Sunday 29 August 2010

Salisbury

We've spent the weekend in Salisbury where we had to move the stuff we had stored at Hamish's parents house as they have now sold it.
This started the conversation again about our move down there and Hamish has said that we will actually do something about it now.
I've not been feeling at all well this weekend and actually spent most of today in bed. Maybe doing something about moving may make me feel better?

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Saturday 28 August 2010

Not The Greatest Of Weeks

Sorry I haven't posted since Monday but I've not been feeling too well this week.

As you know, I suffer from depression, and, whilst I have not been as ill as I have been in the past, this week I have been feeling fairly low.

Work has been OK and, to be honest, it has given me a purpose which helps.  The evenings had been bad though as I have been feeling restless and a bit lost.

One of the problems I am still getting is the very vivd dreams I get each night.  They're not particularly disturbing or scary, but they are hyper real and so it can take me a few minutes after I wake up for them to dissipate and even then bit of them can pop back into my head later in the day.

There is one particular theme that keeps coming back though.  I dream that I am back at school and that it's the last week before I leave for good.  I always feel unprepared and that I am going into my exams knowing that I haven't studied or even attended any of the classes.  This is odd as it has no basis in reality.  I left school 24 years ago and, at the time, had none of these feelings.

I've been awake for the past hour and I can still feel the state of panic from last night's dream.  It's all very odd.

Anyway, it's the bank holiday weekend now and, as soon as Hamish is up and about, we are heading down to Salisbury.  We haven't been down for a few weeks so it will be good to see Roxana again.

Monday 23 August 2010

Wet And Windy

I had another tortuous journey back across London yesterday afternoon thanks to the City Thames Link line being closed in Central London. This was compounded by the fact that half the underground was also closed for engineering works putting all the tourists plus their luggage onto my train.
I caught up with my reading after dinner and actually got to bed at a reasonable time for a change.
This morning it's wet and cold but actually I prefer it like this as I feel more comfortable when I get to work. It's also the last couple of weeks when I can almost guarantee a seat on the train as soon the kids go back school and their parents all head back to work en masse.

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Saturday 21 August 2010

Weekend At Matt's

I'm at my best mate Matt's this weekend and it is really good to see him as we haven't met up for a while.

Bit of a nightmare journey to get here as the Thames Link isn't running across London at the weekend at the moment so I had to get the train to Victoria, then the Tube and then fight to get on the Thames Link at St Pancras.  So, what should have taken an hour took just over two.

Anyway we sat outside a pub for a couple of hours and had a catch up and have just had a wonderful meal of Sea Bass and salad.  And now....we're of to the pub to get hammered!

Thursday 19 August 2010

Plodding On

It's been another week of ups and downs so far. My physical symptoms of the weekend and early part of the week have, for the most part, subsided. However my mood has been subdued again.

Work wise, I've been quite busy but, once again, I'm disturbed by vivid dreams.

My little Internet projects have kept me busy and I have my books but I can't get over the sensation of feeling somehow 'lost'.

I hope it will pass but, right now, it's bugging me.

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Tuesday 17 August 2010

Uncomfortable

I haven't been feeling too well over the past few days and, without going into too much detail, I have been constipated.

I feel like an over inflated balloon.  I called NHS direct last night and they said that my headache (which I have also had since Saturday) is probably as a result of my 'problem' and told me to take a laxative and if that didn't work to go and see my doctor.

Well the good news this morning is that the laxative has worked (and how) so hopefully I will get back to normal soon.

I had an email yesterday from a software company offering to pay me to write a review of their product on this blog.  I will be honest and say that in future, if I get approached I will do so (making the post obvious that I am getting paid) and that any reviews I write will be unbiased and honest.  The reason I didn't take them up on their offer (and I did check out the company and it is genuine) is that the software they wanted me to review was PC software and, for the most part, I use a Mac so I wouldn't be able to test the software properly first.

It was nice to be asked though.

The request also got me thinking about who reads this blog.  Whilst I only have two followers, the stats show that it is being read all over the world, which is quite exciting.  So, if you are reading this - hello - and I am honored that you are following my life and I hope that descriptions of my bowel movements don't put you off!

Sunday 15 August 2010

Sherlock

We've just watched the third, and final, episode of the wonderful Sherlock on BBC HD.

This has been a brilliant albeit short series and has brought the Sherlock Holmes legend right up to date.  The only thing that I found distracting was how much it was like Dr. Who, which is hardly surprising when you consider that it was produced by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatis, both heavily involved in the sci-fi series.  Sherlock's mannerisms, especially his speech patterns, were very similar to those of the 11th Doctor.

I believe that a second series has been commissioned and I really hope that this is true.

We had a very productive afternoon (well Hamish has as he did most of the work) and have now cleaned the lounge from top to bottom and reorganized the tech under the TV including pruning out a number of cables and transformers from long forgotten pieces of equipment.

We may go into town tomorrow to get some new cushions but that depends on how we feel and if it is still raining.

I've also been a bit influential  today as I have been emailing Evernote's support team with an issue I had regarding the tagging of notes in the PC version of their software.  Rather than fob me off with reinstalling the software or not understanding my problem, they went away and were able to replicate the problem and are now working on a software revision.  Cool!

Saturday 14 August 2010

Avatar and Blip TV

Last night we finally got around to watching Avatar (I know - an age after the rest of the world).  For some reason I just hadn't fancied it.  Maybe it was the massive amount of hype it got or the fact that we didn't go and see it in 3D (in fact I haven't yet been to see a 3D film at the cinema).

Well, what can I say but WOW.   I thought it would just be an effects driven piece of glitter but yes, while it was nearly all effects, it did have an engaging and very allegorical story.  The acting was superb and some of the sequences were very powerful indeed.

I've heard that this may be the first part of a trilogy and I'm not too sure I would want this as I doubt whether a follow film could be as engaging as the first and I would hate the memory of Avatar to be tarnished by weaker subsequent films.

Today I launched Ramblings Of An Ordinary Guy on Blip TV (http://RamblingsOfAnOrdinaryGuy.blip.tv/) so take a look.

Friday 13 August 2010

Quick Update

Nothing much to report at the moment as just plodding along this week.

The Mac Mini is all configured and working and is still lovely.  I realised last night that I never reported back to say that the RAM upgrade in Netty had been a success and has worked fine since I replaced the SIMM so it looked like I really did have dodgy RAM but kudos to Mr Memory for sorting it out.

Had a call from Dad last night to say that he had just ordered a Kindle (no prompting from me) he really is becoming a tech head!

Tuesday 10 August 2010

Mac Mini (Almost) Set Up

The Mac Mini arrived today and we have it hooked up to the telly via the amp and all is good.

We now need to rearrange the equipment under the TV and put it on a shelf.  This will enable us to remove some unwanted cables and make things a bit tidier.

Setting up the Mac was so much easier than setting up the PC we used to have, however, it was not without it's annoyances.   Firstly there is a known bug with Boxee and our version of the Mac in that it won't play video, only audio.  This is apparently due to a change that Apple recently made in a software update.  So, Boxee has gone and has been replaced by Plex which does much the same thing (actually it's slightly better as it has more feeds (or Apps as Plex calls them)).  However, Plex doesn't work with Flash 10.1 so I am now installing Flash 10.0 but unfortunately Adobe's archive site is sooooo sloooow.  I think I am beginning to side with Steve Jobs.

The iTunes library came across without any problems and I can now run BBC iPlayer's HD content with out 3 out of every 4 frames dropping, which is cool.

The best thing about the Mac Mini however is that it is so quiet.  The PC's fan could be heard over the TV which was annoying.  Also, it passes through the amp without issue - the PC wouldn't which meant that we had to change the TV input to use it.

So, all in all a productive evening and I will be happy when we have got it on the shelf and tidy.

Not So Good Today

I haven't been feeling too good over the weekend and this morning I was still feeling ill so didn't go into work.  By about 17:30 I was feeling better so logged onto the work servers and caught up so at least when I go in tomorrow I won't have to start from scratch.

What else has been going on?  Well, I've nearly finished "Deamon" which is an excellent book.  The sequel isn't out on the Kindle yet so I have a few more novels in my wish list.  There is an author called Lincoln Child who wrote a book called "Deep Storm" that I read last year and rather enjoyed and so I think I will read his "Terminal Freeze" next.

I've also started following Dan Brown (no, not that one) on Revision3.com.  He is a 19 year old from Nebraska who has been vlogging for a while and has a huge following on YouTube (his monica is Pogobat).  He has recently started a project called Dan 3.0 where he has given his life over to his viewers for a year and is videoing himself doing tasks that they suggest.

As I've not been feeling too good I haven't done any more work on my secret web project and so I'm no closer to being able to tell you what it is but I will soon.

The diet is still going well however I've been unable to purchase anything from boots.com as they are having technical issues with their checkout system and I am now in serious danger of running out of Tony Ferguson products.  I may have to go to a Boots store and stock up which is sooo last century.

Saturday 7 August 2010

Oops Again!

Really sorry but I've been sidetracked reading agin this week.  Well, actually, I have a number of projects on the go.

Firstly the reading.  I finished "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" which is an excellent book.  In fact, I've just watched the film (the original Swedish version, not the one dubbed into English).  It was a fairly faithful rendition of the novel however there were a few set pieces that were in the wrong place, which jarred a bit.  I will be going on to read the other two books in the trilogy soon but I am reading other novels first.

Today I had a bit of light reading and read one of the new Doctor Who novels - "Nuclear Time".  Not bad, and the author had captured the 11th Doctor's mannerisms quite well.  I'm now about to start the techno-thriller "Deamon"by Daniel Suarez which is about a network of Botnets running out of control.  This book has a sequel - "Freedom (TM)" which I may get onto if the first book is good enough.

Other things I have been working on this week include a website that I have been meaning to create for some time now.  I won't go into details yet as I want to flesh it out before I announce it but I have registered the domain name and written a few of the pages.  When it is about half populated I will let you know what it's called.

Last week we finally had enough of the HP PC that wheezes under our TV and struggles (unsuccessfully) to pump out HD programmes and movies.  So, we have ordered one of the new Mac-Minis and I have collated all the content that I will need to put on the Mac when it arrives.  Looking at the specs and the reviews on the web, it will more than cope with being a dedicated HD media computer and it comes with a built in HDMI port to connect it to the TV.

As part of this preparation I've discovered Boxee (www.boxee.tv) which is a great application that aggregates a huge amount of video and audio content from the Web (and on your local drives) and presents them in a clean, remote control friendly way.

Tomorrow I am going to go through all the external drives I've collected (and the old internal drives from my computers that have since gone to the great recycler in the sky) and catalogue them and assign various storage tasks to them.

Anyway - back to my reading and I promise to update a bit more frequently from today!

Tuesday 3 August 2010

Fat Boy Slim(er)

Another milestone in my quest to be thiner today as I've just passed the 2 stone lost mark.  I've got used to the diet now and don't find it so hard.  There have been a couple of occasions where I have been hungry and really craved food but I think they were just psychological as they coincided with my depression.

Here's to the next 3 stone!