Peed off

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I woke up this morning tired but relatively fresh and came to the sudden, saddening realisation that I had woken up hacked off and feeling low. Maybe I was looking forward to yesterday’s events too much or something, but I was left with a mild sour taste. Three people’s attitudes or comments towards me rankled and one persons reaction left me mildly shocked & stunned – certainly enough to comment twice about it to my wife. Now I just want to go to bed and sleep until the weekend. And it’s Monday morning. sigh

What you missed

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This is, frankly, ridiculous. I checked my blog this morning and realised that my last actual post was in January 2010, so I haven’t written anything for 18 months now. That is an unacceptably long amount of time. I even said to myself 18 months before that that I should start a journal and what happens? I just don’t bloody bother!

*sigh* So here’s what you missed….

Work

The last journal entry I wrote was in September 2009. At that time I was just about to embark on a new phase of my career as a contractor at Commerzbank looking after data compliance and audit globally. This was to be a temporary posting until they looked to make me permanent after 6 months.

As it turned out at didn’t actually happen. Instead I was poached by BNP Paribas for the same global facing contract role but on more money (yay!) although it adds 30 minutes each way to my previous City commute as they are based in the West End (boo!). I’m now on the IPUG Executive as the Chair of the Data Compliance and Audit Special Interest Group (SIG) and have also given addresses to COSSIOM, the French market data consortium, on data compliance & audits. I’ll certainly be at BNPP until at least April 2012 as the project I am mainly working on will last up to 3 years.

All in all my career has found a new lease of life, I’ve managed to carve a niche out for myself in the industry and I’m happier professionally.

Karate

My karate has also taken off in leaps and bounds. I’m over half-way to black belt and qualified as a karate instructor (Sensei) in January after a 3 month course. Shortly after qualifying I also took over as the Branch Instructor of Sandon dojo in Chelmsford. I took over the class with 12 students on the roll, we’ve had a bunch of new students through recruitment drives & word of mouth and now have just over 30 on the roll with 24-28 students attending every week for the past month which is quite impressive. They are a great bunch and it is a pleasure and a privilege to be their sensei.

On a side note, training an average of three times a week and eating salad for lunch, I’ve lost several stone and gone from a 40″ waist and a 44″ chest to a 36″-37″ waist and 42″ chest. I got some t-shirts on Father’s Day and they were Mediums. I’ve only just put the XL ones in the eBay bag and bought some Large ones so maybe I’m still slimming down. I’m certainly physically fitter and feel much healthier than I have for years. My wife says I look hot too as my stomach is flat. Fantastic!

Geekiness

My digital life has totally changed.

I have pretty much completely moved away from using my Windows based PC across to my MacBook Pro (which I upgraded to at the start of the year from my first Mac, a MacBook Black). The only time I boot up the PC personally is when I want to game on there or the rare occasions I need to do something on there which I cannot do on my MBP for whatever reason. Then at Christmas this year my wife gave me a lovely, lovely iPad. This little device goes pretty much everywhere with me and has supplanted both the MBP and the iPhone for the majority of my digital experience. I use the MBP for big or lengthy tasks and the iPhone for mobile quick and dirty stuff; mostly relegating it to it’s core mobile phone and iPod function which is no bad thing. But the middle ground is firmly taken up by the iPad and quite comfortably too. In fact, I’m writing this post on the Blogsy app and can touch type quite well with the on-screen keyboard.

Gaming

My gaming life has also pretty much completely changed. My primary platform is definitely now iOS and even then I now favour the iPad over the iPhone – I’m currently addicted to Tower Madness HD. Leave my sheep alone, you aliens! I still play on my PC and the Wii, but the iPad is the main place. I’ve also tried playing on the PS3 and even bought Batman: Arkham Asylum for £7 to see if I could switch to consoles with a title I enjoyed on PC and figured a 3rd person game rather than an FPS might be easier to get to grips with. Apart from getting headaches dealing with gaming on a big screen, it is going rather well (weirdly I don’t get headaches with the Wii – hmmm). With Steam now releasing more games for Mac maybe I will switch across from PC there too but I doubt it. Certainly for now I want to get Bioshock Infinity on PC rather than any other platform, so watch this space!

Life

As for life in general, all is great: my wife and I are even more in love, which I didn’t think was possible; the kids are happy and all doing stormingly well at their respective schools, one of which I’m Vice-Chair of governors at; I’ve become an Uncle after my brother and his wife had a daughter; and my friends are all sound and hale and living their lives happily with people that they love.

Now. Let’s see if I can keep this blog up to date. Again.

Pottery Painting #1 – Batman

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The whole family went pottery painting today.  My wife and I chose to paint plates.  She did a lovely display of high heels on a side plate and I did the Batman symbol (what else!?).  I decided that when we do this again that I would do more in a series, maybe the entire Justice Leagues (my era, not whatever they have at the time).

Hard as nails

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When I upgraded my Gaming PC to Core i5 loveliness, I got two new games with it. Batman: Arkham Asylum, which is without a doubt not only the best Batman game of all time but also the best superhero game of all time; and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, which is – to be frank – bloody hard.

Much has been said about CoD:MW2 in the press regarding the gratuitous violence and a notorious level which sees an undercover US soldier forced to gun down many innocent civilians in a Russian airport. I played the level and actually saw it as pointless as a game level despite being essential to the plot by fomenting hatred of the warmongering US. You are forced to shoot people otherwise the terrorists smell a rat and kill you, if you shoot the terrorists they kill you and at the end of the level they kill you anyway. A cut-scene would have worked just as well although it wouldn’t have sickened me as much and make me wonder for a second or two if our forces actually every need to do this type of thing.

What hasn’t been commented on is how hard as heck it is. I’m on the third or forth level, which is set in Brazil, and I never get very far without being killed by some scumbag’s bullet. The damage model is pretty hard so you only have to take two or three hits before the screen goes black and the game reloads. Whilst I can get to cover, I get pinned down and immediately surrounded. I’m all for realism but this is taking it a bit far. Yes, I know that I’d be a bit pants in a fire-fight, but I don’t want to pay money for what is, after all, entertainment and have this demonstrated to me.

For Christmas, I was kindly given more computer games for my new system. Something my old rig could never ever, ever, ever, ever play was Crysis so I was kindly given Crysis: Maximum Edition which gives you the original game plus the expansion and multiplayer in one little box set. I have to say it’s impressive. As well as looking gorgeous, the enemy AI seeks to flank me and surround me as well as searching for me under cover. Realistic but not so hard that it makes me want to weep.

PsychopathicCoho

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So, I’m sitting here looking at jobs on the net when I get an AIM message from someone called PsychopathicCoho which says Let’s kill Lady Gaga together!.   I immediately think spam or virus and Google the AIM name before closing window or responding and I find lots of information.

Turns out it’s a social networking fish bot (not to be confused with a phish bot) which randomly connects two AIM ID’s together and gives a spurious message to both to get the conversation flowing as well as much hilarity as one accuses the other of initiating the conversation.

After much confusion and then amusement, I had a lovely chat with my random person – a 26 year old film major from San Francisco who loves The Smiths and Joy Division – about everything from the current economic climate to the fact that we both love music from the decade we were born rather than stuff that is around now and how Americans get rather confused about how Britain, the UK, England, Scotland and Wales all fit together.

It was random and totally anonymous but ultimately harmless and rather fun. It also highlighted for me that the world isn’t as big as you sometimes may think and the internet can be brilliant and surprising.

More links:
The AIM FishBot Phenomenon
Got a random IM message?
AIM Fish (not Phish) bots
Project Upsteam Screen Names
The Missing Hat