Best Use Yet For Incognito Mode

Among the many other signs of ageing, one of them must be the increasing frequency with which bands from your childhood spring up on shows such as Never Mind The Buzzcocks as the 'remember these from so long ago that noone actually remembers, and can you even recognise one of them now?' ... rounds. This week it was one of the girls from B*witched (yes, that asterisk is important, and I have no idea (1) why and (2) why I remember that keenly).

After the short snippet had given me a bit of an earworm, I did search for the video on my phone - here if you want to inflict it upon yourself by the way - before immediately realising that I've now cursed myself to have random Irish 90s cheese-kiddie-pop acts appearing in all my search options and adverts for the next few months.

It was worth it though. I'd forgotten how bad the video was - the entire premise seemingly sold on a 'just dance, girls, and we'll CGI in a load more people doing the exact same dance on either side later so it doesn't look too silly' basis, when the budget ran out and they decided to just go with the four of them in a field, doing their very best to prove the theory that just because four people are doing the same synchronised movement it doesn't stop it from looking total bollocks. It's an unstable field, too - occasionally the entire ground tilts and the girls roll off into the fiery pit beneath. That, or it's some terrible camerawork - it really could be either. The dramatic masterpiece of the video - and my particular highlight - is, however, the dramatic zooming out at the 19 second mark when the treehouse is revealed to be ... right next to them!

But! Don't let my justified mockery of the terrible video distract you from how bad the lyrics are. Bragging about a house with windows and doors? Call me old fashioned if you must, but a house without windows and doors isn't a house. It's a box. Or a bunker. Either way, not a selling point. The worst part is that listening through the entire song, that's actually the lyrical highlight. Not to mention the fantastic random pieces of dialogue interspersed throughout, which in no way at all utterly stereotype Irish people, speech or cliches.

This entertaining and distracting diatribe aside - nothing like being topical by cynically tearing down a 15 year old pop video - does lead me to believe that I have inadvertently discovered the best use yet for the Incognito mode in browsers: watching embarrassing old pop videos, while still avoiding it cropping up to humiliate you in later searches or histories. To prove the point I followed this up by watching the linked video for Mmmbop, by Hanson; and yet Google is none the wiser ...

A Drive Home, Or, Why Navigating From Terminal 4 Is Like Using A Compass At The North Pole

This evening I took my cousin Armaan to the airport to allow him to fly on to India for the next leg of his holiday. He was departing from Heathrow Terminal 4, an unusual choice (although I will concede not one of his own choosing) and one that is not quite as straightforward to get to - in fact, we managed to miss a quite well hidden sign on our way in and ended up doing an entire lap of the airport before we arrived at our destination.

This, however, was (a) forgiveable, (b) understandable considering the hidden nature of the sign and (c) nothing compared to my efforts on the way home.

For those unaware, this is the rough journey I should take home:


However, I decided to do things ... a little differently. I set off like this, following the signs to both the A30 to Staines and to M25:


Reaching the roundabout I had no choice but to go straight on, as far as I thought - I knew the roundabout but didn't usually come at it from that angle, but all was, as far as I thought, well. I opted not to go onto the M25 and took the "easier route" continuing on the A30 - it took me round a bit of a loop as I went under the M25:


At this point I missed the exit the first time round and so went for a second circumnavigation ofthe roundabout to add a bit of slapstick to the utter farce that my journey was rapidly becoming. I managed to leave the roundabout slightly better at the second attempt, still faithfully following the signs for the A30 to Staines, now going in the other direction:


Continuing to loyally follow the signs for the A30 to Staines, I persisted onwards with retracing my steps - a fact I was at this point completely oblivious to:


And not long after - fifteen minutes after I was here the first time - I returned to the Crooked Billet roundabout, this time from the direction I should have been, and managed to go back where I thought I was going the first time (and a review of the Streetview on Google Maps shows me that I could easily have turned here at my first visit):


Proceeding at a leisurely pace now once again comfortable with where I was, I rejoined the original route after a detour of a mere 20 minutes:


From here the journey was fairly routine - but to illustrate the utterly ridiculous journey I made, this was my route in full. Sadly, the zoom doesn't show up the ridiculous amount of time I spent driving in circles:


This is why people shouldn't fly from Terminal 4.

Warning: Creativity At Work

A short update tonight, because Chrissi and I have been busy. Busy doing what, you ask?

We've been baking a pirate ship cake!

Words cannot describe the awesomeness. It took me about two hours, perhaps more, to build a mast and get it to hold together. But I managed it in the end. Chrissi managed the hard part of baking the cake - I simply added decorations for guns and bowspits and the eventually-completed mast - bedecked, of course, with the Jolly Roger. A good night's work.

Knocking And Letterboxes Are Beyond Us

One of the benefits of working at home yesterday was that I was in to collect the Amazon delivery. Well, it didn't help as they still didn't bother to knock or post it through the letterbox and just propped it up against the bin - fortunately I was going out for a breath of fresh air and noticed it, bringing it inside before the sudden downpour a few minutes later.

The bounty it contained was four CDs and one DVD - the CDs being Jake Bugg's self-titled album, an album similarly and imaginatively named after themselves by The 1975, Imagine Dragons' debut album which with astonishing creativity they managed to think of a separate name for, Night Visions, and the compilation mentioned last weekend, Teenage Dirtbags. The DVD was the magnificent full collection of Thunderbirds, which is one to add to my growing stash of TV series as I see them on special offer at various times.

I've not really listened to any of the albums fully enough yet to give a proper opinion on them, but the compilation album has made its way to my car where it is now the soundtrack to my drive to and from work. This makes my trip considerably more pleasant (although today it was much nicer anyway as the traffic didn't seem quite so bad). I may swap to disc 2 tomorrow - watch this space for more such crucial updates.

Car Foibles

It is additionally frustrating on a day where I had been ready for work keen and early for any day, let alone Monday, to be then hamstrung by car problems once more. The consequence of a cold night and a sulking battery meant that while I was awake and ready to head to work, my car was of a different opinion. Fortunately I had my laptop still with me from working at Wimbledon on Friday, so it meant an unplanned day of working from home.

On returning to the house I called our breakdown cover to get someone out to at least give it a short sharp shock awake - and not long after (only about twenty minutes), someone arrived. Which is where the comedy of the morning starts.

As the car was parked down the street, I had to rush outside quickly to intercept the van, point out where the car was and the like. This was done, my battery was jumped, the car turned on, and I was advised to give it 25 minutes to charge up. As my phone had been left on the kitchen table I entertained myself by reading the car manual and staring out of the window, idly wondering why I hadn't seen Chrissi go past me yet on her way to work.

After giving my car the 25 minutes running to recharge the battery (and a couple of extra minutes for good measure), I left my car and started to walk back up the road to the house. In doing so I met Chrissi who was heading down the road and rather relieved to see me. Apparantly in my haste to catch the breakdown man I had allegedly left the door slightly ajar (the door is also in the sulking club and sometimes doesn't close properly when you think you have closed it). Coming down to the door not closed, my phone on the table, my laptop on and me nowhere to be seen, Chrissi was puzzled. Wondering if I had popped to the shops, had gone somewhere else or simply been stolen, she waited a little while as she didn't know if I had my keys with me. I understand that she was going to see if my car was around when I passed her in the street. Relieved, she headed off to work, I returned to the house.

This entertainment over with, I resumed the day and continued to work from home (by the time the car was running it would've been far too late to head into work), although I did take the car on a short drive at lunchtime to make it less moody for tomorrow - we can but hope!

Playlist Challenge III: Nationalities

Again nothing inspired this in particular, besides the random thought of a song and then the increasing extension of the theme to see how far I could go with it. Usual rules apply, cannot repeat theme items (particularly as some nationalities, such as 'American', are repeated many times over!):

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers - American Girl
The Beatles - Norwegian Wood
The Vapors - Turning Japanese
The Bangles - Walk Like An Egyptian
Maximo Park - Russian Literature
Sting - Englishman in New York
Cold War Kids - Mexican Dogs

There are probably many more I've missed as well - I tried to identify songs by mentally walking around the globe from country to country and identify songs on that basis, although I don't think I added a huge number that way!

Repeat Trips

Today marked the second day in succession when I headed to Raynes Park. Yesterday's trip was motivated by poker, and due to bad traffic avoiding an accident, and then planning a shorter route but then losing my route twice (and effectively bypassing my shortcuts in the process) I arrived considerably later than planned! Having arrived this much later I made a strong effort to stay in as long as possible to make my trip worthwhile - not only because I wanted to do well, but a quick blowout would have made the long journey even more ridiculous!

Today I was in Wimbledon for work, and as it had been mentioned yesterday that folks were going out for drinks tonight I thought I would gatecrash and invite myself along - as I was located so close! In the end, for bonus irony it ended up that people headed into Wimbledon after a couple of hours so I returned home at that point (as did Chrissi, who had joined me after a kind-hearted invite only because she thought it was my way of sneaking a lift home despite my driving in the first place). A good evening to catch up with people and good to see some less-frequent faces, but I can also increasingly tell I've been gone for nigh on two years and there has been turnover in those who are there.

Learning the Routes

Over the past three days I've experimented with at least five different routes over the six trips to and from work, with varying degrees of success. I've definitely ruled out a couple and am increasingly coming to terms with the realisation that I will have to face the M25 in rush hour twice a day.

One thing that is a positive is that I do have flexibility in terms of timing as to precisely when I leave and arrive at work (providing I am at least working my core hours and do all my hours I am due to work within the day!). It means that even once I settle on a likely route I then have the entertaining variety of changing my departure time to try and find the optimal point for both leaving and departing. It's a balancing act, as the earlier I leave the better my traffic is on the way in, but the more I hit rush hour on the way home instead.

For the moment I'm getting by with a grudging tolerance of this. Tomorrow I'm due to leave earlier so as to get there in plenty of time so I can leave early in the evening - all with the aim of making it back to Raynes Park in time for poker around 6:30ish. It's going to be a little ambitious but should be achieveable, although as I write this I recall that I haven't actually filled up my tank tonight, which I should have done, and as I've likely not got enough for a full trip this would be sensible to attend to prior to departure.

So an even earlier alarm time it is.

Landmarks

So I asked Chrissi on Sunday, "I presume we're not planning to do anything particular on Tuesday?" to which she responded with a baffled "Why would be doing anything on Tuesday?"

Having duly banked my credit for (a) remembering and (b) for one-upmanship as she had not remembered, we didn't do anything after all. However, it is still worth noting that today marks us being together for ten years. I'd call that a landmark worth commemorating if not necessarily celebrating (particularly as we have a wedding anniversary to mark in exactly a month's time!).

Well Known

So today was the first day at the new office in Reading, and this was marked by our new co-residents in the building (HR and Finance) welcoming us with cake. I'm sure this was (a) not necessarily pure generousity but had been arranged on our behalf by the management that had moved us here and (b) entirely planned based on the knowledge of our fondness for cake, chocolates, baked goods and general sweet things. There were carrot, chocolate and lemon flavour cakes offered - I only sampled the carrot cake, but that was good.

The main inconvenience of the move, the increased journey was definitely exacerbated today by the fact that I wasn't fully familiar with all the routes, shortcuts and sneaky ways around the worst of the traffic that need to be followed to make any journey bearable. As a result I managed to get stuck in four separate traffic jams - two on the way in, two on the way back, and three of them due to roadworks that I simply didn't know about to be able to avoid (the fourth being simply good ol' M25 congestion). Tomorrow should be at least a smoother journey as I'm at least aware of what I'm facing!

Musical Nostalgia

I had mentioned that yesterday at work had felt like an end-of-term feel, and one contributing factor to that was the music. We typically have the radio on, but often will have someone's music playing. Yesterday one of my colleagues had a newly purchased album which was definitely worthy of an airing - a compilation album titled Teenage Dirtbags.

This was an immense trip down teenage nostalgia as it contained almost exclusively turn-of-the-century pop-punk and 'alternative' tunes. Tunes featured include classic pop-punk such as Blink 182's All The Small Things, Bowling For Soup's Girl All The Bad Guys Want, Fountains of Wayne with Stacey's Mom, American Hi-Fi's Flavour of the Weak - and obviously the titular track, Wheatus' Teenage Dirtbag, which kicks off the whole caboodle. Ska was represented in the form of Reel Big Fish's Sell Out, Goldfinger's Superman and Less Than Jake's She's Gonna Break Soon (not their best, but still good).

There were more tunes on the second disc - yes, this compilation contains a stonking 44 songs - starting off with Weezer's Buddy Holly and Bloodhound Gang's Bad Touch, although less of the pop-punk focus with efforts such as Celebrity Skin by Hole and Fall Out Boy's Dance Dance, the cheese-nu-metal (is that even a genre?) of Andrew WK's Party Hard, matched in lyrical ingenuity by Metro Station's Shake It (which I hadn't heard before but could sing along to by the end of the first few lines), the 'take us seriously we know more than four chords honest' effort I Feel So by Boxcar Racer and a host of others inbetween.

I have several of the songs on various albums I own, or compilation efforts such as Kerrang, but it was still a fantastic guilty pleasure to go through all those songs in succession. It may be one that goes onto the shopping list.

Office Goodbyes

As per yesterday's blog, today was the final day in the current workplace. To celebrate / commemorate this we were due to have a barbecue in the afternoon (I think this was also in part to get us out of the building so that our equipment could be packed ready to be moved to the new office for Monday).

Much of the morning therefore revolved around packing and getting ready for the move. In theory some of this had been done all through the week, but on my part (label my pedestal, desk and screen, shred scattered paperwork on desk) there was minimal effort involved - I've simply not been there long enough to collect the level of clutter that seems to have hampered most people. As a result there was a significant end-of-term feel about the day; jokes and minimal work being done. Around midday I relocated myself from upstairs (where half the people were working and half were pretending to work) to downstairs (where there were no pretences about working) - and ended up standing around chatting to people for a while, a significant improvement on actual work.

The barbecue was excellent, done on a seemingly industrial scale - large barbecues that one of my colleagues actually owns - and huge amounts of charred meat (plus other sundries, but that's just background noise at a barbecue. It's all about the meat). There were drinks and there was standing around talking - the main downside was that because it was raining (as per national weather patterns if you try and schedule a barbecue in the UK), the barbecue and associated standing around took place in the garage underneath the building. It made for a slightly bizarre setting!

After the majority of those who were weak and pliable and refused to stay for to long had left, those of us remaining decamped to the pub. While I don't drink (as is well known amongst my readers), I always enjoy these events for two reasons - (1) it's always a much more relaxed setting to have the odd chat with someone about something work related - talk them around to your point of view, or make a suggestion - in short it helps to build better working relationships, not to mention (2) it's genuinely good fun and enjoyable.

Relocation Relocation Relocation

So as mentioned yesterday, my workplace is moving - lease on the building where I work at present in Godalming has been ended and we are relocating to Reading, starting next week. This was announced in early July and since then there have been several consultations (both individual and collective) to understand how this will impact everyone and to try and agree a support package to assist those who now have significantly longer journeys as a result of the move.

Unfortunately I'm one of those who is adversely affected. The journey down to Godalming is very straightforward, and is around 40m (although my memory of traffic may be biased from the August journey which has been much easier). A journey to Reading is less obvious, and likely to take at least an hour. Probably more.

For the moment I'm willing to give it a shot. There's going to be support in terms of compensation for increased costs, and the ability to work from home one or two days a week on a regular basis. This will help to make any transition easier, and while the new journey is going to be no different in time to my train journey when I started working here, or perhaps slightly shorter, it will still be an increase from my current trip. And as a result interfere with my sleep, a more severe inconvenience.

It also puts a spanner in the metaphorical works of Chrissi and myself looking at a new home, something we were increasingly focusing in the first half of the year. The plan was to move to the Guildford area, between and closer to both our workplaces. Fortunately our lethargy has been to our advantage as we have not devoted significant amounts of time to a futile exercise - now to find a new point on a map which works for both (a) our current workplaces and (b) hypothetical future workplaces, as we're both fully aware of how impermanent such arrangements are!

Titbits from Today

A selection of minor side-comments and activities from today:

Final Chinese: While we will often go to the nearby Chinese restaurant for lunch, today was an emotional day as it represented our final visit (the office is moving - more on this later). This was an unplanned visit, but as I had neglected to pack a lunch (late leaving) I deemed that serendipity had ruled in my favour and so I joined the group heading out for lunch. No tears were shed but it was a close run thing.

One-off Quip: In response to a comment that the strategy for dealing with the increased radioactive leaks by smothering the entire place in concrete: "Well it worked well with Croydon". Always an easy target. Poor Croydon.

Detour Smugness: As traffic came to a crawl on my journey home, a police car came racing through and I could see where it stopped in the distance. Anticipating the crawl would become even slower, I managed to make it across all three lanes to the exit which I had fortunately come to a halt by. I figured that a longer route home would be quicker as I wouldn't expect to be moving too soon. About 40 minutes later - and despite an unplanned further detour by virtue of taking the wrong turning - I arrived back home, and at the same time heard on the radio that the A3 was closed northbound. Smugness level: significant.

Overdue Catching Up

Last week before we headed up to Chester I was idly searching for entertainment, and flicking through the available TV series on LoveFilm I made the fatally flawed decision to start catching up on new old Doctor Who episodes. I say new old because it is the earlier series of the reboot, so the seasons with the Ecclestone Doctor (of which I had seen one episode) and the seasons with Tennant as the Doctor (of which I had seen the third series with David Tennant, but not the first two).

Over the course of a few evenings I've now caught up to have watched the entirety of the first series and have only two episodes remaining in the second series (the first Tennant series). I now have only one series to watch to be properly caught up again.

Having watched these, I can now see what some commentators have said about the more childish nature of some of the Russell T Davies-written episodes. They seem a little too twee in parts - none more so than the ridiculous farts and other bodily noises of the Slitheen family which was encounted with Ecclestone as the Doctor. There are the odd moment which is deeper or shows a more nuanced Doctor, but it seems a little too adventure-friendly and does make me long for the deeper if more frustrating storyline arcs of the Moffat-era show with Matt Smith as the Doctor. At least there were no farting aliens.

Moral Dilemma

Today I was faced with a mild moral dilemma, the sought that cause liberally and socially-minded people such as myself to wring their hands at length. While at work, I was going to the toilet (I'll skip over the irrelevant details) when I noticed a £5 note on the floor that had likely fallen out of someone's pocket. Retrieving this, I was then faced with a quandry as to what to do.

Obviously, being merely a note it would be challenging to identify its previous owner. I could have sent out some form of communication to the building, but that would been as likely to lead to a false claimant as a genuine one. The sum itself was not substantial enough to be significant, but then I also felt that holding onto it myself was equally improper.

The solution quickly became obvious: while I could not return it, and did not want to keep it, tomorrow I will therefore purchase cakes for work with this discovered note, and so share the wealth amongst all.

7000 Miles

So today I happened to mark off hitting the 7,000 mile mark in my car. I've not been tracking this particularly per se, but as I accidentally hit the reset trip computer button on the first day I bought it, and have had no reason to track a new trip since, it's been effectively counting my miles since I've owned the car.

Of course, the annoyance (that I noted to Chrissi yesterday evening) is that this counts for absolutely nothing. My insurance premiums and general competence of a driver are both judged on the amount of experience I have in years driving (i.e. what is now around nine months) and not on the actual amount I've covered. Were I to drive barely a mile - or not at all - over the course of the year, this would be rubber-stamped as a year's driving experience under my belt safely negotiated. As I'm driving slightly above-average this is more vexing.

There is of course a balance - a reason why insurance premiums are calculated on an annual mileage basis - which is that the more miles you do, the more you are on the road and so the more liable you are to be in an accident or incident. However, the point where more miles increase as opposed to decrease the risk is a lot further along the road than where I've gotten to so far!

Daily Achievements

Today was a good day if only because it marked the halfway point of the week - this happening on the first day is very pleasing! As previously mentioned, we're away for the tail end of the week and with the bank holiday yesterday both Chrissi and I have only today and tomorrow in work.

In work isn't wholly accurate either - I have the morning working from home tomorrow awaiting the landlord who is coming round to inspect the various issues with the property. After a hiatus of around four months on his part it's about time - so I'll be tidying a little and preparing to demonstrate the various issues.

This evening's acheivement was that Chrissi and I again went swimming, which is almost becoming a regular Tuesday routine now. It was odd as I started to recognise fellow Tuesday evening swimmers in my lane - although as I obviously don't wear my glasses in the pool and am so incredibly short-sighted, I only know them by internal nicknames such as 'woman with pink swimming cap'. It could be someone entirely different with a matching pink swimming cap for all I know!

Playlist Challenge II: Roads

This week's efforts in playlist composition (I'm thinking about making this a regular event, as long as I can think of enough options) comes from the more mundane theme of roads and road types. I'm not quite sure what made me settle on this theme, but noticing a common theme in 'things that are travelled along' used in song titles, I wanted to see how far I could get. I came up with the following, again sticking with my approach not to repeat a theme item across multiple songs:

U2 - Where The Streets Have No Name
Foo Fighters - Long Road to Ruin
Green Day - Boulevard of Broken Dreams
AC/DC - Highway to Hell
Goo Goo Dolls - Broadway
Tom Robinson - 2 4 6 8 Motorway
Eddy Grant - Electric Avenue
Chuck Berry - Route 66

There are likely many bands whose name matches the theme - one that comes to mind from recently is The Streets - but the so-glaringly-obvious-it'd-be-a-crime-not-to-mention-it candidate for the album on the same topic is Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited.

I slightly cheated on this one by looking up the artists for a couple of the songs which I could remember but didn't know who they were by. I doubt anyone cares.

Long-Delayed Recap

In late May, the week before Chrissi and I saw Green Day play a stadium gig at the Emirates, I suggested that my busy routine would prevent me from blogging about it at the time and I also unerringly forecasted that my promises to return to the subject and recap later would all come to naught.

However, last night / early this morning I was watching some of the highlights from the Reading festival (courtesy of the BBC iPlayer which I cannot commend enough for this service) which featured Green Day's main stage set from the opening night. This reminded me that I had intended at some point to post some detail myself on when we saw them live back in June. So today's blog was born.

The Support While we just caught the tail end of All Time Low (sounded decent, haven't heard anything else of them besides this to judge them on) the great thing about the stadium gig is that you had a much better calibre of support acts. The main support act was Kaiser Chiefs, who were excellent in (1) going to their most well-known back catalogue and (2) despite being a major band themselves, being fully aware they were in a support capacity and not thanking the crowd for coming to see them!

The Lead-in As opposed to the typical long (im)patient build-up and sudden appearance, we were treated to two songs played through the PA - the first being Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody (and the sight of a crowd of 60-80,000 all singing along is quite amazing - not sure many other songs could get that reaction either), and the second being The Ramones' Blitzkrieg Bop. This is a song that they often will use themselves when playing live, and watching a pink rabbit costumed person stumble around the stage to the song was the focus for the entry of the main act.

The Opening Song Inspired by conversations with Ollie and Chris the previous week at the Muse gig, Chrissi and I had been trying to do our best to predict the opening and closing songs, with minimal success. While we both got half points as I plumped for American Idiot (used as first song in the encore) and Chrissi opted for Know Your Enemy (second song), we both entirely missed the obvious choice - the tour being called the 99 Revolutions tour should have been a clue that the song of the same name would be the first track played. There were enough clues around us in merchandise and clothing to this as well!

The Setlist As you'd expect for a band with their impressive back catalogue, and with a near-on-three hour set to fill, they pulled out all the stops and near all the classics. If you cheat slightly and count Welcome to Paradise (which appears on both the Kerplunk! and Dookie albums) for the former, then you had at least one song from each of their 11 albums - including plucking the excellent Going to Pasalaqua from their 39/Smooth LP. They didn't dwell on the new albums too much, nor ignore them entirely - striking a nice balance between the two.

Lesser-played songs that made an appearance included Sassafras Roots, which has always been a favourite of mine (and sounds superb live), and King For A Day which true to form featured all three members of the band donning drag. The iconic American Idiot track Jesus of Suburbia was played and is definitely even better live - the separate solos really stand out. One song - the only one that I really missed - notable by its absence was Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life), but enough of the great tracks were played to make it worthwhile.

The Show One thing about watching Green Day - and it was particularly in contrast having seen Muse the previous week - was the sheer element of showmanship about this gig. Billy Joe Armstrong is a great frontman with huge energy, and you felt a participant rather than a spectator, there was constant interaction and conversation with the crowd. You were at a concert rather than watching a live play-through. While the repeated hey-hos did get a little wearing, the times they just paused songs midway through to do something different or have a bit of a chat, then carry on from where they'd left off was great.

I'm not sure if it was the best gig I've been to - it's harder to compare to some of those I saw many years ago when I first started to see bands live - but it's definitely got to be up there as a strong contender.

Source Of Easy Amusement

This week I've had a source of constant amusement at work with a mondegreen that I picked up on Monday and have entertained myself with by repeating whenever it still fits.

On Monday, while showing around a new person our receptionist - who while being very nice is grounded in a different reality to this one - was right behind me asking about the location of the new starter's manager with the question "Where's Si gone?" My immediate response (and one I'm rather proud of on a mere three hours sleep) was "Vietnam". This exchange in itself, besides highlighting my on-the-ball wit, was not particularly worth highlighting - but her reaction, to ask in puzzlement "Why is Si in Vietnam?" with a baffled face as the Si gone / Saigon reference completely missed her was wonderful.

This being done, the phrase was repeated a few times during the week, with multiple chuckles. I think even today she still was utterly unaware of the double meaning of what she was saying and why people found it funny.

Well, you've got to find some way to entertain yourself at work, haven't you?

When Does Unusual But Regular Become Routine?

Tonight was another successful gym trip - it's almost to the point that this is routine and mundane and not worth commenting on, but for novelty alone I'll keep bringing it up. I managed to get home quicker from work, so Chrissi and I ignored this entirely and still managed to leave for the gym at the same time. This week I repeated and slightly extended the same routine that I did last week, yet found myself struggling considerably less by the finish. I suspect that on the achievement level this only proves that I was starting from such a low base that all I've done is drag my fitness out of the trench where it was skulking and bring it up to somewhere approaching ground level. At best.

In today's songs that I thought of that were blindingly obvious that I forgot to include on Monday's playlist: Pink by Aerosmith and Yellow by Coldplay. It's not as if I needed to do much more than think of the colour for either!

Mysterious Missive

I noted on Friday that I'd received a surprise letter the previous day, which required a signature and therefore required me to go and collect it. While this had initially surprised me, by the time I got to the Saturday and headed down to the local delivery office I had figured out what it was.

Contained within the envelope were our tickets to the Live at Jodrell Bank show in just over a week - I had been starting to wonder how we got or where we got the tickets. It is quite sensible though that as we had booked in February they would only start sending out the tickets a couple of weeks in advance to avoid people losing tickets!

I could try and explain what the Jodrell Bank Live event is, but I'm not entirely sure! It features music and science at an all-day festival housed at the giant Jodrell Bank telescope. The headliners of the event we are going to are the immense Icelandic band Sigur Ros who I find fantastic. It should be something to look forward to, and the weather forecast itself is even good! That in itself is worth celebrating - as we'll be outside most of the evening at least.

I'll definitely add a couple of blogs at the end of the month about this, and may even include a couple of pictures to help provide context. I usually roll my eyes aggressively at people who feel the need to photograph their gig-going, but this is a bit different so I may want to take a couple of shots myself. More at the end of next week!

Unheralded Success

Despite not announcing and foreshadowing it on yesterday's blog, nevertheless Chrissi and I managed to go swimming this evening. We'd half planned this yesterday but it still took a fair bit of effort to turn this into an actual trip! As opposed to doing this when we got home, with the 6-8pm session at the leisure centre dedicated to an 'all welcome' concept, we opted for the 8-10pm 'lane swimming' instead which was obviously a little more in line with our intentions.

So we ate, relaxed and despite being comfortable and at home we managed to head out to the leisure centre, get a good 30-40 minute swim under our belt and return. I feel quite tired and should definitely sleep well tonight! Or so I hope ...

The annoying thing with theme blogs like yesterday is that even once written, I still mull the theme over in my head and think of items that I missed. In this case, the obvious omission that sprung to my mind not long ago was the not-at-all obscure Van Morrison's Brown Eyed Girl. Not at all obvious!

Playlist Challenge I: Colours

So after last week's post and after a conversation at the weekend, I've been tempted to start a new theme of a playlist challenge. I enjoy trying to come up with songs linked around a similar theme and a common link. My challenge is to be to try and present a convincing playlist of at least five songs while trying not to 'repeat' on links - forcing myself to at least be original.

The opening theme I randomly selected was colours. Playlist as follows:

New Order - Blue Monday
Jimi Hendrix - Purple Haze
AC/DC - Back in Black
The Beatles - Yellow Submarine
The Clash - (White Man) In Hammersmith Palais
Nena - 99 Red Balloons (a narrow winner over UB40's Red Red Wine which was a strong contender for the repetition alone)
Dropkick Murphys - Green Fields of France

For bands you can have Green Day or if you want to be poppy about it, you can also include Pink. The obvious album choice to conclude the theme is Foo Fighter's The Colour And The Shape.

It was fun trying to restrict myself to a certain theme and still try and come up with a collection of good songs to include. I may try and make this a regular event!

Best of Intentions

I had meant to blog yesterday. These meants don't add up to much, however, but the thought was there. I'd planned on doing this at many different times throughout the day - in the morning, before we went to the gym; after we went to the gym and before we went out, when we got home - but in the end simply didn't make it.

The gym was good but hard work - we were really pushed again this session, which was probably good but left us feeling really sore afterwards! Both yesterday and today were a struggle as a result of this lingering soreness, of protesting muscles. I was surprised - I didn't realise I had muscles there, or if they are they've never done anything which which could explain why they're protesting having had it easy for so long.

I'm not sure either of us are going to incorporate this particular session of pain into a regular routine. It felt effective but the lack of breaks between exercises really hurt. We would have to take it pretty slow to start with at least! I've been up to this point debating with myself as to whether this feeling a day and a half later is good, because I worked that hard - or bad, because I clearly never work hard enough for that to hurt that much! Jury is still out on that one, but the longer it goes on the more it leans towards the latter!

Target Hit

So this morning I managed to surprise everyone, including myself, by getting up in time to go for a swim. This was closer than planned - after waking at 6am and turning over, it was only the accident of setting my alarm onto snooze rather than switching it off entirely that caused it to prompt me a second time with an audible nudge-to-the-ribs at 6:15.

Having managed to force myself up, from there it was more straightforward - remember to collect change of clothes, head to car, from there go to the leisure centre and commence with the changing and the swimming. All of which were accomplished with a minimum of hassle, and I got to work slightly earlier than necessary (reduced summer traffic can claim an assist there, I think).

This coming weekend I'm actually moderately busy - on the Saturday at least. I need to fit in a haircut, we have a gym session scheduled, I want to swing by the post office to collect a mysterious letter that came for me midweek and requires a signature, and we're at a friend's housewarming party in the evening. All in all, enough to keep us busy!

Thwarted Plans

My main non-achievement today was going for a swim after work (or before work if I was up particularly early). I wasn't up particularly early, so I decided to do it in the evening instead. Except ... my plans were foiled by the inconvenience of the leisure centre not having open swimming sessions on a Thursday evening (and the same for Friday - at least I checked a day ahead this time).

So instead I came home and watched the baseball. That still counts as "sport-themed activity", right? Although by that token, so does checking my Battrick scores on my phone ... no, I'm going to have difficulty getting that argument to hold its weight.

Check back tomorrow for more feeble excuses as to why I didn't manage to go for a swim again - the goal is to get up and do it in the morning before work, so there's a certain onus on getting to bed at a certain time to get up at a certain time and get all this done!

I Spend More Time Explaining My Absences Than Actually Being Present

After a recent good run [read: not abysmal] of blogging, I lapsed again yesterday by not bothering to blog once again, leaving the day devoid of content, wit and insight. The main reason for this was that I didn't head on the computer at all last night - on arriving home Chrissi and I immediately went straight out again and headed to the gym, and afterwards I was showering and resting and again not particularly inclined to come onto the computer.

I know, headed to the gym! The casual indifference with which I wrote that and then moved on without fuss is marked, as if this routine is so ingrained that to even draw attention to it is unnecessary. Particularly now with a single gym session under my belt, it's all so mundane. Run-of-the-mill. Old hat.

It wasn't, of course. It was a lot of effort (which it should have been) and I felt shattered afterwards (which I should have done) as I simply wasn't used to pushing myself that hard for that long. That my warm-up of a 6 minute jog on the treadmill is not far off half of my rarely occurring 'run' exercise - that should have said enough with regards to how unusual this burst of exercise was. I followed that with a 1000m row (target: under 4:30, achieved comfortably on the clock but not without effort), 10 minutes on the ever-baffling crosstrainer (where after a helpful comment from Chrissi I spent most of the time trying to work out whether I was running forward or backwards), some time spent on various machines which work various muscles I don't think I have and then 12 minutes on the bike at the end.

I was pleased that I went, however. I didn't even feel huge after-effects today from it, although the occasional twinge and tiredness did confirm my decision to make today a rest day and postpone my half-considered swim after work. Perhaps tomorrow I'll do a swim, and then with Friday a second rest day this sets us up nicely for the personal training session on Saturday.

Hopefully.

Playlist Challenge

A couple of months ago I posted on the traditional theme of "Songs Named After Girls", and today after a discussion with Chrissi this evening I was working on composing a new playlist of songs with numbers in them. This was in part inspired by a radio show this morning which was asking for inspiration on songs with numbers in them, although they did go with some rather traditional options too (Bryan Adams' Summer of '69, The Proclaimers' 500 Miles).

Suitably inspired, this evening I set out to create a playlist with all the songs containing numbers that I have in my collection. This included some surprising and entertaining entries - Green Day manage to rack up 13 entries including four from my favourite album, Kerplunk!, Feeder's Sweet16 and Seven Days In The Sun was a strong showing, The Clash's The Magnificent Seven is a superb entry and you have 5:15 by The Who to top the list off (as well as a clear tribute effort of 8:18 by Feeder also making the list).

Credit goes to the double-entries of Lost Prophets' Five Is A Four Letter Word and The Ataris' Eight Of Nine. You can also mix genres - songs with girls' / boys' names or placenames also get hypothetical bonus points, so The Stereophonics' Vegas Two Times is worth a useful number of points - although whether the permenently-referenced 867-5309 (Jenny) technically counts as eight themes as each number is said independently as well as a girl's name I'm not sure.

Final playlist reckoning was 68 tracks with 3.3 hours worth of music. A good effort.

Weekend Recap

After a good run, I've had two days without blogs mainly due to different excuses - the first because we were out on Friday, the second because I was simply lazy / inept / etc yesterday.

Friday night we were out in Wimbledon to commemorate / celebrate Myles' moving next week with a farewell-to-the-area drinks. As there were several of us who used to work together (in addition to other friends of his) it was nice to catch up with others who I hadn't seen recently. It was an enjoyable evening if a rather bizarre choice of venue - the only pub / similar venue in Wimbledon where you could book a table was also hosting a blues band. Supposedly atmospheric but mainly just a little annoying.

Yesterday's laziness also happened either side of the visit to the gym for our second training session. This included playing on different machinery - mostly with names I forget but prompted you to chest press or stretch or something similar. It was a 40-50 minute workout which was tiring but good; and we returned home feeling both tired and well exercised as a result. There was little else achieved yesterday either - mainly some relaxation.

Today I managed to wake up with a really bad pain in my neck - the result of falling asleep on the couch last night while watching the baseball. I've aimed to do little and achieved less, and as there's another baseball game on at an opportune time to watch I may end up migrating over to the couch and watching that instead!

Impromptu Naps

The last few days at work have been rather stressful, which has been somewhat annoying. Nothing particular - just lots of rather divisive arguments and aggressive 'discussions'. A couple of projects are taking a lot more time, effort and work than they should do, resulting in a somewhat tense feel for everyone involved. As a result, I'm looking forward to the weekend a lot more keenly than usual.

This evening following poker I came in, lay down on the sofa and fell asleep. Lay down is an inaccuracy - I sat down lying back at an odd angle, with my shoes still on so my body was part-suspended in midair and part-reclining. The main result was that I awoke a couple of hours later feeling the effects of dozing in such an odd position! I'm not quite sure why I dozed off - it's not as if poker itself was that tiring - I suspect it's the after effects of a long and busy week catching up with me! This will now obviously result in a strange bedtime tonight and stumbling through tomorrow until I can properly sort my sleeping out at the weekend!

Unusual Achievements

While arguably today I should be celebrating the fact that I managed to go to the gym in the evening for a swim - which was both relaxing and good for me - but I have what is arguably a more impressive achievement up my sleeve.

Both today and yesterday, I was wearing a t-shirt that was basically white. On both of these days I was boldly eating summer fruit, which I really enjoy but has a tendancy to be juicy and therefore dripping or explosive. I managed to eat several cherries and plums over the last couple of days without a single drop of red getting onto my pristine white t-shirts. After all, anyone can go swimming - but this is truly a feat.

The YOLO of Fantasy

I'm sure I wasn't the first to notice this connection*, but one thing I couldn't helped be amused by the occasional visits to / references to Braavos in the Game of Thrones series was the repeated use of the phrase 'valar morghulis' which bordered on a greeting or similar. As it translates into the common speech, 'all men must die'. The worrying point is that I suddenly realised that this is no more than the Westeros equivalent of YOLO. All men must die vs you only live once? Sounds about the same to me. I have suddenly lost a lot of respect for the Braavosi.

Now I need to get myself a twitter or something else mundane so that I can tag all my daredevil-like tweets about daring things with #vm or #valarmorghulis instead of the #yolo trend so I am hip and interesting. If only I either did such events or bothered with twitter, this would be a great insight.

* A quick search proves oh how right I am on this and reminds me that I'm not the only source of original insight, particularly when I'm several years late to the source material.
 

Absence Explained

The best reason I can think of for my lack of writing over the past month - despite having several subjects I wanted to cover - is to simply blame the heat. Well, primarily the heat and secondarily that I've been doing other things.

The heatwave has been problematic for me because I don't deal well with high temperatures - I need to be kept cool and well watered or I have a tendency to wilt. However, the problem is that not only is the house entirely south-facing but it also retains the heat very well. Most houses in the UK do - they're more designed to deal with the winter cold than the summer heat. My tendency when I have come home recently has been to collapse on the bed with the fan on, and have typically read or played on my phone instead of sitting at the computer.

The other reason is in part down to the reading - since my last update at the beginning of June I've now caught up entirely with the Game of Thrones books. I've managed to finish the ones Chrissi owned - she had four, the first two books and then the third book's two halves. I have got through these and then added to them with the fourth book and then the two halves of the fifth book. I'm now waiting for the sixth (and last) book, which has the drawback of having not been written - although there was a teaser of a chapter at the end of the fifth book, which didn't help at all! Nothing is resolved and more of the characters I liked are dead, and there seems to be endless amounts of wandering around going on - hopefully this will all lead to something at the end, but I have to wait a while to find out.

Small Things That Irritate II

There's no specific prompt for this from an event today, but one thing that utterly baffles me is how people who wear t-shirts bearing a slogan or writing on them seem to be utterly offended if you try and read said writing. While this is might be more predictable for females, who might perhaps interpret your reading of their garment as mere cover to closely peer at their chest, it's also surprisingly true for males who regard you attempting to read their clothing as a personal affront.

I do wonder what puzzles these people - is it the fact that people are reading the writing? Were they unaware that the t-shirt they were wearing had writing on it? It's a mystery.

The other day I - while wearing the classic descending-evolution t-shirt showing the ascent of man and then the descent of man into a chair before a computer - politely stopped as someone took a step back while staring at my t-shirt and then explained he was reading it. As he slowly read it out loud, he then asked of the slogan (somewhere, something went wrong) "what does that mean?". I fear the wit was wasted on him.

Unexpected Places To Be

So after a long absence almost entirely based around laziness and heat-prompted demotivation, I thought I might pick up my metaphorical pen and write another blog entry.

Today the main achievement was that Chrissi and I went for our gym induction. Yes, I too find this hard to believe - I am now a member of a gym. We joined last week - there was a special offer on and with a joint membership not only is it ridiculously cheap for the first month and a bit, but it also will hopefully help in allowing us to motivate each other.

As well as this we also had our first of five half-hour individual sessions, which are included as part of the deal. It meant that I actually got to play on some of the gym equipment (rowing machine: decent, crosstrainer: incomprehensible), which considering that as a 28 year old I've never properly been to a gym was rather novel.

The membership covers both pool-and-gym so means that I [should] have much better prompting for early-morning swims as I am already paying for it! It's still not too hard to get from there to work - although it wouldn't be as easy as the early-morning drive to near work and then the journey from there to work that I have done of late. However, the gym near to work doesn't have a special offer there!

Highlights From The Actual Tennis

While I've commentated over the past two days on first the queueing at Wimbledon, and then the impact of the sunny weather at Wimbledon, I've mainly glossed over the tennis. So in summary, we saw two full matches and the tail end of a third, so this was what we saw:

The hope of Canada that is Milos Raonic, seventeenth seed, dispatched Carlos Berlocq comfortably in straight sets while looking mostly untroubled.

Untroubled is not what you could've called the ballgirl who was on the receiving end of a Raonic serve. The Canadian is one of the game's best servers, and when his opponent mised it, a lineswoman ducked and the ballgirl just stood there unsighted, it crashed into her arm. There was pain, tears, a shocking display of compassion from what had previously appeared to be an emotionless droid of a lineswoman and the subsequent appearance of a substitute ballperson - something I didn't know existed.

Berlocq didn't have a much better day; there was a louder cheer from the crowd to salute the efforts of a nimble ballboy - who lept salmon-like to pluck an errant ball out of the sky one-handed - than anything the Argentinian accomplished on the court.

Second match saw Karolina Pliskova against thirteenth seed Nadia Petrova, and was the first time I'd ever seen a seed knocked out. Truly, a momentous moment.

Petrova started off sluggish and was hopefully carrying an injury - if only as an excuse for her refusal to run for drop shots. Her power was impressive but it became clear that if the ball was significantly far away from her, there wasn't going to be much effort in getting it back. As the match went on, the effort dropped. It started with the drop shots. Then balls that wrong-footed her were too much effort to turn for and attempt to get back. Then balls that were in front of her but not quite within her reach. Then anything that involved movement. As a result, Pliskova won in straight sets.

The final match on the court was unscheduled - the other three having finished in double-quick time they moved one of the floating matches onto the court as a final treat. We got to see Daniela Hantuchova against 32nd seed Klara Zakopalova. In a topsy-turvy match featuring repeated breaks, the seeded Czech went through in straight sets.

Most amusing was the subtle photographer in the corner of the court - making himself discreet by using a flash in decreasing light. He only seemed interested in taking pictures of the players poised to recieve. And that only when the slender Hantuchova (as opposed to her slightly bulkier opponent) was receiving. Not that I'm casting any judgement on his motivation, of course, but it gave the impression of being less than pure!

From our seats we could see the large scoreboard on court 3, allowing us to track the progress of the game between Agnieska Radwanska and her opponent. We were curious about the prospect of a shock as the unheralded Yvonne Meusburger broke the fourth seed to take the first game - and were then amused as this had clearly riled the Pole, who went on to win the set 6-1. Undeterred, the unseeded Austrian had the temerity to win the first game of the second set, this time on her own serve. The lesson had not been heeded - the next six games all went the way of Radwanska for a 6-1 6-1 victory. If only she could turn up for the first game of sets ...

Overall there was a good amount of tennis that we did manage to catch once the queueing had passed, and it was worth all the waiting once we did get into the grounds!

Two Years In A Row

The most annoying element about going to Wimbledon last year was that I got badly sunburnt in the queue. It hadn't seemed that hot - and had indeed rained for part of the day too, so I had no idea how it had happened. All the same, I turned out rather red and was the recipient of much mockery from work the next day.

This year I was determined to avoid a repeat - if only to avoid the reception at work, as to make the same mistake two years running would be hideously incompetent.

So I prepared. We brought sunscreen. I applied sunscreen liberally at 9:30 as we arrived in the queue, and replenished a couple of times throughout the day. I wore a cap for part of the queue to shield my forehead when we were standing while not moving and in the direct sun, particularly as it approached the middle of the day.

All of this I thought would be sufficient, except that once we were in the grounds, at the end of the first match we watched a guy who currently works at Reed (who joined after I'd left) had happened to be on the same court as us, seen us, came up to us and after initial hellos had said 'You seem to have caught the sun Andy', to which I felt instantly puzzled - had I? Perhaps a tad, but I'd been prepared.

Later, when I looked in a mirror, I had clearly caught the sun. My face was red - I have no idea how, having coated myself in sunscreen, although looking closely the following day I could see a slightly paler line across my brow where I may have had more success in the sunscreen application. I also have an odd spot from my right elbow up to my sleeve where I had clearly not gone round the corner and the angle of the sun had been such to expose this at some point during the day.

So despite having thought I'd prepared this year to combat the threat of sun, I was in fact entirely inadequate in my preparations and clearly need to remedy this next year - three years of such incompetence is just too much!

Wimbledon Repeat

Yesterday we headed to Wimbledon, as we typically do because we are spoiled and live very close to one of the most iconic events in the annual sporting calendar. Myself, Chrissi and former colleagues Matt and Myles met at around 9ish (after much incompetence on my part at taking the correct exit from the A3 which delayed us by about 15 minutes), and headed to the grounds.

It was busy, as you'd expect. It's always busy. Nothing that we were surprised by - but despite arriving at a similar time to last year we were told on reaching the gates it may be 3pm before we were let in. We joined the queue and waited, and as the rows in front of us were marched towards the gates it looked promising. We had a relaxed time, playing cards, chatting and otherwise passing the time by complaining about the queue. When we got moving, however, we then got stopped by about 1:30pm when it became clear that they were letting no more people in, the grounds were at capacity. We were left with a dilemma - abandon the already four-hour long queueing epic, or keep waiting.

We kept waiting. Had we wanted to change our mind, the time to do it would've been in the morning when we arrived. After we sat down and started to queue, it made no sense to leave. Throughout the afternoon we slowly crawled forward - it was a one out, one in policy so only as people left the grounds were others allowed to enter. A sudden surge got us within sights of the bag check area - the real finish line - by about 4:30, when we then were halted until just after 5pm when the crowd was unleashed. We got into the grounds not long after.

After around 8 hours of queueing, we wouldn't have been surprised if fate had conspired against us by then bringing down rain. It didn't. We had around four hours of tennis that we could watch, and it was worth it. Even if it didn't feel like it throughout the long afternoon!

Next year we will have to go earlier, although I'm wary of an arms race where everyone arrives earlier each year just to maintain their spot in the queue ahead of others who also arrive earlier because they were too late last year, and so the pattern repeats itself!

Abandoned Hobby

So as I'd mentioned yesterday, I've recently stopped playing World of Warcraft. I'd say that I've given it up, but it was more of a gradual drift away - I barely played much over May (not helped by being rather busy too!). I'd also gotten a bit bored in April - unusually this coincided with my subscription nearing its end.

The usual rule of thumb is at the point you start to wonder if you should stop playing, you have without realising just renewed for another six months. You then enter a painful cycle - concluding you might as well get your money's worth out of that six months of gametime, you throw yourself into it wholeheartedly. You are at the verge of accomplishing something you have been working towards when your subscription renews again, and a month later you begin the cycle again when you start to lose interest once more.

I hit upon the inspired concept of actually cancelling my game account when I was feeling bored with the game. Even when I occasionally logged on over the next month and a bit, I didn't have any great inspiration or events to get me playing again. I actually happened to be online as my subscription ran out - it gives you an hour and then a 15 minute countdown - and managed to accomplish one of the niggling easter-eggs that I'd been chasing before my time ran out.

Despite Chrissi playing a little this weekend, I've not had the slightest inclination to pick it up again. I may go back at some point. But there are other games too, and equally I'm actually getting some value out of my weekends and evenings at the moment and accomplishing a little more - perhaps coincidental, perhaps not, we'll let it run for a while and see what happens!

Weekend Highlights

While low on major achievements or notable excitement, this was a successful weekend in many respects - awake at a decent time both Saturday and Sunday morning, many mundane tasks accomplished and an overall sense of purposeful activity. So, to summarise - some key or not key moments for the weekend:

Game 2 Down After getting the milestone first play of (relatively) new board game Eclipse under our belts, we went for a second go this afternoon. It was quicker and easier, as we actually understood what was going on, although I'm still not sure we have it wholly nailed! Our strategies and approach may need some refining, particularly as we ended up finishing before having really got started - we're probably being a little more cautious than we need to be, particularly with combat.

Role Reversal Last night I went to bed around midnight as I was tired, leaving Chrissi downstairs playing on World of Warcraft. It was an odd change in roles, as traditionally I was always still playing while Chrissi went to bed. As I no longer have an account I can't do this - it was amusing to be on the other side of the fence.

Extreme Ironing On a bizarre run of motivation, I was ironing several t-shirts - unusually without even needing to do this to have one to wear for the following day / the current day. To keep myself entertained I was listening to randomly selected music, this time the album of choice being the amusingly named Rock Against Bush, a compilation effort. At some point during my listening I realised the absurdity of the scenario; nothing says more punk than ironing on a Saturday afternoon.

The coming week threatens to have activity - some is planned, so it should do - so I may or may not update as a result. I also know I want to recap on several subjects from the last few weeks I haven't covered, such as the two concerts I went to in at the end of May / beginning of June. I'm back in the writing groove so we may have some updates on these over the next few days!

Eventual Completion

This evening's main accomplishment was the completion of a game that was bought back in March. That evening we got as far as unpacking the pieces and looking confused at the rules, and that took us an hour. We then put it away again as we'd ran out of time to understand the game.

This evening, as we had a large amount of time, we decided to give it a go again. It again took around an hour (or slightly more) to take the various pieces out of the packaging and set them out on the board. The board, while impressively put together, is an arse to actually balance the various components on. With the experience of one game under our belts, we now know that at least the majority can be held in reserve and so don't need to be set out from the start.

Once we got under way, the game itself requires us mostly consulting the rules as to exactly how we went about it. The slow progress we made was enjoyable and I think, with more famliarity with the rules and the ability to move a bit faster, we could actually play properly. It may've been a fun game - it certainly had lots of nuances and potential for lots of different ways to win - but as we weren't quite sure what we were doing, neither of us knew who was winning until the end.

I apparantly had won convincingly. I had thought I was losing most of the game. I think reviewing the victory conditions at the start would help with planning a strategy for future games.

We've left the board up for tomorrow - after that setup effort, we might as well get two games' worth out of it - so we'll see how we do under more familiar conditions!

Naming the Day

Two days so far this week at work we have been treated to our Canadian classic rock station (Toronto's very own Q 107 I have now learned). The classic tracks and cliched North-American adverts have been enjoyed by all, but it does spark confusion on a few points:

It's not Friday. Canadian Rock Radio used to be a Friday morning treat, then gradually expanded to encompass all of Friday's listening hours. I suddenly have a suspicion that the weekend is upon me - an even more frustrating uncertainty when this happens on a Monday.

The timing is all wrong. By selfishly living in a different time zone, the radio presenters confuse me by talking about morning in mid-afternoon, and the breakfast show starts at 1pm.

The weather is wrong. I listen to the weather news on auto-pilot and suddenly wonder why it's talking about weather nothing like our own weather forecast.

There are upsides - I have a much better awareness of what's happening in the baseball from the sports reports, although I really only learn about how the [Toronto] Blue Jays are getting on. I also hear information on the NHL should that take my fancy. Oh, and the music is pretty good. But I think keeping it to Fridays is a better call from now on - you can have too much of a good thing.

Songs Named After Girls

A conversation at work the other day led to an unusual playlist concept - solely incorporating songs named after girls. The 'song named after girls' theme is a well-travelled road, and even on my list of barely 1500 songs on my phone I can put together a reasonable list (which I may be able to pad a little with the songs on my computer that haven't made it onto my phone yet).

There are, however, difficult decisions to be made as to whether you include or exclude certain songs. To that end, Green Day's ¡Viva la Gloria! got left out, but Haushinka made it onto the list (only by virtue of the first line, 'Haushinka is a girl with a peculiar name'). I was left with a list of 18-20 songs depending on how strictly I police it, including girls named Ada, Amy, Ashley, Clara, Jenny, Josie, Louise, Maria, Mae, Tessie and aforementioned Haushinka, plus some others including second names. No bonus points or points of any type if you can match the band to the song above.

I then tried to repeat the trick and to see how this worked out with boy's names. Surprisingly there are more, but it again depends how rigorous you are with the line - does the additional hey render Foo Fighter's Hey, Johnny Park! as an invalid inclusion? Am I allowed The Gaslight Anthem's Miles Davis & The Cool as our titular male is bringing along the cool? Does aforementioned girl's name song Ashley count as a boy's name song as well by virtue of the unisex name even if the song is about a girl? All difficult decisions to make. I was even tempted to try and sneak in Coldplay's Death And All His Friends, as the 'his' in the title and lyrics clearly indicates Death is male, but thought that might be stretching it a little too far.

However, one thing that is clear to me is that - surprisingly - the list named after males, men or boys has by far the best tracks. While songs such as Coldplay's Charlie Brown, The Who's Happy Jack, Green Day's Jesus of Suburbia, The Clash's Jimmy Jazz and Feeder's Buck Rogers make it a clear winner, the inclusion of The Who's Baba O'Riley makes it a runaway victor, leaving the girl's name list far behind in the distance.

Points in the Bag

A busy week has meant I've not blogged - we've been out one night, I've been out one night on my own, we've watched all ten episodes of Game of Thrones series three - and having done that there hasn't been much time for anything else at all!

Today at work one half of my birthday present for Chrissi belatedly arrived in the post, and I seem to have banked some kudos points for a good while with this one judging from her reaction when I presented her with it this evening. It was a replica of the iconic Tom Baker-era Doctor Who's scarf. She's spent most of the evening either wearing it or cuddling it (and it's not as if it's that cold to warrant it) - at some point I may persuade her to pose for a picture.

It's good and I'm pleased with my sudden decision to get that on a whim. I get the impression I did well with this choice.

Different Medium, Same Story

So having caught up over the weekend with Season 2 of Game of Thrones - thanks to a boxset kindly lent by a colleague - I was almost at a loss for what to do without my new timesink. However, I decided I'd make a start at the books. Chrissi received them as a gift for Christmas but hasn't read them yet - she prefers to do one series at a time, and as her typical series is thousands of books long, it takes her a while to get through them.

As a result, these remain untouched so I politely asked if I could read - it somehow felt rude to read her books first, as if my eyes reading the words would sully them forever. I started with an early night around 10pm and read for a little while - or so I thought. When I put the book down having stopped it was 2:20am. This wasn't supposed to be happening this way round!

I'm planning to read a little before bed tonight - I may have to set an alarm to remind myself to stop reading and actually to go sleep!

More Milestones

Yesterday's blog was actually the 750th blog I've posted - I'm now three quarters of the way to the four-digit milestone. After a slow start to the year and random dips, I've suddenly picked up activity once more. I am actually enjoying writing again, which is always something I want to enjoy more than I actually get around to doing!

This evening I headed to the airport to pick up Iggy, our friend from Croatia (yet another that we know through our long-dead game originally - and know better through more recent games that we have played together). After deciding to fly into London (in part to visit us, in part to sightsee, in part to attend a meetup for his WoW guild that I am also in), he has opted for Stansted because flights were cheaper. Of course, this is almost precisely the opposite side of London to where we live, so extremely awkward to meet and collect.

Travelling across London is complicated and presents other difficulties in multiple transport connections via just about every method possible, with the likelihood of all going smoothly being slim. Meeting at the end of this would also be challenging. So after much deliberation and review, I hit upon an inspired plan - he would take the airport link coach from Stansted to Heathrow, and either myself or Chrissi (me as it turned out) would meet him there. It's near to us, easy to meet there at central points and lacks confusing instructions to follow.

And so it came to pass. Yet another triumph for me and my organisation.

Conclusion to Season One

At the weekend Chrissi and I managed to watch episodes 7 & 8 of Game of Thrones, series one. This was accomplished on the Saturday (and was perhaps the main achievement of Saturday too!). However, because it was a Bank Holiday on Monday we didn't manage to post the DVD back until yesterday, meaning that the next DVD won't come until Thursday - a whole extra day!

Admittedly, it doesn't matter hugely. The aforementioned busy week or two means that we won't actually have an evening to ourselves to see it until Tuesday next week - we could do this while people are staying with us but it seems a little rude! Either we don't go out to see friends, or we stay inside and force others to watch it with us - neither of which make too much sense!

I'm sure it'll be worth the wait. Then we'll have only two series to go before we're up to date again!

Activity Means Silence

An extremely busy week means that I've had a weekend of utter silence on the blogging front - this was the result of considerably activity overall, and I still have a fair amount that I want to get organised this evening - with the time approaching midnight this looks like an optimistic approach!

So far this evening Chrissi and I have spent time with our Swedish friends who are visiting for a few days, and also helped to plan the upcoming visit of a Croatian friend this coming weekend. This is nothing if not complicated - but we are getting a lot of interesting things done.

For example, the weekend saw us busy on the Saturday, collecting friends in the evening, out on the Sunday - this time differently, as it was the long-awaited Muse gig which Chrissi and I (along with Chris and Ollie) had tickets ready and poised since December - and then again out on the Monday, this time sightseeing with our friends once more.

Next weekend we also have musical distractions - this has all come into a very hectic couple of weeks - as Chrissi and I are seeing Green Day in what I understand is my Christmas present (although also a present to her, so a joint present to ourselves?). I will have the ambition to come back and post more on these later and will hideously fail to actually do so.

Summary: Swords & Sex

Late to the game, Chrissi and I are starting to watch Game of Thrones, and have gotten a little way into the first series which we have at the top of our list with LoveFilm. So far we're six episodes in and have tonight crossed off 5 and 6 - not bad going considering they are an hour each and only arrived this morning. This in itself should be an indication as to how well they're going down.

While I will try to avoid spoilers, as I'm sure not all of my readers have seen the films or read the books - speaking of going down ... yes, it's all about the sex. And if not all about the sex, then there is at least a large amount of gratutitous nudity. The chief scene for a revelation or great moment of character development seems to be in a brothel / in an amorous lady whose affections can be bought.

However, despite my typical slant, I'm not going to subject Game of Thrones to too much mockery. It's actually really good - well cast, well acted, well contrived and well written. There aren't wasted scenes or obvious tangents, the plot is gritty and complex and the violence ... well, that's the other main feature.

The violence is not lacking in subtlety and is both brutal and explicit. This is actually something I'm not complaining about hugely - note my criticism of Merlin's "hit with the flat of the sword, kick over, win fight" combat style back in the autumn. In fact, anything less would probably seem ineffective and fake, considering the brutal reality that resounds around most of the plot.

We're moving quite fast through the series and there's a lot still to come before we hit season two - I'm sure more updates will be forthcoming.

So, Columbus, What's The Point of This Exactly?

I hadn't planned to blog this evening, but watching Newsnight - background noise while I was finishing the washing up and emptying the washing machine - forced me to by virtue of Paxman enraging me at his absurdly curmudgeonly attitude towards Major Tim Peake, the British astronaut who will be taking a trip to the International Space Station in 2015 and was a guest on the show.

Paxman, channelling his best Meldrew impersonation, managed to ask the fantastic question on going to space "So what's the point of this?" which seemed perhaps a tad dismissive. Had he been around 521 years ago he'd have certainly stood on a Spanish dock, haranguing Colombus as to just what the point of this westward voyage was when there was a perfectly sensible route already existing to the east. I will take the time tomorrow to watch it on iPlayer to pull out some of the better quotes, but there was a not insubstantial amount of chutzpah when Paxman (annual salary for presenting Newsnight: £800,000) asked whether it was worth £16m on going into space. Yes, Jeremy, it is.

Sadly the astronaut was better trained in the wiles of PR and instead of calling him a moron to his face, which would have been beautiful to watch, took the question seriously and unsurprisingly pointed out that there was a fair bit of use to this whole 'space, science, exploration, learning things' malarkey that goes on up there.

I'd still prefer he'd responded with a witheringly contemptuous putdown. "Well, £16m isn't a huge amount of money when it comes to public spending, Jeremy. For example, you could cover your presenting salary for 20 years. Now, if you asked the average man in the street about the better value for money - yourself fronting Newsnight for 50 minutes three nights a week for 20 years, Jeremy, or putting a man into space - I think most people would think the man in space gives slightly better value for money."

Corrections and Plans

As we were away this weekend, more of which I will elaborate in due course, on our return this evening my first task was to correct the blog that I had posted on Friday. I had not been as successful as I had hoped and despite the motivation of having already written the blog, still didn't wake up in time to head swimming.

In addition to blogging this evening, I've also set up enough so that I am ready and primed to head swimming tomorrow morning. I have no hint of excuse. Well, there'll be the morning difficulties of leaving my bed but without that, I have no excuse!

But we'll see how that goes ...

If This Hasn't Been Written About, I Claim The Idea As Mine

This morning I didn't manage to leave home early to head for a swim despite the best of intentions. This would have marked the second time this week I would have gone swimming, as I went on Monday - while in theory this happens two-three times per week, it's happened barely once or twice a month. This week therefore gets marked as an unrivalled success just for one trip!

Part of my inspiration for my sudden burst of activity is derived from an event at work which I'm sure is taken straight from a book targetted at teenage girls. If not, it should be, and I claim copyright over any such work derived from this tale.

While I am well known for my fondness for the odd biscuit at work, or similar, I have never been especially concerned at this because I was not alone in making regular visits to the biscuit tin. In the same notion, while I've always held vaguely targetted goals of 'losing weight' or 'getting into somewhat better shape', I've never quite had the motivation to actually do anything about it. However, I recently thought that I may have been too self-concious, as a [female] colleague also had a hint of a stomach showing without any seeming concern, I considered I may be overthinking it.

So last week said colleague announces that she's three months pregnant. Suddenly I have a new issue that I'm comparing a reasonable body shape with someone who's own stomach size is being foetally assisted. As a result I've managed to push myself a little more firmly this week into actually doing something about it!

Hasty Rewrite

As anyone who caught yesterday's blog will have accurately predicted, after a busy day yesterday and a late finish I wasn't really prepared to get up early this morning - let alone to get up earlier and go for a swim, and so I was forced into a redraft of this evening's planned blog.

Instead of the swim I opted to remain in bed, cocooned in the warmth of the covers until I reluctantly emerged around 30 minutes when I should usually arise (and an entire 90 minutes after my theoretical swim-motivated bed departure). I had opted to go in a little later as soon as I realised quite how lethargic I was feeling this morning. That is one plus point - I can decide to go in a little later and noone at work will bat an eyelid, wag a finger, shake their head, cock an eyebrow or make any other cliched gesture indicating disapproval. Having worked an extra 4-5 hours the previous day you would expect so too!

As it happened I ended up in the middle of things and as opposed to finishing earlier as planned to snatch back some time of my own, I managed to still leave an hour later.

Tomorrow, however, I will leave early as I am only working for half a day. I have the afternoon off as Chrissi and I are headed up to Leeds, and we will leave a few hours earlier as a result (particularly as Chrissi is released from her work much earlier on a Friday).

Nicknames

Today became a frustrating day as it resulted in staying a long time at work. I didn't end up leaving until past nine, at this point having not yet eaten (although this part was soon resolved). I had ended up helping out with testing for a project for a key client, which was crucial to go live as the client had become increasingly fed up with lack of progress - and other such fun things.

This resulted in my need to help between 10-12, which quickly extended throughout the entire day as fixes were made, new versions were put up, new issues discovered, new fixes made, original issues discovered reappearing like a code-themed game of Whack-a-mole. We released a little after 7 and then hit several painful issues to the key thing we were trying to fix - which were eventually resolved.

The most entertaining fixture of the day was that I somehow obtained the nickname 'destroyifier' for my ability to quickly break code. I'm not sure how but I have an unerring knack of hitting onto issues and bugs without any seeming effort - if a new fix can past my seeming sixth sense then it's clearly pretty sound. Or so the logic goes!

I ended up returning home at a little after 11pm - enough time to write a blog, prep a blog for tomorrow and head to bed. As tomorrow's blog is predicated on me going for a swim I need to achieve this to avoid having to rewrite.

Windscreen Greeting

A couple of weeks ago, I left work at the end of the day and returned to my car, only to be greeted with a comical note left on the windscreen. I've intended to write about this since then and as I'm in the process of tidying, I feel pressurised into composing a blog post so that I can now add this to the recycling box.

For context, I typically park in a very well-to-do street around some very nice, big houses, the sort that would attract a few million were they to go on the market. The house I was parked nearest looks to have about 327 bedrooms, a large garden and drive / front parking area which typically features several expensive cars and you can just tell is owned by the sort of people who read the Daily Mail.

The message spake thus:

"YOU ARE BLOCKING OUR DRIVE, YOUR CAR HAS NOT MOVED FOR SEVERAL DAYS PLEASE MOVE IT FORWARD!"

It amused me because I was impressed that someone had gone to such patient and diligent effort to be so utterly incorrect.

To start with the core accusation, I wasn't blocking their drive. With what was in hindsight undeservedly considerate behaviour on my part I had even pulled forward as far as possible so they could enter and leave. This road I park in is designed like a U - with both ends of the U hooking back to the same main road - so if my careful parking was even remotely hindering their drive-entering or drive-leaving activity, they could spend 30 seconds coming in from the other end of the road.

More amusing was the suggestion that I hadn't moved for several days. This was surprising to me, as I distinctly remembered returning home the previous day which would have been more difficult to achieve if I had driven home while simultaneously leaving my car in place. I had by coincidence parked in the same space two consecutive days - so not only had they incorrectly thought I hadn't moved, but they confused 'two' for 'several', a careless mistake in any book.

Finally, the instruction to move my car forward (undoubtedly to help clear their access to their precious drive, something that was already available to any vehicle not as wide as an elephant - considering the expensive car collection they may well have had an elephant available and this was the core problem). As they slipped this note under my windscreen, my anonymous correspondant had clearly noted that I was a couple of inches at most from the car in front of me (see earlier note on pulling forward as far as possible to allow them continued use of their driveway when not elephant-mounted). Clearly at this point they decided to ignore that this mere fact undermined their entire argument and just plough straight ahead (insert political joke here) and left the note having clearly gone to such effort in penning it in the first place.

This incident amused me so much because it was clearly indicative of someone with far too little to do to fill their day, and far too little competence at doing even these basic things correctly. I thought of writing a response but it was far too much effort - and I didn't want to run the risk of getting lost going up their drive to deliver it. Instead I settled for the lazier approach of exposing their idiotic fussing from the comfort of my blog - mission now accomplished.

Who In Review

Having seen barely any episodes featuring the Cybermen, I wasn't quite able to assess this week's Doctor Who episode on a Cyberman-menaceometer (I think they were supposed to be 'scary' as opposed to 'cuddly' from some of the context I've read). I've only seen Tomb of the Cybermen, which is a stone-cold classic (menaceometer: brooding and terrifyingly calculating) and last season's Closing Time which was unremarkable and a backdrop to the Doctor working out various other things (menaceometer: defeated by the concept of love).

The story was good enough that I'll forgive the minor issues. The inclusion of two children, for a start - it's rare to have a script for children that doesn't cast them as either irritatingly twee or obnoxiously like, whatever, bored and tiresome. This script didn't quite push them that far either way but there were enough moments to warrant eye-rolling.

Their inclusion was, of course, the prompt to visit the planet. The best moment may be the first reveal of the 'dormant' cyberman. It's such a wonderful introduction as there can be no doubt that it won't remain dormant, leaving only the nervous waiting for when it will happen. I loved the cybermites - an inspired improvement on the cybermats, which even in the more recent episode looked somewhat cute while the mites did not. They generated the appropriate air of remorseless menace which is what the Cybermen should be.

Touching on remorseless menace, all the battle scenes echoed this. The stop-motion cyberman in the first combat encounter belied their seeming lumbering unstoppability and ramped it up a further notch. The repeated 'upgrading' was a nice counter to the classic Who trope, 'how can such an impressive warrior race fall for such an obvious trick so many times?' and at least forces imagination and the use of different obvious tricks.

One feature of the upcoming 50th anniversary spectacular is the lovely use of flashbacks, nods and homage to previous episodes and series. The 'regeneration' montage of all the Doctors was an excellent use of this - although I wonder if this is meant to provide the opposite bookend to that of the Doctor montage in Smith's first outing in The Eleventh Hour?

Returning to the story, I liked the scenes of the internal Doctor conflict (arguably made better by the fact that the children stood in mute attention the entire time). The conclusion may have been a little too neat and straightforward - but on the menaceometer, having the only real counter-tactic as 'blow up the planet' is pretty effective.

Next weekend is the series finale, and as we're away this may be a Sunday or Monday watch on iPlayer instead - rendering us in the annoying position of us having to avoid spoilers from Carisa as opposed to taunting her with spoilers (the episodes in America air later in the day, but on the same day).

Hopefully this is posted late enough that Carisa has at least had a chance to watch it by now. Spoilers ...

Musical Notes

As I listen to the radio much more nowadays - at home, at work and most frequently while in the car - I hear a lot more music and a much wider range of music than I used to, which means I pick up some interesting new bands or songs now and again. They're new to me at least, so I share them because that's how this thing works.

Frank Turner's Recovery is one of my favourite songs around at the moment, it's well written and nicely upbeat; a song that's likely a bit better known but I'll include as it just came on the radio as I was writing this and also warrants a mention is Pasenger's Let Her Go. There's a new song by Haim, who I previously mentioned on my last musical run-through, titled Falling which is a bit softer and a good grower, and I'm also enjoying Of Monsters and Men's Little Talks which you should definitely watch the video for as it's very bizarre. The final offering from songs I've recently enjoyed is Chocolate by The 1975s - this is also worth mentioning for the way they work the line "That's what she said" seamlessly into the lyrics. The lyrics also frequently feature the word 'petticoats'.

Speaking of good lyrics, I was recently listening to the fantastic modern classic that is One Week by the Barenaked Ladies, and was inspired enough to look up the lyrics as to what on earth they actually sing. They're fantastic, do have a search and a chuckle.

Small Things That Irritate I

A radio advert - which I will not give the company the satisfaction of free advertising by naming the perpetrators - has been annoying me for a few days and I've just realised why.

Said advert for an airline encouraging you to go on city breaks features a tourist guide listing off activities at a frenetic speed, as if the actor was being paid by the word and had only a minute to earn as much as she could in some low-budget gameshow finale where success was achieved by recounting sightseeing cliches. The thrust of the advert was that at least the flight to the place would be relaxing, even if while you were in anonymous holiday destination your feet would not touch the ground and your eyelids would never close.

All reasonable, except in the case that among the features listed in order were an aqueduct (large structure built for carrying water to population centres without an adequate natural source of fresh water) and a boat on a river (adequate natural source of fresh water). Suddenly the advert's paper-thin facade came crashing down. Do they know nothing? If they don't know that you would not have an aqueduct where you have a river, how can they be trusted on anything? Do their planes even fly? What's the meaning of this madness? Was noone checking? Do they even make checks before take-off? We put our lives in the hands of people who don't know that you will not have an aqueduct to supply water to a city with a river? Are we insane?!

I am wisely making this the first of a theme series as I suspect it's one where I will find ample material to post future blogs about.

Odd Schedule

After the bank holiday weekend, the Tuesday is always a little confusing and so hard to fit into the schedule. You suspect that it's not really a work day, or are still in the weekend mode even though it is by now well into the week.

This evening after a not-particularly busy or hectic day at work, I sat or lay on the couch and rested early on, idly reading some of the news on my phone. I think there needs to be a new portmanteau to indicate half sitting, half laying. Litting? Slaying? Perhaps not. Lounging is the closest to fitting the bill but implies some vague insouciance of cool, as if when using this word your hair should also be tousled - everything about you being a deliberately unkempt version of chaos theory to demonstrate your edginess and comforming nonconformity.

Besides this, I fell asleep for a while. Insouciant loungers do not fall asleep. This pattern repeated itself throughout the evening as I dozed, woke up and thought 'was I sleeping?' before resuming my slumbering position. I then awoke at somewhere close to 11:30 realising that I was if not fully awake, then not quite as sleepy as I had been.

This does not bode well for the sleep to come tonight, of course. I anticipate a long game of watching the ceiling in a staring contest that I can never win. It's warmer too, which won't encourage me to doze off. Hopefully I can still get up early enough without feeling too tired!