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