spoilt for choice

Wellp, the new season of anime is upon us and I have to confess I'm struggling a bit.

Just recently I've been doing my best to tackle crunchyroll, and last season was the first ever where I've kept track with all the shows that interested me as they came out.  I've not extended this beyond crunchyroll, but found the shows on there to be just about doable.

Now, every year there are a chunk of shows that crunchyroll gets, but the licence excludes us in the UK (this may be just us that's excluded, or it may also be everywhere outside of North America).  Generally, these shows are picked up by other distributors (funimation & sentai, mainly), so I download two episodes of fansubs in order to sample them and then perhaps look to buy them if I really like them (I've actually been belt-tightening, so this is quite rare recently).

Sometimes they're not picked up in this way or I can't access them a tall or nobody picks them up, in which case I will download the complete series as fansub, with the possible intention of sampling them or watching the lot.

Crunchyroll also has a few of the long-term shows like Bleach and Naruto, but I don't generally go in for those, and of course there are a few shows that are "double season" so they keep going and I may or may not be watching them.

However, this season there seems to have been a bit of a shift towards almost everything being accessible on crunchyroll.  I think it's partly because, being the new FY, there are more new starting anime, but it also seems like there are fewer region restrictions this time around as well.

All this is a very round-about way of saying I'm rather struggling to keep up.  Indeed, there are quite a few shows I've not checked out at all, where this time last season I'd at least taken a look at all of them.

I think I may need to be a bit harsher with my pruning.  Certainly much of what I've watched so far has been "okay" so I'm, tempted to put it on a bit of a back-burner.

The other option is I try to use some of the time of I've got to watch stuff on crunchyroll.  The problem is that I'm struggling to watch regular TV shows as I've been playing Civ 5 rather obsessively for a while now.

chinese grand prix

The Chinese Grand Prix was a bit of a let-down, to be honest.

China is usually good - it has a hairpin bend that's very wide that usually lends itself to lots of overtaking, but this time there was very little.  I mean, it wasn't a bad race, it's just compared to Bahrain it wasn't all that much.

Of course, that's the problem when you have an amazing race - it raises your expectations quite a lot, so it makes the next race seem worse, even if you'd have been happy with it normally.

It's looking like Mercedes may be unstoppable this year, though.  Speaking of which, I saw that they tipped up to the Red Bull appeal against the fuel flow thing and tried to get them banned for 3 races.

I found it quite amusing, tbh - proper F1 style kick them while they're on the floor stuff.  In that regard ti was kinda surprising that it came from Mercedes, rather than Ferrari, as that's the sort of thing they would generally engage in.

It is quite odd when you think of it - Red Bull appealed against a punishment that had already been applied, and Mercedes were basically going "Actually, that punishment was way too light."

They apparently submitted a 95 page document in support and had a QC there arguing their case.  The tribunal basically ignored them and simply upheld the existing punishment, which was fair enough.  I do sort of take Red Bull's point if they think the sensor wasn't working properly, but if you're told to do something by the race director you should comply and then make a case afterwards.

Especially when it's the first race of the season - I think they'd have been more likely to make some concession or do something for the rest of the season if they'd taken that approach.  By disobeying you've undermined any point you may then want to make.

wowser

So I weighed in on Monday, and it was not good news.

I'd gained five pounds... taking me up to 20 stone 13 pounds.

It was not a good weekend, generally.  I wasn't too bad with my old problem of buying too much food, but I certainly wasn't lacking stuff to eat.  Well, I say that - I'd actually had a couple of curries during the week (with the training course I felt the need).  However, there were two big problems.

The first was a lack of exercise - on the Friday I was short on walking and on Sunday and Monday I basically did nothing.  There was sort of a reason for this in that I've been having some trouble with my right heel, but really this was a combination of laziness (I played a lot of Civ 5) and a hangover.

And that was the second issue - I went out for a "few drinks" on the Saturday and actually got wasted.  In total I had 8 cans of lager, a half of a small bottle of vodka with 2 cans of Dr Peppers as mixers and two thirds of a bottle of red wine.

I also ate a load of junk - both on the Saturday and then on the Sunday.  Indeed, I even cleaned out the limited supply of junk type stuff I keep at home when I got back, so it really was pretty bad.

I'm therefore not surprised I gained weight, though I have to say the scale was surprising.  I'm slightly suspicious that some of it may be temporary effects, but still, it's a significant gain and completely wipes out the little I had lost since resolving to lose weight for Canada.

I really need to get serious here - I'm getting close to when I need to buy new clothes for the trip and I therefore need to know what sizes I should buy.

easter

Well, last day of the working week today as it's Easter.

I must say it's kinda snuck up on me this year.  I think a big part of that is because of the weather - it feels like it's rained continuously for almost an entire year, and the seasons have virtually disappeared, so it's almost weird now that it's actually spring-like.  It feels kinda sudden, somehow.

The training thing yesterday was horrendous.

Not because it was badly done (though the food at the venue was horrible - rather dried out and sorry looking), but because they'd crammed what should have been two days of stuff into a day - less than a day, actually, as it ended at 3:30.  It was in London so it was a very long day as well.  And then I couldn't get to sleep until quite late, so I'm pretty knackered today.

Oddly, it's the Chinese grand prix this weekend.  I say oddly because usually they time the grand prix so that they don't land on "other" days.

China is usually a good race and I think the new engines will suit it so I'm hoping it will be as good as Bahrain.  Unfortunately the BBC is only showing highlights on the TV again, but I'll listen on the radio.

My other plans for Easter are pretty minimal as I'm trying to save pennies for Canada.

I'll probably do a bit of a swap around with some stuff that's out in the shed - if the nice weather continues I'll need to get my shorts out and put away jumpers and stuff.  I'll also probably do a full back-up (I keep all the drives out in the shed too).  These aren't quite as firm as my landlord recently told me he is actually going away a few weeks after Easter and it's usually easier to mess about in the shed when he's away.  However, the weekend that this covers I'm also booked to go and see a friend.

irony

I'm going on a training thing tomorrow for work.

It's something to do with some new EU regulations, so I'm sure it will be highly exciting.  It's in London, which makes the travelling painful, particularly as they've scheduled a start of 09:30.  It does mean it ends early, though (about 3:30), but I'm obviously no going to blog.

And speaking of work, I found this quite amusing a little while ago, and very relevant to why I'm looking for a new job.

One of my bosses got an e-mail the other day asking if we'd be willing to send them a tool they'd seen us using to help make bid/no bid decisions.

The first point of amusement was that my boss clearly didn't know what he was talking about, even though I've shown my boss the tool several times.  So the boss asked him for some more details "to help pin down what he was talking about" and then forwarded to me to essentially ask what he was talking about.

I pointed him straight at the tool and suggested it was rather cheeky of them to be asking for us to just hand it over.

The boss took a look at the tool and then we had a very brief chat, where the boss echoed my opinion that it was cheeky for them to ask for it.  However, the boss also said the tool looked "like quite a good bit of work" & "clever".

Which all seemed quite ironic - here's a tool I put together that the boss clearly hadn't ever bothered to look at properly before, but then when somebody else asked for it, looked at it and thought it was quite good.

So it's a tool that helps to make bid/no bid decisions, something we're woefully (indeed wilfully) bad at, that the other company could see the value in, but that my own company cannot.

Which kind of sums up why I don't really want to stay - what I do is not in any way valued.

fat lad

I wrote the following last Friday, but failed to post it:

No change in my weight last weekend, so I still weigh 20 stone 10 pounds.

This was obviously a little disappointing, but not entirely surprising.  As previously mentioned, I'd bought way too much food and this spilled over into the full weekend as well as the following weeks itself.  In other words, I was eating pretty badly all week, not just on those few days off I had.

I've not eaten particularly well this week either, so I'm expecting some horrors when I get on the scales on Sunday.

Easter is rapidly approaching - I've got a few days book as leave for my birthday too, so I now enter a period where I'm not doing a full 5 day week for ages.  However, I'm a bit nervous this will also impact the diet situation quite badly.

I need to clean my bedsit this weekend - I don't generally clean when there's a grand prix on and it's been a double-header, so things are getting a bit mucky.  I'll probably do a spring clean over Easter, but another week is a bit long to leave it.  Plus cleaning this weekend will make the job easier next week.

---

In actuality I weighed in on Sunday morning and found I weighted 20 stone 8 pounds.  So, in other words, I'd lost the two pounds I put on.

I have absolutely no understanding how this could be the case - I ate really badly all week and it was nothing special in terms of exercising.  I mean, we went to the pub on Friday as it was two people's birthdays, and both brought in biscuits and cakes, which I partook in.

I even had a small donor kebab on Wednesday evening!  I do my washing on Wednesday evenings now and I wanted something cooked and would usually have had a portion of chips to satisfy this need, but the chip shop was open so I went to the kebab shop next door, which was expensive but nice - the salad was very fresh, which is a good sign in a kebab shop.

So yeah - no idea how I lost 2 pounds :/

civ 5

I've been playing quite a lot of Civilization 5 recently.

I got a bit pissed off with SimCity and have essentially stopped playing.  They've now released the off-line "single player" (like I ever played multi-player!) version, but I've not actually played this yet.  Hopefully it will fix the key issue, which is the ridiculously broken multi-city play, but I'm guessing not.  I think they've just re-engineered it to make it off-line playable, rather than fixing how it does what it does, so I'm guessing it will continue not to make any sense.

Anyway - Civ 5.

I've mentioned Civ3 a lot before on the blog as a game I've played repeatedly and as my favourite of the Civ series.  I found Civ4 quite disappointing - it was pretty and I liked some of the ideas in it, but overall it felt really cramped and compressed as a game, encouraging you just to have, like, 3 cities.

Civ4 I honestly played a handful of times and then went back to Civ3.

Civ5 I followed the development quite closely and was intrigued by some of the new concepts - the game was moving to having hexagonal tiles, rather than squares, and combat was being seriously overhauled.  Given square tiles had some weird impacts on the game and combat has been rather broken for a while I liked the sound of it.

However, when it launched it was one of these new online steam registration jobs and was a nightmare to get installed.   I also then started playing and found a lot of graphical glitches - including tiles I couldn't even see.  It also didn't really seem to explain the new things properly - the advisors just seemed to pop up with links to the civilopedia, rather than actual advice, for example.

I therefore stopped playing altogether.  I had literally only played half of one of the tutorial missions and that was it - I'd give it a few months for patches to be issued and then pick if back up.

Only 4 years passed :/.  I even bought the first expansion pack with the idea of using that as a way to start playing again, but it just sat on my shelf gathering dust.  It was only the combination of the second expansion pack, my being pissed off with SimCity and my complete re-install of my games machine that eventually caused me to start playing the game!

And I have to say I've really enjoyed it.

I mean, it's not perfect, but there's a lot I like.  I like that they've taken some of the core concepts and built them up - you have a lot of smaller events, rather than bigger ones.  So, as a random example, if you're doing culture, you have great artists, great writers, great musicians, but also in the late game archaeology can generate loads of stuff too.  It feels like each of the elements is more in-depth and complicated.

It does maintain the specialisation of cities, which was an aspect I wasn't keen on in 4 - I've always liked building everything in all my cities - but now it's a bit easier to have a mix (so a city that is for gold can also be useful for science), but it's also clear what buildings do what.  If you're doing culture in a city, you have a progression of additional culture buildings that have pre-requisite building of the same type.  It's also helped because the new hex system and increased city influence radius makes cities much more significant entities - you can have loads of citizens doing stuff relating to a specialisation in just one city.

The game does seem to be set up again to discourage large empires, as it was in Civ4.  I'm a little puzzled by the logic of this, as at some point you're going to go to war with somebody and if you're any good at the combat side of things you'll start winning their cities.  And if you're going for a domination victory you have to take all the other player's original capital cities, which means you can't avoid the relevant punishment - the capitals can't even be destroyed.

There are a few options for not having cities as part of you empire - making them puppets, which makes them less of a punishment, but it's still a punishment to have them; or you can raze them, but this can take ages and comes with its own punishments.  Of course, given many of the leaders are often hell-bent on war on the higher difficulty levels this can get quite frustrating.  And those of us who want to build a world-spanning empire, it becomes quite difficult.

As mentioned, combat has been overhauled generally, as we're now only allowed one unit per tile.  The whole thing also works very differently, as combat is now not generally definitive.  Unless there is a significant difference between two units basic strength, combat generally results in damage, so it can take three or four turns to kill a unit.

This is fine, but when you can only have single units on tiles and most units only move 1 or two tiles until the late game it can all get quite frustrating.  It's also very annoying moving armies around when weak ranged units that need protecting only move short distances and need to use up movement points to "set up" for a ranged attack.  This is particularly tedious now every road & railroad you construct costs you gold, making long-distance movement problematic - especially since, of course, one unit per tile also applies to workers.

To be honest, it's like playing two separate games - the combat system is like playing a table-top war game a la Warhammer, only you're playing it on a risk board.  That means loads of obstacles and bottlenecks and restrictions making everything horribly frustrating and inefficient.

But then this is Civ - combat has always been poor, and judged with that background, this version is actually much better.  And there are good things - it's easy to tell what's going on, and the combat predictions are generally accurate and cities have their own defensive strength and ability to attack.

They've badly broken diplomacy, though - I mean, it has a few nice ideas, but key elements are gone, and generally the AI behaves illogically.  To be honest, the AI is generally bobbins - even now, with two expansions, it does daft things and can be very predictable.  Espionage is also rubbish (if they do a further expansion, I hope these get serious work) and you're almost better off ignoring it.

Wow - this is going on a bit, so I'll just mention scenarios and leave it there.

Previous versions of civ have generally had scenarios, but I've mostly found they weren't worth playing.  However, the scenarios that come with Civ5 are actually quite good.  They change the game on more fundamental levels and work as separate games.  They're also generally short enough to enjoy but without eating too much time.

The game also has very good support for modding and they've taken the right approach when it comes to add-ons (when compared to EA with SimCity), which appears to be the good side of it being a steam game.

bahrain grand prix

I only actually watched the Bahrain grand prix last night.

They've decided to make Bahrain a night race for some reason - I'm not quite sure why.  With Singapore making it a night race has the advantage of putting the race in a timeframe more suitable for European audiences.  It also works as a venue, being at night and in the middle of a city.  However, Bahrain is a proper track and is in the middle of the desert.

The race itself was therefore at close to tea time and the BBC only showed highlights as well, which meant they showed it at 10PM, which is just too late for me - it ended at 11:30, which would mean I wouldn't get enough sleep.

As such, I listened to it on the radio (the radio coverage was notably lacking as well, only showing the qualifying and race - this seems to back up my theory I mentioned that the BBC has further cut the budget.) on the day and recorded it to watch last night.

I have to say, the radio coverage was better than the TV coverage.  I think with doing highlights they had a real problem, because the whole race had something going on non-stop.  This meant they had to show you some bits well, or more stuff in less detail, if you see what I mean and I think they went for the latter.  It also didn't help that they clearly had some sound issues on the TV coverage.

Anyway, in my mind Bahrain is one of the boring races, but last year it produced a good race.  This year it did the same - indeed, it seemed to be one of the best races in a good while.  Certainly it showed what I felt previously - that the first couple of races were simply okay where others said they were great.  This was a properly great race.

Well, great if you were in a Mercedes powered car.  The power plant they've come up with is clearly way ahead of anyone else.  And the Mercedes team has combined that with a truly great car to produce a phenomenal package.  If the performance difference shown after the safety car restart is to be believed (when they would obviously want to turn the car up to maximum to avoid losing the 1-2 and having saved fuel while under the safety car) then they're up to around 3 seconds a lap faster than even the other Mercedes powered cars.

That's a phenomenal margin - Red Bull's dominance was never that sort of scale: maybe up to about 1 second at its biggest.

I'm obviously particularly pleased that real racing is on for this year, with my whole trip to Canada.  I was a bit worried it would be a bit of a non-season.

more on interviews

So, the other two interviews.

The next interview was with another big defence company.  Unfortunately, a similar issue occurred to some of the previous interviews - I'd only been told the big company name and only found out the particular division quite a way into the process.  Indeed, in this case I'd actually only found out once the interview was set up, and if I'm totally honest it's not a division I would particularly have wanted to pursue if I'd found out earlier.

Still, I figured I'd go along anyway, and I was owed some time off in lieu, so I took this (plus a day) and had half a week off.  The interview was really intense - the main guy barraged me with questions and I got into a muddle.  In particular, one of the things you're really not supposed to do is bad-mouth your current company.  As you can image, this is particularly difficult for me - especially when they ask me why I want to move on.  What I'd really want to say is "I can't stand the MD and find the whole experience a horrible combination of annoying and frustrating."  Which wouldn't be a good thing to say, but as I say, with him firing questions at me so much I ended up saying some non-complimentary things - though not in that blunt a way.

As I say - not sure I'd want to work for that division anyway, as it sounds a bit dull.  I also think they were looking for someone with different experience (more on that in a moment).

I've not heard anything about this one as I write, but then I'm writing this some way in advance so that's not necessarily surprising.

The final interview was a weird one - I'd applied a while back and they'd said if you don't hear within 5 days you've been discarded; however, it was 3 weeks before they contacted me, and it was clear that it was all being done in a panic.  I mean I sent the recruitment person an e-mail saying I'd be interested in a chat and mentioned we could talk on one of the days off I'd booked the following week, and then suddenly I'm being asked for an interview on one of those days!

The interview was held with the boss and the guy who I would be replacing, who I got a chance to chat with before the interview and it turned out that this was his last day.  To the extent that he was literally grabbing his box of stuff and going home once the interview was over!  He hadn't been sacked or anything, but ti was clear they hadn't timed things well.

Now in this job you would essentially be working on your own in the role.  So, in other words, I'd found out that the only person who could do a handover of the role was not going to be there after that day!

It was another small division of a big company and it sounded fairly interesting.  Unfortunately I don't think the interview went all that well - I find the questions that get asked are either very predictable ones I'm asked a lot or I can think of myself beforehand, or they're total blind-siders.

In particular, the blind-siders often tend to focus on areas that I just don't have any experience of, but also, more importantly, have no mention on my CV.  So, for example, my CV says nothing about me having done project management, because I haven't.  Yet the person will launch into a whole set of questions that really focus on skills that are ore relevant to PM.  I mean, sure, there's overlap with Bid Management, but the important aspects are unique to each job.

This was like that - they asked a bunch of questions that I couldn't really answer because I didn't have relevant experience, but in particular, weren't really mentioned on my CV.  I mean, I'd done similar stuff, but not the exact thing they were asking about, so I struggled.

It was also weird - they were all dressed very casually.  I'm guessing this was because of a dress-down Friday, but I felt like I'd turned up to a wedding in a clown suit!

However, on the good side, they have let me know quite quickly that I was unsuccessful, though even here it was a bit weird - the feedback didn't make any sense.  I mean, I'm grateful they have let me know, but the fact I've been told was because they weren't keen on my answer to a questions they never asked is a bit weird.

In fact I was going to set down some moans about the whole process, but I've prattled on for a while, so I'll save that for another day.

saving on spectacles indeed

I forgot to mention on the money front - as well as spending a huge amount on my car, with my days off I also went to the dentist, which cost me £45 for the 15 minutes it took (they did some x-rays, but also I'm now private), but I also got some new glasses.

I've needed some new glasses for a while - the coating on my current pair has started to crack, which gets picked up in direct sunlight, but also I think my prescription has changed a little.  I also wanted to get a new pair with Canada looming - partly to have a back-up, but also as part of refreshing clothes & stuff.

Anyway, point is, part of the reason I've put off getting some new glasses was the expense - I usually expect to spend at least £250 and often around £400.  This is partly as frames are quite expensive (it's one of those areas where you pay more for less - if you get cheap glasses, they're often big thick things, but the more you spend, the lighter and thinner they get!) but also, my prescription is so powerful I have to get the thinner lenses.

Well, I don't have to get ones as thin as I usually do, but I do have to get thin ones because the curve on cheaper lenses would make them impractical - I wouldn't be able to see out of the sides as the curve would distort things too much.  I'm so short sighted that when they do the test, I can literally only make out the biggest letter (which is about 8 inches high) by squinting!

So I'd put this off for a while, expecting ti to be expensive, but in the end I've paid less than £75!  And that's for a full test, frames that cost £85 and lenses of exactly the same thinness as my current pair (I recall these were about £130 on their own last time).  It's weird and I'm not entirely sure how he worked it out, but he basically applied a bunch of discounts/vouchers I wasn't properly eligible for.  So here at least was good news.

It's the Bahrain Grand Prix this weekend.  It's apparently being held at night this year, though I'm not sure that will improve the racing at all.  The BBC's coverage is very thin - it seems they're not even covering the practice sessions on the radio.

The Beeb's coverage does seem a bit lacking this year.  Gary Anderson has gone, Eddie Jordan isn't going to be there until the fifth race (so a quarter of the way through).  I'm wondering if they've cut the budget even further - they also seem to be a bit lacking in special features, which you'd have thought they could do loads on with the new regulations.

job interviews

So I've had 5 job interviews in the last couple of weeks.

The first was with a small training consultancy company based just outside Guildford.  This proved to be a gigantic waste of my time.  And I don't just mean it wasn't the job for me, but they had me undertake all sorts of exercises and hoop-jumping crap.  These used up around two weekend's worth of my time.  When I eventually got to the interview they made it very plain that my "personality type" wouldn't fit.

I should perhaps explain they had me to do a Meyers-Briggs test.  These are mostly bullshit, but it does give some broad indicators - in particular, for me, they show I'm an introvert, which I am.  So at the interview she basically said that they have meetings where, in essence, they lose control and only the loudest people are heard.

Now obviously I wouldn't enjoy that anyway, but why ever would I want to work for a company that can't control meetings?  Especially a company that's supposedly doing management consulting for other companies.  I phoned the agent that had contacted me and withdrew as I was walking to my car.  I'd actually wanted to pull out as soon as the Myers Briggs test had been mentioned, but she encouraged me to stick with it.

The second interview was with a big defence company.  And it hadn't really been a good idea from the start, if I'm honest.  Unfortunately, the recruitment person did not appear to be entirely competent (you'll notice a bit of theme with this) - the initial job spec she sent me had the job down as being based in Guildford, with occasional days in London.

However, it turns out the job is entirely based in London with no time in Guildford at all!  She also booked the interview for me for 4:30PM, but booked it with them for 4PM, so when I turned up they thought I was half an hour late!  I'm guessing she booked the extra half hour so that they could prep, but didn't communicate properly with either of us - particularly since one of the interviewers had to go by 5PM, so they left half way through.

To some extent, this was all beside the point - I went to the interview seeking to be convinced that it was a good enough job for me to put aside my desire not to work in London, and I was not convinced.  I actually closely monitored the journey time in particular, and if I was to take the job I would be spending 4 hours each day commuting.  The problem is this line - it's a very slow service (1 hour 10 mins) and only has two trains an hour - and I could move, but it's always going to be horribly busy commuter trains.

Since the interview I've heard jack shit, despite chasing.  As noted, I'm not really interested anyway, but it's just another example of how badly all these recruitment people behave.  I had thought maybe it was just the agencies, but this was an actual employee of the company, and she's acted just as poorly.

The third interview was bordering on a farce.

It was with a company that is quite big and well known for one thing, but this was for a different, much smaller, division.  It's quite engineering focused; however, I have to confess I'm not sure it is really that interesting to me.  Not that I really had the chance to investigate - the agency they were using was shocking: terrible communication and the agent didn't seem to have any common sense.

To give you an example, she fixed up the interview but only told me the location/gave me directions on the day of the interview.  Now to be fair, the interviewer messed things about no end - it went from a face-to-face meeting to a telephone interview, back to a face-to-face, then moved from daytime to evening - but the agent did not help matters.  I didn't even know it was this particular other division until a good way into the process.

The interview itself was also a bit of a mess - because it was in the evening and I had to go up the motorway I basically rushed there and that put me in a bit of a manic frame of mind, particularly as I'd had a coffee quite late in the day and it had been a busy day at work.  I rabbited on like I was on speed :/

On this one I've also heard jack shit - hmm, one of those patterns, perhaps?

I'll continue this later, I think - the other two interviews were after a gap anyway.

australian & malaysian gps

The formula one season is under way!

I used an exclamation point there as it seems like the last season only just finished.  Indeed, the Australian Grand Prix was actually a few weeks ago, and we've also already had the Malaysian Grand Prix and Bahrain is next week!

Of course there are some big changes this year - there's the whole new powerplant, with the V6 turbo engines and all sorts of clever engine recovery systems.  But there are also some key changes to things like wing sizes and what they can do aerodynamically.

The new engines are very torquey (after all, they use a lot more electric power, which is instant) and the two seems to have made the cars a lot more skittish.  You can see them skidding and sliding as they fight to control the cars, which I have to say I quite like.

It would be possible to make cars that almost didn't need a driver.  Indeed, at several points in F1's history new technology has been introduced that meant the driver was "compensated for", and much of this has ended up in road cars - anti-lock brakes and traction control are obvious examples.

However, generally, F1 has tended to ban these, partly to keep the driver an integral part of the sport (as well as reduce costs and complexity).  The problem then develops that once everything gets banned everything ends up the same.  For a long time now the engines have almost been a non-factor, but now they're suddenly at the forefront of the sport.

Of course there are down-sides - the ear-splitting noise (which no matter how much you tell people how loud it is, you had to experience to really know: some of the old f1 car was as loud as a jumbo jet, but you can't really appreciate that unless you went to a race) is gone.  But then it's been replaced by sound you can understand - you can hear the tyres squeal, for example.  And while the screaming of the engines was an experience, you couldn't ever be at a race without hearing protection, and on some levels that's a bit pointless when you think about it.

Anyway - we've had two races, so what have I thought?

Well, I have to confess I was a bit worried after the testing that very few cars would finish.  The reliability seemed very low, and a race where only 6 cars cross the line can be a bit disappointing.  However, I've been pleased to see things haven't been that bad - sure retirements have increased, but not disastrously so.  It's also pleasing to see some of the lower teams have taken advantage of this aspect and scored a few points.

The Australian race was okay.  To be fair, Australia is not the best of circuits, as it's a "sort of" street circuit and hasn't tended tend to produce great races.  Generally the most interest comes from seeing the new cars in action.

However, Malaysia was generally better.  It's quite a good circuit - certainly one of the better Tilke circuits and has places where overtaking is possible.  If I'm honest Malaysia had a bit of a lull in the middle, but picked up towards the end.

The Mercedes would appear to be the class of the field, both in terms of the engine itself and the team.  Clearly they put a lot of effort in from quite early last year, which obviously hurt them last year but is paying dividends now.

The opposite seems to have been true for Renault, who with Red Bull were clearly focused on last year's championship.  However, aerodynamically Newey's Red Bull seems as good as ever - it certainly narrowed the gap in the rain, where engine performance was negated.

weight

I mentioned this yesterday, but I unfortunately gained two pounds this last weigh in.

I therefore now weigh 20 stone 10 pounds.

I cannot confess to be surprised by this outcome.  The last couple of weeks I have been eating quite badly.  I've had quite a lot of shop-bought sandwiches and also lots of cakes and various other treats (I've been quite weak when it comes to cream eggs, which have of course become more prominent with it being near Easter).

However, I've also not been doing quite so much walking.  Owing to having the interviews I've had a few half days and haven't wanted to get sweaty, so my number of steps has dropped quite a lot.  The interviews have also been a reason for eating badly - both in terms of having to grab something to eat quickly, but also comfort eating when they've not really been very positive.

I'm actually thinking I will put the whole job hunting on hold until after Canada.  It is proving something of a distraction and messing about with my schedule.  I'm not sure yet if I will fully stop or be a bit more selective, instead.  Because I got so unhappy at work (and there was the fuck up so I was worried I might lose my job) I've been applying to most everything that looked a possibility, rather than the heavy filtering as I did when I looked before.

I also had some slight issues with minor "injuries" - this is too significant of a term to use, to be honest: what I mean is I had a few aches/pains/tweaks/bad night's sleep that meant I decided to take it easy with walking on a few occasions.  This has not been anything long term at any point, and I'm still way above target in terms of steps, but I think it probably contributed to some of the fluctuations.

It's also become apparent I really need a new set of walking shoes.  My current pair the outermost layer of the sole on the bottom has worn through in a few places - indeed, in some places the entire tread is worn away.  I'd been hoping to hold off until my birthday, but I think I will need them before them.

unhappy

I've been feeling down for a while.

I'm finding work to be quite an unpleasant experience.  I find the lack of any clear direction, the lack of common sense and, in particular, the lack of any ability to make change for the better very frustrating.  I have known for a while that I disagree with some of the things they seem to have decided on, but even then I'd be happy if stuff was actually happening - I'd kinda be happy to be proved wrong, but the whole "limbo" aspect of things is just not fun to be involved in.

Of course I've also been more proactively looking for a new job again.  This hasn't been going too well.  I clearly have a good CV - at the least it is good enough for me to get interviews.

I've now had a total of 5 interviews, though these have not been all they could.  I'll hopefully blog about it separately, but I don't really see myself getting/wanting those jobs.

And of course I'm back to the old situation of no apparent prospect of a salary improvement at work (it's now getting on for 2 years), despite my rent and various other costs going up, so I'm struggling financially again.  Particularly since I desperately need to save money for the Canada trip.  This last month or so I've had to spend a fortune on my car:

£450 for a complete new set of tyres
£200 on a service & MOT (plus some replacement parts)
£250 on insurance
£175 on Car Tax

So that's over £1,000: I only take home about £25K a year, so I've had to spend nearly 4% of my entire year's salary in one month!

I've also been struggling with the weight thing.  I decided I was going to lose a few stones in preparation for the Canadian Grand Prix and blogged about the "progress" here, but just recently ti stagnated and then, while I wasn't blogging, it actually went into reverse - I gained 1 pound a few weeks ago (although I lost it again the following week), but this week I'd gained 2 pounds.

The problem - and it's been a problem all my life - is that when I feel down I eat.  I am the very definition of a comfort eater, and since I feel down quite often, I eat quite a lot.  Of course it's a vicious circle - when you get very big and find it difficult to do things like walk up flights of stairs that becomes a source of unhappiness, prompting me to eat more.

The other problem is I've not really gone about it by sticking to a proper diet.  I've increased the amount of exercise I do, which has been helping to keep the last few weeks of not eating well in check, but I've also slipped back into some of my weirder habits.  In particular I've been "multiple buying" again - this is where I buy several meals worth at one shop, then for some reason buy stuff for the same meals at another.

So, specifically, while I was away I had several meals to buy for and bought cheese on toast, hot cross buns and some mini-sausages plus buns as meals.  Only if you do the maths while I needed 4 meals worth I had therefore actually bought 7 meals worth.  Since none of it was particularly long lasting, that meant I had to eat more meals than I needed and for those meals to be bigger.

And to be honest, I didn't really need to buy any of them - I have stuff in the freezer and cupboards that I really need to get rid of (and, of course, would, therefore, effectively be free meals instead of spending more money).

I think I need to introduce some will power and/or start actually thinking about stuff more.

just two months

Meant to post this Friday, but I forgot:

So I appear to have only managed two months of (fairly) constant blogging, before going silent again.

Unfortunately, not blogging seems to have a bit of a momentum to it.  That's why I often try to pre-write entries, so that if I don't have the time / can't be arsed to do a blog on a day I have something to fall back on.

However, as my last post attests I got pretty busy with work for a while.  That actually ended a while back, but unfortunately then I was into the post-overwork phase where I just can't be arsed to do stuff.

I'm actually on holiday three days of next week, so I'm guessing normal service won't resume until April.  I'll try and use some of the time I have to write a few blog posts.  I've certainly got a lot to post about; it's just finding the time and summoning the energy to do it that's the problem, as always.

working weekend

Looks like I'm going to be in working this weekend.

I really didn't need this, but people have let me down left, right and centre.  If they'd done their fucking jobs properly and on time it wouldn't have been necessary.

But of course they haven't so I need to work the weekend to do what needs to be done in time.  Funny how it's always me that has to do this shit.  Give other people two fucking weeks to get their jobs done and they fail to make the deadline, and what they do produce is horribly written drivel.  But of course it's no problem - obviously I can sacrifice my weekend to rewrite the entire fucking document.

The bizarre thing is that this is the exact same thing as where I had the situation that led to "the problems".  People doing their jobs which they've had weeks to do last minute, so then I have to sort out the mess afterwards.

This time, though, I'm not in the situation where it's last minute so I have to make a panicked decision.  No, I get to do that next weekend, I'm sure.

flatline

I've not had the chance to blog just recently, and this may be my only post this week.

I thought I'd give a quick update on the whole diet & weight situation.  I mentioned last week that the problem was going to be temptation, and I roundly failed in resisting that temptation.

Just to give you a "for instance", I ate 6 cream cakes last week.  And we're talking big cream cakes - 2 large éclairs, 2 chocolate cream doughnuts and 2 cream buns (like giant profiteroles).  I also ate 4 custard tarts, which I don't count as cream cakes, but are in the same ball-park.

So not good diet-wise.  With the interviews I have to confess I was also expecting the walking to go badly (in the sense that I don't want to be sweaty for an interview, and also it takes time to prep that ate into time I would usually go for a walk.  Well, this didn't prove to be the case.

I also had a few bad nights sleep, due to nerves for the interview, but also the usual semi-insomnia stuff I get bouts of, where I fall asleep no problem but then wake up at 3AM (or similar).

While the latter isn't a good thing, it does seem to eat calories, so I'm guessing the fact I did sufficient walking and this must have counteracted the poor diet, because my weight remained the same - 20 stone 8 pounds.

This makes the third week at this weight, which is good in the sense I've not gained weight when I could so easily have done so, but very bad in terms of the targets I'm aiming for for the Canadian holiday in June.

Part of the problem I'm experiencing is that I'm okay all week (though not this week, to be fair) but then Friday I get a sort of attitude of "having a treat", only the problem is I get several treats (Friday is my shopping day) and basically then spend a chunk of the weekend eating badly too.  And this seems to counteract the good part of the early week.

Well this week hasn't been too bad, although I'm going to be a bit down with the walking, so we'll just have to see.

final mu

These are the other three series I've been watching on crunchyroll, and I've kinda saved the best for last, in that I like these three more than the others I've talked about so far.

Witch Craft Works
Witch Craft Works kinda took me by surprise.  Reading the premise and watching the first couple of episodes I thought this might be a fairly standard harem anime, however, it isn't really.  I mean, there are lots of things in the series you've seen before, but this particular mix is somehow quite fresh and interesting.  It's not a harem, although there are lots of girls in the show.  It's also almost totally devoid of fan-service.  I mean, some of the characters have big boobs, but I've not seen a single flash and the main character never gropes them; and many of the skirts are short, but I've not seen a single flash of panties; no-one has been to the beach (so far) or taken a hot springs bath.  It's also beautifully animated and both the story and characters are interesting and the funny stuff is genuinely funny.

The Pilot's Love Song (Toaru Hikuushi e no Koiuta)
Unfortunately, unlike Witch Craft Works, the animation on this show is quite lacking.  It's clearly being done on a much lower budget and there are some very glaring moments - in the beach episode (unfortunately, this one also complies with many anime tropes, and some of the ones it picks are a bit unfortunate - the whole beach episode is horribly shoe-horned in) there's a scene where the layer with the swimming costumes doesn't align properly with the bodies, so you get some weird jutting-out angles.  I mean, it's not all horrible: the flying stuff is pretty good, but it doesn't help.  The story is a bit contrived if I'm honest and as I say does utilise too many tropes; but it's really the characters that make this one - the central romance is quite interesting, particularly when you learn the full truths about who everyone is.

Nobunagun
If I'm honest, I think if I was sampling for purchase, rather than watching it all on crunchyroll, I think this is one of those series where I'd have watched the first two episodes and put it down as a definite purchase... but then been a bit disappointed by the rest of the show.  I mean, obviously we're only half way through, but it got a little bit less interesting when it moved into proper monster-of-the-week and team-of-weirdoes territory than when it was just the one military otaku given unexpected powers.  I mean, don't get me wrong, I've enjoyed it; it's just not quite the awesome-fest the first couple of eps implied.

opportunity beckons

So I've mentioned I've been looking for a new job and I appear to have 3 interviews in the near future.

I say "appear" as one of them has gone oddly quiet after sending me a message saying they wanted to see me for an interview.  I've had this sort of thing before, actually - a message saying they want to interview me, I ask what scope there in in terms of dates available, there's silence and then they tell me actually the job no longer exists.

The bit about scope for moving the date is because I've noticed an interesting phenomenon when companies propose dates for interview - they're almost always mid-week: almost never on a Monday or Friday.

However, Friday and Monday are the most convenient days to take as leave - it just looks like you're taking a long weekend for whatever reason.  A day off mid-week is much more suspicious / unusual.

I also think Monday is the most sensible day for sick leave if you need to use that as an excuse.  To me it sounds more reasonable that you ate or drank something that's disagreed with you while you were out and about over the weekend than during the week.

These three being so close together has actually made it a bit inconvenient.  The two that are talking to me I've had to juggle them to try to get them all on the same day.  Well, I didn't have to, but this seemed the least disruptive thing to do.  Whether it's a good idea in terms of the quality of interview I give, I'm not sure.

However, if I'm totally honest I'm not sure either are real contenders.  One I'm not sure the company is going to be a good fit - they don't sound like my cup of tea, if 'm honest.  The other does, but the job would be based in London.

I've always tried to avoid working in London, as the travel strikes me as being horrendous.  The line I'm on is particularly bad as it takes over an hour to go from my closest stations (I'm about equal distance from two) to London - a journey that would take no more than half an hour by car.  I'm also miles from either station - it's a good 45 minute walk - and I hat buses.

I could move, of course, but there's always going to be a transition period, and where to?  If you live close enough for a decent journey, prices are horrible, if you go far enough out for prices to be reasonable, the journey is horrible.

Well, hopefully if I have the time I'll give the verdict on how both interviews went, though I may be a bit tired to blog later in the week.

self-sabotage

Last week could potentially have been a reasonable week, weight wise.

However, I unfortunately sabotaged myself across the weekend.

Basically, it got to Friday and I was really hungry all day.  When I then did some shopping I gave in to temptation and bought some naughty stuff.

First of these were some double chocolate muffins.  I've mentioned I tend to have pain au chocolate on Saturday, but I replaced it with these muffins that were on offer.  I would guess 1 muffin is probably equivalent to 1 pain au chocolate, but there were four muffins, rather than 2 pains, and I at all four across Friday and Saturday.

The second was that normal walker's crisps were on offer, so rather than the lighter crisps, I bought a six pack each of prawn cocktail and Worcester sauce crisps (two of my faves).  I unfortunately then had a total of 8 packs (4 of each) across the weekend.

The next thing was that I bought a pack of chipolata sausages, only this had half as much free, so it had 18 sausages, rather than 12.  I also obviously bought some large rolls to have the sausages in.  Unfortunately, they only had brown bread in one shop, which I bought, but then in another shop I bought some white rolls as well.  And double unfortunately these were also on a two for one offer, which I failed to resist.

In other words I had 12 large rolls across the weekend.

Now this wasn't enough for me to gain weight, but it was a classic case of me getting on the scales on Sunday morning and seeing "no change" and thinking "If I'd not gone nuts I would clearly have lost some weight".

My current weight is therefore 20 stone 8 pounds.

I don't really know what's going to happen this week.  I'll blog about it later hopefully, if I get time, but basically I'm going to be out and about and there's going to be a real temptation to eat badly.  It's also going to restrict my walking, as I'd rather not be sweaty on certain days, and then won't have the spare time to walk on others.

It could be a disaster if I don't resist, and this week has proven me rather wanting in that regard.