Mega update

Well, a lot's been going on.

Archery:

Not much here due to other stuff. Due to issues with the compound being so heavy, I've been using Rob's old recurve bow, but using it barebow. It shoots really well and I've been having a lot of fun with it. Due to other commitments though, haven't been to archery very much.

Computers/Games:

I got Saints Row IV for the 360 for a pittance and have been enjoying that. It's a bit weird as it goes in a very weird direction, but great fun. I've also still been replaying BioShock Infinite on the PC but have had a bit of a lull recently. Still a fantastic game though.

I've also been enjoying FTL again after rediscovering it and also it runs nicely on my laptop which definitely not a gaming machine. Today I bought Elite: Dangerous in the Steam sale as it's hard to resist at that price but won't get to try it until tomorrow on my main PC. I'm also tempted to to try out Civilisation V again.

Going to have a computer shakeup at some point as I'm now effectively living between two places. My main PC is still on Windows 8.1 but my Yoga laptop is on Windows 10. The PC is still running great though, even though it's only a 2nd generation i5.

I'm feeling very ambivalent about Windows 10 though, which has left me reluctant to install it on my main PC. I like the OS generally but I don't like the rampant data mining that things like Cortana apparently need, or the way it keeps 'recommending' it's own browser, etc, and how updates keep resetting things to the default apps and so-on. It just feels like Microsoft have taken away a lot of control of it from the user. I suppose that's fine for most people but for an enthusiast it doesn't feel quite right.

Have been experimenting with a Raspberry Pi and a 5" screen that connects to it. It works very well and I discovered that it will run from one of those mobile phone backup battery packs for a good 5-6 hours, even with a backlit desktop keyboard plugged in. Not quite the most practical portable computer but it could be fun to put it into a case or something. The Raspberry Pi Zero is an interesting concept which has just been announced today.

TV etc:

Been watching several things recently. The main one which was very good is Mr Robot - absolutely amazing first season. I appreciated both the story and the largely accurate depictions of technology.

Other things have included The Andromeda Strain, which was awesome. I enjoyed The Detectorists which is a really nice gentle comedy, and we have also started Bottom as I'd never seen it before. It's completely insane but good fun.

Series 9 of Doctor Who has been OK so far - a lot better than series 8 I think, although they really need to get rid of Clara. She's been there far too long now.

Rob lent me a graphic novel series called Saga. Hard to explain what it's about but it's extremely well drawn and has a very compelling story. Really good. Halfway through volume 5 at the moment.

Aunt visit:

We went to see my aunt a few weeks ago as we had said we would after seeing her at my cousin's funeral. She lives near Bury St Edmunds which is about 4 hours drive away. We travelled down on Saturday without any issues and checked into a new Premier Inn before heading over to see her. The hotel is brand new and very nice. The restaurant was great and we had some really nice breakfasts and evening meals there, and it was in a nice quiet location.

It was a really nice weekend - that first evening we had chips and watched the village fireworks display. She has a good view of them from her flat. We spent Sunday morning exploring the town. It's a nice place - very old and has a unique style in the town centre. It was Remembrance Day so all that was going on.

On Sunday afternoon we went and picked her up and went out for a drive, taking her to see some places she likes. Then we headed back to hers and spent quite a lot of time sorting out photos and things and then headed back to the hotel. The next morning we went and had a coffee with her and headed back. The return journey wasn't as good as the weather was bad and the roads busier, but made it OK.

Work:

Not much to report - it's settled down a bit now but still not quite sure what's coming up - possible restructure, etc. My primary laptop had a weird issue with BSOD so I ended up using a spare Thinkpad Helix that I'd repaired from the scrap. It was nice but the screen and keyboard were a little small. If it had had 8gb RAM though I might have made it my main machine as the small size of it is nice.

Misc:

The Merc is due to be taxed - can't believe I've had it that long! It's going in on Tuesday to have the brakes and suspension checked out as I think it's at that age where it needs it.

It's Steve's stag do this weekend which will be interesting. Hopefully it'll be a good time.

I saw a page recently that said what is something cheap and fun to buy off Amazon and one of them was a nano-quadcopter called the Cheerson CX-10. It took quite some time to get the hang of flying it, but once I did I really enjoyed it. It takes 15 minutes or so to charge and flies about 5 minutes.

I enjoyed it so much I ended up buy a CX-10C which is basically the same, but with a camera in it that can record video and take pictures. It's a bit more stable in flight. The other cool thing was an MJX-901 which is basically the same thing but a hexacopter. It's much more stable and controllable than the other two and flies longer. Very cool. I know these quadcopters can be a very expensive hobby if you get into the larger ones, but these little ones are so cheap and so much fun.

Clickety Clack

Well, it's been a good couple of weeks. Work has been hectic as always but I've been a bit more successful in not letting it get to me as much.

The car is still going fine and has had a couple more things done that have made it needed. The main thing was two new rear tyres as the ones on it were a bit shit. The fronts aren't a great make, but have plenty of tread. It also had a new seal to stop a slight gearbox leak and new transmission fluid.

In other news it was Rob T's birthday meal the weekend before last, which was at a local Italian that is very good. I had got him a book for his birthday about the science of cocktails, which he likes. I'd also got him a random card I found which was a copy of an old map of Montgomeryshire because I know he likes maps. It turned out that it's from the same series that they have framed ones of already so that was a nice coincidence.

My fascination with mechanical keyboards continues. I've been using the Ducky Mini in work to see what it was like, and it is pretty good - I definitely type more accurately on it, although the 60% layout can be a little awkward with systems that use menus or F-keys a lot. I also got hold of an interesting old portable machine called a Dolch Pac 64 which is one of those cool lunchbox style portable computers. It's an old Pentium MMX based system that has network analysis and sniffer software on it. But the main thing is that it has Cherry MX Blue keyswitches. As fun as it was revisiting Windows 98, my plan is to rip out the Baby AT motherboard and swap it out for something more modern and make it into a portable server type thing.

I'm typing this on a HP laptop that my Dad's wife gave me. She replaced it with an iPad and was going to chuck it as the battery had died. But apart from the battery it's fully functional. It has a nice keyboard, nice 11" screen and some sort of AMD CPU. I've put 8gb RAM in it and have decided to try Linux Mint on it. It's pretty nice actually and I might put an SSD in it and use it as a test machine. Not sure if I'll keep Linux on it or try Windows 10 on it which is due out today.

We've had a couple of sessions of DnD recently, which have been good fun. They defeated my creatures infesting the sewer they tried to 'sneak' through and I've got a week to prepare for the next challenge.

I've been trying to sort my eating out with limited success. The positive thing is that I've introduced vegetables into my work and home meals which has worked well, but I'm still struggling with the snacking side of things. My knee has also played up again this past weekend after I squatted down to do something and stood up again. It's not as bad as the last time as it's already getting much better, but it's a bit of a warning sign. Still...small changes are the way to go rather than trying to do it all at once.

I've not been to archery again for a while which is bad so I'm hoping to go this coming Sunday. Between wanting to spent time with special person and Rob and Em being busy, it's just not panned out as I'd hoped really. Oh well.

Misc things

The main thing that happened recently is the Kent BBQ. This is the third one I've been to, and it was another great weekend. We headed down on Friday evening as usual, but had to come back on Sunday as Rob and Em had used all their leave going to New Zealand in January. We took my car due to it being larger and more comfortable.

The theme this time was 'W' and after considering various options (Worf, Wesley Crusher, Weeble), I ended up going as Wales, basically wearing all the worst rugby supporter tat you can imagine. I also took a swearing in Welsh cheat sheet I made up from websites about it, which was quite funny. The night was very good, some of the costumes wer ace, Jake's, Wes as Wolverine and Andy C as a white spaceball with the genuine helmet were great. I didn't get too drunk, fortunately, after the shameful performance a couple of years ago, but still had a good time. The evening did degenerate a bit towards the end and one of the large mirror's in Jake and Laura's bedroom did get smashed, which was a bit much as the house had just gone on the market! The next day we had breakfast as usual and headed back in the minibus to get the car and head home.

Not much else to report really. Work is still proving difficult at the moment but not much I can do about that. The car is going well and happily isn't costing much more than the C3 did in terms of fuel economy. It's had a service and is going in next week to have a bit more work done to make it shipshape. I do need to find some way to get an aux input for the stereo however. It has the functionality but not the cabling required. However it might be possible to sor that out.

The C3 has also been sold to a woman in St Asaph who I hope will be happy with it. I will miss it - what a great little car it was, much to my surprise. I also got a refund of the tax on it pretty quickly too, which is nice.

I've also expanded my mechanical keyboard collection, having got quite addicted to them. As well as the Corsair K65 RGB, I dug out the Cherry G80 I bought last year with Blue switches, and I also discovered another Cherry keyboard in the scrap pile in work. It appears to be a rare G80 variant with a smart-card reader and has Black switches. It is an odd one as it has Windows keys, but also an old 5-pin DIN XT connector with a PS/2 adapter on it. Bizarre. I'd love to get that working. I also got a Ducky Mini as I was intrigued by the 60% layout. It has Brown switches and is really nice - incredibly solid.

We've played a couple of DnD games, which have been good fun. The latest battle has begun and I just sprang a Gelatinous Cube on them - a creature Steve threatened to play several times. It'll be interesting to see how they cope with fighting it off.

It's Rob's bithday meal tomorrow, which wil be fun. Going to the local Italian place which is always good.

Need to sort out my eating again. Now that my knee is 100% better, I find that I'm really struggling again because of the amount of time I spent not really doing much and it became a habit almost. I have been eating badly though, and I'm not quite sure why. My weight has been dead on 95kg for a while now and I don't like it.

A few things

I'm not doing very well at keeping this up to date.

The main things that have happened recently are that the house is had quite a bit of decorating done, which is really good. It's made such a difference, even with the horrible old 70s carpets still in place.

I've also got a new car, finally. I did so much digging and research I ended up going in circles, but I had decided that I would like something nice. Eventually I decided to semi-seriously consider the W203 Mercedes C-class. The early ones were shite - rusty electrical nightmares. But the later ones are highly regarded so I decided to go and have a look at two of them. They were both estates, and pretty much exactly the same, but one was a C270 and the other a C220. The 270 was a bit of a shed cosmetically and didn't feel 100%, although the 5-cylinder engine was stonking once it had warmed up.

The C220 was much nicer and after some thought I went back and put a deposit down on it, picking it up last Friday. It's been pretty good so far but is due a service and needs a couple of little things looking at, so those are being done this coming Friday. It's nice to drive something that is so laid back and comfortable at highway speeds and I'm liking having an automatic transmission again. One downside is the lack of an iPod or Aux connector, however the factory stereo should be capable of it with the right cable added. Fuel economy so far is good, not quite as good as the C3, but acceptably close given that it's a bigger and more powerful car. Perhaps the service will help a bit in that regard.

I finally went to archery again the weekend before last. It was OK - I shot better than I thought I would, but not great really. But to be fair it's been three months since I last went. I had a go on someone's new longbow, which was really good - it was quite a beast though as it is the same poundage as my compound.

Not much else to report really. It was Rob G's birthday this last weekend and his girlfriend arranged a secret party. The boys took him out for a drink at the pub while the girls set up and then we took him back. Somehow he had no clue at all and it was really good fun. It's scary how quickly their golden retriever puppy is growing - for six months old he is truly enormous. I got Rob G the Graphic Superhero book as I have a copy and I knew it would be exactly his thing.

I made the pleasing discovery that Eisbrecher have released a new album, back in January. Somehow I missed that, so I've got hold of it. It's really good and perhaps one of their best ones.

I finally sat down and had a look at my little Trace Elliot bass amp. It's been making a weird crackling sound for ages now. The cause was pretty obvious - there is a tear in the speaker cone, but it was so dusty I hadn't seen it. It's a standard 8" Celestion speaker so I've ordered a replacement one for it.

One project at the moment is that I've had this idea to install a small screen in the front drive bays of my PC tower. These days such screens are quite easy to get hold of so I ended up getting a 5" 800x480 screen which is designed to clip onto a Raspberry Pi. But because it uses HDMI it'll work on anything. My first attempt to get it working was with a USB graphics adapter with a HDMI connector mounted inside the machine but I think I'm going to just hook it up to the main graphics card, although this does mean sending the cable outside of the case which won't be quite as tidy.

More fun and games

It's been a pretty painful couple of weeks again. Not long I recovered from my chest infection, I was asked to help move some furniture. It was fine, quite heavy, but that evening I noticed my knee was aching. The next morning it was agony and it took ages to get better. After a week I went to the doctor and she made me bend it to the point of agony, but basically just said to keep taking ibuprofen. I was sent for an X-ray though as this isn't the first time this has happened and she thought there might be something wrong, but it came back clear. I'm a bit worried about next week though as there is some server hardware to move in work and I don't want to do it again.

Fortunately it is back to normal now, so I don't have to endure the humilation of hobbling around with my Mum's old walking stick. However I do feel that it might be a symptom of how unfit I've become over the last few months and to do something about it seems to be wise.

I'm also really conscious that I've not been to archery for so long now. I've been thinking about how to integrate it now that my life is changing quite a bit and I think I've come up with a plan, hopefully.

Work has been a bit stressful, due to large system upgrade of the social services system, which has been in the planning for literally years. It was all done last weekend, it took quite some time on the Friday and half of Saturday. Fortunately, apart from a few niggles it has gone well and is working OK. There do seem to be speed issues, but that appears to be because the application servers are only 32-bit and therefore limited to only 4gb RAM. I'm really glad this has gone OK because it was dumped on me after one of my colleagues left, and it's been looming for weeks. There's still plenty of work to do of course, but at least this big upgrade has been done.

In other news, I've not been doing much. I've been idly looking at cars, but was handicapped by my knee - I was hoping to replace the C3 before the tax ran out but I've now taxed it.

I'm still intrigued by smart watches, but have decided that while the Pebble does have decent battery life, it's a bit too far in the stripped down direction so have got rid of it in favour of an LG G Watch R. It's one of the models with a round screen. It's an interesting question whether a square or round screen works better. I think the round screen is aesthetically more pleasing, but of course not as good for displaying information. Anyway I've only got it today so we'll see how it goes.

Had a great night with a few guys from work the other week on a Friday. One of the guys has just got a house so we had a night in with Akira on DVD and pizza, which was great. It was one of the days that my knee was particularly bad though so I ended up embarrassingly being waited on hand and foot. The food was from a kebab shop which is not far from work and is very good, and is a dangerous temptation at lunchtimes.

There was also a DnD session in Rob G's new house a couple of weeks ago. It was good, but not much play went on due to not having seen each other in a while and their 3 month old golden retriever wanting to play with everyone. It was good fun though, although I had to apologise the next day as a combination of my knee hurting and tiredness made for a quite a grouchy DM that night.

Been rewatching some old movies and Star Trek episodes with special person, which has been good fun. Highlights included The Commitments, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, which we watched yesterday with large quantities of popcorn.

The work on the house has halted for a little while now that the kitchen is basically done apart from painting. The next step is decorating the hall and living room, which will be quite an undertaking. That is due to start in a fortnight or so.

Birthday week

Been a while since updating this thing due to being quite ill. Two weeks ago I went over to special person's place on the Wednesday evening as normal, and realised I didn't feel 100%. The next morning I was clearly in no state to go to work and I ended up being off sick for a week. By the following Tuesday, I was so bad that I went to the doctor. He listened to my chest and said it sounded awful and prescribed me some antibiotics. These hit the spot and by the weekend I was OK.

It was my birthday on the Sunday. Special person and I had a nice, but busy day. We went to my Dad's for lunch, which was nice and then we headed over and met up with Rob and Em, and Jane and Wes, who were up for a flying visit. We got the chance to meet their new baby, Robin, who was only 6 weeks old. The big surprise of the day was special person buying me an electric double bass, as I'd mentioned that I'd thought about getting one before for 'giggles'. It's quite a challenge to play compared to a bass guitar, that's for sure.

After that we had a nice meal with my Mum before heading back. She got me an interesting infra-red heater thing. It looks like a whiteboard but is a heater. Very odd. It works quite effectively though.

I headed back on Monday and then it was special person's birthday on Tuesday, but unfortunately they were working late, so we had the birthday stuff on Wednesday. It was another really nice day, although we did just stay in. The presents I'd bought were much appreciated and it was a great day.

The house works are continuing. The new kitchen is nearly done and it's a vast improvement on the old one. The living room and hallway are hopefully going to be decorated soon.

In other news I finally bought myself a soldering iron so I could do the pickup upgrade on the Dirnt bass and put new strings on it. I think it'll end up sounding great. I also treated the PC to a fancy new gaming keyboard. It's a mechanical Corsair one with backlit switches that can all be customised. I've got it set to blue and green at the moment, but the keys briefly flash red when you press them, which is a subtle but nice effect. I've also relocated the PC off the floor to hopefully make it pick up less dust and given the case a proper clean for the first time, clearing off some old sticker residue and things. It's quite a nice case but it still gave me a nasty cut when I was trying to get at the power and hard drive LEDs.

I've been carrying on with BioShock Infinite on the PC. I'm playing it on Easy because I just want to enjoy the experience of the story and visuals. I also have tried out Assassin's Creed 4 that Rob lent me on the 360, but as with the previous games I find the controls difficult and frustrating, even though the boat driving parts were quite good. The Oculus has been returned but I have since lent it out again since I'm not quite in the mood to use it at the moment for some reason.

My car is due to be taxed, so I thought about changing it for something more comfortable, but it's all a bit up in the air as I might need to change it to something suitable for lugging my Mum around and the dog. But since the DVLA are being indescribably shite about telling her if she's safe to drive or not, I don't know what I should get. Also since I'm not very good a choosing cars, I'm scared that whatever I look at will be rubbish. I'd like something a bit more solid, perhaps German built, but what to get?

More random stuff

It's been a weird couple of weeks.

I was on annual leave last week, but it wasn't really the greatest week. On the first Sunday special person and I went up to my cousin's house to get her beloved cat, Toby, so he could moved to his new home. He's going to eventually live with Rob and Em, but since they've just started their extensive building works he's being fostered at Em's parents. The poor thing has always been a shy cat and took ages to warm to my cousin. After two weeks alone in the house apart from being fed, he took refuge under her bed and didn't want to come out. After a spirited chase we had to trap him in the conservatory and he finally gave up.

He was very good in the car on the whole - he yowled a bit as you might expect, but didn't do any dirty protests. Upon arrival at Em's parents, he promptly found a very secure hiding place behind the washing machine, but has since emerged and with the care and attention from Em's sister Vicky, he is now having cuddles and being generally adored. Which is brilliant.

Unfortunately that day I started to feel a little iffy and was absolutely shattered after all that day's driving, but I then spent the rest of the week with a cold. Which put paid to any plans I had for the week.

It was the funeral on Thursday. My Dad and I went up with special person on the Wednesday to the hotel where the family were staying in preparation. My Dad had already said he didn't want to drive as it was a bit far for him, but at the same time didn't trust my car, so we went up in his after he'd added me to the insurance. The drive up was fine and we got there just as a few other members of the family did. I was shattered after the drive as the cold wasn't great then, and so we had a lie down before going out to see the family. There was a lot of talking and catching up and my aunt had a lot of pictures of my cousin, which were great to see.

The next day we met up and headed to my cousin's house where the hearse and funeral cars turned up. To my surprise they were all silver - which I think she would have approved of. It took a bit of time to get to the crematorium and when we did there was a delay as someone attending the funeral before us had had a heart attack.

The service itself was short and simple. It was a humanist one, with no religious references. My cousin had said exactly how it was going to go and it was really nice. But she was very cheeky and had Jessica by the Allman Brothers as the exit music - otherwise known as the Top Gear theme. Only she could get away with that! Afterwards it was back to the hotel for the get-together, which was very busy as a lot of her friends and work colleagues turned up. It was very special to see how many people she'd made friends with.

We ended up leaving quite early as my Dad wanted to get back, and I spent the rest of the holiday and weekend, apart from Friday night, round with special person, just hanging out. Typically, today is the first day I feel better, right when I'm back in work. Probably a good thing though as it's been a shit day all round and to cope with feeling ill as well would have been hell.

Not much else to report - up to Series 3 of the great Bluray TNG rewatch and have finished Better Call Saul, which I really enjoyed. It felt a lot like Breaking Bad, but did it's own thing very well. I watched the first episode of the new Daredevil series, but it didn't quite grab me, so I watched the second one and it has got better. I also installed BioShock Infinite on the PC to see how the new graphics card coped with it - very well is the answer, so I want to replay that at some point. I lent the Oculus to Steve about three weeks ago, but he's had it a lot longer due to me coping with other things.

I'm quite enjoying the Pebble watch still. It's pretty limited I guess, but of course it lasts several days, which other smartwatches don't. Also my phone upgraded itself to Lollipop a couple of weeks back which has taken some getting used to. I don't like this new trend of having fields and buttons not outlined properly and making everything flat. It seems like a step backward. When I got my cousin's old iPod touch with iOS 8 on it, I was shocked at how hideous it is compared to the older versions and I reacted similarly to Lollipop, although I don't think it's as bad.

I've been gathering parts for a new project bass, since I haven't had a proper parts assembled one for ages. It's going to be a Jazz bass with an extra pickup by the neck and three Jaguar-style switches to turn them on and off, and the headstock will be shaped like a 51 P-bass, just because. The body was quite cheap though and will need a fair bit of work to look presentable.

Random stuff

Not much to say really - work is much the same...not been to archery in a while...but the big thing is that my cousin passed away last Wednesday.

She'd been struggling for a while after the cancer returned and I went up to see her three weeks ago with special person to see how she was and drop off a new laptop. I knew she'd been having problems eating due to struggling to swallow, but the reality of seeing her at 7.5 stone was quite a shock. As well as dropping off the new laptop, we took her cat to the vet and did a few other jobs for her. The weekend before last, she went into hospital with a chest infection and it was too much for her to fight and she died last Wednesday morning. I heard about it in the evening from my sister and although we knew it was coming, it was still a massive shock. Due to various random communication issue, I heard it from my sister, and had to tell my brother in Berlin.

I've been gradually trying to process it over the weekend but it has been difficult.

In other news, not much to report really. I have upgraded my PC to a GTX 970 graphics card, which involved some modification to the case, but runs games very nicely. I've got Bioshock Infinite to replay on it and it looks amazing. There's probably other things to put on here but I can't really think of them right now.

Many many things

Oops...been a bit shit about updating this thing.

Work has been a bit of a nightmare over the last month - the upcoming staff changes due to the restructure have started to take place causing big concerns and problems and a corresponding dip in morale. Then, to make things even worse, one of my colleagues in the server team handed in his notice and isn't being replaced which is a bit of a nightmare. I've already had to start picking up extra work.

The Windows Server 2012 course last month was good, and surprisingly interesting. It covered a lot of AD too, which I will certainly find useful now. It was good fun exploring Manchester as well, finding places to eat. I had Chinese mostly and had a good time exploring Chinatown and finding amazing things in the supermarkets there like Pork Floss, Tempura Seaweed, Prawn Seaweed and Peanut Soup.

Haven't really played any game seriously since finishing Skyrim. I did try Arkham Asylum on the PC, but I just can't get into it, I really don't know why. I lost interest in FTL because of the randomness of it, but it is still fun. However after being intrigued by them for months I scored an Oculus DK2 on Ebay. For what is basically still a prototype it works pretty well, even on my aging PC. The head tracking and movement is spot on, the only downside is the screen resolution. Oddly enough the display in it is the same as a Galaxy Note 4, to the point where the DK2 actually has the front panel from the phone in it. Bizarre. The goggles fit OK over my glasses but my eyesight must be really bad because I have to use the lenses for nearsighted people AND my glasses.

Some of the demos and things for the DK2 are amazing, some less so. I think the best ones have been AirDrift, which allows you to fly around a mountain range or a village, and Birdy King Land, which is very impressive despite the stupid name. There's also Don't Let Go, which is pretty good fun with headphones on.

Now HTC and Valve have announced the Vive, and Sony the Morpheus and even Google have done the weird Cardboard thing. I'm still not quite sure how mainstream VR will become, even though I've been fascinated by the concept since I was quite young. But the idea of a 4k phone that you can pop into a headset for VR use is an interesting one.

I've consolidated the Yoga 2 Pro data onto the Yoga 13, which has now had extensive surgery to have a new 250gb SSD installed, and the original 128gb SSD moved to the secondary slot. The new SSD is a bit faster and has the space for the data from the Yoga 2 Pro. The 2 was nice with the 3200x1800 display, but was limited to 4gb RAM so I decided to move the data onto the Yoga 13 and put the Pro on Ebay. Not much interest yet - that might be because of it's French keyboard that I converted to the UK layout with stickers...ahem.

I've been to archery a couple of times since Rob and Em came back from NZ. It's been OK but I was out of practice, and I was very tired during the last shoot so my arrows went all over the place. I was very cross and on the point of getting a new, lighter, bow. But since then I've decided that I'll stick with it and sort out the grip with some badminton racquet tape to make it easier to hold. A guy at the club has just started using a back-tension release aid with his bow, which sounds terrifying.

The house works continue gradually. The roof is now adorned with solar panels, although they aren't actually hooked up yet. I didn't think it was the right time to do it but I was overruled. Otherwise the walls will be sorted soon after the electrics were done and then we can start redecorating for real.

I finally signed up for Netflix and have been watching a few things on it - mainly Better Call Saul and Black Mirror, both of which have been pretty good. The feel of Better Call Saul is very much like Breaking Bad, and that's no bad thing, but at the same time I feel you could watch it without having seen BB. 

Basses - I've been naughty and have picked up a couple more. The first one is a Mike Dirnt signature which was cheap as it's been badly refinished in black, so I've got a few ideas to do with that one. The next is a 5-string version of my beloved Squier Jazz Bass. Apart from the extra string, it's theoretically identical,but it has slightly different pickups and a satin finish on the neck, which is much nicer than the gloss on the 4-string. It's even got a two-piece body, which is unusual on Squiers. Anyway, it's beautiful, plays nice and I'm very pleased with it. I just need to get rid of a couple of the others and then it'll all be sorted.

The car has been OK, it needed a new battery last week and I put new wiper blades on it today. But it's future is still undecided until we know for sure if my Mum is losing her driver's license. The wretched Berlingo has been repaired and is back on the road. I've driven it since and I still don't like it.

I'm on leave this coming week, which will be nice as it's been a while since I had a full week off. I don't have any real plans apart from going to visit my cousin Pauline on Thursday. She's still suffering from the wretched cancer, but it looks like some of the treatment she's been having might be slowing it down. It's still upsetting to see her in that state, but she is coping pretty well with it all.

Many things

It's been a good few weeks on the whole.

Work:

Back to normal after the Christmas break. Working on a new backup system which has gone sort of OK in fits and starts. It's always a bit of a faff getting it configured. The fun part was when it need to be reconfigured to stop it killing the network when backing up from a remote site. Otherwise it's been a bit of a curious time lately with the restructure that's going on - I won't hopefully be directly affected but the management is going to change considerably and because of that there's quite the atmosphere at the moment.

Games

After finishing Skyrim I've been playing Arkham Asylum on the PC using a 360 controller for a while, that's pretty good fun and in the last week or so I've been playing FTL. That is a really fun game and is quite immersive somehow despite the crude graphics. But the randomness of the game can be quite frustrating and unfair sometimes. Still, it's good fun and I really enjoy it. Rob has also lent me the latest Assassin's Creed game, Black Flag, but I haven't had a chance to sit down with it yet.

Misc

I've not been to archery recently as Rob and Em are away and I'm not too keen on going on my own so I've been spending the time doing other things including spending a fair bit of time with special person, which has been really nice.

The house has finally had the new bathroom finished. It looks pretty amazing now it's done and the new shower is quite striking and works very well. The tiles that were used are sort of stony ones and it looks great. There's also a fancy cabinet with a mirror on the front, which actually has a demister so it doesn't get steamed up which is pretty cool. Also the work to sort out the wiring throughout the house has started - the first stage is to replace all the existing sockets and wiring and add plenty more. Then at some point in the future the lighting will be done.

My Mum's car suffered a pretty catastrophic failure of the front suspension today after I drove it over a speedbump. The struts gave way and the springs came through and started rubbing on the tyres. We had to get the RAC to come and get it and take it to the garage in Denbigh that normally looks after it but with the flaky gearbox and smoky engine, I don't know if it's going to be worth fixing it. Also the whole reason I was driving it today was to take my Mum to have an eye test to see if she can keep her driver's license and she didn't think that it went very well so we might not need that car anyway.

Fortunately after the test we we heading to my Dad's house and the suspension only gave way when we were nearly there. Could have been worse - 70mph on the A55 would have been a bad time. After the Berlingo was gone, we had some lunch and my Dad brought us home in his wife's car, a nice Audi A4. It's got a 7-speed autobox which is ridiculously smooth.

Back to work tomorrow and still sorting out that backup system amongst other things. I'm on a training course next week in Manchester which should be interesting - Windows Server 2012. It's the first course I've been on in six years and when the opportunity came up I decided to do something more relevant and useful. There's also another course towards the end of March, which is VMware. I'm staying over in Manchester both times, which I'm less keen on though.

Fun fun. Life can be strange sometimes.

Misc

Christmas:

Generally good, spent the day between my parents as usual and skyped my cousin Pauline who is not doing all that well, but it was good to see and talk to her. Spent boxing day and some time between Christmas and NYE with special person which was great.

There was also the Christmas party at Rob and Caroline's on the 27th which was good, but the snow up there led to me nearly getting the car stuck when it came time to leave and I bottomed the front bumper out. The night was great fun and ended up with a fun 80's quiz competition between boys and girls which got quite competitive. Also lots of excellent food, conversation and petting of ancient, demanding cats.

Because of everything going on with the house and things, I didn't get presents for people, instead I got everyone Amazon vouchers, which seems to have gone down well.

NYE

Was at Rob and Em's which was really good as usual. Very good to see Jane and Wes as well, and even Xander who was hyped up on sugar. The night was really great, and we played Cards Against Humanity, which is a horrible game but very funny.

Archery

Only went twice since the last update. The first time we went, someone had locked up the gym so we were forced to shoot outside, but it was so windy it was a real danger to our arrows. Em broke three of her new ones because of the way they were hitting the target. My compound was incredibly difficult to hold steady in the wind and the arrows were all going right. After I missed at one point, I gave up. Fortunately the arrow was easily found.

On the 28th it was the Frostbite shoot, which happens every year and takes place regardless of weather. Fortunately it was a bright clear day but there was a good couple of inches of frozen show. It was a very cold long day though, even with the catered lunch in the middle. There was also some awards given out - and somewhat to my amazement I got three! The club record for shooting a Short Warwick with a compount (probably because I'm the only one to do it), a 3rd class for compound, and a Black WAA Indoor Classification. Surprising but good. And then Em won the Frostbite shoot and I came 6th! Not bad!

Misc

A few other things. The house has been torn apart to have the bathroom done meaning that I'm now unable to wash at home, generally scavenging showers elsewhere, usually when I'm with special person or at my Dad's house.

Yesterday I finally finished the main Skyrim questline. There's not much else to do now apart from the civil war stuff, but I think I'll do that anyway. It's been a hell of an experience...what an incredible game! I've logged 84 hours on it and reached level 34 - and that's nothing compared to what some people have done. I think for the £7 I paid for it, I got an exceptional amount of entertainment! Not sure what to play next, but I think it'll be the Batman Arkham games on the PC.

I've been tweaking the basses a bit by putting new strings on them and playing with the setup. I've also ordered a new project bass - a Squire Precision Bass TB, which is a reissue of the 70's Telecaster bass with a big fat humbucker at the neck. Not quite sure yet what I'll do with it but I've got some ideas. I'm also considering putting the Bass VI up for sale - it's a fun instrument but not really for me.

The car has been a bit troublesome as the headlights are playing up a bit. They have a levelling system which is a bit dodgy in both lights. The left light was missing the cover so water had got in. It constantly tries to keep going upward and the right one is mostly OK but sometimes just points downward. I also replaced many of the bulbs since the indicator bulbs had gone white and the dipped headlight bulbs were useless.

Otherwise the car is going OK. Now that fuel is cheaper I've been running it on Shell V-power which makes the engine run smoother and nicer, especially on the A55. Now that I've been doing more travelling on the A55 I keep considering changing the C3 for something more appropriate as it's not at it's best at motorways speeds. But I can't think what to get.

Still pleased with the gaming PC I got off Robert. It's stll running nicely and now has had an 8th hard drive installed, a 1tb one to back up the contents of all the others. I just need to get some more RAM for it, but that will have to wait until next payday. I've listed the Asus G73 it replaced on Ebay at last, hopefully it should still be worth something.

I'm feeling really fat and unhealthy at the moment...been eating a lot of shit and doing barely any exercise, so I need to get that in hand again.

Still...it's a whole new year, hopefully this one will be good. I feel quite optimistic for a change, and certainly less lonely, which is good. We'll see how it goes.

Well well well

Not much to report since the last update. Things with special person are going really well, which is great.

My cousin has been struggling with her health a bit, which is a real downer unfortunately, but she's on the mend again. I don't know how she is keeping her spirits up really with so many setbacks.

Archery has been a bit intermittent due to spending time with special person, but had a good session a couple of weeks back. The indoor season is different but enjoyable, and because you shoot 3 arrows at a time means that having only 6 arrows isn't too much of a handicap.

This last weekend was the annual Belgo weekend. Due to my own fault I had to come back on Sunday as I couldn't book yesterday as leave as I left it too late to ask, even though we arranged the weekend way back when. So I ended up traveling to Chester with Em, and then to Kent with Rob and Em on Friday night.

After sleeping there, we spent the morning hanging out with Jane and then left the cars at Jake's house and went to Ebbsfleet International to get the Javelin train to St Pancras. From there it takes only 17 minutes which is pretty impressive! We went to check into the hotel, which was the Covent Garden Travelodge. Not the cheapest, but only two minutes from Belgo. We went out to get a pre-Belgo snack before heading back to the hotel for a rest and shower before heading out.

Belgos was as good as it always is, but the group was a lot smaller this time, but it was no less fun. The food was excellent, even though I did go for the vegetarian main course because it was wild mushroom gnocchi and I love gnocchi. It was delicious as well. I also had five beers! Albeit fruit beers - cherry, strawberry, raspberry x2 and a peach. Really nice.

We got back to the hotel for about 11:30pm. Some people stayed up at the hotel bar, but I went to bed. The next day we got up and headed out at 12pm, and set off to Soho in search of a place called The Breakfast Club. However when we eventually found it, there was a queue of hipsters all the way down the street. So we ended up going to a really nice place called Bodean's, which is American BBQ. I had a tremendous pulled pork burger, with a side of chilli cheese fries and burnt ends, which were shared with Rob.

After that we took a look around Forbidden Planet before heading our separate ways. I made my way to Euston via the really expensive guitar shops in Denmark Street and then got the train back to Chester. Fortunately it was only two hours on the train and then I drove Em's car back to Denbigh to collect my car.

Unfortunately I've brought a cold back with me from London so I feel rather rough.

Tonight was the test screening of Ed's new movie which went really rather well - not going to say anything here, but I was really impressed by it, especially for a rough cut.

Bought Robert's old gaming PC off him. It's an older Core i5 with 8gb RAM and an AMD graphics card. As I was reusing the hard drives from the Asus gaming laptop I bought two of those 2.5" drive backplanes and a card that added two more SATA ports. So it has a Crucial M4 boot drive, two 750gb hard drives, two 320gb hard drives, and a couple of random ones I had spare. There's still a spare slot which I might put a second SSD into at some point. Much to my surprise, Windows 8.1 was unfazed by being moved into a completely new machine, it detected the new devices, rebooted, and asked to be reactivated. Once it was activated, it was completely fine. So that was nice.

Keep feeling like I need a new bass project. I'd like to do my own version of a Bass VI but finding suitable necks is hard so I should probably stick to something a bit more normal. But with Christmas coming up it's not really the time.

Oh well. Enough typing for now, feel really tired and rough and my chest feels like I'm going to get a bad cough. I had a Pot Noodle craving for lunch today which is never a good sign...

Mega blog update

This is going to be a long one due to having been overly busy with things. Also a bit patchy and random as most of it has been written before the broadband was activated so the timings might be wrong.

1) Archery

This has been going OK, but I did have a bit of a disaster when I last went as I had an arrow launch slightly early before I'd aimed fully and it hit the frame of the boss. Unfortunately rather than getting embedded it snapped in half, leaving me with only 6 arrows for the bow. I'll have to get some more at some point, but the nice Easton ACC arrows aren't exactly cheap. I think it was because my hand was slightly sweaty and it slipped on the release aid, and since the trigger is so sensitive it just went.
 
However because of the house move and things, I didn't get a chance to go for a month, which led to a few changes. The indoor season has started and because of that and the demand, you now have to book into a morning or afternoon session. Despite it only being 20 yards indoors, it took a while to get back into it again. I had to tweak the sight a bit, which took a few rounds to get right, but once I did, I started to shake a bit because I wasn't used to shooting the bow. But it was still good fun.
 
Also went to the open day at The Longbow Shop - that was great. It's an incredible shop, even if it's completely out of place in an industrial unit in the Birkenhead docks. Had a go with a longbow sharpshooter competition, which was to get an arrow into a 30mm ring. Only the third time I'd ever shot a longbow, but it went OK and I got surprisingly close! I love my compound bow but perhaps one day I'll look into something more simple.
 
2) Berlin fail
 
I was due to go to Berlin on the 9th October to see my brother. The original plan was that he, my cousin Pauline and I would do the ASICS Grand 10k. However due to Pauline's illness, she initially couldn't do the run and then when she discovered it was a bit more serious she pulled out of the trip all together, so I was going to go by myself. However due to the motivation failure I experienced over the summer due to feeling a bit down and miserable, I wasn't in any fit state to do the 10k either.
 
But anyway, I was all set to go, even if the timing wasn't great due to the house move that was coming up. For the first time ever I wasn't really looking forward to going to Berlin, both due to the house move and other reasons I might go into later on.
 
On the day though, I felt quite cheerful about going and was looking forward to it. It would be a good break to get away from the house move worry. However on the way there I got caught up in a traffic jam on the M56. It ended up being closed all day as there was a really nasty accident not far from the Runcorn turning. I got stuck in the traffic not long after Deeside. I used my phone to find out what was going on, but there was nothing I could do and I ended up stuck in the jam for nearly 6 hours and missed the flight. And also due to the chaos caused by the M56 closure, there was no way I was going to make it to the airport at all.
The only option Easyjet had was to book the following day's flight as I hadn't made it to the airport, but after all the stress of the failed journey and various other things, I just told them to stuff it and cancel the return flight on the Monday.
 
3) House move
 
This has finally happened. Due to the issues with moving stuff from the old house, we engaged a removal company to do it, who said they had moved people from all sorts of challenging properties. Fortunately, they were correct, although they were still unable to get their vans up the track, even after the neighbour dug out the turning area. They ended up shuttling everything down the track on a trailer hooked up to a Land Rover. However because they were doing it in quite big batches, it worked out OK.
 
The house still wasn't too tidy by the time they turned up but they were very efficient at packing. It took them about a day and a half to empty the house and then my Dad and I spent the rest of the time shoving the leftovers into our two remaining cars. We did some cleaning but while we had two hoovers, the bags filled up and the replacements had been packed. There was also some epic bonfires of stuff that could be burnt, which was quite fun.
 
But then at last it was done, the house was empty and it was time to go. We had already made sure the keys were safe, so it was time to lock up for the last time and get going. My Mum didn't bother going around the house one last time, but I did. It was a strange sensation. After all, for various reasons, I've lived there all my live apart from a couple of years. However the final evening was cold and dismal and pissing down with rain. I will miss the place, but not how hard it was to look after and keep clean, and the car-destroying track.
The next day I took the keys to the estate agent and then joined my Mum where she had been staying at a friend's house. The wait took a while at lunchtime we got confirmation that I could get the keys to the new house at about 12:25pm. However I got to the estate agent to be greeted by a sign saying they were out at lunch until 1:15pm! Argh! And even then the woman hadn't had the confirmation she could release the keys because she had been on lunch and had to call her manager. But finally the keys were there and we could get in. The removal people were there pretty promptly and emptied their two vans much quickly than they loaded them!
 
On the Saturday, Rob and Em and Mum's friend Kate came to help, which was great as I thought I was going to lose my mind at that point! Kate brought two dogs who get on fine with Sandy, but having two little and one large dog following everyone around was a bit of a hindrance!
 
They helped empty a lot of boxes and get things sorted out to a reasonable level. I had a problem because I couldn't find any of my clothes, but eventually found them in a box labelled Tools. They had been used to pad the tools for some reason.
 
The new house is livable in but does need a bit of work. The decor is very retro and 70s, which isn't the end of the world. The toilet and bathroom need work - the current plan is to bash the wall down and combine them into a single room again and replace the bath with a decent shower. Otherwise, the curtains need doing as most of them were taken, the carpets are all dreadful, and the wallpaper isn't great either. The kitchen is 
OK apart from some terrible fake tiles.
 
I've got more space than I had, but haven't quite worked out how best to utilise it. However one thing I did was buy a larger screen. The Dell 23" monitor I've been using since 2010 or so just won't cut it any more. Not that there's anything wrong with it - it was a bloody good upgrade from the crappy CRT TV I was using before anyway, it's just too small now. I ended up buying a Samsung 40" TV, which is absolutely stunning. It's also a smart one so it can do all sorts of clever things that I haven't been able to use without broadband. However the single problem with it was that it didn't have a VGA input for my old 360. However since the 360 has been on the way out with optical drive problems anyway for a while, it was a good excuse to go out and get a 360 slim with HDMI to replace it. Works fine.
 
I've also replaced my faithful Yamaha surround amp, which I've had since 2002. The reason was that there was a new model for a reasonable price that had HDMI input and switching, and it just made everything a lot tidier and easy to manage.
 
The poor dog has been a bit confused but seems to be adapting. At first he got excited when cars drove past as the only time you'd hear cars in the last place is if they were coming up. He's been a bit anxious at times though and sometimes comes and tries to get into my room so he can sleep on my bed.
 
The only casualties in the move were an aerial photo of the house that was framed - it got cracked, and my Jazz Bass no longer works. It's physically fine but there's no output. It's probably just a loose wire. I'll have to pop the control plate off one day and have a look, but while I was testing it the A string snapped - argh! So it's in disgrace at the moment. I do like it though, so I'll fix it up at some point. I finally succumbed and bought a Squier Bass VI, which is an odd beast as it has a 30" scale and is tuned an octave down from a normal guitar, but otherwise is a guitar, whammy bar and everything. It needed some work, a new bridge and strings, and I haven't got it intonated properly yet, but it makes some great sounds.
 
So far we've met a couple of the neighbours who seem very nice - there have also been a couple of cats in the back yard that the dog has chased. Hopefully they will take the hint and bugger off!
 
For a while after we moved in I seemed to have an allergic reaction to something, but it did eventually clear up. It was theorised that it was the different dust in the house causing it.
 
4) Misc
 
There are only a few things really, the house move has been everything for weeks now. However there have been a couple of events like meeting up with Robert and Chelsea at Rob and Em's house after they got engaged while on holiday. That was an interesting thing as I knew Robert was going to do it but hadn't had any confirmation, so I had a dreadful feeling she had said no. But fortunately it's all good.
 
Finally finished the mammoth Voyager rewatch, which was good. Yes, there is a lot of mediocre episodes, but so long as you don't sit there and moan that it should have been more dark and gritty like BSG then it has some good episodes in there. The finale seems to get a lot of hate, but I don't mind it and think it's quite decent. 

After finishing that, I started the boxset of the 10 movies that I got for my birthday. I worked my way through them in quite good time. They were quite fun but the later TNG movies are pretty bad. I don't particularly like Insurrection and Nemesis is fairly pants, the only good bit is the Enterprise ramming scene.
Exercise has been pretty poor for ages because of feeling ill with a cold and the the house move, but I've been dragged out for a couple of bike rides by Andy, which went surprisingly well after not touching the bike for over a year. Both rides wer about 15.6 miles on the same route. The first one wasn't too bad, but the second one was noticably better. My legs coped OK apart from hills where I really struggled, and there was a certain amount of saddle soreness for a couple of days afterward.
 
On another Saturday it was Andy's birthday meal - a week later than it was supposed to be for various reasons, but partly because I was going to be in Berlin (bah!). It was in the Con Amici, which was pretty good as usual.
 
Been reading the Game of Thones books on my phone, via the Kindle app. They are pretty good now that I've got the hang of reading them, if that makes sense. Keeping track of who is doing what and where and everything can be quite complicated. I've finished the last published one anyway - blimey, can't wait for the next book!
 
Another recent event is something completely unexpected...discovering someone I've known for a while and had a bit of thing about was also feeling the same way about me. That's been going on a little while now, and it's been absolutely fantastic. However due to business commitments the time we can spent together is limited. Skype and E-mail were a big help before we moved, but it took quite some time for the broadband to be connected, which was quite difficult.

Misc

Misc things. Work has been OK, and my manager is currently on two weeks leave which makes things a little more peaceful.

Archery has been good fun. I've finally had the chance to shoot my new bow. The first week was quite tough, I got roped into doing at least 90 arrows by two other compound archers, and by the end my arms felt like they were going to fall off. The second week was a lot better, fewer arrows, but my arms felt a lot happier. The first session was a bit of a nightmare as I had no sight marks. My first arrow went into the frame of the foam boss, two and a half inches in. We had to dig out the wood around it, and then it took three of us pulling at once to get it out. Amazingly we managed to do it without damaging it.

Had a good clearout of the living room last Saturday. Took some stuff to the tip, burnt some other stuff and donated a load to charity. Annoyingly the room doesn't look much emptier, but it has helped. Also found a load of old photographs, which were quite interesting to look back on.

I've been watching the new Doctor Who on iPlayer. Not all that impressed so far, I think Peter Capaldi has a lot of potential, but the writing, particuarly the Sherwood one, has been quite ropey.

The house sale seems to be proceeding, hopefully all is still good. We shall see.

The car has finally had some attention. It's had four new tyres and a service, but they said after the service that it needed a wheel bearing, the accelerator cable replacing and all the brake fluid replacing ASAP. It had the rest of that done today, but fortunately they were able to sort out the existing accelerator cable. This means of course the pedal is much lighter so I keep accelerating harder than I mean to. The exhaust is still blowing but that can wait until payday.

I've gone and lost my work ID, which is a problem because I can't open the doors without it. I've got no idea where it's gone. I went to the gym yesterday evening and thought I'd left it there, but they hadn't seen it when I asked this morning. I scoured the house and car this evening but couldn't find it. Bah.

Last week we finally resumed D&D on the Tuesday and did the final battle in Steve's campaign. This means it's now my turn to be DM, which I was pretty worried about. My first go was on Tuesday and my plan to get the group together with Rob G's new character and Steve's character worked out OK, and it was pretty good fun. It's a nightmare trying to anticipate everything the characters will do though. Also, it was probably the first D&D session ever without ludicrous amounts of snacks, which is a good thing as I've been quite good this week with food, and have been to the gym twice.

Fired up Skyrim for the first time in a while. I've put so many hours into it that I feel I must now finish it, but I have to admit it's becoming a bit of a chore. I'm hearing good things about Destiiny, I might look into picking that up come payday.

Well well well

It's been quite eventful in some ways but not others.

Exercise has gone out the window and eating is out of control, but bringing it back now. I've reached the conclusion that I'm now too heavy to run effectively so I'm working on bringing my diet back under cotnrol and going to the gym.

Last weekend was busy and interesting. Saturday was visiting the film set for Ed's new movie. I was to double for James Cosmo as he wasn't too keen on spending ages lying on the floor dead. There was a lot of standing around and waiting but it was fascinating to see a proper scale movie being made. Also I had to wear James Cosmo's actual clothes which were rather big for me, and actually being on set with Gareth David Lloyd was pretty cool, if slightly intimidating.

Sunday was the archery clout shoot. I borrowed Rob's old recurve. It was really good fun to just launch arrows into the air as far as they could go. Unfortunately my arrows either fell short or didn't go near the flag so I came last. Still really good fun though and the weather held out until just after the finish when it started raining. The week before was the tag archery with the field laid out so you could run around shooting squashy arrows at each other. It was ridiculously good fun and very energetic. So that's two weeks I've not had a chance to shoot Blue Steel. This Sunday though, definitely. I have also got hold of a Carter Chocolate Addiction release aid for it. It's much, much nicer than the Booster one that came with the bow, and is much easier to clip onto the string. Also, it has the MOST appropriate name for me, hah.

Started Voyager season 7 and it's much like the rest of it, a few good episodes and a lot of meh. Reached level 30 in Skyrim and it's suddenly got harder, which is proving frustrating. Still really good fun though.

Work has been OK. I've written a very long and boring document on the procedure for recovering the AS/400 from scratch. It was a pain in the arse but on the plus side I've learnt a load mroe about the system and how it works. The big test now is for my colleague to repeat the process from scratch using my document.

I've finally decided to spend a bit of cash on the car after neglecting the poor thing since I had it. It's having four new tyres and the tracking sorted out tomorrow and then I'll get it booked in for a service.

On a whim I fired up Minecraft on the Yoga 13 today, having not played it since I sold the Alienware machines earlier this year. Much to my surprise it played perfectly fine using the processor's internal graphics. The fan sped up quite a bit as the machine started to get warm but the CPU never went over 70 degrees, which is pretty impressive. I did think about trying it on the Yoga 2 Pro which has a newer Haswell CPU but I don't think it would run well at 3200x1800 resolution. Also randomly found an Asteroids-type game I used to play on my old Acorn Archimedes called Spheres of Chaos is still being developed and there's a fully modernised version for the PC. It's hard to play but good fun and has crazy visuals. I absolutely adore the Yoga 13, it's the perfect size and shape and the fact it can have more RAM and has two SSD slots is amazing. The Pro 2 does have the 3200x1800 screen but otherwise it's a step back with only a single SSD slot and soldered RAM.

The big Asus G73 is still running nicely but I think the heatsinks might need cleaning. The only problem with that is the amount of dismantling it takes to get to them. If I did it though, I could also get to the fourth memory slot, which is stupidly on top of the motherboard, and in theory put even more RAM in it. 20gb is crazy enough though I guess, but it's brilliant to be able to fire up VMs without worrying about RAM.

The house sale is still going through, forms have been flying back and forth and the buyers had a survery done today. I've been collecting boxes from work and it's probably about time we started to actually pack things.

Blue Steel

Work: Much the same, still a few things going on. I've learnt quite a lot recently about the AS/400 boot process which is interesting and frustrating in equal measures. The new head of ICT is also cutting the number of desks to enforce hotdesking and I'm being made homeless. Due to issues with the docking stations I've perfected the art of piling my laptop, second USB screen, USB headset, mouse and power supply into a neat carryable heap that I can put in my locker. The challenge is unpiling it all in the right order so the cables don't get tangled.

Exercise: I am a pathetic and useless fat bastard, all there is to say about that.

Archery: Got the new bow set up and working on Sunday. It's heavier and much harder to draw than the club bow, which makes it more challenging, but at the same time it shoots much more quietly and accurately. I was a bit dubious about the sight and release aid, but they work OK and will do for now. The shoulder workout I get at the same time is a bonus. Due to the rather nice blue flame finish, Em nicknamed it Blue Steel, and it's stuck.

Misc: Went to see Guardians of the Galaxy with Andy and Rob G, what a great film it is. It does sometimes feel like the script is trying a little too hard, but it was still really enjoyable.

My Dad has moved house. It went reasonably OK but I think they miscalculated how much room they had and a lot of stuff went into the garage or storage. It's a nice house though, and I think it'll do them nicely. Another nice coincidence is that Andrea that I used to work with lives just around the corner, and it was nice to catch up with her.

Our own house sale is progressing as far as I know, the solicitors are doing their thing.

Been playing around with computers a bit. I picked up one of the OLPC XO-1 laptops recently. They aren't very common in this country and I've always been quite interested in the hardware. It works fine but needs a software update. It's fun to play with. I could replace the standard OS with a more normal one but I'm not sure how well it would work. My beheaded Latitude E4300 laptop that was running as an ESXi host died again after a power cut, so I've retired it for now.

General state of mind has been up and down a lot recently. Feeling quite unhappy about a lot of things really but at the same time helpless to do anything about them. Seem to be pushing people away but I don't know why. My lack of exercise motivation and failure to do the VoC 5k last Sunday hasn't been helping either and I've put on weight. Some days are OK, others less so.

Still going through Skyrim with the latest thing being that I'm now a werewolf, which is not as fun as I thought it would be as you're surprisingly fragile in beast form. I accidentally became it in the middle of a town as well and the entire place hated me instantly.

The car is getting to the point where I really need to book it in for a service. Since I got it a couple of months ago I've been surprisingly happy with it. The 1.1 litre engine is gutless on hills, but otherwise it's nice to drive and surprisingly comfortable. The exhaust is getting a bit loud though and I think it needs new brake disks as they judder above 40mph. And it's probably well overdue for a service. It was beeping to say it needed one when I bought it but I reset the counter as it was becoming irritating.

Argh

Still keep forgetting to update.

Work: Some interesting but fiddly projects going on and general issues caused by incompetence of external suppliers. Also Windows Server 2003 going out of support next year is causing some concern. It's also ridiculously hot in the office at the moment which doesn't help things.

Exercise: Intermittent running with some success held back by catastrophic eating failure. Need to crack down on it for the VoC 5k and the Berlin 10k.Also the heat makes things miserable.

Archery: Good session last week doing my first short Warwick round so I can get a handicap for the knockout competition but not so good this week for some reason. Can't quite figure out why but I was finding consistency difficult today and the arrows were all over the place. Have also ordered a bow off Ebay, should be here this week, but have had to order the modules to adjust it to my draw length from the USA so they might take longer to get here.

Misc: Still playing Skyrim, still enjoying it. Have done loads of quests and finally got the quest list down to a sensible number. Give that I only paid £7 for it I think I have certainly got my money's worth. I have also got a PS3 off a guy in work but it has so far only been used for Bluray playing and not much else. Voyager rewatch continuing, now into season 5. It's been more fun than I expected, and there are some good episodes, but also a lot of dross. Just watched Timeless which I think is probably one of the best episodes of the whole thing. I think if you took all the really good episodes you'd probably have about 2-3 seasons worth?

The house is still under contract for sale and we've had an offer accepted on a bungalow - scary. Hope it all goes through OK, but there still seems to be an awful lot of stuff to get rid of before we move...

Too long

Keep forgetting to update this thing.

A couple of weeks ago it was Rob G's birthday meal, which was good fun. It was the usual gang minus Rob T who had to go to a work do. It was a good evening. Andy and I spent much of it boring his new girlfriend Katie to death with amusing stories from past holidays, which was entertaining.

Work has been uneventful apart from having my annual PA the other day which went fine. There was also a strike last Thursday which I didn't participate in because I thought it was pointless and unjustified.

Archery has been good today and last Sunday. I had a bit of a booboo last Sunday. I was shooting the compound and somehow managed to lift the bow a bit just as I released the arrow, and it sailed right over the top of the target. It took quite a bit of work to find it again but fortunately we did. As they are carbon arrows they can't be found with the metal detector. I also finished my sets of three dozen arrows at 30 yards and have moved onto 40 yards. Today was a good day, despite a crosswind that causes problems. Compounds have quite a lot of surface area when the wind blows at them sideways so that added a challenge. I also managed to get six arrrows in the gold in one go today, although frustratingly it was after I'd finished scoring.

The C3 is still going OK but I think it needs some brake discs. Also a service. The passenger door handle has fallen off too, but I suspected that might happen at some point. The door itself is a slightly different shade of red from the rest of the car so I think it's been replaced at some point. The Hyundai is still parked up in disgrace. A company has said they will take it and they were going to pick it up on Wednesday but it didn't happen as they ran out of space on the truck, which was a bit annoying as I worked from home specially. They're coming next Wednesday now as I had stuff going on Friday and I have PRINCE2 training tomorrow and Tuesday.

Not much else to report really. House is still under offer, not much going on there yet. Went to look at one yesterday but despite the house itself being pretty awesome, the sloping plot it's on was not so good and causes accessibility issues.

Still playing Skyrim. I've logged about 44 hours on it now, which is less than I expected, but still plenty going on. I just found a new city so that means a whole load of new random quests to do, but that's OK. I got a PS3 cheap off a guy in work which is proving interesting but I haven't really done much with it yet. It came with GTA IV and V and a still sealed Hitman game. It plays Blurays nicely though.

Also continued my Voyager rewatch. I've got to season 4 now with Seven of Nine, which is supposed to be where it gets good. I still think it has some good episodes, but there is a lot of filler in there and of course the lack of any proper story arcs.

Thwack

Been too long since I updated this. The most significant thing that happened was going down to Kent for the annual BBQ. I left my car at Rob and Em's house and we travelled to Chester to meet Rob and Vicky, leaving Em's car there. The drive down was reasonable, a few delays meant we got there at about 10:40pm, which wasn't too bad. Fortunately the airbed I bought inflated OK.

The BBQ itself was great, the weather was perfect and everyone had awesome costumes. My Van Halen one was OK but I'm a bit fat to be recognised as him so people kept thinking I was a generic rock star. Still, the customised Guitar Hero controller worked out well and it was a great evening. Remembering the disastrous Souther Comfort incident last year, I stuck to Crabbies and the occasional shot from Rob's cocktail making frenzy.

On Sunday we headed out to breakfast and then Bluewater to watch Edge of Tomorrow. I really quite enjoyed it, probably all the more because I went in knowing absolutely nothing about it. We then went back to Jane and Wes's to watch a TERRIBLE movie called White House Down while consuming large amounts of Domino's pizza, which was a great evening. Then we headed back on Monday, which was an OK drive apart from some diversionary tactics to avoid a lane closure on the A55.

Not much else to report really. I've been trying to get back into regular running and failing. My diet is also a complete catastrophe at the moment so I'm feeling bloated and hideous again. I was led astray on Friday by the service desk team who were going to the pizza place around the corner. I ended up having a chicken tikka wrap with garlic mayo - to be fair it wasn't all that big and was absolutely delicious.

The C3 is still going OK and is massively improved by an iPod to tape adapter that Rob had spare, which has saved having to rip out the stereo or anything, at least for now. It's proving to be good on fuel, and the only issue is a slight blow from the exhaust which is getting gradually louder.

The people in the Infiniti car came up again to have another look round. Their car is the M35H hybrid, a rather nice beast. Can't quite believe they brought the poor thing up the track twice!

Went to archery today with Rob and Em, and had a great time. I've really got used to the club compound bow and I'm really enjoying shooting it. I had my third round at 30 yards and managed to score 280 with three dozen arrows, which is good as you need 200. I had a go at 40 yards and I think the sights are now all set up properly for the distance but my arms were tired so I'll see how I get on next time. I've been talking to one of the guys there about what would be a suitable bow for me to get. There's basically two options, go to a shop called Custom Built Archery and get all the stuff there or find a bundle on Ebay that people are selling. The club one came like that apparently so it's worth keeping an eye there. One model that has been mentioned as being particularly suitable is a Hoyt UltraTec, just need to find one though.

The Hyundai went on Ebay but so far the only interest has been from Polish people who wanted my bank details, bah. Will have to relist it. Bloody thing.

Things looking up

Sunday was good, Rob kindly picked me up so we could head to archery. I had a good few hours shooting with the club compound again. One of the more knowledgable guys there said the draw length needed dropping a bit and showed me how to do it. Once that was done it threw me off a bit as it felt different and the sight needed changing, but after a few shots it felt great. Really liked it. As the thing is so powerful and the arrows are carbon, I've been scared of missing the target, and once I actually did it for the first time. Fortunately the arrrow was found straight away. It was good to see the other guys from the beginner's class again, and one of them has already bought his own bow.

I picked up the car today. It's a 2003 Citroen C3 1.1. It's not at all what I would normally go for,  but it's in nice condition, drives fine and will do the job. It's got a long MOT until April and should be decent on fuel. It's a bit basic - first car I've had in a while with keep-fit windows and it only has a tape deck. This is a problem as I can't find my tape adapter to hook up an iPod. It's also got a curious dashboard with a digital speedo and LED gauges for fuel and temperature. I filled it up so I now have six blobs of fuel, will be interesting to see how long it takes to get through a blob.

Not much else to report really. Bit of a curious meeting in work where one of our managers gathered us into a room and said she sensed our teamwork was breaking down and people weren't working as well together. It was a bit like having Counsellor Troi in the room saying 'He's hiding something.'

We had another house viewing this evening which was a couple who were supposed to come on Saturday. They turned up in an Infiniti something which was not at all suited to the track, but they really liked the place. The guy turned out to own a company that does wind turbine maintenance so he was interested in the wind farm across the way.

A thoroughly shitty week

Last weekend was good after the car failure. On Saturday it was my Dad's 80th birthday so my two brothers came down and my sister too. We met up at my Dad's house and had a good catch up before going out for a meal. My oldest brother and his wife had been exploring the local canals on a narrow boat, including the 'Pontyclitoris' aqueduct as he annoyingly called it. My other brother is over from Germany with his girlfriend, and they had hired a car to take a trip around the UK for a couple of weeks. The meal was good and then we headed back to the house for more chatter.

On Sunday I met up with them again at my sister's house and we went over to her husband's parent's house for a civilised cup of coffee and things, and then headed back to mine. It was a really good day.

This week has been shit since then. Work has been annoying and I've been trying to find a replacement car but since it's me I was getting all neurotic about it and was scared that whatever I get will be a disaster.

Then on Friday I was taking my Mum's car to work again and the bloody thing died in exactly the same way it did a month ago leaving me completely stranded. At least this time I was able to get it turned round. Then, later on while I was getting some shopping with my Dad who had come over, I managed to drop my S4 on the track. Of course it landed face down on a rock which shattered the screen, which led to a bit of a downer on top of everything else. The problem now is that I've moved my number to a MicroSIM which won't work in anything else I have.

Today was Vicky's birthday meal in Rhyl. Rob G and Chelsea kindly gave me a lift, which was great. It was in the usual Italian place which was pretty good except they did cock up some of the orders a bit.

I have sorted out a car but won't pick it up unti the end of the day on Monday, which is a bit of a pain. Hopefully it'll be OK though. Mum's car has been confirmed as suffering the same failure as last time, but they can't get the part until Tuesday.

I've been failing to exercise again this week due to the stress of it all and have eaten like crap again which is a bit depressing. My evenings have largely consisted of rewatching Voyager and playing Skyrim. My character in Skyrim is going OK but the quests just keep coming. It's good though and I really like the various areas of the game and all the different things you can do.

Bloody cars

It's been an OK week in work, slightly disorganised but things getting there eventually.

The most notable thing this week was the car dying. After it performed OK on the trip up to Kirkham last weekend, it started making a loud ticking sound on Wednesday evening. The garage had a look at it on Thursday after lending me a car to get home with, and decided the top end had issues, and it might go on like that for a while. Unfortunately by the time I got home it had developed some horrendous knocking noises and so the engine is toast. Typical. It's now been listed on Ebay for parts and I'll have to find something else. I'm half tempted to give Rob P a grand and get him to find me a car because I clearly suck at it.

In spectacularly bad timing I bought a Samsung Galaxy S4 off someone in work. I've been setting it up but have been handicapped by it requiring a MicroSIM. My original SIM card from 1999 is too old fashioned to be cut down into the right size, so I'll have to get my number moved to a new SIM in a Vodafone shope. The S4 is really nice and much lighter than the Note. It's crazy to think that I have a computer with a quad-core CPU, 2gb RAM, 64gb storage and a 1920x1080 screen that fits in my pocket.

Not going to worry about the car until next week as it's my Dad's 80th birthday tomorrow and then hopefully archery on Sunday after missing it last week.

I shaved my head and face today after letting them get a bit shaggy, feels good and I'm always surprised at how many years it knocks off. What's left of my hair is greying rapidly and so is my beard.

Been working on the Guitar Hero controller that will be part of my costume for the Kent BBQ in a couple of weeks time. The red paint came out surprisingly well on the removable cover and when I test fitted it back onto the controller it looked great. I've finished it now and applied a couple of layers of varnish, hopefully it'll look good once it's dried.

Not much else to report really.

Good weekend

Last week was generally OK apart from a couple of fraught days in work. On Friday I headed up to Kirkham to visit my cousin. I set off from work on Friday evening and despite a couple of slow bits on the M56 and M6, got up there without any trouble. We spent Saturday exploring the sea front at Clevelys and Fleetwood on the trams before heading back down. There was a 10 mile race going on and it was interesting to catch up with the slower runners first and then the leaders. After that it was back to her house for a leisurely meal in the evening. On Sunday we had planned to go for a run but neither of us felt like it and we ended up going for a brisk run instead, which was pretry enjoyable. After that we hung out for a bit and then I drove home. It was a little busy at first as there was a lot of traffic coming out of Blackpool but was fine after that. The Hyundai likes motorways as it used noticably less fuel.

Today I had a dental appoint to rebuild the top of one of my front teeth as it was sharp and kept cutting me. It's done now but feels a little odd as I'm not used to it yet. I spent the afternoon working in Denbigh as that made more sense.

Tonight was episode 8 of GoT season 4, which was pretty enjoyable, and had quite a few memorable moments in it.

Oh dear

Last week was fairly quiet on the whole. On Monday it was the GoT watch, which was pretty good. Not long to go to the end of the season now, although it's not on tonight.

Work was meh, not much going on. On Friday evening went out to the pub with the gang and had a good time there, before heading back. I didn't do all that much on Saturday really.

Yesterday was good. I went to archery early and had a good time shooting the compound bow. I'm the only beginner who expressed an interest in it, and I really enjoy shooting it. There was the usual ribbing about training wheels and cheating, but I wasn't hugely bothered by that. It was really good fun though, the only downside is that compound stuff tends to be a bit pricey if I wanted to get my own equipment.

Today has been another quiet day, with a bit of tidying. The people who have put an offer in on the house are coming to take a look tomorrow. Typically the dog pissed on the landing. Now that he's getting a bit old and frail he can get a bit scared of the stairs so I think he got all anxious about it and ended up pissing up there. Bah.

Been playing Skyrim a bit. Still enjoying it, even if I'm being spammed by quests. I got one merely by walking past a city guard who was having a conversation with someone else entirely. Oh well. It's all good fun. Now that I've levelled up it keeps chucking dragons at me too, which is interesting. But even now I still feel like I may have only scratched the surface of the game

Ouchy skin

It's been an OK weekend so far. Yesterday morning it was off to Steve's to observe Andy and Rob help Steve shift a wardrobe. I was not required to help as I'd helped move it originally, but it was a good thing I did go because it was only me that remembered how the thing came apart. Oh well.

Today was archery in the morning. It was very quiet as there was a competition going on elsewhere. I was trying out my new tab which was a birthday present from Rob and Em, which caused some pretty crappy shooting at first until I got used to the feel of it, but I got over 200 points on 20 yards for the third time once we started scoring. I then had a go at 30 yards, but by then my arms were tired so I didn't do all that well and only did a few goes. Also I forgot sun cream and despite hiding in the shade when I wasn't shooting, I'm still a bit pink.

Not much else to report really. The Yoga 2 is now set up and working. It's currently running the original French OS with a UK language pack installed, so it can be a little schizophrenic when it comes to displaying messages. Now that it's set up properly, the 3200x1800 display is really quite something. Most things I've tried so far have been fine, the exceptions being the standard Windows command prompt, which is a bit small, and the default RDP client, which shows the destination machine at the native resolution, and is therefore tiny. Fortunately if you get something called RDP Manager it scales it up.

Not sure why leather seats are seen as desirable in cars. The dark grey ones in the Hyundai always seem to be too hot or too cold to me. Otherwise it's still going OK although it's appetite for unleaded is as voracious as ever.

Urgh

Too long since writing anything.

I had a 6-day weekend for my birthday, which was decent enough, and quite eventful. The original offer on the house was withdrawn, frustratingly, but we had a couple more viewings. A rather dedicated woman drove up from Essex on my birthday, setting off at about 7am, and arriving at midday. She looked around for two hours and then drove home. She also met the neighbours which was in a way good thing. She must have liked it because she has put an offer in anyway.

On Friday it was the funeral of Simon's Dad, who died the week before. Amy and Mark and Pam and I went to it to support Simon, even though we didn't know his Dad all that much. It was a big event as it's one of those families that seems to be half the town, and it was good to see so many people there showing their respects.

My birthday on Saturday happened to coincide with Eurovision, so the evening was spent round at Rob and Em's place for the now traditional Eurovision party. It's pretty entertaining when there's 15 people in the room taking the piss out of it.

Otherwise the weekend was OK. My Mum's car broke down yesterday which was annoying it was stuck in such a position that I had to pull it by hand out of the gate until it started to roll. I then had to roll it all the way down the track, backwards, with no power steering or brakes, scary. It's been taken away by a garage who diagnosed a minor problem with the fuel system.

Work has been OK since I went back. Had to stay last night to swap out two blower assemblies in a BladeCenter H. It has two, and will run for one minute with one removed before it shuts down, so it was a bit scary. Fortunately it went OK. Today was sorting out the AS/400 backups which had gone all out of sequence and was getting itself into a mess.

Running not so good. I was going to go on Tuesday on my last day off but the weather was so shit I went to the gym instead. Nothing wrong with that but I find the treadmill terribly difficult compared to running on the road. I was hoping to get the bike sorted out over the weekend but didn't get around to it.

Diet has been shit too, no idea why I do this to myself. I've lost two kilos, but it seems that whenever I lose any actual weight I try to start sabotaging it. Perhaps it's some kind of self-hate thing to ensure I remain forever alone, which seems to be inevitable at this point. I seemed to be always destined to be the third wheel, that one awkward single person in a room full of couples.

Done some stupid things too. I've decided the Surface Pro is nice but not really much use to me as I never use it as a tablet, so I've obtained a Yoga 2 Pro to replace it after really liking the Yoga 13. It's an interesting machine, but I didn't realise how different it was. It's got a French keyboard, which is a bit of a problem as it's not as easy to remove as the original Yoga, and the RAM is soldered. Fortunately the SSD is removable, which is a bonus over the completely sealed Surface Pro. The crazy part is the 3200x1800 display, which is a bit of an issue when things don't know how to scale to it properly. Will have to see how that goes. It also had a a French operating system, which I've now just wiped. However the new installation of Windows 8 doesn't quite get that it has to scale to the 3200x1800 display so everything is hyper tiny. I've solved the keyboard problem with stickers for now as the French layout is a bit strange. The machine is also the rather vibrant orange version, which is certainly different.

Probably stuff that I've forgotten to put on here but I don't care, and I'm tired and pissed off.

An odd week

I wasn't back in work until Thursday. Monday was a bit of a lazy day apart from another house viewing. That one seemed to go OK. On Tuesday my Mum came home. On Wednesday I tried to go for a run around town but it didn't go well. My legs just didn't want to cooperate, so after half a mile I decided to call it a nice walk in the sunshine and any running I managed was a bonus. Also the scrapyard at the top of town caught fire and for a few minutes it looked quite apocalyptic up there so I came home.

Work was OK but busy for the rest of the week, lots of things going on and upcoming scary work. Now that the whole XP end-of-life thing has been sorted out by the desktop team, it's time for the server team to worry about Windows Server 2003 going end-of-life in July 2015, and there's a depressing number of systems still running it.

Today was helping Andy empty his house, ready for the sale to complete on Friday. It took less time than I expected, since there were plenty of people there to help. Most of his stuff is going to storage so it took a few trips to take the stuff there.

The rest of the day has been fairly lazy again. It's the first visit to the archery club tomorrow following the beginner's course, which I'm looking forward to.

Not much else to report really.

Compounded

Today was the last day of the archery beginner's course. It was good fun as always, starting out by putting the bows together and doing some practice shots before doing an actual scored round. This was then followed by a kind of free for all where people could carry on with the recurves or have a go on a compound bow or a longbow. I was really looking forward to trying out the compound, and it lived up to my expectations. It's very weird to draw but that moment of sheer power when releasing it was amazing. The longbow was such a contrast, and while I liked the simplicity of it, I found it very tricky to shoot.

I was a little late coming home for the house viewing today, so as they were coming up the track I was rushing around doing last second tidying. They seemed to like it, although they wanted to have a wander around the land, and managed to time it so they set off just as a massive rain and hailstorm happened. Oh dear.

The rest of the day has been a bit lazy, just watching some old stuff and sitting around.

Running, running, people, people.

This week has been OK. Two days in work after the bank holiday and then two days off work. on Thursday I took my Mum to her writing group thing. She comes back on Tuesday.

I've been out for a run twice his week after being inspired by the 5k on Saturday. I went out on Tuesday evening with Rob, but he had to turn back almost immediately with his foot. I did three miles that day but without anyone to pace me I went too fast again and there was some walking involved. I went out again yesterday and did 4.4 miles, which was mostly OK but again some walking. Pleasingly I've managed to lose 2.5kg since I last weighed myself, which is pretty surprising given that my diet has been shite for a while now.

Yesterday afternoon, Em came up and helped me do some tidying. We tackled the utility room, which for a relatively small room, was absolutely full of shit. There were countless tins and pots of knackered paint and varnish and things like that, ancient cleaning stuff, and various tins of food that had been forgotten. There were some from 2005 but the worst horror was a jar of anchovies from 2002. The amount of stuff that went back into the room was surprisingly small.

Today I took all the rubbish that wasn't burnable to the tip. They are pretty helpful there and took all the old paint and stuff without any problems. After that it was a last minute tidy up for three viewings on the house.

The first one was a guy by himself who seemed like a decent guy and raved about the view, but he didn't stay all that long. Sensibly he walked up rather than risk his car, although I don't know what he was driving After that was a couple who came up in Audi convertible. They stayed much longer and were very interested in the house and seemed to be interested in the possibilities of modernising it rather than anything else. They left just as the next people arrived. They were a local couple who farm sheep and wanted a bigger bit of land for it. They sensibly arrived in an ex-military Land Rover. The house was interesting to them but they spent quite some time having a look at the land. They already live in a similar but smaller house, so they knew what to expect.

There's another viewing on the house tomorrow after the last archery class, and then another one on Monday. That's seven in two and a half weeks. It's encouraging but it's brought it home to me rather that I'll miss this place once we have to move from it. It's also a bit weird to have strangers coming into your house, especially when it's still somewhat untidy and cluttered, despite all the tidying I've been doing.

Not much else to report really. The Hyundai annoyingly went into limp mode yesterday when I went into town for my run. There weren't any warning lights, but it was clearly low on power and the shifts were jerky. I hooked up the engine diagnostic tool and it reported a crankshaft position sensor error. I cleared it and it started up perfectly and has been fine ever since. That thing was a good buy at £12.

It's been far too long since I shaved my head, so I did it tonight. Unfortunately my hair got long enough to stop my head tanning with the rest of my head so it looks a bit daft at the moment. Bah.

Recurved

Last week was a bit meh. Work was OK until the Thursday. Typically a server decided to have a hardware fault and needed a call logged. Fun fun.

Thursday evening was the badminton club night out in the pub, which I went along for. It was a good evening but I didn't stay out too late due to the hassle in work and generally feeling tired. Andy did however tell me about the Easter Dash 5k in Llandudno and said we should do it.

Friday was a fairly quiet day. I had been planning to go for a run but decided not to with the 5k yesterday. I didn't do very much apart from do some tidying for the house viewing on Saturday and finish South Park season 13.

The 5k on Saturday morning was an odd one. It was the first real run I'd done in nearly two weeks at that point, and I thought I'd done terribly as it felt like I'd had to walk half the bloody thing. The course was from the middle of the promenade, up to the pier, back down and then back to the middle again. The middle part was into a strong headwind, which was a nightmare. But when we got the results I was astonished to find I'd only done about 30 seconds slower than my PB at the Marsh Tracks. Andy did very well, coming in under 27 minutes.

The viewing in the afternoon was not a success. The people had been expecting the land to be much flatter, so it wasn't right for their requirements at all. Also the woman was very tall and found the low ceilings a problem. However there is another viewing on Wednesday.

Today was off to the second lesson in the Wrexham archery club beginner course. It was good fun again, but I was feeling it quite a lot from the run yesterday so my body was already aching by the time we got there. We got shown how to assemble the bows this time, which was oddly satisfying, and then did some shooting from further away and learnt how to adjust the sights. Good fun indeed.

This afternoon I wasn't in the mood to do anything useful so I just spent the remainder of the day watching the Dark Knight trilogy. I got it for my birthday last year but never quite got around to it. It's really goood but I forgot how long the second and third films are.