So as mentioned I didn't do much exercise last weekend and I drank beer on Saturday and we ate takeaway pizza.
And yet I'd still lost 1 pound when I weighed myself on Sunday. It hadn't even been a particularly good week to compensate. I guess there's the possibility I was horribly dehydrated when I weighed myself, but I didn't feel that way - more tired than dehydrated.
Still, happy to take a 1 pound loss and won't be too harsh on myself if the "bad living" shows up next weekend instead.
It feels like I've gotten way behind with the scanning. I seem to have lost a bit of momentum with it.
I mean, I have done quite a lot of catching up - I'm no longer 15 months behind, I'm now only about 6 months behind - but I've been feeling like I'm never going to catch up, so why even bother trying?
I mean, it's not that bad, but you get what I mean. I think to myself that I've so much of it to do, doing x instead of some scanning is hardly going to hurt. trouble is all that adds up and I'll soon be a stupid amount behind again.
Part of the problem I think was the all problems I had with the cable internet connection. That coincided with me being off around Easter and meant I couldn't watch crunchyroll stuff. At the time the new UK one - Anime On Demand - was just getting going too and those were what I really wanted to watch while I scanned.
Instead I watched (older) fansubs I'd downloaded, and while that was good and needed doing, it meant I've gotten some way behind with new season stuff where I'd hoped I was going to be fully up to date.
As mentioned there's also this AOD thing and while I have subscribed to it, I'm not hugely impressed. It only seems to work in either a small window or full-screen, even if you adjust the resolution setting. This really doesn't work for me with watching it while I'm scanning, because the window is too small to easily watch and read the subtitles and of course full screen means you can't practically do anything else at the same time.
It's also all over the place in terms of episode numbers. To be fair they launched it just when the earthquake hit Japan and it's a brand new thing, so it's understandable, but it's a bit confusing with the episode numbers they're on and how big a delay they have from Japanese screening.
Also I'm unsure about the whole "season pass" model.
I hope what they're getting at is a quarterly subscription model that's basically a similar idea to crunchyroll. What I'm slightly worried about is that once the season is over, the videos will basically expire. That's a pain for me because I watch anime quite randomly, so it might be several weeks before I get around to watching some things.
The advantage with crunchyroll's model is that they try to keep things on for as long as possible. So if you come along several seasons later you can still watch stuff. A "season pass" implies that previous season's content will not be available to you.
Friday, 3 June 2011
Thursday, 2 June 2011
Monaco GP
Last weekend saw the Monaco Grand Prix.
It was the second Grand Prix in as many weeks, but now that it's back in Europe for a while that doesn't seem quite as bad - Spain is just down the road from Monaco. And of course both aren't far from where most teams are based, in the UK.
Monaco of course is a traditionally processional race.
It's held in the narrow streets of Monte Carlo and if it were proposed as a race today it would almost certainly be rejected as being unsafe / too risky. The cars travel within millimetres of the solid barriers (the famous phrase is that you need to leave the tyres manufacturers logo behind on the barriers to know you've had a good lap) with few run of areas and nothing in the way of gravel to slow them down should they fail to make a corner.
Of course, being so twisty and turn they don't really ever get up to full speed, but there's no margin for error at all. This is one of the reasons why many of the drivers like it - it's a technical challenge and for the spectators it's more about getting really close to the cars and soaking up the atmosphere than stuff like overtaking.
I went a couple of years ago and it really is an amazing, atmospheric race and spectacle.
And this year it was almost a good race as well. To be fair it was nowhere near as some of the previous races, but compared to the dull, processional races at Monaco I've seen it was a hell of a lot better.
For some reason (slower speed maybe?) the Pirelli tyres seemed to last longer than at previous races, despite them using the super soft and soft combo for the first time. Also of course the DRS zone was a bit redundant, although there's some suggestion it helped in one or two passes.
And there were quite a few overtakes, which is quite novelty for Monaco.
Unfortunately for Lewis Hamilton in particular his weren't the best executed of overtakes.
To be frank, Lewis is my favourite driver of the current crop. I think the grid has a lot of good drivers at the moment, but I love the fact Lewis is a proper racer, never content to give half measure and always all about taking people on track. He wants to rave everybody and try to beat them fair and square.
Lewis is also a bit of a demon around Monaco, loving the challenge of the circuit.
But in the last part of qualifying there was quite a nasty accident that spoiled his only planned attempt at a qualifying lap. then, when they came out again he didn't do so well but also made an error and so was demoted to 9th. Not great considering how difficult it is to overtake, even with the current rules.
But of course he went for it and ended up having a terrible time - two of his moves ended with collisions that were, to be frank, entirely his fault. He was being way too ambitious (which, as I say, is kinda why he love him). In particular, the crash was Massa he was way off even being alongside and they got quite badly tangled.
He got penalised for both of these. Also the team called him in at one point, but they didn't have the tyres ready for him.
He was also peripherally involved in a complicated accident that saw Petrov in the barriers and the race red flagged while they took him to hospital.
So things didn't go well.
Unfortunately he also made it a bit worse by giving an interview when he was clearly still very annoyed, blaming the other drivers for basically being rubbish and the stewards for being over-sensitive. Which he then made worse by making a reference to the Ali G thing of "is it cos I is black?"
He was clearly not being serious, but it was a rather cringeworthy foot-in-mouth moment.
It was the second Grand Prix in as many weeks, but now that it's back in Europe for a while that doesn't seem quite as bad - Spain is just down the road from Monaco. And of course both aren't far from where most teams are based, in the UK.
Monaco of course is a traditionally processional race.
It's held in the narrow streets of Monte Carlo and if it were proposed as a race today it would almost certainly be rejected as being unsafe / too risky. The cars travel within millimetres of the solid barriers (the famous phrase is that you need to leave the tyres manufacturers logo behind on the barriers to know you've had a good lap) with few run of areas and nothing in the way of gravel to slow them down should they fail to make a corner.
Of course, being so twisty and turn they don't really ever get up to full speed, but there's no margin for error at all. This is one of the reasons why many of the drivers like it - it's a technical challenge and for the spectators it's more about getting really close to the cars and soaking up the atmosphere than stuff like overtaking.
I went a couple of years ago and it really is an amazing, atmospheric race and spectacle.
And this year it was almost a good race as well. To be fair it was nowhere near as some of the previous races, but compared to the dull, processional races at Monaco I've seen it was a hell of a lot better.
For some reason (slower speed maybe?) the Pirelli tyres seemed to last longer than at previous races, despite them using the super soft and soft combo for the first time. Also of course the DRS zone was a bit redundant, although there's some suggestion it helped in one or two passes.
And there were quite a few overtakes, which is quite novelty for Monaco.
Unfortunately for Lewis Hamilton in particular his weren't the best executed of overtakes.
To be frank, Lewis is my favourite driver of the current crop. I think the grid has a lot of good drivers at the moment, but I love the fact Lewis is a proper racer, never content to give half measure and always all about taking people on track. He wants to rave everybody and try to beat them fair and square.
Lewis is also a bit of a demon around Monaco, loving the challenge of the circuit.
But in the last part of qualifying there was quite a nasty accident that spoiled his only planned attempt at a qualifying lap. then, when they came out again he didn't do so well but also made an error and so was demoted to 9th. Not great considering how difficult it is to overtake, even with the current rules.
But of course he went for it and ended up having a terrible time - two of his moves ended with collisions that were, to be frank, entirely his fault. He was being way too ambitious (which, as I say, is kinda why he love him). In particular, the crash was Massa he was way off even being alongside and they got quite badly tangled.
He got penalised for both of these. Also the team called him in at one point, but they didn't have the tyres ready for him.
He was also peripherally involved in a complicated accident that saw Petrov in the barriers and the race red flagged while they took him to hospital.
So things didn't go well.
Unfortunately he also made it a bit worse by giving an interview when he was clearly still very annoyed, blaming the other drivers for basically being rubbish and the stewards for being over-sensitive. Which he then made worse by making a reference to the Ali G thing of "is it cos I is black?"
He was clearly not being serious, but it was a rather cringeworthy foot-in-mouth moment.
Wednesday, 1 June 2011
burn after reading
Until about half way through Burn After Reading I wasn't at all sure if I liked it.
The main reason for this was that all the characters were either unlikeable or stupid or, mainly, both. Being a Coen Borthers film I was also expecting it to be darkly comic but it was also quite light on jokes.
However, a bit like the title (ooh, clever), it's a bit of a slow burner. There's a lot of build up and then about half way through things reach a kind of tipping point and just about everything flips into the ridiculous, with truly hilarious results.
Stupid people are quite a common theme in Coen Brothers films, although usually there's at least one character who's sensible or clever. Here the only people who come close to that are the CIA men, although they're not really major characters and even they come across as being a litte dumb.
What I think makes burn really work is the central stupidity - the mistaking of CD containing a fired CIA analyst's financial info and a copy of their memoires. This is mistaken for somethign valuable/secret by the two main chracters. The particularly clever bit is that a lot of the chracters fall into what you might call architypal roles are expected actions, despite this data not actually being of any interst.
So, for example, they try to sell the information to the Russains. This is the very much post cold war Russains. But it's like everybody forgets that the cold war is over and that they're not actually in a spy film. Liek they're acting on autopilot.
I'm finding it a bit difficult to explain and that's why it needs such a big build-up. Without that build up the farcical stuff would just seem bizarre. The punchlines need that much preamble in order to work.
You know really there's not a lot more I can say - I really enjoyed the film, but it took a while to really become funny.
My favourite characters were probably the CIA men. The scenes between Palmer and his boss had me in stitches. The palpable embarressment and bafflment of Palmer was rather delicious. The whole "We don't know why" "But we're the CIA" feel of it was just perfect.
The main reason for this was that all the characters were either unlikeable or stupid or, mainly, both. Being a Coen Borthers film I was also expecting it to be darkly comic but it was also quite light on jokes.
However, a bit like the title (ooh, clever), it's a bit of a slow burner. There's a lot of build up and then about half way through things reach a kind of tipping point and just about everything flips into the ridiculous, with truly hilarious results.
Stupid people are quite a common theme in Coen Brothers films, although usually there's at least one character who's sensible or clever. Here the only people who come close to that are the CIA men, although they're not really major characters and even they come across as being a litte dumb.
What I think makes burn really work is the central stupidity - the mistaking of CD containing a fired CIA analyst's financial info and a copy of their memoires. This is mistaken for somethign valuable/secret by the two main chracters. The particularly clever bit is that a lot of the chracters fall into what you might call architypal roles are expected actions, despite this data not actually being of any interst.
So, for example, they try to sell the information to the Russains. This is the very much post cold war Russains. But it's like everybody forgets that the cold war is over and that they're not actually in a spy film. Liek they're acting on autopilot.
I'm finding it a bit difficult to explain and that's why it needs such a big build-up. Without that build up the farcical stuff would just seem bizarre. The punchlines need that much preamble in order to work.
You know really there's not a lot more I can say - I really enjoyed the film, but it took a while to really become funny.
My favourite characters were probably the CIA men. The scenes between Palmer and his boss had me in stitches. The palpable embarressment and bafflment of Palmer was rather delicious. The whole "We don't know why" "But we're the CIA" feel of it was just perfect.
Tuesday, 31 May 2011
more work then
Back to work then.
I already feel like I could do with another holiday. The whole Bank Holiday madness and my associated holidays at the beginning of this month seemed like a good idea, but I'm not entirely sure it really worked.
It certainly doesn't feel like I've had a proper holiday a few weeks ago.
Or maybe it's just general fatigue.
It was a tiring weekend. Saturday I went to see a couple of good friends who I knew from school and haven't seen for what must be 2 years. It was the Champions League final, which is a football thing and I don't really do football.
I stayed over that night and came back on the Sunday, getting back about mid-day, which gave me just enough time to shower and have some lunch and then it was the Monaco Grand Prix., which I'll talk about that a bit more later in the week.
The rest of Sunday was pretty much spent bumming around. I watched quite a lot of telly I'd recorded and also played some games. One thing I didn't really do that I should have was go for any walks.
On the Sunday I wouldn't really describe myself as hung over - I got a bit tipsy on Saturday, no more - it was more to do with lack of sleep. My body clock combined with strange surroundings meant I got up at 6:30, having only gone to bed at 2:30.
Monday I wasted, to be frank.
I watched some more telly and played some more games, and that was pretty much it. I did go for a walk, but it was just the one in the afternoon, and it wasn't a long one. It was weirdly humid out, which made sense when it started raining just as I was getting home, so I guess the humidity was the build up for the rain.
I already feel like I could do with another holiday. The whole Bank Holiday madness and my associated holidays at the beginning of this month seemed like a good idea, but I'm not entirely sure it really worked.
It certainly doesn't feel like I've had a proper holiday a few weeks ago.
Or maybe it's just general fatigue.
It was a tiring weekend. Saturday I went to see a couple of good friends who I knew from school and haven't seen for what must be 2 years. It was the Champions League final, which is a football thing and I don't really do football.
I stayed over that night and came back on the Sunday, getting back about mid-day, which gave me just enough time to shower and have some lunch and then it was the Monaco Grand Prix., which I'll talk about that a bit more later in the week.
The rest of Sunday was pretty much spent bumming around. I watched quite a lot of telly I'd recorded and also played some games. One thing I didn't really do that I should have was go for any walks.
On the Sunday I wouldn't really describe myself as hung over - I got a bit tipsy on Saturday, no more - it was more to do with lack of sleep. My body clock combined with strange surroundings meant I got up at 6:30, having only gone to bed at 2:30.
Monday I wasted, to be frank.
I watched some more telly and played some more games, and that was pretty much it. I did go for a walk, but it was just the one in the afternoon, and it wasn't a long one. It was weirdly humid out, which made sense when it started raining just as I was getting home, so I guess the humidity was the build up for the rain.
Friday, 27 May 2011
yet another bank holiday
Well, there's yet another Bank Holiday on Monday.
Of course really we're only gaining 1 extra day off across the year, it's just that there's also been an undue concentration of them in May.
Plans for the weekend involve watching the Monaco Grand Prix. I'm also supposed to be going to visit some friends who I realised the other day I haven't seen in about 4 years.
I've been horribly busy at work this last couple of days. I even got up half an hour early (that's half an hour earlier than my usual 6:30 wake up time) to get in as soon as I could this morning and I'm still only about half way through what I need to do, so I'll cut the post off here I think.
Of course really we're only gaining 1 extra day off across the year, it's just that there's also been an undue concentration of them in May.
Plans for the weekend involve watching the Monaco Grand Prix. I'm also supposed to be going to visit some friends who I realised the other day I haven't seen in about 4 years.
I've been horribly busy at work this last couple of days. I even got up half an hour early (that's half an hour earlier than my usual 6:30 wake up time) to get in as soon as I could this morning and I'm still only about half way through what I need to do, so I'll cut the post off here I think.
Thursday, 26 May 2011
67 stone
I randomly came across a programme the other day where two ambulance drivers (they may well have been paramedics - I couldn't tell) were discussing the tools they use to move very big people.
The standard trolley they put in and out of the ambulance has a kind of extension thing that allows bigger people lay on it without fear of falling off. Apparently the trolley itself can take up to 75 stone in weight.
If people were bigger than that (!) they explained there's a kind of big bag they use that people can be zipped into. This has all sorts of handles that allow it to be picked up by multiple people and can allow them to carry someone who weighs 99 stone.
One imperial tonne is 160 stone, so that's nearly two thirds of a tonne.
Something else they said was they'd actually had to use the bag for a guy who weighed 67 stone, because of his shape. They'd had to leave open a flap on the bag because his belly was so big they couldn't close it.
I'm not posting this to offer any sort of opinion on this state of affairs. Indeed, as someone who used to weigh about 25 stone with a BMI that put him well into the morbidly obese range it would probably be best approached from a those without sin casting the first stone mindset.
What it did emphasise to me was how bad things could have gotten. My eating and exercise habits were such that my weight was an ever upward trajectory. And it's not good to be in a situation where, should you need to be rushed to hospital they first need to zip you into a bag and then find enough burly men to lift you.
This last week I lost 3 pounds. Well, I think actually it was more a case of losing about 2.5 pounds over the last two weeks.
The standard trolley they put in and out of the ambulance has a kind of extension thing that allows bigger people lay on it without fear of falling off. Apparently the trolley itself can take up to 75 stone in weight.
If people were bigger than that (!) they explained there's a kind of big bag they use that people can be zipped into. This has all sorts of handles that allow it to be picked up by multiple people and can allow them to carry someone who weighs 99 stone.
One imperial tonne is 160 stone, so that's nearly two thirds of a tonne.
Something else they said was they'd actually had to use the bag for a guy who weighed 67 stone, because of his shape. They'd had to leave open a flap on the bag because his belly was so big they couldn't close it.
I'm not posting this to offer any sort of opinion on this state of affairs. Indeed, as someone who used to weigh about 25 stone with a BMI that put him well into the morbidly obese range it would probably be best approached from a those without sin casting the first stone mindset.
What it did emphasise to me was how bad things could have gotten. My eating and exercise habits were such that my weight was an ever upward trajectory. And it's not good to be in a situation where, should you need to be rushed to hospital they first need to zip you into a bag and then find enough burly men to lift you.
This last week I lost 3 pounds. Well, I think actually it was more a case of losing about 2.5 pounds over the last two weeks.
Wednesday, 25 May 2011
resident evil degeneration
I've noticed this pattern before with the rentals I get sent.
Two rentals ago it was the most recent Resident Evil live action film (zombies), last time it was zombieland (zombies) and this time it was Resident Evil: Degeneration (zombies).
In particular I remember it happened with films featuring Jason Statham - I had several of them sent in quick succession. I don't fundamentally mind, but it is a bit weird that this themeing exists in whatever software it is that picks out which DVD to send you next. Well, I assume it's software - perhaps it's done by hand?
Degeneration is a CGI Resi movie made in Japan and that actually features some of the characters from the games and, I believe, is canon, which is to say it forms a proper part of the Resi game series stories, unlike the films.
I have to say, though, that it's not all that good. The main problem with it is that it just wasn't scary. A big part of why the Resi games that I played were scary was the intense atmosphere. They were played in a third person, fixed camera view that gave a cinematic feel and through the use of creepy music they built up a very intense atmosphere.
There are very few scenes that even try to be scary in Degeneration, and to be frank the almost total lack of gore also suggested to me that this was part of an attempt to get a relatively low rating.
Instead, the focus is on trying to be an action film. In this regard it sort of works, but I think the CGI aspect hampers it. I dunno, part of the fun of live action films is that it involves real people. I know these days a lot of CGI is used, but they still try to do lots of stunts and use the CGI to enhance it.
Here you can't really tell. I mean, it uses motion capture, but you don't really know if this is used in all the action parts or not.
Also, everything feels quite wooden. The CGI being used seems more on the level of that used in video game cut sequences, rather than that Final Fantasy film. I mean it looks okay, and it's great for monsters and the zombies, but the living humans didn't look good enough for me to really get into it properly.
Something else that didn't help was that the plot was a bit weak. I don't know if it has more resonance if you're properly familiar with all of the Resi games, but for me it all felt a bit predictable and overly familiar. There also seemed to be quite a few plot holes. A good example of this was the plane crashing into the terminal.
This isn't really a spoiler, since it's plastered all over the trailers, but a plane crashes into the terminal building where the zombie action is centred. Obviously, the human characters need to escape from the building, and there's going to be issues over zombies getting out. So wouldn't a plane crashing into a building leave a very big hole in it? Well, you would think so, but this doesn't really get mentioned as an escape route for either humans or zombies.
And there's lots of other stuff like that - things seem to happen (or don't happen) for reasons that don't really make much sense.
weight
Two rentals ago it was the most recent Resident Evil live action film (zombies), last time it was zombieland (zombies) and this time it was Resident Evil: Degeneration (zombies).
In particular I remember it happened with films featuring Jason Statham - I had several of them sent in quick succession. I don't fundamentally mind, but it is a bit weird that this themeing exists in whatever software it is that picks out which DVD to send you next. Well, I assume it's software - perhaps it's done by hand?
Degeneration is a CGI Resi movie made in Japan and that actually features some of the characters from the games and, I believe, is canon, which is to say it forms a proper part of the Resi game series stories, unlike the films.
I have to say, though, that it's not all that good. The main problem with it is that it just wasn't scary. A big part of why the Resi games that I played were scary was the intense atmosphere. They were played in a third person, fixed camera view that gave a cinematic feel and through the use of creepy music they built up a very intense atmosphere.
There are very few scenes that even try to be scary in Degeneration, and to be frank the almost total lack of gore also suggested to me that this was part of an attempt to get a relatively low rating.
Instead, the focus is on trying to be an action film. In this regard it sort of works, but I think the CGI aspect hampers it. I dunno, part of the fun of live action films is that it involves real people. I know these days a lot of CGI is used, but they still try to do lots of stunts and use the CGI to enhance it.
Here you can't really tell. I mean, it uses motion capture, but you don't really know if this is used in all the action parts or not.
Also, everything feels quite wooden. The CGI being used seems more on the level of that used in video game cut sequences, rather than that Final Fantasy film. I mean it looks okay, and it's great for monsters and the zombies, but the living humans didn't look good enough for me to really get into it properly.
Something else that didn't help was that the plot was a bit weak. I don't know if it has more resonance if you're properly familiar with all of the Resi games, but for me it all felt a bit predictable and overly familiar. There also seemed to be quite a few plot holes. A good example of this was the plane crashing into the terminal.
This isn't really a spoiler, since it's plastered all over the trailers, but a plane crashes into the terminal building where the zombie action is centred. Obviously, the human characters need to escape from the building, and there's going to be issues over zombies getting out. So wouldn't a plane crashing into a building leave a very big hole in it? Well, you would think so, but this doesn't really get mentioned as an escape route for either humans or zombies.
And there's lots of other stuff like that - things seem to happen (or don't happen) for reasons that don't really make much sense.
weight
Tuesday, 24 May 2011
web design software
So I've talked before about how I've switched all my domain name registrations to a new company and cancelled the hosting I had with the eventual intention of having hosting through the new people.
Part of the reason for the move is that the company in question are the ones we use at work and I got to see how they operate. Part of this is that I've been building a new website for work.
It's not the main website, but an additional one for a specific bit of work, but one of the key aspects was that we needed to be able to have users who could log in and out and use passwords to access certain bits of the site.
As part of the hosting this company provides, they give you a web design package called Serif X4 and investigations showed that this package gives you the ability to have user accounts. We therefore took the plunge and bought the hosting (which we'd need anyway, even if the design thing didn't work as we'd hoped) and I set about seeing if I could get it to do what we needed.
The answer to this question was, fundamentally, yes - we could have users and passwords and the whole thing. The way it works means that the details are held remotely on a secure web server hosted by the company (Serif, rather than the hosts).
Now obviously I've built websites before. I actually own a rather old version of Dreamweaver and have used that to build all of my websites. However, if I was going to get this program free with my hosting I thought it best to experiment with all the stuff it provides, not just what we needed for the work site.
And it's a bit of an odd beast.
The reason is that it's both quite powerful and quite limited all at the same time. I'll give you some examples.
Firstly, in the Dreamweaver I have, although it's What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) you're not that far removed from the basic html coding (I've only ever used the html in it). So a lot of it is done by arranging tables. By tables I mean the type of thing you have in word - you set the number of rows and columns and then you can do stuff to the tables or put stuff in the boxes you've created. And I think Word is the best analogy for how I've always used Dreamweaver.
In Serif you don't do that at all - you basically draw the site as if you were using MS Paint or Photoshop or a similar artist package. It's very much about the visual side of website designs.
Now that is very good on some levels, because you can quickly and relatively easily produce very appealing sites. It even provides you with templates that look quite good and you can fiddle with.
The difficulties come because of the content in sites like mine. The above works well if you're designing a relatively static site, but with mine with reviews with variable numbers of words, this produces unexpected challenges.
A good exemplar is the size of the page. When you design the page you fix the height and width. That means if you have a bit more or a bit less content you end up either going off the bottom or falling short and it has no way of the pages automatically adjusting to fit your content. You have to fiddle with some numbers in a dialogue box - you can't even simply drag the bottom of the page (I believe they added this in the next version).
And a similar problem pervades. So, for example, it gives you really simple an easy access to a forum that you can just drop onto your site. But, you can't adjust the design of the forum at all - it's a standard php forum and that's it. Well, you can do colours and through a tortuous back-end process can add bits and pieces, but it doesn't let you properly fiddle with it.
So as I say - it's at once very powerful and very restricted. You can easily create very pretty sites, but something as simple as adding text of variable length to pages is a real pain :/.
Part of the reason for the move is that the company in question are the ones we use at work and I got to see how they operate. Part of this is that I've been building a new website for work.
It's not the main website, but an additional one for a specific bit of work, but one of the key aspects was that we needed to be able to have users who could log in and out and use passwords to access certain bits of the site.
As part of the hosting this company provides, they give you a web design package called Serif X4 and investigations showed that this package gives you the ability to have user accounts. We therefore took the plunge and bought the hosting (which we'd need anyway, even if the design thing didn't work as we'd hoped) and I set about seeing if I could get it to do what we needed.
The answer to this question was, fundamentally, yes - we could have users and passwords and the whole thing. The way it works means that the details are held remotely on a secure web server hosted by the company (Serif, rather than the hosts).
Now obviously I've built websites before. I actually own a rather old version of Dreamweaver and have used that to build all of my websites. However, if I was going to get this program free with my hosting I thought it best to experiment with all the stuff it provides, not just what we needed for the work site.
And it's a bit of an odd beast.
The reason is that it's both quite powerful and quite limited all at the same time. I'll give you some examples.
Firstly, in the Dreamweaver I have, although it's What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) you're not that far removed from the basic html coding (I've only ever used the html in it). So a lot of it is done by arranging tables. By tables I mean the type of thing you have in word - you set the number of rows and columns and then you can do stuff to the tables or put stuff in the boxes you've created. And I think Word is the best analogy for how I've always used Dreamweaver.
In Serif you don't do that at all - you basically draw the site as if you were using MS Paint or Photoshop or a similar artist package. It's very much about the visual side of website designs.
Now that is very good on some levels, because you can quickly and relatively easily produce very appealing sites. It even provides you with templates that look quite good and you can fiddle with.
The difficulties come because of the content in sites like mine. The above works well if you're designing a relatively static site, but with mine with reviews with variable numbers of words, this produces unexpected challenges.
A good exemplar is the size of the page. When you design the page you fix the height and width. That means if you have a bit more or a bit less content you end up either going off the bottom or falling short and it has no way of the pages automatically adjusting to fit your content. You have to fiddle with some numbers in a dialogue box - you can't even simply drag the bottom of the page (I believe they added this in the next version).
And a similar problem pervades. So, for example, it gives you really simple an easy access to a forum that you can just drop onto your site. But, you can't adjust the design of the forum at all - it's a standard php forum and that's it. Well, you can do colours and through a tortuous back-end process can add bits and pieces, but it doesn't let you properly fiddle with it.
So as I say - it's at once very powerful and very restricted. You can easily create very pretty sites, but something as simple as adding text of variable length to pages is a real pain :/.
Monday, 23 May 2011
spanish f1 gp
Spanish Grand Prix this last weekend.
Spain is usually as dull as dishwater. It's one of the newer generations of tracks and it's not one of the better ones - it's very difficult to overtake. Indeed, the person who has pole position goes on to win the race more often than happened at Monaco.
This year, however, it was much more interesting. Clearly as a proper test for the new regulations it seems they've clearly brought some success. The Drag Reduction System (DRS - opening a flap on the rear wing to reduce drag and therefore give a speed boost) seems very temperamental/track sensitive.
Last week in Turkey it seemed to be too effective, with cars passing each other on the straights, making it way too easy. In China it worked perfectly, giving drivers the chance to be alongside in a corner and therefore battle it out. In Spain, despite it being used on a huge long straight it didn't really help at all, just like in Australia.
The problem seemed to be that in the corner before the straight it was difficult to follow another car closely. That meant that, by the time the DRS could be switched on, the other car was a long way in front and so the following driver didn't (in general) gain enough to even come close to passing.
What this did emphasise was the point that it's really the tyres that have had the biggest impact on racing this year. This is good, but I think they need to rethink it a bit. What I think would make things work better is if the harder compounds weren't so much slower than the softer ones and that they lasted ages.
That way you could have a proper battle between strategies - do you have only 1 stop and use the hard for ages, or lots of stops using the soft? This cant' really happen at the moment and is also worsened by the regs that limit the number of tyres the teams have. It also seems to be impacting qualifying quite a bit.
Anyway, the Spanish Grand Prix got off to a really interesting start with Alonso taking the lead with a spectacular bit of driving. Being the local boy, the crowd went mental - you could actually hear them above the sound of the cars, and each car is louder than a Jumbo jet.
This seemed to hold up the Red Bulls and I think also lead to the race being more interesting. To be fair, the Spanish was still less busy than previous races, emphasising that it is a less good track, but even so there was plenty going on.
In fact, still too much if I'm honest. I mean, Mark Webber, who started in pole ended up 4th and I have absolutely no idea how that happened. I mean, he didn't spin off or crash and I don't think there were any disastrous pit stops so how did that happen? It's almost like you need to watch 20-odd different versions of the race to work out what happened to each driver or cluster of drivers.
I dunno - it's just the wrong side of too much for me. But then would I have the sometimes dull, processional racing from recent years back? No, not at all, but it would be nice to find a balance between the two extremes.
Spain is usually as dull as dishwater. It's one of the newer generations of tracks and it's not one of the better ones - it's very difficult to overtake. Indeed, the person who has pole position goes on to win the race more often than happened at Monaco.
This year, however, it was much more interesting. Clearly as a proper test for the new regulations it seems they've clearly brought some success. The Drag Reduction System (DRS - opening a flap on the rear wing to reduce drag and therefore give a speed boost) seems very temperamental/track sensitive.
Last week in Turkey it seemed to be too effective, with cars passing each other on the straights, making it way too easy. In China it worked perfectly, giving drivers the chance to be alongside in a corner and therefore battle it out. In Spain, despite it being used on a huge long straight it didn't really help at all, just like in Australia.
The problem seemed to be that in the corner before the straight it was difficult to follow another car closely. That meant that, by the time the DRS could be switched on, the other car was a long way in front and so the following driver didn't (in general) gain enough to even come close to passing.
What this did emphasise was the point that it's really the tyres that have had the biggest impact on racing this year. This is good, but I think they need to rethink it a bit. What I think would make things work better is if the harder compounds weren't so much slower than the softer ones and that they lasted ages.
That way you could have a proper battle between strategies - do you have only 1 stop and use the hard for ages, or lots of stops using the soft? This cant' really happen at the moment and is also worsened by the regs that limit the number of tyres the teams have. It also seems to be impacting qualifying quite a bit.
Anyway, the Spanish Grand Prix got off to a really interesting start with Alonso taking the lead with a spectacular bit of driving. Being the local boy, the crowd went mental - you could actually hear them above the sound of the cars, and each car is louder than a Jumbo jet.
This seemed to hold up the Red Bulls and I think also lead to the race being more interesting. To be fair, the Spanish was still less busy than previous races, emphasising that it is a less good track, but even so there was plenty going on.
In fact, still too much if I'm honest. I mean, Mark Webber, who started in pole ended up 4th and I have absolutely no idea how that happened. I mean, he didn't spin off or crash and I don't think there were any disastrous pit stops so how did that happen? It's almost like you need to watch 20-odd different versions of the race to work out what happened to each driver or cluster of drivers.
I dunno - it's just the wrong side of too much for me. But then would I have the sometimes dull, processional racing from recent years back? No, not at all, but it would be nice to find a balance between the two extremes.
Friday, 20 May 2011
up and down like the assyrian empire
So my weight went back down again this last weekend.
It wasn't quite enough to cancel out the gain I had, but any loss is good. I also think I had a bit of switch in mental attitude - having posted the numbers of what I'd lost and gotten used to what I now way, it doesn't feel as bad/poor as it did. I've also realised that I'm not that far from getting down into the sorts of weights where normal clothes will begin to fit me.
And speaking of clothes, I'm really desperate for some new stuff. I've been holding off because the idea of buying stuff and then having to buy the same stuff only a bit smaller in six months time and then buying it yet again six months after that is truly unappealing (and expensive sounding).
But it was my clothes that I think gave the game away at work.
My boss (who is that sort of person) asked me directly if I was loosing weight, so I had to fess up. I could hardly say no :/. And as he said, my clothes are "hanging" off me. He's also the sort of person that then went and told everybody.
I found the whole thing a little embarrassing. Not spectacularly so, but I'm never hugely comfortable about talking about that sort of personal stuff. I mean, there's some personal stuff I'm fine with discussing, but there's other stuff that I just don't like to talk about. And that extends outwards too - I'm not comfortable talking about those areas in other people's lives, even if they are.
I guess that makes me rather unusual - gossip and prurience is what keeps half the internet and all of the tabloid papers going.
This week I've been trying to increase my step count. I've been doing two laps around the industrial estate in the morning and then a slightly longer walk at lunch time. This has been successful, but if I want to take it any further it's clear I'll need to walk in the evenings, which may be difficult.
I actually didn't go for a walk last Sunday at all. This was because I'd washed the car on Saturday on top of walking, so I figured I'd done the exercise, but also, washing the car always involves lots of bending over which always leaves me with badly aching legs for a couple of days afterwards, because I've overstretched the ligaments.
I'm still breaking in my new walking shoes anyway, which will take a while, but hopefully they'll last me as long as the last pair I had like this.
It wasn't quite enough to cancel out the gain I had, but any loss is good. I also think I had a bit of switch in mental attitude - having posted the numbers of what I'd lost and gotten used to what I now way, it doesn't feel as bad/poor as it did. I've also realised that I'm not that far from getting down into the sorts of weights where normal clothes will begin to fit me.
And speaking of clothes, I'm really desperate for some new stuff. I've been holding off because the idea of buying stuff and then having to buy the same stuff only a bit smaller in six months time and then buying it yet again six months after that is truly unappealing (and expensive sounding).
But it was my clothes that I think gave the game away at work.
My boss (who is that sort of person) asked me directly if I was loosing weight, so I had to fess up. I could hardly say no :/. And as he said, my clothes are "hanging" off me. He's also the sort of person that then went and told everybody.
I found the whole thing a little embarrassing. Not spectacularly so, but I'm never hugely comfortable about talking about that sort of personal stuff. I mean, there's some personal stuff I'm fine with discussing, but there's other stuff that I just don't like to talk about. And that extends outwards too - I'm not comfortable talking about those areas in other people's lives, even if they are.
I guess that makes me rather unusual - gossip and prurience is what keeps half the internet and all of the tabloid papers going.
This week I've been trying to increase my step count. I've been doing two laps around the industrial estate in the morning and then a slightly longer walk at lunch time. This has been successful, but if I want to take it any further it's clear I'll need to walk in the evenings, which may be difficult.
I actually didn't go for a walk last Sunday at all. This was because I'd washed the car on Saturday on top of walking, so I figured I'd done the exercise, but also, washing the car always involves lots of bending over which always leaves me with badly aching legs for a couple of days afterwards, because I've overstretched the ligaments.
I'm still breaking in my new walking shoes anyway, which will take a while, but hopefully they'll last me as long as the last pair I had like this.
Thursday, 19 May 2011
one tenth as good
Well, the phone line interwebnets stuff turned up on Tuesday, as planned. It was waiting on the doorstep when I got back, so I plugged it all in. I'm of sufficient nerd level that I was able to do all this without looking in any of the manuals that came with it.
Almost as soon as it was all plugged in and ready to rock, there was a call on the landline which turned out to be an SMS (a text message, basically - if you send them to regular phone lines it reads them out to you) telling me it was all activated. I therefore fired up my machine and windows 7 sorted its life out and set up a second network (I really am impressed with windows 7).
Obviously I immediately downloaded some porn. I figured this was appropriate, but mainly it was a way for me to check the real download speed. I mean I also used an online speed tester, but I figured a real-life download would be a good way to see how it did.
At the time I first connected it the download speed was around the 1meg area. To put that into perspective the cable line is a 10meg line, which was confirmed by the speed checker, which had an extra 0 on it.
However, when I tested it this morning the speed was double what it was last night, so around 2meg. It was mentioned that to start with the connection speed would be all over the place, presumably as it works out what settings give it a good balance between speed and quality.
With the cable broadband crapping out all the time due to torrents I've gotten way behind, so I figured I should start straight away. My usual practice is to do a trawl for new torrent twice a week and then set them going first thing in the morning. Unless the connection fails like it has recently, this usually means they're all downloaded by the time I get back.
What I was hoping to do was have two networks running at the same time. I've mentioned that I use my landlords cable, well that's done via a long Ethernet cable that runs across the loft from my place to his. That plugs into his router, which is connected to his broadband modem for the cable.
I actually connect this incoming cable to a (rather old) network switch that I then plug all my machines into, giving them all access to the cable. However, it does mean that I have to set the network as a public one, preventing me doing any file or printer sharing, so that my landlord doesn't have access.
But all of the machines I use are sufficiently new/capable that they actually have two network connections. What I was therefore hoping was that I could effectively run the landline broadband line "in parallel" - get a new switch (actually the BT hub thing appears to have multiple Ethernet ports, so I think it can act as a hub) and plug it up in the same way using the secondary LAN ports on all the machines. This then also gives me the opportunity to create my own network with sharings.
This didn't really work when I tried it in the small play about I had. I mean, I was able to have both networks there and running on a machine - the problem was that it defaulted to using the landline internet, instead of the cable internet. This was not ideal, because of course the landline is way slower than the cable, so I want the default to be the cable.
This may work. You can actually turn the BT hub thing off, so when I'm torrenting or if the cable has crapped out I can turn the hub on and it should use the landline cable as a preferential thing. Otherwise, if it's turned off (I'll have to test this bit out) it should use the cable internet. This would have the added advantage that (assuming I buy a new switch) my own network will still exist, just I'll use the fast internet via the cable.
What I'm trying to avoid is the need to swap physical cables about all the time. I've had that set-up before and it's a right royal pain in the arse.
-----
I've mentioned before how I pre-write many of my blog posts. Well I wrote the above yesterday, having set the torrents going in the morning and seen everything working okay. When I got back all the torrents had finished, so all seemed well.
But this morning when I came to repeat the process (as I said, I've gotten a really big backlog of torrents) I couldn't connect to the internet at all. So I've had it less than 48 hours and already it's broken (or, I suspect, I've been cut off). Marvellous.
Almost as soon as it was all plugged in and ready to rock, there was a call on the landline which turned out to be an SMS (a text message, basically - if you send them to regular phone lines it reads them out to you) telling me it was all activated. I therefore fired up my machine and windows 7 sorted its life out and set up a second network (I really am impressed with windows 7).
Obviously I immediately downloaded some porn. I figured this was appropriate, but mainly it was a way for me to check the real download speed. I mean I also used an online speed tester, but I figured a real-life download would be a good way to see how it did.
At the time I first connected it the download speed was around the 1meg area. To put that into perspective the cable line is a 10meg line, which was confirmed by the speed checker, which had an extra 0 on it.
However, when I tested it this morning the speed was double what it was last night, so around 2meg. It was mentioned that to start with the connection speed would be all over the place, presumably as it works out what settings give it a good balance between speed and quality.
With the cable broadband crapping out all the time due to torrents I've gotten way behind, so I figured I should start straight away. My usual practice is to do a trawl for new torrent twice a week and then set them going first thing in the morning. Unless the connection fails like it has recently, this usually means they're all downloaded by the time I get back.
What I was hoping to do was have two networks running at the same time. I've mentioned that I use my landlords cable, well that's done via a long Ethernet cable that runs across the loft from my place to his. That plugs into his router, which is connected to his broadband modem for the cable.
I actually connect this incoming cable to a (rather old) network switch that I then plug all my machines into, giving them all access to the cable. However, it does mean that I have to set the network as a public one, preventing me doing any file or printer sharing, so that my landlord doesn't have access.
But all of the machines I use are sufficiently new/capable that they actually have two network connections. What I was therefore hoping was that I could effectively run the landline broadband line "in parallel" - get a new switch (actually the BT hub thing appears to have multiple Ethernet ports, so I think it can act as a hub) and plug it up in the same way using the secondary LAN ports on all the machines. This then also gives me the opportunity to create my own network with sharings.
This didn't really work when I tried it in the small play about I had. I mean, I was able to have both networks there and running on a machine - the problem was that it defaulted to using the landline internet, instead of the cable internet. This was not ideal, because of course the landline is way slower than the cable, so I want the default to be the cable.
This may work. You can actually turn the BT hub thing off, so when I'm torrenting or if the cable has crapped out I can turn the hub on and it should use the landline cable as a preferential thing. Otherwise, if it's turned off (I'll have to test this bit out) it should use the cable internet. This would have the added advantage that (assuming I buy a new switch) my own network will still exist, just I'll use the fast internet via the cable.
What I'm trying to avoid is the need to swap physical cables about all the time. I've had that set-up before and it's a right royal pain in the arse.
-----
I've mentioned before how I pre-write many of my blog posts. Well I wrote the above yesterday, having set the torrents going in the morning and seen everything working okay. When I got back all the torrents had finished, so all seemed well.
But this morning when I came to repeat the process (as I said, I've gotten a really big backlog of torrents) I couldn't connect to the internet at all. So I've had it less than 48 hours and already it's broken (or, I suspect, I've been cut off). Marvellous.
Wednesday, 18 May 2011
zombieland
One of my favourite films of all time is Shawn of the Dead.
Shawn of the dead was given the genre classification by its makers as a rom-zom-com, or a romantic comedy with zombies. And it was definitely that - if you'd taken away the zombies you'd have still had a romantic comedy, although you'd have had to introduce a new peril to replace the zombies.
Zombieland is more like a zom-com-rom, in that it's much more like a comedy-horror film with a more secondary romantic element. In that sense it's more like Evil Dead with a romantic element woven in. I use the term "woven in", rather than, say, "bolted on" because it's quite deftly done.
It doesn't feel like the romance is added on, more that if it weren't there the film wouldn't suffer too badly. It could easily have been an odd-couple style buddie movie if it didn't have the romantic element.
Indeed, I think that's probably where its strength lies - the relationship between the two male characters ("Talihasee" and "Columbus") is definitely the highlight of the film.
The zombies are of the modern, fast moving variety. As a general rule I'm not so keen on the fast moving zombie, but I've gotten to the point where I'm so used to seeing them now that it isn't a major issue with me any more. Though to be fair, they're actually more like the infected from 28 days later - not so much the re-animated dead as people infected with a virus that turns them into drugged-up psycho cannibals.
What I would say, however, is there aren't that many real scares, despite the emphasis on the post-apocalyptic/zombie element. I mean, there are a couple of jumps and there's a reasonable amount of gore, but there's not so much in the way of suspenseful or terrifying moment.
There are a lot of good jokes, though - it's a very funny film and it's pitched at a level of humour I always enjoy, as it's of the subtle wisecracking variety. Although I like it a lot, I struggle to find a term to really describe it properly, though.
Then of course there's that cameo from (Is what I'm about to say a spoiler? He's not really credited on the film and it was meant to be something of a surprise, but I'm sure everybody knows by now, right?) Bill Murray, which is just as good as everyone says. Particularly if you're of an age where you're familiar with Murray's early comedy roles.
Although actually if I'm totally honest, there was a better cameo for me personally - they use Metallica's for whom the bell tolls across the (frankly brilliant) title sequence. There was actually quite a lot of good music use in the film, actually.
Shawn of the dead was given the genre classification by its makers as a rom-zom-com, or a romantic comedy with zombies. And it was definitely that - if you'd taken away the zombies you'd have still had a romantic comedy, although you'd have had to introduce a new peril to replace the zombies.
Zombieland is more like a zom-com-rom, in that it's much more like a comedy-horror film with a more secondary romantic element. In that sense it's more like Evil Dead with a romantic element woven in. I use the term "woven in", rather than, say, "bolted on" because it's quite deftly done.
It doesn't feel like the romance is added on, more that if it weren't there the film wouldn't suffer too badly. It could easily have been an odd-couple style buddie movie if it didn't have the romantic element.
Indeed, I think that's probably where its strength lies - the relationship between the two male characters ("Talihasee" and "Columbus") is definitely the highlight of the film.
The zombies are of the modern, fast moving variety. As a general rule I'm not so keen on the fast moving zombie, but I've gotten to the point where I'm so used to seeing them now that it isn't a major issue with me any more. Though to be fair, they're actually more like the infected from 28 days later - not so much the re-animated dead as people infected with a virus that turns them into drugged-up psycho cannibals.
What I would say, however, is there aren't that many real scares, despite the emphasis on the post-apocalyptic/zombie element. I mean, there are a couple of jumps and there's a reasonable amount of gore, but there's not so much in the way of suspenseful or terrifying moment.
There are a lot of good jokes, though - it's a very funny film and it's pitched at a level of humour I always enjoy, as it's of the subtle wisecracking variety. Although I like it a lot, I struggle to find a term to really describe it properly, though.
Then of course there's that cameo from (Is what I'm about to say a spoiler? He's not really credited on the film and it was meant to be something of a surprise, but I'm sure everybody knows by now, right?) Bill Murray, which is just as good as everyone says. Particularly if you're of an age where you're familiar with Murray's early comedy roles.
Although actually if I'm totally honest, there was a better cameo for me personally - they use Metallica's for whom the bell tolls across the (frankly brilliant) title sequence. There was actually quite a lot of good music use in the film, actually.
Tuesday, 17 May 2011
all change
So late yesterday I finally got some messages through that my domains had all been transferred to the new registrar. I did some research on the interwebs and it seems to have taken a bit longer than is normal. I started the process last Monday and it's taken a full week to transfer, where most things seems to indicate it should only have taken three days.
I guess that's not a massively longer time, but it does add more behind one of the reasons I wanted to change - slow responsiveness. Also now that I can play with stuff properly on the control panel, I can see that the new host's user interface on the site is way easier to navigate and do stuff with.
I've also been investigating their hosting packages - like all hosts they offer different levels of stuff for different prices. They seems pretty good value, though obviously proof will be in the pudding - my last hosting was always cheap, but I wouldn't call them good value as it wasn't generally a pleasant and easy "relationship" (I'm struggling for a word to really cover it).
Today is also the day when, in theory, my landline broadband goes up. It was a bit of a pain to get it going, as I mentioned before. The basic problem is that although I knew the company I sued to have hosting with had been bought out by TalkTalk and they'd even changed their name to TalkTalk Business, it turns out they're still effectively run as a separate business and I had to contact them separately.
It took ages to work that out, but once I did getting the MAC was very quick. Though quite why they held on to it I'm not sure - I guess it costs money to get someone to properly release it.
I say it's the start day in theory, because I've not actually received the kit and they've sent me a couple of e-mails saying it could be midnight before it goes live. If I were without interwebs at all I think I'd be more anxious than I am.
Indeed, if I didn't have interwebs at all I think I'd be a bit annoyed and puzzled that it's taken about a week for it to all get sorted. I don't really know how complicated such things are, but this seems like a long time.
I should perhaps say I'm doing it with BT. Like any mega-huge corporation I'm sure there are the full range of good and bad experiences people have had with the, but this was just for convenience and ease. Obviously I've got a BT landline and it was just easy and fairly cheap to "flick the switch" on them giving me broadband too.
My plan is essentially to use it for torrents and as a back-up. It's guaranteed to be slower than the cable and it has a usage cap, but then the cable has a usage cap too. The real point is that for the past few weeks it's been obvious that it's my torrenting that's been killing the connection. In the last week I've deliberately not done any while I wait for the landline broadband and the cable internet hasn't been down once to my knowledge.
I guess that's not a massively longer time, but it does add more behind one of the reasons I wanted to change - slow responsiveness. Also now that I can play with stuff properly on the control panel, I can see that the new host's user interface on the site is way easier to navigate and do stuff with.
I've also been investigating their hosting packages - like all hosts they offer different levels of stuff for different prices. They seems pretty good value, though obviously proof will be in the pudding - my last hosting was always cheap, but I wouldn't call them good value as it wasn't generally a pleasant and easy "relationship" (I'm struggling for a word to really cover it).
Today is also the day when, in theory, my landline broadband goes up. It was a bit of a pain to get it going, as I mentioned before. The basic problem is that although I knew the company I sued to have hosting with had been bought out by TalkTalk and they'd even changed their name to TalkTalk Business, it turns out they're still effectively run as a separate business and I had to contact them separately.
It took ages to work that out, but once I did getting the MAC was very quick. Though quite why they held on to it I'm not sure - I guess it costs money to get someone to properly release it.
I say it's the start day in theory, because I've not actually received the kit and they've sent me a couple of e-mails saying it could be midnight before it goes live. If I were without interwebs at all I think I'd be more anxious than I am.
Indeed, if I didn't have interwebs at all I think I'd be a bit annoyed and puzzled that it's taken about a week for it to all get sorted. I don't really know how complicated such things are, but this seems like a long time.
I should perhaps say I'm doing it with BT. Like any mega-huge corporation I'm sure there are the full range of good and bad experiences people have had with the, but this was just for convenience and ease. Obviously I've got a BT landline and it was just easy and fairly cheap to "flick the switch" on them giving me broadband too.
My plan is essentially to use it for torrents and as a back-up. It's guaranteed to be slower than the cable and it has a usage cap, but then the cable has a usage cap too. The real point is that for the past few weeks it's been obvious that it's my torrenting that's been killing the connection. In the last week I've deliberately not done any while I wait for the landline broadband and the cable internet hasn't been down once to my knowledge.
Monday, 16 May 2011
mad panic special
(My Thursday post about the websites and interweb seems to have reappeared - all very odd. My guess is they resorted to a back up or something.)
Wowser, what a horrible morning.
A bid needed to go away by 12 this morning and those can be a panic at the best of times, but this one was bonkers, as they'd given us a grand total of 3 working days to put together an entire ITT! That's totally insane - stuff that's marked urgent usually has at least a week turn-around time; 3 days for a full ITT is just plain unfair.
Of course everyone's in the same boat, but we're a small company. Big companies can obviously all on big numbers of people to veer and haul and do stuff, but that's obviously not a possibility for us. Luckily for me I was only peripherally involved, so I didn't loose my weekend.
Not that I was uninvolved, but my mad panic was this morning. The bid was via an electronic portal (uploading files, basically) and these are always horrible. I was responsible for putting together the final versions for upload and doing the actual upload.
It was a little nerve-wracking as the 12 'o'clock deadline rolled closer and closer and bits and pieces were still not quite finished. But we got it all uploaded and done in time.
My weekend itself was okay - nothing particularly exciting. One thing I did do was clean my car. I've not had much opportunity to clean it recently and what I though it was about time. I did it on the Saturday and the weather kept looking like it was about to piss down, but it held off while I was actually cleaning it.
The main thing I focused on was cleaning the inside (giving it a real good hoover out and wiping down the surfaces), the glass and the wheels. Obviously I also generally washed the car and the inside and alloy wheels are fairly obvious areas of attention, but the glass is also something I really needed to sort.
For some reason I find that most glass cleaners give very streaky results after a few weeks. Basically, dirt seems to slowly build up on the glass in the pattern of how the cleaner has dried. What I therefore do when I give the glass a proper clean is use a 'polish'. It smells quite a lot of turpentine and what you do is apply it and leave it to dry. Much like the polish you put on a car's metalwork it dries to leave a white chalk like substance that you then wipe off.
Although this is quite a lot of extra effort, the results are excellent - it gives a surface that remains streak free and completely "even" because the drying thing doesn't happen in the same way. It does also have the disadvantage of being quite expensive. In fact, actually all the stuff I use to clean my car is quite expensive, as I buy the Autoglym stuff.
It isn't cheap, but it really is good stuff.
Wowser, what a horrible morning.
A bid needed to go away by 12 this morning and those can be a panic at the best of times, but this one was bonkers, as they'd given us a grand total of 3 working days to put together an entire ITT! That's totally insane - stuff that's marked urgent usually has at least a week turn-around time; 3 days for a full ITT is just plain unfair.
Of course everyone's in the same boat, but we're a small company. Big companies can obviously all on big numbers of people to veer and haul and do stuff, but that's obviously not a possibility for us. Luckily for me I was only peripherally involved, so I didn't loose my weekend.
Not that I was uninvolved, but my mad panic was this morning. The bid was via an electronic portal (uploading files, basically) and these are always horrible. I was responsible for putting together the final versions for upload and doing the actual upload.
It was a little nerve-wracking as the 12 'o'clock deadline rolled closer and closer and bits and pieces were still not quite finished. But we got it all uploaded and done in time.
My weekend itself was okay - nothing particularly exciting. One thing I did do was clean my car. I've not had much opportunity to clean it recently and what I though it was about time. I did it on the Saturday and the weather kept looking like it was about to piss down, but it held off while I was actually cleaning it.
The main thing I focused on was cleaning the inside (giving it a real good hoover out and wiping down the surfaces), the glass and the wheels. Obviously I also generally washed the car and the inside and alloy wheels are fairly obvious areas of attention, but the glass is also something I really needed to sort.
For some reason I find that most glass cleaners give very streaky results after a few weeks. Basically, dirt seems to slowly build up on the glass in the pattern of how the cleaner has dried. What I therefore do when I give the glass a proper clean is use a 'polish'. It smells quite a lot of turpentine and what you do is apply it and leave it to dry. Much like the polish you put on a car's metalwork it dries to leave a white chalk like substance that you then wipe off.
Although this is quite a lot of extra effort, the results are excellent - it gives a surface that remains streak free and completely "even" because the drying thing doesn't happen in the same way. It does also have the disadvantage of being quite expensive. In fact, actually all the stuff I use to clean my car is quite expensive, as I buy the Autoglym stuff.
It isn't cheap, but it really is good stuff.
Friday, 13 May 2011
up, not down
Unfortunately, blogger seems to have broken yesterday, which means I'm posting this very late, but also seems to have eaten my post yesterday.
It was basically about how I'm getting rid of the hosting for my websites and transferring my domains to a new registrar. I'll eventually resurect trismugistus.com at the least, but not for a while. It also mentioned how I'm going to be getting landline broadband as the cable I piggy-back has been really flakey lately. Actuyally, it was mostly saying about all the arse-painery these have either caused or been done in order to solve.
Anyway, on with today's scheduled post.
Dieting and exercise did not go well over my holiday.
In fact, they went so badly I came out of the holiday with a weigh in that was four pounds up on what it was when I went in.
This wasn't a surprising result, given the diet and walking problems, but it was disappointing. Last time I had an equivalent period of holiday was back in September, and I did loads of walking and only really let myself down by eating loads of junk food.
The difference was, in that previous holiday I was staying in a hotel (well, a travelodge job) so I had a much better control over what I did and was focused on doing the walks with fewer distractions. This holiday I was at home and so there was access to a myriad of distractions.
Of course I also ad my birthday in there, when I really let my hair down, so that was the most significant dietary slip. In that sense it wasn't as bad as when I pigged out on junk food last time, but then because I was doing far less walking, it clearly had a bigger impact.
I also found doing all that walking around where I live less enjoyable. Obviously I go for big walks at the weekend normally, but doing similar big walks every day got a bit boring. I think I should have driven to some other places and walked there, but then I was only just saying the other day how I didn't have enough time to do all the stuff I'd planned to - working out some different walks and driving to them and back would only have meant they would take longer.
I was also slightly hampered in that I bought some new walking shoes. These are actually a lot sturdier and therefore heavier than my last pair (which, presumably explains why the last pair started to fall apart in 6 months) and that's actually made walking the same distances a lot harder work. But then I guess that's good in a way.
But yeah, generally not good results for last week. And that's generally been my feeling about this period of weight loss since Christmas - it doesn't seem to have gone anywhere near as smoothly as it did last year. I think my desire flagged a bit and there were a lot more things getting in the way over this period. Maybe summer will bring better fortune?
The raw stats don't really back up my feeling, though. According to my spreadsheet, my net loss was a total of 28 pounds, or 2 stone, which is a good loss. It was a shorter period than last year, when I lost 35 pounds.
But then stats can lie - when I look at the numbers, the weird bump up and rapid fall away at Christmas effectively means it should be more like 42 pounds lost last year and 21 pounds lost this year - so 1 and a half stone.
Or another fact is that I've had two bits where I've actually gained weight this year and these add up to 7 pounds, so if I'd lost those then I'd have had a 35 pound loss across the period.
So I think my disappointment is justified. Don't get me wrong, I'm very pleased that I've lost a total of 63 pounds (or 4.5 stone) but I think I need to really take my diet and exercise seriously again if I'm not to loose heart. However, my next target is even more modest than my last one, in that I'd like to loose a further 1.5 stone by the lat August Bank Holiday.
The reason I've set this specific target is that 6 stone represents about half the total weight I need to loose and I actually kicked off my weight loss in August of last year. Also, I'm hoping that by setting a more sensible target if I'm able to beat it that can only be a good thing.
It was basically about how I'm getting rid of the hosting for my websites and transferring my domains to a new registrar. I'll eventually resurect trismugistus.com at the least, but not for a while. It also mentioned how I'm going to be getting landline broadband as the cable I piggy-back has been really flakey lately. Actuyally, it was mostly saying about all the arse-painery these have either caused or been done in order to solve.
Anyway, on with today's scheduled post.
Dieting and exercise did not go well over my holiday.
In fact, they went so badly I came out of the holiday with a weigh in that was four pounds up on what it was when I went in.
This wasn't a surprising result, given the diet and walking problems, but it was disappointing. Last time I had an equivalent period of holiday was back in September, and I did loads of walking and only really let myself down by eating loads of junk food.
The difference was, in that previous holiday I was staying in a hotel (well, a travelodge job) so I had a much better control over what I did and was focused on doing the walks with fewer distractions. This holiday I was at home and so there was access to a myriad of distractions.
Of course I also ad my birthday in there, when I really let my hair down, so that was the most significant dietary slip. In that sense it wasn't as bad as when I pigged out on junk food last time, but then because I was doing far less walking, it clearly had a bigger impact.
I also found doing all that walking around where I live less enjoyable. Obviously I go for big walks at the weekend normally, but doing similar big walks every day got a bit boring. I think I should have driven to some other places and walked there, but then I was only just saying the other day how I didn't have enough time to do all the stuff I'd planned to - working out some different walks and driving to them and back would only have meant they would take longer.
I was also slightly hampered in that I bought some new walking shoes. These are actually a lot sturdier and therefore heavier than my last pair (which, presumably explains why the last pair started to fall apart in 6 months) and that's actually made walking the same distances a lot harder work. But then I guess that's good in a way.
But yeah, generally not good results for last week. And that's generally been my feeling about this period of weight loss since Christmas - it doesn't seem to have gone anywhere near as smoothly as it did last year. I think my desire flagged a bit and there were a lot more things getting in the way over this period. Maybe summer will bring better fortune?
The raw stats don't really back up my feeling, though. According to my spreadsheet, my net loss was a total of 28 pounds, or 2 stone, which is a good loss. It was a shorter period than last year, when I lost 35 pounds.
But then stats can lie - when I look at the numbers, the weird bump up and rapid fall away at Christmas effectively means it should be more like 42 pounds lost last year and 21 pounds lost this year - so 1 and a half stone.
Or another fact is that I've had two bits where I've actually gained weight this year and these add up to 7 pounds, so if I'd lost those then I'd have had a 35 pound loss across the period.
So I think my disappointment is justified. Don't get me wrong, I'm very pleased that I've lost a total of 63 pounds (or 4.5 stone) but I think I need to really take my diet and exercise seriously again if I'm not to loose heart. However, my next target is even more modest than my last one, in that I'd like to loose a further 1.5 stone by the lat August Bank Holiday.
The reason I've set this specific target is that 6 stone represents about half the total weight I need to loose and I actually kicked off my weight loss in August of last year. Also, I'm hoping that by setting a more sensible target if I'm able to beat it that can only be a good thing.
Thursday, 12 May 2011
fate of the websites
I've decided to cancel the current hosting for all of my websites.
There were a host (ho ho) of reasons for doing this.
Partly it was to save spending the money. None of the sites were hugely expensive, but given how little use I currently make of them it's like pissing money down the drain.
Another reason is that the company they were registered with and that provides the hosting was rubbish. I don't know that the new company I'm switching to will be any good, but it will be a clean break. Customer service was particularly poor at the old place.
Also, the hosting was of disparate types and accessed through different means and using different tools (despite all being the same company - another reason I'm not keen), which made things very confusing. This gives me a chance to consolidate it all into one place.
I'm going to kept all of the domain name registrations, which I've also transferred to this other registration place. I fully intend to revive trismugistus.com at the very least, but not for a while - certainly I won't even think about it until I've finished the magazine scanning, which I see as my main hobby priority for the immediate future.
I'll probably see if I can't get the sites to redirect to my blogs, but I'm sure there'll be lots of feet dragging over the transfers and cancellations. Making it easier for customers might encourage them to change things, and then they'd loose your money!
I've also decided to get my own broadband again.
Piggybacking on my landlords cable is something of a double-edged sword.
The upside is that when it's running smoothly, it's super quick. I can get download speeds somewhere in the ballpark of 10meg, which is super groovy.
Unfortunately, the download cap is pretty stingy - when you've downloaded about a gig it throttles the connection back something chronic. Of course, from my point of view it's still pretty quick - going from 10 down to 2 is a big drop, but 2 is as quick as I've ever had using telephone landlines. So the net effect of this doesn't bother me too much.
What does cause me problems is that the connection regularly flakes out. I'm used to this of course - loosing synchronisation is quite common on landline broadband too (I was more surprised that you get it on cable too) - but the problem is that the modem and router are obviously in my landlords house.
So if he goes out or it's late at night or early in the morning, I have no internet. Also part of the reason he suggested me using it was because he hardly uses the internet, so even when he's in he may not notice. And I also feel I'm being a bit of a nuisance constantly knocking on his door just to ask him to reset the modem/router.
I have actually noticed just recently that when I set a bunch of torrents going the connection dies very quickly. I've in the habit of setting them going before I go to work and leaving them going until I come back, by which time they've finished. I'm not sure if this is some deliberate move by Virgin to cap me in another way or just coincidence, but it is rather suspicious.
And it also means I feel a bit guilty that I'm now regularly killing his internet. As such, my new plan is to get a fairly basic phone line broadband. I can use it for torrents if that is what's causing the problem and it also means I've got a back up.
Not that it proved simple either of course. Turns out that when I cancelled my landline broadband back in September last year they never properly released the line. And to make things more complicated, the ISP was bought out by Talk Talk, so I spent ages trying to find out who to talk too, let alone getting it sorted :/.
There were a host (ho ho) of reasons for doing this.
Partly it was to save spending the money. None of the sites were hugely expensive, but given how little use I currently make of them it's like pissing money down the drain.
Another reason is that the company they were registered with and that provides the hosting was rubbish. I don't know that the new company I'm switching to will be any good, but it will be a clean break. Customer service was particularly poor at the old place.
Also, the hosting was of disparate types and accessed through different means and using different tools (despite all being the same company - another reason I'm not keen), which made things very confusing. This gives me a chance to consolidate it all into one place.
I'm going to kept all of the domain name registrations, which I've also transferred to this other registration place. I fully intend to revive trismugistus.com at the very least, but not for a while - certainly I won't even think about it until I've finished the magazine scanning, which I see as my main hobby priority for the immediate future.
I'll probably see if I can't get the sites to redirect to my blogs, but I'm sure there'll be lots of feet dragging over the transfers and cancellations. Making it easier for customers might encourage them to change things, and then they'd loose your money!
I've also decided to get my own broadband again.
Piggybacking on my landlords cable is something of a double-edged sword.
The upside is that when it's running smoothly, it's super quick. I can get download speeds somewhere in the ballpark of 10meg, which is super groovy.
Unfortunately, the download cap is pretty stingy - when you've downloaded about a gig it throttles the connection back something chronic. Of course, from my point of view it's still pretty quick - going from 10 down to 2 is a big drop, but 2 is as quick as I've ever had using telephone landlines. So the net effect of this doesn't bother me too much.
What does cause me problems is that the connection regularly flakes out. I'm used to this of course - loosing synchronisation is quite common on landline broadband too (I was more surprised that you get it on cable too) - but the problem is that the modem and router are obviously in my landlords house.
So if he goes out or it's late at night or early in the morning, I have no internet. Also part of the reason he suggested me using it was because he hardly uses the internet, so even when he's in he may not notice. And I also feel I'm being a bit of a nuisance constantly knocking on his door just to ask him to reset the modem/router.
I have actually noticed just recently that when I set a bunch of torrents going the connection dies very quickly. I've in the habit of setting them going before I go to work and leaving them going until I come back, by which time they've finished. I'm not sure if this is some deliberate move by Virgin to cap me in another way or just coincidence, but it is rather suspicious.
And it also means I feel a bit guilty that I'm now regularly killing his internet. As such, my new plan is to get a fairly basic phone line broadband. I can use it for torrents if that is what's causing the problem and it also means I've got a back up.
Not that it proved simple either of course. Turns out that when I cancelled my landline broadband back in September last year they never properly released the line. And to make things more complicated, the ISP was bought out by Talk Talk, so I spent ages trying to find out who to talk too, let alone getting it sorted :/.
Tuesday, 10 May 2011
resident evil afterlife
There have been a number of attempts at 3D in film.
In the past this tended to rely on people having to wear differently coloured glasses (typically blue and red). The film would have both versions on it in different colours, but the filters would filter out one colour for each eye, giving a composite image that when combined by the brain was 3D.
This technique tended to be quite unpleasant for long term usage as was demanded by a film. Although the different views received by the brain were a good representation of 3D, the different colours was the thing that made it unpleasant.
Another big disadvantage was for those of us who where glasses. Us specy-types would really struggle with having to wear the flimsy cardboard glasses in conjunction with our normal glasses.
The more recent attempts have also used glasses, but the actual techniques have been slightly different. They again rely on a filtering process, so that different images are presented to each eye, but in some systems they use polarization and others they use a physical filter that flicks between each eye.
Apparently this has more satisfying results, because there's not the problem different colours going to each eye. I say apparently because I've never seen a 3D film. The reason comes back to the glasses - the newer versions seem to involve bigger glasses that fit over the top of your real glasses and I really don't fancy that.
Why do I mention all this? Well, Afterlife was shot in 3D and it suffers from the classic problem all 3D movies have when you watch them in regular old 2D. See, in action films you've always tended to get heavily designed sequences. This is inevitable because things like stunts and fights needs careful planning.
Well, what tends to happen in 3D films is you get an extra layer of planning where things are also worked out in order to give maximum 3D impact. But when you watch in 2D this just gives you a weird "slowed down", plodding feel to the scene, which is never good in an action film.
The actual plot of afterlife is okay, though it continues the slightly disappointing creep the series has undergone from horror to the aforementioned action/adventure genre. Also, since I've not played any of the Resi games since the second one, there's a lot of bits where I get the feeling those familiar with the games will go "oh, that's the thingy monster" but for me they're just other monsters. The zombies also feel like a bit of an afterthought - they're there, and they do play a roll but mostly it's about other monsters and humans, since with humans you can have proper gun fights.
As a stand alone film I think it works better than the last one, extinction, which was kinda dumb, but I'm not sure I'd really recommend it to anyone unfamiliar with either the games or the previous films.
In the past this tended to rely on people having to wear differently coloured glasses (typically blue and red). The film would have both versions on it in different colours, but the filters would filter out one colour for each eye, giving a composite image that when combined by the brain was 3D.
This technique tended to be quite unpleasant for long term usage as was demanded by a film. Although the different views received by the brain were a good representation of 3D, the different colours was the thing that made it unpleasant.
Another big disadvantage was for those of us who where glasses. Us specy-types would really struggle with having to wear the flimsy cardboard glasses in conjunction with our normal glasses.
The more recent attempts have also used glasses, but the actual techniques have been slightly different. They again rely on a filtering process, so that different images are presented to each eye, but in some systems they use polarization and others they use a physical filter that flicks between each eye.
Apparently this has more satisfying results, because there's not the problem different colours going to each eye. I say apparently because I've never seen a 3D film. The reason comes back to the glasses - the newer versions seem to involve bigger glasses that fit over the top of your real glasses and I really don't fancy that.
Why do I mention all this? Well, Afterlife was shot in 3D and it suffers from the classic problem all 3D movies have when you watch them in regular old 2D. See, in action films you've always tended to get heavily designed sequences. This is inevitable because things like stunts and fights needs careful planning.
Well, what tends to happen in 3D films is you get an extra layer of planning where things are also worked out in order to give maximum 3D impact. But when you watch in 2D this just gives you a weird "slowed down", plodding feel to the scene, which is never good in an action film.
The actual plot of afterlife is okay, though it continues the slightly disappointing creep the series has undergone from horror to the aforementioned action/adventure genre. Also, since I've not played any of the Resi games since the second one, there's a lot of bits where I get the feeling those familiar with the games will go "oh, that's the thingy monster" but for me they're just other monsters. The zombies also feel like a bit of an afterthought - they're there, and they do play a roll but mostly it's about other monsters and humans, since with humans you can have proper gun fights.
As a stand alone film I think it works better than the last one, extinction, which was kinda dumb, but I'm not sure I'd really recommend it to anyone unfamiliar with either the games or the previous films.
post holiday round up
Got a bit better sleep last night, though I'm still tired as I'm effectively running at a deficit, but I thought I should post about what I got up to over the last few weeks and during my holiday and that.
As is my usual way, I put together a gigantic to do list / schedule thing. And as is my usual way there was way too much on it.
Usually with these lists I make two errors. Firstly, I underestimate the time things will take, and so think I can cram in more on any given day than I can, but also I'll usually make some fundamental error that then scuppers everything. That big error in this case was not allowing enough time for 'fun'.
By that I mean generic entertainment of any kind, be it watching telly or going out with friends. For some reason I put enough stuff in the schedule to (more than) fill all the available time so when it came to it I didn't have that time available because I was busy enjoying myself, if you see what I mean.
One thing that did surprise me, though, was that over the Easter weekend I'd assigned to giving my bedsit a spring clean and I managed to do this in the time. Usually with these sorts of cleans they're a classic example of my underestimating the time, winding up taking way longer than I think. But no, actually I managed to fit it all in, no problems.
The same can't be said about my main objective for the holiday, which was to get all my 2010 anime magazines scanned. To be fair, this did start well, as I scanned a load of mags in the first couple of days. However, I basically filled up my hard drive as a result and that meant I had to spend quite a lot of time processing the scans (using photostitch to stick them together).
This did give me an opportunity to play with photostitch and I've worked out how to make it give good results when it runs up against a scan it makes an arse of. I also think I've managed to tweak my technique such that it makes an arse of far less to start with. The root cause seems to be that at the edges of the scanner the bending of the page causes a brightening and a distortion of the image. So, by trimming that away, it does a better job. However, you still have to maintain enough overlap for it to work, so it's a bit of a black art.
I also established that it will work perfectly well with jpgs and that I can save the initial scans as maximum quality jpgs, stick them together then save the result as high quality jpgs and the end result is indistinguishable from my purer original method.
Of course all these took time and with my other errors over time allocation I'm still a fair way short of scanning all the 2010 magazines. I've basically got 3 new types (which always has the most things to scan) and 4 animages (which is always the easiest to scan) and then 2010 is done.
Of course that then means I have to move onto 2011, but assuming I get the above done by the middle of the year that will mean I'm effectively two thirds of the way through my backlog. Which gives you an idea of just how big the backlog was.
As is my usual way, I put together a gigantic to do list / schedule thing. And as is my usual way there was way too much on it.
Usually with these lists I make two errors. Firstly, I underestimate the time things will take, and so think I can cram in more on any given day than I can, but also I'll usually make some fundamental error that then scuppers everything. That big error in this case was not allowing enough time for 'fun'.
By that I mean generic entertainment of any kind, be it watching telly or going out with friends. For some reason I put enough stuff in the schedule to (more than) fill all the available time so when it came to it I didn't have that time available because I was busy enjoying myself, if you see what I mean.
One thing that did surprise me, though, was that over the Easter weekend I'd assigned to giving my bedsit a spring clean and I managed to do this in the time. Usually with these sorts of cleans they're a classic example of my underestimating the time, winding up taking way longer than I think. But no, actually I managed to fit it all in, no problems.
The same can't be said about my main objective for the holiday, which was to get all my 2010 anime magazines scanned. To be fair, this did start well, as I scanned a load of mags in the first couple of days. However, I basically filled up my hard drive as a result and that meant I had to spend quite a lot of time processing the scans (using photostitch to stick them together).
This did give me an opportunity to play with photostitch and I've worked out how to make it give good results when it runs up against a scan it makes an arse of. I also think I've managed to tweak my technique such that it makes an arse of far less to start with. The root cause seems to be that at the edges of the scanner the bending of the page causes a brightening and a distortion of the image. So, by trimming that away, it does a better job. However, you still have to maintain enough overlap for it to work, so it's a bit of a black art.
I also established that it will work perfectly well with jpgs and that I can save the initial scans as maximum quality jpgs, stick them together then save the result as high quality jpgs and the end result is indistinguishable from my purer original method.
Of course all these took time and with my other errors over time allocation I'm still a fair way short of scanning all the 2010 magazines. I've basically got 3 new types (which always has the most things to scan) and 4 animages (which is always the easiest to scan) and then 2010 is done.
Of course that then means I have to move onto 2011, but assuming I get the above done by the middle of the year that will mean I'm effectively two thirds of the way through my backlog. Which gives you an idea of just how big the backlog was.
Monday, 9 May 2011
insomnia
I don't really suffer from insomnia.
Not as a proper condition like people know it, where the insomniac is plagued by an ongoing inability to sleep night after night.
I do, however, occasionally suffer with the odd night where I can't get to sleep. Sometimes it goes on for a couple of nights, but eventually my usual sleep routines will re-assert themselves. I think this is an occasional thing for most people.
I think it's probably more a symptom of stress or some other psychological effect. Certainly when I get a dose of it, as I did last night, the root cause seems to be an inability for my brain to 'shut off'.
Usually I'll lie there with stuff going around and around in my head, consciously aware that I need to clear and becalm my mind in order to get to sleep, but also unable to stop the whirlwind of thoughts that plague me.
The cause I would guess last night was my return to work today. I don't think it relates to any specific worry - I wasn't expecting anything specifically bad, troublesome or difficult to crop up, we're talking more an elevation of the general anxiety I carry about with me every day.
Which is why the thoughts I couldn't shut off weren't really about work. I think - it's a little difficult to recall what they specifically were now, but I remember thinking about the Turkish Grand Prix and also a lot about how I hadn't managed to do everything I'd set out to during holiday. I'll talk more about those later, I guess.
As a result of the insomnia, today I've obviously been rather tired. Generally speaking I'm one of those people who needs to get plenty of sleep or I feel awful all day. The weird thing I find though, is while I'm having the insomnia - lying there, thinking - I don't generally feel tired. The tiredness comes when I wake up after the short amount of sleep I do manage to get just before I wake up.
Normally, once I realise I'm having a bought of insomnia I usually get up for a bit and do something. This is never much more spectacular than read or, more often, bimble about on the web. I'll also usually make myself a cup of hot milk with a splash of honey.
It wouldn't surprise me if the official advice is that these are exactly what you're not supposed to do, but I find if I lie there continuing to fail to get to sleep I get increasingly annoyed and that makes it worse. If I get up for a bit and in some way try to draw a ling under the preceding hours I've found I sometimes then succeed in dropping off.
It wasn't wholly successful last night, but then I guess that's part of the nature of insomnia.
Not as a proper condition like people know it, where the insomniac is plagued by an ongoing inability to sleep night after night.
I do, however, occasionally suffer with the odd night where I can't get to sleep. Sometimes it goes on for a couple of nights, but eventually my usual sleep routines will re-assert themselves. I think this is an occasional thing for most people.
I think it's probably more a symptom of stress or some other psychological effect. Certainly when I get a dose of it, as I did last night, the root cause seems to be an inability for my brain to 'shut off'.
Usually I'll lie there with stuff going around and around in my head, consciously aware that I need to clear and becalm my mind in order to get to sleep, but also unable to stop the whirlwind of thoughts that plague me.
The cause I would guess last night was my return to work today. I don't think it relates to any specific worry - I wasn't expecting anything specifically bad, troublesome or difficult to crop up, we're talking more an elevation of the general anxiety I carry about with me every day.
Which is why the thoughts I couldn't shut off weren't really about work. I think - it's a little difficult to recall what they specifically were now, but I remember thinking about the Turkish Grand Prix and also a lot about how I hadn't managed to do everything I'd set out to during holiday. I'll talk more about those later, I guess.
As a result of the insomnia, today I've obviously been rather tired. Generally speaking I'm one of those people who needs to get plenty of sleep or I feel awful all day. The weird thing I find though, is while I'm having the insomnia - lying there, thinking - I don't generally feel tired. The tiredness comes when I wake up after the short amount of sleep I do manage to get just before I wake up.
Normally, once I realise I'm having a bought of insomnia I usually get up for a bit and do something. This is never much more spectacular than read or, more often, bimble about on the web. I'll also usually make myself a cup of hot milk with a splash of honey.
It wouldn't surprise me if the official advice is that these are exactly what you're not supposed to do, but I find if I lie there continuing to fail to get to sleep I get increasingly annoyed and that makes it worse. If I get up for a bit and in some way try to draw a ling under the preceding hours I've found I sometimes then succeed in dropping off.
It wasn't wholly successful last night, but then I guess that's part of the nature of insomnia.
Thursday, 28 April 2011
shinryaku! ika musume (squid girl)
When the main character in Squid Girl shows up, she talks a lot about how she's going to invade the human world and take over. The reason she gives for this is that humans are polluting the oceans and generally make a bit of a mess of the world.
The BBC recently ran a series called Human Planet. Interestingly, the idea of this was something along the lines of treating humanity as if it were the subject of a Nature Documentary. The episodes were divided up into the various habitats of the world (so, deserts, oceans, the frozen north, etc) and it showed some example so the strategies people use to survive.
I found the series to be a weird mixture of both fascinating stuff and appalling stuff. It was like for every clever idea or thing we've come up with, there was an example of us raping the natural environment - often, the two were one and the same. One of the things it tried to emphasise was that for most of the environments, the people were broadly in balance with the surroundings.
So, where they killed a whale every bit of that whale would be used and they'd only take a handful every year - sufficiently low numbers not to have an impact. This was only not true when it got around to modern, city-based living and things like mono-agriculture that are needed to support it.
Overall, I actually found the result a little depressing. It kinda backed up the notion that we're like a plague upon the planet.
I raise this because I think it may well have coloured my feelings about Squid Girl, which I watched at around the same time.
See, my problem was having turned up and given the feeling that it would at least involve some sort of environmental message, instead it was simply a daft comedy. Not that there's anything wrong with it being a daft comedy - it did raise quite a few smiles from me, after all - it's just it would have been nice if it had slipped in a few little environmental things as well.
I mean, okay, she spends quite a bit of her time picking up trash on the beach, but that's about the extent of it. Indeed, the overall theme of the show is more about how she becomes good friends with the humans she meets and how she almost abandons her squid-ness to become human.
In other words the sub-text was almost the exact opposite of what I was expecting - it was about how great humanity is.
Not that I was expecting it to come down badly on us, but tackling a few "issues" wouldn't have gone amiss. Even if it had avoided stuff like global warming, it could easily have gotten pollution in there. Heck, it could even just have been more head on about the rubbish on the beach.
The BBC recently ran a series called Human Planet. Interestingly, the idea of this was something along the lines of treating humanity as if it were the subject of a Nature Documentary. The episodes were divided up into the various habitats of the world (so, deserts, oceans, the frozen north, etc) and it showed some example so the strategies people use to survive.
I found the series to be a weird mixture of both fascinating stuff and appalling stuff. It was like for every clever idea or thing we've come up with, there was an example of us raping the natural environment - often, the two were one and the same. One of the things it tried to emphasise was that for most of the environments, the people were broadly in balance with the surroundings.
So, where they killed a whale every bit of that whale would be used and they'd only take a handful every year - sufficiently low numbers not to have an impact. This was only not true when it got around to modern, city-based living and things like mono-agriculture that are needed to support it.
Overall, I actually found the result a little depressing. It kinda backed up the notion that we're like a plague upon the planet.
I raise this because I think it may well have coloured my feelings about Squid Girl, which I watched at around the same time.
See, my problem was having turned up and given the feeling that it would at least involve some sort of environmental message, instead it was simply a daft comedy. Not that there's anything wrong with it being a daft comedy - it did raise quite a few smiles from me, after all - it's just it would have been nice if it had slipped in a few little environmental things as well.
I mean, okay, she spends quite a bit of her time picking up trash on the beach, but that's about the extent of it. Indeed, the overall theme of the show is more about how she becomes good friends with the humans she meets and how she almost abandons her squid-ness to become human.
In other words the sub-text was almost the exact opposite of what I was expecting - it was about how great humanity is.
Not that I was expecting it to come down badly on us, but tackling a few "issues" wouldn't have gone amiss. Even if it had avoided stuff like global warming, it could easily have gotten pollution in there. Heck, it could even just have been more head on about the rubbish on the beach.
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