Animated GIFs… remember them?!

So, as I know I don’t update this site as much as I could, here is the first annual What Richie G did in… list. I will be going through my Google Calendar for the past year, picking out key things that have happened, adding ones in that didn’t end up on there (if I remember) and, maybe, adding a few little incidental anecdotes along the way.

If you want a more wide view of 2011, then may I direct you to Geoff Marshall’s audio review of 2011. What follows below only sees what I did.

JANUARY

Okay, so photo taken at the end of December '10, but couldn't think of anything else to illustrate January. Taken during the closure of Reading station for signalling/bridge works

After the bitterly cold December, came January. In January, I started working at the Barnstaple campus of Petroc on Fridays, which gave me my first proper taste of commuting to work on a bus, given that I decided that as the X7 bus goes from my village to the college at the times I would need it to, it would be ideal for me to catch. Also, I could claim my bus fares back from the college, something that I wouldn’t be able to do if I drove as I wasn’t business insured on my car.

On Tuesday 11 January, I had an interview at Gloucestershire University. This meant that up until the early hours of the morning, I was doing some audio editing so I had a sample piece to take to interview with me. This piece can be found here. By the Friday, I had the response from UCAS telling me that I had been given an unconditional acceptance. I was happy, and told a few people at work about it, but decided to keep it a bit quiet for a while.

Well, it was only a few days actually, given that, as I was rightly told, I couldn’t not tell my line managers at work, so the following Monday they were told. And other than taking my car for it’s service a couple of weeks later (which wasn’t a major event really), that was pretty much it for January.

FEBRUARY

February brought a couple of changes. In fact, the first week alone was rather interesting.

My recording kit, used for recording the Tube Challenge radio piece.

Thursday 3 February saw me going down to Bournemouth for another University interview. To be completely honest, the only reason I went down for the interview at this stage was because I had already booked the day off work; as I had already been accepted by my then first choice, there seemed little point. However, I was rather glad I went down, as it looked to be a better place. I will say that as Glos. Uni were in the process of closing down the campus where the radio courses were held to move them to another, I cannot say for certain what I ‘missed’, but the other differences were that Glos lean towards the journalism side of their media courses where Bournemouth give a more general overview (or so it seems currently!). Interview done, it was just  a case of waiting for UCAS to respond…

That same evening though, was a worship group practice at my church. Not normally something I would put as a ‘major event’, but the key part of it was that it was for a service I was leading on the Sunday, and the practice was made as I was trying to introduce a few ‘new’ worship songs into the church’s repertoire. It kind of worked – a couple of times since I have done one of the songs I taught that morning, and they are beginning to sing along now! The service involved some card tricks, a bit of sleight of hand, and then getting the kids in earlier than they’d normally come in to share with us a bit more. The thing that shocked me slightly was at the end of the service when one member asked me when I was going to start the Local Preacher training course… I had a bit of a good response in that I needed to get Uni out of the way first!

There wasn’t all that much else that happened in February – at some point I would guess that I got the response from UCAS that Bournemouth had accepted me, but I can’t remember exactly when that happened.

MARCH

A group shot of the 'Two Choirs in Concert' event at South Molton Methodist Church on 20 April 2011. Not in the picture is me, because I was taking the photo.

March 2011 – the month I reached a quarter of a century old and… actually, I think that was it for March pretty much. Oh well.

APRIL

Doesn’t really look like much happened in April either.

The problem with doing this like this is that I’m at the basis of an online calendar that is limited by what I put on it. So if I don’t put anything on it, I don’t know I’ve done it when looking back.

MAY

Nope.

JUNE

Ah, now here’s something.

A few of the teams wait for the next train to arrive at Bayswater on the Zone 1 Challenge, 3 June 2011

The annual Tube Challenge Forum Zone 1 Challenge. I didn’t do all that well, and annoyingly I did worse than I initially thought. I’m disappointed that I came last, but at least I didn’t end up wandering aimlessly around Earl’s Court station in a state of mild confusion brought on by dehydration this year. I also managed to do the follow up ‘warm-down’ Random 15 event the next day for the first time in the three years I’ve done Z1. And of course, staying with my friend in London, as I did for this weekend, is always a treat, even if some times it does seem a little rude on my behalf…

I remember now, June was an odd month as I didn’t work in the library at all during that month. I had a fortnightly job there, and the two main things I did on a Saturday during June happened to fall on the days I would’ve been working in the library. The second was the training day for last summer’s New Wine FM.

JULY

July saw me end my employment at South Molton Library. I had been working there since I left school, so around 9 years or so. During that time, I saw the new library being built and opened, and a few children grow up from babies and toddlers up to senior school age. As I’ve said before about the library job, it’s the job I’ve had the longest, but I’ve probably worked there the least amount of time.

JULY AND AUGUST

Millie and I pose for the camera at New Wine 2011

Then of course there was New Wine, the annual Christian confereval (a mix between conference and festival – could also be a festerence, but that sounds like a disease), two weeks – one at the end of July, the other at the beginning of August – spent in a tent doing radio stuff as I have been for the past few years. Some important God things happened that week that were important to me, but I won’t go into them here. Those people who know me will know what those things were, or at least could have a pretty good guess. Another radio piece that’s found it’s way onto this site is an interview I did with a couple of members of Fat and Frantic – click here to listen.

AUGUST

So to the rest of August! August was actually quite busy for me, and the reason why I left the library job during July (so I didn’t have to worry about having to work on Saturdays, or arrange shift swaps etc.). After New Wine, time was spent sorting some computer and audio wiring out at a couple of Youth Centres in Exeter, stuff that had to be squeezed into the other things I was doing. The following weekend, I went with some friends to Fairport’s Cropredy Convention, the first ‘proper’ festival I’ve ever been to, and, rather surprisingly, had a bit of a God-moment. I won’t go into it here though, maybe another time. Overall, Cropredy was a good time, and one that might happen again next year, but who knows. Given who is organising it, I don’t even know if they know… (hello Martyn, just a small dig there!!!)

Richard Digance at Cropredy - somewhere in the video image is me, a rather 'meta' version of Photographs of People Taking Photographs...

The following weekend was a family get-together at my grandparents. Nothing too interesting happened, I only mention it because it happened, and (in the spirit of this post) was listed on my Google Calendar.

There was then the slightly odd situation where, despite not being at work (at the college) throughout the summer thanks to my term-time contract, I had one more week to get through which was this week. So this was my final week of working at the college (chosen at this point as it meant that I would get paid for August without actually having to work it), and a chance to tidy up a few loose ends, reclaim all my stuff (I say ‘all’, there’s probably still loads of stuff there that is mine, a few photography books spring to mind), and say goodbye to colleagues. It was a surprisingly emotional time my last day actually, after all, I had been there for 8 of the last 9 years, and quite a major turning point in my life because of what was happening next.

But first, Greenbelt at the weekend (I finished work on the Thursday to allow myself to go to Greenbelt on the Friday!). This year, I went with the aim of getting there early, and to meet up with a friend who was there earlier, to get a pitch relatively central. Actually, it wasn’t all that central, but not too bad (I was closer to the ‘action’ last year, and I arrived late!). A good weekend, seeing Milton Jones again, who did possibly make a little dig at those people who video their performances on mobile devices and upload them to YouTube… (a post I haven’t quite got to reposting yet involves a video from last year, click here to view the video on YouTube). Also saw Adrian Plass, well, I say ‘saw’, unfortunately (and I think Mr Plass would appreciate the irony), I was stuck behind a pillar – another very funny man.

Another brilliant piece we saw was Daniel Bye’s The Price of Everything, info about his 2012 tour dates is on the page linked to, and I would recommend seeing it – if he’s anywhere near where I’m likely to be, I’ll probably go again (and possibly film it on my camera and upload it to YouTube…). I will also admit that I had completely forgotten about this until I came to write this piece. So there was a bonus about me doing this, even if nobody reads it.

I can’t actually remember what else I went to see at Greenbelt, nor if I will be able to afford to go again this summer. Time will tell.

THE BEGINNING OF SEPTEMBER

The first couple of weeks were a bit dull really. I had finished work, and wasn’t due to move to Bournemouth until the 17th, although it was the 15th when I went down. The day before I moved down though, I spent the time preparing by… erm… finishing off the wiring of the youth centre in Exeter. I would imagine that it wasn’t the way most soon-to-be university students prepare before moving!

THE END OF SEPTEMBER TO THE BEGINNING OF DECEMBER

Leroy dressed up as a cheerleader for some reason or another. Can't exactly remember why now...

If I’m honest, these couple of months kind of went past in a bit of a blur, and I’d imagine the first term of University would do that to anybody. Certain aspects of the ‘arrival’ were good, time spent settling in (which didn’t go too badly actually), finding a church to go to, involvement with the university Christian Union, and soforth. Some of the ‘academic’ aspects of my university experience were good, if, unfortunately, for some of it a little disorganised. Hopefully the new term will be a little more organised!

Only two main assignments have been done this term, the Media Theory essay being the ‘large’ one to do, with it being the first essay that I’ve ever written. We had to self-assess the work; I gave myself 55%, but when the actual result came back it was 65%. Both of which are a pass, and I know where I went wrong (and indeed knew where I went wrong when I wrote it), so I’m happy.

The other assigmnent was the 4-minute audio piece, the re-recording of Stanley & Miller: Local Detectives being ¾ of the piece, the other quarter being an advertisment for a Christmas event for the CU. As I am still awaiting the assessment for these, I will refrain from loading it onto here until then, but they will be (keep an eye on the ‘Radio’ page of the site).

DECEMBER

Liam puts the finishing touches to the Flat 103 Christmas Dinner

And so we come full circle to December 2011. Still at University a week after term finished to help with interviews for next year’s potential students, I found myself giving guided tours around the campus, and I wish I had a pedometer for it as there was a lot of walking involved! It was paid work, and as when the opportunity came up I hadn’t arranged my return to Devon, I decided to go for it. It was fun, even if they were TV students rather than Radio students, and I think I actually learnt stuff about the uni that I didn’t know before! It was a shame that the SU had closed for Christmas at that time as it meant that a) I couldn’t show them the SU bar, and b) couldn’t actually use the SU bar, but they understood that it was because of Christmas so weren’t too annoyed about it.

Boxing day at my grandparent’s house didn’t go too bad, if a little dull this time around (past years have been more interesting) but I think it was because there weren’t that many of us this year. New Year’s Eve was quite good fun, being invited out to one of the pubs in the village with some friends. The first time I’ve been in that pub since 31 July 1999 when I fell off my bike and was bleeding all over the floor, and it was a good evening, even if we did miss the rather overhyped moment when 31 December 2011 became 1 January 2012.

2012 and beyond

So what will happen in 2012?

New Year's Eve 2011/2012 at the Miner's Arms

Well, here’s a rough synopsis of what I’ve planned so far:

• Back to University on Friday
• Start being part of the BUCU committee
• Turn 26 in March
• More University work
• Tube Challenge Zone 1 (end of June/beginning of July probably)
• might somehow chuck in a Full Network Challenge
• Pass first year of University
• New Wine
• Maybe Cropredy again
• Hopefully Greenbelt
• Start second year of University

And of course, not for one instance believe that the world will end during December 2012, but will be secretly scared on the day they say it will just in case it does happen.

Well, that was 2011. See you next year.

I’ve been bored.

Telephone call random by richietheg

It’s actually been quite interesting, looking at my old posts, something I haven’t really done. I had forgotton some of the things I’d written (and I will admit, some posts have been edited slightly and some aren’t going to be transferred). One of the post was entitled ‘Musings on the Internet how it used to be‘, in which I commented on a website that I happened to visit which had a link to a ‘large’ image with a warning about its size and that browsers may not be able to cope.

Which brings me to today.

One thing that I like about the BBC News website is that they don’t use CSS ‘properly’. By that, I don’t mean that it’s not valid code or anything, (although I am now curious to know… bear with me… I’m really surprised now – it doesn’t… oh well) no, what I mean is that when I was doing web design at college, and I see this around quite a bit too, CSS is so you can change the whole site design in one easy go, so your pages are kept to the same design as you go across your website. The BBC News website don’t seem to have grasped this, which is a good thing.

It means that when you search for archive news since their website started, such as this article about the safety of the Pacer trains, you see their old site design. Click on that link now, go on – I’ll wait. Just make sure you come back because I’ve still got stuff to say and unless you’re a train geek who is interested in a news article from 1999 then you’re not going to be interested in the actual article.

Welcome back! See how narrow that website looks on your monitor? How pixellated the banner at the top of the screen looks? The weird thing is that the text size for the article isn’t (noticeably) a different size to what it is now. The site now is just wider than it used to be.  Incidentally, in case you were wondering (because I was so there’s an outside chance you might’ve been), the old BBC News website does have valid CSS code.

2.4+2.4 = 4.8

If you round to the nearest whole number, that gives you
2+2 = 5.

QED.

So, last night I was asleep. Nothing unusual there (well actually given my sleep patterns recently, but that’s another post for another time!) except that I found myself dreaming – which actually isn’t that unusual either.

I have heard that you only know you’re dreaming when you’re not in a deep sleep, or that you can only remember that you dreamed if you weren’t in a deep sleep when you were dreaming. Anyway, I’ve digressed slightly.

Last night in my dream, I realised that I had come across an idea that I needed to remember. Of course, in that subconscious way you do sometimes, I knew that I was in a dream and that this idea needed to become reality so had to think of a way of doing this. The cartoon from XKCD as shown above came to mind, so I found a keyboard and started typing.

I could feel my real fingers moving as if I was typing, and I assumed that I was using my laptop keyboard to do so – my laptop being still switched on on the floor beside my bed (no officer, I wasn’t downloading anything…) so I assumed that I had managed to pick it up, open it, and start typing.

You can therefore imagine my surprise this morning when I woke up to find that absoutely nothing had happened.  I hadn’t typed a message to myself in my sleep, nor had I remembered this idea that I needed to remember.  Knowing my dreams though, it was probably either a very extraordinarily good idea or a pathetically bad one. I also found that my laptop had turned off as the night went on as the power went in the house at some point during the night and the battery ran out. This is also the reason why I was late for work, because I woke up and looked at my phone and realised that it was half past 8.

The moral of the story? Well, there isn’t one to be fair. There usually isn’t.

A – Did she just say ‘is this second class’?

B – I think she did

A – I’ve got a good mind to go up to her, crush a can of Stella on my head and urinate on her leg.

B – She’ll probably get her butler to beat you up

Well, I thought it was funny.  Perhaps you had to be there…

(I later found out that these two people on the seats behind me didn’t know each other before they got on the train.)

Well, that’s a little odd to say given that I haven’t really done that many posts here (I started with good intentions, but meh).

It is quite often that I find myself in a situation where I really feel for a fictional person.  A few years ago, author Tim Bowler came to my secondary school and before that I read his book Shadows.  I found myself very affected by this book for some reason.  There have been other instances where this has happened but I won’t go into them now.

I was recently shown this blog about Alice and Kev (http://aliceandkev.wordpress.com) , where these two characters, child Alice and her father Kev, have been made in The Sims 3, been made homeless, moneyless, and with certain personality traits. It could be considered a social documentary on the homeless, an amusing yet toughtful story, or somebody with nothing better to do playing The Sims and writing about it on his website.

I’ve often thought about the homeless, especially homeless children.  As I write this, I am lying on my bed, fairly comfortable (aside from the fact that I’ve done my back in) and the fridge downstairs has food in it, I’ve got clothes in my wardrobe, and am typing this on a computer bought within the past couple of weeks.  I’m lucky, I also live in an area where there isn’t homelessness.  But even twenty miles up the road in Barnstaple there are people living homeless, some by default some by choice.  I don’t know what the case is with children being homeless, but I know there are some.

Reading through Alilce and Kev, I got this overwhelming urge to find Alice and just give her a hug. A few times I’ve wanted to be able to do something with homeless children but don’t know what.

There is something else that I won’t go into now though about something that happened a while back that I haven’t forgotton about.

Anyway, I’d go and read Alice and Kev if I were you.  It’s being updated daily (or so it seems), and if you don’t start feeling for Alice then I think there’s something wrong with you.

Sodor Rail – the Fat Controller’s new privatised railway company serving the Island of Sodor – must have the worst safety and timekeeping record for any railway.  I shall prove this now by going through the Thomas the Tank Engine Collection – a book I received for Christmas a few years back.

Thomas and Gordon: Thomas, on coach shunting duties, comes into the station later than intended, meaning that Gordon’s express leaves only just on time. Thomas is not uncoupled from the train. OK, so it’s not an accident or anything, but a potential late running express train. However, Thomas did end up at a station that wasn’t his own, required posession of a siding and also a path to return to his own station and yard.

Thomas’s Train: Due to an engine (Henry) failure, Thomas is entrusted with pulling the passenger train that Henry cannot.  He leaves the station without being coupled to his train, and has to return to get them. This would have left the train to leave the station late, due to an engine failure, and as Thomas wasn’t correctly coupled to the train it would have left much later than scheduled. Again, a path would have been required for this late running train as well as Thomas having to return to the station. I will disregard the incorrect punctuation in the title for now.

Thomas and the Trucks: Thomas and Edward swap duties, so Thomas is heading a goods train.  He fails to stop at the correct station and just about stops in time to avoid the buffers at the end of the line. To quote the book, ‘luckily the line was clear as they swerved into the goods yard’. Of course, there is also the unplanned swapping of engines between duties, which resulted in an engine not cleared for goods use to be used. There is also the issue that Thomas, who is ‘tired of pushing coaches [and] wants to see the world’ doesn’t have the correct route knowledge for this line.

Thomas and the Breakdown Train: A new engine, James, has an accident caused by his brakes catching fireand Thomas helps retrieve him. A derailment is never good news really.  The front trucks are all damaged in the crash and so is James’ tender.  Goods in those carraiges is also damaged then, as well as the rails and the lineside fencing.  James however is fine but is sent for repairs.

Thomas and the Guard: Henry’s train is late to Thomas’ branch line junction. He leaves quickly to get back to timetable, leaving his guard behind in the process, but is stopped at a signal. Now, the presence of a signal on a single-track branch line served by one train is a bit of a mystery in itself.  I must congratulate Sodor Rail in letting the branch line train wait for the late running main line train, caused by an engine problem; ‘my system is out of order’ (Henry – that’s two failures for Henry so far). I believe that Thomas did make up for the lost time on the route so that’s a plus.

Thomas goes Fishing: A water tower at a station is out of order, so Thomas is filled up with water from a nearby river with a bucket dropped from a bridge. Shortly after, Thomas experieces boiler problems and is sent to a siding where he is inspected to find that there is fish in him. First, an out of order water tower at a station is a problem, but not an uncommon one even on the mainland.  Thomas then stops on a bridge – what do the passengers think of this? – and is filled up with water from the river. This would have taken quite some time. At the next station, Thomas is uncoupled and sent to a siding, meaning that another engine would have to continue with Thomas’ train.  Fish is found in the boiler.  Why didn’t the driver and fireman notice the fish when they were pouring the water from the bucket into the engine? And why was Thomas blamed for it at the end – it wasn’t his fault…

Thomas, Terence and the Snow: Thomas, out in snow without his snowplough, gets caught in a drift and has to be pulled out with a tractor wile a bus comes for the passengers.  The wrong kind of snow? Maybe. Of course, we know from the beginning of this year what effect snow has on trains in this country, so we can’t really blame Sodor Rail for this one, and they did try and continue to operate a service despite the conditions.  I think that, despite the delays and cancellations to service, this one is a plus for Sodor Rail.

Thomas and Bertie: Thomas and a bus race between two stations. Thomas wins the race.  Such a common problem with the public transport infrastructure in this country. A bus and a train have been given the same route between two stations. I do think it’s a plus for Sodor Rail as they managed to get there first, and after this incidence, Bertie travels around the towns taking passengers to the station where Thomas then takes them onwards.

The Fat Controller’s Engines: All the engines on the Island of Sodor are going to the mainland.  While showing the shadowing replacement engines what they’re doing, Thomas has an accident and has to be repaired. Again, an accident which has left an engine damaged.  On the plus side, the workmen do manage to fix Thomas so he does manage to travel. Cause of accident, brakes I think.

Thomas comes to Breakfast: Thomas rolls out of his shed and, unable to stop, comes off the end of the (unbuffered) rails and into the stationmaster’s house (or the Fat Controller’s house on the TV series).  A cleaner has messed with the controls inside of Thomas, which is what causes him to roll out of the shed without a driver.  Temporary rails have to be laid on the road at the end of the siding in order to pull Thomas back, so the road would have to have been closed.  There is also sustainable damage to the stationmaster’s house and his garden (which included trees) while the stationmaster’s wife has to recook their breakfast.  ‘You miserable engine’…  A replacement engine – a diesel railcar of all things – has to be put onto Thomas’ branch line while Thomas is repaired. Again, Thomas gets the blame for this, rather than the cleaner who messed with Thomas’ controls…

I’ve just realised how long a process this is going to be.  This book is separated by character in the series and not in the order the stories were released in, so I shall continue next time with Percy, the Small Engine.

I was in a shop the other day and they were using a card terminal that wasn’t part of the till itself so they had to type in the amount I had bought.

And that lead me to think…

Has anybody ever bought something that is the value of their PIN?

For instance, if my PIN was 4253, and I bought something that was £42.53 then that would be a yes (remembering of course that when values are entered into tills and card units, it is always done by pence so that they would enter in 4253 and so would I).

(And, no, that isn’t my PIN, I’m not that stupid.  I did consider double-bluffing you too as that is the sort of thing I would do, but even I have a line that I daren’t cross on the Internet, and publising my PIN is about 250 yards away from that line!  As an aside, I used to, when I was with friends and getting money out of a cash machine, say four random digits as I entered my PIN just to confuse them.  Of course, me being me ended up confusing myself on a number of occasions resulting in me not putting the number in correctly. But I digress.)

Of course, there are some problems with this theory.  Depending if you’re rich or poor, or your PIN is a number in the low thousands or the high thousands.  One of my PINs is quite a high number, and I think I’m quite unlikely to come across this situation myself with that card, while the other was what started me thinking as the amount I bought was rather close to my PIN. If you’re rich, with a high number, say 9835 then £98.35 is nothing to you and you’re quite likely to spend that, yet with a low number PIN (say, 1378) then £13.78 is such a low amount that you would probably just hand over a twenty pound note.  On the other side, if you’re poor with a low number then £13.78 is, not a lot of money, but something you’d use a card for. £98.35 would probably be a weekly shop or something so something that would happen infrequently if at all.

I can honestly say that this has never happened to me. I just think these things up, honestly.  I don’t know why or where but they do show up in my mind.

I shall let you know if it ever does happen to me, and I’d be quite interested to hear if it has happened to you – though I’d advise against publishing the actual amounts and therefore also your PIN!