personal on Oxymoronical

Let's talk about social anxiety

Thu, 28 Jan 2016 23:29:38 +0000

It took me a long time to publish my last post. I spent months trying to start it until I finally felt brave enough. I must confess that for a few hours after it was published I felt my anxiety levels rising. No-one responded. Nothing on Twitter or Facebook. Was everyone horrified at what I’d said? What had I done?

I’m glad to say that those feelings soon subsided as friends and colleagues chimed in their support both public and private. A few mentioned that seeing me talk about these things helped them too. Knowing that you’re not alone is a powerful thing. That can be hard with mental health because we don’t talk about it. When it strikes you feel alone and isolated which makes everything worse.

Me and my dumb brain

Wed, 27 Jan 2016 17:18:57 +0000

Today those polite folk from up north have been talking about mental health and how it affects them and those around them. Mental health is one of those issues that we too rarely talk about. I think it’s partly because you can’t see the problem and unless you have experienced it yourself it can be very difficult to understand. There has always been a stigma attached as if for some reason having something wrong with your mind is much worse than having any other kind of medical issue.

The bizarre world of the expectant father

Wed, 07 May 2014 17:45:18 +0000

I don’t often blog about non-work related stuff. Actually scratch that, I don’t often blog. But I can’t help but talk about how life becomes very strange when you’re expecting. None of this is new but it is new to me so therefore you must read it again and in some cases relive it.

Random strangers are suddenly your closest friend

I don’t know how my wife copes with it at least I don’t have to wear a stamp on my forehead proclaiming me to be an expectant father. Even so the fact does occasionally slip out while I’m talking to people I don’t know. All of a sudden I’m expected to offer up details on how far along we are, how my wife is feeling, if we know the sex, what names have we picked and damnit I just want to order some new checks please I don’t need to hear about how great the schools are around here.

How to Win Friends and Influence People in the Digital Age

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 10:20:39 +0000

A friend recently made me a deal where he would buy me this book if I’d read it and tell him something that I learnt from it. I think this is all a cunning plan of his to get all his friends to do the same and save him having to read it himself but I’m never one to turn down a free book, especially when it is one that a former manager recommended I read. Well ok so he recommended I read the original which was written in the 1930’s. Since then there have been a number of books based on the same ideas for different audiences, even one in pink for teen girls (I am not kidding). This version attempts to bring the concepts into the modern age by using more recent examples and explaining how you can apply them to the internet age.

Afterburner steak rub

Sun, 14 Apr 2013 16:45:01 +0000

This is a recipe for a steak rub that I made up last night. It came out pretty well and everyone enjoyed it. It slightly caramelises the surface of the steak infusing it with herby goodness and after you enjoy that flavour a nice kick of heat comes in the after taste.

1/4 handful fresh sage, finely chopped
1/2 handful fresh thyme, finely chopped
1 handful fresh parsley, finely chopped
2 tsp salt
1 tbsp brown sugar
2 tsp black pepper
1 tsp cayenne pepper

Mix it all together in a bowl, rinse off your steaks and apply liberally to each side about half an hour before you plan to start cooking. These quantities should make enough for 4 small steaks.

Six hour chilli

Mon, 08 Oct 2012 05:51:36 +0000

I’ve enjoyed making and eating chilli ever since I was in university. It has a lot of appeal for your average student:

You can make it in bulk and live off it for a few weeks
You can make it spicy enough that you start bleeding out of your nose (and thus totally impress all your friends)
It’s dead simple and really hard to screw up

The great part is that really once you have the basic ingredients you can just go nuts, vary up the ratios, add extra bits and pieces, whatever you fancy. Eventually though I discovered that I was getting a bit too wild and really wanted to nail down a basic “good” recipe to work from. It took a couple of tries but here it is. It’ll take around six hours to cook, an extra hour for prep depending on how lazy/drunk you are.

Another 7 things…

Sun, 07 Aug 2011 02:43:13 +0000

Thanks to robcee you get to learn a little more about me. Much like him I’ve done this once before (perhaps it’s a sign of our age?) but it was over two years ago so let’s see if I can manage to rustle up a whole other seven things. I believe that the original meme said the facts had to be surprising things that most people didn’t know but I think I’ve used up all the surprising stuff about me already so most of this is probably common knowledge to those that follow my twitter stream.

Sad news today

Thu, 06 Jan 2011 04:53:44 +0000

As I blogged yesterday, today Ripley got a CT scan and biopsy of the mass that is growing in her left shoulder. The biopsy results won’t be back for a few days but the CT results were really all that were needed to confirm our worst fears. Ripley has cancer and it’s large and aggressive.

We got to look at the CT scan and it was frankly terrifying how large this thing is. In certain cross sections it looked to be taking up a full third of her body and it curves all down her left side and up over the top of her spine. It was taking up the contrast solution they inject which means blood is running through it. This both increases the odds of it spreading and makes it much more difficult to remove. In short, there is basically nothing we can do at this point.

Kontemplating Kitteh Katastrophe

Wed, 05 Jan 2011 07:37:26 +0000

Well that’s certainly a nicer way of saying that you’re trying to work out just how to decide how much money and trauma it is worth putting your cat through to keep her alive.

Just before we flew home for Christmas (yes, that flight) we spotted a small lump on Ripley’s left shoulder. We rushed her to the vet’s fearing the worst but they allayed our fears, finding it was just a blood filled space, likely the result of a trauma (though what we couldn’t fathom) and blood tests showed no irregularities. They said it should shrink over the course of a few weeks. We had to put her up at the boarders while we were travelling of course but we managed to put it out of our minds and have a good trip with family.

British Airways ruined my Christmas

Thu, 23 Dec 2010 00:29:39 +0000

To be clear I don’t blame BA for having to cancel flights into Heathrow when the airport cannot run at full capacity. That is certainly not their fault, you can’t change the weather (though you could buy more snowploughs!). What annoys me is their incompetent response to the situation and then their attempts at being nice with fakey emails from the CEO.

I wanted to go and see my family for Christmas this year. We were booked on a direct flight from San Francisco to Heathrow that was due to leave about 4 hours from now but due to the snowstorms in the UK it has been cancelled. The first we heard about it was an email from my dad at 9:30am yesterday morning, he had been keeping track of the flight status better than us. I don’t understand this. They have my contact details so why wasn’t I the first to hear about the cancellation the moment it went up onto the website. In fact I finally got an email from BA about it at 3pm, at least five and a half hours after it went onto the website. The email contained this boldfaced lie:

How do people vote?

Thu, 14 May 2009 11:33:33 +0000

I’m afraid to say that I’m pretty bad when it comes to the political process. I have voted exactly once in my entire life, the first time I was old enough to do so and never since. I like to use the excuse that I don’t know enough about the candidates and the issues involved and so I can’t make an informed decision. While that is actually true (I firmly believe that an uninformed vote is a wasted vote, maybe even a dangerous vote) it really just hides the fact that I don’t make myself find the time to go and research the issues and the candidates like I should. Previously that didn’t worry me so much but I guess as you get older you realise more and more how what the government does influences directly the state of your life, so lately I’ve been trying to keep an eye on the news to see what is going on out there. It’s pretty tough going, the news tends to focus on all the muckslinging and scandals, which as far as I can see is shared pretty evenly by all the parties, and this drowns out discussions on actual policy.

Giving up is hard to do

Sat, 31 Jan 2009 15:56:18 +0000

I don’t like to think of myself as a hoarder, but I am. Certainly not as bad as many people but you know stuff just builds up and it seems a shame to throw away perfectly good things. My hoarding is kept mostly under control by the fact that I haven’t lived in the same place for more than about 2 years since I left home. Moving is the perfect opportunity to ditch things you don’t need any longer, if you throw it away you don’t have to pack it and I hate packing.

Stupid rules

Wed, 14 Jan 2009 17:53:55 +0000

So let’s pretend I am in a bad place and looking to kill myself through an overdose of pills. Is the fact that the supermarkets refuse to sell more than two packets going to be a hindrance to me? I don’t think so. I’ll just go through a few times, soon have enough for my stupid attempt.

Now let’s pretend I’m really sick. Getting out of bed is quite an effort let alone leaving the house. Unfortunately I’ve run out of drugs so I have to make a run to the store. Clearly I want to get a few packs, not only can I get through a pack a day but a few different types covers me as the illness changes over time. Now the store refusing to sell more than two packets is actually a pain in the ass.

7 things I know about me…

Sat, 10 Jan 2009 01:35:31 +0000

That pesky JOEDREW! has tagged me so I guess I have to participate in this thing.

Here are the rules for this particular meme

Link to your original tagger(s) and list these rules in your post.
Share seven facts about yourself in the post.
Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
Let them know they’ve been tagged.

My seven things:

What happened in 2008?

Sat, 03 Jan 2009 17:23:38 +0000

In no particular order:

Celebrated the birth of friends’ children.
Helped some friends through sad times.
Moved past previous mistakes.
Experienced the sheer terror of minimoto bikes.
Met new friends who I now wouldn’t want to lose.
Bought a new car.
Went to the gym a lot.
Met someone very special, twice.
Saw a friend set himself free.
Grew a beard.
Earned responsibilities.
Started planning for the future.
Survived the dangers of Whistler.
Visited Toronto.
Saw my parents move away from my childhood home.
Took lots of flights.
Became a regular employee for the first time in 8 years.
Had a great holiday that I wish could have lasted longer.
Started the long road to moving to America.

What will 2009 bring?

Call centre fail

Fri, 19 Dec 2008 17:33:44 +0000

It’s always fun phoning my mobile phone company. Firstly there is the infuriating menu system where even the “to talk about anything else option” goes to another set of options, none of which are “to talk about anything else”. Then there are the broken systems that lead all the operators to just go to a default “please call us back later”:

Me: “Hi, I’d like to know what the costs are for using data on my current plan.”

Travel stats

Fri, 12 Dec 2008 10:20:43 +0000

I thought it would be amusing to look at some of the numbers associated with my travel home from San Francisco. This is taking into account the time between leaving the place I was staying in America to getting back to my house:

63 hours total travel time
29 hours in hotel rooms
16 hours sleeping
15 hours in the air
4 plane flights (on 3 different planes)
8 hours sat in planes that weren’t flying
3 hours in a car

Happy to be home?

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 15:33:12 +0000

I’m normally pretty happy to be getting home after a trip to the States. Not because I don’t enjoy being out there of course, but you know home is where you’re most comfortable and living out of a bag in a hotel gets tiring after a time. Today is the first time that that has really changed.

I really didn’t spend as much time in San Francisco as I would have liked. A mere 4 days meant I totally failed to hang out with some of the friends I wanted to and didn’t have enough time with even those that I did get to see. I’m really grateful to those that put me up and took special efforts to catch up with me.

Frustration

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 18:07:02 +0000

For a while now I’ve been in a bit of a rut. I knew I was there I just hadn’t quite got the motivation to pull myself out of it. It wasn’t such a bad place to be, but the difference of being just ok with the way things are going and being exactly where you want to be and with the people you want to be with is a pretty large one. I’ve been exceptionally lucky that over the last few months a bunch of things have happened that will help take me to where I want to go and start some new and exciting changes in my life.

The Long and winding road

Sun, 19 Oct 2008 20:04:22 +0000

So as I’ve said before I’m planning on moving somewhere new. I’ve finally made up my mind and I’ll be trying to relocate to Mozilla’s Mountain View office. I say trying because of course just deciding is only the first bit, there are still visas to be arranged, contracts to be agreed, accommodation to find. It’s going to be a long road and I’m barely started.

Hopefully the guys in the Toronto office don’t hate me too much for snubbing them. While they are awesome and I would really love to work out of that office, I think I’m going going to get a better social life outside of work around San Francisco. I have friends inside and outside the city who I know will drag me out so I’m not at home alone every weekend like I am now.

Random music

Thu, 16 Oct 2008 19:44:14 +0000

I’ve known for a while that I’m not terribly good at varying the music I listen to. Even within my own music collection I tend to have a few favourite albums of the moment, and while those favourites vary I rarely listen to anything else. Except when I have the radio on, and then it is your usual popular stuff, some good, some pap. I still pick up new things from friends occasionally but I never really go out of my way to vary what I’m listening to. I started to change that a little over the last few weeks.

Status quo ante

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 09:33:56 +0000

Looks like I can finally say that my body clock is fully switched back to UK time. I can be sure of this because I spent 2 hours trying to get to sleep last night. That hasn’t happened since I flew out to Toronto over 3 weeks ago. I had rather hoped that after my trip had resolved all the issues I was stressed about that I might be able to get myself back into some sort of sensible sleep pattern, but apparently not.

Sky Anytime, programmes you can't watch whenever you don't want to watch them

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 19:28:35 +0000

At my old house I used to have cable TV. Provided first by NTL who then got bought out by Virgin Media. In many ways they weren’t so good, however where Virgin excelled was in providing an excellent on-demand service. With the right TV package you could get instant access to the last 7 days highlights (or for some definition of) and entire series of popular programmes.

Sky can’t quite match the kind of choice Virgin can give, they just don’t have the ability to stream data on demand to an individual home. Instead they have come up with a kind of a halfway house solution. So long as you have their PVR (Sky+) you can switch on the Anytime service. You sacrifice a bunch of space on the PVR but overnight it downloads and stores programming, leaving you with a choice of maybe 10 programmes or movies to watch whenever you like.

Back home

Sun, 28 Sep 2008 11:15:48 +0000

Finally back home after my two weeks in North America. Both Toronto and Mountain View included fun and disappointment. Traveling to these places is generally awesome but somehow I always manage to generate some form of drama for myself, and really living out of hotels and restaurants gets old pretty fast. I’m not much of a cook but I am looking forward to sitting down with a homemade meal this evening, well maybe tomorrow with the jetlag.

More personal

Sun, 28 Sep 2008 08:26:01 +0000

I guess I’ve always disliked the idea of putting my personal thoughts onto my blog. I figure that no-one really cares much about what I’m thinking.

Despite this I’m going to start to post some more personal stuff here. I’ve come to realise that I am frequently bored and just looking for something to say. I usually just fire off a random email to one of my close friends, mostly not really saying anything just general rambling. I think I’ll make their lives easier by just posting here instead, then if they want to get back to me they can, or not without me being too bothered by it.