Day 500, Arrggghhhhh!

In bed on Sunday night it occurred to me that it was only about 5 minutes since leaving work on Friday.

This then lead to thinking how quickly days pass.

Which lead to thinking that it felt like there was about a fortnight of life left.

And that lead to a panic attack.

Arrgggghhhhh!

An out of control feeling where grip on reality is lost.

It is likely that gravity will fail and you will be hurled off spinning into the sun.

The pillow is of no help.

This lasted about 5 minutes.

Which felt like an entire weekend.

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Day 499, A bit of fluff

Who would have thought that poking a phone camera inside a guitar would be so tricky.

It didn't appear to be problematic at first.*

I put the phone inside the body and took a few pics.

However...

Due to a bug with the Nexus 4 camera the flash doesn't always sync correctly unless focus has been achieved.**

If very dark it is not possible to focus.

And triple jointed 30cm pencil-thin fingers are needed to focus in this arrangement.

The results were either completely dark or out of focus images.

From outside the problem went away.

Here bracing is visible as well as part of the kerfed side.

That's the technical stuff over with.

It looks very woody.

And I've got blisters on my fingers.***

Fluff?****

* The traditional problem here should have been losing the phone inside, but oh no, this is less exciting than that.
** Google acknowledge the bug here, downgrade to the previous camera version (2.4.018 (1836172-30)) to fix it.
*** This is perfectly normal for guitar wranglers, strictly speaking they are callouses, It was Ringo that had the blisters. 
**** Yes, there was a small amount of fluff in there in the opposite direction to the camera.


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Day 498, Virtuality Bag

Conference bag.

Slightly creased.

Used once, to carry the free stuff away in.

There is a logo on it, but that is on the other side.

You probably wouldn't recognise the logo.

The image is that of a mug made from letters.

The letter V and the letter M were the consonants used in the logo-ing of the bag.

We all know what VM stands for don't we?*

* Yes, it does stand for that.


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Day 497, Better, Faster, Stronger

T-shirt randomisation dice roll today has this beauty.

The only problem I see with this is that as time goes by the 'Faster' bit is incorrect.

That's my egocentric view at least, perhaps more generally it is all correct.

Apart from the 'Better' bit.

Although that's probably being cynical and a little harsh about the human race.

Let's settle for 'Better' in the sense of 'Better together', in all referendum contexts.

And those polarisation specs, they would be pretty neat, especially if they filter out eejits.


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Day 496, Pointless rebellion

Blocked from all directions, a rock, a hard place, a, er, footpath.

Sod that, this unruly reputation won't be upheld by obeying pointless signs.

Twice in two days.

Double jeopardy.

And as expected there was no reason for the signage on either occasion.

The hazard had gone, the signs spurious.

The rebellion pointless.

Abandon hope all ye who enter here

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Day 495, Dear diskies gone too

A pair of hard disks.*

Left unattended above a glorified shredder.

One of them containing 2 terabytes of some bits of raided data.

Now in literal bits.

"Hang on, that's got my bitcoin key ..."

Too late matey.

* Pedantry corner - 'Disc' refers to optical media whereas 'Disk' refers to magnetic media.


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Day 494, Well?

Random artefacts assembled into the form of a set of stairs, emergency lighting, and similar.

Oil on gouache, 1975.

From an idea on an ill formed variant, Penrose-Escher.

We may go up or down but remain in the same place because we are asking the wrong questions.

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Day 493, Port Stanley

Any port in a storm.

Ok, there's no storm.

But if you need someone to balance an 'in/out' argument on the wireless then who better than Stanley Johnson?

Well, loads of people really.

Purely because the flossy haired one has been at the forefront of media interest.

Must try harder.

That is referring to the news media.

Word association bloggage, measuring up the news content at 07:35 precisely. 

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Day 492, Gilbert and George do brexit

It is unclear whether the graphic artists Gilbert and George favour remaining within the EU.  Their admiration for Mrs Thatcher might suggest they would be inclined to stay.  But is anyone really interested in their half-baked opinions.

Another well known artistic couple, Nigel and George, have recently declared their allegiance on the EU, specifically on the ‘leave’ element.  Until this week they hadn’t been a couple at all, occupying completely different voids on the political spectrum.  How did they come together?  Opposites attract?  A blind date over a pint of Greene King IPA and a glass of apple juice?  Celebrity berk swap?

As with many apparent opposites they do have some things in common.  Both have been, or are still, glorious leaders of political parties.  Both are larger than life characters.  Both are enormously full of themselves.

Here’s a brief snapshot of their character traits - for some reason I get the image of them desiring to be rulers of an imperial realm.

Emperor Farage

Special skills: beer drinking while walking down the road, easy exasperation, plain spoken hearsay, simple minded every-moron approach, focus of a personality cult, extremist.

Emperor Galloway

Special skills: pompous, long-winded, obtuse and verbose, easy exasperation, focus of a personality cult, extremist.

When two became one in the back entries of Crumpsall, Manchester it was to make the beast with two backs, grunting to completion among the dog muck and dustbins and sung about by Mike Harding.

Here we have a partnership of the unprincipled, in plain view, arranged in an odious two-handed circle jerk, each desperate to satisfy their own needs by bringing the other to a climactic exit.  Witness the beast with two arseholes.  A bimodal nightmare even Mike Read would be reluctant to sing about.

Is anyone really interested in their half-baked opinions? Really?

It's moments like this which prompt people to suggest that satire is dead.  That can't be right, maybe just a little more work is needed to be heard over what’s become a new background level of the bizarre.

And what about the stay/leave debate itself?  Don't ask me, I haven't got a clue about the complexities of any of the arguments, the media watered down examples are so black and white as to be meaningless.  Maybe that means it must be time to go and formulate some half-baked opinions of my own.

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Day 491, Battery talk time

Today let's talk about what we can learn from history.

On the left:

Smart phone that has been on battery for almost two days.

On the right:

Legacy technology that doesn't use a battery yet doesn't need winding.

Embarrassing story to endear the speaker to the audience:

There have been times where I have forgotten to charge my phone, oh boy did I feel a schmuck.

The 'but wait' moment:

But wait.  Isn't there a better way, a way that means it doesn't matter if we forget to charge our phones?

The proposition:

Of course there is, why not harness the natural energy of the environment?  Kinetic energy available to all.

The reveal:

We should be using recharging technology like we have in the self-winding watch.*

That's what we can learn from history.

Applause, etc.

End of talk.** 

* Modern phone design starts with the case, what is fashionable for the type of phone and what its ability to dissipate heat is.  This determines the maximum power consumption in Watts that the phone can have.  Each feature of the phone has a cost in Watts and the premium features will be at the head of the queue, the techies then have to determine how to allocate resources across the other features.  There may be a bun-fight over how these are distributed and it will be a compromise.  The battery has a major part to play in this and the amount of space that a mechanical recharging component takes up would be of major importance.

** This talk lasted well within the twenty minutes allocated, so plenty of battery life left here.


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Day 490, Mild weather

This was the scene here in the Sheffield Himalayas at 11am this morning.  It's such a very tightly defined micro-climate that there are even spontaneous total eclipses.

And that happened today.  Astronomers have studied this region for years due to the peculiar characteristics.  A complete black and white out.

For most of the time I was dressed in a thermal suit which was issued to me when I moved in.  The suit is something that all residents are entitled to once they have permanently crossed the 'snow-line'.  There is a 'location tax' paid by all residents to enable even the most impoverished to maintain some standard of heating.  That's civilisation that is.

And oh my was that suit needed.  The optional battery powered nether-region climate setting was of particular value due to the knee level wind.  Flurries gusting up towards the midriff were deflected by the 'blast power' level adjustment set to +9.

Very often at the peak, the top of Lydgate Lane, there may be 60 or 70 inches of snow even in April.  This can come as a surprise to those residents of West Street or Upper Allen Street.  Down in the valley there may be shorts and tee shirts worn in conditions hardly as damp as light drizzle blowing off a Cretan swimming pool on the hottest day the Aegean has seen since Athenians had a day off during the Peloponnesian War.

Hurry up sun, this is affecting tourism.

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Day 489, Train time

What time is it?

Train time!

What time is it?

Traintime?

Ok.

As you said.

We're just passing the time.

In this white walled waiting room.

And another spoonful, one little spoonful, is good enough for me.

Just sitting on top of the world.*†

* Standard deviation from the time of trains launched in 1968 and ranked 205 in the top 500.
† This is about music, not trains.



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Day 488, Cat on a cold back yard

Bird watching.

This benign appearance, not trying to do anything unscrupulous.

But is it the truth, what say you cat?

I’m not good. I don’t know why cats have to pretend to be good, nobody’s good.

That right?

Mendacity is a system that we live in, bird-bothering is one way out and death's the other nine.

Well there ain't nothin' more powerful than the odour of mendacity, you'd better clean your paws.

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Day 487, Johnny Yen's jacked it in

Plucked the space between the heartbeat for an eternity.

Posted a loss in the respiration roller-derby.

Exited the G.T.O torture island.

Left the mind-control billet.

Dealt his last wrap.

And lost his bag for life.

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Day 486, Cubic rube

Determining the structure of a spider web by hitting it with a tennis racket.

Painting a hens egg by first opening it with a sledge hammer

Solving the Rubik Cube by melting it into a single colour on a ceramic hob.

None of these are ways of resolving the underlying problem.

Don't be a square.

Ya gotta get informed.

Otherwise you'll remain a rube.*

* Spoonerism subject resolution in seven sentences.  Sorted.



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Day 485, No user serviceable parts

A quick look inside a BBC Model B+

The indicator that it is a B+ is that the ROM sockets are at top left.

The top three sockets contain ROM chips, below that are five empty sockets.

ROM was useful in that applications could be loaded from there without occupying main memory.

ROM sockets were typically used by disk device drivers, BASIC, or other applications.

Each application would take up a ROM socket.

The left hand ROM is GTERM 3.5, a graphics terminal emulator.

The middle ROM is DFS 2.00, for managing disk drives - the latest version was/is 2.10.

The right hand ROM is currently unknown but will be revealed by further research.

The power supply bears the traditional legend "No user serviceable parts."

I'll be taking the power supply apart and servicing it later, replacing all the capacitors in all probability.

And I'll be using the standard precaution of having both feet in a bucket of water with a live mains cable between my teeth.

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Day 484, Tarmac tundra

No use looking behind you, all the action is ahead.

Unless you want to be a passenger driven by history.*

And most probably into a wall.

* This and other trite and vomit inducing aphorisms, maxims and metaphors are available in the new collection, Life is Like a Box of Chocolates, available at all reject stores right now.


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Day 483, Lost walkways

Those walking by might wonder about their purpose.

Or may ignore what appears to be no more than a shelf denuded of shrubbery.

The connecting pathways between underground road crossings, no longer recognisable as such.

Isolated, open only to those with access to locked, subterranean doors.

Formerly a network of public passageways, now healing over.

Their heart, the hole in the road, filled in, unable to provide sustenance.

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Day 482, Coneworld

Portable city centre tourist attractions are all the rage.

You can barely turn round in many cities without stubbing a toe on a jigsaw-piece ice rink or some kind of giant wheel.

But Sheffield scoffs at such trifling amusements.

Behold, The Coneworld Experience.

Thrill.

To the 30 degree internal slope.

Be amazed.

By the unique and living construction material.

Gasp.

As you accidentally inhale a pine needle.

The beauty and simplicity of it is admired with more than a hint of jealousy by small towns such as Leeds and Manchester.

By the time you read this Sheffield will have moved on to something more cutting edge.

Whereas those other parochial places will be building some sort of cone structure.

How very last year.

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Day 481, The Count

Fifty two weeks in a year.

Four weeks in a month.

Thirteen weeks in a quarter.

Two hundred and eight - the tenth tetranacci number.

Numbered bins strewn with time's dead flowers. 

Alone in a darkened room.

The Count.

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Day 480, Gateway to oblivion

What will have happened down this alley.

The homebound, can't hold it, should have gone before leaving the pub, desperate slash.

The out of sight haven for someone without a bed.

The hand-job for cash transaction.

The thick tin foil, shiny side down, burned on a low lighter flame, dragon chasing experience.

The varied and multiple instances of unconsented abuse.

The last drop of Thunderbird wine supped.

The wrist smiling with sticky black red.

The fox picking over the debris.

How crowded it must be when the sun goes down.

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Day 479, Happy Lunar New Year, Chengdu Blades

Historical and almost topical post alert.

The picture below was taken on January 15 2007.

Only a few weeks away from the year of the Pig in the Chinese calendar, which was due on February 18 that year.

And below are the Chengdu Blades who were in the UK to play a few friendlies after their season had ended.

The player on the far right looks like a relation of Hao Haidong, who at the time was on the books of Sheffield United.

He was then, and is still, the leading scorer for the Chinese national team.

Widely regarded as the finest striker their national team ever had, he was past his best by 2007.

We fondly recall his arthritic step-overs, they were so slow that the opposing player was hypnotised and easily defeated.

Both sides exit the pitch after a terrific display.

Leaving the field open for more dragon manoeuvres.

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Day 478, Dangling over Toytown

Always seeking innovative new methods to enter the city centre this hooked me immediately.

Who would have thought that being dropped from a vintage whirlybird on a length of wire could be so convenient.

And it wasn't.

The health and safety red tape took forever.

After all it's not even as if it could be deemed to be in any way unsafe or hazardous.

There's little chance of getting spiked up the rear by any dome with a lightning rod.

Or the thin piece of wire snapping, sending the danglee plummeting to a two-dimensional finish.

No, no, no.

Bloomin' stupid regulation.

I've done much more dangerous things than that at ground level.

Crossing roads for example, that's a fucking nightmare.

About 400 pedestrians a year are removed from the living, that's way more than people dangling from wire.*

So everyone should enter the city centre by this method.

It is cost effective and practical.**

* This statistical analysis may not stand up to closer scrutiny, but at least I've pointed that out, most media stats are presented in an even more bogus manner.

** This is probably how UKIP present their arguments, I don't know though as I haven't checked but then neither would they.


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Day 477, Rag week

Welcome to rag week where all week we'll be looking at rags.

This one has obviously only had some slight use.

Some dust contamination and light abrasion is apparent on the surface.

This rag can definitely be used further.

I am open to offers.

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Day 476, Tighten the knot

Nuts.

Reduced to another weak pun.

Look, a knot in the wood.

Knots can be tightened.

And nuts can be tightened with a spanner of the correct size.

So there we have it, if it needs explaining, it hasn't worked.

Frankly if it's as weak as it was in the first place then ...

However, the spanner is quite strong.

Was made in Sheffield.

And is 5/8 of an inch in imperial measurement.*

* It might not be, I've mislaid the spanner for the moment and just made this number up.


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Day 475, Reverse act

Books, the internet, magazines, newspapers, any medium you care to name, is full of tonnes of advice.

The value of much of this is supposed to be apparent and taken at face value.

So jumping on that bandwagon then this invaluable advice is mine:

• Live life backwards*
• Don't be an arse
• Treat others with respect and dignity, even if they have been an arse**
• Sometimes you might have to raise your voice
• Never set fire to your clothing while you are still wearing it
• Don't rob banks***
• It's easier and less deleterious to health to become a banker and legally rob people****†
• If you are really cold then setting fire to spare clothing is an option
• You are wearing two pairs of jeans though aren't you?
• Have you considered rebirthing?*****

* Look out for the full definition of this in my soon to be published book.
** It is valuable to point out when someone has been an arse.
*** Not just because it isn't profitable but it really upsets people and defines you as an arse.
**** Paying for their last round of robbery is why your savings aren't making anything.
***** No, it doesn't appeal to me either.
† This also defines you as an arse so I may have to change this advice as it is incorrect.



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Day 474, Where's my T Rex

You spend years looking for one, it's not as if they're missable is it, what with their curly hair and twee elfin lyrical ways.

And then here it is.

Right under your nose.

Can you spot it?

Metal guru is it you?

Nope.

Is it sweating behind the meat counter?

Nope, it's there in front of you.

Not as obvious due to reflections from the sky and the wine sun that owns you.

Dug and redug and dug and redug redug.

Gibberish.

Getting impatient now.

How about two-up seven-right?

Bingo, you are the hot rod mama.*

* And relax.


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Day 473, An apple a day keeps the mono away

As food supplements go these take some swallowing.

Although with only four days supply it shouldn't be that bad should it?

Ah, they have an adhesive rear side, maybe they aren't vitamin food substitutes. 

The classic Apple logo, first seen by me on the single Apple ][ adrift in a sea of Commodore PETs.

All nicked by some scallies from Cheetham Hill who broke into the school/college.*

To defeat the locked door on the computer suite they entered via the ceiling tiles from the next room.

Why wasn't there an alarm.

Perhaps there was?

Why did nobody notice?

Seems incredible that they could have away with the Apple ][ and the 30 odd PETs.

Each PET was a great lump of metal and would have taken some shifting.

Shaped like a vision of some science fiction big brother monolith, the sharp edges could probably slice a finger off.  

Apple ][, made of plastic and with a styling which remained popular during the computer boom for some time after.

The PET just wasn't quite as appealing as the Apple - although the burglers thought it worthwhile.  

A big milky metal box with a mono screen.

Whereas it wasn't just the Apple logo that had colour, it had the display too.

So everything else was black and white.

* The school and college were all part of one gigantic building which included the public library, leisure centre and baths.




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