Month: April 2008

I have a Secret Weapon for the badminton tonight ! They’re shiny …

I have a new Crazy Project lined up. It’s aimed at fixing my Sky dish, which I think has been pushed back against the wall by the wind we’ve had. It’s now about 20-30 degrees out of alignment. The aim of the new Crazy Project is to get the Sky dish pointing back in the right direction. I have 3 options there :

This will involve me on a ladder outside moving the dish and a mate telling me when the signal strength and quality are nice and high again.

There’s a Skydish across the road that I could peek at to see what compass direction it’s pointing in. One problem – I don’t have a compass handy.

This would take a few steps to set up :
1 – Webcam connected to laptop again. Not used my webcam for ages.
2 – Laptop has streaming video software installed to get the webcam piccys on to the network.
3 – Ipaq (currently my satnav machine) gets connected to the wi-fi.
4 – Ipaq gets pointed to the video from the laptop.
5 – Telly and Skybox are set to the signal strength/quality page, webcam points at telly.
6 – I go up ladder with Ipaq and wiggle the dish until the meters are high again.

The telly is out of line of sight for where I’d be standing on the ladder, which is why I’d need a remote view of it …

I’m discounting Option 1 cos it’s just plain boring. Plus CK’s away for a week so I’d have to pressgang a different person. Option 2 goes because it involves lurking suspiciously around someone else’s Skydish and the dish next door to the one I have in mind is broken.

It has to be Option 3 really. That involves poking new pieces of software, crazy positioning of a webcam, abuse of 4 different pieces of electronics and precarious perching on a ladder. It’s nuts enough that it just has to be done.

Pictures will follow if it works but not today – going out soon.

PS Pain free today for the first time since last Wednesday 🙂 Although my knees are still persuading me that it’ll be a good idea for me to acquire new knee supports tomorrow.
PS2 Having the webcam wired in like that would let me view it over the internet if I chose to make that happen …

I lament the relative lack of sophisticatin in the North American auto market. Years of cheap gas have resulted in a population content to drive big boats with automatic transmissions.

I love how high fuel costs have forced the European market toward small, cuting edge designs. Sure hope some of that takes hold here soon.

Keep us posted on your hunt. How neat!

Hi from Michele’s!

There were a couple of C4’s in the local garage that looked interesting … Probably on the limit of what I’d be interested in because I don’t need the space of a Mondeo size thing …

Spotted a couple of Clio’s too 🙂

Hi, I’m over from Michele’s. Happy birthday to your Mum and Gran, hope you’re having a great weekend.

I’m scanning for new cars aswell…I think I’m decided on a Citreon C3 although I keep seeing other cars that raise my eyebrows a bit!!

I’m up at my parents place this weekend, it’s birthday weekend. My nan turned 90 yesterday and is still able to cause more chaos than a teenager 🙂 My mum gains another year next week.

Birthday munchies tonight, which will hopefully be good. We tend to hit two pubs pretty regularly when I’m here, one is in the local town, one is on the outskirts of Lincoln. The Sleaford pub is a drinking pub, not really one you’d want to eat in. The one in Lincoln suffers heavily from a lack of consistency, most of the time the food is good but there’s usually one dinner sighted that’s heading back into the kitchen due to complaints.

I usually mop up the little electronic jobs when I come back, which I don’t mind doing. The burglar alarm has had a seeing to this morning, as it has been chirping away trying to tell us something. It can’t get the message through properly though as its designers didn’t bless it with too much intelligence … Problem sorted though.

I’m still a little sore from the badminton on Wednesday, which is something earned by me being idle physically for a couple of years … Not recommended ! May have to take up jogging around the block to keep my legs moving. It’s all honest soreness, the only bit I was wary of was my knee which was really upset with me. However, since Friday I’ve been able to walk without thinking too much of keeping the knee straight so no new permanent damage there.

Ben greeted me last night by dragging his new toy in, he’s now curled up in his bed having a little snooze. He tortures himself a bit does our Ben, I had some toast not so long ago but didn’t let him have any.

We hunted cars on the way back from the lunchtime pub, I have a few more ideas of what to look for now. The next one will be :
Something Focus sized or smaller (not likely to be a Focus)
Decent engine – I like having a performance option
Cushiness toys
Not an MPV – I don’t need something that big

Looking forward to the munchies tonight and to more badminton next week.

Definitely worth getting the rust off 🙂 I struggle if I don’t get some running around. Kinda like a reminder that I can be bouncy person as well.

Doesn’t stop me complaining for a bit about soreness 🙂 But that show-offy bit will start getting me back towards bouncy instead of depressive … Still a little sore now, that should go away before tomorrow.

when you left the comment saying you were too sore to think straight I came right over, I was worried about ya.

and there you were playing games and showing off for girls 😉

way to go! I assume it’s worth getting the rust off?

my biggest sore spot at the moment is my head

I started to break my lazy ways tonight, by appearing at the open badminton session that’s available at work on Wednesdays. It’s a 2 hour session and we have 4 courts available. We’re hoping to have coaching again later in the year too. 2 hours is a bit more than I can handle at the moment, as I was quickly feeling the effects of having not done very much over the last couple of years.

Talk about slow ! I quickly felt like I had concrete injected into my legs and could barely jump cos of the ballast around my middle !

Verrry, very rusty. But 🙂 Having a pretty girl there meant there was someone to show off to, which always keeps me going when otherwise I’d look for a break. Going for a sidestep left caused my left knee to go “crunch”, despite the knee supports I use nowadays. (They’re more padding than support 😉 Saying “I better stop” after that crunch would have made turning up a bit pointless, so I kept on going. Besides, there was pretty girl on the other side of the net who would have had a disappointed expression on her face if I’d quit then. Can’t have one of those appearing 🙂

Showing off can be a motivator as well as a vanity thing 🙂

The rust showed in the results, my side lost pretty much every game. I’m not too disappointed though, my muscles are complaining heavily now but have survived the night. I’ve not aggravated the shoulder injury and was feeling relatively free for playing the overhead shots (at medium to low power). It’s a missed overhead shot that caused my shoulder problem in the first place.

The muscle memory was coming back near the end of the night, although the memory is expecting a me that’s a couple of stone lighter with legs that are in far better shape. I still have the same size of leg but I get the feeling that half of what’s there is deadweight instead of useful. That’ll improve as I play more. The old saying is “can only improve from here !”

On to other stuff – I’m feeling human again and getting able to move my legs properly 🙂 Lactic acid build up doesn’t do much for the mobility …

I have the opening to my first story for the fiction blog outlined. It should be a fun setting, I’ll have a bubbly girl as the central character, along with a big brute of a half orc who isn’t as stupid as he looks. Let’s just say the opening will have a god leching over bubblygirl who’s in a haystack with someone … Putting that “g” word in there (and the half orc) kinda gives it away that it’ll be a D&D inspired fantasy setting. You can get away with almost as much in those as you can in sci-fi. I prefer sci-fi but it takes longer to explain things in those and I’m not ready for that just yet.

Stories coming soon 🙂 I have an outline for the first few chapters, including that haystack scene. Let’s see where it goes from there … She’ll be avoiding haystacks by the way, a religious experience will settle her down a bit.

Seems like the times when we’re most hectic are the times when we don’t think we’re actually achieving very much … Weird.

Sometimes you can account for the lack of achievement, like Sunday when I spent most of the day buried in Master of Orion 2 🙂 I’m completely unrepentent about that, it’s an addiction that I feed every once in a while when I feel the need to trounce the AI. It’s a decent game is Moo2 (short name), it’s one of those rare sequels that is better than it’s original in some way but different enough to make a sequel worth it. Often a game sequel is just the original game tweaked a little – replaced graphics, a new ability or two or beefed up AI. But they’ll often follow the same formula as the original.

Moo2 is a kind of hybrid between a space game and a Civilisation derivative. Whereas Civ games usually give your units freedom of movement depending on whether they are land, sea or air, Moo2 allows them only to go between solar systems. Where Civ allows you to build cities anywhere, the Moo2 cities are built on planets. It works well, plus you get the ability to direct what they’re building. That’s the big problem with the last game in the series, Moo3 decouples the player from what the colonies are doing.

Anyway – I spent most of Sunday beating up the AI and finished my spell in that particular addiction at about 3.30am on Monday morning. It’s a 1994 game that’s still on my machine and it’s simple enough to play that I’m thoroughly addicted to it. I’ll fall under its spell every once in a while but I promise myself that after I’ve beaten it on Impossible (hardest level) on my easy and hard race, then I’ll ignore it for a while. We’ll see how long that lasts 🙂

Yesterday was spent frantically getting the finance reporting done, or rather doing the finance reporting and then trying to get people to realise what the numbers mean. If they don’t know where the numbers come from, they don’t trust the results, same for if they don’t understand what graphs may be telling them.

Monday night was with the D&D group getting into trouble with monsters and local barons. I managed to scare a ghost away which was good … But bad at the same time because it took a decent magical sword away from us. Ah well 🙂 It’s Ghost Rider now, before lots of clashing TV (recording) tonight.

Tomorrow could be interesting … There’s a badminton club at work that I’m fully intending to make a debut at in the evening. I’ve not played for a few years now and I’m drastically out of condition. Badminton’s also how I bust my shoulder, so I limit the number of overhead shots I go for. Should be fun 🙂 I get the feeling I’ll quickly turn into showing off, depending on who’s there and how long my energy lasts 🙂