Monday 24 January 2011

Futility

Most people (if there's anyone still out there?) are probably using Feed readers of some sort and therefore didn't notice that the blog had been turned to 'Private' and that my mindless spilling of ill conceived thoughts hadn't infected their brain for a few months.

I hadn't gone all shy nor was I mid way through signing an exclusive deal with 'Eat Natural' or in my case 'My Protein or Wine', simply put; I wanted to get more work done and like many other things a blog is a way to waste time. Albeit a small piece of time but enough that when you add all of your little vices together they create a black hole of productivity. Its not that you don't achieve anything, its just not directly useful.

Forums are the worst for this, idle chatter or otherwise searching for knowledge on something that ten years ago you'd have just paid for. BUT now I know where the washer fluid hose connections are, isn't that right skoda?

Another example; I was recently dragged kicking and screaming into 2011 with an Android phone. I hadn't been missing twitter (on which I finally concede Dobbin was correct), weather updates, or even to the minute updates on my inbox but now I have it, I use it. I've also spent a great deal of time fiddling with various setups, reading about custom ROM's and even java based app development. Not only that but I've set up my array of recently acquired tech so I can stream my media throughout the house... and so that it'll sync a few playlists when it comes in range of my home wifi. Not content with this, I then wasted a good portion of a day trying to get my media streaming to my TV via an xbox, and naturally using a different media server (as XBOX 360's only seem to digest .wmv) that can transcode.

Iteration 1 of this procedure led to breaking my OS on two computers, the firmware of my router and a whole lot of wasted time. Iteration 2 worked well, although the 15m ethernet cable is trying its best to break my legs.

Still not content I set around setting up Tversity to forward my media to outside my network and even 3g. For no particular reason, other than I wanted to see if it worked and telling myself I'd use it at 'work', at which I have spotify anyway.

In a moment of stupidity I threw the custom (non supported) firmware from Magic Lantern onto my DSLR, ok it adds a lot of features that are really funky but that body wasn't cheap and I'm hardly a member of slackjaw. In fact, apart from 'tests' I've done very little with the video capability of the camera. I've read an awful lot.

As you can see, I'm not doing so well in the whole writing up phase of this project.

Climbing has been on the back foot; since going well at the Foundry I quickly became bored with the problems and trundled off for a love/hate session at the works (a different world). I had tried going out but I seem to have become a little soft as it was quite frankly unpleasant. Three problems in to the works session it remembered who I was and quickly tore something in my side as punishment, an intercostal probably but it hurt regardless. Ironically this then bound me to the works for the last 3 weeks or so as I've nursed it back to a modicum of health. Trying to alternatively lift your feet off the floor using an undercut and failing is slightly depressing.

Despite all of this, it is improving and up until the drunken exploits of this weekend (Jagermeister FFS) my works technique was going through some kind of boot camp. Having your feet swing off and instinctively stopping the motion leads to a mighty dose of pain which in turn soon becomes an incentive to find out exactly why that third toe hook isn't staying put!

In the spirit of time wasting I'll stop there, hopefully you stopped much much earlier.
Please disregard anything you read on this page. It's all just random thoughts and opinions based on very little. Therefore it's not worth getting upset about. In fact; just don't bother reading it, it'd make life easier for everyone involved.