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Friday, 1 December 2006
sickness and upheaval.. but it's not all bad..!
I'm still alive, honest!
In fact, I'm typing this while the coach takes me up the (currently!) uncongested M1, to what might end up being a house in darkness - Beth texted me earlier to say that there'd been a power cut, so I'm imagining there could be a delay in uploading (or even finishing!) this.
I wonder if installing one of those rather excellent Quiet Revolution vertical axis wind turbines would help in such situations? It looks like there's a fair amount of energy available, having referred to the DTI's windspeed database. Having had two outages in the past few months, I'm beginning to think it'd be pretty cool to be the only house in the street with lights on!
Well, there's plenty going on as a damp December stumbles over the discarded remains of a rather warm November, overall.. in fact, the week since my birthday was somewhat hampered by a 24 hour bug (I can't stand having days off work!) and the beginnings of a cold, but I think I'm pretty-much back to normal, for an entertaining weekend with the family and Jon, who's coming to stay.
I'd recovered enough by last Saturday to drive down to Guildford to rehearse with David and Simon (the newly recruited drummer) of Jude. It was an excellent session, in a small rehearsal room built out of an old railway tunnel. Hopefully there'll be some MP3 clips available when I have time to chop them up!
The crazy scenes of teenage fans outside the venue weren't, however, on our behalf - it was overspill from a gig that was taking place next door, and they mainly got in the way as we moved our kit back to our respective cars. It's pretty cool that I can drive to the heart of Surrey within an hour that time of night, but with all the darkness and motorway, it's not something I'll do too often, I hope!
I was back to work on Monday, and the week has rather zipped by; where does the time go? I'm trying to keep the stress levels down - there's a lot of disomfit owing to a reorganisation that's planned for just after Christmas; in fact, it's becoming somewhat clearer that mmanagement factions are developing, which is kinda weird and hard to keep out of.
The worst thing is that the engineers that I manage are still working really hard to keep on top of all the work that's still coming in, but my concern is that, admidst all the speculation and paranoia around the managers, our achievements won't be celebrated as they might. Fortunately, we supervisors have a tenacity that hopefully will result in a reasonable evening out, rather than a rather unremarkable meal in an Indian restaurant.
Enough of my work woes (I'm trying to keep a low profile, although always happy to impart my opinion!) - it's going to be a great weekend. Sunday evening will be fun, when - as I mentioned in my last blog entry - Jon and I are going to indulge ourselves in some small-scale broadcasting of our own.
I'll have to be up early on Monday, though, to take the train up to the depths of Worcestershire for a three-day course, so the rollercoaster continues.
In fact, with the upcoming Christmas Bazaars, performances and meals (and, of course, work!), I'm not sure there's much opportunity for many days out, and we've got some work to do on the lounge, too, with a new carpet arriving next week.
radio bits
- HD Radio - how they're doing digital radio in the US, and how it works (quite clever!)
- Hitachi's Anti DJ chatter device - a new development that I know Pete, for one, will appreciate! (from New Scientist)
podcast bits
- .net last week featured an article on podcasting
- www.myspace.com/johndredgecomedy - I quite like John Dredge's stuff. Most amusing, although brief.
Well, time to leave you with some links,..
links of the day
- www.nickjr.com/playtime/shows/wubb/games/wubb_ringcatch.html - something for the 3-year olds among us - although Lenni's unlikely to be able to read this! (thanks, Amy!)
- www.exegene.com/release_info.php?ReleaseID=32 - some jolly tunes, if you like your driving drum'n'bass;
- www.tmbw.net/wiki/index.php/Songs_Incorrectly_Attributed_To_TMBG - interesting article on songs that people think are performed by They Might Be Giants, but aren't... it happens quite a lot.
- www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdZ8uG_RbSc - A pop video by Dutch Goth band Within Temptation. I do like a bit of Dutch Goth.
Posted by james at December 1, 2006 2:10 PM
