official cereal bar

Well it's been an eventful couple of days, but in order to give me a chance to find some space I thougth I'd post the one I missed last week.

There's three words that tell you everything that's wrong with the modern world.

Nature Valley Cereal Bars are the official Cereal Bar Supplier to the London 2012 Olympics.

Now don't get me wrong here - I'm sure Nature Valley makes a lovely cereal bar.  And if the sports in the Olympics are your bag then I'm sure it's a lovely thing.  If you've got tickets and you're going along to an event then I hope you have a great time.

But why does the Olympics need an official cereal bar supplier?

When the Greeks were wrestling each other, naked and slathered in oil, on top of some mountain somewhere, do you honestly think that the proposition of having an official cereal bar supplier would have made them realise that that's where they'd been going wrong all these years - no official supplier of cereal bars!

Side stepping the issues of the fact the Greeks probably didn't know what a cereal bar was, let alone care, why does the Olympics need an official anything?  Why is the Olympics a brand?  Why does it need marketing?  If it needs those things to pay for it why is it costing us taxpayers a small fortune?

The British Grand Prix doesn't have an official supplier of cereal bars (though I don't doubt Bernie has spent many a misty-eyed moment dreaming of all the extra cash he could rake in if he could just pursued everybody else that what F1 really needs is a bunch of official suppliers of stuff that's irrelevant to the successful undertaking of the sport).  Wimbledon doesn't have an official supplier of cereal bars.

Heck, I don't think even football - the veritable flagship of just how much rampant capitalism can fuck up good things - has an official supplier of cereal bars.  I mean, I'm pretty sure it has sponsors and I would guess it has official suppliers of things like footballs and I know the team's kit is supplied by a sportswear supplier.

But that's my point - sponsorship has an air of "normality" to it (even if it can leave a bad taste in the mouth) and supplying stuff the sport needs makes sense (even if, again, it's a bit capitalist of my personal taste) but having an "official supplier" of something that plainly isn't essential is just not right.

This rant was brought to you by Reebok - the official supplier of trainers to the transperambulation blog.

put the cotton bud where?

I did actually write a blog post yesterday, but I was so busy I forgot to post it.  It was quite generic, so I'll save it for next week.

So I have a bit of an update on the PVR front.

It's a bit weird, though.

Apparently, the losing the time when going into standby is actually quite a common problem with the 9200 Humax box.  Indeed, it's commonly called the --:-- problem as that's what the display shows instead of the time while in standby.

There is also a solution.  But it's a bit weird.

Basically, the front panel isn't just a display, it also houses the clock components that show the time and, more importantly, wake the machine from standby when it needs to record.  These components consist (excluding the display itself and among other minor bits) of a chip, a large capacitor and an oscillator.

What has been diagnosed as happening is that the components are, very roughly speaking shorting due to impurity build up on the surface of the actual Printed Circuit Board (PCB) these are all attached too.  It's a little more complicated than that, from what I can make out, but the solution is, in essence, to clean the circuit board.

Now it's not really dirt that's the problem, but it's easier to think in those terms.  And being a PCB you can't just stick it in the washing and give it a scrub.  To clean it (and I'm going to give it a go) you have to use cotton buds and surgical spirit (basically meths without the minerals).

The reason I'm going to give it a go is that the official solution is to phone Humax and get them to send me a replacement board, which costs about £30.  I can't honestly believe the board costs anything like £30 - the main components I mentioned are purchasable online for less than £2.00.  Hence why I'm going to give it a go this weekend.

By the way - it also potentially does relate to the power cut.  A couple of people on the forum I looked this up on reported it happening after power cuts.  And given the point of the capacitor is to keep the clock going during power outages (it's obviously powered normally when plugged in) I suspect that the brown outs caused some sort of problem that's led to this issue.

There's a lot more detail with instructions on this forum - http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/showthread.php?t=1274989 (just in case someone has stumbled across this blog entry via a google search or similar).

thor

I was very pleasantly surprised by Thor.

I can't say I was ever a fan of him in comic book form.  Norse mythology is quite interesting, but the particular interpretation used in the comic books never particularly interested me.

I also wasn't a particular fan of his costume and the use of a sort of formal, upper class English with a bit of middle-ages English thrown in for good measure always struck me as a bit weird.  He's a Norse god, not a Shakespearean character.

I also always found it a bit daft that he ever had any problems at all - I mean, he's a God, right?  Okay a lot of the adventures revolved around Loki and he's from a polytheistic faith so perhaps isn't all-powerful (though I think his dad, Odin, was supposed to be) but still - dude's a God, and there's that thing in fiction where if anything is possible, nothing is interesting.

There's also the thing where all faiths seem to exist and be correct in the Marvel Universe, which again, always struck me as a bit weird.

Anyway, the film generally worked quite well.  If I was to criticise one element of it, that would be that Asgard seemed a bit weird.  I mean, it was quite comic-booky, but perhaps a bit too much?  It just felt very artificial, even factoring the point that it's fictional, if you see what I mean.

The plot was pretty much what I basically understood the origin of Thor to be - being headstrong and ending up getting kicked out of Asgard and then redeeming himself.  One thing I did find interesting was Loki - they did quite a good job of portraying him as one of the good guys up to a point where he turned.

Knowing the character in the comics where he's always the trickster and causing mischief, it was quite difficult to set that aside, but it was done convincingly here.

What also worked very well were the humanising / humbling of Thor himself.  You genuinely felt he had a character ark, which could have been quite difficult to achieve, given he starts of as a heroically good God, but it was a bit more subtle than that (if, ultimately, obvious in story terms).

The film also had lots of funny stuff in it and looked great.  In particular the costumes were well done to preserve the basic design points, but didn't look daft.  I think it was a particularly wise choice to ditch Thor's helmet for the majority of the film, for example.

So yeah, one of the better Marvel adaptations, I think.  We'll just have to see if the second one suffers for not having Kenneth Branagh at the helm.

don't use London

While I was "enjoying" my mammoth driving day last Thursday I saw a sign that said:

"During the Olympics avoid driving in central London"

This amused me quite a lot.  I wonder if the advice applies to everyone that lives and works in central London as well?

The Olympics are only a couple of weeks away.  I'm already saving things up to watch on my PVR as I'm anticipating a bit of a dearth of watchable stuff for me.

Don't get me wrong - I've nothing really against the Olympics as a sporting event.  Indeed, I think they're good things from the sporting point of view, it's just they are, on the whole, a collection of sports that I just don't care about.

And I guess, to be honest, I don't mind that they'll probably absorb all the TV hours that there are - it will give me an opportunity to do other stuff.

And mentioning that, my PVR it's still not working right.

The problem is a bit of a weird one.  Basically, when I put it in standby what should happen is that the clock stays lit showing the time.  This is an outward manifestation of the PVR tracking the time so that it can switch itself on when a recorded program comes up.

It now doesn't do this.  If I put it in standby it just shows a dash-dash-colon-dash-dash patter you will be familiar with from new appliances which have a clock that you haven't programmed.

As such, it's not tracking the time and so when a recording time roles around it just sits there and does nothing.

However, where it gets weird is that if I put it in standby while it's recorded a pre-recorded program, then it holds the time like it should, even after the program stops recording.  And the key there is it's a pre-set recording.  If I just set it to record and then put it in standby it doesn't hold the time either.

However, the above is all quite erratic - occasionally it will hold the time even if it's not recording a pre-scheduled program.  And it will always do pre-recorded programs if you leave it on, which means sometimes I've had to leave it on all night and all day to record stuff that's on late or on in the day.

It reminds me quite a lot of what happens when a CMOS battery fails, and really the PVR is just a computer in a VCR style box with appropriate connectors and a specially designed operating system.

In those cases when you switch the computer on after the power has been off it will ask you to set the time.  But then if you turn it off without turning the power fully off it will hold that time.  IT's only when you turn the power off that it would use the CMOS battery to help it store the time.

The difference is I'm not turning the PVR off, just putting it in standby.

There has actually recently been an announcement that a new on-demand TV thing will be rolling out quite soon and of course my current box doesn't have HD at all, so I'm actually tempted to buy a new box with these other features.  However, in the meantime I've bought some cables that should allow me to connect the PVR to my computer and then do something roughly equivalent to a bios update in the hopes that what's actually happened is software related.

If not and it's something in the hardware it may essentially make the decision of buying a new box for me.

british grand prix

My dad and sister went to the British grand prix.

I didn't.  I couldn't really afford it, both in terms of finances and time.  Finances because I'm hopeless at managing them and time because even when the idea was proposed I was planning to look for a new job and new I'd need the days leave for that.

As it turns out I think I was somewhat fortunate.  The weather has been particularly dreadful and on Saturday (Qualifying day) they were turning people away from the parking as the hard-standing areas were already full and they wanted to give the soft-standing areas time to dry out a bit.

Silverstone is quite an exposed track.  Like many of the UK's racing circuits it's an old airfield and as you'd imagine, you generally want to put airfields in nice open areas so there's nothing for the pilots to crash into.

There are stands, of course, and they can be good for keeping you out of the wind and rain, although this can depend quite heavily on direction.  I recall one year sitting in the stand and still getting wet and cold because the rain was driving into the front of the stand.

Anyway - the race itself.

It was a really good one.  The British Grand Prix can occasionally produce a duffer.  The problem is that it's pretty high speed, and overtaking normally only tends to be associated with technical sections (people make mistakes) and high speed straight into slow-speed corner.

Anyway, this was a good one and part of it came from my old theory about how, if you want to produce good races a good way to achieve it is to randomise the field (a draw like in football cups, for example).  If there was a lottery-style draw you end up with lots of fast cars out of position so you tend to get overtaking.

F1 is a trickier case for this idea as some circuits overtaking is extremely difficult (Monaco and other street circuits) and the cars are heavily dependent on down force, which makes getting close to the guy in front difficult, since you drive into his turbulent air and your own down force is less effective.

Nowadays of course we've had some counters to that - you've got DRS and KERS to help with overtaking and the rules changed so little since last year that it's made everything closer.

This is another element for F1 - they bugger about with the rules a lot.  But then this is swings and roundabouts - they bugger about with them because people find ways to exploit them and these often need ruling out.

But yes, we ended up with a cracking race, although the McLarens didn't do much - it comes across like they've been struggling to really push the car forward.  They started out with the best car at the start, but failed to capitalise it, partly due to a few too many human errors.  Now everyone else seems to have developed the car so they're at the same level if not a bit quicker, where the McLaren seems to have stagnated.

fit to drop

Yesterday was a very long day.

It started early with me getting up at 5:00AM in order to get ready for my first interview.  I set of at about 6:30AM and this was too early.  I arrived at about 8:00AM and sat in the multi-storey for about an hour before heading out to the interview.

I've discussed before how I'm pathologically incapable of being late, and this was another example of it, although in my defence I was heading into London and had no idea how the traffic would be.  Indeed, if the end of the day was any judge I could easily have been several hours late!

The second interview went okay.  The plan was a bit wholly and I ended up sat in what was essentially a team meeting.  I wasn't at all sure what, if anything, I was meant to contribute to this.

Also I was obviously handicapped by being quite shy.  this is a particular problem around new people (as I'm sure it is with all shy people) but also with larger groups and it turned out the team was quite large.  I was introduced to them all, but I am terrible with names, so 2 seconds after the introductions I had utterly forgotten who they were.

It didn't help of course that I had my second interview in the afternoon and I was worried about having enough time to get up there, so when it came to questions each time I was more keen to move on than ask a lot of questions.

While I think I would like the people there and the job sounded interesting, I would have two problems - it's a little outside of my experience and I'm still not sure about working in London.  Certainly I don't think I could stand moving into London.

The second interview was in Cambridge.  I set off for it a bit later than I'd hoped and so put my foot down on the motorway.  It had thankfully cleared from the rush-hour so I made it up in time, but if I'd travelled at my usual pace I'd have been late.  As it was I only had about 20 minutes for my lunch.

The second interview was the technical one.

I'd spent as much time as I could doing the prep work, but it was quite difficult to know what direction to take that - should I focus on the physics or the kit they actually sell?  Should I try and memorise a handful of the facts or get a more general feel.

As it turned out they covered a good range of topics, but didn't go too deep into the areas.  Also I got to play with a couple of their products, which was interesting.

My fear on this job is that they are quite focused on that one small area.  On the plus side it turns out their products are really clever and complicated, but I keep flip-flopping - is it too specialised, or is it techy enough to compensate for that.

I felt this one went better than the first, but I did find I couldn't answer some of their questions and also made some clear errors that would have been solved if I'd sat and thought for a while, rather than just blurting out answers.

The fit to drop of the title comes from the fact that, having been up since five, done some 5 or 6 hours of driving and not finished the second interview until 4PM I then had the journey from hell home.

Basically it didn't start well, as there was an accident on the M11.  Now, to be fair, the people on the other carriageway had an utter nightmare, because it was queued back for miles, and was literally stopped.  Most of the people there had actually gotten out of their cars.

On my side the problem was caused by people rubber-necking - slowing down to look at the accident.

I'm not sure if it was this delay or the fact the accident on the M11 meant people would be taking different routes, but when I arrived at the M4 / M3 area of the M25 it ground to a halt.  I must have crawled along for about an hour before finally getting on to the A3.

Now admittedly I did go and get some petrol and grab some junk food to cheer me up, but it was 8:00PM before I got home.  So that must have been about 8 hours I spent driving yesterday.

Hence why I was shattered and today I have basically been useless.

richard hammond's invisible worlds

This was a bit of a different thing for the old rental list.

When I first got the BR drive I naturally considered buying a few BRs to watch to see what it was like.  Much to the relief of my bank balance I managed to resist this temptation and instead added a few of them to my rental list.

I added this in particular because it was one of a couple of series that the Beeb had put together when HD was becoming a thing.  My PVR digital tuner thing isn't HD, so when I watched this at the time it was in nromal definition.  However, it was quite interesting in and of itself and not just a bunch of pretty pictures, so I thought it would be a good thing to re-watch in HD.

It really does look great in HD.

By the nature of what this is about there's a lot of CG stuff, but there's also a lot of use of slow-motion (those digital cameras where they can speen up and slow down are used a lot) and extreme macro photography.

The series has three episodes - Speed Limits, Out of Sight and Off the Scale.  The names are pretty obvious - speed limits is about things that happen to fast or slow for us to really see, out of sight is about things that our senses can't really detect and off the scale is abotu stuff that's too small for us to see.

Hammond is essentially jsut a presenter for it, which seems to have become something of a trend - drafting in someone who is otherwise famous to present where you might normally expect a scientist or naturalist to present somethign like this.  That's not intended as a criticism - Hammond does a very good job with these - I just mean don't go thinking Hammond came up with the program!

I personally preferred the Speed Limits and Off the Scale ones.  I've always been particularly fascinated by perception - how we see the world and how the world really is.  For example, and I don't think this was covered in this program, but we only actually see a small section of the world in colour (the cones are in a small section of the retina) and the rest is in black and white.  However, you don't see that in your head becase your brain fills in the black and white bits with colour.

And tiny things are always fascinating - the classic being things like a fly's compund eyes, which are are amazing when you see them close up but you don't bat an eyelid about splattering them with a newspaper when they're buzzing around the room gettign on your nerves.

One thing I woudl say was that it was a shame there weren't any extras.  Particularly something in the way of a "making of" or some other stuff on the disk would have been nice.  In terms of the making of it's odd there wasn't actually, as a lot of recent BBC documentaries have that 10 minute bit at the end where they are essentially filling in for us so that the show is un-edited for other countries with adverts.

red line

I have to confess I was a bit disappointed by red line.

However, part of this was due to the fact the Blu-Ray didn't seem to work properly.  When I first got a Blu-Ray drive on my PC I had assumed that the normal windows applications would be able to play it or, failing that, the usual players I use, like MPC.

However, this turned out not to be the case - there was no native support for BR playing and I couldn't find an additional bit of software that played BR's on the window's support site.  My assumption is this is some sort of thing in relation to monopolies.

But also none of my usual players worked either, which I was particularly surprised by until I thought about how if there's no native support in windows, this would likely hamper any of the programs I use too.  As such I ended up using PowerDVD, which is an awful program, but I got it free with the drive.

Anyway, when I tried to watch Red Line on Power DVD it was all messed up - the picture had horrible issues that I've only ever seen when trying to play fansubs that have used weird codecs.

There didn't seem to be any way to solve this, so I ended up having to download a freeware player.  The problem is this program suffers from the classic problem of this type of program - they've given you access to everything and all at the same level of priority.  So in other words if you just want to do something simple it's buried amongst all the weird and wonderful rubbish that no normal person ever even thinks about, let alone wants to change.

And to make things worse the player side of it has tiny controls and you can't adjust them.  Well my BR PC is hooked up to my TV and so is across the other side of the room from where I sit, so it is utterly impossible to control it without walking up to the screen.

All this pre-amble is to let you know I was quite wound up and annoyed by the time I actually got to watch Red Line and probably helps to explain why I didn't quite take to it.

I have also since been told that the English dub is particularly poor.  I did only watch the dub, but in my defence I couldn't work out how to change audio channels on the player.  So perhaps if I was to watch the original Japanese I would like it a bit more.  Certainly I would say that the dub was a bit flat compared to the visual side.

However, I didn't really love the visual side if I'm honest.

My problem wasn't really with the animation, which I thought was good, it was with the character designs.  However, I found it a little difficult to pin down quite why - they felt, I dunno, too western, maybe?  Now I don't mean the characters looked to western (anime characters can often seem western in ethnicity) it was more like it reminded me too much of the cartoon I used to enjoy as a kid.

The main guy in particular looked like Johnny Bravo, for example.

I also found the ending a bit hard to follow.  I mean, it wasn't complicated, but it seemed to lack any sort of consistency - a lot of stuff happened but without any clear explanation as to why or any real reason for how that then followed on to what happened next.

As I say, I just found it all a bit disappointing.

revision?

So that was an odd weekend.

I guess I should actually start with the day before the weekend, which is more traditionally labelled "Friday" after the Norse God Frigg, Odin's missus.

Friday was the day of my most recent interview.  It was a fair distance away, but close enough that it was a half-day job.  I actually set off very early as the route is very direct, but takes me straight through a couple of big towns that sounded like traffic hot spots.  Indeed, this was proven very true on the way back when it did indeed take ages to get through one of the towns I'd been most worried about.

This did mean I arrived very early and I decided to use the time to have a quick drive around the closest town.  Big mistake.  The town was okay when I drove in, but as it approached 8:00 the place ground to a horrible stop.  It has a weird one-way ring road system around it and it seems to funnel cars towards a couple of particularly horrible junctions, causing the whole town to seize up.

Because I'd had so much time I wasn't late or anything, but I clearly would have had troubles if I had been a bit closer to the interview time (if that makes sense).

The interview itself went okay.

I don't know that I particularly bowled them over, but I also don't think there were any real show-stoppers in there.  I guess it really depends on the calibre of person they're seeing.  I have a few disadvantages (and advantages, obviously) with my experience so it can be difficult for me to judge.

I got the feeling though that, unlike one of my prior interviews, they will tell me if I don't succeed.  And certainly the timetable he was talking about is quite quick.

Journey back was okay, though as I mentioned I got fouled up in some nasty traffic.

The weekend itself was where the blog title comes in.  For my second interview at one of the places they have asked me to try to learn about their product a bit and it sounds like the interview won't be so much of an interview as a test or exercise of some sort.

I've had exercises to do at a few of the interviews, but this is a little different - more focused on the products they have, rather than general skills.

Anyway, that meant I've downloaded and printed out all their sales manuals and some general information from Wikipedia, so I spent a good chunk of the weekend reading it through.

I have to say it's difficult to know quite how technical they're going to expect me to get.  I don't know if I should have researched the physics of it all or I'm okay with just the products they make and their capabilities.

That next interview is on Thursday, so I have a few more days to bone up as well.

Also that morning I have a sort of second interview with another company - it's called "meet the team" and, as the name suggests, probably won't be like a formal interview, as such.

another one tomorrow

Another interview tomorrow morning.

It should be quite an interesting one.  It's not really in the same sort of area as the other interviews I've been doing, but that's not a huge issue.  While I've generally been looking at technical and product based and away from my current sector, I have applied for a few other things that aren't those.

It's in Oxfordshire, and it's where I went over the weekend.  It was actually surprisingly quick to get too, though I'm expecting traffic to make it trickier.  I'm going to allow plenty of time, but that does mean I will be setting off at what most people would regard as ridiculously early.

I don't regard it as ridiculously early, just early, since I'm a bit of an early bird and am usually up and about pretty early.

The weekend ahead is where I need to learn about these products for the other interview.

I have to confess I've been having a nagging feeling that it might be a bit narrow for me.  They really only have a very small product portfolio and while that's appropriate to what they do, it suggests a very limited variety of work at the least.

I also have to confess that the time it always takes me to get to and from Cambridge is a bit of a worry.  One of the things I've had in the back of my mind is that I don't really want to go somewhere that makes the journey to my Dad's worse.

I know that might seem a silly thing to reject a job over, but I like to visit my Dad a couple of times a year and it already takes me the best part of 3 or 4 hours journey time.  If I lived in Cambridge that journey would shoot up to 5 hours at the very minimum and with delays (e.g. in summer) I could be looking at 7 hour journey times.

Anyway, as per usual, though I will be back in the office in the afternoon, I doubt very much I'll be blogging.

master & commander: the far side of the world

This was a bit of an accident from the DVD rental point of view.

I actually watched Master & Commander (M&C) when I was visiting my dad once and I guess I forgot to take it off my rental list afterwards.

M&C is actually an adaptation of a novel in a particularly well loved and popular set of novels that essentially chart the careers of the two main protagonists, Captain Jack Aubrey and the Stephen Maturin who's the ship's surgeon.

The film is also something of an enigma on that front, in that it seems it did okay at the box office, turning a profit; it was quite well reviewed and as I say it's an adaption of one book in a popular series and yet there's never been any more films made.  Why was this not the first of a trilogy or possibly even a full franchise?

A quote on Wikipedia suggests that while it did okay at the box office, we're not talking Avengers type popular (or Pirates of the Caribbean might be a better comparison), so sequels never really got off the ground.  Also, I know that sea-based shooting is not regarded in favourable light as it's quite difficult to do.

Anyway, the film itself is quite good.  The feel and tone is just right and it looks great.  The characters also work well and seem quite well fleshed out and clearly motivated.  If I was to make one criticism it would be that they're a little generic.

I was going to use the word stereotypical, but I'm not sure that's quite fair.  It's more like they're fairly close to archetypes and therefore feel similar to a lot of characters you've seen before.  However, they don't feel cliché.  The performances are good and they feel subtle and well developed.

The plot is interesting.  It kinda launches into the main story with aplomb and there's very little in the way of deviation from that.  I mean there are some sub-plots, but they really are subordinate to the main story.  However, that main story does meander a bit and, in a way, is more like an overarching goal than a real plot.

It's a little difficult to describe to be honest - it feels more like a slice of (made up) history than a story as such, although it does have beginning middle and end.  I guess what I mean is that it does feel like proper historical fiction, rather than just happening to be set in that period.

complicated weekend

So this last weekend was actually a bit rubbish, which was interesting as it contrasted markedly with the weekend before.

The weekend before went so smoothly as to almost be silly.  I had a big old list of chores to do, including cleaning the bedsit and going shopping and everything went so smoothly that I'd done everything by late lunch on Saturday.

This added to the fact that I had the Monday and Tuesday off for the interviews and the weather was rather nice meant it was a rather good weekend.

This last weekend was not so good.

It started going badly on Friday, when I had a particularly bad bout of insomnia, but a lot to do during the day.  In the evening I went shopping, but made a bit of an error, in that I bought something for my tea.

Now that normally wouldn't be a bad thing to do, but I forgot I'd brought in a packed lunch, but we'd been to the pub.  I therefore had two dinners and had to steak my sandwiches in the fridge and have them Saturday, when I have to confess they were more than a little dried out.

The shopping trip also cost a fortune, because for some reason I decided to get lots of the random or infrequent purchases (for example, the clothes washing tab things I use) all at once.  Normally I spread them out more.

Anyway, when I got home I did the usual Friday night bits I do and then started watching the Valencia practice.  Only about half way through there were these 3 weird brown outs of the power.

I've no idea what caused it, but it seemed to cause my PVR to go a bit funny.  At least I think that was the cause - basically my PVR stopped showing the time when it was on standby.  This was a pain, but it also seemed to mean that it wasn't able to switch itself on when it had a programme to record.

Now luckily the majority of what I had to record was overlapped by me having the TV on anyway, but it did mean I lost a radio programme on Sunday (this was how I figured out there was an issue).  Luckily the problem seems to have been solved by me doing a "factory reset", but it that means I've lost all my settings.  The only one I redid was scanning for channels and a few immediate programme record set ups, so I'll have to do the rest tonight.

Early Saturday morning I did my washing, and that was a bit of a disaster.  Basically, they'd shut the water off (well, I say off - it was tiny dribbling trickle), which is kinda an important aspect of a laundrette's facilities.

Now I use one of the big machines for my weekly wash and in some aspects that turned out to be a good thing.  The smaller machines that somebody else used just kept going through their cycle, even though there was next to no water.  The big machines, it seems, are set up that they'll effectively wait until the water reaches a pre-set level before moving to the next phase.  That meant, with the flow rate, that it took well over an hour for what is usually a half-hour programme.

And it only took that long because I drove home several times, filled up a bunch of plastic bottles and poured them into the machine (via the powder slots).  If I hadn't done that, god knows how long it would have taken.

My guess is they'd closed the water down because they were doing some repairs on Friday and then forgotten to put it back on again.  Certainly when I spoke to the management (it had taken so long they were in - usually I've finished by an hour before they turn up) that seemed to be the implication.

What else?

Oh yeah, for my interview on Friday I have to go somewhere in Oxfordshire and it wasn't very clear where I had to go and I got very nervous.  A big part of the nervousness is that I've taken the morning off and the interview is actually starting at 9:00.  I was therefore very nervous as to what time I had to set off and if I'd get back in time.

The google maps route was direct, but looked complicated and the alternate route I personally though I could do was a lot longer and was bound to have heavy traffic.  I therefore decided to do a trial run, but with all the other delays to stuff I set off really quite late and the return journey was in the dark with it lashing down, which was a bit scary, especially as I was then very tired.

Still, I know the google route now, and it's actually not that bad, though I am going to go very early as it goes through some big towns.

an interesting valencia?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

wakey, wakey

I was up at a stupid time again this morning.

3AM this time.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2 fast 2 furious

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

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

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

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

Let's see, what else?

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

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

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

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

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

shattered

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

double dip

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

simcity

There's a new simcity game in the works.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I'll use two specific examples.

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

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

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

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

It was all way too tedious.

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

avatar

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

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

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

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

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

The effects are, quite frankly, amazing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

bad mood

I've been a seriously bad mood just recently.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My bad mood is pretty obvious isn't it?

canadian grand prix

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

jubilant lee

No post yesterday as it was bonkers at work.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I didn't even go near the ceremony thing.

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

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

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

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

super bank holiday

Well, apparently the Queen has failed to die.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

interview too

Had my second interview yesterday.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

gadget show... ish

They broke the gadget show.

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

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

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

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

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

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

So they've basically been to:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It all feels like a wasted opportunity.

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

monaco gp & eurovision

It was the Monaco Grand Prix this last weekend.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

interview

I have my first job interview tomorrow.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It's the Monaco Grand Prix this weekend.

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

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

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

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

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

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

the expendables

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More exclamation points

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

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

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

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

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

both coming and going

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

the hunt

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

buzzcut

I didn't really post much last week.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

sucker punch

I struggled with Sucker Punch.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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