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Avoidable WorryBeing a record of my thoughts, so that I don't have to think them any more. |
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| Oct. 11th, 2009 @ 10:06 pm Nostalgia | |||
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| It used to be you could turn on the telly on a Saturday night and see proper professional singers singing songs they'd been singing for more than a week. Surely, that was better, wasn't it? |
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| Sep. 6th, 2009 @ 01:45 am I really should stop watching reality television | |||
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The thing that drives me mad about the X Factor isn't when they put someone through who I think has a horrible sounding vocal tone. Because that is, at least to some extent, a matter of personal preference, and I can live with the fact that certain types of voice that I think sound horrible are the sort of thing the public seem to go wild over. When they're out of tune, though; not just a little bit here and there, such as might be explained away as part of their singing style, but consistently and obviously out of tune - like one of them was tonight, by what sounded like almost a quarter tone - well, that's *objectively* horrible - isn't it? Well apparently it isn't, as not one of the judges mentioned it. Surely it couldn't be that on a programme the supposed purpose of which is to find good singers, not one out of the four judges is actually capable of hearing when someone is consistently off by almost a quarter tone - that's nearly halfway to a completely different note - the whole way through the song? Or worse, do they actually not care that someone is so egregiously out of tune? Could it possibly, inexplicably, not bother them? Anyway, she went through to the next round or the bootcamp or whatever they're calling it these days, which means she gets to sing some more in future episodes. Perhaps someone will mention it then. Or maybe she'll end up winning and release a single all Autotuned to hell, like the professional singers do if they can't sing in tune. I suppose if you look at it like that, it really doesn't matter a damn. |
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| Sep. 3rd, 2009 @ 02:23 am Twitter vs RSS? No contest. | |||
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I'm fed up with reading that RSS is dead, killed, apparently, by Twitter. What nonsense! Twitter and RSS are two different tools for two completely different purposes. Twitter gives me a stream of updates from people I choose to follow, telling me in real time what their thoughts are in 140 characters or fewer. Whereas an RSS reader (Google Reader, for example) aggregates and categorises longer articles for me, from a variety of sites that I choose to subscribe to, for me to read at my leisure when I have time. It's true that the originators of those articles could post links to them on their Twitter feeds, and I could find out about the articles that way. But I do not want them all mixed in together, arriving in real time whether I have time to read them or not, and then disappearing off the bottom of the page if I don't get around to Reading them in short order. That's just madness, surely? So let's have no more of this frankly barmy talk about Twitter replacing RSS. Just use each tool for what it's designed for and have done with it. Or next thing you'll be wanting a toaster that can fry eggs and do macramé. |
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| Feb. 15th, 2009 @ 12:52 pm Premature ageism | |||
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| Just watching a TV programme on ageism when trying to get a job. They're saying some of the "code phrases" that really mean "We think you're too old" are "We think you'd be bored in this job," or "We don't think this job will be challenging enough for you," or "You're overqualified." But I was hearing those phrases when I was going for jobs in my early 20s! (A lot of the other experiences of older job-seekers sound familiar too.) Was I old before my time? Or just congenitally unemployable? |
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| Jan. 5th, 2005 @ 11:26 pm flickr is broke | |||
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Well, there may not be as many photos as I was hoping, as a bug in flickr's image uploading software means that it tried to upload the same damn images multiple times, resulting in almost all of my monthly upload allowance being used up, and with the month barely started. So not a huge amount of image posting possible for the next month, but in the meantime, here's a dog with its head in my crotch.  |
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| Jan. 5th, 2005 @ 07:19 pm Completely predictable Sims entry | |||
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 But I don't even play the Sims, honest! I just felt this blog needs more pictures, so here's a picture of me and my girlfriend in the Sims 2. That looks more like me than it does like my girlfriend. But neither of them are very good likenesses, really. |
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| Jan. 1st, 2005 @ 06:08 pm This is for me... | |||
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| Evidently I've let goal no.1 (posting to the blog every day whenever reasonably practicable) slip a bit since getting back home after Christmas. I think the reason is I'm worried about writing something boring. But since the main purpose of it is to get myself into the habit of writing something every day, rather than providing something for anyone else to read - and since I remain convinced that nobody reads this blog regularly anyway - that's not much of a reason really. So I'll try to do better. Promise. |
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| Dec. 29th, 2004 @ 11:48 am More expensivey carness | |||
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| So the upshot of the clutch cable thing was that no-one was available to come out and fix it before Christmas, so I had to join the AA and pay their expensive surcharge for calling them out at the same time as joining. Since I'm driving a lot more than I was before, what with the to-ing and fro-ing between me in London and my girlfriend in Southend, I'm going to have to reconsider whether it's worth me remaining a member (it never was before). AA man fitted a new clutch cable, and off we went to London. And then about a mile from home the clutch went tits-up again. (Actually it had been getting steadily worse for the previous 10 miles or so, but that was when it got so bad that I couldn't continue.) So out comes another AA man (at this point we could have walked home, but decided we'd sooner get it sorted). He had a fiddle and reckoned there was either a problem with the clutch or the new cable just hadn't adjusted properly. God this is really boring isn't it. So to cut a long story short, it's working now but slightly tenuously, so I'm going to need to have it looked at in the new year. And that's about all I have time for right now, so details of Christmas itself will have to wait for a future entry. |
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| Dec. 22nd, 2004 @ 09:15 pm Clutch is broke | |||
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Current Mood:
So I'm driving home to London with my girlfriend when all of a sudden, the clutch pedal goes all floppy and no longer works. The clutch cable is broken, is what I reckon, although having said that I know next to nothing about the workings of cars and I'm not even sure there is such a thing as a clutch cable, so perhaps it will turn out to be something much more complicated and expensive to fix. Lovely! anxiousSo anyway, I'm staying here (at girlfrend's family's house) tonight, then hoping to get the car fixed tomorrow morning, back to London to fetch the rest of the presents and girlfriend's new dress and meet a friend for dinner, then back here on Friday to spend Christmas with girlfriend's family and assorted hangers-on. Girlfriend will be with me all the time, which makes it more bearable, but it spooks me to not be in control of where I'm going to be and how I'm going to get there. So I'm going to spend tonight trying to be one of those people who can just accept setbacks as they come and not worry about things that I can't change. God, those people are annoying, aren't they? |
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| Dec. 22nd, 2004 @ 12:26 am Goal no.2 | |||
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| Goal no.2 is to get my house tidied. I can't remember the last time my house was tidy. There's a couple of rooms I can't even use because they've become repositories for things that I don't have anywhere else to put. There must be masses of stuff I can throw away, and some stuff I could probably sell and make a few bob. But my house is very, very untidy, and this is a long job, so goal no.3 is to break goal no.2 down into easier-to-manage steps. Still not very important goals, are they? Well, I need to start small and work my way up to the big ones. Like what I want to be doing with my life in 5 years time, or what-have-you. Thinking on that sort of scale is still a little beyond me at the moment. Even the tidying feels a bit daunting (hence goal no.3). Ah well. Baby steps. I seem to be doing OK with goal no.1, anyhow. |
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| Dec. 21st, 2004 @ 01:51 am Obligatory Christmas humbuggery | |||
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Current Mood: blurgh
I've gorn and bit me lip. So I'll have a lovely ripe ulcer for Christmas. Bah.Current Music: Goldfrapp - Deer Stop |
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| Dec. 20th, 2004 @ 11:50 pm The inevitable fluffy cat picture... | |||
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 Had to happen. Sooner or later every blog must have a photo of a cute animal on it. Not strictly speaking my cat, but he visits from time to time and disports himself in various amusing and endearing manners. Has the loudest purr I've ever heard, a fondness for tuna, and a big ugly yellow plastic thing hanging round his neck (not visible in this picture), presumably an electronic key for a catflap somewhere but not very practical as it dangles in his food and rattles against the saucer when he eats. Anyway. Nothing particularly interesting happened today. So I've fallen back on the obligatory cute furry animal post. Sorry about that. Please try to avoid noticing how much my carpet needs vacuuming. |
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| Dec. 20th, 2004 @ 12:03 am An early Christmas present | |||
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 Today I got an early Christmas present: a contact juggling ball. If you've seen the film Labyrinth, David Bowie does this really cool looking thing with crystal balls. Or at least he seems to; it's actually a contact juggler standing (or crouching) behind him poking his arm through. Well, now I've got one. Only it's green instead of crystal (the crystal ones are a bit expensive when you don't know if you can do it yet). So I was practising a bit with it this evening, but without the aid of instructions...Occasionally, in a dream, I find myself playing piano. My fingers flow effortlessly across the keys, going to exactly the right places and hitting the keys with exactly the right amount of force, without me having to consciously think about what I'm doing with them. In fact it's a bit like I just move my fingers about in what feels like a random, pretending-to-play-the-piano way, only it turns out I really am playing it, and really well, too. And I find it difficult to reconcile that with the conscious effort that playing the piano in my rather less fluid way takes in non-dream reality. Well, this is a bit like that. I can imagine myself doing it really fluidly, and without even having to think about it, and it looks (in my imagination) just as cool as when David Bowie's character does it in Labyrinth. And then I really pick up the ball... Anyway I can't practise it any more for the moment, because although I got it early I'm not allowed to take it home until after Christmas. By which time I hope to have some instructions. And then, we shall see. By the way, this post counts as 19th December because I haven't gone to bed yet. |
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| Dec. 18th, 2004 @ 10:22 am Headless girlfriend | |||
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Current Mood:
 ecstatic My girlfriend is here for the weekend. So to celebrate, here's a picture of her. Enjoy. |
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| Dec. 17th, 2004 @ 10:29 am Lorenz in Crochet | |||
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 I know this makes me look like a maths nerd but I just think it's kind of cool (and quite pretty too). It's a crochet-ed version of a Lorenz attractor. Click on picture for full story (on BBC news). They also have a rather nice larger picture of the thing, without the nerdy looking maths types standing next to it. |
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| Dec. 16th, 2004 @ 03:42 pm Why don't I have written goals? | |||
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| I was reading in Andrew's Rants about a study conducted in the 80s which showed that the 3% of Harvard graduates who had written goals for their future were, 10 years later, earning massively more than the other 97%. And it got me wondering why I don't write down my goals. Well, I think it's because I don't know what they are. And perhaps some part of myself worries that writing down a goal will be committing myself to something that I may not have fully thought through. Which I suppose is rather silly, really. Writing something down doesn't commit me to anything. It might, in fact, help me get it clearer in my head. If I were to write down a goal and spend a few minutes each day revising it, within a month I'd probably have a spectacularly clear and well-thought-through goal written down. Actually, though, that's not the entire story. The actual question asked in the study was "Have you set clear, written goals for your future and made plans to accomplish them?" (italics added by me.) Writing down goals is one thing. Making plans to accomplish them is something else entirely. But anyway, in the spirit of the thing, I'm going to write down two goals right here and now. Goal number one is to make a blog entry most days. I'm not saying every day, because it may not be possible on some days (for example I'm away for a few days over Christmas and may not have internet access) and I don't want to set up a situation where I've failed should that be the case. But I will endeavour to make an entry on all days when I have the time and the access to do so (which as things stand, is practically every day). This may result in lots of boring entries about nothing in particular. But since nobody reads my blog anyway, I don't suppose that matters much. Goal number two is to make plans to accomplish my goals. Not quite sure how that one will work, or if it will get mired in a recursive catch-22 of its own making, but there it is. Further goals, hopefully, to follow in the time ahead. [Update] Turns out that in fact, there was no such study. Ah well. I'm still going to try to stick to my blogging goal, though. |
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| Dec. 1st, 2004 @ 01:48 pm 16 things that took Dave Barry over 50 years to learn | |||
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| (by Dave Barry, via http://ampers.blogspot.com/2004/11/w 1. Never, under any circumstances, take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night. 2. If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be "meetings." 3. There is a very fine line between "hobby" and "mental illness." 4. People who want to share their religious views with you almost never want you to share yours with them. 5. You should not confuse your career with your life. 6. Nobody cares if you can't dance well. Just get up and dance. (I wish I had!) 7. Never lick a steak knife. 8. The most destructive force in the universe is gossip. 9. You will never find anybody who can give you a clear and compelling reason why we observe daylight savings time. 10. You should never say anything to a woman that even remotely suggests that you think she's pregnant unless you can see an actual baby emerging from her at that moment. 11. There comes a time when you should stop expecting other people to make a big deal about your birthday. That time is age 21. 12. The one thing that unites all human beings, regardless of age, gender, religion, economic status or ethnic background, is that, deep down inside, we ALL believe that we are above average drivers. 13. A person, who is nice to you, but rude to a waiter, is not a nice person. (This is very important. Pay attention. It never fails.) 14. Your friends love you anyway. 15. Never be afraid to try something new. Remember that a lone amateur built the Ark. A large group of professionals built the Titanic. 16. Thought for the day: Men are like fine wine . . . They start out as grapes, and it's up to the women to stomp the crap out of them until they turn into something acceptable to have dinner with. |
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| Nov. 27th, 2004 @ 09:15 am Blogger refugee | |||
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Current Mood:
In case anyone finds yesterday's entry a bit of a strange one to start a Livejournal with, that's because I moved it over from my blogspot journal, because Blogger decided to throw away all my previous posts (and pretend the new ones don't exist if anyone tries to comment to them). Just so you know. annoyed |
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| Nov. 26th, 2004 @ 11:51 pm Blessed air-cushioned comfort | |||
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Current Mood:
Ah, the trivial minutiae of people's lives - that seems to be the stuff of which most blogs are made, so I suppose that's what I ought to start posting to mine if it's not going to be dead in the water. So here we are then, examining the phenomenon of my sore arse. tiredI suppose I've been spending far too long on my computer recently, as my backside has been feeling the strain. My computer is squeezed into a bit of a corner, and there isn't enough space in front of it for an all-singing, all-dancing comfortable office chair (not to mention the good ones seem to cost at least a few hundred pounds). So I sit on an old kitchen stool, the foam in which has become thoroughly compressed. I've had a cushion on it, but the cushion flattens in no time and my posterior is once more in contact with a hard surface. And recently it's been becoming rather sore as a result. So I invested in an air cushion - specifically a thing called a Disc'o'sit, for about 20 quid, including delivery - which was a great improvement, but still not quite doing the trick. Until I applied a bit of common sense to the thing. You see, the upper surface of the Disc'o'sit, for reasons that are not entirely obvious, is covered with little bumps. Little hard bumps. So whilst the cushion as a whole was conforming to the shape of my behind, the little bumps were still pressing against my tender spots and causing discomfort. But the underside of the thing is as smooth as you like. So just now, I turned it over, and what a relief! My rump rejoices in its new-found air-cushioned comfort! Hrm. Just thought you'd like to know. So in summary, I wholeheartedly recommend the Disc-o-sit, but only if used upside-down. |
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