This week was supposed to see a revival in warm weather - it was meant to be a bit brighter, a bit warmer and overall a bit nicer. As it has turned out, none of the above seems to apply; the last three days it's been misty, with very poor visibility. It's been damp throughout - never raining solidly, but constantly wetness in the air. Not unpleasant - it's actually rather refreshing - but a bit miserable all the same!
It was the same weather on Sunday too, when Chrissi and I went out to see QPR vs Everton in the afternoon. It was misting and slightly damp the entire game - which didn't add to the spectacle. It was honestly a rather dire game, without too much of note - the two goals were a deflected shot (for QPR) and a header from a free kick that rebounded off the base of the post, hit the keeper's back and mockingly rolled over the line. Nothing else of note really happened either - it was a fairly dull, tight and cagey game. Nice to get out and watch a game though, it must be a good ten years since I've done so.
I also didn't notice that yesterday was my 650th blog post - not insubstantial, considering it doesn't seem that long ago that I was merely writing my 600th. Since restarting I've not done too badly, as it turns out.
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
Phrases You Don't Expect To Use
Today I was off ill from work due to having a pain in my back - I pulled something around my left shoulder and it made the slightest movement really rather painful. This is not the sort of thing you expect to be saying at a mere 27 years old. I've also so far left out the punchline - that I managed to pull a muscle (as I now suspect) by doing the ironing.
This was so annoying last night that I didn't even blog on my planned subject - it was painful to move my left hand when typing, and typing with a single hand is so alien to me that it was too much effort; so I posted a pre-prepared blog instead. I hope you don't mind.
The net result was in my sleeping badly, getting up late, trying to get up and then realising that there was still a lot of pain if I tried to do something controversial like move my left arm. This ended up in me sensibly calling in sick, which was a good idea as there were far too many unexpected twinges and pains throughout the day - you simply don't realise how much you use those muscles until you hurt something, but even turning your head around gave sudden and unexpected pain.
After a day of rest it's better now, so I hope to be able to go back into work tomorrow without issue, but likely with much mockery coming my way.
This was so annoying last night that I didn't even blog on my planned subject - it was painful to move my left hand when typing, and typing with a single hand is so alien to me that it was too much effort; so I posted a pre-prepared blog instead. I hope you don't mind.
The net result was in my sleeping badly, getting up late, trying to get up and then realising that there was still a lot of pain if I tried to do something controversial like move my left arm. This ended up in me sensibly calling in sick, which was a good idea as there were far too many unexpected twinges and pains throughout the day - you simply don't realise how much you use those muscles until you hurt something, but even turning your head around gave sudden and unexpected pain.
After a day of rest it's better now, so I hope to be able to go back into work tomorrow without issue, but likely with much mockery coming my way.
Monday, October 22, 2012
Something Random You Don't Know About Me III
Another addition to my random comments under this theme - this time not inspired by anything in particular, but just something that I was thinking of.
Over the last two and a half years, in addition to writing a blog, I've also been very sporadically writing a story. Sporadic is the correct word - in that time I've added barely 6,000 words and it's something I look at every couple of months and pick up again. It's also the fact that because I look at it so rarely, I have to read most of it again to remember what my ideas were and what had happened.
Maybe posting that out here will give me the inspiration to work a little harder at it a little more frequently, and see if I can speed progress up a little.
Over the last two and a half years, in addition to writing a blog, I've also been very sporadically writing a story. Sporadic is the correct word - in that time I've added barely 6,000 words and it's something I look at every couple of months and pick up again. It's also the fact that because I look at it so rarely, I have to read most of it again to remember what my ideas were and what had happened.
Maybe posting that out here will give me the inspiration to work a little harder at it a little more frequently, and see if I can speed progress up a little.
Sunday, October 21, 2012
Sunday Politics: An Introduction
One thing I've wanted to talk about for a good while on my blog is politics - it's not always an interesting or engaging subject, but despite that it is an important subject that still affects most things going on. I've hinted at views a couple of times previously, and as Sunday is a relaxing day without much ever happening, it seems like a good day to write some thoughts down.
While my views and political leanings will likely be quite self-explanatory in the long term, I think it's still appropriate to lay them out from the beginning. Traditionally I'd have been described as left-wing, but that's increasingly an inaccurate categorisation. However, I saw an exercise recently which instead placed people on two axes - social and economic, with a liberal to conservative scale on both of these.
This is a much more interesting and accurate outcome - because while social liberalism means one thing, economic liberalism is very different. You will now typically see economic liberalism regarded as both economic orthodoxy, and where there is scope for disagreement, the more liberal wing of economic theory is a conservative position (keeping up?). This is why the traditional linear measurement works badly.
For my part, I end up as socially liberal but economically somewhere neutral - away from a state-controlled economy, but a long way from the 'private good public bad' viewpoint at the other end of the scale. My economic position is more interesting as politically the main parties cover a very narrow spectrum of the economic scale - positions outside of these are viewed as rarer and extreme, despite being held by most people.
There's a fair few subjects I want to explore on this in the future - but that's enough heavy lifting for one blog early on a Sunday, so I'll leave the first of these to next week.
While my views and political leanings will likely be quite self-explanatory in the long term, I think it's still appropriate to lay them out from the beginning. Traditionally I'd have been described as left-wing, but that's increasingly an inaccurate categorisation. However, I saw an exercise recently which instead placed people on two axes - social and economic, with a liberal to conservative scale on both of these.
This is a much more interesting and accurate outcome - because while social liberalism means one thing, economic liberalism is very different. You will now typically see economic liberalism regarded as both economic orthodoxy, and where there is scope for disagreement, the more liberal wing of economic theory is a conservative position (keeping up?). This is why the traditional linear measurement works badly.
For my part, I end up as socially liberal but economically somewhere neutral - away from a state-controlled economy, but a long way from the 'private good public bad' viewpoint at the other end of the scale. My economic position is more interesting as politically the main parties cover a very narrow spectrum of the economic scale - positions outside of these are viewed as rarer and extreme, despite being held by most people.
There's a fair few subjects I want to explore on this in the future - but that's enough heavy lifting for one blog early on a Sunday, so I'll leave the first of these to next week.
Saturday, October 20, 2012
Poker & Pizza
I am once more a day behind on my blogging, so it means that I actually have room to still fit in a blog when I run out of things to say about the current day.
Yesterday evening friends came over for poker and pizza, two fine forms of entertainment. It was a little while since we've seen everyone so it was good to be organised and collect people in one place. In fact, the benefit of planning ahead by a month or so meant that we managed to reserve a day at the first attempt, which is a new record.
So it was an entertaining evening and good to catch up with people - I won the first 'practice' round of poker, which was suspended when pizza arrived. After some great hands first round (QQ which turned into a full house, AK were the highlights) I then had absolutely nothing to shy at all game second round, which was co-won by Chrissi and Laura, when they abandoned rather than fight it out to the death. A distinct lack of commitment I feel. The hard luck story of the night was Paul, who hit two great hands and was beaten by a monster hand both times (His JJ555 ran into my aforementioned QQQ55, and he got taken out by pocket queens held by Laura second time round).
After Chris and Natalie had taken a sensibly early departure time, Paul and Laura stayed and the four of us watched a film randomly selected from LoveFILM. We picked Source Code, which looked like the sort of film that was easy watching. It was too easy to watch - it was terrible. The concept was initially interesting, but the plot was pretty shocking - one of those magic tricks were everything is worked out through lots of use of the word quantum. I wouldn't recommend it except as one of those films you rent and watch to point and laugh at a lot.
Yesterday evening friends came over for poker and pizza, two fine forms of entertainment. It was a little while since we've seen everyone so it was good to be organised and collect people in one place. In fact, the benefit of planning ahead by a month or so meant that we managed to reserve a day at the first attempt, which is a new record.
So it was an entertaining evening and good to catch up with people - I won the first 'practice' round of poker, which was suspended when pizza arrived. After some great hands first round (QQ which turned into a full house, AK were the highlights) I then had absolutely nothing to shy at all game second round, which was co-won by Chrissi and Laura, when they abandoned rather than fight it out to the death. A distinct lack of commitment I feel. The hard luck story of the night was Paul, who hit two great hands and was beaten by a monster hand both times (His JJ555 ran into my aforementioned QQQ55, and he got taken out by pocket queens held by Laura second time round).
After Chris and Natalie had taken a sensibly early departure time, Paul and Laura stayed and the four of us watched a film randomly selected from LoveFILM. We picked Source Code, which looked like the sort of film that was easy watching. It was too easy to watch - it was terrible. The concept was initially interesting, but the plot was pretty shocking - one of those magic tricks were everything is worked out through lots of use of the word quantum. I wouldn't recommend it except as one of those films you rent and watch to point and laugh at a lot.
Friday, October 19, 2012
Eighties Week
This week the radio at work has been set to Absolute 80s, which it may surprise you to know is a radio station which plays exclusively music from the 1980s. It's not fully true - the breakfast show is shared between all their sibling stations for every decade, and so contains typically more recent tunes as well as older ones.
It's surprisingly entertaining and I find myself enjoying it much more than I should do. There are some cracking tunes that come on now and again - Dire Straits' Money For Nothing and Simple Minds' Don't You Forget About Me are the two stand-out ones from today. It's definitely entertaining, though, and you can sing along to a guilty pleasure without feeling too bad about it because they're all the same!
It's surprisingly entertaining and I find myself enjoying it much more than I should do. There are some cracking tunes that come on now and again - Dire Straits' Money For Nothing and Simple Minds' Don't You Forget About Me are the two stand-out ones from today. It's definitely entertaining, though, and you can sing along to a guilty pleasure without feeling too bad about it because they're all the same!
Thursday, October 18, 2012
An Apple A Day Only Counts If You Can Pay
I had a feeling as I posted yesterday's blog that there was an additional event from the week that I had forgotten to mention - and earlier today I remembered exactly what it was.
On Tuesday I went for a brief walk at lunch and stopped to buy an apple from a newsagents / convenience store on the corner nearby. I got to the counter, purchase in hand, and then when reaching into my pocket discovered I had no change to pay for a 35p apple - a mere 9p. Then when looking into my wallet, the annoyance was that I had no notes either. I offered to pay on my card for the amusing amount of 35p only to be told there was a minimum purchase of £2 required. So I left the shop without an apple.
A later discussion made me realise that the ideal approach is to restore bartering into common usage. While I had no legal tender in my wallet, I had several things of arguably more value than the 35p apple. I had an IOU from the tramlink for 80p which was printed from a machine that lacked change and has remained in my wallet unclaimed a year and three quarters later. I had a 7/9ths full loyalty card from Cafe Nero, which therefore was worth at the very least 7/9th of an expensive coffee, or even a cheap coffee (for those of you unfamiliar, nine stamps and you get the tenth coffee free). If the cheapest coffee is around £1.80 my 77.7% full card was surely worth £1.40 at the very least.
But instead none of these offers were made, none were redeemed and they were one apple better off and several potentially beneficial deals worse off as a result.
On Tuesday I went for a brief walk at lunch and stopped to buy an apple from a newsagents / convenience store on the corner nearby. I got to the counter, purchase in hand, and then when reaching into my pocket discovered I had no change to pay for a 35p apple - a mere 9p. Then when looking into my wallet, the annoyance was that I had no notes either. I offered to pay on my card for the amusing amount of 35p only to be told there was a minimum purchase of £2 required. So I left the shop without an apple.
A later discussion made me realise that the ideal approach is to restore bartering into common usage. While I had no legal tender in my wallet, I had several things of arguably more value than the 35p apple. I had an IOU from the tramlink for 80p which was printed from a machine that lacked change and has remained in my wallet unclaimed a year and three quarters later. I had a 7/9ths full loyalty card from Cafe Nero, which therefore was worth at the very least 7/9th of an expensive coffee, or even a cheap coffee (for those of you unfamiliar, nine stamps and you get the tenth coffee free). If the cheapest coffee is around £1.80 my 77.7% full card was surely worth £1.40 at the very least.
But instead none of these offers were made, none were redeemed and they were one apple better off and several potentially beneficial deals worse off as a result.
Wednesday, October 17, 2012
Notes From The Commute
I'm almost convinced I could make a passable short blog solely from my observations on the train and on my commute in the morning and back in the evening. A few to share with you this week:
The Word: Monday morning I was sat in the waiting room at Surbiton when the mobile phone of the person next to me rang. Their ringtone was amusingly The Trashmen's Surfin' Bird (You could also probably make a semi-decent blogging effort if you just noted down everyone's ringtone when it rang near you and added a bit of commentary). This was of course excellent, but more annoyingly this was then stuck in my head the entire way to work.
Pyjama Wednesday: This morning I suspected I had either noticed a new fashion trend or that a lot of the kids on the train going to college were wearing pyjamas. It was only a couple so I ignored it, but it did nag at me - and at lunchtime I saw several more walking around when I headed out to buy a couple of things, again wearing pyjama bottoms. This was quite surreal - the most absurd example being someone wearing a one-piece Hello Kitty pyjama outfit. Doesn't make much sense to me, so I hope it was a theme day. I really hope it was a theme day.
Head Down, Phone Out: The site of someone walking, head down and phone out being played with or being used for texting is fairly common nowadays. This evening I sighted someone who was not just walking with one phone in their hand in front of them, but had two phones out, one in each hand. I have no idea what they were doing.
More in commuting tales coming soon!
The Word: Monday morning I was sat in the waiting room at Surbiton when the mobile phone of the person next to me rang. Their ringtone was amusingly The Trashmen's Surfin' Bird (You could also probably make a semi-decent blogging effort if you just noted down everyone's ringtone when it rang near you and added a bit of commentary). This was of course excellent, but more annoyingly this was then stuck in my head the entire way to work.
Pyjama Wednesday: This morning I suspected I had either noticed a new fashion trend or that a lot of the kids on the train going to college were wearing pyjamas. It was only a couple so I ignored it, but it did nag at me - and at lunchtime I saw several more walking around when I headed out to buy a couple of things, again wearing pyjama bottoms. This was quite surreal - the most absurd example being someone wearing a one-piece Hello Kitty pyjama outfit. Doesn't make much sense to me, so I hope it was a theme day. I really hope it was a theme day.
Head Down, Phone Out: The site of someone walking, head down and phone out being played with or being used for texting is fairly common nowadays. This evening I sighted someone who was not just walking with one phone in their hand in front of them, but had two phones out, one in each hand. I have no idea what they were doing.
More in commuting tales coming soon!
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