The problem with the pace of technology

I needed some support with a router that we are having problems with at work. I looked on the website and found technical notes – FAQ’s troubleshooting etc, but under the model I am looking for, there were only PDF’s available proclaiming the European compliance. Not especially helpful.

I couldn’t seem to find a basic user manual either, so I rang the number listed on the site for UK support.

The first time I rang I was given a premium rate number to call for support, which the line announced itself as (a different model router) support upon connection. The advisor I spoke to could not find any documentation on my model of router but wished me luck in finding help.

I rang the UK number again and explained the situation for a second time. The lady I spoke to was very helpful but was looking on their website for help, which I'd already explained that I'd checked. She was unable to find anything relating to the router on the website that I hadn’t already found myself, which came as no great surprise. She then offered me a number for support for home products that was in America. I explained that for one thing this was a business product, or at least being used by a business and secondly that it seemed ludicrous that there was no European number to call, let alone a UK based number. She offered me a second number, which started with the code for America. I pointed this out only to be told, “I don’t know if it’s an American number or not.” I confirmed that it was definitely an American number from the code. She read it out anyway.

She then Exclaimed that yes, she had found a UK number, but then realised it was the number I was already speaking to her on, which she ironically commented was ‘helpful’ before saying, “I don’t know why they put our number, it’s not really any use to you.” I had to agree.

I take it all back...

Firstly, an update: I haven't smoked a cigarette in over four weeks. Not bad huh? A guy at work commented on it just a few moments ago by saying, "You haven't smoked in, like... ages man!" only to be a bit disappointed when I told him it was four weeks. He thought it was about three months, which at times it has felt like that to me too, but I think a month is doing pretty well, so with all due respect, fuck him.

So, the next part may be extremely old news to some, if not most, but it's new to me so hell with it. You know how sometimes you find something cool out and you're all buzzed about it and you tell someone and they say, "Oh THAT? We've known about that for ages..." and then you get that feeling that confirms that you're just outside the clique, on the fringes of madness, riding a scooter powered by squirrel spit on the teetering edge of the abyss and the munch pebbles are getting bigger... (If you don't know what munch pebbles are, you've either never skated or at least didn't own a skateboard during it's golden age between say, 1980 and 1990,)

Anyway, a little while ago I discovered the 'personalise this page' thing on Google. (If you're thinking, "big whoop", skip this bit. There is a discussion on Geeks vs Nerds further down and some funny quotes and stuff at the end.) First of all I was none too impressed. OK, so it gave you a little clock and I could RSS feed a couple of blogs I like, which was kind of cool but nothing amazing. Then today for some reason I remembered when I saw a demo of Vista, the sidebar to which you could attach gadgets and then I hazily remembered some comparison to Google. So I started tinkering with the add stuff part - how cool is it? There's EVERYTHING on there! I have an IT tab to help with work with feeds from Slashdot and GRC, as well as IP and DNS tools, a fun page with games and comics, and a main homepage with blogs, quotes and the news and weather. I'm all geeked out about it. (I am a self confessed geek and have bought products by thinkgeek.com to prove it - actually I'd love to get a feed from there...) So anything bad I said about Google, (not on here,) I take back - mainly because as well as the gadgets thing being really cool, there is one that rates how evil Google is on that day based on a user poll. I figure any company that doesn't take itself too seriously and allows that kind of thing can't be all bad. Besides, people have a go at Google because they are getting too big and are trying to take over the whole net. Well, being pragmatic, that's what companies in a capitalist society do isn't it? They grow and earn more money and offer more products and services and basically try to take over. It's only the monopolies commission that stops one company trying to buy everyone else and in reality most stuff is owned by about 5 or 6 massive corporations anyway and I doubt most people know the names of any of them.

Whilst I was impressed by Vista when I saw it, it basically does what other versions of Windoze did, which seems to be rip good ideas off other people, (mostly Apple and also Google for this one,) and implement it. Don't get me wrong, I'm a Window$ boy myself - all but 3 of the computers I look after at work are Micro$oft machines, (the others being 2 Macs for the graphics crew and one Free BSD based server with a proprietary OS that acts as firewall and net monitor type of thing,) but the ideas in Vista blatantly aren't new. The Aero flipping screens thing is similar to OSX's interface and the sidebar gadgets are like Google's, as mentioned. I still want to upgrade though, as the benefits will still be worth it and it looks damn sexy.

On another note, I had a drunken pub discussion with someone once on the differences between Nerds and Geeks. Some people will think that it's a different term for the same thing, but this guy described himself as a Nerd and I think of myself as a Geek, so we got talking about why. I asked him if he had any toys on top of his monitor. He said no, which definitely puts him in the Nerd camp, but is a symptom rather than a cause.
After about an hour of discussion, we decided that Nerds have a need to make things neat - whether it's cabling or code or whatever. They like things to be in order. It makes sense to them and they feel more comfortable when things are in their proper place and correctly labelled or referenced or commented or whatever.
Geeks, by contrast, just like things to work. It doesn't have to be pretty, it just has to get the job done. Sometimes this is by necessity, like a lack of time to pretty things up, sometimes it's by design because, hey, that's just who we are. We admire Heath Robinson and are more likely to be impressed by a bodge job that works despite looking unbelievably dangerous and/or unlikely to work, over a job that looks very pretty and orderly.
You don't have to do a particular job to be a geek or a nerd, you can find both schools of thought in programming, network administration - even (gasp,) non IT jobs, (see under [L]users,) it's a lifestyle thing.

Right, finish on some random cack:

Word of the day that doesn’t exist but probably should: Grebulon (noun): A name for those small, unexpected crunchy things you often find inside other things – usually foodstuffs, but not exclusively.

Usage: “I was eating a Kinder Surprise yesterday and there was a grebulon inside, as well as the toy. I may sue the company for psychological damage and whiplash.”

Random me quote: “Don’t let the bastards get you down, shut you up, or fob you off.”

Random me quote 2: “Life is what happens. Everything else is just stuff.”

Clever answers to stupid questions

I have a myspace page - I know, I know... anyway someone posted a list of "things to think about" which were mostly stupid semantic questions, with a few genuinely interesting questions. As I started reading them I was answering them in my head, so I decided to have a go at them. Most of the answers are from my own head, but a few I needed to research further. A coupleI am not 100% sure on, but are ok as far as I know. I ended up answering 68 out of about 85 questions. Most of the ones I missed were either boring or incredibly stupid, but if I can find the original bullitin on myspace, (bulletins are offline at the moment for some reason,) I'll post the rest.

For those I had to research: thanks goes to wikipedia, dictionary.com, howstuffworks.com, google, and several random sites, as well as the book Anatomy for the artist by Sarah Simblet.

Here are my answers:

1. Are people who are allergic to nuts allergic to coconuts too?
No, coconuts are a fruit.

2. Are Zebras white with black stripes or black with white stripes?
It is generally believed that zebras are dark animals, with white stripes where the pigmentation is inhibited. The pigment of the hair is found solely in the hair and not in the skin. The reasons for thinking that they were originally pigmented animals are that (1) white horses would not survive well in the African plains or forests; (2) there used to be a fourth species of zebra, the quagga (which was overeaten to extinction in the eighteen hundreds). The quagga had the zebra striping pattern in the front of the animal, but had a dark rump; (3) when the region between the pigmented bands becomes too wide, secondary stripes emerge, as if suppression was weakening.

3. Aren't all rooms room temperature?
Yes, semantically but 'room temperature' is a measuring point at which the temperature is deemed comfortable

4. Can bald men get lice?
In theory, yes but lice use the hair to climb, cling to and attach their eggs to, so it would be unlikely.

5. Can crop circles be square?
Crop circles is an overall term, due to the original formations seen, but crop patterns have been created in all manner of shapes.

6. Can someone give up lent for lent?
No. This is a logical contradiction. You can’t give up giving up, it’s a double negative.

7. Can you breathe through your nose and mouth at the same time?
Yes due to the human descended larynx.

8. Can you get cornered in a round room?
No, another logical contradiction.

9. Can you make a candle out of earwax?
No, candle wax is flammable when melted - it's actually the gas that burns. Ear wax is a totally different substance and not flammable in that way.

10. Can you write in pencil on an eraser?
Yes. (You've never done that?)

11. Do cows drink milk?
Obviously as calves, all cows suckle from their mother.

12. Do cows have calf muscles?
No, that is a nickname for the gastrocnemius muscle. Cow physiology is different to humans.

13. Do ducks sneeze?
No, sneezing is a product of the human olfactory and respiratory systems, usually in connection with the immune system.

14. Do glow-in-the-dark objects stop glowing when somebody turns the lights on?
No, but their apparent luminosity decreases relative to the luminosity of the brighter object - hence why you can't see the stars during the daytime. They are still there, but the much brighter light of the sun renders them impossible to see.

15. Do octopuses have arms or legs?
Neither, they have tentacles.

16. Do people with big eyes see at a wider range than people with smaller eyes?
Human eyes vary between 20mm and 30mm in diameter on average, but the difference in the angle viewed would be imperceptible between the two extremes.

17. Do stairs go up or down?
Up and down are relative and mostly arbitrary terms until an object in motion can be given a relative vector, seen to be in accordance with one and in opposition to the other.

18. Does anyone actually kill two birds with one stone?
The statistical possibility that someone, somewhere throughout all of history has achieved this act is quite high, however the use of the word 'does', implies an ongoing or at least present tense usage and I would like to hope not.

19. How can someone 'draw a blank'?
The 'drawing' refers to drawing from memory rather than artistry, and probably shares an analogous linguistic form with drawing water from a well.

20. How can you hear yourself think?
The exact processes are unknown but the human mind is capable of replicating and inventing sounds, (and images,) within it's own confines.

21. How can you tell when sour cream goes bad?
The same way you tell when 'normal' cream has gone bad - it smells and tastes different and eventually will develop mould.

22. How do the "Keep off the grass" signs get there?
Someone puts them there. The idea being that if one person walks over the grass to put a sign up it will not cause much damage, but if everyone was to walk over the grass, it would.

23. If 75% of all accidents happen within 5 miles of home, why not move 10 miles away?
Because 'home' is not a fixed location, but a relative one. So if you move 10 miles away, that is now where your home is and all the things that most people statistically have accidents with would still be within 5 miles of the new location.

24. If a cat always lands on its feet and buttered bread always lands butter side down, what would happen if you tied buttered bread on top of a cat?
Firstly, neither of those statements are true. Cats try to ensure they land on their feet but don't always. buttered bread is subjected to the same laws of physics and probability as everything else and does not always fall butter side down, but people percieve this to be the case because they forget about the times it landed butter side up because there was less impact on them.

If you were to tie a piece of buttered bread to a cat and drop them so that they were both 90 degrees to the floor, the cat, being an animate, sentient life form concerned with its own safety, would try to right itself and would most likely land on it's feet. The bread, being an inanimate object, would be subjected to whatever moves the cat made, unless the string broke, in which case it would depend on its distance from the floor at the time, along with its rotational speed, if any, and other physical factors.

25. If a criminal turns himself in shouldn't he get the reward money?
No. Criminality is usually punished by society, not rewarded.

26. If a word is spelled wrong in the dictionary, how would you know?
If you thought this may be the case, you could check other dictionaries, including online ones and then contact the publisher in order to get them to check and rectify their mistake.

27. If an orange is orange, why isn't a lime called a green or a lemon called a yellow?
Presumably the colour was named after the fruit, not the other way around. The orange tree is called Citrus Aurantium in latin, the lemon tree Citrus Limon.

28. If electricity comes from electrons, does morality come from morons?
No. The words moron and morality share no linguistic roots.

29. If heat rises then shouldn’t hell be cold?
No. As previously stated, up and down are relative terms. That's like saying Australia should be cold because it's down.

30. If it is a 50mph wind and you drive your car at 50mph downwind, if you stick your head outside would you feel the wind?
You would feel the air passing over you as you rushed through it, yes. Wind is usually defined as moving air, so you could argue that if you are moving through it, it is not wind, or else you define it as moving because you take yourself as the fixed point of interest as we are prone to do.

31. If it is zero degrees outside today and tomorrow it is supposed to be twice as cold, how cold will it be tomorrow?
Strictly mathematically speaking, this is a paradox as zero is the absence of anything. Pragmatically speaking, zero in temperature is defined as the point at which water freezes in celcius and colder than that goes into minus figures. It would then depend on how much the temperature dropped over the previous day, (assuming we are measuring in days due to the usage of 'today' and 'tomorrow',) therefore if it was 2C yesterday and zero today, we can effectively expect tomorrow to reach -2C.

32. If money doesn't grow on trees then why do banks have branches?
The word, as with many words in English, has multiple meanings, (the word with the most number of meanings in English is 'set',) but branches in this sense still keeps some of the original meaning of being offshoots from a main body.

33. If one synchronized swimmer drowns, do they all have to drown?
No, the routine would stop and if the person could not be revived, the appropriate authorities would be notified and the show cancelled.

34. If quizzes are quizzical then what are tests?
Testing.

35. If someone can't see, they're blind and if someone can't hear, they're deaf, so what do you call people who can't smell?
Anosmic.

36. If someone told you they were a pathological liar, would you believe them?
It would depend on other, mainly non verbal clues. If their body language gave clues as to their assertation being false, then I would deduce that they were indeed lying, but that the condition was not classed as pathalogical. If their body language suggested they were being truthful I would deduce that yes, they were a pathalogical liar and they were telling me this honestly because their condition does not preclude them from ever telling the truth.

37. If swimming is such exercise, why are whales fat?
Swimming is good excercise for humans, who usually do it in warm and relatively shallow waters. Whales have a subcutenous layer of fat in order to keep warm while swimming at depths that would prove lethal to humans, where the water is extremely cold.

38. If the universe is expanding, what is it expanding into?
The theory that the universe is expanding is exactly that - a theory, but one that seems to hold weight due to observations in red shifts from distant stars. You might as well ask, what was there before the universe, to which the most logical and obvious answer, applying Occam's razor, is - nothing.

39. If you are driving at near the speed of light and turn on your headlights, what will you see?
It is impossible to drive any craft at such a speed presently and scientists generally agree that ever being able to do so is extemely unlikely, however even if you are travelling at the speed of light, the light being emitted is accelerating away from you at the speed of light, so it would appear normal.

40. If you have x-ray vision, and you can see through anything, wouldn't you see through everything and actually see nothing?
No. Xrays are very good at penetrating things like fabric and soft tissues, but the more dense the object, the less x-rays penetrate, hence why bones show up on x-rays otherwise the sheet would be blank and they would be no use in medical imaging.

41. If you stole a pen from a bank then would it still be considered a bank robbery?
In theory taking any article from a bank could be considered a 'bank robbery', but the term is traditionally used to describe the theft of a large quantity of money or bonds. Crimes are judged on the value of what is taken and pens cost so little that a bank is unlikely to press charges for the theft of one from its premises, although many attatch them to counters with ball bearing chains to avoid them being taken.

42. If you take a shower, where do you put it?
If you are taking it from the shop you bought it in, the usual place to put it is in your bathroom. If you mean the act of having a shower, then it is a common lexicographical term and does not literally mean 'to take' in this case.

43. If you were born exactly on 12:00 midnight on December 31st –January 1st, which year would you say you were born in?
The year begginning Jan 1st, as it was only the previous year until the stroke of 12. If you had been born at 11:59 and 59 seconds, you would have been born in the previous year, ending December 31st, however births are rarely so precise.

44. If you were on a plane going the speed of sound and walked from the back of the plane to the front, would you be walking faster than the speed of sound?
No, due to the laws of motion and momentum, you would still be walking at roughly 4 miles per hour, (the average human walking rate,) relative to the surface you are walking on.

45. Is French kissing in France just called kissing?
No, apparently they call it American kissing. - I'll check this with my half French girlfriend though.

46. On the periodic table, why do some elements have symbols with letters that aren't even in the word?
They come from the latin versions or similar. For example, PB, which stands for lead, comes from the latin plumbum, from which we derive the word plumbing, as the Romans used lead for their water pipes. Other examples include: Sn - Tin - Stannum (Latin) Ag - Silver - Argentum (Latin), Argunas (Sanskrit) Cu - Copper - Cuprum (Latin).

47. Shouldn't there be a shorter word for "monosyllabic"?
No, the word is a conjunction of 'mono', meaning one and syllabic, which is formed from the word syllable, meaning an uninterrupted segment of speech consisting of a center of relatively great sonority with or without one or more accompanying sounds of relatively less sonority. No other word, conjunction or otherwise, has been formed to represent the same meaning. Besides which the length of a word often bears no direct correlation to it's meaning.

48. What are those little things on the end of your shoelaces called?
Ferrules.

49. What colour is a mirror?
A mirror reflects light, so in general has no colour, but often mirrors may have a slightly blue cast. Other mirrors maybe heavily coloured, either the backing or the glass itself, in which case it could be argued that they are not mirrors in the strictest sense, but instead just highly reflective surfaces.

50. What did cured ham actually have?
Again this is a word with more than one meaning. Curing, in relation to meat is a preservative process dating back hundreds of years and does not connote disease in this sense.

51. What does OK actually mean?
It is taken to mean everything is alright. Its exact origins are unknown, but it is believed to have come from a corruption of 'all correct', i.e. 'oll korrect', which was a popular way of speaking in the 1830's.

52. What would happen if everyone was to flush their toilet at the same time?
Chances are that the water companies would struggle to cope with the demand and burst pipes, flooding and sewage strewn streets would ensue.

53. What would happen if you were to feed a pig some bacon?
It would almost certainly eat it, digest it and eventually, defecate the remains out. Pigs are omnivorous but lack the mental capacity to distinguish between meat from one animal to another and so have no concept of cannibalism, which is an exclusively human idea.

54. Where do they get the seeds to grow seedless grapes?
Seedless grapes are seedless because the seed aborts during development, termed stenspermocarpy. You can see the remnant of the aborted seed(s) in the grape. Grape breeders have found a way to remove the developing embryo when it is very small to prevent it from aborting, termed embryo rescue. They can then raise seedless grapes from the rescued embryos to use in breeding new types of seedless grapes. For vineyards, seedless grapes are grafted.

55. Where does the white go when the snow melts?
The white colour is caused by the refraction of light due to the interactions of photons within the crystalline structure of ice. Because snow is a lot of ice crystals on top of each other, eventually all the different wavelengths of light are refracted back out equally, equalling a white colour. When it melts, it becomes water and the crystalline structure is lost.

56. Where would we be without rhetorical questions?
Literally, exactly at the same point in time & space that we are now. Linguistically we would lose a mostly useless and often frustrating device.

57. Which way does a compass point in space?
It would either float freely or point to the nearest magnetic field.

58. Who was the first person to see a cow, and think what would happen if I pulled those dangling bits and drink the liquid that comes out?
It's unlikely that things happened that way. Someone will have seen a calf suckling, associated it with humans breast feeding and possibly tested it.

59. Why do men have nipples?
Because all human fetuses start as female in the womb. After conception the developing embryo follows a female template. It's only after six to eight weeks that the effect of a gene on the Y chromosome kicks in for boy embryos. This gene stimulates the production and influence of hormones such as testosterone, which 'masculinise' the embryo by altering physical development to form male features. Nipples, however, are formed before this masculinisation process takes place, and nothing that goes on later reverses this. So the story that God made Eve from Adam's rib got it the wrong way round. Males are an adaptation of females and the nipples are just one piece of evidence for this.

60. Why does a round pizza come in a square box?
Square boxes are easier to make, given the materials used and are also easier to store and carry.

61. Why doesn't superglue stick to the inside of the tube?
It is the glues interaction with the air that causes a chemical reaction, making it harden and useful as an adhesive. There is little or no air in the tube and the glue is kept in liquid form.

62. Why is a square meal served on round plates?
It is sometimes said that this phrase originated from the Royal Navy practise of serving meals on square wooden plates. Such plates did exist and so that sounds like a plausible story. However, there's no evidence to support it and in fact, the lateness of the first printed record (see below) pretty well rules this out as a reasonable theory. The Royal Navy's records and many thousands of ship's logs are still available and, if the phrase came from that source, it would surely have been recorded before the mid-19th century. The word square has many meanings, including 'proper, honest, straightforward', and that's the meaning here. This isn't a rectilinear meal on right-angled crockery or otherwise, but a good and satisfying meal.

63. Why is ice clear but snow white?
Ice isn’t clear, it’s translucent, which means most of the photons pass through it. They do refract, but few are actually reflected and it is the absorption and reflection of different wavelengths of light that give colour to an object. If all the light is reflected, it is white. If all light is absorbed, it is black and varying degrees in between. If most of the light is neither absorbed nor reflected, the object is translucent or transparent. For snow, see 55.

64. Why is it called pineapple, when's there neither pine nor apple in it?
The word "pineapple", first recorded in 1398, was originally used to describe the reproductive organs of conifer trees (now termed pine cones). When European explorers discovered this tropical fruit, they called them "pineapples" (term first recorded in that sense in 1664) because it resembled what we now know as pine cones. The term "pine cone" was first recorded in 1695 to replace the original meaning of "pineapple"

65. Why is it so hard to remember how to spell 'mnemonic'?
Some people may find it difficult due to the odd arrangement of consonants at the beginning, however others may find it easy to remember for the same reason - the odd arrangement making it stand out.

66. Why is it, that the sun darkens the colour of your skin, but lightens the colour of your hair?
Hair and skin are two different substances and their pigmentation changes in different ways.

67. Why isn't phonetic spelled the way it sounds?
Not all words are onomatopoeic. Just because the word has that meaning does not mean it should be.

68. Would a fly without wings be called a walk?
No, it would still be a fly, short for flying insect, in much the same way that a person with no arms is still a person.

Thoughts on Thirties

No one ever tells you about your thirties. It's the decade of your life you are least prepared for. As a kid you have school, so you know what your life is going to be until you're 16 at which point you become old enough to have sex and you figure that having sex will keep you occupied for at least a year. Chances are it's more likely that trying to have sex as opposed to actually having the sex will form the larger part of your year, at which point you'll be old enough to drive and cruise around looking for girls/boys to attempt to have sex with. Then you look forward to 18. You'll officially be an adult - old enough to vote and most importantly, old enough to drink and there's a good chance that you'll have met someone willing to have sex with you and actually done it by this point. 19 is pretty much just more of the same and then you hit 20. So you're no longer a teenager, but that's no problem; you're still young and cool, it just means that you're no longer a kid and are now a fully sophisticated adult who may have had sex on a number of occasions, possibly with several partners by now. 21 is a milestone birthday for some reason, even though it's more of the same and then the next big one after that is when life begins at 40.

Only it's not. As you hit 25 and 26, something starts to creep in at the back of your mind. 27, 28... and then at 29 it hits you. The next big one isn't 40, it's 30 and no one has told you about it. You start to panic - you don't want to turn 30. What happens? You know at 40 you are out of touch with the kids and have to start wearing cardigans or jumpers or something, but what happens at 30? Do you start buying knitwear but not putting it on yet, stocking up in preparation? Do you wear it indoors but change into something cool to go out in? Do you still go out?

There's no guidance for you anywhere. Music is aimed at either teens or if it's more serious stuff, your parents. T.V. is the same - programs-a-plenty for kids, teens, twenty-somethings and generations older than you, but what for thirty year-olds? Even the programs with 30-something stars are trying to pass them off as 20-somethings. (Friends anyone?)

One of the reasons no one has told you about being 30 is that it's very different for our generation to our parents'. By the time my father was 30, I was 3. By the time my mother was 30, I was 8. They had grown up and been adults for a while by then. They'd got married, had jobs - careers even, and had kids. By the time I was 30, I'd just got a job in the field I now work in - the first steps into my career.

I didn't want to turn 30. I was enjoying my 20's nicely, thank you very much. I was getting to grips with a few things, growing up gradually but not rushing into anything in particular. True, by my mid 20's I had noticed a few grey hairs in my beard and my male pattern baldness was settled in, but I was still young and I had time. When 30 crept up onto the immediate horizon I got the fear pretty badly. I felt I should know what the hell was going on in my life. I should have achieved more by now. Shouldn't I be a fully fledged adult by this point? What do I do for fun now? Am I having a mid life crisis at 29? If so does that mean I'll only live to be 58? Did I leave the iron on?

I'll break it down for you. I'm 32 now, so I can speak with a little experience about being a thirtysomething.
Here's the bad news:

• There is nothing really that caters for your age group. No specific music, T.V., films, or pastime's of any sort.
• As a thirtysomething, you may experience moments of, "why have I not got my life more sorted than this at my age?"
• You may still live in a shared house, or even worse, with your parents - which you definitely didn't think you would be doing by now.
• You may notice the first signs of aging: grey hairs, the appearance of wrinkles, baldness for men, slightly less perkiness in the breasts for women. Ironically you may also find that you still get greasy skin and spots from time to time, which you had previously thought would be long behind you.
• You are already starting to notice you are out of touch with the kids and may even find yourself complaining about them.

Here's the good news:

• Although there's nothing specifically catered towards your age bracket, you are at a nice age where you can do pretty much anything and not look too out of place. You can go to pubs, clubs, bowling alleys, restaurants, parks... wherever and no one will bat an eyelid.
• Your musical and film tastes etc, won't so much change as just develop and branch out, but you'll still like most of the stuff you did when you were 20.
• You're at a good age, where you can hang out and talk to 20 somethings and have plenty to talk about without coming off as 'the creepy older person that hangs around with younger people', but also can hold your own in a room full of 40 or even 50 somethings. In a room full of 20 and 40 somethings, you can act as a bridge to the generation gap and talk to everyone.
  
• You may not think you have your life sorted, but actually it might be more sorted than you think when you look at it. Do you have a job? A career even? A car? A partner or in a serious relationship? A home? The fact is that even if you said 'no' to all of those, chances are you know what you want and where you are going better than ever before. You know your own mind better than ever before and are less afraid to speak your opinion than ever before. You are more yourself than you have ever previously been and if you think back, your probably more comfortable in your own skin now than ever before, so you are more confident too. That's huge.
• You are taken seriously as an adult by the world at large. Every now and again you get called 'young man' or 'young lady' by someone older, but it's usually someone over 60 at least and you actually take it as a compliment now. People of 50 and below talk to you like a person instead of a child and include you in conversations, even asking you your opinion on things, which you actually have to offer now.
• You have some really good friends that have been with you for a long time. You think of them differently to people that you hang out with, either from work or even socially. Your friends are the ones that have stuck by you throughout and you may or may not live close to them any more, but you keep in touch and you would jump in the car if they needed anything and you know they would do the same for you.
  

Basically you are more grounded, sorted and know your own mind more. You don't have to answer to as many people any more - maybe just your boss and your partner (but if your relationship is an adult one, then it's more equal give and take than previous ones.).

So far I've really enjoyed being a 30-something. I never really saw the American series of that name in the late 80's, early 90's, whenever it was, but it looked like it applied to my parents' generation more than mine from what I saw. Most of them were married, some had kids and nearly all of them wore jumpers or Laura Ashley dresses. Me? I wear jeans, t-shirts, trainers and hoodies with skateboarding logos on them, as well as beanies or caps to keep my bald head warm. My girlfriend says I dress like a teenager, but she's 29 and scared of turning 30, so what does she know? I've tried to tell her it will be cool, but she's going to have to find out for herself. Maybe going through the fear and coming out the other side with a feeling of, "Oh. Really? That was it?" is something we have to go through like a right of passage. To paraphrase the mighty Morpheus: "No one can tell you what being 30 is like, you have to experience it for yourself..."

Smoking - am I a dumbass or what?

When I was a kid, I hated my mother's smoking habit. Back then, every once in a while she would ask me to go to the shop to get her some cigarettes & quite often I would refuse, even if she sweetened the deal with a little money in it for me to buy whatever I wanted to. Sometimes I'd buckle & go, not because of the money - I would usually buy comics with the money rather than sweets, as I've never had a particularly sweet tooth, but rather because she would cajole me into it by pleading & then whining and I would eventually go in order to have a quiet life.
I would lecture her on the dangers of smoking, what it would do to her and plead with her to stop. I think I even hid her pack once or twice and maybe put a pack in the bin once.

Then, at the age of 16 I crossed the line which made me into a hypocrite, I took up smoking. To this day I still don't know why. I was working in a chip shop and the owner used to say, "go have a fag break," to which I used to reply, "but I don't smoke!" and he'd reply, "yeah I know, just go have a break." in a slightly exasperated tone.

For some reason one day he said it & I though, "Hell with it! If I'm going to have a fag break, I might as well have a fag!" and asked one of the other girls who worked there for one. I expected to do the usual, light-inhale-hack-choke-never smoke again, type of thing but instead I lit it, inhaled without incident and proceeded to smoke up to 20 a day for the next five years. Then one day when I was 21, I was walking home smoking and I thought, "I'm really not enjoying this anymore. It tastes like shit." I put it out and decided to quit as suddenly as I decided to start.

I decided I needed a gimmick to help me quit as I had tried before without success. I decided to leave one cigarette in a packet on top of my T.V. and the thinking behind this was that I still had one left, so I didn't have an excuse to go buy another packet, avoiding the "I'll quit after I've finished this packet," problem. Secondly, I only had to resist one fag - not as hard as resisting lots of imagined cigarettes when you don't have any. I had the fallback of having one there at the ready if I wanted one and all I had to do was not smoke it.

This worked for me and I quit smoking for the next 8 years. Then at 29, several events happened that turned my life as I knew it upside down, the main one being that I was dumped by my long term girlfriend who I'd spent the last 11 years with. After that happened I decided on a new start, so I moved cities. Between the move, trying to find a job, getting over the end of a long relationship and adapting to single life, I started smoking again. After 8 years without a cigarette I broke and have been smoking ever since. I did quit again for 6 weeks at one point but otherwise I've been smoking anything up to about 20 a day again.

I've been feeling pretty rough when I've been smoking the last few days and I got to thinking about my stepdad, who started smoking at 15 and who at 60, has got a lung and breathing disorder and has now been told that if he doesn't quit smoking, he won't see 65.
So I've decided to quit again and I didn't smoke yesterday or today. It's been OK but there have been some tough moments. Earlier I came as close to buckling as I have so far but held fast in the end.

I can foresee two problems: One is that I might put on weight. I've heard that smoking is an appetite suppressant and also people eat when they stop smoking because it gives them something else to do with their hands & mouths. Strangely, when I quit about a year or so ago for 6 weeks, I actually lost weight, to the point that I got to my thinnest that I've been as an adult. My trick there was simply to recognise when I felt I wanted to eat and decide whether it was just because of the smoking or if I was genuinely hungry. I made a rule that I was only allowed to eat if I was genuinely hungry and that would be proven if my stomach growled. If my stomach didn't growl, I wasn't really hungry & couldn't have something to eat. I continued this rule for a while after I started smoking again & it served me well. I remember reading that most of the time when you think you want something to eat your body actually is thirsty, so you should drink instead. So whenever I felt like something to eat, I would have a glass of orange juice. If my stomach growled I would eat, but even then I would only eat small portions and stop eating when I still felt a little hungry. This way I would be full after 20 minutes but not overly full and bloated, which is how I used to feel after every meal because I ate until I was full without giving my food time to settle. I started measuring out my food when cooking - not with exact measurements or anything boring and long winded, but instead I got a plate, put some food on it and looked at it on the plate. If it looked like a lot, I took some off. If it looked about right, I cooked it. After a little while my stomach shrank and I was no longer able to even contemplate eating the sort of amounts I used to. I felt pretty good like this and dropped from 15 stone which I was at my heaviest, to 11 & 1/2 stone. I no longer had a round face that to me looked like a potato with a beard, I had a pretty flat stomach & I just generally felt better. Sadly I fell out of this habit a little while back and fell back into bad habits of eating when I wasn't properly hungry and also eating far too much food, which has always been my biggest problem.

The second problem is that it's Monday tomorrow. I've spent the weekend with my girlfriend, who is very supportive and despite really wanting me to stop, (she quit about 3 years ago,) she hasn't nagged me about it and has found many interesting diversions to take my mind off wanting to smoke. Tomorrow I go back to work where pretty much everyone smokes. There's a real community based around going outside for a fag break & there are even one or two of the type of people who sneer at you for wanting to quit. That doesn't bother me so much, as I can always go outside and stand and chat with people without smoking as it will get me used to being around people who do without doing it myself, plus if people want to sneer, that's fine with me. I know that comes from a place of insecurity - it's their way of doing the 'you're not one of us', playground crap. I like to be able to fit in with people, but I do it on my terms. I didn't start smoking because of peer pressure and I'm not going to keep smoking to fit in with other people either. If they don't like that, then that's their problem, not mine. Anyway, the biggest problem will be if I get stressed at work, my normal response is to have a cigarette - not straight away, otherwise I'd spend most of the day outside, smoking, but that release is there for me.

I understand the science behind it, in that smoking doesn't really relax you, rather it increases your heart rate and bocks the production of serotonin in the brain, (the brain's own 'happy drug',) making it harder to feel happy and relaxed when you smoke than when you don't, but to be honest I think you can understand all the scientific explanations in the world but they won't help because smoking is a response to emotional needs. The number of times I've stood smoking and been thinking, "This is essentially poison in a tube, by smoking this I am putting myself at risk of cancer, emphysema, bronchial problems, etc etc, and then taken another drag.

Anyway, I'm doing OK so far, and I'll continue to try to resist temptation, not only of smoking but also of eating when I don't need to and I'll update you as to how I'm getting on.

Phrases and title changes

Two posts in one week! Easy, calm down. It might help to sit down and sip at some hot sweet tea. Yeah I know... well I missed last week so I thought I'd have another pop and thus the balance would be restored. Of course the balance isn't really restored. Now and forever last week will be devoid of posts. Barren. Postless in a post-filled world... but it makes me feel better.

Besides, I'm bored again. Seems like I only post here when I'm bored or else when I have something serious to say & I was so hoping that I'd be funnier on here. Ah well, there's still time.

I've decided to change the name of the blog. I like "The path less worn", but let's be honest, it's a bit pretentious, no? I'm not sure if it would pique my interest or put me off. It may well depend on my mood at the time, along with how much caffeine I'd ingested. (This is quite a variable and is a constant factor in my day.)

Anyway, I heard three phrases yesterday that made me laugh. The first was, "Butt gusset". Say that one out loud. Go on, let it roll around your palette a while. The word gusset amuses me in a fairly puerile way anyway, but "Butt gusset" is just taking things to another level. I kind of imagine someone (a guy predictably,) saying "Mmmm... Butt gusset..." kind of like the way he would say, "Mmmm... pizza..." (Or insert another delicious foodstuff of your own choosing,) while staring into the middle distance with a silly grin on his face. I'm not sure why.

The second was, "broken holes". Firstly, How do you break a hole? Surely the only way would be to fill it in again, or in the case of clothing, mend it. Unfortunately the next thing that sprang to my mind was that it was the sort of name a porn site would have and then I started to imagine what sort of content www.brokenholes.com would offer if it existed, to the viewing public and then I felt a bit sick and had to look at my screen saver of funny cat pictures for a couple of minutes to feel better. Not that I'm a prude - far from it, but the images that came to mind weren't pleasant which I'm sure you could argue says a fair bit about me, but I digress.

Now I should point out that both of these were discovered in the description of a pair of jeans on the Internet. Yes, both these nuggets were in the same description. Those are some pretty funky jeans huh? You want a pair don't you? Well I'm not going to give the site any free advertising, mostly because they were a competitor to the company I work for. If you want to try and find them yourself, go ahead. I've given you enough information to start looking, but I would be very careful about the links you click on after googling those terms if I were you. Also I never actually checked if there is a www.brokenholes.com, so if you go-a-surfin' for it, I accept no responsibility for what you may or may not find there. (I think that pretty much covers me either way.)

But what, I hear you cry, what in the name of all that's good and pure and not displayed on www.brokenholes.com, (seriously I never checked,) was the third term? Well, calm down, stop eating foods with so many additives in them, or switch to decaf, (I'm a fine one to talk about decaf - at an old workplace we called it 'laydeecaff' because decaf was deemed unmanly - but it was all very tongue in cheek, so don't get offended,) and I'll tell you.

But first a little background. I'll keep it very short, honestly. OK, so I like irrelevant humour - Monty Python, Vic & Bob, The Mighty Boosh, that sort of thing. It tickles me. So I like coming up with nonsensical phrases and the like. Some of the best ones are by simply by taking two or more, usually unrelated words and finding an interesting juxtaposition. If the phrases instantly make you laugh, bring forth vivid and strange images, connote something, or have a pleasing cadence, then my work is done. If it fulfils two or more of these then I'm as happy as a pig in shit, or some more suitable simile. For example, I once thought about registering www.collapsiblecheesecake.com and making it my personal site. It may still happen.
So I bumped into a girl at work yesterday - I mean literally bumped into, not the 'I met someone who I haven't seen in a while,'type of thing. Anyway, she was carrying a mug of soup and came out with the following line, which just slayed me: "Careful, I'm maneuvering soup here!"
Well that had me. 'Maneuvering soup'. What an absolute gem! It even kind of rhymes! All credit goes to the young lady in question, but I think if questioned, she wouldn't remember saying it, or at least wouldn't remember the exact wording she used, so I think I'm probably safe from copyright litigation if I nick it & use it here.

So ladies, gentlemen, boys and girls as well as hermaphrodites or trans gender persons and those of you still making those important lifestyle choices, we bid adieu to the blog whose name was "The path less worn" and raise our glasses with a hearty 'wilkommen' to toast the entrance of a brand spanking new blog, called "Maneuvering soup."

N.B. The so called 'new' blog will have all these posts in it, because it's not really new, it's just a change of title (and a change of template and colours but that may change again,). Ho hum.

The premise

Told you I was crap. I've been meaning to write another post for a while but haven't been inspired. Although, saying that, I have a draft post with topics that I'd like to write about, but most of those are rather lengthy and I've not had time to cover any of them.

I'm writing this today with no real aim in mind, so I guess I'll just see where it goes. I have a problem with writing, which is to say I really enjoy it, but I think the part I really enjoy is thinking of ideas. Musing on topics, deciding where I stand, generally mulling things over. I love coming up with the premise for things, kind of "Hey! What if we had two characters like this and they did that and then THIS happened to them? That would be so cool!" That's the bit I like.

The actual act of writing kind of scares me, at least until I do it. Maybe 'scares' is the wrong word. I have this problem with doing things, in that I procrastinate wildly at the mere thought of getting things done and I'm not 100% sure why. It's like when I learned the piano as a kid - I loved playing the piano, but the thought of doing lessons or practising put me instantly into this wierd frame of mind that I get into and I would rather do anything but play the piano, even homework. Once I got there of course I loved it. (I later gave up after not very long for extremely stupid and childish reasons, but I was a kid after all.) It's like I get a kind of mental block. You know how some people rebel against any kind of authority? I'm kind of like that. I loathe being told what to do and will often do the exact opposite, even to my own detriment and just to spite the person, rather than comply. If someone ASKS me to do something, that's fine and 99.9% of the time I will be happy to do as they ask, but if they tell me - well my rebellion gland kicks in. It's incredibly stupid and something I'm working on changing about myself because I can see how self defeating it can be. I'm doing better, but I'm not quite 'there' yet.

In my head I'm extremely prolific - at the moment alone I have 3 unfinished songs, several very short animation tests worked out, a short animated film of about 3 minutes, 2 short stories, one novel (a big novel too and pretty complicated plot-wise so I've been told,), a screenplay for a horror film, 2 comic strips and one graphic novel, a bunch of material for a stand up routine and a rough outline of a sitcom and possibly other stuff that I'm forgetting right at the moment.

The short stories have both been basically begun, the animation stuff has a 3d character just waiting to be completed in order to actually start animating, the comic strips have had a few ideas and sketches jotted down, the novel I actually worked on last night for the first time in months...
It's all been started but after a while I falter. I come up with (what I think is,) a great idea for something, get really excited about it, think about it a lot, work stuff out, talk to friends about it and start it, only to get bogged down or otherwise sidetracked and end up putting it to one side, to 'come back to it later.' John Lennon once said, "Life is what happens while you're making other plans." and it's my favourite quote because it's so true and well observed.

I sometimes wonder if I had the time and money to sit down and complete these projects, would I? If I couldn't blame lack of time from having to go to work and I had enough money to do it would I actually sit down and get some of this stuff finished or would I just get bored again and end up watching DVD's and surfing the net?

What would be just perfect would be if I could find a job where I just had to come up with ideas for things - books, films, comics, whatever. Just give them the premise of it - along with a rough plot, some character descriptions and maybe a few pages of dialogue, (I like writing dialogue,) so they could gain more of an insight into the characters and how they interact. Then they would pay me a large sum of money and I would act as a consultant on the project, watching over other artists, writers etc, going "no, see they have a bigger head than that," or "no, that's more a line for THIS character, see?" and other helpful comments. No one would mind because I was the guy who came up with the idea in the first place.

So if any film companies/animation studios/publishers need an 'ideas guy', then don't hesitate to get in touch. Really. Post a comment with contact details and I'll be in touch.

*sigh*

While I'm wishing, I'd like a better car too...

Well, at least I got a post written.