Here is the bad blogger back after only 7 months of absence this time. How to fill on the gap...
Honorary Weight Watcher
Became an honorary Weight Watcher (Carol and Amber are fully paid up members I just nicked the method from them), lost 20kg and am now the lightest I have been (75kg) since my early teens! Aiming for 70kg before I stop, and then all I need to do is keep it off.
fauna
If anybody needs proof that losing weight is all all about food and and little to do with exercise: I have been busy on so much other stuff recently that my exercise regime has suffered (droping to 2 or 3 times a week recently) but the weight kept falling off at the same rate!
Borneo
Had an amazing two weeks in October in the Borneo jungle on a cruise down the Pandaw River .
Summary: Beautiful Kuching City, River Life and Longhouses, Witness the disappearing Rain forests (very scary) and how they can provide everything for rich human life, Incomparable fauna (Orang Utan & Proboscis Monkeys) and flora (Pitchers and Fruits). The grand Pandaw river, too much food and very few bugs! Last day shopping in Singapore .
Do it again? You bet.
i-Phone
Finally dumped my old Sony Ericsson P900 and replaced it with an Phone 4 that makes work a bit more fun and a bit more accesible.
The Library
After five years in our "new" house I finally built the long awaited Library on our gallery / landing. Very pleased with the result (thank you IKEA), I just need to convince Carol that it really is necessary to label all the books with their Dewey-Decimal classifications (or perhaps the Hewey or Dewey classifications).
Somewhat ironically we are just starting to move to book readers (Carol's Kindle is the first, but I expect some follow-ups soon).
Book List
Richard Dawkins - The God Delusion
One of the most significant books written in the last decade. Turned me from a Deist / Agnostic to a true died in the wool ATHEIST. I am an ATHEIST and proud of it. I think we Atheists should start to mobilise and stop being liberals on religion. All religion is untrue, dangerous and unnecessary. Thanks Richard.
Richard Dawkins - The Greatest show on Earth
The evolution book that should be required reading in all schools, but will never be because of the creationist lobby,
Playlist
The minimal
Mugstar
Oneohtrix Point Never
Moebus & Beerbohm
That difficult follow-up to a masterpiece
Robert Plant - Band of Joy - Close to another masterpiece
The Brit Folks
Divine Comedy - Still fun after all these years
The Carthys & the Watersons - Quintessential British folk family
The Underrated
George Harrison - The most underrated Beatle - All things must pass is a masterpiece
Groundhogs - Underrated 60s (English Blues) /70s (Heavy Rock) band
Why do I do this?
Arcade Fire - The Suburbs each album is better than the last but I still don't know if I like them
The Arena
Gaslight Anthem - Eat your heart out Springsteen
A Discovery
I am Kloot
Others
Bats For Lashes
Florence and the Machine
Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti
Job
Hate it at the moment, need to get a change?
Sunday 12 December 2010
Friday 14 May 2010
Have a Heart (monitor)
I started exercising / training / working out or whatever you want to call it regularly about 11 years ago in order to help me lose weight. You may have seen some of my previous posts on all the sport junk I keep in the cellar.
I have always been overweight and it seems like I have been on almost permanent reducing diets since I was about 11 (true)! I have always been relatively fit despite my weight being between 88 and 110 kilos at various times. I have not participated in conventional sport but I had always loved walking and other outdoor activities.
I used to be into activities like speleology and mountaineering when I was much younger (is speleology an outdoor pursuit?). There are stories about the fat caver stuck in holes all over England and others about the fat rock climber hung up on a rope while abseiling in nylon or perhaps the story of the fat mountaineer falling some 30m down a tree lined cliff covered in wet leaves and twigs and bouncing up with lunch held tightly in paw; that is how much food means to me. But I'll save those stories for another day so I can get back to today's diatribe on the battle against fat.
So whatever I tried, including not eating, drugs (I think that's what they were for), and worse (the Cambridge Diet) it didn't stop me putting on a ton as soon as I stopped (not literally). Of course experts who, because of some abnormal body function are all the very slim, tell us that we need to change our lifestyle. Unfortunately that lifestyle is the lifestyle of a rabbit, and more so, an undersexed rabbit like those in Wartership down perhaps all cabbage and no carnal. As someone who is quite attached a normal human lifestyle as opposed to drug accompanied sludge and lettuce as the only forms of nutrition I eventually turned to MORE exercise.
So as I said at the beginning when I was just over 40 I started regular exercise and I'm still doing it. I workout 4-5 times a week with a combination weights and aerobic (bike, treadmill & rower)
Carol thinks I'm addicted...... she might be right.
Since the beginning I have been using a HRM (Heart Rate Monitor) watch (a Polar Pacer) to make sure I train in the right heart rate limits for a good combination of strength and weight loss limits (if you don't know what I am talking about just try a search on Heart Training Zones).
This post was supposed to be about replacing my old HRM (Heart Rate Monitor) watch, which has been playing up, with a new HRM gizmo but I somehow got distracted, So to cut a long story short, after spending days of in-depth analysis of the options (I have the, sad, spreadsheet to prove it) I have a new HRM watch (a Polar RS300X - GPS) with a GPS pod (for "real" wallking & cycling) that allows me to synch. up to a cool web based training progress tool. You can actually use it without a Polar watch if you want to type everything in. I will probably talk about this thing a bit more later when I have used it for a few weeks.
So, what is the result of 11 years of almost continual training (bar a couple of extended gaps) with or without a HRM.
Just as fat but much fitter and stronger.
My tumour (rather the treatments) wacked my strength big time but it has been creeping up again since I have been off meds. but I think it is starting to hit some age limitations now so I reckon its about as good as it will ever get for me.
So signing off now to attack the fridge for a midnight snack, er .... glass of water.
---------------------------
GEEK NOTE: Anybody interested in a first or replacement HRM but doesn't already have a bunch of polar compatible gear (like our treadmill, bike & rower) you might like to look at Garmin (built in GPS and tracking) or Suunto's Ant+ compatible watches, There maybe a new multi-device standard appearing here that can handle all sorts of devices (including fat measuring scales) BUT Polar's single device protocol is the old de-facto standard and their newer coded standard is backward compatible and ANT+ is actually owned by Garmin not to mention Polar has a new incompatible multi-device protocol called WIND. Given the watch prices compared to the compatible gym gear you might want to hold of for a bit or, at least, be careful that all your stuff will work together. Polar / ANT / WIND bridge devices anybody?
I have always been overweight and it seems like I have been on almost permanent reducing diets since I was about 11 (true)! I have always been relatively fit despite my weight being between 88 and 110 kilos at various times. I have not participated in conventional sport but I had always loved walking and other outdoor activities.
I used to be into activities like speleology and mountaineering when I was much younger (is speleology an outdoor pursuit?). There are stories about the fat caver stuck in holes all over England and others about the fat rock climber hung up on a rope while abseiling in nylon or perhaps the story of the fat mountaineer falling some 30m down a tree lined cliff covered in wet leaves and twigs and bouncing up with lunch held tightly in paw; that is how much food means to me. But I'll save those stories for another day so I can get back to today's diatribe on the battle against fat.
So whatever I tried, including not eating, drugs (I think that's what they were for), and worse (the Cambridge Diet) it didn't stop me putting on a ton as soon as I stopped (not literally). Of course experts who, because of some abnormal body function are all the very slim, tell us that we need to change our lifestyle. Unfortunately that lifestyle is the lifestyle of a rabbit, and more so, an undersexed rabbit like those in Wartership down perhaps all cabbage and no carnal. As someone who is quite attached a normal human lifestyle as opposed to drug accompanied sludge and lettuce as the only forms of nutrition I eventually turned to MORE exercise.
So as I said at the beginning when I was just over 40 I started regular exercise and I'm still doing it. I workout 4-5 times a week with a combination weights and aerobic (bike, treadmill & rower)
Carol thinks I'm addicted...... she might be right.
Since the beginning I have been using a HRM (Heart Rate Monitor) watch (a Polar Pacer) to make sure I train in the right heart rate limits for a good combination of strength and weight loss limits (if you don't know what I am talking about just try a search on Heart Training Zones).
This post was supposed to be about replacing my old HRM (Heart Rate Monitor) watch, which has been playing up, with a new HRM gizmo but I somehow got distracted, So to cut a long story short, after spending days of in-depth analysis of the options (I have the, sad, spreadsheet to prove it) I have a new HRM watch (a Polar RS300X - GPS) with a GPS pod (for "real" wallking & cycling) that allows me to synch. up to a cool web based training progress tool. You can actually use it without a Polar watch if you want to type everything in. I will probably talk about this thing a bit more later when I have used it for a few weeks.
So, what is the result of 11 years of almost continual training (bar a couple of extended gaps) with or without a HRM.
Just as fat but much fitter and stronger.
My tumour (rather the treatments) wacked my strength big time but it has been creeping up again since I have been off meds. but I think it is starting to hit some age limitations now so I reckon its about as good as it will ever get for me.
So signing off now to attack the fridge for a midnight snack, er .... glass of water.
---------------------------
GEEK NOTE: Anybody interested in a first or replacement HRM but doesn't already have a bunch of polar compatible gear (like our treadmill, bike & rower) you might like to look at Garmin (built in GPS and tracking) or Suunto's Ant+ compatible watches, There maybe a new multi-device standard appearing here that can handle all sorts of devices (including fat measuring scales) BUT Polar's single device protocol is the old de-facto standard and their newer coded standard is backward compatible and ANT+ is actually owned by Garmin not to mention Polar has a new incompatible multi-device protocol called WIND. Given the watch prices compared to the compatible gym gear you might want to hold of for a bit or, at least, be careful that all your stuff will work together. Polar / ANT / WIND bridge devices anybody?
Thursday 29 April 2010
German lessons again
Since I started working in a more international role my bad German has got worse. Carol reckoned her's has also got worse, but she has no excuse :-)
Given this we thought we would take a few lessons to catch up a bit so we we signed up for a course at the local Volkhochschule ("Adult Education Centre" but literally "Peoples high school"). The course was titled "Deutsch für leicht Fortgeschrittene", a bit of a weird name "German for the lightly advanced" but it seemed to fit our advanced but poor German.
As we approached the start of the course we both got a bit worried about what we were letting ourselves in for. Even after 20 years in Switzerland we don't consider our German advanced (and neither do our kids)
Anyway the fateful day of the first lesson (last Tuesday) came and we entered the classroom to find that
First: we had been the course saviours, that is, we had made up the numbers to allow this particular course to continue and
Secondly: that "leicht Fortgeschrittene" really meant "early advanced" Whew!
We were hoping to have a lot of more advanced conversations, but the other students are not at the level we had hoped. Oh well, they are a nice bunch of ladies (I'm the only guy, and unusually I am the tallest in the group!) I guess that we will finish the course (and do the homework), its all good revision.
Given this we thought we would take a few lessons to catch up a bit so we we signed up for a course at the local Volkhochschule ("Adult Education Centre" but literally "Peoples high school"). The course was titled "Deutsch für leicht Fortgeschrittene", a bit of a weird name "German for the lightly advanced" but it seemed to fit our advanced but poor German.
As we approached the start of the course we both got a bit worried about what we were letting ourselves in for. Even after 20 years in Switzerland we don't consider our German advanced (and neither do our kids)
Anyway the fateful day of the first lesson (last Tuesday) came and we entered the classroom to find that
First: we had been the course saviours, that is, we had made up the numbers to allow this particular course to continue and
Secondly: that "leicht Fortgeschrittene" really meant "early advanced" Whew!
We were hoping to have a lot of more advanced conversations, but the other students are not at the level we had hoped. Oh well, they are a nice bunch of ladies (I'm the only guy, and unusually I am the tallest in the group!) I guess that we will finish the course (and do the homework), its all good revision.
Solidarity Event "Unterwegs Gegen Krebs"
On 29th May the Swiss Cancer League (Krebsliga Schweiz) hold their 2010 solidarity event in their centennial year
"Unterwegs gegen Krebs" - ("on the way against cancer", sounds better in German) is a 2 part event. The first, morning, stage is walking from various locations (e.g. - Dietikon) in to 14 major towns (e.g. - Zurich) where there is a regional solidarity event. The walks vary from 2 to 4 hours (the Dietikon-Zurich route is 3.25 hours)
The second stage is a train into Bern at around 14:00 for the big afternoon event.
Carol and I will be donning our T-Shirts and walking boots for the first stage of the event from Dietikon to Zurich
Unfortunately will not be doing the Bern trip because to the AGM of the IET (Institution of Engineering and Technology) Swiss branch expects my attendance in the afternoon (not to mention the AGM dinner later).
If anybody is interested in walking with us (or without us) register at http://www.krebsliga.ch (German, French and Italian only) and drop a comment on this posting. If you should go on to Bern you get a chance to stick a solidarity note on a big pin board ....
And, of course, if you prefer to attend any of all of the IET events (except the AGM unless you are a member) on that day instead of living it up in Bern; Carol, me and the rest of the IET people would love to see you there.
"Unterwegs gegen Krebs" - ("on the way against cancer", sounds better in German) is a 2 part event. The first, morning, stage is walking from various locations (e.g. - Dietikon) in to 14 major towns (e.g. - Zurich) where there is a regional solidarity event. The walks vary from 2 to 4 hours (the Dietikon-Zurich route is 3.25 hours)
The second stage is a train into Bern at around 14:00 for the big afternoon event.
Carol and I will be donning our T-Shirts and walking boots for the first stage of the event from Dietikon to Zurich
Unfortunately will not be doing the Bern trip because to the AGM of the IET (Institution of Engineering and Technology) Swiss branch expects my attendance in the afternoon (not to mention the AGM dinner later).
If anybody is interested in walking with us (or without us) register at http://www.krebsliga.ch (German, French and Italian only) and drop a comment on this posting. If you should go on to Bern you get a chance to stick a solidarity note on a big pin board ....
And, of course, if you prefer to attend any of all of the IET events (except the AGM unless you are a member) on that day instead of living it up in Bern; Carol, me and the rest of the IET people would love to see you there.
Friday 16 April 2010
Coming in threes: Phones, Tickets and Volcanoes
No excuses, I know it has been a long time again, but I got presented with some unexpected time on my hands today, all a bit strange really
I'm writing this sitting on a train from Paris to Zurich. Why is that odd?
Well normally I fly because the 5-7 hours on the train (even when it is much more comfortable) doesn't compare to the 1.5 hour flight (I know I should be more green), but today flying was not an option and it all has do do with an Icelandic Volcano.
This was the finale (I hope) to an eventful business trip to Paris.
On Wednesday afternoon I flew to Paris from Zurich. Carol dropped me at the railway station and I immediately realised I had forgotten my phone (Handy / Natel / Mobile or whatever your local cultural pet name for a GSM phone is) and it was too late to go back. In the ensuing culture panic, where all my usual phone based business trip management went out of the window (or rather got left on the shelf in the home office), I forgot to punch my train ticket on the only day this century there was a guard on the airport train. After trying to do a cat from shrek eyes expression to the guard and consequently making people throw up all around me, he forgave me because I think he realised I had become severely disabled without a handy (the favourite Swiss culture nickname), or was it just severely disabled for no reason at all?
This covered two of a set of magic "three things" and after getting to the airport and flying safely with all luggage intact I tried to convince myself that the incident with the Taxi driver almost taking the life of a motorcyclist by pulling out about three inches (75cm) in front of him was number three.
Of course this was a very stupid thought because this is actually an hourly occurrence for any Paris Taxi driver and an almost every 10 minute occurrence for every Parisen motorcyclist (you can draw your own conclusions on the statistical accuracy).
Thankfully I arrived at the Paris office without further incident and after a couple of hours work (its apparently called business when you are not a resident of the state in which you are er...doing stuff, but it feels like work to me) I left with a good friend and colleague to a restaurant and on to his home concluding very pleasant evening with him and his wife.
Before going to bed my friend lent me a spare phone he had (we all seem to have spares nowadays) and therefore enabling a good good nights sleep to be had. Perhaps I should change the pet name to "Teddy".
When Thursday's travel and business went by without any events, except for those that were planned, I thought I had escaped the dreaded 3, but then the I rang up Carol (no, that wasn't the 3, tut - silly) and after exchanging all of the really exciting events of our respective days Carol happened to mention some problems at Zurich airport she had just heard on the radio but she hadn't quite caught the cause.
So I quickly googled (thank goodness you can Google without teddy otherwise I would have a had a nervous breakdown), and discovered that all of northern Europe's airports were gradually closing down, and why, A VOLCANIC ERUPTION IN ICELAND....
Of course Charles de Gaulle was closing, the airport not the man (well actually he is already closed) so I quickly phoned the emergency number of our corporate travel service to organise something. Interestingly, but quite obviously, the emergency service was on hold. Well what do you expect, there was actually an emergency going on.
OK supreme being I got it, but did you have to make it quite so bizarre. No 3 really must have arrived! Combining a double whammy as stopping me going home as planned and stopping me from being home for Joss's birthday tomorrow.
...
So hear I am sitting on a train traveling across France on my way to Switzerland in, perhaps, one of the last seats available today and writing this bizarre little story thanks to Jose and his deft manipulation the SNCF web site last night.
One plus is that given this rather pleasant rail experience, despite the packed train and those incessant teddy ring tones, I might take the Green option more often (First class of course)
So there go the three horseman of the apocalypse... Something funny with that somehow.
And the moral of the story?
Er... don't forget your phone when there is Volcanic activity in Iceland?...
Or maybe ..."When there is an emergency all you need are friends"...
a bit soppy, but better I think.
p.s 18th April : Maybe 3 was the godawful cold I caught.
I'm writing this sitting on a train from Paris to Zurich. Why is that odd?
Well normally I fly because the 5-7 hours on the train (even when it is much more comfortable) doesn't compare to the 1.5 hour flight (I know I should be more green), but today flying was not an option and it all has do do with an Icelandic Volcano.
This was the finale (I hope) to an eventful business trip to Paris.
On Wednesday afternoon I flew to Paris from Zurich. Carol dropped me at the railway station and I immediately realised I had forgotten my phone (Handy / Natel / Mobile or whatever your local cultural pet name for a GSM phone is) and it was too late to go back. In the ensuing culture panic, where all my usual phone based business trip management went out of the window (or rather got left on the shelf in the home office), I forgot to punch my train ticket on the only day this century there was a guard on the airport train. After trying to do a cat from shrek eyes expression to the guard and consequently making people throw up all around me, he forgave me because I think he realised I had become severely disabled without a handy (the favourite Swiss culture nickname), or was it just severely disabled for no reason at all?
This covered two of a set of magic "three things" and after getting to the airport and flying safely with all luggage intact I tried to convince myself that the incident with the Taxi driver almost taking the life of a motorcyclist by pulling out about three inches (75cm) in front of him was number three.
Of course this was a very stupid thought because this is actually an hourly occurrence for any Paris Taxi driver and an almost every 10 minute occurrence for every Parisen motorcyclist (you can draw your own conclusions on the statistical accuracy).
Thankfully I arrived at the Paris office without further incident and after a couple of hours work (its apparently called business when you are not a resident of the state in which you are er...doing stuff, but it feels like work to me) I left with a good friend and colleague to a restaurant and on to his home concluding very pleasant evening with him and his wife.
Before going to bed my friend lent me a spare phone he had (we all seem to have spares nowadays) and therefore enabling a good good nights sleep to be had. Perhaps I should change the pet name to "Teddy".
When Thursday's travel and business went by without any events, except for those that were planned, I thought I had escaped the dreaded 3, but then the I rang up Carol (no, that wasn't the 3, tut - silly) and after exchanging all of the really exciting events of our respective days Carol happened to mention some problems at Zurich airport she had just heard on the radio but she hadn't quite caught the cause.
So I quickly googled (thank goodness you can Google without teddy otherwise I would have a had a nervous breakdown), and discovered that all of northern Europe's airports were gradually closing down, and why, A VOLCANIC ERUPTION IN ICELAND....
Of course Charles de Gaulle was closing, the airport not the man (well actually he is already closed) so I quickly phoned the emergency number of our corporate travel service to organise something. Interestingly, but quite obviously, the emergency service was on hold. Well what do you expect, there was actually an emergency going on.
OK supreme being I got it, but did you have to make it quite so bizarre. No 3 really must have arrived! Combining a double whammy as stopping me going home as planned and stopping me from being home for Joss's birthday tomorrow.
...
So hear I am sitting on a train traveling across France on my way to Switzerland in, perhaps, one of the last seats available today and writing this bizarre little story thanks to Jose and his deft manipulation the SNCF web site last night.
One plus is that given this rather pleasant rail experience, despite the packed train and those incessant teddy ring tones, I might take the Green option more often (First class of course)
So there go the three horseman of the apocalypse... Something funny with that somehow.
And the moral of the story?
Er... don't forget your phone when there is Volcanic activity in Iceland?...
Or maybe ..."When there is an emergency all you need are friends"...
a bit soppy, but better I think.
p.s 18th April : Maybe 3 was the godawful cold I caught.
Monday 8 March 2010
Things I might never do
I have no will power, there are so many things I have said I would do over the past couple of years that I haven't done.
A small sample:
So what are the particular qualities of an activity or motivator that motivates us to do that activity? For me there has to be some kind of achievable goal, doing something for its own sake clearly is not enough, but that certainly is not the whole story. Maybe the goal has to be SEEN to achievable, and that would explain why each of us has different motivators depending on our faith in ourselves to do something.
For instance "practicing the piano", I know the result of that practice will allow me to participate more in the thing I love most (as opposed to the people I love most) MUSIC. But can I make myself sit down at that piano except to tinkle. There are no barriers, we have the piano, I know the techniques (I learned them as a youth ), so what stops me? Perhaps I have no faith in my capabilities to get further.
On the other hand, I had not planned to take up Woodwork and I know from previous experience that I don't have the hand eye coordination to be good at it. But Carol just mentioned that she needed a Tomato frame for the garden so I said I would build her one and then I bought a book on Garden woodworking projects and I find myself building a cold frame and then a bird table and looking forward to the next project (when the weather improves). Why did I think I would be able to achieve anything in woodwork when my history in woodwork (you should have seen them) is certainly not as good as my history in Music.
Is it I need the appreciation of others? That would fit in with Woodwork but it does not explain the huge amount of time I spend re- and re-organising the music collection, now why do i I do such a "train spotter" thing?
Another thing, I battle with my weight all the time at the moment I weigh 96kg and I have weighed between 85 and 100kg (once going up to nearly 110kg) and for a guy of 1.66m tall that is way too much. Now their are two parts to weight control Exercise & Food Intake (really that is all it is :-). Exercise I can do, and I do do, to the extent carol thinks I'm obsessive about it and given that physical exercise can be quite painful why do I do it? On the other hand I cannot control my diet, I just love to eat despite the consequences. Same goal, two approaches one works the other doesn't, explain that.
My daughter Kayleigh and her husband Mario gave me a "body flying" session (flying above a fan blowing winds at up to 200km/hr), but unfortunately I need to be below 95kg to participate (Kayleigh swears this was not on purpose). Anyway I thought getting rid of a few kilo's shouldn't give me to much trouble, boy was I wrong still 95kg and counting.
So I'm no closer to understanding what motivates me to do something, let alone anybody else. And what of my samples ... SNAFU ....bowlderised of course.
A small sample:
- Meditate regularly
- Practice the Piano
- Do the blog more regularly
- Lose weight
So what are the particular qualities of an activity or motivator that motivates us to do that activity? For me there has to be some kind of achievable goal, doing something for its own sake clearly is not enough, but that certainly is not the whole story. Maybe the goal has to be SEEN to achievable, and that would explain why each of us has different motivators depending on our faith in ourselves to do something.
For instance "practicing the piano", I know the result of that practice will allow me to participate more in the thing I love most (as opposed to the people I love most) MUSIC. But can I make myself sit down at that piano except to tinkle. There are no barriers, we have the piano, I know the techniques (I learned them as a youth ), so what stops me? Perhaps I have no faith in my capabilities to get further.
On the other hand, I had not planned to take up Woodwork and I know from previous experience that I don't have the hand eye coordination to be good at it. But Carol just mentioned that she needed a Tomato frame for the garden so I said I would build her one and then I bought a book on Garden woodworking projects and I find myself building a cold frame and then a bird table and looking forward to the next project (when the weather improves). Why did I think I would be able to achieve anything in woodwork when my history in woodwork (you should have seen them) is certainly not as good as my history in Music.
Is it I need the appreciation of others? That would fit in with Woodwork but it does not explain the huge amount of time I spend re- and re-organising the music collection, now why do i I do such a "train spotter" thing?
Another thing, I battle with my weight all the time at the moment I weigh 96kg and I have weighed between 85 and 100kg (once going up to nearly 110kg) and for a guy of 1.66m tall that is way too much. Now their are two parts to weight control Exercise & Food Intake (really that is all it is :-). Exercise I can do, and I do do, to the extent carol thinks I'm obsessive about it and given that physical exercise can be quite painful why do I do it? On the other hand I cannot control my diet, I just love to eat despite the consequences. Same goal, two approaches one works the other doesn't, explain that.
My daughter Kayleigh and her husband Mario gave me a "body flying" session (flying above a fan blowing winds at up to 200km/hr), but unfortunately I need to be below 95kg to participate (Kayleigh swears this was not on purpose). Anyway I thought getting rid of a few kilo's shouldn't give me to much trouble, boy was I wrong still 95kg and counting.
So I'm no closer to understanding what motivates me to do something, let alone anybody else. And what of my samples ... SNAFU ....bowlderised of course.
Friday 29 January 2010
The Playlist -The Beatles
Catching up on Six Months of Music for me is like a lifetime. So I think I'll try and work backwards and see when I run out of steam. Starting with Beatles (did I say backwards):
---------------------
The Beatles are such an integral part of the emotional side of my musical education it is very difficult to treat their recorded work subjectively so I am not going to try. To me from the first strains of "I Saw her standing there" to Paul's comic exit on "Her Majesty" spanning only 7 years from 1963 to 1969 there is no other body of work of such listenable genius in the history of music.
And then they were collectively gone.....
Beyond the end there was only John and for for, oh, such a short time.
8th December 1980 was the day my music died
"And while Lennon read a book of Marx,
The quartet practiced in the park,
And we sang dirges in the dark
The day the music died."
What did Don McLean know?
I grew up listening to these guys on the radio only sub-consciously acknowledging them but then just as their light was turned out at Abbey Road I started on my hormonally charged journey into the nether regions of music (just ask my friends) with the Beatles, Tchaikovsky, Holst and a host of denominational music forming a panoramic backdrop.
It is special to me that the complete works of the Beatles are not a work of musical virtuosos but a group of 4 musical experimenters from Liverpool with a sense of humour and good human sensibilities that when put together made magic.
John, Paul, George Ringo
What other group of musicians are universally known by their 1st names.
-----------------------------------
So what is all this about it?
The guys at Apple (no its not the new i-Beatle, its the "other" apple) have finally re-mastered the whole catalogue This has clearly been a work of love bringing the original mixes to pristine almost current day audio quality over 40 years on.
The Beatles - Boxed Sets
I am now the proud owner of both the Stereo & Mono Beatles 2009 box sets (thank you my love). I think everybody in the house (except me) are sick of the Beatles now, C'est la vie. These are gorgeous re-masters beautifully packaged. The packaging will of course disappear into a corner gathering dust once the booklets, inserts and mini LP covers have been looked at a couple of times but these best versions of some of best rock songs of all time will last forever, actually drop the rock.
The early albums have had all the original excitement put back
The later albums have all the original intricacies pulled out and put right in your face
On all albums you hear things you have never heard before unless you've never heard them before.
The mono re-master of Sgt. pepper is truly magical. Magical mystery tour in both Mono and Stereo are (different) revelations and are becoming favourites. The White Album is still timeless, but now feels eternal. With the new Help, Revolver & Rubber Soul (my favourite as a pre-teen when I thought Norwegian wood was about A Norwegian Wood not Norwegian Wood) mixes it is hard to believe that they were recorded mid-sixties albums.
A Geeky Bit - Go no further ye of weak stamina
Why both Stereo & Mono?
During the Sixties Stereo was still a novelty only of interest to HiFi buffs and mostly for Classical music. As such, the band only paid attention to the Mono mix and left it to, occasionally, George Martin their producer or, more often than not, to some of the junior engineers to rush out a stereo mix (enjoy the now pristine quality screw up on the vocal panning in Eleanor Rigby for instance). Also pop producers hadn't really figured out that you should attempt to balance the sound across the stereo field rather than for instance, sticking vocals on one side (usually right) and all the instruments on the other.
Please Please Me was recorded on a 2 tracks tape recorder which gave them no flexibility on a Stereo mix. They moved to 4 on Hard Day's Night and eventually to a massive 8 on the White Album and thereafter. There are some notes multi-track below for insomniacs and other assorted persons with too much time on their hands.
Anyway, in order to compensate for the lack of available recorded tracks they used some studio tricks like multi-tracking and echo (to take out the dryness in the studio). Unfortunately once you had done all of this added to the small number of resulting tracks there still wasn't much flexibility to do a good Stereo mix.
To sum it up
Up to and including "Magical Mystery Tour", the authentic, band supervised mixes were in Mono. With "Abbey Road" and "Let it Be" only on Stereo. One day I'll try and pick track by track favorites "authentic" or otherwise (I bet you can't wait). But until then:
MONO: Please Please Me, With The Beatles, For Sale, Mono Masters
BOTH: Rubber Soul, Revolver, Sgt. Pepper, Magical Mystery Tour
STEREO: A Hard Days Night, Help, The White Album, Let it Be (no choice), Abbey Road (no choice), Past Masters
NEITHER:Yellow Submarine - The only Beatles dud ... But then there is "All you need is love" I guess and "A Northern Song" oh, and "Its all too much". OK make it Stereo
Historical Note on Tape Recorders (can't believe I am doing this)
Eight track had been available on 1" tapes since the 1940's when, I believe, Bing Crosby helped Ampex develop it based on an idea from Les Paul (the guitarist who, by the way, designed the Les Paul guitar that is still heavily used in all areas of Music today). Apparently 8 track was not considered appropriate for Pop music oh dear me no. Post Beatles (but not due to them) the number of usable tracks just escalated up to 24 tracks per tape and with synchronised recorders up to 96 tracks. Toto used this set-up, but it didn't help the music.
And then came Digital....Infinite tracks anybody?
And completely different ways of using tracks, but that is another story.
LET IT BE!
"Let it be" used mainly a "live stereo" recording that records actual positioning of voice and instruments with 2 tracks. This used to be used to record accurate live performances (as long as nobody coughed).
I MEANT LET THIS TAPE STUFF BE
OK
"Now it's time to say good night
Good night Sleep tight
Now the sun turns out his light
Good night Sleep tight
Dream sweet dreams for me
Dream sweet dreams for you"
Bloody Ringo
---------------------
The Beatles are such an integral part of the emotional side of my musical education it is very difficult to treat their recorded work subjectively so I am not going to try. To me from the first strains of "I Saw her standing there" to Paul's comic exit on "Her Majesty" spanning only 7 years from 1963 to 1969 there is no other body of work of such listenable genius in the history of music.
And then they were collectively gone.....
Beyond the end there was only John and for for, oh, such a short time.
8th December 1980 was the day my music died
"And while Lennon read a book of Marx,
The quartet practiced in the park,
And we sang dirges in the dark
The day the music died."
What did Don McLean know?
I grew up listening to these guys on the radio only sub-consciously acknowledging them but then just as their light was turned out at Abbey Road I started on my hormonally charged journey into the nether regions of music (just ask my friends) with the Beatles, Tchaikovsky, Holst and a host of denominational music forming a panoramic backdrop.
It is special to me that the complete works of the Beatles are not a work of musical virtuosos but a group of 4 musical experimenters from Liverpool with a sense of humour and good human sensibilities that when put together made magic.
John, Paul, George Ringo
What other group of musicians are universally known by their 1st names.
-----------------------------------
So what is all this about it?
The guys at Apple (no its not the new i-Beatle, its the "other" apple) have finally re-mastered the whole catalogue This has clearly been a work of love bringing the original mixes to pristine almost current day audio quality over 40 years on.
The Beatles - Boxed Sets
I am now the proud owner of both the Stereo & Mono Beatles 2009 box sets (thank you my love). I think everybody in the house (except me) are sick of the Beatles now, C'est la vie. These are gorgeous re-masters beautifully packaged. The packaging will of course disappear into a corner gathering dust once the booklets, inserts and mini LP covers have been looked at a couple of times but these best versions of some of best rock songs of all time will last forever, actually drop the rock.
The early albums have had all the original excitement put back
The later albums have all the original intricacies pulled out and put right in your face
On all albums you hear things you have never heard before unless you've never heard them before.
The mono re-master of Sgt. pepper is truly magical. Magical mystery tour in both Mono and Stereo are (different) revelations and are becoming favourites. The White Album is still timeless, but now feels eternal. With the new Help, Revolver & Rubber Soul (my favourite as a pre-teen when I thought Norwegian wood was about A Norwegian Wood not Norwegian Wood) mixes it is hard to believe that they were recorded mid-sixties albums.
A Geeky Bit - Go no further ye of weak stamina
Why both Stereo & Mono?
During the Sixties Stereo was still a novelty only of interest to HiFi buffs and mostly for Classical music. As such, the band only paid attention to the Mono mix and left it to, occasionally, George Martin their producer or, more often than not, to some of the junior engineers to rush out a stereo mix (enjoy the now pristine quality screw up on the vocal panning in Eleanor Rigby for instance). Also pop producers hadn't really figured out that you should attempt to balance the sound across the stereo field rather than for instance, sticking vocals on one side (usually right) and all the instruments on the other.
Please Please Me was recorded on a 2 tracks tape recorder which gave them no flexibility on a Stereo mix. They moved to 4 on Hard Day's Night and eventually to a massive 8 on the White Album and thereafter. There are some notes multi-track below for insomniacs and other assorted persons with too much time on their hands.
Anyway, in order to compensate for the lack of available recorded tracks they used some studio tricks like multi-tracking and echo (to take out the dryness in the studio). Unfortunately once you had done all of this added to the small number of resulting tracks there still wasn't much flexibility to do a good Stereo mix.
To sum it up
Up to and including "Magical Mystery Tour", the authentic, band supervised mixes were in Mono. With "Abbey Road" and "Let it Be" only on Stereo. One day I'll try and pick track by track favorites "authentic" or otherwise (I bet you can't wait). But until then:
MONO: Please Please Me, With The Beatles, For Sale, Mono Masters
BOTH: Rubber Soul, Revolver, Sgt. Pepper, Magical Mystery Tour
STEREO: A Hard Days Night, Help, The White Album, Let it Be (no choice), Abbey Road (no choice), Past Masters
NEITHER:Yellow Submarine - The only Beatles dud ... But then there is "All you need is love" I guess and "A Northern Song" oh, and "Its all too much". OK make it Stereo
Historical Note on Tape Recorders (can't believe I am doing this)
Eight track had been available on 1" tapes since the 1940's when, I believe, Bing Crosby helped Ampex develop it based on an idea from Les Paul (the guitarist who, by the way, designed the Les Paul guitar that is still heavily used in all areas of Music today). Apparently 8 track was not considered appropriate for Pop music oh dear me no. Post Beatles (but not due to them) the number of usable tracks just escalated up to 24 tracks per tape and with synchronised recorders up to 96 tracks. Toto used this set-up, but it didn't help the music.
And then came Digital....Infinite tracks anybody?
And completely different ways of using tracks, but that is another story.
LET IT BE!
"Let it be" used mainly a "live stereo" recording that records actual positioning of voice and instruments with 2 tracks. This used to be used to record accurate live performances (as long as nobody coughed).
I MEANT LET THIS TAPE STUFF BE
OK
"Now it's time to say good night
Good night Sleep tight
Now the sun turns out his light
Good night Sleep tight
Dream sweet dreams for me
Dream sweet dreams for you"
Bloody Ringo
Sunday 24 January 2010
When Paris might be Timbuktu
Just spent the last week in Paris at meetings with my favourite customers. There is nothing more frustrating than spending time in such a great city and only seeing the inside of hotels and office buildings (even nice hotels and nice office buildings) I'd go crazy if it wasn't for my Parisian com padres. Tiring week, spent most of the weekend dozing.
Still learning the Mac way, and starting to see some of the attractions. Got the "missing manual" and can't imagine how people get on without such a book. Like spotlight very much which is search on steroids (including complex file meta data searches), only wish it would index Samba shares. Still a massive fan of VMWare Fusion, just added Windows 7 virtual machine and it just runs. Windows 7 looks gorgeous. The magic mouse batteries ran out today after only 3 weeks of use, looking at a number of forums this looks quite normal. Not very green and not very magic.
Will try and keep the work hours down this week, and if I can I'll try and put some more interesting stuff in the blog.
Still learning the Mac way, and starting to see some of the attractions. Got the "missing manual" and can't imagine how people get on without such a book. Like spotlight very much which is search on steroids (including complex file meta data searches), only wish it would index Samba shares. Still a massive fan of VMWare Fusion, just added Windows 7 virtual machine and it just runs. Windows 7 looks gorgeous. The magic mouse batteries ran out today after only 3 weeks of use, looking at a number of forums this looks quite normal. Not very green and not very magic.
Will try and keep the work hours down this week, and if I can I'll try and put some more interesting stuff in the blog.
Saturday 16 January 2010
Have you got a light Mac?
No, but I've got a dark brown overcoat
But hold on.... I do have an iMac
Every-time I walked past the big, welcoming, not to mention expensive Apple shopfront on Bahnhofstrasse over the last few months those beautiful screens have been calling to me and I have to admit more often than not I had to go in just to wiggle the "magic" mice.
Carol had noticed this phenomena (how could she not) and decided to keep me on the straight and narrow by getting me an iMac for Christmas.
So how is to be a Mac man after so much resistance in the past. I'm starting to see why people enjoy playing with macs, but I am not sure if I would want to work with one (yet).
My first impressions (3 weeks on).
SEVERE GEEKINESS WARNING
Hardware
+
Beautiful looking Hardware - Screen, say no more, Mouse is Magic, Keyboard is tiny and usable (travel is a bit shallow, don't think touch typists would like it). Machine is quiet & fast.
-
DVD drive that scratches your DVD's with its beautiful aluminum casing!! Amazing that people have complained about this since the previous iMac and it still isn't fixed. In fact those sharp edges can catch the odd digit if you are not careful too.
I keep missing characters on the keyboard (now I know why it is so small). No forward delete (it is fn-Bksp), Backslash (Sh Alt /) even @ had me confused for a while being slap bang in the middle of the keyboard. Checked out the Help (no help) Eventually I built my own table by holding down things and wandering around the keyboard.
OS
+
Fast & stable: some of that will be the hardware but start-up happens so fast you wonder if it has actually started & Shutdown is just poof and its gone. Given the stability (no crashes yet in over 3 weeks) just instantaneous stand-by & wake-up are all that you need.
Networking in a PC (SMB) environment worried me a bit, it shouldn't have. I think it works better than on the PC. I'm even using SmartSynch Pro on a PC to back up the Mac to my File Server. Network printing also works well once you have the correct drivers. HP seem to stop Mac support earlier than PC.
Functionality in oodles
-
Don't know where to start and need a manual to do it.
UI
Now to invite Death Threats :
It all feels a bit dated and after playing with Windows 7 I am really not so impressed. The Dock seems to get in the way (I've tried putting it everywhere). Pretty smooth rolling icons might look good in the showroom but Icons that move when you are trying to click on them makes you feel frustrated and not a little bit sea-sick.
Its not that the UI is difficult to use (after a few days) but it is difficult to find the advanced stuff because it is all hidden to keep everything "clean". e.g. how do you move up and down file hierarchies? Up/down buttons? No; Address line to click on the correct point in the path? No; How about a hidden button on the window title (actually on the name) which you access with a right click which exposes a list, Duh. And where did I find out this info, in the help? No, in a book I had to purchase.
What is this with All for One One for All Menu bar thing , very strange if you are used to each window having its own menu bar. And why are all the Menus so ugly (Windows 95 or what)?
For the guys who led the whole WIMP (windows, icons, mouse & pointer) thing they sure do love their keyboard shortcuts.
One thing I like as an old UNIX hack is if you've got fed up with clicking around to find something there is a perfectly serviceable terminal app that gets you to the UNIX OS that is the foundation of MAC OS X. Want to put a directory list in a file "ls -l > x.txt" will do the trick. Unfortunately if you didn't have the Unix shells (very powerful versions of what the PC calls cmd) burned in to your brain at an early age then you will need another manual. Try looking up bash, the default shell name, in Mac help :-) And if you are going to play Unix have you thought of Linux?
Virtual PC
Running the a PC OS on the Mac, using VMWare Fusion allowed me to shut down my PC workstation in a couple of days and I have not gone back. Migrating the PC to fusion was nearly automatic and it is a perfect copy of my original PC from which the migration of things like mailboxes could take place. The weird thing is running it on that lovely Mac screen and having it run MUCH faster than running it on my, admittedly 5 year old, PC. It hardly seems to effect the Mac performance. The cool thing, I can now upgrade to Windows 7 with no risk (just another virtual PC file) and run both on the Mac simultaneously .... I'll have to see how much that slows the machine down. Wonderful piece of software.
Built-In Apps
Mostly toys and expected utilities
I was looking forward to iPhoto and it looks it was fun for 5 minutes but I have already moved (back) to Photoshop Elements, Why? Can't use my server based photo library directly. With PSE all the meta-data is still there in the photos and will stay there and get updated accordingly. For newbies with no family iPhoto is probably OK.
I hated iTunes on the PC it was sooo slow using my NAS based Music library. I used Winamp on the PC, my absolute favourite player. On the Mac iTunes is faster but it still isn't designed for managing large libraries. Worse still it can't play loss-less FLAC files. I am using the buggy but wonderful SongBird.
Mail, Calendar and Address Book are OK, but why are they all separate. Trying to stay away from Entourage (Outlook replacement in Mac Office) so I can give the Mac apps a fair chance.
Safari (the browser) is OK but I soon went over to Firefox, not because I used it before but because I could not set the destination for downloads at the time of download in Safari.
Getting Help
Help is crap, terse and not very er ... helpful.
So many functions are hard to find and not documented you really do need a manual unless you want to go through life oblivious of half of the OS features. I bought "The Missing Manual" appropriately titled and its looking good (only had it two days). I find it strange that Apple famous for ease of use needs manuals to get going. I don't think I ever bought a Windows manual.
-------------------------------------------
So am I happy with my iMac?
Yes, very. I AM HAVING FUN.
Could I become a mac only person?
Maybe, but their are of lots of reasons the PC still has appeal.
1. Much cheaper hardware, I reckon an equivalent PC cost 2/3 of the price and peripherals from Apple are very expensive.
2. Range of applications. For instance, It took me a while to find a FLAC music player (i-tunes doesn't support FLAC) and the only one worth considering is buggy and unstable (although otherwise an excellent set of features). There are literally dozens of FLAC players on the PC. Another example, No personal finance packages that can handle multiple currencies and are easy to use!
3. Windows 7 is the best PC OS so far and at the moment I am leaning that way. That may be familiarity but I guess only time will tell and just in case my MAC makes a great PC.
............
Carol's original intention was, of course in vain, for I am a now Mac person (I have the stickers) and have to walk in through the the doors of the grand shop each time I go past to pick up some overpriced dongle or some piece of software to help my Mac work the way I want it to.
----------
Just in case anyone thought this was my first move, here is Ian's computer history
(W for work):
ICL1904S (originally ICT, at Uni) Commodore PET (1981), Superboard II, HP85, DEC VAX (W) Dragon32 (1982), PDP-11, Sun 2 & 3 Workstations (W) AtariST (1985, almost an early Mac with GemOS but I also ran a Unix like OS called Minix predecessor to Linux), Various UNIX / Windows Homebrews (Interactive/UNIX) & Linux (1990), PC (1991, reluctantly for business purposes). From then on it was various LINUX and Windows PCs as I built up the the Home network from 1995 Onwards. Since 2004 been pure PCs (client & server) until Imac (2009)
-------------------
p.s. joke from Bonzo dog band - Big Shot, album - Gorilla, 1967 (well that's where I heard it first)
But hold on.... I do have an iMac
Every-time I walked past the big, welcoming, not to mention expensive Apple shopfront on Bahnhofstrasse over the last few months those beautiful screens have been calling to me and I have to admit more often than not I had to go in just to wiggle the "magic" mice.
Carol had noticed this phenomena (how could she not) and decided to keep me on the straight and narrow by getting me an iMac for Christmas.
So how is to be a Mac man after so much resistance in the past. I'm starting to see why people enjoy playing with macs, but I am not sure if I would want to work with one (yet).
My first impressions (3 weeks on).
SEVERE GEEKINESS WARNING
Hardware
+
Beautiful looking Hardware - Screen, say no more, Mouse is Magic, Keyboard is tiny and usable (travel is a bit shallow, don't think touch typists would like it). Machine is quiet & fast.
-
DVD drive that scratches your DVD's with its beautiful aluminum casing!! Amazing that people have complained about this since the previous iMac and it still isn't fixed. In fact those sharp edges can catch the odd digit if you are not careful too.
I keep missing characters on the keyboard (now I know why it is so small). No forward delete (it is fn-Bksp), Backslash (Sh Alt /) even @ had me confused for a while being slap bang in the middle of the keyboard. Checked out the Help (no help) Eventually I built my own table by holding down things and wandering around the keyboard.
OS
+
Fast & stable: some of that will be the hardware but start-up happens so fast you wonder if it has actually started & Shutdown is just poof and its gone. Given the stability (no crashes yet in over 3 weeks) just instantaneous stand-by & wake-up are all that you need.
Networking in a PC (SMB) environment worried me a bit, it shouldn't have. I think it works better than on the PC. I'm even using SmartSynch Pro on a PC to back up the Mac to my File Server. Network printing also works well once you have the correct drivers. HP seem to stop Mac support earlier than PC.
Functionality in oodles
-
Don't know where to start and need a manual to do it.
UI
Now to invite Death Threats :
It all feels a bit dated and after playing with Windows 7 I am really not so impressed. The Dock seems to get in the way (I've tried putting it everywhere). Pretty smooth rolling icons might look good in the showroom but Icons that move when you are trying to click on them makes you feel frustrated and not a little bit sea-sick.
Its not that the UI is difficult to use (after a few days) but it is difficult to find the advanced stuff because it is all hidden to keep everything "clean". e.g. how do you move up and down file hierarchies? Up/down buttons? No; Address line to click on the correct point in the path? No; How about a hidden button on the window title (actually on the name) which you access with a right click which exposes a list, Duh. And where did I find out this info, in the help? No, in a book I had to purchase.
What is this with All for One One for All Menu bar thing , very strange if you are used to each window having its own menu bar. And why are all the Menus so ugly (Windows 95 or what)?
For the guys who led the whole WIMP (windows, icons, mouse & pointer) thing they sure do love their keyboard shortcuts.
One thing I like as an old UNIX hack is if you've got fed up with clicking around to find something there is a perfectly serviceable terminal app that gets you to the UNIX OS that is the foundation of MAC OS X. Want to put a directory list in a file "ls -l > x.txt" will do the trick. Unfortunately if you didn't have the Unix shells (very powerful versions of what the PC calls cmd) burned in to your brain at an early age then you will need another manual. Try looking up bash, the default shell name, in Mac help :-) And if you are going to play Unix have you thought of Linux?
Virtual PC
Running the a PC OS on the Mac, using VMWare Fusion allowed me to shut down my PC workstation in a couple of days and I have not gone back. Migrating the PC to fusion was nearly automatic and it is a perfect copy of my original PC from which the migration of things like mailboxes could take place. The weird thing is running it on that lovely Mac screen and having it run MUCH faster than running it on my, admittedly 5 year old, PC. It hardly seems to effect the Mac performance. The cool thing, I can now upgrade to Windows 7 with no risk (just another virtual PC file) and run both on the Mac simultaneously .... I'll have to see how much that slows the machine down. Wonderful piece of software.
Built-In Apps
Mostly toys and expected utilities
I was looking forward to iPhoto and it looks it was fun for 5 minutes but I have already moved (back) to Photoshop Elements, Why? Can't use my server based photo library directly. With PSE all the meta-data is still there in the photos and will stay there and get updated accordingly. For newbies with no family iPhoto is probably OK.
I hated iTunes on the PC it was sooo slow using my NAS based Music library. I used Winamp on the PC, my absolute favourite player. On the Mac iTunes is faster but it still isn't designed for managing large libraries. Worse still it can't play loss-less FLAC files. I am using the buggy but wonderful SongBird.
Mail, Calendar and Address Book are OK, but why are they all separate. Trying to stay away from Entourage (Outlook replacement in Mac Office) so I can give the Mac apps a fair chance.
Safari (the browser) is OK but I soon went over to Firefox, not because I used it before but because I could not set the destination for downloads at the time of download in Safari.
Getting Help
Help is crap, terse and not very er ... helpful.
So many functions are hard to find and not documented you really do need a manual unless you want to go through life oblivious of half of the OS features. I bought "The Missing Manual" appropriately titled and its looking good (only had it two days). I find it strange that Apple famous for ease of use needs manuals to get going. I don't think I ever bought a Windows manual.
-------------------------------------------
So am I happy with my iMac?
Yes, very. I AM HAVING FUN.
Could I become a mac only person?
Maybe, but their are of lots of reasons the PC still has appeal.
1. Much cheaper hardware, I reckon an equivalent PC cost 2/3 of the price and peripherals from Apple are very expensive.
2. Range of applications. For instance, It took me a while to find a FLAC music player (i-tunes doesn't support FLAC) and the only one worth considering is buggy and unstable (although otherwise an excellent set of features). There are literally dozens of FLAC players on the PC. Another example, No personal finance packages that can handle multiple currencies and are easy to use!
3. Windows 7 is the best PC OS so far and at the moment I am leaning that way. That may be familiarity but I guess only time will tell and just in case my MAC makes a great PC.
............
Carol's original intention was, of course in vain, for I am a now Mac person (I have the stickers) and have to walk in through the the doors of the grand shop each time I go past to pick up some overpriced dongle or some piece of software to help my Mac work the way I want it to.
----------
Just in case anyone thought this was my first move, here is Ian's computer history
(W for work):
ICL1904S (originally ICT, at Uni) Commodore PET (1981), Superboard II, HP85, DEC VAX (W) Dragon32 (1982), PDP-11, Sun 2 & 3 Workstations (W) AtariST (1985, almost an early Mac with GemOS but I also ran a Unix like OS called Minix predecessor to Linux), Various UNIX / Windows Homebrews (Interactive/UNIX) & Linux (1990), PC (1991, reluctantly for business purposes). From then on it was various LINUX and Windows PCs as I built up the the Home network from 1995 Onwards. Since 2004 been pure PCs (client & server) until Imac (2009)
-------------------
p.s. joke from Bonzo dog band - Big Shot, album - Gorilla, 1967 (well that's where I heard it first)
Sunday 10 January 2010
How to avoid answering anything important
Remember that having failed in the quest for inspiration from great religious works I threatened to go off and study Philosophy, that great answerer of the all the big questions. Explanations on such things as knowledge, truth, freedom, identity, goodness and of course God, I thought laid within my reach.
Well I've started at least, by looking around for a couple of "popular" introductions to the subject. I picked a modern one "Think" by Simon Blackburn and an older one (1912) by somebody I'd heard of "The Problems of Philosophy" by Bertrand Russell.
A couple of mistakes I made in my initial thinking:
Well, I have read both of these books now and I need to read them again at least one more time to actually start to really understand the language used.
Some of the words used encompass so much understanding behind them that it is worthless to carry on reading until you fully understand them. For instance the word "a priori" (ok, two words) means just "assumed knowledge" right. So how can you spend a big chunk of a book discussing what it means.
However, I have learned a lot from the books but I have no confidence to apply or discuss any of it yet so I shan't be answering whether there is a god or not this week? But I have learned enough to put together a new definition for philosophy
Well I've started at least, by looking around for a couple of "popular" introductions to the subject. I picked a modern one "Think" by Simon Blackburn and an older one (1912) by somebody I'd heard of "The Problems of Philosophy" by Bertrand Russell.
A couple of mistakes I made in my initial thinking:
- I thought, modern would be easier to read (and therefore read "Think" first)
- I thought slim wouldn't take long to read (hence "problems of philosophy")
- I believed reviews that said "a beautifully clear account";
Well, I have read both of these books now and I need to read them again at least one more time to actually start to really understand the language used.
Some of the words used encompass so much understanding behind them that it is worthless to carry on reading until you fully understand them. For instance the word "a priori" (ok, two words) means just "assumed knowledge" right. So how can you spend a big chunk of a book discussing what it means.
However, I have learned a lot from the books but I have no confidence to apply or discuss any of it yet so I shan't be answering whether there is a god or not this week? But I have learned enough to put together a new definition for philosophy
- Philosophy is the science of how to avoid answering anything definitively.
- Enabled me to help a colleague to understand she could study philosophy without it challenging her faith (remember this is me, the faithless one talking here)
- Allowed a discussion of what rhetoric really is over the family dinner table (quite surreal really)
Saturday 9 January 2010
And Here's To Health
The last health update was "The End of a Tumour" post back in June so I thought an update was in order (as that was the reason for the blog in the first place) so here goes.
I'm fine....
Actually, there really isn't much more than that. I have had two MRI scans and one EEG since June. The last MRI was yesterday and the scan results were identical to September's which was slightly clearer of foreign matter than June's. The EEG in November showed only tiny symptoms of abnormality and they were probably mine already.
Prof Neuro is very happy and so am I
My seizure medication (Timonil) has been dropped to 2x300mg from 2x400mg from 3x400mg a day with no adverse (or favourable) effects.
Leftover ill effects are fairly regular but light headaches in the left-hand brain stem area as already mentioned in the past. The lack of sensitivity on my RHS seems to have almost gone away (most of the time).
Given the improvements I kept asking about allowing more than 30% work. Finally, in November Prof. Neuro (obviously fed up with my nagging) said NO for at least another year!
So there you have it .... normal 30% life has resumed for now.
I think I've missed out on too many risks
----------------------------------------
To laugh is to risk appearing a fool,
To weep is to risk appearing sentimental.
To reach out to another is to risk involvement,
To expose feelings is to risk exposing your true self.
To place your ideas and dreams before a crowd is to risk their loss.
To love is to risk not being loved in return,
To live is to risk dying,
To hope is to risk despair,
To try is to risk failure.
But risks must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.
The person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing, is nothing.
He may avoid suffering and sorrow, but he cannot learn, feel change, grow or live.
Chained by his servitude he is a slave who has forfeited all freedom.
Only a person who risks is free.
The pessimist complains about the wind;
The optimist expects it to change;
And the realist adjusts the sails.
William Arthur Ward
I'm fine....
Actually, there really isn't much more than that. I have had two MRI scans and one EEG since June. The last MRI was yesterday and the scan results were identical to September's which was slightly clearer of foreign matter than June's. The EEG in November showed only tiny symptoms of abnormality and they were probably mine already.
Prof Neuro is very happy and so am I
My seizure medication (Timonil) has been dropped to 2x300mg from 2x400mg from 3x400mg a day with no adverse (or favourable) effects.
Leftover ill effects are fairly regular but light headaches in the left-hand brain stem area as already mentioned in the past. The lack of sensitivity on my RHS seems to have almost gone away (most of the time).
Given the improvements I kept asking about allowing more than 30% work. Finally, in November Prof. Neuro (obviously fed up with my nagging) said NO for at least another year!
So there you have it .... normal 30% life has resumed for now.
I think I've missed out on too many risks
----------------------------------------
To laugh is to risk appearing a fool,
To weep is to risk appearing sentimental.
To reach out to another is to risk involvement,
To expose feelings is to risk exposing your true self.
To place your ideas and dreams before a crowd is to risk their loss.
To love is to risk not being loved in return,
To live is to risk dying,
To hope is to risk despair,
To try is to risk failure.
But risks must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.
The person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing, is nothing.
He may avoid suffering and sorrow, but he cannot learn, feel change, grow or live.
Chained by his servitude he is a slave who has forfeited all freedom.
Only a person who risks is free.
The pessimist complains about the wind;
The optimist expects it to change;
And the realist adjusts the sails.
William Arthur Ward
Tuesday 5 January 2010
Some Late Releases
Just noticed a couple of Draft's that never got posted back in May and September last year. One on the "Qu'ran" (I think I got a bit worried about the content but I'm alright now) and one on our holiday in "Cornwall" that was supposed to be more of a travelogue and it ended up being a picture (which is probably more interesting and an infinitely more compact view of Cornwall).
Time to Return
Have you ever left doing something for so long that you feel embarrassed to do it? And when some other thing or someone prompts you to overcome that embarrassment you realise that original something has been growing and festering like a boil (or tumour maybe).
Eventually the boil will grow so much that it will have to be lanced or it will burst of its own accord and the the festering leftovers of time will be washed down the drain allowing new skin to grow and leave, if anything, just a small scar to remind us of the previous painful event.
THE BLOG IS BACK
Perhaps you would rather it wasn't given the previous post.
Much love to Christina for the needle.
Eventually the boil will grow so much that it will have to be lanced or it will burst of its own accord and the the festering leftovers of time will be washed down the drain allowing new skin to grow and leave, if anything, just a small scar to remind us of the previous painful event.
THE BLOG IS BACK
Perhaps you would rather it wasn't given the previous post.
Much love to Christina for the needle.
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