The Blog of Mark Shields.

The Long Walk Backwards - Leaving Facebook

2012-01-26T08:00:00.000Z

I havesaid in the past that I would like to leve Facebook. In fact, in one post Ieven said that I would start retreating from the behemoth, but I never reallywanted to. I think that Facebook served a purpose – you know, reconnecting mewith Connie and giving my future wife. So I can’t be too harsh on the place,really. Though, despite this incredible gift Facebook has eroded all thingsthat make it likeable, and slowly and surely it’s became a waste of time andspace.

Thefirst thing that Facebook did wrong was become so powerful. Successful websitescome and go, but I feel that Facebook has reached a critical mass – it is sobig it can’t really fall down now. It’s unlikely to go the way of Myspace andLycos if they keep doing what they are doing right now, which is pervading allaspects of someone’s life before putting it into monetary terms. Like the OpenGraph sharing aspect, or the ability to link almost all types of media usingFacebook (but with an interspatial link that registers with Facebook anytimesomeone goes through it). Then there arethe games that million of people play that will keep people coming back toFacebook and keep companies developing games for that.

Thefunny thing is that this is exactly the problem I have with Facebook – on myfeed there are people sharing nonsense and fluff, apps adding updates aboutthings I have no interest in, and even worse the site has started to look sodreadful and bloated it might be impossible to find things that you want to doon it.

In aroundabout way – I am over Facebook. And slowly, over time, I am going todelete it. I am firstly going to cull a lot of my “friends”. There are fourtypes of people on my Facebook friends list: my close friends and family, mycolleagues and people I worked with, my “internet” friends from Twitter andmessage boards, and people I used to be in contact with but now I don’t. Back when I used to get regular requests frompeople finding Facebook for the first time if they didn’t contact me within 72hours of friending me they were deleted. I stopped doing this because I don’tuse Facebook enough to be on it all the time.

Thefirst thing that I am going to do is start removing people that I don’t want tohave on there. It feels hard to delete friends (clever Facebook) but itshouldn’t be – just because I am not keeping you on my internet profile doesn’tmean I hate you. Indeed, if we are friends you already have my other methods ofcontact, either on my phone, email or even on the other social network Twitter(more on that below). This will mean that the network of people that I amgetting information from and giving information to is limited and personal.

Thisstep will be done and then tested – if it makes a dramatic change on therelevancy of my Facebook page then it might be enough to change my mind. Ifnot, however (and this is where my suspicions lie) then the following will befollowed.

SecondlyI will stop posting to Facebook. I rarely do this anyway (bar the occasionalself promoting message or the loving cross-post from Instagram) but the otherthings, like photos, are easier to stop. See, Facebook doesn’t have anycopyright control on photos, whereas Flickr does and I prefer that one – ifpeople want to see my photos, I’ll given them the ability to see them in HighQuality with proper information about them.

Thirdly...I will stop going to Facebook. I did this a few years ago in the Exile but havealready deleted the Facebook app from my phone. I don’t miss looking at no morethan my hands would miss hold a cigarette – the motion of opening Facebook ismore tantalising than the actual moment of opening it.

If I do theentire of the above and still feel disconnected from the site there is only onefurther option; deletion.

Note: manyreading this will wonder a few things:

Thefirst is surely to be “this can’t be that big a deal! Just do it already!”Well, I actually do like Facebook for contacting friends. It’s good – I justthink that it’s losing its focus and I want to rein back my control to see ifit makes a difference.

Thesecond is likely to be “you have Twitter! You cried when it was deleted lastyear! Why not get rid of it too?” Ianswer this query by simply saying that I control what happens on Twitter more,who feeds into my feed, and more importantly it’s not full of bollocks justyet. Indeed, it’s got scope for breaking this in the future, but the limitationof 140 characters ensures no games or applications fill my feed with nonsense.

Creative Commons and Piracy.

2012-01-25T08:00:00.000Z

Therehas been a lot of learned people talking about the SOPA and PITA legislationthat was being pushed through the US legal system, and there was a lot ofhyperbole and bias written about why it was or wasn’t a good idea – generally,I disliked the legislation as it did indeed give powers and control to peoplewho shouldn’t be able to wield such control. It is not, however, my place to beable to pick it apart and understand the legalese in such a way that meant Icould impart new opinions on it; more verbose writers have managed to do that.

The onething that I can do is talk from the point of a few different people that arein the argument and what my opinion is on being one of those people. I am

1. Aconsumer

2. Acreator

3. Aprior pirate

As aConsumer

I amsomeone who spends a lot of their disposable income on media – it’s mostlymusic, but also in there are films and television, as well as books and otherart forms. It’s remarkably easy to spend a lot of money these days on suchitems for several reasons – they are expensive and they are volumous. In sayingthat, there is also loads of newer ways to consume. Instead of buying all mymusic, I have the ability to rent it and only pay once. Spotify allows me to dothis and I have been doing it for a long time. It entirely replaces the need tosteal music (illegal downloading is stealing, in my view) and for a smallamount a month also gives you even more music that you might have came acrossotherwise.

Theconcern comes when talking to one of my best friends about this – he statesthat he would rather download the music for free than pay £4.99 a month to rentit. He sees no moral reason to not steal music for free than pay someone to lethim listen to it. The argument is that he won’t pay for something that hedoesn’t own – but the thing is that you never own the rights to anything youbuy anyway. Buying music is no different to buying a ticket to an art show –just because you have the copy of it in your hands (or on your hard drive)doesn’t mean you have any licenses to do anything with it. And there is a largeknowledge gap in what ownership of media means.

I cannotfathom why anyone wouldn’t use a pay-for streaming service today. I agree thatthe artists are dealt a bad hand when you “pay per play” on these services, butit’s a lot better than the distribution of albums entirely without cost onlinepeer to peer networks, isn’t it?

There isa problem when you look at the implications of children and teenagers growingup with the ability to grab every piece of music or film for free instantly –and the media is right to be scared.

As aCreator

A fewyears ago a friend of mine stumbled onto an article posted from my blog into aGerman Magazine. It was this one about people’s personalities and the types ofcars they drive – a bit of fun. I was flattered at first, then I felt a bitviolated. The site had reproduced my work, changed it, and then not evenmentioned it was me who had created it. Of course, I had no money to be madeand look to make no money from this blog (right now, heh) but the realisationthat I was creating “something” and I had not adequately protected it fromcopyright theft.

Thislead me to understand what Creative Commons was – a concerted effort tointroduce the ability to share copyrighted material easily and fairly. My blogis still to this day under Creative Commons under the “Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs2.5 UK: Scotland (CC BY-NC-ND 2.5)” license meaning that you are allowed to,freely, copy, distribute, display, and perform the work as long as youattribute me, it’s not for commercial reasons, and you can’t change or buildupon the work. I only put it on for piece of mind – I don’t expect someone tocome and ask to rework my text into a novel, for example.

However,on my Flickr page I do the same things – my photos are Creative Commons too.And I believe in the ease of the system allowing creators to control andunderstand the rights they can apply to their work and as I user of them I alsoam now becoming a proponent and supporter of them. I have created other works,like videos and music podcasts, and I make sure I am within my legal ability tomake them – one video I made two years ago used Boards of Canada’s music withoutpermission, and I still feel uneasy about it. The one I made about the year inTexas was made using music that I got permission from the band to use in thatvideo. And my Radio Show is hosted on a site that claims to pay artists PRSfees (though I am unsure of exactly how that mechanism works in practice).

CreativeCommons gives me the power to apply rights to these things, but can I controlthem? Not really. And seeing how little people pay attention to them on websites whosteal photos from Flickrs and blogs I sometimes wonder if people really docare. Are we heading to an entirely free system of works that no artist canmake money from? Is that even a bad thing? I am unsure.

As aPrior Pirate

Duringmy teenage years and later I downloaded a lot of music. In fact, the majorityof my musical exploration during the later part of my university career wasdownloaded illegally – and I will not be ashamed to admit it. I can’t reallydefend it, as it’s obviously at odds with my current stance, but there are tworeasons why I am able to reconcile my thoughts – the first is one of means.

I hadlittle to no money as a student and I downloaded illegally because I hadinternet. That’s not a defence, it’s just the reason I did it.

Thesecond reason was that the technology hadn’t caught up with my internet – Icould download an album and put it onto my phone and Creative Zen faster thanpeople could make download controlled systems. The threat of DRM was somethingI didn’t really mind at first and happily paid £14.99 a month for unlimitedNapster downloads... until Napster failed me and stopped doing it. I losthundreds of albums I’d rented and downloaded to my computer. That was theproblem with Napster’s idea – it blurred the idea of owning and not owning amusic file.

So sinceSpotify I know that I don’t own the music. The line is defined. Also,technology has caught up – even iTunes sells DRM free tracks that can be movedand copied to anywhere I want them. And I can now download them again and againthanks to iTunes in the Cloud, another step in the right direction.

And nowI don’t download music illegal anymore and I implore others to do the same;recently having convinced one of my friends to use Spotify on his phone.However, laws and censorship, such like SOPA won’t fix it as it is so easy to downloadmusic, and with faster internet it’s going to become even easier. What will fixit is competitive, easy and compelling reasons to not, and Spotify is one ofthem.

It’s not the full answer, of course, but it’s at least a start.

The Fictional City of Yeardley: From One Source All Things Depend Part I

2012-01-23T07:30:00.000Z

The start of the city, if it was going to be successful,needed to be perfect. I decided early on that if it was going to be realistic,there needed to be a reason for the city to exist in the first place, and mybasic geography came back to me – the most frequently supposed reason for acity or town existing is a crossing point over a river. The first instance wasto build a wide and powerful river. Thesecond decision was to put a bridge over the river and work from there,expanding on both sides as the two sides grew to support the population.

A second and major decision I made was the location ofthe city – I decided it would be in the North of England, just south ofScotland, but without thinking where it actually was. A loosely designated area of the country. Itis not based on anywhere, it is just based in somewhere. This also meant Icould timeline it’s expansion, with the original bridge being built somewherein the 1700s.

After that, I decided on a colour – white was the defaultbackground for Visio, so orange leapt out at me. If was going to go back and do this again, I’dchange my colours, but once I had started there was no way to stop. Light bluefor the river seemed fair, and after that I quickly started to plot roads andbuilt the town from a small series of main roads.

The Key
Orange - a simple road.

Red - a dual carriageway A road

Pink - a Motorway (or A road classified as a Motorway)

Dark Blue - a build of importance, like a castle or sports stadium

Light blue - a body of water from rivers to lakes

Green - a forest or country park

Black - a railway line

Red Circle - a railway station

Dark Grey - a light railway line

Green Circle - a light railway station

Light Green - a future addition to the city planned, like a new road or a new railway

See the below image (click for fullsize) to see a selection of these things.

In the above shot, there are two motorways: the M768 and the A798(M). More about the numbering and naming of these roads will be mentioned when we get to the roads section. Also, the red road is the A780 which again we will discuss. Xavier is a railway station and the terminus of one of the railway lines which i will detail further in the future. And lastly, the blue is the river as you might have guessed. This area that I have detailed is to the North West of the city, and the M768 is one of the extremities of the city limits. This, if you will, is the Eastern Suburbs - a commuter area of families. But, as I said, more will be explained about that in the future.

It is exciting to note that the original roads are stillthere. The roads that run from the south to the north are still there, acontinuation of the idea that the citry grew from nothing into something ratherthan just appearing there fully formed. Which brings me onto an important point that will crop up over the nextfew months – the most important point of the city was to feel normal, and real.To achieve this, I had to think like a planner would have done, and as suchmake loads of mistakes.

Taking cues from Glasgow initially, motorways were partof a massive grand scheme that faltered and failed. Railways too were builtextravagantly, before being pulled back. In fact, a regret of the city’sdevelopment is that I didn’t save intermediate versions, so I could look backupon the older versions see exactly where something came from – my memory isgood, but it’s not perfect.

So once the basic roads and shape was in place, I had tostart thinking about expanding – Victorian railways, canals and others suddenlywere the right thing to be building, and I did this until the early 1900s in mytime line, with railways and roads expanding beyond control. Remember,expressways or bypasses were post-war, so if my city was to expand, therailways needed to. Canals, something I smile at, vanished – there are noneleft. Ship building too was a factor, but because of the cities location andthe competition from Liverpool and Glasgow, it never felt like a genuine way togrow the city.

So now there was industry, rail and factories. What couldpossibly happen now? And then came twoWorld Wars and the biggest shift in development the city would have. And where, in my mind, the real fun began.

2012.

2012-01-14T13:55:00.000Z

The new year is here. It's already heralded some lovely things... a fabulous Christmas and New Year period where I spent time with my Canadian family, lovely gifts from my family, and eternal optimism for the coming new year, something that is infectious and making my partner even more optimistic as each doay goes by. It's likely to be a good year.

Last year was an interesting one - I challenged 2011 to be as good as 2010, and it gave me my highest high and my lowest low, both chronicled on the blog here. Which brings me to my next point - more of my life has been posted on here, and more of my life has happened elsewhere, and this blog is a standing testament to my continued love of writing. As such, this coming year will see some new things.

Firstly, as mentioned last year, I will be writing about my fictional city Yeardley - it'll become more apparent what that entails shortly, but rest assured there is a lot of content there, probably more content than anything else I have written about. Secondly, I have started to write for another website, the Canadian ran Opinionehted (get it? Opinion-"eh"-ted?) where it's mostly music right now but I am looking to expand into social media, internet and technology. So that's exciting.

So, here's to the new year - and the fifth anniversary of my blog. Wow. Five years... pretty exciting.

Mark

The Christmas Break

2011-12-21T01:59:00.001Z

And with that, I yield. In 2012 I'll write about the fictional city of Yeardley, post more about my upcoming wedding, and probably continue to fire off radio show recordings that only 20 people listen to.

I hope you all have a wonderful holiday period whatever you are doing and I'll see you in mid-January 2012.

It's worth noting that with this post being the year's 125th I broke my all-time posting record and with post 500 due pretty soon, and the blog moving into its 6th year, I feel like I have something to be proud of.

Thanks for reading, always.

Mark
x

The Fictional City of Yeardley: Ready Let's Go

2011-12-19T07:30:00.000Z

An Introduction.

In 2010 and 2011 I lived in Texas. On my first job inTexas I was given access to a computer program that is developed to allow thecreation of flow sheets. I have used it before, and the software is calledVisio – it’s not exactly the best graphical program in the world, but it doesit’s job well, if that job is to connect lines together.

I found working in my own office limiting – I rarely hadanyone walk past and say hi, and those who did come we had lengthy chats aboutmusic and comic books. But idle chit chat was missing, like the 30 second“How’s it going?” kind I get all the time in an open planned office. Couple allthat with boring lunch hours, I decided to start experimenting with Visio.

From a young age I had liked to sketch road layouts,originally as a messy road system to a structured city, and then into extremelycomplicated road junctions between motorways and various other roads. These areinteresting sketches, ones that are detailed to the hilt and have logic withinthem. I can understand someone thinking that the sketch is boring or wonderingwhy anyone would like to draw a full road junction, but thinking of the bestways to route traffic and build structures actually feels like a teased outrelief for me – I love backing myself into a hard corner and then engineering,in a sense, a way out.

Prior to Texas though, my roads were always snapshots ofa fake city, somewhere that had no connection, no meaning. Even if I tried Icouldn’t conceive of the scope for a city, at least not until Visio came in.Because before where there had been A3 sheets and endless pencil markings, Visiogave me a literally unlimited space, and unlimited erasing, and the otheradvantage of being able to delete and re apply – any change could be undone inan instant if I didn’t like it.

So, I started with a simple river and a small, singularbridge. And from there I built up as organically as I could muster from Januaryto August 2011 a city that could really exist. The city was called Yeardley,and it stands as my most ambitious attempt at city sketching I have ever done.

In the city are roads, motorways, train lines, lightrailway lines, airports, universities, chemical plants, stadiums, forests,parks, rivers, lakes. In fact, the City became a County – Yeardley is the maincity in the county of Braxton, another fictitious place. But with the increasein size came the advantage of commuter towns and further afield transportplans. And they all evolved at an organic pace.

In the coming months in 2012 I will explore my city tolaborious detail, first detailing the way I did it, and the logic, before goingonto the infrastructure that I developed, the history that I invented for thecity, and then go into detail for most of the major features, such as theAirport, or the Motorways. I hope thatthis will give you an insight into my mind, and maybe let you understandexactly why I developed this city.

And maybe you’ll find it interesting too. I have a massive PDF file of the city that will be made available over time, but in the interests of explaination and understanding, here's a small snap shot of the city; the city centre of the Fictional City of Yeardley. Hopefully you find this at least partly interesting.

The city centre of Yeardley. The pink is a motorway, the orange is a regular road, the blue is the river Huxton, the black is train lines, the dark grey is a light rail line, and the red and green dots are stations on each. Each station is given a unique name, as is each line, but more on that to come. The lighter grey is a proposed line that isn't "finished", but as I said, more on that to come.

Listen to the Math

2011-12-16T08:51:00.000Z

You've been famous since your birth
And a silent one it was
'til they me told it's a girl
and everybody gasped.

I know how to raise you right
teach you how to read
and your math, yeah, toys, spelling, names, alphabet
and how to be polite.

You've been famous since your birth
And a silent one it was
'til they me told it's a girl
and everybody said.

You and your atlas know it all
let the corners curl
cause if you go by night
you'll hit the coast for sure.

It's a ruse, It's a laugh
Experts, they'd agree
Listen to the math
Australopithicine
Rekindle your heart
These hospital machines
Are state of the art

I've put down my middle name
In the back of her book
And signed it just in case
Our walk was over love

Cause I've got one more up my sleeve
Bring it out tonight
Cause if I am the joke
Then you're the punchline

"Listen to the Math" by Tokyo Police Club from their album Elephant Shell.

The Deafness Epidemic

2011-12-15T12:01:00.005Z

Previous thoughts on losing my hearing.

Picture the scene: a class room in 2032 in a primary school. The teacher is handing out paper for the pupils to draw a picture of their family. The first girl starts drawing the house, then the doors, the car, and pet dog, and then her mum, dad, and two brothers, who are both further up in the school. And as she details the parents’ appearance, draws eyes, nose, and ears and adds in a tiny little dot on each ear, right where the ear canal would be.

The teacher doesn’t bat an eyelid. She scans the rest of the children’s drawings and sees the same little dot on the ear. As the class nears the end of the lesson the children start being louder and louder. She starts to hear them more clearly with each passing second, and to compensate she turns down her hearing aid.

See, the above scenario is a bit silly – it’s fictitious of course, and speculative at best, but it’s a future I am thinking about almost daily. Indeed, it’s closer to my own hear than others for reason that I will explain, but I am so worried about it I feel like I should start doing something about it. The problem I worry about is an epidemic of people with hearing problems.

All because of Apple earphones.

I am going deaf. Surely and slowly I am losing the hearing in my left ear, and despite my right ear’s attempts to compensate. Each year I go for my offshore medical I am told that my lifestyle precludes hearing loss; I got to concerts and listen to music daily. However, I’d go so far as to say that despite all of my activities, my hearing loss isn’t based on these activities – I’d been getting hearing tests since I was a child. I knew of my hearing loss back in 2007 when I first went for a medical, and even before then I knew that is was a problem – you notice it when you meet me for the first time, especially when we are in loud places. I will turn my right ear to you just to make out what you are saying.

I have also picked up the rather nice skill of lip reading. I’m not professional at it, but regularly I can read lips and understand what people are saying from not only muted TVs, but across offices and rooms. It’s like my super power. I will admit though that going to many gigs when I was younger probably didn’t help my hearing, the biggest problem for me was that there already was a problem in the first place.

The consequences of this are dire – I am going to lose the hearing in my left ear in the future, and probably need some sort of implant or hearing aid device to help me out. It’s something that I am resolved to happen. So, to help and mitigate the problems, I have made some major changes in my life.

The first is the application of ear plugs at concerts. I started this a few years ago as a trial, and only really decided it was needed when going to see Mogwai (who nicely supplied me with a pair with their latest album). The sound is muted and slightly numbed, but it does nothing to the fidelity of the sound. You can still hear the singing and playing, and actually has been known to increase the fidelity in some concerts, which belies the instinctive thoughts you’d have of it all.

The second was to properly buy a good pair of earphones. I’d had some good pairs over the years, but the new pair I recently obtained are professional grade. They cancel a lot of sound out from around me, meaning that I can lower the volume of my iPod to a lower level than previously. I have never had my music too loud anyway, but lowering it even further (to ¼ of the sound output of the phone) is an even better way of mitigating my problems. Indeed, the earphones are even expandable to custom moulded fitted buds which would increase the comfort and also increase the protection. I was told I was mad to spend money on earphones, but when you consider I wear them for 10 hours a day, averaging over 50 hours a week… it is a worthwhile investment.

Which brings me onto my original scenario; the most widely propagated type of ‘phones out there by far are the white iPod ‘phones packaged with every iPhone, iPad and iPod. They are the worst ‘phones I have ever used in my life. It’s astonishing to me to think that someone would spend £200 on a device to play music, yet use the ‘phones that come with these devices. Even when I bought my MiniDisc player at University in 2003 I never used the ‘phones that came with it, as they were dreadful then. They’ve not got much better since.
And, even thought I am a muso, I am not talking about just the definition of the music that they play. The iPod ‘phones are dreadful for fidelity and sound, but that’s not going to cause people to have problems later in life with regards to their hearing – it’s the fact that they leak sound so badly that people have to turn up the volume to disproportionate levels. Anyone who has ever been on a bus or train without their own ‘phones plugged in will have came across the horrendous sound of someone’s music spilling out of the iPod. It’s a travesty. The reason is because the sound is so low that they need to up the volume to get the sound that they want.

In the future I foresee everyone needing hearing aids because of this – especially the youngest of the new generation who grew up with the music being piped into their ears. I worry greatly for this – and the scenario of all adults wearing “dots in their ears” as described in the supposed scenario is scarily prescient, I think.
What can be done? Apple should put better ‘phones in their products? Only allow low levels of volume to come out of the iPod? Or how about we educate people to understand the long term effects of loud noises on the ear? I liken it to the cigarette and cancer scares of the 1960s and how damaging it will be for the future.

The difference is that listening to music on ‘phones isn’t as addictive as smoke (although, tell that to someone listening to the latest Wild Beasts record) and the science needn’t be proven. It’s a problem that needs fixing.

Wednesday Graveyard: "Live" - The Artwork

2011-12-12T08:00:00.000Z

A cool feature of Mixcloud is the ability to upload your own artwork for your mixes, and I worked on this with gusto. Each week had it's own artwork, all of which were photos taken by myself. These are below with some details on what they are.

The first week. This photo was taken in October on my walk from from work in Aberdeen - it's a shot of the sky at night across the runway at Aberdeen Airport. Interestingly, a second later a plane flew into the sights of the camera that I missed. Which is a shame.

Second week - shot of one of my chairs in my front room. This is where I recorded the first pilot show of the run and it hurt my back tremendously.

Third week - taken at Dyce railway station on in evening in November, it was nice to get this show without anyone in it - normally the other platform, going North, is quite busy.

The fourth week - this show was taken in September from the George V bridge in Aberdeen looking west along the river dee as I walked to five a sides. I love the sun burning through the horizon. It reminds me of an album cover. Not that I am saying it is good enough to be one, of course... :D

Wednesday Graveyard: "Live" - 1.4

2011-12-11T11:30:00.000Z

Have a listen, why don't you? It's all for a good cause - music. This is the last show of the current season, and I'll return with a run of SIX shows in late January 2012. Until then...

Have a listen. Hope you enjoy it.

Mark

Wednesday Graveyard Live 1.4 by Sheeldz on Mixcloud

The Tale of Chemical Engineering (Part VI of I)

2011-12-10T16:01:00.001Z

Previously parts I, II, III, IV and V.

As it happens, I recently was treated to the honour of being the recipient of a thank you dinner and award for completing my companies graduate training scheme, which is essentially the same as just having stayed with them for four years. The people that were there were the people that I had started with back in 2007 and it was nice to see who had survived and who was bothered to come along.

At the same time my company has recently merged with another large engineering firm and taken on all their staff into the new business. This meant that when coming back from Texas I was given to the new company as one of the first engineers to cross the divide. The divide was large at first but now it's becoming smaller, a good thing. The dinner was proposed in three ways:

- thanks for staying with us.
- you are the future of the company
- (and admittedly, not said to us, but heavily implied) don't leave to go contract

Contractor / Staff has already been explained on the blog before, so I'll assume you know the differences. The main talk of the night came from our two managers in charge of different parts of the business They detailed as to why we, as the collective young staff members, were so important to the company and mentioned the future that we are going to heading for. They mentioned future career paths, mentioning people who went on to become managers and "successes", as well as the reasons to stay with the company in the future.

I do plan to stay with the company - they work the way I like to do work and they seem like a fairly ethical company considering the business I work in - sure, they are wasteful and resource heavy in certain areas, but to be honest I've seen the other side - my Texan company were woefully unprofessional and lacking in areas I feel important to the way I want to work, and it was a serious eye opener.

The discussion of my future career made me return to the previous five posts in this series - a rant that became a documentation of how my mind was feeling when I wrote them, like a temperature taken during a year. And now, at the end of the graduate portion and entering the true engineer cycle of my career, I have came to a few realisations.

There are a lot of absolute idiots in my field. People who, somehow, have managed to avoid the culls and build themselves a network of friends that will keep them in employment. In fact, some parts of peoples skills are so lacking that I fear for the safety of some engineering solutions that they propose. I am no shrinking violet and despite tearing my self up about certain problems in recent months at work, I have decided that I am not going to be ambivalent about it, and mark my territory. If I am going to do work, it has to be of a certain quality and a certain style, and others are not going to make me do a job that is detrimental to my own career morals.

The idea of a "career" appears to be in some people's minds the ambition to become a manager. As I have seen on Jonathan's blog, this is not a problem limited to just my company. It appears that they want the best engineers and then move them into management positions. This is quite obviously absolute madness. Sure, some people want that (and I thought that I might) but I see good engineers becoming bad managers quite easily. It's not a good idea.

Also, being a manager makes it very easy to protect yourself from the cull - engineers are the ones that are the work horses and the talent, no question, but also the ones to blame - managers are apparently those who get the credit, and avoid the fallout if there's a problem. I see almost daily people who don't do any work of any worth and are commended for it, despite hundreds (and maybe thousands) working very hard to keep the actual money making business tick over, after all engineering firms have to engineer.

It's worth noting what I mean by "manager". I have line managers, like my lead or chief engineer, who check, correct and control my work. They are fine, and sometimes very good at their job. However, there is another side - project controls, engineering managers, cost "engineers" amongst others that I deal with that don't do the technical side. Instead they are entirely at cost to the company, seemingly protected in their status by the fact that there is a perception that they need to be there to "manage" the engineering team, hence why they will be called managers from here on in. I should also point out that I am not suggesting get rid of all managers, but getting credit and avoiding blame is the hallmark of any manager I've ever work with.

An example of this is the merger between the two companies - a big change is the integration of the two and recently we were treated to an email describing "how well it had gone". It hasn't gone well. At my level, I am still using two different procedure lists and deciding which one applies. I am constantly changing the text and logos of old calculations to the new name. I am dealing with people inside the actual company who don't understand who they work for. At a management level they are working together in the new shiny sparkling office, with the singular budget, but at the engineering level (the level that does the work that makes us money) it's still separate entities.

Obviously, things take time. My problem isn't the change - it's the fact that people are thinking they've done a great job when their job is entirely unsubstantial. Yet protected by themselves.

I am good at my job and I strive to always be better. I want to engineer good, economical, and smart solutions, not just rehashing what has been done before - I want to innovate where I can. I am lucky to work in a field that actually allows me to do this as well, but it feels that there are mixed messages and serious fallacies being propagated: engineers are being told to look to management positions - to allow, as far as i can see, the company to boast that they have their engineers in these positions in the first place.

If being "just" an engineer isn't enough, then I might have to stamp my authority on the company. There is a generation of senior engineers that are stagnant, old and out dated, filling the higher positions in engineering that need to move on and let the new generation to come in supplant them for the future of the business. People who worked in the 1980s and 90s are now 30 years into their career and vastly out of date, yet will sit and wait until retirement age. Instead, for career progression, engineers like my self and Jonathan are being told by superiors career progression lies outside of where we work, what we work on, what we want to do, what we are good at and more incredibly, what they hired us for. And with the ceiling of the dinosaur-engineers at the top we know that this might be the only way to move onward into better compensated positions.

I see the lack of scope for my title to progress to a senior, principal or lead engineer position as a massive reason to not become a chartered engineer, the next obvious step in my career progression. If I wanted to manage engineers, I'd have done a management job.

Engineers engineer, managers manage. I have yet to meet one person that has successfully managed to move between the two, despite the push towards that by the career planners. And it's likely to become a serious problem for the future of the UK engineering sector.

Engineers that don't feel the worth, constantly told that they should be looking for something beyond their current jobs, and a generation of managers born from engineers. Interesting situation, don't you think?

Hat tip: Jonathan, who wrote about his frustrations about being told wanting to be "just" an engineer is a lack of ambition. Once again, his writing is magnificent in it's detail, scope and ability to get me to start to formulate my own jumbled thoughts. Also, tl;dr? Oh well.

The Return of... Graze

2011-12-07T18:39:00.001Z

In 2009 I found a website that appealed to me in fourdifferent ways:

1. They were internet based.

2. The were quirky.

3. They were cheap.

4. They were making me eat healthier

In late 2011 I found them again – so let’s have another lookat Graze.com

There are a few differences from the box that I used toget – the first difference is the larger size. The punnets are now in fours,not threes. Also, it looks like they’ve jettisoned the fresh fruit angle, andreplaced that with dips and breads.

My first box from them in a long time featured somecracking new tastes – the black pepper cashews were a classical favourite, andthe rice cracker and chutney was a brilliant new addition. The lemon merainuepie mixture wasn’t up to my tastes, not really the biggest fan of lemonflavoured things, but the winner was the new “artisan” bread. It was a cheddar, red onion foccacia, whichwas absolutely devine.

I enjoyed it, as the novelty came back, the price islower than normal (a half price offer got my to return, natch) and I have ahunger for trying some new things in my daily eating habits. As I noted thelast time, I found myself reaching for my nuts rather than anything else. I have made a concerted effort to eat bettersince returning to the UK to lose my Texas Fat, and Graze is a guilt-free wayof trimming my snack input (which is at an all time low) but keeping myappetite satiated.

If you’ve not tried themout before, drop me a Tweet and you can have a free box.

Twitter Let Me Back In

2011-12-06T20:03:00.001Z

Just a quick up date on my Twitter palava - it appears to be sorted. I have my access back, for now.

However, without an explanation... I am still confused as to why it happened. So I'll be treading on thin ice for now... and it's icey outside too.

Thanks for your concern, Anonymous poster!

@sheeldz (and @sheeldzm)

Mx

Wednesday Graveyard: "Live" - 1.3

2011-12-03T12:58:00.001Z

This week's Wednesday Graveyard: "Live" is here! Yay! As I promised, as well! So, have a listen if you want. I want you to, so that'd be cool.

Love you all. Especially you, Anonymous poster!

Wednesday Graveyard Live 1.3 by Sheeldz on Mixcloud

A Twitterless Week

2011-11-30T14:17:00.001Z

It's been a week since I was unceremoniously kicked out of Twitter. I think I have had bad luck for two reasons:
- The first is that I was kicked out on the night before USA's Thanksgiving
- The second is that I have not knowingly broken any of their rules.

See, I found out I had been kicked out (which is what I am calling it
now, rather than being suspended) it was late night on Wednesday for
me (but mid afternoon for the Twitter bots) and I didn't really notice
it. I was surprised and shocked actually, and quite a bit sad about
it. I had suddenly been locked out from my internet, my friends, my
family, and strangely without any reason. I wasn't sent an email
about why I had been suspended, because it was likely to have been a
broken rule. But it was the night before a weekend off for the
Twitter Support team – they even Tweeted about it last week, which is
how I know.

I have since last Wednesday read the rules three times over just to
check that I might have missed a rule that I explicitly broke, which I
can't find. The only things I did on Twiter were chat to friends, send
links, and rant about things that annoyed me – nothing really that
would prick a bot's glancing eyes I think, unless it specifically
looks out for tweets about people not answering phone calls when they
are with held (which was my last Tweet before being kicked out).

You can moan and moan about how it's "just the internet" or "just get another account" but you can fuck off right there – it's not just the
internet, because the internet just isn't anything anymore, and
getting another account belies the point of twitter.

This blog is sheeldz. My email is sheeldz. My Mixcloud is sheeldz
– for want of a better description, sheeldz is my "brand" – it is my
internet name, and twitter have kicked me off my own name. It's like
being told you're no longer allowed to text your friends. It's slowly
annoyed me more and more as the week has progressed, from originally
being bemused and surprised, to be lamentful and annoyed at the bad
timing of it, to now which is just sheer frustration.

All of which brings me to an interesting conclusion – Twitter
shouldn't be a company. See, we might have sleep walked into a bad
moment in history. With telephone calls, texts and emails, letters and
other forms of communication, these were point to point – the method
of delivery was not owned in the same way that Twitter or Facebook are
owned. Twitter are well within their rights to stop me using it as
long as they follow their own procedures to kick me out – if I have
broken the rules, they can tell me to piss off. But without dialogue I
am suddenly left without a valid method of communication, which would have been impossible in the past because my method of communication would be the act of writing a letter not the means of writing a letter – being kicked from Twitter is like being banned from using a pen.

So that's where I am now – annoyed, put out, frustrated, sad and a
little bit let down. Twitter have kicked me out and not told me why
despite saying that they would. So all I can do now is wait and see
what happens. Though, after a week, I am unlikely to be waiting any
longer. I have already started thinking about the best way to modify
my "brand" to a new username, which is a shame.

I created @sheeldz to be me and someone else has taken it from me, and
that's a shame. And if you are reading this and wondering why this is
such a big deal then you don't get Twitter and what it does. I suggest
you look into it – and then smarten up. No one liked those people who
complained about emails back in 1994.

Some Perspective

2011-11-30T08:30:00.000Z

Hat tip to Tom Houslay (who runs a frankly awesome blog over here, is a good dancer, can drink with the best of us, and only once has tried to take me back to his sordid sex-lair) who re-shared it, via his Google+ profile (originally from Dave Meralus). I think you might all enjoy Tom's blog, and I think you should click through right now.

This image is quite astonishing, when you think about it. And I suggest that you do think about it.

Awesome.

The Freedom

2011-11-29T08:30:00.000Z

Connie was, for all intents and purposes, in a bind when we lived in Texas. The wide spread nature of the city reduces someone to having to drive, and having to drive is the only way to live in the city. What it meant for Connie, and myself in actuality, was that we were imprisoned without the use of a car. Walking anywhere was pretty much out of the question, especially when simply walking to the car was a chore in the 100F heat.

Obviously, this meant that when I wasn't around she very rarely could leave the apartment complex. It also meant that whenever she wanted to go anywhere, I had to go with her, chaperoning her to the shops for various odds and ends, rather maddening for both of us. The lack of this freedom to just go and do hampered many of the things that we both wanted to do, almost weekly, if not daily.

It is probably due to our upbringing and formative years that this is such a problem – I love walking to places, as does Connie, and we enjoy wandering amongst buildings, shops, streets and parks – Texas does have loads of these, but only a few we saw in temperatures that were applicable, and only a few were of the ilk that we enjoyed (Austin being one of them).

Back in the UK, it is suddenly day when once there was night. The new flat is central, on a quiet street, near shops and take aways, and cosy. The house is small, sure; and old, of course, but it's got charm and history, and importantly it gives us a freedom. We can just up and leave to go to the centre for anything we want. We are not more than 20 minutes walk away from most things we need, and 20 minutes from bus stops and train stations that will take us not just to other towns, but other countries, even further afield than my own continent. I could, if I wanted to, leave my flat in Aberdeen and walk 20 minutes, jump on a bus to London, get a train to Heathrow, and jump on a plane to Houston; upon my arrival at George Bush Intercontinental be entirely stuck at that airport. The public and personal transportation options in the UK are wildly impressive.

And the thing is I didn't need to leave to know this, but I certainly didn't appreciate them fully. I complained about the trains, the buses, even the aeroplanes, and now I have seen a world without public transport – a city built on the freedom to drive anywhere. Without the car, there is no freedom, and I don't want a machine to enable my freedom solely. I want to be able to walk 5 minutes to a shop, of a Sunday, and pick up the latest newspapers and rolls.

That's what I like, and it's the freedom I crave. And I think it's the single biggest reason for enjoying my time back home.

The Map Tells a Tale

2011-11-28T08:30:00.000Z

A few weeks ago I found this: National Rail Network Map (PDF, <1Mb). It's a map of the entire UK railway network, with each station, and each train operating company that runs routes along that line. It doesn't show the routes, just the routes that lines take - for example, you could find a direct line on the map from Aberdeen to Blackpool North station, but no train does that direct route.

What it does is show the utter and sheer complexity of the UK's extensive railway network, which is actually incredibly impressive considering it's age. The part that I like looking at the the areas of the country that I am not so familiar with and comparing them to Scotland's fairly easy to handle railway network.

Scotland has one railway franchise, ScotRail, that is operated by First Group. The way the UK railway is organised is that each part of the UK network is split into a franchise that is then bid on by a company who then runs it, taking the profits and according to the agreement reinvesting them back into the railway. Scotland is one franchise, despite being spread over a large area - this means that if you want you can ignore the fact that the UK network is ran by loads of different companies, and only notice it when you go down south.

The map highlights this by having all the companies in different colours - ScotRail is grey, by the way. It makes Scotland look really boring, only having a few colours where the Inter City trains (Virgin, First Transpennine Express, East Coast, CrossCountry) meet the main stations, like Glasgow and Edinburgh.

I find this all extremely interesting.

Can you find Frodsham?

In the new year I am going to two places in England - London, somewhere I have been before, and Manchester (actually, Frodsham) a place I have never been before. I spent a few minutes locating firstly Frodsham (just south west of Manchester, across from Liverpool) and then secondly locating London and the route that we will take to get to Shepperton Studios (a post that is forthcoming will explain in detail) and the intricate connections that the networks.

Maps have always fascinated me - as a child I started sketching maps of cities here and there and in Texas I developed an astonishingly detailed map of a fictional city that had been built from the ground up as organically as I could muster, with train lines and motorways. It feels like I am unravelling my brain when I do things like that, engaging my problem solving mindset but also zoning out of the other stresses of my life (not that I have many, natch, but it still feels good).

A full post explaining this particular fact will be coming along soon, once I have decided how to approach the subject of my rather strange brain and how exactly I created a full size city, with stations, Universities, airports, roads, rivers, lochs and other details that surprised and shocked many that have seen it.

And the final thing I enjoy about maps is that they tell a tale - all it would take to distinguish where the most people lived in the UK was to look at the above railway map, as the areas around London are fabulously complcicated and dense, whereas up on the Far North Line to Wick and Thurso there are so few stations for a large area that it's obviously very remote.

Maps fascinate me. Expect further posts about maps in the future.

Wednesday Graveyard: "Live" - 1.2

2011-11-27T08:30:00.000Z

The second in a run of four shows by me, this is the Wednesday Graveyard: "Live" episode 1.2. Have a listen, if you want, and let me know what you think!

If you like it, tell some people about it - I would, but you know... UnTwitter and all that.

Mark x

Wednesday Graveyard Live 1.2 by Sheeldz on Mixcloud

UnTwitter Pt. 1 – 25th November 2011

2011-11-25T16:23:00.001Z

Until my Twitter account is unsuspended (or Twitter tell me exactly what I did wrong) I am keeping a daily diary of my Tweets that would

have been posted.

8:59 AM – I am not convinced by this water bottle I have taken from @Connie_RaeD. Not convinced at all.

9:01 AM – This tweeting with no limits thing is quite interesting. I need to keep myself within 140 characters to make sure this is legit.

9:10 AM – just found the ALT+SHIFT+T time short cut – that will save me a lot of time later on today! :D haha

10.10 AM – wow last night I listened to @danielguntrip and @musicismyradar on the radio and they played The Dismemberment Plan. They're amazing.

10:18 AM – Don't have any cash with me today, so I am stuck eating my lunch but I really fancy a big chicken mayo sandwich.

11:16 AM – I don't think many people realise that despite "not being on Twitter" I still get the notifications on my iPhone :D

11:17 AM – It feels like I am spying on them. In a good way, of course.

12:08 PM – Really enjoying eating one sandwich these days, and supplementing it with yoghurt, nutrigrain and an apple. And today, an empire biscuit! :D

12:34 PM – Sometimes I worry that no one else knows how good The Phantom Band are.

12:44 PM – The Toronto Blue Jays have updated their logo, which means the one i bought last year is now "retro" :D

1:10 PM – Curry tonight? Why not.

3:44 PM - This day is lame and I am feeling like crap. I don't want to stay much longer. :(

3:45 PM - Update: Still the same.

4:05 PM - I might be able to leave now, but probably shouldn't.

5:01 PM - This guy I am sitting next to on the train is a bastard. Stop elbowing me - read your book better.

The UnTwitter Diary

2011-11-25T09:16:00.001Z

A few days ago my Twitter account was suspended. This is annoying for several reasons, mostly because I use it probably too much, but also it's an important way of keeping in touch with friends and family.

Another strange side affect is the sudden impulse to tell people about my day via things I have seen or done - like recently finding a newspaper headline that is simply incredible - see photo.

As I hope to have my Twitter account back in a few days, seeing as I cannot fathom why it was taken from me, I have started an UnTwitter diary - a stream of tweets that would have made it on there. And it will be posted on here at the end of each day until I have my twitter back up and running. This is because my tweets help stablise my insanity, and you don't want me going insane again, do you?

The biggest annoyance that this imposed blackout does is that it cuts me off from my personalised version of the internet - I no longer have pictures, news items and stories being shared to me, and I feel remarkably in the dark.

Finally, I find it funny that the last time I did such a thing, my self imposed Exile, was fun - now, as the rest of the world has caught up to twitter, I feel like I am the one being left behind.

My Twitter Account is Suspended

2011-11-23T20:08:00.001Z

So - my Twitter account @sheeldz is currently suspended, which is a bit annoying as it's replaced my method of communication for pretty much everyone on there, including Connie, my sister, and my best friends.

I am awaiting Twitter's response, so I guess I will just to wait - I don't believe that I have broken any rules of Twitter, but we shall see.

Anyway, anyone wanting to contact me should use the old ways until I find out why they have suspended me.

:(

The Wednesday Graveyard

2011-11-19T10:39:00.001Z

A few years ago I started making weekly Spotify playlists thanks, in part, to @Jook's similar set of playlists. I would work them out in the week, build them on a Tuesday evening, and post them around the internet trying to get as many people to listen to the bands I wanted them to as I could. The main reason, of course, was to let people hear and experience the bands and music that I was enjoying of that week.

Fast forward a few months (and rewind a year) and my sister start presenting her show one Strathclyde Fusion "Snap, Crackle and Pop" with @8bitglasses and @DeborahFact. I was immensely jealous of her platform, and conspired against her. The idea popped, ever so briefly into my head, that I could record a podcast. My sister still does a show on Fusion at 7pm on Thursdays.

Then a few weeks ago @danielguntrip started doing his own show on Edinburgh's Fresh Air station and introduced me to Mixcloud, an impressive idea - you make a one track podcast and upload it with it allowing other people to listen BUT not to download. It circumvents all the nastiness needed to gain rights to a song played that you don't quite own the rights to.

And there we are; up to speed.

So Wednesday Graveyard: "Live" is my show. I have done one to date (check it here) and there will be three further shows in the future. It was meant to be one a week but the Gods conspired against me, throwing two consectutive gigs, an overly long haircut, and a corporate dinner in my way, before a weekend of fun with my parents in Aberdeen.

So, I hope this partly explains it. And maybe makes it less insufferable when you listen to it.

Here is the current Spotify playlist, Wednesday Graveyard Volume 2, which will return when I stop making the "shows". There is a massive 650+ track playlist called the Wednesday Graveyard Almanac that features every song I've ever used in the show as well.

Wednesday Graveyard: "Live" - 1.1

2011-11-11T19:01:00.001Z

I have made a radio show. It's on Mixcloud, and you can listen here. It's cool.

I hope you like it. I will write more about it next week.

Wednesday Graveyard Live Show 1 1 by Sheeldz on Mixcloud

Sharing Scotland

2011-11-07T09:00:00.000Z

As someone who sees himself as British first, then Scottish, I am sometimes hesitant to tell people that it's one of the greatest places in the world. I know it to be a fact, as I don't think I would live somewhere that I didn't enjoy, but at the same time you have to understand there must be a bias in that statement and one that you must be careful not to over step. Indeed, in September at Connie's sister's wedding I exclaimed to a Canadian some of the highest praise I can give anywhere:

"So, how do you find Canada, do you like it?" he asked.

"Yeah, I love it – it's live a big Scotland!"

His reaction wasn't what I expected, as it was very suspicious and confused. I think he might have half expected it to be an insult, not realising that it's pretty much the best way to describe something; a bigger version of the Best.

The Lecht, Aberdeenshire / Cairngorms

In my opinion of course. I have a personality trait that I am slowly realising is not helping my personal relationships, and that is one of furious stubbornness. I have examined it a lot recently, and I know that I have to get better at appreciating and coping with other peoples view points – all you need to do is look at my barrage of posts in the last year concerning atheism and they reek of a self satisfied smugness that, even so recent afterwards, I am a little ashamed of.

It is when you are given the gift of new eyes do you suddenly see a place for what it is. Aberdeen, of course, is much maligned by friends, family, colleagues and complainers; even I am known to off handedly suggest that the city is, for better or worse, a bit crap. In saying that though, when someone new comes to the city and is suddenly giving you the view of someone who doesn't see this day in and day out there is a feeling of warm love that spreads from your heart.

Connie's mother Dianna was recently in Scotland on her first (and most certainly not last) trip to Scotland. We gave her a grand tour, starting in Glasgow, moving to Aberdeen, then the Cairngorms, Fort William, the west coast, Mallaig, and then the Lecht. After that we hit Stonehaven, Braemar, and the Aberdeen beach, which was followed by Edinburgh, Crathes Castle, and finishing at Rosslyn Chapel. For 11 days it was good going.

Dunottar Castle, Stonehaven

The impact that the trip had on her was different to the impact it had on me – firstly, it was a connection between the two distinct worlds of our family. Canada and the Canadian family and the Scottish family had never mingled, and the felt like they might exist in their own little bubbles. Once I saw Dianna walking off the plane into Glasgow Airport I was extremely happy that this barrier was vanishing. Secondly, our parents met for the first time. And thirdly, she got to see why exactly Connie and I love the place so.

As I said before, seeing places through new eyes is amazing – her reaction to Aberdeen and the hills were exactly how I think people should react to them, with awe and shock and amazement. We have some stunning geography and it's wasted on those who live in the cities all their lives. Her enjoyment of the small streets and old signs and dainty pubs was also gleeful, as it showed her a world she'd not seen before and shared a world that I take for granted.

In the end, I didn't want her to leave. It gives me confidence to share Scotland a lot more with the Canadian family.

Rosslyn Chapel, East Lothian

The Question

2011-11-04T09:00:00.000Z

On the 28^th October 2011 I asked my girlfriend, Connie, to marry me. She said yes. So that is pretty amazing news, isn't it? I think so. I think it deserved a post of its own, even before I had asked.

IT'S PROBABLY THE COOLEST THING EVER.

And then when I did ask, I was nervous. It wasn't a surprise question, not for me and nor for her, and it had been in the Plan for a while, with various problems befalling my various attempts to get a ring that I thought would light up her eyes and wow the crowds. I suppose the best-laid schemes o' mice an' men / Gang aft agley as the famous bard once wrote. In the end though, it wouldn't matter. But only for my nerves.

Apparently I get them from my father, which I can probably agree on. I also guess that it wasn't nerves from the actual asking nor the fear of being rejected (who would reject a ginger bearded Scottish blogger who wears brogues?) but it was nerves from the fact that it was one of the best things I was about to do and have done in my short life.

SHE SAID YES.

When broaching the topic with my father he stated it was one of the biggest decisions you can ever make, along with having a child. This was a perfect way to calm my nerves prior to asking.

In the end, the important thing that came out of it all was that the coolest person in the world has decided that I am for her, and that she and I will be happy for many years to come. Life always seems so long, and it's reassuring to know that from now on it'll be a proper team effort and, to be honest, I can't think of anyone better suited to be in my team.

I am allowed on mushy, weepy post every 400, and this is it.

Wheels Go Round: Rentals / Reviews

2011-11-03T09:00:00.000Z

I have a fantasy.

No, not that one... one that involves owning a Volvo Estate. Yes, seriously; I'd love to drive a Volvo Estate car, and my betrothed agrees with me – they are a functional and stylish solution to the problem of finding a car that is spacious and safe. One that will be able to give me everything that I would want from a long term car purchase. On top of this, I'd quite like to own a Land Rover Defender, but that's more pie-in-the-sky than the normal Volvo ideal.

Unfortunately, in my current lifeplan a car is not on the top the priority list. Many who had been told that we planned to not have a car when returning to Scotland were quite surprised, as it appears to be a measure of wealth as much as anything else, or a status symbol. You don't have a car? How ever are you going to survive? The answer is quite easily, it would turn out. Aberdeen is fucking tiny compared to the sprawling span of Houston and is manageable. Even the commute has actually been worthwhile.
There are, however, no matter how righteous I bang on about it, positions and situations that are not conducive to public transport. My affiliation with rental cars came in late 2010 when I travelled to Canada for a family engagement – picking the keys up to a 3.6l HEMI V8 Dodge Charger SXT AWD (woop) at Toronto Pearson Airport was nothing but the coolest thing I had done in a long time – I felt like a Top Gear presenter. The next time was a rental in the UK at Christmas time, this time a Hyundai i30 1.6l Hatchback. Ugh – the car was drab, dreary and pretty boring to drive.

Since then I have driven a smorgasbord of cars, North American and European. And here lies the list and thoughts on the cars.

Ford Taurus
I hated the Taurus, over time, because it was a gas guzzling boat of a car. It felt like you had timewarped into the late 1990s, despite the car being a model year after my own Punto. It still is the largest car I've ever driven, being longer and wider than BMW 3-series, and it probably is also the least desireable of all the cars I have driven, but I had it for a year – and it never really gave me any problems. The AC took too long to cool down in 100F heat, and the driving of it felt like you were driving it from 5 minutes ago, but it worked, served us well, and didn't cost me anything. So I suppose that counts a lot in it's favour. I should point out that in Texas the "large" Taurus is actually quite small and sent shivers of giggles down anyone spine who dared ask Joe or I what car we were driving.

Dodge Charger (first time)
In September I flew out to Canada to see my extended and now close family for the first time. This would be the first time I had hired a car and it was a beauty – a 3.6l V8 HEMI Charger SXT All Wheel Drive – a man's car, for sure. It handled okay, had a distinct bought of vroom when I put the pedal down, and was a sumptuously spacious vehicle. I really enjoyed throwing it about the mean streets of Parry Sound in the fall.

Hyundai i30
Christmas time, for me, will now forever be renting periods – in the 2010-2011 period I rented two cars – a small Hyundai in Scotland and a Mitsibushi Lancer in Canada (see below). The Hyundai would rank at the very bottom of all the cars I have driven, and the drop from even the Taurus was a shock. I did almost kill the little car when I forgot how to use the clutch pedal. The problem with the i30 was that it was obviously supposed to be a medium class hatchback for a family yet it lacked a nice dashboard, space, and most importantly it rode like it had been built in the 1990s. I felt, unlike the Taurus, that instead of going back in time in terms of style that this was a car from the present built on top of an old car. I really didn't enjoy driving it.

Mitsibushi Lancer
In Canada, in December, all cars need to have some sort of ability in the snow – this is a fact. It is also the same fact that has convinced me to get a 4x4 car in the UK when I finally do end up getting a car. I reckon that it is the most offroad capable of all the cars I have drive, and probably my favourite car I've rented – even Connie liked it, driving it and me for the first time on Highway 11 in Ontario. Pretty nifty. Interestingly, the car is not available in the UK – the only Lancers that you can get here are the hatchback ones which are beastly, and the saloons are reserved only for the Evolution X, the high powered (and high insurance) model of the car. Which is a shame.

Dodge Charger (second time)
When traversing the western states of the US we hired a car for three whole weeks, an impressive feat by any account. At the rental desk we were asked if we wanted a Chevorlet Impala (ugh) or a Dodge Charger. I said Charger, after the experience in September. He warned us it didn't have Californian plates, something I didn't quite get. In that car for 10 hours at a time was pretty good, considering. If we had been in the Tarus i think we would have killed each other. Instead, it was much more amiable and happy. And the car was a good drive along the Pacific Coast Highway despite it's rather mental juddery brakes.

Hyundai Elantra
The North American version of the i30, i fear – the Elantra was nice enough and felt good to drive on the roads, but is unremarkable. The car is well proportioned and would sit well in the UK against the Focus, but being a small saloon the boot is a tiny bit restrictive. Still it served a purpose (and swallowed our Wild Beasts album, the cheeky bastard. I hope the person who rented it after us enjoyed the sounds of the band).

Peugeot Partner
A VAN! It was ordered to help us get all our clothes and gear that my parents had nicely stored away in Glasgow during our Texas stint. Empty, the van was mental, bouncing and fast and high. Good fun. Laden it was less fun and more workman like, as it should be. I didn't hate driving it, but going from driving on the right and having an automatic to driving on the left and having a manual shifter is hard enough, but coupled with no back window, no blind spot view, and a weird arm rest... haha, that made for some fun times.

Chevrolet Spark
This is the worst car I have ever driven, yet it was also some of the most fun. It was tiny, yet still had three doors, and coped kind of well with the long roads and the long drives. It performed better in town, zipping into spaces like a magnet and generally being quite a nice little thing to throw about – trying to accelerate in 5th gear was laughable, and the dashboard looked like it had been ripped from a snow machine. Trying too hard is how it felt.

Volkswagen Polo
This felt like a bit of karmic resonance, being given to hire – only three weeks ago had I told a few friends of mine that I hated VW and their designs, as they are boring. Driving the new Polo I realised that yes, that might be true, but to drive and sit in the cars are the best I've ever seen – the polo was solid, fun, sharp and classy. The interior was simply exactly what I like in a car – symmetrical, not fuss, and quiet.

I miss driving, but I love walking.

The Culture of the Complainer

2011-10-31T07:00:00.000Z

Complaining would appear to be a very British trait. It's only when engrained in another culture for a while do you see that whilst it does happen all over the world about various things, it's the British who can complain about pretty much anything, to any degree, even in the face of rampant hypocrisy.
The easiest example to pull out of day to day life is the ardent complaining of the weather that takes place up and down the country in almost every commute, in every town, and in every office. It's too cold, too windy, too warm, not warm enough, too sunny, too much work and too little work. It was suggested by Ford Prefect, the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy "field researcher" in Douglas Adams' book of the same name (that I've mentioned a few times here and there), that human's had to keep talking about banal stuff to stop their mouths from locking together – he later abandoned this theory in favour of a different one: that it was to stop our brains from thinking.

I actually favour the second postulation to the first. The reason I think that this might be the correct one is that the level of complaining that you encounter must be correlated to people not fully grasping what they are saying. A great example of this is when people complain about where they live, or work. Complaining about working is a little more bearable when it comes to it, as there are a hundred thousand more chances to be mildly annoyed on a daily basis (by my current estimate) at work and that is sometimes a way of venting rather than just complaining – but living in Aberdeen you are bombarded by people belittling where they live.

My friends were not immune, but at least did something about it – Steven left and Shayan found himself a lady (one of the best reasons to stay anywhere, natch). It is when I hear of people who have made a home in the city complaining about living here that makes me tut and shake my head. I actually really like it in Aberdeen. It took a long time, sure, and it also took me to leave to realise that I wanted to come back, but it has everything I like in a city and more in some cases. The exact details of these criteria are for another post, however.

When hearing of a couple starting a new family in the city, or moving here to live it smacks of ludicrous idiocy to just settle in somewhere that you don't like. I have been asked loads of times if I enjoyed Houston – the answer is, of course, yes, because I really did. But when asked the similar and leading question of "Did you want to come back" or "Did you want to stay" my answer is "Yes" and "No" – that is a different question to saying if I enjoyed it, but wanting to stay is entirely different basis.
In response to my answer I have had people being incredulous, dismissive, and unbelieving of my answer. "Really, Aberdeen?" and I wince almost every time – there's a lot to like about Aberdeen and a lot to dislike, sure, like almost every place in the world. As I said before, just because I don't want to live in Texas doesn't mean that it's wrong for others to want to or that I am dismissing the city entirely, but to suggest to me that I am a little bit crazy to want to live in the city I want to live in when you yourself works and lives in the city feels a little circular and backwards, in my mind.

I suppose people projecting their own annoyances and opinions on to people is nothing new – I am trying to stop my self from doing it almost daily, being one of those tossers that sometimes thinks their opinion is the right answer above all else. I am trying to work on that annoying personality trait but it's a hard one to erode out. I just despair when someone complains about something that is quite easily changed - like their location.

Do not point out the irony of me complaining about people complaining – it'll blow up the internet.

I Know I Know I Know...

2011-10-29T09:27:00.001+01:00

Always apologising for not posting these days. BUT I do have three posts lined up in the drafts and after a whirlwind weekend I will post them on here as soon as I get a chance to tidy them up.

I am sure you are all waiting with baited breath.

In the meant time, why not read some of my recent contributions for Tones of Town or Write in for Writing's Sake?

The links are over there on the right ->

Hooting and Howling

2011-10-16T12:03:00.000+01:00

Carry me hooting and howling
to the river to wash off my hands
of the hot blood, the sweat and the sand
Any rival who goes for our girls will be left thumb sucking in terror
and bereft of all coffin bearers

A crude art, a bovver boot ballet - equally elegant and ugly
I was as thrilled as I was appalled, courting him in fisticuffing waltz.
Now I'm not saying the lads always deserve a braying.
And I'm not saying the girls are worth the fines I'm paying.

Hooting and Howling by Wild Beasts from their album Two Dancers.

4mph

2011-10-03T11:35:00.001+01:00

Apparently the average distance that someone can walk in an hour is 3.1 miles. Recently I have been pushing myself to walk faster and faster each day going to and from work, as a way of gamifying the route in which take to work. I have managed to walk the 1.1 miles from my flat to the train station in 14 minutes, or I can walk at around 4.7 mph in the mornings. I keep this pace up as a way of losing my Texas Fat, the some rather unsightly weight that I gained on the great American adventure, but also as a way of saving a fortune on not owning a car or throwing money down the drain on petrol.

Gamification is a controversial topic amongst many people in many circles, mostly because of the way that it appears to trick people into doing certain things, and also the way in which it can be nefariously applied. I became interested in gamification (a word that likely doesn't quite exist yet, but I am going to add to my Word dictionary right now to stop those squiggly red lines appearing all over this draft) after a thought experiment after playing a session on the Xbox Live Arcade title Trials HD.

The game is a simple physics based platformer game with the trick being that it focuses on trials biking – it's a fiddly game and dependant on skill almost entirely. It is classified as "Score Attack" game – the only real reward, after completing the levels, is to better your times and get better "awards", being the simple Platinum, Gold, Silver and Bronze that we are all aware of.

The thought suddenly hit me. It was like a bolt of lightning – why am I spending so long to shave literally 1/10th of a second of an arbitrary time? The only reason, really, was the glow that the game gives me when I am rewarded by a token gesture of success – the small idea that in a way I have won a victory. It meant that the hours spent getting annoyed and frustrated by the rough skills needed for the game and the unsuccessful attempts were for something, and I felt like I had achieved something in the end. It was an important part of my love of the game.

I began to think about applying this to other parts of my life; how to reward small things that I am enabled to do by giving myself similar rewards. For example, a really easy one was that if I had walked to work four days out of five I was "allowed" or "achieved" a McDonalds Breakfast. It sounds silly, but it meant that there was a reward for doing it. This is not new, not at all – conditioning via reward goes all the way back to survival instincts and training dogs and children to do certain things outside of their basic infant ideas. Give a kid a toy car every time he pees in the potty and he'll keep doing it wanting the reward, and removing the reward gives you the feeling of success without needing the reward, in the end.

Of course, I am not training myself to walk at 4mph like a dog... but the gamification of lives could be used in a really interesting way. Think about school – you are given a grade at which you are marked against. You get an A on a chemistry exam and the reward is that you got an A. Imagine, however, you were given something else. In the world of the Xbox, Microsoft revolutionised gaming by giving out "achievement points" during games. Each game has 1000 to give out, and a well thought out game gives these points for a myriad of various achievements in the titles. Some a rewarded for doing the whole game, some are for getting a certain score or time. It's a good thing and has made me go back to old games just to get the points. My current "gamerscore" is at the side of this blog, and is quite low for someone who has had an Xbox since 2007. But still, it's a numerical and easy way of rewarding someone for doing something that is boastable.

Do this in schools, or work, and you might be impressed at the way that you improve productivity and work quality increase. Instead of seeing a failure, you see a lower level of success, and that's an important way to change the attitude to trying. A small change is still a change in the right direction.

The day someone at a gym figures out and implements a Gamification system of getting fit, you'll see a massive change in peoples success rates. For me, all I want to get to is 12 minutes to the train station so I can break the 5mph barrier.

Crowd Goes Wild

2011-09-23T14:54:00.001+01:00

As I was stroking my second of two goals in during my first return to football in 14 months, I realised that I hadn't really lost any of my "skill", but had lost the confidence in which to carry it out. I turned up, a little nervous and a little tentative, before my first game of the new "season", as I hadn't played any fives when out in Texas, and only ever played (American) Football once, rarely doing anything of any physicality in the whole year. I truly felt the difference when starting to walk on the commute, and now I can brave the whole journey without worry or sweat.

But the game of football has always been a true test of my fitness, or lack of. And I was mostly worried about the possibility that I had lost any of the week in and week out fitness I had picked up back when it was a regular occurrence. The cardio work out that I get in a single hour long game of fives is tantamount to the best work out I can get. I was recently talking to Connie about "secret exercise", or tricking you into getting fit without the whole rigmarole of working out – I find few things as boring as running on a treadmill for 45 minutes or more. But fives is essentially that, but more fun.

And that was the kicker – it was still very much fun. It was still hard going, at first, but it was still the best exercise I get all week.

I started the game in goals, thinking that I could warm up a little more whilst the rest of the team played a bit of football. In my time in goals I saved a few good shots and managed to, not under pressure, get the first touch out of the way. Indeed, as soon as I was out of goals we went from being two ahead to level – maybe the team didn't adjust to me being out field (or it was to do with my only howler of the game leading to the equalising goal).

Soon after though, I fell back into the grove; moving to make space, running, and tackling. I don't feel like I have lost my footballing abilities really, maybe just lost a little sharpness when it comes to instinct (I was beaten several times by the run of the ball, or the spin off the boards) but most of the time I felt competent, and contributed well.

I was shocked when I scored my first goal – a nice left foot swing into the bottom left corner. I was even more surprise when I finished with my right foot a fabulous through ball into the bottom right corner, wondering if my gap in playing might have rejuvenated my right foot's credence in play. It wasn't until I managed to square a few good passes and assist a few goals that I realised that I just had lost some confidence.

So the aches and pains in the morning are back, and the coughing after the cold weather return too. Just don't call it a comeback.

"...been Cancelled"

2011-09-19T07:52:00.001+01:00

It's normal for trains to end up being cancelled here and there, maybe due to train failure or a driver missing a change due to being late, or even inclement weather, such as the cliche "leaves on the line" reason that is forever dogging stand up comedian's sets.

What I sometimes don't quite get is how embarrassed the train company appears to get when it happens. They skirt around the reason, almost playing The Game (sorry) with the actual reason for the cancellation or delay. It's like they are closing their eyes, fingers in ears, singing LALALALA and wishing it would all go away. Just tell us why it happened, no shame, and I'd be happy.

No doubt that some of my readers won't feel the same, but when I am rushing for a train and it is suddenly not leaving, I don't feel rage, but more bemusement at the situation. If i were a doctor needing to get to an important surgery it'd be unlikely I'd rely on the train service - my calculations and web browsing can wait.

Especially if it was the 7.50 Aberdeen to Inverurie that I get every morning. Out of 4 weeks of getting the train it has been cancelled twice - a pretty dreadful record for any public transport service. The thing is, unlike most of my fellow travellers, I don't take the train for granted. I am dismayed by many who complain about the transport network in the UK. Sometimes in rare cases it might be legitimate, but the fact we have one, it works fairly well, and is reasonably priced... I think that most people who complain have an inaccurate expectation of what train services can be like.

Ah, but you might say "give it time; four weeks and early September is nothing. Wait until the dead cold of January, after months of it, see how you are feeling then you smug bastard!" and to them I say "bring it on!", whilst searching Auto Trader for cheap Volvos.

Not America

2011-09-13T09:19:00.001+01:00

As far as cultural exchange is concerned between the two countries, the US certainly is more heavy weight now than the UK. We don't have as much of a cultural export outside of UK rock music, the occasional movie, and BBC TV shows such as Top Gear, or Doctor Who. In the other direction, we are not only bombarded with TV and films to the point of saturation, we also actually have their shops and buying habits being transferred across the Atlantic – case in point, the permutation of the students from the glorious GAP hoody, via Skater Chic, to the current in-vogue Hollister abomination.

As someone who recently was ingrained in the US culture (Texas culture, natch), I can notice these slight transfers more acutely than some, and maybe with a bit more alarm. Why is California surfer style such a boon in the UK when we don't have the weather for it, nor the basis of the culture for it? It's a strange style of imitation when you see children wearing board shorts and Hollister t-shirts walking along the street on a blustery, greying day.

The strangest thing that has not transferred is the actual language of this culture. Recently, I have noticed so many times people using the wrong terms when describing the US, from day to day conversation all the way up to award-winning news and current affairs programs. For all the movies and TV shows that we see on a day to day basis, somehow the actual context of the shows has been lost, like it takes place in a fictional US, or a hybrid country of US-UK, but I'll come back to that.

The most glaring of these was on a BBC News broadcast, on the 6 o'clock news, during the recent Hurricane Irene disaster that struck the North East coast of the States. In one bulletin the newscaster, who I presume is degree educated in geological events to be qualified to be reporting such dreadful occurrences, managed to make two rather glaring mistakes that confused me in the first instance. I shall paraphrase it into one sentence, for parsing and emphasis:

"I am currently standing New York, with the weather currently quite alarming. This is an important disaster in America, right now"

I'd be highly surprised if anyone from the UK could point out what was wrong with that sentence, from the point of view of someone from the States. In fact, in 50% of the instances I'd probably not even notice that something that had been said that was incorrect, but now it's become a bugbear.

See, no one I met in the States ever called themselves "American". To be "from the US" and "American" is quite different and the reason should be fairly obvious – America is much bigger than the US. In fact, of the whole Americas, a total land mass of 42'549'000 square km, only 9'826'675 square km, or 23% of the area, is the United States of America. Not even a quarter – this doesn't mean that the term "American" doesn't apply to them, as it's the given term for people from the US by someone British, but the area is not singularly known as America. This might be splitting hairs, but it's a strange mis-alignment in the American-British understanding.

The worst in my opinion, and one that happens all the time in the UK, is the use of "New York" instead of "New York City". In the mentioned broadcast, the person was standing in the southern tip of Manhattan in the financial district, where the water was slowly rising above the pump walls and into the streets. The caption said "BBC News LIVE – New York", which is correct. But then, when talking, he repeats "In New York" and I pointed it out to Connie that he didn't actually say where – New York is the State, one that stretches from Long Island in the South all the way to the Canadian border, at Buffalo – it's a big State (the 27th out of 50 in order of size). That's similar to someone in the UK broadcasting to the US and saying "I am here, in Europe, and...".

Of course, this is massive levels of pedantry and in day to day life in the UK you'd be hard pushed to feel any different if these things were to change. But after living in the US you notice these things, the little things that have not passed over the borders, and the context that is missing in which the various exports are embedded in.

As I pointed out above, I think that some people, especially the young and impressionable, feel that the UK and the US are synchronised, and that the countries are tied together tightly, much like it would be if the UK was a State of the Union it's self. The commonplace use of US and Canadian slang, the propagation of US hip hop artists, and even the lust after trucks (pick-ups and 4x4s) (which I am guilty of) is a strange product of the US-ification of our major sources of culture. I don't think it's a bad thing, as we have a long way to go to lose our identity, but the small parts that just stick out remind me that this is not the US. Not America.

The Future

2011-09-09T13:12:00.001+01:00

I am currently writing this post not on my work computer, my laptop, nor Connie's iPad, but my own phone from the Blogger app. Pretty snazzy.

However, this won't increase the posts in any meaningful way - typing on my phone is secondly only to standing on small peices of Lego in minor irritations that are actually the worst thing in the world.

The one thing that it does mean is that the future of computers is the mobile device, and no longer exclusive to laptops. This is, I think, the age of the app and mobile device, and the lines between phone, iPad and computer will dramatically blur.

The first company to make an Enterprise solution to this bluring and to convert companies, like mine, to this new computing landscape will be very rich indeed.

A Halt in Proceedings

2011-09-04T21:55:00.000+01:00

An extended break is taking place on this blog. I apologise for that; the circumstances are not worrying beyond the fact that I am not posting. It's partly due to living in the flat without internet and the fact that my new office location forbids posting to my blog.

At any rate, the blogs are piling up in my draft folder. There will be loads to come once I have internet connected and have worked out the facts behind posting via email to Blogger.

Mark

The Commute... Returns

2011-08-23T17:57:00.001+01:00

When I first moved to Aberdeen in August 2007 this blog was essentially still in its infancy, as was my attitudes to a job of work in general. The memories I have of moving to Aberdeen at first are quite vivid; that of a long trek to the office everyday and, later, a dusty old flat not too far from where my new shiny one resides. The truth is that this memorable period lasted barely 3 and a half months, from my arrival in late August, to my eventual movement into a real flat in the West End of the city. The one thing that did stick with me from this short, formative time, was the commuting that I had started.

When I first moved to Aberdeen I had no car, and my office was not on a direct bus link to where I was staying. I decided that, it being only two miles, that walking it was a good idea. The problem with this was that I had just came from the most un healthy period in my life – living alone in the West End with Hyder. Not that this was a bad thing, but it was a significant reason for my sweaty arrivals to the office in those first few weeks. After I obtained the car, I rarely walked to work. I walked for a few weeks in 2009 after I had killed my car whilst hill walking over by Kingussie, and that was actually more a walk to the bus stop.

When I eventually started working in the City Centre my car was left dereilict, as walking was the only way to get to work – parking was not subsidised or catered for, and rightly so, when it was 5 minutes from the train and bus station and the transport hub of the entire North East of Scotland. I enjoyed the walks to work, as they were short and relatively problem free.

In Houston, however, I had no such choice – my office was a 25 minute car ride away, against the flow of traffic. There were no buses provided, no trains to speak of, and car pooling was a potential but operational hindrance when it came to wanting to do over time – obviously, that's just the Way Houston Is ™ and I drove literally everywhere anyway, so it didn't feel too out of the ordinary.

Returning to Aberdeen, like the conquering hero I am, I found my self back into a job that I didn't quite leave – my company had merged with another Scottish engineering firm in my absence, and as such I am not working in what, when I left, was our direct competitors office. The position of this office is slightly different to that of my original location, being in Dyce – outside the city, near to the Airport. This means that, instead of a short walk to work, I am now a short walk to the trains station and then a short train ride, before another short walk to the office.

The Return of the Commute gives me solace in being wehere I grew up – going to University each day was a short wait on a bus, a 40 minute ride into town, and around a 15 minute walk to class. It felt fine, as I listened to full albums on the way into and back from university, and since starting this routine last week I have listened to almost all of my new music and some new podcasts, which has made the journey worthwhile.

The other added benefits of this is that

- I am now walking 4 miles a day, five times a week, for a daily calorie burn of 470

- I can people watch to a greater degree than before

- I am forced to take a healthy packed lunch every day, due to lack of ability to go anywhere to buy food

- I wake up when walking to work, ready for the day ahead

- Walking home clears my head from the days stress

And finally

- I can pick up shopping / meet Connie for a pint / bump into friends on the way

After missing a commute like that for a few years (and entirely for the last year) it feels like a breath of fresh air.

The Alternate Universe

2011-08-18T18:18:00.001+01:00

It is with some fascination, and mild amusement, that I drove around the Southern areas of Ontario a few weeks back. Connie, I, and members of her family were driving along the Queen Elizabeth Way, and several other roads in and around Toronto, making our way from the east of the city to the west. The area I was driving to was called Brantford, the birth place of the world-wide famous Wayne Gretzky. In any case, the amusement was not gathered from the driving, which was laboured due to the incredible piling up of traffic on a mild Saturday morning, but the names of the places that I came upon during this drive.

In Primary School as long time ago, I had spent a few months reading a book about the highland clearings. The book, The Desperate Journey, follows a small family as they are removed from their land and livelihood in Scotland, moving to Glasgow, before taking up a new life in Canada. In that period, hundreds of families had to leave the shores of Scotland and Ireland for several reasons, be it famine or being driven out of their homes. The end result was a large new population of ex-pat Scots, Irish, English, Dutch, German and Italians living in the North American expanses.

Hundreds of years later, and suddenly I remember these stories. Driving along the Q.E.W. I come across the towns of Hamilton, London, Cambridge, Caledonia, Norwich, Norfolk, and Waterloo. This has a strange effect on me – the feeling that suddenly I am in a strange version of the UK that is not the same, but not unfamiliar either.

The strangest thing that I began to realise when reading about the genesis’ of these places and their names is that whilst many are named after the places in the UK that many were from, most cannot with certainty say that’s why they were named that. It could very well be that they were named not for the town that they came from, but they were named that because the person that owned the land came from there – a small distinction, indeed, but still worthy of consideration.

It is all to do with the order in which you are introduced to them – Hamilton, to me, will always be the town to the side of Glasgow, not far in the car, but always somewhere I passed by. Dallas, however, will forever be the Northern sister-city of Houston and the site of the assassination of the president of the US – not the small hamlet south of Forres that is its name sake.

Names are weird things. So is going to places that you feel like you belong in.

The End

2011-08-10T22:53:00.002+01:00

It's over. A year in a day.

I'll be back blogging later next week once my move and new work has started.

See you
Mark

The Year

2011-08-07T14:48:00.001+01:00

I can't say that this project was planned, per se, but it came to me around January that it was entirely possible to create it. This is a video, developed over the course of the last year, that showcases some of the events, experiences, and fun times that have been described on this blog, such as Beer Pong, Connie's dog Benson, various attendances at sports (and tailgating) and various other peices of sight seeing. It is not exhaustive.

The music in the video is The End of the Ocean's Southern Skies which you can grab entirely for free (or a small donation) from their Band Camp, linked here. Thanks to the band for letting me us it.

The Year - A year living in Texas. from Mark Shields on Vimeo.

Hope you enjoy it. This is the Middle of the End, I'm afraid.

Sports: Basketball

2011-08-04T08:00:00.000+01:00

Previous American Sports posts

I should have written about this a while ago, seeing as I went to see my first NBA game in March and my second in April and it is now August. I actually only remembered that I had yet to ink the opinion on NBA into these hallowed pages when I started to write a omnibus round up of all the sports that I have seen since arriving on these shores. So, Basketball.

Sport: Basketball - NBA
Team: Houston Rockets
Stadium: Toyota Center
Cost: $20
Opponents: Golden State Warriors

Sport: Basketball - NBA
Team: Los Ageles Lakers
Stadium: Staples Center
Cost: $93
Opponents: Utah Jazz

Basketball is boring. No, wait, honestly, it is. I disliked it to watch for several reason. The first is that the scores are ludicrously high. The LA game went down to the last second, which was exiting sure, and quite good fun, but the scoreline was in the 80s, finishing 86-85 against the Lakers. The last 30 seconds of play probably took around 3 minutes, which was annoying too. It felt artifical the scoreline being so high, which leads into the secon problem with the sport, in my eyes - the shot clock. In American Football there's a play clock. The reason that is there is to stop the quarterback from keeping the ball on the ground prior to the snap. It stops an already long game being even longer... but that makes sense - much like time wasting in soccer it actively upsets the flow of the sport.

In Basketball, the "shot-clock" is exactly that. From gaining possession in your half you have 24 seconds to place a shot on basket. This means that you are constantly attacking the opponents basket. There should be no need to have this requirement because, and correct me if I am wrong, the whole point of the game is score baskets. So, to attack, you need to win. That's all you need. However, the games terribly imbalanced. See, defending is nigh on impossible due to the non-contact aspect of the sport. You can't "tackle", only try and palm the ball away, and any number of infringements can take place when trying to do this. So much so that players are allowed to foul all the time without much recompense. What this does in the end brings the game down to a single shot, score, repeat style of game. It feels like five-a-sides, where instead of counting the score you count the deficit. So, Utah won 1-0 rather than 86-85 (thanks Jonathan for that pearl of wisdom).

Thirdly, and crucially for me, is that the game lacks any discernible strategy or tactics. If I compare it to the other sports I like; NHL, NFL or, at a stretch, soccer (which I hate), there appears to be plays. In NFL that is all the game boils down to, it's more like a game of chess than a contact sport. In NHL there are so many more opportunities for tactics to come into play; defense actually works, plays can be made on the run, there are off-sides and a key aspect of the NHL game is the "team down" power-play moments that are nothing but a battle of offensive power against defensive might.

Now, someone learned in the sport will come along and tell me I wrong. I am sure of it; indeed, I welcome it. The important thing is that I am not attacking the sport directly, not really, more the reasons that I dislike it. In fact, I went to the game with two other newbies, one already a part fan, who afterwards explained the reasons that he likes the game aligned perfectly with the reasons I hate it (scoring all the time, fast paced, high scoring etc).

To each his own, but Basketball get's a D rating. Sorry, buddy, you're at the bottom.

John Taylor's Month Away

2011-08-03T21:16:00.001+01:00

I love to look
Out at the sea
From the swing park here
At Roome Bay beach

Today John Taylor
Starts his month away
On a boat one-ten miles east
Of Aberdeen

A dozen men, thirty days
With twenty-four hours in each
Of shattered boyhood dreams
And not much sleep

I'd much rather be me.
For once I'd much rather be me.

A month at sea
And then they'll surely sleep
With their heads
Still stuck on land

A month on land
And they'll surely dream
Of girls they can afford
But cannot have

And in a drunken haze
They're on the rolling wave
Once again I'd much rather be me
I'd rather be me

Once again I'd much rather be me
For once again I'd much rather be me.

John Taylor's Month Away from the album Diamond Mine by King Creosote and John Hopkins.

Lick of Paint

2011-08-02T18:58:00.003+01:00

Every so often, I get itchy feet in regards to the design of this blog. It's mostly, as I said before, because I enjoy changing things and experimenting with the various styles and parts that make up this familiar home. This recent change is the first of many upcoming flavours. In addition to the brand new, shiny Social links to the top right of the page (which links to pretty much every version of my online presence, whether you like it or not), I have once again changed the logo header. This time, it's planned.

See, the image is made up of three separate photos. These three are of the beach, signifying the summer. And, each month, or as I see fit, the photos will change with the seasons, showing things and pictures that I created and developed in the previous few weeks.

Think of it as a pictorial version of the lyrical header.

Guns

2011-08-01T23:21:00.003+01:00

Once upon a time, I was a young impressionable eleven year old boy, and I went on a school trip to France. This was 1998, and I had just finished my first year of High School, and as such, was socially awkward as they come. I didn't really mingle with anyone on the trip at the time, though now I consider one of that trip to amongst my bestest friends. There were a few stand out moments on the trip; a boy being knocked out in our room, fighting English school kids in the french hotel, wearing our Scotland football shirts on the ferry home the morning after the infamous Beckham red car and England's exit from World Cup 98... but all these, in my mind, pale in comparison to one of the most incredible moments of peer pressure of my entire life.

I bought a pellet gun.

It was moulded into the shape of a revolver, with a barrel that rotated, and allowed little red pellets to be placed inside. It worked using a spring, and could send these little red balls for a few feet at a time. When it came to getting back into the UK, this being pre-9/11 and 7/7, all we did was shove the guns into a big black bin bag and put it in the bag-hold in the bottom of the bus. Security at Calais had no idea.

This, essentially, was the extent of my experience of guns until a few years ago when I first shot a shotgun on a clay pigeon shooting range. Apart from bruising my right shoulder from my ear to my arsehole, it was a fun experience. Last year, on a close-friends Stag do, I enjoyed it all over again. It truly was an experience.

So, last week, I FINALLY go to do something people had been saying that I just had to do when I lived in Texas - shoot guns. Go to a range, and shoot guns. There are three problems with this activity that became clear to me upon my arrival:

- I don't own any guns.
- I am not allowed to own a gun.
- I was shit scared of it all.

It took a friend and a friend to finally say "Fuck it, let's shoot some guns and shit" for it to finally be organised. When Matt, the resident gun fan, decided to share his passion for the sport, I decided to start to read up on the guns he was going to provide. He provided a .22LR Pistol that was our training wheels, a Glock 19 9mm, a Glock 30 .45, and a Taurus 1911 .45ACP. Numbers and letters that meant little to me, but Wikipedia helped me out.

There were no jumping sideways things happening though. What did strike me, however, and to be honest, this shouldn't have surprised me at all, was how LOUD the shooting was. It was shocking how much my body reacted to the sound, almost instantly, and I wanted to leave. It was... tribal, in it's feeling, and it felt scary just to be in the same room. It probably didn't help that someone standing next to me shooting was firing a hand canon, rapidly, with gay abandon. It was scary.

But the actual shooting was a piece of cake. After getting of the slight shock and awe of holding a gun, one that could be used to kill right there and then, it was easy. The guns are fairly simple mechanically, and jam occasionally. It was the fear of the noise that I had to get over - Matt, our instructor for the day, watched and commented, and pointed out rightly that I was getting scared of the recoil and the noise. This was essentially causing me to drop my arm and flinch every time I went to pull the trigger, the consequence meaning that I was missing my target quite often. The trick, I was told, was to slowly easy back on the trigger and actually be surprised by the firing of the pistol - this mean I would keep my aim steady and the sight in focus. It was remarkable how well this worked; Matt even said it was ridiculous how much my aim improved in one clip. It is worth noting that the .45 kicked back like the snap of a 50 tonne whip.

Anyway, afterwards I felt this this:

God Mark.

There is an interesting point in all of this, though, and here it comes. You see, I don't like guns. I don't like the idea of being able to own a gun. I especially don't like the fact that people can just have guns on their person, concealed (in Texas) and be walking about, fine and dandy. That genuinely scares the living hell out of me. Also, having recently watched Bowling for Columbine*, and the statistics about gun crime, I just can't really understand why people need to carry guns - that is, for uses other than on the range.

That being said, I really really really enjoyed shooting guns, and it is something that genuinely gave me a thrill, but the fact that you can buy guns at shops, buy ammunition at various sports stores, and see guys carrying gun cases to and from cars... makes me feel uneasy. I don't know fully what my opinion of it is just yet, because I am in conflict. Afterwards, I noted to my fellow Scot that it makes sense, in a sporting way, to allow people to shoot guns at ranges, and I don't see why those who like to shoot couldn't have them stored there for use when they wanted to. I am uneasy about the right to bear arms in the US, and the fear and unease is probably born from living in a country where you just don't get exposed to guns at all, bar their over use and unrealistic realities presented to us via movies and cop shows.

Matt was amazing, patient, and genuinely made me in awe of the sport of shooting, and it was so much fun that I can't wait to do it again. What I think I have changed, in my outlook, is that whilst guns are not to be underestimated, it's not the gun that's inherently dangerous but the possible lack of education and control of them that makes me uneasy. I never felt uneasy whilst in the place that had hundreds of rounds shot in the short time that I was there, but it is the feeling that all it would take is one outside of that environment to really make a rather horrific difference to someone's life.

*I should note that I know there's a difference between Bowling for Columbine and going to the range, but that was also one of the only exposures I'd had to gun culture in the UK, so it was another leaping off point.

Bites

2011-07-28T08:00:00.001+01:00

Ever since I was a small Scout, anytime I was bitten by anything it would come out in these great big welts on my legs and arms. These are mostly midge bites, as we call them, or "no-see-ums" if you're from the North American lands. They are the scourge of camping in the UK, and in particularly, Scotland. They don't hurt per se, but they are annoying. Indeed, it does hurt afterwards, when my legs are covered in red dots and itchy as all hell, then they are very FUCKING annoying. I take from the reaction my body has to these little pests is because I am so manly and my immune system is all Lord of the Rings into Mordor on the bites asses.

We even make an industry of getting rid of the little bastards.

But, if I even considered that my puny little bites in the UK were sore, nothing would prepare my immuno-response to the assault that this year has inflicted on my skin. Mosquitoes, Sand Fleas, and most recently bloody ticks, have left my with marks all on my ankles, arms, neck, face and even, my left shoulder. If I thought my shingles from last year was uncomfortable on a plane, a range of mosquito bites on my left underarm is one way of putting that into perspective.

However, if you thought that was bad, which is was, my cohort in exchange Joe suffered a total and utter mauling at the hands of fire ants - 21 counted bites on his right ankle, several more on his left. A swelling akin to a really powerful erection came forth and he had to run to the pharmacy to cool it down.

I don't like being bitten. At least by fucking flying moths and ants and shit like that. Don't get me started on WASPS

Pets

2011-07-27T22:37:00.001+01:00

I was once talking to my girlfriends family in Canada, and I mentioned to them that I had never had a pet; or, I'd never had a substantial pet, I don't think my goldfish are worth much salt (sorry Jonathan). They were fairly surprised to say the least, none more so than my betrothed, who had grown up with a multitude of pets, including dogs and rabbits.

The reason for this lack of feline or canine family relations was simple; I had never really considered ever wanting one. My parents never wanted one, and my sister and I never felt the need to ask, maybe because the answer would have always been no. I don't think I ever did ask, but it was clear that my father and mother were never that keen on sacrificing their home for a pet of any description.

This left me with only a few places to meet and greet animals, which later bred a distaste for dogs. My Gran Muir had a dog and a cat, and I think I remember Ginger, the cat, but I am still not sure if I really do. The dog, Kay, was with us through my childhood, and was great fun to take for walks and play with, even if it was a small yappy Jack Russell. My aunt also had a pair of dogs, the infamous Mandy and Brandy, who were locked away in a room anytime anyone else was around their house. My Uncle also had a cat, who very recently had to be put down - Ziggy was the first pet that I really remember knowing, as I tormented her as a kitten, and she was wary of me until only a few years later.

Mr Benson in full flow.

Some of my friends had pets, a cat here and a dog there, but I never really had any interest in them. In contrast to this, Connie has had pets all around her life, and she even has a dog right now, the incredible Mr Benson. Her two sisters also have dogs, Hurley and Logan. Her family have dogs too, her Grandma having a cat and a dog. It appears to be so entrenched in the lifestyle of a Canadian family to have a dog.

I would not really have considered my self a dog person until a year or so ago, which is probably related to my dreadful experience of being "attacked" by a massive 50ft Alsatian on the way to my grans house once fateful day. Indeed, this experience made me scared to walk along a certain piece of pavement going to her house, and forever made me a little scared of the Alsatian. It is a terrifying dog when it is bearing down on you, blood glinting in it's eyes, its teeth sharper than diamond.

An artists impression of the dog.

Then I met a good dog, a nice dog. I met Mr Benson who is massive, 100lbs of steel muscle, in a lovable chocolate Labrador model. Then I met Hurley, a cross between a poodle and a soft coated wheaten terrier, basically a big teddy bear in a dogs body. Then, later, I met Logan, the only dog I know that has been trained to not lick your face, so instead of kisses you get a warm breath in the face as he puts his face in yours - he is a black Lab too, like Benson, whom he shares a father with.

Little puppy dogs. Hurley at the top, Benson on the bottom. (credit: Connie Draycott)

Water and puppies mix. (credit: Connie Draycott)

Hurley, 2011. In the basement of the Holden's, reacquainting himself with me.

Mr Benson, on the grass in warm weather.

Hurley, totally done.

I like dogs now, and I want one. In fact, I think I feel starved of the attention that pets give me; Hurley and Benson won't leave me alone when I am around, partially because I am knew (and smell like their Auntie Connie) but also because they know that I'll pet them and play with them. And that they dominate me; I am getting better at being stern with the dogs, and I will get better.

Statistics on My Music: The 2011 Update

2011-07-17T00:01:00.001+01:00

Last year I wrote a post that was dedicated to naming (and shaming) those artists which I had listened to the most since 2006 using the tracking site Last.fm. I am still using it, on my Mac and my iPhone. The biggest change this year so far has been that Spotify, that syncs directly, has had to cache its scrobbles because I don't have a dedicated internet connection on my iphone; this might have distorted the results slightly but not by much.

This time, I have a total of 50894 scrobbles (as of July 16th 2011). I am currently listening to Arab Strap, so the numbers will change slightly during the drafting of this post - if you want the up to date list, click here and see my Last.fm profile. Why not friend me? It also means that in the last year, I have added 15'000 new tracks to my scrobbles. Quite a feat.

My current overall artists:
1. Boards of Canada 1'712 UP
2. Belle and Sebastian 1'394 DOWN
3. The Walkmen 1'055 UP
4. The Smiths 1'039 DOWN
5. Idlewild 973 DOWN
6. Interpol 945 DOWN
7. Elbow 840 EVEN
8. Mogwai 835 UP
9. The Twilight Sad 791 UP
10. Radiohead 741 UP

We have lost Modest Mouse, Manic Street Preachers and Arab Strap from the top ten (Arab Strap and Modest Mouse are 11 and 12 respectively). Also, Radiohead and The Twilight Sad are finally in it, reflecting much more my current listening. In fact, if you notice that the distance between Boards of Canada and Belle and Sebastian, you see that compared to last year, the distance between 1 and 2 is greater; there was only 27 plays between them last year compared to around 360 this time. Quite a jump.

Also, interestingly, The Smiths have only had 65 plays all year. That's a massive drop year on year. I have very rarely listened to The Smiths all year. I have moved on quite a bit.

It also probably showcases that my Boards of Canada obsession is rather high.

Top ten overall albums:
1. Boards of Canada - Geogaddi 539
2. Boards of Canada - Music Has the Right to Children 470
3. The XX - xx 434
4. The Walkmen - You & Me 416
5. Modest Mouse - We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank 360
6. The Phantom Band - The Wants 359
7. King Creosote - Bombshell 305
8. The Twilight Sad - Forget the Night Ahead 289
9. Interpol - Turn on the Bright Lights 282
10. Manic Street Preachers - Journal for Plague Lovers 259

Okay, so yeah, I like Boards of Canada (click here for a lengthy article about them what I wrote)and this last year I have almost played everything they have ever owned to death. I managed to get a hold of all their EPs and even the ultra rare Old stuff tapes, Volumes one and two, so that is why they are at the top. Indeed, most of the list appeared last year, but have all fallen quite a way - even last years vogue, The XX, dropped places and only managed 145 plays. Not impressive really. The biggest drop, of course, was the anomaly of Journal for Plague Lovers; it barely managed 12 tracks, not even a full play through of the album's tracks! Quite a drop. Also, notice the entry of The Phantom Band in there: it was released in October 2010, so in under 10 months it has managed to rack up 359 plays - 1 play more more than my top album of all time August 2006 to May 2010. That is impressive. That kind of fact is why I use Last.fm and also why I decided to these posts.

Last year I pointed out that the next chart was almost useless; it had mostly track ones; side ones on it. but never the less, you have to be thorough.

Top Ten tracks of all time:
1. The Phantom Band - O 88
2. The Twilight Sad - Cold Days from the Birdhouse 70
3. The Walkmen - Donde Esta la Playa 59
4. The Walkmen - In the New Year 57
5. The Phantom Band - A Glamour 54
6=. The XX - Intro 53
6=. The Phantom Band - Walls 53
8=. The XX - VCR 52
8=. The Twilight Sad - Reflection of the Television 52
10. The Twilight Sad - I Became a Prostitute 51

Well hello The Phantom Band, nice to see you. Thanks for coming out. Less track ones in there than I excepted too, which is nice to see. Sorry to see Belle and Sebastian drop out of the list at the expense of The Phantom Band (who appear to be like Barcelona, sweeping the board entirely here) but that is how the chips fall.

As a good barometer, it's nice to check how my 6 Month listening relates to the above charts. As I pointed out last time, I change my listening habits a lot. This year's not been so much about The XX and also because I have been scrobbling a lot more frequently, and with better reliability, the numbers above probably fit quite well with my actual habits.

Top ten artists from the last six months:
1. Boards of Canada 765
2. Wild Beasts 424
3. Mogwai 330
4. The Strokes 250
5. Radiohead 248
6. Arab Strap 211
7. The Phantom Band 170
8. Elbow 153
9. Arctic Monkeys 151
10. Found 149

Okay so this is a much better representation of my current musical temperature - it was something of a quizzical thought when I noticed that none of the above charts had had Wild Beasts appear, especially considering that I have been totally obsessed with their most recent album Smother, and their entire back catalogue was picked up by Connie and I. It is also funny to see The Strokes in there; they were the soundtrack for most of the West Coast American Road Trip, so that makes sense. Also, there's Arab Strap, pushing up their number from last year and trying to break the top ten - something that will be likely to happen in the coming months as I write a lengthy article about them for Tones of Town.

I am also very happy to see Found stumble bleary eyed into this top ten - look at the company they keep. You should really check them out if you haven't yet.

As a final note I should point out that over the years my listening has changed a lot, and I have also listened to a lot of music as well. This means that the artists that I don't listen to, like last years We Are the Physics who appeared in some of the lists when I hadn't listened to them in ages, is less apparent in the lists. This means very little. But what it does mean in practice is that my Last.fm recommendations has become very powerful indeed - only in the last few months has it gave me the aforementioned Found, Admiral Fallow, Eagleowl, and others.

Another footnote: in the last week I have found Bandcamp. I even registered my planned musical project's name (but the less said about that, the better). On here I have found numerous bands that, in due course, I will talk about probably on Tones of Town. So keep an eye on there; but Bandcamp is changing the way I find and listen to music by a lot.

See you next year, I guess.

A Short Break of Sorts...

2011-07-13T16:16:00.001+01:00

I had the Spark, and now it's gone. So, instead of writing garbage, or forcing my self to write, I am not going to. Sorry.

In anycase, I have written for other publications recently, so I've linked to them here.

The Sound of Boards of Canada from Tones of Town
I started to write this in 2009, then again in 2010, before finishing it for ToT in 2011. It is my love letter to one of my favourite bands.

The Dears - Degeneration Street Review from Tones of Town
A review of the new album from the Canadian outfit. I have stopped reviewing albums for ToT this year; I find them hard to write. You can see all the reviews written by me by clicking here.

Scottish Bands for the Summer from Tones of Town
This was written to showcase new bands I like. Pretty simple really; a second part will hit in the autumn.

Sunday New Music Challenge 1 from Tones of Town
I did this a few weeks back and it was fun. Asked for three random bands from Twitter and then inked a dreadfully misspelled post before humiliation and changes. Urk.

Write in for Writing's Sake Recents #3

They've updated the sit, so it's worth check it out. As ever, check out the rest of the writers too - they are much better than me.

Sinaasappel from Write in for Writing's Sake

Imaginary Friend from Write in for Writing's Sake

Grateful from Write in for Writing's Sake

Forgetful from Write in for Writing's Sake

Pushing from Write in for Writing's Sake

Wiki Vandal Scandal

2011-07-07T14:51:00.000+01:00

The Worlds ~~Smallest~~ Largest Rodeo

I work in a large office and we obvious share IP address between all of the users; some people in the company probably understand that, but don't realise it. So, when today I was searching Wikipedia for Bulk Modulus information (references to books I could then look up) I noticed that Wikipedia was telling me that I had "One new message".

When you browse Wikipedia it pulls your IP address and logs any changes you make to that IP - and what Wikipedia was telling me was that my IP address had made some changes to the Calgary Stampede page. The Calgary Stampede is a the world's largest Livestock and Rodeo show, which is sometthing that a Texan (and someone from Houston) might find annoying.

Click to open to see the change.

This is the change that my IP address made; the one on the right is the correct version (the one the Wikipediabot changed it back to), the one on the left is the version created by someone in my company using my IP address to make the erroneous change, probably out of spite.

I found this greatly amusing during a time where I was tearing my hair out at the elusive Bulk Modulus formula. For completeness, I found this formula that appears to give me what I want - the value for a Hydrocarbon liquid. Watch out, there's some XXX formula-porn underneath this.

BULKMOD=10000*EXP(1.9947-0.00013427*E2-0.79392/C3^2-0.002326*E2/C3^2)

Where E2 refers to the temperature of the liquid in F, and C3 is the Specific Gravity of the liquid.

Contractor versus Employed

2011-07-06T02:00:00.001+01:00

It's the most interesting question you can have asked when working in my industry, and there is no correct answer:

CONTRACT or STAFF?

It is likely that you are probably unaware of the meaning of the question, as was I when I first started applying for jobs. It took a few weeks for me to see the whole picture, with both sides of the argument, and to see the positives and negatives of both, but before that it's probably best to describe what the difference is.

In the UK Engineering industry, and especially the Oil and Gas "scene' in Aberdeen, there are two sides to the business. You are either a "Staffie" or a 'Contractor". The difference is pretty simple at first; the staff member is a person contracted to the company, like a normal job, and is paid by the companies payroll team. You Pay As You Earn (PAYE) tax, directly out of your wage, and you have the added benefits of being employed under a contract, with redundancy pay, protection against random firings, and get the benefits of having paid holidays.

A contractor is the opposite. They are essentially miniature companies that are hired by the over all company to work there. Imagine BP asked Wood Group to design a platform; WG are considered the Engineering Contractor as BP has contracted the job out to them. Then, WG employ various people to then do the work, by either filling the roles with staff members or by Contracting a contractor employee who actually isnot a person, but is billed to a company that they have set up. Normally a limited company, they are one of the bare minimum shareholders, and pay them selves a modest wage, but take the rest of the income that the one person company makes as their own salary.

The reason for this is that the contractor can be charge inflated wages and sometimes the difference is around 40%-60% more than the similar staff member. The problem with this is that they have no obligation to you - when you don't work you don't get paid, and when you are fired you get little notice and no severance. It's a risk-benefit balance that is done.

In my field most engineers are contractors; at least, the older ones are. They will implore you that this is the correct way to go about your life - my father is such a contractor. However, that was during the boom. If a bust in North Sea is coming (and will likely come) staff positions might be worthwhile. And considering the drive to recruit staff graduates it might be the scene of some changes in the balance towards less contractors and more staff members. Currently, I am unlikely to move to contractor status in the future. I like the company I work for and the work I do there, and also like what I get paid. So it's unlikely to change.

Also, the way that it works is a little problematic - because you are technically a company, yet working as a single person, you have to be careful to toe the line when it comes to tax. You have to divide the money up correctly, pay your self correctly, act like a company essentially. If you don't the taxman might take a keen interest in your money comings and goings, and worst of all will task you with proving that you are not avoiding paying tax (which, you are, of course, but through a legal loop hole that is pretty solid right now, but could shrink in the future, and has done in the past). Ethically it is a grey area too.

This is the way that the UK is, and it's pretty annoying to get your head around. It also breeds disloyalty to companies. If you are not tied to a place you can easily get a few quid elsewhere off the bat and ship yourself there without any penalties. It's a harsh game. This disloaylty was exaplined by myself to a collague when enquiring about the potential for rivalary between the recently merged Wood Group and PSN; would the two companies really get along if they had been rivals before?

The answer is yes because most people who work for Wood Group probably have worked for PSN and vice versa in the past. The nature of the business means that people "churn" all the time between jobs. It means that you have little brand loyalty if you are not employed directly to the company. In the US it's the exact opposite, and for a while I always wondered why it was that way, but this colleague came up with the answer - it is benefits. In Canada's engineering industry there is around 30% more contractors to staff, which is similar to the UK, and the reason we supposed?

Universal Healthcare.

When you are working in the US you have such important insurance benefits tied to good jobs it is unlikely that you would jeapordise them for the thrill of an extra buck an hour. In the UK and Canada, with free(ish) healthcare across the board for anyone, you have no reason to have good insurance cover when it comes to healthcare.

So that's the difference between Contractor and Staff from my perspective right now. In a few years it might change (and likely will).

Independance Day

2011-07-05T16:14:00.000+01:00

Around the 4th July 1776 the US drafted and signed the Declaration of Independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain*. I was asked prior to this day, 235 years later, did I find it uncomfortable that the US was celebrating "freedom" from the Kingdom. I was a little surprised at the question, at first, but then I started to see the adverts declaring that the day celebrates the freedom of the US, with some implying that for some reason under the rule of the King that they weren't free.

You see, in The Land of the Free (TM) they have a strange feeling about being free, like it's an entitlement. The funniest thing about this is that this sense of freedom and it's implicit entitlement actually means that the US is ridiculously hampered by it's own weight. If everyone thinks that they have the right to be in control, no one can ever been fully in control of the country. It almost feels like it should be the wrong statement to make; surely freedom breeds freedom of everything, but infact you can see that in the US that freedom isn't quite what it means to some.

It's worth noting that the US can be a very constrained and persecution-filled land - all you have to do is look at the multitude of laws that are created and curated to this day that dis-allow 'marriages' or 'unions' between homosexuals; the rights of the common law relationship is dimished to almost nought; the rights of secularist and non-religious folks like myself are almost seen as ridiculous compared to the idea of free-religion; and in a situation that is worsening, the rights of a women to family planning and what comes with that are alarming beyond what I think a country in the 21st Century should be. The land of the free allows everyone to freely persecute anyone, and if enough do it, you are in trouble. Blame my liberal/European mindset for this feeling.

But when I think about the idea that they are celebrating "freedom" in the sense of "release" from a abusive marriage to Great Britain I disagree. The Holiday is no longer about that, it's about the ideals that the US stands for, for better or worse, and also for the freedom that the people who live here have. It is a freedom, and it allows me to say this about the country, I guess, but it also a strange balance of right and wrong.

The US is an experiment that is ongoing, with no results as yet.

*Interestingly, it is the opinion of many historians that the actual signing of the declaration took place on August the 2nd.

Life Through a Pretentious Lens Volume 2

2011-07-03T21:31:00.000+01:00

Some more photos taken by myself. These date from several different moments, mostly are from the archive. I regard some of these as the best photos I have ever taken.

Previously:
Life Through a Lens Part I
Life Through a Lens Part II
Life Through a Pretentious Lens

Hill walking in Northern Scotland, 2009

Streets of Bruges, quiet and still unusually, 2009

Large contemporary suspension bridge in City Centre Rotterdam, 2009

Me, standing in the Atlantic Ocean off the West Coast of Ireland, 2010. Taken by Shayan Komai.

Lovely river going through the town of Donegal, 2010

Georgian Bay in Parry Sound taken from the Salt Docks, 2010.

First Maple leaf of the fall in Whitestone Lake Resort, 2010

"The Toll". Travelling from 17 hours and with still a train journey to go. No sleep for around 30 hours, 2010.

Rouken Glen lake during the big freeze of 2010, 2010.

Ice Fishing with Abe, 2011.

New York City; the Empire State Building, 2011.

A gull on Alcatraz Island Reserve, 2011.

The Golden Gate to the Golden State, 2011.

The Grand Canyon I, 2011.

The Grand Canyon II: The Colorado River, 2011.

JFK Memorial, downtown Dallas TX, 2011.

The Forth Bridge effected by Instagram, taken in 2010 and modified in 2011. Personally, I love this piece of engineering and this photo is one of my al time favourites, partly because of the effects, but also the original version has Connie in smiling. Two of my favourite things in the world in one picture. The order of the two should be obvious to anyone who knows me...

Shite Comedy Films

2011-06-30T02:00:00.002+01:00

Name me a good comedy film from the last few years and I will show you a comedy where cunts and idiots get their way for no apparent reason. This only really became obvious when I was watching the movie Due Date; this was simply a vessel for which two actors to act like fannies (without any reproach) for the sake of comedy. I hated both characters, so when they both need up royally fucked for breaking international laws (crossing the order in Mexico with drugs, for example) I was happy and hoped they got locked up for good. Obviously, this didn't happen, and I wondered why I was supposed to care that it didn't.

It happened again when watching Hall Pass - two unattractive wankers getting some maddening free time from their attractive and, to be honest, out of their league women, who they had somehow tricked into marrying them. Who, in their right mind, would even consider such a conceit in a relationship, never mind what type of guy who even fucking consider that in his marriage. Surely it is on the same level of the "seeing other people" break some marriages end in. The two characters in this film dream of nothing else than to pump some random bird.

Stop Looking at This Now.

This is a worrying trend for the mainstream film and I concede it is related to the lack of redemption. The whole idea of the Hangover is that these guys fuck up royally and get their arises handed to them in a series of ridiculous but stupid events but, in the end, they redeem themselves - the one that hates his wife leaves her, the one that was doubting his family kinda comes clean (but is still a wank, natch) and the weird one realizes it's cool to be weird anyway. Good! The whole thing is undone with a sequel that essentially drops all this progression for the same plot, which means that the same journey is going to take place anyway. It's to do with the male getting their fantasy at the expense of artful witty and clever comedy; instead we are treated to gross out filth driven Youtube-able versions of the same storyline.

Imagine trying to make Airplane! now - instead of the Jive-talking Homies you'd get some referential bullshit to Glee and some jokes about how Ted Striker was a total jerk, instead of having some "drinking problems". Where has the subtly gone? Where has the visual joke gone? All that we would need to do to make them even more obnoxious is add a Two and a Half Men laughter track to the fucking mix.

It pisses me off - look at some classic comedy films and you'll see they are quite similar, but differ in such a base way it's shocking that people are getting away with it - let's take Groundhog Day, and Phil Connors, the total bampot cunt, and his journey. He gets stuck in the one daythat is the most cuntish and then has to figure a way out of by becoming a better person and finding love. It's called REDEMPTION.

Liar Liar is the same arc, as is a multitude of good comedy films, with added Jim Carrey-ish nature of Jim Carrey. But there's REDEMPTION. Even the good ones this year ignore this void - the best being Paul, a perfect pitch to a clever story road trip with likable characters and the film soars against its competition because of it. Bridesmaids, PRed as the female Hangover, has like real characters that feel real, even if they are maddeningly fucking border line retarded when it comes to men.

Where are the films that have real comedy with real people, not utter assholes? Where? They are nowhere to be seen because The Hangover 2 ripped a billion dollars in 4 hours. It what the masses want. It's what the writers have the most experience in writing, and the actors enjoy making them.

We are screwed.

Distance and Temperature Continued: Latitude and Longitude

2011-06-27T02:00:00.000+01:00

When discussing distance, or temperature, you forget that there is a very good reason for the particulars of the differences in scale and size of the parts of the world that I compare; the position of them. The world is a complex place, and in looking at these differences an interesting tidbit of information came to my head. When I was in Canada at Christmas doing great things I stumbled, to my surprise, upon a strange fact - Connie's home town of Parry Sound, ON is actually further South than my home of Glasgow, Scotland. By quite some distance. In fact, you can measure the distance technically, by using the lines of Latitude, as created by in essence by Ptolemy and envisioned by Mercator.

The two lines across the Atlantic.

Parry Sound is at 45° 20′ 0″ N and Glasgow is at 55° 51′ 44.86″ N or around 10° Latitude different. In real terms (or distance as we know it) it's around 701 miles (with a fair amount of margin for error).

This distance doesn't fully explain the discrepancy in the temperatures because Parry Sound is further South or in better terms, closer to the equator, which means in theory, it should be warmer. See the differences between Texas, and Alberta, or Glasgow and London for that matter. The answer lies more in the actual position - the Gulf Stream and the North Atlantic Drift does something marvelous.

Weather like this in Blackpool, for example.

It pushes the warm water from the Gulf of Mexico up towards my puny little island and gives us an incredibly temperate climate when compared to somewhere on our line of Latitude - say, for example, Wabowden, Manitoba, 54° 54′ 32″ N, which reaches a average low of -26'C in December!

I thought it best to follow up both of those previous posts with this addendum.

Peter Devenney Shields (1932 - 2011)

2011-06-23T02:00:00.001+01:00

On Friday the 3rd June, my father's father, my grandfather, Peter Devenney Shields passed away. He was 79 years old, having been born on the 4th April 1932

I had thought long and hard about what I wanted to write as a post here but I found it hard to come up with the right words that would honour the man in his life in the correct way. Not because I couldn't think of them, but I just couldn't grasp what an important man he had been in my life, and in my family. I decided that I would write what I felt, what I remembered.

There is one thing though that strikes me as incredible about the man, and that is his life. Being born in 1932, he lived before the second world war, living through the war as a child, and then having to live through the terrible slum conditions of Glasgow that was left in wake of the bombings and war effort. He later worked as an electrician for the great Glaswegian business empire of Shipbuilding - something that I am extremely proud to have had family connections in. He once, when I was very young, took me on an open day to a ship that had recently been built on the Clyde. I remember vague, blurred, clouded memories of finding the ship small, tight, and grey, but there's a memory there.

I also have memories of going to the Kelvingrove Art Gallery with him, going to see a movie in the ABC cinema with him as a child, and also the attempt to go and see Armageddon at the old Muirend Cinema and getting to the trailers before the projector broke. I remember his old car, a Ford Orion, and his later car, a Nissan Bluebird. I am not sure if he had beaded seat covers, but I remember and link them to his car.

I remember the black drink he used gulp down at Christmases - it was in a black can, and then a red can. The two drinks were Guiness and McEwan's Export, two drinks that for the rest of my life will always make me smile as I think of the man who drank them for as long as I can remember there being a drink called beer.

In recent years though, a strange thing had happened - at the age of 79, he was active on the Internet. When he grew up, in 1932, the BBC television channel didn't exist. It came into being in 1936, when he was aged 4. At his death, I could have video chatted with him on the other side of the world (indeed, if I had been in space, we could've video chatted from low earth orbit). He had a Facebook page, replied to emails (albeit putting full messages in the subject) and played online computer games with his friends. He had made a remarkable attempt to keep up to date and despite he inexplicably breaking his Windows computer almost on a monthly basis, he was tech-savvy. And it amazes me.

He grew up during the telehone becoming household, the TV becoming the world medium, colour TV, the Cold War, the advent of the Hippy Movement. He lived through the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Punk, Prog Rock, Metal, and later, Hip Hop. He grew up in the most incredibly tumultuous century our civilsation has ever known, and lived over into another century. He lived such an incredible life during such an incredible time.

But that's not the most important thing; not by a long shot. The man, from a large family, met a woman, Marion Kavanagh, from a similarly big family, and they fell in love. They married, in 1958 and gave birth to my father in 1959. He raised my father in the way that he knew, and my father later fell in love with a woman, my mother, and later, in 1985, I appeared, his first grandson. In 2010, his two eldest grandchildren would move away to America and Germany after one of them graduating from University, the other in the middle of her studies, and he would remark to my father that he couldn't believe that was possible. An electrician by trade, later a taxi driver, who had been born in Anderston and later grew up in Yoker, was a rich man in love and life. Under his Glaswegian brogue and stern opinions, he was a romantic: in an incredible moment, my father and my uncle uncovered cards from his 50th Wedding Anniversary in the most interesting of places - in The Briefcase, where he kept everything important to him: bank details, shares, financial details. And my gran had no idea they were there.

My children will know about my grandfather, and that's the most important thing I can give him.

The Other Glasgow

2011-06-22T02:00:00.004+01:00

I was born in "the City of Glasgow", and lived a short part of my life in the city limits, before moving south of the city and technically growing up in the area known as Greater Glasgow. The city limit was a 10 minute walk from my house as a child, but it's not where you grew up that defines you, it's how you associate your self in that place, and I think of my self as a Glaswegian; I mean, I am one. I read a while ago that I am a member of a group that they called the 'new Glaswegian' meaning that there is a difference between the Glaswegian that my parents grew up having to distinguish them selves from, the No Mean City outlook, whereas I grew up with Glasgow's Miles Better, and this wee guy proudly adorned my bedroom window.


Mr Happy. Taken from http://www.flickr.com/photos/lwr/ under the Creative Commons License

But, there's another Glasgow, and one that I forget. Sometimes, you are proud that the city still has a dreadful image, when some mentions that Glasgow's hard, when in fact it's more like London or Paris in it's cosmopolitan nature, but never really consider what this side of Glasgow is like.

I grew up with it on a daily basis, at High School, and you can see it every weekend in the city centre; the wrong Glasgow, the dark side, the difficult to admit to but impossible to ignore side.

The Dark Side, if you will - those who are affiliated in the wrong way with the two sides of the Green and Blue divide. On a recent trip back to Houston, I travelled on a direct flight from Glasgow to Philadelphia. It was full of idiots. Idiots from the green side of the divide; note that they exist on both sides. These idiots decided that drinking, singing, acting like utter children, and then one literally threatening Connie and I with physical violence, and then you being to wonder what I am labelling myself as when I call myself Glaswegian.

It is easy to forget, however, that I grew up amongst this type of behaviour, the type that makes me really disgusted that I can be guilty by association with these cretins. They argument that "They were just having a good time" or "They were on Holiday" is as backwards as it is fundamentally scary to even think that these pardon people from being civilised. In my life I've met these people all the time (see my ancient series on Neds for context: Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3) and I have learned how to deal with them in a way that I am happy with - condescension, mirth, pity sometimes. They missed an important lesson.

That lesson is that whilst they were growing up, the Other Glasgow was ruled by fights, hitting and berating those you don't understand. In their circle of friends that might still be the case, but My Glasgow, the New Glasgow, this doesn't happen.

The Bruins are awesome, I'm told.

It embarrassed me. A lot of the people on the plan were embarrassed too, fellow Glaswegians. And just like Connie being enraged by the recent rioting in Vancouver after their Stanley Cup Final loss (to the Majestic Boston Bruins, no less) you have to remember that the other people who come from where you are don't define you, and neither does where you come from, but how you represent where you come from is important. And if I chuckle with people in the UK about how Glasgow's a nightmare sometimes, then maybe that's reinforcing a stereotype that isn't true, but it's hard to argue against it sometimes when you encounter such madness as we did on that flight from Glasgow.

We will be traveling First Class next time.

Stylistic Changes

2011-06-21T02:00:00.006+01:00

If you have been a keen reader for around a year, or more, I am very grateful for you sticking around. You might have noticed that I have changed my style over the last few months to include less verbose paragraphs, and introduce more images and strangely coloured text.

Hot.

I at least hope you have noticed. The reason for this slow change is that I am becoming more and more certain that I will likely keep blogging for a long time to come, and it's getting a bit ridiculous to consider my self a 'writer' and more an 'idiot' and as such, I am going to take posts a little less seriously in their style from now on.

Or at least try to.

Finding the BBC

2011-06-20T02:00:00.001+01:00

I have lived in the US for around 10 months now, and it has only been in the last two weeks that I have finally found something that I wish I had known existed for a long time. Well, you see I knew it existed, but I hadn't realised that I could get it on my car radio. It's called NPR, or Public Radio, which is essentailly listener funded radio - Radio that plays without the advertisments that I so readily derised when I heard them day in and day out.

To call it like the BBC is close, because the channel, KUHF, or NPR for Houston, is essentailly BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio 3. The first station, 88.7FM, is a news station for the times that I drive to and from work - in the morning they have opinion pieces, news reports, traffic and editorials akin to that of the morning commute on BBC Radio 4, and in the evening they have a similar program. During the day, they also play the BBC World Service, with World Have Your Say and The World Today appearing on the station - very welcome to hear when driving around the town. On 91.7FM they play classical music that is a quiet respite from the Rock and Country stations on the other frequencies.

The advantage that these stations have over the others is that they seem unbiased to my European ears, and remind of an American-accented version of the BBC Stations that I love, and I wish that I could get. See, you can get BBC Radio here, and it's time shifted too, which means that if I wanted to listen to Chris Moyles in my car at 8am in the morning, I could - I wouldn't, of course, be listening to that odious idiot. But my car doesn't have satellite radio at all (it barely has FM). So I have to make do with the NPR which sounds like the radio I want, and does it in the way that I want it - commercial free.

Interestingly, NPR is something that the US citizen doesn't really agree with - like all things in the land of the Free, if it's free they don't want to be paying for it at all, no matter the route in which it is paid for. So, unlike in the UK where we all pay for the use of the Radio and TV via the TV License, and we are quite happy to do it (or, at least, the most of us are, especially when we see the way TV is elsewhere in the world), the Americans do not. Even when only 2% of the funding of the NPR base is from Federal Grants, people are still actively worried about the editorial content of the stations.

See, in the US, you can broadcast politically partisan shows and opinions, unlike the UK- this why Fox News is seen as Republican and can broadcast bullshit-spouters such as Bill O'Riley and Glenn Beck without recourse (News Hounds being excellent at pulling their bullshit apart) and why when I look at my Apple Genius app recommendations, Apple suggest I download the Obama 2012 app because I have the CNN app on the iPad. So people disagree over the way the NPR is funded, even to such a small amount, and even suggest that it's too liberal, at the same time suggesting it's too conservative. This, unfortunately, is the way the US works - everyone's biased against you, no matter which side you are on. And it's makes me want to pull my hair out.

and I miss it terribly.

But, for the next few weeks I will be forgoing listening to 5 tracks from albums in the car, and listening to the dulcet tones of All Things Considered and Morning Edition, and be happy that I finally found a station that I can listen to, agree and disagree with, and not be berated by various adverts every 6 minutes.

I'll take it.

The Temperature

2011-06-17T02:00:00.003+01:00

Discussing the Weather before. (Part 1, 2, 3 and 4)

Sometimes I wonder if people in the UK who ask me what it is like to live in Houston really understand the problem with the heat. See, when back in the UK last week I was asked several questions, with one coming up all the time:

What's the weather like?

The answer to that is pretty simple - too fucking hot. It's currently barely dropping below 75F at night which, in the good money temperature scale, is 24C. At night. This is the temperature that I actively avoid when I am holiday in Europe, and it's warmer than that when I get up in the morning.

Someone, I can't remember who, stated that they would just stay beside the pool in heat like this. This is not an option for me:

- I burn like bacon on an un-oil frying pan

- I have to go to work every weekday, no matter the heat

So it's hard to live by the heat. I knew that this was going to happen, so should I even be bothered by it? Indeed, I did choose to live out here for a year, and I knew that the temperature was going to be high, but that's the thing - it's not the temperature that really is killing me.

It's the heat. The mixture of high temperature, around 38C at the highest, is coupled with a ludicrous humidity. Just look at this:

It's actually only 94.6 F, which is 34.78C, but it feels like 107F, or 41.67C. Want to know what that actually is like? You don't - it's so warm, it's prohibitive.

So when I was home last week and I tweeted this:

I was being deadly serious - it felt great to finally have some cold temperature around me, some precipitation too. It was lovely. So I decided to look at the difference between the average highs and lows of three places in the world - much like I did in the Distance post a while back. The three places in the world are

Houston, Texas
Aberdeen, Scotland
Barrie, Ontario

Barrie is the closest I could get to Parry Sound from my source, Wikipedia. Trust the source. I took the temperatures for the months, average highs, and plotted them on the same graph like a good engineer. I'll even call them figures. Here's the graph for Highs.

Click to make larger.

So, in Aberdeen we have a nice flat curve - it barely get's above 65F in Aberdeen, on average, which is fine by me really. As someone who doesn't want to strip off naked outside of my own bedroom, and someone who doesn't measure their holiday on the Hexcode of their tan colour, I feel that is normal. Notice that the lowest average high in Houston doesn't even touch the highest average high in Aberdeen. Barrie is a bit more varied, with coldest winters and positively warm summers.

How about lows, then?

Click to make Larger.

Fairly obvious, huh? But, here's the important thing: the difference between a winter and Aberdeen's Highs and Lows are similar - around 10 to 15'C, so fair enough. So, you'd imagine then, that say the hottest it normally is in Aberdeen, around 18'C, and add around 15'C to that, 33'C, wouldn't be that bad - I mean, the difference between 0 and 10'C isn't substatial is it?

Well, I can tell you it is quite difference. 18'C to 38'C is a ridiculous change, one I am not built for. And the summer has only begun.

Want to know what the record high for Houston is in the summer? It's 108F on the thermometer scale, or feels like

A Countdown.

2011-06-16T02:00:00.000+01:00

There was once this old countdown.

The new count down is on. Instead of thatcountdown, it's this count down.

This is the next countdown. It's exciting.

Life Through a Pretentious Lens

2011-06-15T16:32:00.001+01:00

My "series" of posts that just showcase photographs of things that I have seen and done have been fun for me to put up. Recently, however, I have been taking better photos with my new DSLR Camera that can really take good photos. I am going to get a tripod and start taking photos of the night sky, which should be excellent fun, but also to take long exposure shots and stuff of that ilk - pretentious stuff, indeed.

Also, on my iPhone I have installed a smattering of apps that allow me to fiddle with my photos taken on there.
Instagram is the best, that allows me to directly upload photos from my camera to Twitter, Flickr and Facebook, as well as my Instagram feed. It allows for some effects to be added to the pictures as well, but mostly I use it for the sharing aspect.
Photoshop Express is amazing - it allows me to change up some details of photos taken to quite a high degree, alloqing me to straighten, clear, blur, sharpen... loads of little tools that make it worth while.
Diptic is a new one that allows me to create easily developed slide, with more than one photo on each slide, to create really nice presentations of photos.

Also used is 8mm, a kind of video version of Instagram's effects that makes video files look old, and the old Hipstamatic that created a whole host of dreadful albums on Facebook of vintage photos last year. It's pretty good, but the menu system is clunky.

Despite my Affiliations.

The Sky at Night from the Plane

The Line on the Horizon

My Current Collections

Keep Traveling.

Here are a range of photos recently culled from my Instagram feed.

Sports: Ice Hockey 2

2011-06-04T02:00:00.001+01:00

The Continuing Chronicles of Mark and Ice Hockey

I went to see the Houston Aeros play the Binghampton Senators at the AHL; for those who don't know, the AHL is the lower league in professional Hockey in North America, with 30 teams and the same league structure. Indeed, the AHL teams are all affilated with a NHL team. The Aeros are linked to the Minnesota Wild and the Senators are linked to the Ottawa Senators. The differences between the NHL and the AHL kind of end there, as the rules and set up are pretty much the same - think Premier League to the Championship.

It also turns out that there are shit loads of other hockey leagues in North American and they all offer something for anyone. I don't know why it hadn't dawned on me before, but it has now. It's pretty cool.

The sport was, as always, brilliant. We also got these cool thunder stic- wait!

THUNDER STICKS

They are pretty cool. You blow them up and then trash them against each other to make noise and piss off anyone sitting next to you. This is what they look like:

They make a racket. We were also sitting very close to action, which is quite different to the seats we had in the Shark Tank in San Jose - literally, the last row in the stadium, at the back. The proximity to the ice made for some hair raising moments when you momentarily forget that there is glass stopping the puck from ripping your face and beard off, and you flinch when it smacks upon it.

There was something wrong with the game though. No, it wasn't the fact that the Aeros lost (the first time I have been to a Hockey match and the team I am supporting have lost, natch) because, seeing the Texans and Dynamo fail, I wasn't expecting the Aeros to win. No, it was the lack of respect the fans had.

When the officials skated onto the ice there was suddenly booing - from all corners of the arena. They hadn't even made a decision yet! And, as the game went on, a few strange decisions that went against the Aeros meant that this inherent booing just got louder! And, from the fans sitting around us, it was clear that most of the teams' fans expect some miraculous hockey to be played by guys who, whilst playing some great hockey and what really was a pretty amazing game, can't be expected play better than the NHL teams. That's like expecting an SPL team to play Barcelona style football.

At any rate, the game was fun, and I ate a brilliant steak. So all in all it was a very good night.

Listening Woozy

2011-06-03T02:00:00.001+01:00

Let the world take you in, wash over you, and get woozy. It's the best thing after being alive.

Brutal Honesty

2011-06-02T02:00:00.002+01:00

Imagine that someone who you have enjoyed talking to over some food and beer suddenly asks if you are enjoying your time in Texas. That person is Texan. My answer is the same no matter who it was that was asking: YES.

Yes, this time in Texas has been amazing. Actually, it's been very hard to describe into words what it has meant to me, so that's why I've struggled to exactly 101 posts since the year away started. The sports, the weather, the food, the people, the memories, the travelling... it's been an experience of a lifetime - quite literally. I nod and say, "Yeap, Texas is pretty amazing". The next question that is asked is one that maybe I should've taken a little bit more time to answer; "Would you stay if given the option?".

The answer to that question is "No". I realised quickly that I had probably quite insulted the fellow, but it really shouldn't be insulting. I just can't live in Texas. The reasons are numerous (and warrant a whole post, or series of posts, most likely) but they aren't bad. As I've already said recently, it's not you Texas, it's me.

I just worry sometimes that I might be saying things that are in my opinion critiques that, in some people's eyes, might be seen as an affront to the State; they are not intended that way, I am just being honest, brutal as that may seem.

Not Working

2011-06-01T02:00:00.008+01:00

There are many cultural differences between the UK and the US, but one sticks out like nothing else when working in the US and in the Oil Industry - the fact that no-one here takes holidays. Not a single person here that I know of seriously plans their year around holidays or plans to travel away. There are plans for weekends, and long weekends, and weddings, and possibly trips for business, but when I even breathe that I am considering going to take some time off to go somewhere there's a sharp intake of breath.

I took 3.5 weeks off when I drove the Road Trip and that is the longest I have ever taken off mid-year; I took approximately 4 weeks off at Christmas but we can discount that due to the fact that a) it was expected and b) that's about the only time of the year any American worker takes time off. When I mentioned this quite large amount of leave I exepcted a reaction of "Oh, wow, where are you going?" or something along those lines, but not the "Oh man, well, we will need to see..." or "What? How can you?".

The reason I can is because I work within the EU Working regulations. There are things written into law that state that you must take time off work; Canada has 10-15 days required, the UK has 5.6 weeks (or 28 days plus holidays), and even Iran has 4 weeks annual leave to take. The United States of America, the leader of the world, the super power, the beacon of democracy in our world?

None.

pronoun /nən/

Not any
- none of you want to work
- don't use any more water, or there'll be none left for me

Not a single day legally required to be given. Not a single hour. The company I work for, though, in their infinite wisdom, do give you vacation days - however, you earn that at a rate 3.5 hours of per 8 worked, which works out at a 184 hours, or 23 days year (this includes the holidays required to take for the nine office closure days on public holidays). The interesting thing is that even after they give you this accrued vacation-leave, you can cash it in for money, rather than taking the time off work. What's the use in that? Why do it at all then?

There are a few problems with this. The first is people who work are being legally obligated to not taken any days off. What I mean is that in the same way that I have to take time off, people in the US have no reason to, and as such it hasn't appeared in their way of working ever. So they won't, and have no reason to want to. Secondly, the culture of the company I work for seems to be "quantatity". I work 40 hours a week, 2.5 more than my base in the UK. This is the base level, or lowest I can work - 4x 9 hour days plus a few on Friday to push me over the limit. It feels okay here, because everyone is working fucking batshit hours - last week, at the afore mentioned "boil" a guy who works on my project mentions casually that he has been working 55 hour weeks since January. This obviously is analogous to the people that I worked with when the Tales of Rock Steady were the bread and butter of my blogging subject matter - they try to outplay each other in terms of hours worked, or not slept, but to me it just seems crazy - if you can't do your job in 40 hours get someone else to help you out, or you need to work harder. Working 55 hours a week is mental.

Or is it? The third thing that annoys me about working in the US is that it seems to be regarded as crazy to want to not work. I love taking time off and going travelling or just sitting about relaxing. There's a reason why I like Thursdays and Fridays: if it was the otherway I'd be in on the weekend and pissing my self with anticipation every Sunday night - but no, no I don't. I work to make money to then make my life the way I want it to be, not just to fill my days with shite. I don't work for the fun of it, luckily I have a job I enjoy to a degree, but if I didn't have to work there would be no-way I'd be sitting in my window less office troubleshooting the Microsoft Excel Solver function. Yet, here, in the States, I feel dirty, even an outcast, the moment I mention that in the UK, at my company, I get 34 days off (which, with 5 day weeks, works out at essentiall 7 weeks off work.

The work-life balance is broken, and they only have themselves to blame.

Note: After writing the above post over 4 months (starting in February, working in various stages) I finally fact-checked some of the finer points and it dawned on me that the company that I work for actually incentivise you to not take time off. You see, the spurious working hours that I can work are a godsend. If you work your 40 hours a week, on any day of the week, in any lump sum, they don't really care. So, if you wanted to work 40 hours Mon - Thursday, you can, and then work 8 hours on Friday. Then, take the following Monday off, you can use the 8 hours "banked" to still work the Monday technically, without actually needing to come in - so the Holiday is observed, yet they've, in my eyes, tricked you into thinking it's better to work the hours rather than take them off.

Clever.

Crawfish

2011-05-31T17:06:00.001+01:00

I can't eat crawfish. This is a crawfish:

I can't eat them. Last week at a crawfish "boil" I was, for the first time, face to face with the little bleeders and the genuine possibility of having to eat them. I had spurned the chance twice before to meet up for unlimited beer and crawfish because I was unsure of even what it was at first, but I read the subsequent articles online and reviews of various places. I wasn't sure why I was being so... suspect of eating them, but I was, and pictures above are an interesting reminder why:

THEY LOOK ALIVE WHEN THEY ARE DEAD.

This, still genuinely to me, sounds a little crazy, but it wasn't until I was tasked with the prospect of actually eating them, the details of which are below, did my stomach spin and turn like nothing else. I stood, in our local grocery store, picking out a fine piece of fresh Atlantic Salmon, watching the tank of Lobsters bumble around and tumble in their tank and it wasn't until I asked Connie that she said that "they are cooked alive".

This was a tiny bit of a shock to me. I actually don't really know where I thought that they were boiled alive came from, but being told that's what they do and then confirming they do that to Crawfish just sent me over the edge. I wasn't interested. The method of eating a crawfish is to pull the tail off, remove the shell, and eat what I would say is a miniscule amount of meat. We are talking half a Staedtler rubber of meat, if that. The effort that goes into making these little creatures edible is so laborious for such a small amount of food you can eat.

But I have rightly been told that prawns (or shrimp as the USAians call them) also look like they are alive - but I somehow don't care, which might make me a little confusing. I like these kinds of prawns:

Not the kind where the look like they can crawl off your plate. And I think that I might revise my previous statement:

THEY LOOK ALIVE WHEN THEY ARE DEAD AND YOU ARE EATING THEM.

So I chickened out and have apparently missed the culinary delight of the South.

A Small Stretch of Land

2011-05-27T00:01:00.000+01:00

It's a beautiful way to get lost
All you need is a bottle and a few nagging thoughts
And a strong sense of all you ever wanted
And the strength to hold it to your chest as you kill it off
Oh, the road it will light up and guide you home
To a place as unfamiliar to you as a soul
There is nothing left now not to understand
And you were lost on such a small stretch of land.

She was all that your heart did demand
And you fueled its ambition as you followed every plan
And you took leave of any common sense
Hoping that this doubt inside of you would soon be laid to rest
And as your heart forever settles in her hands
Where you feel a resignation that you never could have planned
There is nothing left now not to understand
And you were lost on such a small stretch of land.

A Small Stretch of Land by Mersault from the album Pissing on Bonfires / Kissing with Tongues.

The 8 Year Old Mark Shields Still Can't Believe This

2011-05-26T02:00:00.001+01:00

Sonic on the cover of a Nintendo Magazine. Sonic. On the Cover of a Nintendo Magazine.

Sonic. Nintendo.

Towel Day 2011 or, Why I Have a Towel With Me Today

2011-05-25T15:46:00.000+01:00

Today is International Towel Day, a day that commemorates the life and work of author, Apple Computer owner, activist and atheist Douglas Adams. The most notable thing that he did, in my eyes, is create the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series of books, radio scripts and TV show amongst other things. He died 10 years ago, on the 11th of May 2001. I am currently sporting my towel, unlike last year, when I left it in my flat on my towel rack.

I feel sad when I think of Adams' death, not because I selfishly would like a sixth book in the series (the less we consider the well meaning but empirically disappointing ...And Another Thing that was released a while back the better), but because I always wonder what he would make of the world that exists today, ten years from his death. I wonder what he would have made of the iPad, a literally portable computer, in your hands, and Wifi or 3G internet, truly always connected internet, and what he would make of Wikipedia - the editable anywhere updating and ever expanding Encyclopedia that mimics so much of the Guide it still makes me laugh to this day. I've talked about this already.

What would he have said of it all? Well, we can only speculate, but what you should know is that it would have been a grand slant on modern life from a man who knew how to be funny and intelligent, clever and comedic, and in these days of Big Bang Theory and fucking Frankie Boyle, I think we miss his comedy more and more than we could, or he could have ever realised.

For more information:
http://www.towelday.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Towel_Day
More posts about Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

The Beginning of the End

2011-05-22T23:15:00.002+01:00

I posted this back in August 2010. It marked the 'Beginning of the Beginning' and detailed the start to my time in Houston. Now, in the middle of May in exactly three short months until my Return, the end has really started. When I first started to write this post it was to be a two parter - one part of things that I am going to miss about the US, and a second part about things that I have missed about the UK - or things I am looking forward to getting back to.

This seemed quaint until I started to put pen to paper (so to speak) and it became clear that they are pretty much mutual - both lists need each other, intrinsically.

Transport
I miss buses and trains a lot. This is also compounded by the fact I just like them anyway, and whilst it's been good to try some of the Metros over here the simple fact that you can barely go anywhere without having to drive is just beyond my own ability to comprehend. I grew up with a bus stop outside my house and a train station 15 minutes walk away. These two types of transport get me into the City Centre so quickly it's almost negible - I could be leaving my parents house at 8.30 and be in town at 9.10. How good is that? It's even better in Aberdeen where the city is so small that unless you've chose to live outside the main city you could walk almost anywhere.

That said, I do like the level of streets and parking the USA offers - the massive freeways means that getting to and from various major parts of the city is quite easy, if indeed a million miles on average everytime I try to go anywhere. Compared to the old fashioned system that Aberdeen uses it is a breath of fresh air. I will miss the scope of the roads, but not the actual roads and not the actual drivers.

Weather
I've talked about weather four times, so this is the start of the summer and as such there will likely be a really long winded post about how I feel like I am going to die in the humidity. It is already quite high even now in the middle of May, but I am not to be scared as it is only going to last for a short while in the morning and in the evening - no, the weather's not going to stop, but it will prohibit my excursions to the outside to only the short distances between the airconned palaces of my car and the inside.

I miss Scotland's temperate climate. A lot. Just the fact that I am sitting on my sofa in a Boards of Canada tee and a pair of Skinny Corduroy shorts but I'd be rather sitting in my purple hoodie, black skinny jeans. Many people say that we are a product of our life and my fashion sense, and my comfortable clothing, is not made for this weather. It's hard to look like a indie try hard bellend in 100F heat.

Drinking
The Texans like to drink a lot more than the equivalent Scot and the same age. I am currently working on a theory that might suggest or explain why, but that's a while off being ready to be posted up here - what is shocking is that they drink and drive with aplomb. I hate it. I have to bite my tongue amongst almost friends when they bring up that they were wasted and then drove home, because it's almost pointless even contesting it. Much like the antisocial features of doing it in the UK, imagine the exact opposite reaction when talking about it here. It's almost talked about in the same sentence as falling in the bath or being sick as if it's just another part of getting drunk and living here.

It actually worries me. Everytime I drive on a weekend at night, I am wary of drivers who might be over the limit. As I said in my previous blog there's a gulf between the two countries, but it's quite astonishing how far the gulf widens the longer you live here. I cannot wait to get home and not be asked why I am not coming to bar that's 20 miles downtown to stand and watch other people get hammered. Instead, I'll be able to pop into a bar on the home or just after work and not worry about getting there or getting home, and not have to worry about the other people there getting home.

If one of my friends here was to ask why I didn't go out for drinks in Houston as much as I'd like to, it's not because of any other reason that I cannot be bothered driving somewhere to not drink. That's not fun. I'd rather go home, watch a movie and have a few beers without the worry of travelling anywhere.

Units
This is a technical reason so my co-chemical engineers (and other engineers) will understand this, probably - the US uses, almost inexplicably, the Old English units for everything. This doesn't just means Fahrenheit for the temperature (which is fucking stupid, more on that in a second) but also:
lbs instead of kgs (for mass)
feet instead of metres
psi instead of bar (for pressure)
BTU instead of kJ (for Enthalpy or Heat)

The reason they use them is historical. To make my mark on the job that I am working on in I have, with the other engineers, stopped giving them documents in both units, only using the CORRECT units, the SI units. I say correct because Mass, Heat and Pressure are not given anywhere else in the world in these units. Infact, I shocked a colleague by showing them a version the API (American Petroleum Institute) guidelines in SI units rather than the English units.

The reason why Temperature is so fucking stupid and is worse than the rest by a million miles is that Fahrenheit is a made up unit. It has no fucking place in engineering at all. The Celcius unit is linked to the Kelvin unit, which is the unit used in almost all applications in engineering. The fahrenheit? Useless. Honestly.

Rant over.

In summary, i have really enjoyed living here, in Texas, but I cannot wait to get home. Where that is, I am not sure - Aberdeen, or Canada, or London, or Paris... who knows the future, but I can't live in Texas. It's not Texas' fault either, it's me - I am not Texan.

Author's Note:

I have a few other thoughts about things that I dislike and I like for later posts, this is a catch-all post about some thoughts.

The Greatest Story Ever Told

2011-05-19T04:44:00.000+01:00

People will tell you what to think, but we can only know what we can see. So tonight look up to the sky, there's at least a hundred billion galaxies with a hundred billion stars, and every single one could be a sun just like ours.

We are all just links in a chain, and all life is finite, so use your time wisely. Look after your teeth, try to not hurt anyone. And remember, we invented Love, and that's the greatest story ever told.

The Greatest Story Ever Told by Bill Wells and Aidan Moffat from the album Everything's Getting Older.

Never a more interesting thought I've had than the profound idea that the greatest thing to come from our accidental existence on this planet is the capacity to love and be loved by another. It makes me very happy to be alive.

An Examination of Distance

2011-05-16T21:48:00.000+01:00

Since moving to the US and visiting loved on in Canada it has became clear to me that living in the UK has given me a small-skewed look at distance and what it actually means. This becomes clear when talking to my colleagues and they explain that they drive 25 and 32 miles each to get to work when in Aberdeen it'd take 10 days of working, driving back and forth, just to do what these guys do in a single day. Scale, it seems, is mental.

So when driving from San Francisco to Houston via a multitude of places, we managed to rack up over 3000 miles on the car. Total trip miles were around 3300ish, so to put that into perspective, I have decided to scale it against certain things. So let's take Ontario - the homeland province of my loved one, Connie. It's massive, and that's the reason I have picked it.

Ontario, Canada, with Scotland inset. Open for more detail.

Here is it compared to Scotland in the same scale. The A in Ontario is where Connie comes from, the other A in Scotland is Aberdeen. Big, huh? In fact, the square km of Ontario is a massive 1'076'395 sqkm. Scotland is 77'872 sqkm, OR, 7.23% of Ontario is covered by 100% of Scotland. In other words, you could fit around 14 Scotlands into Ontario. Yeesh. So, okay, big news, Scotland is small anyway, so let's try something bigger. What's bigger than Texas? Not much, not even France.

Ontario, Canada, with Texas inset. Open for more detail.

Texas is big. 268'581 sq miles (naughty bastards) or 696'241 sqkm. So, as you can see it's a lot bigger than Scotland (11% of Texas is taken up with Scotland, or just under 9 Scotland's would fill Texas) BUT Ontario is still bigger - the percentages actually come down as such: 64.6% of Ontario would be covered by Texas, or you'd need just over 1 and half Texases (Texai?) to make up the size of Ontario. Nice. So, exactly how far did our road trip cover then, in terms of these scales?

Road Trip from San Francisco to Texas Border (2 weeks driving, around 2700 miles)

As you can see here, our driving was long. It actually stretches from the top of Ontario down, or across Ontario and into Quebex and beyond, but that's not really the point. The point is that the length of time we drove and the distance that we drove gave me a respect for the distances that the two countries have within them. All you have to do to deflate the Texan idea of their state being big is to give them a map of Canada and say "See, that's the top of Ontario. But, Canada goes all the way over that right to the top."

So what' my point? Well, there really isn't a point per se. But it's just interesting. I mean, have a look at the size of those lakes in the bottom of the picture. The "Great Lakes' they are called. Then, look at the ocean sized blue shape at the top of Ontario... what's that? That's Hudson Bay. Hudson Bay linking with James Bay. The area of this "bay" is 1'230'000 sqkm. That means that it's bigger than Scotland, bigger than Texas, Bigger than Ontario. As a child I was always intrigued by Hudson Bay simply due it's size and location, and the fact that it is so hugely massive. Thinking that you could fit the whole UK in there several times over, and have space for Holland blew my little mind.

It still does actually.

The Gallery of Old Logos

2011-05-09T23:41:00.000+01:00

When I first started writing this blog back in late 2006, it was first on Bebo and as such, those first few tentative posts were lost forever when I deleted my Bebo account. Which is a shame because, other than that, the rest of my ramblings on here have been left remarkably fingerprinted, even down to the style that my blog has had over the years, starting as a sole diary for drunken and working misdemeanours, before shifting to less self centred events, to musings and more recently, actual formulated opinions on people, places and events. Over the course of this period I have played with the actual look of the blog almost as often as I have posted on it. The reason for this is that I am notoriously fickle and enjoy a lot of freedom with which to change the look and style of the blog - indeed, back in 2009, I flirted with Wordpress because at the time it afforded me the chance to use CSS and design my own template. This ended up being so prohibitively hard that I left it to the experts and came back to blogger, limping, licking my wounds.

Within the Blogger system I can change much more now that I could back then, and so now that I know that all my old logos have been saved, it's quite nice to reflect on them after changing the style of the blog again. When I first started the blog, I named it The Crashing Sound of Insanity Impacting Reality which was a mouthful. Indeed, it took several years before I was to shrink it to just The Crashing Sound of Insanity before finally pulling that obtuse title and calling it what it is now: The Blog of Mark Shields which is as plain as I can get without just calling it My Blog and leaving it as that. Which... honestly, I have considered.

The Genesis of Pretence
The first few logos, here, range from back around 2007 to 2008 I think, and they have a sort of theme running through them. Actually, most of my logos and designs do have some kind of theme.

The above change solicited a post.

The White Era, 1
This was the biggest change - black background to white background. In keeping with the style, the colours of the words carried over into the new style, as did the name. What I did do this time around was getting rid of those stupid tags and titles - you know, if you had been reading my blog 3 years ago, there were categories that I used rather than the tagging system. No idea why. Anyway, I ditched it when I changed to the below style.

Got rid of the big box logo for the smaller one.

The Lyrical Headers, 1 and 2
From here on in, the name was slowly going to evolve and change. Firstly, I added the Lyric Headers to the blog, a nice artistic addition that I really liked. Also, it allowed my to play with the use of a Serif font that would continue to be used for a while.

See? Name changed to The Crashing Sound of Insanity.

I got rid of the lyrics for a short while here, before reverting back to them soon after. The reason was that I was trying to use books, TV shows and films instead of music, but none work as well as a short bite like lyrics, and I also don't know many off by heart. Music speaks to me more.

The Start of the Grey
White to grey background. I pulled the style for this logo from the Limmy site - big text saying BLOG was my idea of a cool idea. Also, notice the little slogan underneath? That was a good idea that would stay with me for a while.

Serif font replaces the San Serif font. I hated it.

The Only Upset
The most mental logo I have ever put up on here also drew the biggest reactions - not only from readers but others who rarely read the blog - in fact, the whole idea of this was to see how far I could push my styles and the look of the blog within the confines of the Blogger templates as they were. I also reverted back to a white background for this style, and purple text, that survived for a few months and into late last year. The sheer size of this logo was also quite startling, taking up almost all of the screen on my old Vaio laptop, meaning you had to scroll quite a while to get to the meat. This episode drew a comment from me (and then a retraction). It should be noted however that from this mess (and it was a mess; a mess of a logo and a silly idea) came the current name.

The Mood Stones
Much better. Put up not long after the above mis-step.

And then it evolved. I reused the slogan idea from previous logos, that even included the horrible mis-step above.

This special header was used during my exile.

The Photgraphs
And this is the start of the current generation. I spent 2 hours working on the new template that you see before to this day (May 2011) in July 2010 meaning that it might be the longest my blog will go with any significant changes. Most interestingly, this is the first time I would start to use pictures - this one taken from a free stock photo site. Taken under creative commons license I used it for a while before starting to experiment with the feel that the top-most picture gave the blog, changing it to reflect not only my mood and ideas but also what I was going to be writing about. The wine corks looked great, but weren't really me per se - I don't drink enough wine!

Note the return to Serif fonts.

My glasses' first appearance and the first photo taken by myself specifically for the blog.

Subtle change in font here, and also an even more subtle change in the title - rather than mentioning that I am in Texas, this was modified to show that I am in the US. The photo is, again, my own.

An unused logo from earlier this month. This continues the theme of the binoculars, but I am yet to use it officially... but I will. I like the idea of having the blog logos based around these rather strange objects.

And the current logo, posted here for historical accuracy. Already, I have had a mixed reaction to it - my Girlfriend liking it whereas my sister bemoaning it. I like it. And it had been started (as a project) back in March 2011. So it's been a while in the works.

For as long as I have the blog, I will forever be tinkering with it and changing it. And one day I will return it to a logo like the older ones - maybe for the 5th or 10th anniversary. To the future.

Sports: Soccer

2011-05-05T21:18:00.003+01:00

The last time I spoke of the American Sports was away in the dark distant past of November 2010 with Baseball, Hockey and American Football. Since then, however, I have not only played American Football (albeit, the Flag version) but I have also been to see my first and second NBA Basketball games. It might be telling that I have yet to blog these escapades because, really, the sport dulls me to my core. However, for posterity, they will be blogged at some point, if not to vent and rant, but also to pinpoint the problems that I have with that particular branch of sport.

Instead we will delve into the prickly topic of the advent of Soccer in the United States of America and Canada. You see, soccer's had a rough time of it in the North American state with the countries being few in the entire world not to have the sport as their national pastime. Indeed, so reluctant they are of soccer and it's world-busting appeal, they have four major sports to take up instead, as well as a marked disdain for the actual use of the feet in a sport. I have little desire to follow soccer in it's weekly enthralling matches due to lack of entrenched enthusiasm whilst growing up so I decided that the visit to the Houston Dynamo would be a limited experience mostly there to just tick it off the list.

Sport: Soccer - MLS
Team: Houston Dynamo
Stadium: Robertson Stadium
Cost: $20 (which included free beer and food at the tailgate before the game)
Opponents: Colorado Rapids (who are the current MLS Cup Champions)

The game itself was atrocious. I mean, beyond purely funny and actually moving into digracfully bad territory. In a strange way, it was worse than I had expected, joking to Connie that her true first game would've have been a Pollok Juniors game at Newlandsfield, but the quality of these young men playing in that league were barely under that on display in a televised professional league that is supposed to compete with the other sports in the nation. It is woefully back ward, missing skill, power, venom, and any sort of drive. The lack of force by most of the players in their style was confusingly put against their utter lack of patience when playing - rarely was there ever a tackle needed due to the multitude of missed passes, dreadful touches and even more embarassingly, random ricochets of heads, legs and chests. Do you know what it looked like?

My school playground.

In saying that, it was fun, a good night out, and the set up was typically American, with a fly-by of a US Coastguard Helicopter, confetti explosion at the only Dynamo goal, and the chanting and dancing of the multitudes of Latino supporters that the game has in this country. All in all, a very enjoyable game and night was had even though it was mildly disappointing. The MLS has a long way to be worthwhile investing in it, but there's the catch 22 - to be able to have a product worth selling they need investors, and David Beckham and others might be the first generation, but it will start to build up.

Soccer here gets a D rating. However, I think I might be a Dynamo fan after all.

ER

2011-05-04T02:00:00.001+01:00

The last time I ended up in A&E or ER it was the fault of Steven McMaster, a 'friend', that I was playing football with. This time, readers, I would like to explain that the circumstances were mildly different, but were still involving Messer Steven McMaster and the awkward game of football; this time I ended up in a much worse condition even though the event much more innocuous.

I fell from the kerbside pavement backwards onto my right hand side, extending my right arm out and impacting with the concrete at a silly angle with Gravity once again being victorious. I was instantly sore. "Leave me, leave me a minute, and I'll get up" I said to Jonathan, who asked if I was okay. I wasn't, but it didn't feel as bad as it actually was. I convinced my self that the pain was from a sprain, and thought nothing more of it other than taking Advil and popping some ice on it. The pain of the arm only took away from the pain of going and seeing Scream 4 at the cinema that night.

It wasn't until the weekend (the event taking place on the Wednesday) that I had managed to get any movement back into my arm with great difficulty. Sleeping on my back instead of my side like normal was not only stopping me from getting to sleep, it was disrupting my loyal bed-sharer Connie who had to put up with chainsaw-esque snoring. I decided to go to work on the Monday shielding the arm with every moment and movement, even deflecting to shaking a new colleague with my left hand (as is the Scouting way).

It was the Wednesday following the event that I finally gave in and mad my way to a practitioner of the Medical profession. The delay was caused by my reticence to go to a Doctor that might touch my sore arm, but also that I had no idea how to even go about a hospital visit in this land of non-universal healthcare. After poring over my insurance documents to check what I was covered for (everything, as it turned out, barring abortions and warfare induced injuries) and also how to make sure I didn't have to pay anything. After chosing my location, I ended up in the waiting room of an Urgent Care Center. Within 15 minutes of waiting I was already being seen to by a nurse who asked me my weight (I have no idea what it is on Earth but I think it's 94lbs on Mars, thanks Space Center Houston) and within an hour I am sitting being plaster up with the "possibility of an elbow fracture" after six X Rays had been taken.

I was referred to a proper bone and joint clinic to be checked out and the very next day I had my splint removed, examined, and told the bad news.
"Mr Shields, you've fractured your elbow, slightly, and if you gave me enough time I could possibly convince myself that you hadn't. But, it looks likely seeing that bruise on your arm"
"So what you are saying is that I had a slight fracture that might not be one?"
"Yes, likely"
"Which option gives me the most points to obtain sympathy from my friends and family?"
"The fracture. So yes, you have broken your elbow into five peices"
"Oh I see"

Anyway, they let me leave happily, content in the knowledge that my pain, which was not inconsiderable, was actually bad news, and I should've gone to see them a week ago instead of trying to grin and bear it. But the good news was that it is such a minor fracture that all I get is some pain, lack of grip and strength in my right arm, and a MANLY BRUISE.

The most interesting thing about this whole event is that the healthcare system in the US is pretty good. It's actually miles ahead of the UK (they had an Airline style computer checkin for the Doctors surgery and online 'appointment progress' system) but it comes at a price - one that I will eventually find out once the bills come in and the insurance company starts asking me questions. So yes, the US healthcare system is strange, different, and pretty good, but only if you can afford it and have insurance. If you don't have any of the above, you are shit out of luck, and that is why I love the NHS - no barrier to healthcare is the true right of a citizen in a developed country.

I'm Back.

2011-05-03T21:18:00.000+01:00

And as such, Normal Service will resume shortly. In the mean time, here's a photo of a massive bruise on my arm that details the broken elbow that I am currently nursing.

And here's a photo of me in my sling.

The 30 Day Song Challenge The End - A Recap

2011-05-01T02:00:00.005+01:00

And that's it - 30 days with 30 songs and 30 short paragraphs with thoughts on the songs. I spent almost 2 weeks working on these posts and they mark quite a big turning point in the blog - firstly, it's the biggest commitment I have made to making posts that far in advance ever, secondly it was a really good excersise in creation of posts and thoughtful remarks, and thirdly it gave me confidence to maybe try a few of the other big ideas that I have not had come out in the wash in the past that I might have started but never got round to completing.

As an aside, I have created a Spotify playlist of most of the songs with some not found on the service which is a shame. Also, for posterity, here's a list with all the songs. I think.

Link to the Spotify playlist.

Coldplay - Trouble
Black Lace - Agadoo
Belle and Sebastian - Step into my Office Baby
M83 - You, Appearing
Feeder - Insomnia
Red Hot Chili Peppers - Universally Speaking
Radiohead - 15 Step
Linkin Park - Papercut
LCD Soundsystem - Get Innoccous!
Nine Inch Nails - The Day the World Went Away
The Smiths - Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want
Blink 182 - The Rock Show
Girls Aloud - Call the Shots
Ice Cube - It Was A Good Day
Los Campesinos! - You! Me! Dancing!
Oasis - Champagne Supernova
Lady Antebellum - Need You Now
Godspeed You! Black Emperor - The Dead Flag Blues
Belle and Sebastian - Me and the Major
At the Drive-in - Arcarsenal
Elbow - Any Day Now
Arab Strap - Screaming in the Trees
Fleetwood Mac - Songbird
Elbow - Switching Off
Flight of the Conchords - Fashion is Danger
The Twilight Sad - I Became a Prostitute
Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble - Texas Flood
The Mars Volta - Viscera Eyes
Chris Rea - On the Beach
The XX - Shelter

Hope you enjoyed it. Normal service, by which I mean slow posts, will restart soon. I should be back from the various trips by now and entertaining my parents.