Amourissima

Today work was the usual abrasive and counter productive mess that I have become accustomed too. I spent the morning working on quiet a simple .Net app, the aim was to import an Excel file into our system. I used the .Net ODBC connector to read in the file and turn it into a comma separated file so our antiquated system could read it in. I got it all working only to find that the version of mono we use is unable to provide the ODBC libraries I need, so rather than a simple webpage I ended up with a monster which reads in the file onto an IIS server turns the file into a CSV, then encodes it as a binary file send the stream to a webservice on the Mono box which re-encodes it to a binary file CSV that Basic can read in. Way more tricky that it needed to be.

I was have found it really difficult to blog recently. When I started blogging I always expected to say all sorts of profound and interesting things. Mostly though I have ended up simply detailing my life and its little foibles. I really don't want to fall into the trap of endlessly writing the same things I would rather keep quiet.

I think I might be bipolar. I am happy at times, like my holiday and meeting Kasia, but still sad at work and in other situations. In fact the moments of sadness seem to be winning out recently, I feel like I have a lot of daemons dragging me down. Some are of of my own making some circumstance I just need a change to break out of this ever decreasing downward spiral.

I went for a drink with Phil and Bruce, we were all really tired and in need of some R&R. No rest for the wicked though, even after Phil paid me for the gigs the last couple of weekends I am really behind, having had to pay for the car, and trying to save a deposit.

Fluorescent Adolescent

I went looking at houses in Hazel Grove tonight. After going on a viewing tour of 5 houses I think that Shaw Heath / Edgeley offers a lot better value for money. I saw a couple of the smallest houses since I frst began looking, compounded by being on main roads so having no parking. The trouble is nothing I can afford is actually my dream house, I know I have to compromise, but surely I should at least feel excited?
I think some people are going to have a bit of a shock that they cannot just trust the inflated price that pops into their head.
I went for a drink with Nick, I wasn't the best company after all the problems at work. We had a pint at the John Millington but it was dead, so instead headed to TGI Fridays where Ian was doing a shift. It was a blast from the past going there, thought it has been redecorated it still resonates the same air.
We chatted about life love and the vagaries of pleasing / disappointing women.
After a few drinks Nick took me home, we arrived and had a long chat about our respective love lifes. I think we both have a long way to go but in totally different directions. I cant really give away the details but needless to say we both got some things off our chests which I think hope (certainly on my part) made us feel better.

Whiskey & Green Tea

It has been a long long week. Work has been incredibly stressful, I have found myself in a complicated web of competing demands from my employers and customers. Most of the time I spend feeling powerless and apathetic, not a great recipe for productivity.

All that said I suppose its slightly surprising that I agreed to help Phil out on with his webcasts. It was especially weird as I got up at 5.30 for a 6.20 pickup to get to Wrexham for the setup. I was feeling pretty tired after working hard and spending several evening s throwing together a web forum. Then last Saturday and this Saturday I have spent the day behind a PC watching a webcast of the most dull AGM's I have ever had the misfortune to attend. However his customer really appreciated our efforts. It was strange to get actual praise for doing a job.

On Saturday evening I went for a quiet drink with Phil and his sister. Phil and I both felt so tired after the days jobs and he had travelled back from Bristol. We had a few quiet drinks then went home, Tina went off with her friend for a big night out somewhere.

Today I had my first bbq of the year. It meant cleaning it up, there was compounded ash from last year and a layer of dirt on the grill to be scraped off. I cut the grass, cleaned everything up and lit the bbq, it was smoking when all of a sudden from nowhere it started to rain. The shower only lasted 15 minutes but it pretty much put out the fire, so I had to relight the fire. It was a tasty bbq in the end my dads home made burgers were really nice.

Once my dinner was digested I went jogging to Bramhall then Martina came round and we went for a walk down Old Hall Lane, before joining Bruce Nina and Phil for a drink at the Thieves Neck. Bruce and Nina were telling us about there time in Portugal, which sounded nice. On arriving home they arrived at Ringway only to be hit by a flash flood.

How to FIX IIS

I recently had an issue where IIS would not start giving a spurious error "Unexpected Error 0x8ffe2740". I did a google and found this site which showed the problem was Skype grabbing port 80, genius!

Polish Legendary Smak ;-)

Emily handed round a glass full of these Polish savoury snack. They were really quiet moreish even after a Frankie and Bennies club sandwich.

Vuelvo Al Sur

I have been busy this weekend. Phil talked me into helping him out on a job. He was putting on a series of live webcasts of the Co-operative groups regional annual general meetings. I had to operate the webcast encoder and help pack up at the end of the day. My gig was in Kettering (Phil had to go to Perth) so I had to leave straight after work on Friday night and motor down. I did get a rather tasty curry and a few beers when I arrived there. The event went really well, it was dry and boring to watch, top executives explaining the virtues of the business only to have audience members question why milk is 20 pence more expensive than another store.
We finished up by 5 so I was able to get home go for a quick jog, during which I realised I am really out of shape. Phil made it back around 10 so we headed to the Unicorn for a few drinks. I said hello to Julie but she was too busy working the bar to talk.
Yesterday I felt pretty tired, but I persevered, for the webcasting Phil needed a commenting system so people watching could leave messages for the presenters. I had put together a rough system using youtube.com as a basis. However there were a couple of bugs with the login system. I managed to run through and fix that functionality.
In the evening I bit the bullet and headed to the gym for my first proper weights session in some weeks. My arms are aching today, and I am a lot weaker, Ill have to work hard to get back to where I was. After the gym Phil and I headed to Andy Gilmore's to play some Wii. Emile's sister Hannah, friend K and Hannah's boyfriend Carl were also in attendance. Starting with a Mario Kart session we proved just how random it all is, you can be winning a race by miles only to be massacred by a series of attacks dumping you from 1st to the lower rankings, sometimes even in sight of the line. After which the Wii fit board came out and we all got to perform rather embarrassing moves trying to balance of hula hoop.

Declare Independence

I went to see Bjork at the Blackpool Empress Ballroom this evening. I thought we would miss it at one point because the satellite navigation started taking an obscure detour through a series of A road avoiding the motorway, not a great idea in rush hour. After an hour of getting nowhere fast I went through all the options only to find it was somehow set on pedestrian mode! Whoops, back on car mode and we were soon tearing down the motorway.

We arrived in time to catch Bjork doing a DJ set; Rather than have supporting acts she puts on her own DJ set to warm everyone off. She was pretty good if a little random, at one point using a Paul Mckenna motivational CD. There was lots of feedback and noise.

After a short pause she returned with a brass band, DJ, drummer, and harpsichord player. The set she played was tailored to the instruments and completed with a light and pyrotechnic show. There were lots of songs from her previous albums. The show encore included the only song from debut the anchor song in tribute to the sea town of Blackpool.

Violet Hill

Paul sent me today's title, it is a new song from Coldplay called Violet Hill. Available for free this week. I am not sure whether I like it or not yet, I feel it might be a grower rather than a stand out track.
Today the "credit crunch" (I hate that name) took victim another of our customers, this leaves us in a really weak position, basically according to the boss we are losing money and there will be no pay rises this year. Which given we have 3% inflation amounts to a pay cut in real terms, given this and the fact I am now working with a micro managing mega-lo-maniac got my CV out last night and gave it a polish. I think sometime soon that will come in handy. I quiet enjoy most of the work, but I never enjoy being micromanaged especially about stupid things, if I am 5 minutes late but sometimes spend whole evenings working on projects its all events out, I don't feel a need to justify this I always felt my works speaks for itself. It seems like now rather than care about outcomes the only are is conforming to some corporate ideal, well that dosn't fit well with me I prefer to be measured on results than the time I am sat behind my desk.

This evening I went to Japanese, hijacking the second half of the lesson to show off my photos. It was quiet funny really given I was so clueless when people quizzed me. I really need to practise a lot more. The photos went down really well though, people loved the Japanese gardens (even though my pictures hardly did them justice).

This evening I went for a drink with Phil, Nick and Bruce. Becky had initially said she wanted to catch up but she bailed. Hopefully I will catch her sooner or later. We all had a chat about the credit crunch and then road traffic accidents. Bruce made Nick turn green talking about the guy he saw get hit by a truck. He had finally received a reply to his transcript months after the accident. The guy luckily survived but there are lots of legal hoops to be jumped though yet.

Koop Island Blues

Tonight I went to the Buxton Opera house to see the Yamato Drummers of Japan. They were really amazing, I cant believe how much energy they had and wow drumming must be really good exercise because they had the sort of muscle definition most gym goers can only dream of.


Other than watch drummers, I have spent part of today trying to integrate this authentication system into the comments program I did for Phil. It had progressed well I just need to write a deletion function and tidy everything up, need to be done before next weekend though so Ill have to get a move on.

"Do androids dream of elecric sheep?"

I had to get up early this morning as I had agreed to help Phil out on a Webcasting job. It ended up being a long day what with loading gear.

I had difficulty sleeping last night, I went to see Sandbox at Moho Live last night. I was a very loud and hot gig, I stayed to watch them and drank one can of Red Stripe (£3.50) and two cans of Red Bull (£2.50 each!) by the time I left I felt wired on the loud music and Red Bull, sweaty and vaguely ripped off by the stupid bar prices.

Sandbox were good, they looked and sounded relaxed, I loved Million Marlboro lights, shame neither Ian, Nick, Phil or Bruce could come as they were all either busy or tired, or both.

After driving about for a while I found a space in Picadilly Basin; the area behind the train station. I remember walking around there when I was at uni, the place has totally changed. Gone are the dodgy back street enterprises replaced with flats apartments. As I got out and started walking I was staggered how much has changed in the last few years. I saw people in the windows of their apartments crowded round little tables, is it the future? There were certainly plenty of people milling around the Northern Quarter, I always think how great it would be to live there, yet its prohibitively expensive.

A while ago I read this Wired Article about how the contextual web is enslaving people as they become "memes for the machines". Slavishly adding context to pictures, maps and all manor of things. A few times recently I have felt myself being a machine meme, after Japan I uploaded most of the photos to Flickr and I was poised to add titles and geo-reference (add to the map).
Today however was much worse, a program malfunction causing slides not to upload to the website automatically. I had became a meme for the machine, manually uploading slides to the internet as they changed.

Gone Are the Days

Today was a strange day, on the way into work I was collared by my boss. He looked tired and stressed, and he detailed how the credit crunch is affecting us. Basically we are suffering, and to emphasize the point the customer I work at has cut back the support days from 5 to 3. So from next week I will be going somewhere else (T.B.A.) Thursday Friday, scary stuff.
This uncertainty and the cost of the car has really put me off searching for a house, I am really worried it might be a really bad time to make the plunge.
This evening was surreal, I went to the gym then helped Phil work on his Webcasts. I actually only tried to help we failed to do what we wanted because there was an issue with remote access, its all too last minute.
That wasn't the surreal part though, the unreality came with a visit to the Thieves for a couple of drinks. Phil and I met Ian, Nick and Faye. It was the first time I have seen her for years thought strangely it felt like old times. Lot of talk about Japan, from my point of view and Phil's, including a strange but not unwelcome reminiscing about the first time I was there; on a stopover with with Ian, Faye and Danny, it seems like a lifetime ago now.

Car

For anyone following the sad story of my car, its been in the garage since it broke down on the 1st March.
Yesterday I got it back, and today it goes back to the garage. My dad picked it up and in the heavy traffic he failed to notice that the turbo wasn't working so it slow as a snail, more of a tractor than a turbo diesel.

Sigh.

Whiskey & Green Tea

I had ment to spend this weekend uploading my photos, and blogging up the trip. Somehow its not happening, to be honest I felt tired and low. Post holiday depression has set in, and I feel awful.
After Tokyo life here feels grey and lifeless devoid of colour and sound.
I went into work on Friday, and thanks to Jet lag felt mentally tired and unable to concentrate. I had hoped to feel more human by now but I am finding it realy hard to rejoin the human race.
Last night I went out for a drink at the John Millington with Nick and Bruce. Sitting in the crowded bar drinking Gin and Tonic, after eating a take away curry, I felt joyless. I was happy to see them both I just miss Japan.

Weird Japanese Sign

I saw this at Maibara station, I particularly love the bit about reading a newspaper, XD

Japan Day 13 (Tokyo and home)

Back in Tokyo fr a final day we visited Akihabara electric town home to a plethora of electronic and gaming shops along side the Otaku anime and cosplay die hard territory. It was a fund way to spend the last day before jetting off back home. 

Japan Day 12 (Kyoto)

A word of warning when in Japan don't bother to try and visit on a Monday, unless you like closed signed. Most attractions and museums are closed.

On arriving in Kyoto and heading to the old imperial place we found it closed on Monday. We took a walk around the gardens, its gigantic.

Next we took the subway to one of the many Shrines. It looked a lot like a templet with the addition of the huge gate. 

There was also an incredible Japanese garden, it was outstanding especially with all the Cherry blossom, trees water. It was really something special.

Walking around Kyoto we found it a quite and attractive city. Full of shrines. 

We headed back to Osaka early, it would be our last night here and the trip is nearly over. Tomorrow we head by to Tokyo and our last night at J Hoppers. I feel like we only scratches the surface so far there is so much more to see and learn we are already talking about organising another trip here.

It was still early but with all the cultural places closes we ended up wondering around the shops. Then enjoyed another pizza talking about the day and the holiday.

Remarking on the time travelling on the railways seems the Japanese ride trains are so organised yet somehow so chaotic.

Japan Day 11 (Hiroshima)

Taking a 1:30 minute journey on the Shinkansen to Hiroshima. Being further south we were hoping for better weather and compared to Osaka it was.

We arrived to find rather than a subway there are a confusing series of trains, you pay when you get off which caught us a bit off guard.

To memorialise the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima is a memorial park which contains the impact site the so called bomb dome. This twisted structure was directly hit by the blast but the energy traveled outwards destroying everything else yet leaving leaving this relic in it place. The park is incredibly peaceful so seeing the bomb dome up close was particularly chilling. Anything combustable was incinerated leaving only the skeletal structure behind.

We spent a couple of hours wondering the park, visting some of the many monuments and memorials there.

Emerging from the park past the baseball stadium where people were playing a game. We walked to the Hiroshima Jo grounds walking over the moat we passed a Kendo tournament in process. We stopped to watching in fascination.

Hiroshima castle was like much of the city flattened or burned following the bomb and rebuild post war.

I was stopped at one point where a Japanese man asked me if I were an American, and if I understood what had happened here. Fortunately as a Brit he let me pass.

The mood was a bit sombre on the way back to the hostel, we had a quiet evening and pizza from the place next to the hostel.

A tree which survived the bomb

Hiroshima Jo

Kendo 

Japan Day 10 (Hikone)

We felt tired after all the walking around Kobe so had a lie in cuddling in bed before heading out.

Today we headed to Hikone to see the castle there. It was one of the few castle stops survive unaffected by the war and is mostly original construction. We took the Shinkansen to Miabara then changed trains to Hikone. Hikone city is on the shores of Lake Biwa, the largest lake in Japan.

We followed the crowds of people which led us first to a temple so we had a Quick Look around then headed to the castle on the top of the hill. Constructed in the 17th century Hikone castle is a good example of the style and gives suburbs views out from its high vantage point. 

Like Osaka the castle is best viewed from outside inside it was crowd and cramped build for people in a different age. The grounds were well worth spending some time in though we enjoyed the woods.

I grabbed a fried squid from a stand in the grounds and we met the mascot a cute rabbet with a horned helmet. 

Next we stumbled upon a garden in all its Zen glory it was very beautiful. It was starting to grow cold and dark so we left Hikone heading for Kyoto.

Arriving in Kyoto late, we managed to grab a map a from the tourist information place. It had all the local subway and tourist places marked. Kasia fancied a pizza so we found an Italian restaurant on the 10th floor of a shopping centre connected to the railway station. 

The food was really good (if a little expensive) and we got a great view of Kyoto.

The station complex itself is a marvel of steel and glass. Saint lead up from the ground to the top. It had been a long day so we headed to our hostel for a snooze.

Japan Day 9 (Osaka Castle and Kobe)

Finally we reached the part of the trip where neither of us had clean clothes to wear fortunately the hostel had some laundry facilities. Afterwards we grabbed a breakfast at a nearby store then hopped on the train to Osaka castle. The weather was much better today.

Osaka castle grounds are a lovely the castle itself like many in Japan is a reconstruction the original having been destroyed in the war. It's tourist central with a lot of food halls and convenience stands. The outside of the castle is rather magnificent the inside is a little bit more like a hotel.

It was full of exhibits and stories which were interesting unfortunately a lot of the English translations were not well done. I came away a little disappointed.

After the castle we took the Shinkansen to Kobe. I sent to a card back home to my parents. We wondered around and found one of the best examples of a Japanese Garden of the whole trip. We were also fortunate that it was very quiet we had the place nearly to ourselves.  

Kobe is a small city it took only 40 minutes to cross from the garden through China town to the port area. The town was very pretty and well kept which was a marked difference to Osaka. 

Next we attempted to visit the memorial grandees getting quite lost in the process. So lost in fact that a local girl asked if we were lost and did we need any help, certainly we did. Her name was Aki and she was so kind walking with use chatting about Kobe.

The memorial gardens were for the 1995 earthquake which had a bad impact on the city. We walked around, its seems to be a place for couple as we saw several cuddling up on secluded benches. I really enjoyed Kobe but we had to leave on the train back to our hostel in Osaka.

Japan Day 9 (Osaka)

We awoke late again and went out to see that Bay Area. It was a cold grey day and Osaka was proving to be less full on than Tokyo. It isn't as vibrant here everything seems a bit cheaper dirtier and less exciting. 

The bay proved difficult to get to, we attempted to walk but got lost on the anonymous streets finally finding ourselves back where we started so decided to break for lunch before continuing. We eat at the complex, Japans is full of complexes with department stores and restaurants spanning several floors usually with pedestrian art and underground walkways to the station or subway.

There was a hotel with a sky view resultant which we tried to get a view but only one window had a view.

Defeated we took the railway out past universal studios to get a view of baseball sports island. We made it to the end of the line it felt like the end of the earth. We couldn't find where to cross and it started raining so we headed back. Taking the subway which was not covered by the JR Rail pass to the bay where the Maritime museum was. It was lovely here it even stopped raining so we had a great view.

Heading back two stops we found a park and the Osaka port, though the rain came back. We had planned to go to the castle but the rain put us off, we headed to the aquarium.

Despite the rain we walked to the Aquarium to save the subway fare. It turned out to be a bit stupid as it was further away than we expected.

The aquarium was fantastic spiralling down around a huge tank sectioned into different areas. Beginning as sea level you descend down. Passing through the ring of fire and the pacific. There was even a whale shark in the central tank.

Behind the aquarium was a museum we decided to pass on as it looked a little dull after the wonders of the sea. Instead we found a 9th floor restaurant which was too expensive and had a lovely view.

Returning to the centre we browsed the shops a little then went to Starbucks for a coffee, and to make a plan to get out of Osaka!