Year: 2012

Excellent start to the season so far.

Second game was tonight and despite a shaky start, our bowlers came through by taking wickets at steady intervals which keeps the scoring rate down nicely.

My fielding was again : average but enthusiastic. A little too enthusiastic as I’m rushing the fielding and snatching at the ball. That ends up in :

Me getting hurt (yep – I’m broken again)
Missing good chances to get wickets (by fumbling the ball when I should be throwing in)

What I should be able to do is swoop in, pick up the ball one handed and get the release away. Doesn’t have to be a hard throw (cos I can’t do that no more) but accuracy and fast release save a lot of time and get you wickets. Still, I saved a few runs by looking as if I knew what I was doing plus I have grass stains where some people don’t have places. (I’m lighter and have Speed again but I’m still tubby)

How did I get hurt ?

I don’t count superficial stuff there, outside bruises being great to show off. The leg/knee shiner from yesterday doesn’t really count, as I still had full running power available. I got hit on the shin again. 2 years ago, that was Very Bad News as I suspect I had it caused a crack in my shin bone. It was a similar hit again tonight, a solid shot going through my hands and on to the shin bone.

I was able to continue fielding and did a short amount of batting later but I’m worried by it again. 2 years ago it blighted most of that season as I just couldn’t put any power through my left leg. (Run, walk but not sprint) We’ll see how it goes. Yesterday’s bruise came up quickly, tonight’s hasn’t developed yet.

Batting was … different.

Yesterday’s problem was that I was thinking too much. I had thoughts rushing around my head as the bowler came in for what I was going to do with the ball. That doesn’t help. Instead of playing an appropriate shot, I was picking a shot before the bowler let the ball go. Bad news.

Tonight, I managed to follow one plan – “Empty my head, think of nothing”. Which worked. Everything was working much better for the short time I was out there. But … main plan was – “nudge singles, play yourself in”. Our star batsman was in at the other end whacking boundaries, so the nudge singles plan would have been awesome for the team and had me at Position A for watching the fun.

What happened ? The bowling was so juicy that instead of nudging singles, I was going to whack every ball (and connecting) but popped one up fairly early for a decent catch. Waste of an opportunity.

But my own performance isn’t really that important (although I would like to be the star player like how it used to be when I bowled). What matters is the team scoreline and it’s : 2 games played, 2 games won.

I’m quite stiff and sore now, I’ll be in work tomorrow but I’m looking forward to some chill out over the weekend watching England in the test match. Cross fingers for no rain.

And the thought running through my head right now is : I’m too old for this !

Beautiful day today, if a little cold. Lots of sunshine, no rain. Great conditions for cricket. (The sunshine takes some of the squishiness out of the pitch by drying it up). Pitch was pretty good, if a little variable in bounce. Not much evidence of all the rain, although the bits of the pitch that were down the hill were still a bit squishy. I wouldn’t want to play on the BAWA pitch (the one where my legs always explode) at the moment, it’s probably unplayable.

As a quick aside – with all the hate against Google+ at the moment, you’d have thought Facebook would have its act together ? Far too many posts (including all of mine and a few others) disappear from a News Feed that is supposed to show everything.

One thing I’ll say right now – a lot of this will read depressive, even though we won because I’m tired, didn’t play great and I’ve got a lot to work on.

We batted first, with me being one of the opening pair. I need to work a lot on my technique – shot selection was great. I scratched out 7 runs, plus a few sharp singles for the other guy. I seem to have a lot of my speed back again, which is awesome. But I still need to work on that shot selection and the trigger movements that get everything started.

How did I get out ? This is embarassing. I got bowled (ball gets past me and hits the stumps). But I stood there … cos I was thinking : “they’re not celebrating” and “that was too high wasn’t it ?” and I thought the noise from behind was the ball going into the keeper’s gloves. Oh well 🙂 Maybe they weren’t celebrating cos they wanted me to stay there !

That’s the way my seasons tend to start, I get desperately in need of having the cobwebs dusted off. My breathing wasn’t great and will hopefully improve over the next few weeks.

I didn’t catch the full score but we got just over a hundred, with lots of banter going on. Next up – fielding.

I got consigned to the outfield, which I really don’t enjoy because you’re waiting for big shots instead of anticipating the batsmen dropping the ball down and attempting quick singles. I just love to swoop in on those and try and get run outs. Keeps the Sleepy One awake as well. I didn’t keep wicket, which was good because the fella who had the gloves for us did an excellent job behind the stumps.

Good display by us in the field, despite the cold there was a lot of energy going in. Lots of catches taken held up the opposition enough for us to sneak a very tight win.

I appear to have my speed back, which is great. However … (and this is the source of the depressive mood) the damage is triggering thoughts of “you’re too old for this”

Groin tear/strain is still there. But it doesn’t stop me running at top speed.
Shoulder is down to maybe 1 good throw in a game.
I’ll have a massive shiner on my right shin where I stopped a boundary.
Not damage but my fielding technique needs a lot of work. I appear to have a few trained in faults (actually good technique for a left hander …) that I need to work on.

That’s adding to an awful lot of rustiness.

Anyway – had me shower. Had a very late dinner, caught myself nearly flaking out due to energy debt (was training today so didn’t eat as much in prep as I should have) and I know that when I eventually hit the sack, it’ll be a struggle to get up those stairs.

Another game tomorrow ! Hopefully a similar result to tonight’s game.

PS The Pink Cap is escaping the pyre of a ritual sacrifice. It did ok tonight and a firm brim is better for looking into low sun than the floppy brim of a sun hat.

I have a habit of seeing patterns in things I read or see or hear and making connections that are so tenuous, you’d not believe them.

It can be handy, so I’ll make logic leaps that get us the info we need. Or it’ll let me figure out answers to problems. Trouble is, I can miss the obvious.

That’s enough about me – what’s the latest unconnected stories that I’ve spotted ?

The one that started me thinking was : USPS will not ship Li-ion batteries internationally any more. (Tomshardware link). The worry is that a certain type of rechargeable battery has more likelihood to catch fire or explode. I think the issue from the article is with batteries that aren’t an integral part of the device. My Android phone would escape because you can’t separate it from its battery.

Should you be worried ?

There’s 3 main types of rechargeable battery :
NiCAD – the original rechargeable. Had a really limited life and low energy density (less hours with the torch lit).
Nickel Metal Hydride (NiMH) – the mk2. Higher energy density and lasts far longer.
Lithium Ion – best current tech. Far better energy density for the same life.

What’s energy density ? My car uses a NiMH battery pack that lets it go a mile or so at 40mph without the engine on. There’s a Prius coming that uses a Li-Ion battery that could go tens of miles at the same speed.

Ok – should you be worried ? Electronic Engineer says : No. (But don’t sue me on that !) Every bit of consumer electronics that you use has gone through extensive testing to make sure it’s safe. So the chances of that iPhone brewing up are slim to remote (unless the stories really have been suppressed).

And now for the Join The Dots – Chevy Volt buyers spooked by fires. (BBC link)

This one was a little scary when I read it originally. It wasn’t a fire that started at the original crash (which is scary in itself), it was a fire that happened on a crash test car several weeks after the crash testing. That shouldn’t happen.

If you’re looking at the Volt or Vauxhall Ampera, I’d raise my eyebrows. But I wouldn’t strike it off the “potential next car” list. Stuff like this can happen, it’s best to predict it and anticipate it out of the design but when it does happen, manufacturers will sort it out quickly. Or their customers run away screaming which is really bad for business. That said, I avoided the Volt/Ampera because – it was taking too long to arrive, I distrust Vauxhall and the Lexus was shinier.

This weekend saw story number 3 : Fire in the Williams garage at Spanish Grand Prix. (BBC link)

Formula 1 cars these days are hybrids, where they have the engine assisted by an electric motor for up to 7 seconds a lap. What they think caused the fire was a spark from the KERS (hybrid motor thing) battery igniting fuel. Potentially very nasty. They got away with it in the pitlane fire, only one person was hospitalised.

Makes you think though – the car I’m driving around at the moment has a hybrid motor as powerful as the Formula 1 KERS motor (60kW). The batteries are bigger and are located behind and below the back seats, close to the petrol tank. In theory, there should be no risk as both fuel tank and battery are sealed.

But … then you remember what we’re driving now and what we used to drive – safety’s not a problem. Hybrid doesn’t add any risk that wasn’t already there :
High voltage spark plugs – I’ve seen huge sparkage when we fired up a damp engine. It was like christmas lights going off.
Extremely flammable petrol
Batteries that can generate lot of hydrogen when charging. Hydrogen + Oxygen = KABOOM

Now I’ve scared everyone … time for me to run to the bomb shelter.

As an update – it's not cables or bluray player … Same audio blip was happening with different cables and different bluray player. So it's either :

Amplifier (likely as Onkyo have known issue with HDMI)
Telly (unlikely)

Anyway – dvd playback is working fine with Xbox360 -> Amp, it's just when blurays only have Dolby D soundtracks (instead of HD) where I now have a problem.

I’ve always been a competitive person, right from my early days at school. I’ve always been pretty smart, in the D&D “Intelligence” sense if not the “Wisdom” sense.

So that early competitiveness got directed at getting the absolute highest marks in class. And for the Northern Ireland school, I was right up there. The only real competition I had was a girl called Barbara, which was my equal in brains and ahead in everything else. And because the Northern Ireland schools were ahead of the English schools academically, that gave me a head start when we moved back over here.

I was only ever able to apply that competitiveness to sport when I discovered cricket, although I was also really good at badminton. (Badminton being what killed my shoulder.) While cricket’s a team game, it’s focused very tightly on individual battles where that competitiveness can really bite.

But over all that time, there’s been the gaming. I’d always want to do the game better. Get a bigger high score. Complete it quicker. Be the highest dps person in WoW. Get all the achievements. And all that stuff, mostly competing against myself. Thing is though – I’m not actually gaming that much lately. When I get back in from work, my brain isn’t wanting to go into that higher gear the game demands. I’ve been watching gaming a lot lately instead.

It started with a youtuber called Totalbiscuit, who is a Very dangerous man if you’re interested in games.

TB does a little of everything. There’s a regular mailbox, plus he gives tasters of games through his “WTF is …” series. Those are incredibly useful for giving an impression of whether a game is worth getting. I’ve bought a few due to WTF is and abandoned thoughts of getting many more. He does a Starcraft 2 series as well, which almost got me buying that game and is another ex WoW player.

The next is Jesse Cox of the OMFGCata channel. He’s nuts.

He’s more a “Let’s Play” person, where he’s got a few games on the go at once presenting bites of up to an hour at a time. It’s the commentary that make these. They’re hilarious, especially when things don’t go to plan. The TB + JC Terraria series are amazing and are why I own Terraria. His Skyrim series is why I bought that game and he enjoyed Deus Ex HR as much as I did.

I’ve also been watching Yogscast and Yogscast2. I have mixed feelings here, their coverage is dominated by Minecraft which I absolutely refuse to watch. They’re very silly boys and play to the nerdy, geeky boy gamer stereotype (except for Hannah, who is Gamer Chick). However … they feel every moment of their gaming and when a spider creeps up on Simon, it’s hilarious.

But the highlight found so far is Dodger of two channels :

PressHeartToContinue (aka P<32c) – is a gaming blog where she’ll talk through gaming news and views.
Dexterity Bonus – COFFEH Time ! which is a video blog.

If I did this blog via video, it would be a lot like Coffeh time. Except we’d have the sound of cracking monitor screens. Dodger is way more photogenic and comes over as so relaxed on screen. I’m hooked.

They all share a few things in common :
Love of gaming,
Lots of opinion – The Game Station podcast featuring TB, JesseCox and P<32c holds the interest even through 3 hours.
Rare intelligence
Getting as much fun as possible out of their gaming.

It’s a credit to all of them that I’m more interested in watching their shows than in gaming myself. They’re highly amusing to watch. They enjoy their gaming and include you the viewer in that.

I’ll keep watching all 5 of these channels and non gamers would be most interested in Coffeh Time. Thinking of that one with my “Time’s valuable” post, she’s donating so much of her own time to produce that show to make things a bit brighter for us the viewers.

It’s a privilege to watch – and I may well be doing so quite soon if I can pry myself away from Moo2 …

🙂 I suspect reading is something that eludes them … Could explain why they don't appear to have any training on "How not to upset people you are trying to sell things to"

Those people are why I have a "No Soliciting" sign on my front door. A few people ignore it, but fr the most part they head for my door, see it, and then turn around and walk away. The ones who ignore it–if they're not kids–I sometimes ask if they can read or not, and if they can, do they need a dictionary…?

Oh dear. Door to door people on patrol again.

This time, it’s a case of the arrogant kid who’s just got out of school going into a job where he’s been forced to knock on people’s doors and demand “just a moment of your time”. This one really rubbed me up the wrong way.

Attitude – arrogant and entitled yoof bully
Appearance – reminded me of the Popular Set kids at school

And that’s just the first impression. I cut him off early with a “not interested – sorry”, as I was busy doing other stuff (the grand prix coverage was running in the background). At that, I’d expect them to have the humility to walk away. I don’t expect them to demand why I’d told them to go away before finding out who they were. And I definitely don’t expect them to hang around on the street looking into people’s houses.

The attitude was very much : Give me the world, I’m entitled to it. And the response is – earn it and while you’re at it, work on the humility.

But it’s really about time. Door to door people inflict themselves on you. It could be something important happening like a car alarm going off or a parcel. But if it’s some random person turning up and demanding money, I will not allow them to waste any more of my time than is necessary. I don’t see that as me being rude, I just see it as sending them on their way without wasting either my time or their’s.

If I’m going to spend money on something, I’ll research it first. (And then usually buy the wrong thing like with my Onkyo amp.). Unless it’s something I was intending to do anyway (like Npower Girl), there is zero chance I will give anything to a door to door person.

Time is an incredibly valuable thing.

If I send someone a message, I’m borrowing their time. If I ask someone to look at something, I’m borrowing even more of their time. So I only tend to do it when I have something I think they’ll appreciate or if it’s something I think they need to know. If the messages get ignored or a “busy now but I’ll check later” gets forgotten, then that’s Sad Face.

When I see the hits come in for this message later, that will tell me that you’ve donated some of your valuable time to read this message. And I think that’s awesome. When I see repeat hits coming in from those of you who know I do Walls of Text … but keep coming back … I find that incredible.

What will I be doing with the rest of my time today ?

Errrmmm … Wasting much of it trying to take over the galaxy in Moo2 while chilling out to music. Not feeling the urge to do a city centre wander as I’d been buying stuff at the Mall on Tuesday. But if I had someone call me up or message me and tell me they’d like to spend some time with me ? I’d be out there like a shot.

PS I’ve been ranting a lot lately – which suggests there’s some anger/frustration bubbling away in my mind … Need to address that. Cross fingers for some good cricket 🙂

Oh where to start …

I know some stuff I can’t talk about. Cos I can’t. It’s all over the news but I’m way too close to it. Just remember when you see stories on the news, there’s usually real people caught right in the middle of those stories. If it was a car crash, you’d call them innocent bystanders. Ok, it is a car crash and they’re still caught up in it. But that’s enough about that story.

(I’m actually prevented about talking about it without asking permission due to work rules)

Olympic Flame goes out – lol. Oops. Superstition will run riot with that.

I’m in love with a gamer from the PressHeartToContinue channel. I’m watching videos of gaming more than I’m gaming lately. Spotted Dodger through The Game Station podcast with two very dangerous (to a gamer’s wallet) individuals called TotalBiscuit and Jesse Cox of the OMFGCata channel. They have a ridiculous amount of enthusiasm towards gaming and their enjoyment of what they play has persuaded me to buy more than one game this year … Anyway, P<32c is giving me flashbacks to when Bits graced our screens. She’s smart and she talks good sense. Funny too.

The cap is still there. It hasn’t been crispy fried yet. It wouldn’t burn anyway, the fire would get put out by the heaviness of the rain.

Been buying more music – the latest is Little Broken Hearts by Norah Jones, which is excellent. Morcheeba’s Blood Like Lemonade is pretty good too. I have my eye on Katie Melua’s latest but to be honest, Katie Melua and The Ting Tings are groups where I’ll wait for the album to come out at 2 for £10 or £5. Like Air and Maroon 5, their Pocket Symphony and “It Won’t Be Soon Before Long” albums arrived on Tuesday before I disappeared off to watch Avengers.

Headache has faded today ! Although today was one of those insane can’t draw breath “that was nice, what was it, what’s next?” kind of days. Not had time to get a headache. I got a big grin from a couple of our people in our Portsmouth office as well. Grin + Productive Work = awesome.

Work’s being a little challenging at the moment. We’re moving from a place where we’re accepting stuff to a requirement set that was agreed years ago and towards needing to keep track of things we’re changing with those requirements. The pace of change these days is relentless and one of the facets of my current job is keeping up with the question “What do we actually want ?” Anyway, had good progress there today without the glacial pace that some of this can go at.

That’s how it feels sometimes – long periods of routine punctuated by moments of sheer terror. Terror ? I think that’s actually from a movie or a game. Switch “sheer terror” for “mega fast activity”. I don’t say much about what I work on or for who but let’s just say the stakes can be very high.

Gaming ? Not doing much of that at the moment. Not reading much either, outside of websites and watching gamer videos.

Weather ? It’s still raining. If tonight’s cricket hadn’t been cancelled yesterday then it would have been a classic : Sunshine all day. 6pm – match start. 6.05pm – deluge begins.

Amusement or “Where not to be if you’re supposed to be on leave” – one of our people is on leave all this week. But … the PCS and Unite unions were on strike today. Where did I happen to see this person this morning ? She was on the picket line that was causing traffic chaos in the local area, handing leaflets to cars coming in. Oops. If you’re striking, taking leave is Bad Behaviour. Definitely shouldn’t be in such a prominent place …

I’m not in any of the unions. I don’t see their goals aligning with who they claim to represent. They chase the wrong fights. They should be targeting discrimination in the workplace (we are discriminated against by post code as policy) and other strangeness instead of attempting to get conditions that will make their own members unaffordable to the organisation. They’re actually campaigning for job losses.
I’m not socialist, conservative, right, left, centrist. Ok, maybe I’m a little Nationalist (but not extreme). I’m pragmatist realist and refuse to be blinkered by any particular political point of view. I see the blinkers on people every day – it’s not a way to convince people. And I have zero faith in the current political system. Democracy is a fine idea, when you have credible people to vote for.

And I think that’s enough for now before I dig myself a massive hole !

Last thought from that – be careful what you do online. I read that a collection of people have been fired by a Sheriff in the USA for “liking” a political opponent on Facebook. When they sued, their case got thrown out. That click can have consequences …

And on that note – been lucky where I work, our project has had some long screwdriver interference but we’ve managed to avoid most of it. It’s let a bunch of amazing people get on with delivering something fantastic. We’ve been luckier than most. We’re definitely in a better position all round than the people I referred to on opening this post !

I think my cap is cursed.

We’ve had extraordinary climate conditions over here in GB since the start of the year. Winter saw endless sunshine. And that’s sunshine to the point where we were getting threatened with hosepipe bans and with having the mains water shut off and replaced by standpipes in the street.

Since the cricket season started, we’ve seen rain. Rain. More rain. And puddles. Worcestershire can’t play at their home ground because it’s waterlogged. (Worcestershire County Cricket Club link with picture). We’ve seen 4 games out of 4 called off due to the weather. (Ok, one was because a team doesn’t play in that league – but it chucked it down anyway)

An aside here – I’ve been suffering from a headache for all this afternoon and evening. Brain feels like it’s trying to crawl out through my eye sockets.

Weather – here’s a more spectacular view of New Road (Worcestershire’s ground) … although 3 days later the match was back on at New Road, although sadly only a third of a day’s play was possible.

I have a feeling the weather may be a factor with that headache. I can be sensitive to subtle changes in atmospheric pressure and humidity that can act like a weather sense. On one of my work placements, I had terrible headaches because I was working much of the time in a positive pressure environment (don’t ask where – lol). I.e. the air inside was a few millibars above normal, to blow out all the nasties from welding equipment, solvents and glues.

Trouble with where I work now is that the air in the building is so dry, it really messes up that weather sense. That could be contributing to the headache as well.

Where does the cap fit in all this ?

It’s the first season that I’d have been back in a cap regularly. I normally field in a sun hat and I now bat in a helmet. However … if I’m also to be doing fielding in a helmet (the wicket keeping when standing up), then the hat won’t do because I need to hide the headgear when I have the helmet on. And a cap is easier to hide down the back of your trousers (yes, really !) than a sun hat.

But, with continuous heavy rain since the start of the season ? Is the cap cursed ?

Does it need to be ritually sacrificed (Fire Good) in order to summon the Sun Gods back ?

We shall see.

I kinda like my Pink Cap. It’ll be a silly thing to wear on a cricket field and that’s half the point. Bit like a statement that says : “I’m not scared of the comments I’ll get when I wear this”. Well, it’s going to be worn in honour of a fallen colleague who used to smile at me when she caught me looking up and grinning as she walked through the office. And that’s the image that will be in my head when I get a daft comment about the Pink Cap.

Cap stays – superstition be damned ! 🙂