Month: May 2012

Had game 3 of the season tonight, here’s the Twitter style match

“twitter style match report – dark sky, no rain, ages before batted, bashed quick 9, silly dismissal. Comedy fielding, got a run out, fell badly – shoulder’s gonna hate me. WE WON !”

That’s a quote from a Facebook update. Wonder if it would fit inside the Twitter character limit ? I don’t use Twitter. I suspect with my Wall Of Text tendency, I would get irritated with the character limit very quickly. Or it might make me structure my thoughts better.

Wasn’t sure if the game tonight would happen – the hot weather has broken, with cloudy and overcast dominating today. The conditions were much better today, although :

Work – better if it’s cooler (and therefore cloudy)
Cricket – better if the sun’s out (so you can see the ball)

The light can be a real problem for evening games, in the last few overs it can be very difficult to see the ball. Plus the sun gets very low before the light goes completely. It’s one reason I wear a hat or cap, with the main reason being that it keeps my hair under control.

Yeah – actually worked out as good conditions to play in. I didn’t notice any swing from their bowlers (the ball will go sideways through the air cos of “cricket strangeness”) but it was nice and cool. I batted at number 3, which is a position I don’t usually favour (trouble getting my mind switched on) but I think I did ok today. Bashed a 4 that could easily have been a 6 (gotta trust what the fielder says) and didn’t waste too much time out there. I’m having trouble making anything from quicker bowling though. Need Deep Thought on that as my approach to scoring off them isn’t working.

I helped our team along before trying to run a single to the keeper to get our better batsman back on strike. (I got run out). I think our team scored 154 off our allotted overs.

Fielding next 🙂

Captain understands now that my shoulder has pretty much had it. Not sure if the team understands and it frustrates me too. Now that I have SPEED, I want to use it. I have about 90% movement from my shoulder, it’s just the throwing and bowling action that’s a problem. That’s much better than when I got the original injury. For a few months after that, I could not pick up anything with my right arm because of ouchies when it felt like the arm was being pulled out of its socket.

That’s in the past though. Now it just hurts when I throw the ball too hard or if it just feels like bitching at me. Or … Anyway – sad thing is that while I now have SPEED, I can’t throw the ball when I catch up to it. I only have maybe 1 good throw left per game and that’ll hurt. So I field where I don’t need to power throw. It works out, it’s just frustrating.

Comedy fielding. I did better tonight but I’m still rushing the fielding somewhat. You can take too long to do something by trying to do it quicker. Run out attempt 1 saw me get the ball in the ends of my fingers, where I couldn’t get a good throw away. Run out attempt 2 was better :

Batsman dabs the ball down
Sleepy sprints in and pounces
Easy one handed gather, underarm throw to wicket keeper
Perfect placement to the side of the stumps,
Keeper takes the bales off
Run out !

Sweet.

Getting run outs for the team make my day as a cricketer. It’s not just that wicket, it saves more runs because it makes the other batsmen more tentative about taking you on. Oh and it also means that the Sleepy’s Pink Hat Bounty fund is now at £5, which I may double to £10 per run out because they are so rare. Just gotta find out which charity the BM Girls used for the cake sale and then I’ll send the Pink Hat Bounty to that after the end of the season.

Shoulder … Ooops.

Late on in the game, I went for one that was just outside my comfortable range. So I dived … And a dive that led with my right arm stretched out to grab the ball. I didn’t quite get there and the dive saw me fall awkwardly on my right side – the side with the bad shoulder. Yeah – that hurt a bit. But I kept going with the fielding. I’ve only left the field through injury twice in 23 years :

Once to put knee pads on after taking 3-4 blows to the knees in quick succession
(knees felt like they were exploding)
When my nose got bashed the first time

Great fielding plus better bowling saw us to a comfortable win by about 40 runs (I didn’t see the final score).

I’m on leave now so I’ll be taking it easy with that shoulder. I won’t know what shape it’s in until tomorrow morning because the adrenaline and natural endorphin painkillers mean that unless the damage goes above a threshold, I just won’t feel it.

I think I’ve recruited another future cricketer. One of the player’s wives came along, with a 3-4 year old in tow. He got very curious about my batting gear. I think his tiny fingers managed to get to the finger part of the gloves … just :-). My helmet almost fit him too (little big). My batting pads would have gone up to his shoulder.

ACK ! 2 minutes to midnight ! Hits “post”. MWAH !

PS Another bit of amusement – one of our teammates (not playing tonight) took his dog to the ground for its walk. Friendly pooch, very curious about us. Sniffed my fingers a few times but was a bit too hyperactive to stay still long enough for a good stroking. Poor Kam though – one look at Kam and it’s GROWL BARKBARKBARKBARK … We don’t know what he did ! Although it could be that he was the only one of us holding a bat.

It’s still hot over here.

It’s not Greece or tropical type heat, the car tells me it was 28 degrees C yesterday. But combined with the conditions in our offices, it’s uncomfortable. We don’t have air con, more like air recirculation. And it doesn’t work particularly well. If all it’s achieving is moving warm air from one place to another place, it doesn’t make for good conditions to work in.

Our contractor’s place is better. I take a jumper with me when I go over there. I get funny looks 🙂

But I get funny looks anyway. Latest today was a Cunning Plan I was especially proud of (it worked). We move our documents around in plastic packing crates and you really don’t want to be lugging those without something with wheels to push them around on. Anyway. Things With Wheels are in short supply. So I went scrounging. And found the most contrary computer desk on our site.

Seriously. It was more interested in going in circles than straight lines. But it did the job. Both of getting my crate upstairs without killing my back and in starting off the idea with the new team : “Pete’s Mad”.

I like to encourage that idea as much as possible. The mad spontaneous unorthodox side of me offsets the slow boring orthodox.

Hey – moving day wasn’t supposed to be the theme of this post.

Yeah – it’s gone warm out at the moment. Warm inside too, although it’s actually quite comfortable in the house at the moment. I’ve turned off the main PC so it’s not contributing its own heat to the house. There’s decent airflow through the house, the absence of which is why work is uncomfortable.

This is a plea really – look after yourselves ! And that’s coming partly from watching the latest Dodger Coffeh Time vid.

Plenty of fluids. Eat properly. Keep aware of when you need to take it easy. Sunstroke is nasty …

I have a game tomorrow and need to take care through the day to avoid how bad I got during/after the first game. I never mentioned that did I ? While we were fielding, I was suffering from a lot of acid tummy. I put that down to first game nerves at the time but it was quite possibly : hunger. Anyway. Not pleasant controlling that when you’re trying to run full pelt around the field.

After the game – I was having trouble getting my muscles moving. I nearly blacked out a few times before bed (the fading vision like what Dodger had). But. I may be frail but I’m tough when I need to be. I wouldn’t let a team down. I shut down into a kind of survival mode where I will just … keep … going. I will pay attention to the lessons though so tomorrow :

Eat properly !!!!
One side effect of the diet is that having lost weight, I don’t have as much reserves to call upon (a small price to pay for having SPEED!). What caught me in that first game is that, having been training all day, I’d been unable to control what I ate. I didn’t get enough food and ran out of energy later.

Drink lots
Key when it’s hot. Especially when you sweat too much like I do. I really haven’t been drinking enough over the past few days, so I’ve been suffering more than I ought.

Loosen the tie …
Ok. This is something I need to do. My tie at work is my flag of professionalism. A home time ritual is to undo top button and loosen it. Rituals are important to me – do the ritual, start to relax. (Spot OCD). But because it’s so hot and uncomfortable, I should really be going tie-less at work too.

But yeah – look after yourselves. Be sensible with what you try and do. Being active gets you warm. Try to relax. Wear a Big Floppy Hat to shade the sun. If your body tells you to get shade, have food or drink something – listen !

Chill out dude !

PS I have a few posts stacked up for things I’ll natter about – Skyrim review, Lexus CT +6months review, brainzzzzz (not Zombies, that’s just my brain melting), BuildtheEnterprise project. But not now. Saving my Deep Thought for work hours at the moment.

Oh they deserve it – they have so much patience to cope with us manic crazy people 🙂

Nice post, Pete – and cool nod to your H&S friend 😉
I know the girls always appreciate a thank you 🙂

Our little group moved offices today.

We haven’t moved far, just across a building and up a couple of floors. But it’s always a wrench to leave behind people who have become dear friends over the years. Some of us have moved, others have had to stay behind. It’s part of a reorganisation our place has been going through. Instead of arranging people by projects, it’s more arranging them by where the projects are in their programmes. My stuff is in the Support domain now, the people we’ve left behind are Buying new stuff.

That’s not to say we aren’t buying anything any more, we still have a bit of that to go. But because most of our babies have hit the real world, we’re moved over to support. It’s a wrench for us mentally because we’ve been so focused in delivering those babies. But, you always have to be honest and most of our Buying Stuff phase is done now.

For me, it’s a decision on whether to stay in the role I’m in and migrate from current project (with not much life left in it) to new project in same part of the organisation. Or I pack my things and find another bit of the organisation to work in. That’ll be a wrench too after all these years but … the great people of the project are still around the site.

Really hectic today. Yesterday was finishing up the packing, today was getting everything out of the crates and into the cupboards. And having the surprises when we got to where we are now. I didn’t have much of a problem (I’m adaptable and will happily adopt “clutter” as a pattern to recognise and bring “familiarity”).

Let’s just say the old office and the new office are worlds apart. We’ll clean it up, organise it (make it safe) and put our stamp on it in time.

Oh I was missing our people from the old office very quickly too. I tend to look around a lot (tis good for the eyes to refocus long distance) so I’d catch the eyes of people like Queen Bee, Miss F and the Snow Queen cos they were on a similar eyeline to where the clock I’d use for that long distance peek was.

I had a whinge the other day about the old office but what didn’t really come out of that was that there was a little group of people trying their hardest to lift the spirit down there. They’re organised, busy people who always keep their sense of humour despite all provocation by the more disagreeable down there. To mention a few that’d be :

Snow Queen ! She’s such a sweetheart and is just awesome in gifting her time to everyone else. She works That Hard. Just remember to keep some of that time back for what YOU Want to do instead of what you believe everyone else Expects you to do 🙂
Finance Angel E – who kept me out of trouble so much with my last job. She had my old desk today and I must have done something right cos the clear desk job got the Seal Of Approval.
Queen Bee – if there was mischief afoot, Queen Bee was usually at the centre 🙂 Queen Bee keeps us organised too and was my Go To person for asking the daft questions after Superspy retired.
Finance Angel R – who was oh so patient in getting me funding for some training (I can be hard work)
Ms F – who is one of very few people who I can talk through the personal stuff with
Mrs Sunshine – is still brightening up the office. Sun’s been shining outside but it’s shinier around Mrs Sunshine.
Finance Angel K – such a happy person with an amazing smile, always cheering me up with a “Hello Pete”
And it was good to see Thelma & Louise reunited this week too.

They’re all awesome people and that’s just a few. The ones I haven’t mentioned I either don’t have inspiration for codenames or didn’t have much contact with. Was missing them all by 9.01am this morning. (I get in at about 9am)

You kinda wish that you could pack ’em up and take ’em with you when you move. (One or two might fit in the crates too!)

It was good to come back down there for a visit this pm (work related sadly) and they sorted me out quick (as always) and kept us working. Thank you all so much for all your hard work 🙂

Had another trip up to the Mall tonight scouting cos I needed trousers …

Had other reasons too but trousers were the pressing one. Have to say, it felt great to realise that trousers I retired last year (pre-diet but after the leg infection) now felt baggy. Lots of room there and it was good that I have a decent belt. The belt is 2 (occasionally 3!) notches tighter now too than it was last year. I had to get a new pair though cos my keys were attempting to escape through the pocket. The last pair got retired cos of a “oops – I shouldn’t have bent down quite like that …” incident …

Other Mall trip scouting :

Fence and fence posts. Need to repair the fence to next door as the old panels were rotten after falling victim to heavy wind. Still need to investigate what’s there at the moment and therefore how big a job it will be. Need to repair the fence posts too which to be honest is the most icky part. Hopefully it won’t need concrete (saw something at B+Q today that would serve, if there’s concrete there already for it to work with)

Couldn’t investigate that over the weekend cos there were nasty chemicals but I can check it out tomorrow evening.

Fridge/freezer – mine’s getting old now. It needs defrosting again (next weekend when I don’t have to keep an eye on workmen) but still works well. Had an initial peek tonight for new ones, so I know a little more about what I’m looking at.

That’s how I buy stuff, some would call it procrastination (it is) but I call it gathering knowledge so you know what you’re looking at. Then when you buy, you get something perfect instead of merely shiny. Like I now know how big a variety of these there are, so before I go looking seriously, I’ll measure the hole.

Same with – washing machine. It works. I think. But I’m not confident that it works 100%. Either that, or I need some serious stain removal stuff to get the grass stains out of my cricket whites :-).

Loo – I could do this on my own. If … I could acquire something with like-for-like fittings. That means having the same place for the drain (not a problem), the wall fixing (issue), the overflow and the water inlet (both problems). I’d like to do it on my own because that’s the way I like to do things. I may have to bite the bullet and get a plumber to replace it (cos of the overflow + inlet) but I have another idea for tackling those pesky wingnuts …

Wait … this was supposed to be about fitness wasn’t it ? (it was a busy Mall scouting run)

I used to grade myself as A, B or C level fitness for how intact I was, with 1,2,3 etc for how match ready I was.

Grade A would have everything working correctly, with no residual injuries. My knees were the first thing to degrade but didn’t knock me out of A too much.
Grade B has something complaining. Like a sore back, a broken finger or something else that means I’m not 100% intact but there’s no reason for me not to play. My groin tear puts me at Grade B, because while it’s annoying (minor limp again today) I can still run at full speed with it. Same with the spectacular bruising on my right leg.
Grade C means something major is broken. My shoulder would put me at Grade C, as did the leg problem from 2 years ago.

I’ve accepted now that my shoulder is seriously compromised. I can’t bowl with it and I maybe have 1 good throw per game. But that 1 good long distance throw will hurt like hell, so I save it for when it’s crucial. However, because I have a role batting and fielding where throwing is short distance, I can still play with it.

Last year’s cricket was spoiled by 2 things that dropped me to Grade C – I hurt my back at the start of the year and the leg infection made my skin to weak to risk on the field (it would break when I walked!). While I have the minor groin tear this year, my back is happy as long as I keep using it plus the leg infection is sufficiently healed for cricket.

The numbers said how much of a lazy git I’d been. A1 fitness meant I’d finish 40 overs of cricket as strong as I started, having done a full quota of bowling overs. I’d have a resting heart rate of 56-60. 2 meant I’d be ok but not quite match fit. 3 meant I’d be struggling. At the moment that resting heart rate is about 80.

How am I at the moment ? Honestly – C3, hopefully B2 by Thursday’s game. C cos I dunno about the damage to my left shin, plus hayfever is in my lungs. But time should help with those. I’ll be ok for Thursday’s game by abusing natural fitness and ignoring pain again but I’m nowhere near “match fit”.

Oh – I also scouted vacuum cleaners as one reason my lungs are bad is because of an attack of house cleaning. I knocked over a glass of coke with the vacuum, which led to me scrubbing the floor and getting dust in my lungs. It shows how bad the football was on Saturday that it drove me to cleaning. I had done some vacuuming in the afternoon but the vacuum had declared : “It’s too darn hot, I’m shutting down for a while”. Hence scouting for a new one … it worked later when it cooled down.

Ramble over – in the style of a Dodger vid, the latest of which I’m about to watch – Cya tomorrow (maybe) 🙂 MWAH !

Seen another one for the Crazy Ideas club today … (actually saw it before but it hit El Reg today)

Or is it a crazy idea ?

Here’s the Register story
Here’s the home site.

If you’ve got a bit of Mad Scientist in you, they’re well worth a look. I’d love it if I could look upstairs in a telescope and see one of these in our night sky. But … as another Mad Scientist, I have to say it’s a little silly …

One tenet of engineering is : if it doesn’t serve a purpose, take it away. In this case, it’s the shape :

Enterprise nacelles are for the warp engines. They’re on the stalks to give the ship a good Look (with the excuse being that they need to be away from people. Unless we get a major breakthrough (or a gift from aliens), we aren’t going to get warp travel any time soon. So take the nacelles away and bring them closer to the main saucer.

Saucer section – awesome idea. We need Earth normal gravity to keep healthy and without another gift from aliens, our best way to do that with current tech is to step into what amounts to a tumble dryer. Quick lesson in artificial gravity :

Centrifugal force is a myth. It doesn’t exist. Newton told us “An object in motion will remain in motion until acted upon by an external force” (He’s the deadliest son of a bitch in space dontcha know). If you throw a ball, it’ll gently fall. It would go straight but it’s being acted upon by the force of gravity. If you attach that ball to a piece of string and whirl it round, it’ll go in a circle. That’s not centrifugal force, it’s “centripetal force” where the string is exerting a force on the ball so the string doesn’t fly to bits.

So if you’re in that giant tumble dryer/hamster wheel, you’ll be standing on the outside of the wheel while the wheel is spinning. If there were no floor, or you stepped in a hole, your angular momentum would make you “fall”. However, the floor exerts a force on you equal and opposite to the force you are exerting on the floor. So to your body, it feels like you’re in normal gravity. If you increase or decrease the spin or change the distance to the wheel (different angular momentum) then you change the artificial gravity.

Actual gravity is a whole different beast that works on Very Big Masses. If Earth were hollow or lighter, our gravity would be much less.

But I’m getting sidetracked yet again.

Saucer section – great idea. However … How do you go from the gravity wheel to other parts of the ship ? A point on the outside of the wheel is going at about 100mph (site calcs). You’d need to either have a Ringworld style mass accelerator/decelerator to get you down to 0mph along the ring or you’d need to go to the zero g centre and step off there.

On the spaces inside the gravity wheel, you could put all sorts of cargo bay, space for power generation or space for parasite lander craft. Or zero g work space.

Engineering section – gotta say, this is one of the things I liked about the rebooted Enterprise. In the original, you didn’t really know what this big tube was used for. But in the reboot, most of its length was shuttle bay. And that would work here.

At the moment here I'm :

Watching delayed coverage of the Indy500 (15 laps to go)
Forum, Facebook and Blog commenting 🙂
And listening to the latest The Game Station podcast

And thinking I should close the downstairs window before I take a shower when the Indy500 finishes.

PS There's a little bit of thinking that I should be rearranging my main room too. Gotta decide whether I want to be able to watch the telly at the same time as doing stuff on the desktop PC.

I see you are a multi-tasker. 🙂 I am currently watching little one nap, sorting some things on my desk, reading a cookbook and planning blog posts, planning a kitchen rearrangement,getting ready for a visit from my Brother,thinking about turning tennis back on and reading Facebook/blogs….all sort of simultaneously.

As I start typing this, I’m about to hide behind the sofa so I can :

Watch the cricket off Skysports on the proper telly,
Have the Grand Prix going off iPlayer on my desktop PC monitor.
(the laptop doesn’t really have the puff for it any more, plus it would get in the way of me trolling Facebook and forums)

Plus I’m wanting to avoid “downer” and born of frustration posts which have been a theme lately.

There’s a few things that have struck a chord from this morning from the cricket commentary :

Superstition. Andrew Strauss before today never got more than 6 runs the next morning after scoring a 100 the day before. He’s on +10 now (112 not out), so hopefully that bit of superstition is behind him. It had been in his mind though, you could see the smile from under the helmet.

No ball trouble – this is where a bowler flings the ball down from a position that’s too close to the batsman. It’s deemed an illegal ball where if the batsman gets out it doesn’t matter plus the bowler has to try again. One of our boys was out twice yesterday on no balls. (Didn’t last much long after)

I had a massive problem with no balls when I bowled. For my main action, my run up was really bad. It should be 10 or 11 running paces to get you to the stumps in the right position and with enough momentum to deliver the ball at pace without taking much out of yourself. My run up was horrible, there was a lot of shuffling before I got to a running stride. And that shuffling meant my landing point was fairly random, leading to me giving away no balls.

A no ball is bad enough before it gives runs away (hated doing that)
But if you would have taken a wicket with it … that’s a game changer.

There’s no worse feeling in cricket than turning around to see the umpire give that No Ball signal just after you’ve just sent the stumps flying.

Anyway – they’ve been talking about a West Indian fast bowler called Kemar Roach who has been having the huge no ball trouble, which has given me a suggestion I’d have tried out had I still been able to do the bowling – mark a closer reference to work off instead of where you start the run (or shuffle). Moving the start point back gave me worse trouble, as I’d stretch my run to get to that closer reference point.

Short balls – they’re giving young Jonny Bairstow a hard time at the moment. Most of the time, a bowler will try and get the ball so it would hit the stumps or just outside. It’ll be coming past your body typically at knee to hip height.

But … a valid tactic is to pull the bounce point back a bit, with the target being the batsman’s throat. Above that is no good because it’s easy to duck. Throat high is perfect because it takes a decision to figure out what to do with it, duck out of the way or try and whack it. I used to love short bowling because it made my blood sing. Plus I had good shots against it. In the level of cricket I play, if I hit the ball in the air it was unlikely a fielder would get to it let alone catch it so it would be a safe shot.

I used to encourage it too when I wore a sunhat for batting, by occasionally stopping the bowler as he was about to come in and adjusting the hat in a “Hit that” kind of suggestion (Mind games). I loved the challenge and accepted it as part of my job in the team – absorb the dangerous stuff so it doesn’t get the better players out.

And my “you really are talking mindless drivel” detector is going off …

Time to concentrate on the cricket and the motor racing, while trying to avoid a headache (coffee soon will sort that out – when I said I had no vices, I lied) and hoping my lungs improved. A short attack of housework yesterday has led to my lungs being full of dusty rubbish. [hack][hack][cough]. But the floor is looking a bit better 🙂

PS For some reason I watched the Norway vs England football last night. Let’s just say it hasn’t convinced me to go out of my way to watch any more football any time soon.
PS2 The couple of times I have been hit on the head while batting, it wasn’t a short ball, the ball came off the top edge of my bat. The closest I’ve come to wearing a short ball is the one that got me on the tip of the elbow – just bounced more than I expected.