Rambling update

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Made it through to Friday, pretty tired today generally.  Lovely weather outside, bright sunshine, crisp.  Bubbles is out there somewhere baking herself in what are probably the last few days of warm enough sunshine.  She’s got conjunctivitis the poor bugger.  We’ve got some ointment to put on twice a day, she’s been pretty good about it despite the whinging.

Watched Fright Night last night after recording it on Sky+.  Classic movie, how on earth did we find those special effects ((special in the loose sense)) scary?  Not even sure why it’s an 18, I guess some of the more fleshy scenes are the cause of that.  Evan watching stuff like that the experienced is improved with the surround sound, we’re still really pleased with it.

I got sick of paying for a Sky Movies subscription and not watching anything.  It’s because we don’t sit in front of the TV these days unless we’re doing so to watch something we recorded, so I went through the entire week ahead and set 4 movies to record (Clerks II, Fright Night, Deja Vu, American Gangster) and I’m going to try and do that every few days and record anything I’ve not seen or not seen for a while.  Pan’s Labyrinth was on a week or so ago too, so recorded that and not watched it yet, and Hairspray was on Sky Anytime so I’ve ‘recorded’ that for Grete.

Still pleased with the 5.7% HbA1c result.  Found this nice little chart in case you wanted to know more about the test,

HbA1c
Normal/abnormal
Average blood glucose
4-6.5% Normal for those without diabetes 3-8mmol/L
6.5-7.5% Target range for those with diabetes 8-10mmol/L
8-9.5% High 11-14mmol/L
Greater than 9.5% Very high 15 and above

I bought a Marathon bar ((yes, yes I know, but I like living in the 80’s)) on Wednesday to eat after I got the results, either as a celebration or a commiseration depending on how the results went.  Celebration was a good option.  I never ate a lot of chocolate or sweet stuff before being diagnosed, but I did enjoy a Snickers bar every now and then.  Almost amusingly, they don’t have a totally terrible effect on my blood sugar because of the high fat content, but as you can imagine I’ve had about three since I was diagnosed.

Roleplaying tonight, 4th edition D&D, first time we’ve played (rolled characters up last week), so should be interesting.  Always takes a while to get ‘into’ any campaign, never mind one with a new ruleset so I’m expecting tonight to be pretty slow.

My good friend Simes blogged about some TV he’s been watching.  It certainly feels like the TV schedule has picked up, mostly stuffed with American TV.  The Fringe pilot was cool, the Burn Notice pilot was also interesting and we’ll be watching that to see where it goes.  We’ve got quite a wait for the new series of Criminal Minds sadly, but Bones is back on and is as good as ever (I think).

And I’ll leave you with this,

And I think Pirates would kick both their asses.

Clerks II

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This is a deeply religious movie with strong moral overtones and an solid core of existential theory running through it.  Our heroes must come to terms with their place in the world and learn how to stretch their own minds to release their inner sanctity.  Once accomplished, only then will they realise the true nature of the universe and achieve everlasting happiness.

Or, it’s a rather amusing comedy from Kevin Smith about a couple of guys pushing burgers who discover friendship is stronger than a small fire, and that you should look at that which you take for granted for the love you so dearly need.

Funny, light-hearted, good natured and surreal in a Blues Brothers way, Clerks II was worth watching and has given me an appetite to check out Mr Smith’s other films.

Edit: I know right, you’re thinking omfg how can he NOT have seen any Kevin Smith movies? I know, so sue me.  I’m fixing that right now, it was like, I knew they were there, but I just felt, I dunno, ok? right? is that clear?

Pain! Voltarol to the rescue

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Today I have thumb pain (again).  I have obviously been sitting with my hands in stressful positions when typing recently.  The day before yesterday my left hand ached, around the base of my thumb, and then yesterday my right hand started up (left hand was ok), got worse toward the end of the night and today it’s killing me.  The pad at the base of my thumb hurts, and the tendons feel stretched again.  So I’m slathering Voltarol on and hoping it helps. The fumes the stuff gives off may certainly help.

Just looking at how I hold my hands when using this laptop, I suspect it may be at the root of the issue if I don’t concentrate I tend to hold my hands above the keyboard but rest my right hand against the base of my thumb and then stretch my thumb/fingers around to hit keys and use the mouse-nipple-thingy.

Anyway, yay me.

Empire’s top 500 movies of all time

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Empire magazine (online) has published a 500 greatest movies of all time, as voted on by 10,000 readers, 150 random hollywood folk and 50 film critics.

The format is a bit annoying (it means you have to click through lots of pages to see everything), but it makes for an interesting top 500.

You can probably guess #1 without much effort, but there was some surprises in the list (although with 500 movies, that’s a lot of variation in opinion and not much between them).

Traffic and Open Wireless Networks

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Around a mile from home we got stuck in traffic today.  Long queue, moving very slowly in fits and starts, along a main road off which the road we live is directly connected.  It took us about 20 minutes to travel that mile, maybe longer.

I jokingly said to Grete I’d get the laptop out, find an open wireless network and blog about the traffic to pass the time.  I didn’t quite go that far, but I did get the laptop out and click refresh regularly on the ‘find wireless network’ option.  It’s fun to see what people call their wireless networks.  Some people give their own names away, some people continue to give away the name of their kit (both of these provide room for abuse if you can work out which house the kit is in), and the majority of networks in the area near to where I live are secured.  But not all of them.

I can’t believe how many people still run unsecured wireless networks.  We were probably 20-30 feet from the houses we were passing, and I was getting signal strengths of around 15% to 65% from inside a car, with the laptop running on battery on my knee.  In the rain (not raining inside the car, obviously).  Do people not think, or do they think it won’t happen to them?  The best bits were where we passed side streets, and we’d go from 2 or 3 networks in range to 10.  There’s a massive amount of wireless traffic hanging around our streets.  Most of them are BT Home Hub or Sky devices (and identify themselves as such).  Here’s a selection of our favourites.

Amusing Wireless network name

Clearly someone with a sense of humour.

Need to keep their legs crossed

This person needs to secure their legs more carefully.

Random unsecured network (and default name)

Random unsecured network (and default name)

Don't be Nosy!

Don’t be Nosy! More polite than the first one.

Another default open connection

Another default open connection not far from where I live.

From my drive

That’s the view from my driveway.  That’s not my wireless network.

The one I didn’t get a screenshot of, but wish I had was the one with ~70% strength, called ‘default’ which was unsecured.  I’m guessing it’s unconfigured as well, and hence if you got connected you could probably also connect to the router in question and reconfigure it.

Friends don’t let friends run unsecured Wireless network devices.