 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
----------
---------- ----------
----------
----------
---------
----------
|
My Diary/Blog For the Month of August 2010 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Tuesday 31st August 2010 |
| 08:33 BST The ridge of high pressure sitting over Britain is giving us some rather good weather, and should do so for a few more days yet. The sky is nearly all blue this morning, and the shining sun should start to warm up the chilly night air to around 21° C. That's not that warm, but pleasant enough. Yesterday was mostly bright and sunny, but there were a few times when some dark clouds passed overhead. I completely forgot to write anything yesterday after getting really engrossed in designing DVDs. After a few shaky starts trying some Windows software I had lying around I gave up on that and tried an open source/free solution. Checking what was available from the Ubuntu package manager I found a couple of possibilities, and the one I settled for is the most excellent DVD Styler. What I didn't realise until I checked to see if there was a web page for it, and obviously found one, is that it is a cross platform application, and there are installers for Windows and MacOSX as well as Linux. DVD Styler is a really excellent piece of software that makes all the software that comes "free" with disk burners, TV cards, and the like, look like mere toys. Unless Sonic Solution's expensive DVDit has changed dramatically between version 5 and version 6, then DVD Styler leaves it in the dust ! I am so impressed that I might break a habit of a lifetime and actually donate some money to the makers of DVD Styler (there is a donate button on their website). I seemed to spend hours either in front of the PC, or waiting for it to do stuff. (There was very little waiting for DVD Styler - on my 2.8GHz PC it just wizzed through the encoder, and the results were crisp and clean). At the end of the day I had made a short demo demo DVD for The Bluesicians. (That's not a typo - it really is a demo of a demo DVD) Now I have mastered the essentials of DVD Styler I will be making a slightly more ambitious demo DVD for the band, but my demo demo is enough give the band an idea of what the finished product may look like. Tonight I will probably spend a few more hours doing "video stuff", although there is a small chance I will be having a quick beer with Chris (lead guitarist of the band) to show him the results of my dabbling. I think he works locally, and I've sent out a message inviting him to call me to arrange a meet anytime this week. So if it doesn't happen tonight it may happen one night soon. Meanwhile, here's a sneak preview (in low quality) of one of the songs that will be on the demo DVD. |
| Wednesday 25th August 2010 |
| 14:09 BST With every passing minute the rain gets heavier and heavier. The day started dry but cloudy. Then soon after midday the rain put in it's first shy appearance. Now the sky is getting quite dark, and a weather forecast just an hour or so old says we are in for some really heavy rain as evening approaches, and the rain will continue overnight. It may even be still raining when I go to work. Yesterday turned out to be better than forecast. There were a few brief showers, but there was also lots of sunshine. Overall it was a pleasant day, and although it did get pleasantly warm there was none of the mugginess that spoilt the days before. I didn't go into work today. At the moment I am listed as sick, but I'll change that to a days holiday when I go in tomorrow because there is nothing much wrong with me - now ! Earlier on I suffered two things that lost me a lot of sleep. The first was that I was unable to shut up my noisy brain when I went to bed last night. I was in bed with the lights out at 9pm, and despite feeling tired I lay awake thinking of classic music tracks and possible names for a band. It was gone 11pm when I finally managed to fall asleep. A few hours later I woke up suffering from trapped wind. After 10 or 15 minutes in the toilet making disgusting noises, but little else, I went back to bed feeling tolerably OK. Some time passed, maybe an hour, maybe two, and I did the same thing again. The third time was more productive, and my troubles were beginning to be over. I had to get up for one more visit before the worst was over. When 5am finally came round I felt like I had hardly slept. As the clock ticked on I became increasingly sure that I was too tired to go to work, and there was also evidence that my gut trouble was not as completely cured as I had earlier hoped. Faced with that I stayed in and waited until 8am when I phoned up work with the good news. Once work was informed I went back to bed and slept until just gone 11am. Now I feel as if I have had enough sleep, but hopefully not so much to make sleeping tonight difficult. Since then I have been to Tesco and bought a dozen heavy cans of catfood. Well each can is not heavy, but a dozen are, and even when balanced with four 2 litre bottles of Diet Coke in the other hand it's still a lot to lug home. While looking for pictures of doughnuts to misappropriate (but subtly edit to disguise their origin) I came across some "interesting" artwork that I felt I had to edit as well.  Apparently I am free to
use this image - "You may use this image for free on your website only
if you credit ChristArt.com".
I'm not sure what they'll think about the bit I tagged on the end of
their message, but I am sure these Christian chappies are full of
forgiveness, turning the other cheek, etc. I was going to add
"specially if you are a Catholic choirboy", but I thought that was
rubbing the salt into the wound just a litle too deeply. See, even us
heathens have our morals too !
|
| Monday 23rd August 2010 |
| 07:20 BST It rained all through the night, and it's raining now. The rain started in earnest a little before 9pm last night, but at no point has it reached an intensity of biblical proportions as forecast. When I saw the Countryfile 5 day forecast on TV last night it was clear that the very worst of the rain would be passing more to the north of London and into Essex/East Anglia. I didn't entirely trust the forecast, but as it was being made only a few hours in advance of reality I had more hope that it was going to be closer to reality than more long term forecasts. For instance, the long term forecast is that Wednesday will be the driest day this week, and it would not surprise me if it snowed then. Making the wild assumption that some of the forecast for the next five days has some affinity for reality, it seems that much of this week is going to be quite damp in a way that summer shouldn't be, and mid autumn could be. The big difference is that mid afternoon temperatures should stay in the low twenties, and in other circumstances that would be a pleasant temperature. The problem is that it is not dry heat from the sun, but warm soggy air blowing in off the Atlantic. So it's probably going to feel rather nasty as I sweat away in the humidity under loathsome leaden skies. Strangely enough I feel fairly good right now when I ought to be feeling quite bad. I have to admit it was slightly unpleasant coming to work. My cagoule kept the rain off much of my body except for my face and legs (I could have put my waterproof bottoms on as well but decided not to). In theory I should have been dry, but even at this early time in the morning the air is still (almost) warm and (definitely) soggy, and although my cagoule is alleged to permit perspiration to escape, my shirt started getting damp with sweat as I made my way into work. There was one factor that made this worse. I should have been feeling something akin to unwell after eating all too much unhealthy food yesterday. Oddly enough I felt rather well, and seemed to have enough energy to rush around a lot (and hence get sweaty under my cagoule). When I look back at some of the worst things I ate I can see some almost convincing excuses as to why I am not as bad as I thought I would be. The several packets of crisps I ate were small, mere 20gm (or 22mg) packets instead of the more common 40gm, and they were billed as 30% lower in fat. The label didn't actually shout what that 30% was compared to...........a typical undersea oil leak in the Gulf Of Mexico maybe, but they did have a sort of dryness that other crisps don't have. The excessive lump of chocolate I ate was 50% cocoa solids, and dark so it had less lard in it, and less sugar than typical milk chocolate. The portion of shrimps I ate with squirts of both hot chilli sauce and garlic mayonaise are too complicated to speculate about about, and the bag of monkey nuts I managed to consume over the course of several hours did have lots of healthy fibre, and gallons of high calorie unextracted ground nut oil in them (probably). The thing is, that is all I ate all day, and in terms of bulk it was not all that much, and maybe if I worked out the calorific value of it all it would still be less than an average nuclear reactor. The most important thing is that I feel unexpectedly "not too bad" today, and it is even possible that over the weekend I have recovered my sleep deficit. Waking up at 4.30am was earlier than I wanted this morning, but even as I woke up I was aware that it was hard to stay asleep. It maybe something unique to me, although I doubt it, but after long enough in bed I find it hard to find a comfortable position. It is the reverse of when sleep doesn't come at night. The mattress grows lumps that you never realised were there before, and somehow the pillows refuse to conform to the shape of your head. To add to that discomfort is the difficulty of trying to find the right place and position of your arms. I expect I am weird, but being in bed on the threshold between sleep and non sleep brings as much discomfort as commuting on an over crowded train. Being wide awake, or being fully asleep are as good as gold, but crossing that threshold is like death itself. |
| Friday 20th August 2010 |
| 08:33 BST The day started off very nice with a lot of blue sky and temperate breezes, but it seems to be deteriorating rather too quickly now. The last patches of blue were disappearing as I walked from the station into work, and the nice breeze started to feel a bit humid. High humidity was one thing I remember being mentioned on last nights weather forecast. So it's not just me imagining it. I believe that there is a fair chance of rain today, but it may only be in the form of passing showers. Yesterday remained dry, and moderately warm, but a bit more sunshine would have been nice. Last night I tried yet another variation to my journey home from work. This time I took the train from Earlsfield station but changed at Clapham Junction for a train to Forest Hill. It was actually a complicated way to go, but only because of my impatience. I arrived at Clapham Junction station with loads of time to wait until my conection arrived. rather than wait I took the first train to Wandsorth Common station. There was one positive advanatage in doing that. There are no barriers to pass through, and you can literally take 3 paces to leave the non smoking platform area to enter the real world where you can smoke on the street. I still had plenty of time to wait there until the 16:18 train to Crystal Palace (the earliest possible train I could get if I walked directly to the station at a fast pace - which I did manage once). At Crystal Palace I changed to yet another train to get to Forest Hill. It's a lot of mucking about, and I get home around 30 minutes later, but the savings are handy. I have now found the definitive answer to my guesswork and confusion about Oyster Card fares. By checking the fares to any single journey at this web page - http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tfl/tickets/faresandtickets/farefinder/current/Default.aspx - I found that travel that starts before 6.30am is considered off peak, as is travel before 4.00pm. If I start my journey to work on the 6.33am train, as I often do, and I manage to "touch in" before 06:30am I am charged £2 for travel between Catford and Waterloo East. If I get a later train it is £2.60, as is the train from Waterloo to Earlsfield. The same fares apply in the opposite direction. It is rare that I am not at Earlsfield before 4pm, so usually I would pay £4.60 to get home from work. Last night, by avoiding the inner fare zones I was charged £1.50 from Earlsfield to Forest Hill, and £1.20 on the bus from Forest Hill to Catford. My brains calculator function says that is a saving of £1.90 compared to the usual. There was one day last week when I walked to Wandsworth Common station, and walked from Forest Hill to home. That only cost £1.40, and so I saved £3.20, but I have to confess it was hard work, and I doubt I will be doing that very often. I think I am going to try and go home via Forest Hill more often, although I still cannot work out which is worse - those bloody stairs at Earlsfield or an extra 20 minute walk that is mostly uphill. Tonight I should be going to see All You Need at The British Queen in Locksbottom, but I am not sure if I will make it. I feel very tired this morning, and right now I feel like I will want to be in bed, preferably fast asleep, before the band have even played their first note. I certainly had a strong urge to go ack to bed instead of coming to work this morning. Mostly I blame it on Smudge who somehow managed to persuade me to get up and feed her at 1.20am this morning. I thought she was desperate to go out, and rather than have anything unpleasant to clear up I preferred to get up and go downstairs with her. Once downstair she just sat down in front of her food plate and stared at me. I could have let her starve, but I just put some food down for her and rushed back to my bed. Maybe I will regain some energy during the day, and if I do maybe I will make that gig, but I also cannot shake from my mind that I will have to be up reasonably early tomorrow to make the place look slightly more civilised for when Aleemah comes to visit. At least I can have an early night tomorrow, and on Sunday I could theoretically stay in bed all day if I wished (except that I am hoping to go out exploring on Sunday). |
| Wednesday 18th August 2010 |
| 08:04 BST In the three and half hours since I woke up the weather has changed from not bad to rather good. It is still a bit cool, but the sky has cleared to 100% blue, and of course the sun is shining. Those accursed weather forecasters say it won't last, and before the day has a chance to get close to hot it will cloud over, and by 4pm it could even be raining. Yesterday was, on the whole, rather dull, but the afternoon became horridly warm and humid. Most of the time the sticky humidity did not bother me, but when I left work to go home I found that it was sticky work just walking to the station. I don't know if it was just the stickiness, but I didn't feel like I wanted to expend a lot of energy. At least not all in one go. I couldn't face going up those horrible three flights of stairs at Earlsfield station so I carried on walking to Wandsworth Common station. It may have been slightly irrational selecting to walk an extra 1.5 miles (up a slow hill) rather than rush up those three flights of stairs, and given how thick the air seemed to breathe, and maybe it was. The key thing here is the word "rush" for there is no other way of going up those stairs. With trains to Waterloo every 3 or 4 minutes at 4pm you have always just missed a train, and late for the next one. Brain mechanics probably have a word for it, but I'll just admit to plain old fashioned madness when I feel an overwhelming compulsion to rush up those stairs, and try and reach the far end of the platform before the next train arrives. Walking to Wandsworth Common station seemed like the easy option. Although it may be true that the horror of the stairs was actually only just strong enough to affect my decision because I knew I ought to have done the walk anyway. Walking to Wandsworth Common was indeed an unpleasant and soggy affair. I couldn't walk as fast as I wanted, and I ended up missing the slightly earlier train that would have saved my 10 minutes by changing at Crystal Palace station. I noticed that there was a warning of some disruption because of problems in the London Bridge area, and that caused a few more minutes delay on my journey on a direct train to Forest Hill. At Forest Hill I just missed a bus by 20 or 30 seconds, but another bus came along within 10 minutes, and I was soon on my way to Catford. Back in Catford I went and did some shopping in Tesco before going home. There were a few things I wanted, but I also had a couple of vouchers with £2 off the price of selected boozes. I couldn't really afford to buy any spirits, but I did not want to waste those vouchers so I took along some of the Clubcard vouchers I had been hoarding for the last 18 months or so. In fact I took too many along with me. After buying a 70cl bottle of Grants whiskey, a 70cl bottle of Cointreau (both £2 off), and a few other bits and pieces I found I had taken sufficient vouchers to reduce my total bill to £4.53, and I still had £11 of unused vouchers left. Well those vouchers, and some more will help pay for some more booze the next time I shop in there. I think I have vouchers for £2 off a bottle of rum and a botle of vodka, and I may as well use them while I can. I was quite careful not to buy anything else that was high in calories or fat (apart from one small packet of spiced beef stuff). Most significantly I bought some more fresh fish and a cauliflower. I had one packet of mixed fish with half a head of cauliflower for my dinner last night. I have never stopped to find if I am deluding myself, but I believe the whole meal was quite low in calories and very low in fat. It was cooked in at least a pint and a half of water flavoured with a fish stock cube, and I drank all that stock as part of the meal, and very filling it was too. After two nights of (probably) healthy eating, and extra exercise too, I am feeling almost healthy this morning. I certainly feel a bit thinner (although that is total delusion), or perhaps it is less delusional to say that my gut feels less saggy. A few internal organs may still be a little tender, but the improvement since Sunday suggests they may even recover. My main complaint is that my right ankle and right leg felt unusually stiff this morning. Tonight I will be having the other half of the head of cauliflower with some smoked mackerel once again cooked in a lot of stock. After three nights of eating this type of food I might even find I have lost a few ounces ! I am not sure if I want to do any xtra walking tonight. It's possible that I might feel the urge, but it's equally possible it will be pouring with rain. I have my waterproof "hoodie" with me, but I am not sure if I want to walk that far in the rain ! |
| Sunday 15th August 2010 |
| 09:54 BST The sun is taking it's time, but it looks like it may break through the milky white clouds that envelop the sky at the moment. Would it be too much to hope for that today may actually not be depressingly gloomy ? After three or four days of obnoxious, almost autumn like weather I think we deserve a return to something that feels more like summer. I haven't seen a weather forecast for days now, and I am not sure what to predict, but it feels like today may be a nice day. Yesterday was a horrible sort of day. It wasn't just that the overall weather was cold, damp and gloomy, but I was having a very frustrating time preparing some video clips to upload to Myspace. The actual process of transferring the digital video from my camcorder to the PC is straightforward, and happens in real time. Simply topping and tailing, adding a fade in and fade out, and a caption is fairly quick and simple, but then there is a long wait as the completed clip is rendered down and stored on my hard drive. My editing software only has a few settings to export the completed clip, and none of these provides a small compact file suitable for uploading to the internet. So I had to experiment a lot to find a good compromise between file size and quality. There was a further complication to this process. The lighting in The Chatterton Arms was very dim when I "filmed" The Bluesiscians playing, and although my camcorder coped with it rather well, the pictures are a bit grainy. All that grain adds so much detail that the transcoding process is slowed down, and the output file size is increased. Eventually I had two clips ready to upload. I sent the to Myspace which promptly mangled them when it transcoded them into it's display file format. I searched their website for help, and in particular information on the recommended display size, but no help was forthcoming. Next I tried converting my "master files" from full "DVD" resolution to cif format (352x288). The video now had the resolution of a VHS tape, and the grain made it look like it was mastered on VHS, but the file sized was reduced and quicker to upload. Best of all was that the playback from the Myspace web site now looked reasonably smooth. To do just two clips took almost a whole frustrating day to do. Admittedly there were long periods of time when I was able to walk away and let the computer get on with number crunching by itself, but it was still deeply depressing. Under such circumstances I ended up eating far too much food, and eventually I started on the Scotch. Normally that would just make things far worse, but I must have hit on the perfect dosage because when I finally went to bed a lot of my depression had lifted. So what did I achieve ? Well I probably put a few more pounds on, but I also achieved what I set out to do, and here's one example which I can't see yet, but hopefully cutting and inserting some code into this web page will reveal a video player once I have published this web page. The Bluesiscians - Take It Easy Ken | MySpace Video (I had to stop there, publish the half finished page, and see if it worked OK - It did !) The video is still a little jerky in places, but I don't think it is too bad. Once it has finished playing there are some of my other uploads to choose from in the video screen. Now for today ! I think I am going to end up doing some more video editing/uploading. Now I have a better idea of what to aim for it should be less frustrating. On the other hand if the afternoon is reasonably bright I may try and go for a long walk. I say try because after my gluttony yesterday I am not sure if I will feel much like walking. A lot depends on whether I can refrain from eating anything this morning. Anything more than the small portion of couscous I have already eaten that is ! Maybe there is a third option, and that is to see if Kevin fancies a quick lunchtime pint. I could do a bit of editing now, have a couple of pints, and resume editing a bit later on. Perhaps having a good excuse to walk completely away from the computer for a few hours might be the answer to the wrist slittingly desperation of trying endure all the slow motion life of video transcoding ! At this point you may remember that I previously mentioned that I am doing all this video stuff on one of my lower powered computers, and that everything would be a lot faster on my fastest machine. You may wonder why I am not using that faster machine, and there is a very simple reason. The slower computer has the most comfortable seat for long periods of work ! It seems that unknowingly I am some sort of masochist for not wanting to make life easier for myself by moving either the PC or the chair, or maybe I am just lazy, or maybe it's just that the way things are has proved reliable, or it's something to do with colour co-ordination between the computers, rooms, and furniture. I don't know, you decide, I've already overworked my braincell getting this far ! |
| Friday 13th August 2010 |
| 08:46 BST It's my theory that today could have better weather than yesterday. It was very bland yesterday. The sun didn't come out until as late as 5pm, and then not for very long. The rest of the time it was a grey monotone sort of day. At least it didn't rain, and the temperature was above cold. This morning the sky is horizon to horizon light grey cloud, but I get the impression it is slightly thinner, and more likely to break up than yesterday. It actually feel unpleasantly on the cool side this morning. If I were going out right now I think I would be inclined to put a coat on, and it's definitely too cool for shorts. Although I might still consider shorts if I was going on a long walk, but I am not. I am going out tonight though, and I hope it is a bit warmer then. It's difficult to know whether to say that yesterday was a successful day or not. Ultimately I didn't achieve that much, but what I did achieve too a very long time. So it was worth taking the day off work - probably. One small bit of the day was definitely successful. I was put in touch with the manufacturer of my new monitor buy the company who supplied it to me. They are sending me a new power supply free of charge to replace the faulty one, and with luck it will be waiting for me when I get back to work on Monday. A rather large portion of the rest of my day yesterday was used for just one project. I attempted, and succeeded in making a 12 minute video with the scantiest of resources. Then I spent an age repeatedly trying to upload it to a web site until the upload finally worked quite late in the evening. With the limited material available to me the video is a bit on the sparse side, and features a black screen for maybe 50% of the time. If I knew the right bullshit I would claim it was art, and maybe it is to some who dig that sort of thing, but the truth is that I just padded out a sound track with some photos and captions. The curious can probably find out by having a look around here. I started the video project in the morning, and I intended to contact Kevin to see if he fancied a quick lunchtime pint, but before I realised it, it was already 1.30pm. By then I was also feeling like some breakfast would be a good idea. I needed a few other things so I went and bought some "breakfast" in Tesco. I may have been a little over enthusiastic because I felt quite bloated by the time I had finished eating. It wasn't until quite late in the evening that I had another small snack. One irritating, and yet highly useful thing about doing video stuff on the computer is that there can be very long periods of time when the computer is doing lots of hard work. Admittedly if I were using my fastest machine these things would be a lot faster than on the relatively low power machine that I actually did the work on. For instance, while the computer was doing all the number crunching to convert all my editing into one continuous movie about 50 minutes passed. It took a similar time to convert the huge resulting file down to a file small enough to use on the internet. While all this "number crunching" too place I was able to lay on my bed reading, and/or dozing off, and that also allowed my digestive system to make some headway on my too large lunch. Times like yesterday make me yearn back to the time when I was paid a huge amount of redundancy money when I left my first job. For maybe the first year I was free to be creative, or be lazy, and still have spare money in my pocket. When I retire I hope I can still find stuff to be creative, but that is both a long way off yet, and yet sometimes it feels it is getting closer far too soon. Of course by that time it may be that my income will be so miniscule that I will be forced to selling matches on a street corner. On the other hand the worlds finanaces may take a step in the right direction and my income may be sufficient for a slightly bohemian lifestyle. It would help if by that time I had given up smoking, drinking, eating, feeding insatiable cats, and probably most importantly, breathing. That would make for a cheap existence ! My plans for today may include doing the washing up, and some light housework in between a few naps, and a bit of TV. One definite thing I hope to do is to go out to see The Bluesicians play in Bromley tonight. I am looking forward to it, but there are a lot of unknowns involved that have negative influences. For starters I don't know the pub, and I have no idea if it is going to be unpleasantly packed (and maybe packed with unpleasant people). The idea of going out in the evening after spending all day indoors brings some of it's own problems. I always prefer to do any travelling on an empty stomach. So to go out tonight means not eating anything after midday, or ideally even earlier than that, and that is going to be tricky and involve will power that I rarely have in abundance. However if I can overcome these irrational fears I think I will enjoy myself. |
| Thursday 12th August 2010 |
| 08:53 BST This morning is not exactly how I pictured it would be. The sky is a milky grey colour, and the prospects for any sunshine seem remote at the moment. Maybe later on the cloud covering will break up and the sun will burst through. At least it is dry now, and with the temperatures in the mid teens it's not that cold. I am sure the forecast for today was for plenty of sunny intervals, and the temperature around 24° C. The only problem with that is that I am relying on a forecast that is now 48 hours old. I didn't see the weather forecast last night for a more, but still hopeless, accurate forecast. My new monitor was delivered to work yesterday as planned, and I lugged it home on the trains with me. The reason I missed the weather forecast last night was because curiosity got the better of me, and I had to try out the new monitor as soon as I got home. Upon plugging it all in I found it didn't work. The supplied power brick was faulty, but it worked OK using the power brick of the old monitor. 
The monitor in question is a Digimate L-1962WD TFT 19-inch wide screen monitor. It has built in speakers that were alleged to be fairly good quality, and for built in speakers they are possibly slightly better than others, but in reality they are crap compared to even the cheap external speakers connected to this PC. The resolution of the screen is 1366x768, and on reflection I don't like it. It is a bit on the low side, but mostly it confirms my preference for good old 4:3 aspect monitors. The monitor it is replacing had a resolution of 1280x1024, which is 4:3 (or near as dammit) and provided loads of screen space to do stuff, and my eyes didn't have to swivel from side to side to see the edges of the screen ! On the whole it was a bad choice to make. The biggest negative point was the faulty power supply brick, but I'll ignore that, and it may be possible that the supplier may send me a new one free of charge (I have contacted their customer support about this). On the plus side it does provide a crisp clear picture with plenty of contrast, and my first impressions are that it does display photos rather better than the cheap display I bought for my downstairs PC, and possibly better than the monitor it is replacing. I have now started the first of two days I booked as holiday away from work. I intended to go out somewhere today, but at the moment I don't feel all that inclined to go out under these gloomy skies. At least not for any long distance exploration. It is possible that I may go out exploring locally though. If I do it will be to check out two pubs that I may want to visit for a couple of gigs. They are The Chatterton Arms in Bromley where The Bluesiscians are due to play tomorrow night, and The British Queen in Locksbottom where All You Need are playing the Friday of next week. |
| Wednesday 11th August 2010 |
| 08:24 BST After a very wet day yesterday it is my pleasure to report that the rain has gone away for a while (maybe only a short while). There is a fair amount of cloud in the sky, but it's all very high misty and whispy stuff that poses no threat, but does dim the sunshine. There has been some sunshine already this morning, and I expect we will have more sunny intervals through the day. Yesterday was relatively cool, but today should see temperatures rise to 23° C. That is supposed to be around the seasonal average, but it seems a bit poor to me. I don't feel 100% this morning, and the blame probably lays with my enthusiasm for finishing off a rapidly going stale bag of chocolate chip cookies. They have probably raised my blood sugar level too high, and that in turn has probably raised my blood pressure. Of course there is also an alternative explanation. I have had a very slight sore throat on a couple of brief occasions recently, and now my throat feels a bit tickly. Maybe I am coming down with a summer cold or something ? Now is either a good time or a bad time to get a cold. I am taking tomorrow and Friday off work. There is no particular reason for this. I just fancied a break, and the opportunity to go out exploring somewhere. If I do have a mild summer cold coming on I will be off work anyway, and so won't lose any money, and there is plenty of stuff I can, and even want to do indoors that wouldn't be affected by any but the drippiest of colds. Friday is forecast to be wet, cold, and gloomy so in all probability I'll be staying in then anyway. One aspect where suffering from a cold would be a great inconvenience is my desire to go and see The Bluesiscians play at The Chatterton Arms on Friday night. I don't normally go out late on a Friday, or any night for that matter, but with this week being "adopt a band"* week I feel I would like to see my adopted band play there. * I thought "adopt a band" week was my own invention until I Googled it. I now see there is an Adopt A Band website. Their idea is a bit more upmarket than mine, but the idea of having a special week for it still remains my own invention, or so it seems. Today will, or ought to, have a few bright points. My new monitor should be delivered to me here at work. The one I ordered seems to be a well specified but cheap monitor with allegedly good quality speakers built in. How they actually sound when music is played through them remains to be seen, but I expect that they will actually be very mediocre. It is a scientifically proven fact * that you can't get good sound out of anything less than a combined mid range and tweeter with 8 inch bass speaker in a solidly built British oak cabinet. * entry number 12,913,277 of a Google search - I checked every result given, honest :-) |
| Monday 9th August 2010 |
| 07:55 BST Today promises to be a good day as far as the weather is concerned. There are some clouds in the sky now, but much of the sky is blue, and the sun is shining. I suspect that today will be very much like yesterday, but maybe with just a bit more blue sky. Yesterday was quite sunny with temperatures of around 23 - 24° C. There were a few times when the sun ducked behind the clouds, and there were two times when I did fear that we might be in for a shower. I went out for a walk yesterday, and what a walk it turned out to be ! My plan was to find a pub that The Bluesiscians will be playing an afternoon gig on the 28th August. The pub is called The Fox And Hounds, and it is in the middle of nowhere, or more precisely a couple of miles west of Shoreham station. That "couple of miles" seems so simple, but as I found out it was far more complex than that ! The first complication was that when my train arrived at Shoreham station none of the doors would open in the carriage I was in. I tried to go to the next carriage, but by the time I got to the doors in that carriage the train started to pull out of the station. I was left with no choice but to carry on to Otford station. I could have waited there almost half an hour to get the train back to Shoreham, but I decided to walk to the pub from there. For some reason my mobile phone could not lock onto any GPS satelites until I had already walked a few hundred yards uphill. "Uphill" carries some significance. In fact it carries a hell of a lot of significance because the other complication that makes those "couple of miles" a useless description is that it is very hilly around those parts. (Personally I would say mountainous !). Having locked onto the sat-nav satelites I could plot the course I took, and in particular the climbs and descents I had to make.  On the graph above my
starting
point is on the left, and I first had to climb around 120m (approx
400ft) then drop down into a small valley before climbing back up 60m
to the pub. After one pint in the pub I covered a much of the route
again until I diverged to go down an incredibly steep descent to
Shoreham station.
The first big downhill bit on the way to the pub was a long narrow country lane with the curious name of Magpie Bottom, although my OS map seemed to suggest that the place at the bottom of this shallow valley was called Magpie Bottom.  Some of the views from
the top
were quite spectacular, but the magnificence is never quite the same by
photograph. I guess you really have to be there feeling the sun and the
wind on your face as you pick out its and pieces on the horizon. Near
the pub there was a small gap in the trees and I could see right down
the valley and in the distance the tall buildings of London's
Docklands area.
 I took the picture above
while
still only halfway up the first big climb. Deep in the valley below
runs the railway line from Swanley to Sevenoaks, and up in the rolling
hills to the right there is a big white cross that is probably supposed
to scare away non-believers like me.
 The
final bit of the first half
of my walk was to cross the corn field above to the pub visible in the
distance. (Strictly speaking it is a maize field where baby
corn-on-the-cobs are growing up to become big corn-on-the-cobs !)
Finally, puffing and panting and dripping with sweat, I made it to the
pub.
 Of course having got to
the
pub I had to get back to the station, and I must confess I was dreading
it. It had felt like really hard work getting there, but after a
refreshing pint of Kronenberg I seemed to regain a little strength and
set out on my weary way. I took it really slowly going back up Magpie
Bottom (well you would, wouldn't you !!). I was still puffing and
wheezing when I got to the top, but it wasn't quite as bad as I
imagined it would be. From then on it was almost level road until the
steep descent down to the station. It was actually almost like hard
work going down that steep path, and I was quite happy when I reached
the bottom.
The object of the excessive exercise was to see how easy it would be to get to the pub on the day The Bluesiscians play there. I think the answer is "bloody difficult", and yet I might possibly attempt it. Providing I can get out the train at Shoreham OK, and providing I can get up that incredibly steep path from the station to the top of the first hill without dying, I reckon I could still enjoy myself. I was quite peckish when I got back to Catford, and I knew I didn't have any proper food at home that would not take a fair bit of preparation before I could eat it. So using some restraint I bought some grilled peri-peri chicken wings and a bag of chips. If after eating that I had gone for a snooze, which I really could have done with, I would have been fine, but I started watching some TV. That was fatal because it gave me a grade A munchies attack. I ended up eating all sorts of crap, and totally wiped out any gains I might have made from my rather severe exercise earlier. This morning I feel sort of good. I can still feel where my "breathing muscles" were working extra hard, but my feet and legs feel fine. Curiously I have a bit of shoulder ache and my right wrist seems slightly sore or stiff or something. I am not sure how the shoulders and wrist ache could relate to my arduous walk yesterday. So maybe it's just of those things - old age, syphilis, alopeacia, Tourettes syndrome, or something similar, although my money's on Denoblien Purple Plague. Tonight I think I deserve a rest, but I may not get to have one. My upstairs front room PC is giving trouble. I first thought it was the graphics card, then I thought it was the monitor, but now I think it could be the PC power supply responsible for some nasty intermittent patterning on the screen. Unfortunately the PC uses a physically smaller power supply than is standard, but I do have one that I think is the right size here at work where I took it from a scrap machine found in the skip many months ago. So I shall be taking that home tonight.to try. Then I shall go to bed, and even now I am looking forward to that a lot ! |
| Sunday 8th August 2010 |
| 07:41 BST It's dry now, and it was supposed to be dry all day, but that forecast is now a few days old. On the other hand being a few days old does not make it any less accurate than one issued for 2 minutes into the future by the weather centre's random forecast generator ! It is rather gloomy outside, and the sky is just horizon to horizon mid grey cloud. With luck that will start to break up soon, and we'll have some sunny intervals. Yesterday
was both good and bad. In the muggy warmth of the morning I walked
into Lewisham to meet up with Patricia. I got there maybe 15 minutes
before her so I started my shopping while I waited for her to arrive.
I had this strange affection that I wanted to buy a pair of red
trainers. I knew that the Catford branch of Peacocks had sold some
that would do for my needs, but they had sold out of them a couple of
months ago. The Lewisham branch is a bigger branch, I thought it
worth looking in there to see if they had any. They didn't, but they
did have a nice white pair that were reduced to just £7 as a
sale item. They were a slightly different style to those I had seen
previously in Peacocks, and later, when I had got them home I found
that they seemed to be wider fit, and hence more comfortable than the
style I would have bought if they had any. After
Peacocks I went into Footlocker. It is not the sort of place where I
like doing business because it is typical of the sort of place that
attracts young yobboes. When I got in there there was a young black
man having a vigorous argument with the sales staff about something
or another. Ignoring him I found a nice “ox blood red” pair of
Converse “All Stars” trainers. At a tad under £40 they were
more expensive than I would normally spend on shoes for occasional
casual wear, but maybe it was money well spent. They seemed to be far
better made than the cheap throwaway Chinese made trainers that I
have been buying these last couple of years. Not only that but they
do seem to be a lot more comfortable on first impressions. With
my
two purchases made I met up with Patricia. We went to the Muffin Shop
inside the Lewisham shopping centre where Patricia had a coffee and I
had a diet coke, and chatted for around 20 minutes. With our chat
over Patricia continued her shopping and I walked back home through
the park. On the way back the air seemed less muggy than it had on
the way there. It seems unlikely it could have changed so quickly,
but it certainly felt like it. Back
at
home I tried on my new trainers and was happy with they way that they
fitted. I still had quite a few hours to wait before I was due to go
out to Petts Wood to see The Bluesiscians play at “Petts
Woodstock”. After getting all my stuff together ready to go out I
could think of nothing better to do than to have a lie down on my
bed. I did a little reading, and dozed off a couple of time. I was
awoken twice by phone calls from unwanted salesmen, but the third
time I dozed off I really did fall into a good sleep. It was lucky
that I had got everything I wanted together for going out because I
woke up after the time I was planning to leave. I had originally planned to get either the 15:03 or 15:33 train, but it was the 16:03 train that I actually caught. To make life more interesting it was raining when I left for the station. Happily it had stopped raining when I arrived at Petts Wood station, and I was able to stuff my waterproof top into my back pack before I got off the train. I arrived at The Daylight Inn just as The Bluesiscians were beginning their set.
Somewhere
behind that crowd is a bar and a band playing
It
was
very hot and very crowded inside the pub, and I didn't really enjoy
that, but I did enjoy the music. There were some problems with the
sound, mainly a bit of occasional feedback, but the sound was far
superior to the band who had been playing on the outside stage in the
car park when I first arrived. Their singer sounded like he was
singing through a wet sock, as did the singer of the next band who
played on that stage. The last time I saw The Bluesiscian play, Jo, the lead singer, was suffering from a bad throat, and Chris the lead guitarist had to cover some of the vocal. This time Jo was in fine voice, but for one song she gave the stood down and Chris did all the vocals. That last time I was not all that impressed, but on this occasion he sounded quite good. Perhaps he had a better stage monitor, or maybe it was just something else, but it definitely sounded better. (If curiosity has got the better of you Jo, and you're reading this, pass that on to Chris).
I found the heat, the crowds, and the overall noise level quite unpleasant, although logically it was what I should have expected. I guess I am a bit of a weirdo, but with two stages being used alternately it would have been nice not to have recorded music blaring out once the band had finished playing. While they were playing I wanted it loud and noisy, but a few minutes quiet to allow a few conversations to take place would have made everything a bit more pleasant. (On the plus side, the loud recorded music playing inside drowned out the terrible music of the band who had just started playing outside).
I
stayed
around long enough to thank the band for their music and then I went
home feeling slightly sad. I guess I had allowed myself to get a
little too excited about the day without considering what the reality
of it would be. Although the overall experience was disappointing I
still look forward to the next time I can see the band play because
they are most definitely entertaining. Back in Catford it started to rain again again. On the way home I grabbed myself was was in effect breakfast from one of the local fried chicken shops. I had some spicy hot wings and a bag of chips followed by some ice cream that I had in the freezer. After my breakfast/lunch/dinner I had a look at the photos I had taken. It was so crowded that I didn't even have a chance to get my camcorder out, and the photos I took had to be taken by holding the camera above my head without being able to see what was in the viewfinder. Only the two pictures above were usable, and then only with a bit of “photoshoppery”. The outside picture just needed a bit of cropping and rotating, but the other two needed colour correction and exposure correction as well as cropping. Today I feel like indulging in a full English breakfast, but I think I am going to forego that pleasure and go out for a walk later. I could go to the coast, but I think I'll stay inland and go and find a pub that The Bluesiscians will be playing an afternoon gig on the 28th August. The pub is The Fox And Hounds in Knatts Valley, and on that date they are holding a beer festival. By using some footpaths I reckon I can get Google Maps estimate of about a 3 mile walk down to little over 2 miles. That's just a short stroll from Shoreham (Kent) railway station, although I fear some steep hills will be involved. After I have found the pub, and maybe had a beer in it, I might just retrace my steps, or take the scenic route to Eynsford station which will add at least five miles to my walk. My decision partly depends on the weather, but mostly how I feel. |
| Wednesday 4th August 2010 |
| 07:46 BST I've seen a little bit of everything this morning. There were a few seconds of sunshine, and a few seconds of light rain. I've seen bits of blue sky, and bits of dark grey murderous looking clouds. Right now it has all congealed into one. The sky is just grey. It might rain now or later, but the weather forecasters seem quite insistent that I going to drown on my way home from work. I may shiver too because the temperature is not predicted to rise to much above 20° C today. It's all rather different to yesterday ! Despite some gloomy predictions from the weather forecasters it turned out to be a glorious day. Not only was it bone dry, but there was quite sufficient sunshine to give me some light sunburn. Maybe it didn't get hot, but it was very comfortable even in a strong wind, and I encountered some really strong winds while I was out. When I wote yesterday morning I was not 100% certain I would be going out. I was feeling good in some respects and not so good in others. To be truthful I think I was feeling a little out of practice, and I thought that it might only be a short walk because I was sure that I had seen a weather forecast predicting some heavy rain on the south coast. I was prepared to walk in the rain, but just not very far. Maybe that weather forecast was just in my imagination beause it was beautiful on the coast. I took a train to Seaford and initially walked to the east to see if the cliffs there were anything like I remembered them, and they were. While walking towards the cliffs I stayed away from the waters edge because the tide was out, and the water was actually a long way down the steep shingle beach. I hate walking on loose shingle, and climbing up it seems like hard work. Having avoided the shingle because it was too hard work I surprised myself by thinking the unthinkable, and then doing the unthinkable.  I
saw a path leading up to the
top of the cliffs, and decided I wanted to see what the view was like
at the top. Somehow the idea that it is only 200ft to the top does not
seem much. The Ordance Survey map shows the 70 metre contour close to
the top, but no spot height for the very top. What the photo above
doesn't really reveal is just how bloody steep the last bit of the
climb is. Going up the last 30 ft was exceptionally hard work and I had
to stop to catch my breath a couple of times, but once I was at the top
I had a fag and my breathing and heart rate dropped to near normal
before I had finished it. The view from up thereis rather spectacular,
but I think the climb was worth it more for the feeling of achievement
of getting up there alive.
At sea level there was a strong breeze blowing in off the sea, but on the cliff, it wasn't a breeze but a wind, and oddly enough, half way up the cliff it was like a roaring hurricane. Even my stout body was being buffetted around enough to make photography very difficult. I have more pictures taken up there that I will putting on their own web page sometime. One good one, and I don't know why I didn't prepare it for showing here, shows the "Seven Sisters". They are the next section of cliffs towards the east, and there are, in my photo at least, seven distinct peaks along the top of the cliffs until the edge turns more north towards Beachy Head. There is a lot of insect life up on those cliffs, and I think I am slowly improving me techniques to take photographs of some of them.  I managed to get another,
possibly better, photograph of a gatekeeper butterfly, although I
didn't recognise it at the time. The first one I photographed was
(maybe) 100 miles to the north in Essex.
 In slightly soft focus is
this
bright blue butterfly that I have yet to find a name for. It is a small
butterfly, perhaps only an inch across, and although I have not
identified I am sure I can recall a picture on the internet saying it
is found near chalky soils - and there is plenty of chalk in those
cliffs !
[update; this is either a male Common Blue or male Chalkhill Blue butterfly. Probably the latter]  No visit to the seaside
is
complete without the earache inducing shrieks of the seagulls, and the
piles of guano on any flat surface, but this seagull was probably
feeling innocent as it posed for me on a post. The grey dappling, and a
slightly downy appearance make me think it is a young gull, but it
could just be a different species of gull. To non experts like me,
seagulls are just seagulls, but I do appreciate that there are
different types with different names.
[update; This bird appears to be a juvenile Great Black-backed gull] After coming down from the "mountain", which was hard work in itself, I walked all the way to Newhaven Town station, passing Newhaven Marine, and Newhaven Harbour stations. At the end my feet were aching as usual, but it felt like my new wide fitting hiking shoes were doing less damage to my feet (and this morning I am sure of it). It was a pleasant walk, and unusually I felt no urgency about it. Maybe it was because my feet felt more comfortable, maybe it was just that it was quite a scenic walk, or maybe it was because I realised I had been blessed with far better weather than I could have ever hoped for, but I felt I was in no rush to get to a station for a train home. So I did a bit more exploring than usual, and didn't follow a strict point A to point B route. There were a couple of times I made little detours to investigate things. As sson as I can I will be making up a new web page showing pictures of what I saw on these little detours, and some landscape pictures. Somehow I don't think I'll be doing it tonight. Last night I had trouble switching my brain off. My body was very tired after all that fresh air, but my brain would not shut up. I guess it was some time after 10 pm when I finally got to sleep, and then I was awake again at 4 am this morning. Tonight I am determined to to get to sleep before 9 pm even if I have to batter my brain into submission with a large hammer ! footnote: My typing is getting worse ! I've corrected a few really terrible typing errors in the above paragraphs, but I can't spare any more time to search out the other errors. It's time to do what I am paid to do. |
| Monday 2nd August 2010 |
| 08:14 BST It seems summer is over for this week, and maybe for the year. A lot of rain is forecast for the week, and daytime temperatures will always be in the low twenties. I thought all that was true at first light. It was very overcast with several suspicious looking clouds in the sky, but now it looks like those clouds are breaking up a bit, and I can see a few small patches of blue sky. As I recall from last night's weather forecast for the week ahead, today will be mostly OK, and it is only after today that things might get a bit grim. Today will most probably be similar to yesterday. Occasionally a burst of sunshine would make it's way through the clouds, but most of the time the sun was obscured by clouds. It was only mildly warm, but was a bit humid. Late in the evening, perhaps around 9pm, there was some heavy rain (or at least it sounded like it). Where today may be different is that once it starts raining it may not stop, and I can look forward to a soggy journey to work (and possibly a soggy cat when I get home if she insists on staying out like she did last night). My guesses about how I would spend yesterday were nearly correct. I definitely did not go out exploring, but I did go to Aldi's to buy stuff I really shouldn't have bought. I tried my new hiking shoes on that short walk, and I have mixed feelings about them. They are certainly no worse than my old pairs, and they are relatively comfortable, but I didn't think the new ones were that much wider than the old. It did feel like my foot was a little flatter widthwise, but I was still suffering from too much pressure on the injuries I sustained last week when I wore a pair of trainers without socks and removed many layers of skin in two places. Those injuries are now almost healed, and I hope the biggest hole will be filled in during the course of this week, but the two areas are still quite tender. I am now doing what I should have been doing days ago, and putting on antiseptic cream to try and speed up the healing process. Instead of restoring audio recordings like I suggested I might do, I spent quite a few hours contributing to the giffgaff forums. Giffgaff is almost certainly the best mobile phone service provider around at the moment. Calls are cheap, and texts are cheap too, but the best thing is when you buy a goodybag. The £10 goodybag, which is what I buy, lasts for a month and gives you 100 minutes of talktime to any network, unlimited texts, and unlimited internet (on a phone only). Even better than that is that all goodybags are half price for August. If you're ever tempted to sign up tell them bkfromcatford sent you ! For some of yesterday I went into Homer Simpson mode - sitting on the couch watching TV while consuming all sorts of evil junk food. Of course I would call the couch the settee, and the TV was only displaying video recordings most of the time, but the major simularities are all there. One difference was that I was not serially going through packets of junk food, and in a few cases I actually returned half eaten packs to the kitchen instead of scoffing the whole packet in one hit. It almost sounds like my eating was quite controlled, but in truth it wasn't, and I ate far too much. It made me feel quite heavy as I made my way to work this morning. During this week I have to be a bit more careful how I eat so I am in good condition for Saturday. I am not going out walking on Saturday, but going to see some music being played. Specifically I am going to Petts Woodstock, and the best way to describe that is to link to their website. |
| Sunday 1st August 2010 |
| 10:21 BST There is nothing about this morning that screams out "go for a walk". The sky is a dreary grey colour.Admittedly it is not a threatening sort of dark grey colour, but more a light coloured misty grey. It gives a sort contrast flattening ambience to the great outdoors. The temperature is about 20° C, or maybe a degree lower, and is probably a good temperature to walk in, although for some bizzare reason I do like walking when it is far hotter. All this is building up to the fact that I am finding it very hard to motivate myself to go for a long walk today. As I mentioned, when I wrote up my diary rather late in the day yesterday, I do have a brand new pair of wide fitting hiking shoes I want to try out. I think they will suit my feet rather better than my existing pairs, and the hope is that my feet will stay more comfortable on long walks. While I am feeling negative about going out it does occur to me that I would get a sort of feel of those new shoes by just walking to the shops and back. One of the pros, but also one of the cons for going out today is that I ate sensibly enough yesterday that I don't feel all stodgy. That is always good for walking, but it also means that I am feeling unusually hungry this morning, and the more I think about it the more I want to eat some breakfast, and that would kill any chance of going out today. All these excuses for not going out pale into insignificance against the big reason - I can't think of anywhere to go. On the days when I have gone for long walks I have, as far as I can remember, had a destination in mind several days in advance. That wild curiosity in wanting to know what's out there is a powerful motivator, and the suspense in waiting for the day to arrive to find out drives me on. Sadly today it is lacking, and although I know I would start to enjoy myself if I just went out walking somewhere randomly, it is a hard threshold to cross. If I don't get out today I am not sure what I will do. There is always the unlikely possibility that I will get a reply to a text message I sent on Friday suggesting a meeting for a quick drink, and a beer or two might be nice today. A nice fantasy would be to spend several hours getting boozed up in a pub, coming home to a full roast dinner, and then sleeping it off for the rest of the afternoon. That's not going to happen, and I don't think I want it to happen, but it's nice fantasising about it. There is stuff I can usefully do today. I have quite a few radio recordings that I want to clean up, and that would could me occupied for many hours. There is also a friends PC that after several weeks I am only half way through rebuilding for him. He doesn't need it for a few more weeks yet until after he has moved house, but sooner or later I am going to have to to finish it off. I have a feeling whatever I end up doing today the day will soon be over, and then it's back to work on Monday. |