Brennig Jones (and friends)

The spry, sprightly and slightly caffeine-hyped young woman dragged her husband from his near-death-bed, where he was recovering from a v. serious illness, and threw him on to the local Badminton court at 21.00 yesterday.

Not at all intimidated (!) by some very flash players from a Club on the neighbouring courts, the unevenly-matched couple threw themselves in to their game.

After a 25-minute warm-up the contest between the two unevenly-matched competitors commenced.

And, despite some extended rallies that were punctuated by flashingly fast slam-shots, it was soon over.

After two straight games victory nestled in the winner’s heart like a warm and cuddly friend.

And who was the emphatic victor?

The seriously ill husband.

But she gave him a real run for his money.

(I may live to regret this post. Soph’s getting very good)

beep beep beep

No, not the kind of backing up that one might do in a vehicle of some description.

Backing up your data.

I was having a twitter conversation with Nutty Cow who was asking stuff about backing up, when it struck me that I haven’t backed anything up for a week.

Shriek!

So now I am sitting here whilst my backing up routines run, erm, in the background.

Here’s how it goes in my world; every week I backup every file on this laptop and Sophie’s laptop on to a 1TB external disk drive (EDD).

And then I do it all again on to my standby 1TB EDD.

Then I log on to my web hosting account and trigger a backup all of the MySQL databases behind my various web-properties and I copy these backups on to my laptop and both of my EDDs.

Then I log on to my various web-properties and FTP a copy of every set of the htm/html, php and WordPress files on to laptop and both of my EDDs.

Why do I go to so much trouble?

I had a disk failure, once.

At home.

Not ‘still here’ as in the slogan that one of my T-Shirts bears: ‘Not Dead Yet’. Although, coincidentally, I am actually ‘not dead yet’ too.

But that wasn’t the point behind my comment.

What I meant was I am still not well enough to go back to work, my internal thermostat veers from one extreme to the other which sends me in to feverishly sweating fits whilst instructing my brain that I’m freezing my cute little bum off.

And I keep falling asleep; just sitting here trying to read Important Things, then my head goes down and I’m off to another place for a minute or two.

I have written to my agent telling him to kindly inform the publisher that she should stick her head up a dead bear’s bum because I’m not switching genders; I don’t care if more women buy books than men, that’s not the point.

I feel like shite. Health-wise I mean, not about the publisher thing.

One minute I’m hungry but before I can do anything about it I’m not interested in food at all and the thought of eating makes me feel even more unwell.  WTF’s that all about?

Ears.

Can you go out and find people who will lend us their ears? The audience of the little podcast (This Reality Podcast) that the cute (but slightly potty-mouthed) Soph and I co-present has, according to Google’s stats service, gone mental.

What we need is just less than 3,000 new listeners/subscribers/downloaders – 2,721 to be precise – because that would, unbelievably, take is over the 100,000 listeners milestone.

The podcast had a marketing push three weeks before the Cornbury Festival with a small campaign in a couple of universities. That seems to have added about 10,000 listeners, though God knows why. And our cunning strategy (not!) of walking around the Cornbury Festival with cameras and our microphone/recorder rig, interviewing random people and giving out our flashcards seems to have added just over 8,000.

Since the podcast website was redesigned the amount of web-traffic has gone through the roof (you wouldn’t believe how many people google ‘Radio 1 presenter changes’ every day!).

We’ve expanded the News and Reviews sections to be comfortable with the wider music-based world, so if you would like to write for the website just drop me/it/us a line (all roads lead to Rome, to take an old metaphor and adapt it to a 21st Century telecommunications environment).

The podcast is what accounting experts would call ‘finance neutral’. This means we pay nothing out and receive no income. Soph and I like this state of affairs and plan on keeping the Status Quo. Which reminds me that we’ve never actually played any Status Quo, despite having a PRS licence which would enable us to do so. Is not playing Status Quo a good or a bad thing? Discuss.

But the reason I mentioned money is to illustrate that because we have no income we can’t actually pay you for your time/effort if you do decide you’d like to write for us. Or if you decide you’d like to record audio to be included in the podcast. I mean you could do that as well as writing for it, we just wouldn’t be able to pay you, that’s all.

Anyway.

So the podcast sits there, 2,721 short of the magic 100k subscribers.

I don’t know why I said ‘magic’ because it’s not as if Hermione is going to suddenly appear in front of me and start removing her clothes, is it?

No, of course not.

Eh?

Oh, sorry, I seem to have drifted off for a moment. And wandered considerably off-topic though for the life of me I can’t think what the topic was.

Health? Being not dead? The two could be one and the same anyway.

Did you know that the longest sand spit in the world is in the Baltic Sea just off Kaliningrad, and it is a fraction under 100 km long.

One hundred kilometres.

Amazing.

Yes, I know that there’s a website that claims that the Dungeness spit in Washington is, at a mere five miles, the world’s longest, but they were obviously going for an entry in the Guinness Book of World Records under the heading ‘how wrong can they be?’ when they wrote that nonsense.

Fascinating place, Kaliningrad.

I need to get outside. It’s stopped raining so I’ll see how I feel after a walk around the green.

Oh, and how disappointed do I feel that the big grey chap won’t be coming to live with us?

Very.

I can’t hack it.

It’s 21.15 and I’ve got to throw in the towel and rock up them stairs with a mug of tea and a good book.

WTF?

In other news…

The big grey boy (17 hand, 6 year-old Irish Sports Horse) is not coming to live with Vinnie, Soph and me.

Grump!

obviously, being unwell doesn’t agree with my sunny disposition; no gerbils were harmed in the writing of this piece

When an author, you know, actually sits down and finishes a piece of work, and spends the best part of six weeks editing, re-editing, re-re-editing, re-re-re-editing, re-re-re-re-editing and then doing even further editing, and then tarts it all up and writes an accompanying killer synopsis and bundles the whole thing up and sends it off to one’s agent, one has a set of expectations.

But one doesn’t expect the first publisher who has a good, long, hard look at it, to suggest a rewrite to the extent that the genders of the two leading characters are reversed.

I mean, if the point of the novel is to tell a story from the perspective of Character A who, for the sake of illustration, we’ll call a female gerbil, what the hell is the point of the publisher saying they’d like to see it rewritten so the story is as told from the perspective of Character B, a male gerbil?

That’s the whole reason for the story you dozy twonks.

The point is that this particular story is told from the perspective of the female gerbil.

Give me strength.

I need a mug of tea and I need it stat!

It is 09.02 Monday and I am at home.

I have the day off because of a long-standing hospital appointment; nothing serious, the medical specialists just want to do tests to find out how I can veer so suddenly from nice guy to people-hating guy and not suffer whiplash in the quickness of the movement.

I hadn’t planned to do anything special, apart from the hospital appointment, obv.

Maybe watch a little ChavTV (aka Jeremy Kyle), finish the book I’m reading (which has made me want to visit Kaliningrad far too much), snooze, ride Vin; just generally relax.

[checks TV listings to find out what time ChavTV starts. 09.25 if you’re interested]

‘Days off’ don’t come around here too often; the down-side of being self-employed is no paid annual leave, no paid sick leave.

But I love the irony that I’ve been awake since 02.00 because… wait for it… I’m not feeling well.

Brilliant.

A sick day and a day’s leave all wrapped up in one feverish 24-hour block.

Wonderful.

I have throat glands the size of pomegranates.

No, really.

Anyway this gives me an unusual opportunity to sit and pontificate observe the world from a slightly grumpy (because I’m ill, right?) perspective.

What do you mean ‘so what’s unusual about that?’

Grrr…

First up today is Spotify.

Spotify, in case you’ve been living in a cave since the internet was developed, is (and I quote from their own website) ‘… a new way to enjoy music.’

Really?

Instead of using our ears, you mean?

But no! As we read on we learn that there is no need to throw away our ears just yet because all we have to do is ‘Simply download and install, before you know it you’ll be singing along to the genre, artist or song of your choice.’

Hmmm… I hate to break it to the Spotify guys and girls but that’s pretty much what I do that now.

So the newness in this situation is where?

Let’s read some more because maybe I’m missing the point, ‘With Spotify you are never far away from the song you want.’

Riiiight.

Still not seeing the ‘newness’ thing here.

‘There are no restrictions in terms of what you can listen to or when.’

Well look, I don’t want to be funny or appear as though I’m some horrible grump but there are loads – LOADS – of restrictions in terms of what people can listen to or when.

Shall I explain?

Two words: Corporate Firewalls.

I know of three London-based organisations that between them employ something like 38,000 staff and none of the boys and girls employed by these folks can get Spotify at work.

So far, Mr & Mrs Spotify, I’m completely unimpressed with everything your son (or is it daughter?) is telling us, so let’s see what else he (or she) is trying to palm us off with.

‘Forget about the hassle of waiting for files to download and fill up your hard drive before you get round to organising them. Spotify is instant, fun and simple.’

Right, so it’s a web-side/server-side music/file-sharing service, therefore it’s completely bandwidth reliant too, yes?

How strange of Spotify not to tell prospective customers about this one, this potentially crippling piece of information.

But the real put-off point about Spotify is the price: £119.88/year (because why would you suffer your bandwidth being eaten up with the free but advert-cluttered version?).

Do you know how many tracks I can legally download for what is after all a fraction under £120 a year – and own those tracks at the end of it, hold them in my sweaty little palms and index and re-index them in my Music Library like the slightly compulsive Rob Gordon character in High Fidelity?

Way more – I’ll say it again – way more than I would ever get to own with Spotify.

So there you are Spotify folks, I’ve called you out.

Are you up to the challenge of taking on this sick, feverish guy?

Nah, I didn’t think you were.

But before I go I’ll let the BBC’s technology correspondent give you his take on the Spotify movement so you too, my friend, can judge whether or not Rory is living the lie of Emperor Spotify’s New Clothes:

Rory (bless) says:
Being able to download a playlist to your phone over your own network before you go out, then listen to it despite poor or non-existent network coverage is a real bonus

Umm, Rory, have you even heard of playlists on mp3 players?

OMG Rory, mp3 players!

Did you forget that whole branch of technology when you were drinking so deeply from the Spotify pool?

Rory’s over-hyped piece of corporate sell-out can be found here.

Email consters are starting to think a little bit. But just a little.

Those ‘I need to move £68 squillion through your bank account from this dodgy African country and for the use of your account I’ll leave behind a generous tip of £2.7 million’ emails are entertaining.

But what they’re not is believable.

So the email con-artists have raised their game, just a little.

This amusing little device fell in to my account:

from Gmail
reply-to Gmail

to
date 21 July 2009 10:46
subject Your Email Address

Dear Account Owner,
Dear Account User,

This Email is from Gmail customer care and we are sending it to every Gmail accounts owner for safety. We are having congestion due to the anonymous registration of Gmail accounts so we are shutting down some Gmail accounts and your account was among those to be deleted. We are sending this email to you so that you can verify and let us know if you still want to use this account. If you are still interested please confirm your account by filling the space below.Your User name, password, date of birth and your country information would be needed to verify your account.

Due to the congestion in all Gmail users and removal of all unused Gmail Accounts. Gmail would be shutting down all unused Accounts, you will have to confirm your E-mail by filling out your Login Information below after clicking the reply button or your account will be suspended within 24 hours for security reasons.

* User name: ……………………….

* Password: …………………………..

* Date of Birth: ……………………….

* Country Or Territory: ………………..

Warning!!! Account owner that refuses to update his or her account within Seven days of receiving this warning will lose his or her account permanently.

Thank you for using Gmail !

The Gmail Team
G MAI L BETA

So in the interest of providing a public service (don’t ask me why! I’m just feeling unusually beneficial to my fellow carbon-based life-forms today), here’s why you should just press the ‘Report Spam’ button – if you’re unfortunate enough to receive it:

fromGmail wcesssemembersss@verifsssscsss.com [Your first questions should be... who the hell is this?]
reply-toGmail pcesssemembersssssy@gmail.com [Your second question should be... who the hell is this?]
to
[Your third question should be: why isn’t your email address shown?]
date 21 July 2009 10:46
subject Your Email Address [that’s strange capitalisation!]

Dear Account Owner, [Google have your name. Yes they do. You gave it to them when you signed up for your googlemail/gmail account. So why isn’t it here?]
Dear Account User, [Eh? Why would they put two salutations, one after the other? And see above for name. We haven’t hit the body of text yet and already we’ve raised six very serious question]

This Email [strange capitalisation] is from Gmail [strange capitalisation, again] customer care and we are sending it to every Gmail accounts owner [accounts owner? What the fuck is an 'accounts owner'?] for safety. We are having congestion [We are having congestion? Really, would Google phrase that in such an inarticulate manner? No, of course they wouldn’t] due to the anonymous registration of Gmail accounts so we are shutting down some Gmail accounts and your account was among those to be deleted. [Point 1. My account isn’t anonymous. Point 2. Was that sentence constructed by Fearne Cotton – or by someone else who speaks gibberish as their first language?] We are sending this email to you so that you can verify and let us know if you still want to use this account. [More bad grammar. And lack of punctuation] If you are still interested please confirm your account by filling the space below [More bad grammar] .Your User name, password, date of birth and your country information would be needed to verify your account. [The full-stop runs straight in to the Y, the capitalisation is incorrect and the sentence makes no sense unless the reader makes several intuitive leaps]

Due to the congestion in all Gmail users and removal of all unused Gmail Accounts. [More nonsensical gibberish] Gmail would be shutting down all unused Accounts, you will have to confirm your E-mail by filling out your Login Information below after clicking the reply button or your account will be suspended within 24 hours for security reasons. [Even more incomprehensible English, atrocious punctuation and a general lack of sense]

* User name: ……………………….

* Password: ………………………….. [What? Why would they need this? Come on people, think about it, why would they need this? If, (and that alone is a gigantic leap of astronomical proportions) if this email was valid all Google would need to do is ask the recipient to generate an email from the account in question. And since when does any reputable organisation ask for your password? If someone rang you up and asked for your bank details would you hand them over too? And your credit card security number?]

* Date of Birth: ………………………. [What?]

* Country Or Territory: ……………….. [Capitalisation!]

Warning!!! [Look, not even Google would use three exclamation marks] Account owner that refuses to update his or her account within Seven days of receiving this warning will lose his or her account permanently. [And that’s not even in English]

Thank you for using Gmail ! [So now we’re placing spacing between the final letter in a sentence and the punctuation?]

The bottom line here that this whole email is nothing more than a con and there are many, many signposts that it is a con! But, worryingly, there are reports that people are falling for it.

Why are people falling for it? That’s the question I’m really interested in finding an answer for!

I am currently drifting on a sea of apathy.

And, apparently, aspiring to be a bad poet.

But, really. I’m not miserable, or anything.  I have a laugh.  In fact, we laugh quite a lot, probably more than your average person/couple.

Because we are both hilarious, and ever so slightly mental.

So, why the apathy?

I just find stuff a bit ‘bleugh’ really.

I am not excited about anything in particular, I’m just drifting along with little purpose except getting through the day.

Oh that sounds miserable.

I’m not ‘depressed’.

I was depressed.  It’s not nice.  Clearly.

I think I’m in this grey area between depression and life beyond depression.

I’m sick of reading books about self-confidence and positive thinking and all that stuff.

And talk of healthy diets and 5-a-day and lots of water.

Because I know all of the tools.  I know that Paul McKenna can make me thin and happy and stop smoking.

I don’t smoke by the way.  So there’s one thing off the list.

But this fug of apathy is preventing me from being bothered enough to put any of them into practice.

And, aside from the ‘healthy living’ aspect of getting out of the so-called Bell Jar, I seem to be in a bit of a self-improvement black hole too.

The Masters in Information Services I was so excited about a couple of years ago has become a bit of an albatross.  A dead one. That has been welded to me. Using a lot of money.

I’m not particularly interested in furthering my position at work.  I’ll do what I’m asked to do, and hopefully do it a) correctly and b) well, but my initiative levels are at nil.

I don’t really do anything outside of work – I used to belly dance, I used to swim, I used to run, I used to help with the weigh-in at a slimming club.

The words ‘used to’ are the operative ones here, people.

When we moved to Oxfordshire I had a couple of weeks before I had to start my new job.

I was determined to use that time to restart my enthusiasm in ‘doing stuff’.

Not determined enough, it seems.

I tentatively went for a run around the block.

Twice.

Both times I would say this ‘run’ took less than 10 minutes.

And nearly killed me.

I started a kickboxing class not long after.

Went twice.

I joined the gym earlier on this year.

Hadn’t been for nearly two months, went while I was off work a couple of weeks ago and was sick because I overdid it.

Not been back.

I made it to the toilets, by the way.  I even managed to smile and say ‘see ya soon’ to the fitness instructor blokey as I made my sweaty way to the changing rooms to kneel in front of the toilet.

I have been for a swim since joining the gym. Once.

And it’s not because anything bad happened that I haven’t got into a routine. I just can’t be bothered.

I used to swim every other day before work.

But I don’t really have enough time to do that anymore.

Work starts at 8.30am.  The pool opens at 7am. It takes me 40 minutes to get to work.  Do the math.

This is what I do.  I make excuses.  For everything.

I have no idea why I am ‘too busy’ to do anything.

I think ‘too lazy’ is more like it.

I have this clear memory of my brother asleep on the sofa in his school uniform one afternoon when we got home.  It was, say, 5pm.  He was probably about 15, I was 11.

That memory and image is so clear at the moment, because I think I understand how he felt.  That kind of ‘can’t be arsed’ feeling of ‘what does it matter anyway?’

Instead of getting home and getting on with chopping veg and making something nice and fresh for dinner, or doing half and hour on my studies, I usually get home and have a cup of tea and, lately, something snackish to eat. Then make something easy out of the freezer, or a pasta, or a bagged salad/jacket potato combo. Then resume my position in front of the telly.

That’s if I finish at 5pm.

If I finish at 7pm, I tend to get home, make a pasta with one of those stir-in sauces that requires enough effort to peel a foil lid, and collapse in front of the laptop and/or telly.

And I’m not complaining about my life, I’m really not.  I’m complaining about my attitude.

When I was single I used to think that having a partner would turn me into this amazing person.  That I would be more interested in cooking, and that I would spend less time in front of the telly.

Actually, I do spend less time in front of the telly.  Which means I must have spent a hell of a lot of time in front of the telly when I was single.

But, I’m still me.  Of course. And it’s not up to Bren to change me.  Or anyone else.

This post has been ‘I I I’ and ‘me me me’ and ‘moan moan moan’- so I should add that Bren and I have fun together.  And it’s not like I’m sitting in front of the telly on my own or in silence.  There is conversation and commentary and discussion over our days or whatever, and there is much laughing.

Oh and we do the podcast, and that’s ace, and fun.

But he is so productive – he does so many different things, writing, editing, reviewing, techy-geeky stuff I don’t get.

I tend to have my laptop open to Spider Solitaire and TweetDeck. Achieving very little.

I need a *massive* kick up the arse.

But my legs don’t bend that way.  And they can’t be bothered to try.

OK, on television a couple of minutes ago was an Advertorial from the company formerly known as Ulay but now bizarrely rebranded as Olay. Almost like Olé.

Anyway, the vignette behind this horrendous piece of Americanised marketing is a rather good-looking young woman is ‘made over’ by a team of make-up ‘experts’.

The first of these alleged ‘experts’ instructs the woman in the art of make-up; how to apply, when to apply; what to apply.

There’s just one flaw.

The supposed ‘expert’ has a massive case of ‘trout mouth’.

Yes indeedy, our ‘expert’ has been bottoxed so much that her lips closely resemble a red-painted toilet plunger.

Would you take advice on looking good from someone who looks as though you could lick her lips and attach her face to the nearest plate-glass window?

No, I thought not.

is in the eating

It is an interesting situation when the House of Commons Defence Select Committee says that local troop commanders in Afghanistan have to use ground transport because there aren’t enough helicopters, and our Prime Minister rebuffs this by making a categorical statement that there is no shortage of helicopters.

I had an email this morning from a former Service colleage who has suggested a way of sorting out who has the right grasp of the situation:

… with battlefield economics being what they are, and the bean-counters at the blunt end being so far removed from the realities of life at the sharp end, I’ve got a question! As it’s summer and our MPs usually take a couple of months off about now, surely it would be possible for them to ship out, dress up in camo and kevlar and spend ten hours a day, six days a week for the next eight or nine weeks driving about in Helmand? They don’t need special skills, they can just drive around the place instead of flying in as they inevitably do when they deign to spend three hours on the ground during one of the infrequent VIP visits.

And that is a brilliant solution.

Thank you very much, I think we should write to the PM’s office and suggest it.

Don’t you?