The Iceman Cameth

Frost made it's unwelcome appearance this morning. I should have known - squirrels were all in hiding, lucky beggars, and the icy blasts of wind have been trying to assail me as I desperately cling to my cycle to work exercise plan. As I left the flat this morning, the
first thing I noticed was that it's no longer cycle shorts weather and the wind was freezing me from the legs up. B*stard ! God
only knows how the rest of my body survived - motion battling the torment of winter's breath!

Still, must battle some of the xmas dinner excesses. And it made for a good counterpoint to my sweetie's poetic take on it all as she undoubtedly shuffled along in 4+ layers to the bus stop. Smart lass :)

Sunshine soon - Australia beckons. One day sooner then expected too - glad I found out yesterday that my flight was Friday night and not Saturday night as assumed for the last few weeks !!! Best get packing...

Making a difference

Sometimes the internet can make you feel empowered, giving you insight, information and a voice in an overcrowded world. Other times it can make it all seem pointless when you realise just how many opinions, fools and unheard petitions there seem to be.

I find myself often jaded to signing online petitions, wondering how much it really changes things. Even voting can feel that way, esp. when in a majority area, and more so when both major parties seem to ignore your concerns and petitions.

That said, there are some movements who do harness the internet to grow there influence, organisations who's message can be so simple and clear that you almost wonder why they even need to exist, as surely their message is obvious ? And one of these in Amnesty with a simple message that torture is wrong. Which is simple to understand and hopefully to agree with. And shocking that we are part of it. In any case, I have unsubscribed as part of a new campaign accompanied by quite brutal video footage called waiting for the guards, showing an actor being subjected to the stress position techniques used by us in the crusade against terror.

Another more heart-warming site that most people must have seen by now is the vocabulary enhancing FreeRice where you can prove or improve your word knowledge as part of a never ending game and earn grains of rice for the UN world food program. I notice their banner still claims 10 grains of rice per correct answer, but it appears that amount has doubled as of today. Go for it...

Amsterdam

Last weekend was the first time Mimi and I got away from London, just the two of us, and went somewhere new together. Well, somewhere new for her, as we headed to Amsterdam, which I have visited a few times before. This time was different for me though, as I was able to take in more of the culture and feel of the city with new travel-widened eyes, as well as using the time to wind down, relax and recharge my batteries somewhat. Previous visits had been a little more hectic, and involved a lot more time in varied coffee establishments rather than seeing the sights ! Needless to say, we got a few photos

Another great part of the trip was to see old travel friends in there local city, and taking advantage of that local knowledge. Sure, the Van Gough museum was great, and we picked up some nice art posters to add to the empty walls of our new house. But just going to nice cafes, chatting about lives and sharing stories together was awesome. And of course, going out a great bar (The Pacific Parc) to dance at until 3am was great - the music was eclectic and I heard a great tune from the previously unknown to me BALKAN BEAT BOX (go to the site and listen to Adir Adirim - really fun tune to dance to).

Batteries somewhat recharged, we have got two more weeks of trying to furnish the flat (another weekend night in IKEA for me !) and get things perfect for the upcoming house warming. This should tie in perfectly with the final day of Movember - which is coming on nicely at the moment. My face isn't enjoying the regular shaves (never did, hence the beard) so I am letting the stubble get a bit TOO long at times, but overall it's a chopper style masterpiece Mo if I say so myself. And I do. Sponsorship and "Mo blog" links should all be below !

Mo house in the middle of Mo street

New house has been a source of stress - hot water, plumbing, boiler, washing machine, broadband internet, dishwasher, windows, window blinds, TV aerial and shower head have been broken, busted or sub-optimal. About half of them are fixed now, but the response of our agents has felt slow and painful.

In better news, my Mo is growing well. Check out the fancyness on http://www.movember.com/uk/popups/mologs/?id=119515. Did just notice one side is around 1cm longer than the other today though.... whoops. Guess I'm stuck with that for the weekend, as tonight we Jet off to Amsterdam for a weekend away from house troubles and to meet some old travelling friends.

Movember

Forget October - it's over - welcome to Movember.

As part of a charity drive to raise's Male Health awareness, and partly as a team bonding exercise at work, it is time to grow my "Mo". During Movember (the month formerly known as November) I'll be growin a Mo (slang for Moustache). That's right I'm bringing the Mo back to raise funds for The Prostate Cancer Charity because...

• Prostate cancer is now the most common cancer diagnosed in men in the U.K. with at least one man dying every hour from the disease.
  
• Every year about 35,000 men in the U.K. are diagnosed with prostate cancer and about 10,000 men die from the disease.
• One man in 11 will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetime in the U.K.

Several other people at work are signing up for this - to be part of our team, give me a shout. Also, the golden rule of Movember is all participants must start clean shaven. That's right - the goatee is going into temporary retirement too !

To sponsor my joint beard shave and Mo (moustache) grow, AND fight against prostate cancer please go to http://www.movember.com/uk/donate, enter my registration number which is 119515 and your credit card details. Or you can sponsor me by cheque made payable to "The Prostate Cancer Charity" clearly marking the donation as being for my Registration Number: 119515. Please mail cheques to: The Prostate Cancer Charity, ATT: Movember, First Floor, Cambridge House, 100 Cambridge Grove, Hammersmith, London W6 0LE.

All donations are made directly to The Prostate Cancer Charity which will use the money to fund high quality research into the causes, treatment and impact of prostate cancer and to provide support and information to men and their families.

Thanks for your support

More info is available at www.movember.com.

No change here

Coming up with the pun-a-rific title here was no trouble at all - a few words around the work office has unleashed a deluge of unsympathetic (and rightfully so) puns at my expense. But puns about what you may ask ?...

Saturday night was a beery old night (and a beery old night was he... I'll stop there). But only slightly into my second drink, a couple of uni mates, free of the drinking shackles of fatherhood for one night only, decided it was time to revisit old university habits. The old tradition on wine at dinner was if a copper coin made its way into your drink, you were required to down it in one. Not sure this rule ever applied to pints as such, but in anycase, a penny found its way into the bottom of my drink.

I kind of put off the delight of necking the drink - it wasn't wine, it was only my second and mainly it wasn't much past 6pm. I intended to survive the evening somewhat intact if possible. But a few gulps in, having taken enough crap from the guys opposite me, I decided to finish the other half of my drink and use the penny to retaliate... The drink slid down past gritted teeth easy enough, but the penny took its time, and suddenly jumped forward to strike my teeth. That was sort of the plan, but I hadn't counted on how much the damn thing would hurt. A small exclamation of pain was all it took for the troublesome coin to join that final swig of ale in flying down my throat, and before I could believe it, the penny had gone.

It was soon followed by small bits of bread, and plenty of fluids bought for me by guilty parties all around. Enough I hoped to avoid any "problems" with my new high-copper diet and speed the issue to its eventual resolution. Coming up to 72 hours later, and whilst I can't say I've looked too hard, there is still no definite sighting of the "not-so-loose" change. I even called NHS Direct who directed me to an A&E department, but they sent me away saying that short of stomach cramping or vomiting, there wasn't much to worry about. Of course, now my stomach has started hurting this afternoon, classic placebo timing or sinister revenge of the coin ? Post-gym session I'll put it down to the weight training for now, but why do I have a feeling this is far from over :(

They always said that my drinking would get me in the end...

There coming to get you, Barbara !

Mini-Hobby update - my boardgaming quest for the perfect boardgame may soon come to an end...

Over time I've picked up a number of games which on a high-level can be split into Eurogames (limited randomness, quite simple rules, quite deep tactics - e.g. Chess, Settlers of Catan, Gin Rummy, Ticket to Ride) and Ameritrash Games (greater randomness, lots of cool looking bits and normally strongly themed - e.g. Mousetrap, Fury of Dracula, Zombies!!!, Monopoly).

Now, I have some great Eurogames, but these can be off-putting for some people and are best played with a certain number of players. Ameritrash games tend to appeal to more people (due to pretty pieces) and can be more fun, casual games that work with a wider variety of people. So thus my quest begun to find the ultimate Ameritrash game, which needs:

• Quick to play
• Zombies !
• Good player interaction (teamwork / conflict)
• Zombies !
• Simple rules

By all reports, Last Night on Earth, The Zombie Game has this in spades. Released 2 months ago in the US, it has been getting great reviews from everyone over there. And it was pegged for a UK release this Halloween (how appropriate). But... today I found out that a tiny release of stock is being released this week (6 copies are headed to the shop that I spoke to) and then lots more stock will be released in 4-5 weeks (surely they mean "28 days later..." ?!).

And I am happy. As I have bagged one of those six copies :) Assuming royal mail put down the kettle and start working again, I should have my grubby hands on it something next week...

Braaaaiiinnssss...

Suddenly, from nowhere... an update !

Ok, three people commented on the lack of posts here - which is a lot in the micro-world of blogging. Besides, one of them was my mother, so what kind of son would I be to ignore my own mother ;)

I am assisted with getting today's blog going with the handy firefox plugin ScribeFire, which offers you a little pop-up writing panel, which allows you to quickly start typing when the mood strikes, as well as easily adding links to the page you are looking at. Recommended to all firefox bloggers out there... yes, both of you :) - or maybe not - I just finished this blog post, clicked the wrong thing, and lost everything without a warning message. So it's a power tool without a safety catch :(

Today's post will be sidestepping my #1 project of weight-loss with a simple "click the Traineo link" comment. Things are going pretty well, I'm feeling healthy, and have gym sessions, cycling to work and now an occasional swim at weekends going for me. I have also signed up for the BUPA London 10,000 run next May, which is the furthest I have ever ran (and then that was almost 6-7 years ago !)

Moving on to more important housing news. Mimi has moved in with me, and along with Jon and his girlfriend we are cosily filling our 2-bed / 1-bath house. Not TOO cosy yet, although occasional morning waits for bathrooms and tripping over drying suggests that 1 month is the longest we can sustain this these days ! At the end of this month, Mimi and I move onto out new rental place in Barnsbury (which is located here). It's a basement flat with a large bedroom, kind of modern interior, good storage space and a large shared garden at the back. There is also a large park space infront of the house, which might be fun next summer. The garden is shared with the house above, which I am led to believe has a lady occupying it who is often away and quite friendly, so that sounds like things should get on fine. We have men and large vans hired for the move, otherwise it would be just me lifting the heavy things, which wouldn't be great, not with my back...

Yep, more back problems for me. Nothing major, just a slight stoop which was quickly "popped" out a large and brutal Aussie Physiotherapist. It has caused me a bit of neck pain, which became aggrivated at a recent trip to "the electric ballroom" rock / metal club in Camden. I probably didn't need to be rocking out TO THE MAX, but when in rome... Anyway, it's all on the mend now, and I'm sitting much straighter at work, the threat of a post-rugby victory trip back to the defeated antipodean physio filling me with dread. All that neck twisting, if done a little too hard, might... <shudder>

Well, I had some more here (before losing it) about writing (still ticking along a little), coding (not ticking along at all) and finaces (£240 mystery transaction with Tesco being disputed - people, check your bank statements every 2 months, it can pay off !) but they will have to remain part of my signing off paragraph for now. Apologies for the break from blogging, hopefully I'll have some more news closer to the BIG housemove. And once Royal mail stop sitting about drinking tea, they might deliver my camera from the repair shop so I can get pictures too !

Going down...

Ok - diet plan is on for a good start. I got some scales, which kindly placed me much closer to 19 stone than 20, and then got a little more serious on exercise. Three to five times a week is the plan, with cycling into work and the gym offering the best chances for exercise.

So far I am hovering just under 19 stone, but hoping to see that continue to drop slowly. It's easy to get disheartened - weight loss of more than 2lbs a week is quite unsustainable so not likely to happen. Need to keep vigilant on bad foods and getting to the gym (always tricky to fit in around work) especially as winter rolls in...

[EDIT] ---> Come celebrate in voyeuristic web2.0 style by tracking my fitness and weight loss at Traineo (click the button in the sidebar, or click here).

My name is Ben

My name is Ben, I am 30 years old and I live in London near Tower Bridge and work for UBS investment bank in the IT section. I take these facts pretty much for granted, although a 20 year old me would of been fascinated to hear them.

Today I am sick. Which means in between the napping, I have a day off. Not a "day off" like the weekend where I can go out and do stuff, but a day out of the often fast moving stream of life. Indeed the weekends, whilst fun and fulfilling, are rarely "days off" nowadays.

I often wonder why I am doing the things I do. I don't recall choosing them. Well, maybe I chose between X and Y or this and that, but I never sat down and said to myself - gosh, it's a big world of stuff, what would you like to do in it ? I rarely picked holiday destinations, often led by convention or friends ideas. My set of job interviews were somewhat dictated by the pushiest head hunters.

I guess what I feeling today is I don't spend enough, or any, time on these questions. It's not like my lack of decisiveness has led me into a corner - indeed, most of my choices were based on "which life direction leaves me with the greatest number of choices still open". But this thinking may of prevented me from following a hidden passion or interest I really hadn't considered for myself. And later in life, where commitments are more prevalent such as house buying, career progression and settling down, decisions can be made harder by this attitude of keeping options open.

My name is Ben and I am 30 years old. My options are open. It's time for me to start thinking about using them, rather than simply keeping them open. I currently live in London, currently near Tower Bridge and current work for UBS investment bank. All these could or could not change; but they can if I want and so can I, as I choose to, when I choose to. And realising this should not be scary, but totally awesome :)

Spoon are great and so is Italy and so am I

Joyful is I, for today my pre-ordered Spoon album entitled "Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga" arrived. For those unacquainted with them, Spoon are a superb band, probably one of my favourite of any genre. Catchy chords and tunes, a great singer (Britt Daniels), many different sounds in each album - like the Eels or Blur perhaps - and solid song writing skills add up to a several superb albums, the latest of which might be the greatest. Don't take my word for it though, go listen for yourself.

Just came back from a long weekend in Italy, seeing the Palio horse race. Photos should find themselves onto Smugmug once I've found a spare minute - not likely to be too soon though as this coming weekend sees me off to Wales for more partying and boys-weekend away fun. It's combined with some hardcore outdoor walking too, so net the health might not suffer to much...

Finally today was my financial exam. Felt like I did quite well, but no results yet. Hopefully an e-mail later today will supply that. I guess the last exams I did were many years ago, and I've always had a certain expectation to not just pass but to pass them well. So fingers crossed for 95%+ then :)

[BREAKING NEWS] I got 93% - which I am still pretty bloody happy with :)

Reflection is my real word of the day

Feel like a lot of change and projects are flowing around in my life at the moment, and wanted to take a few minutes to capture where I am at with each. And also mark any progress on them, once I can stop spending ALL my spare time on facebook - if your not signed up then your rapidly becoming part of the minority, as even technophobic friends appear there every day. It's becoming big. It may even become an e-mail killer for some groups. Come see. Anyway, on with the life projects:

Project #1: Lose weight

Well, this is going to be a big one if I am to ultimately aim for the "recommended" weight of around 15 stone. So step 1 is... lose weight ! By which I mean just track SOME weight being lost over the next few weeks, ensuring I've got SOME healthy habits in place to achieve that. I am also keeping a track of everything I eat and drink to help spot where things are going badly in my diet - it also works as a source of guilt as I fill it in as well ! I also have an upcoming 3.5 mile run I am training for, which helps toward the "keeping active" part required for any weight loss program. Ran 5km in the gym last night - very knackering but rewarding !

Project #2: Write

Nothing as grand as writing a novel, but I do enjoy writing, if not for the reflection it brings, as well as a chance to try out words from my word-of-the-day update, which I quite like, although I wouldn't go as far to say that I venerate it. This is ticking along nicely - I have this blog, and another Java / software blog I am trying to keep writing too. Finding this other blog is left as an exercise for the reader for now :)

Project #3: Code

Should be easy - it's my job. But there is coding and then there is Coding. Depending on the role, some task only allow a limited use of coding skills - indeed banking is often a job where the bulk of the work is business analysis and the actual coding can take second place. So I continue to have my side-project of "virtual vampire", and other opportunities are floating out there too. Haven't done much coding on VV for a while though... bad Ben :(

Project #4: Finances

An ongoing project now nearing some degree of completion. This was basically the thought that in general if I want more financial stability, I can either spend time working harder to earn more money, but equally I could spend time managing the money I do have better. The recommendation here has to be Money Saving Expert, a neutral website by Martin Lewis for managing your money better. So I have moved any spare coins into ISAs, better savings accounts and soon will move to a new current account paying twice as much interest as the old one. All these little things add up, and will help me build up a nice nest egg to throw at a mortgage when I am ready for such a thing. Also tracking my spending using some software is good for the guilt mirror effect (similar to Project #1 !).

Project #5: Learn

Did a training course recently at work on some basics of finance that had been long overdue in my career. With the test looming next week, I am discovering the joy of proper learning again. I equally enjoyed learning Spanish over a year ago, and want to keep that feeling going. Getting some basic Greek in my head could help for a trip to Greece this year. Professional certification courses also help with strengthening my CV and developer skills. Guess I need to think more about this one - first things first, I've got a finance test to revise for :)

So that's my life, split in project form. Of course it's not that clear cut in reality, but it's the beginning of a set of goals. Reflection is good for nailing down the "why" behind a lot of what I am doing, and this "why" should help me hammer out some life goals. And these don't have to be active goals as such, even passive goals can help with making decisions, which is basically where I see my weakness. In ways I've drifted a long time without firm goals, and that's a shame, as I think everything is much brighter and more interesting when you've got something to work towards.

Did I mention facebook ? Join us ;)

A lot of large projects on the go

Having gotten home at 4:40pm after a financial derivatives training course, I really thought I was going to make good headway on virtual vampire. It's now 10:15pm and I've just cleared my plate !

Eating up that time in fairness was cooking a nice dinner, doing the homework for the course and a big gym session. I am trying to get fit for a number of reasons - firstly there is a 5.8km run coming up in July (the chase challenge) and I would like to be able run it in around 35-40 minutes. Secondly was a warning for a friend of mine that 30-45 years old is "heart attack alley" so really not the time to be neglecting exercise, and finally a had a health test last year that reported all was fine except for two things; firstly my anerobic / lung capacity was a little sub-par and secondly I am medically obese.

A little shocked that I was in this category, I looked at the statistics, and anyone with a BMI (Body mass index) of over 30 is obese. His chart was nice enough to have an extra "obese II" category for BMI in excess of 35, which I am far from, but being in any of the bright red areas doesn't strike me as a good thing long term. I am used to having a weight around 18 1/2 stone (118kg) for much of my adult life, but to drop to the (still orange coloured) overweight section I would need to drop to 17 1/2 stone (111kg). So I was a little shocked to find that using two different sets of scales, both confirmed my current weight to be 20 stone (127kg) putting me at BMI 34... nearly obese II.

Ok, so it's early days with the gym - around 8-10 weeks so far I think - and coming into Summer there should hopefully be some seasonal weight drop to help me along. But I think I am going to need to look at the little things more harshly now, and look at other opportunities for exercise to supplement the gym sessions.

Right - might get 30 mins on virtual vampire now. As long as each day I work towards goals (gym, writing the blog, software projects) then it shouldn't get me down, because I know what I'm working towards and I know it's things I enjoy and want to improve. It's a lot of investment of time, but cutting out the distractions of life (computer games, idle TV) and working more efficiently at work should all give me the time I need to fit it all in.

Introducing... virtual vampire !

Recently I have been unsettled in my work and much of this was due to not having indulged in some good quality coding for quite a while. So I am intending to join the open source on line community with my own application - virtual vampire !

This tool will be primarily an exercise in building a complete system, with a decent front end and expandable modules, for running one of the sides in a board game - Fury of Dracula. The idea stemmed for another effort by someone where he had written an AI to randomly move for the hidden moves of Dracula in the game, and the player could then ask the system if Dracula was in the areas he was exploring or not.

It almost might be harder to play against a random opponent than a human who you can second guess. However, I intend to initially write a random movement AI for the game, then expand it into a more logical style opponent, looking 2-3 moves ahead like a rudimentary chess computer might. In this case, assigning probabilities to various choices and acting on that information, but still slightly randomly, to prevent an opponent second guessing the computers reactions. It may be possible to take this one step further and assign the AI various attributes (such as cowardly, aggressive or overly bold) to create a different flavour of play style each game - allowing a human player to pick up on this play style and counter play accordingly.

In any case, it's a work in (slow) progress, and all current hosted on the google code website

Mad cults and the Englishman

Given my usual boredom with much of TV today, I was surprised to find something on tonight that made my blood boil. It was the 30 minute Panorama episode on Scientology, which attempts to offer an insight into this "secretive" religion, but instead can only showcase summaries of interviews that have been withdrawn due to legal pressure and hostile verbal assaults from leading figures of the cult. This culminated after seven days with John Sweeney losing his temper and shouting at the interviewer, arming the church for a publicity campaign against the show. By airing this clip on YouTube, I think they underestimated the effect of there media campaign, which instead created more interest for a show exposing them as a creepy and sinister cult which destroys and threatens lives.

The show can be viewed on-line now here and there is also a BBC news article about the show and the shouting incident.

Alongside the footage shown in the show of some scary Scientology practices, there is also a large amount of effort going into there on-line spin campaign to discredit the reporter. For instance, compare the above you tube clip, which accepts comments without moderation and has been rated highly, with another posting of the clip which moderates all comments and has therefore been voted quite low by general users of the internet. At least the population of the internet has been hardened by advertisers efforts in viral marketing already, and can see through this poor attempt by the CoS to discredit the work of John Sweeney and the BBC.

Below is a copy of a comment I sent the BBC Panorama team. Given the strength of my reaction to this show, I thought it would be good to share these comments with any interested audience.

---

"After the recent showing of the Panorama special on Scientology, I found myself outraged and annoyed. Not at the presentation by John Sweeney which was an impressive attempt to gain a measured impression of Scientology, but by the verbal diarrhoea offered by the top member of the church in place of any discussion.

Praise to the BBC for managing to attempt to show all sides of this organisation both good and bad in the face of such hostility to any form of dialogue. And whilst it was disappointing that the verbal assaults of Tommy Davis finally broke down John's professional front, it was incredible that he had endured the intimidation and abuse for so long with such recourse.

Given this is a cult who appear to be able to break down people's minds within days of first contact with them, credit must go to John for his patient attempts to have what could be regarded as an effective interview for this documentary, and it was greatly disappointing he could not manage to achieve the cooperation from the senior members of this church to accomplish this.

I am now much more concerned about the spread of Scientology into the UK, and appreciate the BBC's report on this organisation and furthermore would value more programming on aspects of it's work and activity.

My thanks to Panorama and John Sweeney."

---

Time to calm down and get some sleep - it's times like this that a classic episode of South Park can ease a troubled mind :)

You get what you pay for

Today heralded a trip to the dentist, but not for any old routine check up. I had a check up just over 6 months ago back when I was living in West Hampstead where I was told I was fine and did not need to come back for a couple of years. However the other night I broke a little bit of my molar tooth biting down on some shell in a seafood mix from Tesco, and whilst it was in little pain, it seem prudent to get it checked out as it felt jagged.

The surgery I visited seemed awfully overblown in attitude - more of a "cosmetic enhancement parlour" than a simple dentist. However the interior of the building, like the dentist himself, was a little small and "pokey". I felt at ease until I saw the price list - over 50 quid just for a checkup, with filling hitting around the 100 quid mark each. This was more than the 20 quid I throw down for a check-up in West Hampstead, but I guess you truly get what you pay for, as this dentist showed me x-rays of two fillings I required on opposite sides of my mouth.

Long story cut short, I was 250 quid down and feeling is just coming back to my mouth now. The check up and fillings took two hours, but was essentially painless due to large quantities of anaesthetic in my gums. How it that got there was a little painful, but feeling better for having a healthier mouth. Feeling a little lighter of wallet too :(

Next year I might take up work's dental insurance (only 120 quid a year...) although a gambler might say not to bother - after all I just had the fillings I needed, so the odds of needing more in the next year are lower than they've been for a while...

After straining my wrist quite badly on a London bus, I am on the road to recovery, having taken full advantage of my private-health care through work. God bless free Health and the NHS, but if your a neurotic accident-prone giant then I can heartily recommend Private Cover for getting your bits and pieces fixed up :) How quickly the city can turn a boy away from his hippy communist roots...

Speaking of capitalist joys, with my wrist back in action, it's been time to re-engage myself with the Wii. The game I'm mostly playing at the moment is Legend of Zelda : Twilight Princess. It's a slow bloomer, with a little too much dialogue in the first hour and quite linear play for the first twenty hours as you discover new areas and powers. But those twenty hours of play are all good fun and the linear style introduces parts of the overall land to you in bite-sized chunks whilst teaches you dozens of tactics and tricks to get round obstacles and enemies. What this means as you get to the "now I have most of my basic powers" point, and the whole map is opened up for free exploration, is you can really get immersed into being part of the larger world, which is why Zelda games are great. Good, logical and immersive worlds to discover new things in. Only problem is all of this free exploration has left me somewhat lost of to what my overall mission was...

Some more quirky titles for the Wii seem to be set for release soon. A Greek software house has spoken (in Greek) about an upcoming game where you can use the Wii remote as a baton to conduct an on-screen orchestra ! Another title seems sets to take biometric readings as you exercise, and then upload them to a hospital for a fitness test. A little over-ambitious in my mind, but I applaud the idea ! Can't see it working in the UK really, unless you have some form of well paid medical service in the country you live in... hmmm...

Tonight sees a rest for the Wii (and my wrist) as we go old school gaming and pull out "Fury of Dracula" (see previous post). We shall see if the game mesmerises anyone into being bitten by the board gaming bug - it's getting hard travelling 30 miles West every time I fancy a quick game of something :)

Stepping up to the web 2.0 challenge

Whilst I regard myself as quite technical and internet focused, I have allowed myself to "slip behind" the curve a little recently. I think GMail was the last thing I was up to speed with, after that it all went a little soft. Certainly in recent times I forced myself into using RSS, which I now cannot live without - imagine having to revisit news pages and rescan them looking for any new articles ?!! And then moved onto "semantic tagging" over bookmarking - principally as I had too many (700+) bookmarks to not put them in folders, and I couldn't come up with a hirarchy of folders that consistantly worked for me.

So with my webmail(via Gmail), RSS (via Bloglines) and tagged bookmarks (via del.icio.us) setup, as well as a host of other new "web 2.0" services such as a todo list (via Remember the Milk) and a more general simple list service (via tada lists) I was truely setup to get more of what I wanted out the internet.

But the final piece of the puzzle that clicked into place recently was a site called netvibes. This is now my homepage, and is a customizable page with various panels sorted into columns (bit like portlets, for those who know what they are). Each panel contains one of my web 2.0 services so the overall effect is that of a dashboard or command console, where I can in one look see what unread mail I have, which RSS feeds have updated, what my upcoming week's todo list is and a host of other stuff.

If you are scratching your head here, then I might put up a laymans description of all this techno-babble soon ! If you are thinking - hold on, Outlook does all of this, what is so great about your setup - then you havn't been bitten by the web 2.0 bug. Everything is much more easily accessable, updateable and useable as rigid Outlook components, and I can mix these services together in different ways as I need, as well as change services should a better one come along. The mark of a great web2.0 application is one that will help you migrate to a competing one, but you simply don't want to :)

These are a few of my favorite things... well, just one of them in fact

Recently I have been trying to scratch a recurring itch of mine, board gaming. I flippin' love boardgaming. And we're not talking Cluedo, Trivial Pursuits or, dear god help me, Monopoly (gawd, Monopoly sucks). We are talking real tactical thinking boardgames, each seasoned with enough luck to suit the occasion.

They are a happy compromise between mindless dice-roller family games and chess to me. Backgammon would be a good example of this, although more modern classics like Settlers of Catan, Carcassonne and Ticket to Ride would be a better example of what great board gaming is these days. I think the German's are more into this, indeed the hobby seems kept alive over here mainly by European publishing houses.

But my newest game, sitting next to my desk, is Fury of Dracula - a storming 2-5 player action / detective work game where 1-4 players as characters from Bram Stoker's classic hunt down Count Dracula, who moves around the board in secret laying down traps to hinder the hunters whilst trying to create a network of vampires around Europe.

However, as with many of my geek like hobbies, it's kind of hard to get something like this going. It needs semi-regular interest from people, like sporting hobbies, but is more of a leisure pursuit, so rarely something you plan too far in advance. But this is where the London effect comes in - so many events and socials DO require advance booking to secure facilities, tickets or numbers in this big city, so most of us book ourselves up regularly and in advance. It feels quite contrived to book a gaming session 2-3 weeks in advance, but that's the option here.

So if anyone is a keen board gamer in London, feel free to drop me a mail ! Otherwise I'll keep on trying to find enough vampire hunters / island settlers / city builders and railway travellers to keep my hobby going in the big smoke. Living in a big, bustling city, sometimes I can do with as much escapism as I can get :)

Slipping behind the curve slowly

My new ventures into modern communications has reached another stumbling block... seems Twitter is another of the modern web sites blocked by our companies Internet policy ! I think opinion of Twitter is somewhat divided, but to me it seemed the halfway house between blogging and having regular face to face contact with people - a way of keeping up with people's everyday smaller thoughts and feelings. My profile is here, if any other twitterers wanna buddy up incidentally

Few people blog about the daily little things, and if you don't see people regularly, these things tend to be left out of conversation in lieu of the bigger (bloggable) past events, so perhaps Twitter can help occupy this middle ground ? The little things are often as interesting, and much more individual and personable. Well, guess whilst I'm behind works Internet umbrella, I won't really know if it all works or not - short of doing it all via mobile phone...

Anyway, I can understand the reasoning for the restrictive blanket policy, but this "security over creativity" thing will restrict development towards being a well-rounded technologist. We talk internally about promoting AJAX and Web 2.0 within our tools at work, but then get blocked from trying out practical, successful examples of these ideas in action ! That's one of the main difference between my last small company employers vs the big corporate in general I guess.

And keeping abreast of new technology and learning about the new capabilities of modern software design is what enhances the software I produce and the reward that keeps me interested in a career within technology.

30

Life emergency !

Actually nothing to worry too much about - if you gaze down previous posts you may notice I have these as regularly as other people have pizza, but this one is given extra life-crisis validity by being close to my 30th birthday !

Therefore I am following it through more than other panics - hey, I've even updated and cleaned up my blog this time ! Now if I only I can get round to moving my old travel photos into my newer (and much sexier) online photo album, I'll be in good shape for blogging again :) One of the thing the spurred me on to include the increasingly inaccurately named "Exit Turner" in my cleanup was a lot of memories of people fired up from the guest book Mimi got me for my birthday.

Now, if you are reading this, there is a 95% chance you were included on her mails about this, but in case you are one of the few people I don't have an e-mail address for, Mimi brought a great big leather-bound black-paged book, and got people to either e-mail over photos and comments which she printed and stuck in the book, or on the night of my birthday people were left with metallic pens, stickers and other miscellany to fill the book with kind (or not so kind !) comments. The result is a very heartwarming collection of memories, embarrassments and kind words. It also makes me realise how lucky I am to have a gal like Mimi :)

Did I also mention I got a Godzilla vrs Monkeys birthday cake ? Awesome !!!

Anyhow, back to the life emergency. Essentially I am having "full circle" crisis - e.g. I am where I was 4-5 years ago, with nothing in motion to change this. But this time I am avoiding drastic measures and working on the little things instead. Making some plans, and thinking about what I want to be actually doing in 5 years etc... Of course the options and questions are greater now that many of my friends are buying houses, living with partners and even having kids (e.g. growing up).

All of this will have to wait though - I have a far more immediate work crisis I need to attend to !!!

Back soon ? Hope so