I went to the gym for the first time in months last friday at lunch. Sarah, who sits behind me, convinced me that the ‘body pump’ class was a good idea, so I figured I would give it a shot and Jose (opposite and to the left), Sarah and I wandered in for 45 mins of lifting, lunging, and squatting. Now, I know I’m pretty unfit, but I thought I could manage that.
SO. MUCH. PAIN.
My right shoulder is knackered. I think I might have damaged it. Sadly, I need the exercise. In under a month I will be running 5km in the JP Morgan Chase Corporate Challenge and have a bet with Dale (opposite and right) that I will beat him. That is my only goal. I don’t care if I take 2 hours as long as he takes 2 hours, 1 minute. Even though my lovely mother ran it in 28 minutes at 60 years old, my goal is not to beat her (she trained hard for it! I have only just started). Beating Dale and winning a tenner is the key. and the BBQ and beer afterwards. They are also important.
Complaints aside, I did quite enjoy the gym. I went again on saturday with James (behind and to the right) and he showed me far superior techniques on how to lift weights in various ways. and by ‘far superior’ I mean ‘the correct way to’. I think I’ll do a spin class this week.
Side note: If you’re trying to map out my area of the office from this post, all descriptions of colleagues positions are described from my viewpoint on the desk. HTH.
I feel like i should have appologised in advance for my ukuleleobsession. Well, not appologised as such, more just forewarned. The only people reading this blog should know already that when I get in to something I tend to constantly go on about it until the next shiney thing catches my eye. So at the moment it’s ukuleles. I have been playing quite a lot since I got mine, and am definitely improving. I can now play Somewhere Over the Rainbow reasonably well, and Bright Eyes slowly and fairly poorly. Just locking away the chord fingerings is a challenge, and then working out how to move from one to the other quickly is so very different from any other instrument i’ve played. Fear not – I’ll get there (sorry Phil, Ali and Kev – you will have to put up with this for a while).
Right. For all those people who say that the ukulele is a toy instrument, and shouldnt be taken seriously, check this guy out.
I’ve just been out and bought myself a ukulele. I decided last week that I should challenge myself by learning a new instrument (the cynics who may or may not be reading this are probably muttering about me rarely playing the trumpet any more – I plan to play that more as well, but it isn’t as good playing it solo. If anyone wants to form a band of some kind let me know!). Anyway, a new instrument, yes.
Why the uke? Many reasons. It’s small, relative inexpensive, and more to the point: amazing. At some point I shall video myself playing it, and maybe if you’re very lucky, sing as well. Considering naming it, but I’m unsure what sex a ukulele is.
Right. Again I have failed to update my blog more frequently. I’m not even going to promise it this time around because I’ll probably forget/not have time/some other exuse. But I’m back for now, with a new design. Some things still don’t work. For example: Internet Explorer. PNG transparency just doesnt work without hacks. Hacks which I have not yet implemented. I’ll get round to it soon. The ‘About’ and ‘Contact’ page are also very bare. I’ll update them in the next few days or something…
So… What have I been up to? Not much. I have a job. I am a developer of sorts, working for Markit. I don’t really have a job title as such. I work on the database, write various scripts for things, generally make things behind the scenes better in one way or another. General Developer Dogsbody could be my title I suppose. I guess I am a fairly small cog in the grand scheme of things there, but have you ever tried removing the small cog? Sorry, that sounds horribly arrogant but I like to think I’m doing something important, even if it doesnt often relate directly to the products. Oh, I also wangled Sofian (friend from my course at Manchester) a job here! It’s almost like I’m back at uni. But I’m not in Manchester, work a lot more, have more money and less holiday.
Anyway, apart from work I have also been failing to take photographs (severe lack of inspiration), started singing lessons (just because), and generally pondering life. I have a few projects on the go. Opuscopus.com is almost ready to go live, Snowplease is in the making (more on that sometime later), and I’ll keep tweaking this site.
There are many other new things, and not so new things with me. I’m still thinking about exactly what I will and won’t talk about on this blog. I probably won’t ever decide, so it will just be a constant (or very sparodic) stream of mostly uninteresting crap. I’ll appologise for this now to save me the trouble later. Sorry. I doubt many people read it anyway so I’m not sure why I’m worrying.
Right. It’s late, I have work tomorrow, and need to catch up on some beauty sleep. Goodnight.
Finally, apple released an iPhone with 3g. This is what I was waiting for, and I’m glad I have. The phone is great. Not perfect, but I’m sure the few bugs will be worked out. I’m typing this post from the wordpress app, just released on the app store today. Again, this app isn’t perfect, but I’m sure they will improve it over time. Some easy way to add urls would be nice, for example. Anyway, it was time for a blog post and so here it is.
