So, anyone that’s known me for a while will probably understand the significance of the pic on the right. Scanned from a statement this morning..
Suffice to say, that’s not my bank balance, it’s how much I owe.
Nil, Nada, Big Fat ZERO!
Quite pleased about that really 
.. it’s no good putting off the inevitable any longer, I’ve got to crack on with this fitness malarky..
Went down and renewed my gym membership today. I figured that sticking actual cash money on the line should be a good reason not to waste it! I’m out and about a lot this week so whether I actually get to train before the weekend is unlikely but it’s a start. next step is to make a shopping list and clear the decks for a detox.
Suffice to say, Valentines day isn’t exactly my favourite day of the year, and not for anything to do with recent events. There’s just some pretty nasty baggage from many years ago that unfortunately coincided with exactly the wrong day on the calendar, thus ensuring it jumps up to bite me on the arse every year. Ho hum.
So yeah, moving on. Obviously there was the danger of today spiralling into some kind of headfuck given recent events but I did my best to distract myself from all that by embarking on a fairly major rearranging of my office. Soon got bored of that though and headed up to Gloucester for a mooch, a coffee and some social interaction with actual real-life people. Bumped into a couple I often see in Waterstones, Les and Sian, with their rather lovely Doberman Herla. The poor old girl’s got a degenerative nervous system disorder rather like MS and she’s slowly losing motor function in her legs which is terribly sad to see in such a lovely animal but thankfully she doesn’t seem to be in any major pain and she does end up getting spoiled rotten by all the regulars in costa (not to mention the staff)
I’ve got to admit that seeing all the fluffy stuff online today did spin me out a bit as it was naturally difficult not to think about relationships given how the subject was rammed down our throats from all directions today.
I am still finding it surreal the way Kel seems to be able to just carry on as if nothing’s happened. It’s like she’s managed to to just wipe away all that time from her head or something and is just treating me like I’m just any random bloke she knows and not in fact the guy she was planning to spend the rest of her life with. She seems to have miraculously gained the ability to show absolutely no sign of emotion about ‘us’ whatsoever, it’s just like none of it ever happened and that’s weirding me out big time because now I’m starting to question everything and wondering if she ever did actually mean anything she said to me. it certainly doesn’t feel like it and that’s a very odd feeling.
Still, sitting around moping isn’t going to help anything is it and so I’m just doing the only thing I can, just getting on with it. I’m not quite sure what ‘it’ is yet, but whatever it is I’m getting on with that.
I did very nearly made a prick of myself by buying Kel a big soppy valentines card & ordering flowers etc. but I thought better of it and cancelled them. As far as I can tell the only possible outcome of that course of action would have been more pain for me and I figured what’s the point in belittling myself even further after being made a fool of for the last 12 months? I’ve got a long way to go to get the old me back but I’m at least sentient enough to know I’m worth more than that.
I am lucky to have an excellent group of friends who’ve been keeping me (nearly) sane and putting up with me over the past few weeks. Over the last couple of weeks I’ve had a few trips down to Bristol to hook up with some friends who are also into photography & creative stuff. hopefully we’ll be sorting out some photographic opportunities with them very soon which is cool. It’s also been good for my sanity to talk to some friends who’ve at least managed to (almost!) convince me that I’m not in fact insane and that Kel does in fact ‘want her head read’. That bit did at least make me feel a wee bit better about myself!
Anyway, onwards and upwards as they say..
I think this weeks primary goal needs to be to get my arse down the gym, renew my membership and see if I can’t sort out some kind of sensible training plan to shift some blubber without totally destroying my old knackered knees. I’m setting myself a goal to lose about 1½ stone by June. I’m currently about 16st and want to get back down to under 14½ again. That’s totally do-able as I did more than that a couple of years ago, at one point I was over 17st and got down to under 14½ then, it’s just crept back up again over the last 18 moths or so. No excuses, sure it was a combination of dealing with mum being Ill, shit with Kel and a couple of injuries that took months to get over but those aren’t real justifications. The truth is I just took my eye off the ball.
I’m going to ressurect an old pic from a couple of years ago as motivation for myself. This was the progress I made when i set my mind to it, did a detox and just got on with it.
The pic on the left is pretty much spot on for how much I weigh and how I look now. The scary bit is that when that was taken I’d already lost about a stone so I’m bloody glad I didn’t have any pics from when I was at my heaviest.
If I did that before then I know I can do it again. It’s not going to be easy and I know that realistically i’m going to have to dramatically improve my nutrition and get my lazy arse into gear big time to do so but I’m bloody fed up with feeling like a fat old knacker and so there’s only one thing to do really isn’t there.
Just get the fuck on with it.
So, the postie comes this morning with two boxes for me. They’re both pretty heavy and I was a bit puzzled as though I order stuff all the time I didn’t remember ordering anything this week.
On opening them I find they’re both full of photography books, all up to date stuff and all in absolutely mint condition. Wow! – still puzzled though until I read the note which said something like:
“Saw you’d been having a bit of a shit time of it recently … You’ve been a great mate to me over the years so please accept this little gift from me in the hope that it might cheer you up a bit.”
Bloody hell man, I was gobsmacked.
So anyway, I know I said it via PM already but Paul (Zoot) – what a completely mad bar steward you are! Such a kind thought and incredibly generous of you. Thank you! Suffice to say, you properly made my day.
There’s nothing like random acts of kindness to restore a bit of faith in people eh?
Hmm yeah, I could post a cheesy fanboy review of the Rammstein gigs but that would never convey just how good they were, again (sorry Snake!).
Suffice to say I’m really glad we went two nights running as it meant the first night was full of OMFG!!! moments and then the second we could take in the music more and generally enjoy the most excellent party atmosphere up the front (yes, right at the front, only place to be )
Enjoy it? Oh no, not at all 
Setlists for the nerds (I hope I’ve got them right, took me a good hour and much referring back to photos to piece them together!)
The numbers following the songs are links to pics taken during those songs. All up on Flickr in these sets: Combichrist, Rammstein.
Combichrist
All Pain Is Gone
Scarred
Get Your Body Beat
Fuck That Shit
Blut Royale
What The Fuck Is Wrong With You?
Got a feeling they might have played one other track but I’d never heard them before so I can’t be 100% sure!
Rammstein
Rammlied
(1 2 )
B********
Waidmanns Heil
(1 2 )
Keine Lust
Weißes Fleisch
Feuer frei!
(1 2)
Wiener Blut
(1 2 Babies – with frickin’ laser beams!)
Frühling in Paris
(1 2)
Ich tu dir weh (1 2 3)
Liebe ist für alle da
Benzin
Links 2-3-4
Du hast
Pussy
Encores
Sonne (1 2)
Haifisch (1)
Ich Will
Up in Manchester with Huw & Gabs. Me & Huw went to see Rammstein at the MEN Arena tonight, full report later but suffice to say we had a blast, Rammstein excelled themselves again. Expect lots of pics when I get back home on Thursday.
Being the loonies we are we were of course right up the front and yes, it was fucking mental The most pleasant surprise of the day (apart from the particularly lovely young ladies up the front who were properly up for bouncing around like idiots with us for three hours) had to the the support band. A bunch of industrial/techno/metal nutters from Norway called Combichrist.
They did play one song which I though particularly apt for my state of mind at the moment, and thankfully they’ve made a lovely cartoon to accompany it too
Not the best start to my day being woken up by the stench of smoke from downstairs – again. I ended up wide awake at 7:30 which is a good 2 hours too early for me.
Having set off to a bad start wasn’t really helping the mental state at the mo. It’s all starting to transition from that surreal phase into the painful reality that no matter what I say, do or feel it’s not going to make a blind bit of difference to Kel as it seems that chapter is well and truly closed.
I’m finding it all a bit odd that after eight years she can just switch off and carry on as if nothing happened. That’s the bit that’s hurting the most at the mo, because it just makes it feel like I meant absolutely nothing to her and my brain just doesn’t want to compute that, it just doesn’t add up after everything she use to say to me. I dunno, I guess that’s just Kel’s way of dealing but it still feels like the most incredible slap in the face.
Anyway I did at least get to enjoy a nice little bubble of ‘me’ time tonight at the school because at least when I’ve got my belt on I tend to switch into ‘Black Belt mode’ automagically and at least then I get some of the old confident me back. Tonight was all about intensity and focus which meant I had to demonstrate those traits to a higher level than I’d expect my students too and that tends to rub off on them too and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy because the more energised they are the easier it is for me.
As we often do, in my ‘Masters’ training session we started out on one topic and a question from one student led me off on a tangent into a pretty deep discussion about the psychology of confrontation and dealing with real aggression etc. Bit of a shame that some of our students don’t make the effort to stay for that part of the class because it’s where all the ‘real’ training begins.
Talking about that stuff and thinking back to some examples from my time on the door did me some good confidence-wise. Need to get out and hook up with some old training buddies I think and get a bit of the mojo back.
Anyway, best get some shut-eye. Off up to Manchester to see Rammstein with Huw tomorrow, then we’re coming back via Birmingham on weds to see them again
\m/ O \m/
It seems to me a lot of people are whining about the iPad simply because they were hoping for the power of a full blown laptop in something the size of a paperback but I think the key thing is simply that Apple haven’t really designed the iPad for geeks like us with a higher than average technical knowledge, and hence demand from our devices. They’ve firmly pitched it at the casual sofa surfer who probably hasn’t even considered the potential for more advanced applications. They just want a bigger version of the iPod touch. Indeed, ever since the touch came out I’ve been saying I just wanted one with a screen the size of a DVD case and that’s pretty much what we’ve got coming with the iPad so they are delivering exactly what I asked for.
Sure, we can all think of super-geeky advanced applications that it could do *if* it had X/Y/Z additional features but just look back at what’s happened with the iPhone and iPod Touch. I don’t think anyone was really aware just how big a deal it would turn out to be a couple of year back. It’s easy to be critical at this stage when nobody has even touched one but I’m betting in a couple of months time when we do we’ll all be thinking very differently and this time next year when it’s begun to show it’s true potential then I’m sure we’ll all be chuckling as we buy the version 2 hardware and think “yeah ok Steve, you did it, again”.
There are however a couple of immediate things that did spring to mind..
No multi-tasking, well yeah, that sucks. No twitter at the same time as surfing? No chance to check email or open a browser whilst working on a doc in Pages? Yeah, that sucks but I’m betting the rumours of some form of multi-tasking in OS4 are true and they’ll be doing something with an update soon.. I wouldn’t mind betting they’re just holding off on mentioning it with the iPhone 4G announcement around the time it hits the streets with a “Hey, look, we’ve made it even betterer, aren’t we ace!”
Home screen – looks sparse with just the icons. Again, I’m *hoping* for something more here at a future date, but it’s already doing enough for me to want it.
GPS? Having realised that of course Apples A-GPS shares silicon with the 3G hardware that does mean that only the 3G model will have a GPS. Slightly leaning in that direction as a result now but that’s going to be entirely dependant on the data plan pricing. I’m definitely not going down the contract route but if there is a sensible PAYG or rolling plan I might go for it.
File synching – The SDK does mention the fact that apps now have access to a shared folder which mounts on your desktop when docked so no more fiddling around with different sync methods for each app. That’s going to make stuff like the new iWork and other productivity apps a whole lot better immediately.
Read one interesting take on the state of play earlier from Jo hewitt, developer of the iPhone Facebook App. Check out his blog here: http://joehewitt.com/post/ipad/
Well it would seem that that, as they say, is that.
I went over to Kel’s last night (weds) and had a bit of a chat about stuff, some of it personal and a few bits to do with the school. All perfectly amicable, if not a little odd. It just seems so weird after 8 years to sit on a sofa with someone but feel like you might as well be in another country.
Could spend hours going over boring details and over-analysing stuff that is of no interest to anyone else but the simple fact of the matter is she doesn’t love me, and hence doesn’t want to be with me any more. Simple as that really.
It’s all just a bit surreal now, especially given that it was only a month ago that Kel told me she did in fact still want to get married. (Bearing in mind this was after her finishing with me, telling me that getting engaged was the biggest mistake ever and then subsequently telling that after all she didn’t in fact want to throw away seven years so easily and would I please consider giving it another go etc.)
Anyway, when she said at christmas I was understandably well chuffed and had a proper little scheme hatching in my mind. I was planning to buy her a replacement for the engagement ring she’d lost last year and then take her away for a ‘finally out of debt’ celebration weekend where I could surprise her with a ‘proper’ proposal. Having seen Ian’s awesome shots of an engagement celebration in Paris I was thinking about something like that to make it extra special. Hmm, that was literally only a few weeks ago and then WHAMMO - so long, and thanks for all the fish…
Still, like I said, I’m not blaming Kel or holding any animosity towards her. If it’s not right and it’s not making her happy then there’s no point in me getting arsey about it is there? Sure it’s hurting like hell at the moment but I’m doing my best to keep it together for everyones sake. I’m really hoping we’ll always stay close as friends if nothing else and I’m going to try and do the best I can from my side at least to make sure that happens.
Got to admit I’m pretty gutted about the whole situation for Callum though. He’s never had a particularly good relationship with his Dad and ever since he was about 5 I’ve been around. I did ask Kel to be sure to explain to him that this was her decision because I’d hate for him to hold any resentment towards me about it all because I know how he feels about his dad. We’ve been pretty close over the past few years (hey, I was even planning to have him be my best man..) and there have even been times when he’d said to Kel he wished I was his dad because his real one was crap. The feeling was mutual and it hurts doubly so to lose him too.
Soo, anyway, I’m making no apologies for having a bit of a rant on here though as it’s one little way of maintaining a bit of sanity at an otherwise weird-as-fuck time. I am also taking a bit of consolation from the fact that having talked this over with some of my mates (including a couple who are mutual friends with Kel too) and they’re all pretty much in agreement that this just seems a bit (lot) weird and Kel wants her head read! That at least makes me feel marginally better!
According to my friend Bev, Kel’s officially a ‘bloody nutjob’ and should read this but I’m not sure I want to be anybodies ’second best’ thanks! Perhaps I should buy her the book though eh?
Ahh fuck it… Man I was so looking forward to this month and this year as a whole, planning to have a big celebration for finally being out of debt after so many years. I don’t regret getting out of the rat race for a moment but the financial mess it left me in was something of a challenge to say the least. I ended up with about £45k in debt and it’s taken nearly seven years to pay that off so you can imagine what an ace feeling it is to finally get there. Well, it would have been an ace feeling if I’d not just had the rug pulled out from under me like this. It would have been really nice to have been able to feel good about something, even if just for at least a few days eh?
Still, I suppose it does at least mean that instead of spending it on expensive jewellery for someone to lose I can spend it on new tech for me instead, and now I don’t have to turn down those requests to take naughty pictures of good looking girls any more either!
See, I knew there had to be a silver lining somewhere!
So, finally, Apple have unveiled their new tablet device, the iPad. And whilst I can already see several glaring omissions, it has basically delivered exactly what I said I wanted when I first got an iPod. i.e. it’s basically an uber-iPod Touch with a 10″ screen.
All i every really wanted from a tablet device is something I can view PDFs on (particularly all my software manuals and ref books etc.) and do a bit of sofa surfing. Add in the iWork apps too and it’s already looking pretty tasty. Having thought about it a bit this evening I can see all sorts of other areas where it would be useful.
They’ve been clever enough to maintain the compatibility with the existing iPhone apps via scaling, and I’m betting a fair few of them will be updated to run at native res before it’s released too. Omnigroup have already announced they are updating Omnifocus, and also planning to make iPad versions of some of their other apps such as OmniGraffle.
The price point starting at $499 was a very pleasant surprise, I guess that will translate to £400 for the 16Gb model, and to be honest that will probably do me for starters. Apple tend to hit their stride on v2.0 products really so I’m inclined to see how it pans out initially, especially as I’m planning on spending most of my disposable cash on camera kit at the mo. I’m not sure I need the 3G version (I think, though I’ll probably change my mind in the next couple of months) so I’ll see how I get on with wifi only (could always invest in a mifi or similar if needed on the go). Maybe I’ll wait until the inevitable 128Gb 3G version 2 with camera built in.
Talking of cameras, I can see this being a photographer’s dream. Imagine having something with a screen like this to view images live in the field. A proper chance to spot and correct any glaring errors before you head home and realise it’s too late.
OnOne already do a nifty little app for the iPhone/Touch which acts as a camera remote/live view for Canon and Nikon cameras. The existing version relies on a wifi connection to a host PC – presumably due to the lack of a USB connection to the phone, but now that there is a USB adaptor for the iPad I’d imagine they’ll soon have a version to take advantage of the direct connection and full resolution of the screen. There are going to be loads of photography related apps when this thing hits the streets, the possibilities are endless.
Then of course, there’s the potential for this to act as a temporary archive/backup for photos when you’re out on the road. I’d been considering one of the dedicated archive devices for weekends away but can easily see this doing the job nicely.
Hmm, the potential as a portable portfolio too. Who’s not been wowed by the photo viewer on the iPhone with the pinch and swipe gestures. Stick that on a 10in screen and it’s going to look awesome.
With the little dock/stand and the Apple Bluetooth keyboard it’ll do pretty much all I’d need for office stuff on the move too. The netbook has been great but with 10hrs of battery life this thing is made of win and I’m sure Callum would be happy to inherit the netbook
Gnnf… got to wait at least two months, three for the 3G. Ooh dear, I’m getting the proper tech horn for this now…. Hurry up Steve!
