Archive for the ‘ General ’ Category
Well, from this location. Revelationspace is no more, all hail www.gamerfathergeek.com!
In theory this domain expires in a week or two, though I’ve only cancelled today and you know how companies like to be notified a decade in advance of cancellation so who knows, I may be hanging onto the domain name for another year. Either way I won’t be using it so to the two of you who may read this, change your bookmarks!
Until the age of about 20 I had the luxury of eating as much crap as I wanted and staying pretty skinny. For a while after that I didn’t mind the extra weight, I think I looked better with it than being skinny. As many people are happy to tell you though, once you get married you let yourself go. There may be some truth to it or it may be coincidence, I’m not sure if I stayed single myeating habits would have been any better. I wouldn’t call myself fat at all but there’s certainly more torso padding that I’d like and a couple of years ago I had to replace all my trousers for being too tight.
I haven’t really dieted before, my willpower extends to just a day or two normally, a week at a push. That is, until a month ago. For one month I have eaten no chocolate, biscuits, cakes or sweets. I think the difference this time has been motivation. Before the motivation has always been weight loss, but this time it was health reasons. About a month ago I had several bouts of extremely painful ‘digestive issues’. I’m talking the worst pain I’ve ever had. Super sensibly I didn’t see a doctor but I was pretty sure it was all down to what I was eating.
I’ve known for years that I have an intolerance to dairy (and a few other food types) but it has gotten worse lately. The symptoms were usually heartburn, bloating and upset stomach. So I decided I couldn’t take this any more and I’d cut it all out. All dairy and anything that gives me heartburn is out of my diet. This sadly includes chocolate, the most lovely of foods. For the first few days I got the shakes from not being able to snack on sweet things after meals, but after that I was astonished to find that I no longer craved the stuff. I was happy sticking to grapes and raspberries in their place. I thought for the first time that I could actually give it all up for good.
So here I am one month on and I have not had one moment of weakness. In that month I have not been ill and I’ve had no heartburn (used to get through a packet of Gaviscon a month easily before). I feel more full after my meals and I very rarely feel flakey when I’m hungry.
Today I bought a set of weighing scales. It’s a bit late now as I don’t know what I weighed before I started this diet but I figured I’d start keeping track now to see if there is any loss. 80Kg if you’re interested. I may even see about getting a bit of exercise here and there. I think if I managed to give up chocolate there’s nothing that I can’t do.
Ok so Laura tweeted me:
right – ipad is doing a mammoth sync. What’s the best app for using office docs on it? any other apps you recommend?
First and foremost, the last time I checked opening and editing files from MS Office was not ideal on the iPad. I have not tried recently and I have not tried out the various Office apps for the iPad so try at your own risk.
If you just wish to read the files, I very highly recommend GoodReader. It opens all kinds of different files, allows annotations and lets you access files on Dropbox and other similar services. It is incredibly cheap for what it does!
Apple’s word processing, slide show and spreadsheet software (Pages, Keynote and Numbers, respectively) are very nice and easy to use but don’t expect brilliant compatibility with Microsoft Office files. Changing from one to another is not something I’d rely on.
It has been open to debate a lot since the iPad was released but I believe the device is much better suited to consumption rather than creation. You can create things with it especially if you’re willing to use workaraounds (eg emailing your documents to yourself on a PC and converting the files where possible). Very much is possible depending on how much effort you want to put into it and how much more convenient it would be to actually just use a normal computer. This is something that I think you can only judge by yourself.
Other apps that are essential or I highly recommend:
Twitterrific for Twitter.
Friendly for Facebook (though I believe Facebook are releasing an official iPad app soon)
Informant HD is a very nice diary/organiser app and syncs with Google Calenders.
Instapaper – See a link that looks interesting? Don’t have the time to read an article? Many apps support a “Send to instapaper” feature. Open up Instapaper and it will download the articles for you, often strip out all the crap and present it like a clean crisp newspaper article for you to read offline.
Kindle – Sure I have a Kindle, you have a Kindle but as your Kindle books sync across devices it’s nice to have this when you don’t want to carry all your devices with you at once.
BBC News – The BBC website’s videos are almost always Flash based and so cannot be viewed on the iPad. Their news app will have the videos in a format that you can read.
Sky News – I hate to say it but their news app is much better. For following the riot news a fews weeks back I found this to be so much better.
AppAdvice – Great app that lists news about new apps, discounted apps and has guides for new users.
Zinio – Many magazines are starting to release iPad versions that you can sometimes buy cheaper than the print copies.
iPlayer/4oD Catch Up/ITV Player/ – Self explanitory.
VEVO HD – Music Videos
Guardian Eyewitness – One new photo a day, stunning ones mostly.
IMDB – Great app of the website. Want to know what that actor from that thing was in? This is what you need.
TV Guide – Self explanitory.
Windowshop – Amazon’s app. Great way to browse and buy goods from Amazon.
Words with Friends HD
Infinity Blade (Just to show off to people how good the graphics can be on iPad, try Epic Citadel for a free version that lets you just walk around a castle)
Plants vs Zombies HD
Cut the Rope
World of Goo
Osmos HD
Fruit Ninja HD
Interactive Alphabet (by Piikea)
I Hear Ewe and I See Ewe (latter is animal, shape, object and colour matching game)
Magic Piano
Peppa’s Party
It is news to nobody that knows me well that managing money is not my strong point. I’m much better than I used to be but I have a long way to go.
The first step in the right direction was perhaps a year ago when I decided to set up a second account that was for food and household purchases only. That way I could put a lump sum into that account every month and know exactly how much I was spending on food without having to keep track of receipts and such. The new Lloyds TSB Money Manager is actually pretty good but still to have it coming from just the one account makes things much easier.
I have just created a third account for personal spending. With comics, apps and other miscellaneous small purchases I’m letting them add up without really thinking about it. Turns out a couple of comics a week at £2-£3 each adds up!
I love to plan budgets even if I don’t love to follow them. I’ve a little planner on Google Docs and to make me more aware of when my money comes out I’ve put all the major bills on Google Calender too. So in theory I can spend £100 on myself and have an £80 ‘buffer’ still to use for unexpected costs like vets bills, presents for birthdays or the bi-yearly internet domain fees I always forget about.
In theory I can then split the remaining money at the end of the month between my savings accounts.
Or, you know, piss it away on more comics 
We got Hannah her first bed (not counting the one at Grandma’s!) this week. After a bit of a cock-up getting the wrong mattress and Mothercare not accepting it back because I dared to open the plastic seal, by the end of Friday we were ready to start Hannah with her first bed. I was a bit worried about it, I thought that she would be constantly out of her bed and never get to sleep. But to our suprise she took to it brilliantly. Yeah she got all her teddies down and enjoyed her freedom, but she ended up in her bed eventually.
Well that worked until today! In her defense she was woken up accidentally by her Mummy but still, it took her a long time to settle! Twice she was at the top of the stairs, waving her nappy at us telling us it smelled (she had done a wee). It’s the kind of situation where you can’t help but laugh at her.
Anyway one one of the many trips made to try and settle her, I thought I’d take a video and so here it is:
(Obviously she’s saying “Cheese” because she thinks I’m waiting to take a still picture.)
Like with many children, it’s just as difficult to get Hannah out of the bath as it is to get her into it. So today I thought I’d tell her that if she didn’t get out of the bath she would fall down the plug hole where there are snakes and crocodiles. I assumed most children would find this sufficiently scary to want to get out of the bath quickly.
I assumed wrongly.
On learning that there are crocodiles down the plug hole, Hannah proceeded to shout down it “I’m going to eat you, crocodiles!” and chomp away at them.
Then after a while she started shouting at the plug hole “Go away snakes, you can’t get my sweets!” and then blew raspberries at them.
I love my crocodile eating, snake scaring little lady.
I think I’m going to leave Facebook. After deleting the vast majority of ‘friends’ from there, the only real use it has been is seeing the odd pictures from friends. Even then, the people I’m interested in seeing about are friends with my wife on Facebook so anything really worth seeing she will no doubt show me anyway.
So yeah I’m going to delete it. May be forever, maybe not, I shall see. I have barely used it and between this blog and Twitter I have the whole ‘posting whatever I want’ covered.
Will leave a status up for a couple of days with my Twitter/e-mail/blog details and then get delete the account.
Recently I’ve been doing well with money. For me, anyway. It’s also helped I got a decent amount of money for selling a gold soverign and also for cashing in about 16 hours of extra work. So in the past few weeks I have managed to buy some nice things for myself including:
This is in addition to having to spend money on a the dog’s booster injections and a couple of birthdays. So about breaking even for this month.
So when’s the perfect time for the garden fence to start breaking apart with the strong winds? Yeah, now. In-laws reckon about £250 for new panels. If this could only have happened a couple of weeks ago, I could have not bought some of those things and have asked for B&Q vouchers for my birthday (which is on Friday).
Should really have an emergency fund I know, but between birthdays, Christmas, our anniversary and OU fees, the first few months of the year conspire to make me poor and April is a chance to treat myself a bit, and so I did.
You win this time, nature.
I’ve written about this before but it’s bugging me again, for the love of Thor please Marvel (and the rest), bite the bullet and start releasing digital comics simultaneously with print copies. Not just some obscure, non essential title like you’ve done with Hawkeye & Mockingbird. All the titles. I do not live anywhere near a comic shop so I have to use eBay which is just a pain in the arse!
Marvel has an okayish website for digital comics, and a pretty good iOS reader (in fact lovely to read on my iPad). The process to make the comic work with these apps can’t be that convoluted, get that stuff out there!
So I propose this:
Books and TV shows already have simultaneous physical and digital distribution, movies may get there eventually but I can at least understand a director wanting to their audience to see their work in a cinema. But comics? On an iPad the images are always 100% crisp and clean. I would argue it is the best way to view a comic.
No delivery costs (though yeah, 1/3 of the money goes to Apple on iOS). No delays for re-prints. Always-on impulse buying. Sales whenever you want. Hell, whack adverts in the comics to get the extra money, we’re used to ads in comics.
Yeah sucks to be working in the brick-and-mortar stores but it is the nature of the world. Formats change and business needs to change with it. People didn’t keep using VHS because they didn’t want the people who’s livelihoods depend on it’s use to be safe. Digital comics are not new, you would not be springing this upon an unsuspecting industry.
Ok rant over, back to work now. Ahem.
I just remembered something from an April Fools Day some 20 years ago. My primary school teacher was leaving and I was terribly upset. Miss Cooper was brilliant, we went to the same karate club together and she even gave me 1:1 extra karate practice after school (you know, before such things would automatically be assumed nefarious).
So I was at home and being the sensitive soul I am, was sobbing away. Mum decided to try and cheer me up by showing me an article in the local paper about something amazing, aliens being proved real or something, landing in my home town. This momentarily cheered me up until she said it was an April Fools joke, at which point I cried even more. First my primary teacher leaves me, then it turns out aliens aren’t real.
Worst April Fools ever!