moar science

this is a tiny bit more advanced than previous posts. but only slightly. and it's something that someone pointed out to me today so i'll just do an overview of the idea. an idea rooted in special relativity. it's quite a good name for the type of relativity, as it's general relativity's special brother. (more basic and often wrong).

the idea of relativity is that time is also relative. so you're familiar with the concept that different people are in different locations, and no one location is more correct than another. thus you can choose any location to be the origin (to borrow the maths term). relativity says that time is also relative. this goes against our everyday understanding that time is the same for everyone. so a simultaneous event, in relativity, is no longer the same as our common experience of it. different things can happen at different times for different people. a feature that does get retained is cause and effect, where the effect is always seen after the cause.

that's off to a slight tangent. i want to write about the effect that time is in some ways like another dimension of space. so if you got rid of one space dimension and replaced it with a time dimension you could then picture a 3 dimensional image where one dimension is time.

this analogy is even simpler where you think of a 2 dimensional space. like a square. if you travel across a 1 mile square at 1 mile an hour along the line from the bottom left corner to the bottom right corner it will take one hour. if you went spent an hour travelling aiming along the diagonal you wouldn't reach it because you have further to travel in the same amount of time.
now, imagine that the bottom line represents time and the vertical represents space. so in the first example you travel no distance in space and one hour in time. in the second you travel some amount in time, and less amount in space. ie you have a set amount of travel and it's shared between space and time.

so then, you take it to the extreme so you travel the full distance in space and not at all in time. but is this possible? the answer is yes, if you have no mass and travel at the speed of light. not possible for humans, but something which particles of light (photons) do. these travel at the speed of light and so do not travel in time. they literally never age. when a photon is created in a light bulb, as far as it is concerned, when it reaches your eye and is absorbed, no time occurred between those two events. crazy.

there are many many weird things about this i do not understand or comprehend, yet there's only one more thing i want to share which amazed me.

almost all particles have a 'half life'. This is just like radioactive particles which decay over time. some particles have very short lifetimes and decay in fractions of a second.
it is conceivable that the photon also has a minuscule half life but will not have had a chance to decay since it doesn't travel through time. what would happen if there was a glitch in the matrix so that photons experienced a brief moment of time, long enough to decay? all the photons would be gone and you'd have to wait for new ones to be created. in the mean time, they stars would be invisible. the sun would be gone for 8 minutes. and loads of other weird things i haven't yet contemplated.

ps weight up to 79kg. 1kg from target! still thin though. may have to target 82kg instead.

motivation

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

- Steve Jobs

Every day when i wake up i try to think two things.
1) Thanks for waking up.
2) This day could be my last. What I do today is what matters most.

It was with all that in mind that I was able to email the first girl I ever loved to tell her what a profound effect she had had on me. not that she cared!

and they say movies are unrealistic

i saw this and thought of you

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-21410565

in other news, i forgot my weekly round up of weight. i was 78kg when last i checked on a thursday morning. 2 kg from target. that is going well. i feel like i've missed the boat on taking a picture every day. i will instead try to take a picture every day of my bonsai tree and then make a film in 6 months time. likelihood of lasting one week? 10/1

i wrote another post too but fear it would detract from the magnificent story above so will save it for tomorrow. also, it's unfinished.

flag girl vs canteen girl

so i've narrowed down the choices.

there were two canteen girls, but one is not for me. flag girl is awesome. looks english. canteen girl is also awesome. and likely eastern european. there is a third lady, who i think i described as the crazy blonde killer lady from die hard 3. which is the perfect description. she is incredibly hot, and a little bit scary. definitely russian. i feel like i should only choose one. i don't want to settle for second best.

it's been so long since i had to introduce myself to another human i have forgotten how to do so. i also have the etiquette issue of this occurring in a work place.

the only plan i can come up with in my head is to ask them directly about the etiquette. of course, the conversation in my head always goes very well. but then i'm not great at predicting what other people would say. if only there were only three actions (eg bet/raise/fold) that other humans could do.

anyway, as steve jobs said, we're all gonna die soon. and that is hopefully motivation enough for me to get it out my system.

slow reading

i usually read pretty quickly. yesterday i finished a 200 page book. i started it the day before yesterday. i think there should be a single word for 'the day before yesterday' like there is in other languages.
it was a book about public speaking. i didn't read through it all very thoroughly. lots was repetitive. the stories then repeated what it had just said in a narrative form. and some paragraphs were redundant. like the news you can often get a sense of whole pages just from the title.
last week i finished a confederacy of dunces for the second time. it's an even better book the second time around and definitely one of my all time favourites. a yak tip (Thanks). I read it much slower this time around. i made sure i took my time to enjoy the conversations, the situations, the magnificent metaphors and everything else about it. i really tried to imagine every step of the way. it's a book that deserves the attention. it also has an amazing foreword.

and so it has come to pass that the modern day hero has returned to grace us with completing his story. i, of course, am referring to the man child, quincy capers. and i will be reading this slowly, such that i am forced to enjoy it immeasurably, every single step of the way.

scammers!

working for other people is a scam.
it seems that i had to set myself up with an umbrella company as i am a contractor. the umbrella company issues an invoice to the client, for my pay. by the time the money actually gets to me, i receive half of what was on the invoice. HALF!? how the fresh hell is this possible?
taxes, taxes, admin, more taxes and then i'm left with a wee amount.

what makes an expert?

in science, you spend years studying something, reading papers on a subject, perhaps devising and running experiments, interpreting results, leaving your methods, results and interpretation open to others to critique. After years of this, you find that you have learned a rather large amount of information and by virtue of not many other people having spent time in this area, you are an expert. quite possibly only because you now know more than most (which probably defines expert?).

however, having read 'bad science' it seems that anyone can call themselves an expert. with the advancement of anonymity on the internet and the lack of honesty in the media, it seems that people can call themselves experts (or get called experts) when they lack any sort of knowledge, let alone more than most. yet they get listened to. listening to a rock star's opinion on politics is a subset of this effect. famous for one thing so you listen to their opinion on another?! equally wrong would be as would be listening to a doctor's opinion on football tactics because they are doctor. yet people happily listen to actors opinion on medical issues. and then newspapers print it because they need to sell, and what better than to write about calabrities opinions on things that might affect you!?

so i wonder how do you know when you become an expert? especially in fields where there are no qualifications/regulations or ratings systems. let alone fields where luck plays a large factor (e.g. poker).

re peat

i have lots of drafts saved. i should probably get around to posting them. except, when i read through them i think i have posted the content in some of them before. yet they still appear as drafts...

i hate repeating myself. if i tell a story to one person, i will try to avoid ever telling it again, in case the same person hears it again. i don't like when people repeat their stories to me.
maybe i should change how i think there. a wise man recently told me, don't treat others how you want to be treated, treat them how they want to be treated.

also, i had for you to miss out on perhaps one useful nugget located in the deep recesses within some of these drafts even if they are repeats so perhaps i'll post them and hope for the best. i only wish that someone would type in the comments: "REPEAT!" if they see some repetition. not that i'm testing you. (i am)

submentals

i've studied a bit of physics. i wasn't great at it, some of it was very difficult, some of it was boring and some of it was interesting. One of my favourite bits were the explanations to the crazy quantum world and this is where some philosophy would come into it.

i also like that many of the best discoveries throughout history is one person doing an experiment, real or of thought.

yesterday, i met one of the greatest wallies of my generation. when he found out i knew a bit of maths (or so he thought, i know very little maths) he cornered me and threatened me with his world view. this included:

- reworking the colour diagram into a round ball (had he not heard of photoshop?) so that two circles of colour can come together on opposite sides.
- red + green + blue = black
- together, this makes the yin yang logo
- Einstein's time is over. all future thought will be collaborative.
- dismissing existing physics (eg Heisenberg's uncertainty principle which is fundamental to many things!). This is because he was "thinking outside the box". as far as i could tell, the box consists of sanity
- the world should now be built solely for extroverts (no quiet time)
- and so on.

while he was talking i imagined what would happen if i just stopped him by covering his mouth with my hand and saying "no. you're talking shit"

that led me to dream of bullshit man flying in through the window to save him.

i don't know what to title this

my first job out of uni was working for an internet company that ended up being so bad it was king of the watched on watchdog. (for those non uk people, watchdog is a show about things so bad british people actually complain about it. they write to anne robinson who then tells all the other british people what they knew but were too afraid to complain about themselves).

the head of this company was a phenomenal imbecile. however, it is hard to hold genetic defects against someone, even if it pervades the very essence of their being. his greatest flaw, out of his many flaws, was the small fact that he was, and probably still is, a herculian cunt. i don't use that word lightly. Hercules was, to the greeks at least, a deity. or semi deity? im not too familiar with the greek mythologies. in any event, he was the strongest of all the made up people, and stronger than any man could ever be.

but back then, i was young. i knew that people could be cunts, but was always a bit distanced from it. they're not in my generation. my generation could grow out of it, i thought. and if not, surely they won't get anywhere in life.

WRONG

i used to play football on sunday mornings. the frequently cold, regularly wet, always half asleep and often semi drunk excursions were worth it. i always tried to play on a team devoid of pointless human beings, and for the most part i selected teams well. perhaps only 2 people who should be forcibly removed from the planet did i ever have to share a dressing room with. thats not to say i wasnt surrounded by them on the pitch. some of the opposition players managed to outperform the great many people i have met to form unbelievable, yet true, tales of this blog.

however, there are some that slip through the net. and one of the characters i played with on my team was a shining example of everything one should not want to be in life. his superhero power was to whine. perpetually moaning about everything and everyone in football (and probably in real life - i only once had the misfortune of having to see him elsewhere) could be acceptable if you were any good at football (or indeed anything in life). his football special skill was 'abuse the ref'.
he grew up as the child of a deputy head teacher of the school he went to and abused this power by being a cunt. analogous to cartmen's uncontrollable plight in le petit tourette, he forgot how to not be one.

these are the human beings which i don't think should be able to get anywhere in life. so when you see one being abused for being a mongoloid on a relatively popular podcast i am torn with conflicting emotions. there is a nice feeling, that everyone else instantly can see what a terrific specimen of bile he his. however, there is shock, horror and disbelief that he could get there in the first place. i know life can be unfair, but quite this unfair?

i need to somehow deal with this. i'm going to try to apply the techniques learnt unto me by jared tendler in 'the mental game of poker' to the real world and my current predicament. wish me luck.

downtime

frustratingly, my internet keeps going down. like a

catchy title here

i have now twice in the past three weeks injured my back. trying to put on or take off socks. i missed out on playing football with the injury defined as old age. this most recent injury also included an ankle strain i seem to have picked up at the gym the day before the back injury. even in the snow the swelling seems to have remained. if i lived 100 years ago i would probably be put down. and if not, i'd be close to avg life expectancy. the best almost cliché i can muster for this is a good innings for a bowler. so no weight update this week i am afraid.

i recently started reading another book of feynman lectures. i think if i was asked which 6 people i would invite to dinner given a choice of anyone at all, feynman would be top of the list. closely followed by larry david and karl pilkington. i am yet to decide on the other three. joe montana is likely to take up one of those three spots. as is natalie portman. as for the final chair? probably yakshi. although i'd make him sign a non compete clause for portman.

here's the bear up a tree

next week - Russia's marble arch

what is that?

when you see question time on tv (if you're unlucky) or some other debate, people who asks questions are told off if they make a statement instead of asking a question. Oprah has got around this minor inconvenience by adding the words, "what is that?" to the end of a statement.

if anyone cares about the lance armstrong cheating, but not enough to see a tv celebrity 'interview' him, here is a summary:

"you cheated! you're a dick! what is that?"
"I'm a dick. i cheated"

as for me, i'm still doping with creatine and am now up to 79kg! 1kg away from target although i still appear to be the same size. how very odd.


turns out writing is much more difficult than the thought of writing. even with a great idea you have to do all the story arcs, the dialogues, the twists (and the turns) as well as all the bits in between. it seems a good idea is no where near enough. nonetheless, i shall plough on. i have written only a couple of thousand words so far. i've stopped to write a basic plan of where things may go and signposts along the way, and then i can get back to writing 500 words per day.

here's a picture. next week - bear up a tree.

cinematics

i'm giving up on the cinema. not because it's exorbitantly expensive. nor because i'm so old that i don't like modern day films. but because i'm so old that i don't like modern day human beings and no longer care about hiding this fact.

There's not much worse than a collection of people. for example, i heard a great definition:
democracy (n), where any two idiots can outvote a genius.

that's a bit of a tangent though. i dislike the cinema because the odious cretins that we are forced to share a confined space with seem oblivious to other human beings. they have no qualms about talking, playing with their superbright phones and worst of all, eating like an animal which has been starving all winter, and finally gets that first food of spring, devouring it in double quick time afraid that a lion will chase them away.

i need to quit my job.

i have too many other things to do

1) write 500 words a day for a new book idea. this is brilliant. if i can get 15,000 words done in a month i'll be very happy

2) learn to program objective c. writing an app at the moment. a very simple one so hoping for it to be finished in a week or two. again, need to spend an hour a day on this (minimum) as i need to learn new stuff and then also make the app.

3) exercise. this one can be done while at work. taking an hour out my day to go to the gym is probably my favourite hour of the day.

4) reading. i like to read. i go in and out of phases. 30 minutes before bed is nice. i should find a good book. recommendations? i haven't read many of anything. except chuck pahalniuk. i read most of his books already. even things like a confederacy of dunces needs to be told to me. (although that one i read thanks to yakshi)

5) sitcom writing. that's tough. i need lots of funny ideas for that which take time. still, i need to allocate some time for that too.

6) patent. i almost have a patent. i need to build a prototype, make it official and licence it. in the next few months.

7) i think those 6 are enough. and working takes out my entire day till 6pm. and gives me only 7 hours per day to achieve everything. and i have to waste some of those 7 hours eating and drinking and cleaning my self. every day! why isn't there something that can clean and feed me in my sleep?

an absence of stars

stars sent me an email to say because i haven't played there this year they'll steal my fppees. i'm pretty sure i played there in Jan and Feb. i think i need to earn one vpp to keep my fpppees. i wonder if spending some fppees on a tournament will suffice?

party also sent me an email to say they're going to steal the $5 bonus they put in my account because i haven't played there for 180 days. seems a bit mean to offer it to me, tell me i can't cash out less than $30 or so, and then steal it back if i don't play. maybe mean is the wrong word, it's more like they're trying to prey on weak minded people and get them sucked back into the claws of gamblor.

i'll probably try and play a wee bit on both in the next few days.

in other news, no jim for a while meant no weighing. to my surprise and delight i had put on a couple of kilos since my last weighting so up to 77kg now. 3 to go till target acquired. it should be noted that said target should be reached in muscle as opposed to fat! and i think my waist is increasing again. i need to channel my thoughts into making my other muscles get bigger instead!

news

i think i've said before that this is one of my favourite songs. mostly because it has an unhappy ending. something most songs lack.
sadly, now is an appropriate time for me to post it.

i am ashamed

i only recently saw the star wars trilogy.

turns out it was a bit rubbish. maybe i've been spoiled by more recent movies with proper special effects.
that said, it has a great story, and some interesting concepts.

also, it's influence has spread into culture everywhere. sadly that kinda ruined it for me since i knew all the twists in the movie...

anyways, i saw this and it made me laugh

tour the france

wiggins win. it was quite amazing. and soon he will reach the pinnacle of british sporting achievement by winning sports personality of the year. unfortunately, abbreviated to spoty.

my sideburn tribute has been going well since the summer, however a hair cut is due. why is it not called a hairs cut?

in other cycling news, mark cavendish is pretty much the greatest sprinter of all time. i think his level of underratedness is criminal although is probably more appreciated outside of the united kingdom.

i have written here for a while. i have two writing projects now. one sitcom, one sci fi book/tv series. the book/tv series premise is awesome. building characters now. writing with a friend and i think when i've done one chapter i'll stick it here for feedback. though that probably won't be for quite some time.

it is late and i still have much work to do. luckily i went shopping so have some food for company.

every now and then...

...i remind myself of just how much i hate myself.

yesterday i continually made excuses to not approach a lady on a plane because she was too hot.

i am now considering phoning easyjet to make up a story of how i found something belonging to her and asking them to ask her to get in touch with me (since data protection probably prevents them giving me her details.) i know her first name and seat number which should be enough for them. being male, i am unable to understand the difference between romance and stalking. it's probably not a fine line, and yet i am unsure upon which side of the line this proposal lands. (advice in comments appreciated thanks.)

in other news i may have finally found a flat where i can live alone. hurrah to no housemates.

target acquired

house hunting is, to me, like shopping. after i've been into 2 shops/houses, i'm fed up and no longer care. my primary aim becomes to leave the shopping area immediately, with or without my desired goods/house.

the thought of shopping is even worse.
this explains my poor attempts to find a housing situation better than my current one.
also, it's cheaper to live with someone else. much cheaper. but most people are dicks and not worth the discount.

along with the friday round up (which for this week is simply, read mine and tell your friends), purely for my benefit, i will list my current weight status:

putting on weight goal.
total time available 10 weeks.
end of week 1
current weight 74.7 kg
target weight 80 kg

muscles status - sore arms chest and shoulders. (this is good!)
mind status - hungry (also good)

cheating on this blog

i started doing some writing elsewhere!

i've never been a fan of writing. but i have decided to write a book with a friend. just a coffee table book. he has many good ideas and has written books before. it doesn't seem particularly expensive to get it published for just a few copies that we would begin with. and i reckon it would be pretty cool to have that on my ceevee.

coming up with lots of ideas is pretty tough though. especially when you have a day job. although the day job can be great material for writing.

take for example today. i've been doing some work on modelling. (mathematical modelling!)
it has two key elements. in brief, one of these elements is to limit the number of customers to see the effects that this will have.
today, my new boss (who replaced my awesome previous boss) was talking to me about what i do in a failed bid to understand what i do.

i explained the two key aspects including the one above. i explain how it takes time to run, mostly because of this one part of it. she then asks, can you just not limit the customers?

amazing.

the whole essences of what i'm doing is to limit the customers and see the effect it has on many other things.

how is this person my boss i hear you ask?
i ask that same question every day. (not to her. yet.)

toast

my toastmaster career ended pretty quickly. after one visit to the club, and one misplaced axe maniac joke, i started playing football again on the same nights so i never went back. i noticed everyone gave speeches which followed the same guidelines. unable to come up with material, and before i didn't know i wasn't going back, i wrote a speech in the hope i'd have a chance to talk to them from the pulpit.
since i'll never say it there, i'll say it here.
These are the exact words i planned to say (apart from the ones in brackets)

My speech
(reading from sheet)
Greeting everyone.
Thanking ringmaster. Thanking toastmasters. Thanking fellow guests.
Repeating title of my speech
Pausing for thought
Opening sentence. Seemingly unrelated to title. But you know I'll get there in the end.
Telling a funny joke.
Pausing till the laughter dies down. Still waiting.
Expanding on opening sentence. Taking a direction that is unexpected.
Pausing to make eye contact with audience.
Leading this thought into a joke, observational humour based on something you do which you don't realise is weird, but everyone does it without realising everyone else does it too.
Looking up from page to make eye contact.
Pausing as I see the green light comes on. Pretending not to panic when I see how much more I have to get through.
Scanning page as I look for key point to mention. Mentioning key point.
Pausing for dramatic effect
Key point has tied together opening sentence with title.
A rhetorical question about where my idea leads.
One final pause before thanking everyone.
(turning over to paper to reveal a blank sheet)

a new low

yesterday i applied for a job. looking for jobs in scandanavia because of women (although i know finalndia is not really scandanavia, and is my choice of prime location, it's not really big enough to have jobs as far as i can tell), i applied for a job i can do at ericsson.
to set the scene, this job had been open for about 2 weeks, and not apparently closing for another few days.
well, in record time, they didn't just reject me, oh no, a mere 12 hours and 41 minutes after i applied, i got an email in response to say there's no longer a job opening.

these are a few of my favourite things

watching 4od through chrome. no adverts!

pancakes

smell of freshly cut grass

chocolates

a few russian and most finnish women.

speaking of finlandia, after raikkonen won the grand prix on sunday, i thought i'd listen to what he has to say. famous for not saying much, during his live interview he said a swear word. i think it was shit. (the word he said, not the interview). not to be outdone, vettel then come on stage and said the word fuck.

larry david.

pictures.

and that concludes, this week's 'my favourite things'

science thought that confuses me greatly

time.

almost every single physics process looks the same backwards in time and forwards in time.

people have learnt to tell which one is which on a large scale, something attributed to entropy (the idea that things always get messier). so when a glass smashes into a million pieces you can tell if a video shows it going forwards in time or backwards.
even though entropy makes it clear in our understanding, there's no good explanation why this is the case.

(for counter example, take a ball, throw it up and catch it, and that video will look identical forwards and backwards.)

and it's not so simple when mathematically looking at processes. eg an electron going forwards in time looks identical to a positron (it's antiparticle) going backwards in time. EXACTLY the same. some dude postulated that there could be just one electron, and it goes forwards and backwards a lot to make it look like there are lots of electrons and positrons!

as for things travelling at the speed of light, they don't even travel through time!

all forces and interactions have no sense of time. as in, stuff can happen forwards or backwards, and you can't tell them apart*. many interactions don't even include time as part of their equations. eg the gravitational attraction between the earth and the moon, or the repulsion of the same end of a magnet.

things that no one knows include:
why time goes forward
whether time is continuous, or made up of very small steps

thinking about these things is painful to my mind.


*there is one fundamental force which isn't perfectly symmetrical and explains why there is more matter than antimatter. iirc it's called CP violation, and this violation means when you add time in there, it might look different forwards and backwards. i remember something here then explaining there being more matter than antimatter but even if i merember that correctly, that's for another day.

its definitely not about the bike

i read the whole reasoned decision thing from the usada. i never used to be at all interested in cycling till a few years back. it's quite an interesting team, tactical, mental and physical sport.

a few things struck me in and about the report and it's surroundings.

1) there is no scientific evidence. they very occasionally allude to scientific evidence but didn't really say they had any, let alone provide any.

2) the case is built almost entirely on what other people have said. nothing else.

2a) nonetheless the case is quite strong.

3) they have many occasions of terribly flawed logic
exhibit a) person A sees something. he tells persons B and C.
person A swears he saw it. person B swears A told him he saw hit, person C also swears person A told him. That sequence is described as triple confirmation of the event occurring.
amazingly, they do this on more than one occasion, calling things doubly confirmed when it's just a person A and B.
exhibit b) they say that if people who confess have nothing to gain from the confession, their confession is worth more.
i assume this means that if people do have something to gain their confession is worth less.
they then proceed to say how all the confessors have had nothing to gain. which is blatantly wrong. writing books, tv appearances, reduced sentences, etc. there was lots to gain.

4) it's weird how as soon as he quit, lots of his ex team mates got caught. like they suddenly forgot how to avoid getting caught.

5) he's still quite good at triathlons.

6) it's a shame if it's true, and it appears to be true. i hope that his cancer charity doesn't suffer.

as i imagine others have said, it seems that it was indeed, not about the bike.

Revenge is good

for some reason i started thinking about the selfish nature of humans, and that oft quoted aspect that people only ever doing things for themselves. and it's possible i've remembered an exception. the experiment goes something like this:
i sit you down at a table. i tell you there's someone in the room next door. i place £10 in front of you and tell you to offer as much or as little of this as you like to the person next door, the rest you keep. the catch (of course there's a catch!) is that they have to accept the offer for you both to receive the money. otherwise you both get nothing.

in theory, they should accept anything, since 1p > 0. however, most people would reject a deal splitting it £9.99 and 1p, because of revenge. this concept is so ingrained, i don't think anyone who took part in this experiment offered so little because they knew it would get rejected.

people rejecting offers which are too low, and hurting themselves is purely spite. but this fear of revenge where people hurt themselves to hurt you more is apparently good for society.

a guy at MIT called Dan Ariely has written books and papers on the subject. My only problem is that he called the book the upside of irrationality and then described how all these seemingly irrational actions were rational. so it should be called the upside of counter-intuitivity.
anyway, there's a nice clip of him explaining it here



turns out, revenge is also done for selfish reasons since you benefit long term.

clarification

although it may seem more like objectification (it's not)

for verification purposes
1) flag girl (aforementioned post)
2) gym girl (who seems to have stopped going to the gym)
3) canteen girl (who i think was staring at me earlier in the week)

however, i was unable to find/talk to any of them this week. i did however, make a terrible and very brief conversation with an insanely attractive lady. she reminded me a little bit of the lady villain from die hard 3. but with a more attractive everything. an 11/10 imho.

luckily i had to travel to south london this week which was incredibly scary.
next week i think i'm going to have to talk to one of these ladies as there is nothing else on the scare table. hopefully, this scare goal will turn into more pleasant experiences!

while i still remember, i realised that when you go out in a group of three, and you all sit in a line, (eg gig or train) the person sitting in the middle has a lot of responsibility. you have to listen to whoever is talking. you sometimes have to choose when they both speak at the same time. you also have to decide which one to talk to when you have an idea of talk. a lot of responsibility. and i think some people take it too lightly.

flags

for the first time since starting (almost) regularly working out a few months back, i think i've noticed an increase in breast size. this is a fantastical development. i haven't weighed myself in a while, and while i hope the weight count is going to up a healthly amount, i fear that following a bout of gastric troubles i may just be where i've been for the past few months. never mind, onwards and slightly upwards.

also, i have updated my goals section. i found i ran out of ideas on how to scare myself. going rock climbing was a great one, especially as every time i go i do a slightly more scary climb up a wall. haven't been for a few weeks though.

also updated is the 'get a job' to 'get a better job'. but before i leave i should probably talk to one of three attractive girls that i have found. the trouble is which one? (or more accurately, in which order do i want to get rejected.)

i also need to decide what to say. i don't really have an opening gambit. except for one who i asked about the flags marauding around the walls of her office. i could begin by saying "hi flag lady". but that's as far as the conversation in my head has got. i didn't ask her name the one time we spoke, but i'll call her flag girl for future reference.

the only thought i have for what to say is based on louis ck's asking out of a librarian toward the end of episode 4, season 3. i couldn't find a clip online for you, nor could i work out how to record it off my computer. but just know that it's good.

slam dunc

duncan jenkins was a hilarious parody account on twitter.

a self titled "perspiring football journo" he made quite funny comments quite regularly, and all rather original. he often tweeted about liverpool, as the man behind the scenes was a liverpool fan. a month or two back, the account pretty much stopped.

this is a link to the story of why. it is more amazing than the lance armstrong case.

(also, every time i see the villains name, Chang, i think of Chang from community)

an assortment of thoughts

"wish me luck"
really? if you need to ask for it, then maybe it won't be sincere if people offer it. what next? wish me congratulations? wish me presents?

birthday card etiquette. why can't i just throw the card away straight away? perhaps not in your face, but by that evening, i don't need the card anymore. also, is there a time limit for how long you're allowed to keep a card? there should be.
i can't remember if this has been done in seinfeld or curb. if not, i'm doing it.

if hot drinks cool you down, why don't cold drinks heat you up?

i always forget how much i hate the cinema till i get there.

when you have a job, how are you supposed to go the bank to cash a cheque? who uses cheques these days anyway.

why is there money in my pokerstars account?

friday round up including cool science

todays friday round up is a role reversal where you tell me a blog that is a) regularly updated and b) good to read.

in other news, some cool science facts:

1) everyone sees their own rainbows.
the angle that the light makes through the rain drops to your eyes is unique for each person. the only time you'll share a rainbow is when seeing a picture.

2) coastlines
coastlines are of indeterminate length. well, you can determine them, but the length depends on the tool used to measure them. the bigger the 'ruler' the shorter the coastline.
eg imagine using a one kilometre ruler. you wouldn't be able to get into many ins and outs.
now using a one metre ruler there's loads more ins and outs you can use.
and so on.
coastlines can be compared if you use the same ruler size for different countries although that won't be a perfect comparison as each coastline will have different amounts of ins and outs (that's definitely the technical term, yeah).

and with those two thoughts, i run off into the sunset to find a new job now that my boss has quit. and isn't the perfect human being i thought he was. until we meet again.

are you mugging me off?

as per usual, on my way home after a drunken night out i fell asleep on the nightbus. well, only a little bit and i did well enough to be awake at my stop.
i live a ten minute walk from the bus stop.
i had one ear phone in as i like music. i was walking home in what i can only describe as a happy style. at one point i did a full circle and noticed two people in the distance.
about 15 seconds later i heard footsteps and one guy appeared on my right, saying
"mate, have you got the time?"
(translation for non londoners: "mate, i'm about to mug you")

this has happened since school, i thought.
"no", i replied.
well, i didn't. and even i if did, i have no time for people like him.

no sooner had i responded when his mate grabbed me from behind and appeared to be trying to take my jacket off by lifting it over my head. a strange attack.

i wasn't really sure what to do. part of me (the drunken part) didn't want to kick him in the nuts in case i antagonised them, as they weren't doing a great job so far.
another part of me (also a drunken part) wanted to hit him as hard as i could.

i shouted help a few times to see if that would scare them into quitting but it didn't. then his mate decided to join in and kicked me in the arse. that was much more confusing than it was painful.

i decided to just start shoving this guy attacking me from behind. i also decided to shout "fuck off, i haven't got anything on me"
this combination of actions seemed to do the trick as he let go and quizzically repeated "you haven't got anything on you?"

i took this opportunity to run away.

(in hindsight, it happily appears i was attacked by the worst muggers ever.)

a few minutes later i was home, drunk on alcohol and high on adrenalin.

the worst part is that i woke up the next morning after less than 5 hours sleep. damn my work afflicted body clock!

i found a new thing that scares me

wall climbing. i think other people call it rock climbing but it's in doors and on a wall. many things scare me about this experience. it's far away. i'm surrounded by people. some of them watch me fail in my attempts to climb walls.

it's a place where the walls aren't high so you don't need ropes. and thus the thing that scares me most is falling off. i imagine falling badly. hitting the wall many times on my way down and landing on my face. it hasn't happened yet, but there's always a point near the top of the wall where i know i wouldn't land safely if i fell and i have to do a reach of faith for the next little grip for my fingers to hold on to.
my wall balance is also quite poor so i don't have much confidence yet, even though i am yet to fall.

todays friday blog round up will remind you to read my blog. and remind me to write my blog. sometimes i read old stuff i write and i do a laugh. that makes me happy.

i would also like to describe a superpower i have, one which many of the population share. it's the ability to predict rain accurately within the next 5 minutes. i can just feel a drop in pressure. an old colleague had it following an injury (real superhero backstory for him) where the pressure drop lead to pain in his previously injured joints, at which point he knew that meant rain. happily i can do this without the pain.
so just now i brought the washing in as i felt an imminent onset of rain. i am happy to report it's now raining.

it's getting cold

winter is heading this way. summer was fleeting, and while the sun may be shining, it is deceptive in its projection of the warmth of the outdoors.

While hiding from the outdoors, today, I will attempt to see how many press ups then sit ups then press ups then sit ups (etc) I can do till collapse.

If necessary, I will limit situps to as many as I can do 2 minutes since i think i can do more of them.

Here goes:

Pressups - 17
situps - 50
Pressups - 6
situps - 30
Pressups - 4
situps - 20
Pressups - n/a
situps -

clearly, 2 minutes was optimistic for a limit.

and now, lunchtime. with added creatine.

friday round up

the more astute of you will have noticed it's not friday. well, fuck you. my blog, my rules.

the past week has seen future queen kate get her tits out in public and complain when someone took a pic. i like that the comparison in fuss kicked up between that incident and the one over harry galvanting around in private completely naked with pics taken - when no one cared in the slightest.

mid september is already upon us and the days are getting shorter and colder. i need to quit my job before winter is in. i don't want to get up and go outside in the very cold. plus it would necessitate buying a suit coat and shopping is one thing i always try to avoid.

that said, i did buy some protein shakes this past week. that and creatine should help me out gain the last 5kg i require to achieve my weight goal. i was then thinking of learning some martial arts. however, it has come to my attention that the person that wins a fight is not the biggest person, the strongest, nor even the best technical fighter. (i'm talking about real fights here, not competition fighting). the winner is the greater nutcase. the person who literally doesn't care what happens to themselves.

this trait is very noticeable with smaller people and i believe gives rise to the well known phenomenon of 'little man syndrome.'

as for a blog round up, well yorksha pudding seems to be blogging a bit more so go check it out. i like the writings. sadly, i don't think i'll ever find anything as good as yakshi and it seems unfair to give him the weekly award every week.

oh, and with curb starting again soon, here's one of my favourite scenes from it

act now darling, urges osborne

a misplaced comma and that would have been the headline.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-19310258

i imagine that this would have been the reply:
"that was an unhelpful intervention, osborne. and don't call me darling."

i can't believe it's been a week since i posted.

on occasional Fridays over the past few weeks i've been telling long forgotten bloggers to pull their fingers out. firstly, rubbish has started posting again. rubbish by name, not rubbish by postings.

amazingly, the austrian vunderkid jethro also did a posting!

and finally just this week alex (that hot swiss one) decided to do some posting again.

while i may have been slow to get them posting, and perhaps i can't take all teh credit for it, i seem to have done quite well.

i have lots of draft posts that i haven't got round to posting. i really should start doing that more regularly.

today i found out one of my coworkers is on 3* the salary of me! i think 2 of me could do what he does. especially if one of me was highly motivated. maybe i should ask for a pay rise.

powerlympics

so i took the afternoon off work to go see the powerlympics. i got tickets to cycling because it's a great sport.

they have a time trial over 1000m where people off differing levels of handicap can compete and there is a time adjustment to make it fair. c1 get the most time, c3 have no time change and c2 is somewhere in between. the scientist in me wondered how they work it out, but it was far too confusing to see a pattern.

i also have conflicting feelings of sorrow for the athletes because of their disabilities combined with immense awe at their courage and convictions. there were some very impressive athletes!

here are some cool pictures. a silver medallist brit, a gold medallist brit, and a shot of the crowd. finishing with my favourite pic of the day, where i messed around with the shutter speed and followed some cyclists to get them pretty steady in the picture, but the background a blur.

a day in the life of...

...an introvert.

i wake up. silence. not even a single thought in my head. no fears, no hopes, no highs and no lows. if i was able to have a thought I would think that this fleeting moment is bliss.
all too soon i can hear noise. some big, some small. i like the sound of trains in the distance. it lets me know that everything is ok. and it reminds me of her.
back to noise and i realise that it will be like this for the rest of the day. machines, people, nature, constant. some i get to ignore, and to some i have to respond.
sometimes i get caught up in what i'm doing and nothing will affect me. those moments are rare - usually i'm be putting in effort just to function.

having a job and being essentially surrounded for 10-12 hours per day makes things harder. by the time that's over i don't want to talk to anyone. anyone gets offended by this because they think i'm being rude. i'm just trying to clear my mind, be able to relax and improve myself.

i think i'd like to go away somewhere for 6-12 months and just live alone. somewhere empty and quiet. the fields of mongolia perhaps. if only i knew how to get food from somewhere other than a supermarket.

and then, the end of the day, and as i start to drift off to sleep, sounds are amplified, some real, some in my head. i try to forget i'll have to do this all tomorrow and instead attempt to focus on the good things i aim to do.
every day i hope it will be easier for me than yesterday, but i don't even know what i can try to achieve that.
i know i'll always be able to cope; i want to do more than just cope.

the best comment of the olympics

i saw daley get bronze celebrate like he'd won, except what really struck me was the chinese guy who got second crying with his silver. this picture i saw today sums those moments up

but what i heard today about the Korean lady who won the gold in archery was amazing. She apologised to her country for winning by shooting an 8. "In Korea, we do not shoot 8s" she said. amazing.

live poker!

i did a poker in real life, and it was just as unexciting as i remember.

about 20 people turned up, and only top 3 paid with winner getting 58% it seemed rather top heavy. i don't have many interesting hands to report. i folded aqo from the sb against an utg open which may have been a bit tight. didn't want to call or 3bet but in hindsight probably should have 3bet.

ended up doing a deal with 4 left. i have no idea how to calculate icm but when i got home i checked online and it seemed pretty close except for the guy in second getting a bit screwed. i'd pointed this out to him whilst making the deal but he wasn't at all bothered. it had got a bit crapshooty with stacks of 30-70k and big blind being 3k, but there was probably decent play for one more level. maybe next time i should suggest one more level and then a chop. also that might tighten them up so i could steal more! (though i may be giving them more credit than i should)

in other news, i have decided just this second to resurrect "Friday blog resurrections".
For those of you that have forgotten, this is where i tell people who probably don't read my blog to resume blogging because i enjoyed their thoughts on a page.

so rubbish, alexandra and kevin, it's your time to shine.

i'm off to eat some pancakes and maybe enjoy some sunshine.

the money mess relationship

i couldn't think of a catchier name. sorry. but here's what happened:

i went to halfords to buy some wind screen wipers for my car. i returned home to fit them myself, didn't really know what i was doing but how hard can it be? well, as i was clipping on the first wiper it broke. i may have been doing it completely wrong but it was hard to tell.
so i took out the second wiper, and managed to attach it fine, if a bit slowly. i went back to halfords hoping for an exchange since the clip in the middle was broken. here's what it went mental.
lady at the cash register, who we'll call "mental of the day" or menday for short, told me to get another member of staff. i found one, lets call her jonny, who just went and asked someone else, who we'll call cool dude who i think knew everything about every car currently in existence and how to fix anything using all that they sell in the shop. or dude for short.
so jonny lady, after directing me to dude, who was busy, comes back with an entire replacement part. cool. menday, then wants to put it through the till, i assume for stock or something. she tells me off, saying they're only gonna do it once. i said, it's not my fault it was broken, and if this new one is broken i think you have to replace it too. she didn't reply because jonnylady then tells her to not put it through the till. that comment then set off mendal who went apeshit with jonny.
a one minute argument in front of me was followed by a one minute argument in an aisle far away but in my line of sight. she then comes back, takes my card, and then just runs off somewhere else in store. with my card. how very odd.
over 5 minutes later she comes back, and gives me my card back. i don't think she did anything on the till with it.
she also gives me a replacement clip. i say i don't need it, i already have a replacement blade. she doesn't get this after 5 times of me telling her and showing her that the blade i have is now fine so i just leave with my new blade and replacement clip.

this story has a happy ending* as i carefully remove the existing blade to see how to fit the second new one, which passes by without incident.

the end

as i went home with my extra clip, i realised that i would save it somewhere should i ever need it.

I will NEVER EVER need it.

i know however, that i will save it. and i realised i could probably throw away loads of stuff i 'might' need which is taking up lots of space. on the off chance i need something i've thrown away i could probably buy it off ebay for less than £20.
and that's when i realised there is an interesting relationship between hoarding things and money. hoarding things saves money, but is it worth it?


also, does anyone know what the point of collar straighteners are? (ie can i throw them and the spare ones away!?)


*i'm assuming she won't try to commit any fraud with my card having spent 5 minutes in the back of the shop cloning it.

human vs google

how do you know who to trust when faced with human info against results from google?

i guess you usually go for source, but what if both sources are reputable?

here is my dilemma. a welsh person told me some hilarious words in welsh however, google translate doesn't quite agree. but i think computer translators aren't yet up to scratch so i'm going with human winner in this battle. you'll be pleased about this because you'll now find out these two hilarious words in the welsh language. i will spell them phonetically, partly because i don't know how to spell in welsh.

1) jellyfish, in welsh, is called a:
piss god wibbly wobbly
(i think pysgod is correctly spelled welsh for fish, but i prefer my spelling)

2) microwave, in welsh, is called a:
poppity ping

anyway, that's enough learning for one day.

cheerio.

benjamin franklin

being not american, my first exposure to benjamin franklin was i think in day of the tentacle. (i just checked the internet to see if i could buy it for a couple of quid but it seems the going rate for the cd is about £20!)
anyway, as far as i was concerned, all he ever did was capture lightning. with a kite. so a doc brown style character. it turns out, however, that he did a lot more.
i been reading his autobiography (only the abridged one so far) and i think i am going to write down one thing each morning that i will do that day, and then do it. this will be in addition to my daily goals written here, which i have just updated.

i dont have much else to say. i seem to have accumulated a lot of useless stuff in recent years so am going to try to throw some of it away. i hope that in this process i may find a copy of day of the tentacle. that would be like finding money, only better, because it would be like finding money, going to the shop, buying something amazing, from the comfort of not moving.

going to do this while watching the cycling. some of the women look quite hot, but that may just be down to them wearing cool helmets. i don't want to google them in case i am disappointed.

amazing sportsmen

they always impress me. imagine how good you must be to win 6 consecutive gold medals in the olympics. apparently, only hungarian aladar gerevich has managed this.

another magnificent sportsman was eddie merckx. 5 tour de france wins and record holder of 36 stage wins, also the only person to have won the points jersey, king of the mountains jersey and overall winner in one year. he was a phenomenal athlete.

the people of britain seem to have a greater appreciation of cycling with bradley wiggins winning the tour de france, although i think mark cavendish will be more well known as time goes by for being possible the greatest ever sprinter.

it was a shame that he didn't get a chance to sprint for gold in the olympics road race although it does seem that no other country wanted to even try against him in a sprint finish so every someone in the breakaway won.

anyways, speaking of hungarians, george mikes said "An Englishman, even if he is alone, forms an orderly queue of one".
which i think is a good thing!

my job

my job is uninteresting. my boss is interesting.

i've worked for horrible human beings in the past. ones who run in every morning shouting that you won't get paid if you don't do better. (As a form of motivation no less! after the 3rd time you start to ignore everything he says at it's easier that way). so you sit at work dreaming of having an awesome boss.
someone who has common sense. who uses his mind. who tells you things honestly. who tells you to go home at 430 because you aren't gonna be still concentrating at that time. who tells you to work from home when possible. and who encourages you every single step of the way. and that is my boss. a lovely human being and a great manager.

going to work in the past five weeks has not once been a chore. i don't seem to do that much after a hectic first week yet still somehow manage to get everything done on time.

the big problem with work is it takes away much of your day. i'm now having to be more efficient with the rest of my time so that i can actually write a sitcom (haven't done anything on this since i started work!), get better at programming (started doing something every day) and the many other things i want to do.
yesterday i filed a patent with a friend. it's an awesome idea, and he's a patent attorney so hopefully in 12 months that will come to fruition.
haven't had any time for poker sadly. at least now i have some money to deposit should i wish to start up again.
the last thing i have managed to do is start working out every day for the past few months. i managed to put on 3 kilos in a month and only about a kilo since. i have readjusted my rigorous (lol) training program to concentrate more on muscle groups with less time doing cardio (more high intensity cardio to be accurate, such as 10 minute sprint jogging [on a bike, obviously] instead of a 30 minute cycle).

hopefully the next 5 kilos will go on in the nearish future.

thats enough of an update for now. next time we shall discuss my horrible sleeping patterns of needing less sleep at night.

keeping up appearances

i remember learning to play chess
i had a tutor for a few weeks to learn some basics and some strategies. and then read a couple of books. i never learnt any openings or anything remotely advanced. when i was about 7 (?) i went to a club to play against others. i think everyone was beginners. or at least that's how i remember what it was supposed to be.

for my first game i sat down opposite a girl, younger than me and in a wheelchair. i kinda felt a bit sorry for her, and also confused as to whether she knew how to play chess.

4 moves later and i'd learnt a few things:
1) there's an opening called foolsmate where you win in 4 moves
2) when you lose to it you feel like a fool
3) to never, ever, judge someone by their appearance.
4) i was awful at chess

[edit: as you'll see from the comments, it's actually called a scholars mate, so rather than losing as a fool, i lost to a scholar. many thanks to mark for clearing that up]

reading riting and rithmatic

i think schools miss out on focus on talking. it sounds a stupid thing to say since most people talk too much; i just happen to think that most people talk much shit. especially me.

i want to learn to talk properly. and to think properly before i speak. this is what i'm going to focus on for the rest of the week.
thinking before i speak, thinking of the words i say, their consequences (if any! im not that important) and also how i speak and my posture while speaking. i will also make sure to not get angry (anger other than faux anger is never good).

the first thing, will be to remember to do this all day each and every day this week.

this is one reason i've begun to like writing more. there is more time to think before typing. and no one sees how long i've been thinking of the right words to say. and society seems to envy fast thinkers.

i had a funnier blog than this, but that will have to wait...

less blogging...

having a job is a pain. aside from waking up early, it means i have less time for all the good stuff. and there's not even much in the way of comedy for blogs.

i did just watch something on telly about a former world gurning champion, peter jackman. gurning is distorting your face to look mental. slightly offensive in my opinion. anyone who follows ricky gervais on twitter will be familiar with such images. this guy however, took it to another level. he got some teeth removed to be able to pull a better face. that's commitment.

his name was also something that struck me. it's an almost famous name. in my mind, a cross between peter jackson and hugh jackman. coincidentally, i just read about someone complaining on the bbc website about having an unfortunate surname. it was a journalist! that passes off as news? he didn't even have a bad surname. Gopnik. he thinks it's terrible because it means 'drunken lout' in russian. so a very small number of people he meets will laugh and remember him.

to me it just sounds like he's being a bit of a pansy. perhaps he should spare a thought for people called amanda. (and i hope he doesn't name his daughter amanda.) because in russian, manda means cunt.

recommendations

when you finish a job your employer writes you a reference. usually they try to tell the truth. i guess sometimes they don't for whatever reason, such as happiness to get rid of you.

i thought it would be quite good if you could do that for people too. eg

"completely disinterested in anything other than herself. only interested in winning, including every conversation. i didn't even realise that was possible.
looks down upon everyone even though she isn't tall (literally or metaphorically).
avoid."

"mental, but in a magnificent way. sometimes doesn't know whether to laugh or cry so does both at once. intelligent, quick thinker, generous and modest without realising it. tenacious and fun. and incredibly hot. treat badly and i will hunt you down like liam neeson from taken."

surprise!

rich people get accountants in order to try to pay as little tax as possible.

journalists lie to make a story sound good (including, shockingly, taking quotes out of context!)

politicians are hypocrites


feel free to add your own

mindlessscrap

there used to be this great website called mindlesscrap that had fantastic trivia. a fact I remember was that there's only one word in the English language which changes its pronunciation when the first letter is capitalised. And that word is polish.

you may have noticed that the euros are happening in Poland and the Ukraine. apparently, my friend got told off for calling it the Ukraine instead of just Ukraine. but sometimes I think the 'the' is necessary.

anyway, that part of the world isn't known for its acceptance of other races so imagine my complete lack of surprise when i saw the headline that Eusebio, aka the black Pele, "was taken to polish hospital"

friday rounds up

well, i was about to hand a post of the week to someone other than yakshi but then he wrote this.

this the last workday of freedom i'll have for at least a month. although the way i'm looking at my job is that they're paying me to learn vba which is something i was kinda doing for myself anyway!

other than this the times are currently uninteresting. i need to find something more interesting to do. will work on updating my goals panel at the top right..

x men powers are unrealistic. but...

heroes, less so.

i guess it's not as famous as x-men but heroes is much more realistic. in terms of superpowers anyway. when you look at how people and superpeople would interact, x-men may not be far off.

you may think this is a set up for a joke, or at least hope that's what it is because the alternative is that i sound mental, but this is a serious science.

for those that don't know, heroes is a show with people who have superpowers. superpowers are cool. everyone wants them. i would like mind reading or invisibility. though as i said recently i think i would choose being able to control space time. but those aren't realistically going to be the first ones we get. realistic ones are perfect memory, calculator minds, perfect drawing abilities or having perfect pitch. these aren't actually too different from heroes powers. and imagine being able to choose ones you see in other people! (eg peter petrelli)

you may have noticed that these realistic 'powers' i mentioned are those that savants have. now imagine you could temporarily give yourself those powers? well, a scientist has already done that. ('testing' his theories on his PhD students no less!)

currently, this requires the use of a 'thinking cap'

commercial devices have for some time existed which allow you to control your computer using your mind (eg the now discontinued 'neural impulse actuator' or intendix)

imagine if you could learn these skills without the need for an external stimulus!

and that is really the only step required to superpowers.

once you've learned to control your mind to such an extent, the 'savant' powers are surely available. some of the more remote heroes powers are potentially viable, such as regeneration - after all, many animals can already do so. telekinesis which is very cool may be slightly problematic even at that stage.

the next step however, could be the most interesting. if you can focus your mind, and the em waves that are used, you may be able to 'see' other peoples minds due to their em waves. after all, em waves interact with each other. and that leads to the slightly more remote possibility of being able to affect others without the use of anything external, simply(!) using your own mind. and then the possibilities of what you can do are both scary and seemingly endless.

goal line technology

instead of using cameras or other technology to decide if a ball has crossed a line, uefa in their wisdom added two people who will sometimes have a good view. and even when they have a good view they still get decisions wrong.
yet to introduce technology they want it to get the decision right 100% of the time. surely getting it right 80% of the time is still better than having people who aren't that accurate?

even stranger is when they defended being archaic using one of their principles which is 'to have solidarity between all levels of the game'. they seem to have given up using this defence which disappoints me. i would have liked to see champions league football with the same principles as a sunday league game*.

we would see things such as:
the linesman are selected from the substitutes (one for each team).
referees able to ignore said linesman as and when they see fit (inc offside decisions)
nets put up by the home team players shortly before kick off
undersoil heating not allowed


i've also read a lot of people say it's bad because it opens up a can of worms. eg ukraine's non goal when the ball crossed the line was offside anyway from a couple of passes earlier. so two wrongs make a right for them(!?). and being able to cut out one error of judgement entirely is bad. i wonder if they advocate getting rid of linesmen too? or maybe because they aren't perfect it's ok to keep them.
so how about a goal line technology that is only 90% accurate? because that is what they have! why not make it 99%?


*sunday league is FA sanctioned rather than UEFA but perhaps the FA has to obey UEFA?

terrible news

i think i found a job. whilst applying for my one a day i got a phone call from someone i barely knew offering my a job. how ironic.

went to see them today, and it is temporary work which is good because i can then not have to stay too long. the problem is that it's outside of london and commuting far far away is massively annoying.
also this means i'll have to get up early.

on the plus side, it's a great working atmosphere and actual money which i can then use to populate my poker account and not get annoyed at playing mouthbreathers at 10c20c but instead get annoyed at 50c/$1 mouthbreathers.

the best thing is that if i get one of the few jobs i applied for i can leave quit easily. my applying for one job a day means i lost track of many jobs that i applied for but there are 4 i want to do. one i hear from this week. one next week. and two others in about a month. so add in interview times and responses etc means i could easily work 3 months before getting a preferential job so three months of money would be nice.

and the best part is that i know i would suddenly start running well at poker making more than the job! (though that would mean i have to get around to play poker again)

the best chocolates in the world

i like chocolate. i believe uk chocolates are the best although this may be because i was brought up here eating them. or maybe it's simply because they are the best.

american chocolate is appalling. and all the bars are named wrongly. (eg milky ways are called mars bars!?)
swiss chocolate has a very high opinion of itself. they never relax and put anything with the chocolate like caramel or even honeycomb. plus, the chocolate is generally too bitter. much like swiss people when they think of non swiss chocolate.

so uk chocolate is the best. the problem is that there are so many bars to choose from. so here is your definitive guide to the best, complete with name, description and special skill:

mars
a rich man's milky way.
bonus: is a roman warlord

twirl
a flake that doesnt crumble into a million pieces when you look at it
bonus: the double meaning when you ask your girlfriend to give you a twirl never wears thin. never.

maltesers
chocolate and honeycomb combined; lighter than air. i can fit at least 20 in my mouth
bonus: so light that it takes more calories to eat than you receive from it

dairy milk
comes in a million flavours, including 'normal', 'caramel filled', 'half replaced by air but the same price', 'mint', and many others.
bonus: i can eat over half a kilo of this and not feel at all sick.

terry's chocolate orange
as the saying goes, if it looks like an orange, sounds like an orange and tastes like an orange, then it probably is a duck.
bonus: counts as one of your five-a-day

plane journeys

i dont know why but people often ask me why plane journeys are different times in different directions for the same journey. everyone's best guess is that it's due of the spin of the earth, presumably because when the earth is spinning the opposite way to the plane it's a shorter journey.

most scientists know better and will say of course it's not because of the spin of the earth.

ironically, it is because of the spin of the Earth, but for a very different reason.

when the sun heats the earth, the poles get less heat than the equator. so there is a transfer of heat, via wind that takes hot air at the top of the atmosphere to the poles. cold air below it moves from the poles to the equator to fill the gap left (equalising the pressure).
due to the earth's spin, the coriolis force causes this wind, in the northern hemisphere to become an easterly wind (which counter intuitively means from the east, not to the east) near the equator and vice versa in the southern hemisphere. this causes an effective eddie current where at more northern latitudes, the wind's move in the opposing direction.

All this, is of course a generalisation, so only describes the overriding patterns that are found.

This is the explanation for prevailing winds (which leads to prevailing ocean currents). And it's these prevailing winds which cause the plane journey times to differ, as it's quicker to travel with the wind.

one last piece of counter-intuitive information is that when planes take off AND land they want to do both into the wind as this gives more stopping power and for take off, more lift!

kinda busy this weekend so forgot to play poker but have almost solve my c++ algorithm that was driving me mental.

todays friday round up with actual round up content

l'il dave's blog has been added to the roll. well written tales from a high roller.

post of the week, involves expert usage of the word 'fuckball'

persons to bring back from blogging wilderness
alexandra!

favourite search terms that have found me in the past month are
'ryan reynolds' and 'done a britta'

got stuck on a c++ exercise i was doing, and it drove me mental so i stopped doing anything for days. gonna try to ignore it and get back to learning more. found an exercise for building a game which should be cool as i'll finally be doing something useful! crackhead manager will be appearing sooner rather than later.

oh yeah, might play a bit of poker this weekend again. have finally calmed down after playing so terribly last time!

iRobot

i spent a minute trying to see the letters in the word on the right before i saw that i was expected to type not one but two words! five minutes of looking at the 'word' on the left and the only conclusion i can draw is that i am a robot.



anyway, i just found out that you can google 'english person' and look at the first website that comes up. and then laugh. the only thing that worries me is that doesn't all humour has an element of truth to it?

turning chat off

some people turn chat off in the poker.
sometimes, even though you know you shouldn't be affected by the words of others, it still affects you. and it's easier just to turn it off and not know than have to hear it and then choose to be unaffected by it.

i think it would be nice to be able to turn chat off for some people in real life too. (eg football commentators)
i used to be better at filtering out other people talking, but i got worried i would start doing it all the time without being able to control it.

no regrets

back when i was at university, i lived in a wonderous house, occasionally co-habited by mice. turns out tom and jerry style mouse traps are useless as mice just eat the cheese. even if you glue the cheese to the trappy part, they just eat around the glue.

on my walks back home from the pub, there used to be a short cut that included a few banks of steps that were very tall, a minutes walk away. occasionally i would see how far i could jump down them. then, one winter's night, on my walk home, mildly emboldened by alcohol i tried to jump the entire lot of ~10-15 steps. i landed successfully on both feet. success however, is measured by many things. in this case the only success was that i didnt fall over and roll down the next flight. though that may have been better than landing and not bending my knees which is what i did.

the pain that shot through my heels was immense. after a very slow reaction to the pain, i collapsed on the floor to take the weight off my legs. lying on my back, after about 3 minutes i realised it was bloody freezing and i needed to get home before freezing to death. that walk home took my about 15 minutes and involved me walking like an old lady who needed a zimmer frame, but without the zimmer frame. i spent three days in bed unable to walk before i was able to go to a doctor to check it out. though i was just told, "come back if it gets worse."

it did get better shortly afterwards so i was able to start walking again but i felt the pain occasionally for about 2 years afterwards.

so anyone that ever tells you, "you only regret the things you didn't do, and not the things you did do" is wrong.

(anyway, you shouldn't have any regrets - you can't change the past, only the future.)

a terrible injury?

maybe this is just how i read it, but Bolt was in a car crash in 2009, was injured and taken to hospital. was he taken to hospital with a damaged leg? with cuts and bruises? no. and this is how it was reported:

"In 2009 police said Bolt, also the 200m world record holder, was taken to hospital with a female after an accident in Jamaica."

i think it's pretty sexist of the bbc to say the female is an injury.

work in progress

almost 3 days since a post, and it feels like a while!

having now run out of money and with lots of expensive things to fix (car, tooth, etc) it seems my desperation meters for getting a job are quite high so may even try temping. i only want to work for a month or so just to pay for a few things i need done imminently. how i pine for the days when i used to be good at poker. or had money in my poker accounts.

i have decided that if i could have any superpower it would be that of controlling time and space. i think mind reading would ruin the surprise, even though it would make better at poker than the love child of stu ungar and quincy capers.
far fetched as superpowers sound, a professor recently told me it's not at all far fetched. i am in the midst of writing a futurism post, and for a sneak preview, watch series 1 of heroes. (DO NOT WATCH SEASONS BEYOND THAT, for it turneth into excrement).

angry!

why does poker still make me angry??

i dropped down to shit levels to play shit players and losing to submental random button clickers is very frustrating! i don't care whether it's through bad beats or hilarious preflop calls such as cold calling 3bets pre with 63s and hitting a flush on the turn or 76 for 20% of your stack and flopping a magnificent 77x vs me.

i've seen this so many times and for so long so why does it still annoy me?!

i also get very annoyed by people disturbing me when playing - they see i'm concentrating on something else but just don't care and keep talking to me. worse still is they often have ample opportunity to talk to me when it's not late at night yet refrain from doing so. and when these effects combine there's a hulk-rage switch which goes off inside my head.

i know what i should be focussing on and how my mental approach should be but just don't seem to able to do it. maybe i should just quit entirely.
anyway, down to $100 now.

here's a picture from the beach today.



i couldn't be bothered to go down to the beach beach since it's sandy and sand is just annoying. plus it wasn't even warm. i have fond mammories of this beach. when i was a kid i saw a topless sunbather. probably my first pair of real life breasts. and they were magnificent. it kinda made every pair since a bit of a let down, i think only one pair i've seen since compares.

what to post?

i have a bunch of drafts which lie somewhere between idea stage and almost ready to post stage but i think i have already posted some of them. so why are they still saved as drafts? this annoys me as i dont like repeating posts.

as you can see, i have just learnt the beauty of asking questions when speaking. it quit engages the audience (you). we are now engaged. congratulations!

i started playing a bit of the poker almost daily again. i quite like it. winning helps. though today was my first losing day. i briefly reached just over $200 which is ok, after stating with 70(?) last week. and i've only been playing very short spells (<60mins) once per day. really need to work on my patience though.
i think i also found a poker blog to add the roll (i'm saving that for a friday post). post of the week which i'm also saving till friday seems to once again have been won by yakshi. that'll wait till friday mostly because there's two magnificent posts there and i can't decide which is best. so in j-j-jimmy style i'll reread them to see which has the most staying power.

seeing as it's summer i'm off to the beach tomorrow/today. fully kitted out in winter jacket, hat and possibly scarf. it is after all a british summer.

the best national anthems

musically speaking

1. russia
2. italy
3. france

of the worst both musically and wordly would be the uk. one year they'll probably enter it into eurovision. the national anthem is as far as i can tell just a prayer for the monarch to not die.

This weekend marked around 60 years of her sitting on the throne (too easy to make a drink more orange juice joke). i fail to see the logical years of anniversary. it's something like 25, 40, 50, 60, 75. marked by silver, ruby, gold, diamond, platinum. neither the ascending arithmetic series is logical, nor is the series of gemstones/metals associated with it.



I accidentally found myself in the middle of the celebrations. I was confused as to exactly why people were celebrating. But there were many.



This was then followed by a brazillian boats floating down the river. Anyone who hung around past 6pm will have seen many goinging back to where they started since that's where they reside. A somewhat strange exercise if you ask me. But no one did ask me.

Then, to celebrate in style, a single firework was let off. I literally blinked just beforehand and missed it. Though it did make for a nice photo of London's newest skyscraper with clouds of smoke across it.



You may have noticed that the weather was typically British and although by the end there weren't many people lining the walkway, for the many hours preceding that it was packed full of people getting drenched. at least it finally disproves this man's theory.

more fillums

less forms. job applications are so dull. they lure you in making you think it'll be a quick cover letter + CV thing, yet invariably they have a million questions and an unresponsive server.
also, they're very formulaic. films are much more interesting. well, good films are. I watched sunset boulevard. it's massively rated on imdb. i was hoping it would be good, but the high expectations just made it seem worse. without being too harsh i would give it maybe a 9/20. i liked the main guy in it at first but his character deteriorated as the film went on. it also didn't have the romantic style of other old films. how it gets rated higher than hitchcock stuff shocks me.

been playing a little poker again. i started with $5 on partypoker and about $80 on betfair and i'm gonna see if i can win a little over the next few weeks, playing 3/4 tables at a time for the next few weeks. a few hundred perhaps by end of june would be nice. my goal is £1k, but tis not an expectation, it's my target! (yeah, i know, money goals bad, volume goals good, blah blah blah, but i want money.)

things that scare me #2,361

strangely, going out is much scarier to me than doing strange things when already out, since i'm not entirely sure what normal is, probably since i don't go out that often.

just recently i went out for a burger. after finishing said burger, and it wasn't small, i was approximately as hungry as when i started. i waited 10 minutes to see if i started to register being filled up but no such luck. so i ordered another. the waitress seemed unperturbed by my behaviour so i asked if many people had ordered 2 burgers. she said a few had. obviously (to me) i then asked "how about 3?"
she looked at me, paused for a moment, and said no. i knew right then and there her pause was challenging me. she had a pretty face and i wondered if it would increase my chances to see the rest of her body if i succeeded in this challenge she had just laid down at my feet.

i rather comfortably finished the second burger but didn't feel like another. so i asked her about dessert. she seemed impressed. sadly, they didn't have my preferred dessert of soufflé or soufflé-esque cake so we paid and left.
i think i have a thing for waitresses, and there's an even hotter one at another restaurant nearby. i wonder if i could instead impress her with eating abilities.

i might first try and get some tips from the winner of this eating contest:

interrobang

shall we bring it back‽
yes. though we may need to improve the icon for it as it currently looks like a mess or perhaps a stain upon the screen.

i have started this here and now. this time next year, it will become a standard on keyboards on computers and smartphones across the globe!

one random thing i've recently learnt:
the power of questions when giving talks. i guess it's because it engages the listeners to think as well as listen?

sketchy

i don't remember if i've posted this before, but even if i have, watch it again. it's still possibly the best 25 minutes episode of sketch show ever made.
each sketch gets better and better. the last one with the dinner party and pub is my favourite. and stephen mangan is in it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=sVaj_3IgYAk

i tried to find stephen mangan's "i'm a porrrrrrtaaaaaah" scene in green wing but it doesn't seem to be online, other than on 4od, so if you're in the uk, watch it. if anyone knows how to copy video of tinternet let me know and i'll make a clip and put it on the youtube or something.

i think when i get a job i will celebrate by buying green wing dvd's.

pen knives

i don't know how they got their names. they're not pens. they're just many knives and things that aren't knives.

i got to use one this morning. they're fun. i always found them fun. i had one when i was younger and stabbed myself in the little finger. accidentally of course. this led to copious amounts of bleeding, but my primary concern was not to leave a blood trail so that my parents wouldn't find out and thus would avoid landing myself in trouble.

of course, parents are usually more concerned that you're ok rather than that you're an idiot/still learning. this then reminded my of a kid who crashed his car on my street one day. he swerved to avoid a cat (his story) and ended up flipping the car and landing on a hedge. the first things he said when he got out the car (he was fine!) was "my dad's gonna kill me"

smile like a similie

i wonder if there's a word for a simile that makes no sense? perhaps a 'fielding' would be apt.

it's friday and my cop out day for writing a blog post which can go to rounding up blogs that aren't on my list of blogs you should already be reading. once again best content was found on yakshi's blog. All you other bloggers need to up your game.

I read a betfair blog recently which was reminiscent of their new fangled twitter account. Betfair poker's twitter account consists of (4 writers writing) hilarious nonsense. worth a follow if you partake in the twitter. two accounts i found have copied their style successfully are waterstones oxford street, and arena flowers.

today was uneventful. i realised c++ bored me. there is no goal to aim for. so i'm gonna go straight to objective c from next week and try to build stuff on my iphone.

also, did 30 minutes of the poker today. i'm beginning to enjoy it again. winning helps obviously. winning slowly at the moment, but aiming to increase the hours a bit and i'll be happy with a few hundred dollars a month. i seem to have run out of money in real life. the job i applied for today was a job i applied for on wednesday but i had to rewrite my cv for it so it counts.

anyway, i dont think i'll be around this weekend, so will be back to daily blogging from monday/tuesday.
hopefully it'll give me time to come up with more things i'm afraid of that i'll actually do.

in the mean time i will leave you with a link to a comedy you probably haven't seen. it's part 1 of 3.

i almost forgot to blog

i didn't. the problem was i went outside for a walk, i wore a hat, but i was afraid to doff it to lady's whilst saying m'lady. so i was ashamed to blog.

i also went into a shop where a gorgeous lady works. i didn't want anything from the shop, but by that point felt compelled to buy something. it's a food place, so i waited for her till to be free so we could share a moment. i was obviously too scared to say anything to her. though i wouldn't even know what to say! "what time do you finish" seems too cliché. so instead i just stared as discreetly as possible. sometimes i hate myself.