Monthly Archives: September 2008

I’m knackered

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Up since 5:30am, pretty tired now. Had our roast dinner at 1:30pm’ish, which was much better than having it later (in theory). Went out into the garden with Grete and got some tidying up done (an hour or two), was going to blog about how the Wii encourages that because you can put time into Wii Fit but I’m honestly too tired, maybe tomorrow.

Ended up eating too much for tea because I was starving after the gardening so probably blew all the good we did by having our dinner early.

Oh well. Tomorrow is just another day.

Sunday indeed

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So, you can tell it’s Sunday around here. There’s me (awake) and then there’s the girls.

Who are all clearly very tired.

The post that never was

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I was going to blog about my Wii Fit high scores, except I can’t find a way of seeing the high scores without doing each of the events.

And I’m not doing 3.5 hours of exercise just so I can write down all my scores :p

Writing

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Yesterday I used the ‘snowflake method’ to write a single sentence description of a novel, and then expand that into a paragraph providing more detail. I actually quite like the idea I wrote, it’s something that’s been knocking around in my head for a few weeks. But I can’t help the feeling that ‘I am not worthy’ and that I should leave writing to the people who know what they’re doing.

I guess that’s the internal critic people talk about, telling me I’m not able to do it, and that I should learn how to tune it out and just get on with the writing and see what develops. Maybe I will. The next stage in the method is to write up some information on each of the characters, quite a lot of information and that will prove to be a challenge. Although I think I’m up to it. There are some technical difficulties with elements of the plot and I wonder how much attention I should pay to those at the beginning and if I should just ignore them and work them out as I go along. It’s possible that I’m getting hung-up on those issues due to some sekrit internal critic plot to stop me doing anything (this is main theory #1) so I’m going to try and not worry about them. They’ll either work out or not, and if they don’t I can try different things.

Still early, only just gone 8:08. Played a little Resident Evil 4 on the Wii, I like the control system. It’s pleasing that they managed to use the Wii features and not just rely on the standard controller. Playing it on easy, I suck at computer games in general, and got to an early section where some Evil Dudes[tm] were lobbing what looked like sticks of dynamite[1] at me, and inevitably I stumbled and went the wrong way and didn’t shoot the right guy and got blown up, maybe I’ll have another go later.

[1] is it dynamite these days? Does anyone still use that? I guess they do, a quick check reveals it’s considered to be a high explosive. Ooh I learned a new thing, the difference between low explosives and high explosives. Low explosives undergo deflagration (i.e. propagates through burning) where-as high explosives detonate rather than deflagrate.

Shift!

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It’s shift based sleeping in our household today, Grete was up until around 5:00am and I’ve been up since then.

No reason. Felt like sharing.

Like buses

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Blog posts are like British buses, you get none for a few days and then a whole bunch come along at once. I tested the surround sound speaker placement with Aliens, just flipping to some scenes I knew would have full 5.1 sound going on – and – it’s another notch better than it had been!

The sound is even more full and truly surrounds us, even though we’re sitting pretty close to the rear speakers, I’ve angled them in slightly so that we’re in the direction of the cone of sound they give out. Very, very pleased with them now. The stands will have to do – I may try and find something to cause them to lean back a little. I adjusted the heads a little and got them tighter so they don’t droop, but the stands themselves still lean into the room.

We both did our 30 minutes of Wii fit today. I wasn’t going to bother because my shoulder really does hurt a great deal, but seeing Grete doing it made it seem easier, and I stuck to low impact, lower body stuff (so lots of skiing, stepping, snowboarding, etc.) Another win for the Wii, having so much choice means you can work around the bits you broke the day before, yay.

Speakers II

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Both the rear speakers are attached to the stands (these ones btw) and they don’t look too bad. The speakers are quite big and the stands lean into the room because the carpet is higher at the skirting board, but otherwise I’m quite pleased. They are obvious, but not in the way they have been for the past couple of weeks (i.e. sitting on the arm of the sofa and the windowsill) and the sound they emit is definitely behind our heads, which is an improvement.

Now we need to find a fun movie to watch with lots of 5.1 ‘special effects’ that come in from the back.

Maybe Aliens.

Rear speaker stands …

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weeeeeee my rear speaker stands have just arrived. Fingers crossed they’re ok. Decided on stands in the end, rather than trying to fit the speakers on the wall. Hopefully it’s the right move.

If they’re any good, may get some for the front speakers too.

We’ll see.

Worst. Flapjack. Ever.

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I love flapjack, but as you can imagine it’s loaded with sugar, and even though oats are nice and friendly and low GI, on the whole, flapjack isn’t the kind of snack I should be seeking. It’s the one thing I truly miss that could be considered a sweet snack.

So, I bought some honey (low-medium GI) and some Maple Syrup (pure) which is low GI and I tried to make some flapjack without sugar.

Worst.
Flapjack.
Ever.

The top is crusty and nice but hardly sweet, and the base is like a thick gloop of stodgy gloop which tastes like raw oats, which suggests to me it’s raw oats!

So, maybe I’ll have another shot. I’ve got some options like including some Splenda[tm], more syrup, less honey, baking it for longer, etc. Neither syrup nor honey are that cheap, so either I’ll find a recipe which works soon or I’ll have to re-mortgate the house.

I’m trying not to think about the 125g of butter you’re supposed to use per batch.