Year: 2012

March 6, 2012
March 5, 2012
A while ago, in June last year, I backed a Kickstarter project by Julia Nunes. I’ve mentioned Julia before as being a YouTube genius. She has released a couple of albums in the past, but was looking to raise $15,000 to do a proper studio album. Within 24 hours she had received pledges of $19,000, and by the time the project closed, she had pledges of $77,888, with 1,685 backers.

I think one of the reasons that Julia is so popular with her fans is that she is so… well, interactive. She has used the Kickstarter site to the fullest, with regular updates and even videos of part of the recording process and her giving an impromtu concert in the Kickstarter office.

March 2, 2012
February 26, 2012
Just had my first game session in a month, due to my being laid low with illness and sleep issues. I’ve had this scheduled in the diary for a good while, and I was hoping I would be ok for it. Thankfully the cold has mostly gone, apart from a tickle on the chest, and the last two nights I achieved some really decent sleep.

February 26, 2012
Just watched Real Steel on DVD and was very pleasantly surprised. Unusually for this kind of flick, it had an actual story (albeit a predicatable one about a father bonding with the son he never knew), and the acting was pretty good too. Good special effects – although they used CGI for the robots for most of the action/moving shots, they actually did built giant robot electronic puppets for specific scenes where they interact with actors – 19 of them, in fact. I think this made all the difference, especially with the scenes with the son.

Well worth seeing, not least to spot the boxing references, both real-life and fictional.

February 24, 2012
[Note: thankfully this issue has now been resolved]

After it got dark, I was able to do the final test, and the answer is a minor *sigh*.

I really don’t know what it is about equipment manufacturers and backlit keys and displays, especially for machines meant for the bedroom. Am I the only one who thinks the bedroom should be relatively dark?

February 24, 2012
February 23, 2012
On BBC Question Time tonight, Ed Vaizey was asserting that RBS shares were up. David Dimbleby disagreed – “They are 40% down on last year.”

This is where Ed Vaizey, grasping at straws, actually said “Well they are up on their lowest point”.

February 23, 2012
The nonsense with Papworth Hospital unfortunately continues, emphasising to me that you can think an organisation is really great (I’ve had no complaints in 10 years), but it only takes one major foulup and a total lack of will to fix it to completely change your mind.

I have now been stuck with a CPAP that doesn’t work well for me for 4 weeks. During that time, I have been fobbed off by the technical people for a few days, had my notes placed with “my” consultant’s office for two weeks, ignoring the fact he is on annual leave, and for the past week the issue has been with another consultant, who I haven’t managed to speak with once, only repeated phone calls to his secretary. This is despite my stressing several times that I am not getting quality sleep, that it has affected my social life (a week’s holiday wasted, haven’t had the energy to go out once in the last 3 weeks) and work (tired all the time, to the point that I have taken time off). All they can see is that I have been giving a “new” (it’s not), “improved” (it’s not) machine.

February 21, 2012
Not sure if I mentioned it, but I bought one of these as a birthday present to myself.

A Denon M38DAB, it is a micro CD player, DAB/FM/AM radio and amp combined. I’ve had it running for the past few weeks, balanced on a pile of books on a chair, and plugged into my monitor speakers. However, over the weekend, I moved some bookcases around, and now it is in its home, and connected up to a pair of old – but excellent – speakers that were my dad’s.

February 18, 2012
Is anyone else watching this? Excellent BBC 4-part drama about a heist at a money-counting secure vault. More twists and turns than a curly-wurly, and some excellent acting, especially from Steven Mackintosh.

We’ve recently had episode 3 of 4, but all the episodes to date are on BBC Iplayer – http://www.bbc.co.uk/i/b01bpkk9/

February 13, 2012
I just looked at my last post, and corrected a load of typos, which were probably indicative of my state of mind. Spent most of the weekend on the sofa, with my nose alternately in a book or a hankerchief.

Friday and Saturday nights, I ended up bringing my duvet downstairs and slept in my recliner chair, with the footrest out, but only slightly reclined. This was because every time I lay down in bed, I was wracked with coughing fits.