Summer Is Back

Several times this week people have said the equivalent of "so that was the summer", when in fact I lost count of the summery sunny mornings we've had this year. The sun is streaming through the window now. We are all subject to the weather and we don't want a drought situation so we need rain, and usually we get it at night which is fairly sensible. I think that the weather has only stopped me walking once, and that was in Pockley and I still got 2.5K steps in which is about half a kilometer, and it didn't affect my Million Step Challenge , it was just another sub 11K day.

It looks like I am sort of on track for the #August50 , but I still have to do two posts a day for most of August, but it is doable, but I am going to walk in today so expect to keep my steps up.

I really to appreciate the colours of nature on a day like this, often unfeasibly enhanced by the camera on my Sony Xperia XA, not always in a good way sometimes looking back it's like I'd been in the middle of Ben Wheatley's "A Field In England". If you know the film you will know why I said that, if you don't know the film film , watch it and find out. Incidentally it was released on all formats simultaneously, the TV broadbast being on Film4.

So I'm going with "Summer Means Fun" which I thought was by The Beach Boys, then remembered it was by The Fantastic Baggys, but someone said it the original was by Jan & Dean, but I found this excellent version by Bruce and Terry which I had never heard before, because, as far as I'm concerned, summer is still alive and kicking. Well that wasn't a grammatically correct sentence was it , but what the hell. Have a brilliant day and enjoy the sunshine!

Here Comes The Night

Tonight it's cold and wet, the days are getting shorter and we'll soon be waking up in the dark as wll, looking out from our windows at work into the blackness, then looking at the clock and seeing that it's only three o'clock.

The think is , is this is the world we live in, days fluctuate like an giant elastic band getting longer and shorter depending what part of the year that we are in. Rain is good because it waters gardens and plants. Dark is good because it makes us appreciate the light, it the way that cold makes us appreciate the warmth.

I can't recall the weather being so bad that I wished for something else, for quite a long time. Tonight even though it was slightly raining , I put on my waterproof hat and walked for half an hour clocking up 3K steps. Tomorrow will be interesting to see how long Pacer keeps recording my steps as I expect. Will it clok 5K steps for me to get to work, I'm sure you can't wait to find out.

Anyway, the night is here so I'll leave you with "Here Comes The Night" by Them, sleep well my friends.

The Trouble With Shooting Ghosts of American Astronauts

A ridiculously rubbish play on words, in my last post I said that Google Fit didn't seem to be tracking steps, but was it my Sony Xperia, or the operating system or the software. Today I installed something called Pacer and it seems to be recording the steps OK so it looks like it's Google Fit.

It is a small trial when something is not working and you don't know which part of the chain is the problem , and it may be one part or more than one. Remeber when a bulb went in Christmas lights and trying to track which was this problem one. Though it does feel good when you sort it out.

Tonight I went out for an extra walk to hit my 11K, and I've done nearly 12K so that's cool.

Anyway as I type this "Ghosts of American Astronauts" by The Mekons is playing, just a lovely surreal song whihc I will leave you with. My blood sugar is down to 4.4 so I need to sort out something to eat.

Enjoy your evening my friends.

Failures

This was going to be my second post yesterday for #August50, but I didn't get round to it so that's one failure to start off with , although I am writing it now. This morning I was thinking that the milk was lasting a hell of a long time, then I poured it in to the tea (I'm not a milk in first person which still seems very odd to me), the milk was finally past it's sell by date, another failure!! But !!! If I had written this last night I couldn't have written about the sour milk.

When I worked at EE someone said to me they felt under pressure because we were always expected to deal with emergencies (like Summer, Valentine's Day and Christmas, that was a running joke about marketting), but I said that mobile phones were now a 24/7 thing and you always expected to be able to make a call or use your phone. I said imagine you came home and hit the light switch and nothing happened you'd be straight on the phone (assuming it was working!!) to the power company because you expect power and water 24/7. Phones have become a utility, and need to be always available and we make sure that they are.

Yesterday I walked to work and Google Fit recorded 3.5K steps , normally it's 4.5K to 5K (the highest as been 6.6K via Cowgate and Westgate Road), so I was disappointed , and continually during the day it's been down on what I expected. Fenham Library to home was recorded as 100 steps when I know it's 5-600, so that was another failure, but is it the Sony phone hardware , the Android Operating System of the Google Fit App, or even the EE network. For me it's a failure but I will deal with that.

There's a few other things like moving the Song of The Salesman site, trying to set up the Joomla database connection. It makes some suggestions but doesn't tell you what information you have to give it, and the help and talk boards all say the same thing "you must have put the wrong information in". Well guessing doesn't really help in this situation.

All these are failures but they are challenges to be addressed and I will will deal with the ones I can, and I do like a challenge though not as keen attempting the apparently impossible which is a situation I often find myself in.

And in an amazing piece of synchronicity Chris Hawkins on 6Music has just put on "Needle In A Haystack" by The Velvelettes which seems fairly appropriate given the subject. Have a great Tuesday everybody.

Ideas

I love showering but always find drying myself a bind and was thinking what a great idea a full body air drier would be. No wet towels , afterwards, no picking up wet towels to dry yourself with if you are not first in and just the feeling of warm air on your body would almost be like a mediterranean holiday. I love warm water on my body and warm air would be just as good.

The thing is many years ago what would be the next step, Yellow Pages? Your local libriary? If you asked friends they may think you are some kind of deviant... warm air on your naked body.... you pervert sir ... how dare you. But we use hair driers (or is it dryers?) , we use hand driers , and I do like the Dyson Airblade, and we also have fans to keep us cool when the weather is hot , so all the bits are there.

However thanks to Berners-Lee and Arpanet we have the Internet, the worlds biggest reference library and if you search Google for "full body drier" this is what you get. There are a lot out there. You can get this fairly snazzy one by Valiryo on Amazon, though at £900 to replace my shower towels I am still tempted. I don't know of any friends who have one.

So I had a great idea but found that someone had got there first, though if someone were to offer me a free one I would take it straight away.

Anyway , although it's Monday it looks like a gorgeous day so I will probably be walking into work and no doubt looking for things to video and photograph. Also this post is keeping up the #August50 and if I do another one tonight then I should be starting to get towards the 50 that I am aiming for.

So the song has to be Polly Jean Harvey's "Dry" ... one of those songs that is not on the artists album of the same name like Led Zeppelin's "Houses of The Holy" , what else could it be ... have a great Monday everybody...

The Baltimore Stockbroker

Well the #August50 hasn't started well, so much for two posts a day, although I have a lot of time to make it up, though because August has a few weekend away , I probably only have about 25 days when I can write, so the two a day is sort of essential when I can write.

My walking has got off to a reasonable start, and last night it poured down but today looks like another bright day, that's perfect really , rain at night the sun during the day.

Though there's no direct posts about The Baltimore Stockbroker, it's something I had heard about but not thought about. It came up in the Jordan Ellenberg book an is basically about targetting people to take advantage of them. Anyone can do it, it's just whether you are enough of a git to actually do it but financial institutions and governments do it all the time. This is the full story from Mike Adams blog

"To repeat from the beginning: Suppose you received a letter from a financial advisor who told you a certain stock was going up over the next several weeks. You watched the stock, and sure enough it went up. A few weeks later that same financial advisor sent another letter to say another stock was going to go down over the following few weeks. Sure enough, as you watched, the stock did go down. Then that same financial advisor sent a third letter to tell you to watch another stock that was going to go up. Sure enough it did. With the next letter the financial advisor told you to watch another stock that was going to go up. And sure enough it did. That same financial advisor sent another six letters each time predicting correctly the direction of every stock he told you to watch – a perfect prediction ten out of ten times.

In the eleventh letter he asked for a big investment. What would you say? He had been right ten out of ten times. What the investor does not see is the total picture—the whole story. That financial advisor began sending letters to 10,240 prospects. In 5,120 he predicted the stock would go up; in the other 5,120 he predicted the stock would go down. The 5,120 to whom he sent the letter saying the stock would go down never heard from our financial advisor. Of the 5,120 to whom he said the stock would go up, 2,560 got a second letter predicting that second stock would go up and the other 2,560 got a second letter saying the second stock would go down. The 2,560 who got the letter predicting the wrong direction of the stock those people never heard from our financial advisor again. Of those who got the correct prediction, 1,280 got the third letter predicting a third stock would go up and 1,280 got a letter saying the third stock would go down. You the reader now the full story. Only 10 prospects would get letters with 10 perfect predictions. The other 10, 230 people never heard from the advisor ever again. "

So a small group of people think that the guy is a genius. The book goes on to state , quite rightly, that the improbable is highly probable because there are so many people. It's high;y improbably that you will win on the lottery or a horse race , but people do and sometimes quite handsomely. The thing is with today's speed of communication we hear about these things a lot more quickly. We have tools to help us if we so choose,  but improbabilty and  chance can always throw a spanner in the work.

Part of life is about minimising risk, and we all do that. You set out a bit earlier to get the bus that will get you to work on time, but sometoimes the bus doesn't turn up and you are still late. I try and minimise risk by building in contiongency and options to everything, but it doesn't alwys work , but actually does 99% of the time. I don't tend to miss trains or flights or be late for work or miss paying bills because I have things in place "just in case".

Sorry this is just a functional post, but I suppose the theme points toward the superb Penetration song "Life's A Gamble" . Will I do another post today? We shall see .....

Have a brilliant Thursday everybody 

#August50

I had this mad idea of doing 50 posts in August under the tag #August50. That's like two posts a day. The most I've done is 43 which was last October so it's certainly not impossible, jyust it will take time. I really need to be able to to a post in under twenty minutes but more importantly find something to write about.

I finished the Million Step Challenge having done 1,071,635 steps in three months , which took in 92 days, and daily totals ranged between 2.5K and 22K that's an average of 11.6K a day. I was wondering how I could keep this up and decided to set a target of 340K a month and we will see if I can keep to that. The winter months may be problematic and February will require me to average over 12K steps a day.

Today looks a little grey but I haven't hit 11K for a week, but I am going to to hit that today, starting by walking into work, which is a daily target.

It is always good to have something reachable to aim for, and it costs nothing to walk. Although my weight loss is unspectacular to non existent from this exercise and reasonably sensible eating (bread virtually cut out , but the odd Marathon bar when blood sugar drops) today I was 102.6 Kg (16 stone 2lb) which is the lowest I 've recorded myself since getting digital scales a couple of years back,  and I havent been under 16 stone in 35 years so it's a little progress.

Anyway what more appropriate songfor this post than "The Weight" by The Band. It was going to be used in the film "Easy Rider" but the film producer opted for a same version cover by a band called Smith.

Have a great Tuesday and first day of Augus.