was the one where I said to myself "odds on you're not going to get the job, so just relax and try to enjoy it."

This attitude has actually often proven to be a real winner for me.  If I manage to get myself into a state where I sort of don't care (I mean I do, but it's more like I've decided the thing has already gone badly so there's not point being worried about the outcome) then it actually turns out well.

The best example was my driving test where I basically set off without my seatbelt on.  Now you are actually allowed to remove your belt when manoeuvring so long as you put it straight on afterwards, but I don't generally need to and was at the end of the street before I realised I'd simply forgotten to put in one after getting in the car.

After that I assumed that I had basically failed and so I relaxed totally and just took it as a bit of additional driving practice and essentially a dry run for a second test.  But I actually passed.

I'm actually only taking the morning off tomorrow, but it's unlikely I'll be doing a blog as the afternoon will probably be quite busy.

It's the Monaco Grand Prix this weekend.

Monaco's probably the most famous Grand Prix there is and a few years back we went there to actually watch it.  The recent change in weather really reminded me of the trip, actually, as extraordinary heat was one of the hallmarks of the trip as the med was going through something of a heat wave.

While Monaco is super famous it's not usually the most exciting of races.  The problem of course is that there are no overtaking spots.  It's held on the streets of Monaco and so it's very narrow - dedicated race tracks are always a lot wider - which makes things difficult, but there are also no long straights (in fact there aren't really any straight bits at all) so the traditional overtaking opportunities don't tend to present themselves.

This isn't to say there aren't good races at Monaco.  Last year was a particularly good one as plenty happened.  There was even quite a bit of overtaking.  And other years can be interesting for various battles or incidents that shake things up.

Monaco is also seen as a particular challenge by the drivers as well.  As mentioned, there are no straights so they don't ever get a chance to relax and the narrow streets are surrounded by crash barriers so if you get it wrong then it's pretty final.

Of course this is the sort of thing that doesn't really show up well as a spectator at home.  When we were at the track it was great because you're really close and you get a much better feel for the whole experience.

One thing they did have in previous years was the in-car stuff on the red button and that really worked well for Monaco because you got a much better feel for how hard they work and how thrilling driving the circuit must be.  This has since been replaced with the driver tracker, which is okay but not as good.

the expendables

I'm not sure quite what to say about The Expendables.  It seemed sort of like a bigger budget version of the cheesy action films that seemed to saturate cinema in the 1980s.

I can't ever really say I was a huge fan of these.  I mean, I've watched quite a few of them and they were okay, but very few were every really memorable.

The big problem is they were just too cheesy.  The action, gun-play and fighting would be good but then between those bits you'd get hackneyed plots and terrible dialogue and the whole thing would be saturated with homoeroticism.

I think I've mentioned this before, but why is it homoeroticism when it's men being presented as sexy / beefcake?  Unless I'm getting the wrong end of the stick the implication is that it's only designed to appeal to gay men, rather than hetero women.  I dunno, it just seems all the terminology is rather male-centric.

Anyway, I think my problem here was that I was expecting the film to be somewhat more self-aware than it was.

It's odd - there seemed to be something of an attempt at it, but it didn't really work.  The most obvious example of a bit of self-awareness was in the character names.  So, for example, Jason Statham's character has the rather daft name of Lee Christmas and others are called Toll Road and Hale Ceaser.

The trouble is it's not clear if these are their real names or if they are names they've picked in order to not be identifiable or as aliases or similar.  They also don't make anything of it in the film proper.

Another problem I had was that the bad guys don't really make sense.  The idea seems to essentially be that a rogue (well, I think he was rogue) CIA agent is manipulating a tin-pot dictator for the usual sorts of reasons.  The trouble is there doesn't seem to be any sort of hard and fast decision as to whether the dictator in question is really just a puppet being forced to do stuff or he's actually a really evil person himself.

So we end up with some contradictory scenes where he's shown to be total bastard himself but then others where he's seen to be controlled and manipulated by the CIA guy.  So are we meant to feel sorry for him?  But he's an arsehole too.

It's like we've got an arsehole buffet, where perhaps we should have had two separate arsehole courses.

More exclamation points

So this week seems to be yet more confirmation of my British weather theory.

This theory is quite simple - it's that the weather in Britain comes with exclamation points.  By that I mean that we don't seem to get gradual seasonal shifts, we get weather that suddenly veers from one thing to the next.

So last week I was wearing my jumper at work because it was chilly and traipsing around in a coat because it was raining all the time.  And we're not talking good old British drizzling - we're talking cats and dogs stuff.  And when it wasn't raining it was cloudy or foggy or some such rubbish.

But then suddenly yesterday it was sunshine and blue skies all day with promises of more of the same and today its 25 degrees out.

It's weather with exclamation points - one minute you're swaddled under 10 layers of clothing, the next you're having to drag them around because you'd collapse from heat exhaustion if you kept them on.

both coming and going

I had a horribly busy / tiring weekend for some reason.

I've mentioned before the troubles that I was having meeting my footwear needs, though I'm not sure if I've mentioned that I've been wanting to get a new mattress as well.  Well I looked online and saw that the nearest millets was in Aldershot and they also have some big furniture type stores there as well, so I decided that I would try to knock everything on the head in one weekend.

The plan was I'd do my washing as usual first thing then head up to Aldershot for opening time, park at the furniture store, nip into town to get work shoes and walking shoes and then head back to get the mattress.  I'd then unload all of these before heading into Aldershot with the primary intention of posting some parcels I had to send but also in case the shoes were still outstanding.

I also needed to buy some bits from smiths and Tesco's so I could park up in Tesco's in Aldershot and then walk into town.  This walking would also help me tick my walking allocation box for the day too.

Good plan and it sort of worked - I got all of the things done, including the mattress, although there was one downside.  The out-of-town furniture places have gotten a company to manage the parking since I last went there (we're talking years since I last went) and one of the conditions they have is that you don't leave the site and of course I did, so they've charged me.

I've actually just been doing some searching and there are quite a few websites (including some YouTube clips from watchdog) saying these aren't really legally enforceable.

Anyway, having bought the mattress it was a hell of a struggle getting it home.  It's actually oddly deep (as in "high") and although it's surprisingly light it's rather inflexible.  I only drive a small car so I was fiddling about putting seats down and taking off headrests and all sorts to cram it in.

I did get it in eventually but it was a bit dodgy driving as it was difficult to get to the gear stick.  I remember thinking as I set off that it'd be a bit dodgy if the police saw me and of course on the drive back there was a police car that had pulled someone over (for speeding I guess)!

The reason for sending the parcels is I made a bit of a decision to get on and rip a bunch of anime DVDs and put them up for sale.  I had actually started doing this with my normal DVDs but got a bit side-tracked with the whole contracting work, but I got a couple of hefty credit card bills and it kinda spurred me into action to try and get the cash flowing again if I'm honest.

The other issue was that on Thursday night I had real trouble sleeping and Friday night I wasn't able to catch up, which meant that by Saturday afternoon I was absolutely shattered.  Sunday I felt so tired that I didn't go for any walk or anything - indeed I didn't actually leave the bedsit

the hunt

More on the job hunt today, I'm afraid.

Interestingly, I've already had a couple of good sniffs.  Indeed, I appear to have been asked to interview for a couple of jobs - well, tentatively.  They're not fully confirmed just yet.

I've been a bit surprised, actually, as you obviously hear about how the economy is in the toilet all the time, but there have actually been loads of jobs on the websites I've been using.  In fact there's been sufficient that I've been able to be choosey about which ones I apply for.

Now don't get me wrong - I'm not saying there are more jobs than you could shake a stick at, but I've definitely not been desperately applying for all jobs because there were so few around.  I'm guessing this is a reflection of the fact that I now have a good few year's experience and I'm not straying outside of that area of experience.

My guess is it's hard for people with no experience moving into new areas or freshly entering the job market.  Certainly a lot of the jobs I'm looking at are asking for experience, though I think that's something of a reflection of what I'm going for as well - you wouldn't employ a new person in the role.

One thing I would definitely say is that this thing of using recruitment agents is rubbish.  A lot of them really don't do anything like a good job.

Now this isn't borne of bitterness or anything, but you have to remember that I'm sort of in a similar area and if I'd been putting up some of the job description they do I would, quite frankly, be embarrassed.

I mean, if you're advertising a job surely you'd at least make sure that when you copied and pasted the job description the company supplied you with the text was all fully copied across and decently formatted.  I've seen descriptions where the sentences on each item of a bullet list were all cut in half so it became unreadable.

What's worse is they're very protectionist.  They put up the job description but they won't say what the company is, which you can sort of see as being fair enough as they want to stop you going direct, but they won't even put what sector it is.

So in my case I'm really not interested in construction or the company may be in the health sector and want someone with lots of health experience.  So if they don't put the sector and I apply then it's just a waste of everybody's time.

Of course, the worst crime they commit is not replying.

Given that these companies get fees for finding people and that's all they do it's quite poor behaviour.  To me they're kinda on a level with Estate Agents.  They have too much power and are providing a service which really shouldn't be needed.  Especially in this day and age, but the irony is they seem to have actually gained greater power with the internet.

You can kind of understand it from the view of the company that's using them.  They act as a sort of first filter, since I imagine if you put up a job you get hundreds of applications, the vast majority of which are no hoppers.  Of course the problem is these recruitment agents don't really know what the job requires, they're just comparing your CV to the spec, and the spec may not be that good or they may not understand it properly.

buzzcut

I didn't really post much last week.

That was primarily due to a double whammy of having to get back up to speed / pick up all sorts of stuff that had happened while I was away and applying for jobs.  The applying for jobs bit was the thing that took up most of the spare time I would usually use to do things like write my blog posts.

I finally finished doing my CV while I was on holiday.  The tricky part was coming up with some stuff to match the technical sections in my CV.  I've basically divided the CV up into two parts - technical stuff and bid writing stuff.

The technical part was easy to populate because I could just take the material I use for my work CV (I get put into bids and obviously do technical work as a contractor like I did earlier in the year) and tweak it so it was a bit more appropriate to the format, etc.

The difficult bit was the bid writer side, because I only really do that internally to my company so there was no pre-existing material.  The real challenge was dividing both up in such a way that they matched stylistically.

The technical stuff easily divides up into a series of discrete projects, but the bid writing was better divided up into areas of activity with each project as a single example of me doing that.

In the end I came up with what I think is a relatively smart CV that brings out both sides quite well.  My idea was that by making a CV like that I could adapt it if I wanted to do a technical or bid writing job.

Bid writing is of more interest to me.  I think.  It's certainly been a lot easier going through the job descriptions on the websites and thinking whether I could do the role or not.

The technical / analytical searches have generally produced loads more results (probably a ratio of 20 to 1!) but the big problem is that I don't have much of the specific experience with the analytical software like SPSS, SAS or SQL.  So while I could learn and probably have all the other skills, that means it's not even worth applying.

One thing that's also been interesting is the salaries.  The analyst roles are reasonably well paid, but it's broadly similar to my current salary.  Unless, that is, it's in the financial sector, and then the money goes quite high.  For the bid writing roles the worst salaries are equivalent to what I'm currently on and generally are a bit higher (backing up one of my issues where I currently work).

As part of this whole process I also had a rather significant haircut - the buzzcut of the title.

I've been thinking about getting it all trimmed off for a while as I've actually started to thin on top.  This wouldn't be so bad but unfortunately my hair is really fluffy and tends to stick straight up unless it's more than an inch long or so.  The trouble there is when it gets that long it tends to acquire some weird curliness, but only in certain parts.  My sideburns get very curly, but more on the right than the left, for example.

The buzzcut is also super easy to maintain and I can also now do it myself, saving myself money.  I mean, it's not a lot of money, but given how long a haircut takes it's surprisingly expensive.  We're talking an equivalent day rate in the order of £350 a day and that's a lot for the type of level of work it is.

I am a little worried though as I fear it makes me look too aggressive / thuggish.  A part of the issue is that, while my hair is thinning it's not receding, but also I have quite dark hair so it's not a subtle thing.

sucker punch

I struggled with Sucker Punch.

The problem was I felt it was trying hard to do something clever but not quite achieving it.

The clever thing it was trying to do revolved around exploitation.  There were several levels to this.  One was quite obvious - the exploitation of young women by popular culture.  This was examined through a whole series of contradictory elements such as the girls dancing and questions over empowerment.  But there were other themes - family's (natural and forced), violence (real and for titillation), the use & abuse of cultures (Hollywood's wholesale taking of tropes from other cultures), for example.

My problem came in that it was trying to have its cake and eat it.

Now I don't fundamentally have a problem with this, it's just that here it didn't quite work.

So the film is exploring the exploitation of beautiful young girls as eye candy.  It's trying to point out that this is wrong.  But it's also doing it itself.

The film is exploring the use of false empowerment - girls presented as being empowered, but actually being 'enslaved' and used.  But it's also doing this itself.

I guess the issue is that it failed to undermine these issues.  In the end it simply used them itself.  It would have been far better if it had parodied them or somehow undercut them.  It made it all feel slightly pointless.

The other issue I had was the fact that it felt like a series of individual things stuck together.  It's quite normal for action films to effectively be a series of heavily designed action vignettes that are almost glued together.  Weirdly they're like musicals in a way - there's the song and dance bits and then there's the stuff that moves you as briskly as possible between each of these.

Well in Sucker Punch this goes to an extreme with each of the vignettes feeling like an individual movie.  But this is to the extent that each one is completely different in style, tone and theme.  Indeed, each uses a particular set of tropes such that one is a far eastern thing, another is a World War 2 thing (and also a zombie thing) and another is a LotR fantasy thing.

The trouble is that the switch back and forth between these is extremely jarring.  Part of this is where the exploration of themes comes in - the wholesale plundering of other cultures, the exploitation, etc.  But the real difficult I had is that generally these are really cool.

In particular they feel like the best bits of anime, games, western comic books and movies all welded together.

I dunno, perhaps the coolness was meant to be the part that undermines the issues?  Instead to me it felt like all it did was reinforce them.

spanish grand prix

Spanish Grand Prix this last weekend.

Usually Spain is a bit boring.  A big part of this is because it's where they do the winter testing and it's also where they used to do some of the in-season testing back before they cut it out to help reduce costs.

In the past that has meant the teams and many of the drivers know the track intimately, but it also means they know each other's performance at the track very well too.  Obviously if you keep using the same track over and over then the final result come race day is likely to reflect what you saw when you were practicing too.

However, thanks to Pirelli even tracks like Spain have been given a new lease of life in terms of the quality of the races and this last weekend was no exception.  The race was a good one with lots of on (and off) track action.

Of particular note was obviously that Williams has managed to win a race for the first time in something like 10 years.  They've been going through quite a rough patch recently Williams and haven't really even been in contention for being a mid-field team for a while.  Last year was there worst ever season, but this year their fortunes seem to have turned through the full 180 degrees.

Also Sauber and Lotus both seem to have made some serious steps and are very much contention.  Indeed, it's such an open season that we've had five separate winners in each of the five races this year.

Another clear example is that Alonso is currently sitting at the top of the table, despite having not won any of the races and everyone saying the Ferrari car this year is terrible.

There were a couple of sour notes.  Having had the victory and celebrating Frank Williams's 70th Birthday there was a fire in their pits after the race and four people got injured.  Fire has always been one of the riskiest elements in Grand Prix and it's claimed more than a few lives over the years.

The other sour note was Lewis Hamilton who, having done a stunner of a lap in the final stages of qualifying was then told to turn off his car while out on the circuit as he was low on fuel.  The cars are required to give a sample of fuel from the tank following qualifying to make sure they're not adding in anything to improve performance.

This is actually quite a lot (1 litre) and if they can't give this then there are quite serious penalties.  It came about because of a similar incident involving Lewis a while back where he ran out of fuel on his in lap.  This time the team told him to stop so they would be able to give the sample.

Now I believe there is also a regulation that says you can't do this either - knowingly under fill your car (more fuel = more weight and makes you slower) and stop.  However, McLaren indicated it was an error, but the stewards didn't accept this and demoted him right to the back of the grid.

This seemed un-necessarily harsh, given that the weight reduction would only have given him 2 or 3 tenths (he was half a second quicker) and he'd already set a quick time that would have put him 6th.

And this after the last race in Bahrain where Rosberg tried to run Hamilton and Alonso off the road and Hamilton overtook off the track and yet nobody received any punishment at all.

One of the things that did amuse me about it was when Hamilton pulled up the booing of the crowd was epic.  Lewis isn't the most popular fellow in Spain given how fanatically they love Alonso and the year they spent as team mates at McLaren.

glowing orb of brightness

There was a rather sudden change in the weather last Friday.

Suddenly the sky went this weird colour that I heard people describing as "blue" and there was this bright yellow ball floating in sky that appeared to produce a curious warming sensation on exposed flesh.

Some people said that finally the weather was nice, but I knew the truth.  We have been plunged into a nightmare scenario designed by the cosmetics companies to get us all to spend our entire earnings on gloopy creams that protect us from this burning sky globe.

That's quite enough of that.  Yes, this weekend the weather gave us a brief respite from the constant drizzle, rain, torrential downpours and miserable, chilly grey dampness that has been the British climate for the last couple of months.

It's weird; the grey and wet weather has actually been getting to me the last few months.  It's not so much that we've had some it's that it's been continuous and incredibly repressive.  A bit of rain I don't mind at all, but when you get soaked to the bone every time you leave your house it gets to be a bit much after a while.

Actually the weather we had was just how I like sunny weather.  It was nice and bright, but it wasn't hot.  Even when you were out in the full glare of the mid-day sun it was still pleasant.  I don't like it when it gets really hot and it doesn't matter if you're in the shade or not, you just feel clammy and sweaty all the time.

Of course today it's clouded over.  It's not actually raining here yet, but I understand it's on its way.

I did actually have a few pictures I took that I wanted to upload about the weather while I was on holiday.  Unfortunately I've not downloaded them off my phone and while I'm sure I could e-mail them or something similar I can't be bothered to work out how to do that.  I'll therefore do it later and blog about it then.  Let's just say it was mildly moist.

shoes, shoes everywhere

Well, I'm back in the office.

I actually got back yesterday but didn't really have the time to write a blog post.

It was a good holiday I think, overall.  As I said beforehand I had a few days for doing stuff and then I was off gallivanting around the country.

The stuff at home my main aim was to get some new footwear - I needed some work shoes, walking shoes and some trainers.  My thoughts were that the easiest of these to get would be the work shoes, then the walking shoes, then the trainers.

The trainers would be most difficult because I won't wear anything except black trainers and I also like reeboks.  These, combined with my foot size (a 10 or 11 depending on the shoe fit) which is very popular tend to make it rather difficult to find them.

I figured walking shoes would be okay as there's a millets in Farnham and they sell karrimors, which are the brand I like and it would just be a case of finding the right fit and a design that looked sturdy.

The work shoes would be a piece of piss as there are usually lots of designs that are acceptable and there are loads of Clarks shoe shops around.

The reality was almost the exact reverse.  The first sports good shop I breezed into had Black reeboks in my size and I was out within 20 minutes.

The walking shoes proved to be problematic because the millets in Farnham has gone.  I then wasn't at all sure where another one was locally.  However, I knew there was a millets at the factory outlet place that's just up the road from my Dad's in Devon... only that had closed too!

I don't think millets have gone under and I've had a look online to find the shops.  I guess I could always order online, but shoes are one of those things you really need to try on to make sure they fit properly.

The work shoes was bizarre - I went into the Clarks in Aldershot and, as suspected, they had several designs that would have been suitable, but some of them were incredibly expensive (£70 for shoes for work!) and those that weren't they didn't seem to have any sizes that fit.  The ones I did try on were too small and they didn't have the next size up.

I then tried this cheap shoe place up the road, but they were awful - like walking on planks of wood.

There is a shoe shop in the town I work in so I'll try looking in there, or they could probably order them, but overall it was bizarre that I couldn't find any.

a week away

As previously mentioned I'm away on holiday next week.

I didn't initially have any plans for the holiday.  I was taking it mainly because otherwise it would be ages between holidays, since I didn't take any extra time at Easter.  It's also my birthday and I usually take some time off at my birthday, though not always a week.

Anyway, having not really had any plans I'm not off all over the place, going to see some friends on a couple of the days and then for the last weekend (the one with the bank holiday) I'm off to see my dad.

As with the holiday generally I'm seeing my dad as otherwise it would likely be months until I see him again.  It's not hugely convenient him living in the West Country as it means some very long drives to see him.  Some way off a "popping over" situation.  And the trains are useless and long-winded and expensive of course.

My other aim is to pull my finger out over the whole jobs thing.  I need to finish my CV and start actively applying for some of these jobs I've been looking at if I'm serious about this whole issue.

I've also got a fair few chores to do next week, like the shopping for shoes thing, so for a week I was just taking to have a break it's going to be quite busy.

Anyway, the point is this'll be the last blog for a bit more than a week.

drought that never dried

It's no wonder the British have such a strongly developed sense of irony.

A couple of weeks back the water company where I live (and several others in the South and South East) declared a hose pipe ban.  Their reason for doing so was that it has been very dry over the last few years and, indeed, we were officially in drought.

Since then, of course, it has rained every single day.  And I don't mean that as an exaggeration - every day for the last couple of weeks we've had some rain.

Now don't get me wrong - I know this relatively short spell of wet weather (April Showers have really been living up to their name) is not enough to completely negate what have been a reasonably dry few years.  However, it is quite ironic that as soon as a drought is declared and a hose pipe ban goes into effect it starts raining.

Of course there's also the issue of leaks.  The record of the water companies is generally appalling on the leaks front.  Any small saving you personally can make is dwarfed by the amount of water that gets pissed away in leaks every single hour.  Of course there's a cumulative effect of us all saving a bit, but still, even a small amount of Google searching will bring up some eye watering (heh) stats.

But for me the whole thing is much more fundamental than that.

Our water industry is privatised (as, indeed, are most all of our utilities).  Now obviously if it were nationalised we would still also pay for the water, but with it being nationalised, surely these companies are under a different type of obligation to us, because we're now customers.

If you went to a shop and tried to buy some clothes you wouldn't expect them to only sell you half a pair of trousers because you were only allowed a certain amount of cloth.  If they did that you'd go elsewhere.

But to me that's a ridiculous notion for the utilities - it still comes out of the same pipe or down the same wire.  There may be a different person you're paying, but it's still coming from the same place.  To use the shop analogy it'd be like going up to a different sales assistant and now they're going to sell you exactly the same thing, but they're going to charge you a different amount of money, or they're going to put slightly different restrictions on the length of the trousers you're going to buy or when you can wear them.

It's a ridiculous situation.

I've also never had much truck with this notion that private companies are more efficient simply by virtue of needing to turn a profit.  It's a ridiculous and patently untrue notion.

Companies being driven by profit can just as equally lead to fraud, deceit, cost-cutting (as in the worst kind - skimping on safety, for example)

the fast and the furious

What a terrible film.

It's weird.  I mentioned it in my review at the time, but I actually watched the fourth film in this franchise first and I thought that was much better than this.

I mean, I don't actually think the fourth one was a good film but it was sufficiently glossy and bombastic to be watchable.  This first film has a near identical plot (yes, it came first) but it somehow manages to be dull.

Perhaps there's some budgetary thing going on - the first was risky so there was a smaller budget, maybe?  After it was a success the sequels got more cash?  I dunno, it seems possible but generally sequels are done on smaller budgets.  I can't really be arsed to find out though, and you never really know with these budget numbers they give what and where that money was spent.

But my real issue was that the film just seemed like a bit of a mess.

While both films seemed like heavily planned action sequences strung together by not-very-much of any real interest, in this first one the problem seems to be that they don't really give a crap about the linking parts.  There seemed to be a lot of non-sequitors and bits that didn't actually make much sense, just in order to get to the next cool sequence.

But this is also a reflection of the cool sequences not really meshing together.  It shouldn't be necessary for the connecting bits to work quite as hard at joining the dots as the dots should really join themselves.

One of the particular bits that don't quite work is the supposed rival gang of Asians.  The real reason this doesn't work is that you end up with confused characters and motives.  I mean, the basic problem is that you effectively have two sets of bad guys and the hero is trying to infiltrate one.

The trouble is the team he's infiltrating we're also supposed to think "oh, they're not so bad - it's not like they kill anyone".  I mean, they're criminals, but it's the classic Hollywood bad-good people.  But because they have a properly bad set of guys you end up with this weird situation that he's trying to take down the good-bad guys and not the bad-bad guys.

It's all very weird and convoluted when it didn't have to be.

i have no toes

This last Saturday I managed to flay the skin off of my little toe on my right foot.

I think flay is the right word.  It wasn't deliberate, as such.  I mean, I didn't set out to remove the skin, but the thing that caused its removal was something I kinda thought may cause that to happen.

I'll stop being cryptic - basically, I put a plaster on the toe next to my little toe and the action of me walking has caused rubbing which has initially formed a blister, but that's then quickly burst and so the skin has scraped off.

I was kinda afraid this would happen, as I've had the same effect before where a plaster on a toe has rubbed and taken the skin off or otherwise injured another toe.  The irony of course is that I put the plaster on in order to protect the first toe from the effects of rubbing.

The reasons for both incidents of rubbing are somewhat complicated.

Essentially I need some new shoes.  In fact I actually need a complete set of new shoes.  I need some new work shoes as the soles are nearly worn through on my current pairs (I have two for stupid reasons not worth explaining).  I need some new trainers because my current ones are rubbish.  I need some new walking shoes because my current ones are worn out.

Luckily I'm on holiday next week so I'll take the opportunity to buy all my new shoes then.

The other cause is I have feet that are very wide but not very long.  I think if you measure the length of my feet I actually only have something like size 9.  However, because my feet are so wide I generally have to wear size 10 or 11.

And you know what they say about men with wide feet - difficulty finding shoes that fit properly.  I can occasionally get wide fittings, but generally only in work shoes for some reason.

Anyway, the wide foot thing means that my toes get squished together.  Now I don't know if it's a reflection of this squishing, but my smaller toes tend to curl under quite a lot and are very close together.  This means that the two combined - close toes and ill-fitting shoes tends to lead to le getting the rubbing effect that's cause my skin to flay off.

My toe is very much on the mend.  I've been strapping it up with plasters and that worked quite well.  I obviously didn't do any walking on Sunday or Monday and this rest has also helped.

I'm sure I'll be totally fixed by the weekend and I was already fine doing a very short walk this morning.

bahrain

So the race went ahead.

It would appear that there were quite a few protests, but nothing impacted on the race itself after the Force India people being caught up in it on Friday.

One of the things that was very apparent though was that there were virtually no spectators.  I mean a big part of the problem with a lot of these new events is that there are no spectators, but this weekend the place looked virtually empty.

I've noticed it at Bahrain before but there don't actually appear to be that many places to watch the race.  Usually you have two types of spectators - those seated in grandstands and those standing.  Well at Bahrain there never appear to be any standing spectators.

I don't know if this is a deliberately move and you can't get to the areas where there are no stands (this is the case in Monaco and a few of the other street circuits) but it really does make the place look empty.  What's odd about it is that it's not because there are loads of stands - there are big bits of the track where the cars just drive around a bit of the dessert and nobody except a few marshals and TV cameras can see them.

At some of the other races where there are few spectators there are stands but they're empty, but at Bahrain there only appear to be a couple of stands and they were still empty.  Whether this was a consequence of the unrest (people staying away or being kept away) or is simply a further reflection of the fact that the event attracts few people anyway I don't know.  Certainly you'd think that foreigners would be less keen to visit and the BBC showed some footage on the way to the circuit of loads of security people and APCs.

Anyway, the race itself was actually not all that bad.  I wouldn't rate it as a great race, as such, but for a Bahrain GP it wasn't bad.  There was some overtaking (even if quite a bit of it was the artificial DRS-on-the-straight kind) and certainly a few things of interest happened.

In particular McLaren seemed to have a bit of a shocker.  Having had problems with a wheel nut in Button's pit stop in China (cross-threading, apparently) the same thing happened to Lewis Hamilton... twice!

With him having started in second place he ended up down in eighth, although it wasn't really clear that it was entirely down to the problems in the stops.  Having seemed to do well in Qualifying, during the race the McLarens didn't really seem to be up to speed during the race.

Jenson's car (engine or drive train it seemed like) packed up on virtually the last lap, although some sort of puncture issue had actually taken him out of the points on the lap before.

The weirdest thing was Nico Rosberg, though, who seemed determined to drive Leis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso off the circuit.  Both incidents happened in the same place and both were quite clearly him going too far.  It clearly states (and sensibly so) that you can't go pushing other drivers off the circuit, but in both cases that's what he appeared to do.

The stewards didn't punish him at all, but instead made some statements about how the other drivers weren't alongside.  Now of course they have all the views and angles and information and stuff, but from the TV pictures it looked like they were alongside and it's difficult to see why they would be going that far over if they weren't alongside.

In particular if Rosberg did nothing wrong then why wasn't Lewis punished?  He overtook off the circuit, which isn't allowed, but surely he only did that because Rosberg left no room?

I'm sure if the circuit hadn't had such big run of areas Rosberg wouldn't have gone quite to far as he did, but surely that's not the point - you can't go shoving other drivers off the circuit, veering way across like he did.  And we're not talking any small move or instinctive reaction - the Bahrain circuit is extremely wide and he moved across the full width of it, so it was a clearly deliberate move to push them off.

I'm all for letting them battle and I often tend to think the stewards over-react, but here I think it's gone the other way.

to bahrain or not to bahrain

Well, as I type this now it currently looks like the Bahrain Grand Prix is going ahead.

Last year the event was cancelled by the organisers due to the protests and Arab spring type unrest.  This year the promoters apparently want to stage the race.

The FIA does have the power to call off the race and in theory the teams / drivers could boycott the event.

Already some people in force India have come into contact with unrest, having basically driven into an area where a protest was going on and people threw petrol bombs at them.  From the reports the implication is that the protestors were not specifically after the Force India people, they just got caught up in it.  However, if that's what happens when they're not specifically after the teams, I wonder what would happen if they were?

The opposition movement has, I believe, stated that they would not target the teams or anyone coming into the country to do with the race, but they have stated that the Grand Prix represents everything that's wrong with the country.  It was brought in by the ruler and that's who they're protesting against.

I guess one of the real fears I have are that the teams will get caught up in it - probably in a similar style to the Force India incident: not deliberately, but in a way that doesn't matter.

The other thing I'm afraid of is that the protestors will do something daft.  If they try to storm the track or in any way interfere there are all sorts of possibilities for things that could go horribly wrong.  While F1 cars can stop incredibly quickly, they're still having to do so from 200mph on some occasions.  And we know they crash into each other all the time - some protestor running on to the track could be a horrible tragedy.

Or they may protest and be cracked down on.  This would be horrible because it means the sport is part of the cause of people get hurt or killed or whatever.

It will also not exactly help the sport's reputation.  We're already known to many people for the vast sums of money that go sloshing around.  The idea we're staging a race basically because some Arab king wants to pay to stage it and the sport doesn't have the courage to not take his money will not be a good result.

Who knows, it may go without a hitch.  But I've a feeling that even if the race event goes smoothly F1 won't come out of the weekend well.

a warm front

So my landlord has had a new boiler installed.

I have discussed before in the blog that I now have a heater in my bedroom / living area that's connected to my landlord's heating.  It's proven quite useful and has saved me a considerable amount in terms of electricity cost.

It's not completely removed the need for me to use my own radiators, not least of all because obviously I have no control over it.  A good example of this is that I get up quite early (about 6:30 now but more like 6:00 when I was on contract) but my landlord doesn't, so he doesn't have any need for the heating to come on until about 7:00.  That therefore means I have to have my radiator on for about half an hour and then the landlord's is effective for the half hour before I set off for work at about 7:30.

Anyway, he's gotten a new boiler fitted because the old one is apparently not up to the job.  I'm not sure if my radiator made it more obvious, but apparently he said it's not been very good since it was installed.  He reckoned it took a lot of very careful fiddling with to get right and was very sensitive.

However, the problem form my point of view was that this was going to take the hot water out of action for a couple of days.  I'm not sure why it was a multiple day job, but it was, so he told me that Monday and Tuesday there would be no heating (I'm pretty sure he'd actually been hoping that by now the temperature would be enough not to have it on anyway) but also there's be no hot water.

My hot water is obviously supplied by the landlord's boiler too and in terms of things like hot water for washing up this was no great issue, but showering would be impossible.

Now to some degree I don't quite understand this as there is an immersion heating in the hot water tank, but my guess is that by taking the hot water out of the loop it meant they would need to drain all the systems, so there would be no water (hot or cold) in it to use.  Since my shower is a power shower without any sort of its own heating element, this certainly meant I couldn't have a hot shower, but probably meant I couldn't have one at all (no water).

His proposed solution for this was that he'd put a kettle in the corridor that joins me to his house and I could use that to boil water and "wipe down" instead.

This was not something I felt comfortable with (I sweat a lot during the night and my hair gets really greasy) so instead I took myself off to a travel lodge for the night.

It worked out okay.  I unfortunately forgot to take my earplugs with me so I woke up a couple of times in the night, but when I returned on Tuesday the boiler had been installed and was all up and running.  I also forgot my comb, but that was not such a problem.

switch it off and on again

No review today as I didn't really get the chance to do any last weekend as I was jibbering on about earlier in the week.

As such instead I thought I'd post about something that finally happened today - we went digital.  Which is to say they've now fully switched off the analogue TV signal where I am.

It seems to have taken absolutely bloody ages for it to happen.  And it seems that way because it has taken absolutely bloody ages for it to happen.

Switchover was meant to all be completed by now but there have been various delays that have meant it's only now that it's all switched over.  It didn't even happen all in one go.

They switched off one of the channels at the beginning of the month (the 4th I think it was) and today they've switched off the rest.  This has meant two lots of me having to retune my digital box, which is always a complete pain.

The problem is it takes ages and seems to be quite badly affected by atmospherics.  Which is to say that when the weather is bad like it has been just recently some of the channels can be subjected to quite a bit of noise / interference and the box tends to err on the side of caution.

Well, I say that, it's actually a really good decoder and is able to tune in to channels that other people's cant, but when it does the scanning and saving it seems to be quite conservative for some reason.  Certainly it occasionally seems to miss channels.

It did that this morning and I'll have to return it when I get back home.

The other issue I have is that the recording schedule gets wiped when it rescans.  This is sort of understandable as the channel numbers may change or, as I say, some channels may be lost; however the bit that I don't get is that, if you do the retune it scrubs everything before it does the retune.

So as soon as you hit the "scan" button it deletes all the old channels and the recording schedule.  So if you don't save the results of the scan you end up with 0 channels.  It's rather weird, though considering it's the only compliant I have of the box that's not too bad going.

One weird thing that did happen between the two switchovers was one Sunday morning it had really poor reception across all the channels - literally searching brought up only about 8 channels, all of them BBC.  This rectified itself by the afternoon (thankfully, as it was a Grand Prix day!) but then after that it seemed to be picking up additional channels from the next region over.  I therefore had two radio 4s and two BBC Parliament channels (the duplicates were more than a little random!).

Hopefully I'll be able to do a scan when I get back and it'll pick up the channels it missed and not give me the random extra ones.  Then it's just a case of setting up all the recordings again.

One thing I did notice this morning was that the signal strength had shot up for all the channels it did pick up.  This is something they said would happen after switchover, as the digital signal apparently would interfere with analogue.  I'm not sure if they'll "turn-up" all of the transmitters once the whole country is switched over, but certainly the signal was saying it was around 60% where it had been about 40% before (percentage of what I'm not sure!).

chinese grand prix

Last weekend it was the Chinese Grand Prix.

Usually China is quite a good one.  It's a Hermann Tilka designed circuit, but it's one of his better ones.  You normally get overtaking, particularly into the first corner.  As with many Tilka circuits there's a gigantic straight (the start/finish straight) and this has also become the DRS straight.

This has led to the slightly odd situation of people who would have had a go into the first corner instead using the DRS to do an easy overtake down the straight instead.  This wasn't so bad this year as it was last year, but it still clearly happened.

However, the race was a bit of an odd one.  As I say, usually China is good, but this year it only got good in the last third.  The first two thirds was actually weirdly boring.

I mean the opening couple of laps were good, but after that it seemed to settle into the weird sort of rhythm where everyone seemed to be doing their own thing.  However, at about two thirds of the way through these different things and a few incidences all seemed to converge such that (with the exception of Rosberg who was way out in front) everyone seemed to end up in the same stretch of track with either more or less grip on the tyres.

This led to some really exciting racing and over-taking and so I really enjoyed the end part.

In terms of the championship Lewis is on top.  This is a reflection of him having finished third in every race where everybody else has been all over the shop.  I believe he has stated that it was his intention to be consistent this year, though his expression after the first two races where he looked like he'd already lost the championship suggested he was thinking more along the lines of consistently winning.

It's too early to know if the Mercedes will now be a fly in Lewis's ointment.  For the first two races they qualified well but had a lot of trouble working the tyres in the race so tended to fall back.  In China you wouldn't have known they had any troubles as they performed very well throughout the race (Schumacher suffering with a wheel change problem that put him out).

Whether this means they've really cracked it or it just happened to work for the Chinese Grand Prix and the conditions (it was quite cold) it's difficult to know.  Certainly it looks like Red Bull have lost their edge.  The lack of changes to the rules this year mean that others have caught up and the one thing that did change (blown diffusers) seems to have been key to the Red Bull design.

burn, burn, burn

So this last weekend I had a few things on my to do list, one of which was burning and ripping some audio books.

I listen to audio books when I'm walking.  I find music difficult to walk to as you naturally want to fall in to step with it and of course each song has its own tempo.  Well, unless you listen to dance music I guess, as loads of songs are at exactly the same tempo.

I use audible, which is owned by amazon.  It's all done digitally - you download the audio books and they have their own player thing.  Their player is actually terrible, but I don't generally use it.

What I generally do is burn them to CD (I've discussed this before - you're only allowed to burn them once) and then rip the CD and stick those on a tiny MP3 player I have (a Sanso clip).  Ripping the CD means I have to deal with iplayer, since audible uses its own proprietary format.  It's a necessary evil and generally seems to work okay.

Anyway, the to do list only featured ripping and burning as one of the things I had planned.  It was a grand prix weekend, and one of the ones the beeb was showing in full, so that would obviously take up a big chunk of time, but I hadn't expected that doing the audio books would take quite as long as it did.

The problem was I'd stacked up more audio books that usual and also the books I'd purchased were mostly quite long.  So while burning each Cd only takes about 5-10 minutes, when you're doing 30 of the things you're talking 2.5 hours at the minimum.

Ripping the things is quicker, but it comes with a kind of admin burden.  The reason for this is I just use windows media player to do it and it doesn't really recognise the tracks.  That means you have to go through and re-name everything.

I don't do this to the extent I could - I just rename the files and folders, rather than editing the Meta data, but still, it's horribly tedious.  And it's horribly tedious on top of the whole ripping process, which is tedious too.

There are associated tasks too, like downloading the audio books, backing the files up, putting them on the MP3 player, etc, so all told I'd say I spent a total of around 7 hours doing all the stuff that I needed to just to rip the audio books.

When you consider that the total time for the Grand Prix adds up to 6 hours (1.5 + 1.5 + 1 + 2) it's not really surprising I didn't get much else done at the weekend!