iLost

I was not fully organised for that run a couple of days ago and briefly googled for any instructions.

In amongst the threads, I noticed a fair amount of controversy from serious runners about whether it was acceptable to wear headphones whilst running in a race like the one on Sunday. Apparently its so that the fast serious runners can call (eg) 'stand aside' to the slower ones as they accelerate through to the front. I envisaged that this would be happening to me continuously, although to avoid embarrassment I'd planned to start from the last wave in any case.

But as a casual runner I thought that part of the fun was throwing on a tune with some running rhythms to count along to. I decided I would take my little 'running iPod', which is one of the old school chewing gum shaped ones in a fetching shiny red. Suitably loaded with running music (don't ask), I prepared for the race in what was still only drizzle at that stage and rummaged for my iEars or whatever they are called.

Gasp.

They had disappeared. Lost forever. Probably on the tube.

I would have to survive in full aural contact with the other runners - of whom, I estimate, nearly all were wearing headphones and not calling out 'stand aside!'.

some vid of the headphone-less run

sssseptember

I always think of September as the month when spiders start to get too big for their boots and start invading the indoors.

As if on cue, this little specimen decided to dangle from a window today whilst attempting some particularly clever form of crochet.

September. Spiderssss.

red tee shirt with a very long number

We all had to wear red tee shirts for this one.

A bit of a race around the streets of London. Part of the Human Race 10k with allegedly a million runners around the world. I'd crossed London to Wembley, despite the closed Victoria line and to others' amusement wore the red tee-shirt inside out on the way having remembered to cut out the two 15 cm long care labels.

The inside outness was supposed to help me keep a lower profile on the tube but I suppose bright red is bright, however you look at it, plus compulsory telemetry gleaming from one running shoe.

Jeans dropped at the 'baggage' area at Wembley Arena and then into the shiny main stadium for the warmup by the fashionable Pendulum (who played a jarring industrial metal version of drum n bass) and then Moby with a band doing O Lordy greatest hits, whilst the 'waves' of runners were instructed about how to turn sharp right when leaving the stadium.

I'd wondered if anyone would turn up for this actually, because (eg) John had been offered loads of spectator tickets late last week.

In fact, it was mainly runners present in very large quantities 20,000? 30,000? very hard to guess. We listened to the music, listened to the warm ups and then it was time to hit the dusky streets to the car-wash proportions of rain that started to fall. I'd brought a baseball cap which did a surprisingly good deflection job and the red layer with the blue layer underneath seemed to keep me moderately cosy as I joined the runners many of whom were going about the whole run as if it was a sprint.

My tactics were somewhat different, with a view to be both visible at the start and the end. It seemed to pay off, even if my time is pretty unremarkable.

no sun day

Sound deadening mist draping the morning after yesterday's barbecue friendly heat.

I'm alone in the silence until loud rods of rain descend suddenly, drilling holes through the mist.

Distant cracks of thunder.

Another ten minutes and the blackbird attempts a short flight in the secondary stillness.

exotic

A shameless plug for Naomi's site today. Naomi is sittin' out in the Hollywood Hills and writes a fine blog on all manner of topics. The post I'm linking to is about her time in the clubland of New York's Staten Island, with its rather different approach to clubbing, 1954 style. Fascinating reading, worthy of a novel or a movie!

But also as I've been reading a few posts today, the soon to be in Greece Lady banana caught my eye with this little Britney moment.

Sims do Toxic. I'll have to reload the rashbre/britney collaborations...

Oh OK. here's the old britney/rashbre/MTV version...

...and interestingly enough, the lyrics of 'you want a piece of me' are very similar to the sentiments of Naomi's 1954 clubland story, where one option for a singer was to sign everything away and effectively work for the mob. Some parallels with more recent stories.

polaroid morning

It was still dark when I started to get ready for work today.

That's probably the first time since the summer. Admittedly a few days ago I was in darkness watching the hedgehog running around in the garden in the small hours and a different early I was looking at what seemed to be a particularly low flying moon.

But now there's that time when the sky starts to get lazy in the morning and it won't be long before I'm also making the first cup of tea with a light switched on. The day starts to need to be unpeeled before use instead of ready prepared.

Same thing now as I blog this against dusk, with a few birds chirruping to one another about the best branches.

thought less

Yesterday I was whizzing around London, to different areas, making extensive use of my Oyster card - people to see, places to go, things to do.

Today I've been sort of chained to the desk and engrossed in pretty much one topic all day, apart from a few breaks for cups of tea. What I noticed today was that the assignment has filled every nook and cranny of my head, so that I've not really thought about or done anything else.

I think tomorrow I will need to go out for a while, interact with a few others face to face and maybe walk around in order to let some fresh thinking blow though my head.

I don't know how it works, but sometimes 'not thinking' about something can actually stimulate a better way to resolve it.

standard anytime day return

I see that the railways have decided to rename all of the tickets again to make life simpler.

The old 'Cheap Day Return' becomes the new, simplified, 'Standard Off-Peak Day Return' and a normal day return becomes the 'Standard Anytime Day Return' which should not be confused with the 'Standard Anytime Return'.

Flow charts will be provided.

aspidistra

Comparing notes about George Orwell with fellow blogger Pat the other day and then Philobiblon provided the link to the orwell diaries. It's George Orwell's daily diaries being published as a real-time daily blog. Blogroll it now.

tera raid

I rescued a bricked disk drive a few days ago by bypassing its controller and slurping all of its data onto another disk. The disk was a terabyte and made of two platters in such a way that if either failed then the whole thing was effectively dead. Not a good idea.

I've moved to Raid 1 now, where the disk is effectively made of two separate drives, and everything is written to both. That way, if one disk fails, the other one can be used to rebuild a new safety copy. Maybe it sounds paranoid, but its a lot better than losing mad quantities of data. I can remember back two or three years ago when a Terabyte seemed like a lot of data.

Sunday

Rainy start created receding barbecue options, but then Sunday's early afternoon turned sunny and the tenty thing looked less necessary.

As Beijinged Leona Lewis rose bus-top slowly, in a bacofoil dress resembling an aunt's spare toilet roll cover, from within a badly cropped topiary, Jimmy's strains of 'The Lemon Song' (squeeze me baby) indicated that Boris had waved the flag of the Olympics fresh from China.

We looked skyward from our sandwiches and wraps for the red arrows (apparently banned from the actual 2012 show) and indeed, our roving reporter Julie managed a picture of the planes from her iPhone as well as a reasonable quantity of inadvertent voicemail calls to friends in the quickdial list.

I'm sure British ingenuity will ensure suitable profile for London and Great Britain and meantime the barbecue at number 100 was great!

facebook homesick blues - or - rats live on no evil star

Yes, I am on facebook.

No, I don't update it except via some feeds from other sites. So now I have wall to wall walls with flowers growing and sheep being thrown at me in between zombie and vampire attacks.

Look out kid. They keep it all hid. Better jump down a manhole. Light yourself a candle. Don't wear sandals. Try to avoid the scandals.

never odd or even...If I had a Hi-Fi - Madam, I'm Adam - too hot to hoot...

BoB