Year: 2012

That’s right ! I’ve finally managed to finish listening to all the tunes in my library again. Must be time to reset the playcounts again …

Before I pass on what I think of the new arrivals, a shout out for a friend : I have a colleague about to do a sponsored sky dive this Saturday and I was going to pass on the last bit of my Pink Hat Bounty as a little extra to the contribution I’d pass on anyway 🙂

Here’s her page – wish her luck (and maybe add a bit on for the cause ?). The catch in my last game of the season drew in another £5 of Pink Hat Bounty and for something like this, I’d have been putting in a fiver anyway :-).

Where was I ? MUSIC !

I saw this on Facebook and had to grab it. At the moment, they’re joining me with listening to Retrospective by Suzanne Vega, which is a greatest hits collection from a few years ago. She’s since gone on and created even more great music.

Next up will be Sounds From Nowhere by the Ting Tings. I wasn’t expecting much from this. The reviews are marmite, which I really can’t understand except by considering the viewpoint of the Entitlement crew. Those are the people who build up their own expectations to impossible levels and then throw their teddies out the pram when what they received doesn’t match that expectation.

Sounds From Nowhere is a very listenable-to album. It’s not as raw or edgy as their first album but it is a pretty good one. Perhaps that’s where the aggro has come from, it’s not as different as their first.

Tori Amos has been in the news lately – she does pretty well at rousing up the interest when there’s a new album on the way. I managed to find Abnormally Attracted To Sin, which is a characteristic Tori Amos album. She’s a hell of an artist but there’s something that makes me avoid getting everything she’s done like I do with groups like Alisha’s Attic, Bat For Lashes and Garbage (except the latest which is rip off prices). This one’s a decent album again but the most special thing here is the singer, there’s no real stand out tracks. Some of Tori Amos albums are filled with stand out tracks (Beekeeper, Scarlet’s Walk, Under The Pink) but this one is very samey. Still worth getting though for the Tori Amos fan.

Smash Mouth – All Star Greatest Hits. This one may provoke smiles. They must have had fun making this collection, although the best tracks on here are the cover versions.

Beyond Good & Evil soundtrack – is better in the background on the game to be honest. It definitely adds something to the game but it’s a collection of background rather than something that would take the attention in the foreground.

Civilisation V soundtrack – same thing here. However – music like this tends to worm its way into your head, take up residence and drive you crazy.

Deus Ex soundtrack – from the original game. This works really well. I find myself wanting to take another look at a game I missed out on the first time around to hear the music in the correct context.

Edie Brickell’s Edie Brickell album. I got frustrated waiting for this old album to be made available over here. Come on ! I can’t even buy it from Amazon or iTunes because it’s barred from sale. That’s half the reason why piracy happens, because you literally cannot buy some stuff. I’ll buy this one when it becomes available, it’s good enough for that.

Machinarium by Tomas Dvorak. Soundtracks are the new classical music, whether they be on film, telly or game. Tomas Dvorak does a great job of setting the mood with his soundtrack to Machinarium and it’s one you could listen to as a standalone album too.

Air’s Premiers Symptomes – interesting EP. There’s tracks here that give promise of better to come, including one that’s like a precursor to the enchanting All I Need.

Katie Melua’s Secret Symphony. You’ll know what to expect by now from Katie Melua and this one is no exception. Good album, not particularly inspiring. There’s nothing on the level of Shy Boy here.

Gabriella Cilmi’s Ten. This one’s a fairly worth successor to her original album 🙂 Although she should move on from Sweet About Me because that song can get old very quickly.

Trine 2 soundtrack. Awesome soundtrack. It’s very listenable to as a discrete album. Must play the game at some point. (Guild Wars 2 permitting).

Transvision Vamp’s Velveteen. I love this album. It’s cheeky cheerfulness and I suspect was an inspiration for the Ting Tings.

King of Leon’s Youth & Young Manhood – meh.

Stuff that hasn’t made into the library yet includes :

Bat For Lashes – Haunted Man : I have this on preorder
Olympic Opening & Closing ceremony music – I may get these at some point
Garbage’s latest : they’re too greedy with the pricing or I’d have bought it by now.

Been enjoying my music 🙂

PS No recurrence of the breathing issues yet, although I’m waiting to see if it flares up again tomorrow.
PS2 That’s a lot of music isn’t it ? I cheated when making that list by asking iTunes what I’d recently listened to. That’s what it came up with for the last 90 days … just over 300 new tracks.
PS3 Someone’s doing a skydive ! For charity ! See link up top !

Yeah – if it stays bad and the breathing trouble flares up again, I'll have to risk the doctor …

Hugs ! And I'll always remember you as Krinza first 🙂

Hi Pete! I know how difficult it is to have difficulties to breathe! I have astma when I get a cold. It is called cold astma or something. Exercising and medicine have keept it in shape really well. If I eat something that gives me difficulties to breathe, it starts within half an hour from the time I was eating. Maybe it helps you a little. Or it is stress, and it starts when you are trying to relax and your body gets stressed out off it. If you understand what I mean. hugs Lotta (used to be Sandra)

What I’m allergic to.

I’ve been getting breathing difficulties, which haven’t exactly been pleasant. Most of all it affects how I get to sleep. And you need your sleep to keep the rest of you healthy.

I have an idea what’s causing it, although I have to lock it down to one thing in particular out of a steadily growing list … And then I stop having what causes the problem. After having 2 really bad Friday’s, I steadily improve over the week. What’s different about Friday ? Well, it’s not just Friday as the breathing issues started up on the Thursday too last week and before one of the potential causes.

Ok, what’s the causes ?

Well one underlying cause is stress. That’s quite high at the moment but I’d eliminate it as an environmental or contact cause. But it needs recognising. And no I can’t talk here about what the cause is. While I know who some of my readers are, I don’t know who you all are ! So this blog never tells the whole story about what’s going on with me. It can’t. But one thing I will let slip is that I’m seriously considering finding another place to work because of it.

Meh – getting distracted again. Stress is something you just have to deal with. One of the best ways is by talking it through with someone you can trust. Trouble is, there’s so much going on behind the scenes that I don’t know who is passing on what incorrect information about me and the way my mind works. And down that road lies damaging paranoia …

Things I think I’m reacting to :

Bacon – This is the Friday morning treat to replace the teacake in the week. I know bacon makes me react by triggering the latent hyperactivity. Plus I only have it on the Friday, hence linking it to “Friday is Bad”. I’m not convinced though because the breathlessness starts before.

Brown bread – distinct possibility and I’m tying this to what I can remember having for munchies the evenings before I have trouble.

Garlic bread – is something I’ll have before pizza, so it could actually be the cause for me thinking pizza was causing me to react. I also very occasionally have garlic bread before my usual dinner at home if I’m feeling particularly starved.

Milkshakes or milk – high likelihood. I’d been neglecting the milkshake method of getting vitamins into me until quite recently. I already figured out I’ve been reacting (with acid) to having excess milk or cheese, so it’s not too great a leap to think that milkshakes are something I have to exclude.

All the new diet stuff – this would suck as since I switched to include healthier stuff in my diet, my legs have reversed a trend of erupting into awfulness and have been repairing. (Still a way to go). I don’t think it’s the green stuff, as that’s been consistent over the week and weekend, there’s no specific trigger that would have made Friday’s bad. Plus I’d had a cough since before I switched the diet around.

Jaffa cakes ! This I can believe, as I’ve been munching these again after ignoring them for a while. And I don’t just have the occasional jaffa cake, I’ll demolish the packet.

I think there’s a few more items too. Would I miss them ?

Bacon ? Yes but it’s a “me want”, not a “me need”. Plus the bacon in our canteen is not the healthiest … Think cholesterol bomb.
Brown bread ? Healthy eating makes me want brown bread to be ok.
Garlic bread ? Curious one. There’s nothing that makes this vital, plus if it’s followed by pizza ? Oink.
Milkshakes ? This’ll suck as the calcium in the milk helps the bones stay healthy.
Diet stuff ? Need it. I’m not giving this up though …
Jaffa cakes ? Yum – but I could give them up in a heartbeat.

There’s two baseline allergies that will be causing the breathing issues :

Dust – need a new vacuum cleaner and I need to blitz the house. But … I can’t do that until I know I’m not going to keel over in the process. Oh and the last time I was this bad, I’d just blitz cleaned most of the house, although the cause then was an air freshener plug in thing.
Hayfever – I don’t think this is the cause at the moment, my eyes have settled down. Hayfever mostly attacks my eyes, with only minor effects on my lungs.

Weight definitely isn’t a factor, as I have 1.5 stones less of me to cause a constriction on my lungs.

It’s a worry – but I’ll be keeping an eye on it. Starting with seeing how long I can resist bacon, garlic bread, milkshakes and jaffa cakes. I need to keep having the brown bread and the diet stuff and I don’t think those are a trigger anyway or every afternoon at work would be an utter nightmare.

PS I still have a twin packet of jaffa cakes in the cupboard that may taunt me a while …
PS2 And despite saying I could give them up in a heartbeat, they’re Jaffa Cakes ! Cake is Life.

Ok, so 2 days in Guild Wars 2 and a whole day today of ignoring it …

I’ve been very impressed with this one in its very early days. I’ve forgiven the early access issues cos, to be honest, once it started working it’s been the smoothest online multiplayer experience I’ve seen yet. Warcraft was good but even after it was settled, I saw servers knocked offline by masses of players invading the capital cities. (That’s commonplace now in WoW and works)

But in its early days, GW2 has been working very well. Let’s see if that continues when more people come in who didn’t get to be part of the early access.

Character names are much more in demand in Guild Wars 2, so I’ll be using my online gaming name of Iceangel as a surname. The little guy I’ve been playing so far is Finlay Iceangel :

Yeah. He’s a funny little guy. Engineer seemed to have the best potential for doing damage at range, which is my favoured role in these types of games. He’s an Asura, who are half crazy little gremlin/goblin people. I’m enjoying the storyline so far.

Early days so far. That’s the character selection screen, how does the actual game look ?

That’s from the starting area. The environments look better than what The Old Republic (SWTOR) managed, even when it got past beta stage. SWTOR really dropped the ball incredibly badly. It just copied WoW but didn’t implement it as well. I dunno if it got fixed after the beta weekend but it didn’t even include swimming. MMOs have to be 3 dimensional.

But swimming/no swimming is a minor complaint. However … if it’s implemented fully into the game :

(oops for leaving a hint screen up!)

Then it adds a whole new level of potential. That’s an underwater sequence where I’ve joined in with one of the random events that happen all the time. Reckless Inquest Engineers have dabbled a little too much and upset part of the wildlife. Players then join in to take down the Enraged Shark (no laser beams on this one, just Big Teeth). In WoW, the first player to hit the mob would “tag” it and be the only one to get the credit. In GW2, all players who help with the event get credit according to how much they helped out. And these random events happen all the time.

The drawback with the WoW model is that you have to beg for groups in order to get the group content done. It’s very tough as a single player to get into trustworthy groups. Or …. you just wait a few levels until your character is far too strong for the fight and do it easily. Guild Wars 2 has a dynamic level system, where the game will step you back or step you up to match the content. Because I level quick and I’ve been gaining levels through pvp, it’s been dropping me back to keep the content challenging.

That dynamic level system has huge advantages. In WoW, you can’t really pvp until you get maximum level and decent gear, either because you’re not allowed in or because your survivability is low. In GW2, level doesn’t matter, it just puts you up to maximum level. Talking of pvp …

I was having way too much fun storming the castle over the weekend.

That one is from us assaulting a gateway. We’ve demolished the boiling oil that the defenders placed over the gate, now we’re taking down a cannon emplacement on the neighbouring tower before going for the gate. The oil and cannons are all put up by players. In that screenie, I’m taking part in World vs World vs World, where my server is up against a couple of others so there’s a 3 way fight going for dominance of the map.

It’s quite dynamic too. The WvWvW combat is pretty tough. It takes a while to break down those gates, even with lots of people helping out :

Yes. That is a scary amount of people on screen at once. Performance of the game is pretty good. I was getting very occasional slowdowns with the graphics still at the quality above. No need to step it back as I occasionally had to in WoW. No lag either.

What I will say though is that while my engineer is pretty good in the single player content and can happily take on single elite NPC mobs in WvWvW, I’m not so convinced about how he does in multiplayer. I may be looking at making a “Melody Iceangel” (Melody ? It’s got a nice ring to it) for pvp. She’d be an elementalist character aimed at doing lots of area damage. We shall see. One of the advantages of that levelling system is that I’d be able to join in the WvWvW early instead of taking massive time to level two characters to maximum.

I’m pleased with it so far. I suspect Guild Wars 2 will keep me interested for quite a while. It’ll definitely change some WoW veterans minds on whether they should get the new expansion. Like – they’ll stay in GW2 and cancel their Panda preorders.

I’ve had to break from it today though because that overindulgence over the weekend had a side effect – my shoulders hate me !

One of the oldest signs I’ve known that a game has that “just a little more” factor is when I see the sun starting to come up while I’m still playing it.

I know ! And it’s 2 months past longest day (and therefore earliest morning) of the year too !

One of the most hotly anticipated games for the last few years opened its doors properly yesterday. It’s Guild Wars 2 and it’s been promising to revolutionise Massive Multiplayer Online (MMO) gameplay. MMOs in the past have fallen into a well established cycle where the world is effectively static. But … it’s not just static, it’s bound to what the player triggers and at the same time, completely ignores what the player triggers.

I didn’t explain that too well did I ? World of Warcraft is the one that made MMOs popular. It wasn’t the first MMO but it was the first that made MMOs popular and easy to play. That’s not to say it was easy in the early days, the farming required made it pretty damn hard. It’s easy now, sure but in vanilla days, group quest meant you needed help. In current WoW (and SWTOR), group quest means either waiting a few levels or using special tactics, a special build, a hunter or death knight.

But – there’s a lot of flaws in the way it does things. I got bored of the WoW model mostly because of the lack of challenge in the current game but it seemed like the massive amount of content in there was just about getting you to the endgame faster. And the endgame sucks bigtime. What makes the WoW model worse is that all that content is great. But it’s wasted in the rush to get to endgame, which is just going through the same select few locations in repetition ad nauseum.

Aside – the only MMO that doesn’t suffer this model is Eve, which is completely player driven outside of Empire. And the game is well balanced enough that the player-political map constantly changes with the shifting alliances. I just find it mind numblingly tedious.

Guild Wars 2 feels a little different there. For a start, the mechanics are much simplified. You have much less skills to play with as standard … But those are supplemented by utility skills that you can select. I have a healing turret and a gun turret for my Asura Engineer.

Where’s this sun up test come in ?

Well – after giving up on Guild Wars 2 early yesterday because of massive problems with the login servers (which might be back today), I went off and gave full attention to Twenty20 Finals day. (Yorkshire came a close second – all 3 were good games). After that, I go back in at about 10pm. I level up through a fairly amusing (not the best but pretty good) early storyline and reach level 11. Upon which I’m getting tired and thinking I should go to bed (at about 1.30am).

But not before checking out the much vaunted World vs World vs World player vs player mode. This sees players from multiple servers coming together to fight it out over a single map. The maps are huge … and full of control points, strongholds and castles for players to fight over. It’s suitably epic.

WoW players may know of Alterac Valley (dunno how much that’s done now since it went effectively PvE only). Alterac Valley is a North-South contest with effectively just one lane to fight in. WvWvW is massive. It’s easily the scale of a WoW zone and might actually be bigger.

Yep – it caught me for a little while and that’s with me fighting effectively on my own instead of being on voice comms with a guild. I was still on there at 5am …

Oops.

Yep. Guild Wars 2 definitely passes the Sun Up addictiveness test in a way that WoW kinda did before it went easy.

But what it doesn’t pass is the availability test. A common happening with all MMO releases is that their Day 0 log in demand far exceeds the capacity available. Some MMOs deal with this by staggering their release (WoW did). GW2 was attempting to evaluate this through stress testing. That didn’t succeed in anticipating demand.

It’s a great game – but wait for the demand issues to sort themselves out. By the way – I’m on Aurora Glade as an Asura Engineer called Finlay Iceangel. I’m planning to use the Iceangel tag as a surname for the characters there, so at some point there will hopefully be a melee Bashara/Bashran Iceangel join the engineer.

Can’t close without a mention of a pioneer who passed away yesterday. It happened before I was born but I’m feeling a need to watch again the HBO series From The Earth To The Moon to relive again some of those early space faring days. May they come back some time soon. Farewell Neil Armstrong !

I was kinda hoping to be falling asleep in front of the telly today and tomorrow.

Friday – England v South Africa in one day cricket
Caturday – Twenty20 domestic finals day

Friday’s England game was effectively a washout, with the day being “will they ?” “won’t they ?” with heavy showers interspersed with occasional dry spells. Hoping for better tomorrow although I’m expecting the rain to intervene again.

Definitely needing the downtime as I’m definitely not feeling right at the moment. I suspect I’m having issues shifting to this different diet. I’ve had trouble adapting to taking mineral supplements before so putting the greens back into the diet too ?

How am I doing at the moment ?

Structurally, my legs are fine. I have maximum power available, even if I can’t use it when I’m not on a cricket field (max power = slippage = sore bum). Ok, maybe not 100% ok because for some reason, my left achilles has decided to clamp up and go tight. No big deal.

My legs are still a mess though. It’s going to take a while for all the surface damage to repair itself. That’ll be another advantage of the downtime this weekend, no work trousers to sandpaper the healing away.

My muscles have been rebelling too. I run a fine line before my muscles go into a cramping up tendency. I suspect some of the healthy options stuff I’ve been eating/drinking have had too much salt in there. That’s what tends to get my muscles into trouble.

Oh – yesterday was good. I was supposed to be at a meeting at a contractor’s office in the middle of Bristol for a 10am start. I’m thinking – leave around 9am, that’ll let me miss the worst of the rush hour traffic as they’d be at their offices by then. I actually left at 8.50 and was on the motorway at 8.55. I was still on the motorway at 10am … And this is for a trip that’s supposed to take about 15-20 minutes total.

Meh. There’d been a lorry break down on the motorway, which caused the initial traffic problems. But what compounded it was a little Citroen dropping the contents of its radiator into the inside lane. And what made that into a major problem was that it wasn’t pushed into a refuge that was less than 50m ahead.

Deeply meh. I’m still on my learning curve so I didn’t contribute as much as I’d like but I think I learned enough and contributed enough to make it worth me coming. That learning curve is pretty huge at the moment but one of the things I’ve always been good at is taking in and assimilating new information.

News has been active lately. There’s 2 stories that especially catch my eye – a playboy Prince (which I’m not going to say anything about except for “silly boy” for getting caught) and exam results.

I got used to being top or near top of every class at school. This was in the days when GCSEs were just coming in and they were a decent test. I got 6 A’s and 4 B’s (iirc!) at GCSE. The B’s were English Lit, French, History. Coulda been 3 Bs and the rest A’s.

However ! My GCSE results and those of the other kids in my year have been made irrelevant by more contemporary results. The A* result didn’t exist when I did my GCSEs. It was added because too many kids were being allowed to get A grades. Over the years, the pass rate has gradually gone up and up. There’s a couple of reasons for that :

Past papers allowing more practice
Easier marking

Both reasons are valid. What’s caused the controversy this time around is that someone’s decided that English GCSE results could be permitted to have a lower pass rate than previous years …

Good on ’em ! But what it has done is provoked huge “how could this be allowed ?” controversy.

I have a huge problem with exams anyway. They teach the wrong behaviour. Rote learning for facts isn’t particularly useful in modern life. Knowing how to attack questions and hunt for information is what’s useful. Knowing when to say “I don’t honestly know but I will find out asap” is the most useful thing anyone can say. It’s far better than just guessing. Guesses can be very dangerous.

But then again, for some techniques rote learning is key. If someone was doing medical stuff on me, I don’t want them to be looking it up in a book 😉

I’ll leave it there cos my fingers are getting itchy for a bit of gaming. I have a contingency plan in case the cricket is hit by the weather – Guild Wars 2 early activation starts tomorrow morning. And I suspect that as soon as I log into Steam and get spotted, a certain SteamGirl will be looking to drag me into GW2 🙂 I have a feeling that SteamGirl has her eye on the Eurogamer expo at the end of September. I think she’d have liked to drag me off to Gamescom which just finished over in Cologne, Germany.

That’s something really good for a struggling ego – someone who I’ve only met in person once (and she thought I was 10 years younger, pre-diet!) and who is highly amusing to natter to over Steam chat and wants to drag me off to places 🙂 What’s stopping me ? I really don’t know. Although I’d pin it on that one track mind that had me looking elsewhere somewhere closer to home for quite a while.

I think I’m feeling a kind of anticipation.

Season’s changing at the moment and there’s a bunch of stuff that’ll be either finishing, starting, transitioning or shifting around a bit soon.

The thing I’m feeling the anticipation for is Guild Wars 2, which will possibly see me dive into Massive Multiplayer Online games again for the first time since World of Warcraft was at its peak. I guested a bit for Violence Reborn raiding in Lich King but missed the early Lich King raids and late Burning Crusade raids. I got fed up with WoW during the Cataclysm times so didn’t really do much of those raids.

No – my main WoW memories are the original raids and the early Burning Crusade raids with the Mercenaries. We had a good thing going there, although it fell apart as the Guildlink initiative turned into a black hole sucking all of the players addicted to raiding into the one guild. I was more about keeping my people ok than the raiding though.

So yeah – next big game on the horizon is Guild Wars 2, which I should be able to access early from this weekend. I’ve been thinking I should have cleared off one or two partially completed games (like Beyond Good & Evil and Machinarium) before heading into GW2. That’s not happened though cos I’m usually not feeling the motivation to dive into games after looking at a monitor screen all day at work.

I’m also looking at Planetside 2, which could well be awesome. Sci fi ground combat with the potential to be fighter pilot again. Missed that. I’d get caught up in WoW’s player v player gameplay (and quite likely GW2’s pvp too) but first person shooter games online left me cold because there was no persistence past each staged battle. Planetside 2 should see players fighting for domination of a couple of continents. Could be interesting.

TV is on the transition as well.

I’m currently watching the last Deadliest Catch of the season, plus there’s the cricket season coming to a close. I’ll be watching as much of Twenty20 finals day (Saturday) as possible but that’s pretty much the last big cricket event of the summer. I’ve also been enjoying Leverage and Falling Skies

TV will be transitioning into the Fall schedules and I’m looking forward to Warehouse 13 coming back (it’s fun). DOCTOR WHO ! Yep. 10 days for the next Doctor Who episodes.

I have a few rules with what I watch where I let the OCD out to play. My V+ box shows 7 shows per page. I start on the last page, if it’s just movies I’ll watch one of those. (Real Steel was surprisingly good.) If it’s something daily, I’ll watch a bunch of them. That leaves weekly stuff. I like to watch a few episodes one after the other, to get continuity. However …

Falling Skies and Doctor Who ? They’re like – watch immediate. Or in the case of Falling Skies, watch the next day cos it’s on late and I’m listening to music by the time it’s on.

Oh and if there’s more space available on the box than is listed to record in the planner ? I’ll dip into the movie collection. I have a small pile of blu-rays from the Bristol trip a couple of weeks ago that I haven’t watched yet.

Work is transitioning as well, in both what I do and who I work with. We’re getting a fair bit of turnover in the team – 2nd RO and a couple of people the rank above me, including the one I’m trying to learn as much as I can from before he goes.

Project wise, I’m switching from the old project to a brand new one. It’s a good opportunity – I’ve soaked up a lot of knowledge over the past too many years, including seeing now the consequences of decisions made (or not made!) years ago. The thing I’m most responsible for is called a Master Data and Assumptions List, which is where we record decisions, facts and just plain “this is what’s gonna happen” assumptions. It’s very important that everyone involved in a project is working off the same assumptions, or you either get work done twice (which you pay for twice) or work not done at all.

It’s a good opportunity and I’m already getting a chance to apply my brain to it. Just hope we don’t end up being a poor relation to some higher visibility projects.

It’ll be sad losing a few of the people though as they either move on in the organisation or leave for the outside. I’ll definitely miss Miss Meerkat’s cheerful cheeky grin as it pops up to see who’s coming through the door 🙂 May it stay unblurry for a long time in that photographic memory !

Oh ! Music too. I have finally managed to get everything in the library listened to since I acquired the Beyond Good & Evil soundtrack a few months ago.

Must do another music post sometime soon. Not sure if there’s been much stand out stuff in what I’ve acquired lately but the Deus Ex soundtrack and the latest from the Ting Tings were pretty good. Not forgetting the Machinarium soundtrack by Tomas Dvorak (one to look out for) and looking further back, I was very impressed with Velveteen by Transvision Vamp.

Ooo – 1 hour 20 left of Deadliest Catch and it’ll be on to the music again. Cya later !

Been seeing improvements with this latest diet shift I’ve made.

My legs and the wounds on there that have refused to heal have been an issue for over a year now. The antibiotic pills and cream stuff given to me by the doctors helped up to a point (and mostly cleared it up) but after a while, that patch type stuff runs out and the original problem returns. In my case, it looks like it was diet.

That first doctor’s trip did help in a very significant way though – the “diet” (actually antibiotic) pills had a fairly strict pattern attached to when I could have them : don’t take one until 2 hours after food and 1 hour before food. With 4 times a day, that’s 3 hours times 4, literally half the day when snacking was banned. Upshot – the habitual grazing was no longer an option. Going on that regimen for a week put the idea in my head “yes, this can be done”.

Combine that with knowing that in the cricket I’d gradually been losing my speed … and you have someone thinking that he can make a go of losing the weight. Oh – I’d also been seeing my most recent photos taken on a holiday. Best word to describe ? Chunky. I don’t like being chunky and I definitely don’t like being slow.

Result ? After almost a year of it, I’m down 1.5 stone (9.5kg) and I have all of my speed back. And that’s not just straight line power, it’s being able to dodge out the way when I have to. I still wilt in the heat (was hoping less insulation would help there) but hey – can’t have everything.

I’ve had to shift that diet again though. With the stuff on my legs erupting again a week and a half ago, I figured I’d look up diet as a potential cause for the damage coming back. As in, was I giving my body the material it needed to repair itself ?

So – diet shift. I’ve added lettuce to the lunchtime sandwiches. I’m drinking orange juice regularly again (old habit that I dropped a couple of years ago), I’m taking vitamin supplements (as a booster). I’m eating green crunchy stuff in the evenings as grazing snack instead of cookies.

Trouble is, that comes at a cost in the early days of the shift. My head was definitely not right last week (think it’s been more in balance today) with motivation definitely lacking. That’s not to say I wasn’t getting on with doing Stuff, I may not Want to do Stuff but I’ll get done what needs to be done. Like the laptop, the contracts stuff at work, the desktop and all the other bits and pieces at work.

That balance thing also shows itself in cramping up – I ride a fine balance there and having the leg muscles I have doesn’t help. That sounds kinda whingy doesn’t it ? I can handle the cramp and it’s a good sign that I need to drink something.

Other signs – you know when you get starving and there’s a kind of conversation with yourself that goes like :

“I’m hungry ! Feed me something !”
“But I just ate, what do you want now ?”
“I dunno ! Feed me Something”
And you have no clue what the “something” you need is. You have an instinctive level understanding that you are missing something crucial but can’t put your finger on it. By adding the Vitamin C rich stuff back into my diet, I think I’ve identified that “something”. That’ll help the diet too because instead of treating craving with cookies, I’m treating it with green stuff.

How are the legs doing with all this ?

I have this impression that there’s thousands of mini workmen inside me all shouting “Yey ! He’s finally giving us the stuff we need to fix him ! Let’s get to work”. And they’ve been patching up each broken bit in turn. Literally. The bad bits on my legs are in patches on both calves and above my left knee. Behind my left knee is also bad. Each patch started repairing after the other.

At the moment, I have a couple of fairly spectacular patches and my right leg looks like it got burned a while ago. But that’s ok, cos it shows it’s mending now instead of getting worse.

Hopefully the legs will continue to improve. As they are at the moment, I cannot wear my knee pads because of where the patches are. And that means no cricket. And no “warm up the legs” treatment when the cold of winter gets into my knees, as it will. I got bored of these leg issues last year and want smooth skin again.

I think it’s time to close now before this post gets huge. Summary ?

Diet’s helping – and I’m adjusting to it
Legs are repairing (I hope!)
Having leaner legs means I can see the muscles at play under the skin
And that’s pretty awesome
I have speed !!!!!
Still not gonna be seen in public in shorts

What I’d really like to close on is – if you find yourself confronted by a need to make a wholesale life change, throw yourself into it. Don’t look back, don’t have second thoughts. Make that change. Whether it be giving up something damaging like drink, drugs or smoking. Or if it’s needing to eat healthier or otherwise lose weight. Or change in circumstances at home or work (not something I’m usually good at due to inertia but when the change clicks ? I’m ok)

It’ll seem hard early on but stick with it. It’ll be worth it in the long run. However, I’ll admit to being no saint there. I have had the occasional cookie and piece of chocolate when I’ve felt the need. I have one chemical addiction that I’m not willing to give up – caffeine.

Sometimes a little comfort is needed. I’m not so tough that I don’t need that comfort munchie every once in a while. But as long as that long term plan is in sight – consider the chocolate or the cookie a treat rather than the norm. Try to be dependent on absolutely nothing. I’m not there yet, I have that chemical addiction to caffeine which means I get headaches if I’m too long without coffee.

And I am definitely rambling now – if you make big decisions like me with the diet, stick with it ! It’ll be worth it. And I’ll be remembering that tomorrow when I’m dodging out the way of people on the stairs 🙂

Nope – not thinking about spending money on stuff (although I do need another vacuum cleaner soon) but I feel I need to say a few things about buying stuff.

(Techie stuff mainly)

You see so many people buying things and then getting disappointed that it’s not all they would have wanted. There’s a sense of entitlement there, although some of that comes from feeling entitled to receiving a completed and reliable product from the people we’re giving money too. And yep, I can’t believe that Legends of Pegasus is still in the Top 20 Sellers chart in Steam, despite the horrific reviews that game is getting.

We have very different rules to buying things at work. They’re quite strict and we have to go through a lot of hoops to firstly get approval to spend money and then to get the work on to contract. While I dislike that from an engineer “let me do my job” point of view, I can accept it from the point of view of being professional and an acknowledgement that the money I’m spending is not mine.

To give more of an idea of the hoops we’d have to go through to get support contracting in, we have to give a lot of justification.
Why have we selected that company and not others ?
How much does it cost (often based on early estimates of scope of work) ?
Do we really need it ?
Can we shave anything off the final cost ?
When is it required ?
And have we got a good contracting means

You’ll notice that “can we do it better ?” or “do we get more value out of spending a little more ?” are questions that do not apply. “Can we wait for something better ?” is also not a question that’s used much because, we need kit now and it often takes too long to jump through the hoops to get it through quickly. Plus, in the techie world if you keep going with the “wait for better ?” then you end up not buying anything and continue using wheezing, archaic equipment that serves no purpose.

Buying at home is much easier. But that doesn’t mean it has to be frivolous. I put in a lot of research before buying techie items at home and even there, I don’t make the right decisions all of the time. My amplifier is a case in point, I assumed I’d avoid the occasional bad HDMI board issue with Onkyo amps. That assumption was incorrect as I suspect that’s the cause of the silent blips (I’ve eliminated all other causes).

There’s a parallel there though. The justifications we have to include at work force us to convince others that we aren’t throwing cash away. They make us look beyond “cos this is how we’ve always done it” and also make us look at options we may not have considered.

Home buying is rather different. If I’d gone by work rules I’d have :

Been hunting for a “what’s wrong with my laptop” person (time + money)
Investigated suitable replacements
Investigated who would be the cheapest supplier
And then hunted for another person to do the switch

I have to admit, I actually followed most of those steps up top but I don’t have to justify my computer/techie skills to anyone around me. People come to me for advice with techie stuff 🙂 I’m happy to admit that I don’t know everything to do with PCs (anyone who does is a liar) but I can answer most questions by figuring out how to ask Google the right question, filtering out the incorrect, inconclusive and irrelevant.

Investigating suitable replacements was based around me knowing what I’d need to replace the suspect item (a 2.5″ SATA completely standard drive) and knowing I’d have the freedom to spend a little more on an item that would boost the performance of the machine. (The hybrid SSD definitely makes for a smoother machine).

I also did an investigation on the software, trying a couple of trials before setting on Acronis True Image as the software for the job. It’s easy to use (for a techie), whereas the other free/free trial options didn’t apparently want to do what I wanted – clone the drive.

Suppliers is a curious one. Google shopping results help here but whereas at work, we’d be required to go for the cheapest supplier, I was free to spend a little more (especially considering fuel) on going to Novatech. I’ll go through Novatech a lot for my PC bits : They’re cheap, they sell good stuff, they have an excellent selection and most important – They’re local. Being local means I can take advantage of flexi credit by leaving work a little early to head down the motorway to pick stuff up. Definitely better than waiting a few days for Bristol’s Finest Postmen to lose your item in the mail.

It’s definitely easier to buy stuff at home – but does it get you a better result ?

Not always. I’ve got a few pieces of cricket gear where I’ve effectively bought something because it caught my eye, finding that it was less than ideal when I took it on the field. Not sure if I can actually use my latest helmet.

I’m rambling again I believe.

Yes – the hoops we have to jump through at work are a pain. They’re often based around convincing people who tend to be very reluctant about spending money. But … they’re worth it in the end. I put in a lot of checking out around buying my current car and minimal research into buying my last one. What I learned about Lexus in that time assured me that it would be a great car with good dealership backup (both correct). I assumed the Focus would be an almost like-for-like replacement for the Puma and was proved wrong (handling not up to it).

I’ll close out with : Procrastination can be a good thing.

Applying a little patience and walking away to do a little more window shopping to check out the options lets you commit your cash with a clear head. You know more about the detail of what you’re buying. If I’d believed the rumours about bad Onkyo HDMI boards, I’d have bought a Yamaha AV amp. By checking out the inside of a Prius, I saw for myself the different quality of the interior and bought the Lexus.

I’m actually quite happy with the AV amp but the dvd playback is an issue. The Lexus – is still awesome. Also happy with the laptop performance now, hybrid SSDs deliver the performance boost that WD Raptor drives don’t.

PS Laptop = stable. No random 10 second frozen mouse pointer pauses since the upgrade. Desktop = stable with new firmware in the drive.