2009, Week 2

The fuzzy happiness of the christmas holiday has worn off, leaving irritable tiredness. Most of the week was spent trying to catch up on sleep by going to bed earlier than normal and then playing round after round of expert suduko on the iPod. Unfortunately this meant I ended up getting to sleep later, annoyed that it took me 50 minutes to complete a game when it takes Jen 20.

Jen was off ill one day this week, which meant I didn't have her driving behind me before I get to the M1. When I take the exit onto the motorway I normally frantically wave at her, and I very almost did it to whomever was driving behind me that day.

Waving at strangers seems to get me in trouble. A few moths back I was driving, minding my own business when a kid in the car in front started giving me a damian-esque stare. I'm guessing it's just British Reserve, but I always tend to avoid eye contact in these situations, hoping the kid will go away. Unfortunately avoiding eye contact meant not looking at the road, which I'm pretty sure is frowned upon. Therefore, despite my 20 years+ experience of looking at things, the little bastard was winning. Not wanting to be outdone, I decided that If I waved at the kid he'd probably get embarrassed and play his evil Derren Brown mind games on someone else. Unfortunately, this slightly backfired as far from embarrassing the kid, it clearly freaked him out. I then had to spend the next 2 minutes not making eye contact with the kid and his concerned mother.

We got the new TV this week, replacing our CRT with a sexy HD TV, which makes our virgin TV signal look even more shit. It's like watching TV with the adobe 'water colour' filter permanently applied. Progress! It does make 'Dead Space' even more scary though. Who every did the sound design on the game deserves an award, or preferably someone jumping out of their cupboard's shouting 'boo' at every opportunity. Let's see how they like it! This is the first game I've played since I was a kid that clearly had a physical effect on me. I'm always quite shakey after I've played, my body clearly pumped with adrenaline. I think the last game that got to me anything like that is 'Alien Trilogy' on the PS1, and that was only the first few levels before it turned into a derivative FPS. Oh, and Sabre Wulf on the Spectrum, that had me running out the room screaming whenever the titular wulfy appeared.

We stayed over at Becky and Matt's on Saturday. On the way down Jen and I were working our way through the family tree as far as we can remember. I was slightly embarrassed that I couldn't really remember my Grandmother's name, on my Mum's side. I don't think the fact that I never met my grandmother is a valid excuse. I think her name was Christa, although this an educated guess based upon that fact that it's one of my sister's middle names. The only interesting thing I know about her is that she was in 'The League of German Girls', which was the female equivalent of the Hitler Youth (this little nugget won me a £10 book voucher for a year 9 report on world war 2, so hey, some good did come out of the Nazi party). You'd think this fact would lead me to ask many more questions about her in the past, yet I didn't. I also know that my Grandfather was a tank driver in the war, so I'd imagine there's a quite interesting story to be told. I'll find out more this week and follow up.

2009, Week 1

2009 started as it did last year, a few people round ours (Becky, Matt & John), alcohol and the girls annihilating the boys on Sing Star (I blame everyone else, and the introduction of Sing Star Abba). Unlike last year, the party finished on the afternoon of the 2nd. As John and I were first up after the night before (not strictly true, I'm pretty sure I woke John up like an annoying kid on christmas morning) we decided to have a go on Gears of War 2 that I borrowed from my brother. We spent the morning on the sofa in sleeping bags, fully clothed. After Becky and Matt had gone, not wanting to upset the status quo we spent the next day and a half in sleeping bags playing GOW and watching a 3 hour IT Crowd Marathon. Best New Years Ever.

On Sunday we saw a preview of Slumdog Millionaire at Leicester Highcross's Showcase Cinema De Lux, thanks to the good people at www.seefilmfirst.com. As we were late we ended up on the front row (which thanks to De Lux's reclining chairs wasn't too bad). There was a couple with a small kid sitting next to us, who's kid kept trying to give her bottle to Jen thinking she was mummy. Normally I'd be annoyed, but hey it's free and it was actually quite funny seeing this kid run around without a care in the world whilst on screen [spoiler] slum kids were having their eyes destroyed by gang masters to increase their begging potential. It was a great film, melodramatic, but countered with gritty realism. Also, it had Paper Planes on the soundtrack, which is always a plus (although it didn't help save Pineapple Express from mediocrity). In fact, i'm not even sure how a kid got into a 15 rated film.

Over Christmas Jen and I were talking about the white stuff. Jen reckoned that it doesn't snow as much as when were kids. I countered (less eloquently then written, of course) that we romanticise memories of snow when were kids, and because of this these moments are permanently committed to memory. Snow was fun when you didn't have to drive expensive fragile sledges (cars), and when throwing an icy ball of pain at whomever you were with wouldn't cause serious rifts in the relationship. As if our omnipotent friend was trying to back me up the first day back to work was after a night of snow (As much I like God helping me prove a point, I can't help but think his messing around with a snow machine meant he really dropped the ball in Gaza)

We bought a new TV from Currys today, although we won't have till Wednesday. I've noticed that I've got into the habit of arguing with sales staff whatever i'm buying something of moderate value. I think I'm always in the right but I'm sure I come across as a bit of dick. Today it was over Curry's overpriced warrantee. Apparently because LCD TVs are new technology we don't know how long they'll last (These Colecos'll rust up on ya' like that!) and the normal manufacturing guarantee doesn't cover you if pixels fail (a half-truth, it will if more then x fail. In any case, if any fail out-of-the box, i'll just return the TV straight away using Curry's handy 21 day returns policy). Despite the half-truths and lies used to try and sell us the warrantee I politely declined. She responded with a look of disbelief, as if I've just shat on her sofa. She asked if i'm really sure I don't want their great warrantee. This set me off and I pointed the faults of her aforementioned reasons for buying their warrantee. I argued that I have accidental damage on my house cover anyway, so why purchase it again? She countered that I would have to pay an excess on home insurance, I countered that my home insurance excess was less then the cost of their overpriced cover. This went on for a few minutes whilst Jen stood there looking a bit embarrassed. The point was, it didn't get me anywhere, I'm pretty sure I didn't trigger some sort of sales epiphany: 'what an enlightening gentleman, I have seen the errors of my ways and will ensure that I'm 100% honest with any future customer, even if it means I cannot trick them into to buying our over-priced warrantee despite that fact I would get handsome reward'. So an extra new years resolution (taking the count to 4) is to stop getting into pointless arguments, I only come across as a self-righteous dick.

I've bought a fair few CDs this week. I had very little new music last year and as a result the stuff I did get was played to death. Some initial reactions: Santagold - Santagold, solid pop record, although I'm already fed up of the few tracks that have been played to death on adverts. Crystal Castles - Crystal Castles - Nice to hear something legitimately different, the chopped up vocals on opening track is awesome, although I was listening to it at work and freaked out for a few seconds when I was convinced I was played NES in the office. Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes, Pitchfork's album of the year. This wasn't what I'd expected, very laid back, I can see it being a grower. Cut Copy - In Ghost Colours, Another Pitchfork pick and I really enjoyed it on first play. Sounding like LCD Soundsystem and Rapture with a careful measure of 80s (see Ladyhawke) I can see this becoming something of an obsession this year, if not a little throwaway (see Ladyhawke).

Socking it to the man

Jen got me a shiney iPod touch for christmas, which I'm really paranoid about scratching and/or dropping. I've got a silicone case (£2, thanks ebay) but that still doesn't protect the screen. Apple do some funky iPod socks but they cost a shocking £19. Being cheap I decided to make some myself. Jen found some child gloves in pound land that have worked a treat. A bit of cutting and sewing and I now have some awesome bespoke iPod socks, sans the apple logo for £1.

Some batteries I bought from Sainsbury's had an interesting message on the back...


I wouldn't normally microwave batteries, but now i'm confused.

My Mac is Self-Aware

A while ago my favourite bit torrent client 'Azureus' rebranded itself as 'Vuze', changing from a simple client to a full blown media 'experience'. Presumably the changes were made to try and make the author some money, which is fair enough. Unfortunately as a result of adding these 'features' the software became a bloated pile of crap. So I thought I'd leave some feedback. Fortunately, the captcha did the work for me.

That went quick...

2008 seems to have gone really quick and despite my best intentions i've managed to avoid blogging about a lot of the stuff I've done this year. The whole point of the blog was to try and persist some of the more transient memories so that in years to come I can reminisce about the mundane events of 2008. (I blame EJB3 for my odd usage of 'persist' and 'transient' in this sentence).

Unfortunately, if Will Smith was to zap me with his Men In Black style memory be gone ^TM sonic screwdriver, wiping my memories of the last year, reading this blog would only tell me; my iPod lasted longer than expected, video game covers are misleading, I like flowers, my tomatoes didn't work out very well, my best man's speech was acceptable and that I can't kill a rabbit.

50 year old Dave might read that stuff, but to be honest I think i'd remember a fair bit of it (damn the gaze of that dying bunny, it will haunt my soul forever ... sob). So, one of my many new year's resolutions is to blog more, even if I don't have anything that interesting to say, making this more of a diary then a blog.

So, in the spirit of the above ramble, here's some thoughts on 2008 that unless you're 50 year old Dave will probably want to skip...

Music - I've not bought as many CDs as I'd like this year, with my major obsession being Midlake & Sigur Ros despite that fact that the former haven't released anything this year and the latter released a good but slightly below par album this year (Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust). Notable mention should go to the eponymous Ladyhawke album, which I've really enjoyed, but sure I will stop listening to soon, never to listen to again. It's a fun album, but a bit throw away. I've discovered TV on the Radio as well (late to the party as usual), whos album 'Dear Science...' is great.

Haven't been to many gigs. Early in the year was Radiohead at Manchester LCC with Neil and Corrine, which was good but lacking in intimacy. Support was from Bats for Lashes (never did get into her much) and MGMT (who i thought was boring at the time, but actually now really like the first half of their album Oracular Spectacular). The only other 'proper' gig was Sigur Ros at Alexandra Palace just before christmas which was fantastic. There was alot of slow stuff, but the light show made the ambience electric, culminating a full water fall across the front of the stage, rear projection onto the water fall and glitter cannons. Apparently it's being released on DVD this year, woo!

Seen a bit of comedy, Boosch at NIA (funny, but bloody awful visibility) and Mitch Benn and Luff Town Hall (well worth the £13)

On a semi-related note, I start to learn keyboard/piano earlier this year on a slightly knackered casio I bought from Christine. Unfortunately the sticky keys meant that I had to turn touch-sensitivity off, which meant I couldn't put any expression into the music. In 2009 I'm planning to buy a full length keyboard with the proceeds from whoelsewriteslike.com.

Film - My favourite two films of the year have to be 'There Will be Blood' (actually late 2007) and 'The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford'. It sounds stupid but they're both real films, beautifully shot, amazingly acted and sticking with me long after viewing.

Games - It was the year of making music on plastic instruments. Jen got me Guitar Hero III (wii) at christmas which I was hooked to for months. Then in summer I got rock band (xbox) which I must of spent hours drumming on, convincing myself that I'm a semi proficient drummer, which is bollocks because I can't drum unless I have a tv screen in front of me saying what to hit.

Interweb - It's all about podcasts, highlights being Collings and Herring, Adam & Joe, Mark Kermode, Phil & Phil's perfect 10, Stephen Fry (infrequent but brilliant) and Russell Brand (fun whilst it lasted).

Holidays - Went to Barcelona for the second time in two years with Becky & Matt, followed by a cosy few days in the parent's Caravan in Wales.

Phew, that's enough rambling for now, told you to skip it!

Bring on the wall!

Two years after moving in and we've still not finished work on the house. One part that's annoyed me for ages is the 3 x 6 metre stairs wall. It's a funny shaped wall and because of this trying to hang picture on it would just look a mess, like an Ikea monster had vomited chunks of contemporary art onto the wall.

A few months back I decided that we should have a single image on the wall that fits in with the odd shape. To keep things cheap this invariably meant we'd have to paint something on to it by hand.

I knew from the start that it would either look incredibly cool or like the work of a crayon weilding manboy. So, to reduce risk we took a methodogical approach that involved photoshop, a projector, a macbook, step ladder, wall paint from the shed, ikea pencils, a week of painting & a bit of guess work. The actual pattern is derived from a collection of Photoshop Brushes, available here. You can load these in GIMP using the instructions here. Here's a few pictures:


The scale plan we knocked up in Photoshop


Projecting the plan


This photo is only part of the image, it actually goes further down the stairs with some huge flowers.

My dad once painted an awesome Star Wars wall mural in mine and my brother's bedroom (I'll try and dig out some pictures). He did this all free hand in multicolour, with a little help from the 'how to draw Star Wars' book, which makes our monotone technologically assisted job seem a bit weak. If only there was a 'How to draw Evil Dead II' book. That would be awesome. We'd need a lot of red paint though.

[Updated post on 14/12/08 to point to the actual brushes file I used and explain how to open brush files in GIMP]