Month: April 2012

And even before they start, it feels like I’ve been beaten up again …

I’m going to defer Pink Hat Project (or change what I’d do for it). And I’m very disappointed about that as it means I can’t assure myself that I’d be able to throw myself into every game possible this year. Taking stock of the issues at the moment :

Leg – the infection that kept me out of cricket last year improved quite a bit. It’s not been icky since about December. I think the infection is completely gone now but the leg is not yet healed and still flares up when I wear the wrong thing.

If I did launch Pink Hat Project as a season long thing, I couldn’t guarantee that I wouldn’t have to pull out mid season due to the leg becoming infected again.

General frailty – I carry a bunch of old injuries that like to remind me and slow me down. At the moment, it’s the hip injury but I’m also getting flashes of pain from my upper body and lower back that I cannot relieve through stretching out. I have a finger that’s decided it wants to tell me it’s at broken+3weeks.

It sounds like general depression inspired whinging (I am in a depressive cycle right now) but I just don’t have the confidence that I won’t break down a few games into the season. Hence keeping in reserve the option to take a fortnight or so away from cricket if I need to. And I probably will need to at some point.

But … I will still wear the Pink Hat at every opportunity in honour of a fallen colleague who passed away not 3 weeks ago now. I just won’t do it as a massive thing that would put so much pressure on me I’d permanently break something through pushing myself to play when I’m already injured.

And thinking about it, I think a bounty will be in order if I do pass certain goals this season :
Score a 50 (never got one, should have done),
Get runouts or stumpings (wonderful if they happen, opportunities are rare)
Get 10 catches over the season (this is likely)
Or even less likely – get wickets (depends if I can/do bowl)

So instead of doing it on just turning up and being mediocre, having a bounty on doing something that’s worth a reward. I like that better. I’m only expecting I have 1, maybe 2 (3 at absolute max) seasons left in me before I can no longer command a place in a team on merit and I’ve already lost one of the reasons for being in a team due to the bowling. Batting I’d be able to do at age 50 but if I don’t have the speed in the field then that’s the point where I can’t justify being in a team.

Still – it seems like I’m writing off my chances and disappointing myself before even trying to see what I have available. I’ll see how it goes at the practice tonight.

At the end of the day it’s motivation. I need to appear strong for other people to give me the impulse to feel strong myself. Perhaps I need a cheerleader to tell me I can achieve stuff even when the depression makes me believe that I can’t ? (Please let it be a cheerleader with intelligence!)

Craziemob watched Hunger Games tonight.

Gotta say, this is a really well made film. They got their script and executed it pretty well. The main star, Jennifer Lawrence, playing Katniss will be massive. But then again, we could already see that from her being the highlight of X Men First Class.

Wait – you’re probably detecting a hint of very faint praise there …

Yes. The execution is done extremely well. The cast play their parts well. Sets and effects are top notch. Will I buy it on blu-ray ? Probably not. Although saying that, this is likely to be another Avatar where I avoided buying it until a second watching off Sky movies. Yet the hype has made this such a smash hit that we’re likely to see the next two books in the series turned into film.

Bit like Twilight. I watched Twilight. Honest. Yep, I’ll freely admit that I’ve watched Twilight once. And I’ve even bought Paramore albums ! But I stayed away from the sequels. I may well end up doing the same with Hunger Games (Today’s hyperactivity broke just before the start, which is probably why I’m underwhelmed).

Hunger Games – great execution, script was carried by the star. Concept somewhat tired and World Setting was nonsense.

Do I recommend you see it ? No. Watch Mirror Mirror instead cos that’s highly entertaining and is a film I will Definitely buy when it comes to bluray at an acceptable price. And I enjoyed John Carter more too.

Hyper ?

I must have needed the break and looking back at the “Anyone got the number of that truck ?” post just as I started my leave reminded me how burnt out I was. This morning though, getting back in to work was a Sleepypete spinning like a top. I got to my desk at 8.45 and by 9.30 I’d been thinking so quick I was amazed it was 9.30 and not 11.00 yet.

Hype – is Hunger Games. The hype has made people come out to see this one for sure. But having seen it, I’m not sure Hype will get people out to see the sequels. The concept has been done better before and in Future Earths that are less nonsensical.

Hectic – oh yes. Next few days will be nuts :

Working like a dervish as usual,
Shopping to do (need stuff for weekend)
First net session for cricket on Wednesday
Battleship will be watched on Thursday (I will leave my brain in the car where it’ll be safe)
And travelling to do

Hopeful ?

I’m very curious to see what I’ll have available in the net session on Wednesday. I’m feeling pretty good at the moment. I still feel the point pain in back and shoulder that reminds me to not go nuts with trying to bowl too quick. And I still have the faint limp due to the hip injury. But I’m hopeful that I’ll be able to turn the arm over a little on Wednesday, although I don’t particularly want to do any bowling in matches this summer. I prefer fielding these days.

What I do know however is that my legs are in great shape. The power is there in the muscles and the knees are supporting delivering it. The hip injury is slowing my walking but it’s not in muscle groups that affect power running. I’ll be looking for some serious speed in the summer on cricket fields where I’ll have the space to pin the ears back and go for it. And perhaps with carrying less ballast, I’ll have brakes too. That’ll be a pleasant change !

Back to the fray tomorrow.

PS Hell ? That’ll be what I’m in on Thursday when all my muscles go concrete after nets !

Last day of the break today – and I think I’m recharged and ready to dive back into work tomorrow. As always, I’ve listened to a ton of music over the break. Actually just over 1000 different tracks with today to go. What kind of stuff ?

I’ve quite enjoyed Taking Time Out (T’Pau). I’ve needed it as the mental exhaustion from how hard I’ll drive myself takes its toll after a while.

One of the albums I’ve listened to again is Duffy’s Rockferry which has the track “Warwick Avenue”. So beautiful, so sad. Love trying to sing along to this one (it’s outside my range) but I know I’ll have to be careful if I ever do get into another relationship as I suspect me singing along to songs like this made Ravenwolf very uncomfortable …

Another really sad one that’s come through is Roads by Portishead. This is one that’ll make me sit up and pay attention while joining in too.

I’d actually much rather sing along to the Incidentals (Alisha’s Attic), although my voice isn’t cooperating with that one at the moment. Or Forever Autumn from the War Of The Worlds show. Had the chance to go see this near Xmas but we declined due to : cost, logistics (Lincs+London+back) and the tickets went sooo fast.

Also listened to the first All About Eve album again. This is a real blast back to the past, with All About Eve being the first group I really got into. Favourite track is Apple Tree Man but videos are hard to come by, here’s a more recent one : Blue Sonic Boy.

I reckon that if I’d listened to the album this one comes from before doing my cabin fever breaking city centre wander, I’d have come home with a few Morcheeba albums. Fear And Love – had never really registered those lyrics, I’d just sung along and got lost in them.

I’ve not picked up her latest album yet (it’ll go cheap soon) but I’ve turned into a fan of Katie Melua and one of her best is Piece By Piece. Dunno when I’ll listen to that again though because the way I choose what albums I listen to don’t favour it because it’s so good. (That doesn’t make sense does it ?) Anyway, am I someone’s Shy Boy ?

And thinking of amazing voices, here’s one from Tori Amos’ album of covers : Strange Little Girls.

Just added another couple of greatest hits album to the library, one of them is The Bangles. They broke the mould when they broke onto the scene but sadly didn’t stick around for many albums. I reckon tomorrow will be a Manic Monday.

Also put on the Seal greatest hits acoustic album which has a track which says it all : Bring It On.

Could be a wrench though getting away from the Lazy Days (Robbie Williams) but that time off has had the desired effect : Feeling Good (Nina Simone). But not before more chill out, next album up in the queue is Fallen Empires by Snow Patrol which has this Symphony.

Spotted this one being popular in the hit counters …

Opinion on my CT – Lexus didn't botch it, the reviewers did. Most of the reviews available at time of writing were on prerelease cars before the CT got tuned from that feedback. After 6 months of ownership, the CT is an awesome car. Not as quick as you'd like but that's the only weak point of an incredibly strong package.

This is another in the theme of “you may be interested in” … 🙂 Sparked off by this Register article that’s talking about improving how your network at home works.

Networking is getting into everything these days as Data and Information become ever more prominent in our society. We’d be lost without our Google searches … Even some cars like the Nissan Leaf can have you able to interrogate it via apps on your phone. Mentioning cars, loving the Bluetooth integration on my CT. Getting urgent messages around is much easier with that, instead of fumbling with the handset to interpret or send a text, just call them with the speakerphone which lets me keep a hand on the wheel at all times.

The Reg article is a pretty decent one and well worth a look if you’ve been having trouble getting the machines on your network to talk to each other. While it is a bit techie, it doesn’t get sidetracked into the black art of getting Windows machines to talk nicely. Although it helps there if the software ({cough} Krapspersky {cough}) doesn’t get in the way.

I run a few devices here on my home network :
Acer laptop – this connects via wifi and is my main “looking at stuff” computer
Homebrew desktop – games + email in the morning
Littlewhitebox – this is an Apple Airport Express (I have an older model)
Panasonic bluray player – connects via wifi but to be honest it’s a bit pointless it being connected
Phone – although not really because I have the wifi disabled to save battery
Xbox360 – if it ever sees games again I have a Long Wire for it
Linksys router – connects it all together

The network sees quite heavy use, as unless I’m watching something on the telly I’ll be streaming music to my hifi. The laptop plays the music off iTunes, it’ll chuck it over the network via the Airplay protocol and the Littlewhitebox will decode that and send it to the amplifier. It works extremely well. The quality is very good, outside of the crackles you’ll get with certain music on mp3s.

When my amplifier breaks (I’m waiting for a dodgy HDMI board to break, although it hasn’t misbehaved lately) I’ll replace it with something that supports Airplay natively. I’m a firm supporter of the Airplay system and the Littlewhitebox. It’ll expand the mp3 up to about 1.1Mbits/s, which is getting close to cd quality while still using a little compression. It gives you a portable box that can go anywhere and plug into anything with an audio input. I’ve even had it feeding music through a telly. The hifi mags always seem to ignore it though when they review network streamers.
 And I’m getting sidetracked again.

The wifi’s been doing pretty well lately. It’s been able to cope with the 1Mbit/s streaming audio, 360p video coming from the internet and occasionally massive file transfer when I send stuff between laptop and desktop.

What’s it have to compete with ? I live out in the suburbs so there’s happily no flats with 1 router per place to compete with. I can see 8 other networks at the moment but I know one of my neighbours had or has a scanner that likes to try hacking other people’s networks. I have my router set to not broadcast its name, which stops that scanner from jamming my network.

No broadcast – trouble free for months
SSID broadcast – jammed within days

I think the intention of that jammer is to knock devices off the network so they have to reconnect. With WPA-PSK encryption, the connection phase is the only time when the key can be intercepted. (WEP is brute force hackable without that clue.) But … it’ll still take millennia to derive the passcode even if you intercept it. (tomshardware article)

My kit is a little old, so it takes longer to copy files than if I wasted cash on the latest and shiniest stuff. But when you really look at it, if you can stream audio at 1Mbit/s while copying massive files and watching video then 802.11g is perfectly adequate. But I am thinking of stepping into Powerline networking bits. If that amplifier breaks, I’ll replace it with something that has Airplay built in but it’ll need a wired connection. But that’s the only reason I’d have to add Powerline networking bits.

Recommendations ?

Read reviews, sort through what they say to point yourself towards the best kit
(Belkin are on my Do Not Buy list for their predilection to having a gadget for everything but none that work)
If what you have works, you don’t have a need to change
Make sure your wifi is encrypted (WPA-PSK if your bits support it)
Investigate router options for avoiding interference

I’m interested in Powerline network kit but I’ll not buy anything until I actually have a need for it. The Xbox360 is effectively my dvd player now and the bluray player and audio streamer have a wifi connection. The desktop sits next door to the router where it can use a wire to get the best performance online. There’s all my networking needs right there.

Thought I’d sum up the holiday so far in the style of game achievements … Achievements are a relatively recent innovation in gaming which aim to extend the life of the game by giving you interesting challenges to make you play the game a different way. 

Smile time – turn a friend’s mood around by being good company. Think I managed this with the quick run out to see Mirror Mirror, although I suspect the film had more to do with Smile Time than the company. 

Lazy Days – do as little as you can get away with. I had intended to get a couple of outstanding jobs done this holiday, which I’ve avoided. The key thing I needed to do though was Chill Out. The Xmas to Easter period tends to be tough as I’ll run myself into the ground. I’d done that again this year and badly needed the R+R to get me back into a position where I can apply brain without having to lean on hyperactivity all the time.

Yes, I feel a bit bad for not starting to clear out the back garden or getting the car serviced. 

Chill out – be more relaxed. Definitely feeling a lot more relaxed now than 9 days ago (last day at work). 

Cut the fat – be lighter, despite the Easter effect. I’m lighter now than I’ve been for years, possibly lighter than when I started working. (Can’t remember when I broke through 13stone). I’ve not seen the scales go below 13 stone yet (I’m not exactly burning the calories at the moment) but I’m stable at 13st0-13st2, which is a massive improvement. 

Decipher a Riddle – confirm a theory. I had a theory that my last pair of jeans were part of the cause of last year’s leg problem. The leg would improve over the week when I was wearing work stuff and then go way backwards on a Friday when I’d be in jeans again. I’d not worn them since maybe October but had to go back to them due to a zipper malfunction … (The tag you pull came off). And lo and behold the leg started flaring up again after half a day in those jeans. I get my jeans from a different place now. 

Avoid insanity – minimize exposure to daytime TV. I watch way too much TV. And that TV seems to be changing to being more interest in Fact TV than Fiction TV. I dunno, fiction TV like dramatisations seems to be running out of ideas or they’re falling into the “Survive Through Ratings Gained By Sensationalism” trap. Fact TV like Ice Road Truckers or the others from the Deadliest Catch production group are far more interesting. It’s unscripted and you really don’t know what’s going to happen unlike most Fiction TV which is telegraphed and obvious. 

Where was I – get sidetracked. There I go again ! Yep. Managed to avoid exposure to daytime TV, although there are still the infestations of lawyer ads, other ambulance chasing ads and insurance ads. It’s where the money is these days and makes you glad you have a fast forward button. 

Itchyitchyitchy – try the beard again. This is really training so my beard doesn’t grow too quick. Last time I shaved was almost a fortnight ago so men can imagine what kind of itchiness I’m feeling at the moment. Aaaand … I still have a slight bald patch under my chin from the incident that see my first broken bone. 

Toast and Butter – get at least some control back over the kitchen. First time I’ve had the toaster out for a couple of years. I have at least achieved a little bit of clearing up 🙂 I also have more control over my sofa from clearing up, if not my chairs. 

See the sun – avoid turning my clock around. I’d normally fall victim to a bad habit, where I end up staying up way too late and totally wrecking my day/night cycle. Managed to avoid that somehow, although it might be a symptom of me gaming less these days. 

Miss people – have your thoughts dominated by things like “Is … ok ?”. That’s a definite. I’m rubbish at doing things for Me but live for helping out others. And it’s difficult to help out other people if you’re not around them.

There’s still a couple of days to go until I launch myself back into the whirlwind of work but I think when they’re up, I’ll be raring to go again. If only to get a chance to grin at a very special little lady.

Last night I was hoping I’d be unveiling the “I’m lighter than I’ve been in years” Pocket Dragon (it’s a “Feed Me”) but alas, the needle of the scales is still above that certain point …

🙂 I’m still lighter than I’ve been in years but haven’t dipped below that 13 stone point yet …

Lies, damned lies and statistics …

I love stats. It’s a form of information given through numbers that should depend on hard fact boiled down into recorded info. It’s the core of what I do at work, in terms of output at least. (My actual function is wider than just stats, I apply my engineering knowledge to let me select the right info and to validate it). But stats can be cheated to reflect what the provider wants you to see.

There’s two ways I can get stats out of this blog :
The Sitemeter hit counter where readers can see the number but not the info
The Google stats screen which only a blog owner can see

They both read different info too. The sitemeter counter only works off the main template and doesn’t work on the mobile template. I could probably fix that but I’m happy with the default mobile template the way it is. It’s clean, quick to load and doesn’t soak up any more of precious mobile data than it should. It also misses other hits, I suspect due to No-Script additions to browsers. (No-Script mods are intended to prevent adverts loading as well as stopping nasties)

The Google one just flat out lies … lol. It doesn’t admit to the hits that it doesn’t think you should know about. Sitemeter is showing 5 hits this morning of which Google shows none. 2 of those are people hitting “Next Blog” (hi and welcome!), 3 are from the Googlebot. Google is showing 3, 2 of which are from that mobile template which Sitemeter can’t see.

The sitemeter one also provides more detailed info going back the last 100 hits, the Google one doesn’t give anything significant outside of browser, platform and which page got looked at.

The lesson ?

When you get presented with stats, don’t necessarily trust what they’re telling you. Ask questions about the source of the data and what the presenter is trying to tell you. If you see stats on the news, Don’t Trust Them ! Our news agencies believe they can run our lives and one of their weapons is twisted statistics.

(aside – if you get bored easily by stats, skip to the end now !)

And here I go presenting statistics … I can’t get ’em out of Sitemeter but Google gives some interesting info over the “lifetime” (actually May 2009 to now) it’s been grabbing info :

38% of my visitors are from the UK, which makes perfect sense as that’s where I live
29% come from the USA, home of blogging
And the next highest is Russia with 7% with the rest being fairly split

Browser choice shows a trend to do with how I work but also something encouraging for the general enlightenment of the internet :

40% over the lifetime use Internet Explorer (we’re forced to use this at work)
33% are more enlightened and are using Firefox
Next highest is Chrome with 11% and curious to see is 298 (2%) hits from Android and 304 from Mobile Safari. That just happens to be what my phone uses and I suspect at least 290 of those hits are mine – lol.

When you go more recent and just look at the last month, Firefox wins with 29%, IE is second with 22% and newcomers Safari and Chrome in there with 18% and 17%. Browsers are getting more diverse these days, which can never be a bad thing.

Same with the platforms used to browse the web :

78% over the lifetime use Windows, with 7% using Macs. And there I am with my 298ish Android hits too 🙂
Going more recent and you see that Windows share drop to 60% (all those desktops) and the iPhone share rise from 4% to 16% and my Android share going from 2% to 10%. Macs stay where they are at 6% and Linux is somewhat forgotten at 5%.

I think that shows the rise of the smartphone, with iPhones being a seriously cool (and popular) device.

Ok, that’s enough of boring number stats for now and where they come from. What’s the presenter trying to tell you ?

I love seeing the hits come in. It means people are for some reason coming back for even more of those Wall Of Texts (and I’ve gone above my length limit here …). It hopefully shows that people are interested in what I ramble on about. It shows they care.

And that last bit is pretty darn awesome 🙂

PS Ask questions, send comments, gis a subject to ramble on about 🙂

Ok, so I broke the cabin fever by having a wander around the centre of Bristol for a while today.

It really was too much of a good day to spend it cooped up inside again. At least it was too sunshiney out there … I must have timed it perfectly as another in a series of short but intense storms was just starting up as I was getting back (to find my parking spot had been borrowed yet again).

I don’t tend to buy much these days when I have a wander and there’s a few reasons for that :

I have what I want already. That sounds like I buy lots of stuff doesn’t it … But it’s more down to me hoovering up all the stuff I’m interested in quite quickly and being quite restrained on the other stuff. Like I already have pretty much everything Alisha’s Attic, The Cardigans and a few others like Snow Patrol have come out with. My dvd/bluray collection is wanting me to buy it more shelves.

I’m also reasonably disciplined on resisting “want” in favour of keeping it to “need”. Like resisting buying a new bat because while I “want” one, I don’t actually know what I “need” plus my last but one bat was still going strong. And while I “wanted” cookies, they stayed on the Millies counter.

Stuff I want isn’t available. I’m missing an Edie Brickell album but can’t get it because it’s simply not available over here. I couldn’t even buy it on mp3 from Amazon US. I have seen it in the shops but £15 is an offensive price to ask for a cd, import or no. Pink Hats and other pink gear falls into that as well. It’s simply not available, even online.

Prices are too high. I’m in a sound financial position (more money is always good but the only debts I have are house and car) but I flat refuse to pay more than I think something is worth.

So £15 (or more) for a bluray movie is not going to happen. Book prices are also excessive these days. Although the value or worth of something radically changes if I was buying an item I know someone else would enjoy too. Smiles are priceless.

Clothes and outfit shopping is something I really should be doing. However, I suspect I may have to recruit someone to drag me round clothes shops in order for me to actually buy new stuff. (There’d be coffee, lunch or dinner in it !)

But that doesn’t stop me having a leisurely wander around.

Good day for it today too. Bright sunshine, not too hot, air as clean and fresh as it gets in a city centre. And legs that are (mostly) happy for me to be doing that walking round.

(The mostly comes from the old hip injury that interferes slightly with my walking but it isn’t one of the muscle groups that’s needed for running so it shouldn’t interfere with the cricket)

I did manage to buy a couple of things too. I’ve needed a new sleeveless jumper for cricket for a while now. Picked one of those up. I could do with getting another sleevey jumper too for really cold nights. I don’t tend to wear jumpers while fielding because I’m hot stuff on a cricket field. (Enthusiasm more than skill but it does make me very warm and I overheat easily).

Also acquired new spikes. With legs like mine, you need spiked shoes to let you put all the power through to the ground. Because I play evening cricket, the dew starts to come through mid game making the ground greasy. With flat rubber shoes, your feet slip around like crazy which quickly leads to pulled muscles. Spikes give the grip needed to put in power sprints.

I left the bats where they were though. I need to have a practice session to remember what I need in a bat (after the disaster bat buy a couple of years ago). But that sleeveless top is a good sign.

“Medium” size = tent.
“Youth” size = just about right.

Youth being 32 to 34inch chest and Medium being 38 to 40. Yep. Still officially a youth according to chest size. Happy with that, especially as it seems I’ve gone down a size with the diet judging on how my shirt collars fit better these days :-). My whites are still a tight fit though but that’s because I have chunky legs.

I seem to remember there's a Simpsons song about that too 🙂

'It's an awesome feeling knowing that you've made someone smile.'

I love making people smile 🙂