Let’s Dance

Tuesday, June 17, 2008 ~ 3 comments so far

Despite having been blogging for some years now, I still put myself under some weird pressure to post every day or so and as such I have developed a dance I like to call the “Start Stop two-step”.

It’s quite simple and I’m sure many my fellow bloggers have mastered it already, but if you are new to the world of ballroom dancing then here are some instructions.

Gentlemen, prepare the floor to ensure your partner doesn’t slip or trip. Ladies (or Gentlemen dance partners) whilst you are waiting it is customary to prepare some post-dance refreshments, a stiff gin, a cold beer, or perhaps big mug of tea. Whatever tickles your wotsit.

Floor preparation is crucial, and you really shouldn’t rush this stage, so make sure you have an Idea ready, as well as an empty place into which the Idea will flow as you smoothly spin and twirl across the dancefloor.

OK, we are ready to begin. Please assume the position, elbows slightly bent, fingers hovering over the keyboard. Take a deep breath, don’t rush, and don’t worry if you falter at first, one of the fundamental reasons for this dance is to help you overcome your nerves and focus your brain.

Ready? Start typing, don’t pause if you lose your bearings or your Idea suddenly disappears, it will return eventually. Instead let your fingers alight gently on each key, deftly picking at the threads of your Idea, helping it to spiral across the dancefloor until it lands, sated and breathless on tiptoes.

Or, you know, you could just come up with a really crap metaphor to try and explain why you are struggling to focus on your writing. That may be easier.

(note to self: when choosing a metaphor, pick a subject you know something about… )

In the garden of pain

Monday, June 16, 2008 ~ Comments Off

After a rather good Friday night, I spent most of Saturday getting re-acquainted with the sofa whilst Louise was off buying plants for the garden. So, when Sunday rolled around and the weather was fair, we headed out into the garden.

Although to be completely honest Louise headed out into the garden and I delayed the inevitable as much as possible. I did eventually go out and pick up spade and fork to help dig over the neglected sideborder in the back garden. Now our soil sits on clay, and I don’t mean it’s a bit clay-like I mean if you dig down about six inches you can cut out neat blocks of clay from the under the soil. It’s heavy going and of course being largely made of clay our garden develops a solid baked crust that took a pickaxe to get through yesterday.

Turning over that kind of soil is bloody hard work, so why we decided to tackle the much bigger job of digging up one of the old iron clothes poles, I’ll never know.

Alas we failed to dig out the large concrete block as, whilst trying to wiggle it free, the rusted and rotten iron clothes pole started to bend and, very quickly started to break. Thankfully it was at very close to ground level so with a whacks of a sledgehammer the edges were round off, leaving me covered in rusty, watery gunk from inside the broken off stump of the pole. An exotic grass planted next to the stump finishes off the job.

Needless to say that, after some digging, and generally exerting some force on a fairly solid object, I’m a little bit achey in places I’d forgotten I had. Well, at least since the time when… ahhh.. but that’s another story.

Sshhhhhh

Saturday, June 14, 2008 ~ 4 comments so far

I haz hangover.

Please send jaffa cakes and chocolate milk.

Ta.

Ohhhh Two?

Thursday, June 12, 2008 ~ 10 comments so far

The contract for my mobile phone is up at the end of the month. So I’ve started looking around for alternatives, starting as ever with consideration of what I want it to do, because that’s what I do you see, research, plan, consider… I am gently mocked for this by my own wife and friends, but I knew they would, you see, having considered their reaction to my over-pondering of things, see how this works? iPhone

Having spent many years with a Windows Mobile phone (varying models), I grew used to having contacts and calendar sync’d, keeping me on track during a busy day and giving me the comfortable fallback of having enough information at my fingertips that I didn’t need to carry anything other than my phone.

18 months ago I decided to simplify things a little and try and rid myself of gadget lust. It seemed to be working:

I find that I’m not using my new mobile phone for much more than phone calls and text messages (sorry txt msgs). This, in part, in because the phone itself isn’t as functionality complete as my old phone so I’m just not using the same set of features. Yet the thing is, I’m not missing anything and it’s liberating to NOT be able to check my email at a moment’s notice. The way I use my mobile phone is regressing back to being, largely, just a phone. However that’s more the technology forcing me to make specific decisions so isn’t quite the same.

Alas the last line of the above quote is the most telling. iPhone

Increasingly unreliable, recently it’s stopped ringing at all it seems, the Samsung D900 has been (form factor aside) a failure. Whilst it looks good and feels good in the hand, the software provided is shoddy and managed to triplicate my contacts as well as randomly delete some with no rhyme nor reason. Being without a reliable calendar or having any confidence that my contact list was up-to-date has led me to hack my way to some semblance of a workable system. Thankfully having most of such things covered online (contacts aside, why HAS no-one cracked that yet?) it’s not too bad… but even that is made worse by the grindingly slow internet browser that comes with the Samsung.

Basically, my experiment failed so straight to the top of my list are the ability to easily talk to my calendar and to keep my contacts sync’d safely and to be able to browse the internet. The latter requiring a nicer, bigger, screen than the Samsung offers. iPhone

OK, a quick question, has anyone read this far and NOT figured out where this is heading? iPhone

Cutting to the chase, it looks like a straight fight. In the (red) corner (geddit!!) we have the new iPhone 3G, in the blue corner the, Windows Mobile based, HTC Touch Diamond. Both are touchscreen and… well they both do pretty much the same kinda thing. Feature wise the HTC is the richer, but since when has any Apple purchase been down to features?

Having had a quick shot of the current iPhone, and the iPod Touch, there is a lot to be said for the way it “just works” – an awful phrase that one. The iPhone also gets free bonus points for being associated with the same people who made my MacBook and the operating system which all so “just works”.

Ohh hell, who am I kidding, come July 11th I’ll be yet another ‘fanboy’ touting his iPhone around. I don’t care if it has flaws, I don’t care if it’s not the best fit to my needs, I know that everyday I pick it up I’ll enjoy using it.

Which, in contrast to my current phone which makes me want to throw it off the balcony in our office into the fountain below, and then fish it out, stamp on it then run over it with a tractor… is a good thing I think.

If nothing else it’ll help keep my blood pressure down (ahem, worst argument ever?).

Ohh and once I DO get said iPhone, I promise I’ll try not to go on about it too much.

Hey, I said “try”…

I’m fascinating

Wednesday, June 11, 2008 ~ 8 comments so far

The more it starts to let me down, the more interesting my body becomes.

Today I visited the physio again to restart my failed effort at getting back to running.

I learned that my knees have a good level of hyperextensibility (they can be bent ever so slightly the wrong way, if that makes sense), that my I’m slightly knocked kneed, and that my ankles are (as I knew) completely fucked. No wait, that wasn’t the term he used at first…

Anyway, I wasn’t there about my ankles – which aren’t all that bad but he said we might have to work on them if I want to get back to running… which doesn’t make sense as I WAS running on the self-same ankles – I was there about my knee.

To be fair it’s been a little better of late, I’ve been a lot more disciplined in doing my exercises but it still feels like someone is pushing a sharp pin into my knee at times, mainly when you push on the really sore bit. Which, frankly, I think he did one more time than was necessary…

He also suggested that I may have had a touch of the Osgood-Schlatters which has contributed to my weak Vastus Lateralis. You can tell this from the knobbly bits below your knees, the last bump before the shinbone starts. The one on my left leg is much larger than the one on my right, which he found odd as, having done an analysis of my mechanics it’s actually my right leg that should be injured and sore as it’s all out of alignment (again, big word for that but can’t recall it).

Anyway, I’ve got new exercises to do, and will be back in a month. I’m determined to see this through this time, so at the weekend I’ll be out to buy some ankle weights.

And just to confirm that all sadists are physios (yes I DO believe that is the correct way round), he said he was giving me an exocentric exercise (I think that’s what he said), which would “be a bit more painful but I think you need some pain”.

So there you have it, it’s almost like going back in time.

Spot the difference

Monday, June 9, 2008 ~ 9 comments so far

I’ve changed the name of this blog, well the banner image, from Informationally Overloaded to One Man Blogs. As no-one has mentioned this I presume no-one has noticed but there was some thinking behind this (and hey, you know me well enough by now that I have to analyse it a little, right?).

1. I know it pisses people off when I change things here, be it the title of the website or the URL that brings you here. I quite enjoy this so I try and change things once a year or so to keep you on your toes.

2. Most of the people who read this blog are web savvy enough to be overloaded with information at some point or another, so the title felt a little brash; MY information overload is more than YOUR information overload? Quite obviously it is not.

3. The simple fact is that I am not, and wasn’t really ever, overloaded with information. Yes I subscribe to hundreds of RSS feeds but I don’t feel compelled to read them all, and I’m reasonably good at keeping on top of the important things which allows me to quickly dismiss all the other stuff if needs must.

So there you have it. And no, you don’t need to update your links, although there are a few of you who STILL insist that my surname is McClean. It is not, it has one (small) c, like this: McLean. If you are one of these people, then I doubt this plea will make a difference but hey, a man can dream, right?

So there you have it.

What? Slow blog day? How very dare you!

A good book

Monday, June 9, 2008 ~ Comments Off

We all know that there are many excellent writers out there who blog just as there are many bloggers who are excellent writers. This latter point is proven by the publication of You’re Not The Only One, a collection of stories written by people who blog, and which was compiled to raise funds for War Child.

So, if you want a good read, go buy it. Or if you just want to support a charity that works with the children trapped in war-torn countries, go buy it and then hand it in to a charity shop (two lots of karma in one go!).

For full details of the book, how it was compiled and who is in it, go and see the woman that made it happen.