updating blogger

I'm slowly bringing my blog into beta mode, and i've found this lovely code to make a label cloud in the side bar. If you want the code it is from phydeux3. I'm struggling to get a last.fm widget to work. It keeps throwing up and error that has me clueless. I'm slowly back blogging a few items too. Sorry I've not been around on the blogosphere much, I've been carried away milling on facebook.

london weekend and mstu

Leading up to June I'd been feeling a bit down, probably cos in another world I'd've been travelling to canada to spend time with v. Instead I'd decided to try and keep myself busy, which i think i've done pretty successfully. This weekend I took the opportunity to visit hc in london and see monkey swallows the universe live at the Spitz. Arriving around mid-day, i'd got a fair amount of time to kill and wandered into green park to read in the sun. Nice and relaxing, i'd arrange to meet hc around trafalgar late afternoon, so wandered over to see if i could find a nice coffee bar nearby. Arrived at trafalgar and noticed that there was due to be a free palestine march. It sounded interesting so took a seat on the steps outside the national gallery and awaited the arrival of the march. I'd happeded to be sat next to a group of knitters, who apparently meet up in random locations around the city to knit. There were a couple of guys too - how metrosexual. One of them was knitting with a pair of huge needles, about a metre tall. It seemed to be attracting considerable attention.

Eventually the march arrived and a number of seakers addressed the crowd. Some were much better than others, I must admit some of the speakers that were addressing us as comrades and encouraging us to support the freedom fighters were not using the most tactful of language. It's such a shame a week after the event to see the political turmoil that has enveloped the state of palestine. A coalition of democratically elected governers is overturned because other countries refuse to deal with Hamas. It makes a mockery of democracy. And the embargos enforced on the palestinian authorities is one of the main issues to lead to the conflict and in-fighting that only serves to ridicule the ability of the palestinian people to govern themselves. What a situation.

As the afternoon wore on I looked down to see that I was beginning to turn a bright shade of red, so i swiftly made for the shade and awaited hc.

We headed out to liverpool st station and got something to eat before making our way to the spitz. It was absolutely roasting hot in the venue, and we were in time to see the first act. They were pretty poor, playing chaotic rock that followed obvious progressions from loud to quiet. Yawn. Then it was mstu who again put on an absolutley fabulous gig. Nat's vocals were particularly passionate and the new songs hint that the new album will be just as good as the debut. Finally, shady bard, the headline take the stage and wow the crowd with their orchestral indie rock. Songs about the environment, reminiscent of 'we love life' by pulp. Good stuff.

Sunday i appreciated the warm weather, browsed the tate modern before arranging to meet a myspace friend. Passing st paul's i decided to pop in and say a prayer. The sung eucharist had just started, so i took a seat near the back and listened to the pomp of the ceremony. Not my usual thing high anglican worship, but nothing else would have done in this magnificant venue. The architecture and paintings are incredible and with the bombastic sounds of the organ vibrating through the church you can't help but get a sense of the awesomeness of god. Something that is easy to forget when sat around tables with coffee chatting, which is my normal worship preference. I also liked the fact that there were people coming and going at the back of the church, some to get a free look at the architecture, others to perhaps pray or sit in on the service for a while before leaving. It gave fluid nature to the worship, strange in a venue that follows such a rigid formal worship. Of course those who wished to take an active participation in the service could be lead to the front of the church by one of the nuerous ushers.

Finally met up with ys in shepherds bush and enjoyed mint tea and some food at a little arabic cafe before going for a walk through st james park. It was a lovely day and interesting to meet someone who is also a big fan of music.

A few more pics in the flickr set

Microwave meal for one

Couldn't be bothered to cook on monday so opted for the lazy microwave meal for one option. Cooked some rice and followed the microwave instructions. After the last blast in the microwave I took the korma out to stand and removed the film lid. Hmmm think I'll give it a stir to ensure that the heat is distributed in an homogenous manner. Stuck my fork in and whirled it around BANG! the korma exploded firing splashes of orange korma right up my t-shirt, on my glassses, on the walls, on the ceiling, on my housemates recently washed washing. Everywhere. No quick and convenient meal here, no had to spend ages going around mopping it up. Changed my t-shirt, but thought I'd do the trousers later. Then just as i started eating the neighbour came round for a chat, I felt such a scruff trying to hide behind the door with korma splashes all down my trousers and I hadn't even looked in the mirror and was fearing my hair was also streaked.

Guitar tuning

So I decided it was time to re-string the guitar and start playing again, well by playing I really mean strumming a few chords. I'm not to adept at the whole stringing process and it took me ages to get all the strings on. Later I discovered that my tuner had broken but I set out to get it vaguely in tune by ear. It takes a bit of practice but I'm not too bad at it. Apart from when I came to tune the high E string, for some reason I tuned it to the 7th fret of the B string instead of the 5th. Sounds a bit flat, tighten the string, play a note, still flat, tighten the string, play note, that's almost it, still a bit flat, another turn....ping the string broke and nearly took my eye out. Going to have to get some more strings now - grrr

What's this?

Went shopping in tesco the other day, wandering around listening to my iPod. I seleected the least busy checkout where a young lad was making swift work of scanning the items and sending them down the converyor. As I was packing I noticed there was a hold up and thought he was asking me something. I looked up and took my earphones out. "Can you tell me what this is please?" He asked waving the object and pointing to is cashier button machine indicating he needed to know what it was to weigh the item. I looked bemused and he asked me again. "It's a courgette" I replied. Unbelievable! It's hardly an exotic item, wish I'd said it was a carrot now, they're cheaper to the kilo.

bank holiday III - mac

Sunday
church was a bit of a chore, a couple of people were away and all of a sudden the whole set up and collection becomes a real bind. The service was quite nice, nothing exceptional, a trainee local preacher having a trial service. I thought she did alright, though nothing revelationary or challenging. Went to see my friend cem over macclesfield way after church. We had a good afternoon strolling by the canal and getting something to eat before returning to chat whilst watching the best indie anthems ever, or some such countdown chart on mtv2. It's strange to see snapshots of indie hits that i really liked as a teenager. A time when the song artists appeared to me to be relatively ancient. Looking back now, seeing damon albarn singing boys and girls, for example, thinking - doesn't he look really young there! Another sign of the ageing process and no, i no longer enjoy listening to radio 1 in the daytime.

Bank holiday II - "wax on, wax off"

Saturday
Did my usual wander into town in the morning to think about my book, i'm having a bit of difficulty over some grammar technicalities, it's all to do with the changes of naration i'm using. Milled around town and got some shopping done, as chesterfield had been relegated there was no cause for a trip to oldham in a last gasp chance to stay up. Instead i spent most of the afternoon in the garden painting my fence. A fence that appears to be on it's last legs, yet another looming expense, however, i hope the lick of paint will see it good for some months to come. The hours of fence painting, if mr myagi is to be believed, should help turn me into an expert in karate - so beware, I can probably kick you in the head, even if one of my legs is broken now.
Finished the day watching some snooker and reading this excellent book. Took me ages to get to sleep, my shoulder really ached, like i'd got a dead arm or something. I just couldn't get comfortable. So much for mr myagi!

bank holiday I

I've been pretty busy lately, too busy to blog as i've been out enjoying the nice weather we've been having. i don't particularly like super long blogs, they are just little morsals of thoughts and things i've been doing. if you've got time to be reading long in depth debates and shenanigans you really ought to be getting out more. so i'll blog some small episodes over the coming days:

Thursday
so it was election time, i'd declined to be a poll clerk this year as i wasn't in need of the extra cash and i didn't fancy the really long day. Ther was little coverage over the elections and they seemed to come and go with little fuss. The predicted labour failure didn't really materialise. my ward was very tight, just a few votes in it. To be honest i'd have been happy with the candidates from labour, lib dems or greens. Members of the labour party were going around knocking on doors to remind people to vote and to get an idea which way people were voting. I'd never seen them do that before - they were obviously keen to win the seat. They lost out to the lib dems by about 30 votes! Thankfully there seemed fewer interest from the british national party around sheffield, though they still collected reasonable numbers of votes in the wards they stood which is a worrying trend.
At bible study we're using an mrdf study guide looking at poverty and slavery. It's been interesting and this week we were looking at some of the laws given to the newly flourishing israel nation after leaving slavery. Rules that ensure profiteering is not a major driver, but the growth and stability of all members, rich and poor, of the israel nation. Laws that give rights to the alien and ensure stumbling blocks are not placed in the way of those less able. Alright if we were to read on in the passage there are numerous odd laws that must really be taken within the cultural setting, but the basics to which the israel nation was raised are a great set of starting ideas. We mused how we would run a new settlement. The key seems to be the 'buy in' from all members of the group. It only works if everyone does their bit, however menial. In practice though, humans seem to be inately selfish which i guess is why capitalism creates greed at the exploitive expense of others, communism breeds apathy and a superior ruling class that has to enforce the pricipals in order for them to work, the welfare state breeds people who exploit the benefits entering a cycle of dependency and an unwillingness to work. It makes you wonder if there is ever a way that the kingdom of god can work here on earth as prayed for in the lords prayer - may your kingdom come on earth, as it is in heaven. Will there be a time when everyone wants to serve god in that way, or will selfish tendancies or disputes about irrelevencies continue.

new tv

Yay! I've just bought a second hand tv off a guy at work. It's got digital tv, widescreen, will plug into our computer recorder thingamijig with s-video to SCART connection. But the best thing is I can get chunky old analogue teletext so i can read my reviews in all their glory. Plus i can catch up with all the rest of the planet sound reviews - they really are good. Hooray for teletext.

Just been shopping and nearly created a toilet roll landslide. A huge pile of multi packs stacked enticingly at the end of the row screaming look at me - 33% extra free. I wandered over, began to lift one of the top packs and noticed that a pack behind had been inexpertly stacked. It began to slip, causing the pile atop it to begin to gently slide towards me. Luckily i managed to stem the flow and rectify the situation without having to endure the embarassement of being engulfed in an avalanche of bog roll.

Blossom falling

A few weeks ago i was about to leave for work but returned inside to get my camera cos the blossom on the tree outside looked beautiful against the deep blue morning sky. Most of the blossom is now on the pavement and blowing onto my entrance. Or it was, mostly yesterday, the tree being almost bare i decided it time to get to sweeping it up. Some of it had got wet and begun to degrade and stick to the tarmac and it took quite some effor to sweep it up and bag it up. Two bin bags full, and it weighed quite a bit too. Felt like i'd accomplished something and i went to read in the back garden. After about 15min ct called, she was in the area and wondered if i was free to meet up for a drink. I was and as i left i noticed that it hardly looked like i'd spent ages sweeping the pathways! thank you wind. Oh well, most of it is swept, i'll just wait the final petals to slip their grasp and float to the floor and begin the task again.

what's that

Started my drive to work this morning and oddly I could only see about 20m ahead. Well, I tried washing the windscreen, but it made no difference. Even the usual land marks were obscured, only becoming visible as I got closer, like they hiding, and then jumping out to reveal themsleves at the last minute. When I got to the motorway it all made sense. Those great big signs that tell you not to drink and drive etc today proclaimed 'FOG'.

Of course


That's why I couldn't see very well, it was foggy.



In other news, I recently bought a new razor. In fact this story starts years ago, when I used to use a Gillette razor that contained two blades. I bought it cos the advert said it was the best a man can get. It worked fine. Then they invented a razor with an extra blade that they claimed enabled you to travel three times the speed of sound, or somesuch. That also worked, but was slightly more expensive. Now they have five blades, where will it stop. I thought three was excessive. What next, I'll soon be using a razor as big as my face with a hundred blades in it. No more. I recalled my dad saying he also had had enough with the expensive razors and was now using disposable ones from tesco that were equally as good and cheaper. Excellent I thought, and purchased some to try this week. Three blades as well. Yesterday I tried gliding the blade across my face and I kid you not a wood planer would have been better. Had to check in the mirror that my face was still there! It was uncomfortable and worse than using a bic razor. There's a lesson here, don't accept frugal advice from your dad, you'll end up eating no frills food, scraping your face off and wearing abbibas trainers with wrongler jeans. They're just as good as the originals.

yeah - right (!)

Little things

CC came over on sunday and we went for a wander around the bole hills after lunch, meeting up with ss. Good to see them both and to hear their stories of uni life. As we were meandering along the footpaths we passed a guy carrying a hoe, he'd obviously been out in the allotments. Following him was an attractive girl, probably his girlfriend. I turne to cc and said, 'check out that guy, out with his ho'. It amused me for ages, did that. Talking of amusing tales, I remembered one from work that I was retelling to cc and ss. I was down on site in Mansfield working in the site cabin, showing some of the guys how to work this computer package. We were all huddled around my computer at a desk in the cabin when in walked the cleaner. She had in her hand an upturned broom, it was a huge stage broom, almost a metre in width. 'Sorry to bother you', she said, 'but I can't seem to find my broom, I can only find this one and it is too big. My broom is much smaller, if you see it can you let me know'.
No one had seen her broom,
'I don't know where it could be, but we'll buy you another one', said the project manager and as she left and shut the door he turned to us all and said 'it'll be the guys out on site, they'll have had it at lunch time to play quidditch.'

Meeting Richard Branson

It's been a bad week for virgin media, not only have they had a fall out with BskyB, resulting in me loosing sky one and sky sports news, but their broadband internet has been playing up. I've not been able to get online, and I had a number of things to blog about on friday, and I can't recall what they are, I'm sure they couldn't have been that enlightening. It's annoying loosing these channels as they are the ones you can flick onto whilst eating your tea/breakfast. Plenty of football scores, futurama and simpsons and of course 24 on a sunday eve. However, Richard Branson cut his holiday short to come to my house and tell me how sorry he was with the inconvenience the loss of these channels and internet was. I said, "it's nice of you to pop by Richard, I can call you Richard can't I?" "Why yes, I think Sir Branson is far too formal for my flowing blonde locks image." "Ok Richard, but the thing is I wanted to check what was on at the cinema this weekend and without the internet I couldn't."

feeding from the bile

Decided to engross myself in my book this afternoon, use my current feelings as inspiration for one of the scenes in my book, and it proved quite useful. Took me a while to find somewhere to have a coffee and write as the deli I found the other weekend was shut. No opening times posted, though I do recall reading ona flyer - come and sit and read the sunday papers, or words to that effect, obviously not on a sunday though. It's quiet in the city centre on a sunday afternoon, found a quiet corner in a coffee house and got down to some writing. Wonder if I'll ever finish iit, but at least it is giving my mind something useful to d, rather than wallow in pity and 'what ifs'. Met up with ad later to go and see Hot Fuzz. Entertaining, bit of light hearted humour always helps. Talking of which, last sunday we were singing a john bell song, kind of contempory liturgy put to a familiar tune, which has the verse:

Jesus Christ is raging, raging in the streets,
Where injustice spirals, and real hope retreats,
Listen, Lord Jesus, I am angry too.
In the kingdom's causes let me rage with you

ad had typed it out on the song sheet, but had made a typo: Jesus Chris is raging, raging in the streets. I had a job not to refrain from laughing - that's me on my commute to work, raging in the streets.

Regina bookends

It seems that as a regina spektor gig saw the beginning of a relationship with v, another one marks it's end. We both had our reservations about full commital, not least the difficulties of living on separate continents. How do you ever know, there's no all encompassing formula, and all the what if's and unknown variables. For someone with a mathematical mind it's too hard to calculate, and yet we shared so many beautiful times together and i always enjoyed engaging in conversation, as we had so many things in common, especially our eclectic taste in movies and music. Last night when the end became apparent, there's that numbness that engulfs, as if all you blood is failing to be pumped to it's correct location. The mouth goes dry, saliva stops and you try swallowing cos it feels like there is some great obstacle in your throat. There's nothing to do but wallow in self pity, trying to see what could've been done in the past to have a different result. How someone of such beauty would have an interst in the first place, a wilderness set before devoid of any replacements that could meet such a standard. A few seasons ago leeds were playing at the san siro and now they are in danger of playing chesterfield at saltergate next season, and you just wonder what you could've done to win one more corner.

Things of note

During January I have enjoyed some things and hated others, so I thought I would give a brief rundown for you so that you can either try out the things I've liked or avoid the things I've hated. Apologies for such a poor post, if you have better things to do then there is no need to read further. However, if you are a little bit bored at work (in your lunch time of course) then it may well introduce you to something that you like too. Perhaps you could comment and make this into some kind of interactive forum. (If, as my site stats suggest, you have popped over to this blog due to searching for cures to a swollen uvula then you ought to check the june 2006 posts)

5 Good things

1. 6 music - what a great radio station, an ecclectic mix of past greats and novel new bands.
   
2. Operator Please - came across these australian kids thanks to 6music. Top passionate shoty punky pop tunes. They even have a song all about Ping Pong. They rock.
   
3. malcolm middleton - has a new album out very soon and the upcoming single Brighter Beat sounds superb. The guitarist from arab strap looks due to release his third excellent album. Buy them all!
   
4. Jarvis Cocker - check out this brililantly funny video for his single. Oh, and I've got tickets to see him live in sheffield - yay!
   
5. iPod - what a wonderful thing for storing many records, you can never have too much music.

5 bad things

1. Car insurance companies
   
2. Car insurance companies
   
3. Car insurance companies
   
4. Car insurance companies
   
5. Car insurance companies
   

Monika Webster

Is the title of the first single released by the delgados, and it is backed by a 'brand new car'. Which is what I now have, well when I saw brand new, I mean, brand new to me. So really I have a car, that was once brand new. Another fiesta, cos i like them a lot, and this is the newest car I have ever owned, it is only 6 years old. Hopefully it will enable me to get to work in a much more convenient manner once i've sorted out the insurance. It is black, in case you were after further details.
So much of my saturday was taken up with viewing cars and purchasing. The evening I met up with a at the showroom. Whilst reading the programme about upcoming films I discovered that die grosse stille(into great silence) is coming soon. I've been wanting to watch this movie ever since reading a review from the toronto film festival. It sounds very intersting.
We had gone to watch babel, one of a number of films that I would like to see at the moment. There are parts of this film that work superbly, the sense of the varying cultures of morocco, mexico and japan is quite striking. The interaction of the characters, the modes of communication add to this, along with the wonderful camera work and a clever soundtrack that weaves the cultures together. On the down side, the film is overlong, which seems to be a trend these days. It's not that I'm against long films, but if you begin to feel the movie is overlong whilst watching it, then it's time to get out the scissors and cut some scenes, leave them for the movie geeks to watch on their 2DVD packs. The character played by brad pitt becomes rather dull as there is not much of a story for him, basically he's trying to get his wife to hospital in morocco. We don't need ten scenes to tell us this! It's actually the moroccon characters that are really interesting. The japanese storyline really made me feel sad (slight spoiler) following the trails of a deaf mute teenager struggling with her own identity and feeling unlovable. She struggles for attention and goes to extreme measures to garner male sexual attention. Thankfully it doesn't lead her to take her hown life, which towards the end of the film I feared would be the conclusion. Perhaps it could've ended like that, and such and ending would've made me feel sickeningly sad. Not really what you want when you go to the cinema, but if a movie can move you to such emotions then on one level it has suceeded. Though will have failed if you've gone out to the cinema for a nice evening out!
After dp had dropped me off near my house I bumped intyo dp and j who were on their way to the C&C, I didn't need much persuading to join them for a couple of beers. I was able to have a good moan about how much i disliked insurance companies.

Zephyr in the sky at night

I wonder...

It was a bit windy today. Gradually throughout the day it got noticably windier and reports of road closures came through to the point that we were told to leave early. I'm still on the train, and I thought that for once the train was going to save me time on my journey home. One of the guys set off from the site cabin, still wondering the best route back, however within 2 minutes he had returned.
"Don't think I 'm going to get very far"
"why's that?"
"Tree's blown over"
And he pointed to the dirt track that leads from the road to the site cabins and a conifer had blown over, broken a wall and lay strewn across the access track. We found some rope on site and I tied it around the branches, couldn't remember any of the sophisticated knots I learnt at scouts, so made up my own version of a round turn and two half hitches. The other end was fastened to a tow eye on a car, and then the exciting bit as the car revved up and sped forwards dragging the branches away and freeing the road.
I was last to leave as I was still confined to the train time table. Got to the station. Now Thorne South station is little better than a bus stop, a brick shelter and that's your lot. You could even imagine it necessary to wave the train down as it goes past. At lunch I'd managed to contact the rail company and discovered that the line was still running. Though I was still a little concerned as to whether the train would still be running. There is absolutely no way of telling from this station. The fast train to manchester airport, which doesn't stop, came past, which was promising. It proved that the line was still free. The time for my train came and went, and I began to wonder how I was ever going to get back home. Certainly didn't relish the thought of spending the night at thorne. The train from sheffield arrived on the other platform and I dashed across the line to ask the conductor if he had any information. Turns out the train had been cancelled and his train would be the next to pass, so he invited me onto the train to Scunthorpe, where we turned around and came back, eventually arriving in Sheffield. I was now late for a meal with friends that I had been looking forward to all week. Thankfully e picked me up from the station and we weren't too late.

Inconvenience

On Wednesday I was involved in a car crash on my way to work, and I am now sick of re-running the events that led to the incident, the numerous times I've had to repeat myself to the inquisitive and to the insuarance companies. The result was I was in car number 3 of a four car sandwich. Everyone else was able to drive off, my car was smashed from behind by a van which completely wrote it off. I liked that car too, it was nice, though on the good side at least I don't have to clean up the grated cheese that had escaped from my sandwhich the previous day. It was a job I wasn't relishing. If I was a calvinist I would be celebrating the fact that the crash was all part of God's plan, and something good always comes out of these situations (like not having to clean the car) - thankfully I don't care too much for predestination, nor does it seem does dave walker.
Despite being a bit shaken and stiff from being flung around my car from the impact I was ok, but it has left me in a very inconvenient situation with regard to commuting to work. I'm having to leave super early to catch the hourly train from Sheffield, and then a 1 mile plus walk to the site. It means I get in late and the whole process takes nearly two hours. Three hours on friday as they kindly decided to cancel the train. It's just not fun and makes the work even less enjoyable than normal, who wants to spend around 4 hours a day commuting for a job that isn't particulalry interesting.

New year and all that

Hope you all had a nice Christmas and new year. It's 2007. I've been quite busy, Victoria came to visit after Christmas and we have been away to Prague and London. I'll blog about them in due course, and now that I've changed to blogger beta I may incorporate some changes to the blog design too.