phillsacre.me.uk

My photo today was – again – taken at lunchtime. There are a few little paths near where I work, this is one of them.

You can’t see it in the preview, but on the post there’s a little direction arrow indicating the walk. I like this because it’s absolutely pointless – you can only walk in one direction there! I wasn’t massively happy with any of the photos I took today to be honest, but I think that’s the purpose of this exercise!

I will also mention the car. I might have said something last week about the clutch needing to be replaced. Anyway, it went into the garage today and the clutch is now replaced. It feels a heck of a lot lighter and smoother now – I can see why it needed replacing!

Also… I feel pretty stupid admitting this, but I’ll say anyway because it might actually be useful to someone. When I took the car in for a service last week, I asked them to look into a potential problem: it seemed that the engine was revving when it shouldn’t be, i.e. when I put my foot down it would rev up and then drop back down again. I initially thought this was due to the engine – maybe the turbo was kicking in too early or something like that!

It turns out that it was the clutch slipping. I didn’t really know what that meant when they told me at the garage, but I Googled the symptoms the other night and it turns out that the engine revving up is one of the symptoms. The clutch was also getting pretty heavy – when I drove someone else’s VW Beetle earlier this year and then went back to the Saab, it felt like I had to put a lot of effort in to depress the clutch!

So having the clutch replaced fixed the imaginary issue with the engine. Just thought I’d say in case someone else is having issues with the engine revving when it shouldn’t… it might be the clutch slipping!

A couple of weeks ago I completed my first “fanvid”. In case you don’t know what a “fanvid” is, it’s basically a fan-made video created using clips of a programme (in this case, Ashes to Ashes) with a backing song. It’s basically a mashup, and it’s probably best just to watch some examples. Some of my favourites, done by my friends, are Anne-Marie’s Mad World / Life on Mars video, and Sarah’s Even Angels Fall / Sherlock video.

Anyway, I got really into the last series of Ashes to Ashes. The idea for the video had been brewing for a long time but I finally got round to doing it recently.

You can see it here. Note that this may give away a few things if you haven’t seen Ashes to Ashes series 3, so – you have been warned!

Well, I’ve done a new photo! Hope you like it. It’s a horrible day outside – grey and raining pretty hard!

So I decided to take a picture of some sheet music instead. I’m a musician (well, I like to pretend to be a musician at least), so sheet music is something which I find fascinating. The translation of the music on the page to what you actually hear! I’ll give ten points to anyone who can tell me what this piece of music is, but for those of you who don’t want to guess the answer will be at the bottom of this post. Anyway, I hope you like it.

On a related musical theme – some of you may know Phil and I often listen to Absolute Radio. Last year they started up a new show with exclusively 90s music, and just recently they’ve started up a whole new station which plays exclusively 90s music!

This makes me feel a bit old. Throughout my whole university life, 80s music was the old kind of music which we used to consider “a bit old but fun to dance to”. You know, you’d go out to cheesy tunes on a Friday night, and you could guarantee that they’d play a lot of 80s music. They’d play quite a few 90s songs as well, but that didn’t really have its own genre – it was just cheesy.

Well, now 90s music has its own genre, apparently. (I suppose genre is the wrong word but I can’t think of a better one at the moment). This is slightly scary, because 90s music was the stuff that I grew up with. When 90s music was just sort of lumped in with all the rest of the current music, I felt quite comfortable. Now, 90s music is given its own section, you know, just for those of us who are getting old enough to be nostalgic about how much better music was in the 90s…

I don’t know why, there is just something quite scary about that for me! 1999 doesn’t feel all that long ago for me (I still listen to some CDs I bought back then), and yet it was 10-11 years. I recently turned 27, which isn’t really old by most people’s standards, but ten years ago I would have thought that was pretty old.

C’est la vie. Life continues inexorably. It’s just one of those things that we all have to come to terms with sooner or later. Just don’t get me started about students starting at university this year who were born in 1992. 1992, for goodness’ sake! *Phill rants off into the sunset, or the rainset to be more accurate…*

The piece of sheet music I photographed was Chopin’s Valse Brillante, op. 34 no. 2

So, a few days ago Alex started up a photo challenge, and then Simon followed (don’t believe his blog when it appears to go all the way back to 13th August – he backdated the posts; it was really about a week later than that!)

Aaaanyway, I’m not much of a photographer but I thought this sounded like quite a cool thing to do. I can’t promise to take a photo every single day (I know, I know, that’s not much of a challenge), but I’ll try to take it as seriously as I can given my schedule!

I often walk or drive past somewhere and think “that would have made a really good photo”. Well, hopefully now this will give me an incentive to actually capture those photos!

The first one was taken today at Walton on the Naze. Phil and I went out there for a walk. It was taken on my HTC Wildfire – the camera isn’t brilliant but didn’t come out too badly after a bit of colour correction on the PC. We’ll see how this thing turns out ;)

I mentioned yesterday that I needed to get a PAC code from Orange in order to migrate my number to Vodafone. Well I haven’t received the PAC code yet (it’s apparently in the post and should arrive tomorrow), but I had great difficulty in finding out just how to contact them in the first place: their website seems to contain a mass of contradictory information, and even when I did manage to get through it still worked!

I tried ringing up 150, which let me put in my mobile number and ID code, then cut me off. Then I tried ringing up 450 and going through to customer services – they didn’t have the necessary authority to give me a PAC code, but they gave me another 0800 number who could do it. I tried ringing the 0800 number, and it gave me the “this number does not exist” message.

So, all in all, I’ve been none too impressed with Orange’s customer service!

What you actually need to do – at least, as of yesterday – is ring up 450 and select options 2 and then 3. This took me through to someone who was able to generate a PAC code for me at least.

Quite why it was such a mission I don’t know – I know they don’t want people to leave but this is ridiculous! Not being able to get through on 150 was pretty awful – just cutting a call off without explanation is really inexcusable! Especially when it’s a number which is referred to many times on the Orange help pages.

I must admit, I’m not sad to be leaving Orange – they don’t have brilliant signal in our area, and it’s not exactly been a joy and a pleasure to deal with their customer services. I’m sure all mobile operators are just as bad though. In my time I’ve been with BT Cellnet, T-Mobile, O2 (basically BT again), T-Mobile again, Orange and now Vodafone. None of them have been particularly fantastic. I guess that’s just par for the course.

Ah well, onwards and upwards, as they say…

I feel like most of my life I’ve spent catching up. When I was growing up, a lot of popular culture seemed to pass me by. I was quite content just to mess around with a computer, or go out and play football, without really getting into films, TV, music, that kind of thing. I used to be really into kids books before I was a teenager (mainly Enid Blyton…) but when I’d grown out of those books I never really started reading anything else to replace it.

On top of all that, when I finally did get into music (I bought my first CD aged 15), it was mainly dance music. I would sometimes listen to the radio – I have fond memories of listening to the radio while revising in the summer, the radio made it somewhat bearable! – but my tastes were actually pretty narrow and so I didn’t really like the same kind of music that everyone else liked.

As a result of all this, a lot of “firsts” happened at uni for me:

• I first saw Star Wars (the original trilogy, not that there are any other Star Wars films of course… ;) in my first year at uni;
• I caught up with a whole load of pop music I never listened to the first time round – at cheesy tunes, to start with, quite a few of the songs I didn’t really know! (although at the time I was too scared too admit it… fortunately they played the same ones a lot, so after a few weeks I knew them pretty well!)
• I first listened to the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (the whole radio series) in my second year at uni, and then read the books the following year.

Anyway, I feel like I missed out on a lot when I was growing up – not really through any fault of my own, but these things just passed me by – but these days I feel like I’ve pretty much caught up. There are still “classic” films I need to see and so on, but I’m getting there.

All that said, there is still one thing which has been niggling at me like a sore thumb (yes, I know I’m kind of mixing my metaphors there…) It’s something which virtually every single one of my friends (and I do mean that literally) is into. I’ve never read any Terry Pratchett.

There were people who were into Terry Pratchett at school, but I just never got round to reading any of his books. Then I had friends who liked his books at uni, but – again – I just never read them. It’s something I’ve kind of been putting off for a long time, and there were a lot of other things to catch up on, so it’s just lingered there without me really thinking about it.

Anyway, I finished my reading list recently (amazingly enough), and I decided to start reading some Terry Pratchett: the prevarication will continue no longer! Phil has got three of the Pratchett books, and I am currently working my way through “Lords and Ladies”. It’s not the ideal place to start because it’s in the middle of a series, but I’m enjoying it so far!

He seems to have a brilliant sense of humour – just right for me to appreciate: quite witty, understated, very English! – and very tongue in cheek. In short, I’m enjoying it so far!

So long may the journey continue. I’m hoping to eventually read all of the Discworld books, although that will take some time. Still, good things come to those who… read Terry Pratchett books. If they enjoy them.

Well, the general election results are in (which you will already know about if you’re in England and haven’t had your head buried under a rock). It’s going to be a Conservative / Lib Dem coalition government (a “ConDem” government, if you will, which will make this country a ConDemNation…)

I think this is a good thing. In fact, personally speaking it’s the best possible outcome for me – of the possibilities that we had, realistically speaking. I didn’t want Labour to win, I didn’t want the Conservatives to win (although not as much as I didn’t want labour to win), and realistically speaking the Lib Dems were never going to win. A coalition government between the tories and the Lib Dems will hopefully yield something positive – their pledge looks good, so we’ll see what happens.

Either way, though, the next few years aren’t going to be easy – apparently we have the highest unemployment rate since 1994, and the economy is still spiralling out of control. The words “poisoned chalice” were used, which I think is probably accurate. Still, on the bright side, maybe good things – such as electoral reform – will come out of it.

Anyway. Totally changing the subject… I forgot to mention: we watched “Up” the other night, on Blu-Ray. It was a really nice film, I can see why everyone I know who’s seen it has had nothing but positive things to say about it. A while back we watched “Revolutionary Road”, which was a pretty depressing kind of film. Well, “Up” started out with a similar plot line to that film – except that it was far more uplifting! It was, in fact, the polar opposite. Very moving story, beautifully told, directed, and generally well worth watching.

Is it just me, or has the world gone a bit election mad? I’m getting fed up of the election to be honest. Part of the issue is that I genuinely can’t decide who to vote for. Not that my vote would make much difference: I live in a fairly safe lib dem constituency, so whichever way I vote it’s not likely to make much difference. That said, even if my vote did make a difference, I just don’t think I could decide.

The primary consideration I have when voting at the moment is “it can’t be labour”: one illegal, immoral war which well over 50% of the country were against would have been enough, and then there’s the small matter of the financial crisis (have we really done away with boom and bust Mr. Brown? Have we?). And then there’s ID cards, and so on. But apart from that, I’m pretty open.

That said, two things are annoying me about the way people are talking about the election. Firstly: what the heck is wrong with the Conservatives? Everyone I know seems to hold them up as being the joke party, i.e. “I’d never vote for them in a million years” kind of thing. Why? I just can’t see the reasons myself. Sure, OK, there was Margaret Thatcher. So what? It just seems that to look back at the past and say “I’m not voting for this party because of what happened in the 80s” is disingenious to say the least.

Especially given that someone who knew a lot more about politics than I did once explained to me how a lot of the issues of that era, i.e. the recession, were caused by factors either outside the government’s control, or would have happened even with a labour government. But I’ll come back to this in a minute.

The second thing that annoys me is people trumpeting the lib dems as the saviours of democracy. Now, I do agree with some of the Lib Dems’ policies… but they’re far from perfect. As far as I can tell, a lot of people are voting for them simply because “they’re not labour or the conservatives”. Which is probably a bit cynical on my part, but still.

The real issue here is this: politics is complicated. really complicated. Can you imagine what it takes to run a country? There are thousands of different things going on, and a government is responsible for all of them. To be honest, I don’t think labour have done a bad job over the past thirteen years. Yes, they did do some terrible things (Iraq War, finance crisis, ID Cards, police state etc), but as a country we’re still here, and I honestly think it’s debatable whether we would genuinely have been better off under another administration.

I don’t think this country needs another government. I feel this country needs accountability. If the people had a way of actually forcing the government to be accountable – while the government were still in power – that would actually make this country truly democratic. The current system is basically only a democracy once every four or five years – and the first past the post system means that even that is mockery!

Which is why I feel like saying “the tories are evil”, or “the lib dems are our saviours” is … well, ridiculous. It’s simply not true. Without a crystal ball you can’t see who would be best. I don’t know, you don’t know, no-one does. The factors are too complicated for even the most brilliant mind to understand it all. These quizzes that ask you to answer questions to be able to choose your political party – for the same reason, I find them bizarre. “What do you think is the best thing for the financial crisis? Increase spending now, etc.”… I don’t know! I’m a programmer for goodness’ sake, not an economist. This is why we have a government, so they can consult people who understand this stuff and make the best decisions. I’m not qualified to do it.

So, to bring this rambling mess to some sort of point, this is what I’m trying to say:

I don’t think any one political party is the “best” option. Because I don’t think it’s possible for anyone to really know that information. The days of people believing in a political party such as labour or conservative because they represent their outlook on life are gone.

So I honestly believe the best option for this country is:

1. A hung parliament. A coalition government will be forced to work together for the good of the country. At the moment I feel too much that politicians work for the good of the party. Would ID cards have survived with a coalition government? Perhaps, but I think it would have had a much tougher ride. Would the Iraq war have happened under a coalition government? Again, I think that’s even more doubtful.
2. Electoral reform. We need to be able, as a democracy, to ensure that our government is accountable. This can’t be done at present to any meaningful degree. This needs to change.

Just a few thoughts, it’s getting late so they may not make very much sense ;)

That was probably was one of the most cryptic titles I’ve come up with to date! It’s due to the fact that on Saturday, Phil and I went back to the house in Woodbridge where I spent most of my formative years. (Well, I wasn’t there the whole time, but that’s where we were living).

Anyway, after I went off to university – nine years ago – my parents moved to Ipswich. But they didn’t sell the house, the rented it out. Anyway, my Dad is retiring next year, and they want to sell the house. So, they gave the tenant notice, and she moved out last month. The past couple of weeks they’ve been spending a lot of time at the house trying to get it into a state where it can be sold.

You may have guessed that the tenant didn’t exactly leave things in a pristine state. If I’m honest, it was actually pretty awful what she did. She removed a lot of the work surfaces and units from the kitchen, she ‘painted’ – badly – various places, the whole place was filthy… I could go on. On Saturday Phil and I spent most of the day helping Mum and Dad to get the place cleaned up. Phil went into the garden to do some tidying, and I spent the afternoon ripping out a rather badly installed network.

I think she must have had someone come in to network the house (why she didn’t use wireless I don’t know – I think it was available in 2001, but I would guess these network points were installed well after that). Firstly, there were holes all over the house to allow the cables through the floor and up into the loft. Then the cables were basically run across the walls, i.e. there were a boatload of cable clips keeping the cables in place. Unfortunately in some places the cable clips had broken, letting the cable basically droop down! In other words, it was a mess.

So anyway, I basically ripped out the whole lot, leaving a large number of small cable clip holes – but at least it was better than leaving it there. I don’t think anyone else would have wanted it to be honest!

It was quite funny to see the old house to be honest – my room still had my old desk unit in it (which my Dad and I designed and built), but apart from that there was no furniture there. It’s been so long since we lived there that I do feel like it’s not really home any more, but it did bring back a few memories! Good times. Still, live moves on.

That took up most of our Saturday afternoon. Then, after that we went round to Anne-Marie and Sarah’s to watch Doctor Who. It wasn’t a bad episode this week although I don’t think it was exactly a classic. Then we watched the next couple of episodes of ‘Blackpool’ (really enjoying it, only one more episode to go now though!). Oh, and I should mention that ‘Ashes to Ashes’ was also good on Friday night – still so many questions, but I’m really looking forward to the next episode though! Phil says it’s kind of like old school Doctor Who, where they did six part stories and you were kept on tenterhooks until the next week!

On Sunday we weren’t at church in the morning (unusually), so we did a bit of gardening and the like. Then we went round to Jo and Evie’s and spent the day in the park with them, which was a really pleasant way to spend the afternoon. Then we went to Sunday@6, and afterwards watched ‘Young Victoria’. It was a fairly entertaining film but not one I’d really want to watch again to be honest – not my cup of tea!

I mentioned briefly in my last post that I had ordered a new PA system. Well, it arrived yesterday. In a huge great big package, on a palette! (A palette, for those of you who don’t know, is basically a wooden base which big packages can be strapped to so they can be more easily lifted by forklifts and the like). I should have taken a picture actually, but still.

I managed to get it inside (the sub came in a huge box which I wasn’t capable of lifting – I basically had to walk it all the way inside!), and then unpack everything. The system is basically an HK Audio package from Thomann (based in Germany). I bought an amp from them before and it was pretty decent, so I didn’t have any issues with buying from them again.

The last time I had a PA system, I had an amp with a couple of speakers. This time round I wanted to get an active (powered) system so I didn’t have to lug an amp round as well – basically it’s a bit more hassle-free. The package consists of one active 300W subwoofer – which contains all the electronics (and is why it’s so heavy!) – two 150W satellite speakers. Also included are speaker stands, cables and carry bags (a pretty good deal for the price). I also bought a Shure SM58 microphone for live work, and some cables to connect up my mixer.

I tested it out yesterday – at pretty low volume – and it all sounded good. Nice balanced sound, not too overpowering, and generally quite well rounded. Essentially what I’m saying is, I’d make a terrible audio engineer but it sounded good to my ears at least!

So I’m really happy with it. The first proper usage of it will come at my sister-in-law’s wedding in June, and I think it’s easily up to the job! The idea is that after that, I might be able to do the odd wedding gig here and there, I don’t want to loads of them but it might be a useful money earner from time to time.

Anyway, in other news, Phil and I went to see the Assistant DDO (Diocesan Director of Ordinands) on Tuesday evening. He was very nice and we had a good chat about my application and how the process was going to work. It’s quite exciting stuff actually, I have a few things to do. He even recommended that I started looking for colleges – which hadn’t really even crossed my mind! So I’ll definitely have to start doing some research. So, watch this space for developments on that front!