The Outgoing

I can't remember a time when I've written a retrospective post about the prior year, or something looking forwards, so I thought I'd double down on new experiences and try for both.

The logical place to start is back, (not that time has a 'back,' or 'front,' but you know what I mean) so let's start there.

In terms of job, nothing changed.  I'm with the same company, doing the same work.  The only difference is location.  This year I ended up working with a fun group of teachers, so that's a bonus I didn't have last year.  I'm working closer to home, which means I'm not waking up at six in the morning, I'm sleeping longer every day which in turn led to me being happier overall.  It turns out sleep is pretty important, guys!

I'm still with the same rugby team.  I joined last year and there was a noticeable changing of the guard (I say noticeable, I wasn't there the year prior, so I don't have a frame of reference beyond what people have told me) that ensured we had a decent amount of energy going into the season.  We staved off any mention of the word relegation, and ended the season with two or three wins (I forget).

This year we were forced to play two relegation playoffs, of which I played one (I was busy for the other and could not play).  In all, this year has been incredibly disappointing.  Almost all our points were scored through the forwards, our attack had no flow, we made very few opportunities and made hundreds of mistakes.  Up to the playoffs I had played four or five games (I also had surgery on my ankle this year, which meant an enforced absence for the first few games) and only scored once.  The other wingers on the team had scored once or twice.  The fullback scored once.  I can't remember any of the centres scoring.  We probably scored more points in any two games last year than the whole of this year.

Our defence was not much better.  We were disorganised and, frankly, unfit, so we bled points even during the games we won.

On a personal note I made mistakes and struggled to find form.  It was difficult coming into a team that was already established, after a personal injury, and I will have to put in  a lot of effort next year to retain my position.  Try scoring is an important statistic for wingers, and I did not do enough of it.  The result was my often coming off the wing and working the inside channels like an extra flanker, not exactly conducive to scoring and also an excellent indication of the dysfunction of our attack.

No individual wins a game of rugby, but I will definitely hold myself to higher standards next year in order to try and drag us upwards, particularly in defence where I will suggest using an aggressive pattern (and of course be rebuffed because I'm a foreigner who doesn't know anything).

It's evident that no one else is going to step up to the plate on the pitch, so I will.




Machismo and bravado aside, this year I started a number of personal projects.  The first is a book.  I've been writing a sci-fi (yes, I know, hardly an inspired genre choice) novel that's reached the end of alpha testing.  That is to say, in literary terms, that I've written a hundred thousand words, and that I need to now beat and wrestle those words into a story.

I've seen people talk about their writing as if they were sculptors, finding a story hidden inside a block of imagination, much like an artist chisels away at wood or stone to find the naked Greek man underneath.

Writing, for me, is more like punching a bear in the gonads.  At many points I sat down and fought like a madman, foregoing food and drink (and occasionally sleep) to hammer away at the keys in front of me, thinking I was making headway in felling the beast.  Occasionally it would get angry and fight back, knocking me for six and causing me to seriously reconsider the endeavour.  During these low points I would peruse the internet and look to others who are writing for the creative outlet (as opposed to those looking for financial gain) and see a literal world of people who are better at it than me.  That's always a fairly dispiriting realisation, no matter how times you are forced to reflect on it.

Like punching a bear, this project serves no real purpose.  I'm never going to be a professional author (not smart enough), nor am I ever going to be published (no personal connections).  Despite being willing to go toe to toe with any number of Carnivora for the chance to have a Dream Job (tm) I'm realistic.  Sad face.

As such, I have some modest goals for my book.  They are as follows:

Goal the first, sell one hundred copies.  This is the big one.  The goal that means, in my mind if nothing else, that I'm an author.  I will note it on my CV.  This, for me, will be the fulfilment of a lifelong dream to 'be an author,' and to 'write a book.'  This is a dream I assumed I would target when I was forty and in the midst of a life crisis.

Goal the second, sell ten physical copies of my book.  Possibly with signatures.

Let's get down to brass tacks.  This is a vanity endeavour driven by ego.  The idea that someone might want to read whatever drivel I write, and that I am interesting or important enough for another human being to be entertained, is entirely self indulgent.  I am essentially saying that I am cool, and you are not.  That I matter in some way.  A physical book can last thousands of years and thus secures my legacy as a human of note.

Now that I think about it, maybe I'm having my mid-life crisis early.

Anyway, with the advent of on-demand vanity presses I can sell enormously expensive single copies of the book, instead of bulk buying thousands at a time.  My aim is to sell ten physical copies, each of which will count towards my hundred total.

The third, have a real ISBN number.  This one is probably the easiest to fulfil, but is likely to be the most expensive.  Anyone can purchase an ISBN number, but they're very expensive.  If you go through Amazon or other popular self-publishing services, they can give you numbers and bar codes that look like ISBN numbers, but are only recognised by their respective services, so are not true ISBN's at all.  Sneaky buggers. 

The point of this is to ensure I can take my phone, scan the code, and have it direct to a recognised storefront.  Should I ever meet someone who is interested in my book (an unlikely premise, granted) I want to be able to whip out my phone, scan the barcode of the copy I will carry around with me literally everywhere, and have it direct to a storefront with my name on it.  Did I mention I have an enormous ego?

Fourthly, I want a pucker cover.  I want a cover that is art.  I want it to be a self-contained story that is good enough to go toe to toe with the huge publishing houses and their artists.  This has potential to be the most expensive aspect of the project, but will almost certainly make or break it.  The cover is the first thing you see and most people will judge it thusly.  To get my hundred sales this needs to be perfect.

The fifth and the final, I want a review.  Not a review from the Times, or an online blog.  An amazon review.  I want someone to have read it and felt strongly enough to have left a review.  I don't care what the content of the review is, I just want one.

Notice how none of these goals have anything to do with the quality of the writing or how it is received.  Don't take that to mean I'm assured of my own genius, but rather the opposite.  It is not Discworld, nor will I ever be Pratchett.

It is also my first book.  The first is always a learning experience.  Who knows.  Where I will end up in the future?  One day I might even be adequate.  Now there's a long-term goal.

The rest of my top-secret projects will be revealed at a later date, that's enough writing for one day.

Farmer Sam

So I didn't play this weekend.  I had a slight strain of the calf over the week from the last game, so they rested me for this match.

My right knee has been bunk for months which, when strapped, is unbalancing my gait and putting additional stress on all kinds of interesting places in my body, resulting in small strains and minor stress all around the shop.

Something unexpected came of it:

I was promoted to groundskeeper for the game, bringing me back to watering mums garden.

One of the new arrivals this year, Pat.

When the teams were playing I was relegated to ball boy, only in charge of one ball at a time.  No more.

Trying to roll up 50 metres of hose, a three man operation.  I managed to cut myself quite handily on an old rusty connector.  Tetanus hoooooo!

After I cut my hand I had to tape it up.

IBM Rugby

So I've started playing for IBM.

They're in the first division (under the top league) in Japan, so they're fairly strong in the scheme of things.  Having said that, they only narrowly avoided relegation last year, so it'll be a struggle this year as well most likely.

We had a practice game against Yakult (of the yoghurt fame) this weekend, in which I played a measly 20 minutes.  Infer from the 20 minutes what you will...

Anyway; I scored a try and made three or four runs for a total of probably 40 or 50 metres.  I made one error in throwing a pass to no one after one such break, but my tackling was 100% (1 out of 1).  It is debatable whether I should have gone inside to cover an attack that they ended up scoring from, but in the end it would have been 4 on 1 anyway so there's not much that could have been done.

They won by a try or two - one of theirs was a charge down and one was a kick with an incredibly wicked bounce (the aforementioned decision).

Anyway, if you are interested in watching, here it is.

My 20 minutes:

The whole game:

Happy Birthday to Me

Before you read this note that it's very late and I'm rushing to get to bed, so there will be many typing errors - many of which will never be fxed.

Okay that one was a joke.

But the rest are not.




So today is my birthday.  If you're reading this then the chances are you're family and therefore in England.  As such, it's probably still my birthday.  Or does that count?  Is timezone directly related to birthdays?  I.e. does my existing in a different one mean it happened at a different time?  Geographically and physically speaking that's an ugly idea, but I rather like the sound of timezones being actual entities that aren't simply human creations and therefore my birthday is still ongoing for you.  I may get you shit presents for Christmas but at least I've given you an extra eight hours.  But only on my birthday.  And I want those hours back when I come home, whenever that may be.

I'm writing this on the back of an envelope on the train and a mother of four just gave her eldest (8 years of age) a full can of coffee.  It's 10.30pm.  I'm not a parent but that seems silly not to mention unfortunate for whoever is living under that apartment when they get home.

I went to a training session for my new job (same company, new area).  I contemplated ending it about 50 times.  "This is a child.  Do not punch the child."  I may be exaggerating but not nearly as much as you might think I am.  It started okay, but after the nice american and patronising but amicable enough ozzie left, a loud, possible tourettes suffering yank took the floor and I spent the next 2 hours with a headache listening to 20 minute anecdotes about whatever shit took his fancy.  He was given coffee at an early age and probably has 3 brothers.  Prick.

Anyway, there were no windows so jumping out of there was out of the question.  I considered breaking a chair and beating myself to death with a chairleg.  Then I thought that I may as well beat him to death.  THEN I thought that I might get put in a cell with someone just like him in some kind of Bardic or cosmic comeuppance.  So I just sat there hating him.  I have 'training,' tomorrow and the day after so Christ knows if either of us will make it out alive.

So you're wondering why I'm on the train at what is now 11pm.  IBM training is on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.  During the weekday it starts at 7.45 and finishes around 9.30.  It actually finishes around 10 because everyone just practices their own thing, whether that be passing or kicking or whatever.  So here I am, absolutely dreading the next couple of days of 'training,' and hoping that I can just get to sleep tonight.

I often find that I write the most when I'm feeling blue, and that's certainly the case today.

I loathe birthdays, with the very limited exception of a couple of friends and family, I find the entire ordeal entirely pointless.

I think I've used this picture before, but I have rarely felt more like the bear during any part of my life so far.  I don't know why specifically today, but I'm definitely feeling down at the moment.  The girlfriend got me a very thoughtful present and made dinner so that's cheered me up somewhat.  I'm waiting on presents from Grandad and Mum so when they arrive I'm sure I'll be able to look back on today and smile at this post - but for now I miss everyone dearly.  I even had a little weep on the train home; combining the extreme fatigue of today (training was very hard and I was borderline postal by the end of the 'training,' today) with my generally negative attitude towards events like today entirely accounts for the sadness so I guess I'll just try to not think about it.  It's times like these that I consider a stiff drink.

And that was today.  I woke up at 7.45, spent 10 minutes trying to figure out where my socks were.  I spent a goddamned lifetime listen to an utter berk talk bollocks, then went to training which was admittedly life affirming.  I got home about 30 minutes ago and now I'm off to bed.

Happy Birthday I guess.

Phew

So I've officially finished my contract for this year.  There's a long layoff until the next one starts so I'm sitting on my hands somewhat.

I would like to say that doesn't mean I'm being lazy, but it probably means exactly that.

I've applied to various jobs, although I doubt they'll get back to me (not pessimism, just raw experience) so I've been hitting the gym and awful lot.  I'm going to make a timelapse video of a gym session because I'd be interested to see how much time I actually spend working versus time spent admiring myself in the mirror.  I fear the results won't be particularly satisfying.  I'm also interested in the various ways of doing timelapse.  The primary method for photographers is to purchase an off camera trigger that will time shots, the downtime, number taken etc.  Of course I don't have one of those, so what I might try doing instead is taking a video, then editing out large numbers of frames, leaving single frames in at set intervals.  It comes with a couple of caveats.  Firstly, I don't know if my battery will last that long shooting long videos.  Secondly, the camera only supports up to 30 minutes clips.  Today I spent close to 4 hours in there, so I don't know if I can trigger the camera without moving it about and ruining continuity.  Lastly, I don't know if the card will hold all the video.  I guess we can try it out at least.

In other news, I've put up some damned stupid videos of me and my friends playing games on youtube.  The idea is to learn the adobe suite of programs (just get a basic knowledge really).  Did you know that after effects can analyse a scene, determine the 3D properties of the scene, and then let you edit the footage as if it were in 3 dimensions ala 3dsmax or autocad.  I'm just going to let that sink in for a second.

It's not flawless, but when it works it's absolutely mind blowing.  The latest video I uploaded has exactly one effect added from after effects.  The scene lasts about 25 seconds, 10 of which have this effect added (just 3D text pinned to a wall to make it look like part of the scenery, not very well).  It took 2 hours for AE to figure out the properties of the scene and another 2 for it to render, but goddamned that is amazing technology.

In the past, gaming was the route to greater technological innovation - pushing polygons onto a screen was extremely hard work.  Then consoles kind of ruined everything by standardising to the lowest common denominator and now every game has a pixel budget determined by consoles - meaning any old PC can play games at a respectable quality.

I think it's editing software of this ilk, that will one day make it to the youtubes of the world, that will once again force technology forward (in the computer realm anyway).

Anyway, I can barely type because my arms and shoulders are full of lead or iron or something heavy, so this is me SIGNING OFF.

Bye.