While I was successful this morning with my main goal (to to the gym) and miserably unsuccessful with the others (go to the bank, get haircut), the fact that I was up early enough to go to the gym and still have time to do the rest of my tasks should I have the motivation to do so.
Being the thoughtful husband I am, I got up and dressed very quietly so as not to disturb Chrissi, who was still asleep. An hour or so later I learned that, thanks primarily to my consideration, Chrissi had nearly wet herself by not knowing where I was and thinking I was in the toilet rather than at the gym. The crossing of the legs apparantly continued for half an hour until the sound of the door went as I came home - which was a hint that I hadn't been in the bathroom all along.
No harm done, though. Chalk up another victory for bladder control.
Saturday, September 06, 2014
Thursday, September 04, 2014
But You're Treating Me Like An Adult!
There are some conversations during which you can't help having this little internal monologue, baffled that you're being treated like an adult. You know full well you shouldn't have this sort of responsibility or decision-making power, you're surely not old enough or serious enough to be talking properly about this sort of thing like - well, like a normal person.
Chrissi and I had one of these earlier in the year when we were handling the housebuying paperwork with the solicitors, and another previously with the bank when discussing mortgages. Throughout each of those conversations there was this incredulous disbelief that they're taking us seriously, which is clearly madness - it's us, how can we be talking about buying a house? In what sort of crazy world would they let us buy a house as if we knew what we were doing?!
Today there was another one of these conversations, as we were at the doctors discussing what we'd need to think about and what our options were if we were to consider trying for a baby at some point. I hasten to add that at the moment we have no idea if this is something we want or not, and it was with this intent that we wanted to understand all the considerations - but they took us seriously. As if we were the sort of people who might seriously talk about starting a family, which is clearly madness. Yet at no point during the appointment did the doctor turn to us, point and laugh and accuse us of taking the piss.
The whole experience was very surreal. Do you ever get to a point in your life where you actually feel that you are at the appropriate age to be doing something? Does the terrified bemusement that you're actually being taken seriously when you're trying to act like an adult ever recede?
Chrissi and I had one of these earlier in the year when we were handling the housebuying paperwork with the solicitors, and another previously with the bank when discussing mortgages. Throughout each of those conversations there was this incredulous disbelief that they're taking us seriously, which is clearly madness - it's us, how can we be talking about buying a house? In what sort of crazy world would they let us buy a house as if we knew what we were doing?!
Today there was another one of these conversations, as we were at the doctors discussing what we'd need to think about and what our options were if we were to consider trying for a baby at some point. I hasten to add that at the moment we have no idea if this is something we want or not, and it was with this intent that we wanted to understand all the considerations - but they took us seriously. As if we were the sort of people who might seriously talk about starting a family, which is clearly madness. Yet at no point during the appointment did the doctor turn to us, point and laugh and accuse us of taking the piss.
The whole experience was very surreal. Do you ever get to a point in your life where you actually feel that you are at the appropriate age to be doing something? Does the terrified bemusement that you're actually being taken seriously when you're trying to act like an adult ever recede?
Tuesday, September 02, 2014
Template Adjustments
One thing I've been doing with my free time at work recently has been learning a little more coding - there are several courses on CodeAcademy and while I've dabbled a little with Ruby and SQL, last week I was doing a combined course on HTML and CSS, the first of which I mostly understood but was useful to really get clear, and the latter of the two has always proved a mystery to me.
The result was that yesterday, when I looked at my blog and knew that there were a couple of features I'd never really liked but never quite worked out how to change, I realised I now probably was able to adjust it. This was somewhat true - I knew roughly what I was doing, but the difficulty of navigating a very concise template which wasn't filled with handy comments or pointers as to exactly what did what was slightly trickier to handle.
The eventual solution was a combination of handling the template code in one window while using firebug as my investigative aide to help pin down exactly which classes were causing the problems. The actual solution involved commenting out a couple of lines and changing some of the padding - but the net result should be a marginally cleaner layout, which has been long overdue.
The result was that yesterday, when I looked at my blog and knew that there were a couple of features I'd never really liked but never quite worked out how to change, I realised I now probably was able to adjust it. This was somewhat true - I knew roughly what I was doing, but the difficulty of navigating a very concise template which wasn't filled with handy comments or pointers as to exactly what did what was slightly trickier to handle.
The eventual solution was a combination of handling the template code in one window while using firebug as my investigative aide to help pin down exactly which classes were causing the problems. The actual solution involved commenting out a couple of lines and changing some of the padding - but the net result should be a marginally cleaner layout, which has been long overdue.
Monday, September 01, 2014
How Does This Work Again?
While I'm on a blogging surge*, I still can't quite remember how this blogging thing actually works. I was in a productive mood last weekend and so wrote a couple of posts, which as with the tried and trusted approach I set to appear throughout the week to create the illusion of activity.
Apart from one slight flaw in my plan - I forgot to actually publish them as scheduled posts. I simply prepared them, saved them as drafts and then abandoned them. It was only when logging in to write something today that I realised they had been entirely abandoned. So I published them, and we return to activity.
Apart from one slight flaw in my plan - I forgot to actually publish them as scheduled posts. I simply prepared them, saved them as drafts and then abandoned them. It was only when logging in to write something today that I realised they had been entirely abandoned. So I published them, and we return to activity.
* Yes, the now four posts within a little over a week does count as a surge.
Wednesday, August 27, 2014
Pleasing Symmetry, or, Coincidence
A couple of weeks back I got a new CD from Chrissi, Teenage Dirtbags 2 (which I feel is the sort of title which should have a tagline, perhaps along the lines of More Teenage, More Dirt, More Bags) - the imaginatively titled successor to the Teenage Dirtbags compilation from last year. This made it into my car this week and eventually the CD actually made it into the CD player. The result of which is that I've been humming several songs that have gotten slightly into my head throughout the day.
This evening at work we were watching a couple of films - apparantly my cinematic knowledge is fairly sparse and there are many films I have simply not seen. This week it was the turn of Back to the Future, followed by Back to the Future II (but not III as it was getting late). Having watched these, I got back to my car and was amused that on starting the car the aforementioned CD picked up where I had left it on track 4, which is Bowling For Soup's 1985. There's a pleasing symmetry about this.
This evening at work we were watching a couple of films - apparantly my cinematic knowledge is fairly sparse and there are many films I have simply not seen. This week it was the turn of Back to the Future, followed by Back to the Future II (but not III as it was getting late). Having watched these, I got back to my car and was amused that on starting the car the aforementioned CD picked up where I had left it on track 4, which is Bowling For Soup's 1985. There's a pleasing symmetry about this.
Tuesday, August 26, 2014
Musical Interlude
As this weekend was the August bank holiday - marking the Reading and Leeds festivals - I've been enjoying the various sets available on the BBC iPlayer as a magnificently lazy way of sampling live music without needing to actually summon the motivation to leave your house.
There were lots of great sets - Blink 182 were typically energetic, although it's worrying to think that some of their songs featured (a couple from Cheshire Cat, for example) were released nearly 20 years ago - meaning that probably many of those watching weren't even alive at the time. A worrying thought for a band you've grown up with! The 1975 looked particularly energetic, although didn't seem to play as long as some others, while another favourite of mine was the excellent set from Imagine Dragons. For both of these I'm looking forward to see what their second album is going to turn out like, having enjoyed their first offerings and heard some teasers in this.
There were lots of great sets - Blink 182 were typically energetic, although it's worrying to think that some of their songs featured (a couple from Cheshire Cat, for example) were released nearly 20 years ago - meaning that probably many of those watching weren't even alive at the time. A worrying thought for a band you've grown up with! The 1975 looked particularly energetic, although didn't seem to play as long as some others, while another favourite of mine was the excellent set from Imagine Dragons. For both of these I'm looking forward to see what their second album is going to turn out like, having enjoyed their first offerings and heard some teasers in this.
Monday, August 25, 2014
Six Months of Slacking
It may have escaped people's notice, but I've not been around here much recently. Clearly three posts this year has been a lethargic effort even by my own highly lackadaisical standards.
So what's happened this year? Well, I can cover it off quite quickly. We bought a house, we moved into the house, we've done the standard 'new house' stuff such as organising furniture, constructing IKEA puzzles, putting off decorating and taking advantage of the eternal DFS sale. On a work note I've been made redundant twice - admittedly the first time I was sent a lifeboat from a neighbouring sinking ship, but it's still twice - and have since found another job with longer term prospects of staying above the waterline.
There's been time for some travel and social activities too - we've spent a weekend in Frankfurt, an enjoyable week in Sweden split between Stockholm and our friends in northern Sweden, and to round things off we have a trip planned to Athens in September. Closer to home, we did the annual visit to Wimbledon (sunburn report: not excessive), hosted a July 4th barbeque (albeit not on July 4th), and watched the Farnborough Air Show from the comfort of our own garden.
So all these goings-on, and not a thing written about them. Clearly I have some catching up to do!
So what's happened this year? Well, I can cover it off quite quickly. We bought a house, we moved into the house, we've done the standard 'new house' stuff such as organising furniture, constructing IKEA puzzles, putting off decorating and taking advantage of the eternal DFS sale. On a work note I've been made redundant twice - admittedly the first time I was sent a lifeboat from a neighbouring sinking ship, but it's still twice - and have since found another job with longer term prospects of staying above the waterline.
There's been time for some travel and social activities too - we've spent a weekend in Frankfurt, an enjoyable week in Sweden split between Stockholm and our friends in northern Sweden, and to round things off we have a trip planned to Athens in September. Closer to home, we did the annual visit to Wimbledon (sunburn report: not excessive), hosted a July 4th barbeque (albeit not on July 4th), and watched the Farnborough Air Show from the comfort of our own garden.
So all these goings-on, and not a thing written about them. Clearly I have some catching up to do!
Thursday, February 27, 2014
Relative Timing
As you know I like to ponder on some of the messages and what they actually mean - particularly in mediums such as advertising and how facts can be twisted and presented with such stark differences. A conversation on the radio prompted me to think of this again. For example, which of these sounds more likely to happen: (1) something happens to an American on average once every ten years, or (2) every second the same thing happens to an American.
The answer is - perhaps surprisingly - exactly the same. With a current USA population of 313.9 million, and a total of 31.5 million seconds in a year something that (cue Daily Mail style capital letter alarmist headlines) AFFECTS ONE AMERICAN EVERY SECOND ... is the exact same as something that only happens to an American on average once every ten years. Something that happens (cue headlines again) AFFECTS ONE AMERICAN EVERY TEN SECONDS? Happens once in one hundred years.
Basically, we're not very good at handling large numbers. And we can't compare between big and small numbers - so tend to think something happening over a small period MUST be big over a large period.
The answer is - perhaps surprisingly - exactly the same. With a current USA population of 313.9 million, and a total of 31.5 million seconds in a year something that (cue Daily Mail style capital letter alarmist headlines) AFFECTS ONE AMERICAN EVERY SECOND ... is the exact same as something that only happens to an American on average once every ten years. Something that happens (cue headlines again) AFFECTS ONE AMERICAN EVERY TEN SECONDS? Happens once in one hundred years.
Basically, we're not very good at handling large numbers. And we can't compare between big and small numbers - so tend to think something happening over a small period MUST be big over a large period.
Monday, February 24, 2014
Self-Tribute
I'm not usually a huge fan of excessively self-referential songs or videos - they usually fall on that fine line between smugness and egotism which isn't exactly appealing. However, I've been enjoying The Killers' latest video for one of their new songs, Just Another Girl, from whatever it is their greatest hits album is called.
As opposed to coming across as brash, it felt more of a reminisence, re-covering their previous videos from the past decade. Even as someone who is fairly agnostic on The Killers - they make decent tunes but can be a bit annoying at the same time - I could pick out several song references, such as the red costume from Spaceman, the wedding scene from When You Were Young, the dancing Japanese man in red from Read My Mind, the bird prop from Human and the slightly more obvious direct video insert of Bones as well as the opening montage of clips from All These Things That I Have Done, Human, When You Were Young, Runaways and Mr Brightside. There are probably more in there that I don't recognise by simply not knowing their songs or videos that well, but it's well put together. In other words, it seemed like a nod to their past songs on a sign-off note, which is actually rather well done.
For completeness I should probably link to the video itself - it can be found here.
As opposed to coming across as brash, it felt more of a reminisence, re-covering their previous videos from the past decade. Even as someone who is fairly agnostic on The Killers - they make decent tunes but can be a bit annoying at the same time - I could pick out several song references, such as the red costume from Spaceman, the wedding scene from When You Were Young, the dancing Japanese man in red from Read My Mind, the bird prop from Human and the slightly more obvious direct video insert of Bones as well as the opening montage of clips from All These Things That I Have Done, Human, When You Were Young, Runaways and Mr Brightside. There are probably more in there that I don't recognise by simply not knowing their songs or videos that well, but it's well put together. In other words, it seemed like a nod to their past songs on a sign-off note, which is actually rather well done.
For completeness I should probably link to the video itself - it can be found here.
Sunday, January 26, 2014
Octuple Century
I was going to cover many things today - the film we saw yesterday, the restaurants that were selfishly fully booked and with ridiculous waiting times, the imminent house move - but today is a milestone blog, and milestone blogs dictate a full post reserved for them exclusively. It's just how it's done.
So this post, marking my 800th blog post, is on its own a tribute to my own blogging. And how I've done so 800 times over the last 8-and-a-bit years.
So this post, marking my 800th blog post, is on its own a tribute to my own blogging. And how I've done so 800 times over the last 8-and-a-bit years.
Saturday, January 25, 2014
Everything's Changing
One of the things that's hard to measure is whether your tolerance is increasing, or whether what you're trying to tolerate is actually becoming more tolerant.
This sounds like a deep and meaningful point but I say this, of course, thinking about music. I was listening to the radio on the way into work yesterday - as I usually do, but this came about yesterday hence the focus - and realised that the Keane song I was listening to was actually rather good, and that was the second time recently I'd thought that. I've always associated Keane with depressive dirge, a similar vein to classic Coldplay where nothing should be upbeat on pain of pain, and moaning melancholy was the favoured note.
Now this means one of two things; either (1) I've mellowed significantly, which is always a possibility, or (2) the more unlikely option that Keane have actually cheered up. I'm not sure which is scarier. I've linked the two songs beneath - have a listen, let me know if it's just me.
Keane - Higher Than The Sun
Keane - Won't Be Broken
Is it really just me?
This sounds like a deep and meaningful point but I say this, of course, thinking about music. I was listening to the radio on the way into work yesterday - as I usually do, but this came about yesterday hence the focus - and realised that the Keane song I was listening to was actually rather good, and that was the second time recently I'd thought that. I've always associated Keane with depressive dirge, a similar vein to classic Coldplay where nothing should be upbeat on pain of pain, and moaning melancholy was the favoured note.
Now this means one of two things; either (1) I've mellowed significantly, which is always a possibility, or (2) the more unlikely option that Keane have actually cheered up. I'm not sure which is scarier. I've linked the two songs beneath - have a listen, let me know if it's just me.
Keane - Higher Than The Sun
Keane - Won't Be Broken
Is it really just me?
Friday, January 24, 2014
Electrical Choices
This morning I had a ridiculous journey to work - my car was being particularly tempremental, but in new and unusual ways.
I was leaving slightly late, but while it started without issue - and went around the two right turns at the foot of the road without issue - when I went to turn right into the main road, I realised I'd utterly lost my power steering. This had happened once before, and I was hopeful that it would clear up. As I was in traffic queueing up to the roundabout, I was able to turn off the engine and turn it on again - that age-old solution - in the hope that this would do the trick.
It did! While I was greeted with an ominous beeping upon reengaging the ignition, when I got to the roundabout I was able to steer around it without incident. I was able to proceed happily on my way. Except as I came off the roundabout and glanced down at my speedometer, it was still registering 0. I was definitely not doing 0. Hoping this was a minor glitch, I continued - I had little choice but to do so at that point - and navigated the car carefully for the next 6-7 miles. It is surprising how much you need to look at your speedometer, and changing gear by ear was trickier than I'd realised. Judging speed by how fast other cars are going and what gear you're in equally so.
Unsurprisingly, when I came to a point where I could turn off I decided to stop for petrol. This allowed me the option to turn off the engine, leave it for five minutes to get out of its sulk (ten minutes when you include walking slowly around the shop), and hopefully it would be behaving better on my return.
It wasn't. Admittedly I could register speed again, but the steering had disappeared to compensate. Following the best example of parents everywhere, I pulled over to the side by the garage and sat down for a stern 'we're not going anywhere until you behave yourself' lecture. After a fifteen minute wait, I decided to give it a go again. The steering was sulky but almost could be persuaded to work; the speedometer was fully engaged. I made it to work without incident.
The evening home my drive was fine. Whatever funk it was in had cleared up. I have no idea quite what it was or for that matter wasn't doing, but I have booked a long-overdue service for Wednesday. This should hopefully soothe it back to full health.
I was leaving slightly late, but while it started without issue - and went around the two right turns at the foot of the road without issue - when I went to turn right into the main road, I realised I'd utterly lost my power steering. This had happened once before, and I was hopeful that it would clear up. As I was in traffic queueing up to the roundabout, I was able to turn off the engine and turn it on again - that age-old solution - in the hope that this would do the trick.
It did! While I was greeted with an ominous beeping upon reengaging the ignition, when I got to the roundabout I was able to steer around it without incident. I was able to proceed happily on my way. Except as I came off the roundabout and glanced down at my speedometer, it was still registering 0. I was definitely not doing 0. Hoping this was a minor glitch, I continued - I had little choice but to do so at that point - and navigated the car carefully for the next 6-7 miles. It is surprising how much you need to look at your speedometer, and changing gear by ear was trickier than I'd realised. Judging speed by how fast other cars are going and what gear you're in equally so.
Unsurprisingly, when I came to a point where I could turn off I decided to stop for petrol. This allowed me the option to turn off the engine, leave it for five minutes to get out of its sulk (ten minutes when you include walking slowly around the shop), and hopefully it would be behaving better on my return.
It wasn't. Admittedly I could register speed again, but the steering had disappeared to compensate. Following the best example of parents everywhere, I pulled over to the side by the garage and sat down for a stern 'we're not going anywhere until you behave yourself' lecture. After a fifteen minute wait, I decided to give it a go again. The steering was sulky but almost could be persuaded to work; the speedometer was fully engaged. I made it to work without incident.
The evening home my drive was fine. Whatever funk it was in had cleared up. I have no idea quite what it was or for that matter wasn't doing, but I have booked a long-overdue service for Wednesday. This should hopefully soothe it back to full health.
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