Month: August 2013

Thank you 🙂 Bugging me about Birmingham PHO has helped bust me out of that cage …

Or at least a little start on it for now 😉

Thank you

Yep – it’s another blatant steal from Facebook :

Let’s see how many of those where people I know are suffering :

Crohn’s – aye. He’s a great guy too, been invaluable to us over the past I dunno years I’ve known him. He hides the constant pain well.
PTSD – someone I know saw something which made him very quiet for a little while after he joined us. But we listened, we helped, we let him talk through it. We treated him like one of the gang. And I think we helped him lift this. If you know someone who you think is suffering from PTSD, don’t push – just listen. Pushing can make this problem much worse if the person suffering is not yet ready to come to terms with it.

Anxiety – a very dear friend is suffering from crippling anxiety at the moment. Huge hugs.
Bipolar – this is part of my curse. I’m up, I’m down. I’ll get stuck in the down and not know how to get back out of that pit. The only thing I can say here is – enjoy the upside and remember in the downside that you have people who care about you. They want to help you out, they just may not know how.

Depression – this is the massive crippling thing of the modern age. It can be chemical, it can be situational. But – it locks you in to a negative frame of mind that is self reinforcing. What helps me out immeasurably is helping others. It’s what I live for. I get a buzz from helping others, even if it’s just seeing them smile. And that boost can help me crack my own depressive phases.

Diabetes – I know people with this. People at school had this, one of them nearly killed himself several times due to alcohol induced comas. It’s a fairly manageable condition but don’t recoil or otherwise embarass the victim when you see them having to take the medication. They’re embarassed too, they don’t need your negative reaction to make them worse. Support them instead

Cancer – I’ve had a close relative die from this and it was the inspiration for the Pink Hat cricket thing I did 2 seasons ago. It’s not a good way to go. But – it’s getting more survivable, even if the side effects are not what you’d wish on anybody.

Again. Support the person suffering. Help them own their illness/condition. It’s when the condition owns them that they have a problem, helping them understand it will help them get back in control of it. Sometimes that’s just being there and listening to what people have to say.

Let them express it in their own words. And then keep their confidence. That’s primarily what this blog is for, it lets me express my own conditions/problems/successes (and the rest) in my own words. I know I have a few regular readers, although I don’t know exactly how many. It’s only a few but the fact that you take time out to read my random witterings also helps me in my own battles.

(Yep – there’s a few patterns that appear in the hit counters and when I see them it’s “Oh wow” and a big smile breaks out)

Arthritis – hugs to Purplepixie, I can imagine how much pain you have from a) my occasional joint problems and b) how much of a statue I’d be after first practice of the year !

For me, there’s a few things tugging my mental condition back. Since I went back on the vitamin tablets last week, my mood has improved and my skin seems better able to get started on repairs. But I still am prone to inflicting even more damage on it which sets back both the healing and my own mental state. It still feels like I’m locked in, discouraging me from leaving the house. I wear dark clothes because of unsightly marks in embarassing places. The mercy is that on the outside, it’s just itchy. There’s no pain from the bad bits. Plenty of pain from damaged joints but none on the outside.

There’s a whole host of other internal problems that people are struggling to deal with. Situations cause depression as much as medical conditions. And stress on that level can then lead to medical conditions that reinforce the depression. People deserve your support. Sometimes they don’t know how to ask. Sometimes the best thing to do is just be a friend and be available to listen when they need to talk. But they would all appreciate :

Although sometimes when I offer a hug, I get the impression that the mental reaction is “AIEEE RUN !”

They make everything worthwhile don’t they ?

I’m watching the England Women play the Aussies at the moment. It’s half time and I’ve just watched Sarah “Squirt” Taylor bash the highest score by an England lady in the Twenty20 format. Oh and she just happens to be one* of the most skillful wicket keepers in the world game at the moment, that’s including the men.

*(not many players would beat James Foster of Essex’s keeping)

But more of that in a bit.

Back to work today after a long healing weekend. This weekend I started taking the vitamin tablets again in the hope that they help my skin out. I think it’s working … and I feel better (more energised) on the inside too, despite it being allergy season part 2. Let’s hope that healing continues as there’s a lot of damage to repair.

It was a random encounters day today …

I saw the Snow Queen again (I owe you a better name my dear!). It always brings out the grin seeing the Snow Queen and we’d love to steal her away from where she is right now so she can come work with us. She became the Heart of my last team due to being a little bundle of Awesome and it always adds a bit of bounce to my step when I can borrow a bit of that Awesomeness.

Even if I’m trying to avoid bouncing too much at the moment in order to help out the healing … (my skin is very delicate)

Saw Crystal today too. (It’s based on a cricketer’s nickname). We share a lot of problems me and Crystal. More than you’d think possible. We both suffer from hayfever that hits us early summer and in autumn. We’re both suffering from internal injuries that slow us down (although mine are kinda self inflicted, Crystal’s definitely aren’t). She’s a smart girl is Crystal, we were lucky to acquire her for the project when she did because she sorted out a lot of problems that had been allowed to build.

And she’s mad about cricket too. So yep. Usually I’d spend my lunch at my desk playing a card game. But I always welcome the chance to escape and have a natter with someone. Today’s lunchtime was one of the better.

I’m missing some excellent cricket !!!!!! Just seen an execution of a run out that anyone in the game of cricket would have been proud to pull out of the bag. Arran “Deadly” Brindle – take a bow. Shows that the women’s game tends to have more skill in than the men’s.

One of our Finance Angel’s has turned very dark. As if she’s seen a ghost, beaten it up and nicked all the hair colour that the ghost had stolen before.

And at the end of the day, the Judge comes looking for help. I’ll always help the Judge as she’s been very useful in the past. I think she dropped an email and ran today – I’ll see what I can do tomorrow.

We’ve been blessed to have a lot of very bright women involved with the project over the years. Women provide a different perspective to men when it comes to project work. Men tend to be inspired but scattergun (me definitely!), women tend to be organised, super professional and remember everything that needs to be done. I definitely appreciate them keeping me straight over the years. It’s kept me out of trouble.

(I better mention Ms Warpath too in case she’s peeking … at a time when we’re losing people, it’s good to know there’s someone with a good head on her shoulders keeping the ship afloat, backed up by our Apprentice on this end)

Back to the cricket …

The women don’t have the power of the men. It makes it a very different game. Instead of power hitting, we see deft touches to avoid the fielders. Instead of 90mph bowling, the fastest we see is Katherine Brunt pinging it down at 70-75mph. That’s about the pace I used to bowl at my quickest. There’s some incredible skill in the field.

We’ve already seen Sarah Taylor get the record score in an England shirt and around that was some great fielding by the Aussies (making up for indifferent bowling). Think full length diving catches. We’ve seen a smartly executed power throw run out by Arran Brindle.

Hopefully we’ll see something spectacular from behind the stumps by Sarah Taylor. I have my fingers crossed.

Today was a good day. I’m hoping tomorrow will be better. (More sleep will help – don’t believe I got much last night …)

And … while I was doing my “does this make sense ?” check, England take another wicket. Come on England ! Great job so far, looking good.

Now what was the address of that cat video streaming site …

Pete said: We have access to massive amounts of information that tell us how to do stuff, that helps us out in ways we didn't know existed 10 years ago.

It's just a pity we don't use that information to build better worlds….. rather than Facebook status updates and cat videos! [lol]

I don’t think we realise how much we’re spoiled in this modern technological age.

We have so many things that help us out. So many devices that make it easier to do things (or make it harder to concentrate on the important things like housekeeping !) and so many devices that just make it possible to do things we wouldn’t have thought possible 5 or 10 years ago.

It’s the little devices that help out most of all. 5 years ago, I used a separate satnav. It started life as a Hewlett Packard iPaq 4150 running the Tomtom software. Good little device, even though I didn’t use it much for its prime reason for being. It was a Personal Data Assistant, before phones became powerful enough to take over that job. The only problem it had was the glitches in the Tomtom software.

Even then, we’re spoiled. When I started working, satnavs were incredibly rare. We’d plan our routes on pieces of paper (big writing !) and we’d panic when we lost track of the route. Nowadays GPS takes all the fun out of getting lost because it’s an ever present thing on everything keeping us in the picture for where we are. GPS used to be a luxury reserved for the military …

I was watching the Doctor Who prom concert before moving over to the desktop, even there things have improved. Video recorders have been in the home for decades now but digital video recorders make things so much easier. No more hunting through the tape library for the right tape, just look in the list. I could watch that on a stream from the internet too if I missed it.

That’s another thing – when I started with Blueyonder, I had 512kbit/s download. Now, I have 30Mbits/s and my upload is faster than that original download.

Where did the inspiration of this post come from ?

Mostly from gaming. I’ve bought a few things from Good Old Gaming over the past year and barely played any of them. To be honest, it’s so cheap there that I’ve had my money’s worth from the goodies (soundtracks, pictures etc) they throw in with the game.

The latest attempt was to have a go at Arcanum. The concept here is awesome. It’s a Dungeons & Dragons type setup with orcs, elves, dwarves and magic crossed with technology. Kinda like D&D moved into the Industrial Age. The concept has spectacular potential, the implementation does not. It’s ok for the time but is missing things we take for granted like a big sign saying “Go Here To Progress Story”. After the intro, I literally had no clue where to go next and the game wasn’t helping.

Bit of a pity that.

A lot of the other games were like that too. They would implement more depth into the game (there’s dazzling depth possible in Neverwinter Nights, especially when enhanced with the extra character classes) but it’s also possible to get lost in the game. Same with the first person shooter games. They had multiple routes and it was possible to get lost.

A frequent complaint against modern games is that they are on rails. The term “corridor shooter” has come into gaming. This is where a game may look open but you’re shepherded (often unsubtly) down set pathways. Things like unopenable doors or sidestreets with an invisible wall. Progress is good but often comes with costs.

Another sign of progress – my laptop is currently streaming the music over the network to my hifi. In ages past, I’d be running across the room to change cds. I’d certainly not be picking from a library with 10,000 tracks. I’d definitely be tripping over the audio cables a few times 🙂

I can’t help feeling that we miss out though. I’m still in hiding mode at the moment but the modern things lead to a more Indoor life anyway. I’m not needing to venture outside for entertainment. I’m missing chatting up the barmaids at the local or propping up the popcorn stand at the cinema.

A modern life is a more lonely life ? Perhaps.

But then again, before the internet came around, I wouldn’t have had the involvement in World of Warcraft which led to me gaining lots of good friends from around the globe. Eve counts there too, although the Eve crowd is a bit more geeky than the WoW crowd if you can believe that.

Another inspiration for this post is hearing the comments about the cricketers. When I started my cricket, it was before the ultra professional era. Now, the cricketers are more in the gym than active in the game. They’re a stronger bunch, a more powerful bunch. Perhaps I’d have been a better cricketer given more gym time or more practice time ? Definitely if it was directed practice. But I doubt whether my fragility would have supported gym time.

Apologies if this has gone very scattergun ;-).

We definitely have it easier these days. We have access to massive amounts of information that tell us how to do stuff, that helps us out in ways we didn’t know existed 10 years ago. We can get cash from a hole in the wall (I vaguely remember ATMs being introduced). We can call people across the world from a device that fits in out pocket.

But perhaps we’re getting a little too reliant on the technology. I definitely think a hug is more satisfying than a win in a game.

I’ve got the cricket coverage on at the moment and it’s sparking a few thoughts.

There’s no play, they’re talking among themselves because it’s raining. This can sometimes be far more interesting than the actual play. (Especially in the current game because it’s a 5 day revenue pitch)

The current chat is on bats … The bat is the most important piece of kit in cricket, at least in terms of something you’ll keep around for ages and it’ll make a real difference to how you play in a game.

The ball matters too, a bowler will like a hard ball because it does more for them. In nets, I used to pick up the hardest ball I could find and then use that. It didn’t have to be Shiny, I’d make it shiny over 10 minutes practice and make it swing round corners. But you don’t provide your own match balls and they don’t last that long. They make a difference – but you don’t keep them.

Here’s a pic of some of my bats :

Oh and there’s a knocking in hammer and bat gripping tool there too.

The Sky boys have been talking bats this morning and it’s actually been interesting. Bats have gotten bigger over the years but they’ve also changed. One way of getting them bigger has also made them more delicate. They have different thicknesses and different shapes.

I’m not going to say much about bats but I will say a few things :

The modern bat is definitely far more delicate. Of the 3 in the pic, I had the bottom one at school and bought the V500 (middle) in maybe 2000. I got the V1 (top) and ditched it after half a season because it was getting cratered (partly due to my ineptness with it).

You can see how old that bare bat is … it drank a lot of Linseed oil over the years and I took the labels off because they were getting grotty. It’s a Duncan Fearnley bat that gave me many, many years of good service, although a few of those were interrupted by me not finding teams while bouncing round the country and because I had a few forced years off due to tearing up my shoulder.

We customise our kit. The bare bat has a red and black handle because I’d removed the half grip that I put in my bats so I could put it in the new one. Bigger handles make the “feel” of a bat better, I used 2 and a half grips to make mine feel right. Clive Lloyd (a West Indian Legend) used 7.

The feel of our bats was very important. If you’re in a sports shop that still lives up to the name, you may see cricketers playing shadow shots with the bats. We’re checking out the weight and balance. We want to be One With Our Bat. It’s no good if the bat can potentially hit the ball 5 yards further if you always mis hit due to being a fraction late or early all the time.

That’s the problem with the newest bat – I stopped using it because I could never get the timing right. That’s probably why it looks cratered to be honest. Although it also had a protector thingy at the bottom, which would have only achieved me getting run out. If you tried to slide that bat, it would stop and dig a hole. There was no way to make it slide.

I’ve rabbitted a lot there.

It’s the most important piece of kit we have, we get attached to our bats. But before I close, 2 more pics :

That’s the original V12 bat. It’s a bit different, the weight is all concentrated in that chunk near the bottom. We had someone at school with one of these.

It was a beast.

Even weedy me could knock it a long way with this and I Wanted One. Trouble is, they came heavy and my arms wouldn’t last long with it. Plus as an opening bat (when I got there), I needed to be quick and a heavy bat slowed me down.

The modern V12 is a pale shadow of the original legend. It’s normal. Why get it then if it’s just pretending to be the legend ?

The last pic is one from ages ago. It’s a piece of linen maybe 30 years old that hangs up in my living room :

The laws of cricket are very simple, when you’re just going by the important ones 🙂

First day of a long weekend for me today. I’ve been feeling beat up, so I took today off to try and get some equilibrium back.

(I have a clue why – I suspect I’m allergic to the Fairy washing gloop I switched to after the Tesco “this does nothing but make you think it does” stuff ran out)

I’d like to have been playing with a new laptop today, setting it up to how I’d like it. How come I’m not ? There’s a few reasons for that. I suspect my inner good sense (it’s there, it’s just vewy, vewy qwiet) is steering me away from the £500+ offers for £100 cashback at PC World right now. But it’s mostly that the laptop manufacturers aren’t really offering what I want to buy at the moment.

Let’s have a look shall we ? Along the way, I’ll hopefully decode some of the jargon for you if you’re looking to get a laptop upgrade.

There’s only one factor you should be calling Essential when you’re looking at a laptop – Usability. This means different things for different people. My mum is really happy with a new 13″ cheap ultrabook. It’s small and light, which fits needs imposed by frequent arm injuries. I’m looking for something with at least 900 lines on screen. Mum’s laptop is Very Shiny but doesn’t fit what I want.

But usability is that key factor. Keyboards, trackpads, mice, screens are how we interact with PCs. In a desktop, there’s a dazzling array of choice. I’ve actually gone back to an old cheap Logitech because a relatively new Microsoft wireless keyboard let me down because it kept dropping the signal, leaving me mired and unable to control my character in games. With a laptop, you’re stuck with what you bought. So getting that right is crucial.

You can mostly ignore things like hard disc size, memory and processor. Everything you see on the shelves will be more than adequate for 90% of people using a laptop. In fact, far more than adequate. But what does it mean ?

There are two manufacturers who make processors : AMD and Intel. There’s a gap opened up between the two now, with AMD not keeping up in the development race. AMD also push their kit harder, so a laptop you buy that does 2000 Squirtles* per second may actually do only 800 Squirtles per second when it’s pushed. And when do you want the maximum Squirtles ? When you’re pushing the machine hard. If it limits itself, then you’ve got something that can’t be used to the potential you bought. That extra potential may as well not be there.

(*A Squirtle is an arbitrary number, doesn’t mean anything. Or it might be something cute & watery)

In a desktop, you can get around that because the space is there to pack in cooling. But in a laptop, you’ve bought something that can only do 800 Squirtles but masquerades as something better. So I avoid AMD for laptops.

But what do all those cryptic numbers for the Intel machines mean ?

You’ll see things like Pentium D960/B960 advertised. Avoid those, they’re old. Processor speed is fairly irrelevant but you don’t want to be ripped off with 5 year old technology. Most of the time it’s things like i5-3227U.

i3, i5, i7 means how much silicon is in the processor. i3 chips have less processor cores, i7’s have the most. What does that mean ? Not much. The i5 chip in my desktop is very close in potential to the equivalent i7. For a laptop, you’re probably better with an i3, because less silicon means less power used, means more battery life (in theory!)

The next number is more interesting, it shows the generation of the chip.
i3-500 was first generation
i5-2500K is my desktop’s chip (Sandy Bridge) and is second generation
i3-3227U is Ivy Bridge, or third generation
i5-4000 will be Haswell, or fourth generation.

The letters show that the chips are a little bit “different”. For a laptop, avoid the K (it’s a desktop chip, bad for laptops) but M and U mean they’re better for laptops.

That’s digressing though. What you need to remember is – 2000 = old. 3000 = not so old. 4000 = not out yet. Newer is better but any of these will be overkill for a machine that gets used just for iTunes, browsing, email and video streaming.

What of the manufacturers ? I go on trust a lot of the time. I stick with manufacturers that I’ve had reliable kit from and blacklist those who disappoint me. Where I don’t have good info of my own, I’ll ask around for info. I’d jump at advice from people I know, I’m wary at information on the interwebs.

Acer – I’d go back to Acer any time. We’ve had lots of good kit from them. But they don’t have the “perfect” laptop for me.
Dell – they have the “perfect” laptop for me (Inspiron 17R) but apparently they have bad wifi and I’m not convinced on their build quality. (The random reboots at work are apparently the fault of Dell hardware). So I’m avoiding Dell.
Asus – Blacklisted. They let me down on features for my last 2 boards and I’ve had questionable reliability.
Toshiba – positive, my sister’s had good experience from Toshiba kit.
HP – has probably been fished out of the bin after breaking.
Sony, Samsung, Lenovo – interesting but I’d only consider if they had a “perfect” spec, which they don’t.

Asus is a shame, as they have something close to that perfect spec. But – various letdowns in the past (a SP/DIF that doesn’t carry surround sound ? What the hell ?) and early hardware failures mean they’re blacklisted. Something adding to that is the board that Luth now has, it didn’t come out that long before Vista, yet Asus never bothered making Vista drivers for it. That’s unforgiveable.

What is that perfect spec ?

At least 900 lines. This is so I get a decent number of lines in iTunes. It’s not really for the definition, there’s only so much our eyes can pick out. But if software like iTunes has fixed line heights, it affects what’s on there.
An Intel mobile chip.
An SSD or a spare bay for one – the Dell has this and a spare bay would let me sort out an issue on the desktop too. The Asus machines typically have an SSD built in. They speed the machine up a lot.

Why not Dell ? I’ve said things before about their lack of info about delivery times. It’s a shame, as today would have been a good day to accept delivery. There’s actually a place that could give me the “perfect” spec, PCSpecialist. They’re a custom builder. However … they have a fortnight leadtime on laptops. Not keen on that.

I’ll pick out another laptop at some point but at the moment, the following are on my mind :
Offers are tempting me into spending more than I want to
There is no “perfect” spec out there for me
If I ordered online, I’d need to be in to pick it up
It’s a damn shame there isn’t a native version of iTunes for Linux

I’ll close there but If you’re confused about the adverts and would appreciate a bit of decoding, leave me a comment.

I think maybe you had one too many bangs on the head but I'm sure that the woman ( can't comment on beautiful bit ) in question would be very pleased if you chose her humble little gathering over an adventure in Amsterdam and sometimes we all need taking out of our comfort zone and it can make lots of difference to how we feel about ourselves – in a good way !