deKay’s Blog

We’ve got Virgin Media cable TV, and, ooh, 18 months or so ago they had a slight argument with BSkyB. The outcome was that Sky threw their toys out of the pram and withdrew all their channels from Virgin’s service.  They expected everyone to ditch Virgin as a result, but, of course, many people barely even noticed. It’s not like Sky are the pinnacle of quality programming.

In fact, the only thing I noticed was the lack of The Simpsons to watch every night. Only Channel 4 have that covered anyway.

But this week, Sky have come crawling back. And?  We now have three main Sky channels instead of one, but the shows are the same. Literally. It’s still the same old Simpsons, Futurama, and Malcolm in the Middle repeats. Phew! Thanks for coming back, Sky! I don’t know what I did without you.  Oh yeah - the same as I do now. Not watch.

I found out today that a friend of mine’s 8 week old baby died last night, in sudden and unexpected circumstances.

I can’t even begin to imagine how terribly this has hit him and his family. I know he won’t be reading this, but if on the very, very slim chance he might be, I’m so sorry for your loss, and my thoughts are with you.

It’s the sort of thing which is upsetting to anyone, even if they don’t know the people involved. With the imminent arrival of my own child I appear to have Dad-hormones on full at the moment, and I found the news very difficult to take in, much more so than I thought at first. It’s so very sad.

You can read about it here and here.

Oh Mr Asda! With these special offers for the mathematically-challenged you are really spoiling us!

OK, so technically it isn’t measuring colour blindness, but rather your ability to sort colours by hue. This is a slightly interesting test, which isn’t completely scientific because it because it can’t take into account your monitor settings and capabilities, but is worth a go anyway.

I scored 6, which is, apparently, somewhat excellent. Yay!

Test your “Colour IQ” here.

Well, my wrist is. I’m partly blaming it on not fully recovering from Guitar Hero DS, but the rest is possibly due to sleeping on my hand at a funny angle or something.  My left wrist and little finger have been hurting for a week or so, but it’s been agony for the last couple of days.

And now today, as if it was feeling left out, my right hand has started to ache. Maybe it’s because I’ve been compensating for the loss of use of my left hand a bit, or perhaps it’s sympathy pains, but I feel I’m going to end the week pretty much handless.

I’ve realised recently that I have some sort of obsessive compulsive disorder. Trivial OCD, yes, but it’s still there. It’s apparent in several ways:

• I can’t watch people at work use an interactive whiteboard if it isn’t exactly calibrated. Even if the pen and the on-screen pointer are merely millimetres out of alignment, it drives me up the wall. I genuinely can’t watch them operate it, and last week I actually stood up in the middle of a meeting, took the pen from the speaker, and calibrated the board myself as I couldn’t go on.
• All sets of stairs must have a handrail or bannister. This isn’t for safety reasons, as I rarely use it anyway, it’s just in my head I can’t abide seeing them without one.
• Games, CDs, DVDs and books must not, ever, be organised alphabetically. Usually, alphabetically arranging such items is a “socially acceptable” OCD, but in my case I insist they’re not. I can arrange by type, by date, by subject - but never, ever, alphabetically. It makes me uneasy.

I’m not the only one, right?

I only subscribe to two magazines - EGM, and PC Plus. In fact, I’ve cancelled my renewal for PC Plus because I don’t actually have a PC any more, but I still have the end of the subscription to run.

Imagine my surprise when I opened this month’s issue to find, along with the usual scammy scratchcards and flyers for home insurance, this:

Sort of, anyway. Remember a while back (just over a month ago, actually) when I posted this picture:

Well, I came home from work today to find out what they’d done it for! This, in fact:

Amazing. What a waste of time and money.

OK. I’m not sure of the point of this, but anyway:

Look up your birthday in Wikipedia. Pick 4 events, 3 births, 2 deaths, and 1 holiday.

May 15th

Events

• 1718 - James Puckle, a London lawyer, patents the world’s first machine gun.
• 1756 - The Seven Years’ War begins when England declares war on France.
• 1940 - World War II: After fierce fighting, the poorly trained and equipped Dutch troops surrender to Germany, marking the beginning of five years of occupation.
• 1940 - McDonald’s opens its first restaurant in San Bernardino, California.

Births

• 1936 - Wavy Gravy, American clown and activist
• 1981 - Zara Phillips, British royal and eventer
• 1987 - Andrew “Andy” Murray, Scottish tennis player

Deaths

• 1978 - Sir Robert Menzies, twelfth Prime Minister of Australia (b. 1894)
• 1991 - Andreas Floer, German mathematician (b. 1956)

Holiday

• Buddha’s Birthday in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau and South Korea (2005).

What does all this tell you about me? Nothing!

Dogwood Tales via Red’s Ramblings v.2

My baby brother is getting married next weekend. Again. He actually got married a couple of months ago, eloping to Canada with his then-bride-to-be, but he’s having a wedding blessing with vow renewal ceremony in this country on Saturday.

I thought they only renewed wedding vows in Neighbours, but it would appear I was mistaken!

Anyway, I’ve been asked to be his Best Man. After all, I am a Man, and I am Best, so it makes sense. It’s not like a full blown ceremony with everything a wedding has, but it’s a big responsibility nonetheless, and one that carries with it a requirement: writing a speech.

I’ve written speeches before. Of course, I had one to write for my own wedding. I’ve also had to write and deliver several to do with work - mainly about new software and technologies and stuff. But they were all easy.

This one is different. It’s not that I can’t think of things to say (I can), it’s more how to say them, for an audience of an unknown number of people, most of whom I don’t know at all. At least at my wedding, I knew more than 50% of the attendees really well, and for the work-related speeches it didn’t actually matter. But here, I need to be funny, slightly cruel, traditional and caring. All without going overboard in any single area, lest I upset people or make them sick.

So I’ll manage it, I’m sure, and I’m looking forward to it. After all, it’s a bit of an honour, isn’t it? But it’s taking longer than I thought, and I’m having to think a lot harder about not so much the topics, but more the words and intonation. It’s like trying to write two speeches at once!