Sleepypete's Pillow

"Why are all those people bouncing to no particular time ?"

🙂

Last Night of the Proms is *very* British. If you want to understand us Brits I recommend watching it. It'll confuse the hell out of you! [rotflmao]

Couple of things on today :

Strictly Come Dancing is back ! And it’s the Last Night Of The Proms.

I didn’t watch Strictly regularly until last year, when it well and truly caught the attention. There was a good selection of celebrities taking part that year and you genuinely didn’t know who’d win and who’d knock you over (in a good way) on the night. Not so convinced this year, we shall see what we shall see.

They have some marvellous dancers too …

Quote from Yveta : “Music does something special to me, I just have to dance”. Music kinda does something special to me too, I’m always wanting to sing along (but keeping it in check due to ultimate shyness)

The music tends to be pretty good on Strictly. They have a house band for the dancing with guests coming in too. The quality varies somewhat (the house band is good but not great and can butcher some songs). But it definitely has me turning off the TV speakers and routing the audio through my proper hifi.

Noticed that ? I’ve never heard a TV that sounds passable, let alone anywhere near good. But then again, I’ve been spoiled by having proper hifi for many, many years.

This year’s Strictly has Sophie Ellis-Bextor on, who I developed a dislike of when she was more current in the singing business. Not really sure why, as she was very, very good. Great tone and kept the timing. And her “Read My Lips” album is on Amazon for £3.65 with free MP3 download. Don’t mind if I do.

Also means I have an excuse to preorder Goldfrapp’s new album and Iron Man 3.

Still watching Strictly but coming later is an annual event : Last Night of the Proms.

For the uninitiated, this is an unabashed celebration of Britishness. It’s a concert with some of the best of British classical music. It has Jerusalem, it has the Sea Shanties. It has the Pomp and Circumstance marches. And … most important … it has the audience participation.

It’s worth watching and joining in with. It’s silly … and it’s uplifting.

And I’m thoroughly looking forward to it.

How’s me ? I seem to be improving – finally ! There’s still a lot of damage but it seems to be finally repairing (that’ll be the vitamin tablets) I’ve added another thing to my Suspicious Of Allergy list too – bacon flavour crisps. Shame that. I liked those.

I’ve not been back to the doctor for a while. But I’m hoping that when I do (soonish), I can ask for an allergy test with enough of me in factory spec for it to give worthwhile results. Why go back though if my skin is repairing ? I’m having other physical issues which are slowing me down :

Back – is not healthy at the moment.
Shoulder – is more restricted than it was.
Hip – this is the big one, something’s not right in there and can make it painful to walk around.

But as with the rest of it, I’ll see how it goes there and manage it best I can. I’m looking forward to putting the skin condition behind me, although I think I’ll have a lasting legacy of needing to look after it more. It’s being very easy to cause it damage which then takes way too long to heal. I’m still not convinced that some bits actually want to heal. We shall see. If they’re still bad next week, I’ll get them checked out.

Think on that note, check this out : If this ain’t love …

LOL 🙂

I suspended my sense of being offended at the thought of intentionally taking starships into the atmosphere of planets. Things like that are an abomination 😉

Pete said: The new Trek movies have violently divided opinion. Some people think they're a worse abomination than Office 10 or Windows 8.

It was an abomination…. [lol]

Ok – I was looking for Serenity the other day. Still not there yet but getting closer.

I could do with more uninterrupted sleep, aided by me worrying the bad bits of me a bit less. (Itch leads to scratch leads to more itch leads to no sleep) I am improving, I just have to avoid making it worse because I can make it worse much quicker than it gets better.

But I was feeling good enough yesterday evening to go hunting up at the Mall. (For more than laptops). First stop – PC World and a peek at their laptops. Not much joy here, they were ripping up their laptop area, presumably in preparation for the next ones coming in. Keeping an eye on it as there’s another week of a £100 cashback offer.

Besides – they’re not selling what I want at the moment. I’ve pretty much eliminated being interested in anyone’s laptop except Acer. We’ve had good times with Acer kit, they’ve done well for us. This one is coming up to 4 years old and is still going strong. Ok, it’s not good with the HD video but it still copes with everything else I throw at it. It could do with the keyboard being attacked with cleany stuff though.

What’s on offer ? 14 or 15″ laptops (or a Shiny 13″ ultrabook) with or without touchscreens. That’s ok – but I want more lines on my screen than these laptops have. I don’t really care about a touchscreen. Down that road leads grubby screens from fingerprints. I do care about having a proper HD screen and that’s because of apps like iTunes which don’t let you change the text size. I may have a fight with iTunes anyway because I fully intend to put an old version on because they took a leaf out of Microsoft’s book and make v11 an abomination.

So – they’re not selling what I want at the moment but there’s two more reasons why I’m not buying right now :

The old laptop is still going strong (just about)
The new laptop cost more than I want to spend.

This laptop cost £450, the touchscreen 15″ Acer costs £600 with a £100 discount. That’s a lot of cash. Perhaps it’s inflation over the 4 years I’ve owned the laptop but you know what ? Computer prices don’t really change. The specs change but the prices don’t. With the desktop bits lists I build, the “acceptable” spec changes according to the time but they always end up around the same price. Unless I play with a very silly spec, in which case I can put the price in the thousands. Yet they’re asking us to pay a lot more for laptops now than I think we should be.

Yep. I have fun sometimes with those bits lists, although they’re not as exotic as they used to be. Multiple SSD drives just isn’t the same as pricing up a second tower to contain a 7 drive SCSI array.

Ok ok – too geeky ? Maybe 🙂

But. I wasn’t seriously looking for a laptop last night, there’s just that tantalising offer there.

I was however … looking for blurays. There just happened to be a major movie release yesterday (Star Trek Into Darkness) and I’m now watching the first movie in prep for the second (not tonight, maybe tomorrow). The new Trek movies have violently divided opinion. Some people think they’re a worse abomination than Office 10 or Windows 8. Some people think they’re a fresh reimagination.

I liked what they did with the second in particular. I’m looking forward to watching it again.

I also picked up Oblivion, which was a cracker. And HMV happened to have a 4 for £10 offer on multiple formats going, so I now have copies of the music from the Olympics closing ceremony, Tori Amos’ Gold Dust, Predators and Unstoppable. They’re not the greatest of media but they were still pretty good.

And it got me out of the house for a while – never a bad thing 🙂 I’ll be back there next week for another peek at laptops but also to pick up a few things :

Iron Man 3 – yes !
Goldfrapp – Tales of Us (looking forward to more awesome)
Arctic Monkeys – AM (maybe – good but not full price good)
Doctor Who series 7 soundtrack

And there I go singing along to the Star Trek music again. It’ll be Michelle Shocked not too long after it finishes.

PS I may go to PC Specialist and get one of these (link). Shiny ! And with a superduper HD screen too. The spec I’d want is £573 though, still pricey.

There seems a dearth of stuff on telly at the moment …

(With the serenity thing, I’ll talk a little about me later)

As a scifi fan, it used to be that we’d be blessed with lots of competition for our attention when it came to new stuff on the telly. At one point, we had 3 concurrent series of Star Trek, Babylon 5, Farscape, Earth Final Conflict and a bunch of other notables. Now, the only current scifi I’m watching is Falling Skies (the others are on a break).

Don’t get me wrong, Falling Skies is very high quality scifi. It keeps you guessing as to what’s going on. It has outstanding pacing for each episode. It’s consistent with itself and the rules it sets. But there used to be a lot more on. (There is – I’m ignoring Continuum now and gave Under the Dome a miss).

What we do have is an awful lot of good scifi in the cinema this year. Oblivion was a major highlight. Pacific Rim was great fun (if very silly). I’ll be getting Star Trek Into Darkness quite soon after the blu-ray comes out. I missed out on Man Of Steel. Iron Man 3 was a fitting finish to that trilogy. And the latest was Elysium, which had a lot of good things to tell about it. (I may do a mini review / major tech analysis of Elysium sometime)

What else ? Looking forward to Riddick. I’m not convinced by the plotline but Vin Diesel’s Riddick is a very watchable character. Mortal Instruments … should be a good bit of fantasy. Rush will be awesome if it’s as good as the Senna movie. The second Hunger Games movie will hopefully live up to the first. Thor should be amusing.

But at home, I’m in the strange position of running out of stuff to record. My series link list is currently :

Formula 1 Grand Prix – on BBC of course
Stargate Atlantis repeats – until end of this week
Body of Proof – this is still quite amusing
Falling Skies – catch this from the start if you can, it’s worth it
Strictly Come Dancing – I may even watch the dailies this time round too
And Castle just disappeared off it because it’s run ended.

I’ll keep myself amused by finally catching up with the various series I have on dvd that I haven’t had a chance to watch yet. This includes (don’t laugh!) things like TinTin, Ulysses 31, Dresden Files, Space Above and Beyond, Dungeons and Dragons and a good few others besides.

For now though, it’s finishing off a legend. I started watching the Firefly series just as the cricket season was starting … So I had a big break in the middle. I’ve gone back to it tonight. It only ran for 14 episodes plus 1 film but it’s quite possibly the best scifi that’s been on telly.

And that’s quite a high bar to compete with. Yep. I think this is better than Star Trek (which isn’t actually that high quality), Babylon 5, Farscape …

It’s centred around a ship. A Firefly class transport (think small junk trading ship) called Serenity, which is crewed by a truly motley bunch. It’s embedded with humour. It lives by scifi rules which always stay consistent. It makes it about the story, not the technology (which is where ST always fell down).

It’s entertainment. And I’d thoroughly recommend watching it, even if you’re not a scifi fan.

How about my own serenity ?

I think it’s getting there. I’m much more comfortable with me as myself. My head’s in a decent place. I think I’m getting more sleep … My skin’s not too impressed with me still but it’s improved since I started taking the vitamin tablets again. I can have Jaffa Cakes again !

What I need to do is let the healing happen (not as easy as it sounds). It is happening now, I just keep interfering with it. Work actually helps, as it lets me concentrate on stuff which doesn’t involve worrying my arms or legs. I have my fingers crossed that the improvement will continue this week.

We shall see !

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

Or at least a little start on it for now 😉

Thank you

Yep – it’s another blatant steal from Facebook :

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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