Saturday, August 26, 2006

Race Against Time

It speaks for itself that two out of the last four evenings have seen me falling asleep shortly after getting in. For the first time in a number of years I've not gone away for a week or two - in the absence of especially appealing options, I chose instead to split my holiday time around various things that haven't taken me quite so far from home, like certain music festivals for example. It's largely down to these efforts at fitting stuff around my normal working life that mean I'm a little behind on things like this blog and flickr, which I haven't updated for a bit as I'm waiting till I have the time to upgrade to the pro account and start to organise my pictures properly. That's not about to change immediately as I'm not going to be around for much of this week, but normal service will be resumed shortly, as the September evenings start to draw in and my summer commitments are fulfilled. I hope you've had a good summer too!

Thursday, August 24, 2006

Song Without An End

In the early hours of this morning, one of my favourite bands was interviewed on the radio, and did a couple of live songs. And I'm slightly surprised at the glee I felt at having my pre-emailed question put to the band on air - seems there's some things that don't get outgrown easily. On which note, over the course of the weekend just gone (of which more later) I ran into someone I know who has both played and sung in his own band, and worked and toured with a fair number of other bands - in short, someone who has had significant exposure to the business of making music from the inside as well as the outside level fo the paying punter. He was working at the event I was at, and enthusiastic and excited as hell about getting to work with someone whose music he's very fond of. So I'm pleased to see it is possible to maintain one's levels of enthusiasm and interest when it might be easy to become a bit jaded over time.

Thursday, August 17, 2006

It Was Twenty Nine Years Ago Today

It was twenty nine years ago yesterday that Elvis died, and so today is the anniversary of that fact hitting the front pages of newspapers. And that's what makes it notable for me. It's certainly fair to say I never loved Elvis, but his death is the first major piece of breaking news that I remember clearly - I know exactly where we picked up the family newspaper that day, and recall being surprised at quite how extensive the coverage was. Sure I remember the long hot summer of 76 well, and I remember all sorts of local or personal stuff from before that, but on a worldwide scale, this is where it starts for me. I wonder how that is for other people - how about you?

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

The Home Front

It's a distinct rarity for me to have spent the weekend within the postcode where I live. On the upside I did some work in my garden, did a load of stuff on the computer, filled several binbags of stuff that I should have thrown away ages ago, and even got to grips with organising my clothes to the point where I found the floor of my bedroom underneath everything. In between that and some uneven amounts of sleep, it's left me almost as exhausted as a normal weekend of driving too far! In other news, the fact there's an ongoing conversation about shoes elsewhere is nearly enough for me to claim I have a good reason for the introduction of this gratuitous shoe picture - at the time I got them, I never thought I would like these as much as it turns out I do, but I've worn them a lot this summer.

Wednesday, August 09, 2006

Step Back InTime

It's been a funny day, but an illuminating one. A colleague of mine was playing with a Rubik's Revenge (see title link) - this is the 4 x 4 x 4 version of the Rubik's Cube that readers of a certain age may be familiar with. Perhaps foolishly, the question was put to me of whether I could solve it... Back in the mists of time, I wasn't the first in my school to solve the cube but I was the first to do so without using a book. And over the course of half an hour of playing with the thing, at the end of a fairly creative but mentally-challenging day where I've hopefully got to the bottom of a particular work difficulty, something occurred to me that I've not really considered before. If you asked me how I fixed the thing, I couldn't rightly tell you; there was a lot of instinctive turning going on, and I broke my own Revenge in 1987 so I can justifiably claim to be a little out of practice. Nevertheless, it gradually came together through a lengthy process of trial and error, with patterns forming along the way, which is an exact mirror of how I'd managed to get to grips with my work problem - so in one sense it seems that the many hours of playing with various Rubik puzzles (but especially the cube) when I was ten or eleven seems a far more apposite predictor of the skills with which I now earn my living than any of the areas of study I went on to pursue. Which amuses me no end. Now I just need to find out where my colleague got his from, as I've been meaning to replace mine for quite some time!

Tuesday, August 08, 2006

Good Times, Bad Times

I'm sure that when people sneer about blogs being tedious online diaries of stuff that nobody wants to read about, this is exactly the sort of post they mean. Today is the second day since I appear to have lost my watch. No big deal, it's not valuable in either sentimental or financial terms, but I'm surprised how much at a loss I feel without it, just because I'm used to it. Even with clocks everywhere I look. On the plus side, my house is becoming tidier by the hour and if it doesn't turn up by the weekend I'll be living in something approaching show home levels of tidyness by then. And if this is really all I have to occupy my mind, that's a sign life is pretty good in general. *UPDATE Guess what turned up down the back of the sofa? Sometimes starting to give up on something is a really good way to make it happen. And to do so before I got as far as going through my bins suggests my timing isn't too bad after all!

Sunday, August 06, 2006

And There We Went...

One 3-0 defeat later, and there's no cause for alarm just yet. This post is brought to you in the spirit of completeness, and with the weary resignation of someone to whom this is nothing new. My suspicion is that this is about the 25th season since I first went to a match, though it would be highly misleading to suggest anything like regular attendance for at least half that period.

Saturday, August 05, 2006

'Ere We Go, 'Ere We Go, 'Ere We Go

Football season starts today - these are the days of bright new hopes, naive dreams and foolishly high expectations without the sobering touch of reality. And like an ice cream on a globally warmed summer's day, those hopes generally don't last long. But this time, just maybe...

Thursday, August 03, 2006

L'Esprit D'Escalier (part two)

Having been the subject of a minor assault on my way home - no real harm done, just some damage to my bike which it is not beyond my wit to fix though I could live without it - I'm once again in the psychological realm of being just a tiny bit torn between wishing I'd done something that would have left me feeling a little more like it hadn't been all one-sided, and predominantly thankful that I neither respond well nor in kind to intimidation or physical violence. Though there is no prospect that anything will come of it, the police have been informed, and now that the adrenaline is wearing off I just want to fix up my bike and put it behind me. But I'm damn sure I'll be riding home through the same place at the same time tomorrow, it takes more than that to put me off going about my business. I gave up being bullied a long time ago.

Tuesday, August 01, 2006

Bloody Hippies!

On sunday I went to Ben & Jerry's Summer Sundae - the picture above shows up-n-coming bright young things Captain on the distant stage. The post title link takes you to an article about how the B&J organisation is gradually finding its way back towards returning to the principles of social activism embraced by its founders Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, who gave up the day-to-day running of the company 10 years ago. So, a hippy rock festival on a hot summer day with as much free ice cream as you could get down your gullet and a host of stalls emphasising different slants on ways to save the planet or at least not to flog it quite so flaming hard all the time. Worthy gestures are always a good start, add in a good time and the world briefly seems a better place than it does watching the news on the telly. Here's the proof of how far I got with the ice cream consumption, and something else about it that impressed me - a bio-degradable 'plastic' bottle made entirely of corn, and one where the profit on each bottle goes towards cleaner water efforts all around the world. Up with this sort of thing!
_