Sleepypete's Pillow

As I said on FB – woohoo! Though perhaps, it's natural order being restored courtesy of an hat and bat 😉

Yep, that’s right, the natural order of the universe is breaking down.

What’s the proof ? Game on Wednesday had 2 incidents that are highly unusual. The second was not so much of a surprise, as it was my third catch of the year. Going back to the old hat has really helped my fielding as I can track the ball properly again. I’m also fielding well enough to secure a place at my favoured infield position which is kinder on the shoulder.

Still, 3 catches this year is a good return, I’ve only dropped 1 so far (not counting the couple I didn’t quite reach). No runouts yet, I must be scaring batsmen into not running, which is half the battle. A bit of energy injected early on makes it easier later.

What was the first incident ? Well, it’s one that doesn’t come every day. It’s my first of the year and must be the first in quite a few seasons. The scorers needed several repeats of the signal from our umpire because they thought he was joking. I’d gone back to my old bat after missing shots with the new one. It was the first scoring shot of my innings.

Ok, I’ve built that up hugely, what happened ?

I hit a six.

That’s right – one hit, clearing the boundary. Can’t remember when I hit my last, it may be decades.

Definite signs that the Natural Order of the Universe is breaking down. The sudden spurt of batting form didn’t last though. I stole a single at the end of that over, followed by a comment of “perhaps that was a bad idea” as I knew what was coming from the other end. Quick, little bit of swing and I almost dug out an excellent over. Out for 7.

Which is incidentally also the number of games we’ve run on the trot. Our fielding isn’t great, with catches refused and several of our fielders showing huge Ball Fright but somehow we keep winning those close games. It’s good stuff 🙂 We were lucky to get the game in too, after torrential rain on Monday and Tuesday.

I’m becoming more a fan of my phone too now after a shaky start. The 3g internet problem was sorted out late Wednesday giving full functionality to the little handset. It has several app toys in there to keep the SleepyGeek happy. I’ve only managed to catch TrackID out a couple of times so far, although NeoReader can’t even recognise the bar code of a KitKat. It requires educating.

The battery is lasting longer too, still going strong after almost 2 days. So it’s forgiven and will hopefully fit in the rather thin pocket of my leather jacket. It’s a Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini. If I’m not a fan of endorsements but will pass one on if it does well. Being a free upgrade helps there too.

What now ? Twenty20 finals day on the telly at the moment, although it’s being disrupted by rain. Hoping they get 3 full games in, I’m currently watching Marcus Trescothick hammer the ball to all parts. Go Tres !

Pizza is due in the break between 2nd semi and final, although the heavy rain we have here at the moment may make me delay that.

The future’s bright, unless you put your mobile phone contract with someone who will pass your personal details to every third party mobile phone upgrader under the sun.

Gotta be fair to H3G though, they haven’t done that unlike my last mobile phone provider. Ok, I kinda started in the middle of a post there 🙂

I have a new mobile phone … It’s brand spanking new modern technology. However, this isn’t a “best thing since sliced bread” post … No, far from it. Gadgets have their place but I reckon the people who make them are forgetting the basic requirements as they hunt to pack in more and more functionality.

What’s a phone for ? It’s to make calls and send & receive text messages. It must have enough battery life to give you a decent chance to be away from the charger. Anything else is just fluff. Internet is nice, gps is ok, especially when you’re somewhere strange and are looking to get around. Satnav capability is creditable but to be honest, I don’t think a little screen will beat my old iPaq based combo. Although the iPaq is car bound. Touchscreens are a gucci change for cleaning up the look of phones but after struggling to enter my wifi password, I’m not convinced.

What’s the cost of all these new fangled features engineered to enrage the Luddite Tendency ? Let’s list them :

Battery life. First and most important feature. I used to think my last phone was a bit poor because at about 3 days, it didn’t have nearly as much the one before which lasted for over a week between charges. This one has a battery life of 36 hours … And that’s with all the bells and whistles turned off.

That’s not good. Bonus functionality should not get in the way of core functionality. If I was away from power for a weekend, this phone would die halfway through the weekend unless I went for severe power management (turning off when not in use).

Troubles with data connection. I can’t get a 3g signal through … and that’s at work as well as at home. I’ll have to see what it’s like at the Mall when I have a whinge at the 3 shop. I can get data to it through my wifi network but that’s only useful at home.

More on the touchpad. I have to admit, after struggling heavily on Friday I’ve found it much easier to put those tricky passwords in. (I apply Kung Fu to my passwords now … and it is strong) Still, I think I’ll end up missing real buttons.

Where was I ? Hmm, mid rant until I thought I’d found a fix for that internet trouble … Which seems to have worked and then failed again. Ho Hum. The internet issue is patchy, we’ll see what they say in the shop.

The battery issue is likely to be the real killer, if I switch back to my old phone it’ll be because I don’t want to put the phone on charge every night. That’s looking like a “when I switch back” to be honest … It was a bit clunky compared to the previous Nokia but it wasn’t too shabby. It would have been a much tougher choice if the upgrade hadn’t been free 🙂

PS It’s not all bad. This new Android phone comes with an applet called TrackID. It’ll listen to about 5 seconds of music and then try and identify it. I haven’t caught it out yet, despite trying a few things. Must look for something particularly obscure in my iTunes collection …

Well, maybe not yet at least.

Cricket is one sport where tailoring your gear to support you while playing really helps. And that’s from toe to noggin. It’s pretty tough to go into a sprint on ground made greasy by dew when you don’t have spikes on. Spikeyboots really help 🙂 And a good pair of boots will keep you playing when you get a toecrusher from a bowler.

When I’m in the field, I generate a lot of heat so I depend on just a few bits n pieces. I have my SpikyBoots which are still going strong after a few years. (Ok, they’re starting to fall apart but they’ll last a bit longer) I have a couple of pairs of white trousers which now desperately need a wash 🙂 I throw myself around in the field and never feel I’ve put the required effort in unless I get at least one new grass stain. To give me the confidence to dive around, I wear a pair of knee supports. They’re quite honestly, RUBBISH ! They don’t give much support to knee ligaments but they do at least give some padding against the ground while being RUBBISH means they don’t hinder movement.

I don’t tend to wear a jumper now, although I used to when I was a young pup. Couldn’t bowl in a jumper … having that wool around my shoulder put me off. (This was when my arm was 100%). Finishing the fielding outfit is what I have on my head. I’ve never worn contacts, so I’ll always be with my glasses on. Top that off with a rainhat and you’ll see a crazy disreputable person in :

Shabby boots, grass stained whites, a tubby tummy attempting to creep out from underneath a shirt that is never tucked in, hands spread wide to help me start with tearing off after the ball and my trademark demonic grin lurking below glasses and rainhat*.

*(with English weather, I refuse to call it a sunhat)

One of the guys is leaving our project, so we celebrated by heading off to Lords for a day at the cricket. It was a great day out, good company, interesting weather, close exciting games and the right team (our’s!) won. And I walked out of there with a new hat 🙂

I like my new hat 🙂 But after Wednesday’s game it looks like it’ll be kept aside as a non cricket playing hat. Maybe a watching hat :-).

Depth perception is pretty critical when you’re in the field, it goes towards timing dives and knowing where to stand for a catch. So I’m depending on my glasses being well aligned, to let me judge where the ball is correctly. To have the best chance, you need to be able to put a 50p on the ground where you think the ball will land, as soon as it goes up in the air. What happens if the eyes are out of alignment is that the 50p landing point guess will move as the ball gets closer. So you set yourself for the ball landing in one place, if you stay then the ball will either go over your head or land short.

Or, if the glasses/eyes are doing really badly, it’ll land 6 foot to the side … Not had that kind of embarassment for years though, my current pair of glasses have done the depth perception much better than any I’ve had in the past.

Funnily enough, I never really needed good depth perception while batting … Although what I’ve forgotten this year is that the helmet has helped because it lets you level your eyes with the horizon. You forget more technique than you ever learn.

What happened Wednesday was a bit embarassing. Looks like the new hat was a bit big, so it comes down over my head more. That means it hits the legs at the back of my glasses, which knocks that alignment out just a little. It’s a pretty close thing, so you can only really tell if it’s ok when the ball is coming towards you and not even then. I held one catch but missed stopping the ball with a few dives.

And then there’s the one on the boundary … I was actually sub fielding for the other side, so when the instant guess says it’ll land 30 feet short I’m thinking “fine, wasn’t planning on catching one of our guys anyway”. Then it starts getting closer through its trajectory, closer, closer and that 50p landing point is suddenly just 8 feet away … To the point where it’s probably easier to go for the catch than let it bounce. Especially as the cricket ball bounce made the rotten thing move 5 feet to the right.

Yep – embarassing. So the new hat is fired and I’m back to the old one. Old hat is fine 🙂 It sticks on well and has a bit of air up there (although that’s filled by my hair). The brim is a bit unruly though, so it has issues keeping the sun out.

Still, after me beating myself up for getting caught out by gear we did actually win. Closer game than it needed to be, with me standing at the other end when the winning runs were knocked off. I got 4 not out, having dropped down the order to give a cramping leg chance to settle down. 4 plus 1 catch isn’t bad, especially when the early catch prevented one of their openers from making an impact. I threw myself around in the field again, with the bad ankles standing up to the strain well. Calf wasn’t so good, it wanted to explode on me due to cramp. I blame poor preparation, Wednesday at work was extremely hectic.

Oh, before I finish, I have been reasonably pleased with myself this week … Firstly, I managed to avoid buying another bat on Tuesday. Why another bat ? Ask a cricketer that question and you’ll get a blank “Why not ? It’s there ?” look. The other reason is cos I’ve still managed to avoid sledging the bloke who’s going out with the Evil Ex, who’s also played in the last couple of games. I have a feeling that if I had started sledging him, I would definitely not have stopped as there was plenty of excuses for it.

That said, I’m not going to start sledging the guy now, I’ll just close out with a Youtube link :
Chris Rea’s Gonna Buy A Hat.

Muahaha – I take it you've just become aware of that moronic survey as well.

Spotted those in HMV today going for 2 for £10 … was very tempted 🙂

Strangely enough, my inbox was hit harder this week than last …

Work is "fun" here too, we have people who say they do stuff but need very careful checking to point out where they haven't.

Firefly and Jericho both ended before their time. Serenity was a decent continuation but it kinda tore up that universe. Same with Defying Gravity and B5 Crusade, excellent concepts killed off by idiot moguls.

LoL @ the parking spaces reference! Too right!

You need Killers, Iron Maiden, Number of the Beast and Piece of Mind. IMHO the early albums are by far the best.

Sounds like a good break to me, though atm I would rather be practiclaly anywhere but at work. It's really stressful 🙁

I was quite pleased that they made a decent stab at closing out Dollhouse properly though was diappointed it got rushed so much -just when the storyline was potentially devleoping and getting interesting. There were a few non-siquiters especially involving Alpha but consiering the time they had left, not bad at all. Don't even get me started on why they had to drop another good series (RIP Firefly and Jericho as just two others)…

Back to work tomorrow, so it’ll be back to the old routine of oversleeping and then rushing out to get to work before they run out of teacakes.

Or more appropriately, to get out of the house at that certain time that gets me through the traffic easier. It works out to me clocking in between 9.05 and 9.15 most days, safely within teacake supply timings.

I’m always curious the evening before returning to work after a break. What’s happened ? What’s the gossip ? Has the Big Stick ™ come out ? (When the IT Girl speaks, we obey – well, I do at least). Have the wheels come off ? How has everyone been ? IS THE CANTEEN STILL SELLING TEACAKES ?

The wheels do that you know, they can’t survive at work without me. Honest. (Yeah right! I iz small kog in Big weel)

Anyway, it’ll be good to go back. There’s only so much hometime downtime I can take before I start clawing the walls in boredom. That hasn’t actually happened yet this time, I bet because I’ve been picking music up again. This time, it’s a double Dubstar album (Goodbye) joining their Make It Better album. I first heard Dubstar by catching their track Anywhere on early Saturday morning telly, the same as how I picked up on Alisha’s Attic. I was impressed with the Disgraceful album but initially hadn’t thought much of Make It Better.

Opinions change though, with time – my music tastes have got a lot more varied lately 🙂 (I blame the Sister)

Doh – missed one of my traditions. Can’t talk music without a video link, here’s Stars.

I’ve had a couple of objectives this week, fairly simple ones because they involved not doing much. Objective 1 – chill out. Think I’ve managed that. I have the borderline insomnia that I get when I’m not tired when bedtime comes around.

Objective 2 – injury healing. Dunno there. My shoulder isn’t in pain but we’ll see how it is when I stretch for something. Ankle is bad news, I reckon I’ll have to take it to the doc’s because when dancing out the door of the pizza shop (it made sense at the time), it wanted to go Crunch again. Won’t keep me out of cricket but it’s a bit of a pain (sic) not being able to put power through it on hard ground.

Objective 3 – clear the box of recorded stuff. Check 🙂 It was at 27 hours recorded on there before Sherlock started recording. It started at about 16 hours free … Plenty of X Files and Deadliest Catch watching going on and I was very impressed with how they closed out the Dollhouse.

Objective 4 – listen to lots of music. Oh yes. Definitely. iTunes tells me I’ve listened to 669 different songs lasting 1.7 days over the past 7. Not bad 🙂 Oh – joining Dubstar on iTunes was Plastic Beach from Gorillaz and an old All About Eve live album.

Plastic Beach is definitely the better of the three, although I have a feeling I haven’t gotten to the standout tracks from Goodbye yet. I think it’s the variation I like in Plastic Beach, plus the better ones start slow and then build. It’s good stuff. It might be next weekend though before I get to listen to it as an album, cos I like to listen to individual tracks first before running them through as an album.

People who know me really well will be wondering about me & gaming … There’s no objective 5 : Game As Much As Possible in there :-). I guess I must be getting fairly reformed there. I’ve been in the games occasionally, with a few runs through Settlers IV and a bit of Borderlands tonight. Not much Eve though … apart from a little bit of redeploying ships. Strange. Possibly more confirmation that my games addiction has been replaced by a music addiction.
(I’ll be covering thoughts on that in a blog post about personality change …)

Ok. There was an Objective 5 : “Get through the Turtledove book”. Which I succeeded in 🙂 Funny – a 500 page book needed months of hard slog to get through. The next book was a 320 pager by Jack Campbell which took just under 48 hours to go cover to cover. I still want to get that Turtledove series read … even it takes me the next decade. 4 down, 4 to go – home straight. Current book is Storm From The Shadows from David Weber, I’m 300 pages through that out of 1000.

I’m sure I’ll have plenty more reading to do when I get back in tomorrow … Wonder if my inbox has survived the assault it’ll have been getting this last week ?

Week off this week ! Hurrah

Looking to stay off my feet as much as I can get away with and generally take it e-z. Looking for the various niggles to settle down, so I can get back into haring around a cricket field like a mad thing. Also looking to get the brain recharged so I can plan what I do instead of just reacting to the next firefight task.

Went up to see the parents on the weekend, sister was there too. Bit of a whirlwind weekend, definitely with some strangeness cos the sister was the one fixing my dad’s laptop and not me ! It’s another Acer, which has been very sturdy over its mebbe 3.5 year life but has been slowing down lately. It’s another victim of Kaspersky … Which has now been removed. It’s a dog eat dog world in the area of computer software and if one company’s product disappoints, well there’s plenty of other companies out there gagging to sell you stuff.

So Kaspersky has been ditched due to issues with its IS 2010 product (false alarm reports are not good if non-IT people see them) and because it’s another of those products that gets in the way. Avira is on there now and the laptop is a little quicker again. Still 3 and a half years ain’t bad. There’s only one sign of hardware failure and that’s a flickering screen. I’d buy Acer, as shown by me tapping this post out on an Acer laptop. (Which is a turnaround, as Acer Labs hit my Blacklist after disappointments with a previous motherboard)

We went up this weekend cos we were going to see Yorkshire play Notts at Trent Bridge. That’s only about an hour away from where my mum & dad live, not too far at all. The best cricket matches are close run things, where from start to finish you don’t have a clue who will win. This wasn’t one of those, as Yorkshire’s batting got blown away by good bowling quite early.

Our side lost … but that was ok cos – I got to shake the Hand Of Bumble ! Spotted the legend that is ex England batsman and Sky commentator David Lloyd making his way around the ground. Called over “Good afternoon sir, we’ve just been listening to you on the car radio” (which we had !) And the proffered hand was duly shaken.

Made my day 🙂

Right – I fell asleep last night wishing I could spend more time in my current Jack Campbell book (finished Turtledove no 4 – finally…), it’s nigh on time to get back to it accompanied by the first of what’s going to be a LOT of iTunes listening.