Year: 2013

And that first random thought is that I really need to blag one of those cans of air to clean out the keyboard on this laptop !

It was Mothers Day this weekend just gone, so we all did the travelling thing (it’s tradition). Was a fairly good weekend all told. Gotta admit, I’m still looking inwards when I rate a day as Good or Bad at the moment. My skin is gradually getting better, although it’s gone slightly backwards today (not had enough water lately).

I think it was a good weekend for my mum, which is what counts. It was the first time we’d all been back since the funeral. (My nan was my mum’s mum) House felt a bit different, there was a definite sense of a gap. That’s the hardest thing about a loss, the unconscious expectation that someone is about to pop their head around the corner.

My mum’s suffering from 2 health issues at the moment (well, actually a couple more), one of which is a severely broken elbow. Like complications with the nerves and massive cast kind of thing. But that looks like it’s mending, random pain (from confused nerves) is turning into meaningful pain and she can wiggle the fingers. Happy Days. She appreciated the flowers too.

We’ve been changing things around a bit. Since they retired, my mum and dad haven’t really needed more than one car. Their normal runabout was written off in a crash (they’re ok – yey !, car was written off – yey !*) so they had the opportunity to turn 2 cars into one. They have an A Class Merc now, which meets with approval. My sister has their MX-5, which they’ll use as a commuter car because it does double the mpg of the Merc ML they have.

*The dead car was the Volvo, which I hated. I didn’t get on with the brain in its automatic gearbox and it was too slow to justify <30mpg .="" p="">
So – travel this weekend and a few excuses to play with more techie stuff.

Internet radio – this was a bit of a bust to be honest. I had my phone hooked up to the car via bluetooth and it was pulling in Test Match cricket commentary audio from the BBC iplayer app. Just one problem – lack of signal and a lack of the app waking itself up when the signal returns. Next time, I’ll try the Tune In Radio app and I’ll see how it copes with the signal loss.

Phone providing the music – This needs a little more preparation or a passenger who’s taste coincides with your’s. The iPhone 5 (contrary to some reports) works perfectly with Bluetooth connected it to my Lexus CT or the Merc A Class. The A Class was limited to telephone connectivity, whereas my Lexus can also pull in audio from apps or music. But – you can’t control what music is played outside of Next Track, Last Track. Here comes the :
Preparation by making a playlist for the trip
Passenger to tell the phone what to play

I’ll definitely keep using the phone for car music, when I don’t just go to the iPod Nano random selection. They both have the same amount of memory installed but the Ipod holds 33% more tunes.

Dad’s phone – my dad has a new phone to let him use it with the Merc. The old one didn’t have Bluetooth, the new one is a HTC Wildfire S which does. Incidentally, the HTC was the most reluctant to talk via Bluetooth.

Satnav – my car apparently likes Mansfield. It’s a bit more North than I should really go but twice now, it’s diverted me that way to avoid bad traffic near Leicester. I like that feature, I just don’t lose time to traffic jams any more when I’m on long trips.

Car swaps – we’ve done this before. My mum had a Belmont SRi with no power steering, which was causing her problems with her arms. My sister had just blown up her Astra GTE. I needed something more reliable for starting work. So I got the Belmont (excellent car, shouldn’t have part-exed it), my sister got my Astra Mk1 while looking to either repair the GTE or get something new. My mum really got short straw with a truly nasty Peugeot 205.

I’m rambling again aren’t I ? I think I need to find some good topics to focus in on. Blogging has been frustrating lately. I’ve had the urge to post stuff, I just haven’t had anything quality to talk about. A lot of the themes have been done to death in the 800+ posts so far. I feel a music post coming on though. Soon.

Health wise, I’m steadily improving although my skin is still ridiculously weak. Just rubbing it too hard can make it bleed. Not good. But it is improving. I have the feeling though that my skin will recover in time for cricket but the rest of me will be a wreck.

Tally at the moment – really badly stiff neck and shoulder, swollen legs and hips that hate me. Plus a huge tendency to cramp which is due to a water imbalance. The water thing is in hand – I’m drinking lots of water but I don’t think I’m drinking it quite fast enough to satisfy my body’s need for it to sort my skin out.

I’ll leave this post with a Youtube link – it’s dedicated to a colleague 🙂 It was one of the tracks from the car last night and it sticks in the mind …

Cricket’s back on the telly again 🙂

It’s at a bit of a hostile time though. It’s coming from New Zealand and it’s the opening day of the test series with England. We’ve already seen the one day games but this is the Main Event. It’s the big interest. One day games can be a bit random in who wins. But Test Match victories are different, they’re earned. Or thrown away. Either way, it can be compelling viewing.

The game was actually supposed to start yesterday but rain put paid to that. I suspect England would like it to be still raining as they’ve lost 3 wickets already. Not good.

Hostile time ? It’s not as bad as the India series but the play starts at 9pm and goes on until 4-5am. I can watch the first 2 hour session but after that, it’s sleep time.

So where’s the tech come in ? Cricket is a really low tech game when you get down to it, although tech is helping out with making the gear better.

Well – at the moment I have 4 pieces of input coming in, plus I’m tapping away the keys on this blog post.

Tech 1 – the laptop is streaming music across to my hifi. I’m watching the game but I’m not particularly interested in the commentary. So I have the laptop playing the music across the network. Oh – I’m getting on top of getting all the music listened to as well, I have less than a day (400ish tracks) of music I’ve not listened to yet.

Tech 2 – cricket on the telly. This is a bit more of a deal than the old analogue tuners. My cable box is effectively a small computer. It has a bunch of tuners to pull in the picture and sound and it gets those from the same pipe as my internet. The computer puts the pictures on the telly or into the hard disc.

Tech 3 – watching/listening to a review of Sim City over youtube. It’s a Totalbiscuit video so ordinarily, you’d be locking your wallet somewhere that you wouldn’t end up buying the game. Not with this one though, as TB + Missus are being very honest about its flaws. The new SimCity looks like an incredible game that’s going to be submerged beneath modern game design issues. It’s subject to always-on DRM, which means you need to be always connected to the servers to be able to play. The “server” end of that is most critical, as those servers are very busy … The game is also saved on those servers.

Personally, I don’t trust the Cloud. I see too much unreliability and inaccessibility from systems that are supposed to be 100% online and available.

Anyway – tech. Youtube is working much better on Virginmedia now, which is another example of where Cloud can break things. Allegedly, VM used to cache Youtube videos on their own server. This led to massive buffering issues where their server couldn’t cope with the demand of you watching the video. I still see those occasionally but it’s much better now.

Talking of buffering …

Tech 4 – my Iphone playing cricket commentary from the Test Match Special people (superior to Sky commentators). I’m using an app called Tune In Radio, which I’ve used for years now. It lets me play cricket commentary in a car that doesn’t have Long Wave radio. But when playing through my home internet, it was buffering a lot … VM strikes again (or network contention with that audio streaming and youtube playing). I’ve switched to listening to commentary via 3’s 3g network and there has been no buffering at all.

At some point, I may have to try putting the wifi card back in my desktop to see what happens when VM breaks Youtube again. As in, my iphone provides the internet.

Tech’s easy though. If tech breaks, you just swap it out for a replacement. Wish I could do that with my body at the moment, although to be honest it seems to be becoming trying to avoid damaging myself more.

I’m getting measurably better but very slowly. And it’s very easy to set back the healing. My upper arms have been looking like I’ve been hugging wild animals with very sharp claws. Oops. But – my legs are improving to the point where there’s good tough skin there again. If they continue to improve, I may be able to train soon :-).

Hopefully I’ll continue to improve enough to play cricket this summer, with enough extra recovery time to let some of the incidental problems (hip issues from sitting in uncomfortable positions) get better.

PS I’m not buying SimCity. Looks interesting but I’m not paying the entry fee, plus I suspect it’ll be yet another game I’d play for a few hours and then put away to gather dust.

I'm not sure if the baby type washing powder things have done much good but they definitely haven't made things worse.

Hydrating on the inside rather than the outside seems to be having a benefit, although I need to keep the discipline to not damage myself more.

Nah. Not about me, I’m talking about news stories I’ve been spotting 🙂

British Gas have drawn public ire again by declaring bigger profits than expected. The theme at the moment is that the companies we’re forced to buy things from, like the petrol, energy and utilities people want to fleece us for as much as they can take us. Energy bills have been ramping up, petrol prices are still rocketing and the profits go up quicker.

It’s where competition doesn’t really work sometimes. Where my parents live are a series of petrol stations which cost around 3-4p more than 20 miles away in Lincoln or Newark. There’s no good justification for the prices being higher but they continue being higher because the competition doesn’t undercut them. It’s the same in the energy utility industry, there’s no competitive undercutting going on to aggressively get customers switching. So we pay more on average.

Smartphone app to test urine. I’m sorry but there is no way in hell that I’m going to pee on my shiny new iPhone. It would make the screen all sticky and nasty.

Not gonna happen.

(It’s actually an interesting theory on the app but there’s all sorts of potential for error. Like the lighting conditions under which the picture is taken)

The myth of working at home. Ok, I didn’t read all of this one because I went zzzzzzz in the middle. I’ve been doing the occasional work at home day, in the hope of making it easier on my ailing skin. The healing gets interfered with by needing to wear sleeves and trousers.

I have a laptop which can get access to almost all of the work sites that I need to access. My mobile can pick up the calls from my works number. The laptop lets me chat online via Communicator. I don’t waste a couple of hours waiting for the bus. Win win situation, although I do miss the general office gossip. Offices can tend to stovepipe info, where one person doesn’t think to involve another in what they’re doing even when they Need to know. We’re not so bad with the stovepiping (in fact one of my prior roles was to be a busybody breaking down the stovepipes) but I’ve seen it where it gets bad.

Point is, when I work from home I’m doing Stuff and I’m contactable. It shocked me last year when I realised that a colleague didn’t even fire up his laptop when working from home. I’d sent a “you need to see this” type email which didn’t get seen because … I dunno what he was doing but it didn’t involve being contactable via the works network. Wasn’t reachable by phone either. (He’s not with us any more)

The upshot of that working from home story is that Yahoo have banned it now because they think they lose too much productivity. I think they have a point because I know too many supposed professionals take the mick out of the privilege, which leaves more work for people like me and my colleagues and friends to pick up. It is great to have the option though.

Mission to Mars wants older people. Forget them, let me go !

Pretty Contractor Lady leaves the project. (Ok, it’s not a BBC news story but it’s big news for me). She’s been massive for us over the past few years, shepherding very complicated acceptance through the works which involves persuading some quite contrary characters to sign their names to things that say Job Done. I’ve always had huge respect for her, she’ll leave a massive hole when she moves on.

Does being lonely make you ill ?

They’re linking loneliness to physical health as well as mental wellbeing. I suspect the link is more metaphysical there. I’ve always been a great believer that how you believe you’re doing mentally has a big impact on how you cope with things physically. I’ve believed for a while that my skin’s been getting better slowly and steadily, whereas honestly it’s still barklike in places and fragile. I’m still my own worst enemy there, causing self inflicted damage that sets back the healing.

The loneliness link is to chronic inflammation with the theory being that lonely people release more cortisol, a hormone associated with being stressed. Yeah, that’s a given, if we don’t have people to talk problems through with, that problem festers and infects the mind.

It’s one reason why I blog, to think through and release thoughts that otherwise rattle round in my head when I’m trying to get to sleep.

Think that’s enough news for now 🙂

If you're using skin products I'd definitely stick to those designed for babies – they're much less likely to irritate the skin.

Drinking lots of water is good. Not only will it hydrate the body (and your skin) but it'll also wash out any toxins that have been released due to your recent weight loss.

(Skin stuff today but there’s a couple of extras at the bottom !)

I seem to have that typical Sleepypete thing going again …

Still battling that skin condition. But. I’m steadily getting more and more useful data. And it seems to be improving too as I get that data.

The overriding theme seems to be that everything that is good for me, isn’t. The original problem was an infection in my legs which didn’t get cleared out fully. And then when I decided to try and be a bit healthier to give my body more of a chance, I appear to have picked stuff that I react to.

The most spectacular of that seems to be the orange juice and white bread. I’ve always had a Don’t Care attitude to white bread, although I know that brown is healthier. Brown bread is the more pure form, white bread is effectively bleached brown bread. You don’t need the extra processing that turns brown bread into white. Anyway, since ditching the orange juice I’ve only had one minor mouth ulcer (bit myself – ouch) and I’ve not had a late night “I gotta go to hospital – can’t breathe” incident.

So that’s a positive.

What I have to do is be a bit more gentle with myself, this weekend will help a lot with that as I intend to chill out to cricket and rugby all day today. It means I can sit on the floor and not wear much (so I don’t expose sensitive skin to roughness). Work is ok, it’s not that bad under a full sleeve shirt – but being able to chill out is good.

I’ve had to stop using the moisturizer too. I don’t think it was doing me much good. Since I decreased the use of that, my legs have got a lot better. Not perfect, but better. My arms are the nasty looking bit now with very dry skin that’s easily damaged.

I have a new plan though …

Water, water everywhere and I’m drinking a lot of it. Theory – moisturize from the inside instead of the outside. And that seems to be doing some good. In fact, it’s another facet where I’m going back to how I used to live.

Another thing I’m suspicious of now is vitamin tablets. They’d been a constant since my skin erupted last year. I’ve seen steady improvement since stopping them. The suspicion has been kinda confirmed today too with me thinking : “Ok, vitamin tablets = bad, let’s go back to milkshakes”. Before, I’d have milkshakes using powder laden with vitamin supplements. Theory, if the tablets are bad then let’s get the vitamins from the milkshakes. And …. today has been the first time the condition has gone backwards for a while. There must be something in those vitamins that I’m reacting to.

Ah well. Steps forward, steps back. But learning all the time.

Yeah. I think I’m improving, it’s definitely more manageable than a few months go. And I have a better idea of what to avoid and what to use. The night moisturizer I have still seems to work too, I just have to be miserly with it.

We’ll see how it goes.

Other stuff ?

My likely next car is officially Coming Soon. I love my current Lexus CT. It’s a very comfortable cocoon, laden with toys and incredibly smooth and easy to drive. I think it’s helping my sore left hamstring to recover. It’s economical and has just enough power to keep me happy. But … I have my eye on the next generation Lexus IS. There’s a hybrid version of that which is looking to have just a much MPG but a lot more speed. No sign of a soft top version though and I think I may wait for that.

Check it out : Lexus IS300h.

And talking of cars … it’s insurance renewal time. Admiral have quoted me £350. The meerkats tell me I could get insurance for £200. I wonder if Admiral will try to convince me to stay again like last year ?

From The Earth To The Moon was well done too, will have to lend you that some time …

*Loved* Band of Brothers for its gritty realism. An excellent series.

And a little bit of new stuff.

It’s been a weird week. I can’t honestly remember much of what I’ve been getting up to, although I have had lots of popcorn while watching stuff. So much popcorn that my next shopping trip needs to be to Tescos because they have the better popcorn.

(oops – incoming minirant)

If not the better rest of the foodstuff. I get my apples from Sainsburys cos they’re bigger and usually taste better. Seriously, what’s going on with the places we get our food from these days ? It’s not a mistake to have beefburgers with more horse in than beef. That’s pure unadulterated fraud. And it hasn’t been an isolated incident. It’s also not in the ultra low cost processed food either, every week we hear a new story continuing to show that what we come out of the shop with is not what we thought we were buying.

I wonder if it’s to discourage us from asking questions. If we have to ask, do we want to know the answer ?

We’ve already had the stories about pork in halal meat breaking that taboo. How long before we hear something worse like animal contamination in vegetarian foods ? It’s one where you don’t want the suspicion confirmed but you know it’s coming. We have that little faith in corporate entities these days, they’re out for the fast self serving buck instead of being customer focused.

Erm – where was I ? Deep breath 😉

Popcorn !

What’s the popcorn been accompanying ?

Cricket – I’ve been taking more time at home lately because of this annoying skin thing. Some of it is working at home, Friday was annual leave so I could watch a bit of cricket and let my skin have a day off. No popcorn with the cricket, it’s on a bit early.

Hunger Games – I remember coming out of this in the cinema with a sense of being underwhelmed. The set up takes a long time … When it gets going, it’s an excellent movie albeit with a hefty sense of deja vu for anyone who’s watched Battle Royale. I enjoyed it more on blu-ray, perhaps because I knew there was a treat coming after the preamble.

Battlestar Galactica – I’m rewatching this after picking up the first season on bluray in a sale. This is another series that left me irritated and frustrated by the end. I suspect that’s a testament to the quality of the first series. It’s stellar. Series one keeps the action level high and the tension level through the roof. It’s intelligent scifi. I guess I got frustrated because the intelligence got mired in the silly mysticism that infected the storyline. Saying that though, there’s bits of that mysticism introduced quite early.

I’m watching box sets of dvds again, now that there’s less recorded stuff to plough through on the box. Perhaps the original series of Battlestar will get a rewatching ?

Band of Brothers – oh this series was amazing. The action is all there. It’s World War 2 with no holds barred on the violence level. As it should be. When it comes to the “censor it or show it” argument with video violence, I’m definitely on the side of “show it”. Not because I want to see it but because I believe showing it warns people about the consequences. And this series shows a group of great characters having the horrors of total war thrust upon them. It’s ordinary men being affected by their situation, you feel for them. And it’s compelling viewing.

If you haven’t seen Band of Brothers yet, please do. It’s worth watching for so many reasons : historical, action but most of all the characters. It’s one of those rare series which doesn’t outstay its welcome. It runs for 10 episodes and could easily run for more. However, you don’t want to see those characters suffer more so you’re relieved for them that it’s over.

Band of Brothers is the one I’m in at the moment. I may well watch From The Earth To The Moon next. It’s from the same production group but is about the moon landings. Also compelling viewing, an adjective I wouldn’t attach to The Pacific which was billed as Band Of Brothers – Pacific. The Pacific was a bit nasty. The action was all there but you couldn’t identify with the characters. Perhaps that’s how their situation shaped them ?

I’m also intending to watch through the Dungeons & Dragons animated series 🙂 That’s one from my childhood. As is Ulysses 31, which I still haven’t managed to watch through yet. Same with my Dogtanian dvds.

So many series, so little time to watch them in.

There’s new stuff on as well, although I have to admit I’m only half watching it most of the time. What’s keeping my attention is the real life stuff, like Ice Pilots and the other things from that stable (Deadliest Catch, Ice Road Truckers). I dunno – perhaps real stuff has more meaning.

Not gaming as much, I still have all the “new” ones from Xmas to try out. Borderlands 2 has been good. Given up on Skyrim, which is a case of a game being so big it has outstayed its welcome. A poor combat system is bad enough but when the game grinds your nose through 100+ hours for a playthrough, you ain’t gonna finish it. Borderlands 2 is the opposite there, it seems to have removed a lot of the grind from the first game.

Music’s getting there too – I’ve almost got the unlistened tracks down to 500. That’s about a day of music that I haven’t listened to yet. It’s getting there 🙂

And I’m wall of texting again …

May what you eat be what you intended to eat !

Had a day away from the office yesterday.

I think I got a lot out of it too, as I’ve learned enough now to look in the right places to pick up design traits and I’ve gained enough experience to say whether those traits are good or bad. I’ve been used to a project designing in the technological age, this was something with bits conceived in the 1950s.

Old tech can be the best tech. What you really want from machines and devices is for them to work. You want them to be fit for purpose and to perform that purpose every time without error. Talking cars, my current car is phenomenally complex compared to my first. Which is the more reliable ? My current car by a long way. The systems built into a modern car make it work every time and consistently. My Fiesta had a carburettor at the heart of its engine which, while it was too simple to go wrong, depended on fine settings which would drift over time. It works – but not perfectly.

Ok, that’s “bad” old tech. “Bad” new tech is things like my last phone which starts with a simple idea (be a phone) and adds stuff to that, losing reliability along the way. Whereas the old car would always run (given a bit of coaching for conditions sometimes!), the Android phone was unreliable. I gave up on it because it was causing me to miss phone calls.

And that’s another lesson from yesterday. Yes, some of it may belong in a museum but it works, it’s reliable and in its own way it is perfect for the purpose whereas the modern tech of my last project can just get in the way because it throws in so many Good Ideas that it doesn’t have the capacity to perform its primary purpose.

(Don’t get me wrong – the last project produced awesome kit but some of it could have been … Better)

I’ve digressed there more than I wanted to …

I can’t say much about what I was up to yesterday but I can tease by saying it involved danger, wonder, curiosity, awe, stimulation, learning and all sorts of other stuff. We had great hosts who took us into their world for a day and allowed us to see things not very many people do. But I can’t tell you here what those were :-).

Toy ?

Been enjoying the new iPhone more 🙂 The Android phone was crippled for battery life and I struggled to add content to it like music. iTunes is a fantastic interface for getting content on to a device. Apps were ok through the Android store but the tiny screen size worked against it.

The iPhone isn’t perfect but so far, it’s a revelation compared to that crude early model Android phone. (I’m sure they’ve improved since mine but I had one that was locked into fairly early, bad, software). I left my iPod Nano at home yesterday but was still able to listen to a few albums on the coach. I had a book with me but I’ve missed out on so much sleep lately that I just wanted to close eyes & listen.

You’ll hear all sorts of things from Apple evangelists about how iPhones are great. The functionality is incredible and the user interface is decent … but there are flaws. Apple’s UI has always been legendary but they’re also developing very poor software quality. And quality is king.

Issues ?
iTunes 11 losing functionality – glad I could go back to an earlier version. Apple will force you to upgrade software in order to keep connectivity. I was on iTunes 10.5 before changing, which was too old, iTunes 10.7 or later was needed.
Lack of a “be quiet” button – maybe I’ve not found it yet but it is a vital feature to be able to go into a meeting and quickly and quietly put the phone to silent or vibrate only. I’ve not found that yet.
Reliability – the phone seems fine but sync is an issue. I got home yesterday and my laptop refused to see the phone and wouldn’t sync anything to it. Dunno the cause but it needed a factory restore of the phone to sort it out.

That factory restore is a Good & Bad. I wouldn’t expect to use that feature but the backup system made it seamless. I didn’t have to do anything to the phone to get settings back. Being able to use the phone for the day with no battery life issues is a Good Thing and I’ve forgotten what that was like – the Android phone was very heavy on its battery.

Yep – I have a few niggles.

But that isn’t going to stop me heading back to the shop on Friday (maybe – time permitting!), telling them that I’m happy with it. I feel some accessorising coming on … 🙂

PS And a bit of hunting for more clothes. I’m shivering ! And I’m wearing multiple layers in a house that should be warm …