more ballads for the brain keeper

I've been driving around to various meetings this week and have so far clocked around 350 motorway miles in the process.

I decided to create a smart playlist for the car before I started and just typed in "2012" as the album year and hit shuffle.

My original plan was to see which of the 2012 albums stood out to me for travelling in a sort of 'maybe I could do a list for the blog?' kind of way.

Instead, I found myself having an interesting dream in a hotel on Monday night, most of which seemed to take place in the short time before awakening again.

I really should find out about the timing of dreams in sleep patterns. I know about Rapid Eye Movement and the the safety shutdown of the body during REM to avoid acting out the dreams (sleepwalkers take note, your brain superhighway pons might be differently configured), but I think there must be some more stuff that would be useful to know.

Anyway, my dream was one of those ones where you kind of know you are dreaming and there was a bit in it that was getting rather tricky, so I baled from that dream into another one (sort of like Inception, that film with di Caprio).

Phew. The next dream found me in a field (I know, I should dig out that dream meanings book - I used to use it for brainstorming sessions) - It was very supersaturated colour and there were cigarettes growing in amongst the grass.

Now I worked out the cigarettes in a few seconds. Breaking Bad Series 4 middle episodes. I've just been watching it.

But for the rest I might need some help. I didn't need that group of Mumford like folk singers and a combine harvester at getting up time. It was beginning to go like a margarine commercial. So I woke up instead.

Then I realised the tracks I'd been listening to in the car the previous evening may well have included a subliminal message. I'd flicked through some of the albums quite quickly (unsuitable for motorways) but pretty much listened to every track on one excellent album.

It was by Hannah Louise Clark's "Foe"

And the name of the album?

"Bad Dream Hotline"

January's emerging challenges

I will be setting the alarm for an early start tomorrow.

I've also booked some hotel nights away and filled the car with fuel ready for the start of a busy week.

My calendar shows I'll be partly around Westminster and partly further afield. January always seems to be a long month after the accelerated speed through December and has the other joys of 'Debt Day' around the 14th when all the bills roll in.

That's ahead of Blue Monday - which this year is the 23rd January - the pseudo scientifically derived low point of the year. It's a blend of poor weather, maximum debt, time since feel-good factor of Christmas, disintegration of resolutions and general low motivation.

I'll class it as hokum, but it's best to be prepared to side step it in any case.

visions of sugarplums were gonna dance in my head

A few minutes to sit quietly now the new year is beginning to spin up to full velocity.

Yesterday we started the complicated meetings (4 sites together in a call) and next week I'll be on the road for at least part of the week.

I've still a few end of 2012 archiving things to do with various rashbre computers. I'll be resetting Outlook to a fairly empty state, shuffling some folders around and also restarting a new Aperture photo library for 2013.

I know I could just let things roll along, but it feels like the right time to reset things at the start of the year. The 2012 Aperture library is around 85Gb, which still takes a while to copy.

I've also reset my cycling goals for 2013. I hardly cycled at all in December (I just checked and it was 85 miles).

I've decided to use the 2012 cycling outcomes as the basis for 2013 targets. It is good as I now have a full year of recorded numbers, month by month.

When I started at the beginning of 2012, I set a 40 mile per week, 160 mile per month, 1800 mile per year sort of target. I was aware that I'd need to fit cycling back into my 'habits' for it to work and I decided that a lower target was probably better psychologically.

I also rapidly discovered that it was best to have a week that started with a Sunday and finished with a Saturday, so that I had a chance to (a) get ahead or (b) recover if I was behind.

The 'actuals' from last year were pretty good and I think I finished at around 4,600 miles and just over 110,000 Calories which was well beyond my original target and sets a bar for this year.

I've been using one of those heart rate monitors throughout which is a kind of way to measure input. My next foray is into 'Watts' which is a measure of output and I'll see how that works over the coming months.

I haven't really got started properly yet this year because of little bike issues - I am slightly amazed that a short term unused bike has managed to pick up a couple of minor glitches. Fortunately there are others to pick from so I'm still cycling. So far its 87 miles this year, so it's a bit of a look uphill at the moment.

starting windows again?

I've obtained a replacement for the little PC laptop that died a couple of days ago. It came with Windows 8 on the desktop.

What I've found with this Windows 8 'Modern UI' aka 'Metro' interface, is that it's quite good if you want to concentrate on single tasks which take over the whole screen. Great for use with a tablet, phone or interactive television type environment.

However, this clean big button interface falls down for someone like me who is used to working with several things open at once.

Take the internet browser as an example. In Windows 8, it can easily be fired up in a kind of 'sealed unit' mode where it takes over the whole desktop. It is very clean and simple to use and would no doubt appeal to a certain type of user.

But if you are used to working with Word and dipping in and out of the browser and maybe a spreadsheet to check things, then it's not as convenient. I also find that every so often I carelessly bump the cursor against a screen edge and after popping up the so-called 'charms' it can flip back into single focus mode.

I have a simple (and some would say Luddite) fix. I have re-installed the Start button onto Windows 8. That way I can run Windows 8 but when I want to I can bypass the Metro interface and use Windows in the traditional manner, with multiple applications open on the desktop. I don't think I'm alone with this approach.

Microsoft appears to have removed the original Windows code related to the Start Menu. I can see that this makes sense for a touch screen / Surface kind of interface, but I wonder how it will play out for more conventional laptops and desktop systems?

It's hard to estimate precisely, but some of us have been using Windows interfaces for many years and we get used to how to do things. This can create a frustration when a familiar approach is no longer available.

Maybe a start button return for Windows 9?

broken windows

Well, we are all progressively getting back to work.

My additional (failed) domestic task for yesterday was also to take down the external sparkling lights as rashbre central returns to its normal operating state.

I had a couple of irritants along the way which deflected me from my purpose.

This included the first technological failure of 2013, when the quietest household PC stopped working. It's only used for modest duties but now it's flashing lights refuse to come on at all and the whole device lies inert.

I've tried all of the usual remove power, remove battery, use a replacement power supply, reset the hardware type things but it looks as if something on the motherboard has died.

I googled the failure on the internet and it seems to be quite a common occurrence. I have already surrendered to the inevitability of buying a replacement machine rather than attempting to repair this particular piece of hardware.

So now for the new flashing lights of the slightly mysterious Windows 8...

Back to Work with Misery Bear

Thanks, T-Hedgehog, for the tip-off.

Reset the counters for 2013

Time to press the reset buttons again for another fine year.

rashbre central's year in 3 minutes video (2012)

The end of the year is the right time to do one of those bonkers videos summarising the year.

Sometimes people say they think the year has passed quickly.

I tend to disagree when I look back over all the things we've done.

Even when it's edited down, it all still looks pretty busy - and that's without showing work or shopping.

Enjoy this skittish 3 minute version of rashbre central's year. That's around 1 second for every weekday. There's some pictures from the blog and a few other stories too.

Happy New Year.

pause awhile with three jolly wheelers

A late afternoon visit to the Three Jolly Wheelers in Woodford Bridge, Essex.

It was a pub which I hadn't visited for a very long time. Someone asked me if I remembered the inside and I had to confess that I'd treated it as if it was a new location, because of the changes to the layout.

The original pub dates from around the 1830s. What I remembered was a substantially different layout which had separate public and saloon bars. The beers used to be sold at different prices depending on the level of bar decor. There had even been a small off licence tacked on to the side.

Of course, all of that has been obliterated in various modernisations, through the times when pubs had become more open plan and egalitarian. On our particular evening it was very quiet, but bracing itself for the next and densely packed New Year's Eve.

Just along the road, another Grade II listed hostelry from the 1500s hasn't survived as a pub. It used to be called Ye Olde Kings Head (yes, really), and had been a Charles Dickens inspiration for The Maypole in Barnaby Rudge.

Then Lord Alan Sugar bought it a few years ago and it is now operating as a somewhat black and gold Tudor Turkish restaurant. I guess it's handy for Lord Sugar, who lives just around the corner in Chigwell, within walking distance of the establishment.

I normally focus on 'fun going forward', but what with year end and all, it is also interesting to briefly look at 'fun going back'.

let me tell you what I want - steppin' out

We moved the operations centre for rashbre central to somewhere with a big staircase for part of the Christmas break.

It turns out that our venue was also the one where the Spice Girls broke into the party at the start of their first video.

Then someone else told me it was the same location used in one of the Batman movies and then it also turned out to be featured in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.

We aren't making any movies here, but will still enjoy the theatricality of the enormous staircases and magical artefacts.

Coal Hole

We had that dilemma on Friday evening. We'd found a good table in a bar but needed to be somewhere else in about an hour.

Somebody suggested we should move across to the Savoy, which was close to our mid evening destination, but I was a little concerned.

The logic was perfect; to front load the journey time and then not be worried about being late at the destination.

I was more dubious about whether we'd get anywhere to sit at the Savoy. It says 'no reservations are necessary' but can be troublesome* to get into.

We headed across in any case, did that thing where you drive along the Continental side of the street at the entrance and then found ourselves in the spacious and quiet lobby.

I think this was to lull us into a false sense of security, because as we headed for the American Bar I could see the numbers increasing and sure enough both this bar and the Thames Foyer were full.

They manoeuvred us away and suggested we try the Beaufort bar back along the corridor and around the corner. I'd already heard them say we might get standing room there, but as we entered I could see a waiter on a course to intercept us.

"No room at the Inn" was the basics of his message.

"Coal Hole?" someone suggested. We all nodded and tripped back outside and around the corner to the bustling standy-up bar along the Strand.

* including the incident without a tie, but that is another story.

unexpected time warp

Accidentally landed in a partly monochrome world today, as we found ourselves in a town which had transported itself back to the Second World War.

We'd headed there for lunch unaware of the special event and were initially bemused to see so many American and British troops from World War Two on leave, alongside civilians in 1940's clothing.

The we realised that the steam train hauled by a U Class steam locomotive from Alton had just arrived and many were disembarking for Christmas leave before the train's return trip with Winston Churchill on board.