On cricket ... Best England side ?

This is going to be perhaps a bit of an indulgent post ...

Last Test Match of the summer tomorrow ! Almost the last cricket ... there's this 5 day game at The Oval and then there's T20 Finals day at Edgbaston, Birmingham the weekend after. Not sure where England are touring this year. (New Zealand and South Africa).

I have the Sky Sports cricket channel on at the moment, mostly because having the news channels on in the background gets too depressing. It's muted though, music beats the sound of old cricket matches. I currently have a Kings of Leon track on and soon it'll be the Sirius album by Clannad. (Fuzzy is also being happily addicted to a new game, GreedFall, on the laptop).

Anyway. The daft thought was .... what's the best England side out of players that I've seen ? Let's go.

These kinds of posts always have to have a restriction and this time it's : This must be a player where I've watched a match they played in (on telly is ok), which puts the time region from around the mid 1980s.

Opening up the innings we have : Mike Atherton and Alastair Cook. You need resilience from the opening batsmen and that's precisely what this pair are. The openers lay the foundation for the rest of the batting to pile on the runs. Atherton earned his nickname of "Iron Mike" and I think the Chef could have scored the most runs of anyone in Test cricket but there's always a time that you have to call it a day. In Atherton's case, he had a degenerative condition with his back, which forced him to stop. Cook had just had enough of it.

I missed a lot of Mike Atherton's career though due to a) playing on the weekends ... b) Sky taking the games off terrestrial and c) BBC having very little respect for the sport by showing pretty much anything instead of it. Of all the players, I wanted to bat like Atherton. (and bowl like Devon Malcolm but I was never as tall or quick !)

Number 3 needs a mix of that opening bat resilience and potential to turn that into attack. There's always the chance that one or both of the openers just gets a really good ball so your No 3 needs to be able to stick around. Ricky Ponting did this expertly for a long time for Australia and did it exceptionally. But this isn't about the Aussies. My number 3 would be Joe Root. Although don't let him captain the side. He's a bit off his game at the moment but when he's on it, he's exceptional.

Skipping ahead a little to number 7 and the wicket keeper ... Apart from one I'll come to in a minute, I have a pretty low opinion of pretty much all the England wicket keepers I've seen. Ben Foakes was excellent with the gloves but got found out with the bat. Prior was a nutter and his glovework could be very dodgy. Geraint Jones - no. Bairstow is an idiot who has poor glovework and has actually introduced flaws into his batting, he's a worse player than before he started tinkering.

So who is the keeper ?

Sarah Taylor. She is an absolute legend. Her glovework has always been magical. You expect a wicket keeper to stop everything that gets past the batsman and get the occasional stumping and all of the catches. Taylor does that .... and then produces stumpings and catches that no one has a right to pull off. It's amazing. And when she's happy and on it, there's an effervescent bubbly fun erupting from under the helmet that must be so infectious for the rest of the team. It's better as a cricket team when you're having fun, it means you're doing well. Or it can lift the team into doing better. I used to be really noisy on the field, except when I went into injury survival mode or if I got put on the boundary where I'd get bored.

Sarah Taylor suffers from a quite crippling depression though, focused around perfectionism. I think she described it as "I got to number 1. I can only get worse from there." That's really, really tough to deal with as a player. I didn't hit it like that but I had something different hit me with my bowling. When I could no longer bowl but saw really poor bowlers on my team, I would have very guilty thoughts of "I should be bowling, I am massively better than that and not bowling is making us lose the game." I hated losing.

This is an amazing player. Even without the inspiration crazy amazing stuff she'll pull off, she's easily the best wicket keeper that I've ever seen. Saw Jack Russell too. She's better. Bats really well too when on her game, classic form and crafty innovation.

1 - Mike Atherton, 2 - Alastair Cook, 3 - Joe Root, 7 - Sarah Taylor
(or Alec Stewart if I have to pick a bloke. Great keeper, a titan with the bat. I have huge respect for the attitude he had whenever I saw him play. He's someone who you would instinctively rely on.)

My all rounder is Ben Stokes at number 6. He could get into any side as either batsman or bowler and regularly produces match winning performances in either role. A super dependable player, another one who hates not giving what he thinks he's worth to the side. I rate him far ahead of Andrew Flintoff, who occasionally displayed his potential with the bat. Great bowler though. I only saw the last days of Ian Botham and he was struggling massively with back problems.

The spin bowler is Graeme Swann at 8. Another one with a winning attitude and that kind of attitude will carry along a cricket team. The kind of attitude that refuses to admit defeat until the scorebook says you lost. Anyway, Swann had a special technique where he bowled with overspin, which means the ball doesn't just turn in to the right hander, it also hurries on a bit. Excellent for unsettling them and rushing the batsman into a mistake.

Opening bowlers have to include James Anderson. He's England's best bowler out of total merit, knowledge and craftiness. And you know what, Ian Botham, included as a bowler, also for skill and craftiness. When my action was having trouble as a result of basically forgetting my calibrations, watching Botham figure his action out helped me realign what I was doing and also to figure out new tricks.

I'm trying to think of an ultra fast assault with a deadly weapon fast bowler but I think Jofra Archer is the first 95+mph bowler I've seen for England. These guys make things happen when conditions are totally against the bowlers.

3rd seamer is Darren Gough. Not the tallest ... but one of the most cunning. I suspect that with all of the new innovation that's come into the game in the last 10 years, he'd have been even better now than when he played. That's something important, the game has moved on since the days of Atherton and Botham. However, if you got talent, talent tells.

Who are the other batsmen ?

For those not in the list, there's :

Kevin Pietersen. Never played for England, always played for himself. The best batsman this century before Steve Smith emerged but ... fatal for pretty much any team he played for.
Devon Malcolm. A god among fast bowlers ... but also erratic and often not really on the same planet.
Jofra Archer. Mentioned above but a bit too new. There is massive promise here though. I've only really had "This guy could be awesome" feelings about bowlers like James Anderson and Dale Steyn when they started ... but Archer provokes that instinct too.
Steve Harmison. Bowled from a great height but without much accuracy or intelligence. I watched an incredibly frustrating session in the West Indies where England should have won but the batsmen could just leave 90% of everything being bowled. That's not how you win games.
James Taylor in the batting. A very promising player when he came into the side (to be unforgivably written off by his hero KP) but was lost to the game due to a potentially fatal heart condition. Good to see that he got through that one.
Gooch and Gower - didn't see them play, slightly before my time.
Nasser Hussain. Always gave everything for England but ... other players are better !
Andrew Strauss. A very vulnerable opening batsman and his handling of KP was disastrous.

The others in the middle order would be Michael Vaughan and Alec Stewart, plus Paul Collingwood if I'm not allowed to have Sarah Taylor in the side. Vaughan had a style in his batting that just made it look so easy. The best players look as if they have so much more time than everyone else and Vaughan had more time than anyone. I've mentioned Alec Stewart above, he's an absolute titan. Incredibly dependable, with an over my dead body attitude to whether he'd allow the opposition to get the upper hand.

Paul Collingwood got the nickname "Brigadier Block", partly I think because he may have been starting to struggle physically with the batting. Also because he could defend incredibly if necessary. But that's not his true strength in any side, he was on another level when in the field. Acrobatic and inspirational. You need players like that to pick off catches, to stop runs they have no excuse being anywhere near, to lift the side.

Cricket can be a really tough, grindy game and it can take an inspirational special moment to lift the side, wake them up and get them performing again. Sometimes it's a quiet word to the bowler to reset their minds to On again. (Done that a couple of times!). Sometimes it's a bit of Paul Collingwood magic in the field (Done that too, loved it). Or it can be an effervescent bubbly wicket keeper being involved, being daft, lifting the side through personality and pulling out something magical that'll be on highlight reels for decades to come.

What's the line up ? Here we are :

1 - Alastair Cook
2 - Michael Atherton (also captaining)
3 - Michael Vaughan
4 - Joe Root
5 - Alec Stewart
6 - Ben Stokes
7 - Ian Botham
8 - Sarah Taylor keeping wicket (or Paul Collingwood if I'm not allowed the legend)
9 - Graeme Swann
10 - Darren Gough (or Jofra Archer if he fulfils his potential)
11 - James Anderson

I think that side would be more than a match for any team.

This is hugely a matter of personal opinion though ! Every cricket fan reading this will have a different 11. Some will pick Jack Russell. Some will go back in time to Gower, Edrich, Gooch, Randall, Willis, Phil de Freitas and Gladstone Small. Phil Tufnell was a great bowler too. Didn't see him play much. John Emburey ?

So many amazing players. Only enough room for 11 of them !

Meltdown plus one month. And a bit.

I've been keeping up with the techie stories more than usual lately.

Maybe I should have been doing that before making the leap and buying the bits but ... there you go. It has been good to get a certain amount of confirmation bias coming in from what I've been reading though.

Before I go any further - disclosure note. I buy and fund all my own computer kit. I can't recall being given anything computer related outside of a USB memory stick that was acquired and then wiped without looking at what's on it. I think it's still around somewhere. (Be very wary of geeks bearing free USB memory stick gifts)

Oh the thing about techie stories may have something to do with a new internet gateway being put in at work and me no longer being able to indulge in Rockpapershotgun reading at lunchtime. Mind you, that site has gone downhill a massive amount in the last month or so anyway. Tomshardware has replaced it for the lunchtime stuff.

One thing there though. Always be aware of the likely bias in what you're reading. Make your own mind up as to what you want to believe. Statistics help there ... but statistics can be twisted to suit the ends of the person presenting them.

In my case, the Asrock motherboard that I bought is apparently not as good as the Asus or Gigabyte competitors. The raw performance is nigh on identical, to within 1-2% but the power consumption figures were higher. I suspect out of date firmware or rogue settings were to blame there ... but those results are still being presented. I acquired the Asrock board because, despite a blip with the sound hardware, it was very solid for the 8 years I had Pumpkin.

There's a lot of partisanship amongst computer techies. I try to keep a clear head amongst all that, while keeping up my own prejudices brought on by experience with the kit.

But for every "I don't use Corsair kit because it's let me down a few times" (it has, I've had a couple of memory sticks be dead on arrival), there will be a small army come out of the woodwork and say they've never had a problem. I use Corsair power supplies and will continue to do so because, while their memory was dodgy, the power supplies are top notch. A good power supply will still go BANG. Quietly. A poor power supply will go BANG and take half of your computer with it.

A Corsair power supply went bang and was replaced in Pumpkin, no other issues. A Seasonic (I think) power supply went bang in one of my other machines and damaged a couple of other components as it went.

So yeah, remember prejudices. Act on them if you must ... but update them often because stuff relevant to a manufacturer's gear one year becomes completely irrelevant with the next round of gear.

But also look at other people's prejudices too. Are they advising you to go in one particular direction because they're blinkered towards the alternatives ? Or is that kit genuinely better. The statistics will tell you. There's usually a middle ground where the statistics tell you what you need to know.

And then there are the ghosts in the machine.

The latest article to spark off the Deep Thoughts is one on the processor I bought for Meltdown and Intel scaremongering about how it might have a short life ... Let's look at that :

AMD and Intel are rival processor manufacturers. After years of little progress from Intel, AMD have come out with something that blows away the Intel rival. The market share is going up. It's taking over. So Intel react by sowing doubt and uncertainty. It's an AMD Ryzen 5 3600 by the way.

To be honest, the AMD chip has a lot to live up to. The i5-2500k Sandy Bridge processor in Pumpkin lasted trouble free for 8 years. However, I know one streamer I don't watch any more had a Haswell iSomething-4000ish chip die after probably half that. I'm hoping for similar life out of the AMD chip. (To Pumpkin, not the failed Haswell chip).

The speed advantage is real too. There's 3x the processing power available in the AMD chip compared to the i5-2500k in Pumpkin. That's more than what I need (I'll come back to this point in a bit). I haven't done a comparative test on my laptop yet but its chip had a 50% advantage over Pumpkin. (Clock for clock, it's actually 2x instead of 1.5x but it's downrated for laptop battery life).

What I want is for a similar amount of life to what Pumpkin had.

HOWEVER ! I don't think it would have managed even a year with the settings it had when first activated.

There's been a few Tomshardware articles (I'm not linking it, they shove notifications at you if you let them, that's Bad) that talk about the Boost clock performance of the chip and they cast doubt as to how likely it is for the chip to reach that boost performance.

This is irrelevant to most normal users of a computer.

Oi ! Who's picking these pictures ! Erm.

Ok. Boost clock speeds. These will happen for a short time, the computer will overheat and then slow down. And that hot cold fast slow puts strain on the machine. I've actually disabled that Precision Boost Overclock and the computer is running at a constant 100% at a comfortable 67 degrees C at the moment. Here's what it was doing before, at idle :

The 53 degrees was at the low point of the graph, it was spiking up to 75 degrees C. That's really dangerous for electronics. When it was on load, it seemed stable (you'll get processing errors or the dreaded Blue Screen of Death) but I think it was derating at 87 degrees C. This agrees with what Tomshardware put in today's article. They had a machine under load and ... turned the cooling off to see what would happen.

Sensible people don't do that. Unless they have something they don't care about breaking. That seems to be a common theme with the hardware review sites. They will run kit to destruction without much second thoughts, which makes other people attempt to do the same ...

Anyway. Meltdown after 6 weeks now is utterly stable. Totally solid. And it actually has an easier time playing Elite than when it's doing those SETI sums ! Elite maybe uses 30% of its capability. It feels a little smoother although when things were getting busy in the combat zone, it was getting jumpy. Odd.

That makes me think of an older laptop. It was an Acer Aspire running another AMD chip, an ancient Athlon X2 running at 2GHz. Except when you wanted that performance, like when watching streamed video, it would overheat, derate itself down to 0.8GHz and the video would go super choppy.

That brings me back to that "I'll come back to this later.". Just because someone says you need the top graphics card and the best processor, doesn't mean that's what you should buy. Always look at your own requirements. They won't be the same as anyone else's.

The AMD Ryzen 5 3600 was Just Right for what I want. Plenty of power, acceptable price at £190. I wasn't convinced that the next one up (Ryzen 5 3600X at £256) gave sufficient extra to justify the price. By saving that money, I could go up to more memory, which definitely has a benefit. An 8GB machine struggled with Battletech and the Roguetech mod was unplayable. 16GB would have coped better. 32GB was strong and gives future proofing.

Someone who isn't interested in gaming with great graphics (one who likes Stellaris and avoids Wolfenstein perhaps) could go for the cheaper processor with built in graphics. You can get one of those for £95 or £145. I think the £145 one is the one to go for there because it has 4 cores and 8 threads instead of 4 cores and 4 threads. That makes a difference apparently.

I don't need a new graphics card. I have an 18 month old nVidia 1060 3GB card that cost £200 and could be replaced for the same amount now. A newer card would be a genuine improvement but ... do I need to spend £320 on a shiny new 2060 with this ray tracing feature ?

Nope.

Not quite that nope.

To be honest, I'd rather save that money and buy a better flight stick. Who am I kidding. I'd rather spend the money and buy one of these :

You have to get your priorities right. That Lego Star Destroyer is very expensive though. (And I wouldn't be able to get it on VIP release anyway because my Lego VIP account is fatally broken).

Expensive ... but TOTALLY AWESOME and I want it.

That feels like a long wall of text today ... here's some key points :

Trust No One especially when they're trying to spend your money. It's your money. Spend it how you please. Don't spend it to please others.
Make your own mind up.
Stick to your requirements. Anything extra is nice (especially if it involves cake) but ... ask if there's something nicer that the money could go on.
Sometimes it's best to stay within design limits than try and push them too far.

Throw out prejudices that are no longer relevant. It's good to do this in every aspect of your life occasionally, not just when it concerns things you are buying.

PS The only change I would have made to Meltdown's spec in hindsight would have been to research the box more and get a better one.

Moving on and making plans

I wasn't sure a week ago but it looks like I may finally be seeing the back of this skin condition.

That's been a long time coming !

I don't think I'll ever be totally free of it but it'll be good to be over the worst of it. Quick summary time ?

It started a few years ago as a leg infection. I think I got bit while on holiday and it was literally eating away my calf. It took some persuading for me to go to the doctors and even then, the infection wasn't wholly cleared out until a few visits later. Between those visits, I decided to do something about my diet and introduce some Green Stuff.

Bad move.

Critically bad move. Turns out I was allergic to the orange juice I added to the diet. That critically affected my breathing to the point where I should have gone to the doctors because I could barely breathe, even when lying down to sleep. I also added lettuce to my sandwiches, which lasted six months before I figured I was allergic to that too. But not before the infection was spread from my calf to a significant amount of me.

Hence me referring to multiple Zombie patches.

However - I'm seeing the bad bits clear up a little bit each day now. I'll be staying on the Benadryl and will be keeping on those pasta bake things too. Partly cos I like them but mostly because that diet change has helped me out a lot in general. I won't be all clear by Comic Con but I'll be much closer.

Which means - time to get on with sorting a few things out and making a few changes which have been on hold for way too long. This has literally been years where my prime focus has been on getting better and it's led to a few things being neglected.

First up - Comic Con - plans and thoughts are coming together on this one. I'll be there on the Friday and I very much hope that I'll have at least one someone with me. One thing I've learned over my far too many years is that you can never neglect what you eat on long days out like this. It's critical or you flake out halfway through and don't appreciate it all.

If that special little lady I keep talking about does accept the offer, I know where lunch will be - apparently there is a Noodle Shop there. If she spots that, I may have to entice her out of there with something special (I'm betting there are Groot models, that may do it). And there's plenty of proper eating places around the venue too. That was my big fear, I consider it dangerous to drive on an empty stomach after a long day. If you fade out while driving, you're in a 70mph missile. So me offering to buy dinner is not just a friendly gesture !

Still not sure about whether I'd take the car all the way in or use the Underground to avoid negotiating the traffic.

A near future priority is sorting out my boiler. It's still making very nasty noises and isn't effectively heating the house. Definitely a near term priority. Crossing fingers that it doesn't cost too much. It can heat the water so I can have showers but the hot water isn't reaching the radiators.

There's more than a few other tidying up jobs I have to do around the house as well. It's not in a shape that I'd want visitors to see it in. Definitely not in the shape I'd need it to be for selling up and moving on to the Sleeping Dragon narrowboat.

New job - I need more cash (I'm ok - just would like to build savings quicker). Plus it's about time I changed where I work. I've been there way too many years. That's another effect of the illness, it put me down to maybe 50% of my capability (still better than a few people I see) and I was concentrating on the day job, instead of looking wider. Actually, that's far better than some I've seen too, where they're concentrating 95% on their MSc and screwing up the day job in the remaining 5%.

Before anyone thinks that's them, it's someone who left the organisation many years ago and they're not someone I've mentioned here.

But yeah - new job, new things to do. Just one problem, limited choice of interesting places to work in the organisation. That's a topic not for here because my reasons are FAR too sensitive to put here ! Let's just say I work with very exotic toys that you sometimes hear about in the news.

Finding someone to share it all with - this has been something I've wanted for a very long time. I keep thinking I've found someone special but outside of 2 ill fated long term relationships, I've not found that right person. Yet. Or at least I don't think I have.

I still have my hopes for one special little lady. I watch the videos and listening to what she says triggers all sorts of responses (of the conversational kind ...). Or she comes out with something that makes me laugh loud enough that the neighbours can hear it (over the noisy boiler and the stereo)

No - I haven't given up there. I rarely do give up on people. Leave 'em alone if it looks like they don't want to know me but give up ? Never. Never Give Up, Never Surrender. Name that film ! (Ok, I got reminded about Galaxy Quest through a twitter convo last night and added it to the list of films I seriously need to watch again)

There have been a few interesting looking ones on Okcupid but I rarely get replies to messages. Ok, I got one who declared "I'm looking for a serious man for a serious relationship". Yep, that's what I think I am and it's what I'm looking for but ... it has to be as equals and this seemed like anything but. The lady I grow old with has to be someone I respect and I wouldn't be respecting someone with the minimal and poorly worded mis spelled (beyond your yours your's) info on her profile.

I'm rambling again aren't I ? Stuff from tonight :

Illness - getting better. About damn time.
General condition - losing weight :-), rest of it - could do with work.
Comic Con - really looking forward to it. On my own - fun. If Steamgirl comes - it'll be good to meet up again and get swept along by her. With the special little someone - AWESOME
Job - I have a cool job with great people but I need something new and technical again. The current job is dominated by process - yawn.
Soulmate - hopeful always but still on my own. I miss regular hugs. I miss the chats. I miss the bickering if you can believe that. But most - I miss doing things for other people. The little things that they appreciate way more than their apparent significance.

I think that's me about rambled out. I'll close with a bit more on that general condition thing - as my outsides improve, it's highlighting where my insides are struggling. The swellings have gone, which in places where protecting bad bits like my knees. That's ok, I just remember to walk in a way that doesn't stress the knees. I think I may need a new hip in my 5th decade. Legs that used to be good for push starting cars are lacking their power. I've leant on and abused natural fitness for a very long time now and need to supplementing that with some conditioning work now.

I think that conditioning work would help out everything else to be honest. I suspect most of my inside aches and pains are down to bits not being used very much. There's been a few times where I've been doubtful for cricket due to a stiff back and ... once I got on the field and did the warm ups, the stiffness in the back went away and I was back to zooming around at Warp Speed.

A little running around can be very good for you.

Especially as I can dodge again now.

Hmm - is that a good thing considering that it tends to be Pretty Ladies at work that I tend to be dodging most ? (lots of blind corners - honest guv)

Strategising

Pictures !

First a serious one :

Oh and a bit of an apology for yesterday's post - sometimes I'll start off with something that seemed a good idea but sometime during the typing, the "good" of the idea evaporates and the quality starts to descend to the floor. Where it commences digging. Oh well. It seemed a good idea at the time and if anyone is interested in a little advice about :

Hifi's
Computers
Geeky stuff
Other stuff I can't mention here (that got you curious - admit it)

Drop me an email and I'll try not to go nerdygeeky like yesterday.

On with the pics, starting with going through the one up top. We've all hit the rocky stuff at some point in our lives. I'm still struggling with my own one that's lasted maybe 3 years now (it's healing but very slowly). How do I deal with it ? Staying positive, which is much harder than it sounds. When the negative stuff hits, you need something to rationalise it, to accept it, to distract away from it.

Activities - the cricket was great, a side effect of Warp Speed and exercise with me is that it shuts my brain down. I can't think as accurately as when the adrenaline isn't in my system. Sometimes that's not a bad thing. Being cold and analytical about it, depression can be due to an imbalance of chemicals in the brain. And having a rush in of endorphins and adrenaline from running around can jump start better chemicals getting in there.

Oh - if running around isn't an option (it isn't for me at the moment) then breaking the natural rhythm of what you can do helps too. It's why I'll mosey around the shops at either the local Mall or Cabot Circus for an hour or so. It gets me out of the house and doing something different.

Contribute - I live for helping people out. Although I think it was winding up the boss today when I was piping up with helpful (it was - honest) bits and pieces about the old project. I didn't know every nut, bolt, nook or cranny but it was close ...

Oh - I wouldn't advise contributing this way :

It may seem like a good idea at the time but if you don't use a burn phone, untraceable cash and can't arrange a cast iron alibi then ... Oh and use an internet cafe too cos "I need a hitman" will be a giveaway if it turns up in your Google search history on your own IP address.

Comparisons - Compare yourself to a time when you felt different. Yeah, the skin thing is lingering on and I'm not really helping it go away but - it's a hell of a lot better than this time last year and it's steadily, slowly improving.

It's not just that though. With the personal/relationship side of me I've gone through some massive highs and some equally massive lows. I'm pretty sure my latest attempt at making someone run away screaming (the - "will you go see a movie with me?" question) is actually making them run away screaming but I'm trying to be more philosophical about that than I have been in the past. I don't show it too much but I feel as deeply as anyone else does, possibly more because it doesn't get let out too much.

Emotions - Create different emotions. Watch a funny or scary movie.
Erm - like watching Captain America 2 and then having the urge to run pellmell across the car park on a leg that 3 days prior was being exceedingly painful.

Or like last week when I had a remote control tech support phone call starting at 10.30pm from the parents (who I love to bits but who I wish sometimes would RTFM). It was literally like pulling my hair out but we got things sorted. My dad is as anti-techie as I am pro-techie. Strange how that works out ! Long story short, the next thing I saw was a Yogscast Kim Galacticraft video that had me grinning from ear to ear within minutes. You can't help but laugh along with them.

Certain emotions though ... I wouldn't advise checking out ... Like Ivanova said "You're too young to experience that level of pain."

Pushing away - Push the painful situation out of your mind temporarily. It's why I've insisted on staying working when at its worst, my skin condition probably would have justified me going on sick leave. I can enter a state of total focus, where the world is shut out. Including the sensations where my body is telling me to check out the bad bits, which invariably makes things worse. The total focus state comes in during certain gameplay and can hit during work time too. I zone in.

Thoughts - Replace your thoughts. Read a book. Play a game.

There's not much worse than sitting, moping, dwelling on a problem. Sure, you need to confront, analyse, evaluate and exorcise the problem to put it behind you but - sometimes we're just not ready to put the problem in its box. And replacing the bad thoughts with something different can give you insight and inspiration of how to deal with the problem thoughts.

This is bad :

This is good :

Sensations - Identify other sensations. Be mindful of the smells, feelings and textures.

Not so sure about this one. Although what did come immediately to mind was Cupcake vs Muffin. (I definitely miss Snow Queen Special Cakes!) Popcorn vs Biscuit. Pizza vs Pasta.

Something that's not on that first list though - Ask.

Don't feel bad about asking for help. Your friends will give it unconditionally and it can sometimes be the most effective way of dealing with your problems. You may not see a way out yourself but sharing the problem with someone you trust will help you climb over that wall of thinking through it. But most of all :

Hugs always help.

A to Z albums - B

That's right, after almost 4 months, I've almost finished going through all the B albums in the collection.

To be honest, there's been some randoms in there along the way. I've managed to listen to just over 5000 tracks of a 12000 library now. I've been doing it by listening to a semi-random selection of albums, in between single tracks from albums. And because the "unlistened to tracks" list is done by album (because things like compilations have lots of different artists), I've been going through from A to Z on the albums.

And I've just about got through the B's now. So - what's in there ?

Well - a lot of Best Of's for a start ! Let's leave those until later.

Baby The Stars Shine Bright Tonight by Everything But The Girl. This group has all the ingredients, except for decent songs. Their Amplified Heart album had points of greatness but this one is very weak. And they just re-released it too. Glad I got it for something like £1 from Hay !

Aimee Mann's Bachelor No 2 - I need more from Aimee Mann. I like her voice. And the songs are good too.

Kate Bush's Back Sides - this is a little piece of history. It's an album from over 20 years ago that we had on vinyl. That format was lost to me until my dad got a device that can transfer from vinyl to cd. It's a TEAC machine that works fairly well, although the transport can hop and skip. There's an All About Eve b-side that I've not listened to for 20 years that's still good, shame it hops the stylus off the disc before the end.

Anyway - Back Sides - b sides will surprise you. Hopefully it's B sides that are new and fresh. Some artists just use remixes of the A-side as extra tracks. That's really bad. I prefer to listen to new tracks. And sometimes, they're better than what makes it on to albums. Take some of the Alisha's Attic B sides ... Here's one from the vaults - most B sides are definitely Too Far Forgotten.

There's game soundtracks in here too. One of the things about Good Old Games (Gog.com) is that the games are not just cheap, you get lots of extras in there too. I have all the soundtracks from the Dungeons and Dragons games, with the B's offering the Baldur's Gate soundtracks. Great games (that I never finished - lol!) with outstanding mood setting soundtracks.

Talking of a mood setting soundtrack - Band of Brothers. This series presented the horrors, the comradeship, the hardship of World War 2 from the point of view of a company of US Airborne paratroopers. If you've not seen Band Of Brothers, I'd thoroughly recommend it. It's strange, at the end you feel like you want to see more but you don't want the men to suffer more.

Soundtracks ? Barbarella will be an all time scifi classic. It's definitely a movie of its time (1968) and it has Jane Fonda at her most gorgeous. Scifi, Jane Fonda, what's not to like ? Perhaps the cheesiness. I still enjoyed it when I watched it last.

There's a bit of classical here too - Barber's Adagio for Strings will have you weeping, depending on what it's attached too. I also have a rather sizable Beethoven collection in here (bought for mebbe £1 off Amazon!). And there's the Battle Of Britain soundtrack too plus not one but two Battlestar Galactica soundtracks, the Beastmaster (yep).

Yep. I may have a music collecting addiction ;-).

Bastion is a game I bought on the strength of what people say about it but I haven't played it yet because it will need a controller I don't own (yet). The soundtrack is outstanding.

Garbage come in with two albums - Beautiful and Bleed Like Me. I like Garbage, they make strong indie rock, backed up by the sexy/vicious vocals of Shirley Mansun. Compelling.

What else ? I'll leave the Best Of's for another post maybe cos ... Wall Of Text alarm !
Suzanne Vega's - Beauty & Crime - good but not really special.
Tori Amos - The Beekeeper - like most Tori Amos, there's awesome tracks mixed in with the mediocre. The title track (The Beekeeper) is special and is guaranteed to have me try and sing along.
Beiderbeck Affair - little bit of smooooooth jazz, which formed the soundtrack for a very charming series with James Bolam and Barbara Flynn.
Avril Lavigne - The Best Damn Thing. Well, perhaps not the best but she always tries really hard and makes music that's fun to bop along to.
Beverly Craven's Beverly Craven album - some good ones here too, wouldn't mind getting some more of hers, although the songwriting can be weak again.
Beyond Good & Evil - is a game I need to finish, if only cos the incidental music is pretty good.

Morcheeba is a group I really shouldn't like but do anyway. They have two albums in here, Big Calm started them off for me, Fear And Love is a highlight. But there's also the  decent Blood Makes Lemonade album.

Goldfrapp's Black Cherry definitely isn't their best but it's more listenable to than most of their first. Quite disco-ey but not as good as Supernature. They have a film event coming up at the start of March which I'm highly likely to attend. (And probably be the only one in the cinema !)

Paramore are here too with Brand New Eyes. I think this may be their best album, they went backwards a little on their latest. No tracks of the calibre of The Only Exception.

Uhoh - I really have blown through Wall Of Text haven't I ... and that's without the Best Of's. T'Pau were a band that burned bright for a short time, Bridge Of Spies had the classic China In Your Hand.

Ellie Goulding has just entered a corner of my heart with her Bright Light's album. Interesting, may look for more.
But there's a whole side of my heart reserved for Hannah Peel, her Broken Wave album is wonderful. More !

Dire Straits - Brothers In Arms. Of course ...
Bugsy Malone soundtrack. Kids doing 1920s/30s prohibition gangsters with spud guns instead of tommy guns. Fun movie with memorable soundtrack.

And finally - Don Henley's Building the Perfect Beast. It's a very manufactured pop album with not much that really stands out. Except ... I hope I recover enough with enough in my legs to support a bit more cricket with the Boys Of Summer.

Sporty days (not all about sport though)

Sport's dominating at the moment :-)

We've had the conclusion of Wimblydon, a couple of Grand Prix, Le Mans 24 hours a couple of weeks ago and we're rushing headlong into another Ashes campaign. Plus a Lions rugby tour down under. (I follow Six Nations rugby but Lions tours seem a bit artificial somehow)

Oh ! I have some time off coming soon too ! It'll be in a couple of weeks and hopefully the heat will be more manageable by them. Don't get me wrong, I like a bit of sun. (And it's weird having to shade the eyes in the shower!) But I overheat very easily.

Sun = good. Heat = bad. Global warming ? Yeah, I think they're right there but I don't think the temperature will get appreciably hotter, I think instead the Earth will adjust by turning that warming into energy that drives the atmosphere more and we're seeing that in the more intense storms we're getting.

Doh. That was a bit of an aside wasn't it. See ? I do pay attention to the world sometimes !

Although I'm more concerned with a few of the people in it than I am of the world itself. Yep. Got my eye on a few of you and I hope you'll be ok.

Anyway - sporty stuff. I watch a lot of sport. But I also apply a lot of quality control to what I select for watching. Like avoiding the Lions rugby. I don't watch all cricket, I'm selective. Like there's a West Indies game on at the moment, I'm not interested in that.

Another aside (based on what's on the news right now). Charles Saatchi is a crazy man. To mistreat (allegedly!) and give up someone as beautiful and with the character of Nigella Lawson ? Nuts. I don't watch her shows much but when I do, I'm entranced by one of the hottest people on telly.

(I think this post qualifies for the scattergun label now, don't you ?)

Yet another aside - news is showing the Boeing 777 crash story. Comments - it's a credit to whatever worked right that only two have died (may it stay as two!) but you have to ask questions of "how ?". My first thought was that it was another sign of why the Dreamliner shouldn't be flying but I'm wrong there, 777 is not the ill fated Dreamliner.

Back to topic - motor racing. This is very much a mixed bag to be honest.

The Le Mans 24 hour is interesting due to its uniqueness. Here we have 200mph cars racing solid for a full 24 hours. It's an incredible event. But to watch it for the full 24 hours ? I wouldn't wish that on anyone ! I did enjoy watching the selection of it that I did watch though.

Grand Prix racing is a curiosity too. It's better when we have our favourites doing well. I'm only 99% (ok, less than that) keen on it right now because the McLarens are struggling. I like the Brits to do well in all sport I watch. Formula 1 is only interesting because of the incidents that are happening right now. The actual racing isn't great. Some tracks are better than others. Some tracks are less interesting than watching paint dry. Like the Nurburgring today, Monaco from a while ago and soon Hungary.

Oh it's also interesting for Suzi Perry. Did I mention that going gaga about ladies with long dark hair thing ? (see above ref Nigella Lawson). Highlights are a good way around the dead time but I feel more connected with sporty stuff when I see the whole thing. There's a kind of story to the game or race that you don't get with highlights.

Oh but what was exciting - tennis.

I exercise the quality control here too. It's very easy to get burned out on a sport. Especially if it's as repetitive as baseball (sorry baseball fans it doesn't have the "ball can go anywhere" of cricket) or tennis.

But we did have 2 incredible games over the weekend. I wasn't sure who to support in the ladies final but when hearing there was someone with strange habits and who falls asleep at random times, yep. That's the one I'm supporting. And she's the one who won too. No such issues with wondering who to support in the men's final.

Well done Ms Bartoli and Mr Murray ! Thoroughly enjoyed those games.

Back to work tomorrow, although I'll be looking forward to the Ashes starting on Wednesday and you can bet the commentary will be on in the car on Thursday afternoon when I'll be driving back.

How's my own cricket coming on ? Haven't played for a while. That's partly been down to lack of opportunity (rain, empty teams, full teams) but there's am outside chance of a game on Thursday. Wait - I said I was travelling ... There's a chance I'd be back in time but I've told both captains it's a "play if I get there in time". I wouldn't want to play to be honest as there's zero chance I'd be able to prepare myself.

Physically, I could play. But that's me refusing to acknowledge why I shouldn't as per usual. My skin is much improved, although my arms still look like I've been washing cats. My legs are super improved, they're still damaged but that damage is repairing itself. The reason my arms are still bad is because my discipline has been weak and I've been "helping" them too much.

I can ignore the damage to my arms though, enough to play at least. What I can't ignore is the damage to my hip, there's damage inside and outside. It's an old groin injury that's been aggravated by reinjuring it a couple of years ago, plus it hasn't appreciated the sitting on floor that I've been obliged to do because of treating the skin condition.

So yeah - improving. Looking forward to the Ashes. Definitely looking forward to that time off to chill out.

Oh and hugely looking forward to the promise of cakes that came with a certain very special person's Facebook post from Friday :-).

Reruns

And a little bit of new stuff.

It's been a weird week. I can't honestly remember much of what I've been getting up to, although I have had lots of popcorn while watching stuff. So much popcorn that my next shopping trip needs to be to Tescos because they have the better popcorn.

(oops - incoming minirant)

If not the better rest of the foodstuff. I get my apples from Sainsburys cos they're bigger and usually taste better. Seriously, what's going on with the places we get our food from these days ? It's not a mistake to have beefburgers with more horse in than beef. That's pure unadulterated fraud. And it hasn't been an isolated incident. It's also not in the ultra low cost processed food either, every week we hear a new story continuing to show that what we come out of the shop with is not what we thought we were buying.

I wonder if it's to discourage us from asking questions. If we have to ask, do we want to know the answer ?

We've already had the stories about pork in halal meat breaking that taboo. How long before we hear something worse like animal contamination in vegetarian foods ? It's one where you don't want the suspicion confirmed but you know it's coming. We have that little faith in corporate entities these days, they're out for the fast self serving buck instead of being customer focused.

Erm - where was I ? Deep breath ;-)

Popcorn !

What's the popcorn been accompanying ?

Cricket - I've been taking more time at home lately because of this annoying skin thing. Some of it is working at home, Friday was annual leave so I could watch a bit of cricket and let my skin have a day off. No popcorn with the cricket, it's on a bit early.

Hunger Games - I remember coming out of this in the cinema with a sense of being underwhelmed. The set up takes a long time ... When it gets going, it's an excellent movie albeit with a hefty sense of deja vu for anyone who's watched Battle Royale. I enjoyed it more on blu-ray, perhaps because I knew there was a treat coming after the preamble.

Battlestar Galactica - I'm rewatching this after picking up the first season on bluray in a sale. This is another series that left me irritated and frustrated by the end. I suspect that's a testament to the quality of the first series. It's stellar. Series one keeps the action level high and the tension level through the roof. It's intelligent scifi. I guess I got frustrated because the intelligence got mired in the silly mysticism that infected the storyline. Saying that though, there's bits of that mysticism introduced quite early.

I'm watching box sets of dvds again, now that there's less recorded stuff to plough through on the box. Perhaps the original series of Battlestar will get a rewatching ?

Band of Brothers - oh this series was amazing. The action is all there. It's World War 2 with no holds barred on the violence level. As it should be. When it comes to the "censor it or show it" argument with video violence, I'm definitely on the side of "show it". Not because I want to see it but because I believe showing it warns people about the consequences. And this series shows a group of great characters having the horrors of total war thrust upon them. It's ordinary men being affected by their situation, you feel for them. And it's compelling viewing.

If you haven't seen Band of Brothers yet, please do. It's worth watching for so many reasons : historical, action but most of all the characters. It's one of those rare series which doesn't outstay its welcome. It runs for 10 episodes and could easily run for more. However, you don't want to see those characters suffer more so you're relieved for them that it's over.

Band of Brothers is the one I'm in at the moment. I may well watch From The Earth To The Moon next. It's from the same production group but is about the moon landings. Also compelling viewing, an adjective I wouldn't attach to The Pacific which was billed as Band Of Brothers - Pacific. The Pacific was a bit nasty. The action was all there but you couldn't identify with the characters. Perhaps that's how their situation shaped them ?

I'm also intending to watch through the Dungeons & Dragons animated series :-) That's one from my childhood. As is Ulysses 31, which I still haven't managed to watch through yet. Same with my Dogtanian dvds.

So many series, so little time to watch them in.

There's new stuff on as well, although I have to admit I'm only half watching it most of the time. What's keeping my attention is the real life stuff, like Ice Pilots and the other things from that stable (Deadliest Catch, Ice Road Truckers). I dunno - perhaps real stuff has more meaning.

Not gaming as much, I still have all the "new" ones from Xmas to try out. Borderlands 2 has been good. Given up on Skyrim, which is a case of a game being so big it has outstayed its welcome. A poor combat system is bad enough but when the game grinds your nose through 100+ hours for a playthrough, you ain't gonna finish it. Borderlands 2 is the opposite there, it seems to have removed a lot of the grind from the first game.

Music's getting there too - I've almost got the unlistened tracks down to 500. That's about a day of music that I haven't listened to yet. It's getting there :-)

And I'm wall of texting again ...

May what you eat be what you intended to eat !

How you doin' ?

That's that polite question that you always hear. Facebook has taken it on too, with lots of people giving literal answers to the "How's it going ?" that it puts in the status update entry box.

I say "polite" question because people always expect an answer along the lines of "I'm doing great, thanks, how are you ?". I've been breaking the mould on that lately by giving a standard answer of delaying slightly (to consider the answer!) and saying "improving".

I don't think people have been entirely prepared for that answer. It's a little too honest :-).

Or perhaps their mind is working through "He's improving, I didn't realise there was anything wrong, what did I miss ?" I like that "what did I miss ?" thought as it suggests that I've been able to hide this skin problem since it exploded late last summer.

I am genuinely improving too, although painfully (literally!) slowly and not really helped by me too. The damage is steadily declining, where I don't do the self inflicted wounds thing. Because things are taking a long time to heal, if I disrupt that healing by giving into temptation and scratching the damaged bits it sets back the healing more than you might think. Work can be a bit awkward because moving around more means the healing can be disrupted by what I'm wearing. And I've not said what the most awkward thing is yet ;-)

No need to go back to the doctor's place though just yet. Just more self discipline to erase a life long tendency to attack the bits of me that aren't right yet.

It is genuinely improving though (I can wear a helmet again!) and I think I've identified a few things that were making my skin go wrong :

Work. I might be allergic to work. LOL :-) Nah. It's the buildings, they have a very dry atmosphere which I think is a very minor contributor to what's gone wrong. It's something to live with, I'm not about to insist on any special conditions for it although working from home may be something I have to talk to management about.
White bread - not so sure about this one now, although I've not had the unpleasantness of being unable to breathe since I ditched the white bread.
Stress - always causes problems. But the reasons for that stress are not something I'm going to put here. Although what Ms Warpath suggested earlier today rings very true.

Orange juice/citrus. This is huge. If you're continually getting mouth ulcers without the explanation of "I bit my mouth" then that's a major signal that you're eating/drinking something you shouldn't. What I didn't realise is that a citrus allergy might extend to lemon muffins too :-).

You know what that means ? I will be forced to consume only chocolate muffins.

(I promise to eat other stuff as well which might be vaguely healthy - says he knowing that after I finish this post, the first thing I'll do is fetch an apple from the kitchen)

The last thing I know that's causing me problems is water ... Yep. It appears to be a little boy problem. And you know what little boys hate ? Bathing ! Looks like having a shower is causing two problems - the towel is damaging the skin and the water is leaching out the bits I need for healing. But I know how to get around that (it involves being gentle and using lots of moisturiser).

I know - awkward. But - by understanding why it's bad in one way, you can make an adjustment, do things differently and deal with the inconvenience.

Lesson - there's a way around every problem. You just need to believe that there is an answer there, even if it's not obvious.

Sometimes you need to ask for help, sometimes you need to find a strength from within. Sometimes you need Rubber Mallet assistance to get inspiration. Hopefully not too often though because concussion is a Bad Thing.

I'm hopeful that I'll make the cricket season, although I'm definitely not ready yet. Too much damage and too much time needed for repairs. What is helping is knowing there's good friends out there who are genuinely concerned when they find out when I'm not healthy. I've been lucky to have been involved in an awesome project for longer than I should have. That's one reason why it's been tough to let go, although I know that in the new one there is potential for me to have the autonomy I never had (and could have done with to get things done!) in the old project.

Ok Ok ! That's enough self indulgence for tonight, where's those apples :-)

PS One thing about the people on the project is that if proves true the old saying about when genuine friends meet up for the first time in a while, they'll pick up from old conversations. And that's proved true about 2 very lovely ladies from the old project who I had the chance to have conversations with over the past week after meeting them at random :-)

Scattered thoughts ...

Was kinda hoping for snow :-) But alas, it has avoided Bristol again.

To be honest, snow this time around will be "interesting" ... Why's that ? No car allowed at work (except Friday's) and my car is allegedly not keen on ice/snow.

It's a particularly awesome car :-) Definitely the best I've had in all respects. However, one criticism I and others have is that the traction and stability control is very aggressive in cutting power when the wheels start to slip. And when you have a powerful electric motor driving the front wheels, that can mean that the car just doesn't move. (Allegedly)

So I'll be at the mercy of the buses if the bad weather does come. From one point of view, that's not bad. You're free to abandon a bus at any time if it gets stuck in traffic or bad conditions. Means a walk but hey, I'm not that badly damaged. (I do have leg issues but they actually like some work to free them up).

Where's the snow ? I keep an eye on http://uksnowmap.com/#/ - the UK snowmap. It collects data from a twitter channel and collates it into a map. Just one problem, I see a bunch of isolated heavy snow reports on that map right now and I have a feeling that they're not true. Yep, you get scumbags dragging down that good thing as well as most of the other good things we still cling on to.

Other stuff - I've been scattered again lately. Seems like this skin thing likes to recover a bit and then get worse again. Not sure what's triggered it off again this time, although it could be jaffa cake related. Hope not, cos jaffa cakes are a Reason To Live. Looks like I have to avoid them for a while though.

Yep. Got sore again, although I'm hoping that copious amounts of moisturizer helps out there.

With the cricket, my ears have improved to the point I can wear a helmet again. (No helmet, no batting, no cricket). But my skin is in such bad shape that it's getting damaged very easily and it's not repairing at all quickly. The moisturizer does seem to be helping though.

What am I up to at the moment ?

Been back at work for 8 days now, settling into more responsibility. Similar role as before but more responsibility. It may not be for too long but I'll get as much out of it as I can.

Still catching up on all the telly recorded over the Xmas break. I did record some, even if most of it was repeats of films and documentaries. At the moment it's a few episodes of Soviet Storm, which tells the story of WW2 on the Russian Front. Rating ? It's worth watching for a bunch of reasons :

It's interesting (to a military scholar)
It's paced pretty well, keeps that interest level going
It's detailed (15 episodes !)
It appears balanced, although you always want to see multiple sources of "truth" to check balance

And there's that old saying "If you ignore the lessons of the past then you are doomed to repeat the mistakes". It goes something like that. I've seen/read a fair bit of WW2 history for the battles we were involved with but not much for Russian, except knowing that it was as brutal as war can get.

There's a few more things recorded aside from Soviet Storm. I thought XXX2 was possibly better than XXX1, although I won't rush to buy either. Full Metal Jousting was a curiosity but I don't think I'd bother with a season 2 if it gets made.

I've also been gaming again :-) That's a mixed thing. I can get hooked into certain games, looking for a win. For a game like Moo2, that doesn't mean any old win. It means a high scoring win. So if it's "just a win" but I'm beaten to certain score things, I'd abandon and start again. At the moment, it's Borderlands 2 which I'm enjoying immensely. True, I'm playing as a Mechromancer which is somewhat overpowered. However, it's a sizable improvement on the original in a lot of ways.

Pacing - the original was a lot like the older style Massive Multiplayer Online game, especially with the grind. The new game seems to be much more focused on telling its story.
Mechanics - I dunno, these seem just "better". But I'd struggle to define "better". Maybe I need to play through the original.

And I have a bunch of others that appeared in the sales to check out :-). Borderlands 2 first, after a couple more Soviet Storm episodes.

Born at the right time ?

I've been watching the Stargazing show tonight (after getting back in from a work run down south ...)

It makes you think, watching shows about science fact and astronomical exploration. There's a lot out there just begging to be looked at. Trouble is, that's all we can do right now for what's outside our Solar System. We can send probes to our local neighbourhood but for everything further out from that, we're dependent upon what we can see.

And ... because that light takes a finite and deterministic time to arrive, we're seeing the objects out there as they used to be. The Andromeda galaxy at 2.5 million light years away will be different now to what it was when the light started its travel toward us. The Stargazing programme tells us that the star Betelgeuse is expected to go supernova "tomorrow" in astronomical terms.

(tomorrow translates to sometime in the next million years)

Betelgeuse is about 640 light years away, which means it could have gone Boom already, we just haven't seen it yet.

One curious idea is that if we ever invent Faster Than Light travel, we could Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun (spot the Pink Floyd reference) and effectively watch that Boom happen as we travel towards the star. Or, you find a star that's recently gone supernova and travel away from it to catch the older light.

I.e. - if you can travel faster than light,
Going towards - winds the clock forward
Going away - winds the clock back

That's beside the point though. You watch stuff like the astronomical programmes and it's like seeing all these marvels that you can look at but never, ever touch. We don't have the technology yet (almost certainly not in the next 100 years either) to get to other stars. Interplanetary travel sure, interstellar is a whole new ball game.

I read books like Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars, or Ben Bova's Mars or countless other space scifi books and I think - I'd fit right in there. My brain coupled with engineering skills and technical instinct would fit right in with a permanent colonisation or just research colony expedition. And I'd have the interest to be along for the ride.

I play the games now but given the choice between gaming and reading all the nitty gritty technical bits to do with a spaceship ? Hold me back before I burn my eyes out on the manuals. But we're not there yet, which makes me think like I've been born a generation or two too early.

What are the choices though ? Let's have a look :

Present is easiest. I've lived through the dawn of the Technological Age and got in there really early. The tech we have available has exploded in terms of advancement over the last 100 years. We had no manned flight 150 years ago, yet this world would not work without it now. That technology fits and drives my natural aptitude.

Past is curious. I'd have been drawn to crafting and would have ended up as a blacksmith or leatherworker. Something that lets me work with tools. I don't think I'd have lasted long though. Leaving aside the issue of my eyes (I need strong glasses to correct astygmatism), I think I'd have been tagged as one of those smart people who are too dangerous to leave alive. And my natural naive state wouldn't have seen the axe falling.

So yeah - either burned at the stake for being a heretic or eliminated for being too smart. I don't think much to what my prospects may have been in Medieval times.

The future is where you start looking into that crystal ball. There's two possibilities as I see it :

Bad future - we don't escape this planet and therefore come to an unavoidable certainty of exhausting the resources available. That's a very dark future which will begin with wars over resources (we've seen that already with Iraq) with those wars descending into a stalemate. One of very few good Tom Clancy books is Red Storm Rising, which has an unwinnable East vs West war initiated by Russia needing to secure new fossil fuel reserves.

If we can't spread past the Earth, then I can't see the future being anything but dark. Getting out to our local solar system will buy us time, there's huge amounts of resources out there waiting to be tapped. It's just to difficult to get to them at the moment.

Good future - interplanetary and interstellar travel become a routine reality. This planet is too crowded already. The UK is definitely overcrowded. Interplanetary and interstellar travel will provide an escape valve to give a bit of breathing space. Trouble is, it wouldn't be an even distribution of people leaving, it would be the best and brightest. Which leaves behind the dregs to inhabit the Earth. Heinlein used that as a minor theme in his Lazarus Long books, where the situation on Earth got worse and worse as more people left.

So that good future could actually be a dystopia. Looks good on the surface, would be good for a few but for the many it would be a nightmare.

There's a lot of good books out there about near future Earth societies and they ask a lot of questions about the nature of humanity. What are we prepared to do to ourselves. How we behave as a group and how we like to be treated as individuals. Many of those books have small groups of powerful people behaving very poorly and large groups of individuals breaking their society through the sense of entitlement that we see coming into today's society.

I'll leave it there. I'm hopeful of that Good Future coming about, I just feel a little sad that I've been born a generation or two too early to experience it. The present has lots of technological toys but that's what they are, just toys.

PS Living now does have its compensations, I have the pleasure to know and work with some wonderful people. Today's work trip had the unexpected pleasure to involve the Pretty Contractor Lady. The meeting was discussing a bit of kit we're having fitted, with the meeting discussing what will be needed to fully satisfy what we're aiming for. Pretty Contractor Lady's part was to establish what she'd need to present in terms of accepting that it's done right. I'll get something thoroughly done when the time comes :-)
PS2 Wild Thing (someone from a few years ago!) made an appearance too the other day and said I hadn't changed a bit. Wasn't quite sure what to make of that :-)

Moody Movember

Been quiet again lately.

My brain has been doing its usual thing of thinking about all sorts of things, usually at random but when it comes to seeing and clicking that "new post" button, it hasn't quite happened.

I think I'm still in a hide mode, where I'm thinking more of recovering than anything else. But it's not just that. I possibly suffer a little from Seasonal Affective Disorder, which is one where the turn of the season switches something in your mind towards "It's dark out there, you should be sleeping." There's a bit more to SAD than that but that's the basic premise of it. I'm quite tired right now and in need of a break :

Been fighting this skin thing for a while and it grinds you down
Breaks from work not giving me much benefit
Treatment sometimes being worse than illness
And that tendency to SAD

Does that read a bit like "Sleepypete needs a hug" ? Per'aps.

I do feel very much worn down but that's mostly from not recovering from what ended up being a nasty situation at work. You expect your bosses to take an interest in what you're doing and to steer you in the direction they think you should go in. But when that steering becomes outright interference and later direct sabotage of what your stated objectives are, that's when the stress level starts to ramp up.

What I do depends on a steady flow of information. And what this particular individual was doing was to systematically remove me from the meetings where I could get that information. His last act of doing that came directly after hearing one of the other people at his level pass on a "Pete really helped me out in that meeting" with me then being immediately removed from attending the next review. I saw my role in that particular review as support, feeding information to the people who needed it, while drawing in information to discuss with others who were not a part of that review. I'd not be totally quiet though, I'd be reporting on a few of the defects that were our organisation's responsibility.

And sabotage like that had been steadily increasing over his period in post (note I do not say "in control" there).

There's a lot of distinct styles associated with meetings. There's the type that have to be constantly saying things. It doesn't have to make sense, it doesn't have to be related to the subject actually under discussion. But they have to be seen as actively involved in the discussion. That's the Long Screwdriver type that cause huge amounts of interference and damage in projects.

I'm a much quieter person. I will listen hard to everything going on in a meeting and will be actively collating all that information together. I'll make judgment calls as to whether I need to pass something on to people outside the meeting. And that often happens because meetings can't involve everyone because they're a time sink.

I'll talk when I need to, not because the Long Screwdriver instinct says I should be.

The problem comes when the Long Screwdriver person's behaviour gets reinforced by apparent progress made when they're around. They don't seem to realise that we'd have been getting on with it anyway and we'd have got on with it better without their interference.

Case in point - several problems we're tackling now have their roots years ago when a collection of these Seen And Definitely Heard people were involved. (There's been quite a number of them)

This all sounds like a rant doesn't it ?

There's a definite separation between Professional Behaviour and how people actually are.

The big target of the rant above is actually a great person. He inspired a certain kind of loyalty, despite all the interference. A long time ago I worked directly for one of the other people I've vaguely referred to above and would defend him without question. I saw his workload back then, the documents he worked from and I'm not surprised deeply significant critical details were missed out (because the source documents were misleading). But I know how hard they worked and could see how much effort they put in to getting things right. His only fault was to not get his helper (me!) involved when he was getting overwhelmed.

That's one thing I'm struggling with at the moment - summoning the energy to put in. And I think that's showing with the tendency not to hit that "create post" button here. I'm ok at work when I'm powered by Coffee, Crunchies and Pepsi Max but the crash comes at home. (Not needed the Crunchie & Pepsi Max for a while!)

I'm still battling the skin thing, although it's hugely better than it was a month ago. I'm nearly clear on all parts of my body, with the red inflamed bits steadily receding. There's still a few holdout bits but the treatment gel stuff is very effective with those. However, I'm having to balance treatment with looking after the rest of me - hip hates me right now.

This weekend has been a chilled out one, filled with sport. Yesterday saw As-Live coverage of the cricket from India, it starts at 4am and finishes at 11am so the hours are hostile for watching it in the week. But it's ok for a weekend. Follow that yesterday with England v South Africa rugby and then the Grand Prix qualifying. Today it's As-Live cricket again, which will finish neatly before the Grand Prix starts. I'll be able to watch a little of the build up too.

There's also Strictly Come Dancing too, hopefully Michael & Natalie will keep going, although I suspect they'll be in the dance off. There's a lot of great dancers in Strictly this year, any of the ones left in now could win the whole thing, it's that open.

I'll close out with Movember - I had a head start here because my face was a bit torn up by the spreading infected excema. I cut the beard but kept the 'tache for Movember. It's a fairly decent one too, maybe I'll grab a picture :-)

But - I promise - in a week, it's gone. Lol. It's annoying and is getting in the way.

And I suspect that promise to remove it will come as great relief to all who know me.

Right ! Back to the cricket and firstly, enough munchies to see me through a few hours where I'll want to touch as little as possible. And then - more gunky treatment ... (Cross fingers I stay warm!)

PS I'm on the busses to get into work next week, which is due to more of those Long Screwdriver people ... We have a huge site where I work but. The Long Screwdriver mob are insisting on squeezing more people into it than can fit so they can close other sites. That's in terms of how many desks we have for them as well as car parking space. Yet no one of sufficient seniority has raised their flag to say "What the hell are you playing at ?". They just accept the squeeze as normal business. Instead of going "Ok, we'll make this happen by abusing our workforce" it should be "There is no more room on this site, stop squeezing more in". We're expected to cope with about 75% of the room needed to fit everyone in. It doesn't work. And they wonder why the workforce keeps giving the senior management votes of no confidence in the yearly surveys ...

Travelling, Toys, Aliens and Brr

Been out and about in the car lately with work.

They don't let me out too much (They think I scare people) but it is good to have the occasional trip out to contractor places or the outstations. Especially when it give you a chance to see what you've been working on. Not that the seeing what I'd been working on was the point of Monday's trip, they just happened to be visible out the windows.

From 200-300 metres away, maybe more. Yep. I've been playing with big toys over the past decade.

Anyway. Travelling. One trick I implemented was to take more advantage of the Smart Numbers telephone system at work. That system lets us take a number with us and either attach it to the phone at the desk we end up at for the day or route it elsewhere. I had mine going to my mobile during the two travel days. Now you're thinking "Hey ! He's going to be in a car for a significant amount of that." Yep. True. But I feel better about telling people to ring me back cos I'm driving than ignoring voicemail messages.

Smart Numbers works well (at least it does now that the bugs have been worked out) but the voicemail system is utter garbage. It's nigh on unusable. Trouble is, the people who ring in don't understand that and insist on leaving garbled messages that we never hear when they should be sending an email instead (or even a text to the number I give in my sig with a "please do not use voicemail, send a text to this number instead")

Travelling doesn't just mean telling people to ring me back when they phone while I'm driving. It's ok for me because my CT is set up with a handsfree spiderphone facility. But it's not ok for the person trying to talk to me as my attention wavers between conversation and driving. If the driving demands concentration, that's where the concentration goes.

I use my own car for business trips. It's just not worth me taking a hire car :

My CT is far superior to the typical hire car in toys
I'm familiar with it and the satnav is well programmed now
iPod integration (and phone integration) works well
It's 50+mpg and therefore a cheaper option
And I realllly distrust the hire car companies

Hire car companies are naughty - I've seen a few colleagues have to defend themselves because mysterious blemishes appeared on the hire car, supposedly when the colleague had it. You have to inspect the hire car carefully before and after. If there are blemishes, take pictures before opening the key packet.

And it's really sad we have to protect ourselves in that way. Surely there should be a level of being able to trust the hire car company contracted by the massive organisation I work for. But then again, that may be part of it. The company may assume they can get away with upsetting the little guy because the little guy's voice gets lost in noise.

Toys ? Kinda gone through this one already with those Smartnumbers - there's just one flaw there, Caller ID doesn't work through the redirect to my mobile.

However ... what I did find out about was something else with that Smartnumbers. At work, if the desk phone rings, we don't have a clue who it is. Unless ... you know about a part of Smartnumbers we weren't told about : Caller ID through the desktop. I need someone to ring me while that's active so I can see it working.

Aliens ?

Think I achieved a couple of things in John Lewis yesterday. Yeah. I bought a vacuum cleaner. But that's boring ... At least it is alongside knowing that the John Lewis girl who was looking after me was definitely thinking I was from another planet. Good to see I haven't lost that.

Oh - here's something really sad. When I started looking to talk to people in John Lewis, I went up to Bloke sales person and Girlie sales person. Bloke immediately passed me over to Girlie, with me getting the impression that he thought selling vacuum cleaners was beneath him and was the lady's work. That's kinda sexist.

Did I care ? Hell no. I'd far rather talk to a pretty blonde lady any time than a chubby, balding middle aged bloke who apparently didn't want to talk to his customer. Wonder what she thought of it ? Look after your people as well as your customers.

Failing to look after your people leads to them not being effective at their jobs, especially if you actively prevent them from doing work which is actual priority work.

Brr ?

Getting cold again here. I've not turned the heating on yet but may have to soon ... Legs are still not healed yet (although they are steadily improving) so I'm still in shorts in the evening. It's getting a bit cold for that though and my knees are starting to ask for knee pads to be on.

Cricket season is almost over too. Played my last game (the evenings have been drawing in) a few weeks ago but the domestic season goes on a bit longer. Enjoyed watching the last England game for ... a week tonight with England beating South Africa.

And I'd better leave it there before I wear out the keyboard. Been strugging to think up topics lately although ... when I get one ? Wall Of Text :-)

Someone stole my holiday !

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.

On religion ...

Another one grabbed from Facebook :

Of all the door to door people who come knocking, it's the religion ones that I'm most wary of. The only one who's come close lately has been the Anglian windows bloke who I thought would try and force his way in.

The religion ones are the worst of the lot though. I have nothing against people who live with religion close to their hearts, it's the evangelists who I don't have the respect for. The people who will drag a child with them when they go doorstep to doorstep, with that child being a moderator for any offensiveness that might be justified by preventing a stranger from forcing their way into your home.

And that's what it feels like with the doorstep religion people, they expect that you will invite them into your home and often don't bother waiting for an answer. Cue slamming of door in faces.

But that's just style. I had a similar reaction to the Anglian windows person who :
Didn't show any personal ID
Only identification was an "Anglian" on his fleece top
Was bordering offensive in his efforts to get me to talk to him.

Yep - I'm paranoid about the doorstep sellers and will only let them in if they're as sexy as the Npower girl who convinced me to change away from British Gash, which is something I had planned to do shortly anyway. (Customer disservice again)

Before I go into the next lot which I suspect may upset a few religious people, I have every respect for what people believe in. It's your answer and your interpretation to fundamental questions. And I have no right to question those beliefs. Organised religion, however, is fair game - muahaha :-)

I have a kind of religion but it's a personal one. I think there's gremlins, spooks, ghosts, supernatural wibblies out there who like to toy with us. Use a computer for a while, you'll know what I mean. Strange things happen that defy the logic these things are supposed to run on.

I also believe heavily in karma, do good things for others and they'll remember when you need the favour returned.. And that stands me in good stead at work, where I get more responsiveness out of our contractors than some of my colleagues do. I think that's partly the contractors knowing that I don't ask them to do stuff which would be a waste of effort. I'll also work through the problems and "how do we do this ???" to the benefit of everyone. Lol, I'm usually asking them to do stuff they know they should be doing anyway but without bashing them over the head with a reminder of that.

So that's the "do unto others" tenet that the Christians like to think they follow. (Look up history, the Christian mob ethic has been consistently "do unto others before they do unto you"). Don't get me wrong, it's a fine belief system for individuals, it just goes badly wrong when it gets organised.

I have to admit being soured on Christianity by what I experienced in primary school over in Northern Ireland. I went to a Quaker school which was heavily populated by Protestant kids with the occasional Catholic. The playground could literally be a battlefield. It was also during the time when the Troubles were still active, when the Peace Process was not quite started up. As an 8 year old, I was confused : "You follow the same god right, why are you fighting ?". I found it nonsensical and didn't want to have anything to do with it.

Oh, there was also the ganging up on the English boy too :-) Everyone gets bullied for being different but our differences are what make us strong. I was also known as the Milky Bar Kid at that Irish school.

Yep - my pre-teen mind was so confused by the Protestant vs Catholic thing that it went its own way and sought its own interpretation. My own code of ethics borrow heavily from what I learned early on but a strong ethic of "Be Good To People" should be the core of everyone's ethics, religion should not have anything to do with that.

In terms of meaning though ... My superstition makes me think there's a supreme being type entity out there. But not the capricious gods of most major religions. They're more concerned about their worshippers legging it for someone less cruel than they are concerned for the welfare of those worshippers. (Yes greek gods, I mean you!).

So what do I believe in ? I believe in Luck. Fate. Destiny. It's why I have my superstitions that guard against tempting fate. You can go some way to making your own luck. Don't walk under ladders that are unstable and have things perched on top. Take precautions when working on that ladder.

Why luck ? Most religions are centred around the question "Why Am I Here?" and answer that question with something that keeps control of their flock. I prefer the scientific element inherent in the sheer luck involved in us being here.

Astronomic chances of a life bearing planet in a life supporting solar system
Having a moon that causes tides that generate our climate
Sheer random chance of those first amino acids getting together
Enough radiation to spark random evolutionary mutation
Random evolution making creatures as smart as we are
Incalculable chances of the chromosomes that made me ME coming together

The mind boggles at the staggering amount of luck that makes us US. And it is sheer luck that makes us what we are. When you look at it, luck makes a lot of sense too as a Creator. Bad luck comes along with Good luck. Believers in a perfect supreme being (Christians) have no explanation for the innocents inflicted with Bad Stuff. A perfect being can make no flaws in their design. We all know how many flaws are in this world and a bare fraction of those are punishments for evildoers. Nothing in this world is perfect (although someone I know comes close!) which puts the kybosh on "God made us in his own image". Ok, that makes their god flawed and imperfect too and in no way befitting the tag assigned to them.

No. I prefer to believe in Luck, as I know how fickle luck can be. Luck will also respect it when you put the effort in to improve your chances.

And I'm now starting to run out of things to add to the Wall Of Text without repeating myself. Questions and last thoughts :

Always ask : does this belief make sense ?
Trust in your own choices
Have respect for the choices of others, particularly what they believe in
Treat others how you would expect to be treated in return
Being nice leads to cookies and chocolate
And a hug feels better than a sermon

Very last thought - would I get married in a church ? If it mattered to my partner, definitely. That's part of having the respect for the beliefs of others. My feet might feel a little toasty but it's her day as well as mine. Oh to find someone though both interested and interesting. I do know someone who more than fits the "interesting" part, she's smart, sexy, full of life, has a good soul and most important, can keep up with my brain which works in its mysterious ways. But "interested" ? she's got other stuff going on that's got her full attention. There I go again with chasing the unattainable !