Sleepypete's Pillow

You ask yourself – “why didn’t I start the login process before having my shower ?”

Lol

I’m currently waiting for 223 people ahead of me to get off the Silvermoon WoW server. It’s actually moving fairly quickly. One thing about Silvermoon, it has shorter queues and they clear quicker than Draenor.

I’m active on 2 realms at the moment :

Draenor – is the new home of the Violence Reborn horde guild. These are the awesome people who gave me a new home after a lot of silliness kicked off in the guild I helped create, oh – 8 and a half years ago now. That showed what could happen when raiding and the politics around getting a bunch of people out every few nights to raid. The guild basically tore itself apart with the tensions between those who wanted progress and those who just wanted to enjoy the game.

I’ve gone from one end to the other. I wanted to see the content and be part of a team that kicked ass. Mind you, that was partly due to knowing who the raid leader was. Yep, she was pretty awesome and it’s a genuine pleasure to have her as a friend.

Here’s to you Overqueen ! It was never the same after you left for the BC beta.

The VR people are a bit more laidback, they don’t mind too much that I got burned out completely from raiding and have no real interest in that end game stuff any more. I feel a bit guilty actually for spending more time on :

Silvermoon – is the home of the alliance guild I’m helping level. I’ve never really played much alliance. After a short dalliance with them in the early days, I was horde all the way. So there’s a lot of levelling content that I’ve never seen.

That’s where the game is for me, the journey up to maximum level. It’s a different game after that, filled with repetition and lacking in interest. On the way there, you journey through 2 worlds and a bunch of continents with lots of stories along the way. I’m about to jump into adventures in the southern tip of Azeroth with my new mage. (Queue’s almost done !)

But there are a few changes I’m displeased about in WoW.

They seem to be joining realms together on the quiet. I’m fairly ok with that when it comes to the auction houses. More players means there’s more people to sell stuff. That means more competition, better availability and lower prices. That’s great. But what isn’t is the competition when you’re out in the wild doing the adventures. There’s far too much competition out there and I’m often seeing players from other realms getting to the baddies that I’m hunting down. They get in the way and make me take longer.

Guild invites. This is the new junkmail. On at least half the characters I’ve started, there have been unsolicited guild invites coming up even before the introductory cutscene.

This is silliness of the highest order.

It’s like having 5 or 6 people knocking on your door every night inviting you to a rave. That’s what guilds with no control on who joins them are like. They’re noisy, filled with rabble and no place I want to be. If a guild wants to have people of the calibre of the average WoW player (it’s very low, dregs of gaming society – trust me on that) without even a brief chat to see if they’re polite (or even talk the language of the server), then I don’t want to be a part of them.

That comes out as slightly ranty but I’ve seen what disruptive people can do to a guild. They’ll troll the members just for fun. You can’t trust anything they do or say. They’ll clean out your guild bank. And all sorts of other nasty stuff. I don’t know about Draenor but on The Maelstrom, there was a guild called something like “Cairne’s Cows”. If one of those turned up in a group, the rest of the members would leave. It was that bad. I used to arrange raid groups surreptitiously so that if we had to take one, there would be only one member of Chaos AD in the group. (That was a fella called Rana who was actually pretty good – the rest were disruptive liars).

WoW’s got a bit more friendly to the solo player since then though. There’s more facilities in there for getting into random groups but even then, you see the dregs of the player base causing problems for the rest. I’ve not used the facility too much (intentionally) but saw plenty of frustration in guild chat from those who did.

WoW’s an awesome game in terms of content but the players really drag it down.

Mind you. There are some awesome players out there and I’ll close out with a few :

The Legendary Sandra – who retired from the game a few years ago. She drew a comment of “I like this one, can we keep her ?” to Sarai the Overqueen during our first MC raid after a schism in the raid organisation.
Overqueen – I’ve mentioned her up top there. She had the hard task of keeping Guildlink on track, it was never the same after she got drawn into the BC beta.
The original Mercs – the ones from work I mean, not the people who came in afterwards, some of who were responsible for tearing the guild apart (and then buggering off to a raiding guild).
All of the VR people

And I’m looking forward to helping the new guild through its adventures.

Beware … there’s a Warcraft post coming soon. But, keep reading, it’s not this one !

As I was leaving work tonight, I heard something I thought I’d never hear … My phone, ringing in someone else’s pocket. Ok. Not my phone exactly but the ring tone. I currently use the Ennio Morricone theme tune to The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, which actually works rather well (if you customise it to remove the very quiet bit at the start).

But … someone else has it now, so it’s no longer unique and therefore I need a new one.

What shall it be ? I’ve got lots to choose from. The tracks I use come from the iTunes library which has only 11314 usable tracks in it. I need more. There’s a few rules though :

It has to avoid resulting in the phone being put in a bucket. You know the type.
It has to be instantly recognisable. You know, a song you hear and immediately know what it is.
It has to start being loud immediately so you grab the phone before the answer thingy kicks in.
Cheesiness has to be avoided (see bucket comment but add water)

Wait … what’s this ? Another music post so soon ? Yey ! I like doing these. I’ll do another one sometime “soon” which will have the amazing tracks that didn’t make the Top 40 due to not having long enough in the library.

If I had a partner, the Alisha’s Attic B side “Wonderful U” would be perfect, although some relationships I know turn into their other B side “When You Coming Home ?”.

The Gorillaz track M1A1 would be an amazing ring tone. Hearing the “HELLOOOO IS THERE ANYONE THERE” ringing out across the floorplate would be highly amusing. At least for a short time before you raced across, not to answer it but to rescue it from the water bucket.

It takes a while to get started too, so you’d need that custom thingy. I use an app for that, which I won’t name and therefore advertise because it annoyed the hell out of me by giving unwanted notifications saying “You haven’t made a ring tone this week”. Yeah. Cos I’m happy with the one I have.

Another couple that are worthy but take time starting are In The Round by The Cardigans (love that song) and In The Hall Of The Mountain King, which is part of Edvard Grieg’s Peer Gynt. They’re great pieces of music because they build gently … but unsuitable to go on the phone for the exact same reason.

I’ve been thinking of a few good candidates :
Antmusic by Adam and the Ants – well recognisable and loud early start.
Expresso Love by Dire Straits – same with the good start before the vocals come in.
Black Velvet by one hit wonder Alannah Myles – instantly recognisable start again but it’ll date you if you recognise it 😉

I’d love to grab an Alisha’s Attic, Hannah Peel, All About Eve (esp. Scarlet or The Pearl Fisherman) track for it but they fail the instant recognition test.

Classical is a good source to mine. Adagio For Strings by Barber is another one that’s instantly recognisable but … I associate it with the segment of the Homeworld game where it kicks off when you warp back home to hear radio chatter describing your home planet being turned to glass by orbital bombardment. However … Mars by Gustav Holst is a good one, as is anything from Carnival of the Animals.

Another few good candidates :
Sk8r Boi by Avril Lavigne – great start but recognition test ?
Mercy by Duffy – very catchy
Sweet Dreams by the Eurythmics – could be, although I prefer the Bat For Lashes version
Tranvision Vamp’s Baby I Don’t Care – not sure what people would think of the primal scream that starts that one
River City People’s version of California Dreamin’

TV shows ? Movies ? I flat refuse to use any of the Star Trek themes. Ha ! I know you thought I’d be tempted. Farscape is a good one, Thunderbirds !!! (bit too common). Firefly ? Awesome series.

Off the wall thought – I wonder if I could get a copy of the Bunbury’s cricket song ? Wonder who would recognise that. Maybe as something that only comes up when people from cricket phone me. I know someone who uses the old BBC cricket theme.

I’d better close off there (and join the queue on the WoW server). I’m actually tempted to try something local (and highly nuts). Ooo arr ooo arrr.

Last post of the Top 40 !

But first a couple of semi random comments. This top 40 thing has marked the step from my old laptop and the Windows world and into the new world of Unix based Mac OS X and Apple laptops. I have to say, apart from the hole it’s left in my wallet, it’s a decision I’m very comfortable with. And there’s a few reasons :

The cost thing isn’t actually as big an issue as it used to be. My last laptop cost me £450 for a 17″ Acer. Compare that to £1000ish for a Macbook. If you can buy 2 for the price of 1, there’s a definite Value For Money issue. My Macbook Air cost about £960 with work discount, a comparable Windows spec would have been £821 from Pcspecialist. That’s still a wide difference but not as much as it used to be. Plus you avoid the uncertainties over interface quality.

What is interface quality ? The keyboard and trackpad on the Macbook Air are super high quality. They’re as sensitive as you’d want. No more, no less. It’s what convinced me to change to Macbook actually. The keyboard, mouse/trackpad and screen are THE most important thing to consider when you’re buying electronic Stuff.

Speed. I haven’t tried any games on it yet to see how they run but general operation and use is free of all those mysterious pauses and holds that a Windows machine is subject to. It’s so efficient, that when you hit the power button, 15 seconds later there will be a cluster of applications open and ready for action. And they’ll all be complaining that they have no internet because the laptop has started up before the wifi has had a chance to negotiate. That doesn’t happen in Windows. Not even on my desktop which has a similar SSD magic disc. There’s no settling down time before things are usable.

It ain’t Windows. Microsoft are steadily destroying their PC business by making their software ever more hostile and increasingly less efficient. Mac OS on the other hand is built upon solid computer engineering principles (Unix is a nifty, proven, well evolved system) and it has a well designed user interface on top. Yep. Takes getting used to but that’s partly to drop the bad habits that Windows has embedded in people.

Ok ! The rest of the Top 40 (after waiting 5 minutes for the old laptop to fire up)

At 10 there is Paramore with Playing God. Their track The Only Exception from the same album is probably better but this is very high quality summing up the original Paramore before they lost a couple of members. It’s from their excellent Brand New Eyes album.

9th most listened to is The Cardigans with I Need Some Fine Wine and You, You Need To Be Nicer. Gosh that’s a mouthful. Warning – dark lyrics track (it’s about wife/husband beating). Dark subject but it gets all those listens because it’s on a great album, it has Nina Persson’s voice interacting with the band.

8th is another Cardigans track and is my second favourite – 03.45am No Sleep. Another one that sounds sad but I prefer to go by Nina’s interpretation that you’ve been up chatting with friends and you suddenly realise that the sun is starting to come up. I’ve had moments like that with the Swedes in the VR guild.

Number 7 is a teenage favourite – I Say Nothing by Voice Of The Beehive. These girls disappeared far too early.

6th in the list is from Edie Brickell’s Ultimate Collection (you know – one of those greatest hits albums that a label puts out when an artist moves label). It’s 1873, more sad subject but wonderfully sung with great accompaniment.

At 5 is Goldfrapp’s Utopia. It’s from their Felt Mountain album which is … weird … I believe this track is based on the film Metropolis with the lyrics suggesting links to the super computer in control of the city. Other people think it’s fascist propaganda. Either way, it’s an outstanding showcase for Alison Goldfrapp’s voice.

4th is Dire Straits again with Expresso Love. This one gets the nod because of the interplay between guitar and piano which is another Dire Straits trademark. It wasn’t just about the voice and guitar with them, they also slid in outstanding instrumental sections where the guitar and other instruments would hand off to each other.

Number 3 is the Biker Bunny Song. It’s Bat For Lashes with What’s A Girl To Do. It’s from her first album, Fur And Gold. It’s the track that my sister and I keep going back to cos of That Video. Definitely channelling a bit of Donnie Darko there. Great song from a quite distinctive and very powerful live performer. And because I think this girl is the best thing since Alisha’s Attic, here’s a bonus – Laura, you’re more than a superstar.

Second is The Cardigans again with In The Round. This is also from Super Extra Gravity but what makes this one a bit different is that’s a bit more carefree than their usual. Bit like a singer or dancer getting lost in the music from enjoying it so much. It has a melody line that immediately gets your head nodding and then it just builds … With Nina Persson’s lyrics providing the perfect counterpoint as usual.

And finally – the band that started my addiction with music off all those years ago. Back then, I’d have someone shouting “Turn That Down !” even though it could barely be heard outside the door. Now, my dad’s favourite song is Apple Tree Man (which I won’t link cos the video is very strange). Top song – Devil Woman covered by All About Eve, which is a little sad that it’s there because songs like Scarlet, Martha’s Harbour, Wishing The Hours Away, Blue Sonic Boy (old school Dr Who fans pay attention!) knock it hollow and that’s just one amazing song off each album.

That’s it – no more music posts for a while. Well – until I feel the urge again. I don’t think many people click on the youtube links but I enjoy listening to the songs over again as I’m building the post up.

How’s me ? I had someone let me know they were looking out for me last night, which makes all the difference. They let me talk gibberish at them for a while and it cheered me up a bit. I had a better day today. Cheers !

There’s a few times I put stuff here that I really don’t want to post, partly because posting it acknowledges it …

Pain levels are ramping up again … It seems that as my skin condition improves (and it is, it’s a hell of a lot better than it was even 1 month ago), the condition of my insides degrades. Actually, my outsides are now pretty much at the point where if I leave it alone enough (tougher than it sounds!), it may well heal on its own.

And at the moment, you’re probably thinking – this is going to be a self pitying post listing all my problems. Which it is – but there’s an ulterior motive … Listing my problems helps me assimilate them, acknowledge them, tackle them and in the end, hopefully beat them.

So what are the problems at the moment ?

Number 1 – acid. I had a period a few years ago when I suffered quite badly from acid reflux. That seems to be coming back but it’s fairly explainable. I can acknowledge the triggers and avoid most of them :
Cheese – no more take out pizza. Cheese is definitely consistently making me react. This one’s fairly easy to address. Cut out the Dominos when I’m eating alone and save it for when I’m out with people.
Stress – not so easy. I really need to be looking elsewhere, especially with the main blocker (the skin condition) being on the mend. I’ve been where I am too long and what I’m doing now is less interesting than what I was doing a few years ago. (Not close enough to the tech).

Apart from that, it’s grazing on certain things to keep my tummy busy. Give the acid something to work on. Speaking of that, I should really put the dinner on …

Number 2 – physical state. It feels like some of my tendons are not wanting to be where they should be. Muscles are taking every opportunity to misbehave. Let’s have a look at that :

Tendons – I’ve had a problem with my hips for a while now. It’s damage from cricket most of all. I never really figured out a good way of warming up my groin muscles and all the turning and bending you do with cricket takes its toll after a while. This is affecting my hips and my back with the shoulder occasionally joining in too. Improvements in the skin condition will help there too, because instead of sitting on the floor (cos of treatment issues) I’ll be more comfortable sitting on sofas and chairs. Hopefully when the repairs get closer to finishing, some of the mineral levels which must be out of whack at the moment will get back to normal. That’s been my usual cause of cramp – things like salt imbalance.

But I may still need my hips looked at and I suspect I’ll be one who gets hip replacements early. Possibly my knees too, because they’ve been complaining since the swelling has gone down. I think the swelling was actually keeping my knees intact !

So the solution to this one will be to not take quite so many liberties with how I throw myself around. I’ve already said I won’t play cricket for one of my teams next year. If the other one folds, then I’ve played my last regular cricket. It still feels like I have some unfinished business there though, especially with the batting but I’d also like an authentic match conditions stumping.

What helped my back before was a couple of very lovely ladies who put my back together again after I hurt it. (Lovely ? Yeah, there was serious emotional trauma involved with them but – that healed in time, they healed my back much quicker saving me from pain of a different kind). I’ve not found a cooperative healer since then. Yeah, I could go find a physio and that would probably help out my hips too.

That touches on Number 3 … Mental state

I’ve mentioned before that I’m touched by manic-depressive tendencies. Well, at the moment, the depressive tendencies are winning out over the manic tendencies that make me bouncy. And what makes this aspect of pain most difficult is that it’s something you can rarely deal with on your own.

I really do miss not being around people. I’ve been hiding a little too long. Hopefully I can reverse that soon. But that’s not really what I miss. It’s being around special people who think I’m special too. You can feel alone in a crowd but if there’s that one special person holding your arm ?

And that’s one pain that I’m struggling to do something about. I’ve met a lot of special people over the years, there’s still a few around who I think are special. But … I’ve never found anyone where that special feeling is mutual.

Still looking 😉 My problems can be addressed though :

Acid – avoid cheese, keep the stress down
Muscles – be more careful, take in the fluids
Mental – bit more difficult

PS I hate having negative posts as the latest one on here – I must knock it off the top tomorrow with the conclusion of that Top 40 🙂

I wasn’t going to add in a post today because :

I’m super tired;
It was going to be a whinge;
And I hate doing whingey posts.

It was originally going to be a whinge about advertising but I read this post (Link) about the issues affecting my current Warcraft server and the words in there that said Blizzard were deleting negative posts kinda broke the straw.

Ok – 2 issues today and I’ll save the gaming one until later.

First one is advertising …

I had another one of those spam emails today. “Can we post on your website ?”. No. I’m responsible for what goes here and I have to stand by what appears here. I posted years ago about taking my guild’s website off the links list (when I was guild master at the time – this is the Mercenaries guild) because their website didn’t have the basic tools added that stopped spam. And we had a massive amount of spam, most of it pointing people to porn sites.

I don’t have a problem with people indulging in porn. It can be amusing, instructive? and occasionally hilarious. What I do have a problem with is the potential for my page to be flagged for adult content. I don’t know what the consequences are but I doubt they’re good … On the interwebs, you’re not just responsible for your own page, you’re responsible for what you link people to.

Oh and there’s also the tendency on places like Youtube for the adverts to be so much louder than the video you’re wanting to be watching. I don’t want people getting inflicted with annoying popups or offensive adverts. I definitely don’t want people getting drive-by viruses from advertising, like how a certain national newspaper got caught (Register link).

I will mention people here, like Lexus (yey!), Ford (ok), Vauxhall (previously yey!, now very meh), Apple (cautious yey), Microsoft (may their UI designers burn in hell) and whichever supermarket I went to last. But that’s just my opinion and I’m usually giving the bad as well as the good. I aim to give a balanced opinion, advertising is anything but. As I said on Facebook earlier, the prospect of adding unbalanced advertising lies here turns my stomach. And if you advertise, that gives someone editorial control over you (“we didn’t like that post, take it down or no advert paycheck”). Not gonna happen.

(This is why I try not to post while tired !)

So no advertising – cos I hate it enough to want to avoid inflicting it on others. I don’t need the paltry money it brings (although extra cash is always nice).

Gaming ?

I tried logging into the Warcraft servers last night (gave up immediately because of a very early start today) and had more of a go today. No joy. I play on the Draenor Europe server which is currently having a few issues. Over the last couple of weeks I’ve experienced enough disconnects to convince me that group work is a bad idea.

It’s an online MULTIPLAYER game ! Group work is what you’re supposed to do on it !

I’d consider starting off a character on another server but I’m honestly too tired tonight (more below). Tonight’s attempt at Warcraft was abysmal – it took about 5 attempts to log in, I did one of those group work things (being disconnected before and after) but took the hint when it completely froze up (couldn’t select a character to log in with) afterwards. Tonight would not be a Warcraft night.

This is another sign actually – addiction makes you more sensitive about these things. If you’re tearing hair out about a game being unavailable, it’s time to do something different. I’m half-watching the round of Youtube videos behind this post and after those, I’ll be reading books while listening to music.

Wait – this post is mainly anti-censorship. The place people go to complain about their online service being unavailable is the forums for the service. Those forums are typically controlled by the providers and they don’t like criticism, it tends to get deleted. So – this post is partly about giving those dissatisfied people a voice. We should get game credit for this current debacle but I doubt we will, Blizzard doesn’t do that. CCP do with Eve but not Blizzard.

We have similar dissatisfaction at work with the IT. It goes down more often than it should (we should have >99% availability, we don’t) and we’re subject to stupid limits on the amount of data we can store. On top of that, we’re forced to use Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server as our primary system. It’s not fit for purpose as that and forces us to hold off on making new files. It prevents us being as efficient as we should be.

In both the case of Warcraft and work, we have the right to be highly annoyed because we’re paying an inordinate amount of money for a service that isn’t up to the job. It isn’t delivering. We are not getting our value.

But that’s enough about work. I try to keep the anti-work stuff at a minimum. I work with some great people but we are handicapped by the ultimate management, the support groups (aiming my rifle at the IT here) and idiots who inflict policy on people without understanding the implications.

Closing off now …

Today was actually a really good day, I’m just overtired now because it was also a very long day. Up at about 6am, to get a bus at 6.30am to catch a coach at 7.30am. I live under 3 miles away from work, yet I have to allow an hour to get in due to policies inflicted upon us – that’s silly.

Wait – good day. I saw shinies !

It is pretty good to see what we work on. We’re a bit disconnected from the reality when we’re stuck in the office. We deal with massive pieces of kit filled with complex machinery that all interconnects. We don’t get an appreciation of how it all interweaves, with that being the most accurate term when you’re looking at :
HVAC, network, power, low pressure water, high pressure water, chilled water and all the other services coming in too.

It’s mindbending putting all that together and making it all work efficiently.

And quite possibly that’s why I enjoy working with the big toys I work with. But it wouldn’t be the same without the people who are part of the teams putting it all together and the people who use it after we hand it over to them.

I think I’ve used that title before somewhere … Mind you, in almost 900 posts I’m bound to have repeated a few !

There’s a massive storm coming through the UK at the moment and we’ve been in the firing line. Ok, it’s not the hurricane force or tropical cyclone type that does so much damage in other countries but it’s been a big deal for us. It’s a little more than the average UK rainstorm that we get.

This morning ? Fine while waiting for the bus but as soon as I got off, the heavens opened and I was being the drowned rat by the time I got to my desk. Coming home, I got caught in a brief shower on my way to the bus stop but it wasn’t as bad as in the morning.

Except … Massive flashes, a couple of forky lightnings and three huge rumblings. No – I wasn’t hungry, the canteen had cookies today. A good thing too cos I visited Sainsburys. No cookies means shopping while hungry (never advisable) means more shopping than will fit in the bag.

Yeah – bit damp. But I can live with damp, although I’d prefer to have my steel umbrella (da car) on my way into work. Add “increased potential of colds and flu” to the results of the discrimination by postcode policy.

How am I doing ? I’m not suffering from any colds (yet – and I wouldn’t notice if I did anyway cos I sneeze so much !). My condition is actually improving daily. My skin is repairing nicely and this is a few days after the drugs ran out. It’s not fixed properly yet but it’s definitely encouraging. I’ve not used any of the moisturiser I got given, I’ve not actually needed it because the only dryness has been around the bits that are still damaged. And this is comparing to fingers that felt like sandpaper last year.

Back to the weather – it’s going to be an interesting few days … (of the Interesting Times curse type interesting). Trains have been suspended, the local bridges got closed. By the way I can hear it raining, I suspect there may be flooding problems.

And there’s the dinner bell ringing … Picture time ! Spotted these today :

Add floods to zombie with that apocalypse thing.

Oh hell – I’m doomed.

We made some truly beautiful machines back in the day before science took over and made them look weird. Mind you, some of them were also awesomely powerful machines of destruction too (the Vulcan was designed to obliterate cities).

And finally :

I know the answer … to the riddle 😉

Not angry mad mind you, just nutty mad.

Warning – there’s even more techie talk in this post …

Ok, so since switching the network around I’ve had 2 evenings where there’s been no interruption in the audio streaming. Result ! However … It means my old laptop and my printer can no longer see the network. There’s solutions to both :

I have a new widget for the old laptop which will let it connect.
I can plug the printer in to the desktop and access it through that.

However (again!) … There is another solution. A plan that goes past Cunning into Mad Scientist territory. And … I already have the bits to make it work.

Right now, I have a wifi network transmitting at 5GHz. It works, it’s away from the interference. But it means my old kit (laptop and printer) can’t see the network because they can only work at 2.4GHz.

The solution (and Cunning part of the plan) – to have a second device that transmits at 2.4GHz. In effect, having two independent networks going.

But – it gets better. Why not give the jammer something to jam while happily sending you want on a frequency it can’t see ? My wifi network is currently called “Aquarius” (don’t ask – I must have been watching something Greek or mythological and it sounded good at the time). What I could do is set things up as follows :

Internet router transmits on “Hahacantfindme” at 5GHz
(I’d pick something else like Athena)
Laptop sends its audio through that.
Old router plugs into the internet router and transmits on “Aquarius” at 2.4GHz.
I.e. you give the jammer what it expects to see.
And my old laptop and printer can get back on the network through Aquarius.

Everybody’s happy, including the jammer because it has something to jam. Owner of the jammer on the other hand ? I can see them going “Hey ! How come the music isn’t breaking up like it did before ?” Muahaha.

There is another solution that does the same thing – Apple do a device called the Time Machine which does data backup duties. It can also extend wifi networks, just like what the 2nd router plan above would do. It is a couple of hundred £££ though, so perhaps an accessory too far.

I hope if anything this post has illustrated one thing :

It is dangerous to give techies too much gear to play with. They get daft ideas of how to use it.

Ok, so I’m watching the Strictly come dancing midweek show at the moment and my “how things work” eye is being caught by how they’re moving.

On the dance show, it’s all about movement with :

Precision
Coordination
Elegance
Timing
And a little bit of power

Whenever I see people do things, I’m always thinking of whether I can adopt what they’re doing to make what I do better. That’s how I learned how to sprint, although it caught me out when it sent my bowling completely wonky for a game. (I’d listened to commentators and a small change made the ball move in the air the other way to what I normally did).

I’ll never be a great dancer. I make things up as I go along a bit too much. I’m reactive when I move. (I dodge well). When I try, I’m usually trying to ape what other people are doing which leads to an uncoordinated mess.

What I do have though is power and precision. When I hand things to people, it’s usually such a gentle handover that they don’t realise they have the object I’ve passed to them. As I’ve said before though, that power can work against me because it can take that extra fraction of a second to get the legs moving.

Elegance ? Yeah, it looks good but it tends to be extra flourish that can get you in trouble. (Like today when I nearly tripped over my own feet doing a spin-dodge!) With the cricket, I’d tend to try and work out any flourish, it slows you down. Quick, precise movements are what you need. That’s why sportspeople tend to look wooden on programmes like Strictly.

I’ve put a reasonable amount of thought into how I move. Mostly, the interest is in protecting my body against itself. I can walk extremely quickly but it tends to grind my knees away. I can walk even quicker but that breaks the ligaments in my knees. I can run super fast – but without knee pads it feels like it’s making my knees explode.

That thought on movement has led to me adopting a walking style that tries to minimise how much sideways movement goes through my knees. It’s precise enough with the footfalls that I can go near silent with the right shoes. That’s not about sneaking up on people (although that can have hilarious results), if you make noise that’s energy that’s not going into getting you where you’re going.

The protection thing goes into other movements – because my muscles are so sensitive at the moment that I have to be very careful to not make moves that will send me into cramp or unhook the damaged bit in my back. (Hopefully that’ll get better !)

So for me – it’s about learning how to move to protect my body from legs that got too powerful and to avoid causing further damage to the damage I already carry.

For other people – I can’t but help notice how some people move. Some look trained, some look absolutely totally natural. The natural ones can be dangerously compelling to watch. Why dangerous ? Lol – cos standing there with the slackjawed expression can lead to a damn good slappin’.

And I’m a) running out of things to say and b) written a lot already.

I’ll be trying to :
Stay being efficient and precise in my movements
(cos it helps me in other ways)
Continue confusing people who are taking things off me
Keep looking for moves I can adopt
And attempting to avoid those slappings

But first … the Cunning Plan.

I have a disappointment with the new Macbook. It’s more susceptible to the network interference that means my audio streaming breaks up. This is the way my network is built :

Internet comes in to the modem router. I’m on cable internet so my options there are a little limited. I have the Virgin Media Superhub, which has served me well so far.
Desktop – is connected to the superhub by a wire for best performance in games.
Macbook – connects to the superhub over wifi
Airport Express – also connects via wifi and sends audio to my hifi

The wifi used to operate on the old 802.11g (don’t worry about the arcane stuff) at a frequency of 2.4GHz. Every wifi device should support that, it’s the oldest protocol. Trouble is, that means every devices uses it so in built up areas there can be lots of interference. To make matters worse, other electronic wireless devices (phones, baby monitors) use the frequency band making even more interference. And it’s the interference which breaks the audio streaming, making me a Sad Panda.

I actually have 2 Panda’s but I’ve barely played them, I’ve concentrated on Seraphice the mage instead. (Slight longitudinal shift into Warcraft!)

The Cunning Plan has involved me throwing hardware at the problem. My old laptop and Airport Express device had old wifi and couldn’t support the newer 802.11n (again, don’t worry about the arcane stuff). The new Macbook has far Shinier Wifi. So – cunning plan – set up the devices so they avoid the interference.

That’s the plan at least. I’ll wait and see if my new Littlewhitebox (the Airport Express) device that arrived today sorts out the problem. If it doesn’t … I’ll throw more money at it by investing in Powerline networking. So instead of the audio being broadcast over the air, it’ll partly go over the mains cable. Hopefully I won’t need to go that far.

Top 40 !!!!

It’s numbers 11 to 20 today :

At 20 – Dire Straits – Your Latest Trick. This one is from the classic Brothers In Arms album and somehow I’ve listened to it more than the other amazing tracks (Ride Across The River, Brothers In Arms). Why do I like Dire Straits ? Cos Knopfler’s guitar work is incredible and his voice makes mine sound good.

19 – The Cardigans – Holy Love. This one is from their Super Extra Gravity album which will see another couple of tracks appear in the Top 10. It’s one hell of an album, there’s outstanding track after outstanding track on it, although I wouldn’t recommend depressive people listen to it. The tracks are amazing but they deal with some Heavy Stuff. Ok, this one isn’t quite as good as the rest 😉

18 – The Cardigans – For What It’s Worth. This is from the iTunes Original collection. There aren’t many iTunes collection albums (I have the Norah Jones one too). They’re greatest hits albums again, so I wouldn’t recommend them for that because you probably have the tracks already. However, the Originals albums add in interviews with the band in between each track which, in my opinion, makes them worth getting again. This track was originally from the excellent Long Gone Before Daylight album.

Why do I like the Cardigans ? It’s not just about the voice, which has that clipped but perfect Swedish accent. No, it’s about the band as well. Instead of being in the background, quietly supporting, they’re in the foreground being as active a part in the song as the singer.

17 – Bjork’s Violently Happy. Cos I love you. Bjork burst on to the scene with this one and she’s been brightening up pop music since then. It’s been an infinitely more interesting genre with Bjork around, she’s utterly unique and half the time you’re wondering what weirdness she’ll come up next. Gloriously different. And … that’s no way to treat a teddy bear !

16 – Alisha’s Attic – Affected By You Not. This one’s a B-side so no youtube video. One thing I love about Alisha’s Attic is how prolific they were. They only released 3 studio albums plus one which was available only on Ebay. However, each single came with multiple original tracks as B-sides and they are typically incredible. Some are better than the album tracks (I was disappointed with The House We Built). Here’s one I could find – AA are definitely Too Far Forgotten.

15 – Adam & The Ants – Kings of the Wild Frontier. There’s only one Adam Ant. Some would say that’s a good thing (see above about Bjork being more interesting). I don’t think many groups used dominant drums as much as Adam and the Ants.

14 – Abba – Hasta Manana. There’s so many super sweet Abba tracks that could have been on this list but Hasta Manana found its way to the list. Yep. I like Abba and I’m proud of that. Just give them a listen and you will too. Although I’d recommend skipping the Mamma Mia film. You do Not want to be exposed to Pierce Brosnan attempting to sing. It will be with you for life.

13 – Battle Without Honour or Humanity. This one’s from the Kill Bill soundtrack again. Instantly recognisable.

12 – U2 – I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For. This is the Rattle and Hum version and … strangely appropriate cos I haven’t either. I’m not a huge U2 fan (they’re too political and their politics are the nonsensical rantings of those with too much money) but they do make excellent music. But like Tom Cruise and movies, off screen he’s an absolute turd but on screen ? He makes some excellent movies.

11 – Roberta Flack – Killing Me Softly With His Song. Sometimes the old ones are the best. This one shows the new girls how it should be done.

Ok – that’s enough for now 🙂 The Top 10 will come in the next few days 🙂

Someone noticed the reference to the Pretty Contractor Lady which I snuck into yesterday’s post :-).

So I thought – I’ve used a lot of codenames for people over the years, let’s give some of them a mention again. Almost all of them have been awesome friends and colleagues over the years, they deserve their mention again.

So – Pretty Contractor Lady ! Name born out of lack of inspiration for describing this awesome lady. She’s one of the acceptance girls who worked over at our Prime Contractor’s place. My last project had 6 major milestones. Massive milestones. This lady was instrumental in getting the acceptance work done which saw us through not 1 but 5 of those major milestones. Not just a pretty face but a consummate professional who stuck at it producing high quality work despite us not being the best behaved customer at times.

And she was helped out by Ms Warpath (don’t make her angry! nah – she’s great and that’s not a particularly apt name) and the Scottish Go To Girls (definitely an apt name). We’ve been blessed with having outstanding people on the project and it’s a shame they’re gradually bleeding away to the Next Big Thing.

Back home we have the Apprentice, who is so much more than that. She got the name Apprentice because when she joined us, I was trying to pass on as much information and process as I could in a very short time before I got redeployed. And she keeps the boys on the job like a boss too.

There’s another name – The Boss never had staff. (We occasionally think of staff as an infection, to be avoided wherever possible). But her empathy had everyone coming for advice. Why “The Boss” ? Cos she told the team leader what he was doing every day. The Team Leader was God. And The Boss was the one telling God what he was doing. There’s also “Actual Boss” too.

And now I’ve mentioned the old team …

Snow Queen ! That name came from how enchanting she was at one of the Xmas parties. At the same time, there were ads for an adaptation where the Snow Queen steals the heart of the bell boy. I actually feel a bit bad about this one because the Snow Queen adaptation was nigh on unwatchable with the core character being narcissistic and evil, which is the complete opposite of our Snow Queen. We had to leave her behind when our team got rearranged and we miss her terribly. Not just for her indomitable character (yes that’s you ! you’ve just forgotten !) but she’s another one who is a consummate professional. There’s the wrong way, the right way and the perfect SQ way.

And she worked with :
Ms Sunshine – who would walk into a room with a round face framed by sun yellow blonde hair, it would be like the sun walking in and making everything brighter.
Wild Thing – who made a daft comment during one of the team moves which got picked up on by me and Diablo. And yes, the natural unconscious grace she possesses could have turned our bones to water (line nicked from which book ?)
Diablo ? We had a double act going. Both techies, both a little nuts. His nuttiness has been worn off a bit too much by promotion. Anyway, we had pictures on our “who are we?” tallies. Mine was an angel smiley, his was a demon smiley. The demon smiley got spotted by the French teacher consultant we had and El Diablo was born.

We still have the Finance Angels working for us. There’s two of these, both utterly charming (and angelic). The original name got coined because Angel E is one of those people who is unfazed by anything. She was very hard to tease because it just didn’t register. She’s one of those beautiful people who can’t recognise badness. But, again, it’s not how they are which earns the respect, it’s their professionalism.

Noticing a theme there ? We’ve been blessed with the services of some highly professional and highly skilled people. It’s that which gets the respect, not the looks. In fact, something I’ve observed over many years is that the ladies who have the looks tend to spoil their own image by being hostile and unfriendly.

There’s a bunch of other names that appear here, most of which are chosen by other people. Names like Craziequeen, Cyberkitten, Aginoth, BionicDwarf, Ravenwolf, RCA. All fantastic friends (ok, one on that list isn’t a friend of us any more but she was!)

Oh ! I almost forgot a few others.

The Little Canteen Girl was great fun while she was here. She’s now disappeared to have kiddies so isn’t around to sneak extra turkey into my sandwiches.
There were the Axe Girls who tormented me and Diablo when they walked past our desks on their way home. Imagine a pair of meerkats popping up and us both going sigh.
Superspy – cos his name matched someone in the movies. He’s retired now. I spotted him ages ago and he looked the same but lighter, freer, healthier.
Miss F – who listened when I needed a friend to sort out some threads that were getting heavily knotted in my head.
Miss L – who gave me an example that I needed to pull myself out of a deep hole.
Bright Young Thing – who had me utterly besotted at one point but who disappeared out of my life with no thread to follow.

There’s far more people out there who have earned a mention – I tend to struggle for inspiration though. The thing with a codename is that it has to be usable. It has to be positive. It has to be something that doesn’t get me sued or sacked for discrimination. That’s another reason I’m uncomfortable with one or two of them … Partly cos one reminds me of one of my nicknames over the years:

Snowman – yep. I had dandruff 😉
Alisha’s Addict – used this for a while, it was a joke on me finding everything I could that was produced by Alisha’s Attic
Sleepypete – to distinguish me from the other Pete in the gaming group. I got off lightly, he was PGS or Power Gaming Scumbag 🙂
Keela – after my Eve character, it came from a randomly made D&D character which I liked.
Ice or Iceangel – after my Warcraft character

And – last but definitely not least – I am Dwagon Guy.