Month: July 2015

It's meme time and harder than you think! No cheating & using Google. every answer must start with the first letter of your first name.
Name:
Animal:
Boys name:
Girls name:
Occupation:
Colour:
Something you wear:
Drink:
Food:
Something you find in the bathroom:
Place:
Reason to be late:
Band/Singer:
Sport:
Put a blank copy in your comments so your friends can play too

From the Facebook feed :

It’s meme time and harder than you think! No cheating & using Google. every answer must start with the first letter of your first name.

I’m actually going to use 4 names and letters here. There’s Sleepy, there’s Pete, there’s Dwagonman and then there’s Iceangel, my favoured game name. (Yeah, some of you know me as Keela too)

But first – there’s been a new budget announced today and … someone who sets that budget is something that rhymes with runt. (That is a word that I will never utter in company but you know precisely what it is and the connotations of it as a swear word – it’s possibly the worst swear word in the vocab which accurately describes the feelings towards him.) It makes you want to join the union so you can go on strike, or escape ever worsening conditions and working expectations (I’ve been doing 3x posts for 6 months now and 2x posts for much longer than that) and head into the private sector.

That’s bad stuff though !

Meme time …

Name: Pete, Sleepy, Ice or Dwagonman. I’ve adopted all of those, a couple are by choice, a couple were given.
Dwagonman – from donating one of these as a raffle prize, plus most of my avatars are Dragon related.

It’s my Twitter handle too. If you know my real name and get contacted by someone on Twitter using that, it’s not me. Twitter asked me to confirm an account made in my name and with one of my emails, which came as a surprise to me. Beware impersonators.

Animal: Dogs are awesome, watch what you say around Parrots (it may get repeated and haunt you), Snakes are smooth and I don’t think Iguanas would live in igloos.
Boys name: Paul, I know a few of those. Stephen, David and Ian. Not sure why I’ve put the Ian there but Stephen and David are special names.
Girls name: SKYE ! Hello Skye 🙂 I know an awesome Pamela too and then there’s Ingrid and Debbie. Don’t actually know an Ingrid (name off top of head) but a Debbie pointed me at this meme.
Occupation: Slave (what I’m feeling at the moment after seeing the budget info), Pleb (see budget comment), Downtrodded and Indignant. There’s also Public Servant.
Colour: Purple is always epic. Silver is for shiny things, which are always pretty. Indigo is almost purple, so that’s pretty epic too. And … Dark blue. (Couldn’t think of a colour without the descriptor as a cheat)

Beware red.

Something you wear: Denim summer jacket, Pants (although I may know someone who runs around commando), Sleeveless jumper, Invisible Aura of Cool (it’s there, no one can see it)
Drink: Pepsi (I know brandnaming but it tastes better than coke for me), Irn Bru, Doom Bar (a beer) and Beer.
Food: PIZZA !!! What else could it be ? Donuts (I know, unhealthy, you may tut but see pic), Ice Cream and Sausages. That’s a weird combination, although technically you could have it in a cinema.

Something you find in the bathroom: Shower rail, Pole for the shower rail, Indecency (depends how much steam you’re making – haha), Deodorant (ok, I cheated and stole an answer)
Place: Portsmouth, it has ships. Desk, chained to it without proper reward (can you see an angry theme slipping out through this post ?), India and Sofia Gardens where England are playing cricket at the moment (ok, it’s called something else now due to company sponsorship but Sofia Gardens is its original, true name)
Reason to be late: PIZZACOMA !!! Sleeping Sleepy, Dragons burned my homework and … Inconvenienced (could cover all sorts of misdemeanours)
Band/Singer: Pretenders are coming up soon (thematic song link), Sleeper were awesome when they still did music (here’s one from way back), Dirty Vegas have one wonderful acoustic track in their repertoire (Days Go By) and then there’s classic heavy metallers Iron Maiden (Infinite Dreams).
Sport: Pool, Snooker (hey ! you can wake up now !), Dominos (pokes the people who are sleeping again), Irritating Fools (yes, it’s a sport and I happily indulge in it when the mood takes me)
Put a blank copy in your comments so your friends can play too – will do !

There’s been a little theme running through this post. I’m genuinely angry at a certain politician and his privileged life and I’m happy to say I didn’t vote for the …. (very naughty word deleted). One last pic for Mr Osborne.

Too much anger for one day, fun is better. Hopefully you can pick out the fun from within the angry stuff :-).

Britain today is being all about remembering possibly the worst terrorist atrocity visited on us

On July 7th 2005, a group of terrorist loons blew themselves up on 3 London Underground trams and 1 London bus. 52 died and over 700 were injured.

I quite rarely talk about current events on here, although you should know I keep a very close eye on them. When I’m not watching anything else, the telly is usually on Sky News (I know – it’s Murdoch-twisted but all our news is twisted in its own way), although it’s on mute to protect my ears from the lunacy of some of the presenters.

Yep – I saw that hate campaign against one of the presenters – I won’t defend her (see lunacy comment) but imagine how she felt about it ? Be nice. It’s easy to join in with the howling mob but be sure you have all the context.

Nah – I don’t talk about the current events much because there are so many other places you can get that from that are far better informed than me. After all, I’m getting my info from the same places that you are. Just remember … Take what you read, see or hear with a pinch of salt. Can you trust what they’re saying ? (See lunatic comment above) Are they telling you what you want to hear instead of what the truth actually is ? Are they trying to bend your opinion their way, away from what is beneficial to you ?

Besides – this page should be all about me and what I observe around me, there’s better places to go for stuff about the world although I might pitch in an opinion sometime if I have something valid, interesting, funny? to say.

Yep. Ask those questions, determine for yourself what you want to trust. The most valuable lessons I learned at school were in history, where our teacher (the incredible Mini Hitler*) gave us the factual knowledge we needed to pass the exams but also impressed upon us the need to question, decipher, unravel, interpret the evidence before us.

*Mini Hitler was a maybe 4 foot 6 inches tall scary lady history teacher. But she was possibly the most respected teacher in my all boy secondary school. She was a legend. And we called her Mini Hitler because you most certainly did not want to incur her wrath. She never did anything while I was there but there were rumours … many rumours … She didn’t need to raise her voice at all with us and this was a mob of hormones that made an English teacher straight out of training burst into tears.

But I’m rambling when I should be remembering.

We do remember what happened today 10 years ago. Here’s BBC’s story today.

I also remember what happened 2 weeks later, where 5 bombers attempted to repeat the atrocity but failed due to incompetence. The bombs had degraded to duds and only one minor injury resulted from the detonators going pop. Here’s the wiki info. We got away with that one.

I can remember hearing huge amounts in the past about Al-Qaeda. They’re barely mentioned today (IS have the attention and the crazy people now).

There was a story locally about a bomb factory just down the road from where I work. It was in Westbury-On-Trym. A loon wanted to blow up the Bristol city centre shopping area and got turned in to the coppers by the local Muslim community. Here’s the Wiki info. (The alternative was a Daily Mail link and I’m not going to inflict you with that). That situation was dealt with fairly quietly and no one was hurt. Although from what I heard from the various sources, the bomber would have probably blown himself up due to ineptitude.

You hear other bits and pieces around the news about other potential terrorist incidents around the country. I saw on the news the incident where a bunch of supposedly rational people drove an SUV laden with fuel and (I think?) explosive into Glasgow airport. If they’d got in through the door, then they may have burned down the building. But these supposedly rational people failed to account for the bollards in front of the door that stopped the SUV. The scary part there is that I used to fairly regularly use the airport terminal that they tried to burn down.

I guess the important thing I’m trying to say is :

It hasn’t happened again. Not in the scale of July 7 or, going further back, the IRA campaigns of the 20th Century.

Our security forces do a good job of stopping the threats before they develop. Say what you will about invasions of privacy but they have been keeping us safe all these years. I’ll leave that there before the conspiracy theorists jump on it.

What was I doing 10 years ago ?

I don’t really remember the same way as I can place where I was on September 11 2001. Back then, I was attending a design review for one of the systems I was keeping an eye on integrating and was listening in disbelief to the news about the Two Towers while driving home. They were still standing when I got in the car and had fallen by the time I got home.

2005 was different, I’d just got back from the USA Orlando holiday which was the last time together with my reasonable time partner. She walked out as soon as she got back (You can guess how that made me feel). I was emotionally numb from that for many months after. Years maybe ? I can’t rightly remember*. I was also reaching out to quite a few people at this time and getting very confused and distressed when they turned away, put up the walls and stopped talking to me.

*(this was also perhaps 2 years after Nose Job 1 which caused long term neurological memory damage and I think my memory is still affected by it)

So I’m somewhat sad to say that I can’t remember what I was doing 10 years ago. I think I was at work, listening in disbelief with the rest of us but also within my own little emotional cocoon from the personal stuff.

Selfish ? Perhaps. But that’s the honest truth of it. I remember the events that took so many lives but my head was dominated by the emotional turmoil much closer to home.

A much more sombre post today – but I hope you understand why. No piccys either, it wouldn’t be appropriate. And about that word “worst” at the top. All terrorist atrocities are awful. The scale should not be used as a comparison between horrible events. Numbers are a side issue when it comes to misery. And that’s not to belittle anyone’s loss – I feel all the loss equally, whether it be 1 or 1000s.

Last thought – Would you believe I’ve perhaps been 200 yards away from a bomb that went boom ? It was in N.Ireland and it blew the front off a store. I dunno actually, that could be a different memory that’s become real, I was about 8 at the time ! Fact is though, bomb threats were a fact of life when I lived in N.Ireland but for our last graduate, who hailed from Belfast, that country was far safer and bombs were a thing of the past.

Progress is a good thing.

Or manflu.

Or something equally virulent where I’ll get into trouble for bringing into the office where someone will probably catch it and then take several days off work until the symptoms fade. People can be like that.

Not me though. I was feeling ropey this morning but coffee and a teacake started getting me right again. I could start to feel them on Saturday but had the runny nose, … blocky sinuses and headache resulting from the blocky sinuses coming in Saturday night and most of Sunday. I was below par today but able to ignore most of the symptoms. Probably better actually than when the skin problem was at its worst.

Coffee power ?

Definitely.
Aside – tonight’s music listening just started with Bohemian Rhapsody. Great start to the evening’s listening. It’s now the epic Mad Max soundtrack.

Yeah – so Sunday was a bit of a survival day. What have I been getting up to since Thursday’s post ?

Dealing with the Ants Invasion. Great song but not something you want to see in your house. There’s the various schools of thought on dealing with ants. Stepping on the buggers didn’t seem effective, there seemed to be more of them coming in. Next step – deploy the chemical weapons (Ant powder). And now I’m not seeing ants walking in but did have a bit of an ant graveyard by the front door.

One of the joys of home ownership.

Anyway – I was looking for an excuse to have something cold from a coffee selling place and there happens to be one of those right next door to the place I could get the ant powder from. I had a Mint Choc Chilled Cooler and I think it was freezing my brain into icicles.

Will go back there for more.

My outsides have been improving again. The damage is steadily repairing and where I worry at the bad bits and make them worse, I’ve got something new which is really helping there. It’s Aveeno moisturising cream. The way my body seems to work, Stuff works for a little while then the effectiveness goes away. It hasn’t had chance to assimilate the Aveeno yet, so the New Gunk is making my skin happy.

It was a gift/suggestion from Cupid’s Gift and I think it may benefit me more than the birthday gifts I got her. I wonder how many biscuit fines she’s been able to extract so far for interruptions on coffee breaks …

It’s genuinely helping actually. I’m wondering if I can now measure recovery in weeks rather than months. Some of the damage repairs in days. Other damage takes more time, especially when I self inflict more damage in the cause of IMPERFECTION DESTROY.

But – getting there.

Saturday saw me doing the Space Truckin’ thing again with the Internet Spaceships. There was a Community Goal going in Elite where you take metals to an away from civilisation space station. This one hadn’t been hit too hard by the players due to it being a bit difficult to find the materials. My Python was able to land at the outposts that sold the metals but the biggest trading ships couldn’t. So the big trading people didn’t join in so much.

My Python still needs a name :

Not a particularly pretty ship is it … Too functional, too trapezoidal. “Independent Trading Vessel Brown Trouser Alert”. That’s for how it docks at the outposts. They’ve changed the docking computer so that instead of coming in on a fairly sane trajectory, it’ll aim the nose straight down at the landing pad, go really quick until the ship is maybe 50m from landing and then pull a high g pitch up maneouvre to line you up on the pad properly. Good job the ship isn’t more than 50m long.

It’s ok, the docking computer knows what it’s doing. I think, although it did get me fined 500k credits for not doing the docking fast enough while I was carrying a huge amount of smokeys. Tobacco is bad for you.

So that was Elite, I’ve given up on Fallout Shelter because :
I think I have the winning formula now – the food, water, power situation was stable tending to max.
When the population hit 100 out of a possible maximum of 200, performance of the game tanked.
It wasn’t fun after knowing I’d beaten it, especially with it being nigh on impossible to control.

So I need to feed the iPad with more games now. The current one is Spellfall, a match 3 game which is funded by microtransactions. Because I refuse to do microtransactions, that means a wait of half an hour between games for the character to heal all the wounds back up again.

Any recommendations ? Tried Candy Crush Saga but … meh. Boring. The 3x Sorcery games and 80 Days are on my list.

Didn’t feel too much like playing games on Sunday – the bugs were having their effect. I think I’m coming out of bugs today though. My chest is still congested but nose is less bad and I can concentrate more. I didn’t do the Internet Spaceships much on Sunday cos my head wasn’t in it.

But I’m doing better today. Even if I did think I should have a “PLAGUEBEARER” sign around my neck. And curse you Games Workshop for making it tough to find good Plaguebearer funny pics.

If you’re well, I hope you don’t get sick;
If you’re sick, I hope you get well soon.

Cya !

PS From the difficulty levels of one game (Plague Inc) that gave me some amusement :
Brutal – sick people locked up in prison.
Normal – sick people ignored.
Casual – sick people given hugs.
Kinda glad our world is Normal and not Brutal. The only time people really noticed my bugs today was when I did a really loud and long coughing sequence (more like my traditional sneeze). But that Casual world sounds great.

Can’t believe it’s around a month since I did a music post and even that was Eurovision inspired.

Bit tired at the moment and struggling for inspiration (not been sleeping much this week despite trying and the warmth leeches the energy away) but the random neurons have been firing again :

Sister’s found the blog after just over 1000 posts and 10 years (with an 18 month gap). It’s not that I’ve been keeping it secret, I just didn’t tell anyone in the family. I know, I know, splitting hairs and all that.

She’d also like me to say a little about the two pooches they have there. There’s :

Murph, captured there as a totally adorable gangly growing puppy with huge long legs and head attached to an ickle body. There was about to be bacon raining from the sky from my dad (left), hence the attentiveness. It was obvious then he was going to grow into a very handsome fella but he needed a friend. Enter Icey :

I hear that Icey’s quite an affectionate pooch with a very active guard dog instinct. It’ll be good to meet her some day. And look at Murphster there posing for the camera. “I don’t always lounge on their sofa but when I do …”

One of the things we usually do when we meet up is compare libraries. We share similar music tastes, me and the sister, although it’s not identical. More like a big overlap in the middle. So while I like female vocals above most everything else, the big sis will go for people like Muse who I find a bit samey. Yep. Heretic reporting in. We’ll often give each other ideas which result in us buying music we wouldn’t have thought of getting before. With me, that’s been Goldfrapp, Bat For Lashes, KT Tunstall and a few more like that.

But we haven’t had chance to do that compare for ages. So the idea – what’s she missing out on ? Here’s a selection (and I may add in youtube links later after … tired)

Kacey Musgrave – Same Trailer, Different Park. Interesting voice, nice songs. Not listened to the album proper yet (bit new), highlight is Keep It To Yourself.
Queen – Flash Gordon. Haha, very cheesy film, soundtrack matches it perfectly. One of Queen’s best albums.
Zero 7- The Garden. Big sis put me on to these people. You have Sia’s vocals, she’s an unusual one. It’s a fragile voice but so beautiful. Not listened to this album yet and I’m looking forward to it. May pick out a favourite when I do.
Massive Attack – Protection. I’ve had Unfinished Sympathy for a while which is amazing but have just recently been reminded about these guys by our Snow Queen who posted a link to (what was it ?) I think Teardrop. Soooo gorgeous a track with combination of piano and that ethereal voice.
Massive Attack (again !) – Mezzanine. This one is way better than Protection with Teardrop. I’ll keep collecting Massive Attack albums when they get cheap.

Portishead – Third. Not their best, they must have been running out of ideas by this stage. Listenable but not as emotionally cutting as their earlier work.
Melody Gardot – Worrisome Heart. Gorgeous album that’s a collection of tracks that work together. Recommended. Highlight is Love Me Like A River Does.
You+Me – Rose Avenue. Not bad, a good recommendation from our BrumPixie but it didn’t really grab me that much. Maybe on more listens ?
Lucy Spraggan – We Are. Surprised that this one didn’t grab me either after the brilliance that was Join The Club. Too much attention from the non-music people ?
Pretenders – 5 albums ! Lots of good stuff here but to be honest, get their singles collection. You won’t miss much from the rest of the albums. And I have to listen to Brass In Pocket again.

Madonna’s Rebel Heart didn’t really grab me that much either – highlight is Ghost Town. I guess I’m measuring Madonna’s albums by the exceptional Confessions On A Dance Floor and Ray Of Light.
Siouxsie and the Banshees – Spellbound. She has a reputation this one but is it deserved ? Not sure.
Plastiscines – About Love and Lp1. About Love has the stellar track Barcelona. It’s worth buying just for that :-). Perhaps mediocre outside that.
The Veronicas – The Veronicas (the newest album). Another cracker from the Aussie ladies. Highlights are Let Me Out, Teenage Millionaire and More Like Me but … I need an excuse to listen to the stunning Untouched again.

We’re getting back to March now … Yep. I’ve bought a fair bit ! But I try to get all my music cheap :-).

The Clash are an example with their Singles. Think Sainsburys had this for maybe £3. You know the Clash, Rocking that Kasbah.
Ed Sheeran is one I’ll keep an eye on. His + album was a great start, hoping for more from X, although I’ll wait for that to go cheap again.
The Staves are another group I’m keeping an eye on, their If I Was is still in that best seller selection. And it’s a good album too with tracks like Don’t You Call Me Any More and Let Me Down.

That’s probably enough music for now ! Before I get to the Elvis collection that appeared …

Or that. But that album appeared in the collection way back and I think the sister has deleted the copy I think I snuck on to her laptop. And then burned the hard disc.

PS Minions film – enjoyable, felt like it was missing something. Possibly judging it by the standards of the outstanding Despicable Me 2. Lots of laughs.

I have that feeling of wanting to write something tonight but … the heatwave we’re having in Blighty at the moment is driving away most rational thought.

There are plenty of irrational thoughts happening (as a few people found out over the messenger service today !) and I think I managed to reserve some sensibility for the work stuff. Some at least.

I think someone’s done that in the sky. It’s darn toasty out there. Even toastier on the bus which is a bit like an oven at the moment.

ABCs ? I saw this one late last week on the Facebook and I can never resist a good meme like this. The answers won’t all be the same as then but … here we go !

A- Age: 6. Oh wait, you wanted my physical age and not the mental age ?
B- Biggest Fear: Isolation and being ignored. That sense of reaching out to people and not getting any response.
C- Current Time: 20.11 UK British (it’s actually) Summer Time.
D- Drink you last had: Diet Pepsi with TONNES of ice. And no Mentos this time.

E- Easiest Person To Talk to: Everyone. For an introvert, I seem to be able to get people talking quite easily, although I do have a bad habit of turning the conversation round to focus on me. It should be about both.
F- Favourite Song: There’s lots but the one that’s stuck in my head for a few days is Dear Prudence from Across The Universe but that’s because I’d not heard I Wanna Hold Your Hand for a while. There’s also 03.45am No Sleep by The Cardigans, Cupid’s Gift got treated to Wonderful You by Alisha’s Attic and then there’s Moon and Moon by Bat For Lashes.
G- Grossest Memory: My outsides for perhaps the last 5 years. They’re trying to heal up now though.
H- Hometown: Bristol now but for a long time it was a not so little village in Lincolnshire.
I- In love with: Oh there’s a question 🙂 There’s a little lady out there who I hope knows that I really, really like her.
J- Jealous Of: Such a petty emotion. I try and avoid it. You can be jealous of those who have more, those who have what you want, those who have what you had. But … do you really deserve what they have ? Were you the one to earn it ? I think that’s the true root of jealousy. Ok, I’ll admit to being jealous to people who have air conditioning in their homes.
K- Killed Someone? Yep. You will never find the body. Or the pixels that made up the body.
L- Longest Relationship: It must have been 15 years with a lovely Muttley called Scruff. Here’s the old man again.

M- Middle Name: Bob, short for … erm, not Kate.
N- Number of Siblings: now 1, it was 2.
O- One Wish: to have 2 siblings again.
P- Person who you last called: I can’t remember, last one I messaged was SQ to check if she’s ok. Last conversation with a friend was LTK over the messenger. Last phone call was with the boss (cos he’s down south today) and last person I phoned was the mum and dad.
Q- Question you’re always asked: Hayfever ? After I’ve blown out the windows by sneezing.
R- Reason to smile: Other people smiling at me and the memory of hugs. Last hug ? Cupid’s Gift 🙂
S- Song you last sang: Singing along to I Wanna Hold Your Hand.
T- Time you woke up: Hmm. Maybe 7am which was a bit earlier than I wanted to.
U- Underwear Colour: Blue.
V- Vacation Destination: Sometime soon I want to have a narrowboat holiday to check out whether living on one would be a realistic proposition. Also want to go to Le Mans for the race weekend and maybe even Spa for the Grand Prix, although Grand Prix racing isn’t particularly great at the moment.
W- Worst Habit: Not doing me chores.
X- X-rays you’ve had: Several – left wrist was my first broken bone. Can’t remember if Nose Job 1 had an X-ray. Barium meal to check out the acid problem (they found nothing, suspected cause – fat + stress)
Y- Your favorite food: PIZZA !!!
Z- Zodiac Sign: Scorpio. They of the sting in the tail.

A few shoutouts to finish with ?

Get well soon little lady who’s off work at the moment !
Hello sister – welcome to the blog 🙂
A big hand for LTK who’s given me so much encouragement over the last few months.
And a big hug for someone who I hope is enjoying her time off in London this week.

Stay frosty ! If you can. And … if you see anyone suffering from the heat :

Help them out (that includes pets that idiots have left in car-ovens too)