Sleepypete's Pillow

You can have fun with old cliche settings.

When people hear them, it’s guaranteed a groan. But if you say them slightly wrong 😉

Had the excuse to do one of those on Wednesday (or was it Tuesday – da days are blurring). Running into someone, again, getting a big smile (as always) before rushing off in our different directions led to me sending the message across :

“We mustn’t stop meeting like this”

Didja see what I did there ? And then I promptly ruined it with something about not wanting to fix the typo. Nooo ! Make that “we must keep meeting like this” :-). I come out with as many Shoot Self In Foot daft comments as I do daft comments that make people grin.

Anyway – there’s a few people who the phrase “We mustn’t stop meeting like this” definitely applies to. They always remember my grin and answer with one of their own when I spot them first at work (if they spot me first, I see a blur as they hide – I know it’s true!) :

BK and Craziequeen 🙂
Badminton Girl who enjoyed it when I was there but quit badminton at work for the same reason as me – some of the other players were jerks
The Finance Angels (who we’ve inherited from the old team – yey!)
The Pretty Contractor Ladies (there’s a bunch of ’em)
Always the Snow Queen
And many more
But there’s another one today who asked a question which brings me to today’s picture :

The question followed me saying that my side was still sore : “Why do I still play cricket ?”

The answer is fairly simple – it lets me run. I have several speeds – Walk, Fast Walk, Run, Run Fast and RUN LIKE HELL. It’s only at Run Like Hell where I get to play with the full potential of the power in my legs. It’s a full pelt, head back, feel the wind ruffle the hair and whistle past the ears type of speed.

And I am pretty darn fast with it too. I’ll do other people’s fielding because I’ve run that much faster than them.

Cricket is about the only chance I get to do it too. You can move quick around most places given the excuse but to RUN LIKE HELL needs a lot of space. A cricket field is about the only place with the space to kick into that gear. Partly cos of the ground you cover at a full sprint, partly because of the distance needed to stop. I can slow down and dodge better this year than before I lost the weight but 13 stone of me moving at over 20mph is going to make a dent.

I enjoyed the bowling a lot, it was like outwitting the batsmen. I was pretty good with the bowling too before the shoulder tightened up. I don’t enjoy the batting much these days. I know I can produce better innings than I do, which is where I put a pressure of expectation on myself. Fielding is a good laugh though. I can use my running speed and now my regained agility to full advantage to scare the crap out of batsmen attempting to pinch singles to me.

Ok, that’s enough about cricket – where did that other typoed cliche come in ?

It’s not just cricket where rain stops play – I’m half watching the football where the Ukraine vs France game got delayed 55 minutes for rain. Crikey. England game on later and I’ll probably watch that properly. Have to actually because I haven’t had dinner yet and have run out of other stuff to watch.

The cricket quote is actually “It’s just not cricket”, which for foreign readers is an English saying that’s basically “They don’t cheat like that in proper games”. Let’s just say football is just not cricket and leave it at that shall we ! There’s a reason I only rarely follow football, despite otherwise being a sport nut.

One day later – still ow.

What’s actually the damage ? My actual shoulder seems ok. My arm and fingers are fine. Not saying it would support bowling or throwing but it’s not the bit that’s causing pain at the moment.

No – it’s more higher ribs area, intercostal muscles near the back. I think it’s actually a second injury that joined the shoulder injury when I bought my last telly. Humping a 28″ CRT (the old big type) from its box on to its stand, on my own, was probably not a good idea :-). There’s also damage at my front where the pecs link to arm.

I’m wondering if it’s one reason I’m having issues with my breathing at the moment. I have full running power available, which is a burst that draws off anaerobic respiration*. However, it’s taking a while to get the breath back after one of those bursts.

*Anaerobic respiration – muscles do work without oxygen. Makes a byproduct called Lactic acid, which is where a “heavy legged” feeling comes from. It’s a (weak) natural poison that’s telling us to take a breath.
Aerobic respiration – muscles do work with oxygen. If you get enough oxygen in, the muscle can work for longer.

It’s the reason why a sprinter can cover 200 metres in 20 seconds but it takes 100 seconds to do 800 metres and 2 hours+ to do a marathon. (Marathon = 42km, 2 hours = 7200 secs, so that’s about 5.8 metres per second). We can do a burst of high energy output but the cost is that lactic acid that tells us to slow down, plus we need to replace the oxygen in our cells with the oxygen from the air.

I’ve always been better at the burst of energy thing than the running for miles thing.

Tonight’s game got cancelled early as the rains rolled back in again at about 3.00pm. I’ve got mixed feelings about that – the selfish side goes “phew! easy night, no more cricket damage -> chill out” but the team side is sad that 22 guys won’t get to have some fun on the cricket field.

That’s something – always be true to how you’re feeling. If you’re having bad thoughts like the selfish one above, recognise it, own it, accept it. It’s ok to admit that you’re in two minds about something. Doubts are part of all of us. The important thing is to act and not be owned by the doubts.

You never know the answer unless you ask the question !

Oh my – I must be feeling lightheaded for all this deep thought to be coming out 🙂 I must have bumped my head when I fell backwards yesterday.

Back to the cricket – the getting older thing is creeping up on me with it being harder now to bounce back when I get hurt. I can still run Very Fast, including having the sprinter change up (which is awesome). My eyes when they’re not streaming are still good (when I trust them). My heart & mind are in the best shape they’ve been in for years, now that I’ve laid to rest a few ghosts.

So yeah – it’s feeling harder to bounce back after I do damage. That’s where I’m having the hardest job of adjusting. I’ve done things in the past like twist my ankle before a game so badly I could barely walk for the next week. Yet I played a full part in that game including bowling my 10 overs. I bent some fingers into a Vulcan salute (missed a catch) and then bowled faster …

I’ve done a few things like that – take damage, ignore it, bounce back quickly. That’s always been my way. Accept the pain, don’t let anyone else see it.

HOWEVER !

With all that mopey stuff about how I’m feeling old, what really makes up for it is two things :

Getting smiles from Pretty Ladies (visited the old team today)
And getting indulged in my favourite amusement of “Guess Pete’s age”

Yep – someone else today thought I was under 30. Can’t be bad 🙂

PS Charity links – they need your support ! CQ’s Race For Life and Thumper’s Avon Foundation walk.

4th game of the season tonight, despite the weather predictions :

That’s one from Facebook that just had to get Yoinked 🙂

Today’s been the first dry day for a little while and despite a certain doomsayer (I know too much) saying : “It’s sunny now but come 5pm ? Apocalypse Rain”, we got the game on tonight.

We didn’t do too well tonight. We batted first and lost wickets steadily. An early comedy moment involved our star batsman (not me) getting the strike stolen from him for several overs and when he finally got to face, his first ball ended up being hit on to a roof. 6 runs !

We scratched out 90 painful runs eventually. I didn’t help, I think I only managed to get a couple due to not actually being on strike much when I was there, before falling lbw to a very straight one I tried to do too much with. That’s the story of my batting at the moment – trying to do too much with the ball, not keeping it simple.

Defending 90 runs in the field is very tough in our cricket. It’s feasible but only if you get early wickets backed up by good fielding.

I did earn another £5 for the Pink Hat bounty fund 🙂 As well as getting the Comedy moment for the game. (We’ll ignore someone’s bowling as that gets the Tortured Soul award)

Bowler comes in, batsman hits it around the corner. Straight … at … me …

Cue the world going into slow motion as I’m peering through the gathering gloom, struggling to pick up the ball against the background. (I need new glasses as I’ve lost all confidence in my depth perception.) The ball hits my hands and I push it upwards. As I’m falling backwards, I grab the ball as it comes back down.

He’s OUT !

Yep – comedy moment right there, at least I pushed the drop catch straight up so it was still in reach for the second attempt. Just one problem – I landed on the weakened right shoulder again and it’s hurting a lot more than it should have done. Think I have real damage there and I’ll have to break a habit and actually get it checked out.

There’s another game tomorrow which I’m down to play in. I’ll turn out if they need me, plus I’ll be at the ground anyway because I have the team kit in my car.

Given up on me dinner (Chinese is very good for after cricket but there’s a lot of it). Shower time after another Transvision Vamp track.

That catch earns another £5 for the Pink Hat bounty, which I’ll add to a contribution to Thumper’s next walk. Here’s a link to her training blog. Thumper’s next walk is going to be in San Francisco on 7-8 July (donations link) and I’ll add my normal £5 contribution for things like this to anything more that comes from Pink Hat bounty before the 7th and 8th.

PS Not forgetting the Race For Life – click ! donate ! save lives !

Think I need to test hayfever tablets again.

I’m sensitive to a few kinds of pollen, although it seemed to be the types that came early and late in the season. I tended to be ok in the middle of summer. Not now though. Eyes have been streaming and the nose has been running … Lungs have been fairly ok but still not brilliant.

The eye streaming thing has a knock on effect – I think the hayfever tears spark off a depression like : Sad -> tears, Tears -> sad. Anyway, that’s been getting to me lately in a Brainzzzz kind of way :

Why don’t I take hayfever pills I hear you ask ? Side effects …

One of the side effects I realised I was getting was a type of chemically induced depression. I’d take a hayfever tablet to give me 24 hours relief from streaming eyes and I’d then be grumpy for the next 36 hours. I’d take an anti-histamine to open my lungs up for cricket and find that my legs went utterly unresponsive for fielding. I could still run but when I looked for something extra for sprinting, it felt like there was no gas in the tank.

(And by gas, I mean energy – not the type that makes fielders fall about laughing when a bowler makes a series of raspberries when running in to bowl – and I’ve done that a couple of times !)

Thinking of cricket, one thing I realised from watching the old highlights while it was raining is that umpiring standards have improved no end recently. It used to be that you could instantly say whether you’d see a stream of errors from the umpires in an international as soon as you heard who would be officiating in a game. Some of the umpires changed the results of games through their appalling decisions.

You don’t see the likes of Darryl Hair, Billy Bowden or Daryl Harper standing in games at the moment. Darryl Hair was blind (although kudos to him for calling certain bowlers for throwing) and Bowden and Harper thought the game was to show them off, instead of the umpires being there to support the players.

What’s really improved standards has been the Umpire Decision Referral System. In a Test Match, each side has 2 chances per innings to refer an umpire’s decision to TV evidence. What that means is :

The umpire makes his decision,
The players get a chance to say “we think you’re wrong”
The TV umpire checks lots of evidence
And the correct decision is given

I think it’s given umpires the confidence to go with their gut. Before, the benefit of the doubt would be given a lot more in a “yeah I think it’s hitting the stumps but I have doubts – not out”. Those get given out nowadays, with the onus on the batsman to refer it.

What we’ve been seeing is a lot of referred decisions staying with what the umpire on the pitch said. The benefit of the doubt is given to the umpire. It’s turned into something very good for the game. It supports the umpires and doesn’t hold up play very much. And most important, it’s fair to both sides and game changing decisions are given correctly.

Will other sports go the same way ? Rugby already does. Football is refusing to.

PS Watched Snow White & the Huntsman tonight. If you buy one Snow White film from this year, IGNORE this one ! Buy Mirror, Mirror instead. SN&tH is another of those admittedly well made films that just doesn’t have the storyline. Mirror, Mirror was far more entertaining.

I think I said ages ago that there was another different Pocket Dwagon avatar coming soon …

I changed at the weekend (just felt like it!) but I’m looking to switch to another one as a symbolic thingy. I like my symbols. But I think that might be the OCD tendency talking …

Anyway – the next avatar’s going to be one of this pair :

With “Feed Me” being the symbol. I’ve used the little fella before as an avatar but just as a jokey Feed Me Mini Eggs thing. Nah – the symbol this time will be weight loss :

I’ve been seeing the needle go below the 13 stone mark 🙂

Not sure how many years it’s been since I was last under 13 stone. I think I hit that at uni due to working too hard and exercising less. (Yeah right). But the weight definitely climbed on when I started working because I could indulge in far too much unhealthy food. Lunchtime Heaven would be finding out that a placement had a place I could get chips for lunch every day.

Effectively having 2 dinners per day is bad news for the waistline, especially if you’re not expending enough energy to cover that intake. It’s sandwiches for lunch now and they just happen to be the sandwiches with fewest kcals :-).

Yeah – been seeing the needle of the scales go lighter lately, although I’m not going to jinx it by switching to that Feed Me avatar until it stays under that target weight. I need to lose more still to be honest. I’m back to 34″ waist trousers but they’re a stretchy 34″. I won’t go below 34″ (hips are too wide for 32″). But it’s definitely getting there :

I have my speed back
Some underlying health issues have faded
(I’m not saying what those were cos people would get worried)
And I feel much better for it

I need to keep the exercise going – I’m fine if I keep myself moving. However, a couple of weeks away from cricket and my back is wanting to freeze up on me (rubbish chairs at work too). I suspect that doing gardening would help me out (weather permitting).

I’m going to keep the discipline going for now with the weight. The leg infection helped me out there – the “diet” pills told me that I could handle going for a while without grazing on junk. The “diet” pills were antibiotics that needed 2 hours without food before and 1 hour without food after. 4 times a day. So that’s a 6 hour cycle with 3 hours of no munchies. It can be done ! Even by a serial snacker.

So that’s just over a stone lost so far with more to come. Just gotta keep the discipline going and not eat stuff for the sake of munching. Did ok there today, avoided an afternoon cookie 🙂 This was just after giving a big grin and wave to the Snow Queen (hello Snow Queen!) who just happened to be nipping through the canteen area at the same time I was.

Happy days.

Wonder if I can use a different description to “a little extra” soon ? I don’t honestly consider myself to be “trim” or “athletic” yet. More like “normal disappear into crowd” type average build.

Last thought – if you’re trying to lose weight and you’re going the heavy exercise route, don’t be discouraged if your weight goes Up after exercise. I gained half a stone through the first two games of this season. A lot of that was in my legs, which felt very heavy and stiff after those games. The reason was lactic acid build up, after that went away over the next couple of days I was back down to the weight from before the games.

Exercise may make you gain weight as well as lose it – the lesson is to understand why and balance energy incoming with energy outgoing. So on match days, I’ll eat more. At other times, I’ll attempt to avoid temptation when not actually hungry.

Too much ramble ! Not enough pictures !

PS The CQ Race For Life link needs more clicking and definitely more support.

Back to work again tomorrow. I’m not quite sure where this holiday has gone to be honest.

I don’t think I’ve been gaming that much, I definitely have managed to resist some of the “wake at noon, play until daybreak” silliness of previous years. (I’m not gaming as much these days). I need to read more stuff to be honest. I’ve been stuck in Stark’s Command for months now, having just not gone back to it.

What have I been doing ?

Lots of music been listened to – since breaking up from work on 31st May, I’ve listened to 811 different songs lasting 2.2 days (iTunes is great for picking out stats like that) including 20 different albums. Of the new stuff, the opinion is :

Alanis Morrissette – still pretty good, if a little samey.
Transvision Vamp – fun 80s tunes. Me like.
Kings of Leon – dunno here. Youth and Young Manhood isn’t that great to be honest, although I’ve not yet listened to it as an album. Just not as much my type of music as girlie vocals are.
Air – Premiers Symptomes – I like this too. It’s good occasional listen chill out music. Can’t sing along to it though cos it’s instrumental and I do like croaking along to my music.

The weather has turned into something utterly appalling … I should really have checked out repairing the fence in the back yard but I don’t fancy drowning. Still, it’s looking a lot better out there now than it has done.

Talking about weather – it held off long enough today to let CrazieQueen & The Fairy do their bit for Race For Life, raising money for Cancer Research UK (link to fundraising site + it’ll go on the link list soon). I’ll get the credit card out for that soon and the £10 bounty from the Pink Hat fund for the run out I pulled off will go there too. They’ve earned it today. If you click on one link from here today, make it be that one.

Back at home, I’ve been watching a lot of recorded stuff, plus there was a decent amount of cricket on the telly to enjoy. That 811 different songs is actually a little light for what I can listen to over a week off because I was having to keep up with the recorded stuff as well as watching the cricket.

Been recovering from that attack of house cleaning still too – either it’s dust in the house or pollen from outside but my lungs have been full of rubbish (it affected me in the Thurs 31 game too) and my eyes have been almost constantly streaming.

One thing about all this weather – it’s made me glad I bought something called “Supaguard” with my car. It’s a protective coating that’s supposed to keep showroom shine on the car. It seems to work too – all this rain has been quite happily washing the accumulated dust and road grime off the car, leaving it super shiny. Awesome. The last time I took it to a car wash was around Xmas and to be honest, I dislike using car washes because of the chance for it to scrape the paint off. Rain + Supaguard do a great job.

It’s going to be strange heading back in tomorrow.

Usually after a break, I’d be looking to find out how everyone had gotten on. If they’re ok, how they’re feeling, whether any good gossip happened while people were away. I can usually tell the “are they ok?” from just a look. I’m like that – when I look at someone, I’ll see more than they’d like me to. Most of the time at least. There’s times when that perception gets jammed or blocked by a brave face being put on.

Tomorrow will be different though – the people I’d usually look to first are in the old office and unless I let Autopilot have it’s way, I’ll be heading straight up to the new office. Wonder if I’ll get an excuse to go down there and say hello. I hope so, communicator and email are ok for messages but if you want to really know how someone is, there’s no substitute for saying hello and grinning at them.

I do keep thinking of them, although I know there’s a couple of them that know I keep this blog going and occasionally talk about them. Miss F made me promise not to talk about her, will have to ‘fess up to breaking that promise due to saying something nice in the Moving Day post.

Reading that one again shows I occasionally follow my own advice – I ran into someone this time last year who’s kept me laughing occasionally with insane chatting over Steam Chat. We’re both gamers who happen to be interested in the same games … She’s talked me into getting Guild Wars 2 (and I’m not convinced now that was a good idea) and I’ve done a total of maybe 2 hours testing on that this weekend. The GW2 people would have been Expecting people in the beta to be putting far more hours in than that. Well ? I just don’t feel like doing what they’d Expected me to do ! Far too much cricket and motor racing (and football being ignored) on to be gaming too much this weekend.

For now – it’s a choice of either Moo2 (I keep opening that relic back up again for some reason) or continuing the Deus Ex HR run. Not convinced I’ll do that much more Skyrim to be honest. It’s a great game and I feel I’ve got my value out of it but it’s let down by not being able to break out of certain quest lines. You should be able to choose to not be a cannibal or not crash the merchant ship.

It’ll be Deus Ex shooty stuff I think – my neck and wrist have decided to dislike me, which means the static mouse gameplay of Moo2 is a Bad Idea.

Enjoying another chilled out Saturday again after Prometheus last night.

First up – Prometheus. It’s another in the series of Alien & Predator universe films. To be totally honest :

It’s a well made film, as you’d expect from Ridley Scott. If it was standalone or if the AvP films never happened, the script would make sense. It’s a prequel to the iconic film Alien and does a decent job of setting that film up. Bit like Return of the Sith sets up a lot for the older films and XMen First Class set up the other XMen films.

Prequels are usually very tightly bound by what they need to follow. The interest isn’t so much in how things will end (cos you already know that from the older film), it’s how they get there. Prometheus gets there very well, although there are a few liberties taken with Things That Should Not Be Left As They Are. Saying that though, the faults are mostly with the poor (but still watchable) AvP films than with this one.

But that’s enough about Prometheus. I’ll watch it again when it comes to Sky Movies, not sure if I’ll buy it on bluray though. I said that about Avatar as well and ended up buying it after a second watch. The key difference is that Avatar was something new, Prometheus is scraping the bottom of an already well cleaned barrel.

On getting out to movies – I made an offer ages ago to someone that she could gladly come along to one of the cinema outings as a “forget your troubles” relax type evening with neutral people – that offer still stands 🙂 Haven’t mentioned it much though cos I didn’t want to put too much pressure on.

Testy, sporty, Test ?

Lots of sport, this weekend and next. The England v West Indies test match finally got underway this morning and the play today has been : Interesting. Despite losing a couple of days, there could still be a result. Hopefully now the sun’s out today, it’ll stay with us.

But it’s not just cricket, I’ll be half watching the football later via my laptop (or I’ll hide behind the sofa and use my desktop’s bigger screen) and I’ll be watching the GP qualifying via SkyF1 after the cricket. I already have it set to record. Same tomorrow with the race. And similar next week :

Still Euro2012 football reminding me why I rarely watch football,
England cricket on the Saturday
Le Mans 24 hours

It’s Fathers Day too next weekend but we’ve already (conveniently!) agreed to delay that for a weekend. Tuesday 19th will see the InterServices 20-20 tournament, which will see a great chance to get to Lords for the day in support of true heroes.

However, all that clashing sport does mean that I’m missing out on one opportunity – I have access to the Guild Wars 2 beta testing that’s happening this weekend. I had a look for a couple of hours last night and it lives up to its hype so far. I’m not totally convinced though. The questing system is more freeform but it’s still very much “Kill 10 mobs” type questing. We’ll see how it develops. It seems to be a more freeform type game than previous MMOs, depending on movement to avoid damage. I need to work on that because my WoW play tended to be Damage, Damage, Damage, zzzzzz, Damage, stop, Damage, Damage, zzzzzzz etc ad nauseum.

Hopefully they’ll pull off the promise with Guild Wars 2 and turn it into a truly excellent game. I guess I should really tell them about the issues I had in creating my first character – it claimed firewall issues which I fixed by one of these 3 methods :

Restarting my cable modem (doubt it was that)
Giving it “run as admin” (could be)
Deleting the previous firewall settings (highly likely)

If it’s the firewall settings, I’ve seen that kind of issue with the iTunes updater interfering with my Airplay streaming. Annoying because it is not something an end user should have to deal with. Beta is Beta.

What I also have beta access to and am quite looking forward to is something called Planetside 2 – it’s a Massive Multiplayer Online First Person Shooter. Technobabble aside – it’s a scifi shooter with thousands of players taking place over a continent wide map. Or that’s the plan. It’s not quite at Beta stage yet so we’ve just been looking at early testing which honestly looks more complete than what some companies will unleash as final product.

It looks pretty awesome and it should get around the biggest problems in multiplayer pvp – Persistence and Rush Play. The best PvP I had in Warcraft was the old Alterac Valley, where you had 40 vs 40 players fighting it out on a North-South map. Horde (me!) would go north, Alliance (evil) would go south. Along the way there are towers to capture and destroy and generals that help out. Alterac Valley battles used to last for hours and you’d see the collecting subquests finish to bring out superunits for your side. 5 players could hold off 20. Something changed though and it turned into Rush Play, where the opening sequence of the battle would see 40 players riding past the other 40 players crossing over in the middle of the map. Battles became a 10 minute race instead of an epic 100 marathon.

Persistence is the other artificiality in most PvP, you can win the battle but at the start of the next round everything is reset. I’ve never much seen the point in that. At least in WoW’s later open world PvP, if you won the battle you would control a block of territory for a while getting bonuses from that.

Planetside 2 will hopefully bring Persistence where you hold what you take, plus allow defence to make Rush Play less effective. It also has tanks and most important – fighter aircraft. The earliest games I enjoyed were flight sims and space sims and it’s been way too long since I had a go at a decent flight game.

So if you’re in Planetside 2 and get shot down by an Iceangel or “Iceangel624″*, then that could well be me.

*(624 will be if, as is likely, I don’t get Iceangel quickly enough – the 6 24 are from my best bowling figures)

For now though – too much on at the moment to do the gaming thing, so it’s back to the cricket with F1 to follow and muted football on laptop/desktop.

Had been hoping to get some good cricket watching in today and yesterday, with Thursday supposed to have been the start of the third Test match between England and West Indies.

It’s 2-0 at the moment to England and looks like it’ll still be that scoreline on Monday when the game is supposed to end … Bit damp out there at the moment. Not damp here (it’s been dry since about lunchtime) but persistent rain 60 miles up the road in Birmingham has seen the first two days of a Test match washed out for the first time in almost 50 years.

Yep – despite our infamous weather, this is officially the worst spell of rain since 1964. In cricketing terms at least. Which are the most important, depending on your point of view.

Looking outside at the moment – it reinforces what I’ve been thinking for years : Global warming and climate change isn’t necessarily about Heat, it seems more about Energy.

Heat – it doesn’t actually seem that much warmer these days. It’s been getting hot, sure … but are the maximum temperatures going up ?
Energy – the storm systems seem more frequent and far more energetic. Heavier rain, higher wind and more of it.

But it’s more complicated than just that – our climate is a vast interlocking network of air currents circulating round the globe. Disrupting part of that means the butterfly wing flaps in one place have massive effects on somewhere a long way away.

It explodes the mind thinking about it doesn’t it ?

What has been on instead of live cricket is recorded cricket. It’s curious watching the old games again. Today they’re not going back as far as showing players I wanted to be when I was starting out as a cricketer but you can see again that climate isn’t the only thing that’s changed over the years.

Players now are somewhat different to those many years ago. Endless coaching is making them approach the supposed “ideal”. That coaching is refining or destroying technique. The 2003 coverage showed the legendary Curtley Ambrose, Destroyer Of Willow. He’s a 6 foot 8 giant but when you see him running in to bowl, it’s sheer perfection. It’s an easy sprint, legs eating up the ground getting him into the perfect place to deliver something filled with impending pain or shattering of stumps.

West Indies haven’t had anything like him in years. He was the last of a dying breed, before entitlement spoilt the attitude of the apprentices they had coming through. The new bowlers expected to follow in the footsteps of legends like Ambrose, Walsh, Marshall, Holding and others from before my time : Hall & Garner. These guys were made even more dangerous by being part of a unit, there was nowhere to hide. Get off strike to Ambrose and you have Walsh about to put one near your nose.

The new ones, like Jerome Taylor, don’t have the application or the attitude to show their quality on the pitch via honing their talent through hard work and practice.

To be honest – my own performances on the pitch could have done with more hard work and practice :
Hard work – I used to be first in nets and last to leave. Now I have to ration my training in order to not break stuff.
Practice – more fielding practice would mean avoiding “wake up time” where I miss chances to get run outs due to fumbling the ball. Need to work out the mistakes before taking to the field.

With me though, that’s lack of training opportunity. The international players have no excuse, although their coaches haven’t done players like the very dangerous Steve Harmison any favours – he was no1 bowler in the world at one point, until the coaches confused him. Good to see that James Anderson has gone back to his roots, after the coaches attempted to ruin him too.

I’m rambling about cricket aren’t I when I should be giving up on the garage (if they want me to use them for servicing, they gotta ring me back!) and having a shower …

It’s been curious to see some old idols in the highlights :

Devon Malcolm – not seen him but he was GOD to me as a 15 year old seam bowler. I wanted to bowl as fast as this bespectacled demon. He was awesome, as comic relief as well as bowling.
Dominic Cork – wasn’t as fast as most international bowlers but definitely made the most of what he had. Which was having the ball on a string, with control of movement as well as accuracy. He struggled desperately with bad knees but was still playing county cricket into his 40s.

Can’t think of any batting heroes to be honest. But then again, we didn’t have many to choose from. I think I’d pick out :

Robin Smith – noone hit the ball harder. A shame his career was blighted with Death By Spinner.
Michael Vaughan – another with bad knees that forced his career to a premature end. He combined Fun on the field with a blazing intensity of play. Noone wanted to win more but he never forgot to have fun along the way. And that fun continues into his Test Match Special commentary. Hell of a player too, the sheer class shows through today. The only person we have close to his class right now is KP.

Right – I think I need to give up on the garage for today. Shower then -> Prometheus tonight.

Another from the category of spotting random news stories …

Ages ago, I read a pertinent story on the Register titled “Windows for Warships“. It was written by an axe grinder who was worried we were moving away from “Good Software” into being dominated by Microsoft’s latest offerings. There’s a lot of hysteria in there that’s been proven moot with time. (Especially this one about the UK’s systems).

To be fair to Microsoft at the time, they were doing pretty well with Windows. It was moving towards the Unix ideal of a solid microkernel operating system. (Something small at the core with all the bells and whistles bolted on). The NT4 that we used for a while at work was a very solid foundation for what we needed. It’s reliable, which puts to bed the main fears of the two early articles. Business in the office doesn’t actually need much. The multimedia bells and whistles are Shiny but distract away from actually getting work done. Besides, bells and whistles should come in applications, not in the foundation.

Today, there’s another one called “Windows 8: Not even Microsoft thinks businesses will use it” (link supplied to full article). The new one is about Windows 8 and the horror that it could be bringing to us. We’ve got a preview of that horror with the newer versions of Office. Compared to the old ones, they’re just plain Nasty.

I think the problem comes with something called Business Model. I.e. “we’ve sold people this thing once and it’ll work forever. how are we going to make money in 5 years ?” Normally, that repeat business comes from stuff wearing out or something better coming along. Now it comes from a cycle that comes round every few years where we’re required to upgrade in order to use the latest hardware or software :

Windows 98 – couldn’t install this on a PCI Express machine
Battlefield 3 and other Directx 10 games – won’t run on Windows XP

My latest machine runs Windows 7 purely because it was needed for Battlefield 3 (plus it was available and Vista and XP were not). Trouble is, it also feeds a very vicious hardware upgrade cycle too :

Dos + Windows 3.11 – was happy on my first 4MB machine
Windows 98 – think this was ok on 16MB
NT4 – was happy in 32-64MB
Now ? This Windows 7 laptop is currently using 1.8GB (with Firefox, Outlook, Messenger and iTunes open). It needs 2GB as a bare minimum, preferably 3GB or more to run smooth.

Every iteration of software we get is more bloated than the one before. Much of the functionality is unnecessary too. The machines we used at work 5 years ago are smoother than the ones we use now and don’t suffer the same lunchtime slowdown (it’s when they fire off the virus checker).

You have to wonder where Microsoft are intending to go with their software. They seem bent on evolving it towards software that deliberately interferes with what the user wants it to do instead of seamlessly enabling it. That’s what an operating system like Windows should do – it’s there to enable, not to disrupt.

I suspect the day is coming when the users rise up against their oppressive masters in revolt and burn down the very foundations of society.

There’s alternatives out there – Apple have their OS X but to buy into that requires huge cash (plus their quality is slipping) or the dubious legality of Hackintoshing. Linux and its plethora of free software is looking like a more and more attractive option. I suspect Windows 7 will be the last Microsoft platform I build a machine around but it depends on :

Software compatibility – a lot of games don’t run well on Linux
Lockouts – I can easily see Microsoft pulling the Directx thing again

Hackintoshing – To be honest, I’d prefer Linux here. OS X and Linux are both built around the same foundation (Unix). However, OS X is subject to Apple’s lockdown policy. Linux is far more open. If it’s a choice between an illegal install of an unnecessarily locked down platform and a freely available open platform, I’ll choose Linux.

But that’s a while off yet. My current machines will last me ages so it’s a while until I’ll renew my flirtation with alternative operating systems.

Indulged my cabin fever earlier by escaping to Bristol centre.

As well as having the traditional munchie + coffee, I managed to pick up yet more music … And sadly the tradition is now for coffee seeing as hot chocolate is another of those “LOVETHATWANTTHAT” addictions that upsets my stomach (like pizza can do).

Aside – Don’t you hate it when people put silent gaps of 6 minutes or so in their album tracks ? It’s typically on the last track of the album. It means you either listen to silence for those minutes or you skip ahead to actual music. If you can. Car stereos don’t often give you the option to skip ahead. Kings of Leon is the latest.

Conditions were pretty mixed out there today. It was a better day than yesterday, which was continual heavy rain. Today was just occasional heavy rain :

That’s from the car park of the local Tesco. I’d parked and was just thinking : “shall I wait for it to stop or just run like hell ?” And a couple of ground cogs later, it had gotten far heavier. I ran and got soaked in the short distance it took to get to cover. Twas back to bright sunshine by the time I’d raided the store.

Music ! What’s arrived lately ?

Tranvision Vamp’s (don’t laugh!) Velveteen is the first, had my eye on this one for a while since hearing Baby I Don’t Care from a collection of 100 driving songs. Just listened to the title track Velveteen so far and that one’s pretty good. Had the chance to pick up the album today in a 3 for £10 offer. Looking forward to some carefree 80s girlie vocal tunes here.

Next up is Youth & Young Manhood by Kings Of Leon (which drew the “y u put silent tracks in ?” comment) and the last one for today is Premiers Symptome by Air. The Kings of Leon album is speculative and I’ll probably end up getting all their stuff at some point because they’re not bad. They’re in no way special but at least their stuff sounds a bit different. I refuse to listen to anything by Travis because all their stuff sounds the same and Coldplay are almost of that ilk.

Air is completely different, it’s soft dance music with a French flavour. I’ll probably acquire all of Air’s cds when they become available cheaply enough. I haven’t heard anything from them that approaches the stunning All I Need for quality but it’s still a refreshing change.

More picture !

I missed that when it visited Bristol, it’s gone now. Ok, I saw it long enough to take the snap of it (just before being accosted by a junkie looking for money) but the homing instinct was kicking in (it was just before the Easter break when I badly needed some downtime) so I disappeared off home. Or maybe I just wanted the excuse to treat someone else to it. I missed an opportunity to be honest …

Reading that March 30th post again and it’s a bit sad how the “There’s more empty shop fronts now than there used to be” is even more true today than it was in March. There’s tough times out there.

It’ll be a bit of time before I can tell what those new albums are like. To give each track a fair crack, I weave them in to the iTunes DJ shuffle one by one. It means each track gets a chance to impress, I find that the experience of listening to an album straight through depends heavily on the artist. Some groups are awesome at making albums : Kate Bush, Arctic Monkeys, Dire Straits in particular are very good at interweaving their songs. But it does mean that each track melds into the next. Hence separating them out to find the favourites.

There’s another selection of albums I Want at the moment :

Garbage – Not Our Kind Of People
Edie Brickell – Edie Brickell (2011)
Katie Melua – Secret Symphony
Ting Tings – Songs From Nowhereville

Whereas I’d go straight out and buy something like Norah Jones’ latest album when it’s released (and it’s a good one – hearing that voice is as good as Happy Pills for me), those 4 are either too expensive or they’re not quite in the same league as a Norah Jones, Alisha’s Attic, Lene Marlin or Tori Amos. Actually Tori Amos is one where I need to get more of her albums.

Oh – almost didn’t mention the Alanis Morrissette album picked up from BK – definitely enjoyed that one : Thank U 🙂.

Last thought – why when there’s an effigy burning do you always get a CMOT Dibbler appearing ?

Good night, hope you’re having sun shiney days where you are !