Over the last few weeks I've been reading "Mustaine," which, rather predictably, is the autobiography of one David Mustaine, lead singer of my favourite band, Megadeth.
The book was pretty good. It's certainly very readable and you get a good insight into Mustaine's life. What I would say, though, is that it feels very trimmed down. Of course, this is true of all biographies, because you have to hack stuff away simply in order to avoid a multi-volume overload.
The problem is more that because Dave has had such an eventful life, this means quite a bit of stuff that's skimmed over is still pretty interesting. I mean, for a lot of people that warrant biographies you can skip past big chunks of their life where they didn't do the bit that was interesting about them.
However, Dave had a fairly unique - and not particularly fun - childhood that informs quite a lot of what came after, so you can't skip that. Then he was a homeless drug dealer, which is not something you can skip. Then he broke into the music world when he was becoming an adult and you can't skip that. And then you have Megadeth, with its constantly changing line-ups and massive success, the rivalry with Metallica, his drug use and abuse, his wife and kids, his finding God, the trouble his big mouth has gotten him into, the injury of his arm...
And it's not like he's now retired, or even like his career has hit the skids, so something has to give. In this case the 'give' takes the form of a skimming past stuff once you get out of the first years of Megadeth. So the earlier years have the most detail and then there are choice highlights from the later years.
It works quite well, and everything in there is entertaining and interesting, but you do sometimes feel a bit like you want to know more. In particular, touring and his process of writing songs are given very short shrift. Which is okay as I'm sure those things would only be of interest to fans, rather than the ordinary public, but if you're looking for details on what all the songs are about, you'll find meagre pickings (as I understand it, there was actually talk of doing a separate book on the songs, so this might be part of why they're not really covered).
What also feels a little short-changed is some of the well known feuds. In particular, Kerry King and Pantera are both mentioned, but almost more in passing than "here's what happened" detail. I can kinda understand that as most of these have been healed or fizzled out, so they may not seem important now and it wouldn't be fair if the book was entirely Dave banging on about old grudges.
But what about the big one? The Metallica thing.
Well, it's clear from the book what Dave's perspective on the whole thing was and is. He's certainly not changed his tune in that he feels hard done by, although he acknowledges several times that he was "a handful."
The main impression I got was that it's difficult to see how it could have worked any other way. I mean, a lot of the book is about how he was a chronic drug abuser and alcoholic and when he did drink he was an angry and dangerous drunk. And it took him several decades before he even came close to sorting all that out.
I mean, if Megadeth wasn't entirely his band and instead he'd been in other collaborative bands (which is what Metallica in the early days was) then you get the distinct impression he'd have been kicked out of those bands too. But since Megadeth was his, you get the situation where he's constantly firing people in a similar fashion to how he was kicked out.
Now to be fair there is a distinct difference - most of the people he fired were more like 'hired guns' than people who'd really been an integral part of Megadeth's song writing. And they all went for pretty reasonable reasons, although it's interesting he admits he's not very good at firing people.
But the point is more that okay, he was hard done by, they didn't fire him in a good way, and in his eyes he should have been the guitar player in the biggest band in the world, and yet that was a hell of a long time ago and Metallica have written an awful lot of albums that got them much more success than those early songs did.
Friday, 24 September 2010
Thursday, 23 September 2010
system building pt2
God, I'd completely forgotten what a pain it is to re-install a system.
Specifically I'm talking about re-installing XP on my old machine. My original plan (can't remember if I discussed it) was to use this machine as a file server and to watch TV on, but that hit a bit of a snag. Well, there have been a few snags, actually.
I mentioned before about how I had to change my plans for cases. My new case, which is all clever and stuff ended up with my old machine bits in because the GFX for my new rig was too big to fit. Well, something I also thought about doing was dusting off my old acrylic case and using that for my file-server machine.
However, couple of problems. First off, it turns out this old case id damaged, but also it's old so it's using 8cm fans. New cases tend to use 12cm fans, which are bigger, so they can shift he same amount of air but run slower and therefore are quieter. So the problem is acrylic case is broken and also very old. Also, it's got loads of blue lights in it.
I had forgotten Id' originally built this machine with the idea of using it as a sort of "show off" modding case, so when I had transferred all the gubbins (which took hours) and fired it up I was blinded by all the fan-lights and stuff. So the upshot is I need yet another case.
Especially since my plan of using this as a file server can't be implemented. Basically, I bought two new copies of windows 7 - one 32bit and one 64bit. The 32bit was for my old rig and the 64 for my new rig. But what I didn't know was that a 32bit system can only support about 3.5gb of RAM in total (i.e. including the video RMA). But what I also didn't know was that all core2 duo processors are 64bit compatible.
So essentially I've bought a useless version of windows 7. Except, I though, maybe I could run it on my old normal machine and by another 64bit copy. But this time before simply leaping into it, I tried testing out my hardware and software with windows 7.
Generally speaking I was hugely impressed. I was rather afraid that windows 7 would have horrible compatibility problems, but in reality it run nearly everything - even my old copy of Office 2000 and Photoshop 7! But the important bit is the 'nearly', because there is no driver for my A3 scanner.
And my A3 scanner is critical to the whole deal, which meant another change of plan. So, I installed the 32bit Windows 7 on my old games rig and will be using that as the file and print server and TV machine. Which really is a bit of a waste, but I have to keep using my old normal machine so that I can still use my scanner.
But I've decided to upgrade it to Windows XP. see, the old machine used Windows 2000, but my copy of XP of course is now not needed for my games machine, so I'm installing it from fresh. And it's taking ages.
See, the machine of course is slow compared o the newer ones, but also, Windows XP isn't the quickest installing thing anyway. I'd been thorough impressed by how quick it was to set Windows 7 up, but SP has taken me days.
I guess a part of that, though, is that windows 7 is relatively new, so it doesn't have as many patches. XP, being old, has literally hundreds of patches to download. But also, a lot of them take a long time to install compared to the windows 7 ones.
But also, the update process for Windows 7 seems much more comprehensive. I mean, it had lots of hardware patches and stuff where XP's doesn't. A great example of this is the printer - for XP I had to go on a mission to find a driver, but with Windows 7, the driver was there for download from the windows update site, which it found and installed automatically, so it was a piece of piss.
But yeah, it's never easy tweaking and upgrading, and now I've the added expense of buying another new case. And I should really get a better PSU too...
Specifically I'm talking about re-installing XP on my old machine. My original plan (can't remember if I discussed it) was to use this machine as a file server and to watch TV on, but that hit a bit of a snag. Well, there have been a few snags, actually.
I mentioned before about how I had to change my plans for cases. My new case, which is all clever and stuff ended up with my old machine bits in because the GFX for my new rig was too big to fit. Well, something I also thought about doing was dusting off my old acrylic case and using that for my file-server machine.
However, couple of problems. First off, it turns out this old case id damaged, but also it's old so it's using 8cm fans. New cases tend to use 12cm fans, which are bigger, so they can shift he same amount of air but run slower and therefore are quieter. So the problem is acrylic case is broken and also very old. Also, it's got loads of blue lights in it.
I had forgotten Id' originally built this machine with the idea of using it as a sort of "show off" modding case, so when I had transferred all the gubbins (which took hours) and fired it up I was blinded by all the fan-lights and stuff. So the upshot is I need yet another case.
Especially since my plan of using this as a file server can't be implemented. Basically, I bought two new copies of windows 7 - one 32bit and one 64bit. The 32bit was for my old rig and the 64 for my new rig. But what I didn't know was that a 32bit system can only support about 3.5gb of RAM in total (i.e. including the video RMA). But what I also didn't know was that all core2 duo processors are 64bit compatible.
So essentially I've bought a useless version of windows 7. Except, I though, maybe I could run it on my old normal machine and by another 64bit copy. But this time before simply leaping into it, I tried testing out my hardware and software with windows 7.
Generally speaking I was hugely impressed. I was rather afraid that windows 7 would have horrible compatibility problems, but in reality it run nearly everything - even my old copy of Office 2000 and Photoshop 7! But the important bit is the 'nearly', because there is no driver for my A3 scanner.
And my A3 scanner is critical to the whole deal, which meant another change of plan. So, I installed the 32bit Windows 7 on my old games rig and will be using that as the file and print server and TV machine. Which really is a bit of a waste, but I have to keep using my old normal machine so that I can still use my scanner.
But I've decided to upgrade it to Windows XP. see, the old machine used Windows 2000, but my copy of XP of course is now not needed for my games machine, so I'm installing it from fresh. And it's taking ages.
See, the machine of course is slow compared o the newer ones, but also, Windows XP isn't the quickest installing thing anyway. I'd been thorough impressed by how quick it was to set Windows 7 up, but SP has taken me days.
I guess a part of that, though, is that windows 7 is relatively new, so it doesn't have as many patches. XP, being old, has literally hundreds of patches to download. But also, a lot of them take a long time to install compared to the windows 7 ones.
But also, the update process for Windows 7 seems much more comprehensive. I mean, it had lots of hardware patches and stuff where XP's doesn't. A great example of this is the printer - for XP I had to go on a mission to find a driver, but with Windows 7, the driver was there for download from the windows update site, which it found and installed automatically, so it was a piece of piss.
But yeah, it's never easy tweaking and upgrading, and now I've the added expense of buying another new case. And I should really get a better PSU too...
Wednesday, 22 September 2010
weight for it
Well, I'd lost another pound when I weighed myself this last weekend.
I have to confess I'm a little disappointed with that, but also not entirely surprised. See, having now established that to get an at least vaguely accurate reading from my pedometer I need to put it in my breast pocket, I've had something of a shock about my walking. Previously I thought I was doing okay, but the pedo has revealed that I must actually have been falling some way short.
I therefore decided I was going to try getting up even earlier and going for a longish walk first thing, rather than the shortish stroll I've been doing. This did not work well.
The real problem is my totally weird behaviour when it comes to going to work. I mean, I don't officially start work until 9am, but I generally get to work at about 8am. And I honestly don't really know why.
Part of it may be that I'm a bit of a morning person. I like being up before everyone else. One of the things I like about my morning walk is that most of the rest of the world (as it were) is still sleeping.
Part of it is traffic. The route I use to work involves a roundabout that causes a lot of delay. Generally speaking, during term time, if I get there after about 7:45 it will add at least 15 minutes to my journey time. Now considering my journey to work is about 30 minutes on a morning, you can see how that's nor much fun.
Also, I have a particular loathing for sitting in traffic jams. I will actively seek out and use alternative routes even if they are much longer if it means I can avoid sitting in a jam. Even if the extent that the extra time taken on the alternate route might outweigh the time spent in the jam.
It's because it feels like utterly wasted time.
Another part of it is that it's part of my campaign to get RED to shift to flexible working. Id' love to be able to go home at 5 instead of 5:30. Or to save up and toddle home at 3:30 on a Friday. Or even take an extra day off.
But I don't think these really explain it. I think the real explanation is that I established the time I get up when I last worked at dstl (where they do have flexi) and I have simply stuck with it ever since. In other words, it's a routine I've now established and for me that's difficult to alter.
So when I started on the whole walking thing, I started getting up at 6:30, rather than my usual 6:45. The idea was that this would let me go for a 15 minute walk and still maintain the same basic schedule in the morning. And it worked well, but then I discovered the fact that my pedo readings were way off, so I started thinking about how I could squeeze in extra walking.
And the answer I came up with was to get up at 6:15 and go for a longer walk - to do my Saturday and Sunday walk. That way I'd easily bump up the mileage. Only there's a big problem - I just can't get up at 6:15 and go for a long walk like that. It's a real struggle, so all I end up doing is the same short walk and then getting into work even earlier!
Of course, I know the real answer. The real answer is to add an extra walk to when I get home. Problem there has been that all this fannying around with boxes and decorating my room and e-bay rubbish has meant that I'd just not had the time to do that.
I guess after my holiday when all will hopefully be sorted I can do a more sensible, planned routine and do the walk after work.
Anyway, last week I struggled to get even my minimum amount of walking in. I've been making so many trips to the post office to post e-bay stuff and spending the evenings parcelling it all up that I couldn't really do as much walking as I'd have hoped, despite the whole attempt at getting up even earlier.
It also didn't help that I wasn't quite as strict with the diet as I had been. I mean, I didn't completely fall off the proverbial wagon, but there were certainly a couple of days of non-plan eating.
I could blame this all on the horrible disruption I've been experiencing as part of the room redecorating sage, but the truth is I should be working around that.
I have to confess I'm a little disappointed with that, but also not entirely surprised. See, having now established that to get an at least vaguely accurate reading from my pedometer I need to put it in my breast pocket, I've had something of a shock about my walking. Previously I thought I was doing okay, but the pedo has revealed that I must actually have been falling some way short.
I therefore decided I was going to try getting up even earlier and going for a longish walk first thing, rather than the shortish stroll I've been doing. This did not work well.
The real problem is my totally weird behaviour when it comes to going to work. I mean, I don't officially start work until 9am, but I generally get to work at about 8am. And I honestly don't really know why.
Part of it may be that I'm a bit of a morning person. I like being up before everyone else. One of the things I like about my morning walk is that most of the rest of the world (as it were) is still sleeping.
Part of it is traffic. The route I use to work involves a roundabout that causes a lot of delay. Generally speaking, during term time, if I get there after about 7:45 it will add at least 15 minutes to my journey time. Now considering my journey to work is about 30 minutes on a morning, you can see how that's nor much fun.
Also, I have a particular loathing for sitting in traffic jams. I will actively seek out and use alternative routes even if they are much longer if it means I can avoid sitting in a jam. Even if the extent that the extra time taken on the alternate route might outweigh the time spent in the jam.
It's because it feels like utterly wasted time.
Another part of it is that it's part of my campaign to get RED to shift to flexible working. Id' love to be able to go home at 5 instead of 5:30. Or to save up and toddle home at 3:30 on a Friday. Or even take an extra day off.
But I don't think these really explain it. I think the real explanation is that I established the time I get up when I last worked at dstl (where they do have flexi) and I have simply stuck with it ever since. In other words, it's a routine I've now established and for me that's difficult to alter.
So when I started on the whole walking thing, I started getting up at 6:30, rather than my usual 6:45. The idea was that this would let me go for a 15 minute walk and still maintain the same basic schedule in the morning. And it worked well, but then I discovered the fact that my pedo readings were way off, so I started thinking about how I could squeeze in extra walking.
And the answer I came up with was to get up at 6:15 and go for a longer walk - to do my Saturday and Sunday walk. That way I'd easily bump up the mileage. Only there's a big problem - I just can't get up at 6:15 and go for a long walk like that. It's a real struggle, so all I end up doing is the same short walk and then getting into work even earlier!
Of course, I know the real answer. The real answer is to add an extra walk to when I get home. Problem there has been that all this fannying around with boxes and decorating my room and e-bay rubbish has meant that I'd just not had the time to do that.
I guess after my holiday when all will hopefully be sorted I can do a more sensible, planned routine and do the walk after work.
Anyway, last week I struggled to get even my minimum amount of walking in. I've been making so many trips to the post office to post e-bay stuff and spending the evenings parcelling it all up that I couldn't really do as much walking as I'd have hoped, despite the whole attempt at getting up even earlier.
It also didn't help that I wasn't quite as strict with the diet as I had been. I mean, I didn't completely fall off the proverbial wagon, but there were certainly a couple of days of non-plan eating.
I could blame this all on the horrible disruption I've been experiencing as part of the room redecorating sage, but the truth is I should be working around that.
Tuesday, 21 September 2010
new PC
I've been building a new PC.
Well, no, that's not quite the entire story. I have been building a new PC, but I've also been rationalising my existing PCs.
I currently have 5 PCs in various states of working order and of various performance levels. I also have several of the (now famous) plastic crates worth of "PC gubbins" out in the shed.
The idea is to eventually end up with 3 computers.
The first will be a dedicated gaming rig, which is the new computer I'm building. This is a really powerful machine, the juicy bits of which are a quad-core, 2.8ghz core i7 chip, 8gb of RAM (using 4*2gb sticks to take advantage of hyper threading), a Velociraptor 2 drive, which spins at 10,000RPM and is SATA 2 (couldn't afford one of the SATA 3 ones), and a 5970 ATI card, which has, I believe, 2gb of RAM and a dual-core processor with a clock speed of 1ghz, which, when you think about it, is like having what was a reasonably good computer from a few years ago sat inside my computer :/.
It's also going to be running windows 7 64bit and should basically be able to cope with anything the gaming world can throw at it for a good few years to come.
The second machine is what I'm currently using as my games machine. The idea is that I'll upgrade this to windows 7 32 bit and will use it as my regular, run of the mill machine. However, I'll also be able to play older games on it using the windows 7 XP mode thing. I'm also updating it to have two relatively cheap ATI cards running in cross-fire (more an experiment than a necessity, if I'm honest) and am bumping up the RAM.
The third machine will be what I'm currently using as my regular machine, but will essentially become a file server with my printer on it and also a whole bunch of hard-drives for storing stuff and doing back-up, etc. I'm also going to put this machine next to my TV, so I can watch stuff on it (really, my new TV is more like a monitor). I'm upgrading this machine with some more RAM too as it was cheap, but also, crucially, a Blu-Ray drive, so I should be able to watch Blu-Ray stuff (well, if I ever buy a Blu-Ray disk that is :/).
Everything else I'll put on e-bay and then, since most of it is so old and won't sell, I'll take it all down the recycling place.
It's been ages since I last built a machine and stuff has moved on quite a bit, but some things stay the same. The main thing that stayed the same is the fact that I made some gigantic cock-ups.
The main cock-up this time was with the power supply. When I was putting the system together, I started out with my absolute dream system, which cost a small fortune, and then stepped things back to a more affordable level. However, I think I must have gotten rather mixed up with the case and power supply.
Basically, the case I bought has a power supply that's recommended for it and initially I was buying the pair. But I think at some point I decided to look for cheaper alternatives, and managed to confuse myself that I'd changed the case, so I picked a different power supply.
Except I hadn't changed the case, and the case has an odd design in that the power supply is at the bottom, so you need rather long cables and the supply I bought fell short. Now, this wouldn't be such a problem, because my other supply has super long cables, but the new PSU is also not sufficiently powerful to run both the cross-fire graphics cards if I swap them over.
So, in other words, I've had to buy the first PSU I picked as well :/.
My existing games machine case is actually an over-sized one and it was originally my intention to put the new gubbins in there. However, when the new case turned up, it was a really nice case with some neat features, so I tried to put it in there. But, as well as the unusual design, I also found that the graphics card just wouldn't fit.
Now to be fair, that's not really the fault of the case, because the card is an absolute monster. I was actually quite shocked at the size of the card when it turned up. It's actually longer than the motherboard is wide. In fact, it's almost as big as the motherboard is tall!
Which kinda backs up what I was saying at the beginning about the graphics card being like a mini-computer.
Well, no, that's not quite the entire story. I have been building a new PC, but I've also been rationalising my existing PCs.
I currently have 5 PCs in various states of working order and of various performance levels. I also have several of the (now famous) plastic crates worth of "PC gubbins" out in the shed.
The idea is to eventually end up with 3 computers.
The first will be a dedicated gaming rig, which is the new computer I'm building. This is a really powerful machine, the juicy bits of which are a quad-core, 2.8ghz core i7 chip, 8gb of RAM (using 4*2gb sticks to take advantage of hyper threading), a Velociraptor 2 drive, which spins at 10,000RPM and is SATA 2 (couldn't afford one of the SATA 3 ones), and a 5970 ATI card, which has, I believe, 2gb of RAM and a dual-core processor with a clock speed of 1ghz, which, when you think about it, is like having what was a reasonably good computer from a few years ago sat inside my computer :/.
It's also going to be running windows 7 64bit and should basically be able to cope with anything the gaming world can throw at it for a good few years to come.
The second machine is what I'm currently using as my games machine. The idea is that I'll upgrade this to windows 7 32 bit and will use it as my regular, run of the mill machine. However, I'll also be able to play older games on it using the windows 7 XP mode thing. I'm also updating it to have two relatively cheap ATI cards running in cross-fire (more an experiment than a necessity, if I'm honest) and am bumping up the RAM.
The third machine will be what I'm currently using as my regular machine, but will essentially become a file server with my printer on it and also a whole bunch of hard-drives for storing stuff and doing back-up, etc. I'm also going to put this machine next to my TV, so I can watch stuff on it (really, my new TV is more like a monitor). I'm upgrading this machine with some more RAM too as it was cheap, but also, crucially, a Blu-Ray drive, so I should be able to watch Blu-Ray stuff (well, if I ever buy a Blu-Ray disk that is :/).
Everything else I'll put on e-bay and then, since most of it is so old and won't sell, I'll take it all down the recycling place.
It's been ages since I last built a machine and stuff has moved on quite a bit, but some things stay the same. The main thing that stayed the same is the fact that I made some gigantic cock-ups.
The main cock-up this time was with the power supply. When I was putting the system together, I started out with my absolute dream system, which cost a small fortune, and then stepped things back to a more affordable level. However, I think I must have gotten rather mixed up with the case and power supply.
Basically, the case I bought has a power supply that's recommended for it and initially I was buying the pair. But I think at some point I decided to look for cheaper alternatives, and managed to confuse myself that I'd changed the case, so I picked a different power supply.
Except I hadn't changed the case, and the case has an odd design in that the power supply is at the bottom, so you need rather long cables and the supply I bought fell short. Now, this wouldn't be such a problem, because my other supply has super long cables, but the new PSU is also not sufficiently powerful to run both the cross-fire graphics cards if I swap them over.
So, in other words, I've had to buy the first PSU I picked as well :/.
My existing games machine case is actually an over-sized one and it was originally my intention to put the new gubbins in there. However, when the new case turned up, it was a really nice case with some neat features, so I tried to put it in there. But, as well as the unusual design, I also found that the graphics card just wouldn't fit.
Now to be fair, that's not really the fault of the case, because the card is an absolute monster. I was actually quite shocked at the size of the card when it turned up. It's actually longer than the motherboard is wide. In fact, it's almost as big as the motherboard is tall!
Which kinda backs up what I was saying at the beginning about the graphics card being like a mini-computer.
Monday, 20 September 2010
an end in sight?
In theory, today is going to be the last day my landlord need to get into my flat to do decorating.
Well, no, that's not true - today is the last day before I go on holiday and he does the final phase. The final phase, as I understand it (though stuff seems to change constantly) will be to paint the newly installed wallpaper, wash the carpet and wash the curtains.
He had planned to paint the ceiling, but instead he's washed that. Also, there was mention of touching up wallpaper that's above the dado rail (the new stuff is going in below the rail) and repainting the skirting and window ledges (the gloss paint bits, as opposed to the emulsion on the wallpaper). However, I haven't a clue whether he's still going to be doing those.
As mentioned, everything seems to change every time I ask him about it. Originally, he wasn't going to do the new wallpapering until I was gone, for example, but that's what he's supposed to be doing today. What he's been doing was stripping the wallpaper in preparation for this and that was done in bits over a few days.
The entire wallpapering he reckons he can do in one day, because his mate is going to help him. That seems like a very generous mate to me, and I'm basically expecting to go back tonight and find it half done. I think they're being over-ambitious.
What does strike me mainly though is firstly why are they painting the wallpaper? This seems daft to me, but I must confess I know almost nothing about decorating.
But I'm also struck that, if a mate was available and my landlord's wife chipped in they didn't need to do all this pre-emptive bollocks (and make my life horrible) at all. I mean, when I'm gone they can move the furniture for easy access and then you're talking 1 day for stripping and cleaning, 2 days for wallpapering, (or 1 is help available) 1 day for painting (if that - if you don't bother with the gloss stuff, which is fine, then it seems more like half a day to me) and then maybe 2 days for carpet cleaning (do half of it, let it dry, move furniture, do rest, let it dry).
So that's 6 days effort if you're doing it on your own, probably only 4 if you can get someone to help. I'm going to be away for 7 days, so it all fits in.
And even if you do the stripping and cleaning beforehand to give yourself a bigger comfort margin, then you could do that in the last week before I go. I mean, they won't get access to my room until the 2nd of October, so that means I've now got a further two weeks of completely disrupted living because he's done this crap so early.
Which is, I might add, on top of the last week of the same disruption and a good couple of weeks before that pissing about with the boxes, shed and e-bay.
It all just smacks of rubbish organisation. Especially when you consider my landlord is retired, so has loads of free time on his hands.
Well, no, that's not true - today is the last day before I go on holiday and he does the final phase. The final phase, as I understand it (though stuff seems to change constantly) will be to paint the newly installed wallpaper, wash the carpet and wash the curtains.
He had planned to paint the ceiling, but instead he's washed that. Also, there was mention of touching up wallpaper that's above the dado rail (the new stuff is going in below the rail) and repainting the skirting and window ledges (the gloss paint bits, as opposed to the emulsion on the wallpaper). However, I haven't a clue whether he's still going to be doing those.
As mentioned, everything seems to change every time I ask him about it. Originally, he wasn't going to do the new wallpapering until I was gone, for example, but that's what he's supposed to be doing today. What he's been doing was stripping the wallpaper in preparation for this and that was done in bits over a few days.
The entire wallpapering he reckons he can do in one day, because his mate is going to help him. That seems like a very generous mate to me, and I'm basically expecting to go back tonight and find it half done. I think they're being over-ambitious.
What does strike me mainly though is firstly why are they painting the wallpaper? This seems daft to me, but I must confess I know almost nothing about decorating.
But I'm also struck that, if a mate was available and my landlord's wife chipped in they didn't need to do all this pre-emptive bollocks (and make my life horrible) at all. I mean, when I'm gone they can move the furniture for easy access and then you're talking 1 day for stripping and cleaning, 2 days for wallpapering, (or 1 is help available) 1 day for painting (if that - if you don't bother with the gloss stuff, which is fine, then it seems more like half a day to me) and then maybe 2 days for carpet cleaning (do half of it, let it dry, move furniture, do rest, let it dry).
So that's 6 days effort if you're doing it on your own, probably only 4 if you can get someone to help. I'm going to be away for 7 days, so it all fits in.
And even if you do the stripping and cleaning beforehand to give yourself a bigger comfort margin, then you could do that in the last week before I go. I mean, they won't get access to my room until the 2nd of October, so that means I've now got a further two weeks of completely disrupted living because he's done this crap so early.
Which is, I might add, on top of the last week of the same disruption and a good couple of weeks before that pissing about with the boxes, shed and e-bay.
It all just smacks of rubbish organisation. Especially when you consider my landlord is retired, so has loads of free time on his hands.
Friday, 17 September 2010
e-bay madness
Balls.
This is one of the problems with doing loads of e-bay auctions - you make mistakes.
A simple example of this is that when I uploaded the auctions I made a couple of errors with the photos, accidentally forgetting to change the photo from the previous auction. This is no great shakes as it's easily fixed, but the other error I've made is a big problem as it's cost me a fortune (well, relative to the amount I got from the auctions).
Basically, I've sent a parcel containing multiple items to the wring person.
I also sent them their correct item, so at least I didn't swap them over, but it means all sorts of problems. First off the real winner won't be happy, second I'm reliant on the person I sent them to being honest and third I'm basically going to have to pay to deliver it multiple times (or cancel the payments made by the actual winner if the recipient doesn't play ball).
And because we're talking multiple items, we're also talking big weight and therefore big cost for postage.
So, "balls!" it is.
This is one of the problems with doing loads of e-bay auctions - you make mistakes.
A simple example of this is that when I uploaded the auctions I made a couple of errors with the photos, accidentally forgetting to change the photo from the previous auction. This is no great shakes as it's easily fixed, but the other error I've made is a big problem as it's cost me a fortune (well, relative to the amount I got from the auctions).
Basically, I've sent a parcel containing multiple items to the wring person.
I also sent them their correct item, so at least I didn't swap them over, but it means all sorts of problems. First off the real winner won't be happy, second I'm reliant on the person I sent them to being honest and third I'm basically going to have to pay to deliver it multiple times (or cancel the payments made by the actual winner if the recipient doesn't play ball).
And because we're talking multiple items, we're also talking big weight and therefore big cost for postage.
So, "balls!" it is.
Thursday, 16 September 2010
black hawk down
Well, this weeks film rental was Black Hawk Down.
Usually I watch the film at the weekend, but as discussed earlier in the week I was horribly busy moving shit about this last weekend. I therefore watched the film on Tuesday night.
I noticed there were several commentaries, but given the two and a quarter hour running time, I didn't have the chance to watch these at all. I also have to admit that I was engaged in some e-bay "parceling up" while watching the film, so perhaps wasn't giving it my full attention.
I mention this as a possible excuse for the fact that I wasn't actually hugely keen on the film.
The problem I had was it didn't really seem to gel together properly. The bit that worked was the combat - it felt real, visceral, chaotic and brutal. The bit that didn't work so well was the - I dunno - characters?
There seemed to be lots of cheesy elements. For example, the young soldier who had run out of bullets and is surrounded by a blood-thirsty mob, who takes out a picture of his young wife and small child. Then when the mob attacks him he tries to hold onto the picture, but it gets pulled out if hands.
I dunno - it just felt a bit corny. The problem of course is that this is a story based on real events (well, it's adapted from a book based on real events) and the guy actually survived, so one would assume this is a fairly realistic depiction of what happened. You never know, though - it could just as easily be pure Hollywood invention.
And to be fair there is a note of truth to it anyway. You would expect someone of his age to have a young family and if he loves them, it's hardly surprising for him to be carrying a picture of them with him and for that to be what he thinks about as he's about to die. I dunno - I think my problem with it was that there was a bit too much of that sort of thing.
What didn't help was that the whole thing was told entirely from the American's point of view. All wars when you get down to it are messy, but civil wars are often the nastiest and that's what the Americans are in the middle of, but it's never really explained why all of the local Somalia's seem to want to kill the Americans.
I know boy soldiers are a part of quite a few conflicts around the world, but here we also had what seemed to be ordinary civilian women picking up guns of the fallen and shooting at the Americans. You can understand the warlord's men wanting to kill them, because he's who they're after, but why there's this general animosity is never explained.
Indeed, the Somali are depicting in a very one dimensional way generally. There's a blurb at the beginning giving some idea of the circumstances, but detail on their side is totally absent. We also get hardly any of the characterisation that's given to the Americans.
There's also a weird note of triumph at the end when people get out.
I'm not saying it's painted as a victory, but this was an operation that went horribly and disastrously wrong, but the end of the film doesn't truly feel like that. I dunno - it almost ends too soon, and the end blurb doesn't quite capture the "this was a terrible cock-up" feel.
Usually I watch the film at the weekend, but as discussed earlier in the week I was horribly busy moving shit about this last weekend. I therefore watched the film on Tuesday night.
I noticed there were several commentaries, but given the two and a quarter hour running time, I didn't have the chance to watch these at all. I also have to admit that I was engaged in some e-bay "parceling up" while watching the film, so perhaps wasn't giving it my full attention.
I mention this as a possible excuse for the fact that I wasn't actually hugely keen on the film.
The problem I had was it didn't really seem to gel together properly. The bit that worked was the combat - it felt real, visceral, chaotic and brutal. The bit that didn't work so well was the - I dunno - characters?
There seemed to be lots of cheesy elements. For example, the young soldier who had run out of bullets and is surrounded by a blood-thirsty mob, who takes out a picture of his young wife and small child. Then when the mob attacks him he tries to hold onto the picture, but it gets pulled out if hands.
I dunno - it just felt a bit corny. The problem of course is that this is a story based on real events (well, it's adapted from a book based on real events) and the guy actually survived, so one would assume this is a fairly realistic depiction of what happened. You never know, though - it could just as easily be pure Hollywood invention.
And to be fair there is a note of truth to it anyway. You would expect someone of his age to have a young family and if he loves them, it's hardly surprising for him to be carrying a picture of them with him and for that to be what he thinks about as he's about to die. I dunno - I think my problem with it was that there was a bit too much of that sort of thing.
What didn't help was that the whole thing was told entirely from the American's point of view. All wars when you get down to it are messy, but civil wars are often the nastiest and that's what the Americans are in the middle of, but it's never really explained why all of the local Somalia's seem to want to kill the Americans.
I know boy soldiers are a part of quite a few conflicts around the world, but here we also had what seemed to be ordinary civilian women picking up guns of the fallen and shooting at the Americans. You can understand the warlord's men wanting to kill them, because he's who they're after, but why there's this general animosity is never explained.
Indeed, the Somali are depicting in a very one dimensional way generally. There's a blurb at the beginning giving some idea of the circumstances, but detail on their side is totally absent. We also get hardly any of the characterisation that's given to the Americans.
There's also a weird note of triumph at the end when people get out.
I'm not saying it's painted as a victory, but this was an operation that went horribly and disastrously wrong, but the end of the film doesn't truly feel like that. I dunno - it almost ends too soon, and the end blurb doesn't quite capture the "this was a terrible cock-up" feel.
Wednesday, 15 September 2010
£5 you say?
No, five pounds, my good man. Five lots of sixteen ounces. Five of your very best "el-bees" (lb's).
Which odd introductory paragraph is meant to tell you that the big upside of all this physical labour I've been engaging in to keep my landlord happy, is that I appear to be burning fat at a rapid rate of knots.
Let me summarise - this weeks weight loss was a huge 5 pounds, and the increase over previous weeks must mainly be due to the lugging around of boxes.
I think it's also probably due to the fact that last week I made another cut in my caloric intake (dinner has now virtually ceased to exist for me) and also didn't stop walking. Now to be honest, I did trim back on the walking, because of how tired the box-moving has made me, but I didn't stop.
Well, actually, I did stop. On Friday I wanted to do two things. First off, I wanted to rest so that the blisters I'd gotten would have time to heal properly (this sounds like I'm some arctic explorer and my feet were falling off, but it's not like that at all). But secondly, I wanted to see what would happen to the step count if I put the pedometer in my breast pocket, rather than my trouser pocket.
See, for the last few weeks I haven't really been increasing the amount of walking I do, yet my step counter seems to have gone bonkers. And Friday confirmed that this is clearly because when kept in my trouser pocket, the pedometer massively over-counts. I'm guessing this is due to the knocking about it receives, but from now on it's living in my breast pocket as much as possible.
I also didn't walk on Saturday and Sunday. Well, I mean I didn't go for a walk. I did lots of walking, most of it carrying heavy things, so I wasn't too bothered by not doing a proper walk, but the point is that this week I've been back walking again.
So, although I doubt I'll have another 5lb drop any time soon, hopefully it'll keep going in the right direction.
Oh, and I should say that I have theoretically lost a full stone. Unfortunately this stat does depend on that very first reading I took being accurate, which I'm almost certain it wasn't, but even excluding that I've definitely lost more than half a stone, which is pretty good going.
And I also realised that this last weekend marked the four week anniversary of me starting on my diet and exercise plan (wow, that sounds more scientific that "not eating all the pies and not sitting on my fat arse all day").
Still a very long way to go, though.
Which odd introductory paragraph is meant to tell you that the big upside of all this physical labour I've been engaging in to keep my landlord happy, is that I appear to be burning fat at a rapid rate of knots.
Let me summarise - this weeks weight loss was a huge 5 pounds, and the increase over previous weeks must mainly be due to the lugging around of boxes.
I think it's also probably due to the fact that last week I made another cut in my caloric intake (dinner has now virtually ceased to exist for me) and also didn't stop walking. Now to be honest, I did trim back on the walking, because of how tired the box-moving has made me, but I didn't stop.
Well, actually, I did stop. On Friday I wanted to do two things. First off, I wanted to rest so that the blisters I'd gotten would have time to heal properly (this sounds like I'm some arctic explorer and my feet were falling off, but it's not like that at all). But secondly, I wanted to see what would happen to the step count if I put the pedometer in my breast pocket, rather than my trouser pocket.
See, for the last few weeks I haven't really been increasing the amount of walking I do, yet my step counter seems to have gone bonkers. And Friday confirmed that this is clearly because when kept in my trouser pocket, the pedometer massively over-counts. I'm guessing this is due to the knocking about it receives, but from now on it's living in my breast pocket as much as possible.
I also didn't walk on Saturday and Sunday. Well, I mean I didn't go for a walk. I did lots of walking, most of it carrying heavy things, so I wasn't too bothered by not doing a proper walk, but the point is that this week I've been back walking again.
So, although I doubt I'll have another 5lb drop any time soon, hopefully it'll keep going in the right direction.
Oh, and I should say that I have theoretically lost a full stone. Unfortunately this stat does depend on that very first reading I took being accurate, which I'm almost certain it wasn't, but even excluding that I've definitely lost more than half a stone, which is pretty good going.
And I also realised that this last weekend marked the four week anniversary of me starting on my diet and exercise plan (wow, that sounds more scientific that "not eating all the pies and not sitting on my fat arse all day").
Still a very long way to go, though.
Tuesday, 14 September 2010
it still hasn't ended
So yes, the second problem my landlord hit me with.
Despite the months of notice I'd given, "their decorator" had booked a holiday for the exact same week I was away. I still don't get what they meant by "their decorator" but either way I offered to take the week before instead. Only they couldn't do that week either because they were apparently going away for two days.
Which made me even more confused. I mean, apparently their decorator wasn't going to be away that week, but he also wouldn't be able to do the work because they would be away for two days. Given how small my room is (and we're just talking the bed/living room here) it seems bizarre he couldn't do it in the available time.
Anyway, the upshot of this seemed to be that they would have to do it themselves during the week I was away, but because it would be too big a job they would a) have to scale back on it and b) have to do the prep work before I went.
I didn't really mind a, but b poxed me up for multiple reasons.
First off, I'd have to do all sorts of furniture moving so that John could get access to the walls on various days, but also the secret of the bed would inevitably be revealed.
The secret of the bed is that I'd destroyed it. To be fair, it was a really cheap bed, but also, the real problem was of course my huge bulk. For years I've been propping the underside of the bed up using piles of magazines (it's become what I do with all those Japanese magazine I buy!) and there's no way I could loose enough weight for the un-propped bed to support me in that sort of timescale.
Plus of course it gave me somewhere to put the magazines. So now I needed to move all the boxes with magazines into the workshop all in one go as well, and then switch to using my fold-out settee bed thing and tell my landlord to get rid of the old bed.
And that's what I had to do this last weekend - I spent all day Saturday moving furniture around, cleaning the mess I discovered underneath and moving crates and crates of (heavy) magazines into the shed.
What makes this all even worse is that my computer table where I have my computers is a total nightmare. I actually have several machines from where I've upgraded over the years and (pack-rat tendencies kicking in again) I've never disposed of the old ones, but there's also all the peripherals like the printer and scanner and speakers and monitor, etc, etc, there too.
So I've now got a kitchen full of cables and crap while I wait for my landlord to do the bit next to the computer. I requested he do it first, but given how long it took him to empty the shed, Christ knows when he'll get done.
And even when he is done, if I put it all back I'll then have to move it all again before I go on holiday so he can do the actual decorating.
But then there's another factor - the shed is likely to get quite cold and damp over the winter, so if I'm going to sell my stuff I need to do it now. And that means torturous hours of taking photos, prepping and uploading e-bay auctions, then parcelling stuff up before finally lugging it all down to the post office and standing there blowing my entire lunch hour getting the stuff sent.
Now I've posted before about how tedious and rubbish e-baying is, but the scale has now become bonkers. Last Sunday I had more than 40 auctions end while I spent literally all day posting more than 70 more. Now not all things sell, but (and I've actually been kinda impressed by this) nearly 60 of those 70-odd did sell.
To put that in perspective, normally I sell around 20-25 things in one go. And I never have big amounts across multiple weeks. I mean, maybe I'd sell 30 items across 3 weeks if some of them didn't sell and had to be re-listed. I've more than doubled that in two weeks, and all while I've been doing all the other crap too.
So, given how my muscles are still aching and we're nowhere near an end point, you can see why I'm moaning.
Despite the months of notice I'd given, "their decorator" had booked a holiday for the exact same week I was away. I still don't get what they meant by "their decorator" but either way I offered to take the week before instead. Only they couldn't do that week either because they were apparently going away for two days.
Which made me even more confused. I mean, apparently their decorator wasn't going to be away that week, but he also wouldn't be able to do the work because they would be away for two days. Given how small my room is (and we're just talking the bed/living room here) it seems bizarre he couldn't do it in the available time.
Anyway, the upshot of this seemed to be that they would have to do it themselves during the week I was away, but because it would be too big a job they would a) have to scale back on it and b) have to do the prep work before I went.
I didn't really mind a, but b poxed me up for multiple reasons.
First off, I'd have to do all sorts of furniture moving so that John could get access to the walls on various days, but also the secret of the bed would inevitably be revealed.
The secret of the bed is that I'd destroyed it. To be fair, it was a really cheap bed, but also, the real problem was of course my huge bulk. For years I've been propping the underside of the bed up using piles of magazines (it's become what I do with all those Japanese magazine I buy!) and there's no way I could loose enough weight for the un-propped bed to support me in that sort of timescale.
Plus of course it gave me somewhere to put the magazines. So now I needed to move all the boxes with magazines into the workshop all in one go as well, and then switch to using my fold-out settee bed thing and tell my landlord to get rid of the old bed.
And that's what I had to do this last weekend - I spent all day Saturday moving furniture around, cleaning the mess I discovered underneath and moving crates and crates of (heavy) magazines into the shed.
What makes this all even worse is that my computer table where I have my computers is a total nightmare. I actually have several machines from where I've upgraded over the years and (pack-rat tendencies kicking in again) I've never disposed of the old ones, but there's also all the peripherals like the printer and scanner and speakers and monitor, etc, etc, there too.
So I've now got a kitchen full of cables and crap while I wait for my landlord to do the bit next to the computer. I requested he do it first, but given how long it took him to empty the shed, Christ knows when he'll get done.
And even when he is done, if I put it all back I'll then have to move it all again before I go on holiday so he can do the actual decorating.
But then there's another factor - the shed is likely to get quite cold and damp over the winter, so if I'm going to sell my stuff I need to do it now. And that means torturous hours of taking photos, prepping and uploading e-bay auctions, then parcelling stuff up before finally lugging it all down to the post office and standing there blowing my entire lunch hour getting the stuff sent.
Now I've posted before about how tedious and rubbish e-baying is, but the scale has now become bonkers. Last Sunday I had more than 40 auctions end while I spent literally all day posting more than 70 more. Now not all things sell, but (and I've actually been kinda impressed by this) nearly 60 of those 70-odd did sell.
To put that in perspective, normally I sell around 20-25 things in one go. And I never have big amounts across multiple weeks. I mean, maybe I'd sell 30 items across 3 weeks if some of them didn't sell and had to be re-listed. I've more than doubled that in two weeks, and all while I've been doing all the other crap too.
So, given how my muscles are still aching and we're nowhere near an end point, you can see why I'm moaning.
Monday, 13 September 2010
when will it end?
I'm a bit sick of this now.
I'm pretty sure I've discussed most of this before, but the difference now is that I'm thoroughly bored of it all.
Basically, a while back, my landlord asked me if he could get into my place at some point to decorate. This would obviously need to happen while I was away, to avoid me having to sleep in a room of stinky fumes.
Okay, it took me a while, but I arranged a holiday for the end of September/beginning of October when I could pop down and visit my Dad (his birthday is early October) and also have a few days off. I informed my landlord of this well in advance - months and months ago, in fact.
But there was an attendant issue - I have so much stuff that was packed into so many boxes, my room was basically like some sort of warehouse. So, my landlord also wanted me to move all the stuff up into the attic.
This meant I was faced with the Herculean job of having to sort through all the boxes and decided to either keep, throw away or sell everything. My preference of course was to sell as much of the stuff as I could. That way I would earn a bit of money back and also it would alleviate the pack-rat tendencies I have which were a big part of why I'd accumulated all the stuff in the first place. If it's going to a good home (or even a bad one), I'd be able to let go much easier than if it was just going into the bin.
I therefore hatched a plan. I would go through all the cardboard boxes, deciding what to chuck away and also repacking everything into plastic stacking crates. I'd also be careful to make sure that 'keepers' got put together and 'sellers' got put together. Once complete, these would be lifted up into the attic and from there I could sell stuff at my leisure.
I had several months to do this before I went on holiday and my landlord would redecorate while I was away.
A perfect plan and phase 1 went well - I sorted through it all, repacked it, chucked quite a lot of stuff and put some of it in the attic and was awaiting my landlord's help in putting more of it up. Only that didn't happen.
Instead, I got called in for a chat where they dropped a bit of a bombshell.
First off - and most importantly - was that my stuff represented a "fire hazard" and therefore couldn't be kept in my room or go in the attic. Instead, it would need putting in the "workshop" (actually a big shed). A space would be cleared for me, but, given the fire hazard status, I would have to move it all right away.
But this also meant that accessing individual boxes would become very complicated. The attic meant relatively good accessibility to all the boxes, but in the shed those at the back would be difficult to get at. So that meant I had to resort it all to maximise convenience. Also, because people could look in the shed, I'd need to cover stuff up so it couldn't really be seen.
So I got ready for the big move, but then had to wait ages while my landlord failed to clear the space. I was therefore completely in limbo, where I could have been using the time productively.
This meant that instead of the couple of boxes a day I'd hoped to do over, say, a week, I had to move all the boxes in a single day. But also, because the boxes had taken up so much room, I'd had to rearrange the furniture in my room to make space.
And this is where we get into the other problem my landlord hit me with.
Actually, having typed all this out, it's way too long, so I'm going to break it into two - more tomorrow.
I'm pretty sure I've discussed most of this before, but the difference now is that I'm thoroughly bored of it all.
Basically, a while back, my landlord asked me if he could get into my place at some point to decorate. This would obviously need to happen while I was away, to avoid me having to sleep in a room of stinky fumes.
Okay, it took me a while, but I arranged a holiday for the end of September/beginning of October when I could pop down and visit my Dad (his birthday is early October) and also have a few days off. I informed my landlord of this well in advance - months and months ago, in fact.
But there was an attendant issue - I have so much stuff that was packed into so many boxes, my room was basically like some sort of warehouse. So, my landlord also wanted me to move all the stuff up into the attic.
This meant I was faced with the Herculean job of having to sort through all the boxes and decided to either keep, throw away or sell everything. My preference of course was to sell as much of the stuff as I could. That way I would earn a bit of money back and also it would alleviate the pack-rat tendencies I have which were a big part of why I'd accumulated all the stuff in the first place. If it's going to a good home (or even a bad one), I'd be able to let go much easier than if it was just going into the bin.
I therefore hatched a plan. I would go through all the cardboard boxes, deciding what to chuck away and also repacking everything into plastic stacking crates. I'd also be careful to make sure that 'keepers' got put together and 'sellers' got put together. Once complete, these would be lifted up into the attic and from there I could sell stuff at my leisure.
I had several months to do this before I went on holiday and my landlord would redecorate while I was away.
A perfect plan and phase 1 went well - I sorted through it all, repacked it, chucked quite a lot of stuff and put some of it in the attic and was awaiting my landlord's help in putting more of it up. Only that didn't happen.
Instead, I got called in for a chat where they dropped a bit of a bombshell.
First off - and most importantly - was that my stuff represented a "fire hazard" and therefore couldn't be kept in my room or go in the attic. Instead, it would need putting in the "workshop" (actually a big shed). A space would be cleared for me, but, given the fire hazard status, I would have to move it all right away.
But this also meant that accessing individual boxes would become very complicated. The attic meant relatively good accessibility to all the boxes, but in the shed those at the back would be difficult to get at. So that meant I had to resort it all to maximise convenience. Also, because people could look in the shed, I'd need to cover stuff up so it couldn't really be seen.
So I got ready for the big move, but then had to wait ages while my landlord failed to clear the space. I was therefore completely in limbo, where I could have been using the time productively.
This meant that instead of the couple of boxes a day I'd hoped to do over, say, a week, I had to move all the boxes in a single day. But also, because the boxes had taken up so much room, I'd had to rearrange the furniture in my room to make space.
And this is where we get into the other problem my landlord hit me with.
Actually, having typed all this out, it's way too long, so I'm going to break it into two - more tomorrow.
Friday, 10 September 2010
furniture remover
This weekend I need to further the thing with sorting out and boxes and stuff.
I'd have done it last weekend if I wasn't so tired, but the next phase is re-arranging the furniture to take advantage of the space I've gained through moving the boxes into the shed. This weekend is an ideal time to do it, because it's a scheduled cleaning weekend anyway, so when I move the furniture I can have a bit of a clean and it's just a more complex routine, if you will.
I've been wearing short-sleeved shirts for most of this week, even though the weather doesn't really justify it. I think it's something of a last hurrah to summer before I pack the shirts away again and get out the long sleeve shirts. And who knows, this time next year, I may have lost so much weight that the shirts look silly on me and I have to get some more.
I'm getting way ahead of myself, obviously, but I'm slightly worried about that aspect. It's not going to stop me, but because I am so big I am worried I'm going to have to buy a lot of clothes to match the slimming process.
There's also a Grand Prix this weekend, although I believe it's the Italian, which is Monza. Monza's often a bit of a dull. It's a very high speed circuit and doesn't have very many corners, which makes it difficult to overtake. In order to control the speed a bit they've also put chicanes in over the years and chicanes also kill overtaking.
Still, this year has been so good that even some of the usually dull races have been interesting, so you never know.
I'd have done it last weekend if I wasn't so tired, but the next phase is re-arranging the furniture to take advantage of the space I've gained through moving the boxes into the shed. This weekend is an ideal time to do it, because it's a scheduled cleaning weekend anyway, so when I move the furniture I can have a bit of a clean and it's just a more complex routine, if you will.
I've been wearing short-sleeved shirts for most of this week, even though the weather doesn't really justify it. I think it's something of a last hurrah to summer before I pack the shirts away again and get out the long sleeve shirts. And who knows, this time next year, I may have lost so much weight that the shirts look silly on me and I have to get some more.
I'm getting way ahead of myself, obviously, but I'm slightly worried about that aspect. It's not going to stop me, but because I am so big I am worried I'm going to have to buy a lot of clothes to match the slimming process.
There's also a Grand Prix this weekend, although I believe it's the Italian, which is Monza. Monza's often a bit of a dull. It's a very high speed circuit and doesn't have very many corners, which makes it difficult to overtake. In order to control the speed a bit they've also put chicanes in over the years and chicanes also kill overtaking.
Still, this year has been so good that even some of the usually dull races have been interesting, so you never know.
Thursday, 9 September 2010
my name was earl
Over the last week, as part of my efforts to watch stuff I've got on DVD, I've been watching My Name is Earl episodes.
I really liked the first season of Earl and the second season is okay. The whole long-term arc of Joy stealing the truck didn't quite work, but it was still firmly focused on the list.
However, season three seems to be where it all went a bit wonky. The first part of season three takes place in prison, and it's really hard for Earl to really cross a lot of things off his list when he's in prison. I also seem to recall, though I've not go that far with the DVDs that later on he ends up in the comma, and if it's hard to cross stuff off when you're in prison, it's almost impossible when you're in a coma.
And that's where it went wrong, I think - Earl is about the list, not being in prison and comma dreams. I can kinda understand it, because when you have a list to tick off that tends to set a finite length to your series. The problem of course is that the show was cancelled after the fourth series, so rather than have a plan of "we'll finish the list by the end of this season" and wrapping it up nicely, it ends without ending.
Maybe I'll warm to it a bit more this second time around.
Also, I forgot to mention yesterday about the diet side of my slimming programme.
What I've been trying to do is stay below an absolute limit of 2,000 calories a day. In practice, I'm generally a couple of hundred below that in terms of counting. I'm also pretty sure that I'm over-counting, so perhaps I'm somewhere down around 1,600 calories a day on a good day or around 1,800 on a 'bad' day.
I'm actually deliberately over-counting, partly in order to be safe, but also because if I think I've hit 1,800 then that acts as a good break. An example of the over counting is that I count my daily yoghurt (very good for digestion - everyone should eat yoghurt, but you don't need to bother with those fancy pseudoscience yoghurts, good old fashioned normal yoghurt is where it's at) as 150 calories, where a labelling inspection suggests that, depending on variety, it's actually around 113-121.
This over counting/rounding up also has the advantage of making the maths a lot easier. It's a lot easier to add things up if everything is 150, 250 or 600 calories, etc.
Also, I've discovered a bit of a weird phenomenon now that I've reintroduced bread to my lunch. Basically, when it gets to evening I'm virtually not hungry. I often just have an apple, my juice (I'm fining it's really tough hitting the five a day thing on the diet) and my yoghurt and that's basically it. I tend to spread these out rather than having them all in one go, but generally I won't get peckish until just before bed and it's odd, but I quite like going to bed on an empty stomach now.
It's all a bit odd really - when I kicked this off, I was really struggling with a rumbling belly making me feel bad and occupying all of my attention, but now I almost quite like a bit of hunger. It almost makes the food taste better.
The only thing I am still struggling with is that I enjoy having a really full belly. To me, feeling stuffed after a meal has always been a part of enjoying a meal and that's the hardest thing to resist. I don't think I've ever in my whole life left an empty plate (assuming I like the food) and I know that's what normal people do - have leftovers because they're full. Well, I've never full enough to do that.
I really liked the first season of Earl and the second season is okay. The whole long-term arc of Joy stealing the truck didn't quite work, but it was still firmly focused on the list.
However, season three seems to be where it all went a bit wonky. The first part of season three takes place in prison, and it's really hard for Earl to really cross a lot of things off his list when he's in prison. I also seem to recall, though I've not go that far with the DVDs that later on he ends up in the comma, and if it's hard to cross stuff off when you're in prison, it's almost impossible when you're in a coma.
And that's where it went wrong, I think - Earl is about the list, not being in prison and comma dreams. I can kinda understand it, because when you have a list to tick off that tends to set a finite length to your series. The problem of course is that the show was cancelled after the fourth series, so rather than have a plan of "we'll finish the list by the end of this season" and wrapping it up nicely, it ends without ending.
Maybe I'll warm to it a bit more this second time around.
Also, I forgot to mention yesterday about the diet side of my slimming programme.
What I've been trying to do is stay below an absolute limit of 2,000 calories a day. In practice, I'm generally a couple of hundred below that in terms of counting. I'm also pretty sure that I'm over-counting, so perhaps I'm somewhere down around 1,600 calories a day on a good day or around 1,800 on a 'bad' day.
I'm actually deliberately over-counting, partly in order to be safe, but also because if I think I've hit 1,800 then that acts as a good break. An example of the over counting is that I count my daily yoghurt (very good for digestion - everyone should eat yoghurt, but you don't need to bother with those fancy pseudoscience yoghurts, good old fashioned normal yoghurt is where it's at) as 150 calories, where a labelling inspection suggests that, depending on variety, it's actually around 113-121.
This over counting/rounding up also has the advantage of making the maths a lot easier. It's a lot easier to add things up if everything is 150, 250 or 600 calories, etc.
Also, I've discovered a bit of a weird phenomenon now that I've reintroduced bread to my lunch. Basically, when it gets to evening I'm virtually not hungry. I often just have an apple, my juice (I'm fining it's really tough hitting the five a day thing on the diet) and my yoghurt and that's basically it. I tend to spread these out rather than having them all in one go, but generally I won't get peckish until just before bed and it's odd, but I quite like going to bed on an empty stomach now.
It's all a bit odd really - when I kicked this off, I was really struggling with a rumbling belly making me feel bad and occupying all of my attention, but now I almost quite like a bit of hunger. It almost makes the food taste better.
The only thing I am still struggling with is that I enjoy having a really full belly. To me, feeling stuffed after a meal has always been a part of enjoying a meal and that's the hardest thing to resist. I don't think I've ever in my whole life left an empty plate (assuming I like the food) and I know that's what normal people do - have leftovers because they're full. Well, I've never full enough to do that.
Wednesday, 8 September 2010
good news, everybody!
So there was no DVD rental this last weekend either. It sometimes works out that way, and to be frank I don't think I would have had time to watch it anyway.
I thought therefore I'd talk a bit about the weight and walking thing (that makes a change, huh?).
First off - the best bit. I lost another 2 pounds!
Unlike last week when I was pretty convinced I'd gained, I had thought I would loose some, although I wasn't sure it would be 2 pounds again. To put that two pounds into context, a bag of sugar weighs a smidge over 2 pounds. If you pick up a bag of sugar, it's not so heavy that you're straining, but it's a weighty thing, so you get a good feel for how much that represents.
Also, as noted last week, each pound of fat holds around 3,500 calories and that would broadly appear to track with my pedometer readings and my diet/calorie count.
I'm still not up to the mythical 10,000 steps-a-day, but hen I have the advantage (1) of being fat, which actually helps on that front. Each step for me is like a normal person carrying a big heavy rucksack with them, so if I was doing 10,00 that would actually be more like - I dunno - 12,500 for a normal person.
I've actually been debating whether to put my step count on here or not. See, the problem is I believe the counter is not accurate, but I think it's not accurate because it counts steps when I'm doing things like driving. So, weekdays it's quite a bit over because of driving to work, but weekend there's little to no driving, so it's much more accurate, but I also have more free time, so do more walking.
Now you might think the solution would be to take off the pedo when driving or whatever, but the problem was when I try that forget about it and either leave it at home or in the car and things get really inaccurate.
Also, since I now know these things I can generally compensate and they also give me a flavour of what I'm doing. I basically reckon my actual step count is about 20% less than what this pedometer shows, but even taking that off I'm still on my targets.
I'm also hoping that the extra stuff I'll need to do in lugging all my e-bay wares about will help bump up my exercise over the next couple of weeks. I've got a bit of a hankering to really push the boat out and do loads of walking over the next couple of weeks, although I have fears of more blisters.
I think I'm feeling like that because at the end of the month I've got a holiday and am going to visit my dad - part of me thinks it would be really nice if he notices I'm slightly skinnier. Another part of me thinks if I get my hopes p that he will and he doesn't I'll feel a bit crushed.
Even if he doesn't, it's my plan over the week off to really put in the miles and do a lot of walking. Hopefully when I visit him I'll get a new set of walking boots as there's quite a good shop near him. I can then try and break the new boots in a bit.
I thought therefore I'd talk a bit about the weight and walking thing (that makes a change, huh?).
First off - the best bit. I lost another 2 pounds!
Unlike last week when I was pretty convinced I'd gained, I had thought I would loose some, although I wasn't sure it would be 2 pounds again. To put that two pounds into context, a bag of sugar weighs a smidge over 2 pounds. If you pick up a bag of sugar, it's not so heavy that you're straining, but it's a weighty thing, so you get a good feel for how much that represents.
Also, as noted last week, each pound of fat holds around 3,500 calories and that would broadly appear to track with my pedometer readings and my diet/calorie count.
I'm still not up to the mythical 10,000 steps-a-day, but hen I have the advantage (1) of being fat, which actually helps on that front. Each step for me is like a normal person carrying a big heavy rucksack with them, so if I was doing 10,00 that would actually be more like - I dunno - 12,500 for a normal person.
I've actually been debating whether to put my step count on here or not. See, the problem is I believe the counter is not accurate, but I think it's not accurate because it counts steps when I'm doing things like driving. So, weekdays it's quite a bit over because of driving to work, but weekend there's little to no driving, so it's much more accurate, but I also have more free time, so do more walking.
Now you might think the solution would be to take off the pedo when driving or whatever, but the problem was when I try that forget about it and either leave it at home or in the car and things get really inaccurate.
Also, since I now know these things I can generally compensate and they also give me a flavour of what I'm doing. I basically reckon my actual step count is about 20% less than what this pedometer shows, but even taking that off I'm still on my targets.
I'm also hoping that the extra stuff I'll need to do in lugging all my e-bay wares about will help bump up my exercise over the next couple of weeks. I've got a bit of a hankering to really push the boat out and do loads of walking over the next couple of weeks, although I have fears of more blisters.
I think I'm feeling like that because at the end of the month I've got a holiday and am going to visit my dad - part of me thinks it would be really nice if he notices I'm slightly skinnier. Another part of me thinks if I get my hopes p that he will and he doesn't I'll feel a bit crushed.
Even if he doesn't, it's my plan over the week off to really put in the miles and do a lot of walking. Hopefully when I visit him I'll get a new set of walking boots as there's quite a good shop near him. I can then try and break the new boots in a bit.
Tuesday, 7 September 2010
a better mood
So I'm feeling a lot better today.
The problems yesterday were a bit of a collective coming together. I think if it had just been one or two I'd have been okay, but all together meant I wasn't impressed.
First off, I was tired.
The tiredness stretched back into the weekend. Basically, as mentioned last week, my landlord wants me to move my stuff into his shed. However, he'd utterly failed to clear the shed and didn't seem to be progressing it at all - I even had to prompt him to actually do anything.
This was particularly annoying because it was them banging on about fire hazards. Anyway, he eventually finished on Saturday and knocked on my door. He then had the cheek - the very temerity - when I said I wouldn't do it then, because it was too late, to basically imply I was dragging my feet. Fucking cheek of the man.
Anyway, I therefore decided I would do it very first thing Sunday morning. It would serve as quite good exercise and needed doing and would also help get him off my back. However, I was a bit shocked at just how much there really was to do.
I've been careful not to overload the boxes as much as I can and had also worked out something of an order to put them in to avoid to many unnecessary problems as I e-bay the stuff, so it was pretty quick and efficient, but man it was hard work.
And to be perfectly frank I'm not actually finished - there's a whole bunch of stuff that really also needs to go out there. However, the problem has been that I've not had any room to manoeuvre. But the point is I moved everything I needed to at that time and it was bloody hard work.
But then, in the afternoon, I had a shed load of stuff to put on e-bay. And I'm not kidding here - I currently have 73 active auctions on e-bay. And that's with me having had 20-odd on from last week.
The 73 is a long way from representing everything I need to e-bay., but it represents probably 90% of the stuff that I can e-bay right away. A lot of the rest of it either needs me to watch/read/play it or actually needs throwing away.
I've actually been a bit surprised that so many of the thing I've put up have been selling. Especially the old comics - I mean, a lot of them are incomplete runs of comics from the best part of 20 years ago, and yet they're selling. Okay, they're not selling for good prices - most are going for 99p, which is on the borderline of being a loss - but they are selling.
Anyway, so all that was why I was tired - I did loads of stuff on Sunday. And that was on top of going for a really long walk on Saturday.
A really long walk that had resulted in a second blister. I don't know why, but when I started with the walking I didn't get any blisters, but then last week I got quite a bad one on my heel.
I decided that I should therefore switch shoes, as the blister might have been due to rubbing. I say might have been because sometimes I get blisters for other reasons, and I actually suspect that's what caused this one. Anyway, it turned out that the shoes I switched to rubbed one of my toes and caused a blister there too.
So yeah, the weekend was a bit rubbish from all those points of view. Especially as the time I spent doing all that crap meant I didn't really get any time to relax or enjoy myself.
So when Monday rolled around I wasn't feeling great due to the above, but I thought work would be relatively smooth.
But it wasn't smooth.
See, I've been rewriting a report that someone else did. The report she produced has good content, but the structure was poor and she has a rather... formal approach to language. In other words, she tends to write these enormous, run on sentences full of overly-syllabic words.
So I'd started rewriting it on Friday, which, by the way, we can't really afford to do as she's blown loads of time already (annoying, much of it on format and format is the thing we need to worry about least at this stage) and got in on Monday to find she's basically read the being-edited version and has sent a whiny, overly-anal e-mail about how we've messed it all up.
This is highly unprofessional behaviour to say the least and also meant the whole process took ages longer than it should, and as noted, we didn't have the time. Plus it put a cloud over the whole thing as it's not nice when you're halfway through a job like that to have the person look over your shoulder and tell you you've made a complete arse of it.
Not least of all when that person has, to be frank, done a piss-poor job in the first place.
So yeah, wasn't really feeling jolly and happy yesterday.
If the person hadn't been working remotely, cross words might have been exchanged.
The problems yesterday were a bit of a collective coming together. I think if it had just been one or two I'd have been okay, but all together meant I wasn't impressed.
First off, I was tired.
The tiredness stretched back into the weekend. Basically, as mentioned last week, my landlord wants me to move my stuff into his shed. However, he'd utterly failed to clear the shed and didn't seem to be progressing it at all - I even had to prompt him to actually do anything.
This was particularly annoying because it was them banging on about fire hazards. Anyway, he eventually finished on Saturday and knocked on my door. He then had the cheek - the very temerity - when I said I wouldn't do it then, because it was too late, to basically imply I was dragging my feet. Fucking cheek of the man.
Anyway, I therefore decided I would do it very first thing Sunday morning. It would serve as quite good exercise and needed doing and would also help get him off my back. However, I was a bit shocked at just how much there really was to do.
I've been careful not to overload the boxes as much as I can and had also worked out something of an order to put them in to avoid to many unnecessary problems as I e-bay the stuff, so it was pretty quick and efficient, but man it was hard work.
And to be perfectly frank I'm not actually finished - there's a whole bunch of stuff that really also needs to go out there. However, the problem has been that I've not had any room to manoeuvre. But the point is I moved everything I needed to at that time and it was bloody hard work.
But then, in the afternoon, I had a shed load of stuff to put on e-bay. And I'm not kidding here - I currently have 73 active auctions on e-bay. And that's with me having had 20-odd on from last week.
The 73 is a long way from representing everything I need to e-bay., but it represents probably 90% of the stuff that I can e-bay right away. A lot of the rest of it either needs me to watch/read/play it or actually needs throwing away.
I've actually been a bit surprised that so many of the thing I've put up have been selling. Especially the old comics - I mean, a lot of them are incomplete runs of comics from the best part of 20 years ago, and yet they're selling. Okay, they're not selling for good prices - most are going for 99p, which is on the borderline of being a loss - but they are selling.
Anyway, so all that was why I was tired - I did loads of stuff on Sunday. And that was on top of going for a really long walk on Saturday.
A really long walk that had resulted in a second blister. I don't know why, but when I started with the walking I didn't get any blisters, but then last week I got quite a bad one on my heel.
I decided that I should therefore switch shoes, as the blister might have been due to rubbing. I say might have been because sometimes I get blisters for other reasons, and I actually suspect that's what caused this one. Anyway, it turned out that the shoes I switched to rubbed one of my toes and caused a blister there too.
So yeah, the weekend was a bit rubbish from all those points of view. Especially as the time I spent doing all that crap meant I didn't really get any time to relax or enjoy myself.
So when Monday rolled around I wasn't feeling great due to the above, but I thought work would be relatively smooth.
But it wasn't smooth.
See, I've been rewriting a report that someone else did. The report she produced has good content, but the structure was poor and she has a rather... formal approach to language. In other words, she tends to write these enormous, run on sentences full of overly-syllabic words.
So I'd started rewriting it on Friday, which, by the way, we can't really afford to do as she's blown loads of time already (annoying, much of it on format and format is the thing we need to worry about least at this stage) and got in on Monday to find she's basically read the being-edited version and has sent a whiny, overly-anal e-mail about how we've messed it all up.
This is highly unprofessional behaviour to say the least and also meant the whole process took ages longer than it should, and as noted, we didn't have the time. Plus it put a cloud over the whole thing as it's not nice when you're halfway through a job like that to have the person look over your shoulder and tell you you've made a complete arse of it.
Not least of all when that person has, to be frank, done a piss-poor job in the first place.
So yeah, wasn't really feeling jolly and happy yesterday.
If the person hadn't been working remotely, cross words might have been exchanged.
Monday, 6 September 2010
unf
Not really feeling in the mood today.
Bit of a shit weekend and work is being a bit shit.
Plus (or perhaps, explaining the above a bit) I'm feeling tired and I've got a couple of blisters on my foot.
Bit of a shit weekend and work is being a bit shit.
Plus (or perhaps, explaining the above a bit) I'm feeling tired and I've got a couple of blisters on my foot.
Friday, 3 September 2010
where did they come from?
Well that was a bit of a blow.
I've been prepping stuff for e-bay auctions all this week and one of the big ones was going to be my collection of discworld books. I mean, I'm pretty sure I'm not going to sell them, but it's worth putting them up there.
In fact, I'm pretty sure I'm not going to sell hardly any of the stuff I'm going to put up, but once it's been up there for a bit and no-one has bought any of it I can feel okay about taking it all down the tip.
Anyway, what I generally do is prep the text of the auctions along with the pictures before I put them up, and since there's going to be so many, I've been trying to get a head start, where I would normally do them on the same day. And I've made a bit of an unfortunate discovery.
I've discovered that there are two discworld novels I've not read.
Now I knew there were discworld related books I'd not read - there are some books aimed at children, for example, and there's lots of spin-offs, like the science of discworld books and stuff - but I've not read those as I'm not hugely interested. However, these are both proper discworld novels.
The two in question are The Last Continent and Carpe Jugulum. It would appear that both of these books were released (presumably this means in hardback) in 1998, so somehow I've completely missed those two books. I'm actually at a bit of a loss to explain how I've missed them, to be honest, but it gives me a bit of a problem.
See, it doesn't make much sense to sell the books unless it's a pretty much complete collection. Plus, I'm obviously going to get those books anyway and there's also the issue that I've still not read Unseen Academicals, which is the newest book, so I should read that too.
All of which is great from one perspective - yay, more discworld books to read - but annoying because at the pace I read it'll be a couple of months before I've read these new books, even if I start immediately. And that means I can't clear stuff as quickly as I'd hoped.
This process is also being hampered by the fact that the bloody shed hasn't been cleared. I mean, why drag me in and go "You've got to put your stuff into the shed immediately, because it could explode in some horrible fireball of death any time!" until you've actually cleared the space in the shed? All it does is massively inconvenience me, because I don't know when I'm going to have to do all the moving.
Plus, I put a bunch of boxes right next to the door in anticipation, which means they're right in the way and I don't know if I should move them out of the way (I keep banging into them). I bet if I do move them, I'll immediately get the knock at the door to tell me the shed's cleared.
I've been prepping stuff for e-bay auctions all this week and one of the big ones was going to be my collection of discworld books. I mean, I'm pretty sure I'm not going to sell them, but it's worth putting them up there.
In fact, I'm pretty sure I'm not going to sell hardly any of the stuff I'm going to put up, but once it's been up there for a bit and no-one has bought any of it I can feel okay about taking it all down the tip.
Anyway, what I generally do is prep the text of the auctions along with the pictures before I put them up, and since there's going to be so many, I've been trying to get a head start, where I would normally do them on the same day. And I've made a bit of an unfortunate discovery.
I've discovered that there are two discworld novels I've not read.
Now I knew there were discworld related books I'd not read - there are some books aimed at children, for example, and there's lots of spin-offs, like the science of discworld books and stuff - but I've not read those as I'm not hugely interested. However, these are both proper discworld novels.
The two in question are The Last Continent and Carpe Jugulum. It would appear that both of these books were released (presumably this means in hardback) in 1998, so somehow I've completely missed those two books. I'm actually at a bit of a loss to explain how I've missed them, to be honest, but it gives me a bit of a problem.
See, it doesn't make much sense to sell the books unless it's a pretty much complete collection. Plus, I'm obviously going to get those books anyway and there's also the issue that I've still not read Unseen Academicals, which is the newest book, so I should read that too.
All of which is great from one perspective - yay, more discworld books to read - but annoying because at the pace I read it'll be a couple of months before I've read these new books, even if I start immediately. And that means I can't clear stuff as quickly as I'd hoped.
This process is also being hampered by the fact that the bloody shed hasn't been cleared. I mean, why drag me in and go "You've got to put your stuff into the shed immediately, because it could explode in some horrible fireball of death any time!" until you've actually cleared the space in the shed? All it does is massively inconvenience me, because I don't know when I'm going to have to do all the moving.
Plus, I put a bunch of boxes right next to the door in anticipation, which means they're right in the way and I don't know if I should move them out of the way (I keep banging into them). I bet if I do move them, I'll immediately get the knock at the door to tell me the shed's cleared.
Thursday, 2 September 2010
a weird effect
Despite being a bank holiday weekend, I didn't watch any films.
Part of the problem was that I was without a rental DVD, but also, as discussed, I had the sudden problem of box sorting and moving to cope with, so I didn't have as much free time as I'd thought.
Which isn't to say I didn't watch anything - I actually watched loads. First off there was the Grand Prix of course, but I also finished off the first season of Code Geass, which was spectacularly good. I also even started watching the second season of My Name Is Earl.
I'd forgotten that Earl was so good in those first two seasons. My memory is that seasons 3 and 4 really seemed to loose their way, so it was a pleasant surprise to find season 2 was really good. Well, it starts good - I watched it on TV, but I've not got very far with the DVDs so it may be that it tails off - I can't remember.
Anyway, the real point of this post was to make up for the lack of a review by talking a little about the whole weight thing yet again.
I know, it's kinda boring already, but I thought I'd mention some of the weirder things.
First off, I keep having bouts of feeling really amazing. In the very first week I was really tired all the time. I put this down to the combination of suddenly exercising where I'd done nothing before, but also I was having real problems sleeping.
Well, the sleeping seems to have sorted itself, so that may be the reason, but I've generally been feeling really good and some days I feel amazing. I'm used to feeling awful - most days before I started this I would feel down and tired all the time. Even if I'd had loads of sleep, I'd still feel knackered. But now, even on the days I'm not super high I still feel pretty good.
I can only really put it down the exercise. Id' heard that this happened, but it's weird when you think about it - you feel like you've got more energy even though you're actually burning off more calories.
I also read something about how the whole weight loss thing works and suddenly I sort of understand it better than I did before.
Basically, one pound of body fat equates to about 3,500 calories.
Now, for an adult man, the recommended calorie intake is 2,500 calories. So, if you go on a diet that's 500 calories a day less, then 7 * 500 = 3,500 calories, so you would expect to loose 1 pound a week.
Simple.
And what's more, if you add exercise in as well and burn, say, another 500 calories a day then that's another pound a week.
Although that is where it gets more complicated - how much exercise (walking in my case, obviously) you have to do in order to burn that 500 calories seems to be the source of much debate.
Part of the problem was that I was without a rental DVD, but also, as discussed, I had the sudden problem of box sorting and moving to cope with, so I didn't have as much free time as I'd thought.
Which isn't to say I didn't watch anything - I actually watched loads. First off there was the Grand Prix of course, but I also finished off the first season of Code Geass, which was spectacularly good. I also even started watching the second season of My Name Is Earl.
I'd forgotten that Earl was so good in those first two seasons. My memory is that seasons 3 and 4 really seemed to loose their way, so it was a pleasant surprise to find season 2 was really good. Well, it starts good - I watched it on TV, but I've not got very far with the DVDs so it may be that it tails off - I can't remember.
Anyway, the real point of this post was to make up for the lack of a review by talking a little about the whole weight thing yet again.
I know, it's kinda boring already, but I thought I'd mention some of the weirder things.
First off, I keep having bouts of feeling really amazing. In the very first week I was really tired all the time. I put this down to the combination of suddenly exercising where I'd done nothing before, but also I was having real problems sleeping.
Well, the sleeping seems to have sorted itself, so that may be the reason, but I've generally been feeling really good and some days I feel amazing. I'm used to feeling awful - most days before I started this I would feel down and tired all the time. Even if I'd had loads of sleep, I'd still feel knackered. But now, even on the days I'm not super high I still feel pretty good.
I can only really put it down the exercise. Id' heard that this happened, but it's weird when you think about it - you feel like you've got more energy even though you're actually burning off more calories.
I also read something about how the whole weight loss thing works and suddenly I sort of understand it better than I did before.
Basically, one pound of body fat equates to about 3,500 calories.
Now, for an adult man, the recommended calorie intake is 2,500 calories. So, if you go on a diet that's 500 calories a day less, then 7 * 500 = 3,500 calories, so you would expect to loose 1 pound a week.
Simple.
And what's more, if you add exercise in as well and burn, say, another 500 calories a day then that's another pound a week.
Although that is where it gets more complicated - how much exercise (walking in my case, obviously) you have to do in order to burn that 500 calories seems to be the source of much debate.
Wednesday, 1 September 2010
more loss (thank god)
I was terribly afraid that when I weighed myself on Sunday I would discover I had gained weight.
My fear was born of several issues.
First off, when I did my first official weigh-in, I was shocked to find I'd apparently "lost" 5 pounds. However, this 5 pound loss was compared to the impromptu and not to be taken seriously measurement I did when I first got the scales.
There were of course many possible explanations - I was fully clothed when I first did it and it was at the end of the day, rather than the beginning, being very high up the list. I was also afraid that I'd made an error of some kind, however, I repeated the measurement and got the exact same result. But however much I counselled myself that it wasn't real, I was delighted with this apparent result.
So I was afraid that this time I'd be higher simply because I wasn't really as low as I'd thought I was, if you see what I mean.
The second issue was that I'd not really started the week very well both in terms of diet and exercise. I mean, it wasn't bad in the sense of sitting on my arse all day, eating 3 pies and 5 mars bars and washing it down with a gallon of coke, but certainly I seemed to be eating plenty and not getting hungry and I wasn't hitting my targets for the pedometer.
Not that the pedometer is proving particularly accurate. My best guesstimate is that it's about 10% inaccurate, but the main problem is that it's not consistent in its inaccuracy.
There was one day last week where I know for a fact I did more steps than the day before, because I walked around the field 3 times in the morning, rather than 2. The days were otherwise no different, yet the earlier day it recorded some 400 more steps than the day after.
But the real problem was that on both of those days the steps were well below the targets I've set.
So you see my fear - I wasn't sure about the first measurement, I'd not been as hungry as I had the week before and I'd also not hit my step targets. However, I was genuinely delighted to find I'd lost a further 2 pounds when I measured myself on Sunday!
Until my landlord dropped the bombshell, as discussed yesterday, I was really chuffed with this.
Well, actually I was still pretty chuffed, it's just that my focus was on the problem at hand. I guess the upside, though is that all that box moving and sorting I did was quite knackering. Plus on the bank holiday I did loads of walking (enough to safely put me above the 10,000 steps thing, in fact).
My fear was born of several issues.
First off, when I did my first official weigh-in, I was shocked to find I'd apparently "lost" 5 pounds. However, this 5 pound loss was compared to the impromptu and not to be taken seriously measurement I did when I first got the scales.
There were of course many possible explanations - I was fully clothed when I first did it and it was at the end of the day, rather than the beginning, being very high up the list. I was also afraid that I'd made an error of some kind, however, I repeated the measurement and got the exact same result. But however much I counselled myself that it wasn't real, I was delighted with this apparent result.
So I was afraid that this time I'd be higher simply because I wasn't really as low as I'd thought I was, if you see what I mean.
The second issue was that I'd not really started the week very well both in terms of diet and exercise. I mean, it wasn't bad in the sense of sitting on my arse all day, eating 3 pies and 5 mars bars and washing it down with a gallon of coke, but certainly I seemed to be eating plenty and not getting hungry and I wasn't hitting my targets for the pedometer.
Not that the pedometer is proving particularly accurate. My best guesstimate is that it's about 10% inaccurate, but the main problem is that it's not consistent in its inaccuracy.
There was one day last week where I know for a fact I did more steps than the day before, because I walked around the field 3 times in the morning, rather than 2. The days were otherwise no different, yet the earlier day it recorded some 400 more steps than the day after.
But the real problem was that on both of those days the steps were well below the targets I've set.
So you see my fear - I wasn't sure about the first measurement, I'd not been as hungry as I had the week before and I'd also not hit my step targets. However, I was genuinely delighted to find I'd lost a further 2 pounds when I measured myself on Sunday!
Until my landlord dropped the bombshell, as discussed yesterday, I was really chuffed with this.
Well, actually I was still pretty chuffed, it's just that my focus was on the problem at hand. I guess the upside, though is that all that box moving and sorting I did was quite knackering. Plus on the bank holiday I did loads of walking (enough to safely put me above the 10,000 steps thing, in fact).
Tuesday, 31 August 2010
sunday, bleedin sunday
So this last weekend gone was the bank holiday.
I didn't really have a concrete plan of action, but it was my intention to do a bunch of prep work for putting a load of stuff on e-bay. On the Saturday this mainly involved going through boxes and photographing and weighing stuff.
I spent most of the afternoon doing it and was pleased with the progress. Sunday I'd pretty much earmarked for computer cleaning and sorting. My landlord wants to redecorate my room, so I wanted to start the ball rolling of tidying up the computer area, which needs sorting for several reasons.
My dad is also wanting to buy a new monitor, so I've been spending a lot of time looking through computer specialist websites and I kinda ended up getting the old system building bug. See, I'm also keeping track o the progress of the latest version of the Civ franchise - number 5 - and a while back they posted some system requirements stuff.
And, to be frank, the recommended system is a bit of a monster. Also, I'd started playing Anno 1404 again and was getting a motherload of Crashes-to-Desktop while it was saving (which is just about the worst time for it to crash). Although there's no patch to fix the CTD, some of the stuff out there suggests that more videocard RAM had cured the problem for some people.
In other words, there was a sudden impetus for me to update my machine. I mean, I also spent ages designing a dream system, but that would cost about £1,600 - £1,600 I don't have let me hasten to emphasise - so I also looked at tweaking my existing computers to boost performance.
However, an important part of this would be to finally update to Windows 7 and that means I'd need to spend ages doing "system sorting out" stuff, which is what I had planned for the Sunday. Also, it's good to occasionally clean out your PC case as the build up of dust that tends to occur is not good, so I was hoping to do that.
Instead, my landlord dropped a bit of a bombshell.
My landlord actually has a bit of a knack for managing to want to talk to me at the most inconvenient times - just as I'm sitting down to watch the Belgium Grand Prix, there's a knock at the door and they want 'a chat'.
Anyway, to cut a long story, there were 2 issues.
First off, my collection of boxes is now considered a fire hazard (given the damp problems I'd struggle to see a roaring log fire as a fire hazard in my flat, but never mind) so I need to move them all into the shed out the back.
And secondly, their decorator has booked a holiday right when I'm off at the beginning of October, even though they've known the dates for weeks.
This second point was where it got really confusing, because their solution seemed to be that they want to go into my room and start stripping the wallpaper in advance. I realised later that I don't actually understand how this solves the problem, unless they're saying they're going to decorate it themselves.
Even if they are, I'm kinda stunned that they're suggesting the small room I live in will take more than... ooh, two days to decorate (I'm going to be away for a week).
I dunno, but the basic upshot is that I had to spend the rest of Sunday and Monday sorting through all of the boxes - not just the ones that had stuff in I want to sell now. Of course, ultimately, I want to sell, recycle or throw away 90% of what's in the boxes, but I was thinking I'd have a month to do this and even then that I'd have time after the decoration as well.
However, if the boxes now have to go out in the shed that adds all sorts of complications, meaning it all needs doing as soon as is humanely possible.
I didn't really have a concrete plan of action, but it was my intention to do a bunch of prep work for putting a load of stuff on e-bay. On the Saturday this mainly involved going through boxes and photographing and weighing stuff.
I spent most of the afternoon doing it and was pleased with the progress. Sunday I'd pretty much earmarked for computer cleaning and sorting. My landlord wants to redecorate my room, so I wanted to start the ball rolling of tidying up the computer area, which needs sorting for several reasons.
My dad is also wanting to buy a new monitor, so I've been spending a lot of time looking through computer specialist websites and I kinda ended up getting the old system building bug. See, I'm also keeping track o the progress of the latest version of the Civ franchise - number 5 - and a while back they posted some system requirements stuff.
And, to be frank, the recommended system is a bit of a monster. Also, I'd started playing Anno 1404 again and was getting a motherload of Crashes-to-Desktop while it was saving (which is just about the worst time for it to crash). Although there's no patch to fix the CTD, some of the stuff out there suggests that more videocard RAM had cured the problem for some people.
In other words, there was a sudden impetus for me to update my machine. I mean, I also spent ages designing a dream system, but that would cost about £1,600 - £1,600 I don't have let me hasten to emphasise - so I also looked at tweaking my existing computers to boost performance.
However, an important part of this would be to finally update to Windows 7 and that means I'd need to spend ages doing "system sorting out" stuff, which is what I had planned for the Sunday. Also, it's good to occasionally clean out your PC case as the build up of dust that tends to occur is not good, so I was hoping to do that.
Instead, my landlord dropped a bit of a bombshell.
My landlord actually has a bit of a knack for managing to want to talk to me at the most inconvenient times - just as I'm sitting down to watch the Belgium Grand Prix, there's a knock at the door and they want 'a chat'.
Anyway, to cut a long story, there were 2 issues.
First off, my collection of boxes is now considered a fire hazard (given the damp problems I'd struggle to see a roaring log fire as a fire hazard in my flat, but never mind) so I need to move them all into the shed out the back.
And secondly, their decorator has booked a holiday right when I'm off at the beginning of October, even though they've known the dates for weeks.
This second point was where it got really confusing, because their solution seemed to be that they want to go into my room and start stripping the wallpaper in advance. I realised later that I don't actually understand how this solves the problem, unless they're saying they're going to decorate it themselves.
Even if they are, I'm kinda stunned that they're suggesting the small room I live in will take more than... ooh, two days to decorate (I'm going to be away for a week).
I dunno, but the basic upshot is that I had to spend the rest of Sunday and Monday sorting through all of the boxes - not just the ones that had stuff in I want to sell now. Of course, ultimately, I want to sell, recycle or throw away 90% of what's in the boxes, but I was thinking I'd have a month to do this and even then that I'd have time after the decoration as well.
However, if the boxes now have to go out in the shed that adds all sorts of complications, meaning it all needs doing as soon as is humanely possible.
Friday, 27 August 2010
summer bank holiday? really?
Well, this weekend is the summer bank holiday - the last bank holiday before Chrimbo.
I've got to say it's a bit of a misnomer this year, as summer has been a bit of a damp squib. There was a brief spell of hot weather early on, when my aircon came in very handy, but after that it's been a real mixed bag.
Just recently it seems to have rained a hell of a lot, but there have also been some sunny days and both really humid and surprisingly cold days. Over the last couple of days it's really felt like we're heading into autumn, rather than being the middle of summer.
And this weekend also marks the return of the Formula 1 circus, with the Belgium Grand Prix held at the famous Spa Francorchamps circuit. Spa usually produces a good race, and it's also well known for the steep climb up the Eau Rouge valley.
My sister and dad actually went to the Belgium Grand Prix a couple of years ago and sat in the stand at the top of Eau Rouge. They said it is incredibly steep - proper out of breath stuff. I wish I could have gone myself, but I've got the whole problem of spending huge amounts of cash on anime and manga that often prevents me from having proper holidays or doing anything that needs a large amount of cash.
I'm not sure how my walking regime will stand up to the whole Grand Prix weekend thing. I guess this will be the acid test.
I've got to say it's a bit of a misnomer this year, as summer has been a bit of a damp squib. There was a brief spell of hot weather early on, when my aircon came in very handy, but after that it's been a real mixed bag.
Just recently it seems to have rained a hell of a lot, but there have also been some sunny days and both really humid and surprisingly cold days. Over the last couple of days it's really felt like we're heading into autumn, rather than being the middle of summer.
And this weekend also marks the return of the Formula 1 circus, with the Belgium Grand Prix held at the famous Spa Francorchamps circuit. Spa usually produces a good race, and it's also well known for the steep climb up the Eau Rouge valley.
My sister and dad actually went to the Belgium Grand Prix a couple of years ago and sat in the stand at the top of Eau Rouge. They said it is incredibly steep - proper out of breath stuff. I wish I could have gone myself, but I've got the whole problem of spending huge amounts of cash on anime and manga that often prevents me from having proper holidays or doing anything that needs a large amount of cash.
I'm not sure how my walking regime will stand up to the whole Grand Prix weekend thing. I guess this will be the acid test.
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