Andy's Blog

*HUGELY* tired today, I really should go to bed much earlier than I am doing currently.  I think I didn’t hit the sack until 1.30 this morning – stupid really.

It did at least give me time to sort out some of the new music I have “acquired”, get rid of some of the duplicates albums I had misfiled, sort out some of the tags that were wrong and copy them to the external hard drive ready for others to “review”.  Annoyingly the first thing I noticed when I fired up the laptop at work, ready to listen to some music, was a whole load of mis-tagged tracks which have also found their way onto my iPhone.. BUGGAR!

Work was abuzz this morning with the news of a planned 2,100 job cuts announced on the BBC News website, and literally as I am typing this there’s news of a *further* 2,100 job cuts.. DOUBLE BUGGAR!

Probably not the best time to be feeling tired and looking lethargic at work.  Unfortunately the swim this lunchtime hasn’t helped much either, and I still haven’t managed the 20 lengths without stopping!

To add to the tiredness, peevedness and alarm I can now add “lonely”.  Online friends seem to have disappeared and chats and updates from MSN and Facebook have dried up to a trickle.  This could, of course, just be a by-product of me trying to be offline a little more and keeping to my ‘talk only when talked to’ policy, which I am hoping will make me a little less annoying and let others actually lead a life. 

Time to venture out maybe?

Ah well, I need to wake up before my Karate class tonight and mentally prepare.  The Wednesday class is always a tough one and I need to work on my Kukutsu Dachi and Shuto Uki, before my students arrive, if I want to attain my next belt.

Methinks it’s time to hit the coffee again, or if things get too bad; to pop a caffeine bean and suck on it for the remainder of the day!

Edit 1: Update -  The 2 x 2,100 job cuts aren’t within my section of the company, which hopefully means I won’t be invited to a meeting to “discuss my career options” anytime soon.  

Thanks for the words of concern though guys n’ gals, much appreciated

Edit 2: Just to prove me a damn neurotic liar, about 10 minutes after posting this little update; up pops two different people on MSN for a chat, and three messages on facebook!

Tis the first full working week of 2009, and all is quiet when I finally step out into the new years morn’ at 6.30am and crunch into the first settled snow of the year!  It’s hard to dispel the childlike delight when you see the winter wonderland spread out in front of you.. or at least it is for me; I am still a kid at heart trapped in a big gangly body.

I even managed to chuck my first snowball of the year!  I don’t think my mate expected the snowball to come flying over the 6ft fence, let alone at that time of the morning, or even saw from whence it came.. but the cursed whimper as it went down the back of his neck was most satisfying

Resolution Watch:  The ‘Get Fit’ resolution is still on track, hence the being up and out at 6.30am this morning and have managed to get to the Gym on alternate days as planned, and swimming every lunchtime.  So far, so good!

The ‘Two Belts’ resolution doesn’t really kick off until Tuesday when the Senior Karate classes start back up, but I am already in line for a couple of beatings from fellow Sensei’s.. Not entirely sure that’s gonna help with the resolution.

Unfortunately the ‘Get Offline’ isn’t going too well, am still online far more than I should be and have also started twittering – so that’s not a good sign.  I am trying to stay off MSN a little more than usual and not post so many facebook updates, but it’s *soooo* hard!  A geek’s addiction is never appreciated.

I was thinking of adding another resolution to the already long list, that of ‘Stop being so damn shy!’.  Unfortunately this is one trait I have had for the longest time, and is one of my bigger burdens (amongst many other competing burdens).

The online ’me’ is a lot more confident than the physical ‘me’, which can sometimes make for fractured conversations and a lack of eye contact.  Unfortunately some people read that the wrong way and think me stand-off’ish.  I think the online ‘me’ is the more truthful version, I just need to work on bringing that out into the real world a lot more often!

Edit: For some reason I have the song “Reason’s to be cheerful, Part 3″ by Ian Drury and the Blockheads running around my head as I write the shyness section.. I think that’s a good sign :-/

…
It’s time to light the lights
It’s time to meet the Muppets on the Muppet Show tonight.

There is something very comforting when you fully embrace your inner ‘Muppetness’, a realisation that sometimes it takes WAY too much time and effort to be miserable and that life really shouldn’t be taken THAT seriously anyway!

The shedding of some expectations has lifted a huge weight from me and in large respects has made me go; “what the fff…lipping heck were you thinking anyway?!”.  Other issues still need to be resolved, but those I will face in typical muppet fashion… minus some singing and dancing… and chickens (maybe).

So, I am embracing my muppetness and choosing appropriate characters based on my mood for the day.  So watch out for Kermit, Fozzy Bear, Beaker and more importantly Animal!

Until then I am practising my “Mr Boombastic” routine ready for the christmas party discos – so beware!

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For better or worse things are-a-changing around here.  First visible change, to the outside world at least, will be the car!  The mighty Volvo will be packed up soon and returned to the Volvo dealer, which is a wee bit of a shame as I actually quite liked the car – but needs must.  Actually what will hurt most is losing the 80GB built in mp3 player, which when crammed with tracks-a-plenty will talk to you as you browse through your uploaded goodies.

I shall miss the old girl’s metallic voice mispronouncing all the album and artist names.  Now, how to hook up the iPhone to the replacement old banger?  At the moment music is my great escape, especially during the commute to work – my ‘acceptable’ bit of reflection time with no sour looks when the music is pumped upto 11 on the dial.

Mood music at the moment is definitely on the darker side of the rainbow at the moment;

• The Drugs Don’t Work by The Verve
• The Artifact And Living by Michael Andrews
• Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol
• Pale Shelter by Tears for Fears
• Pilot by Alisha’s Attic
• Mad World by Tears for Fears (or performed by Michael Andrews/Gary Jules)

On the plus side, and probably a reflection of something deep and profound, I have managed to tag and update the music collection.  So now 14,580 songs (or 1,070 albums) have been tagged, categorised, and album artwork added – which all makes the iPhone/iPod look a lot more visually pleasing!

Now what else can I do to fill up the long nights?

Well it made me laugh… Check some of their other excellent cartoons over at XKCD.

If anyone out there is wondering what to get me as a pressie for Christmas/birthday next year/just cos you want to as I am generally a very nice person… then look no further!

Currently reading a five page extract from Paul Carr’s new book “Bringing Nothing To The Party: True Confessions Of A New Media Whore” which is published on The Register.  Hilarious stuff, well it made me laugh in all the inappropriate places, and is a companion to his blog site.

Very geeky I know, but that’s me..  So get rushing over to Waterstones already!!

Quite why my friends are still surprised when I turn up with a new gadget is a bit of a mystery to me, you’d think after all these years (and all these gadgets) they would have learnt by now.

After thinking it a bit of a gimmick, plus already being in a contract with Vodafone, I have finally gotten myself an iPhone after O2 rather kindly offered to buy me out of my current contract. So I am now the proud owner of a 16Gb Apple iPhone 3G!

…and I have to say I am MORE than delighted and impressed with it.  Up till now I have been using a combination of other products to be the uber-chic man about town;  My Nokia 6500 Classic mobile phone (with Vodafone data tariff), Nokia n810 Internet Tablet for accessing the Internet, and an Apple iPod Nano 4Gb for music.  The iPhone now replaces all of these.

Now there is a bit of a wrench in dropping the Nokia n810 as this runs my Operating System of choice (Linux) and allows me to run a large number of Open Source products which I also use on my desktop PC at home (see my previous post here for more info).  However all these apps never really ‘fitted’ together in a seamless way, which the iPhone does.  Also, the need not to waste batteries (on both the mobile and n810) when bluetoothing between the two devices so I can 3G connect to the Internet is a bit of a bonus.

It’s not entirely a perfect device, but the advantages far outweigh the imperfections;

• Where’s cut-n-paste?  I would love to be able to snip bits of information out of websites or emails and post them in the notebook.
• When you minimise an app, it closes it (apart from the music)!  So when you are in the facebook app, and then decide to check your email, it disconnects you from any chats you were in
• iTunes!  *sigh* I have to run Windows to update my iPhone with music or install apps.

That all said, I am online now stalking friends on facebook whilst listening to some very early Genesis tracks – bliss!

I find myself, almost unconsciously, wandering back to facebook to check out what my listed friends are upto, moving my cars around in Parking Wars, building up my castles in the Knighthood game, updating my profile and uploading more pics.  She-who-must-be-obeyed is starting to feel like a facebook widow.

As some of you may know, I am an iterate IM’er (Instant Messaging), and facebook also allows you to IM friends when they come online – hallelujah!  …or as I am beginning to wonder “uh-oh”.

IM’ing for me is a simple, and cheap, way to chat to friends and gets over some of the inate shyness that is, unfortunately, built into my DNA (which is one reason why I don’t use the phone on a constant basis).  However I am beginning to wonder at what point does IM’ing friends start to become, for them, something coming close to stalking?  The unfortunate element of IM’ing is that you don’t know what the person is doing or feeling at the time you send a cheery little “hello” down the line to them, and people (despite beliefs to the contrary) will always try to remain polite, especially to friends, whatever their mood.

So I think, from now on, I shall try and keep my IM’ing to a minimum and only on a as-needed basis – unless of course I am IM’d first.  Maybe I am overly worrying about a non-issue, but that is a side effect of having too much time on one’s hands during the wee hours (I go to bed WAAAAAY too late).

So if you do find yourself being pestered one too many times, a “feck off” is always taken in the mood it’s given . What’s more worrying, is the following reply given by a friend when I brought it up with them;

coooooool, i have my own stalker….wicked !!

Just gotten some new cartoon me’s done by Piers Baker ready to start littering around my various sites. This site will, hopefully, start getting a new look to make it a little more ‘troozcentric’ and a little less off-the-shelf, and the smattering of new cartoon me’s is the start.

I am always a little in awe of cartoonists and the apparent ‘ease’ at which they knock out these little drawings. Although one of the problems that you find when getting a cartoonist to do you a cartoon, is that their first impulse is not to offend their ‘client’. Certainly the first batch of cartoons I ever had done, by a rather nice Brazilian guy, were extremely good but he couldn’t help but put a positive spin on the look.

I on the other hand, being of a certain thick-skinnedness, don’t mind the cartoon being not too good looking – after all, and you will be SHOCKED to learn this, I ain’t no Brad Pitt (probably more ‘Tar Pit’). However; Piers done an excellent job, of which you can see the results.

I will still continue to use the cartoon face piccies to show my particular mood at the time of writing these little snippets of literature gold.