Month: February 2012

February 26, 2012
Just had my first game session in a month, due to my being laid low with illness and sleep issues. I’ve had this scheduled in the diary for a good while, and I was hoping I would be ok for it. Thankfully the cold has mostly gone, apart from a tickle on the chest, and the last two nights I achieved some really decent sleep.

February 26, 2012
Just watched Real Steel on DVD and was very pleasantly surprised. Unusually for this kind of flick, it had an actual story (albeit a predicatable one about a father bonding with the son he never knew), and the acting was pretty good too. Good special…

February 24, 2012
[Note: thankfully this issue has now been resolved]

After it got dark, I was able to do the final test, and the answer is a minor *sigh*.

I really don’t know what it is about equipment manufacturers and backlit keys and displays, especially for machines meant for the bedroom. Am I the only one who thinks the bedroom should be relatively dark?

February 24, 2012
February 23, 2012
On BBC Question Time tonight, Ed Vaizey was asserting that RBS shares were up. David Dimbleby disagreed – “They are 40% down on last year.” This is where Ed Vaizey, grasping at straws, actually said “Well they are up on their lowest point”. Well, duh.
February 23, 2012
The nonsense with Papworth Hospital unfortunately continues, emphasising to me that you can think an organisation is really great (I’ve had no complaints in 10 years), but it only takes one major foulup and a total lack of will to fix it to completely change…

February 21, 2012
Not sure if I mentioned it, but I bought one of these as a birthday present to myself. A Denon M38DAB, it is a micro CD player, DAB/FM/AM radio and amp combined. I’ve had it running for the past few weeks, balanced on a pile…

February 18, 2012
Is anyone else watching this? Excellent BBC 4-part drama about a heist at a money-counting secure vault. More twists and turns than a curly-wurly, and some excellent acting, especially from Steven Mackintosh. We’ve recently had episode 3 of 4, but all the episodes to date…

February 13, 2012
February 11, 2012
Have just finished this book, and thoroughly enjoyed it.

I picked up the book as a result of reading about the film made of the same name by Cameron Crowe, starring Matt Damon. This was on my list of films to watch, but I suspect I will find it annoying, having read the book. It wasn’t until I started reading the book, that I realised I had come across the same story before – when Benjamin Mee took over the running of Dartmoor Zoological Park, the BBC made a 4 part fly-on-the-wall series of it, called Ben’s Zoo.

The film claims to be “Based on a true story”. Like many films with this claim, the story is frequently changed and twisted to suit the studio’s/director’s/star’s view of what the story should be. One wonders why they go to the trouble of buying the rights of a true story, if they are going to change it out of all recognition.

Spoilers follow.

February 6, 2012
I have a Casio AP60R electric piano. It isn’t the best electric piano in the world (although it ain’t bad), and it is getting on a bit, but I like it. A couple of weeks ago, I was moving a heavy object, and it slipped…

February 2, 2012
An update on how things are going. The last week, I haven’t been getting on with the machine at all, to the point that for two nights I unplugged the thing and slept without CPAP at all. In the meantime while I have been waiting…