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!