Month: November 2012

Birthday yesterday. Yey !

Perhaps. I’m definitely feeling older on the inside these days, although I try and hide that as much as possible.

So – what did I do ? Went to work as usual. There’s two different ways people approach work on their birthday. Some come in, some take it as time off. I prefer to come in so I can grin at people. I much prefer being around other people than being on my own.

Ok – so how does that tie in with living on my own so much ? Yawn. I get by with keeping up with what’s coming over Facebook, not so much blogging these days, by watching the amusing gaming related videos, by trying to make people laugh over online chat. (I kinda miss the WoW chat, there’s some amazing characters there)

It wasn’t all work yesterday though. I had the follow up appointment at the doctors. I have to say, the experience has improved since the first visit :

Visit 1 – waited over an hour past the appointment time. Saw bloke doctor. Meh. Sure, I’ll look at a male athlete’s body and think it’s attractive but my thoughts are mainly “How can I be like that ?”

Visit 2 – waited a while again, saw lady doctor. Impression ? Brain the size of a planet but a little disconnected from reality. As in didn’t quite perceive the universe the way the rest of us do. Cute from that certain point of view though.

(I’m sure there’s a few people who think much the same of me)

Visit 3 – shorter wait, more normal lady doctor. The sort of person who would look stunning if they made the effort. Better drugs too, they cleared out the infection although there’s still damage to repair.

Visit 4 (yesterday) – shorter wait again, different doctor again. Total – KNOCKOUT. Wow. She had the sort of looks that would have nightclub bouncers letting her not just bypass the queue, they’d be paying her to go in. Oh and she was chuckling at my vague attempts at humour too.

Yep. I believe I managed to remain rational and intelligent in the face of all that beauty.

Prognosis ? Recovering steadily. Doc didn’t think I needed any drugs this time (reckon the infection has been dealt with) but she was worried about the remaining bits of me that are still angry looking. So I’ll keep doing the Hide & Treatment thing until I’m all pasty white again like a proper geek should be.

Keep that Yellow Face away. It burns.

So my birthday evening was spent watching stuff on the telly while hiding in my main room trying not to get the gunk I’m treating the damage with on anything.

That sounds pretty bad doesn’t it ?

Yes. From a certain point of view. However. I look back to a fortnight ago and remember all the damage I had then. I remember how wretched existence was getting. I remember having to remove work outfits as soon as possible when getting home. I remember trying to keep the ickiness of the infection under control. I remember trying to keep it hidden while at work and to avoid it affecting my performance there.

And then I think – I’m now far more healthy than I was then. I’m getting the most important birthday present anybody can get – my health.

And that’s far more valuable than anything monetary or material. Although hugs would be awesome too.

Cakes tomorrow ! I have a visit to the contractor’s place but on the way back, cakes will be acquired for work.

PS I also have to thank everyone who’s been giving me support (or just treating me normally) when I’ve been down.
PS2 Trolling contractors is far too amusing.

Apologies in advance cos this is gonna be a scattergun post 🙂

Headed up to the Mall again tonight. Just … felt the urge to wander. Plus there’s a kinda novelty back to it now.

I’m not totally healed up yet but I’m hugely improved from where I was just 2 weeks ago. That’s best summed up as “wretched”. The thing that was consistently dominating my thoughts was “must get home, must get the self-treatment done”. I’ll spare you the icky details but heading out for a Mall run was the farthest thing from my mind. I missed a few leaving do-s in town (including the original Finance Angel’s one) because my skin condition was quite frankly, embarassing.

Most medical conditions can be hidden away. People either fight through exhaustion, mask depression, conceal illness or isolate their sneezes at home. Skin conditions are different. There’s an intense feeling of embarassment associated with it. It’s out there on the surface to be seen by all. With me, it was under my right eye and on my ears. It was also on my arms and legs. A skin thing is something that makes you want to hide away, not due to fear of infecting people but due to knowing how icky it is.

Waaaaait – Post Derailment Alarm triggered !

Things have much improved now, to the point where I can quite happily head off to the Mall on a whim for a wander.

It’s kinda dangerous though, because I haven’t bought myself much yet for my birthday. Ok, so I did pick up the Space Above And Beyond series from Play.com (ultra low price – had to). I’ve not bought anything major though.

One big thing from tonight : “Smile and the world will smile back at you”

I’ve been having pretty ladies smile at me. Not sure why. Perhaps it’s because I look like a human again and not someone you see on those disease outbreak movies. I caught one of the girls in HMV looking at me (she was on till and bored cos no-one was buying anything) and sending a smile my way. So she got the Big Grin ™ when I spotted her.

Been getting lots of opportunities tonight to use that Big Grin. Wonder if it’s down to what’s working out as a Wolf Man look. My hair’s about as long it has been right now, plus I’ve joined in with the Movember thing.

Maybe I should keep the moustache ? 🙂 🙂 🙂

Hey – spending money. I have 2 big items on my I Want List at the moment :

iPhone 5 – I’m definitely thinking about pensioning off my current phone and the iPhone 5 is very tempting. Especially as I’m already locked into iTunes. But … £269 up front and £15 more a month than my current contract … not so tempting.

Steering wheel for PC – This is being held off at the moment more from people not wanting to sell me one than it is from me procrastinating too much. With these, you have to spend a certain amount or what you buy breaks within a couple of months. But … the various techie shops at the Mall don’t appear to want to sell the next tier up. I may get one eventually, although I don’t actually have anything to race with one yet.

I feel the Need For Speed again. Forza scratched that itch for a while but the Xbox360 platform is getting very archaic now.

So – spending big cash tonight : resisted. But – it was good to escape the house for a little while tonight, although I’d kinda like to have tagged along with someone with the excuse of buying them dinner. There’s stuff I need to buy but I just don’t think of looking in the places that sell the stuff I need to buy.

Doctor’s again tomorrow – I’m not completely healed yet but things are improving. I’ll be curious to see what she says.

PS I did buy something at the Mall tonight, collection cd’s from Texas and Johnny Cash have arrived 🙂

I feel I have one of those “must buy widget” obsessions coming on again.

What is it this time ?

A steering wheel. Yes ! A steering wheel. This particular obsession started after watching a Youtube video by the Yogscast, where they were trying out Forza Horizon (racing game). There’s a bit of history to it as well :

In the BBC micro era, I was addicted to a game called Revs. It was a Formula 3 car simulator which was groundbreaking. It dates back to when computers were archaic compared to what they can do now. If I emulated a BBC on a modern PC, it would barely register on the cpu need. I believe Revs became the foundation for the first F1 games on PC.

One of the things distracting me at uni as Need For Speed Hot Pursuit 3, which could get some quite hilarious crashes going. It offered a decent challenge. I didn’t think so much of the Porsche game though or the first Colin McRae rally game.

Games a far more complex these days though, with the simulation going as far as modelling how the wheels go up and down with the suspension. And all sorts of other crazy stuff like that.

When I bought an Xbox a couple of years ago, the game that caught my attention most was Forza 3 (the Xbox’s signature racing game). Dead Space and Halo 2 were boring next to PC shooters and Final Fantasy XIII was a tad meh. But I definitely enjoyed Forza. The controller works well with it, using two analogue triggers for brake and throttle and a joystick for steering.

But – it’s missing something …

The building obsession is with finding a cost effective steering wheel. And I think it’s going to be a PC steering wheel because it’ll be easier to attach it to my desk than to have it on my lap in front of the telly. Plus the PC is far more powerful than the Xbox 360.

There’s a few things to think about though :

Robustness. It’s pointless and frustrating to spend money on something for it to break in a few months. And most of the affordable wheels seem really bad for robustness.
Price. Think I may have to go as high as £70 to get on the bottom rung of acceptable robustness.
Fit. Not sure if this is relevant now, as wheels have been around long enough that they’ve evolved into the ideal.

So there you have it – Value For Money and Robustness > features.

Will I indulge this obsession ? Maybe. It’ll depend on availability as well. I’d likely have to special order a wheel in order to get to a minimum acceptable level. And it’ll depend on being able to get a suitable game to play it on too. I’ve not actually used my new joystick that much, mainly because I haven’t got a good enough game to take advantage of it. (Need to check out Planetside 2 still).

Need to get healthy as well though. The health has improved, people think I look early 30s again plus most of the patches have recovered. There’s still quite a few bad patches though and my ears have definitely not recovered yet. I need to figure out how I can leave them alone more to recover. And I’m back at the doctor’s place on Tuesday too.

I have a feeling that the hangfire might have been due to two rockets being set off at the same time – I think one fuse went quick but the rocket didn't go because it was tethered to a rocket with a much slower fuse …

I do like the odd dramatic moment during a firework 'display' but that rocket (or lack thereof) certainly took the biscuit this year!

I’ve been writing a lot lately about the infection that had hold of my legs and various bits of the rest of me …

Hopefully that little segment of my life is coming to a close 🙂

Since the doctor trip on Wednesday there’s been some quite dramatic improvement. I’m not clear of signs of inflammation yet but it’s getting so close that I’ll soon have difficulty picking places to put the medicine cream. It’s improved that much and that’s coming from it affecting maybe 20-30% of me.

I hadn’t said exactly how much it had affected me had I ? Well, as well as the big patches on my legs being joined by patches around my elbows, the infection had spread to my hip, ribs area, bum, ears, a patch under my eye. Probably about 20-30% of me, some bits worse than others.

But it’s now considerably better. I’m hoping that when I next see the doctor in 9 days, I can walk into her office with a big grin and show completely healed legs and arms. But I’m not counting my chickens just yet, it’s improved before and then come right back. Hopefully I’ve identified why with thinking that I’m allergic to a few things :

Orange Juice – think I have a citrus allergy which was setting off bad breathing and the excema.
White bread – I can mostly avoid this because brown bread seems fine. Pizza’s a problem but as long as I keep that in moderation I’ll be fine 🙂
Office – dry air is promoting the excema I think. Can’t do much about that except try and get moisture in to me.

So yeah – I’m hoping this little chapter is coming to a close so I can concentrate on getting things done and moving forward again 🙂 I’ve let a lot of things drift lately because I’ve had my whole essence focused on trying to get healthy again.

BOOM !

We had our annual Crazie Fireworks combined with birthdays last night, hosted by the BionicDwarf. I’ll hopefully get this house in order for a bit of hosting soon, that’s another thing put on hold by the infection.

I have to say, Sainsburys rockets are much better than Tescos rockets although we did get one “interesting” rocket which hangfired. And we had one of the mortar boxes decide to start shooting sideways.

Great little display though, CK, BD and I chipped in with £270 worth of fireworks which gave us just over half an hour of :

Cracking fireworks too.

We followed that with pizza (yey!) and a couple of movies after handing out of a decent selection of birthday presents. Tis birthday season at the moment, with BD, CQ and mine coming in quick succession. Mine’s not until the 13th (born on a Wednesday). Oh – movies, I’m watching one of my new ones at the moment : Beastmaster. Old classic.

After that – Strictly results. Yep. I watch Strictly Come Dancing. First year watching it as a regular and I’m quite enjoying it.

And with that admission (coinciding with the dinner gong from the kitchen), time to sign off with the shreds of leftover dignity 🙂

Yeah – new episodes for a tenth season. It's better than the 3 part thing we had a little while ago but it's still a fairly tired series now.

As in NEW episodes of Red Dwarf??

I’ve managed to almost get everything in the library listened to 🙂

There’s a full 1.6 days of new stuff in the library, or so iTunes tells me. Maybe I kinda went a little overboard in acquiring all those soundtracks …

It’s not all soundtracks though – here’s some of what came in :

Tori Amos – Abnormally Attracted To Sin. Not bad, kinda more of the same. Tori Amos is a very talented singer songwriter and also extremely prolific. Being prolific isn’t always a good thing, as it can mean that too much of the not so good stuff gets unleashed. Abnormally Attracted to Sin is better than American Doll Posse but isn’t as good as some of her best material. Still worth a look though.

Smash Mouth – All Star Greatest Hits. Lol 🙂 This is fun. Again, nothing classic here although the I’m A Believer cover excels.

Alone In The Dark soundtracks – I grabbed all three of these games in a cutprice ultra bargain deal at Good Old Games.Com. IIRC it was about $3 for all three. We weren’t convinced about AITD 2 but the first game kept us busy at uni for months before we had it cracked. This was in the dim and distant days before Wiki captured all the walkthroughs and before the Internet and Google really took off so it was tougher to find hints and tips. It’s from when Hint Telephone Lines could make money.

I’m listening to the AITD3 soundtrack at the moment and it’s … got character 🙂 Liking it.

Morcheeba’s Charango – Morcheeba are pretty different to what I usually listen to. They’ll be different to what most people listen to. But that’s mainly because they put a lot of variation into their albums. Charango is no different and there’s a good selection of good tracks here. Check them out, there’s a good chance they’ll have something you like.

Fallout soundtrack – another from GoG.com, this time I saw a “sign up and get this game free!” So I did. The Fallout games have always had their own unique character charm to them. They’re set in a Post Apocalyptic alternate reality Earth where those kitsch 70s ads hung around way past their time. It lets them put a certain degree of very dark humour into their games to offset the post apocalyptic thing.

Faster Than Light soundtrack – this one is available on Bandcamp from Ben Prunty music. Game soundtracks have a specific job to do – they set and reinforce the mood and then submerge under the game to become subliminal. The Mass Effect and Deus Ex HR soundtracks are very good at doing that and this one is the same. Will be looking out for more from Ben Prunty in the future.

The White Stripes – Get Behind Me Satan. Another very different pop group. I first listened to their Elephant album. Different is definitely good when it comes to music, it sets groups apart from mainstream tat and gets them noticed. I’ve definitely noticed The White Stripes and will be looking for more, they’re worth it. This album appeared courtesy of Head doing offers 🙂

Bat For Lashes – The Haunted Man. It’s good. There’s some decent tracks here but not as many stand out tracks as on her previous albums. I’ve yet to listen to it as a pure album though, maybe in the next few days when I get round to it.

Independence War soundtracks. These are another couple of game soundtracks picked up for peanuts from GOG.com. One thing about GoG is that you get lots of freebies with the game. Things like pdf copies of the manuals (when game manuals were worth having), pictures of material like spellbooks and best of all – soundtracks. Oh ! I-War 1 + 2 – two games that unfortunately for them came around at the same time as when the X-Wing games were going strong and which therefore didn’t get the chance they deserved.

Last Night Of The Proms. I’m a Prom fan, I try and watch every year’s Last Night if I can. I like music and this is as uplifting as it comes. Perhaps this recording isn’t as good as most though, I suspect it was the one where the organisers went “We’re recording this, keep it quiet” and therefore missed the whole Audience Participation thing where the off-time audience additions make the whole show.

Lisa Hannigan – Passenger and Sea Sew. Oh. Character. This girl has it. Lisa Hannigan had the misfortune to emerge at the same time as Little Boots, who at the time was on a mission and was blowing away all the competition. Yet here was delicate and very precious Lisa Hannigan coming along with that unique and deliberately fragile voice. Little Boots doesn’t hold my attention as much now but Lisa Hannigan singing I Don’t Know ? You may have heard that one so here’s a different link : What’ll I do ?

Very glad I gave Lisa Hannigan a second look courtesy of some cheap Amazon deals 🙂

Oh dear. I seem to have been distracted into listening to as many Lisa Hannigan videos off Youtube as I can find. Time to close and maybe leave room for a Part 2 of new stuff 🙂

But before I go :

Something old – Red Dwarf’s back. Not quite sure what I think, the concept is extremely tired now and overdone canned audience laughter detracts from the comedy value.

Something new – watched the first couple of episodes of Arrow tonight. Not convinced I’ll stick with this one, it has great TV actors in it but the concept is weak …

Something different – watched the first episode of Elementary. This one has more of a future than Arrow I think, if the networks stick with it. But … concept has been overdone, there’s about 4 different Sherlock Holmes going on at the moment – the BBC one, Elementary, the films and the really bad ones we see on the movie channels occasionally.

PS I think they gave me Strong pills this time. They’ve certainly had a very fast and decisive effect. Need to figure out something to have with the ones I’ll have tomorrow morning … (6 little pills with food that masks a nasty aftertaste)